War of the Encyclopaedists (34 page)

Tricia wondered if this whole thing wasn't some elaborate plan to get her alone. She almost hoped it was. She peeled off his soaked undershirt and kissed him again. “Oh, you have these,” she said, fingering his dog tags. “That's classic.”

“Yeah, you're in a movie right now. It's black-and-white.”

“It's more complex than that,” she said as he pulled the tank top off her and kissed her along the lacy tops of her bra cups.

A knife edge of Arabian sunlight slid across the pillows from a gap in the tarp. They had followed each other to this place, and their previous drunken hookup was picked up and burnished to a shine and repackaged in a filigreed box of fate or kismet. Tricia looked up at the gouges in the ceiling where the insurgency began; below that, Montauk's face and muscled chest floated over her own, the warm steel of his dog tags sliding across the space between her breasts. They were making stories about themselves. Tricia knew this was happening even as it was happening, and realized that she didn't care.

43

After Montauk had provided independent confirmation of the address and name, Captain Byrd had given the go-ahead. From the halogen bath of the checkpoint's generators, the raid party walked into darkness. Baghdad was in a continuous brownout, and central Karada's streetlights had been mostly offline since the invasion. They spread out into the usual urban march formation—two columns, one on either side of the street, with about ten yards between each soldier. The apartments still had some juice, and a soft glow came from a few of the windows, although most of the city was long asleep. Each soldier did a quick swivel to either side every so often, scanning. Jackson pointed his muzzle at an upper story, and Montauk followed the line of sight to a silhouette in a dimly lit window: a middle-aged man, mostly bald on top, illuminated by a floor lamp with a red fringed shade. Montauk nodded to Jackson in acknowledgment. No one said a word. The man did not wave. When they had gone four blocks south, Jackson looked back and Montauk waved him left. Their column crossed the street to join the other column, and the raid party slipped into Mansour's alley network.

The temperature was in the high eighties Fahrenheit, and the air smelled of sweat and gun oil and smoke from homemade stoves and trash fires and something else, spicy and faintly putrid, that Montauk imagined as some kind of complex Iraqi stew. They fell silent as they approached the Babil Apartments. Montauk motioned for 3rd Squad
to stack up along the front porch of number 8. Ant was at the front. Montauk took his position at the rear. He fingered the safety on Molly and ran a glove over her heat guard. If Abdul Aziz were waiting for them inside, there was a good chance Ant would catch some bullets. Montauk had told himself back in training that he'd never order troops into a building like this—he'd just call in an air strike and sift through the rubble. So much for that plan.

Fields stepped to the other side of the door from Ant, like they'd rehearsed, gripping the handles of a heavy SWAT-style door knocker that they'd borrowed from battalion. When Fields was in position, Ant reached behind him to Staff Sergeant Arroyo. Montauk, at the rear of the squad, received a tap a few seconds later, which signaled that the entire squad was cocked. Montauk gave a last glance around at the darkened shapes of the sleeping apartments and at the squads posted up on either corner of the target building. Not a sound from any living thing in the vicinity, only the throaty clanking of a private generator the next block over. Montauk returned the tap forward: the signal to execute passed back down the eight-man squad to Ant, who was breathing rapidly, the butt of his carbine jammed up in the meat of his shoulder, his elbows in, his gloved fingers opening and closing on the carbine's pistol grips like a gymnast's on a pommel horse. He felt the tap on his upper arm, then tightened his grip and nodded to Fields. The door gave way with a dry crack, and Ant felt himself shoved into the room, which was suddenly floodlit with four rifle-mounted white lights.

A second passed. No gunfire.

Montauk slowly exhaled and moved up to the open door to direct traffic through the house. He looked across the alley to see Captain Byrd and the company translator, Farouk, trotting toward him. Alarmed voices came from inside the apartment, and soon a paunchy, middle-aged man in a dishdasha
was stepping fearfully outside.

“Is this his apartment?” Byrd asked. Farouk relayed the question; the answer was affirmative. He lived there with his wife and two sons.

“Tell him we're looking for Abdul Aziz,” Byrd said. The man kept looking back into his house, where four soldiers were bunched up in the anteroom, the antithesis of a good tactical position. Fields gave the
universal
what now?
signal to Montauk. Farouk was telling Byrd that Abdul Aziz was the man's oldest son. That he was not at home right now.

