Alone and Unafraid (American Praetorians Book 3) (30 page)

“Neither am I,” Ventner said.  “Anything else?  No?  Then let’s get this show on the road.”

Nobody argued.  In a few minutes, everybody was mounted back up and ready to go.
  The plan had been hastily briefed to the Praetorian and Ventner Dynamics team leads, and Dave had hastily given Rizgar the rundown.

It couldn’t be that easy, though.  The radio crackled with Erikson’s voice.  “Can I get all the leadership back here at my vehicle?”

“Oh, what the everlasting fuck?” I snarled.  Before Ventner or anybody else could say anything, I snatched the handset and said curtly, “Negative.  We are moving.”

“We need to discuss the plan,” she said.  I looked over at Nick, exasperated.

“She cannot take a hint, can she?”

Ventner spoke before I could give vent to my exhaustion-fueled fury.  “The plan has already been disseminated to the team leads and vehicle commanders,” he said.  “We’re wasting time here.”

“I am in charge of security…”  She didn’t get a chance to finish.  Ventner had apparently gotten one of his comm wizards to set the State radios so we could step on them if need be.

“Negative, we were contracted to get you out, and that’s what we’re going to do.”  Ventner, while calm, still sounded way more pissed than I’d ever heard him.  “Now get off my net.”

There was a scratchy, strangled noise over the radio, that sounded like somebody trying to say something and having the handset snatched away.  Good.

We were two vehicles back from the lead Kurdish T-72, which rattled into motio
n with a belch of black smoke, just to turn on its treads and rumble back down the road, with the vehicles behind it peeling off to follow.  With where we’d staged, we had to head back south a little ways to get on the road we needed to take.

As the column got turned around, and took the packed-dirt side road running past the power station, the various Kurdish armored vehicles slid in at varying intervals, sometimes determined by which State drivers were actually willing to let them in.  Some of these people were really acting like dickheads, not willing to back off from the rear bumper of the vehicle ahead of them for anything, as if crowding together was somehow going to protect them from the Shi’a forces’ fire.

I was watching them as we cruised by to get on the side road.  “What a bunch of fucking rabbits,” I said, looking at the nervous expressions and dumbassed tailgating.  “I cannot fucking wait to get rid of these assholes.”

“You and everybody else here,” Nick said, keeping his eyes on the road.  “Can you imagine being one of the WPPS guys, or the Marines?”

“Fuck,” I replied, rubbing my eyes.  “Talk about a nightmare assignment.”  I’d had to work for some real clown-shoes in my day, but I hadn’t seen much of anything from the State people that made me think they’d even be remotely tolerable, particularly that Erikson character.

We didn’t talk much as we continued down the road, the column slowly threading off the highway and onto the dirt track.  As we passed by Taza Khurmatu on the left, the road met a canal that snaked through the fields toward the south.  It felt like we were going the wrong way, back toward the oncoming Iranians, but it couldn’t be helped.

We weren’t moving fast; tanks can’t make more than about thirty miles an hour on open terrain, and this was anything but.  The Kurdish commanders were keeping on the road, but it snaked and turned regularly, especially once we met up with the canal, which was really more a small river than a canal.

There were a few vehicles at the edges of the village, and I saw more than a few people in the fields watching as we went by.  Some just went about their business, as if they saw mile-long columns of civilian and military armored vehicles every day.  Hell, living this close to the perennial flashpoint of Kirkuk, they probably did.

I was looking for cell phones or radios, but anybody who was using them was keeping out of our sight.  That was probably ingrained survival instinct by now; back in the first couple of years after the invasion, being seen with a radio or cell phone within line of sight of a convoy meant you got lit the fuck up.  While the old Iraq vets had told me that that got changed by command fiat after a while, I suspect that the Iraqi Army and Police were just as ruthless as those first occupying Americans had been.  When you’ve been blown up or ambushed a few times, you quickly stop caring about the lives of just about anyone outside your unit.

The lead tank rumbled across the bridge over the small canal, and started up the road on the side of the larger one, taking a few moments to rattle around the control building for the locks that were just upstream from the bridge. 
The entire convoy slowed as the tank driver maneuvered.  As imposing as those things might be, they are clumsy as hell in tight spaces.  I could see why they fared so poorly in urban fighting.

Once around the cinderblock shack, the tank continued onward in a cloud of dust.  The convoy picked up speed behind it, though the faster we went, the rougher the ride got.  The tank’s treads were tearing the shit out of a road that wasn’t all that smooth in the first place.

