That stopped me cold. “Listen, I’m not an Oprah kind of guy, and I don’t cry in movies. I deal with things my own way.” The tone of her question, which implied that I could care less about the destruction of lives, made me angry.
“It’s just that it seems like a game to you.”
“What do you want me to tell you, Masters? Do you want to hear about the nightmares? The alcoholism? How about the stalled career and the broken marriage? Or maybe the phobias? Will me talking about all the baggage I’ve collected make you happy? Make working together easier, or get this case solved faster?” I was working myself up. In fact, I’d only ever boiled it down like that for even myself once before, given myself a picture of what my life was, what I’d become.
“Well, I—”
“It’s called irony, Special Agent,” I said. “It’s a great shield—maybe that’s why it’s called irony, made of iron, y’know? You should try it. If you’re going to stay in OSI, you’re going to need protection that works for you. Or it’ll get under your skin and you’ll never get it out.”
I started walking again. Within a dozen steps, I felt like apologizing. Being in that hospital had affected me. And Masters was just trying to come to grips with me—my personality. We were going through the process of getting to know each other professionally, while sharing a number of intense life-changing experiences…Jesus. I gave myself a mental shake. I was starting to sound like Brenda.
“Hey, soldier—you want an ice-cold Coca-Cola? Or maybe you want to take the Pepsi Challenge?”
I looked up from my boots and saw a corridor of shops. Apparently, we’d just wandered out of the war zone and into a friendly flea market. Servicemen milled about in the fairground atmosphere. Incongruously, a heavily armed marine walked past with an M249 machine gun in one hand and a bag of groceries in the other, a couple of bread sticks poking up out of the bag. He strolled by, acknowledging our presence with a nod. His face was covered in the fine, beige dust of the street and his fatigues were bleached the color of dried mud. I didn’t get to see his eyes. They were behind heavily polarized rose-colored glasses. An interesting choice.
“What gives here, Corporal?” I said.
“New in town, eh?” he replied.
“Yeah.”
“Haji shops. The hajis do a little business, earn a few bucks. You can buy anything you want.” He leaned in close, putting his armored body between Masters and me, and said, “And I do mean
anything
—know what I’m sayin’?” Although I couldn’t see the wink I’m sure he gave me one behind those lenses, there being no misunderstanding about what that “anything” might be.
“Thanks for the heads-up,” I said.
A young Iraqi male who was all teeth, wearing a Lakers basketball cap and other branded clothing, was hanging out of the nearest stall, beckoning Masters and me to come on over. He repeated the offer of selling us sodas.
His shop was little more than a trestle table with a large umbrella over the top to provide shade. Others on the strip were more permanent structures with proper roofs and air-conditioning. Portable generators filled the air with a choral buzz. I decided to take him up on his offer. “Two Cokes, thanks.”
The boy—he couldn’t have been more than fourteen—took the money and handed over the sodas. I gave one to Masters and said, “Peace?”
She accepted the can and clinked mine in agreement. “Peace. Where are we?”
“Beats me,” I said.
“You want an iPod? New model out—fifty thousand songs, movies. What’s a war without a soundtrack, right? How about CDs, videos? I can get you cable TV,” said the vendor. Masters walked on ahead and the young man said, for my ears only, “Are you lonely here? You like to fuck Iraqi virgin—make your nights as hot as your days…”
“No, thanks,” I said. I’m no prude, but I was dubious as hell about the wisdom of allowing this kind of activity to go on unchecked in what was supposed to be a secure area. I caught up to Masters and we picked up the pace through the market. There was nothing more either of us wanted or needed here.
TWENTY-THREE
T
here were seven convoys heading out in the next four hours. Two were supply ops, the others were patrols hunting for the insurgents responsible for that truck bomb. As luck would have it, one was going our way.
“Space A…Space A,” mumbled the sergeant checking our CAC cards. “And you want to go where?”
Masters repeated, “Rasafl Street, number seventy-five. You know it?”
The woman fed the information into her laptop. “Yeah, it’s in Saddun. A ten-minute ride from here. Sounds familiar; what’s there?”
“A company called MaxRisk.”
“Yeah, know ’em. We work with those guys—contractors. We can take you there and they can bring you back here when you’re done. You okay with that, ma’am?”
