Carrie's run

CHAPTER 32

Balad Air Base, Iraq

PFC Williams saved them. He called in the Predator, which was still up there, too high to be seen or heard from the ground. As Carrie and Warzer half-carried, half-supported Virgil till they were able to roll over the concrete barrier by the Marines, Sergeant Billings giving covering fire, the Predator fired its remaining two Hellfire missiles into the buildings from which most of the mujahideen were shooting. The sounds of the explosions rolled toward them from across the road.

Once they had come through a jagged hole in the fence, the mujahideen who had come into the factory after them were caught in a withering crossfire between the Marine machine gun on the Humvee in the middle of the road and the Marines with them behind the fence.

Carrie watched as more than twenty mujahideen raced toward the Humvee from the ruins of the buildings on the far side of the road, only to be cut down by the light machine gun from their position. Thank God Sergeant Billings had the foresight to station his second fire team behind the factory, she thought, taking her first real breath since they’d entered the factory.

Virgil had been shot in the lower leg. The wound was bleeding profusely; it was possible an artery had been hit. Sergeant Billings used his combat knife to slice open Virgil’s pants leg and put a tourniquet above the wound, but they needed to get him medical help urgently. A few minutes later, the firing from the mujahideen was reduced enough to load him on a Humvee and get him across the canal to Camp Snake Pit, a fire base that was an area of open sand surrounded by sandbag walls, where they bundled Virgil into a Huey helicopter. Carrie went with him, along with one of the Marines, who had also been wounded by fragments from an RPG. There wasn’t enough room for Warzer; he would follow on the next helicopter out.

The helicopter lifted up in a clatter of sound and dust, the camp swiftly dropping far beneath them. Carrie sat next to Virgil, who was lying on a stretcher beside the wounded Marine on the floor while a Marine corpsman tended to him. Through the open doorway where a door gunner stood, she could see the sand-colored city and the V-like fork where the Euphrates River divided from the canal below. The helicopter banked and headed high over the river east toward Baghdad.

“How long till we get there?” Carrie asked the corpsman, almost shouting to be heard over the sound of the rotor, the wind from the open doorways tugging at her utility uniform and whipping a few strands of hair that had escaped from under her helmet about her face.

“Not long, ma’am. He’ll be all right,” the corpsman said, indicating Virgil. “I gave him some morphine.”

“How’re you feeling?” she asked Virgil.

“Better with the morphine.” He grimaced. “Nobody ever says how unbelievably much being shot hurts.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “We knew it could be a trap.”

“Couldn’t be helped. A chance to get Abu Ubaida and Abu Nazir. We couldn’t pass it up. Too bad about Romeo, though. If you could’ve still run him, we might’ve gotten another shot.”

“Romeo was a double.” She frowned. “He worked against us as much as for us.” She leaned closer to him. “I think he was responsible for Dempsey.”

“What makes you think so?”

“He gave us actionable intel-and he knew there was no working cell phone service in the city. Field radios have too limited a range and al-Qaeda was besieging the Government Center. He had to figure we’d send someone back to the Green Zone. The clock started ticking from the second we parted in the teahouse.”

“So why’d they kill him?”

“I don’t know. It’s bullshit,” she said. “They shouldn’t’ve. They didn’t need it to set the trap for us. There’s something else. I’m not seeing it.”

“We left it too long. We should’ve hit the factory right after they took him there.”

“How? It was impossible to move around the city at night. And we sure as hell couldn’t have done it without the Marines. Spilled milk,” she said. “At least you’re out of it. Your family will be happy.”

“My family won’t give a shit. Not that I blame them.” He frowned. “Carlotta and I separated a couple of years ago. My daughter, Rachel, thinks I’m the worst father in the world. And she’s right. I haven’t been there for her.” He grimaced.

“You’ll have some time now. Maybe you can make it up.”

“Why? So I can drop them like a hot potato the next time a Flash Critical op comes up? They’d be crazy to let me into their lives again.” He grabbed her arm. “People like us, we’re junkies. We’re hooked on the action. Don’t let them do it to you too, Carrie. Get out while you still can. I don’t know anybody on the NCS side of the Company with a decent marriage. Why do you think everyone messes around?”

“Take it easy,” she said, patting his shoulder. “We do good. Without us, the country’s blind. Doesn’t matter how strong you are if you can’t see.”

“That’s what we tell ourselves. Listen, Carrie, you didn’t kill Dempsey,” he said.

“But I did. I really did.”

“Because of Romeo? Shit, this hurts,” Virgil said, trying to straighten his leg.

“No, Abu Ubaida. He had his suspicions about Romeo and he’s smart enough to know we’d try to send someone to Baghdad,” she said.

“It’s not all on you, Carrie. Ramadi’s a battlefield. Dempsey knew what he was getting into. Saul handpicked him for this.”

“Maybe,” she said, looking out of the open doorway on her side. Below, she could see the sun shining on the miles-wide surface of Lake Habbaniya, like a blue mirror on the desert floor. “What you said before, about everybody messing around. What about Fielding? Is that why he was with Rana? He must’ve known the risk he was running.”

“I don’t know why Fielding did-ow!” he cried as the helicopter jolted a little. “I don’t know why he did half the things he did. You still going on about that?”

