Black Storm (23 page)

Slowly, over the sound of the engine and the thunder of the wheels, he made out a voice. It was Sarsten's. He was talking a few feet away, in the dark, a steady flow of syllabic sound that only now and then penetrated to reach his ear and his understanding.

Then the other voice, Blaisell's, said with dawning understanding, “Fuck, you're putting me on, man. Aren't you?” and the other voice chuckled and said, “Hey, I had you going there though,” and after a second Blaisell chuckled too.

Riding in the darkness, Nichols listened, eyes squinted. But no more words came his way.

 

MADDOX WAS
breathing shallowly when the truck's brakes gave a long, shivering moan. A weird creepy sound, like the complaint of a ghost. It shuddered to a halt, the iron beneath and around them angled upward. The engine ticked over, and with her ear to the metal she heard shouting in Iraqi. No one moved inside the hollow shell of darkness. She dragged breath after breath down into the hollow fear inside her, into the panic that fluttered her heart.

It wasn't actually a surprise. She'd felt it before, as she zipped her space suit closed and slammed the air lock shut behind her, entering Level Four. It had struck her in aircraft. Sometimes even when she was riding in a car, and someone else was driving.

She was thinking this when the motor accelerated and the truck began moving again, upward, then downward, then slowing, easing its bulk and its weight slowly forward with a series of squeaks and shudders, jerking forward so that her head nodded. Then the engine died, popping and rumbling to a halt, and around her shadows rose in silence, and she rose too, facing the hatch, wanting to claw at the metal with her fingernails. She didn't care if the whole Iraqi Army was on the other side. She wanted out, out,
out
.

The boots dragged themselves up, over the curved rim of their dark sky, then paused above them. A hollow cough came through the iron. Then the scrape of metal slowly moving against rough metal.

She was fast, but she was still second or third below
the circle of light that blinked open above them. The man-figures bent, then one rose suddenly toward the light. He went up quietly and quickly through the opening. The men below regrouped, and a second sucked upward. Then she felt hands grip her legs and arms. They half pushed, half threw her up through the hatch, and she caught the lip with her arms and dragged her legs up and out of the iron ring.

Outside. She breathed in fresh air, or at least fresher, cool with a hint of dust so that she sneezed suddenly, before she could remember she was supposed to stifle it. She swallowed quickly, guiltily, but no one said anything. Ducking her head to avoid a web of truss work and beams, dusty and neglected-looking, only a few feet above. A roof or ceiling of some sort. She crept forward on gloves and knees over the curving tank and then reoriented herself and fitted her boots to rungs leading over it and down.

She stood on black concrete, rough and unevenly planed, as if it had been poured too quickly to level properly. Above the truck hung fluorescent tubes, whole, but lightless. The only illumination came from the truck's headlights, which were still on though the clatter of the worn-out engine had stopped. They lit everything in stark shadows, a confused jumble of large objects half revealed and half in shadow. She smelled diesel exhaust and burnt rubber and hot metal, like the smell when something goes wrong with your car and you keep driving because it's dark and you can't stop but you know something's going very seriously wrong.

Gault dropped to the concrete, holding his pistol. His camo trou were muddy and dripping. He didn't look at her, just immediately headed for the cab. Nichols was already there, pulling weapons out from behind the seat and passing them down. When the gunny had his, he checked it quickly, breaking it down to look inside. Checking it hadn't been tampered with, she guessed. He looked up and saw her watching him, slapped the
weapon back together, and jogged back. Without words, he directed the men out around the truck with a pointed finger.

Then she and Sarsten and Gault were alone with the Iraqi, who was staring at her. Gault was looking in his little phrase book, while Sarsten spoke rapidly in Arabic. The Iraqi replied, a few short words, but his eyes stayed on her. Then he reached out suddenly, and pulled off her bush hat. She grabbed for it but he held it away, staring at her hair.

