Hostile Fire (11 page)

They worked ahead slower now. Soon they passed a pair of houses with no lights. There were no vehicles by either building. Another quarter mile farther along, Murdock went to ground and the two men followed. He had out the imager and scanned two houses that still had lights.

“A big dog at the right-hand place,” Murdock said. “He hasn’t spotted us yet or smelled us. We’ve got the wind in our faces so he can’t smell us. We go around these places.”

They found a dirt road that led to the left. They needed fifteen miles in that direction so they headed down the road at a trot. Now there were more houses. Rafii spotted a car near a small home. Murdock scanned the area.

“No dogs, no guards. Ching, let’s see what you can do. We all go in and push that old sedan a quarter of a mile down the road. It’s slightly downhill so that will help. Then you do your wire work.”

Ten minutes later the car was a half mile from any building. Ching went to work with his knife and in two minutes had the engine purring.

“Don’t know what the hell make it is,” Ching said, “but it has half a tank of gas, so let’s roll.”

Twelve miles to the left they found the main north-south highway. It was bigger than they had figured.

“There will be road checks on this one,” Rafii said. “Not real blocks, but a slowdown and look over. Probably a pair of Home Guards there who will pull anyone to the side who looks suspicious.”

“We can’t shoot our way through,” Murdock said. “We have to stay silent. Rafii, you drive and talk up a storm. If we hit a checkpoint, Ching and I will be sleeping.”

“Football,” Rafii said. “If they wonder where three men are going at night, I’ll say we’re part of a football team playing in Baghdad tomorrow. There’s always some kind of tournament going. Yes, football, they call it. It’s soccer to you guys.”

“Not the Dallas Cowboys, I figured,” Ching said.

They drove. There was little traffic. Murdock didn’t know if nighttime driving was restricted or not. He didn’t think it was. Rafii said they had passed three small towns he remembered. “Not more than five miles to the city,” he said. Then he swore in Arabic.

“Checkpoint just ahead. Not a big one. One army truck to the side. These may be Home Guard guys. If so, they are tough and well trained. Get to sleep, you guys. Just no snoring.”

The old car pulled up to the block. There was one car ahead of them. The driver in the other car talked to the soldier, who waved the rig on through. Rafii pulled up and
stopped. He had out his papers. They had been made and weathered and worried and were as authentic as any in the land. He held them out to the guard.

“Quiet night?” Rafii asked in Arabic.

“The way I like it. Where you headed?

“Football stadium. We’ll sleep in the car tonight. We play at ten o’clock tomorrow.”

“Just three of you?”

“The others are ahead of us. We had to work all day. The other bastards got off early.”

“Who you playing?”

“Don’t know. The draw is tomorrow.”

Another car pulled up behind them. The guard gave him back his papers. “So get moving. And boot in a couple of goals for me.”

They were through and past the check.

“Nice going, Rafii,” Murdock said.

“We could have taken him out easy,” Ching said.

“Sure, but he had a relief man in the truck,” Rafii said. “I saw the radio in his pocket. All of these checkpoints have radios now or telephones. Good thing we got through clean.”

Murdock rode in the front seat. He looked at Rafii. “What’s Jones’s address in Baghdad?”

“Twenty-two-oh-three Bahar Lane. It’s in a section where poets, writers, starving artists, and musicians used to live. I don’t know what’s there now. You know this is a big city, almost five million bodies now.”

“Been here before,” Murdock said. “That’s why we have a local native as our guide. Can you find the place?”

“Know about where it is. Then we follow my nose to get the right street. Not like we had a map.”

As they neared the city, they saw streetlights and stores and shops along the way. More and more houses and some industrial areas cropped up. Then they were in the middle of the five million people who made up Baghdad. The highway vanished, and they rolled into a maze of narrow one-way streets, thousands of lights, and in places, swarms of people. They had to stop for a surge of people who crossed the street. About half of them were women. Strange in a Muslim country. Then Murdock remembered their training. This was not
a fundamentalist Muslim nation. On the corner a garish sign glowed.

