Betrayal dh-12

by John Lescroart

  "A buck an hour? Is that what they're making?"

  "Give or take, for the cooks and staff. Guards maybe two hundred a month." Nolan lowered his voice even further, gestured toward the desk. "But don't let Tucker hear that. Jack bid it out at around twenty an hour per man, but as I say, Kuvan's a genius. His fee is two bucks an hour, which takes our cost up to three an hour, so we're hauling in seventeen. That's per hour, twenty-four seven, times a hundred and sixty guys so far, with another two hundred in the pipeline. And the more we bring on, the more we make. Like I told you, you play it right, this place is a gold mine. How much they paying you, Evan, two grand a month?"

  "Close. Plus hazard duty…"

  Nolan cut him off with a laugh. "Hazard duty, what's that, a hundred fifty a month? That's what our cooks make."

  "Yeah, you mentioned that." The news disturbed Evan-a hundred and fifty dollars extra per month and he faced death every day.

  After a little pause, Nolan looked at him sideways. "You know what I'm making?"

  "No idea."

  "You want to know?"

  A nod. "Sure."

  "Twenty thousand a month. That's tax-free, by the way. Of course, I've got lots of experience and there's a premium on guys like me. But still, guys like you can finish up here, then turn around and come back a month later with any of us contractors, and you're looking at ten grand minimum a month. A six-month tour and you're back home, loaded. This thing lasts long enough, the smart-money bet by the way, and I go home a millionaire."

  Up at the desk, Major Charles Tucker looked like he could use some time in the sun. He'd sweated through his shirt. He sported rimless glasses, had a high forehead, and nearly invisible blond eyebrows-a caricature of the harried accountant. And he made no secret of his disdain for Nolan. "Let's see your paperwork. Who signed off on it this time?"

  "Colonel Ramsdale, sir. Air-base Security Services Coordinator."

  "Another one of Mr. Allstrong's friends?"

  "A comrade-in-arms. Yes, sir. They were in Desert Storm together."

  "I'm happy for them." Tucker looked down at the sheets of paper Nolan had handed him. He flipped the first page, studied the second, went back to the first.

  "Everything in order, sir?" Nolan asked with an ironic obsequiousness.

  "This is a lot of money to take away in cash, Nolan." He gestured to Evan. "Who's this guy?"

  "Convoy support, sir. Protection back to the base."

  Tucker went back to the papers. "Okay, I can see the payroll, but what's this sixty-thousand-dollar add-on for"-he squinted down at the paper-"does this say dogs?"

  "Yes, sir. Bomb-sniffing dogs, which we need to feed and build kennels for, along with their trainers and handlers."

  "And Ramsdale approved this?"

  "Apparently so, sir." Nolan leaned down and pretended to be looking for Ramsdale's signature. Evan stifled a smile. Nolan, punctiliously polite, somehow managed to put a bit of the needle into every exchange.

  "I'm going to have somebody in audit verify this."

  Nolan shrugged. "Of course, sir."

  "Sixty thousand dollars for a bunch of dogs!"

  "Bomb-sniffing dogs, sir." Nolan remained mild. "And the infrastructure associated with them."

  But apparently there was nothing Tucker could do about it. Nolan had his form in order and it was signed by one of the Army's sanctioned pay-masters. He scribbled something on the bottom of the form. Then he looked up. Behind Nolan, the line had grown again to four or five other customers. "Specie?" Tucker said.

  "I beg your pardon," Nolan replied.

  "Don't fuck with me, Nolan. Dollars or dinars?"

  "I think dollars."

  "Yes. I thought you would think that. You're paying your people in dollars?"

  "That's all they'll take, sir. The old dinar's a little shaky right now."

  Tucker made another note, tore off his duplicate copy, and put it in his top right-hand drawer. "This is going to audit," he repeated, then looked around Nolan and said, "Next!"