 

GAULT HADN'T
expected this. He cursed himself, knowing he should have anticipated it. But he hadn't, and now the Iraqi was yelling a mile a minute, shaking the major's hat like it was a cobra he was trying to kill. He was talking too fast to catch a word, except maybe for
hurmah
—woman. Sarsten was standing back now. Only occasionally did he interject a word. Gault looked off into the garage, or warehouse, or wherever they were, and realized time was passing, they weren't moving, and that someone might overhear. So he put his hand out, over Ted's mouth. The Iraqi threw his hand off. Gault said angrily, “Tell him to shut up, will you?”

“Isma'! Tkalam be sout wati,”
Sarsten told the guy.

“You bring woman—this is
haram. Mush taiyyib!
Forbidden. You are fools.”

“She's a doctor.”

“Doktoor?”
He stared at her, and Maddox, bless her, coolly took out a medical pack and held it up. The red cross on it silenced the Iraqi. He rubbed the boil on the side of his face, breathing hard. Shaking his head.

Sarsten spoke then, smiling. He patted Maddox as if she were a pet, not noticing, or pretending not to see, the look she gave him. He said several sentences with the words woman and good in them. Then he smiled. And after a moment Ted smiled too, only in a puzzled, still angry way.

“You really are fools,” he said again, and Gault noticed the guy's English was getting better the more he spoke it.

He didn't like this place. He felt exposed, though he couldn't tell exactly why. It was an open-bay building, poured-in-place concrete or maybe the prefab type of tilt-up walls. The ceiling was light-duty: corrugated steel, held up by the truss work. He kept looking toward a line of light. Now that his eyes were adapting he saw it was a gap along the bottom sill of the sort of rolling door you saw on warehouses. It looked like a garage, except he didn't see any fuel pumps or tools. Maybe a service area, where trucks pulled in for unloading or maintenance. He didn't want that door to roll up all of a sudden. Too many unwelcome surprises could be on the other side. He pulled his city map out and squatted on the concrete. Clicked his light on. “Where are we?” he asked the Iraqi, pointing at the map.

Ted looked at Maddox, then at Sarsten. He still looked angry, but finally he squatted. Gault handed him a pencil, and he studied the map a moment, then made a firm mark and looked up. Gault bent close, wiping sweat off his face.

The mark, not a cross but a dot, was almost perfectly centered in the city map. Just south of one of the eastward-swooping bends of the river. Above a white strip representing the Baghdad/Muthenna Airfield. On one of a scatter of the black squares and rectangles that meant buildings. Streets and rail sidings threaded them. Ted had placed his dot just north of the airfield, in a built-up area the map called Al Fajr.

He glanced up as Vertierra went to a knee beside him. The RTO put his face close and muttered, “I found a window. Back of the building. Looks like we're in a truck park. A bombed building back of us.”

“Any other doors?”

“One, in back. I've got Nichols posted there.”

“Okay. Maintain the perimeter. Keep out of sight from outside,” Gault asked Ted. “Okay, my friend. My
good
friend.”

He patted the Iraqi's shoulder, then, remembering how the Arabs liked to touch each other, reached around him and gave him a shoulder-hug. “Thank you so much for helping us.
Shukrahn
. Bringing us into town in your truck. Very, very smart! They tell me you know the way from here on. Make me happy and tell me that's true.”

Ted nodded. He pointed straight down. And grinned.

Gault stood and looked at the floor again. It was still concrete, still as roughly finished. Where it met the wall a considerable amount of dirt and the kind of debris smokers left behind, butts and crumpled packs and burnt-out matches, had been push-broomed into a little shoal. “Under here?” he said.

Sarsten began to speak, and Gault wheeled on him at once. “I'll ask the questions.”

“Just trying to help.”

“If I need it I'll ask. Right now I want you on security by that entrance.” He pointed to the light.

The SAS raised his eyebrows, started to speak. Then smiled.

