Escape from Baghdad! (25 page)

“He's ten, Kinza.”

“So?”

“Just saying.”

“Different days, eh, professor? He could have been in a classroom.”

“That little shit is a monster,” Hamid said absently. He was hunched over in a corner of the roof, working on his mobile kit, thumbscrews and fish hook tools. Dagr didn't want to know.

“What are we doing here, Kinza?”

“Waiting for Mikhail.”

“What the hell for?”

“Now, professor, you're not going to like this, but we don't have a choice,” Kinza said.

“Like what?”

“I'm thinking we need Mikhail to man the sniper station up top. We're bringing him up here to practice with the gun.”

“What? Mikhail? He's a fucking librarian.”

“He can shoot, can't he?”

“A crossbow,” Dagr said. “He can shoot a crossbow.”

“Same principle, really,” Kinza said. “Look, it's the safest job. We set him up on the roof with the rifle and let him take pops at the door when we get down. He can take out the armored guy first.”

“He won't hit anything, Kinza.”

“Even if he hits nothing, sometimes it's worth it just filling the air with bullets. They'll be so worried about a sniper that they'll be hopping around.”

“He's going to get killed.”

“Five minutes, and he runs,” Kinza said. “Look, do you think I'd throw away his life for nothing? Hell, I'd put the Satan nephew up there if I thought he'd be able to lift the damn gun. There is no one else, professor.”

“You want me to convince him, is that it?”

“No,” Kinza said. “He's already agreed.”

“What?”

“Let it go, professor,” Hamid laughed from his corner. “Kinza told him that they're coming to burn the library down. He's putting on war paint as we speak. You couldn't hold him back even if you wanted to.”

Later on, in the living room cum command center, Dagr stood in a heroic pose, like Hector, as the three women of the house decked him with martial accoutrements.

“You are the tank,” Kinza said, apologetically.

“That's not a good thing, I take it?” Dagr asked. The women were attaching vests, shin-guards, arm guards to him, all Kevlar, but weighing a ton, evidence of some nefarious doctoring.

“You can't shoot,” Hamid said bluntly. “Not straight, anyway. So you got to be the human shield.”

“Not exactly,” Kinza said. “Basically, the tank soaks up pressure. You get down first and look the most threatening. We give you the biggest gun, make you the most dangerous looking dude there.”

“Er, I'm not fully understanding the plan here,” Dagr said weakly. He was already faint from the enormous weight of the things the women were attaching to him.

“There's good news and bad news,” Kinza said. “The good news is that you've got nearly impenetrable armor: the very best we could get: Marine issue Kevlar, which has been reinforced by steel plates for your chest, with outsized double stitching along the hems for a stylish finish. Then forearm guards of Kevlar, and shin-guards too, also of Kevlar. Your thighs are also Kevlar with steel plates to protect the major arteries. Your helmet is the Marine-issue K-pot, picked out in the latest desert camouflage pattern.”

“Stop being an ass. What is the bad news?”

“You're most probably going to get shot a bunch of times,” Kinza said. “Just don't get shot in the face. Otherwise you should be fine.”

“Shot a bunch of times?”

“The tank has to draw fire,” Kinza said. “You get out first and start blasting around your machine gun. The assholes think you're Rambo and all concentrate on bringing you down. Meanwhile, Hamid and I start dropping them and Mikhail takes the big guy down with a headshot.”

“That's the plan?”

“Yes.”

“Me getting shot up, that's your plan? Seriously?”

“Look, it's a good plan,” Kinza said. “You'll get hit maximum once or twice. Trust me. We only got one suit of Kevlar. You'll be the safest guy there.”

“Think you can handle it, professor?” Hamid asked. “Don't piss in the Kevlar. We have to give it back after the job is done.”

“It's on loan? What if it gets shot up?” Dagr asked, aghast.

“Well we'd lose our deposits,” Kinza said. “We can't afford this shit outright. It's very expensive. Mother Davala had to call in a lot of favors for this one.”