“The way he died, I don’t believe it,” she said.

“Listen,” he said, tightening his grip on her arm. “This place, the whole American mission here, is about to explode into a million pieces. Focus on that. I’m out of it now. You’re the only one who can stop it.”

She nodded and sat there, holding his hand till the long runway of Balad Air Base came into view.

She accompanied Virgil in a military ambulance to the Balad base hospital, the nearest military medical facility. Once she saw that Virgil was being taken care of, she called Saul from the head nurse’s office. It was after three in the afternoon local time, eight A.M. in Langley. Saul was in his car on his way to work. She told him about Virgil so he could make arrangements. As soon as Virgil was stabilized, they would take him to Ramstein AFB hospital in Germany for follow-up treatment, then back to the States.

“Are you operational?” he asked her. Virgil’s being wounded must’ve shaken him.

“Cut the crap, Saul. I’m not some weak-kneed little girl and this is an open line. What about Bravo?” B for Secretary Bryce and her trip to Baghdad. “Can you stop it?”

“Bill and David are meeting with her today.” Okay, she thought, breathing a little easier. David Estes and the DCIA, Bill Walden, himself. They were taking this seriously.

“Saul, Romeo is down.”

He didn’t respond immediately. She heard the faint sounds of a car horn honking on the line. Probably some jackass on Dolley Madison Boulevard or wherever, she thought.

“What about Tweedledum and Tweedledee?” Their respective code names for Abu Nazir and Abu Ubaida.

“No. I’m sorry,” she said. What else was there to say? It had to have hit him hard, the first time they’d ever had a shot at both of them together. “On the other matter, I’m sending an Aardwolf.” An Aardwolf was a Flash Critical report, the most critically urgent, highest-priority type of communication within the CIA. In theory, when Aardwolf came in, the director of the CIA was supposed to get it within one hour of its receipt at Langley.

“I’ll alert Beanstalk,” Saul said. If he was pissed at her failure in Ramadi, he wasn’t showing it. Beanstalk was Perry Dreyer, CIA Baghdad station chief. He had given her Dempsey and she had killed him. She wouldn’t have blamed him if Dreyer wouldn’t give her the time of day now, although if anyone had a clue about how things really were in Iraq and what she’d had to deal with in Ramadi, not the official bullshit the administration was putting out, it would be Perry. “Listen, are you sure it’s actionable?”

So Saul was doubting her, she thought. It was a fair question, though. She was basing her intel entirely on Romeo, who had been not only a double, but a duplicitous al-Qaeda son of a bitch. Except-she’d seen Romeo with his kids. He loved them and he had to know that if the Marines smothered them with help and money, it would get back to Abu Ubaida and Abu Nazir in a New York minute. Romeo also knew that if the assassination attempts hadn’t happened within a week, she’d have known he was lying and would have acted. The intel he’d given her had to be good. The fact that they’d beheaded Romeo and killed Dempsey proved Abu Ubaida knew that Romeo had passed along actionable intel.

Sometime during the long night, before she and her team got to the porcelain factory, Romeo, tortured by Abu Ubaida, had given it up. If Romeo had been feeding her false intel, they’d have roughed him up but would have kept him alive to feed her more garbage and maybe lure her into another trap.

A slim reed, but all she had.

“It’s highly actionable. Get everything ready. I’ll be in Golf Zulu”-GZ, the Green Zone, Baghdad-“as soon as I can,” she said, and hung up.

She said good-bye to Virgil at the hospital and, using her cell phone, tried texting Warzer, hoping he had caught a helicopter ride to Camp Victory, adjacent to the Baghdad airport, and had managed to make it back to the Green Zone.

“how is v?” Warzer texted back, asking about Virgil.

“good. r u back? we shd meet,” she texted.

“im back. meet clk twr my district fajr -2.” Thank God, she thought, feeling the first sense of relief in days. Warzer had made it safely back to Baghdad.

She remembered his telling her that he and his family lived in Adhamiya, a Sunni district on the east bank of the Tigris. She would have to find out where the clock tower was, probably near a mosque or a main square. Fajr was the dawn prayer for Muslims and the minus two was a little piece of misdirection that meant plus two hours, so they would meet about eight A.M.

She boarded the helicopter a half hour later, munching a Subway sandwich she’d bought from a mini-mall of American fast-food stores like Subway, Burger King and Pizza Hut on base. For most of the servicemen and women living and working behind the blast walls and fortifications of the big American base, it was as if they had never left home; they had no connection to the Middle East at all.

Walking out to the helicopter, she could smell the smoke and see black columns rising from burn pits, where, someone had told her, they burned the base’s garbage. It was almost dusk, the helicopter casting a long shadow across the tarmac. Being at this bustling American base made Ramadi feel unreal, like a different universe.

The helicopter lifted off and flew low over Highway 1, south to Baghdad. Traffic on the highway was light as night approached. It was far too dangerous to be on the road after dark. As they flew over the outskirts of the city, she spotted something she hadn’t paid attention to on the ground. From the air, Baghdad was the palm tree capital of the universe, the setting sun turning the Tigris River to reddish gold.