The Return Of Dog Team

by William W. Johnstone

  Some rooftop spotters fired off rounds in the general direction of the now-distant gunship. Figures emerged from the sidelines into the open. They stood facing the direction in which the aircraft had flown. Their backs were to the western branch of the highway, so they didn’t notice the onrushing SUV until it was almost upon them. Their shouts and shots had served to drown out the sound of its approach.

  The vehicle slowed, weaving around some potentially axle-busting potholes cratering the pavement. It swerved to avoid a wagon wheel that lay in the middle of the road like some absurd relic of old Wild West days.

  It was a donkey cart wheel. Two-wheeled wooden donkey carts were in wide use throughout Iraq, not only in the outlying rural areas, but even in the cities, including Baghdad. That made them a popular choice as bomb-delivery vehicles.

  That was what happened here. A donkey cart loaded with explosives had stood at the crossroads, waiting for the target—the convoy—to arrive. But for some reason or another, the cart had been delayed until all but the last truck in line had already driven to safety.

  The bomber had probably used a cell phone to detonate the IED, or improvised explosive device. That was military jargon for a bomb. The Red Dome Mosque militia was partial to cell-phone detonators. They’d picked up the trick from Al Qaeda bombmasters who were working with the Sunni insurgency. For balance, the Shiite insurgents were getting their lessons in advanced terrorism from experts sent by Tehran.

  The blast had punched the side of the truck, splitting it open at the seams. The cab had accordioned, pulping its occupants. The gas tank had ruptured, blown, and burned. Tires had melted into pools of molten rubber.

  The SUV closed in on the crossroads. It was about thirty yards away when the militiamen first noticed it. Most of those out on the roadway were militiamen, and even those who weren’t were armed. They were grouped in a loose arc around the wreck, standing between the SUV and the open road east out of town.

  They turned around, leveling their weapons, trying to get them into play. Kilroy didn’t give them any time to do that. He stepped on the gas. The SUV picked up speed, bulleting toward them. Contact was imminent, a matter of split seconds.

  The militiamen broke and scattered to avoid the oncoming vehicle. Their shouts of surprise and outrage were clearly audible to the pair in the SUV, even through the bulletproof glass and over the noise of the engine. For a moment, the scene seemed frozen into a snapshot. Militiamen goggled, their mouths gaping. Kilroy was able to make out individual faces.

  Among them was a man in a yellow turban. He wore round glasses and a beard, and was short and stocky. He ran to the side, short stumpy legs working as he dashed to safety. Kilroy had the crazy feeling he’d seen him before but couldn’t place him. Besides, things were moving too fast.

  Ahead, a youth in a red and white–checked kaffiyeh head scarf raised a rifle to his shoulder and pointed it at Kilroy in the driver’s seat. He was slight and thin faced, with hollow eyes, sunken cheeks, and a wispy beard.

  It was too late for the youth to shoot. He had time only to throw down the rifle and dive to the right of the oncoming vehicle, throwing himself into a ditch. The SUV’s right front bumper brushed against the tail of his coat before he was clear.

  The militiamen had cleared the way, but the road ahead was littered with debris, including some tub-sized scraps of twisted metal that glowed a dull red. Kilroy swerved to avoid them. Tires squealed. SUVs run toward top-heaviness and have a tendency to tip on too-tight curves. This vehicle was heavier than most, and with special fittings. Kilroy held his breath as all four wheels stayed on the asphalt.

  The road was open. The SUV accelerated. Some militiamen fired at its fleeing form. A jackhammer pounding stitched the vehicle’s rear, hot rounds foiled by the vehicle’s armor plating. The SUV had been customized for Iraqi motoring. Armor plate and bulletproof glass, with the chassis and frame specially reinforced to bear the load. Heavy-duty springs and shocks. Hidden gunports in the sides and rear. Solid tires, puncture proof, bullet immune. The engine was a turbocharged beast, a massive mill of high-velocity horsepower.

  Kilroy punched the accelerator, and the SUV zoomed forward. More militiamen were firing at it, but their rounds ranged far wide of the target. Bursts sounded, none hitting, sleeting harmlessly through the air.

