The Return Of Dog Team

by William W. Johnstone

  Whoever the marauders were, they would pray for death, Fadleel vowed. Once he’d caught up with them.

  Smugglers always thrive and prosper through collusion with the local authorities. In this case, Fadleel was acting as an agent, not of the local authorities, but of the supreme authority of the mullahs of the holy city of Qom and the lesser but still potent civil powers in Tehran. They wanted weapons to flow across the border into East Central Iraq. They wanted the weapons pipeline up and running. They were even providing the weapons. Tremendous profits were there for the gunrunners.

  “Let the Sunni dogs use them to bite the Crusaders with. When the time comes—and it will, soon—we Shia will shoot them down like the curs they are. But for now, let them use their fangs against the infidel and their lackeys.”

  So had said Captain Saq, head man of the Iranian border patrol guards in this district, explaining the rationale for trading with the enemy to Fadleel. Not that Fadleel needed convincing. He’d trade with anyone who could meet his price. Even the Americans—though his price to the unbelievers would be slightly astronomical, in the unlikely event that he’d ever be approached by the occupiers. Or was it so unlikely? Shadowy insurgent warfare made for strange alliances.

  Captain Sayed Saq was the key contact man in this area. He got the weapons from Tehran, supplying them to Fadleel and his cohorts and splitting the profits with them. Of course, he took the lion’s share, but that still left plenty to be shared among the smugglers.

  Fadleel was scrupulous in accounting for every dinar to his military senior partner. He was afraid of Saq and not afraid to show it. Saq liked it that way.

  The district smuggling clans had an up-and-down relationship with officialdom. Sometimes they were allowed to operate freely, so long as they made their payoffs. Other times, when politics were involved, the regime would make efforts to suppress the trade. At such times, Saq and his border squad could be supremely suppressive.

  For now, though, he and Fadleel were conducting a joint operation. Earlier that day, Saq had summoned the smuggling chief for a final preparatory meeting.

  Saq was a vigorous, athletic individual, a superb horseman who’d once been on the Iranian equestrian Olympics team. He was vain about his appearance. He’d once shot a man who’d sought to flatter him by comparing his looks to that of the international film star Omar Sharif, famed for playing Dr. Zhivago. Saq professed to be indignant that he, a Muslim believer, had been compared to the actor, a Christian Arab. In truth, he was flattered, but he’d shot the flatterer anyway, not fatally. Saq was prideful of his dark wavy hair, moist chestnut-brown eyes, and chiseled features.

  He was all business with Fadleel, though. His face set in a perpetual fierce scowl, he said, “Hamdi and Waleed’s Red Dome militiamen are putting pressure on the Americans. The more weapons they have, the more pressure. Tehran doesn’t want to see a letup of that pressure—no loosening of the thumbscrews by even a single turn. So the weapons flow must continue uninterrupted.”

  Fadleel said, “But who is attacking our shipments?”

  “That’s what I am asking you.”

  “It is a mystery. If I knew, I would wipe them and their posterity from the face of the earth,” Fadleel said solemnly.

  Saq said, “Find out.”

  Fadleel ventured a suggestion. “Might it not be Akkad?”

  “Ridiculous! He would lose greatly should the operation collapse. Besides, some of his men have been killed, too,” Saq said.

  “He would not be the first to spend a few men to gain much wealth.”

  Saq shook his head, his manner dismissive, scornful. “It’s not him. For certain reasons of state that need not concern you, I know for sure that his loyalty is unimpeachable.”

  Fadleel knew that Iraqi crime boss Akkad and Iranian border guard Saq were involved in more matters than were known to him, Fadleel. Deep matters that would be worth one’s life should one be caught looking into them. He shrugged.

  “One of Akkad’s men, then, going into business for himself,” he said.

  Saq nodded. “It’s possible.”

  “Or the militiamen. Why buy guns when they can just take them?”

  Saq said, “No. That would be the surest way to dry up the supply. The imam would never risk that.”

  “Perhaps he already has enough weapons,” Fadleel countered.

  “One can never have enough weapons, least of all Hamdi and Waleed, with their vaunting ambition. The swine,” Saq added.

