Carrie's run

CHAPTER 30

Fallujah, Anbar Province, Iraq

As the sun set, the sky a stunning pink and purple, calls to prayer from the minarets of dozens of mosques echoed over the city. Riding on the motor scooter, they could hear gunfire and explosions from mortars to the west as Warzer drove her back to al-Andalus police station. They were running out of time. Dangerous at any time, after dark, the city was a no-man’s-land.

She and Warzer had gone to Romeo’s house to take Romeo’s wife and family to a nearby souk. They ate kebabs from a charcoal grill and bought Harry Potter toys for the children at market stalls. While she was with them, Virgil, disguised with a false beard and a Kurdish-style turban, snuck into Romeo’s house to black-bag it, installing listening devices and hidden cameras.

Now, driving past a mosque in the fading light, they spotted a Marine LAV APC followed by two Humvees with mounted machine guns.

“Shit, a patrol,” Warzer said.

They were in disguise, Carrie thought. To the Marines, they were Iraqis on a scooter on an empty street at night.

“Their fingers are on their triggers. Do as they say,” she reminded him.

The LAV stopped. The turret gun pointed right at them. The Humvees stopped and a loudspeaker voice from the front Humvee said, “Kiff!” Halt!

Warzer stopped. He and Carrie got off the scooter, Warzer setting the scooter on its stand, then raising his hands in the air. So did Carrie, removing the veil and head-covering portion of her abaya so they could see her blond hair. She raised her hands high. A Marine got out of the Humvee and gestured for them to come closer.

“Let me go first,” she told Warzer, and, hands held high, approached closer.

The Marine, a young corporal, stared at her, eyes like saucers. With her blond hair and all-American face, she must’ve been a completely surreal sight, but he kept his M4 still pointed at her.

“I’m American,” she told him in English. “We’re with Task Force One Forty-Five. We need to get to al-Andalus police station.”

“An American woman? Here?” the Marine said.

“I know. Our mission is classified. We’re working with Marine Captain Ryan Dempsey from the Two Twenty-Eighth. Can you help us?”

“Excuse me, ma’am, but are you out of your mind?” the Marine said, squinting at her as if to make sure she was real. “This is Sniper Alley. I don’t know how you’re still alive. Are you really American?”

“I live in Reston, Virginia, if that helps,” she said. “This is Warzer,” she said, gesturing with a tilt of her head. “He’s with me. Could you escort us back to the police station?”

“Let me check with the lieutenant, ma’am. You can put your hands down, just don’t move,” he said, backing away from her as though she were still dangerous. He spoke into the Humvee and after a minute, came back.

“That’s a negative, ma’am. We have our sector to do. To tell you the truth, it’s a mother-sorry, miracle someone hasn’t shot at us already. You better get going,” he said, eyeing Warzer as if he’d like to shoot him anyway.

“Thanks, Corporal. We’ll do that,” she said, and, putting her abaya head covering and veil back on, tugged at Warzer.

They got back on the scooter and drove past the LAV and Humvees, Carrie conscious of every eye on her even though she couldn’t see them. The street they were driving on was completely dark now, the only light the headlight on the scooter.

We left it too late, she thought, feeling a twinge in her spine as if a bullet might come ripping into her back any second. A minute later, one almost did. Driving down the narrow street, she saw a flash of light and the loud crack of a shot rang out. Instinctively, Warzer swerved to the side, then straightened and turned the accelerator as far as it could go. He swerved again, slaloming left, then right. She could see the lights of the police station up ahead, surrounded by sandbags and concertina wire, its flat roof silhouetted against the stars.

Warzer raced straight at it, the scooter bouncing on the potholes in the road. She heard another shot coming from behind that by some miracle missed them. They swerved sharply and turned into a gap in the sandbags to the front of the police station, Iraqi policemen pointing their AKMs at them, shouting in Arabic for them to stop. They stopped and got off the scooter. The instant she pulled off her abaya head covering, revealing her long blond hair, the Iraqis relaxed and waved them inside.

“We left it too late,” she told Warzer, going into the police station.

“We managed. You’re good luck, Carrie,” he said.

