Carrie's run

CHAPTER 33

Adhamiya, Baghdad, Iraq

Perry Dreyer was waiting for her in his office at the Convention Center. The sign on the door read “U.S. Refugee Aid Service” and was a few doors down from the USAID office where she had first met Dempsey.

Carrie waited at the reception desk while an American woman in her thirties in a neat skirt and white blouse checked out her dirty Marine utility uniform with a big rust-colored stain on the shirt from Virgil’s wound, her unwashed face, tangled hair and backpack slung over her shoulder. Go to hell, Carrie thought. You think you’re in Iraq, try Ramadi instead of the Green Zone, honey.

The woman picked up the phone, said, “Yes,” then, “Come with me,” and got up and led Carrie through a big modern office filled with CIA personnel at computers into a large private office, where Dreyer, an intense, curly-haired man in slacks and a plaid shirt and wearing steel-rimmed glasses, seated behind a glass-topped desk, gestured for her to sit.

“How’s Virgil?” he asked.

“Good. The bullet hit the fibular artery in his leg, but they were able to stop the bleeding. They’re fixing it and as soon as he’s stabilized, he’ll go to Ramstein, then home.”

He nodded, his eyes on the bloodstains on her shirt. “What about you?”

“What about me?”

“No bullet holes in you? Everything good?”

“No, everything is not good. Dempsey is dead, Virgil’s out and we lost Romeo. So no, I’m not ‘good,’ but I’m operational, if that’s what you mean.”

“Whoa,” he said, holding up his hand. “Take it easy, Carrie. You’re shooting at the wrong guy. Saul didn’t have to sell you to me. I wanted you here. And I was right. What you’ve accomplished in just a few days back in-country is little short of miraculous. So ease up. And call me Perry.”

She slumped in her chair.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Since I screwed up on Dempsey, I’ve been ready to kill somebody. It just landed on you.”

“Dempsey was a casualty. We’ve taken a lot here-and something tells me we’re about to take a lot more. You’re going to do an Aardwolf?”

She nodded.

“Good,” he said. “I’ll give you a computer with a secure JWICS link.” He pronounced it “Jay-wicks.” The Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System, or JWICS, was the CIA’s computer network, designed for highly secure, encrypted top secret communications. “Maybe it’ll finally wake up those idiots in Washington. What about the assassination attempts and the planned attacks? What do you need from me?”

“This new Shiite guy, al-Waliki, the new prime minister.”

“What about him?”

“Secretary Bryce is the appetizer; he’s the real target. AQI gets him, they’ve got their civil war. I need to meet with him. We have to protect him.”

Dreyer grimaced. “Not so easy. This belongs to State. They’re very proprietary. Our fearless leader, Ambassador Benson, has issued orders. No one meets with Waliki but him.”

She looked at him incredulously. “You’re joking, right? We’ve got Marines having to live in their own shit in Ramadi, IEDs and headless bodies from Baghdad to Syria, this whole damn country’s about to explode and this guy’s playing bureaucracy games?”

“He’s afraid.” He frowned. “The Kurds are ready to start their own country, the Sunnis want a war and the Iranians are making moves with Muqtada al-Sadr and the Shiites to come in and pick up the pieces. Benson’s the president’s boy. We can’t go around him.”

My God, she thought. Was it possible that Dempsey and Dima and Rana and even Fielding had died for nothing? To have America lose the war and have so many die because of bureaucracy?

“It sucks,” she said.

“It totally sucks,” he said in agreement. “When is the attack?”

“My asset thought it was next week, but that was before Abu Ubaida realized he was a double and cut his head off.” It reminded her that she’d promised him she’d look after his family. I will, she told herself. But first she had to stop a war.

He took his glasses off and polished them with a cloth. Without them, his eyes were softer, less guarded. “Carrie, this is me-and Saul-asking. When do you think?”

She sat up straight. She had felt grimy and desperately wanting a shower when she came in, but now suddenly, she was feeling wonderful, no fatigue at all. No worries about Virgil or anything. Then it hit her. Was she going on one of her flights? She hadn’t taken her clozapine in twenty-four hours. Had it started already? She swallowed hard. She needed to get out of here and take a pill. Meanwhile, she had to focus. The good thing about Perry was that at least, like Saul, she could level with him.

“What everybody forgets, what everybody doesn’t realize, is how smart these guys are. Everybody thinks they’re a bunch of idiot hajis running around screaming ‘Allahu akbar’ who can’t wait to blow themselves up so they can get to the seventy-two virgins. They think,” she said, tapping her temple with her finger. “Strategically. That’s what makes them dangerous. We have to also.”

“I agree,” he said, putting his glasses back on. “Don’t hold back. What do you think is going on?”

“I’m not sure, but Abu Ubaida’s been pushing the envelope. First Beirut and New York, now here. Why? You could say, he’s in the terrorist business; that’s what he does. But I think there might be something going on between Abu Ubaida and Abu Nazir. My asset Romeo hinted as much and I had the sense even before,” she said.

“What are you saying?”

“There’s no evidence to suggest that Abu Nazir was even in Ramadi. When I first interviewed Romeo, he put it out there that Abu Nazir was in Haditha. I think it was a slip of the tongue. Romeo tried to cover it over by suggesting he might be in Fallujah, but I think it was a feint. U.S. forces are all over Fallujah. One thing we should do is get some eyes out to Haditha now.”

