Hunting in the Shadows (American Praetorians) (21 page)

             
I made a show of examining the photo.  Alek hadn’t thrown these clowns out on their asses yet, so I’d play along for a while.  “Am I supposed to recognize the guy I’ve never heard of?” I asked.  “Or are you calling me a liar?”

             
“I’m trying to find out if you may have this man, even if by another name,” he said tightly.

             
“So you’re calling me a liar,” I answered, looking him in the eye.

             
“Look, you people are already in enough trouble here,” he said.  “The more you cooperate, the more this situation might work out for you.”

             
“Cooperate?”  I passed the point where I gave a damn for why Alek hadn’t thrown them out.  “What do you mean cooperate?”

             
“You have exchanged fire with Iraqi security forces,” he said, as though talking to a child.  “We have good information that you have killed no small number of them.  The Iraqis are our allies.  This is a very serious matter.  If you are holding another Iraqi national against his will, that is even more serious.  I think I can get the Iraqis to let us take you back to American custody, but that will be difficult, and dependent on you cooperating with us fully.”

             
I looked at Alek, who rolled his eyes.  I turned back to Collins.  “Are you fucking serious?”  He looked taken aback.  “You’re more concerned with our maybe killing some Iraqi troops than with Iraqi troops killing our people and then taking more of them hostage?  Where the fuck are you people’s priorities?  Or is it that governments believe other governments first now?  All of you corrupt fucks have to stick together, is that it?”

             
I shook my head.  “When you bastards abandoned every principle you ever swore to uphold, you lost any and all authority.”  I tilted my head and looked at him.  “Except what you can enforce by the gun, but you can’t really do that here, can you?  Hell, you can barely keep a lid on the mobs back home, much less deal with us.”  I leaned forward, into his space, and made him back up a step.  “And if you tried, it would be a big, big mistake, Collins.”

             
Collins tried to bluster back some of his poise.  “Are you threatening an official of the United States Government?  Because if you are…”

             
“Are they going to go to the lengths to get you back that they did for those poor bastards from Camp Lemonier?” I asked him.  “Last I heard, they were rotting in an Egyptian prison.  And there were a lot more of them than there are of you.”

             
“We can make things very difficult for you,” Collins warned.  “We are in constant contact with the Iraqi government, and there is plenty of reason to help them track down a dangerous band of criminals, if only to preserve the special relationship we have with Baghdad since the war.”

             
I snorted.  “Save it for the suits in Baghdad, if they even believe you anymore.  ‘Special relationship?’  You pulled everybody out and left them to the whims of the Iranians.  And the Iranians, to everyone’s eternal shock, still hate all things Western, and still want every infidel dead, no matter how nice you’ve tried to play with them.  So, you’ll ‘cooperate’ with the Iraqi authorities and by extension the Iranians, and get…what?  ‘Good will?’  I don’t fucking think so.”

             
I leaned in and forced him back again.  “This isn’t about dead Iraqi soldiers.  This isn’t about anything but you fuckers trying to cover your tracks from Africa.  Naturally, it couldn’t be your fault that those guys got left behind, so it had to be ours, right?  But you can’t have us out and about, doing our jobs like we actually fulfilled our part of the contract.  It makes you look bad.  So you try to fuck us over because your bosses didn’t have the balls to do what had to be done, and sacrificed over a hundred American citizens in the deal.  Ain’t gonna fucking happen, Collins.”

             
Collins was white as a sheet, his lips pressed together in a thin line.  I don’t know if it was just rage, or if he had figured out that there were almost twenty very heavily armed men in the room, that he was trying to threaten.  His sidekick just looked bored.  That guy didn’t look like his suit was all that well tailored, had a neatly trimmed goatee, and looked like he had the Oakley suntan—the space around his eyes was markedly whiter than the rest of his face.  I pegged him for an intel or security type.  He stepped forward and whispered in Collins’ ear.

             
Collins glared at me, then at the stony-faced shooters, several still carrying rifles, around the room.  He nodded, finally, and stepped back, straightening his jacket.  “I tried to be reasonable with you people.  Things are only going to get more difficult from now on.”  With that, he left in a huff.  The other guy, who hadn’t said a word to any of us, simply tilted his head in a slight nod, and followed.