“Stand fast, I want this guy to lead us through the house,” Montauk said. He turned to Byrd, who nodded.

In the neighboring buildings, candles and oil lamps were lighting up windows. Montauk turned aside and fingered his hand mike. “All Outlaw elements, this is Outlaw Six, be advised we've got the home owner here, and he's going to give us a tour.”

The man walked back into his home. Montauk followed with Farouk, while Captain Byrd stood outside. The man slipped off his shoes in the anteroom and looked briefly at the feet of the soldiers crowded in there with him.

“Sorry we can't take our shoes off, it's against our rules,” Montauk said. Farouk translated, then took off his own shoes. “It's not meant as an insult.”

The man opened a door into a kitchen area lit by a Coleman-type propane lamp hung above the refrigerator. The room smelled faintly of spices and meat threatening to turn. Mom was almost exactly as short as Montauk's own mother. A boy of about thirteen stood beside her, impassive, which Montauk guessed meant he was furious. Montauk called for 1st Squad. Jackson sent in his Alpha team to search the bedrooms.

The younger son's room was covered in soccer posters, mostly eighties-looking team photos of different Arab and European clubs, although there was a large Nike poster of Baggio from the '94 World Cup. “This kid sure loves soccer,” Phage said as he shone a flashlight into the darker recesses of the closet, the bulk of his weapon and body armor forcing him to bend in at an uncomfortable angle. Joh slid a stack of British
Maxim
s out from under the bed. A Koran graced the bedside table.

• • •

Montauk found Captain Byrd standing by his Humvee with Captain Persons, the battalion intelligence officer. “How's it going, LT?”

Montauk sighed. “No sign of the target, sir. I was going to recommend we give them another five minutes, then call it a night.”

“What's the rush?” asked Captain Byrd.

“Well, sir, I doubt the kid is AIF.”

“We've been attacked by kids younger than him, LT,” Persons said.

“Roger, sir, but the only reason we're searching this house is because one of our translators fingered it as the home of Abdul Aziz, the older son, who doesn't appear to be here.” The mother was starting to yell.

“Go find out what's going on, Montauk,” Byrd ordered.

The house was packed with people, which briefly reminded Montauk of the Encyclopaedists parties. All his soldiers had night optics on their helmets, so there was a weird alien vibe to the scene, almost comical. Like it was all part of the night's theme. Mom was barking heatedly at her son and, apparently, everyone else; the son sat on the edge of his bed in stony silence as Phage loomed over him.

“Tell her to quiet down,” Montauk said.

Farouk gave her the command, but she simply raised her volume and tried to hit him. Ant jerked back to avoid touching her, as they'd been instructed in Montauk's operations order. But Fields hadn't retreated; he looked like he was about to smack the woman back.

“Fields,” Montauk said. “Hey. Fields. Over here.”

“She mad at her son. She crazy!” Farouk said.

“
Why
is she mad?” Montauk asked. The kid piped up from the edge of the bed, and the mother began raging at him again, her arms flapping in the loose dress. Ant stepped back from her along the counter, and a teapot slid off and burst across the kitchen floor.

“Hey, sir, I think she's mad because her kid had titty mags,” Jackson shouted over the din. Captain Byrd's voice came through Montauk's radio, though he couldn't make out the words.

“
What?
” Montauk asked Jackson. The woman was yelling some hostile phrase repeatedly. Farouk looked stricken. Montauk gripped his sidearm, the one he'd promised his dad he'd lug around.

“We found some titty mags under his bed when we were looking for weapons, and she started flipping out,” Jackson said.

“Hey,
shut u
p
!”
Montauk bellowed at the woman. Silence filled the kitchen until the only sounds were an orchestra of breathing. The woman stared at Montauk's pistol, pointed at the ceiling, the glass lantern making the sheen of sweat on her plump face shine like glaze on a fresh donut.

Captain Byrd's voice through the radio again:
Two-Six, Six, acknowledge, over.

“Six, Two-Six, say again?”

I say again we got him, one military-aged male on the fire escape, over.

Montauk ran outside and found Captain Byrd at the edge of the alleyway, where Staff Sergeant Nguyen and his squad were aiming their M4-mounted lights up at a shirtless man on the fire escape.

