Carrie's run

CHAPTER 29

Ramadi, Anbar Province, Iraq

They drove into Ramadi in a Humvee behind a Marine LAV armored personnel carrier, going on the bridge over the Euphrates River to the checkpoint by the electrical power station, the four of them, Carrie, Virgil, Warzer and Dempsey, in U.S. Marine desert combat utility uniforms. The sun was high, the day hot; the temperature was in the nineties, with a fine grit in the air from the desert wind.

They stopped at the checkpoint, a pile of sandbags and concrete. Dempsey got out and briefly talked with the Marines manning it. He came back and slid in behind the wheel.

“Not good,” he told them. “Two police stations got hit last night. Jarheads on IED Avenue got plastered with heavy mortars. Bet they didn’t tell you that at Langley, that AQI has hundred-and-twenty-millimeter mortars and Russian AT-13 Saxhorn missiles? Serious shit. And the hajis have upped the ante. They’re offering two months’ wages to anyone who plants an IED on Route Michigan, the main drag in the city. Three months if it kills any Americans.”

“What do we do?” Carrie asked.

“Have to use RPG Alley,” he grimaced and started driving.

On the way in from Abu Ghraib, Warzer and Dempsey had briefed them. Ramadi was, Warzer had explained, a city of a half million under siege, caught between three forces: al-Qaeda, the Sunni insurgents, and the Marines. A hundred kilometers west of Baghdad on the main highway across the desert, it was, in Dempsey’s words, “easily the most dangerous place on the planet.”

Now, driving onto the main street behind the LAV, Carrie could see what he meant. The street was bordered by rubble from where buildings used to be; the few buildings and power-line poles left standing were Swiss-cheesed with bullet holes. Except for a few mosques and rusted water towers still upright, the city looked like photographs of Germany after World War II, she thought. They passed a deep bomb crater in the road and Virgil glanced at Carrie over the Humvee’s center console, then went back to scanning the street, his M4 ready.

In the distance off to the right, in the direction of a mosque about a quarter of a mile away, its minaret poking up over the buildings, they heard the sound of automatic-weapon fire, followed by staccato bursts from a heavy machine gun. Dempsey turned off the main street, no longer following the LAV.

“He’s going to the Glass Factory,” he explained. A Marine FOB-forward operating base-had been set up there. They on the other hand were headed for a police station in al-Andalus district, where they could set up. As they drove down a narrow street, two Iraqi men dressed in white thaub robes and kaffiyehs and holding AK-47s came out of a café doorway, then sat at a metal table outside over thimble-sized coffee cups and watched the Americans drive by. Dempsey started to speed up, then almost immediately slowed down.

“Shit,” he said.

“What?” Virgil asked.

“Pile of stones on the sidewalk by that corner ahead,” he said.

“What about it?”

“I don’t know. IED maybe.” Dempsey looked left, right, then behind them. “No good way around. Hold on to your favorite body parts, people,” he said, gunning the engine as he raced toward the corner, aiming the Humvee so it would be scraping against the building on the opposite side of the street, as far away as they could get from the pile of stones.

Carrie held her breath, unable to take her eyes from the pile of stones, expecting an explosion as they raced by it. They made the turn onto the next street, where, incredibly, a handful of young boys were kicking a bundle of rags fashioned into a soccer ball in the dusty street.

“Wow,” she said, exhaling.

Unlike children elsewhere in Iraq, none of the boys waved at them or even stopped playing, though the sudden stopping of chatter among them let Carrie know they were aware of the Humvee. After they passed the boys, Dempsey gunned the engine, raising a storm of dust.

Finally, they pulled up to the police station, surrounded by sandbags and manned by Iraqi policemen with AKM assault rifles. Carrie spotted another Iraqi on the roof behind a light machine gun. They got out of the Humvee and went inside, where Dempsey introduced them to Hakim Gassid, the police commander.

“Have you been hit yet?” Dempsey asked him. Police stations were a prime al-Qaeda target, since the Iraqi police and the U.S. Marines were the only forces standing between al-Qaeda and complete control of the city. Not a day went by that policemen weren’t killed and stations attacked, typically with mortars, RPGs and IEDs, and sometimes with attempts to overrun them.

“Twice, but nothing this week, thanks to Allah,” Gassid said.

A few minutes later, Carrie, in full black abaya, and Warzer, wearing a white thaub and a kaffiyeh with the checked pattern of the Dulaimi tribe, left the police station by the back door, taking a motor scooter to Warzer’s cousin’s house on the other side of the river.

The problem was how to run Walid Karim, to whom they’d assigned the code name “Romeo,” in a city under siege. Normal tradecraft like dead drops, coded messages, hidden radios and disposable cell phones wouldn’t work in a place where al-Qaeda checked every cell phone, even those of people they supposedly trusted, and you could get killed crossing any street in the city at the wrong time. Especially someone so embedded within al-Qaeda as Romeo.