  He went on, silkily, “Might not the raiders be from our side of the border?”

  Fadleel looked shocked at the idea. “Who would dare go against you?”

  “That is true, that is true,” Saq agreed, with no sense of irony or self-consciousness whatsoever.

  “Rest assured, whoever they are, we will find them and destroy them.”

  Saq held up a cautionary finger. “Until then, there can be no mishap, no interruptions.”

  Fadleel tried to project resolution. “Tonight, I will personally oversee the transfer.”

  “That is good,” Saq said. “And some of my men will go with you to protect both our interests.”

  Fadleel was uneasy at the idea of Saq’s armed patrolmen being present when a large amount of currency would be exchanged, but he kept his face blank and his misgivings to himself. He said easily, “No need to trouble yourself or your troops. My men are equal to the task.”

  “I never doubted it,” Saq said, showing off a dazzling, white-toothed smile. His teeth were all capped, like a movie star. “Still, my men will accompany you,” he added, a tone of finality sealing the fact that it was a done deal.

  Fadleel said, “As you wish.”

  “As I command,” Saq corrected. “Lieutenant Nasruddin will accompany you. My men can watch your men, and your men can watch my men, and they can both watch Akkad’s men.”

  “It is well.”

  So ended the meeting.

  But it was not well, not really, not at midnight in the wadi when the weapons transfer between Fadleel’s gunrunners and Akkad’s brigands was taking place. Not when Fadleel was so acutely conscious of being under the guns of Captain Saq’s men.

  Lieutenant Nasruddin commanded a crew of three Iranian border-patrol guards. They were the crew of a 4X4 light armored scout car that stood on a rise east of the wide place in the wadi and commanded a clear field of fire over it.

  The four-wheeled vehicle was low slung, lightweight, and minimally armored, more of a Fast Attack Vehicle than anything else. Part dune buggy, part armored car. Well armed, too. A rear gun turret was equipped with a minicannon and heavy machine gun.

  Lt. Nasruddin was thirty, thin, and wiry, with a shiny, blue-black mustache and goatee. His eyes were narrow, close set. He sat in the open-topped front passenger seat. It was a hot night, and it was cooler and more comfortable to leave the protective roofing plates open.

  A bored, gum-chewing driver sat beside him in the front compartment. The windshield and side windows were made of bulletproof glass.

  The raised gun turret was protected by metal shielding but was also partially open. The scout car could have been better zipped up behind its full array of armor plating, but that would turn the machine into an oven. Besides, the vehicle design sacrificed armor for speed, mobility, and fuel economy.

  A gunner sat in the cockpit, manning the guns. He was bareheaded, his helmet resting beside him on the curved, padded seat.

  A fourth trooper stood on the ground near the passenger side, holding an assault rifle at port arms. This man was Sgt. Maroof, Nasruddin’s personal bodyguard and executioner.

  Akkad’s men had come in two vehicles, a utility truck and a pickup truck. There were seven or eight of them. Half of them helped unload the weapons crates from the gunrunners’ trucks and load them into the gang’s trucks. The others stood watch, armed, alert, ready. The same proportion of loaders to gun-toters held among the smugglers.

  The recent round of shootings and ambushes had lef
t all the players keyed up, on edge, the gang members perhaps more so, because they were so obviously outgunned by the Iranian border patrol contingent.

  Fadleel was down on the wadi floor, flanked by his enforcer, Khargis, a bull of a man with curly black hair topping a thick-featured, lumpy, black-bearded face. They stood by themselves off to one side of the trucks, out of the way from where the work was being done.

  Khargis muttered into his beard, “I don’t like having that pig Nasruddin at our backs.”

  Fadleel said, “What can he do?”

  “Kill us and take all the money and the guns.”

  Fadleel’s humorless laugh echoed hollowly. “He does what Saq tells him to do.”

  Khargis frowned, glowering, eyes shifting from side to side. “Who trusts Saq?”

  “Tehran.”

  “Who trusts them?”

  “Enough,” Fadleel said, meaning that the discussion was at an end. He didn’t trust Tehran either, but why go there? Whatever happened, happened. It was Fate.