“I don’t believe in luck. It better not happen again.”

The intel she had for Saul was critical. She had to get it back to him ASAP, she thought, finding the police commander, Hakim Gassid. “Impossible, al-anesah.” He shook his head. “No cell phones are working.”

“What about land phones, the Internet?” she asked.

He shook his head.

“I have to communicate with my superiors. It’s life or death, Makayib.” She called him “Captain.”

“Maybe in Fallujah, inshallah, there is some way. In Ramadi, al-anesah, is only destruction. You have no idea how beautiful our city was, al-anesah. We would have picnics by the river,” he said wistfully.

It was insane, Carrie thought. She had one of the most important actionable pieces of intel she’d ever come up with, and suddenly, she was in the eighteenth century, with no way to communicate it back to Langley. She had to come up with something fast.

“Have you ever made love in a jail before?” Dempsey asked her. They were on a cot in Hakim Gassid’s office on the second floor of the police station. Outside, they could hear the sound of gunfire and the crump of RPGs answered by the rattle of the machine gun on the roof and the AKM automatic fire from the policemen around the perimeter of the building.

“Have you?” Carrie asked.

“No, but I have, in worse.”

“Where?”

“Back pew of a Baptist church in the middle of a sermon. Her daddy was the preacher. Stella Mae. Great-looking girl. I’m not sure whether she was doing it to get back at Daddy or she just didn’t give a shit, but the pew was about as comfortable as concrete and I kept thinking, They’re going to catch us any second and every dick here has a gun in their car or truck. You?”

“Never did this. Sneaking in a little sex while people are trying to kill me. The Iraqi cops must think I’m a whore.”

“They probably wish their own women were half as sexy. Sorry about the setting,” he said, kissing her neck. “You have no idea what you do to me.”

“Don’t talk so much. Speaking of which, I need to talk to Langley.”

“While we’re doing it?” he said, sliding his hand between her legs, making her crazy.

“Stop it. We can’t use cell phones.”

“I know. The last local cell tower was blown up last week. Even if it was up, they monitor cell traffic just like us. I don’t think anybody back home has a clue how sophisticated the enemy is here. Our best bet is to use the encrypted line back at the embassy in the Green Zone. Touch me right there.”

“Won’t work. I need to be here to run Romeo. Stop, wait a second. Wait a second.”

“Write a report. I’ll take it to Baghdad and send it from there.”

“No good. You don’t have my security clearance level. Oh God, that feels good. Wait. Romeo mentioned a VIP coming in next week. An attempted assassination. Any idea who’s coming in?”

“Me, in just a minute,” he said.

“Asshole.” She pulled his head up by the hair. “Do you know?”

“Secretary of State Bryce,” he said. “Her trip’s supposed to be a secret, but if the hajis already know, we’re blown.”

“I need you to go to Baghdad to stop her from coming. Can you do that?”

“Do this first,” he said, making her arch her back in delight. “Like that?”

“Shut up and pay attention to your work,” she said.

At dawn, Dempsey left the police station for Baghdad in his Humvee. Carrie had made him memorize Saul’s phone number at Langley. Regardless of whether his report got sufficient attention from whatever DIA-CIA liaison he reported to or not, Saul had to know what she’d learned. They had to get Secretary Bryce to cancel her trip to Baghdad. In addition, arrangements had to be made to protect the Iraqi prime minister at the government offices in the Green Zone and to prepare for an attempt to breach the Assassin’s Gate. If there were any problems, Dempsey was to contact her ASAP somehow. Someone said there was a repair crew working on a cell tower, but if he had to, he was to drive all the way back from Baghdad if necessary.

Carrie watched him go. There had been shooting all through the night, and sometime around three in the morning, they’d heard a massive explosion over toward the hospital by the canal. Someone said it was a car bomb at the Iraqi police station in the Mua’almeen District. There was a rumor that more than thirty policemen had been killed. As he drove off, she thought, I shouldn’t have sent him. It’s too dangerous. Every mujahideen in Ramadi has got to be watching him drive toward Route Michigan and the highway back to Baghdad.