  A tree stood south of the roadside, a stunted one whose branches formed a gnarly, spiky canopy. Snagged in the middle of it was a donkey’s severed head and neck.

  “A waste of a perfectly good jackass,” Kilroy said. “I get the same feeling myself sometimes.”

  The SUV barreled east, toward Greentown, a fortified Coalition compound several miles farther down the road.

  Kilroy, uneasy, said, “Did you see that guy in the yellow turban? I think that was Waleed Tewfiq—”

  “The militia chief himself? I doubt it,” Vang Bulo said.

  “A yellow turban is supposed to be one of his trademarks.”

  “There are lot of yellow turbans around.”

  “I only caught a glimpse, but it sure looked like him.”

  “Too bad you didn’t run him down.”

  “I would’ve, if I’d recognized him in time,” Kilroy said. He seemed downcast.

  Vang Bulo tried to accent the positive. “There’s always another time.”

  Kilroy said, “The next time I see him, I’ll shoot his ass.”

  Two

  Kilroy and Vang Bulo stayed east on the highway, passing Greentown and continuing on to Border Base Foxtrot. A line of brown foothills stretched north-south along the eastern horizon, marking the Iraq/Iran border. The terrain marked the difference between the two countries. The land on the Iraq side was mostly flat. The foothills signaled the advent of the more rugged, hilly Iranian landscape.

  The highway continued eastbound, edging the foothills, terminating at a gap that provided a natural corridor between the regions. The gap had been dynamited during the run-up to the Gulf War between the two countries, filling the pass with countless tons of rubble and sealing it off from incursions by either side.

  The main pass was destroyed, but the hills were threaded with a number of smaller valleys, clefts, and gorges providing access to either side. The area had been a haunt of smugglers and bandits since the days of the Babylonian Empire.

  The locale where Border Base Foxtrot was sited had been an Iraqi army outpost under Saddam Hussein. It was close enough to the border to keep an eye on it, but far enough to be out of range of sniper, mortar, or rocket fire from the hills.

  The Coalition used the base for the same reason Saddam had: to monitor both sides of the border. Iran’s ambition to possess atomic weapons had ratcheted up the tension between itself and the West. Iran had a large pool of sympathizers among the Iraqi Shiites.

  Foxtrot was a border station, tasked to watch both sides of the border and suppress the movement of weapons and fighters across it. Should Iran ever decide to make an incursion into Iraq at this key corridor, the base would be a frontline bulwark against the onslaught.

  The base sat on a low rise several hundred yards south of the highway. A gravel road connected highway and base. The ground surrounding the base was open and flat, with little cover and few places for ambushers to lurk. This fact helped minimize mortar and rocket attacks from insurgents, hazards from which few coalition bases were exempt.

  The outpost was well fortified behind concentric rings of ever-stiffer defenses. It was bounded by alternating layers of barbed wire and metal chain-link fences. The inner redoubt was ringed by high, concrete slab antiblast barriers designed to withstand car and truck suicide bombers. Watchtowers equipped with heavy-duty machine guns covering all angles of approach stood at all four corners of the site.

  Foxtrot housed several combat infantry and light cavalry units and a helicopter base, all ready to respond swiftly to action on the border or in Azif and Quusaah. It was a lot to cover, and the facility was overstretched, but they did the job with what they had. They were
results oriented.

  The tan SUV carrying Kilroy and Vang Bulo arrived at the base in late afternoon. It had to pass through a series of checkpoints.

  It halted at the main gate, which was manned by a squad of military police. A senior MP came around to the driver’s side of the SUV.

  Kilroy lowered the window. Heat came pouring in. He presented his and Vang Bulo’s IDs, authorization papers, and clearances. They were heavily credentialed, with all kinds of top-priority clearances and total-access passes.

  The MP gave them a close inspection, then radioed base security for verification. Security certified that the newcomers were okay. The MP returned the documents. The gates opened, and he waved the SUV through.

  Indicating it to another MP, he said, “There go a couple of heavyweights.”

  “I’ll say! I don’t know about the driver, but that black guy weighed three hundred pounds if he’s an ounce,” the other said.

