The colonel had kept Gonz’s business card and had decided to call him after Dr. Lami had asked for his help. Of course, being a good journalist, the colonel had wanted verification about the ricin. Gonz hadn’t wanted to confirm or deny anything, but in the end he and the colonel made a compromise: the colonel would be kept in the loop for the next twenty-four hours and could have the exclusive on the story at the end of that time period. But in the mean time, both Colonel K.C. and the Iraqi newspaper had to keep a lid on what was going on. The colonel had quickly agreed, saying that he would meet them at the newspaper offices.
McKay had been getting her Kevlar vest on when Gonz had told her she was staying put. He wanted her available should Ghaniyah call. She had argued her cell phone would work anywhere in Iraq, but Gonz then shared his concern that they might be walking into a deadly trap. He had made it clear that he wanted her around to finish the job if he and Heisman were taken out. Fearing for his safety and angry at being left behind, she had insisted that Gonz at least wear the LVD. With his microphone open, they would be able to have a live audible video feed.
Gonz had agreed and then immediately radioed for twelve Marines from the 2/5. Within thirty minutes, the dozen Marines, plus the two CIA men, were on their way.
Jadida, Iraq Sunday, April 16th 11:04 a.m.
Gonz and Heisman were shown into a spacious office where a small boy sat in the large leather chair staring at a computer monitor that displayed the standard Microsoft 3D flying objects as a screen saver. Before Gonz could say anything, an older man came in from behind, carrying a paper plate of food and a cup of water. He wore a Western style business suit, expensive leather shoes, and a pair of reading glasses perched on the end of his nose.
“Dr. Lami?” Gonz asked.
The newspaper owner gave him an embarrassed smile. “He didn’t get breakfast.” He looked at the boy and said, “Faris, these men are here to help.”
The boy slowly turned his attention away from the computer screen, but when he saw Heisman with his bulk and black skin, his eyes noticeably widened. He couldn’t stop staring.
“Faris..!” Dr. Lami scolded.
“Hi, Faris,” Heisman said in Arabic with a smile. “My name is Heisman.”
Faris continued to stare, clearly baffled. “Are you Arab?” the boy asked in Arabic.
“No. American.”
“American?”
“That’s right,” Heisman said with a wink. “Surprised you, eh?”
Anxious to get the mission under way, Gonz nodded for Dr. Lami to step outside the office with him.
Dr. Lami put a hand on the boy’s shoulder and, nodding toward the big black man, said, “Tell this man what you told me? Okay?”
Faris said to Heisman, “You have a funny accent.”
“Saudi Arabian,” Heisman told him. “You know where Saudi Arabia is?”
Faris slowly nodded, not taking his eyes off the big man.
Outside the office, Gonz closed the door behind Dr. Lami and quietly asked, “What can you tell me?”
The doctor immediately removed a small piece of paper from his inside jacket pocket. “This is the address.” The text was carefully written in both English and Arabic. “It is close. Five minutes by car. No more.”
“The colonel said the boy’s family is related to a man we were questioning. Adnan Hanjour?”
Dr. Lami nodded. “My photographer, one of my photographers, is his brother-in-law.”
“How many people are we talking about? How many people live there?”
“My photographer, his wife, and Faris.” Almost as an after thought, he added, “And a baby. They have a baby.”
“Okay.”
Dr. Lami gave Gonz a hard look and said, “Is it true? What the boy says? The insurgents are hunting for some stolen ricin?”
“We’re trying to track that down as we speak.”
Dr. Lami shuddered and pulled off his glasses, cleaning them with a handkerchief. “And this man’s connection?”
“I have every reason to believe he is innocent. But he is in danger. That’s why we had him in custody.”
“Because of the missing ricin?”
Gonz nodded. “Right.” Changing the subject he asked, “You been to the house? Seen the layout?”
“No, sorry. But Colonel K.C. has. Faris can help, of course.”
Gonz nodded. He looked through the glass to Heisman and the boy. The ex-football player was leaning across the desk pointing to something as Faris sketched a diagram on a piece of paper.
“The colonel should be here momentarily,” Dr. Lami said.