Watching the Humvee drive away, she tried calling him on the cell phone on the wild chance it was working, already missing him. But there was nothing. No reception of any kind. Not to mention, her cell battery was nearly dead, with hardly any place to recharge it because electricity in the city was so sporadic.

It was crazy calling him anyway; she felt like a total idiot. What the hell was she doing acting like a teenager? She felt strange, disconnected from herself. Was it her bipolar? Or was it that everything they did here was so dangerous you had to live not just day by day but second by second? She felt out-of-body, like she was watching the dusty trash-strewn street where he drove away and watching herself watching.

A shiver went through her for no reason she could understand. She was never going to see him again, something told her. She shook her head to try to clear it. This was crazy. She still had pills from Beirut, but when she got back to Baghdad, she’d find someplace and arrange for more. She couldn’t shake the uneasy feeling, looking at the area around the police station. Forget bipolar; this place was making her crazy in all kinds of ways.

Although it was still early in the morning, the sun barely clearing the tops of the buildings, she could feel the heat coming. Except for the debris and death, Ramadi could have been anywhere in the Middle East. Strange, she thought. Decisions we make for the most arbitrary of reasons end up changing our lives forever. For her, a decision she had made almost casually at Princeton years ago to study Near East Studies because the geometric patterns in Islamic art had fascinated her had brought her to this.

And then there was Romeo. He was giving her actionable intel, but she could trust him about as far as she could throw the Brooklyn Bridge, the last thing Abu Ubaida had tried to destroy.

She went back inside to an open jail cell where Warzer and Virgil had spent the night. They were getting up, and in a little while, they were all sitting in the cell, drinking glasses of strong Iraqi tea with plenty of sugar and eating kahi, phyllo-dough pastries dipped in honey, that one of the Iraqi policemen had brought them.

“Now what?” Virgil said, brushing a fly off his kahi, then taking a bite.

“Anything on the bugs you planted at Romeo’s house?” Carrie asked.

“The women were talking. Arabic.” He grimaced. “Need you or Warzer to translate, but Romeo didn’t show.”

“Which means he’s with Abu Ubaida. He’s inside. That’s what we want,” she told them.

“What about the intel on the attack in Baghdad?” Virgil asked.

“We wait till we hear what Langley wants to do. Dempsey’ll tell us tomorrow when he gets back,” she said.

“You, wait?” Virgil grinned. “Doesn’t sound like you. Getting cold feet, Carrie?”

“I’ll admit it,” she said. “This place scares the shit out of me.”

“It should,” Warzer said. “I moved my family to Baghdad, not that that’s so much safer.”

“I have to admit, I don’t like the idea of waiting. Especially on Langley,” she said. “Once Abu Ubaida goes operational on this latest attack-and we’re talking a week at most-our chance at nailing him and maybe Abu Nazir becomes a total crapshoot.”

“What do you want us to do?” Warzer asked her.

For a moment, her eyes searched the walls of the cell as if looking for an answer there. But there was nothing but bits of penciled-in Arabic graffiti, which, except for the occasional invocation of Allah, was amazingly similar to Western graffiti.

“Go back to electronic surveillance on Romeo’s family. I gave him money. He’ll want to give them at least some of it. I’ll be by in a bit to translate,” she told Virgil, who got up, still holding the tea, and went out, presumably to a holding cell on the second floor where he’d set up his gear.

“What about me?” Warzer asked.

“Abu Ubaida is here in Ramadi. I can’t believe some of these Ramadi policemen don’t have snitches. See if you can find out if anyone knows where they’re hiding.”

Warzer started to get up. She motioned to him. Not sure how to say it, she just said it. “Warzer, do you think these Iraqi police think I’m a whore?” she asked, using the Arabic word, “sharmuta.” “It’s just now, with death so close, there’s so little time. .” She faltered.

He looked away, clearly uncomfortable, then back straight at her.

“Carrie, you’re a very beautiful woman. Truly. For these men, you’re like a movie star from Hollywood. Someone so far out of reach. But also, our world with women is so different. So yes, maybe, a little like a sharmuta. But listen, Captain Dempsey, as a man, I like him. He has courage. But you don’t know him. There are rumors. Be careful,” he said.