  3

  That night in his trailer's office, Jack Allstrong sipped scotch with Ron Nolan while they tossed a plastic-wrapped bundle of five hundred hundred-dollar bills-fifty thousand dollars-back and forth, playing catch. Allstrong's office, nice at it was, remained a sore point with him. This was because the main office of his chief competitor, Custer Battles ("CB"), was in one of the newly reburbished terminals. When Mike Battles had first gotten here two months before, he found that he'd inherited several empty shells of airport terminal buildings, littered with glass, concrete, rebar, garbage, and human waste. He had cleaned the place up, carpeted the floors, wallpapered (all of his supplies bought and shipped from the United States), put showers in the bathrooms, and hooked the place up to a wireless Internet connection.

  At about the same time, Jack Allstrong had had to start work on his trailer park to house his guards and cooks, although he still couldn't compete with such CB amenities as a swimming pool and a rec room with a pool table. Allstrong knew that these types of cosmetics would be important to help convince his clients that he was serious and committed to the long-term success of the mission, but he was initially hampered by lack of infrastructure and simple good help.

  But then that genius Kuvan Krekar had come up with the idea of dog kennels as another income source, and that was already working. Allstrong now had a decent number of the ministry people starting to believe that IED-and bomb-sniffing dogs would be an essential part of the rebuilding process in bases all over the country.

  So all in all, Jack was in high spirits for a variety of reasons: Kuvan was in fact interested in going in with them on their currency-exchange bid, which gave it immediate credibility and might make them the front runners over CB; the CPA was still paying them in dollars (which meant Allstrong could buy his own dinars to pay his local workers at the deeply discounted black-market exchange rate); the bomb-sniffing-dog revenue wasn't going to be stopped, at least in the short term, by bureaucrats like Charlie Tucker.

  The bottom line was that the two million dollars in cash that Nolan had retrieved today and carried here in his backpack covered approximately four hundred thousand dollars in the company's actual current expenses, including tips to Colonel Ramsdale and several other middlemen. Everyone was too busy and/or too afraid and the times were too chaotic for anyone to bother keeping close tabs on exactly what the money was used for, or exactly where it went. There was plenty of it, in cash, and the mandate was to get Iraq up and running again. Subtext: whatever it cost.

  For example, in the first month of the contract, Allstrong's trailer park had run out of drinking water within a week, a true crisis. Jack had gone to Ramsdale and told him he desperately needed to buy more water immediately, but that he was out of money, what with payroll, housing costs, legitimate security equipment, weapons, and vehicles such as armored Mercedes-Benz sedans, and all other daily supplies for his now close to 150-man staff. Without a personal look at the situation and apparently without a qualm, Ramsdale signed off on an authorization for Allstrong to add six hundred thousand dollars to the original sixteen-million-dollar contract over its six-month life-peanuts considering the fact that the contract as written already was paying Allstrong a little bit more than eighty-eight thousand dollars a day, all of it in cash.

  Allstrong had requested a total of a hundred thousand dollars from Ramsdale for the water, but the colonel had been so used to thinking in one-month units that he'd okayed six times the requested price, and Allstrong had seen no reason to correct him. And after all, the truth was that they were all working in an extremely hostile environment, where the danger of death was real and omnipresent. In Allstrong's view, that risk should not go without significant reward, even if much of it turned out to be under the table. It wasn't as though people like Ramsdale didn't know what was happening. In fact, Ramsdale was planning to retire from the active military before the year was out, and he'd already made a commitment to stay on in Iraq as one of Alls
trong's senior security analysts at a salary of $240,000 per year.

  Standing over by his wall map, Allstrong caught the latest toss of the packet of bills from Nolan and turned it over in his hands. "So." It wasn't a question. It wasn't an answer. The tone seemed to say, I'm holding on to fifty thousand dollars in cash, when last year I was flat broke. He smiled. "How sweet is this, huh, Ron?"

  "Yes, sir." Nolan tipped up his scotch. "It's turning out to be a good year."

  "Yes, it is." Allstrong crossed over to his desk, casually flipping the wrapped bills package over to Nolan. "And I think it could be even better, but I'm leery of burning out my best assets, which are men like you. No, no, no, don't give me any of that false modesty bullshit. I send you out to do a job and you get the job done. It's not every guy in the world can walk around with two million dollars and not be tempted to disappear with it."

  This was more than just idle chatter. That exact temptation, though for far less money-a quarter of a million dollars-had proven too strong for at least one of Allstrong's other senior employees in the past two months. Beyond that, almost two dozen of his first crew of guard hires-from pre-Kuvan sources-had disappeared with guns and credentials almost as soon as they'd been issued them.