“We don’t have time,” Gonz explained, feeling suddenly tense. “Excuse me.” He opened the office door and looked at Heisman. “Ready?”
Heisman nodded and grabbed the drawing. “We’re a go.” He turned to the boy and said in Arabic, “We’ll see you in a little bit, okay?”
The boy numbly nodded, staring after the large black man as he quickly walked away.
MP-5, The Green Zone, Baghdad, Iraq Sunday, April 16th 11:18 a.m.
McKay eagerly watched the monitor. She could tell Gonz was jogging now as the video bounced up and down. In front of him, two Marines were leading the way down the alley. The audio picked up the men’s heavy breathing and rustling of their thirty-plus pounds of gear. To her ears it sounded like an elephant stampede, and she worried that al Mudtaji’s men could already hear them coming.
Peterson sat entrenched in front of the monitor, nervously biting a fingernail. The video image abruptly came to a halt, and the view changed to show a Marine across the small alley, down on one knee, his assault rifle at his shoulder, ready. Suddenly the two-way radio on the desk squawked. Then they heard Gonz’s whisper. “Marco Polo 5, you read me?”
McKay snatched up the radio. “Five by five, Gonz.”
“Nothing to report?” Gonz asked. McKay knew he was asking if they had a lead on Ghaniyah’s whereabouts.
“Negative.”
“Roger, MP-5. We’re going in.”
“Roger that,” McKay said.
Gonz’s arm appeared on screen as he directed the men into position.
McKay anxiously watched the monitor, chewing on her lower lip.
Then her cell phone rang.
Chapter Twenty-Three
MP-5, The Green Zone, Baghdad, Iraq Sunday, April 16th 11:21 a.m.
“Ghaniyah?” McKay anxiously asked as she answered her cell phone without looking at the display to see the caller I.D. Instead, her eyes were riveted to Peterson’s computer monitor.
“Dr. McKay?” a man’s voice asked.
She was momentarily taken back to hear a strange man’s voice on the other end. “Yes,” she cautiously answered, as she watched a Marine kneel on the ground before a wood fence that she presumed surrounded the small patio area of the target house. She could see him peek through a hole in the wood. Gonz turned around, and McKay could see a Marine perched on the roof across the alley. He was in sniper position.
“Chadwick at Langley. You still got a live feed on?”
McKay didn’t like the caller’s tone and replied crisply, “That’s right.”
“We lost our connection. We need you to reboot using channel Delta, Bravo, Eight. Repeat, channel Delta, Bravo, Eight.”
McKay quickly relayed the message to Peterson who seemed to be happy to do something other than watch his monitor. After a few keystrokes he said, “Patch in place.”
McKay repeated, “Patch in place.”
“I’m not getting it...” The CIA man irritably reported.
McKay sighed. She knew the protocol allowed Langley to get a live feed whenever a CIA agent used an LVD, a Localized Video Display, but she hardly thought the suits back in Washington D.C. could help Gonz and Heisman right now. And she didn’t like the interruption.
“Should be there,” Peterson said, looking over his shoulder at her.
“You should have it,” McKay impatiently echoed as she saw the patio’s back gate slowly open. Gonz�
��s hand on the latch. He was going in first.
“Okay, okay. We’re on.” With that the caller had hung up.
McKay snapped the phone shut. “They’re back on,” she told Peterson.
Gonz slowly stepped inside the patio, and she could see exactly what he saw – a masked gunmen just inside the open sliding glass door. His machine gun aimed right at Gonz.
Jadida, Iraq Sunday, April 16th 11:22 a.m.
Gonz fired at the masked man at the same time that a series of shots rang out from inside the house. He felt a thunderous blast hit him in the chest as he was blown off his feet.
He lay on his back, staring up at the blue sky interspersed with telephone lines. He had no idea if he hit the terrorist or not. All he knew for sure was that he couldn’t seem to breathe.
MP-5, The Green Zone, Baghdad, Iraq Sunday, April 16th 11:22 a.m.
“Oh, God,” Peterson moaned. The screen showed only the sky which meant Gonz was down, face up on the ground.