The canal road wound north, then west, then north again, through open fields mostly lying fallow, abandoned in the face of the once again escalating violence in and around Kirkuk.  I sometimes found it a wonder that anybody was able to grow anything in this country; so many farmers had been forced to flee for various reasons over the years.  Saddam destroyed the irrigation systems for half of the Iraqi farmers in favor of weapons before the US invaded, and the Islamist insurgencies, on both sides, had turned thousands into refugees in the years since.

Another cloud of dust, barely visible through the haze of grit we were presently driving through, broke me out of my reverie.  It was big and coming south, along the main Kirkuk-Tikrit road.  I was pretty sure I knew what was making that cloud.

Just judging by eye, it looked like that cloud was going to be within small arms range by the time we got to the highway bridge over the canal.  Considering that I fully expected a lot heavier ordnance than small arms (think 120mm tank guns), that was bad.

I reached down and changed channels on the radio.  “Coconut, Hillbilly.”

Alek replied immediately.  “Go, Hillbilly.”

“We could use some of that top cover, Coconut.  We are nearing the Highway Twenty-Four
Bridge, at…” I rattled off the coordinates.  “We have multiple vehicles inbound; no visual yet, but I am expecting heavy armor.”

“Good copy,
” he replied.  “En route.  We will be on-station in five mikes.”

“Make it quick,” I said.  “I don’t expect this to be a standoff for long.”

The dust cloud ahead was slowing, and so were we, as Rizgar became aware of the oncoming force.  As the dust settled, I started to be able to make out shapes.  They were low, angular, and dangerous.

Two M1A1 Abrams, two M2 Bradleys, and four IAV Strykers were in a rough echelon across Highway Twenty-Four.  All weapons were pointed at us, and the Bradleys both had TOW boxes mounted on the sides of their turrets.
  If the shooting started, this was going to be a very bad day, but probably not for very long.

The commander of the forward Abrams was out of his turret, his hands on the DShK mounted on the commander’s cupola.  It still looked weird seeing a Russian machine gun mounted on an American tank, with an Iraqi in the turret, but that was the way of it out there.  The US occupation and subsequent operations had ensured that there was as much NATO equipment floating around the Middle East as there was former Warsaw Pact.

The lead T-72 had stopped by now, with its main gun leveled at the Iraqi vehicles ahead, though I wasn’t at all confident in how that was going to work out.  T-72s don’t have a good record against Abrams, though one could hope that the Iraqi tankers were about as well-trained as their infantry brethren; that is, not very.  We were close enough that it would be hard to miss, but I kept hoping their gunners weren’t very good shots.

For several minutes, there was a Mexican standoff, as we sat there staring at Saleh’s troops, and they stared at us, over the barrels of a hell of a lot of destruction.  The Iraqi tank commander had a bullhorn, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying, and the Kurdish tank commander was staying buttoned up, so he probably couldn’t hear shit, either.  But apparently, our holding position made the Iraqi reluctant to just start shooting.

The poor guy just looked exasperated and confused.  He was yelling into the megaphone, we weren’t moving or shooting at him, and we sure as hell weren’t replying to whatever he was saying.

My phone buzzed.  It was Ventner.  “Any ideas?” he asked.  “It’s gonna be kind of hard to go around these clowns with that canal at our backs.”

“I’ve got top cover coming,” I said.  “Hopefully that does the trick.”

Almost as I spoke, the two Iroquois gunships buzzed overhead.
  They’d come in low and fast, and raced over the convoy and the echelon of Iraqi armor before coming around in a tight turn to circle the IA.

Both helicopters had been fitted with rocket pods and the door guns were out.  Granted, the door guns were 7.62 GPMGs that wouldn’t put a dent in the Strykers, never mind the tanks or the Bradleys, but the rockets could do some damage.

Of course, so could the 12.7mm guns on the tank turrets, or the 25mm Bushmasters on the Bradley turrets.

As the helos circled, speakers on the underside of the lead bird started blasting Arabic.  I could pick up a little of it, loud as it was.  Something about pulling back and letting the convoy through, or getting a Hellfire to the head.

That was, of course, a bluff.  We’d never been able to afford Hellfires, nor their attendant support and targeting systems, not to mention the attention that buying reasonably high-end air-to-surface anti-tank missiles would gather.  The pods on the sides of the helicopters held 70mm unguided rockets.  They still packed a hell of a punch, but they weren’t Hellfires.  Hopefully the Iraqi commander didn’t notice that.

