Alone and Unafraid (American Praetorians Book 3) (5 page)

He nodded.  “That part’s not on the thumb drive.  We’re bringing you in to help get the diplomats and staff out of Baghdad, yes, but you
r primary job is going to be to get inside the loop on this Project, and shut it down.  And I mean all the way down.  Don’t leave anything that the Iranians or the Chinese or anybody can use to point back to the US aiding Al Qaeda or any other terrorist organization.  End this shit before it bites us in the ass.”

I frowned.  Mike wasn’t looking too sure about this, either.  “You want us to make it disappear?” I asked quietly.  “No trials, no testimony before Congress?”

He shook his head.  “Even if you grab them and every bit of evidence you can, more than likely you will be the ones heading for a deep, dark hole in the ground if you come forward with it.  However, I’m not asking you to necessarily kill everyone who’s involved with this; frankly, they’re more valuable for intel purposes alive.  We have contingencies in place to take them once you get them out of the country, provided you can take them alive.”  He looked back and forth between us.  “Understand, I don’t want you guys to put your teams at unnecessary risk to take them.  As far as my associates and I are concerned, these men have committed treason against the United States.  If you judge that it isn’t tactically plausible to take them alive, we won’t ask questions.”

We stood there and digested that for a second.  It didn’t take long.  We’d had Collins and his goons in our sights for over a month now; we weren’t going to turn our backs on the chance to continue the hunt with better pay and support.  Collins had been ready to turn us over to the I
raqi Army to keep us from stumbling across his little Project, and his advisors had fought with Salafist groups to take Basra.  Fuck them.

“How much does Langley know about this Project?” I asked Renton.

“Enough to be pissing their pants,” he said.  “The seventh floor is in full CYA mode.  This is worse than Iran-Contra by an order of magnitude.  If it gets out, heads are going to roll.”

“Is that why we’re being hired?” I asked.

He smirked.  “No, that would presume I work for Langley.  I haven’t worked for them in years.  And no, I’m not going to read you in on who sent me yet, either.”

“I take it none of the other companies are read in on this aspect of the mission?” I ventured.

Renton shook his head.  “They know nothing about it.  They shouldn’t even know about the existence of the Project, and I would strongly advise against letting any of it slip.”  He raised an eyebrow.  “You guys managed to do a lot behind Liberty Petroleum’s back; I’m confident that you can be sneaky enough bastards to pull this off.

“Now, about Black…”

Half an hour later, Renton, Haas, and I came out of Black’s cell.  “I think he’s sincere about his desire to put the Project behind him,” Renton said.  “I’m not telling you to trust him; hell, I’m not telling you how to accomplish any of this.  But I think you should consider using him as an asset.”

“Would you trust him?” Haas asked.

“Trust him?  No.  Would I use him anyway?”  Renton nodded.  “Absolutely.  In this business you can’t afford to trust assets.  That doesn’t necessarily mean you let him know with every waking breath that you don’t trust him; it just means you keep your eyes open and never turn your back on him.”

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a pair of phones.  They looked like burners—cheap, off the shelf phones from one of the local telecom kiosks that had cropped up in Iraq even during the war.  They were everywhere in Basra, even with the violence going on.  “These are programmed with numbers to contact me.  Don’t worry, any calls are run through multiple blinds, so there won’t be any traces run through these.   It’s going to seem like it’s taking a long time to connect; that’s just because of the security measures.  If you need anything, don’t hesitate to call me.  If you lose or have to ditch the phones, the same numbers will still work, the same way.”

He turned grim.  “Gents, get out of Basra.  I don’t know how much time you’ve got, but the noose is tightening.  Al Khazraji might help you, but I’m pretty sure al Zubayri will turn on you, and
Al Hakim will sell you down the river in a heartbeat if he thinks it will save his skin and his little fiefdom.  Cut yourselves away and get the hell out.”

I glanced at Haas.  He nodded fractionally.  He believed Renton, anyway.  I’d have to have a longer talk about it later, but for the moment, that would do.

“What about you?” I asked Renton.