  But Ron Nolan merely shrugged. "You pay me well, Jack. I like the work. It's nice to get a regular paycheck. Beyond which"-he broke his own smile-"I disappear with two million of your money, I'm pretty sure you'd hunt me down and kill me."

  Allstrong pointed a finger at him. "You're not all wrong there. Nothing personal."

  "No, of course not."

  Allstrong put a haunch on the corner of his desk. "What I'm getting at is whether you're starting to feel stretched a little thin."

  "No, I'm good."

  "I ask because another opportunity has come up-I know, they're growing on trees nowadays, but if I don't pick 'em somebody else will. Anyway, I wanted to run it by you, see if you wanted to take point on it. I should tell you, I consider it pretty high risk, even for here."

  "Taking a walk over here is high risk, Jack."

  "Yes, it is. But this is in the Sunni Triangle."

  Nolan tossed the package up and caught it. He shrugged. "What's the gig?"

  "Pacific Safety-Rick Slocum's outfit, he's tight with Rumsfeld-just pulled in a contract through the Corps of Engineers to rewire the whole goddamn Triangle in three months. High-voltage wiring and all the towers to hold it. You ready for this? He's going to need seven hundred guards for his people."

  Nolan whistled. "Seven hundred?"

  "I know. A shitload. But I'm sure Kuvan can get 'em."

  "I'm sure he can too. You gotta love them Kurds."

  "Who doesn't? So…you want to hear the numbers?"

  "Sure," Nolan said. "I haven't had a good hard-on in a couple of days." With the wrapped bills in one hand and his tumbler of scotch in the other, he got up and crossed over to Allstrong's desk.

  His boss pulled over the adding machine and started punching and talking. "Let's assume two hundred a month for the guards, what we're paying now. Good? We've got seven hundred guys working for ninety days, that's four hundred twenty thousand. Plus food and ammo and other incidentals. Let's go wild and call that twenty bucks a man per day, so forty-two grand. Shooting high, call our whole expense five hundred grand. Slocum told me off the record that because of the high risk in the area, he expects the winning bid to come in at no less than twelve mil. Which is exactly what I'm going to bid it at and which, if you're doing your math"-he hit the calculator-"is a three-month profit of eleven million five hundred thousand dollars."

  "I've definitely got wood," Nolan said.

  "So you're in if we get it?"

  "All the way, Jack. We'd be crazy not to."

  "I agree. But I'm not sugarcoating it. I'm thinking we might lose a dozen guys. I'm talking dead, not deserted or disappeared."

  "Okay."

  "There'd be a significant bonus in it for you. Twenty a month sound good?"

  "When do I start?"

  "First, let's get the gig. But remember, I want you to be sure you're good with it. You'll have your bare ass hanging out there."

  "And seven hundred guys guarding it, Jack. Can I bring my escorts? I like that guy Scholler. He runs a tight ship."

  "I'll talk to Calliston, but I can't imagine there'd be any problem. He doesn't even know who those guys are."

  "Poor bastards."

  "Hey," Allstrong said, "they enlisted. What'd they expect?" He went around his desk and stood looking out the window at the airport outside. An enormous C-17 Globemaster III transport plane coasted by on the tarmac-several hundred more tons of supplies and equipment direct from the United States. Without turning around, he said, "So between now and then, what's your schedule look like?"

  "When exactly?"

  "Next couple of weeks."

  "Pretty free. I got the message out up at Anaconda and Tikrit. We've definitely got friends trying to hook us up in both places, but they've got to clear their own brass first. We might have to sub under KBR, but I got the sense they're generally open to us doing what we've done here. Whatever happens, it's going to take a little time. Why?"

  Now Allstrong did turn. "I'd like to send you back to the States for a week or two. Clean up some problems in the home office. I'd go myself, but I don't feel like I can leave here just now if we want to pick up these jobs we're talking about. You'd be back in plenty of time for the Triangle thing if that comes about. And after today, payroll's covered until next time."

  "What kind of problems?"

