The Death Trust

by David Rollins

  “Thanks for the heads-up,” I said.

  A young Iraqi male who was all teeth, wearing a Lakers basketball cap and other branded clothing, was hanging out of the nearest stall, beckoning Masters and me to come on over. He repeated the offer of selling us sodas.

  His shop was little more than a trestle table with a large umbrella over the top to provide shade. Others on the strip were more permanent structures with proper roofs and air-conditioning. Portable generators filled the air with a choral buzz. I decided to take him up on his offer. “Two Cokes, thanks.”

  The boy—he couldn’t have been more than fourteen—took the money and handed over the sodas. I gave one to Masters and said, “Peace?”

  She accepted the can and clinked mine in agreement. “Peace. Where are we?”

  “Beats me,” I said.

  “You want an iPod? New model out—fifty thousand songs, movies. What’s a war without a soundtrack, right? How about CDs, videos? I can get you cable TV,” said the vendor. Masters walked on ahead and the young man said, for my ears only, “Are you lonely here? You like to fuck Iraqi virgin—make your nights as hot as your days…”

  “No, thanks,” I said. I’m no prude, but I was dubious as hell about the wisdom of allowing this kind of activity to go on unchecked in what was supposed to be a secure area. I caught up to Masters and we picked up the pace through the market. There was nothing more either of us wanted or needed here.

  TWENTY-THREE

  There were seven convoys heading out in the next four hours. Two were supply ops, the others were patrols hunting for the insurgents responsible for that truck bomb. As luck would have it, one was going our way.

  “Space A…Space A,” mumbled the sergeant checking our CAC cards. “And you want to go where?”

  Masters repeated, “Rasafl Street, number seventy-five. You know it?”

  The woman fed the information into her laptop. “Yeah, it’s in Saddun. A ten-minute ride from here. Sounds familiar; what’s there?”

  “A company called MaxRisk.”

  “Yeah, know ’em. We work with those guys—contractors. We can take you there and they can bring you back here when you’re done. You okay with that, ma’am?”

  “Sounds good, Sarge,” said Masters.

  We were directed to the lead vehicle, a Humvee with a TOW launcher mounted on its roof. Hanging curtains of Kevlar armor covered the doors and windows. Two riflemen were already seated inside. Masters and I climbed in and received nods from them. It was hot enough to pop corn inside, and it stank of sweat and cigar smoke leaching out of the riflemen’s clothing. I guessed the sergeant sitting opposite was the cigar-smoke culprit; his pale skin was reacting to the heat by flushing a cochineal red. A portable CD player thrashed out heavy-metal music, making conversation impossible. Not that I was looking for any.

  The convoy moved off, tires crunching over pulverized concrete and other debris, which included a dog that had become roadkill. The shirt beneath my flaks was drenched with sweat and I could feel it trickling down into my pants.

  With curtains over the doors there was not much to see, and the grunting and screaming coming through the speakers merely added to the claustrophobia. The soldiers had their heads back, eyes closed, except for the sergeant chomping his cigar, who alternated between glaring at his feet and at me.

  Masters leaned forward. Her hair was up, tucked inside her helmet. Strands of it had escaped and some of these were caught in the sweat on her skin. I watched a bead descend slowly, moving from strand to strand. And then I found myself wondering whether the cleavage between her breasts was also perspiring. It was at that moment I finally realized I was attracted to her. Funny how these things work. Maybe it was the grief she’d given me earlier.

  Before long, we turned onto a broad freeway. I got tired of the sergeant blowing smoke rings in four-four time so I turned to watch what was happening up front. “Have you worked out what side of the road the people here drive on?” I asked Masters.

  She turned to look out the windshield. She pointed to the right, then the left, then shrugged. The road rules seemed to be only suggestions, and vague ones at that. The traffic was involved in a type of slalom, maneuvering around the deep potholes that pockmarked the road. A rumble filled the car, seemingly coming up through the asphalt. Our road merged with another and we found ourselves beside another convoy moving slightly faster. I counted five Humvees and a seventy-ton Abrams bringing up the rear, no doubt the source of the vibration. The half ton of metal in its tracks battered the road surface as it whipped by at around forty miles per hour. The screech of its turbine engine drowned out Metallica as if the music were no more than a squeaking door hinge. The dust came next, blasting through the vents beside my face. The convoy disappeared down a side road and into a cloud raised by its own passage.