  The night was dark, but the wadi was lit by the soft glow of the parking lights from the different vehicles. Beyond the zone of light in the wide part of the wadi, the gully’s rock walls were black against the charcoal gray of the overcast sky. About half the contraband had been transferred from the gunrunners’ trucks to the buyers’ vehicles.

  Fadleel and Khargis met with Jafar Akkad, Hassani’s younger brother. Jafar was oxlike, sly eyed. He handed Fadleel a briefcase filled with cash.

  “We pay in good, old-fashioned American dollars,” Jafar said.

  Fadleel appreciated the irony, smiling with his lips. “If the dollar sinks any lower, we’ll insist on being paid in euros or Saudi riyals.”

  “How about Iraqi Interim Government money?”

  Fadleel chuckled politely. Khargis said, “That currency will soon be as worthless as money with Saddam Hussein’s picture on it. Good only for wiping your ass with.”

  It was an insult for an Iranian to speak derisively of an Iraqi leader, even (or especially) a deposed despot of the Saddam variety. Jafar’s face stiffened, but he chose to let the remark pass. A pillar of the Akkad crime family never lets personal feelings interfere with profit. So Jafar told himself.

  He indicated the scout car. “Do you fear us so much?”

  Khargis stepped forward. “I fear only Allah!”

  Jafar’s expression remained blandly unimpressed. His eyes and lips turned up at the corners. “Perhaps it’s there to watch you as much as us,” he said.

  Fadleel made little warding motions with his fingertips, as if shooing away the thought. “Some well-meaning friends merely wish to assure that we can continue our trade without fear of interlopers. A defensive measure, nothing more.”

  Jafar said, “So?”

  Fadleel took the briefcase into the light from the trucks and began counting the money packs, brick by brick.

  Jafar said, “It’s all there.”

  “Of that I have no doubt,” Fadleel said, with complete insincerity. “I trust you implicitly. But it is not a matter of trust. I must answer to others who do not know you as well as I, and to them I must account for every last penny. Do I protest that your men open every crate to inspect what was inside them?”

  “This is how business is done,” Jafar said offhandedly.

  “My point exactly.”

  Fadleel had the ability to keep up a conversation while simultaneously counting cash and never losing track of the amount. “There are many fine new rifles and thousands of rounds of ammunition. There are grenades and plastic explosives enough for you to open the gates of hell in Azif.”

  “This is well and good,” Jafar said, “but we’d like to move on to something bigger.”

  “Who wouldn’t?”

  “Tank- and armor-piercing shells. Artillery. Katyusha rockets. Stinger missiles to bring down crusader aircraft.”

  Fadleel said, “If and when such hard-to-find hardware should become available, we will let you know. For now, I’m sure you’ll make good use of what we have to offer.”

  “Indeed,” said Jafar.

  Fadleel finished counting the money. He closed the briefcase lid and locked it. “It’s all there. Not that I ever doubted it, of course.”

  Jafar’s smile was openly mocking. “Of course.”

  The deal was done.

  Lt. Nasruddin was chain-smoking cigarettes. A half a pack’s worth of butts littered the ground beside where he sat in the scout car. He didn’t offer any smokes to his men.

  He was something of a dandy, with a eyebrow mustache and a custom-tailored khaki uniform. He watched the transfer, not bothering to hide his boredom.

  His second-in-command, Sgt. Maroof, was a bodybuilder with a powerful physique. Bulging biceps swelled out of the shirtsleeves of his khaki shirt. He had an inky walrus mustache and held a short, stubby machine gun with a folding metal frame stock.

  He stood beside the scout car, leaning an elbow on the top of the passenger side door. Lt. Nasruddin frowned at the familiarity, but Maroof was oblivious, having eyes only for the transaction taking place down on the flat.

  “The money’s in that suitcase, eh?” he breathed, sounding like a pervert panting his way through an obscene phone call. His eyes were small, hot. “Look at that pig Fadleel with all that money.”

  Resting a beefy forearm on the top of the door, he loomed over Nasruddin. The lieutenant touched the tip of his lit cigarette to Maroof’s hairy forearm, burning him.