He got that slight smirk on his face again.  “I’m going to disappear again.  I almost want to use that old cliché, ‘I was never here,’ but that hardly seems necessary under the circumstances, does it?”

“Plus it’s kinda stale,” I said.  “We’ll be in touch.”

As it turned out, we had less time than even Renton suspected.

Chapter 4

I didn’t go back to sleep after Renton left.  Something about the urgency of his warning to get clear of Basra and Al Hakim had infected all of us.  We all made sure our kit was packed for a fast breakout if necessary.  Mike, Eddie, Jim, and I met in our little ops room to discuss our options.

We hadn’
t gotten very far before we were interrupted again, this time by Hassan.  “Mister Jeff,” he said, “Hussein Ali is here.  He wants to talk to you.”

I was a little surprised.  While Hussein Ali al Khazraji was a hardassed old bastard and one of, if not the, most professional soldier I’d met yet in the Middle East, it was still before four in the morning.  It was awfully early for
Basra.

“Bring him in,” I said.  I tried to always have time for Hussein Ali, but the timing seemed to lend a new importance to his presence, especially in light of the conversation Hassan and I had had earlier.

Hassan stepped aside and let the commander in, before following and shutting the door behind him.  Hussein Ali looked as grizzled as ever.  The man had a way of watching everything impassively, and yet somehow seeming amused by it all anyway, without ever cracking a smile.  He was also dressed in the same green fatigue jacket and jeans he’d been wearing when we first met him, when he was just a former colonel and militia leader.  That he was dressed that way, instead of in his tan PPF uniform, spoke volumes all by itself.

He began to speak.  Hassan translated; while my Arabic was improving, as was Hussein Ali’s English, neither of us were confident enough in our linguistic abilities to try to communicate anything important without Hassan to translate.  In private, chatting, he and I tried to work on each other’s respective languages.  But for the important stuff, we kept Hassan around.

“My friends,” Hassan translated, “I think I have found you already planning for what I came to speak to you about.”

I glanced at the table, where we had several overheads of Basra, with various esoteric marks that, to us, pointed out major checkpoints and areas to avoid.  I was pretty sure neither Hussein Ali nor Hassan could read them, but the old man was sharp, and had probably guessed what they were anyway.

“And what is that?” I asked.  A much as I found I liked Hussein Ali, when it came to my team’s safety, I stayed cautious.

He squinted at me.  When he spoke, his voice was still low and measured.  “Daoud al Zubayri is preparing to take you and your men into custody, provided he can take you alive, and turn you over to General Qasim Saleh’s men when they get here in a few days,” Hassan relayed.  “
We must get you and your men out of the city, where he cannot find you.”

I nodded.  “We figured it would be Daoud.”  Hassan nodded as well; after all, I’d picked his brain on the matter.  “How much time do we have?”

“Sooner is better,” was the reply.  “We will have to be careful, since many of Daoud’s men are stationed at checkpoints and patrolling in the area.  Daoud has great ambitions.  Your men would be a good demonstration of his dependability to Saleh.  He does not want his prize slipping away.”

It sure explained his smug detachment from the last meeting I’d had with him.  “And why do you want to help us, Hussein Ali?” I asked quietly.  I had no illusions about the man; he wasn’t doing this for sentiment, or even a sense of honor.  He was a ruthless, hard-edged pragmatist; he’d had to be to survive this long.  I suspected that Hussein Ali’s military service went back to the Saddam era.  He’d played the game through the war with the US, the following insurgency, and then the increasing chaos as the Sunni-Shi’a war raged through Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq.  He was a survivor, and survivors aren’t guided by sentiment.

His eyes crinkled and a faint, tired smile made its way through his beard.  “Because we are coming with you,” Hassan said, even before Hussein Ali could say anything.

Now, that I did not see coming.  Hussein Ali was the head of the PPF.  He had a reasonably secure position here.  Sure, Hassan had said that there was bad blood between him and the Iranians, and that there was a history—implied to be a bad history—between him and Saleh.  But joining us and running away?  That was a bit of a surprise.  From the looks on the other guys’ faces in the room, I wasn’t the only one wondering what the hell was going on.