             
Nobody said a word until they were gone.  Finally, Alek blew out a deep breath.  “Damn, Jeff, you didn’t have to be so nice to him.”

             
“I’ve always hated bureaucrats,” I replied.  “Slimy fuckers.”

             
“Are his threats credible?” Paul asked quietly.  “Can he come after us?”

             
Haas shook his head.  “Jeff’s right.  The US hasn’t got a lot of reach anymore.  They started cutting back years ago, and the collapse of the dollar just accelerated things.  Most of their money is going toward keeping a lid on things at home.  Just about every federal agency these days is focused inward, not outward.

             
“That doesn’t mean they won’t try to find a way,” he said after a thoughtful pause.  “You guys are the designated scapegoats for the Somalia debacle.  You still walking around, and operating, no less, makes them look bad.  Most people back home aren’t even aware of it, but trust me, they’ll try to do something about it eventually.  They still haven’t managed to shut down new media, no matter how many lawsuits they bring.”

             
Larry snorted.  “I’d say that the unemployment, hyper-inflation, riots, and police-state bullshit they’re pulling makes them look quite a bit worse than leaving us alone.”

             
There were general noises of agreement, but Haas clarified, “Never underestimate the force of the wounded egos of politicians and bureaucrats.  Even if it’s coincidental, they will often go to great lengths to destroy you if you cross them.  We need to watch our backs.”

             
“You’re preaching to the choir, Haas,” Bob said.  “They tried to arrest us when we got back to the States from Africa last year.  Tom’s legal-fu got us cut loose, especially as we did everything with Agency oversight, technically.  It only figured they’d try again, and this is as good a place as any.  We’ve been looking over our shoulders for a while now.”

             
The truth was we’d been looking over our shoulders since long before Djibouti and Somalia.  There had been good reasons why we were holding security on a civilian freighter in the Gulf of Aden instead of holding a DoD or OGA contract.

              We started to go over the intel we’d gathered from Abu Qadir and his cronies.  Nobody brought up why we had come back without them.  That was just sort of assumed and accepted.  We couldn’t afford to keep prisoners, and an extended resort stay at Gitmo was out of the question, even if the Agency would be willing to take them off our hands.

             
We hadn’t gotten far, though, before Kyle, one of our support geeks, called out, “Guys, I think you need to come take a look at this.”

             
That never boded well.  Alek and I exchanged a glance, then Alek turned and asked, “Can you put it up on the projector, Kyle?”

             
“Yeah, give me a second…”  He tapped a few keys, then the little projector shining up on the whitewashed wall flickered, and changed to overhead video footage.

             
“Oh, fuck.”  The view was looking down at Ikhwan Square, in the Kurdish quarter of Kirkuk.  A large traffic circle sat in the center, faced by the Ikhwan Mosque.

             
It looked like there had been a march.  There were still large crowds of people in the area, and most of them looked like they were trying desperately to get away from it.  A line of men in blue Iraqi Police uniforms and black body armor were advancing north along Hawler Road.

             
The street and traffic circle were strewn with bodies.  Even as we watched, small puffs of smoke and dust indicated where the IPs were continuing to fire.  More people dropped in the street.

             
“There was supposed to be a peaceful protest at Ikhwan Square today,” Kyle explained.  “We’ve been keeping an eye on it, since I figured it might turn into a flash point.  It did.  No idea what started it; I was watching as the IPs opened up, and didn’t see anything that looked like it was provocation for deadly force, but there’s only so much you can see from up here.”

             
“Are you into their comms?” Alek asked.

             
“Maybe fifty percent,” Kyle admitted.  “The IPs are broadcasting in the clear, but they’re talking to the IA, too, who are running encrypted freq-hop.  The IP officers are insisting to higher that it wasn’t their fault, that the protesters attacked them.”

             
“It doesn’t look like those aggressive protesters are capable of doing much,” Bryan pointed out.  More of them were falling to IP gunfire.

             
“It’s possible that there were some plants in the crowd,” Hal said.  “Wasn’t that how things went pear-shaped in Paris last month?”