“The sign says coffee and jazz,” Rafii said. The music gushing out from the open door was pure Frank Sinatra singing “My Way” in English. Three blocks later Rafii turned into a side street and nodded.

“Oh yeah. I lived about two blocks from here. Came back several times. Almost didn’t get permission to leave the last time. Now I know for damn sure where we are. Another ten minutes unless we get run over by the gangs.”

A short time later, Rafii eased the old sedan to the side of the street and pointed. A house made of wood and plaster set back from the curb. A Citroën sedan was parked in front of it just off the street. A steel fence shut off the front of the yard, and a gate in it was closed. Rafii pulled out and drove two blocks away.

“Everybody out. We don’t want this rig tied to us in any way if the farmer reports it stolen. We walk back. I’ll make the contact. Both of you stay in the shadows of the houses at each side.”

“Go,” Murdock said.

Lights glowed from two windows that showed to the street. It was a two-story house and in better condition than most of the others around it. Rafii moved up the sidewalk, past the parked Citroën and up to the gate. He looked it over for a few seconds, then opened it and went to the side of the place and evidently to a back door. Murdock frowned and waited. He wished he had talked them into bringing the Motorolas. The small personal radios would have been damn handy right then. They waited.

It was almost ten minutes before Rafii appeared at the side of the house and waved them forward. They went up like black ghosts and around the side of the house.

“Yeah, he’s here. He isn’t happy that we dropped in on him, but he expected this would happen. He knows that the CIA man here was cut down. Right now he’s angry, about half-drunk and had been about ready to mount one of two partly clad women when I knocked on the back door. That he’ll never forgive me for. The rest of our mission is open to persuasion.”

“You tell him why we’re here?”

“Nope, just that we’re working with his old outfit and it needs some of his help.”

They slipped in a black rear entrance, went through a dark room and then into a lighted one. A man sat on a well-worn couch. He had a full beard that needed trimming. His mustache covered his mouth. Small nearly black eyes stared out from below heavy brows. His hair was black streaked with gray and Murdock couldn’t guess how old he was. From forty to sixty-five. His face was puffed and fat, showing splotches of red and brown. Even before he stood, Murdock guessed he was eighty pounds overweight. When he came to his feet, it was with an effort. He had to push down on the couch with both hands. He wore an Iraqi white shirt and white pants, now stained with what Murdock figured was tobacco juice. As if to confirm it, Jones turned and spit at a bucket that sat at the end of the couch. Half of the stream of dark brown juice went into the improvised spittoon.

“What son of a bitch gave you my address?” he asked.

Murdock stepped forward. “I’m not sure, Mr. Jones. Do you know a man by the name of Don Stroh?”

Jones roared with laughter, his eyes teared, and he slapped his heavy leg with a meaty hand. “That old bastard is still alive? Stroh the Stickler we used to call him. What a fuckoff. He must be a big shot in the Company now if he’s still kicking.”

“He’s alive and in Kuwait,” Murdock said. “You know about the CIA man here who they lost.”

“Didn’t lose him. I know exactly where his body is. But he’s not much good to the Company now.” He scowled at them. If there had been women in the room, they had left. He didn’t offer to let the men sit down. “What the hell can I do to help you? I have no fucking contacts anymore. The police used to watch me like a cat on a rat. Now they leave me alone. I like it that way. I get enough booze, enough to eat, and enough women to keep my whanger happy. What more could I want?”

“Iraqi President Kamil now has four functioning nuclear bombs,” Murdock said.

“Oh, God. Just what we were afraid of.” Jones sat down
and nearly broke the couch. He waved the SEALs to sit.

“What the hell can I do about it?”

“We don’t know where they are. We want you to help us tie down the location.”

Jones laughed. He wiped tears from his eyes and shook his head. “Find them? You must be nuts. I ask two questions about those weapons and I’m skinned and my head is paraded through the streets on the end of a pike pole. Not a chance.”