  Maroof swore, jumping back. The smell of scorched hair and singed flesh hung in the air. “Ow! What did you do that for?”

  “Covetousness is a sin,” Nasruddin said calmly. The cigarette he’d ground into the other’s arm had gone out. He flicked it away and took out another cigarette, lighting it with an expensive solid gold lighter. The yellow flame burned with a hissing sound.

  Maroof rubbed his arm where it had been burned. He was careful to keep his face blank and his resentment to himself, but his dark eyes were sultry in a stiff face.

  Nasruddin turned his attention to the transaction in the wadi. It was almost done; the last of the crates were being loaded into the Akkad gang’s trucks. He was happy to stay where he was, sitting in the scout car and smoking. He was in no mood for anything so strenuous as going down the wadi to look over Fadleel’s shoulder and verify the money count. It wasn’t worth scuffing the finish on his coal black, spit-shined combat boots (and not his spit, either). The money would either all be there, or it wouldn’t.

  “If Fadleel has sticky fingers, his hands will be cut off,” Nasruddin said to himself.

  Maroof edged away, drifting into the darkness.

  “Where are you going?” Nasruddin demanded

  Maroof said, “Road call.”

  “Oh.” Even Nasruddin couldn’t crab about that. When you gotta go, you gotta go. He didn’t think of it in those terms, exactly, but the sentiment was the same.

  The big man moved off to one side of the knoll, by a heap of waist-high boulders. Nasruddin and the others looked elsewhere.

  Maroof faced the rocks, his back to the scout car. He needed his hands free. He looked around for a place to set his machine gun. He placed it on the flat top of a boulder to his right. He unbuttoned his pants and urinated into the weeds. He murmured, “Ahh . . .”

  He finished, buttoning up. When he looked up, his machine gun was gone. The look of bewilderment on his face was almost comical, but not to him.

  He assumed it had slid off the top of the rock and fallen down the other side. Funny he hadn’t heard it fall, though. Good thing it hadn’t gone off; the lieutenant would have chewed him up alive if that had happened. It wouldn’t have been too good to have a gun go off with all these excitable and heavily armed smugglers and gang members about, either.

  He’d better secure that gun, though, and quick. Resting a hand on the rock, he leaned over it, peering into the darkness on the other side.

  Behind the rock was a mass of inky blackness
and what looked like another boulder. But it wasn’t inert stone; it was moving, alive.

  For an instant, Maroof was stupefied. Was this some djinn or ghoul, some evil spirit of the night?

  It was a man, crouched down and hiding behind the rock. A black man. It was Vang Bulo, although Maroof didn’t know that. Vang Bulo, who’d crept up to the knoll stealthily unobserved. He wore loose-fitting dark clothing and held a knife in one hand.

  He reached up with his free hand, grabbing Maroof’s shirtfront and pulling him down. The knife thrust up to meet him, burying itself deep in his belly. The Ugandan gave the knife a twist. The shock paralyzed Maroof, rendering him unable to cry out.

  Vang Bulo pulled him the rest of the way, headfirst over the rocks and down to the ground, cradling him in his massive arms to stifle any noise. He lay Maroof flat on his back as carefully as a mother laying an infant in its cradle.

  He cut Maroof’s throat, a deep slash of the knife that severed the windpipe. It was done with neatness and dispatch, with a minimum of noise or fuss.

  On the wadi floor, the last crate had been loaded in the gang’s trucks. The gang members piled into them. Engines started, raucous in the studied silence of the place. The utility truck drove away, disappearing into the westward branch of the wadi. It was followed by the pickup truck, whose riders kept their weapons pointed toward the gunrunners.

  At the same time, a small commotion erupted in the rear of the scout car. The sound was muffled by the engine noise of the Akkad gang’s trucks.

  The gunner in the turret bowed, slamming into the machine gun and its stand, collapsing on the cramped, circular metal plate floor. He lay motionless, not even twitching.

  The impact of his fall rocked the scout car on its springs. Nasruddin and the driver were jarred in their seats. They turned around, peering into the obscurity at the rear of the vehicle.

  Behind the back of the scout car stood a man pointing a gun at them. Kilroy.