Whether he did or not, he decided he wasn’t cowed.  He got behind the DShK, swung it up, and fired a burst at the lead Iroquois.  It went so wide it wasn’t even much of a threat to the bird.

The response was immediate.  Both helicopters swung wide, then came in low and fast.  Flame belched from the lead bird’s rocket pods, and a salvo of four rockets slammed into and around the Iraqi commander’s Abrams.

Abrams are tough tanks, and extremely hard to kill, but if you hit one right, it is definitely doable.  A few went down to RPGs during the anti-American insurgency, and in the fighting that followed the
American withdrawal, the Iraqis lost quite a few more.  That was from ground level, too; tank armor is, by necessity, thinner on top than on the front and sides.  That makes them vulnerable from the air.

The tank momentarily disappeared in a cloud of dust and smoke.  Then flame jetted up out of the top of the turret, as the blowout panels on the roof redirected the
blast of the main gun ammunition cooking off upward, ostensibly away from the crew.  How well that worked when the commander had his hatch open, I couldn’t tell.

Once the dark cloud dissipated, the commander was nowhere to be seen.  The tank also wasn’t moving, the ammunition bunkers were burning fiercely, and black smoke was starting to pour from the turbine engine in the rear.

That was apparently all that was needed.  The other vehicles abruptly backed up, turned around, and raced back the way they’d come, leaving their comrades to their fiery steel tomb.

The helos circled overhead once more.  There was no sign of movement from the stricken Abrams, until the driver’s hatch opened, and a lone Iraqi soldier climbed out and ran away.

“Gotta love air support,” I said.  Nick nodded.

“Especially when the cut-rate air support we’ve got still makes ‘em cut and run.”

I was sure that the State people would have something to say about it.  They always did.  But if they did, they kept it off the radio as we continued to rumble north, toward Erbil.

Chapter 19

Most of the contractors kept our distance as the State personnel unloaded at the Consulate in Erbil.  A few of them came over to shake hands and thank some of us, but the general reception was cool.  We were two radically different tribes, and the gulf between
us was pretty wide.  Most of them just got out of the vehicles and went to meet their fellows coming out the main doors without looking back.

I knew Erikson was pissed at us all.  When push had come to shove, the professionals had pushed her aside and done what needed to be done without regard for her college-educated opinion.  That had to rankle, and the stiffness of her posture as she got out of her Suburban and walked over to the Ambassador, pointedly not looking at anyone carrying a gun, said all that needed to be said.

I found it rather amusing.  Fuck her opinion, anyway.  She was alive, that was all that mattered.  If her ego was bruised, it wasn’t my problem.  The odds of Praetorian getting contracted by State anytime in the future were so long as to be laughable anyway.

Ventner walked over to us.  “Well, that was certainly exciting,” he said.  “Come on, I owe you guys a drink, and I know a great place downtown.”  Iraqi Kurdistan was a pretty secular place; you could find all sorts of booze that would have probably gotten you stoned down in Baghdad these days.

I shook my head, looking over at Black.  The guy looked a little pale and tight-lipped.  “We’ll have to catch up with you,” I said.  “We’ve got some business left to attend to.”

He glanced around at us, and saw almost universally grim faces, somewhat at odds with what we’d just accomplished.  He held his hands up, his expression saying he knew enough not to ask questions.  “
Okay, then.  I’ll see you guys out there.”

Black looked over at me, apparently sensing the change in mood.  He was expressionless, as I jerked my head toward the vehicles.  Dave had given us the coordinates of a safe house set up out in town, not far from where we’d had our headquarters when we were working out of Erbil with Liberty Petroleum.  Funny, that had only been a few months ago.  It felt like years.

We loaded up with a minimum of talking.  There was a certain weight to the air, that I don’t think anyone with the rest of the convoy picked up on, except maybe Ventner.

It took about twenty minutes of driving to get to the safe house. 
“Close to the old headquarters, my ass,” Little Bob complained.  He and Black were in the back seat, having broken down the machine gun mount in the back and stashed the gun on the floor.  Now that we were in Erbil, there was no need to be so overtly armed, and in fact several good reasons not to be.

“It’s less than a mile,” I said.  “That still counts as close.”  The
safe house was a small, old-style house across the street from the Erbil Sheraton hotel.  “I am going to take it up with Dave as to why it’s in such a high-trafficked spot.”  Even though the general global economic downturn had slowed Kurdistan’s growth, there were enough people with enough money to keep the Sheraton open.  The traffic wasn’t as heavy as it might have been a few years ago, but there was still enough that there were an uncomfortable number of eyes in the vicinity as we pulled up in a pair of heavy trucks.