Thomas was yelling the Arabic word for
Get down!
while PFC Lo was yelling the Arabic for
Stop!
Nguyen silenced his squad and motioned for the guy to climb down the ladder. The light beams followed him down the dusty black metal, bits of paint flaking off underneath his bare feet as they touched the rungs.

“Abdul Aziz?” Montauk said.

The young man nodded.

Jackson appeared on the fire escape above and yelled down, “Sir.” Montauk looked up. Jackson was holding an AK. “Found it in his closet.”

Abdul Aziz began talking quickly and anxiously, and Montauk radioed to get Farouk back out to translate. Farouk arrived a moment later with Aziz's mother in tow.

“Ask him about the gun,” Montauk said to Farouk. But Farouk could hardly be heard over the mother, who was berating her son with as much lingual dexterity as he was using to deny (apparently) any wrongdoing.

“LT,” Captain Byrd said. “Contain the situation.”

Montauk signaled to Thomas and Lo, who were on perimeter security. “Cuff this guy.” Thomas moved in and forced Aziz into a prone position while Lo took his wrists and bound them with flex cuffs.

“Throw a hood on him and let's get the fuck out of here,” Montauk said.

44

jenn_yi82:
you think maybe you're attracted to him because it's illicit?

Tricia sat in her kitchen at a small circular table with a red-­checkered tablecloth, the sort you might have found in a restaurant in Little Italy in 1970. Her laptop was connected to the only Ethernet connection in the hotel suite; she would have been cloistered in her room otherwise. She was alternately writing a long-overdue e-mail to her mother, chatting on AOL Instant Messenger with Jenny Yi, and taking drags from a Gauloise that sat smoldering in the chipped tea saucer they used as an ashtray. She could hear Luc in the shower.

tburner:
It's not illicit for me.

tburner:
But it is for him.

Tricia heard the shower shut off. A moment later, Luc left the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his waist and padded off to his room.

tburner:
I find myself thinking about him all the time. And inventing scenarios in my head that are really just excuses to hook up again.

jenn_yi82:
“hook up” huh? I thought you hated that phrase.

tburner:
He could get in trouble. What if I'm helping him make a huge mistake?

jenn_yi82:
you're horny, so what. That's normal.

Was Jenny even reading her messages? Luc walked into the kitchen wearing only a pair of shorts. His hair was wet, slightly mussed, and the towel was draped around his neck. “Ah, Tricia. Still clicking away.”

“Yep.” She took a drag without looking up at Luc and replied to Jenny's message.

tburner:
That's not the point.

“Hard to pull yourself away from home, no?”

Tricia wanted to keep her head down and ignore Luc. “Home is my perspective,” she said, glancing up at him. She turned back to her screen as if intently studying some treatise. She almost wanted to tell him about Mickey. Just to see how he'd react.

Luc walked over to the sink and filled a glass of water. As she heard him drinking only a few feet behind her, Tricia became acutely aware that he could now see her screen. She almost reached to close the laptop, but instead she pulled up a new browser window and quickly navigated to nytimes.com.

“I know the foreign news editor at the
Times,
” Luc said.

“Do you?” Tricia said, turning to face him. That kind of name-dropping had impressed her back in Boston. Now she wondered if it was even true. At best, Luc had probably shaken the guy's hand once at a cocktail party, years ago.

Bing.
Tricia could see the blinking chat window without even looking. And there was Luc's head tilting, his eyes refocusing . . .

She turned quickly with the intention of closing the chat window, but she couldn't resist reading it herself.

jenn_yi82:
whatever. he's an adult. he can hook up with you if he wants to.

Tricia closed the chat window, blood tingling through the capillaries in her cheeks.

“I should send him the mortar piece,” Luc said. “I bet he'd love it.”

Tricia turned back to him. He was swiveling the corner of his towel in his ear. He wore a slight grin. “You refuse to simplify complex situations,” he continued. “Why do you think I brought you along?”

Luc was never this forward with compliments. He thought the chat log was about him. “You know it's rude to read other people's conversations.”

Luc's grin widened. He put a hand on the back of her chair. “We're all adults here . . .”

Tricia took a long final drag of her cigarette, inhaling the acrid taste of burning filter. “That wasn't even about you.”