He got up and jogged away toward the entrance, cradling his rifle. Gault turned back to Ted. “You're telling me it's right underneath us?”

“
La
. Not
beneath
, not
here
. But that is how you get to it.” He pointed down again.

“Where does it lead?”

“That way.” He pointed. “Where you want to go.”

Gault was frowning over this statement when he remembered the Finnish map, the guided tour to the sewers of Baghdad. He got it out too and laid it next to the city map. He took out his compass and oriented them both, then exchanged it for the GPS. He waited till it picked up the satellites. Ted watched silently. When the latitude and longitude came up, Gault plotted it. It came out on top of the penciled dot, and he nodded, impressed. They were right where the Iraqi said they were: north of the airport, south of the river.

Ted had observed this without saying a word, looking at the maps, then at the device. Now he pointed to one of the dotted lines on the Finnish map. “This one. Here. Down to the river—through Al 'Atifiyah.”

Gault transferred the position to the Finnish map, as closely as he could—it didn't have lat/long markings, just the call-outs for elevation and the river and some of the principal streets—and sat back on his heels. He felt uneasy again, and again he couldn't say why.

“Where exactly are the missiles?” he asked Ted.

“Mee-sles?” The word didn't register, he could see that.

“Flying Stones.
Hijurat ababeel
. You said you worked on it.”

“Work on it? No. I didn't say that.”

“You didn't?” Gault looked at him; hadn't he said he did, back in the truck? “
Mutta'assif
. I'm sorry. I thought you did. Well, you said you knew where it was, right? Where is it?”

For answer the Iraqi extended his hand. Gault watched it travel across the map, his breath withheld. The moving finger reached east. It reached across the river. It came down on the tongue of land created as the Tigris writhed from south to east, in the center of the city, creating a bulge of land that under his flashlight showed a cluster of black squares north of a bridge. The bridge was called the Jisr 17th Tammit. “Jisr,” he knew, meant bridge. But the cluster of buildings was labeled in English.

“The Medical City,” said Ted, picking absently at his boil. He grinned, showing teeth that made Gault look away. “Big hospital. For important peoples. Saddam Hussein, he goes to there.”

Gault examined a cluster of buildings overprinted in red adjacent to it. Red meant government buildings, on the CIA map. The key number was forty-five. He expected them to be some sort of health department buildings, or maybe housing for medical staff. But when he turned the map over and read the entry under forty-
five, he saw they were the Defense Ministry and the Headquarters of the Iraqi Army.

“Son of a bitch,” he muttered. “Get the commander over here.”

Then he remembered: he hadn't seen Lenson get out of the tanker.

He looked up, but Maddox was already climbing the ladder again. Her boots grated on iron. The sound made shivers run down his back; he hadn't enjoyed being entombed in there either. He heard her calling, muffled by the metal.

He studied the map as the naval officer emerged, then let himself down step by step to the concrete.

“Commander. You okay?”

Lenson rubbed his face slowly. He still looked dazed, but he seemed to be trying to focus as Gault explained. When he got to the Medical City bit, he blinked. “It's a hospital?”

“This Medical City, it's a hospital, right?” Gault asked Ted. “Like a national hospital?” The Iraqi nodded. “And that's where Flying Stones is?”

“That is what they say.”

A flame flared inches from his face. Gault looked at him. The man looked back levelly, unconcerned, sucking another of his cigarettes, and flicked the burnt match against the wall to lie smoking with the others. Making his voice calm, he said, “That's what
they
say. What do you mean? Haven't
you
been there?”

“
La, la
. No. I told you. I have not been to it.”

“How can you take us there if you haven't been there?”

Ted raised his eyebrows. “I? Oh, no, no. I not take you there. No. You go.
You. I
not take you.”

“Oh, yes, you will.”

“No. No. I will not go.”

Gault raised his voice wearily. “Sergeant Sarsten? A little translation help, please. We seem to have a serious misunderstanding here.”