Homeland: Carrie's Run: A Homeland Novel (20 page)

“Snipers. Fire, dammit!” Rabbit shouted, firing his M4 at the roof of the building as well.

Carrie tried, but she couldn’t see who was shooting at them, though her nerves screamed in expectation of a bullet hitting her at any second. The harsh rip of M4 bursts from Rabbit and the man behind her sounded unbelievably loud in her ears. She put her finger on the trigger, not knowing what to do as they drew opposite the building. Then she saw it.

She could see the outline of someone up there and before she realized what she was doing, she squeezed the trigger blindly, feeling the M4 move in her hands. She squeezed off another, the shots sounding very loud, although she was positive she hadn’t come near hitting whoever it was. Before she could even see what happened, they were speeding away. She felt a terrible urge to urinate and tightened to hold it in. She put the safety selector back to “Safe.”

After what seemed like an hour but must’ve been barely a minute later, they exited the highway, the lead Mamba honking and bumping into Iraqi cars to get them out of their way as they headed toward the Green Zone checkpoint. The streets were crowded with cars and motorbikes and people. Through the window came a smell of dust and diesel and rotting garbage.

The checkpoint was ahead of them: concertina wire; concrete blast walls, some decorated with graffiti; sandbags; concrete turn barriers in the roadway; a queue of cars and a long line of people going through inspection and metal detectors to get in, watched over by an M1 Abrams tank and a detachment of U.S. Army soldiers. They snaked their way around the serpentine turn barriers and stopped briefly at the checkpoint, where a contractor who looked exactly like a soldier except for the Blackwater shoulder patch on his shirt waved them on through.

Passing by the blast walls, it was as if they had landed on another planet. They were on a wide avenue lined with palm trees, villas with green lawns and gardens, monumental buildings with pointed domes like something out of
The Arabian Nights
and, in the distance, the sun shining on the Tigris River. They drove past a monument with giant crossed curved swords over the entrance to what looked like a vast parade ground. Near it was what looked like a big concrete flying saucer with its hatch open. She remembered it from her last trip, but Rabbit, assuming she was a newbie, pointed it out.

“Monument to the Unknown Soldier,” Rabbit said as they continued on down the avenue, finally turning left past some government buildings in grassy open spaces, then right onto Yafa Street and pulling up at the entrance to a tall building with a dry fountain with statues in front that sooner or later, every foreigner who wasn’t tied down in the military got to know: the Al-Rasheed Hotel.

“Do you want to check in or go over to the Convention Center?” Virgil asked as they unloaded. The Convention Center was where the Iraqi Provisional Government and U.S. government agencies had offices.

“Convention Center,” she said, checking the safety was back on and handing her M4 to Rabbit.

“You did good,” he said.

“I was scared to death,” she said.

“Me too.” He grinned and waved.

She and Virgil, pulling their rolling suitcases behind them, walked across the wide boulevard and showed their IDs to U.S. Marines stationed behind sandbags outside the Convention Center building’s wrought-iron and concrete fence. The Convention Center was a giant fortresslike building made of gray concrete. It looked like a fortification from World War I.

They showed their IDs again to American MPs manning the entrance and went inside. Instantly, they were hit by the air-conditioning, and after asking, they eventually found an office with a sign on the door that said “USAID Baghdad,” the U.S. government aid agency. They knocked and went inside.

They were shown to an office waiting room, where they sat and waited while a young American man in a Marine Service C uniform shirt and tie, military written all over him, went to get someone. A U.S. Marine captain, also in Service Cs, came out of an inner office.

He was about six feet tall, athletic, good-looking, with dark wavy hair longer than the normal Marine’s, blue eyes and a Tom Cruise smile.

“I’m Ryan Dempsey. You must be Virgil and Carrie. Welcome to the Sandbox,” he said, shaking their hands. When he touched her hand she felt a tingle like nothing she’d experienced since the first time she’d met her poly sci professor, John, at Princeton so long ago. It’s the adrenaline, she told herself, the thrill of surviving the drive, of being alive. But taking a good look at Captain Dempsey, she knew it wasn’t true.