“I'm going to drop dead in it. I know it. Dead in borrowed Kevlar.”

“You'll be fine,” Kinza said. “You always moan, but you pull through when it counts.”

Rumbling in the container of the Blackwater truck, Dagr felt the acute discomfort of the ride and realized with faint chagrin that while he was facing certain death, all he could think about was the stifling heat. He updated his mental inventory of various hells to include this; held immobile in a steel box in sweltering Baghdad noon, strapped down with heavy armor and helmet, forbidden to make a noise or fan himself, or even have a drink.

He tried to fix his mind on trivial matters, his varied aches and pains, the itch on the inside of his calf, the pommel of the pistol jabbing his hip, to reduce mounting apprehension of certain death. It seemed almost comical that anyone could expect this of him, to jump down from a moving truck into a mass of armed men. Yet Kinza had a way of making these things seem common place, and Dagr supposed it was because he had a singular lack of imagination.

They lounged beside him almost gracefully in the truck, lithe as panthers, sleek and dark, their guns out, looking fit, relaxed. He felt like the sacrificial cattle of Eid, clumsy in panic, herded left and right by the butcher's men.

The truck swayed through the streets, and native Iraqi police did not stop them, such was the power of the emblem on its side. If they were afraid of the US Army, they were terrified of Blackwater. The driver was
plodding dull, a man who didn't want to know anything beyond the rotation of his tires and the steady accumulation of hazard pay in his account.

Dagr counted the minutes, and then reflexively ran over probable speeds and distances, pinpointing on his mental map where they were. Such were the tools of the mathematician, but the numbers comforted him little. Too soon, they stopped on the street, as Hassan Salemi's men voiced their objections. The dull man in the cab shrugged, face closed, ignoring the jabbering of monkeys, his hands repeatedly making the same motion: open the gate, open the gate. Eventually, the color of his skin and the latent power of Blackwater dented even the Shi'a confidence in their own barricade.

The truck rolled slowly and the driver honked twice, as previously agreed. Hamid and Kinza were at the doors, jacking them open, and Dagr found himself stumbling forward, out of some sick compulsion. It was like the one time he had gone bungee jumping in Dubai. The sunlight hit him and he staggered down like a drunk, the M4 carbine semiautomatic cradled in his arms. His knee banged against the lip of the fender, and he howled in excruciating pain. The truck eased away and he collapsed to one knee, off balance, his helmet slick with sweat. His peripheral vision was shit. He heard the other two landing several meters behind him, exposed.

Salemi's men were staring at them, aghast, momentarily frozen around their two round café tables, spending those precious miniseconds trying to register. Dagr saw one putting out his cigarette into a full mug of tea and felt an odd pang for ruining his morning. He remembered abruptly what he was supposed to be doing; his finger automatically tightened on the trigger, and the M4 started roaring in his hand. Bullets sprayed into the ground, hitting nothing, and then the vicious recoil lifted the muzzle up, and he saw the tables being hit, upturned, wood and glass flying. Perhaps he hit something, he wasn't sure, but from behind he could hear the whine of single shot pistols, as Kinza and Hamid, kneeling, did their business with more efficacy. Men ducked away. Guns roared.

There was return fire from somewhere in the doorway. Aghast, Dagr remembered suddenly that the bear-man in armor was nowhere in sight. He must have ducked inside for some reason. This plan was shit, he thought, even as something hit him with the force of a mule-kick, punching him back on his ass, the M4 spinning away. The air whooshed out of his trunk. He lay on the ground, paralyzed, eyes circling around floor level to see the tarmac littered with cigarette butts and slow pools of blood leaking from other unfortunates.

The bear man stood in the doorway, shotgun in hand, calmly reloading. Dagr stared at him, willing someone to kill him, but perhaps they were already dead. The plan seemed sadly awry. He tried to make some effort to move, but his arms and legs were not responding and it seemed pointless in any case.