  The senior MP gestured impatiently. “What I mean is that those two have some major juice for a pair of civilians. Those clearances were authorized by the top brass in country.”

  The other was unimpressed. “That don’t mean much. There are lots of civilians with plenty of clout walking around in Iraq today. Private security contractors, bureaucrats, businessmen, reconstruction effort officials—”

  “Those two didn’t look like bureaucrats,” the first said. “They looked like action men.”

  “They came to the right place.”

  The SUV proceeded through a series of checkpoints before entering the base proper. A wide open central area was ringed by an armory, a motor pool, administrative and staff headquarters buildings, barracks, a mess hall, and a training area. Some of the buildings were solid masonry construction left over from the Saddam era. They gave the base a more solid, permanent feel, as compared to other bases, where the structures were mostly tents put up by the Coalition.

  The scene had that air of purposeful activity typical of a combat zone outpost. And although the Iraq war had been officially declared won and over several years ago, make no mistake—Iraq was still a combat zone. This time, the name of the game was counterinsurgency warfare.

  The SUV pulled over to the side, out of the way of ongoing operations. Kilroy and Vang Bulo got out. Kilroy held a clipboard under one arm. Vang Bulo got into the driver’s seat after first adjusting it to give himself some legroom. He drove the machine to the motor pool to give it a once-over to make sure that the Azif militiamen’s bullets hadn’t done any damage.

  Kilroy started across the parade ground on foot, angling toward the intelligence office. The sun was low in the west, a dull red-orange ball whose upper half was hidden by gray clouds streaking the horizon. It looked like it felt: hot, sullen. Long shadows slanted across the landscape.

  The intelligence office was housed in a canvas tent. The senior officer on duty was Captain Bricker. His face was long, narrow and squared off at the hairline and jawline. He was well named, thought Kilroy, since his face was shaped like a brick standing on its short end.

  Bricker wore thick, square-rimmed glasses. His desk looked like an oversized card table, and he sat on a metal folding chair. Power cords and cables snaked across the floor, bundled at junction boxes and USB multiport hub connectors. Electricity was supplied by a portable generator outside the tent.

  Kilroy reported on what he’d seen in Azif. It was not required of him. Bricker was nowhere in Kilroy’s chain of command and had no jurisdiction over him. He was outranked by Kilroy, too, although he didn’t know that, since the information was sealed away deep in the Army’s most above-top-secret recesses.

  All Bricker knew was that Kilroy had some major-league military connections and that he was not only authorized but required to assist him in any way possible, should Kilroy make such a request. That was all he needed to know. Bricker hadn’t become an intelligence officer by not knowing when not to ask questions.

  Kilroy gave a quick, brief verbal report of what he’d seen in Azif, minimizing his and Vang Bulo’s mad dash through town. He thought it was important, or at least useful, to pass along the information that he’d seen a man in a yellow turban who could have been Red Dome Mosque militia leader Waleed Tewfiq in the locale of the roadside bombing.

  Bricker showed real interest. “Waleed’s a major pain in the ass, and it’s been getting worse every day.”

  He opened a folder, laying it out on his desk. It contained a handful of glossy black-and-white photographs. He pushed one across the table to Kilroy, who picked it up and examined it. It was a head and shoulders shot showing a round-faced bearded man with glasses and a dark-colored turban. He was squinting and scowling.

  Kilroy said, “I only got a glimpse, but that looks like him. On the other hand, you see a lot of guys who look like that running around in Azif.”

  “It probably was him,” Bricker said. “He turns up at a lot of terror scenes. He’s careful to avoid being directly linked to them, though.”

  Kilroy nodded. “I just thought I’d pass the information along, give you a heads-up.”

  “And we appreciate it, Mr. Kilroy.”

  Kilroy returned the photo to the other. Bricker slipped it back in the file, closed the folder, and rose.

  “I’ll notify the appropriate persons that Waleed was observed at the scene,” Bricker said. “Not that it’ll do much good. He’ll be long gone. Probably hiding out at the mosque. He’s safe there. Still, who knows? He might be hanging around at the bomb site, trying to whip up a crowd against our guys.”