McKay didn’t say a word. Her hands clasped over her mouth and nose, she stared at the monitor with a strange emotional detachment. She coldly reasoned that Gonz had two things working in his favor: there was a medic with the assault team and he was wearing a flak jacket. But where had he been hit? The stomach? The head?
Suddenly Heisman’s face filled the screen. He was obviously leaning over Gonz. A concerned look on his face. “Fuckin’ A!” Heisman moved off screen and they heard him yell, “Go! Go! Go!”
There was more yelling, the words incomprehensible. McKay and Peterson waited for what seemed like an eternity. Then Heisman appeared again. Looking right at the camera.
“Hey man, you okay?” they heard Heisman ask.
“Fuck,” Gonz moaned.
Peterson’s face lit up as he turned to her. “He’s okay..! You hear that? He’s okay!”
Jadida, Iraq Sunday, April 16th 11:28 a.m.
“Clear!” Gonz heard a Marine call out from inside the house.
“Clear!” another shouted.
“Hey! Got vitals here!” yet another Marine yelled.
Gonz struggled to sit up. “Vitals” meant someone was alive. He yanked his Army jacket up to his neck so he could see his flak jacket underneath. The bullet was embedded just below his heart which explained why he had had the air knocked out of him.
“Okay?” Heisman asked.
“Just dandy,” Gonz grumbled.
“Probably got a broken rib or two.”
“Damn.”
“Hey, you’re better off than our friend in there.” Heisman grinned. Gonz strained to get up, and Heisman suddenly picked him up in one easy motion. He kept a protective arm around Gonz who swayed on his feet for a moment.
Standing on the patio, Gonz could now see that the insurgent was indeed dead, his body sprawled just inside the opened glass door.
“Sniper shot, by the look of it,” Heisman said.
“Got some vitals!” a voice bellowed again.
Gonz quickly moved inside the house, every breath feeling like hundreds of needles were being driven into his ribs. Heisman was right behind him. A Marine near the kitchen nodded toward a hallway. “Down there.”
As they headed down the narrow corridor, suddenly they heard a baby wail. A moment later Gonz and Heisman entered the modest master bedroom. A man and women sat on the edge of the bed. The woman was tenderly holding a toddler whose legs were crudely tied together with rope as she gently peeled away the last of the duct tape from the toddler’s cheek. The baby had obviously been gagged and was screeching in protest as the tape was painfully removed. The shirtless man next to her sat slumped over, his face bruised and bleeding. He had evidently been pistol whipped. The team’s medic was tending to his wounds.
“Can you tell us what happened?” Heisman asked in Arabic.
The woman glanced up, clearly surprised to be addressed in her native tongue by a black man. The fear in her eyes was clearly evident. “My son,” she replied loudly over the baby’s screams. “Faris. He’s only nine and–”
“He’s fine,” Heisman quickly told her. “He’s fine. He’s at the newspaper office.”
The Iraqi man gave Heisman a surprised look as his wife closed her eyes in relief, tears now streaming down her face.
“Can you tell us what happened?” Heisman asked.
“They came in...” The woman explained. “Four of them... They wanted my brother...”
“Adnan,” Heisman said.
She gave him a surprised look, then nodded. “They think he and Ghaniyah have something they want.” The baby continued a high-pitched bawl as the woman rocked him in her arms. Heisman could see ropes burns on her wrists.
“Where’s Adnan?”
“I don’t know... I don’t know... He came here... He tried to get all the men to go with him. He told the men that he would have it soon... But they tied us up. Taped our mouths.” Choking back a sob, she looked down at the baby who was crying loudly. “Even Badr...” She glanced up at Heisman. “What kind of people are they? To do that to a baby?”
“Where’s your brother, ma’am?”
“We don’t know,” her husband hotly answered. “He doesn’t have anything to do with this! He’s innocent!”
“We know that,” Heisman calmly replied. “We know that. But we need to find him.”
“They left,” Daneen explained, putting a reassuring hand on Maaz’s arm. “Adnan went with three of them. One stayed here. The leader, a man with a sword, he told Adnan he would have us killed if Adnan didn’t... if he didn’t... do as they say...”