“Saleh will see me destroyed, whatever that takes,” Hussein Ali explained in Arabic.  “He and I were rivals in the old Army, before the invasion.”  That pretty well confirmed my suspicions about just how long Hussein Ali had been at this game.  “I am also too much of a political liability to the Mullah.  While the Iranians might accept an accord with him, because of the circumstances of the war with the Salafists, I have killed too many of them, and my name is known to the Pasdaran.”  The Pasdaran was another name for the IRGC.  “I would disappear, quietly.  Maybe I would be found with my throat cut.  I am not interested in dying on their terms.  You have been friends to us, and have fought for a cause not your own.”  He raised a hand.  “Yes, you fought for money.  But you did not have to take this contract.  You did not have to sacrifice your men for Basra, or stay on to help us after they died.  Considering that we are about to be men without a country, I cannot think of a better course of action than to join your company.”

It took a second for that to sink in.  He wasn’t just talking about joining forces to get out of Basra; he was talking about signing on as Praetorian personnel.

“Let me see if I’ve got this right,” I said slowly.  “You want to join the company?  You want to be Praetorian Security contractors?”

“Yes,” Hussein Ali said.  “That is what we wish.”

Mike, Eddie, Jim, and I all looked at each other for a moment.  “We’ve never hired anybody on the fly before,” Eddie pointed out.

“And with good reason,” I replied.  “But under the circumstances…”  I turned back to Hussein Ali.  “Ordinarily we are extremely selective about who we hire.  This maintains a standard and is what makes us effective enough that you and the Mullah hired us to help you purge the Qods Force officers from the PPF.  However, in this situation, I think we can take some of you on a probationary basis.  Once we get out, you’d have to pass our screening and training course to stay, but for now, I’d say we can use all the guns and local expertise we can get.
  How many of you want to come with us?”

“Twenty-five to thirty,” was the reply.

“And they’re all al Khazraji?” I asked.

Hussein Ali nodded even while Hassan was translating.  “They are all family, yes.”

I nodded.  That would make things simpler.  A major problem with Arab militaries is that Arabs tend to be “amoral familialists.”  That means that to them, anyone outside the family—and families can get pretty big—isn’t worth their time, help, or blood.  So, when surrounded by soldiers of other families and tribes, they tend not to fight so hard for the outsiders around them.  The exceptions have always been units made up of one tribe or family.

“They’ll be your team,” I told him.  “I know they’re going to be larger than one of our teams, but under the circumstances, I only want one point of contact; it’ll simplify communications, and with the language barrier, simplicity is going to be key.”

I realized that that kind of separation had the potential to cause rifts in a situation where we’d have to trust each other just to stay alive, but frankly, it wasn’t too different from what we’d been doing with the militia-turned-PPF for the last couple of months.  We’d managed to build a decent rapport with most of these guys, and I hoped that it would hold.  Shared hardship and danger would go a good ways toward ensuring that it did.

“How much time do we have?” I asked quietly.

Hussein Ali shook his head.  “Perhaps a day.”

“If he has any idea that we’re on to him, Daoud will move faster,” Mike said.  “He’s a slimy little fucker, but he’s clever.”

“Think of it as a dress rehearsal for Baghdad,” I said.  “Start getting everybody ready to move.”  I looked Hussein Ali in the eye.  “That goes for your people, too.  Put some patrols out there; only make sure they don’t come back.  This has to happen a little bit at a time; a major exodus is just going to be a target.”  I pulled out one of the overheads, and pointed to the spot we’d already chosen as a rendezvous.  “We’ll meet up here, at this truck lot just outside Ad Dayr.  I’ve had Hassan run up there and start laying the groundwork, so the owners aren’t going to raise any kind of fuss.”

“When did that happen?” Eddie asked.

“About a month ago,” I replied.  Eddie’s eyebrow rose, then he grinned.  Hassan murmured an explanation to Hussein Ali, who also nodded, an amused glint in his eyes.  Damn right I thought ahead, motherfuckers.

“How soon do we move?” Mike asked.