“Pretty dangerous there,” he said, rubbing his hand along his jaw. “What about Baghdad?”

“Let’s assume for the moment this whole thing is Abu Ubaida. I know he was in Ramadi because I saw the son of a bitch. Put yourself in his place. He has to assume we know about the assassinations from Romeo, so he’s only got two choices: call it off-in which case, whatever game he’s playing with Abu Nazir or us, he’s lost-or he moves up the timetable.”

Dreyer leaned forward on his desk. “Best guess: how much time do we have?” he asked.

“What about Secretary Bryce? Have they canceled her trip?”

“Her plane’s already in the air. She’ll make a stop in Amman to meet with King Abdullah, then here.”

“I don’t get it. She’s walking into a trap.”

“The president thinks this meeting with al-Waliki is too important. The administration feels their whole Iraq policy is on the line. Midterm elections in November,” he grimaced.

“Are they out of their minds?” She shook her head. “Do they think we’re making this shit up?”

“Never mind that. How much time have we got?”

“Forty-eight hours; for my money, a lot less. They’re probably moving mujahideen into position inside Baghdad this very second,” she said. “Perry, I don’t give a shit what Ambassador Benson says. Get me a meeting with al-Waliki.”

“In order to do that, I need more from you. Specifically, how and where are they going to come at the targets?” he asked.

“That’s what I’m going to find out.”

“Don’t take too long,” he said.

Midnight. She woke up bathed in sweat from a bad dream. For a moment, she wasn’t sure where she was. It had all come together: Reston, Beirut, Ramadi, Baghdad. The sound of gunfire in the distance reminded her. She was back at al-Rasheed Hotel, Baghdad.

In her dream, her father had been in the factory in Ramadi. They had cut off his head. He was standing there, covered in blood, holding his head in his hands, and it was saying to her, “Why won’t you see me, Carrie? If Mom loved you, she wouldn’t have gone away and never said good-bye. She would’ve contacted you. But I stayed and look what you did to me.”

“Please, Dad. I’m sorry, but please. You’re scaring me with that head,” she cried.

He put the head on his neck and said, “Listen to your dad, princess. How is anyone ever going to love you if you won’t talk to the one person who does?”

Right when he said that, Abu Ubaida came up to her in the souk with his knife, saying, “Now it’s your turn, Carrie. Such a pretty head.” And she woke up.

She went to the minibar and opened a bottle of Afnan water. She drained it, then went to the balcony door and looked out at the city and the river. Leave me alone, Dad, she thought. I’ll be nice and talk to you when I get back, I promise. But right now, I’ve already killed too many people and I’m about to kill some more, so please let me sleep. I need it so badly and this crazy disease you gave me doesn’t make it any easier, but I guess you know all about that, don’t you?

Maybe we both need redemption.

In the morning, back to her Beirut garb of tight jeans, a sleeved top and a black hijab over her hair, she met Warzer by the clock tower of the Abu Hanifa Mosque in the Adhamiya district on the other side of the river. After separating and doubling back and forth in taxis between the mosque and Iraqi University to make sure they weren’t being followed, they met at an outdoor table at a shisha hubble-bubble café on Imam al-Adham Street. There were few men sitting outside, no one near them. The morning was hot, already steaming, and the air was permeated with the smell of apple- and peach-flavored tobacco smoke coming from inside the café.

“She’s still coming?” Warzer said, shaking his head about the secretary of state’s visit. “I don’t understand.”

“It’s an election year in America. A lot of things won’t make any sense,” Carrie said, leaning closer over her coffee. “We need specific intel. How are they going to get into the Green Zone? Where’s the attack going to be? Exact time? How are they going to do it? Guns? Car bomb? And whatever we find out, we have to get it soon. I doubt we have more than a day, if that.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“There are two Sunni strongholds in Baghdad that AQI might use: here in the Adhamiya district and al-Amiriyah, right near Camp Victory and the airport. Best guess, for the attack on the secretary flying in. .”

“Of course. They’ll use al-Amiriyah. For the other attack, you’re thinking from here, from Adhamiya?”

She nodded. “What I need is intel on new people, young men, Salafi-type Islamists from Anbar, just arriving into Adhamiya in the past two or three days, staying with family or friends. Who would know about that?”

“Their relatives. The women in the souk.” He shrugged.

“I’ll take care of that. Who else?”

“Of course.” He smiled. “We were just there. The masjid. The Abu Hanifa Mosque. Men gossip as much as women.”

“Okay, so that’s how they launch the attack on the Assassin’s Gate. How do they get across the river?” she asked.

“The Assassin’s Gate is on Haifa Street, near al-Jumariyah Bridge. Across the bridge?”

“Either that or by rubber raft or scuba. They’ll come tonight. But how and where are they going to get to the secretary and the new prime minister?” she asked, then sat up straight.

“What is it?”

“Wait! Right across the street from me!”

“What do you mean?”

“The Iraqi Council of Representatives has their offices and chamber in the Convention Center, where the U.S. has its offices too, just catty-corner across Yafa Street from my hotel.”

“But, Carrie, the Convention Center is heavily guarded. How are they possibly going to get in?” he asked.

“Oh, that.” She smiled, taking a sip of coffee. “No problem. I know exactly how they’re going to do it.”