Hunting in the Shadows (American Praetorians) (10 page)

             
“Some things just keep going,” he said.  “Even if people don’t have money for much, they still will find a way to scrape up enough for stuff like soda.  Saw it in the PI, too.”

             
“Yeah,” I allowed, looking back out the window.  “I guess nothing ever completely collapses, does it?  Even when everything’s going to shit, as long as the shooting isn’t
here
, people try to keep things as normal as possible.”

             
“For various values of ‘normal,’” Larry pointed out.  “’Normal’ in East Africa was pretty fucking shitty.”

             
“No argument here,” I said, as the factory dwindled into our rear view.  We were coming within sight of Altun Kopri.

             
It was here that I was starting to have other concerns.  While our operation was based out of Erbil, most of the Peshmerga operation in Kirkuk was not.  Iraqi Kurdistan was pretty evenly split between the KDP and the PUK, and it was often ground truth that never the twain shall meet.  We would likely have to stop at a Kurdish checkpoint to get across the bridge at Altun Kopri, and it was 99% likely that it would be manned by KDP Peshmerga.  Rizgar and his boys were PUK.  There could be some trouble from that; the KDP and PUK had fought a civil war as soon as they were out from under Saddam’s thumb back in the ‘90s, when the US started enforcing the no-fly zone over Kurdistan.

             
Larry pulled us off the main highway as it turned north, and we headed into Altun Kopri.  The main road through town was nice and wide, and I looked around at probably one of the most colorful towns I’ve ever seen in the Middle East.  Blocky, stucco houses were painted red, blue, or even bright green.  There were still a lot of the standard light tan or gray buildings, but I was struck by the number that were colorful.  You saw a lot more of that among Kurds than Arabs.

             
There were also a lot more trees.  Granted, we were close to the river, so there was a lot more water, but the town looked positively lush compared to Kirkuk.

             
There was no sign of Iraqi Police as we rolled into town.  While it was technically not in Kurdish territory, Altun Kopri was solidly within the Peshmerga sphere of influence.  Even so, with everything going on less than thirty miles away, the town looked peaceful.  We didn’t see any patrols. Nobody even appeared to be armed.  What we saw was just business as usual.  In many ways, what we saw inside the town mirrored that cola factory just outside.

             
It was a pretty straight shot through the town, at least until we reached the first bridge.  A good chunk of Altun Kopri was actually built on an island, or big sand bar, in the middle of the Zab River.  The first bridge was shorter, having little more than a creek to cross.

             
There was no guard force on the first bridge, at least.  Getting on it was interesting enough as it was, without adding in a guardpost that we’d have to clear.  The road had been nice and wide going through Altun Kopri, but it narrowed down considerably as we got closer to the bridge.

             
The bridge itself was two narrow lanes with rusty, green-painted metal rails along the sides, leading into the main trellis.  It would have been narrow for a HiLux; the tanker was going to take up most of the bridge all by itself.

             
Larry stopped the truck at the near end, watching for traffic.  We didn’t want to have to get in a pushing match with some locals; even here, that would draw unwanted attention.  It was the middle of the day, so as sparse as a lot of the traffic was, thanks to the inflated gas prices—yes, even in the Middle East, sitting on top of huge oil reserves that were actually being tapped, gas prices sucked; that’s what happens when currency breaks down—there were still an appreciable number of cars on the road.  Larry waited until the pair of little hatchbacks crossed and went around the tanker before gunning the engine and starting us across.

             
There was about enough room for a moped on our left, and the right was just about scraping the trellis, but we got across without anybody being stupid enough to challenge the five-ton tanker truck.  I was kind of surprised, but wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

             
The road stayed narrow as it threaded through the small outlier to the town that crouched on the sandbar.  Most of the buildings on the shoreline had lower walls that reached down into the river itself, I imagined to keep floodwaters out.  I know I wouldn’t want to live on a glorified sandbar in the middle of a river, especially in winter and early spring.

             
We reached the second bridge with only a couple of close scrapes from local drivers, and started across.  The second bridge was built much like the first, but painted red.

             
A few kids were on the side of the road as we came off the bridge, and waved at the tanker as we drove past.  Some things never changed.

             
The cemetery came up quickly on our right, and Larry spun the wheel, turning the Bear onto the south-running road on the west bank of the Zab.  We were quickly out of the town and heading through open fields again.

             
Soon the fields gave way to the same ridge of hills that we’d gone through coming out of Sharow Village.  After a little while, we turned off and headed for Dibis Dam.

             
The Dam was going to be another potential sticking point.  While we had moved from de facto Peshmerga control into an informal demilitarized zone, we knew that the Dam was held by the Iraqi Army.  While we did have documents showing that we were members of a logistics company that was doing business with the local provincial government, such as it was, if they decided to search the vehicle, we were sunk.  I really, really didn’t want to have to shoot our way past an IA checkpoint at this stage in the game, but the dam was our only way across the river at this point, unless we wanted to go most of a day out of our way.

             
The road wound through low, rolling hills.  There was a fair amount of brown grass growing; this close to the river, there was less overt desert.  There wasn’t really any traffic; as near as I could see, we were the only vehicle on the road.

             
As we neared the dam, I kept my eyes peeled, but there was no movement, no vehicles.  There was no sign of even a checkpoint.  What the hell?