  The part of town we were heading for was more commercial, with taller, more densely packed-in buildings. The overall hue was light brown and tan, the color of grit. A bridge took us over a dirty gray stretch of water that moved with the speed of a garden slug. The mighty Tigris.

  “Rasafl Street—coming up now,” announced a voice from the front. “What number you want?”

  “Seventy-five,” I said.

  Children played in the fountain spouting from a burst water main, shooting one another with imaginary guns. Across the road, an old truck had stalled and overheated. Steam boiled out from under the hood. A bunch of Iraqi males rushed around it, yelling at each other as if it was going to explode. Maybe it was.

  There was a lot more traffic on the road, but we barely slowed. Motorcycles darted in and out of the flow. There was only one road rule—get the fuck out of our way. Ahead, the lights in a busy intersection turned red. Our driver kept his foot on the gas. An old heap swerved at us, out of a side street. The driver hit the brakes, skidding. We shot around it, avoiding a collision by inches. “Motherfucker!” yelled our driver. “You get your license off the back of a cereal box? You’re fucking lucky I’m a better driver than you, motherfucker!” The Humvee behind us clipped the Iraqi’s rear fender, putting it into a spin. We didn’t stop to see if the driver was okay.

  The street itself was lined mostly with merchants peddling everything from rugs and canned and bottled petrol to Levi’s and Nikes. There were westerners, too—civilians. Most were armed to the teeth with submachine pistols or assault rifles. Those little coils connected to earpieces were also the fashion on Baghdad streets, as were blade-style sunglasses with dark orange or burnished red lenses like the ones the corporal back at haji street had worn. I pegged the majority of these people as former Special Forces or ex-infantry with combat experience. They were not interested in the shops. Their heads swung continuously from left to right, assessing threats, calculating lines of fire, planning escape routes, and estimating the collateral damage should they have to use the firepower strapped to their flaks. For the most part, they appeared to be providing security for the unarmed Europeans who were, I assumed, involved in the rebuilding.

  I was looking forward to getting out of this mobile oven. The sun was now high overhead, boring down through the blue magnifying-glass sky. The driver counted street numbers on the buildings, when they were provided. “That’s seventy-five there,” he said, slowing. He pointed at a tan concrete wall with a heavy brown steel gate. Behind it lay a glimpse of dust-covered vehicles in a dun-colored courtyard. Four men, two Caucasian and two massive Polynesian types, stood guard behind dirty concrete blockades.

  “Okay. This is it,” said the driver. He pulled up. We opened the door and jumped out. The convoy was on the move immediately, wheels spinning up dust clouds. It was gone within seconds, heading down the road, no farewells exchanged.

  Masters spanked the grit out of her fatigues as we walked toward the nearest of the men—one of the Europeans. An HK G36 swung from his right hand. “MaxRisk?” I asked.

  The man looked me up and down and took his time answering, as if he was thinking of a witty reply
that would impress his compatriot, but either he changed his mind or his brain failed him. “It is,” he drawled. A fellow countryman. “And who might you be?” He indicated he meant the plural you with a gesture of his head that included Masters.

  Masters and I badged him in unison, holding our IDs in front of his face until he got it. This seemed to take a while, which suggested he was in need of either reading glasses or a few extra points of IQ. I gave him the benefit of the doubt and resisted the temptation to speak slow. “You got an American citizen, a Dante Ambrose, working here?” I said.

  “Maybe,” he replied. “We got a lot of Americans here.”

  “Sonny, I’d appreciate a straight answer to a straight question. It’s either ‘Yes, we do,’ or ‘I don’t know.’ ‘Sir’ is optional, but don’t give me any of your macho shit. I’m tired and I’m hot and you’re keeping me from the hotel pool.” I was irritable, but he had an assault rifle. That made us even in my book and maybe in his, too. Maybe a command tone would help get things moving. It did. He swallowed and said, “Okay…okay…just head up to the office and ask the man at the desk.” He aimed a remote at the gate and pressed a button. It slowly swung open.