“Sounds good, Sarge,” said Masters.
We were directed to the lead vehicle, a Humvee with a TOW launcher mounted on its roof. Hanging curtains of Kevlar armor covered the doors and windows. Two riflemen were already seated inside. Masters and I climbed in and received nods from them. It was hot enough to pop corn inside, and it stank of sweat and cigar smoke leaching out of the riflemen’s clothing. I guessed the sergeant sitting opposite was the cigar-smoke culprit; his pale skin was reacting to the heat by flushing a cochineal red. A portable CD player thrashed out heavy-metal music, making conversation impossible. Not that I was looking for any.
The convoy moved off, tires crunching over pulverized concrete and other debris, which included a dog that had become roadkill. The shirt beneath my flaks was drenched with sweat and I could feel it trickling down into my pants.
With curtains over the doors there was not much to see, and the grunting and screaming coming through the speakers merely added to the claustrophobia. The soldiers had their heads back, eyes closed, except for the sergeant chomping his cigar, who alternated between glaring at his feet and at me.
Masters leaned forward. Her hair was up, tucked inside her helmet. Strands of it had escaped and some of these were caught in the sweat on her skin. I watched a bead descend slowly, moving from strand to strand. And then I found myself wondering whether the cleavage between her breasts was also perspiring. It was at that moment I finally realized I was attracted to her. Funny how these things work. Maybe it was the grief she’d given me earlier.
Before long, we turned onto a broad freeway. I got tired of the sergeant blowing smoke rings in four-four time so I turned to watch what was happening up front. “Have you worked out what side of the road the people here drive on?” I asked Masters.
She turned to look out the windshield. She pointed to the right, then the left, then shrugged. The road rules seemed to be only suggestions, and vague ones at that. The traffic was involved in a type of slalom, maneuvering around the deep potholes that pockmarked the road. A rumble filled the car, seemingly coming up through the asphalt. Our road merged with another and we found ourselves beside another convoy moving slightly faster. I counted five Humvees and a seventy-ton Abrams bringing up the rear, no doubt the source of the vibration. The half ton of metal in its tracks battered the road surface as it whipped by at around forty miles per hour. The screech of its turbine engine drowned out Metallica as if the music were no more than a squeaking door hinge. The dust came next, blasting through the vents beside my face. The convoy disappeared down a side road and into a cloud raised by its own passage.
The part of town we were heading for was more commercial, with taller, more densely packed-in buildings. The overall hue was light brown and tan, the color of grit. A bridge took us over a dirty gray stretch of water that moved with the speed of a garden slug. The mighty Tigris.
“Rasafl Street—coming up now,” announced a voice from the front. “What number you want?”
“Seventy-five,” I said.
Children played in the fountain spouting from a burst water main, shooting one another with imaginary guns. Across the road, an old truck had stalled and overheated. Steam boiled out from under the hood. A bunch of Iraqi males rushed around it, yelling at each other as if it was going to explode. Maybe it was.
There was a lot more traffic on the road, but we barely slowed. Motorcycles darted in and out of the flow. There was only one road rule—get the fuck out of our way. Ahead, the lights in a busy intersection turned red. Our driver kept his foot on the gas. An old heap swerved at us, out of a side street. The driver hit the brakes, skidding. We shot around it, avoiding a collision by inches. “Motherfucker!” yelled our driver. “You get your license off the back of a cereal box? You’re fucking lucky I’m a better driver than you, motherfucker!” The Humvee behind us clipped the Iraqi’s rear fender, putting it into a spin. We didn’t stop to see if the driver was okay.
The street itself was lined mostly with merchants peddling everything from rugs and canned and bottled petrol to Levi’s and Nikes. There were westerners, too—civilians. Most were armed to the teeth with submachine pistols or assault rifles. Those little coils connected to earpieces were also the fashion on Baghdad streets, as were blade-style sunglasses with dark orange or burnished red lenses like the ones the corporal back at haji street had worn. I pegged the majority of these people as former Special Forces or ex-infantry with combat experience. They were not interested in the shops. Their heads swung continuously from left to right, assessing threats, calculating lines of fire, planning escape routes, and estimating the collateral damage should they have to use the firepower strapped to their flaks. For the most part, they appeared to be providing security for the unarmed Europeans who were, I assumed, involved in the rebuilding.