             
Larry brought the truck to the end of the dam and started us across.  Aside from a few people down by the water, fishing or splashing around, there wasn’t a soul in sight.  The dam was completely deserted.

             
I couldn’t quite believe it.  Dams are major infrastructure, and therefore major targets.  Granted, I couldn’t actually think of a time when AQI or Jaysh al Mahdi had actually attacked a dam, but to leave it completely unguarded seemed more than a little weird.  Nonetheless, there were no Iraqi soldiers or police on the dam.

             
We turned onto the road that paralleled the canal leading off the dam, and rolled toward Dibis.  Before getting to the town, we turned off onto the main road heading back east toward Kirkuk.  It was a fairly wide, two-lane road with an overgrown median.  Streetlights curved over both sides of the road from the median.

             
The traffic continued to be sparse.  Larry pointed it out.  “People know shit’s going down in this province,” I ventured.  “They’re laying low.”

             
Larry nodded without taking his eyes off the road.  “Makes sense, I guess.  From what I’ve heard from the old guys who were here back during the war, though, these folks never let shit blowing up keep them from going about their business.”

             
The land flattened back out, and we drove for about a half-hour through farmland, until K1 Airbase started to loom ahead of us.

             
There was a checkpoint set up across the road, with concrete Jersey barriers, concertina wire, and two Stryker combat vehicles sitting behind it.  A half-dozen jundis were leaning against the Jersey barriers about a hundred yards back from the start of the serpentine that was designed to force vehicles to slow down and weave through the barriers, thus denying a suicide car bomber a straight shot at the checkpoint.  They looked about as alert and professional as most regular Iraqi soldiers I’d seen, which was to say, not much.  Their helmets were mostly tilted to one side, at least on those who were wearing them.  Several had their rifles just leaning against the barriers next to them.

             
Larry slowed as we got closer, though he never stopped.  We didn’t want to look like we were hesitating too much; it might be taken as a sign we were up to no good.  Which of course we were, but we didn’t want the jundis getting wind of that.

             
“What do you want to do, boss?” he asked.  “We could try to go around.  There are side roads.”

             
“None of which are very good,” I answered.  “We’ve also go to think about whether or not we’re going to arouse suspicion by bypassing the checkpoint.  And we’d have to make a U-turn to get to a crossing over that canal on our right, which is bound to attract attention.”

             
“Maybe,” he allowed, as we rolled closer.  “On the other hand, none of these guys looks all that alert and ready to lay down the law.”

             
I didn’t have long to think about it; once we were past the first barrier we were committed.  “Hold up.  Stop, we’ll sit here for a minute, like we’re confused, and then turn around.”  I glanced at the rear-view mirror.  There wasn’t any traffic behind us.  “It might just look like we missed the turn.”

             
Larry was eyeing the jundis.  One of them, a noncom by the looks of him, or at least as close as the Iraqi Army got, was starting to stand up, cradling his M4, and was watching us intently, probably trying to figure out if we were going to come through, and give him some work to do, or turn around.  I guessed a lot of Iraqis would turn around; we’d seen that sort of thing around Peshmerga checkpoints in the last few months.

             
The Bear slowed, then stopped, rumbling, in the road.  None of the Iraqi soldiers I could see had optics to tell whether or not we were doing anything inside the cab, but I didn’t know what was on the Strykers, so we made a show of looking at a map and pretending to argue, while keeping an eye on the jundis.

             
“One is starting to walk toward us,” I said.  “Looks like a couple others are wondering if they should follow him; they’re standing up straighter.”

             
“Let’s not take too long making up our minds, then,” Larry said.

             
The intercom crackled.  “Are we risking a search, guys?” Bryan asked.

             
I didn’t dare reach for the mic while we could be observed.  The guys in the back would have to sit tight until we were turned around, at least.  They could see what was going on, thanks to the fiber-optic cameras mounted over the cab.

             
Finally, the lead jundi started to walk purposefully toward the truck.  It was time to go.

             
Larry threw the Bear in reverse, and turned us toward the curb, executing a neat three-point turn to get us pointed back the way we had come.  I kept watching the Iraqi soldier, who had stopped just short of the last coil of concertina wire.  He was still watching us, but didn’t look like he was going to run after us to stop us.  The Strykers just sat there, unmoving, their guns pointed at the sky.

             
Only after we had made it at least five hundred meters from the checkpoint, without any reaction, least of all gunfire, did I start to breathe a little more easily.

              “Dammit!”

             
This was the third canal crossing we’d reached that had turned out to be about ten feet underwater.  The imagery was proving to be so dated as to be almost useless.

             
“There’s got to be a crossing,” Larry said for the umpteenth time.  “There are tire tracks; there’s got to be a fucking crossing.”

             
“Maybe the crossing’s back the way we came,” I said.  I wanted to punch something.  Not that this was the first time we’d wound up chasing our tails because the imagery had been wrong, or the intel was bad, or just because somebody had decided to dig out his canal the day before we came through.  That didn’t make it any less frustrating.

             
“That means going through the checkpoint,” Larry pointed out.

             
I rubbed my eyes.  “Yeah, I know.  Fuck.”

             
“Hold on a second,” Nick said over the intercom.  It had to be getting unpleasant back there in the tank; the “roads” we’d been on weren’t exactly smooth.  “I think I see a spot we might be able to get across.  Push west, almost all the way to the fork in the canals.”

             
“Can you actually see this on the cameras, or is it on the imagery?” I asked.