The Faithful Spy (16 page)

Nonetheless, he eventually found three lower-level technicians whose sympathy for al Qaeda had escaped the government’s security checks. They could not deliver him a working bomb, but they provided equipment that Farouk found very helpful. Then he discovered Dmitri Georgoff, an out-of-work Russian nuclear scientist looking for hard currency. Farouk and Dmitri attended their first meeting with great caution, Farouk because he feared a CIA sting operation, Dmitri because he preferred that his head remain attached to his body. But both men found the meeting satisfactory, and after some negotiations, Dmitri agreed to provide Farouk with two lead-lined steel boxes filled with useful material. Their cost: $675,000. That sum represented a serious investment for Farouk. Sheikh bin Laden himself had to approve the deal.

Al Qaeda still had nothing close to a working nuclear weapon that could vaporize a city. But one didn’t need a nuke to panic the enemy. A conventional bomb laced with radioactive material—a dirty bomb—could devastate the infidels. Radiation frightened people. They couldn’t see it, smell it, or feel it, yet it could kill them years after it hit them. Some radioactive isotopes could contaminate an area for decades, making it worthless even if the buildings remained standing. In the proper place—midtown Manhattan, say—a dirty bomb would cause hundreds of billions of dollars in damage and kill thousands of
kafirs.
And unlike a nuclear weapon, a dirty bomb was easy to build. The hard part was finding the dirt, but Farouk had solved that problem. Already he had shipped enough radioactive material to the United States for at least one bomb.

Now he hoped for more. Three weeks before, the man who called himself Omar Khadri had given Farouk a new mission. Iraqi villagers in the desert south of Falluja had found a secret underground building in an abandoned military base. They believed that the building contained radioactive material. They hoped to give their find to Sheikh bin Laden.

So Farouk had made a most dangerous trip, two thousand miles west, from Pakistan to Afghanistan to Iran and then over the mountainous border of Iran into Iraq. Along the way he dodged both the infidel troops in Afghanistan and the Iranian secret police, who did not look kindly on al Qaeda. Farouk could have flown to Jordan and driven to Baghdad, but on a mission as sensitive as this he preferred to avoid leaving tracks on any airline manifests. Besides, he would have had difficulty explaining the equipment he carried to customs agents.

Farouk had warned himself not to get too excited. The men he was meeting tonight were fighters, not physicists. All he had seen so far were blurry pictures of rods and steel drums that looked promising but proved nothing. Still, he couldn’t help but hope. If they had truly found new material…and under the nose of the United States!

The Americans were fools, Farouk thought. Decades before, the Jews had blasted Saddam’s nuclear reactors and destroyed Iraq’s effort to build an atomic bomb. The material he would see tonight, Allah willing, represented the remains of that program, exhumed from a grave in the desert. At best it would be nuclear trash, iodine and cesium that could never have made a real atomic weapon. No government would bother with the stuff. But it would do just fine for al Qaeda’s purposes. And al Qaeda would never have had a chance at it if the United States hadn’t invaded Iraq. For Saddam had never shared his secrets with Sheikh bin Laden. He was a godless devil, the most useless of the infidel Arab leaders. But America had taken care of Saddam. Iraq’s doors had opened to al Qaeda’s holy warriors.

Yes, the Americans were fools. You invaded Iraq because you said it was full of “terrorists,” Farouk thought. Well, now it is. Allah works in mysterious ways.

THE SUN HAD
set when the Mad Dogs rolled up to the concrete blast walls that blocked the entrance to the Khudra police station, a pitted two-story building marked by a tattered Iraqi flag. Suicide car bombs had hit the station three times. Now most cops wouldn’t leave the station even to patrol, much less arrest anyone. But a few officers still worked with the 2-7 Cav; Jackson wasn’t sure if they were brave or crazy. In any case, they knew the streets of Ghazalia better than he ever would. He hoped to take a couple of them out tonight.

Jackson strode to the station’s front gates, where Lieutenant Colonel Ghaith Fahd stood, cigarette in hand. The men tapped their hands to their chests, then shook hands. Fahd was the only officer at Khudra whom Jackson really trusted.
“Salaam alaikum,”
Jackson said.

“Alaikum salaam.”

“You heard us coming?”

“Nam.”

Jackson was not surprised. His tanks ran on huge engines, modified jet turbines, that announced their presence long before they arrived. Noise was their biggest tactical weakness. But tonight he hoped to turn that flaw to his advantage.