             
A month before, Muslim protesters had been gunned down by French gendarmes in front of the Arc de Triomphe after a handful of wanted terrorists in the crowd had thrown grenades into the police line.  The backlash had been horrific; most of Paris was now a war zone, and even the Army was holding back, not wanting to go into the city.

             
Yeah, the world was in great shape.

             
“The Peshmerga are already mobilizing,” Kyle reported.  “I’m picking up some phone traffic between Erbil and Sulaymaniyah.  It sounds like the KDP is blaming the PUK for this, since it was mostly PUK Pesh in Kirkuk.”  He paused, and then switched the video feed to another drone.  It showed the outskirts of Kirkuk City to the west, near Kirkuk Airbase.  There were Strykers and Humvees moving onto the roads heading into the city.  “The Iraqi Army is moving in to restore order,” Kyle said, as though the feed didn’t already show us that clearly enough.

             
How long before the IRGC started taking advantage?  Probably not long, any more than it would take us.  It’s always easier to hunt people when there’s chaos going on.

Chapter 12

             
Of course, it didn’t work out that we got to go hunting.  Hal’s team was fresher than we were, so they headed back toward Kirkuk City to start sniffing out infiltration routes.  With the Iraqi Army locking down the main roads in and out, it was going to be a bitch to operate there.  Alek leaned on Jim and me to give our team a couple of days down time.  We were already down a man; there was no way I was letting Malachi back out, as fucked up as he was.  His eye was the least of it, we found.  There was a chunk of shrapnel that Tony hadn’t been able to get out that was dangerously close to his spine.  Maggie, our primary physician and the only woman in the company, wouldn’t even let him out of her sight until she was sure that chunk of metal wasn’t going to turn him into a quadriplegic as soon as he turned his head.

             
The rest of us didn’t exactly rest, even though that was what we were supposed to be doing.  We spent most of the first day looking over maps and intel reporting, trying to memorize names and faces of known Qods Force operatives.  It quickly became obvious that we weren’t seeing just Qods Force.  Several Persons of Interest had cropped up in Iraq in the last two months who were identifiably Hezbollah agents.  This was getting more unpleasant by the day.  Finally, after about eighteen hours of poring over intel, we retired to one of the conference rooms and crashed on the cots set up along the walls.

             
I doubt I’d been asleep for more than an hour when Kyle shook my boot.  “Jeff, Chris needs to see you,” he said.  “We got a call from the Rimrock guys.  Sounds like trouble.”

             
With a groan, I hauled myself semi-upright.  I’d gotten just enough sleep to be even groggier than when I’d gone down.  I grabbed my pistol off my kit, shoved the paddle holster over my belt, and followed Kyle to the op center.

             
Chris was standing at the map, the sat-phone to his ear.  Chris was a heavyset guy, with a shaved head and a nose that had been broken several times in the past.  He had become Alek’s number two man in the ops cell.  He and Alek had pretty much paralleled each other in the Corps, and they’d retired within a year of each other.  Chris hadn’t originally been interested in our sort of work, but with the economic and societal situation at home being what it was, he’d changed his mind about six months ago.  What we did was dangerous, but we found ways to pay a lot better than anything in the States.

             
“Hey, Jeff,” he said, as I came in, still knuckling the sleepy out of my eyes.  “Some of the Rimrock guys at Installation Two think they’ve spotted somebody casing the area.”  He held out the sat-phone.  “I know you guys are supposed to be on stand-down, but everybody else within range is tasked out right now.”

             
I shrugged as I took the phone.  “It is what it is.  We didn’t come here to relax.”  I lifted the phone to my ear.  “This is Stone.  Talk to me.”

             
“This is Maggen,” a clear voice said.  Tom Maggen was one of the Rimrock team leaders.  Rimrock was a smaller PSC that had been hired on initially for site security by Liberty Petroleum.  We had come along later, when it became apparent that they needed somebody a little more…proactive…on board.  There had been some friction between the companies, and Maggen was one of the worst.  He was former Law Enforcement, and didn’t like our attitude.  Which was fine, we didn’t like his, either.  The fact that he was calling us showed that he was pretty rattled.  Not hard to imagine, given that the ISOF troops had gone through several of his elite officers like a brick through tissue paper at Baba Dome East.