“What kind of rumors?”

“Money,” he said, rubbing his thumb against his fingers. “Stories about sales of American equipment, medical supplies, ammunition, refrigerators, all kinds of things on the black market. This war is the biggest gold rush in history for companies. Blackwater, DynCorp, KBR. Everyone is getting rich except the people.”

“Do you know this is true about Captain Dempsey?”

“I know nothing. I shouldn’t have said anything, except. .”

“Except what?”

“I like you, Carrie. For me, you are the best of America, so good. About you and Captain Dempsey, I should not speak. Only”-he hesitated-“I think you are very lonely.”

She was talking with the police chief, Hakim Gassid, about informants when Virgil came and got her.

“You better come see this,” he said.

She followed him back to the cell where he kept his equipment. On his laptop, he showed her two interior scenes in the entranceway and main room of Romeo’s family’s house.

“This was last night,” he said, rewinding the footage, people making gestures and moving backward. Then he started playing it forward, with Romeo coming into the house.

She watched as Romeo came into the entryway and then into the main room. As in most of Ramadi, there was no electricity and the rooms were lit with lanterns and candles. She listened as he greeted his wife and mother and then cradled his children in his arms. Like most Iraqi homes, the furniture was sparse and set along the walls, a carpet on the main room’s floor. So far, everything and the conversation seemed normal, except she noticed he kept looking around. At one point, he got up and picked up a lamp and looked at it.

He’s looking for bugs, she thought. He knows. Of course he knows. Idiot, she thought, mentally kicking herself. First, he’s not stupid, and second, someone, some neighbor or extended family member, must’ve spotted Virgil, who even on his best disguise day couldn’t pass for a Kurd, not that people wouldn’t wonder what a Kurd was doing in Ramadi.

She watched him give his wife some or all of the money she’d given him-impossible to tell-and whisper something in her ear she couldn’t hear. And in the distance, even on the soundtrack, she could hear gunfire. As they watched, Carrie quietly translated what she could hear.

They watched Romeo go to the side of the room, turn over the corner of a carpet, pull up a board from the floor and take out an AKM assault rifle. He put the floorboard back and started to check the AKM.

The children came back; he talked with them and let them climb over him. The little boy tried to pick up the AKM and Romeo smiled and showed him how to hold it and aim. Then the wife and Romeo’s mother took them away, presumably to bed.

Something was missing. What was it? She watched the video intently and then she had it. No nervous tic. He wasn’t twitching. It was gone. That miserable son-of-a-bitch liar, she thought. Why did he do it? To gain sympathy in Abu Ghraib? To distract questioners? To help disguise his identity? Or was he just a pathological liar? Everything he said had to be taken with a huge grain of salt. But she knew that already, didn’t she?

“No tic. Is that what you wanted me to see?” she asked Virgil.

“Wait,” he said, holding up a cautionary finger.

The mother, Aasera, came and made tea and brought him a glass. They talked for a bit about the family. He asked her about Carrie, the American woman, and her Iraqi companion, Warzer.

“I don’t trust them,” Aasera said. “They pretend to be friends, but they are infidels. Why did you bring them to us?”

“Ama, I had no choice. Inshallah, they won’t bother us again,” he said.

“Take care. I think she is dangerous, this blond sharmuta.”

“Enough, woman. Stay out of my business,” he snapped, and waved her away. She darted a suspicious glance at him and left the room. As soon as she was gone, he took out his cell phone and began texting.

“Can we get what he’s texting and the number he’s calling?” Carrie asked Virgil.

“That’s not the phone we gave him. Baghdad Station can probably pick it up from Iraqna’s cell COMINT. AQI may have their own functioning cell station. Maybe we can pick it up from the Iraqna company and I can get it from them, but it’ll take a couple of hours.”

“Let’s do it,” she said, and started to get up.

“Wait,” he said, stopping her. He sped the video up so that about an hour had gone by when suddenly, she heard sounds from outside on the video and saw Romeo stand up. His wife, Shada, looked at him and asked who it could it be at this hour. He started to ready the AKM, then put it down on the chair and motioned for her to answer the door. He followed her to the entryway.