Oh shit, she thought. I’m in trouble.

CHAPTER 27

Green Zone, Baghdad, Iraq

They were at a small table at the BCC, the Baghdad Country Club. A white cinder-block house with blue trim on a residential street near the river, it was one of the few places in Baghdad where the booze flowed freely. The club was packed with Green Zone expats who came here instead of the bars at the Al-Rasheed or the Palestine Hotel because with the Shiites trying to form a government, the hotels didn’t openly serve alcohol.

There were men in uniforms from a dozen different Coalition countries—Brits, Canadians, Aussies, Poles, Georgians, U.S. embassy and Provisional Government officials—and contractors from private military companies like Blackwater, DynCorp, KBR-Halliburton and a hundred others. More and more, the war had been subcontracted to these private companies and they had practically taken over. The bar and adjoining rooms were crammed with their employees, hired from every corner of the earth at Wall Street–like wages, speaking dozens of languages and spending money like it was going out of style. Jet planes taking off couldn’t have matched the noise level, and female waitresses who didn’t mind a pat on the butt could make a thousand dollars a night.

Carrie was sitting with Virgil and Dempsey, who was really a Marine captain on loan to the CIA, using the USAID office cover, from Task Force 145, a shadowy outfit fighting the insurgency.

Joining them was an Iraqi national, Warzer Zafir, officially a translator for the U.S. embassy, unofficially also from Task Force 145. The Iraqi was mid-thirties with dark hair, a three-day stubble, a straight nose sharp as an ax blade. Also attractive, Carrie thought. At the table next to them, a trio of Aussies was loudly celebrating an Australian cricket victory over “those donger South African whackers, mate.”

“I speak Arabic. I don’t need a translator,” Carrie had told Dempsey back in his office.

“Warzer has other virtues,” he said.

“Like what?”

“He’s from Ramadi,” Dempsey said.

“What about Ramadi?” Carrie asked.

Now, at the BCC, draining a Heineken, Dempsey told them:

“You guys need to understand what’s going on. Iraq’s changed since you were here last. Over the past two weeks, more than three hundred bodies, most burned, tortured beyond recognition, have shown up here in Baghdad alone. Our troops are getting it from all sides. IEDs and snipers on every block. It’s hard to tell who the Iraqis hate more, us or each other.

“The Sunnis will never accept Jaafari as prime minister.” He leaned closer. “This insurgency has legs. AQI is getting stronger. They’re on the verge of taking over Anbar. We’re talking from the outskirts of Baghdad all the way to the Syrian border. People are scared shitless. Last week, two U.S. Army Rangers from the Seventy-Fifth went missing in Ramadi. An hour later they turned up minus their heads.”

“That’s why I’m here,” Carrie said. “You’ve seen the photo. Do we have anybody who’s seen him?”

Both Dempsey and Warzer shook their heads.

“Even if somebody did recognize him, they’d never talk. What you Americans don’t understand,” Warzer said, “is that it’s not like Democrats and Republicans. If the Shiites take over, they’ll kill all the Sunnis. They fear if we take over, we’ll do the same. Saddam was a pig,” he said, his face contorted, “and I’m glad he’s been caught. But when he ran things, only some people died. Not everyone.”

“I need someone from AQI. I heard you had a prisoner,” she said to Dempsey.

Dempsey nodded. “While I was with the Seventh Marines, before all this spook shit, we captured an AQI commander in Fallujah. But they’re tough to interrogate. They’re not only not afraid to die, they want to die.”

“What’s his name?”

“He goes by Abu Ammar,” Dempsey said.

“That’s his
kunya
,
his nom de guerre, not his name. Interesting he chose Abu Ammar,” Carrie said.

“Why?”

“Yasser Arafat used it. Ammar was a companion of the Prophet. Maybe our ‘Father of Ammar’ has delusions of grandeur. Where do you have him?”

“Abu Ghraib.”

“The same place they did all the tortures and stuff?” Virgil asked. Two years earlier, leaked photographs of U.S. servicemen and women torturing and sexually humiliating inmates at Abu Ghraib prison had been a worldwide political disaster for the United States.