The solution she and Warzer came up with was a teahouse in the souk, the downtown market near the central bus station, and a staggered set of prearranged days and times when Romeo would be there. The teahouse belonged to Falah Khadim, the uncle of a cousin of Warzer’s. For ten thousand American dollars cash and no questions asked, he was willing to risk it. Abu Nazir had cut people’s heads off for doing a lot less.

It was getting late in the day, after the loudspeaker call of the muezzin from a nearby minaret for the afternoon Asr prayer. Riding on the scooter to the souk on streets that were crowded despite the sound of gunfire and explosions coming from al-Thuba’t district near the Euphrates Canal, the waterway that branched from the main Euphrates River on the western side of the city, they went to meet the uncle, Falah.

Warzer went into the teahouse to get Falah, because as a woman, Carrie could not enter. In conservative Ramadi, the teahouse was where men went to drink strong Iraqi tea, smoke shisha hubble-bubble pipes and play dominos or tawla.

A group of men came walking toward her as she stood outside a shop selling hijabs and other women’s clothes. They were moving quickly, all of them with AKM assault rifles, and before she could move aside-thinking she needed to take cover and warn Warzer there was about to be shooting-one of them bumped into her.

“Alma’derah,” he apologized.

“La mashkila,” she said-It’s nothing-and then her heart stopped.

It was Abu Ubaida himself. She recognized him instantly from the photograph. He was attractive in an Arab male way and she could see why Dima had been drawn to him. He looked at her strangely and she turned away, pulling the edge of her hijab modestly across her face. Despite her dyed eyebrows and brown contact lenses, she could tell she looked odd to him. He was starting to say something when one of his men called and they ran off.

A moment later, she understood when there was the sound of an IED explosion near the entrance to the souk, followed a minute later by the roar of an American F/A-18 fighter jet overhead, making the awnings and the goods in the souk vendors’ stands rattle.

He’s here, she thought, hardly breathing as she moved to find Warzer. People were running everywhere. Some to get away from the blast scene, others to go to help. She ran to the teahouse just as Warzer and a short, fat Iraqi with a Saddam-style mustache came outside.

“I saw him,” she told them. “Abu Ubaida. He’s here.”

“Come inside, quick,” Warzer said, looking around. “It’s not good to talk out here.”

“I thought I couldn’t,” she said.

“There’s a storage room with a back door. Come,” the uncle said in Arabic, looking at her the same way Abu Ubaida just had. Her disguise wasn’t worth shit, she warned herself. They went around and into the storage room through a back door that had a padlock that the uncle, Falah, unlocked.

The room was small and piled high with boxes of tea and sugar and weapons of every kind.

“Salaam. You sell guns?” Carrie asked Falah.

“Every teahouse and half the shops in Ramadi sell guns,” Falah said, looking at her as though he had never seen anyone like her. The disguise wasn’t working, but what the hell was she supposed to do? Walk around in a miniskirt and halter top? “You’re American, yes?”

“I appreciate you doing this,” she told him.

“Just give me the money and don’t tell anyone,” Falah said. She opened the plastic bag she was carrying and handed him the money from a stash of hundred-dollar bills Dempsey had in a safe in the USAID office. “When is he coming, this man?”

Carrie checked her watch. “In about twenty minutes. Can I meet him back here?”

“I don’t like to sell guns in front of my customers. Usually, I do it in back, but we can’t have a woman in a teahouse. You hide here. If someone wants to buy, I’ll tell him to come back later.”

“How’s business?” Carrie asked him.

“Not too bad, thanks to Allah,” Falah said. “Even though the supply is good, the prices keep going up. It’s cutting into my margins. If you’re interested”-he looked at her-“I can get you anything you want.”

“What are the ordinary guns going for?” she asked.

“Depends.” He shrugged. “For a brand-new American Glock 19, four hundred fifty dollars. For an AKM, Kalashnikov, never used, one hundred fifty to two hundred fifty dollars.” He studied her, then asked, “Will they execute Saddam?” Saddam Hussein, now in Abu Ghraib prison, had just been charged with war crimes against the Kurds and Shiites.

“I don’t know. It’s up to the Iraqis,” she said.

“Nothing is up to the Iraqis,” he said, motioning to Warzer.

The two men left, Falah back to his business and Warzer to keep watch while she waited for Romeo to show. The storage area was hot, claustrophobic; a thin blade of sunlight came from a crack between the back door and the sagging lintel.

After Romeo’s release from Abu Ghraib, using the cover story of an amnesty for a score of Sunni prisoners called for by al-Waliki, the new candidate of the Shiites after Jaafari had been rejected, they had gone back to the Green Zone. There Virgil tracked Romeo via the cell phone they had given him. As expected, they saw that he had gone back to Ramadi. But she had no illusions. She and Romeo didn’t trust each other. He could get rid of the cell phone and slip the leash any time he wanted. The only hold she had on him was the threat against his family.

“We’re threatening to kill his family with kindness, literally,” she told Virgil and Dempsey. Romeo was completely untrustworthy, but yet they were so close. Only minutes ago, she had literally touched Abu Ubaida. She thought about Dima and Rana and admitted to herself how badly she wanted him dead. And Abu Nazir.

Falah, followed by Walid/Romeo, came into the storage room.