“Cigarette?” Fahd said, offering Jackson his pack.

“Dunhills? Fancy, Colonel.” Jackson shook a cigarette onto his palm.

“My raise came through,” Fahd said, and laughed.

Jackson lit up and gratefully sucked on the cigarette. Though he didn’t smoke. At least he hadn’t before he came over here. “You know those things will kill you,” he told Fahd.

“No quicker than anything else, Captain.”

Jackson marveled at Fahd’s cool. For an Iraqi officer in this neighborhood, even to be seen with an American was an act of supreme courage. Yet Fahd never seemed tired or tense, much less afraid. They walked into the street, out of earshot of the station.

“You have plans tonight?” Fahd asked.

“Yes. A raid.”

“How many men do you need?”

“Only those you really trust.”

Fahd nodded. “Five…no, four. Ehab is home today.”

“Just four men?” Fifty officers were on duty.

“Yes.”

“That bad, huh?”

“Even worse, Captain.” Fahd handed Jackson the cigarettes. “Have another Dunhill. I’ll round them up.”

TEN MINUTES LATER
Fahd was back, four men in tow.

“As you like, Captain.” An Iraqi expression that meant: Whenever you’re ready.

Jackson looked at his watch. Eight-forty. Saleh had said the meeting was supposed to start at nine and last an hour. But he’d also warned Jackson that the guerrillas often ran late. And Jackson knew he couldn’t risk watching the barbershop—any American presence would be obvious. He had decided to hit at nine forty-five and hope for the best.

“We have a little while. Where’s your flak jacket, Colonel?”

“I don’t have one.”

“We gave you enough armor for every officer in Khudra.” Jackson didn’t hide the frustration in his voice.

A brittle laugh escaped Fahd’s lips. “Let me tell you a story.” He lit a fresh cigarette. “It will be over before this Dunhill.”

“Sure.”

“My father owned a store in Sadr City. You know Sadr City, of course.”

“Of course.” Sadr City was a giant slum in northeast Baghdad, on the other side of the Tigris River, a desperately poor place.

“We were not wealthy. No one in Sadr City is wealthy. But we were comfortable,” Fahd said. He took a deep drag on his cigarette. “Unfortunately my father—Mohammed—liked to joke. Sometimes he joked about Saddam. In 1987, the Mukhabarat”—Saddam’s secret police—“raided his store. They took him and my brother Sadiq to Abu Ghraib. You can guess the rest.”

“Did you ever see them again?”

“Sadiq survived, for a while. He died two years later.”

“Did he tell you what had happened?”

“He never spoke after they let him go.”

“He never said what they’d done?”

“He never spoke at all.” Fahd pointed at his mouth. “No tongue.”

Jackson felt his own tongue curl inside his mouth as he tried to think of something to say.

“I’m sorry.”

“They must have found a very bad Mukhabarat agent,” Fahd said. “My father’s jokes weren’t so much.”

“And you escaped?”

“I wasn’t there. They never came back for me. I don’t know why. Maybe they felt—what is the word?—lazy.”

“Inshallah.”

“Inshallah,”
Fahd said. “Instead they sent me to fight against Iran. I survived—the war was almost over—and then I got into the police academy somehow. Now I am a lieutenant colonel in the Iraqi police, respected and loved by my men.” Fahd laughed. “A charmed life, wouldn’t you say, Captain?” He held up his cigarette, still burning. “And now the story is over, as I promised.” Fahd took a final drag on his cigarette, then stubbed it out into his palm and flicked it onto the asphalt.

“So you don’t wear body armor,” Jackson said.

“If Allah wishes me to stay alive, I will. And if he wishes me to see my father again, I will. Either way I will be grateful for his blessings.”

LED BY J.C.’S
armored Humvee, the Mad Dog convoy rolled north on Dodge, a broad avenue that stretched through the center of Ghazalia. Bomb holes pitted the road. Patrols here got hit almost every night, though no soldiers had been killed. Yet.

With the streets empty, they had the road almost to themselves. The patrol stretched a half mile nose to tail, with Fahd’s Land Rover nestled in the middle, a toy among the Bradleys and tanks.