The bear man stepped forward, shotgun draped over his arm and pointing down, close enough that Dagr could see the twin barrels. In this last instant, Dagr felt an intense desire to live a few minutes longer, for some miracle reprieve, and the still rational parts of his mind marveled at this pure animal instinct for had he not settled his accounts with life many months ago? Where then, did this yearning to breathe come from, this terrible fear, even as the bear fingers tightened on the trigger.

There was a loud crack surprisingly far away, and Dagr, who was a mass of pain, could not tell what further damage there was, until he saw the bear man pitching backwards, a mass of smoke coming from his chest.

Abruptly, a surge of adrenalin cleared away some of the fog, and feeling returned to his extremities.
Mikhail
. He couldn't help mapping the trajectory of the bullet and knew that the librarian had somehow saved him. Then it occurred to him that the bear man was still alive, himself wearing Kevlar, and it was now a slow contest of who could rise first. Dagr crawled to his belly and then half slithered away toward the edge of the building then remembered that he was supposed to
tank
, that Kinza and Hamid were fighting without the benefit of armor or second chances. Indecision gripped him and he ended
up sprawled on the ground against a half-wrecked table, behind which one enemy was noisily dying.

He wanted to take his helmet off but his fingers were stiff and the strap too tight. His chest throbbed.
The bruise must be something to see. My ribs are cracked for sure
. He laughed weakly, tried to vomit, ended up spitting ineffectually into the dust.

To his alarm, the bear man showed signs of fight. He had already recovered to a semistanding position when Kinza finally reached him. Dagr saw the shot gun pump, and then his right paw disappeared into a fine mist of blood and bone as Kinza shot him at almost point blank range.

“Get him in the doorway,” Kinza said, cool. He was talking to Hamid, who skulked over to Dagr.

“There's men on the roof, you fool,” Hamid spat. “Do you want to get shot?”

Dragged unceremoniously into the hallway, Dagr saw Kinza bent over the bear man, his pistol burning a tattoo into his forehead. The bear man was moaning incoherently, holding up the ruin of one massive arm.

“Hamid get to work,” Kinza said, waving him over.

“What you want to know?”

“Where is Salemi? How many men inside the building, and where,” Kinza said, reloading his Makarovs. “And Xervish.”

“Easy.”

Dagr craned his neck, went dizzy, closed his eyes, and then reopened them. He regretted doing so, because Hamid had the bear man's head in some kind of vise and was probing with two long bent sticks.

“Pressure points inside the face,” Hamid said, as he worked.

“Are you alright?” Kinza extended a hand to Dagr, picking him up to a slightly wobbly crouch.

“Shot in the chest.” Dagr poked stiff fingers into the mangled plates in his vest, and then hissed in pain as they got scorched.

“You took it well,” Kinza said, poking his head around the corridor. There were muffled sounds over there, and the bolt actions of AK47s being cocked. “Hmm, what we don't want is a kind of siege here.”

There was a loud shriek from the vicinity of Hamid. The right arm of the bear man shot up, fingers grasping, and then was still after some muffled swings of a gun butt.

“Shit, sorry,” Hamid called up. “He's dead. All he said was Salemi is out with the peacock.”

“What the fuck, Hamid?” Kinza said. “You've crossed the line to absolutely fucking useless now.”

“Weak heart,” Hamid said, irritated. “The fat fuck had a weak heart. Just spasmed on me.”

“I thought you were some kind of pro,” Kinza said, poking his head out again. This time there was shouting at the other end of the corridor, and a gun barrel stuck out cautiously.

“AK47s,” Dagr said. “They've got us pinned. Their reinforcements will be coming up the front soon too. Is it too soon to get the fuck out of here?”

“It's more art than science,” Hamid said. “There isn't a fucking textbook for this, you know.”

“Actually, I thought Cheney might have made one,” Dagr said. “I remember reading something about water-boarding manuals.”