“When you’ve seen what I’ve seen . . . ,” Dempsey said, then shrugged, as if Iraq were quantum physics, impossible to explain to laymen.

“Have you bugged his cell?” Carrie asked.

Dempsey shook his head.

“Shit.” She frowned. “Does anyone have a clue what his real name is?”

“We have a snitch in there. Swears our Ammar is from Ramadi, which makes sense, and that his real name is Walid. We don’t know his last name.”

“Why does Ramadi make sense?” she asked.

“Because it’s the heart of the insurgency. It’s rumored that’s where Abu Nazir is.” He leaned closer. “I have to tell you, CENTCOM is planning a major operation in Ramadi,” he whispered in her ear.

“When?” she whispered back.

“Soon. You don’t have much time.”

“So no one’s seen Abu Nazir or Abu Ubaida?” Virgil asked.

“They say if you see them,” Warzer put in, “it’s the last thing your eyes ever see.”

Dempsey looked around and motioned them closer. They all leaned in.

“So what’s next? We go to Abu Ghraib for you to interrogate Ammar?” he said.

“No,” she said. “Ramadi.”

“Forgive me, al-Anesah Carrie,” Warzer said. “But you are a little new in Iraq. Ramadi is . . .” He searched for the word. “You cannot imagine how dangerous.”

“We’ve already seen how dangerous Baghdad is,” Virgil said.

Warzer looked at Carrie and Virgil with his dark brown eyes. “Baghdad is nothing. Ramadi is death,” he said quietly.

“We have no choice. I need to talk to his family,” she said.

Dempsey grinned. “There’s one born every minute,” he said.

“What? A fool?” Virgil asked.

“Worse,” he said, still grinning. “An optimist.”

From the open
door to her balcony at the Al-Rasheed Hotel, she could see the lights atop the Fourteenth of July Bridge over the Tigris River. The half of the city on the other side of the river was in pitch darkness, the power more often off than on, the curving river a silver ribbon in the moonlight.

From beyond the Green Zone she heard the crump of an explosion and the rattle of automatic weapons. Looking that way, she saw a line of red tracer bullets, trailing dreamlike across the darkness. The shooting stopped, then it started again, as much a part of the night sounds of this city as police sirens and cleaning trucks in an American city.

She went back in her mind to the same old question: What was Fielding’s secret? What had he been hiding? Why did he kill himself?

Why does anyone? Why did her father try? Where in this night was her mother? Wasn’t her leaving also a kind of suicide, a killing of her old life? Was that why she had never tried to contact any of them, not even her own children? Saul was right, she thought. We’re all hiding something.

When her father finally got on clozapine, he tried to reconnect. It was as if she had never really known Frank Mathison, the Frank Mathison who had been in Vietnam—and she hadn’t even known that about him till she found a photograph in a box in his closet, him shirtless, looking incredibly young and skinny, cradling an M14 in a jungle clearing with two friends, all of them grinning at the camera, shitfaced on whatever they were smoking, the Frank Mathison her mother had married before it all got really bad. He had moved in with her sister, Maggie, and Maggie’s husband, Todd. He was in therapy, basically normal now, according to Maggie.

“He wants to see you,” Maggie had said. “He needs to reconnect. It’s important for his process.”

“His process? What about mine?” she’d snapped.

She wouldn’t let him get close. If she saw him at Maggie’s house, she’d say, “Hello, Dad,” “Good-bye, Dad,” and that was all. Because she couldn’t forget; her bizarre childhood a Ping-Pong match between gibberish and silence. And because he might seem normal, but she knew the craziness was hiding in him, waiting to get out the second you turned your head away.

And what about her? Her craziness?

Son of a bitch, she needed a drink. And jazz. She got her iPod ready. Just then, there was a knock on the door.

It was Dempsey, filling the doorway. Still in his service shirt and pants, a few drinks further to the wind than he had been at the Baghdad Country Club. The way he looked at her thrilled her to her core—Damn, he was a good-looking man.

“I want the truth. Are you married?” she asked.