“Oh? Who, then? Your Army friend?”

“Yes, in fact. But it's not what you think.”

His grin went slack. “Isn't it?”

“We're trading information.”

“Are you serious? That's incredibly unprofessional.”

“Don't lecture me on professionalism, Luc. It's like your prime concern is vilifying the military. We're supposed to be striving to get an unbiased picture of life in Baghdad. If we don't, then what's the point except to feel cool for being war-zone journalists.”

“Tricia, you're fucking a soldier for information.”

“No. I'm not. Those two things are separate.”

Luc laughed in disbelief. “What information are you giving him?”

“Are we supposed to be hiding something?”

“Tricia,
what information did you give him?
”

“One of his translators was killed and another was beaten up, and I had Yasmin ask around to confirm the name of—”

“
Tricia!
”

“—of the person they
already
suspected. That's it.”

“First off, you're endangering Yasmin's life, and who knows what they did to this so-called suspect? They might have killed him.”

“No, they captured him.”

“When?”

“Last night. They raided his apartment.”

“You have the address? We're going. Right now.”

“Luc, the guy they captured tortured and killed an Iraqi translator. We don't know who we're going to find there. You really think that's a good idea?”

“Are you saying you're not going to come?” he spat. “You waltzed right into the elections, ignoring the bomb threats.”

She thought back to the video footage of Nick Berg's beheading. She'd forced herself to watch it after her little scare at the polling location. How meekly he knelt at their feet before they slit his throat, sawing through his vertebrae with a machete as if carving a turkey. She'd scrolled through the names of reporters killed in Iraq on the website of the Committee to Protect Journalists. Shot in the head at close range. Tortured and then strangled. But mostly it was the image of Nick Berg, his head held aloft like some cheesy Halloween prop, that had planted the seed of fear in her stomach. “This isn't a polling location,” she said. “It's the house of a terrorist.”

“Is it? Excuse me for not putting much faith in what your macho soldier tells you. We don't know who this guy was, Tricia. But now, thanks to you, we have an obligation to find out. I'll call Yasmin and have her meet us there. I hope you're right. I really do.”

That was bullshit. Their entire trip thus far, Luc had gone for the easy story, the evocative but simple photo. He was doing this purely to spite her. Tricia lit another cigarette and watched Luc march into his room and pick up the phone.

She was afraid, but she could feel the inevitable victory of her pride. Her pride would always win that contest. She was going. She would prove him wrong.

The aluminum speaker on the earpiece of the Convention Center's public telephone vibrated with a reverb-heavy ringtone sounding from half a world away. After the fourth ring, Montauk heard the mechanical click of the receiver as if it were some old metal analog contraption from the forties.

“Hello?” said a hollow-sounding voice on the other end.

“Dad?”

“Mickey? Mickey. How are you, son?”

“We're making it through.”

“Any word on your guy, the one who—”

“Urritia. He's back in the States now. They're stitching him up.”

“That's good, that's good.”

“So, you wanted to talk to me?”

“Well, yes.” He paused. “Your mother and I. It's been hard working things out. We've been fighting. Mostly little things. But fighting, a lot. Too much. And although we love each other very much, and we certainly love you very much, too, we've decided it's time to make a change.”

Montauk shifted on the phone booth stool so he could lean his back up against the chipping drywall and prop his boots on the sill of the booth.

“We didn't mention it when you were here on leave, but we've been living in different rooms of the house for a little over a year now. I don't know if you knew that.”

“I guess I kind of suspected.”

His father sighed. “I didn't want to bring it up during your deployment, but I didn't want to hide it from you, either. I hope you understand that. It seemed like you were doing all right, that your deployment's been pretty . . . straightforward.”

“I haven't seen any real action, you mean.”

“I mean you seem to be coming into your own. As a platoon leader. And I'm proud of you. I really am.”

Ant's lanky figure floated tentatively outside of the window. He tapped on the glass. Montauk opened the door and held the receiver to his chest. “What's up?” he whispered.

“Sir, the CO wants you to come to his office.”

“Be there in a minute.”

Ant glided off.

“Hey, Dad. Company commander requires my presence.”

“Okay, son. Let's talk some more soon. I love you.”

“Love you, too, Dad.”