“I want your team moving out before the sun’s up,” I told him.  “If any of the PPF asks, you’re running down a lead on some ISIS fighters who are trying to come in from the north.”  I was pretty sure none of the PPF troops would muster up that kind of curiosity at four in the morning, but it was always a good idea to have a cover story.  “Get out, get up to Ad Dayr, and lay low.  Rendezvous will be at 2100 tonight.”  I wanted it to be dark when the better part of a short company showed up.  I turned to Hussein Ali.  “Can you get the first of your people out before sunrise?”

He nodded as soon as Hassan translated.  “I have told them to be ready to leave ever since Daoud first spoke with Saleh’s people,” he said.  “It was not difficult to foresee where these events were going to go.  I can have the first ten away by dawn.”

I nodded.  We went over a few more details, mainly concerning link-up procedures both in Ad Dayr and in Baghdad, in case we had to push on without meeting up beforehand.  One of the things we’d all learned over the last couple of years was to always,
always
be ready for everything to go to shit.  Murphy is a persistent bastard.

It was almost four before we broke up.  Mike and his team were actually not with
the rest of us at the police station; they were still holed up in the old abandoned warehouse in Al Maamel where Al Hakim’s militias had first set up their firm base.  They would roll out as soon as Mike and Eddie got back to them.  There still should be enough darkness to see them clear of the city before sunrise.

Meanwhile, I
brought my guys in to brief them.

“What the fuck?”

Cyrus had been getting more and more unhappy as I outlined what was going to happen.  He’d been a little sullen ever since Mike and I rearranged the teams; he’d liked it where he was, and didn’t want to change. 
Now he was downright livid.

“Are you fucking serious?” he asked.  “Our little vendetta against these black-ops guys isn’t enough; now we’re contracted to go into fucking Baghdad, where just coincidentally, everything is going to shit worse than it is here, just to continue to carry it on?  I mean, what, seriously, is our beef with these guys? 
What is so bad about what they’re doing that we’ve got to risk our skins to stop it?”

“Oh, I don’t know, Cyrus,” Larry said sarcastically.  “Maybe it has something to do with supporting the nastiest group of jihadis in the region?  The same cocksuckers who stone women and behead people for looking at them wrong?  Some of the same motherfuckers who have been killing Americans at every chance since 9/11?”

Cyrus snorted.  “Fucking please.  There hasn’t been enough of an American presence in this country in the last few years for them to worry about.  And don’t try to tell me that you think Al Hakim and his cronies are some sort of pure as the driven snow Boy Scouts.  They’re not, any more than we are.  And we’ve sure done some shady shit in the last few months to get at the Iranians.  These guys are just taking that to the next level.  Not our problem.  Helping one bunch of fucked up hajjis kill a bunch of other fucked up hajjis?  More power to ‘em, I say.”

“It ain’t the same and you damned well know it,” Jim growled.  “What the fuck is your problem, Cyrus?”

He turned to Jim.  “My problem is that I don’t have a death wish like the rest of you apparently do.  ‘Oh, here’s a job that calls for us to go alone and unafraid into the worst hornet’s nest in the region!  What’s not to like?’  Fuck that.  Africa was bad enough.  I thought, working with the Kurds, we might have something a little more stable, but no, here we go, Somalia all over again.”

I sighed.  I was too damned tired to deal with
this.  “We’re contracted for this, and for good reasons, Cyrus.”

“And who agreed to that contract, huh?” he demanded, facing me and bowing up a little.  “Isn’t this a co-op company?  What the fuck makes you think you can agree to contracts without consulting the rest of us?”

“Fine,” I snapped, “all in favor of taking the contract?”  Six hands went up.  Cyrus’ stayed down, as he glared at me.  “All opposed?”  He raised his hand.  “The ayes have it.  Now quit your fucking bitching and get your gear ready, then get some sleep.  It’s going to be a long day.”

I actually got up late.  The sun was fully up, and when I squinted at my watch, it said it was 0900.  Well, I supposed that given what time I’d finally fallen asleep, I’d needed what little I’d gotten.  Nick was up and at the radios, while Larry was still snoring on his pad on the floor.  I glanced at the door, where Bryan was leaning against the jamb, his belt kit on and his OBR in his hands.