“What difference does it make?” he said, not taking his blue eyes off her.

“I don’t know, but it does. Are you?”

“I’m between,” he said, as if marriages were military assignments, temporary postings, and then you moved on to the next.

“Oh shit,” she said, the two of them coming together like atoms smashing, tearing off their clothes as he came into the room, kissing each other like the world was ending. They stumbled to the bed and as she wrapped her legs around his hips, feeling him push himself inside her, some part of her heard a pair of loud explosions this side of the river followed by a renewed outburst of automatic-weapons fire.

CHAPTER 28

Abu Ghraib Prison, Anbar Province, Iraq

They brought Abu Ammar, a.k.a. Walid, in manacles into the interrogation room where Carrie was waiting. The room was bare: concrete walls and two wooden chairs facing each other, nothing else. She gestured for him to sit down and after a moment, he did.

“
Salaam alaikum,
” she said to him, gesturing to the two U.S. soldiers who had brought him to leave. Walid didn’t respond with “
Wa alaikum salaam
” as Arab courtesy demanded. He was a thin man with close-cropped hair and a ragged beard in an orange prisoner’s jumpsuit with a nervous tick that caused him to jerk his head slightly sideways every few seconds. She wondered if it was natural or a result of his imprisonment and past interrogations.

His eyes flicked over her for less than a second, taking in her blue
hijab
,
jeans and USMC hoodie, then moving away. He didn’t have to say anything. She understood. She was the enemy. For several minutes, neither of them spoke. She made sure to sit still so the recording equipment and hidden miniature video camera she was wearing got a good image.

“You know the
hadith
of Abu ’Isa al-Tirmidhi reporting of the Messenger of Allah, peace be upon him, who said, ‘The best of you is he who is best to his family,’ ” she said in Arabic.

He twitched his head, but he never stopped watching her. His eyes blinked multiple times like a bird’s.

“So, no electrics or waterboarding this time. You must be ‘the good policeman,’ ” he said in Iraqi Arabic.

“Something like that.” She smiled. “I need your help, Assayid Walid Karim. I know you would rather die than do this, but think. A word from me—and you will be free of this place.” She waved vaguely at the walls.

“I don’t believe you. Even if I did, I would rather die than help you. In fact, I think”—he twitched—“I prefer the electrics and waterboarding to your stupidity,” he said.

“You will believe me, Walid Karim. That is your name, isn’t it?” Although he tried not to show it, she could see he was shocked that she knew his name.

“I am Abu Ammar,” he said.

“And what of poor Yasser Arafat, who wants his
kunya
back?” She grimaced sarcastically. “Listen, this will go much better if we tell the truth to each other. You are Walid Karim of the Abu Risha tribe and a commander in the Tanzim Qaidat al-Jihad fi Bilad al-Rafidayn, known to us poor American infidels as al-Qaeda in Iraq. You come from Ramadi, from al-Thaela’a al-Sharqiya, south of the river, near the hospital.”

Karim stared intently at her, barely breathing, twitching. It had taken her and Warzer, using all his family and tribal connections, three difficult, secretive days hiding in Warzer’s uncle’s house in Ramadi, Carrie in a full
abaya
,
her eyebrows colored brunette, wearing brown contact lenses and never breaking her disguise, to uncover Karim’s real name and the house where his family lived. Then she visited Karim’s family, bringing Warzer, who claimed to have been imprisoned in Abu Ghraib with Karim, so they would trust her.

“I’ve been to your house,” she said. “I’ve spoken with your mother, Aasera. Your wife, Shada. I held your children, your daughter, Farah, your boy, Gabir, with these hands.” She held up her hands. With every word, she could see how appalled he was that she knew so much. “Your son, Gabir, is beautiful but too young to understand what it is to be a
shahid
,
a martyr. He misses his father. Say the word, and I promise, you will be home and holding him yourself in a couple of hours.”

“You lie,” he said. Twitch. “And even if not, I would rather see you kill them than help you.”

“God is great. I would never kill them,
ya
Walid. But you will,” she said.

His face twisted with disgust. “How do you say such a thing? What kind of a woman are you?”