  "Well." Allstrong tipped up the last of his scotch. "I hired a private eye and he's found Arnold Zwick. The idiot went back home to Frisco." Zwick was the company's senior executive who'd disappeared with a quarter million dollars of Allstrong's money about six weeks before. "I'd kind of like to get my money back. I was hoping you could talk some sense into him. After that, take a little well-deserved R and R wherever you want to go. Sound good?"

  "When do you want me to leave?"

  "I can get you on a plane to Travis tomorrow morning."

  "Done."

  Allstrong broke a smile. "You know, Ron, I hate it when you take so long to make your decisions."

  "I know," Nolan said. "It's a flaw. I'm working on it."

  At his desk, Allstrong picked up a manila envelope and handed it across to Nolan. "If what's in that doesn't answer all your questions, I'll brief you further in the morning. Now you'd better go do some packing."

  "I'm gone."

  Nolan executed a brisk salute and whirled around. His hand was on the doorknob when Allstrong spoke behind him.

  "Aren't you forgetting something?"

  Nolan straightened up and turned around as he pulled the packet of bills out from under his jacket. He was smiling. "Oh, you mean this old thing?" He tossed it back to his boss. "Just seeing if you're paying attention, Jack, keeping you on your toes."

  "Pretty much always," Allstrong said.

  "I can see that. Catch you in the morning."

  Dear Tara-

  So today I got to walk through some of the mean streets of scenic Baghdad with this crazy guy, Ron Nolan, who didn't seem to know or care that we were in hostile territory. He's one of the security guys for Allstrong, which, you may remember from my last letter, if you're reading them, is the contracting firm that we've somehow gotten semipermanently attached to. I find it ironic, to say the least, that I'm supposed to be out protecting him. This guy needs protection like a duck needs a raincoat.

  It was too surreal. He's there to collect the company's payroll for this month. So I'm thinking we're going to go in someplace like a bank and get a check from Bremer's people that Allstrong can then go deposit in their bank. Wrong. They've got barbed wire and cement blocks set up in the hallway in front of this door. Nolan shows his ID to the Marine sergeant on duty with his whole platoon. The place is a fortress.

  Anyway, we pass the ID check-everybody knows Nolan-and they walk us into this t
iny internal room-no windows out to the hall, even. Stucco is still all over the floors from when the building was bombed in April. No drywall either. After Saddam left town, the looters came in and took everything, and I mean everything. Rebar out of the walls. Internal wiring. You wouldn't believe it. There's not a desk in the whole ministry building-everybody uses folding tables like you get at Wal-Mart. I wouldn't be surprised if we bought ' em from Wal-Mart and had 'em shipped over.

  Anyway, so we're in this small, dim, dirty room. Four lightbulbs. It's roughly a hundred and fifty degrees in there. And there's these two guys who take Nolan's papers, check 'em over, then disappear into what looks like a warehouse behind them. Ten minutes later, they're back with a shopping cart full of packages of hundred-dollar bills.

  I'm standing there thinking, They're kidding me, right? But they count out these forty wrapped bags of fifty thousand dollars each and-you won't believe this-Nolan signs off on the amount and together, counting them a second time, we load 'em all up into his backpack!

  Picture this. Nolan's got two million American dollars in cash in a backpack he's wearing, and we're walking out through this mob of not very friendly people in the lobby of the Republican Palace, and then we're back outside the Green Zone, strolling through the impoverished Baghdad streets that are crawling with citizens who make less than a hundred dollars a month and who really don't like us. Was I a little nervous? Is this guy out of his mind, or what? And I got the sense he was loving it.

  Long story short, a couple of blocks along through this really really crowded marketplace and finally we hooked back up with my guys in the convoy and made it out of town and back to the base here, where Jack Allstrong has supposedly got a huge safe-flown in from America, of course-bolted into the cement foundation under his office.

  Anyway, lots more to tell about some of the other insane elements of the economics of this place-all the cooks here at the base are Filipinos, and the actual guards out at the airport are from Nepal. We met a guy named Kuvan today who evidently supplies Allstrong with all these workers. Nolan tells me none of them make more than a hundred and fifty bucks a month, where he makes twenty thousand! He tells me that when I get done with my service here, I should volunteer to come back and work for Allstrong. Ex-American military guys make out like bandits here. You'd love it if I went that way, huh?