“Not too long,” Falah said, and left.

“You have the money?” Walid said. She showed him the money in the plastic bag.

“Did the Tanzim accept the amnesty story?”

“I told my brothers that since they could never get real information no matter what they did to me, they never knew who they had. To the infidels, I was just another Sunni prisoner. They released me without knowing anything.” He twitched. His nervous tic.

“And they accepted it?”

“The news about al-Waliki and the amnesty was on the television. It seemed reasonable.”

“Tell me about Abu Ubaida. Is he in Ramadi?” She was testing him, not revealing she’d seen him.

“He’s here but may be leaving very soon,” he said, looking around as if they might be overheard.

“What about Abu Nazir?”

“No one knows. Some say here. Some say Haditha.” He twitched. “Or Fallujah. No one sees him. He is a jinn.” He twitched again and looked away. Something in the way he did it made her feel he was holding something back or had made a mistake.

“ ‘But those who swerve away, they are fuel for hellfire,’ ” she recited from the Koran, the sura on the jinn.

He stared at her. “So, you know the Holy Koran,” he said, as if something completely new had been added to the equation. “A woman no less.”

“Only as a woman knows such things,” she said, playing to his ego. “There’s something else. What aren’t you telling me?”

He motioned her closer. “Abu Ubaida is acting more independently. There are those who say Abu Nazir is no longer in control. Abu Ubaida is here in Ramadi where the battle is. As for Abu Nazir, who can say?” He shrugged. “Some of the Tanzim are choosing sides.”

“Are you choosing?”

“Not yet. But it may come to that.” He twitched. “Abu Ubaida doesn’t trust me. He doesn’t trust anyone. Anyone he doesn’t trust, he kills.”

“Unless someone kills him first,” she said. For a moment, neither spoke. She could hear the clack of domino tiles and smell the apple tobacco smoke from the shisha hubble-bubbles coming from the teahouse. “I need to know a time and place where he’s going to be. Can you tell me?”

“No.” He leaned almost close enough to kiss her. “There is something. But before I say, I need to know my family will be safe.”

“I can’t guarantee that in Ramadi. Not even in the Green Zone. You know this.”

“I need to know my son will be safe.”

“If something happens, inshallah, I will do my best. If you want, we can take them to America. Farah and Gabir will be safe,” she said.

“Not America. There are only infidels in America. Syria-but with money.” He twitched. Now she understood. He was telling her he did not expect to survive. He was making his last will and testament with her.

“How much money?” she said.

“One hundred thousand dollars U.S.”

“Only if what you tell me is worth it,” she snapped. “And only if they are in danger.” She took a breath. “Inshallah.” God willing.

He twitched again. She remembered Saul telling her once, “Don’t force it. When the asset is ready to drop his pants, you have to wait for him to realize he doesn’t have a lot of choices. He has to talk himself into it. Just wait for it. All night if you have to.” She waited.

“There is going to be an attack against the new Shiite prime minister. Something big,” he said.

“In the Green Zone?” she asked. “How? Where will it come?”

“No one says. But we have men training on attacking a narrow street. They are told there is an arch.”

“You know what it is, don’t you?”

“I think Assassin’s Gate. Very soon. Maybe a week. They are getting everything ready,” he said.

“That’s it? Just break into the Green Zone and attack the prime minister’s office? Nothing else? That’s not his style.”

He stared at her, twitching, with his dark eyes. “I think you are a most dangerous person, Zahaba.” The code name they had agreed on for her. Gold, for the color of her hair. “Perhaps not every American is a fool.”

“Are you trying to provoke me? It won’t work,” she said. “There’s another attack, isn’t there? Abu Nazir and Abu Ubaida, they never do just one, do they?”

“It is their signature,” he said in agreement. “There is another one. This against the Americans. Someone important.”

Her mind raced. The Assassin’s Gate was a big sandstone arch topped by a dome spanning one of the main entry points into the Green Zone in Baghdad. If Abu Ubaida managed to assassinate the new Shiite leader, al-Waliki, it would trigger a civil war that would lead to the destruction of Iraq and the complete failure of the American mission. The casualties, including Americans, would be enormous.

On top of that, there was another assassination planned. Of an important American. She had to find out from Saul who was coming in from Washington and where. Ten-to-one, the second attack would be on Camp Victory, near the airport. It was where all the VIPs came in. Having failed in New York, Abu Ubaida was making his bid for the leadership of AQI. It all fit.

She had to get this intel back to Saul immediately.

“Do you know who the American is?” she asked.

“Only that Abu Ubaida said he would cut off both heads of the two-headed snake.”

“Were you in the room with him when he said this?”

“Not in a room. Last night. We were dropping off four policemen on the road to what the Americans call Hurricane Point. This is Saddam’s old palace where the Euphrates divides into the main river and the canal, but first”-he twitched, never taking his eyes off her-“we cut off their hands and heads. We put the heads on stakes in the ground, like signs along the side of the road. Go drive there; you can see them.” He smiled oddly. “If he knew we were speaking, what do you think he would do to me?”