             
“We’ve had two vehicles moving around the area over the last twenty-four hours,” he explained.  “They been moving in random patterns in and around the villages nearby, but they never seem to stop anywhere.  And about thirty minutes ago, we were overflown by an unidentified helicopter.”

             
That didn’t sound good.  Not many people in Iraq or Kurdistan could afford to run helos.  “Could you tell me the make?” I asked.

             
There was a pause, likely as he asked somebody else.  “It was a Russian design, I know that much,” he said.  “It was mid-sized, no markings.  I think it was painted tan.  It looked kind of like a police helicopter.”

             
I turned to Kyle.  “Do we know of any medium utility helos the Iraqis or Kurds are using?  Sounds about the size of one of our 407s or Hueys.”

             
“The Iraqis just bought six Ansats from the Russians,” he replied.  “They look kind of like a Huey, but with this kind of funky double tail in front of the tail rotor.”

             
“Did it have a double tail in front of the tail rotor?” I asked Maggen.

             
“I’m not sure.  I think so,” he said.  I gritted my teeth.  My patience isn’t at its highest when I’m tired, and I’ve been told that even at its highest, it ain’t much.

             
“Can you give me any details aside from mid-sized and unmarked?” I asked, trying to keep my frustration and contempt out of my voice.  The guy was out of his depth; unfortunately most of the Rimrock operators were.

             
“Not really.  It went over fast, and it’s kind of dark,” he said defensively.  “I’m pretty sure it was a recon flight, though.”

             
No shit
, I didn’t say.  “Make sure your guys are at one hundred percent security,” I said.  “We’re on our way, we’ll check it out.”  A thought occurred to me.  “And don’t try to cowboy up and check it out yourselves.  Make sure that facility’s secure, and leave the snooping and pooping to us.”

             
“Wilco,” he said stiffly.  He really didn’t like my attitude, but my give-a-fuck got broken a long time back.  He hung up.

             
I tossed the phone back to Chris.  “It looks like the bad guys aren’t satisfied with chasing us back into Kurdistan,” I said.  “Sounds like somebody’s scoping out the Liberty compound for a raid.”

             
“Or a bombing,” Chris offered.  “We used to see that kind of recce before a VBIED strike.”

             
I thought about it, and then shook my head.  “Nah, doesn’t add up.  Not with aerial reconnaissance added in.  Terrorists packing old station wagons with explosives don’t usually use unmarked helicopters.”

             
“ISOF?” Chris asked.

             
“Can’t think of anybody else,” I replied.  “Can you call over to the air scouts, and get a whirlybird or two spun up for us?  We need to check this out.”

             
“They should be on thirty minute strip alert anyway,” he said.  “They’ll be ready by the time you are.”

             
I nodded my thanks.  I was already on my way out of the room.

             
It didn’t take long to wake the team up.  There were the usual curses, grumbles, and groans, but since I’d been up first, and had been one the last ones to lie down, I wasn’t terribly sympathetic.  We grabbed our kit, which had been staged next to the cots, ready to go, since we got back to Erbil, and headed downstairs to the garage.

             
It was a short ride to the airport, during which I filled the rest of the team in on what was happening.  Then we were climbing on the Hueys and pulling for the sky.

              About ten minutes later we were circling over Installation Two.  It wasn’t much.  It had been little more than a monitoring station on several of the wells on the Kirkuk fields, but with a couple of pre-fabs it had become one of the central headquarters for Liberty’s new exploration.  They were hoping to use some of the new technology, that wasn’t presently allowed in the US, to extract more oil and natural gas from the field than had been previously possible.  They were also way too close to Kirkuk Province given the circumstances.

             
We were all fully kitted up—ammo, body armor, helmets, NVGs, the works.  Instead of using the seats, we sat in the doors, our boots hanging over the skids, rifles on slings pointing out and down.  We wanted to be ready to roll as soon as we touched down.

             
The terrain below was rugged, barren, and dark.  Most of the Kirkuk field was under the line of hills running from the northwest to the southeast, along the northern border of Kirkuk Province.  The installation was right next to a main hardball road that cut through the hills, heading north toward Erbil.  For the moment, there didn’t appear to be any traffic on the road.

