Homeland: Carrie's Run: A Homeland Novel (26 page)

CHAPTER 35

Assassin’s Gate, Green Zone, Baghdad, Iraq

She spent the remaining few hours of the night on a narrow bunk in a shipping container that everyone called a “trailer,” set in a sea of trailers laid out in a grid near the old Republican Palace. Dreyer had given her his trailer while he slept on a blanket on the floor in his office. But she couldn’t fall asleep. All she could think of was Dempsey and how he’d looked the first time she saw him, and again that night that they made love at al-Rasheed, and imagine what the IED had done to him and what he must’ve thought in that last instant. Did he blame her? Damn, he was a good-looking man. Just being near him had made her feel sexy, alive. Would she ever feel that way again? Could she ever even allow it again?

She opened her eyes but couldn’t see anything. The trailer was a dark, closed metal box. Like living in a coffin, she thought. She could feel depression moving in on her like a storm on a TV weather map that’s heading toward you. She pushed it away. No time for that now. Kill Abu Ubaida first. Then get drunk and let it come, she told herself.

Still, she couldn’t sleep. Something didn’t fit. What was it? Suddenly, she sat bolt upright in the darkness. What was it on the recorder in the factory? Abu Ubaida’s voice when he was interrogating Romeo. Something about Abu Nazir. What was it he said?

Of course he will. What good is that? I need you to tell me.

Why? What did it mean? Why wouldn’t Abu Nazir’s word be good enough for him? Why did it have to come from Romeo? Was it just a power trip on his part? She didn’t think so. The stakes were too high. Think, Carrie. Think.

I can’t, she thought. Clozapine wasn’t a cure-all. Oh God, let me sleep. I can do this, I swear, if I can just get some sleep.

By the time she showed up in Dreyer’s office that morning, in jeans and a T-shirt, with a Beretta M9 pistol Dreyer had given her, the sun was just edging over the tops of the buildings on the other side of the Tigris. It was going to be another hot day, she thought. Dreyer was already at work on his computer. One look at his face told her the bad news.

“Benson turned us down. I tried. Believe me, I tried,” Dreyer said.

“Well, he’s not turning me down,” she said, heading for the door.

“Carrie, wait!” he shouted. “Technically, we’re attached to the embassy. They’ll order me to send you back. We need you here. We can’t afford it.”

She stopped at the door and looked back at him. “I’ve gotten a lot of blood on my hands since this thing started, Perry. I can’t have any more. You do what you have to. So will I,” she said, and left.

She hit her cell phone and called the number Sergeant Major Coogan had given her for Captain Mullins, commander of the Special Forces Group being assigned to her by Colonel Salazar. He picked up before the first ring was completed. She told him where she was and what she needed. He said he’d be there in ten minutes.

“Meet me in the prime minister’s office. It’s on the second floor,” she said, ringing off and heading for the stairs. As she started up, Perry Dreyer joined her, followed by three of his staff, young men with M4s.

“If I can’t stop you, I guess they’ll have to fire us both,” he said.

They walked all the way around the big interior atrium to the prime minister’s corner office on the Yafa Street side of the building. Two armed Iraqi soldiers wearing the red berets of the Iraqi Security Forces guarded the door.

“Prime minister not in,” one of them said in bad English.

“
Salaam alaikum
,
sadikh’khai
,
” Carrie said, greeting them in Arabic as friends. “You’re both Shiite, yes?” One of the soldiers nodded. “Of which tribe,
habibi
? Shammer Toga? Bani Malik? Al-Jabouri?” she asked, naming major Shiite tribes of the Baghdad area. She was guessing that al-Waliki, the candidate of the Shiites, would only trust being guarded by fellow Shiites, preferably from his own tribe.

“Bani Malik,” the first IFS guard said.

“Of course, as is Prime Minister al-Waliki.” Carrie nodded. “I should have known.”

“He is of al-Ali of the Bani Malik,” the guard said, indicating al-Waliki’s specific tribal subbranch.

“We’re from the CIA. Sunnis of al-Qaeda are planning to kill the prime minister this morning. No doubt you will die as well. Call your commander to join us and come with us,” she said, pushing past him and opening the door. She walked into the large, plush office where the prime minister, Wael al-Waliki, was meeting with Ambassador Robert Benson.