  Kilroy pushed back his chair and stood up. “One more thing. I didn’t stick around to take too close a look, but it seemed like the militiamen were sporting a lot of firepower. Those weapons looked new, too.”

  Bricker nodded, tilting his head so that reflected light shone off his glasses, making them opaque. “The Iranians are shipping them across the border. Times past, they only sold guns to their Iraqi Shiite counterparts, but no more. In the last few months, they’ve been selling them to the Sunnis, too.”

  “Imam Hamdi at the Red Dome Mosque is no friend of Iran—or the Shia,” Kilroy pointed out.

  Bricker said, “Neither is Waleed Tewfiq. They hate the Shiites, and vice versa. But both sides are willing to overlook their age-old animosities and work together when it comes to killing us. Tehran would like to see an armed Sunni uprising against the Coalition. That way, Iran wins no matter what. The more slaughter on both sides, the better for them—and the Shiite government they figure will ultimately take power in Iraq.”

  Kilroy said casually, “I’ve heard things are pretty hairy up in the hills on the border. Lots of shootouts and ambushes between gunrunning gangs.” He’d more than heard it, he knew it for a fact, because for the last two weeks he and Vang Bulo had been making night raids into the hills, stirring up trouble. He’d made the remark to see if he could fish up any new information.

  Bricker was tight around the mouth. “The border is forbidden territory for us—the Coalition, that is. Our troops are not allowed to cross the border. Or even get too close to it, for fear that they might get fired on from the hills and create an international incident.”

  He made a pushing gesture, as if warding something away, like a cat pushing away a bowl of food it finds unappealing. He went on, “There’s been some vicious firefights up there recently. Several gunrunners have been robbed and killed. Some kind of a turf war between smuggling gangs, we think.”

  Kilroy said, “Maybe the militiamen got tired of paying for weapons and decided to just take them.”

  Bricker shook his head. “Nobody kills the goose that lays the golden eggs. Besides, Waleed is tight with Hassani Akkad.”

  “Akkad? The local Al Capone?”

  “He’s that and more,” Bricker said. “Leader of the biggest criminal gang in the province. Gunrunning, kidnapping, smuggling, murder, you name it and he deals in it. Akkad’s connected on both sides of the border. He’s the middleman between the Iranian gunrunners
and the militiamen. We’d sure like to get our hands on him.”

  Kilroy said, “If I hear tell of him, I’ll let you know.”

  “If you hear tell of him, run. He’s a bad man to mess with,” Bricker said.

  Kilroy looked suitably impressed. “Need me for anything else?”

  The other shook his head no, then reconsidered and looked up. “Not unless you’ve got something else to tell me.”

  “That’s all for today, Captain.”

  Bricker paused, then said, “You’d be well advised to stay clear of the border area. It’s a hot zone there now. The migratory Bedouin tribals who graze their herds on both sides of the border have all cleared out. A man could get his head shot off just for sticking it up and taking a look around.”

  “You could say the same about Azif or Quusaah. Or Baghdad.”

  “Quite true, Mr. Kilroy.”

  “I’m careful about where I stick my head. It’s not much, but I’d like to keep it all in one piece.”

  Kilroy picked up his clipboard, said so long, and went out. He wondered how much Bricker knew or suspected. The intelligence officer was a bright guy. Bright enough to stay out of things that were above his pay grade. He had to know that Kilroy was more than merely an expediter for Mecury Transport Systems, his official cover. The high-powered clearances and authorizations carried by Kilroy gave him unlimited entrée to virtually all civil and military sites in Iraq.

  But Bricker knew nothing of the Dog Team or Kilroy’s role in it. Or did he? Dog Team data were disseminated solely on a need-to-know basis. For all Kilroy knew, Bricker could be a clandestine Dog Team operative under deep cover, so deep that Kilroy’s handlers thought it unnecessary to inform him of same. Which was only good sense: you can’t betray what you don’t know.

  Kilroy didn’t think Bricker was on the Dogs. He didn’t radiate that aura of the carnivore typical of action men. But he could be on the team—there was always that possibility. It was part of the wheels-within-wheels nature of clandestine service. You tended to see wheels even when there weren’t any. A hazard of the profession.