“Remember the
hadith
of Abu ’Isa. I’m trying to save your family.” She bit her lip. “I’m trying to save you,
sadiqi
.”

“Don’t call me that. We’re not friends. We’ll never be friends,” he said, his eyes fierce like those of an Old Testament prophet.

“No, but we’re both human. If you don’t help me, the Tanzim will cut off your children’s heads—and I won’t be able to stop it, may Allah forbid it,” she said, holding up her right hand.

“My brothers would never—”

“And what will they do to a traitor, a
murtadd
?” She spat out the word, “apostate,” into his horrified expression. “What would they do to his family? His poor mother? His wife and children?”

“They won’t believe it,” he snapped.

“They will.” She nodded. “They will when they see the American Marines bringing gifts, new big flat-screen televisions, and money, fixing and painting the house. When we have members of the Dulaimi and Abu Risha tribes whispering across the Anbar how you helped the Americans and are even thinking of becoming a Christian. They won’t want to believe, but they will see the gifts and the protection from the Americans and they will know. And then, one day, the Americans will suddenly be gone. Then the Taksim will come to administer justice.”

“You whore,” he muttered.

“What of the
hadith
of the Prophet of Allah on that day? Or you can go free of this terrible place today. Go home, Walid. Be a husband to your wife and a father to Farah and Gabir and never worry about money or safety again for as long as you live. You need to choose,” she said, looking at her watch. “In a little while I’ll leave—and whatever you decide, there’s no going back.”

For a long time, he didn’t speak. She looked around at the bare walls and thought about the things that had been done in this room. Perhaps he did too, she thought.

“This is evil,” he said finally, twitching.

“For a greater good. You cut off innocent people’s heads, Walid. Don’t talk to me about evil,” she said.

He looked at her, his eyes narrowed. “There are no innocent people,” he said. “Not me. You?”

She hesitated, then shook her head no.

He twitched his head and exhaled. “What do you want, woman?”

Carrie took a photograph of Dima’s boyfriend Mohammed Siddiqi, a.k.a. Abu Ubaida, out of her pocket.

“You know this man?” she asked. By the expression on his face, she could see that he did.

“Abu Ubaida.” He nodded. “You must know or you wouldn’t ask me.”

“What’s his real name?”

“I don’t know.”

“Yes you do,” she said, crossing her arms in front of her chest.

“
La,
truly. I don’t know.”

“What do you know about him? You must know something. Someone must’ve called him something.”

“He is not Anbari, not even Iraqi. Once I heard someone call him ‘Kaden.’ ”

“Where’s he from?”

His face hardened, and he looked at her suspiciously. “You will let me go? Today?”

“But secretly, you will work for me,” she said. “Where did he come from?”

“Palestine, like—” He stopped suddenly.

He had slipped. She jumped at it. “Like whom? Like Abu Nazir? Both Palestinians?” When he didn’t answer, she added, “Your son Gabir’s life hangs by a thread, Walid.”

“As do we all. We are all in Allah’s hands,” he said.

“And in your own. Tell me, they’re Palestinians? Both of them? Is that why they’re so close?”

He twitched and nodded, then: “Maybe not so close anymore.”

“Why? What’s happened?”

“I don’t know. How could I? I’m locked up in here like an animal,” he snapped.

“Then go free. Where is Abu Nazir now?”

“I don’t know. He moves all the time anyway. They say he never spends two nights in the same bed. Like Saddam.” He grinned, showing yellowing teeth.

“And Abu Ubaida? Where is he? Ramadi?”

He nodded, almost imperceptibly. “But not for long,” he said.

“Why? Where is he going?”

He shook his head. For a moment she was afraid he was done talking. Walid was the best shot they had. If she couldn’t get him to commit now—with a major battle for Ramadi coming, according to Dempsey—they would fail. Roll the damn dice, Carrie, she told herself, and stood up.

“Stay or go, Walid. This is the moment,” she said, holding her breath. From somewhere in the prison came the faint sound of someone screaming, but she couldn’t make out the words. Walid must be hearing it, she thought.

“What’s your name?” he asked.