The two men were seated at a small mahogany table. Behind them, a curtained window, one of the few in the Convention Center, provided a view of the lawn and grounds and beyond the fence to tree-lined Yafa Street and the Al-Rasheed Hotel in the distance. Dreyer, the CIA men and the two Iraqi ISF guards were behind Carrie.

“What the hell is this? Get out—all of you,” Benson growled. Spotting Dreyer, he said, “Perry, I gave you strict orders. Are you that interested in committing career suicide? Get out.”

“He tried to stop me. This is my idea,” Carrie said to Benson, and to the Iraqi prime minister she added in Arabic, “
Lahda
,
min fathlek
,
Prime Minister, but your life is in danger. You must listen.”

“Look, I don’t know who you are, miss, but this is a direct order. Get out of this room now,” Benson said.

“Ambassador, if I walk out, you and the prime minister will both be dead within the hour. So if you want to end my career tomorrow, fine, but I’m not leaving,” Carrie said.

“Who the hell is she?” Benson asked Dreyer.

“One of ours, Mr. Ambassador. You need to listen to her. She knows what she’s talking about.”

“Look, miss, thank you for your concern, but we don’t need protection. We’re in the well-guarded Green Zone, surrounded by American troops in the most protected building in the Green Zone, not to mention ISF guarding these offices. Your concern is unnecessary,” Benson said.

“And with all due respect to you, sir, AQI has infiltrated the ISF and they won’t give a shit who you are when they kill you. And if you could pull your head out of your own self-important ass for one second you’d realize that it doesn’t matter if they kill you. You’ll be replaced. But if they kill him”—she pointed at al-Waliki—“the Shiites go nuts and this whole country erupts in full-scale civil war.”

“What is this? Some kind of a joke?” Benson snapped.

“I just came from Ramadi last night covered in blood from one of my guys. Do I look like I’m joking? Right now, we need to get you and the prime minister to a safe location without anyone knowing. We have to do it immediately. Take off your clothes.”

“What?”

“You and the prime minister both. We’re going to disguise you,” she said, and repeated it in Arabic for al-Waliki, then turned to Dreyer. “We need an absolutely safe location within the Convention Center. Someplace the ISF won’t look and that can hold at least a half dozen or more U.S. soldiers just to make sure they’ll be okay. Any ideas?”

“There are some rooms in the basement under the big round auditorium, the one where the parliament meets,” one of the CIA men said. “I heard someone say Saddam’s secret police used to use them for all kinds of shit. Drugs, interrogations, rape.”

“Charming,” Dreyer muttered.

At that moment, Captain Mullins arrived with a squad of soldiers in full combat gear, along with an Iraqi officer wearing the red ISF beret.

“You Carrie?” Mullins asked. He was a small, muscular man, about five seven, with brown eyes that took in everything in an instant.

“Why aren’t you at your posts?” the Iraqi officer said to the two ISF guards in Arabic.

“I needed them here. You’ll understand in a minute,” Carrie told him in Arabic. Then to Mullins, she said, “We need to get Ambassador Benson and Prime Minister al-Waliki to safety. This man, what’s your name?” She pointed at the CIA agent who’d mentioned the storage rooms.

“Tom. Tom Rosen,” he said.

“Tom will show you where to take them. We need men we can absolutely trust to guard them. How many men did you bring?” she asked Mullins.

“Two ODAs. A Teams. Twenty-four men, not counting me,” he said.

“How many can you spare? I need at least three or four,” she said. “They, plus our CIA staff can protect them. You’ve got the extra uniforms?”

One of Mullins’s men handed Carrie two pairs of ACUs, desert camouflage fatigues, and two M4s. She gave them to Benson and the prime minister.

“Put these on,” she told them. “You’ll pretend to be soldiers.” She turned to the ISF officer. “We want everyone else in the ISF to think they are still meeting in this office,” she told him in Arabic, motioning him closer. “Get fellow Shiites, men you know and trust, if possible from your own tribe. You need to find the AQI infiltrators. As soon as we leave, no one gets in or out of the Convention Center. Any Sunni soldier in this building who joined the ISF within the last three months is suspect. Disarm every one of them and turn them over to us for interrogation. They are not to be harmed, understand? They have critical information.”

She turned and translated for Dreyer what she had told him.

“And, Perry, whatever you do, don’t let them get rid of them or let them buy their way out. We need intel from whoever they take in as prisoner,” she said to Dreyer.