I was looking forward to getting out of this mobile oven. The sun was now high overhead, boring down through the blue magnifying-glass sky. The driver counted street numbers on the buildings, when they were provided. “That’s seventy-five there,” he said, slowing. He pointed at a tan concrete wall with a heavy brown steel gate. Behind it lay a glimpse of dust-covered vehicles in a dun-colored courtyard. Four men, two Caucasian and two massive Polynesian types, stood guard behind dirty concrete blockades.
“Okay. This is it,” said the driver. He pulled up. We opened the door and jumped out. The convoy was on the move immediately, wheels spinning up dust clouds. It was gone within seconds, heading down the road, no farewells exchanged.
Masters spanked the grit out of her fatigues as we walked toward the nearest of the men—one of the Europeans. An HK G36 swung from his right hand. “MaxRisk?” I asked.
The man looked me up and down and took his time answering, as if he was thinking of a witty reply that would impress his compatriot, but either he changed his mind or his brain failed him. “It is,” he drawled. A fellow countryman. “And who might you be?” He indicated he meant the plural you with a gesture of his head that included Masters.
Masters and I badged him in unison, holding our IDs in front of his face until he got it. This seemed to take a while, which suggested he was in need of either reading glasses or a few extra points of IQ. I gave him the benefit of the doubt and resisted the temptation to speak slow. “You got an American citizen, a Dante Ambrose, working here?” I said.
“Maybe,” he replied. “We got a lot of Americans here.”
“Sonny, I’d appreciate a straight answer to a straight question. It’s either ‘Yes, we do,’ or ‘I don’t know.’ ‘Sir’ is optional, but don’t give me any of your macho shit. I’m tired and I’m hot and you’re keeping me from the hotel pool.” I was irritable, but he had an assault rifle. That made us even in my book and maybe in his, too. Maybe a command tone would help get things moving. It did. He swallowed and said, “Okay…okay…just head up to the office and ask the man at the desk.” He aimed a remote at the gate and pressed a button. It slowly swung open.
“Thank you for your cooperation,” I said.
He nodded and spat onto the road.
Good comeback, pal.
A sign painted on a large rectangular board sat on the brickwork over the building’s main entrance. It said,
“MaxRisk. Let us minimize yours,”
in orange lettering outlined in black against a pale blue background. Unlike many buildings on this street, this one looked recently constructed. It could easily have been some kind of government garage before the invasion, and was the perfect digs for a heavily motorized security outfit. The building itself was a U-shape, a main block with two wings enclosing the large open courtyard. More than half a dozen pickup-style vehicles were parked rear bumper to the wall, and each carried a fearsome inventory of weaponry. Quite a few Europeans and Polynesians were hanging around servicing their weapons or having a smoke. Others were trying to get a game of soccer up and running, and were rolling empty fuel barrels into position for goalposts.
We walked to the main entrance, where a sign that said “Reception” pointed the way up the concrete stairwell. Music blared from somewhere ahead, Eminem at the end of the tunnel. A man was singing along to it like it was karaoke and he was convinced he was about to be discovered. If so, he was deluded. Masters and I rounded the final flight of stairs and walked into what was more an operations room than a reception area. There was no reception desk—just a row of filing cabinets separating the stairwell from the office space. A large black man was the source of the sing-along. He wore combat fatigue pants—same as ours—but with a black T-shirt. On the front was a grinning death’s-head skull with the single word
Smile
above it. He was tapping something into a computer keyboard while he sang. Massive gold rings throttled his fingers except for one, his trigger finger. He seemed not to have noticed us, so I took a moment to scope out the room.
A man in his early thirties, dressed similarly to the singer but with a different T-shirt, blue with some sort of surf motif on it, was leaning back in a chair with his dusty boots up on the desk in front of him, talking on the phone. Occupying one entire wall was a laminated street map of Baghdad. It was covered in grease pencil marks. Other items on the wall ranged from wanted posters featuring unhappy-looking bearded locals, to photos of smiling men packing enough heat to quell a major Central American coup, as well as assorted military memorabilia and a motivational poster with a bunch of guys in a long rowing boat, titled “Teamwork.” The caption beneath read,
This is where we all follow the guy with the loudest voice to our inevitable doom.