Black hadn’t said a word since we’d gotten to the Consulate, and had spent most of the trip across the city staring out the window, silent and tense.
  He knew what was coming.

We piled out, the weapons and armor, at least what we hadn’t had to turn back in to Ventner’s people, stuffed in large duffel bags.  I doubt we fooled anyone who might be watching; a bunch of large Westerners getting out of large pickup trucks with big black duffels could only be one thing in this part of the world, especially with everything going on down south.
  Still, we were trying not to be obvious about it, and nobody reacted, though I suspect there were some discreet phone calls made.  I made a mental note that the safe house was going to have to be moved, soon, preferably somewhere out in the country and away from the city.

As soon as we were all inside, Black dropped his duffel and turned to face the rest of us.  Without planning it, we had all sort of gathered in a half-circle around him.

“Before you make any decisions as to what to do with me,” he said, before anyone could say anything, “You need to hear about the rest of the phone call with Ledeen.”

I looked over at Mike.  He just shrugged, as if to say,
your call
.

“All right,” I said, folding my arms in front of me.  “We’ve got some time.  Fill us in.”

He took a deep breath.  “I called Ledeen to tell him to get out.  I know he’d stayed on for various reasons, including the pay, but I’d heard him muttering to the effect that Collins had threatened his family.  I don’t know if it’s true or not,” he said defensively, as several eyebrows rose skeptically.  “He just made it sound that way.  Collins didn’t want word of the Project getting out; publicity would definitely get it shut down.

“Well, when I got through to him, he was already on the run.”

There was silence, as we thought through some of the implications, all while staring at him impassively, waiting for him to continue.

“Apparently, our little IED op at Abu Ghraib got one of the major eastern commanders of ISIS, a guy named Abu Khalil al Gharawi.  Blew him apart.  It was a pretty major coup, and it looks like it’s done what we…what you guys set out to do ever since you picked me up.

“Gharawi got replaced by a little guy, one I’ve never heard of.  He calls himself Abu Jafar al Qari.”

We all looked over at Haas.  He shrugged.  “It’s an
old kunyah from the Hadith.  One of Muhammad’s original followers, I think.  Doesn’t give us dick as to who the guy really is.”

I turned back to Black.  “So what about this Al Qari character?”

“Apparently, at his first meeting with Collins and Tremor, he declared the Project to be infidel treachery, and ordered all of the Project advisors killed.”

There was another silence as that sank in.  This was precisely what we’d been after all along; drive the wedge far enough between ISIS and the Project that ISIS turned on them.  I guess on some level we were all a little surprised that it had worked.

“He knows for a fact that Collins and Tremor are dead,” Black continued.  “He said he saw the heads.  He and another guy, called Mick, shot their way out when the ISIS fighters came for them, but he’s pretty sure that there are only ten or twelve of them left.  When I talked to him, he was in contact with three of them, trying to get out of Ramadi.”

He took a deep breath.  “I know you guys don’t trust me, and I know you don’t owe me anything.  For damn sure you don’t figure you owe
them
anything but a bullet.  But, even if you’re going to kill me, I just have one request.

“Get them out.  At least Ledeen.  He’s a friend, and deserved a better break than I gave him getting him into this.  Even if he gets out
just to end up to living in the same deep, dark hole that I’m sure I’m headed for if I get out of this alive, I think it’s better than getting his head sawed off with a rusty knife on the Internet.”

Again there was dead silence.  To his credit, Black didn’t wilt in the face of the cold stares that were directed at him.

I have to admit, and I’m not terribly proud of it, that I was sorely tempted.  Not for the sake of the Project guys; I didn’t give two shits if those assholes lived or died.  It was just that going back in would mean killing more ISIS motherfuckers, and I had seen enough out there that I had a serious hate on for those bastards.

Even through the fog of fatigue from the last few days, I recognized the slippery slope I was poised on.  I was pretty sure a lot of the guys on the Project had found themselves on the same slope, and hadn’t seen it until it was too late.  You get to the point where the fight is all that matters.  Slowly, the cause, your honor, everything else ceases to have any bearing.  You’re just jonesing for that next dose of violence, and the rush of adrenaline that goes with it.

There’s a fine line between those of us who kept with private-sector soldiering, but kept our moral compass, for the most part, and those who went over that line and down the slope.  We always had to be aware of that line, and I knew I was getting in danger of crossing it.