  “Thank you for your cooperation,” I said.

  He nodded and spat onto the road.

  Good comeback, pal.

  A sign painted on a large rectangular board sat on the brickwork over the building’s main entrance. It said, “MaxRisk. Let us minimize yours,” in orange lettering outlined in black against a pale blue background. Unlike many buildings on this street, this one looked recently constructed. It could easily have been some kind of government garage before the invasion, and was the perfect digs for a heavily motorized security outfit. The building itself was a U-shape, a main block with two wings enclosing the large open courtyard. More than half a dozen pickup-style vehicles were parked rear bumper to the wall, and each carried a fearsome inventory of weaponry. Quite a few Europeans and Polynesians were hanging around servicing their weapons or having a smoke. Others were trying to get a game of soccer up and running, and were rolling empty fuel barrels into position for goalposts.

  We walked to the main entrance, where a sign that said “Reception” pointed the way up the concrete stairwell. Music blared from somewhere ahead, Eminem at the end of the tunnel. A man was singing along to it like it was karaoke and he was convinced he was about to be discovered. If so, he was deluded. Masters and I rounded the final flight of stairs and walked into what was more an operations room than a reception area. There was no reception desk—just a row of filing cabinets separating the stairwell from the office space. A large black man was the source of the sing-along. He wore combat fatigue pants—same as ours—but with a black T-shirt. On the front was a grinning death’s-head skull with the single word Smile above it. He was tapping something into a computer keyboard while he sang. Massive gold rings throttled his fingers except for one, his trigger finger. He seemed not to have noticed us, so I took a moment to scope out the room.

  A man in his early thirties, dressed similarly to the singer but with a different T-shirt, blue with some sort of surf motif on it, was leaning back in a chair with his dusty boots up on the desk in front of him, talking on the phone. Occupying one entire wall was a laminated street map of Baghdad. It was covered in grease pencil marks. Other items on the wall ranged from wanted posters featuring unhappy-looking bearded locals, to photos of smiling men packing enough heat to quell a major Central American coup, as well as assorted military memorabilia and a motivational poster with a bunch of guys in a long rowing boat, titled “Teamwork.” The caption beneath read, This is where we all follow the guy with the loudest voice to our inevitable doom.

  The room was deliciously cool and two air conditioners punched into the brickwork thrummed away. Plastic streamers waggling like colorful worms on speed writhed and flicked in the stream of refrigerated air gushing from the vents.

  There were also numerous posters of pouting naked women suggestively holding various items from shock absorbers to shoulder-launched Stinger missiles. I wasn’t sure what the suggestion was—did they want to have sex with the cameraman or the items in their hands? Whatever, this was an office environment the PC weenies back home had not yet invaded, although these men were obviously ready for them if they tried, because two M4 carbines leaned against the wall within easy reach. The weapons were well used—the bluing worn away in places—but immaculately clean with a light sheen of oil on the barrels. It was the sort of office General von Koeppen’s twin would have had if he had a twin and that twin was his polar opposite.

  This was MaxRisk’s operational HQ. I guessed the company probably had business offices somewhere else in town with Muzak, talking elevators, and secretaries, where contracts were negotiated and clients won over, because there was a shitload of money to be made in this game in Iraq and MaxRisk was a company doing just that.

  “Can I help you, sir, ma’am?”

  The black man with his death’s-head T-shirt and gold rings was leaning on the filing cabinet between us. He was powerfully built. The clear, brilliant whites of his eyes and teeth spoke of health, as did the muscle bulk of his shoulders and arms. His voice was deep and smooth as peanut butter.

  I got right to the point. “We’re looking for a Mr. Dante Ambrose.”

  “Who’s asking?”

  I gave him a look at my star and said, “Special Agent Vincent Cooper, OSI.”

  “And your friend?” he said, motioning at Masters.

  “His trusty sidekick. Special Agent Anna Masters, OSI,” she said, holding her ID where he could see it.