Prime Minister al-Waliki stood and faced her. “You, CIA lady. I won’t do this. I can’t hide. What if someone sees me dressed like an American soldier? Politically, it would be the end of me,” he said in English.

“You have no choice,” she told him in Arabic. “Sunni elements of al-Qaeda are already inside the building. If they kill you, Iraq will split apart. There will be civil war. You know this better than anyone, Prime Minister. Then Saddam wins. He may die, but he wins. Put on the clothes for just an hour or two. Stay alive.”

Suddenly, the boom of a massive explosion rattled the windows. It was followed by additional booms from a cannon—Carrie was willing to bet from the 105-mm guns of the Abrams tanks—and a nonstop firestorm of small-arms fire. The battle had started.

“They’re attacking the Assassin’s Gate. Get your pants on,” she shouted at Benson. “Hurry!”

The Assassin’s Gate
was a white stone arch over Haifa Street topped by a domelike sculpture that looked like an ancient Babylonian warrior’s helmet. It was about three hundred meters east of the Convention Center and had become one of the major checkpoint entries into the Green Zone. Led by one of Mullins’s team leaders, they headed east on Yafa Street, then down an alley behind the buildings toward Haifa Street, the sounds of the battle getting louder and louder the closer they got. In the gaps between the buildings, they could see Iraqis, men, women clutching children, some pushing carts, all running the other way on Yafa Street, fleeing the fighting.

They stopped beside a building, looking out toward a parking lot behind the children’s hospital. It was a big open area bordered by bushes. If the insurgents had taken over the hospital, they could be walking into an ambush. The sounds of the battle were very loud, an almost nonstop staccato of automatic-weapons fire punctuated by booming cannon fire. They could see the flashes of gunfire coming from the windows of the children’s hospital.

They formed into two A Teams, Alpha and Bravo, and gave Carrie the code name “Outlaw.” Master Sergeant Travis, on point for A Team Alpha, signaled that he was going in. A moment later, as he sprinted toward the parking lot, the other team members took up positions behind parked cars to provide covering fire as needed. But there was no fire from
mujahideen
from the windows or from the parking lot. As Captain Mullins had anticipated, everything was concentrated on the Haifa Street side of the hospital, where the battle was taking place.

Although she couldn’t see the fighting at the checkpoint from here, she anticipated that Colonel Salazar had turned it into a killing zone. With tanks and troops dug in to defend the checkpoint and more men and Bradleys brought up from behind to box the
mujahideen
in, it was plenty loud enough. What the big blast had been—an IED or a car bomb or something—she didn’t know, but it meant Americans had likely taken casualties too.

Warrant Officer Blazell, whom the others called “Crimson” because he came from Alabama, a six-foot-six, shaved-headed, midthirties African-American whom Mullins had assigned to look after her, tapped her on the shoulder and indicated that she should follow him as the team zigzagged across the parking lot, where two A Team members had already taken control of the back door to the hospital.

She followed him, running lightly; the only thing she was carrying was the Beretta pistol. Once they were inside the door, Crimson shoved her to the floor. It was instantly apparent why. Gunfire from everywhere in the building and from outside at the checkpoint echoed in the corridors. There were flashes from gun muzzles and bullets everywhere. The body of a woman, a nurse, her legs spread wide, her
hijab
covered with blood, lay in the hallway.

She followed Crimson, his big body shielding her, and the rest of A Team Bravo as they ran through the hallways, checking rooms one by one. In one they found sick children huddled on the floor with a nurse next to the lifeless body of an Iraqi in a white smock; a doctor, she thought. She didn’t see A Team Alpha or Captain Mullins and assumed they had gone on ahead, maybe to another floor. One of the other Bravo team members by the staircase indicated they had cleared this floor and pointed for them to go up to the next floor.

They ran up the stairs and swept into a ward filled with beds, with no one in them. All the children were lying on the floor, where nurses and aides crawled from one to another. Some of the children had been shot with bullets that had ripped through shattered windows and walls on the Haifa Street side of the building. They were crying and screaming, and as she ran she nearly stepped on a small boy—he must have been three or four—clutching his stomach, trying to hold the blood in and shrieking at the top of his lungs: “
Ama!
Ama!
”
Mommy! Mommy!
And she thought, This is hell. This is what it’s like.