Heisman turned to Gonz and quickly translated. After a moment, Gonz turned to a nearby Marine. “Check the body. Look for a pager. Or cell phone. Some way of communicating.”
“Got it,” the Marine said, quickly exiting.
Gonz looked at Heisman. “If the threat was real, how would the guy here know to finish them off?”
“Could have been an idle threat.”
“No. They want the ricin. They’re on a deadline and they’re desperate.”
Heisman turned to Daneen and switching to Arabic asked, “You have a telephone here?”
The woman nodded. “In the kitchen...”
Heisman said to Gonz, “They got a phone. We could tap it. Could be the call would be coming in here.”
The Marine came back quickly. “Found a cell.”
“Give it to me,” Gonz instructed. Taking the phone, he quickly scanned through the list of calls made and received. He unhooked the two-way radio from his belt. “McKay, Peterson, you with me?”
“Five by five,” he heard McKay answer. He knew her voice so well, he knew she was smiling. Then he remembered. The LVD was on. She had seen him go down and had been right there with him. The thought of that gave him comfort for some reason.
“I’ve got some numbers I want you to trace. See if any are live and if we can triangulate them.”
Jadida, Iraq Sunday, April 16th 12:04 p.m.
“This is stupid!” Sharif thundered at Adnan as he walked around the room swinging the sword from its hilt. “The Americans were here!”
“I didn’t know where else to go,” Adnan replied wearily. Ironically, that was the truth. He had to get al Mudtaji’s men away from his family. The old warehouse was the only place he could think of. He now sat on a crate very close to where the American had been beheaded just five days ago. The dried blood on the wood floor had turned into a brownish drab color.
What Adnan had had no way of knowing was that the warehouse had now been compromised. They had made this discovery as soon as they approached the side entrance, which had been spray painted “2nd Bn 5th” and the date of April 14th, two days ago. Sharif had been furious to find the signature sign of the 2nd Battalion, 5th Marines. He had sent the other two men inside to scour the three floors of the abandoned building. They had come back reporting that the building was empty. Sharif and Adnan had then followed the men to the second floor main room where the American Quizby had spent
his final hours.
Sharif had been infuriated to learn that the Marines had been inside the building, too. Another large spray painted message on the wall read, “2nd Bn 5th.”
“The Americans were here!” Sharif repeated angrily, waving his dagger at the spray painted wall. “It is no longer safe!”
“Then leave.”
Sharif stared at Adnan with pure hatred. Finally he asked, “Where is she?”
Adnan returned his angry look. “She’ll be here.”
Sharif offered Adnan his cell phone. “Call her.”
Adnan shook his head. “Can’t do that.”
“Call her!”
“I don’t have a number for her!”
“I don’t believe you!”
“We’re working through a third party.”
“Who!?”
“No one you know.”
Sharif glared at Adnan. “Call this person! Call right now!”
“It won’t work,” Adnan protested.
“You call them and tell them that–”
“I can’t! There are designated times when I can call. Otherwise they’ll tell her it’s off. She’ll disappear.”
“When? When can you call?”
Adnan had no idea what to say. He just wanted a little more time. Glancing at his watch he said, “An hour.”
“I don’t believe you,” Sharif calmly told him. He suddenly thrust his sword at Adnan, the tip painfully piercing his throat. “You have to have an alternative plan. In case of an emergency.”
The blade breaking the skin just above his Adam’s apple, Adnan could feel the blood trickle down his throat.
MP-5, The Green Zone, Baghdad, Iraq Sunday, April 16th 12:23 p.m.
Peterson was busy making last minute adjustments to the tracking software on his laptop. The five different cell phone numbers Gonz had given them were now in the system along with Ghaniyah’s number. So far, not one phone appeared to even be turned on. He frowned. “If Ghaniyah knows not to speak for more than three minutes, this might be a horrendous waste of time.” Peterson glanced at McKay who sat slumped in a nearby chair, sipping a mug of tea. “If she knows it, you can bet they all do. They’ll turn it on, give a one or two word command, turn it off. We’ll still have nothing.”
Seven Days From Sunday (MP-5 CIA #1) Page 25