  The man folded his massive arms on his chest and regarded Masters and me for a few seconds. Then he fired the remote unit at the sound system, silencing Eminem mid-abuse. In the sound vacuum, he said, “It’s about time you goddamn people showed up.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  I asked the man if I could see some identification.

  He produced a wallet from his back pocket, and showed me the plastic window occupied by a CAC card. The name said Dante P. Ambrose, and the man standing opposite wore the face in the photo.

  “Is there someplace we can talk to you, Mr. Ambrose?” asked Masters.

  “Yeah,” he said, with a hint of the deep South in his voice. “Teddy—you mind holding the fort awhile?”

  “You got it,” said Teddy with a bored wave.

  The room Ambrose showed us into was a storeroom. Locked, khaki-painted steel gun cases were bolted and heavily chained to the wall. There was a desk, two chairs, a few columns of cardboard boxes, and a small fridge. It was hot and stuffy in the room. Ambrose turned on the air-con and I noticed he’d brought his rifle. My eyes followed it.

  “Don’t let Marlene bug you, Special Agent; I sleep with her. Spend more than a week in this country and you’ll be doing likewise. Get you a drink? The heat will kill you. We got Dr Pepper or Diet Sprite. Take your pick.”

  Masters and I went for a Sprite and a Dr Pepper respectively. I also asked for Tylenols, if there were any to spare. Ambrose called out to Teddy, who thankfully played requests, and I washed three down with the doctor. To break the ice, I said, “So, MaxRisk. What do you people do here?”

  Ambrose gave us the sales pitch. “Mostly, we do CP—close protection—get paid to chew on a bullet for the people we watch over so that they can go about their business. We specialize in anti-hostage work. No one under MaxRisk’s CP has ever been taken by insurgents. That’s a record we’re pretty proud of. We’ve also had no deaths, no accidents recorded among staff or customers. At the moment, we’re contracted to the U.S. Army as well as an Australian company—water-treatment specialists.”

  “You were pretty hard to find,” I said.

  “Yeah, well, that’s a good thing.” He allowed himself a smile. “Might keep me alive a bit longer. Before we go any further…Reassure me you ain’t CIA.”

  I was offended. CIA people had a certain look about them, like their mothers dressed them be
fore they came to work. “No, we’re not CIA, nor are we after you for unpaid parking fines, Mr. Ambrose.”

  Masters said, “You know why we’re here.”

  “I know why you’re here, but I guarantee you have no idea why you’re here.”

  “What do you mean by that?” Masters again.

  “When are you going to start asking me about Peyton Scott?”

  “Start at the beginning, Mr. Ambrose,” I said. “How well did you know him?”

  Ambrose swallowed a mouthful of soda and said, “Scotty was my sergeant. I was his senior NCO. I met him before we left the States. We did a little house-to-house and room-to-room stuff—trained together with a bunch of Israelis before we landed here. You know what I’m sayin’?”

  “Yeah. You get along?”

  “Yeah, we got along. He was the son of a general and could have been an officer, but he wanted to soldier from the front line—get his white-boy hands dirty. He was good at it—a good soldier. The men liked him, respected him. I liked him. He knew what he was doing and none of our guys got a scratch while he was alive.”

  “And after he was gone?” I knew the answer before I asked the question.

  “Our unit got shredded. Within three months we’d lost seven guys to insurgents, booby traps, IEDs, and drive-bys. We went from the luckiest squad in Iraq to the unluckiest outfit in the whole fucking corps. Some guys left—got out—others went to new units, but the killing didn’t stop.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m saying that my men—all of us—were targeted. And it all started with Peyton. Even after the men left—went home—they kept on dying.”

  Bishop had already confirmed as much about Peyton’s old squad when it was in-country, but what Ambrose was talking about smacked of something more sinister. “How do you know that?” I asked.

  “Because everyone I’ve contacted has turned up dead. Three guys were snuffed out in fires; four in car crashes; there’ve been accidental electrocutions, drownings, boating accidents; one guy’s car fell on him—he was working under it in his garage. Some pretty weird shit has been going on, that’s for damn sure.”