Bryan was the first to break the silence, predictably belligerently.  “Fuck that,” he said.  “Who cares if you feel responsible for getting him into this?  He’s a big boy, and at some point he had to know what he was getting into.  He chose his side, along with all those other cocky black-ops ninja motherfuckers, now they get to deal with the fucking consequences.”

“I’ve got to agree with Bryan,” Little Bob said.  “Why should we go get our asses shot off to rescue them from the results of their own actions?  And before you say anything about our ops leading to this,” he said, glaring at Black, “just remember that we wouldn’t have had to do anything about it if they hadn’t been supporting
motherfucking ISIS
!  The same motherfuckers who have been cutting off heads, and hands, and machine-gunning helpless people stacked in ditches for years now.  They picked the absolute worst bunch of maniacs to back to fight the Iranians.  I seem to remember plenty of incidents of blowback from supporting murdering fucks before, all there in the history books as lessons learned.  No, fuck them, and fuck you.  Let them rot.  If they get their heads cut off on YouTube, so much the better; it’ll send a message to any other bright-idea morons about dealing with these fuckers.”

The general murmur was, for the most part, in agreement, but looking around, I saw a few thoughtful looks, mostly with the same violent gleam that I knew was in my eye. 
We’re all thinking it
. 
More jihadi fucks to kill.  More dead women, kids, and unarmed men avenged.
  But we couldn’t think that way.  We weren’t in the revenge business.  Yeah, the raid in Yemen had been close.  Al Masri’s cronies had killed our friends, and even without being contracted to do it, we’d gone after him.  But all of us involved in that had had a long talk later, and determined that we couldn’t get that emotionally invested again.  Yeah, we’d fight back against the jihad wherever we could, but there had to be a goal, a mission.  Slaughter for slaughter’s sake wasn’t the way soldiers worked, and contractor or not, we were still soldiers.  Soldiers for hire, but nonetheless soldiers.

I’d be all for a contract that gave us a chance to take ISIS down.  That contract was not on the horizon.  We couldn’t do it by ourselves, anyway.  We could work with locals, like the Kurds, but beyond Kurdistan, the Kurds, whether PUK or KDP, really didn’t give a fuck.  If Iraq
, Syria, and Iran burned each other down, the Kurds were determined they would still be standing.  They weren’t interested in saving a bunch of Arabs from ISIS.

The conversation, if you could call it that, was interrupted by a phone buzzing.  It took a few seconds to figure out it was one of our “Renton phones.”  I pulled it out and stepped out of the room to answer it.

“Congratulations,” Renton said.  “You guys pulled it off.  Both missions, no less.”

“Do you have surveillance on this entire fucking country?” I asked tiredly.

“Well, yes, but since I’m at the Consulate right now, I’ve at least got first-hand knowledge of the latter,” he said.

I raised my eyebrows.  “You’re working official cover?”

“Ha!”  He sounded genuinely amused.  “Of course not; nobody here knows who I am or even where I came from.  I got myself inserted to run interference and coordinate local support for you guys.”

His tone sobered.  “Which brings me to why I called.  Have you still got that Black character?”

“Yeah,” I said, glancing toward the other room, which was still filled with murmurs that weren’t exactly conciliatory.  “We’re trying to figure out what to do with him.”

“You turn him over to me, is what you do with him,” Renton said.  “Though not right away.  I’ve got one more job for you guys.  Another half million up front, three-quarters once it’s done.
  The same payment methods as before.”  Meaning diamonds, gold bullion, or similar tangibles that would be similarly hard to trace.

“
Why do I get the impression we’re not going to like this job?” I said.  Even in present dollars, a million and a quarter was a good chunk of change, about equivalent to three quarters of a million five years ago.  He wouldn’t be offering that kind of paycheck for a milk run.

“Probably because it’s not going to be easy, or risk-free,” he said.  “I need you guys to go back down south and extract the surviving Project personnel.”

“You’re right, I don’t like it,” I said, “and neither will anybody else, especially since it’s exactly what Black just asked us to do.”

“Really?”  Renton sounded thoughtful.  “How much does he know?”

“He was able to sneak a cell phone just before we busted out of Baghdad,” I said, “and got in contact with one of his buddies.  He knows that everything’s gone to shit with the Project, and that Collins and Tremor are dead.  He also apparently knows that at least a few of them are still at large, and has asked us to at least get his buddy out.”