             
“Set us down in the hills southeast of the road,” I instructed Sam over the radio.  “Give us about a kilometer standoff; we’ll hoof it the rest of the way in.”

             
Sam acknowledged, and banked the helo around toward the south.  I kept scanning the ground as we descended, looking for any sign of the recon vehicles.  It all looked quiet.  Either Maggen had been jumping at shadows, or whoever it was figured they had all the information they needed.  If it was the former, I was tempted to kick Maggen’s ass for crying wolf, though that might have just been because I didn’t like the guy.  If the latter, they were in for a big surprise.

             
The helos settled to reasonably level spots about a kilometer east of the oil installation, in twin clouds of dust and flying gravel.  We jumped off as soon as the skids touched the ground, and ran a few meters to the birds’ front, where we rallied in a 360, facing outboard.  I got a quick head count, checked with Jim that he had everybody off the other bird, then signaled Sam to take off.  The birds would orbit for a while to the north, but they wouldn’t be able to hang out indefinitely.  If we ended up out here too long, they’d have to return to Erbil.

             
Once the helos were away and no longer noticeable, though we could see them through our NVGs off to the north, circling over deserted farmland, I got up and signaled to the rest of the half-team with me to do the same.  I pointed to Juan, who took point and started us moving up the slope.

             
I’d decided to keep the team split for stealth’s sake to start with.  We had two separate observation positions, hastily chosen looking over imagery in the SUVs on the way to the airport.  The terrain and lack of vegetation limited our options, but we had the road pretty well covered to the south, which was where I figured any strike force would come from.

             
One kilometer isn’t that far, if you’re walking unencumbered, over level ground, in daytime.  At night, over hills, with enough kit to fight and sustain for at least a day, it takes a little longer.  It took close to an hour to make the movement.  By then, we were already seeing headlights coming up the road.  Worse, there were helicopters inbound.

             
Jim and I had flipped a coin to determine which element would take north and south.  The northern element would block the road if need be, while the southern element would provide support by fire.  As I watched the two Ansat helos curve around to the north, I knew that plan was blown to hell.

             
“Kemosabe, Hillbilly,” I sent.  “Moving down to engage helo-borne troops to the north.  The vics are yours, brother.”

             
“Affirm.”  I left it to him.  Jim had been around the block long enough that I didn’t have to worry about the job getting done.

             
I pointed to Juan, and then pointed down toward the north.  He nodded once, and led off at a trot.   It wasn’t a run, but it was faster than walking, and we needed to be in position fast.  The odds were good that we weren’t going to be in position at all, and were going to have to hit the jundis on the run.  Joy.

             
It was brutal.  The ground was rocky and uneven, and in the dark it was hard to keep moving without stumbling or tripping.  My knees and shins were protesting before we’d gone a hundred yards.  The helos were down, obscured by clouds of dust and grit, as their cargo of ISOF soldiers dismounted.  Our trot turned into a run.  They were too far out to engage us accurately if they spotted us, and Juan was keeping us below the crest of the finger anyway.  The only way they’d really be able to spot us was with thermals, and I was pretty sure even the ISOF didn’t have those yet.

             
We hit the installation when the Iraqis still had about five hundred meters to go.  I called ahead to Maggen that we were coming in fast from the south; two of the Rimrock guys were at the southern door as we pounded up.

             
As soon as we were all inside, I pointed to the two Rimrock guards.  “Cover this door,” I said, “don’t fucking leave it.”

             
I didn’t wait for their acknowledgement past a nod.  The offices on the ground floor were empty.  I took the stairs two at a time, looking for Maggen.

             
The building was only two stories, with offices on the ground floor and living quarters on the top floor.  Maggen was in the middle of the common area, arguing with Wilson and Corey.

             
I didn’t bother to wait to find out what the argument was about.  “Get all the non-shooters downstairs and on the floor,” I barked.  Apparently my tone was a bit harsh; everybody looked at me like a deer in the headlights.  “Are you fuckers deaf?” I demanded.  “Get the fuck downstairs!”  I grabbed the nearest Liberty employee by the shoulder and shoved him toward the steps.