Through J.C.’s night-vision goggles the world glowed yellow and black. Looming over a field to the east was the Mother of All Battles mosque, a concrete monstrosity with minarets designed to resemble machine gun turrets. Saddam had built the mosque to celebrate his decade-long war with Iran, which had left two million people dead. When the electricity was running, the minarets glowed infernally in the night. But tonight the power was out. The mosque and the neighborhood had gone dark, though generators provided power to a few fortunate houses. The blackout was a good break, and so was the new moon. The darker the night, the better the goggles worked.

A tracer round cut through the night, a single shot as the patrol passed by. They’re out there, J.C. thought. Watching us. Waiting for us to make a mistake. Good. Let ’em. His finger crawled around the trigger of his .50-cal.

The Humvee halted as the convoy reached the northern end of the Ghazalia road, where a narrow bridge ran into Shula, a crowded slum. The patrol has to look routine, Jackson had told the Mad Dogs. They can’t know we’re coming. The convoy made a slow U-turn and headed south.

IN THE NARROW
back room of the barbershop in Ghazalia, officially known as Al-Jakra for Hair Cutting and Shampooing, Farouk Khan perched uncomfortably on a cheap blue couch. Boxes of old shampoo bottles lay on the floor, and three AK-47s had been left carelessly under a staircase by the back wall. A noisy generator in the corner powered an overhead bulb and a hot plate boiling water for tea. He looked again at his watch. Nine-twenty. Why hadn’t they arrived? Farouk was not a coward; cowards did not last long as nuclear spies. Still, he hated pointless risks.

The door opened, but it was just Zayd, the skinny Iraqi who had guided Farouk from Islamabad to Baghdad. Farouk was thoroughly sick of Zayd. The Iraqi’s manners were atrocious. He spat and picked his nose with abandon, and he never washed. Plus, Farouk didn’t trust anyone so thin. Eating was a great pleasure; who would forsake it? But Farouk had to admit that Zayd had come in handy. He spoke Arabic, Farsi, Urdu, Pashto, and English. In fact, Farouk hadn’t yet heard a language that Zayd didn’t understand. And he knew half the tribal leaders between here and Pakistan. So Farouk had accepted the man’s medieval personal habits.

“Funny, isn’t it, Zayd,” Farouk said. “It’s easy to tell the wealth of a country from a hospital or a supermarket. But barbershops look the same wherever I’ve been. Here, Pakistan, Europe. Black swivel chairs, counters crowded with mysterious glass jars, posters of young men with close-cropped hair.”

“Umm.” Zayd put a knuckle into his nose. Farouk wondered whether the gesture was meant as an answer. For a man of so many tongues, Zayd said surprisingly little. Perhaps great conversations went on inside his head.

Farouk settled back in the couch, feeling it creak under his bulk. Outside he could hear the heavy low rumbling of American tanks in the distance. He jiggled the Geiger counter in his lap and tried to control his nervousness. “Will they be here soon, Zayd?” His companion merely shrugged and poured two glasses of tea, dropping in sugar with his dirty fingers. Farouk grimaced and drank. Then he heard the cars pull up.

CAPTAIN JACKSON’S PLAN
was simple. The barbershop sat on the western edge of Ghazalia. When his convoy reached the street that ran to the shop, the Humvees and Land Rover would peel off and race west. The tanks and Bradleys would follow. With any luck the guerrillas wouldn’t realize what was happening until the Humvees had already reached the shop. The heavier armor would establish a perimeter when it arrived.

The strategy had risks. Jackson had fifteen soldiers in the Humvees, along with the five Iraqi officers in the Rover. They should be able to take out four guerrillas. But if the shop had been fortified, they could be in for a fight. Especially before the Bradleys arrived with reinforcements. Normally, Jackson would put his heaviest firepower at the front and keep the lighter vehicles in the rear, but this time he could not risk alerting his targets.

Even after his men got inside the store, their problems would not be over. Jackson didn’t know the layout of the shop, or even whether it had a second exit. His patrols had cruised by the store twice in the last three days, but he had feared more recon might spook the target. Still, he had no doubt his men could pull off the mission. They’d been through worse.

Jackson looked through his armored window at the deserted storefronts. Time to give the bosses one last chance to chicken out. He picked up his battalion radio and called the Tactical Operations Center at Camp Graphite. “Mad Dog Six to Knight Six, over.” Knight Six was the battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Steve Takahashi.

“This is Knight Six.”

Jackson looked at his watch. Nine thirty-three. The Humvees should hit the shop in minutes. “Our ETA is Niner Four Tree.” “Tree” was army lingo for “three.”