Murdock sat on a wooden chair and watched Jones. He didn’t say a word. Jones shifted his bulk on the couch. He wiped one hand across his face.

“Christ, what’s he planning on doing with them?”

“We think he’ll set off one in the desert somewhere as a warning to his neighbors. Then he’ll threaten Syria or Saudi Arabia. If they don’t lay down their arms and join him in the greater Arab Union, he’ll bomb them out of existence. He’ll keep it up until he owns every Arab nation in the Middle East.”

Jones nodded slowly. His eyes took on a hard glint. “The bastard could do it. Or he could sell a weapon to some terrorists, al-Qaida, for example, who would use it to blow up some American city. That’s al-Qaida’s dream: nuke an American city.”

“We need to know where they are, so we can destroy them,” Murdock said.

“The three of you?”

“No, sixteen of us—seventeen, actually. We’re Navy SEALs, and the rest of the platoon is waiting in Saudi Arabia.”

“SEALs, huh? Heard about you fuckers. You’re supposed to be hell on earth. Maybe so—you got in here without getting caught. Oh, damn. I figured I was out of the loop for good. Why the hell they trying to sucker me back into the action?”

“Because you’re the only hope we have. Nobody else in Baghdad can do what you can do. We need to find out where the weapons are, and we have only three more days.”

“Three days?” Jones snorted, reached for a dark bottle, and took a long pull from it. He wiped his mouth on his
white sleeve and shook his head. “Hell, take more like three months. My contacts are all gone, dead, or executed. What the hell can I do in three days?”

He slammed his fist into the couch, picked up a pillow, and threw it across the room. “Huda,” he bellowed. “Huda, get your pussy in here. We’ve got company. Bring in some of that good beer I’ve been saving. I’m not sure, but I think I’m back in business. Hell of a long vacation. What can a man do when his country gives him a call? Hell yes, I’ll help you—that is I’ll try to help you—find out where the nukes are. Won’t be easy. You got one of them fancy SATCOM radios I hear about? Hey, I’ve got the Internet. Huda, where the hell are you? You go deaf, woman? Get your little ass in here with the beer.”

Baghdad, Iraq

Murdock and the other SEALS accepted brown bottles without labels, and Jones waved at the woman dressed in a skirt and blouse who brought them.

“These Iraqi women are not downtrodden like those in the fundamentalist countries. They have rights, can drive, go to school, even teach school and enter all sorts of businesses and professions. Most are frightened that any kind of a regime change here would put the Iraqi fundamentalists in power and push the women back into the dark ages. Huda is bright, speaks English fairly well, and is a great help to me.”

“Can she meet with any of your former contacts?” Rafii said.

“Ah, yes, the turncoat. You are an Iraqi; I can tell by the way you speak English. Your Arabic must be perfect. The short answer to that question is yes, no, and maybe. It depends who it is and how well-concealed the meet is made.

“How can we help?” Murdock asked.

“Mostly by staying inside this house so no one will see you, and not making any noise. The telephone system is back in operation after a long time in ruin after the Gulf War. Let me make a call or two. No, we don’t have cell phones yet, but the land lines do quite well. Huda will show you up the stairs, where you can get some rest. If I need you tonight, I’ll call.”

The SEALs stood and followed the Iraqi woman out of the room and up a closed stairway to the second floor. There were three rooms; the largest had two beds and dressers.

“I’m not a damn bit sleepy,” Ching said.

Murdock scowled. “Sailor, on a mission like this we sleep whenever we get the chance. We might not get another bed
this good for two or three days. So we sack out.”

Going into enemy territory this way put a serious nervous energy drain on the men, and Murdock knew it. All three were sleeping within ten minutes.

Sometime later, Murdock felt a hand on his shoulder. He looked up without moving and saw Huda.

“It’s time to come downstairs,” she said. “Just the commander.”