Montauk placed the receiver back on its metal hook and exhaled through his nose. “Fuck,” he muttered. He didn't want to move. Fields was waiting across the room, and he looked over when he heard the click of the hang-up. “Fuck,” Montauk muttered again, pulling himself out of the chair.

“All yours,” he said, slinging Molly over his shoulder and Walking With A Purpose toward Captain Byrd's quarters, trying his best to stamp out his irritation at himself. He should have just told Ant to hold
on for a while because he was having an important conversation. With his father. And really, what could be so pressing? Montauk rapped on the door to the turret room that Byrd shared with the company first sergeant.

“C'mon in.” Captain Byrd was sitting on his cot in the small office. He looked sleep-deprived but alert. “Shut the door. Have a seat.” Byrd popped out a can of Copenhagen, stuffed a plug in, and held it out to Montauk.

“I'm good, thanks, sir.”

Byrd was already leafing through his green Army-issue notepad. “All right, so. I stopped by Intel today at Warhorse. They've been putting the question to your guy from the raid.”

Montauk blinked. “What'd he say?”

“Says he's never heard of Aladdin. But he does know Ali Gorma. He says—this is coming from the interrogators at Brigade, by the way—he's known Ali Gorma for a long time, and they've had differences. For a long time. That's what he says, that he was basically framed.”

“Aziz could be lying, sir.”

“Could be. But it's out of our hands now. Brigade's going to keep him detained for the time being to see if anything else pops up. They don't have their own detention facility, so your guy will be going to Abu Ghraib. They say they'll let me know if they learn anything, but I'm not holding my breath.”

Montauk imagined himself bursting into tears.

Captain Byrd looked back down at his notebook for a moment. “Did your other source confirm the link to Aladdin?”

“No, sir. Just the name and address of the guy who assaulted Gorma.”

“So all we know about Aladdin is that Gorma said it was the same dude. You know you need to take that shit with a grain of salt, right, Montauk? I mean, you've been here for a few months.”

“Roger, sir. It's a pretty thin lead.”

“Yeah, it is. Which leads me to another thing. Are you putting prices on people's heads?”

“Sir?”

“I heard you had a reward posted for the guys who smoked Aladdin. That true?”

“Yes, sir, it is. Probably a mistake, I realize now.”

“How much?”

“Five hundred.”

“Dollars US?”

“Roger.”

Byrd spat thoughtfully into his plastic bottle. “That's an interesting choice,” he said. “Do you think that's part of your mission?”

“Well, sir, force protection is part of our mission, as is nailing terrorists, so anything that would help accomplish those missions seems like an implied task. So finding Aladdin's killers is kind of part of the mission, yes.”

“Montauk, let me tell you what your mission is. Your mission is to secure the southern entrance into the Green Zone. It's to ensure that the Green Zone doesn't get blown up by anything coming through your checkpoint. It's also to accomplish that while taking care of the troops in your platoon and following my orders. Which, by the way, means informing me when you intend to do something novel like post personal rewards for information leading to the death or capture of a terrorist.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I don't want to stifle your initiative. You're all about finding ways to accomplish the mission, and that's good. You'll be a good company commander someday. But this reward shit is dumb. It's just going to lead to a bunch of Iraqis coming up to try to get your cash.” He spat in the bottle again. “But maybe the real issue is that it makes you look like a weirdo in front of your platoon. You know what most guys read around here?
Maxim
.”

“Uh, hooah?”

“You've got a bunch of highbrow shit coming in, like your book review newspapers. And a big old copy of
The
Canterbury Tales
. It's good that your troops think you're a smart guy. That's going to give them confidence. But you need to understand how you come off to your platoon. They need to know that you're not making decisions affecting their personal health and safety based on criteria from some cuckoo-cloud Montauk-land. And what I think is that your reward scheme comes across to your guys as a weirdo obsession. That you're thinking about revenge rather than your mission, or that you're some
how more attached to your translator than your men. Understand what I'm saying?”

“Roger, sir.”

“So, with that in mind, shit-can the reward. Any questions?”

“No, sir.”

“All right. Dismissed.”

Montauk slung Molly over his shoulder and headed out the door.

“And go read a copy of
Men's Health
or
Low Rider
or something,” Byrd said.