As Shada opened the door, four mujahideen with automatic weapons, she assumed AQI, burst in past her, followed by Abu Ubaida himself. She recognized him from the souk.

“It is late, my brother,” Romeo started to say, but Abu Ubaida cut him off.

“You have to come now. He wants to see you,” Abu Ubaida said.

“But my family-I promised them I’d stay home tonight,” Romeo said, gesturing at Shada and his mother, who came into the room.

“Are you sure you want them involved in this, Walid? He has questions, brother. So do I,” Abu Ubaida said as the four men hustled Romeo out of the house. On the video, Carrie could clearly hear the sound of car doors slamming and someone driving away as the two women just stood there, staring at the door. Virgil stopped the video.

“He’s blown, isn’t he?” Virgil said.

“Yes, but did you hear what Abu Ubaida said?” she said.

“That was him, wasn’t it?”

“Hell yes, it was him. Do you realize what this means? He said, ‘He wants to see you.’ There’s only one person who can give Abu Ubaida orders: Abu Nazir himself! We’ve got ’em both! Both in the same place at the same time! We call in a drone and we can eliminate both of them, once and for all! Virgil, you’re a genius!” she said, and hugged him. “Does he still have the cell phone we gave him?”

Virgil nodded. “So far,” he said.

“So we can track him?”

“Have a look,” he said, opening another window on his laptop and showing her a pulsing dot superimposed on a Google satellite image of Ramadi. It appeared to be on Highway 10 in al-Ta’mim District in the western part of the city, south of the canal.

“Do we know where that is?” she asked.

“I asked one of the policemen. He says his best guess is that it’s the porcelain factory. He says it’s ruined now because of the fighting, but it used to make sinks, toilet bowls, stuff like that.”

“We’ve got them,” she breathed. “We need to call in a strike.”

Virgil frowned. “Unless it’s a trap,” he said.

It was like a slap in the face. Of course, what was she thinking?

“What time was the video showing them coming and getting Romeo?” she asked.

“A little after midnight.”

She looked at her watch. It was just after eight A.M. So Romeo had been with Abu Ubaida and also, possibly, Abu Nazir for seven to eight hours. Or maybe not. She had to admit there was also the possibility that Abu Ubaida had split from Abu Nazir and that his comments to Romeo had been a ploy. Abu Ubaida had to have found the cell phone she had given Romeo. That cell phone was still on and Abu Ubaida had to assume it was being tracked.

No question, the probability was huge that Virgil was right. It was a trap. They might have been torturing Romeo this very second, if he wasn’t dead already. They wouldn’t have to torture him much for him to tell them everything he knew about Zahaba, the blond Arabic-speaking female CIA agent and her Iraqi sidekick. She felt queasy. It would make her al-Qaeda’s number one target in all of Iraq. Not to mention, Romeo was her asset, her responsibility. She’d put him into this situation.

Unless Abu Ubaida still trusted Romeo. In which case, there was a chance that Abu Ubaida had been telling the truth to Romeo and they could still kill both Abu Ubaida and Abu Nazir today. Although she had to admit, the way that Abu Ubaida had spoken to Romeo certainly didn’t sound like he trusted him. What was it Romeo had said to her about Abu Ubaida in the teahouse? He doesn’t trust anyone. Anyone he doesn’t trust, he kills.

So which was it? Time to decide, Carrie.

If she called in a drone strike, Romeo would die too, along with whoever was with him in the porcelain factory. If it meant getting Abu Ubaida and maybe Abu Nazir, stopping the assassinations and a civil war that could mean tens of thousands of lives, it was worth it. Romeo was collateral damage.

But if it was a trap, it meant they knew they had to stop her. Tracking works both ways; the thought stopped her dead. Had they been tracking her?

“Even if it is a trap, we need to get to the Marine commander and have him order up an attack on the factory,” she told Virgil, motioning for him to follow. As she headed for the stairs, she saw Warzer coming up, his face twisted.

“Carrie,” he said. “I’m sorry. Truly.”

“What is it?” she asked.

“IED. On Highway 11 outside Fallujah. Dempsey’s dead.”