Veil of the Goddess

by Rob Preece

  "What about you, sir?"

  What about him? When you grow up in south Dallas, the Army was one of the few options that take you away from street gangs, drugs, or a lifetime of menial work. If he stayed with Newland, he would be pissing away everything he'd spent the past ten years working for—and would probably spend another ten years or so in the stockade for desertion as well.

  But he was an officer, and someone in covert ops had knifed a soldier while he'd been on guard duty. He wasn't going to let anyone finish what Smith had started.

  "Let whoever does the post-op know that I ordered the shot that downed the chopper. My responsibility. Now move."

  As his tank company roared into the night, he bent down to pick up the wounded woman.

  She pushed his arms away. “I'm all right. What's going on?"

  "Your CIA friend went off the deep end. Tried to kill you. You must have got him before he could finish the job. Now we've got to get out of here."

  "Okay. Help me with this.” She gestured at the wooden joists she'd fallen upon when Smith had killed her.

  "We don't have time for construction debris. We've got to go underground before the insurgents put on a show of force."

  "I don't know what's going on, but I do know that Smith tried to kill me over what you're calling construction debris. According to him, it's The Cross."

  He must have looked as confused as he felt because she shook her head impatiently. “The True Cross. The one Jesus was crucified on. Not symbolically but literally. I don't know if that's true, but it's clearly important. We need to get it to safety."

  Safety was something Herrera suspected would be the last thing they'd find around here.

  Newland stood, exactly as if she hadn't just been lying their with every drop of blood in her body spilled on the foundation stones for the old mosque, then lifted up the crossbeam as if it weighted only a few ounces.

  "We can hide in the ruins back there. Bring that other piece."

  Without waiting for him to answer, she set off at a jog.

  Zack eyed the twelve foot long piece of timber. Herrera was as good a Catholic as the next Latino, but he expected the artifacts of the Saints and Angelic Hosts to be in churches where they belonged, not lying on some remote battlefield.

  He picked up what Newland claimed just might be half the True Cross and was amazed that it seemed practically weightless. So much so that he was able to grab Smith's body and his briefcase and carry those as well.

  From the evidence of the wounds, he'd assumed that the agent had been the one who'd flipped out. Now that he'd heard the Sergeant, he wondered if he'd made a truly monumental mistake.

  * * * *

  Ivy headed toward the sound side of the mosque complex where a couple of outbuildings were more or less intact.

  Her mind whirled with impossibilities but she'd been long enough in Iraq to know that survival came first. In Iraq, understanding what was going on rarely happened anyway.

  Running full speed, she hit the door to what looked like it had once been a supply shed and smacked it open, then put her M16 on her hip and stood guard.

  Captain Herrera was lugging not only the main piece from the Cross, something she and Smith had both struggled to lift, but also Jones’ corpse and his briefcase.

  "What did you bring him for?"

  "You want to leave his body there for the insurgents to put on T.V.?” Herrera shoved the broken door shut behind him.

  She hadn't realized she was poking her rifle into his chest until he used one finger to push it out of the way, then set down his cargo.

  "All right,” he collapsed onto the earthen floor. “I'm going to assume you know what you're doing. So tell me what you know. We'd better pool our knowledge if we're going to stay alive."

  She considered, nodded. She didn't know any secrets. She had no idea why her squad had been assigned to work with Smith and Jones in the first place, how he'd guessed that what he claimed was the True Cross would be here in Mosul, or why he'd decided to try to kill her. But she was interested in learning what she could. Because there was one thing she was certain of. Given the way theater command had responded to Smith, what he was doing was approved at high levels within the government. Which meant the woman who had killed him was likely to be in a heap of trouble.

  "I don't know much,” she admitted. “Smith hand-selected me and my squad—you know women don't normally fight combat missions—but he didn't tell me anything about the mission. I certainly didn't have a clue what he was looking for until I saw this.” She gestured toward the two timbers that made up the alleged True Cross. “He used a smaller Cross from the briefcase like a dowsing rod."

  Herrera shook his head. The Captain was a good-looking guy, maybe an inch under six feet with a nice build on him and intelligent brown eyes. The burning helicopter provided enough light for her to see him clearly even without the night vision gear that had never arrived.

  "Maybe we should look in the briefcase and see what else he has there,” he proposed.

  "Might as well.” They couldn't get in more trouble than they were already in.

  While Herrera fiddled with the locks to the case, Ivy ran her hands along her neck. A new scar was crusted with blood but there was no pain. Indeed, she felt better than she could remember.

  "You didn't give me morphine, did you? And how did I heal so fast?"

  "As far as I could tell, you were dead.” Herrera snapped open the briefcase.

  A smile trembled on her lips as she waited to hear the punch line. Yeah, right. Sure she was dead.

  Herrera didn't seem to be in any hurry to deliver, though. Instead he flipped through sheets of paper and carefully drawn maps.

  "How's your Arabic?"

  "Pretty bad. I learned enough to recognize bomb warnings.” She paused. “Uh, what exactly did you mean about me being dead? I don't think that's funny."

  Herrera glared at her. “No joke. You looked dead. From the blood spatter, I'd say Smith cut your carotid artery and bled you out completely. Training and reflex action allowed you to shoot him but you were already dead by the time that happened."

  She swallowed hard. “That's impossible."

  "Of course it's impossible. Just like it's impossible that the True Cross has survived for two thousand years and we just happen to come across it. I'm telling you what I saw."

  He continued flipping through papers from the briefcase while he spoke.

  Since Herrera had the briefcase, Ivy steeled herself and searched Smith's body.

  It was nasty work—the M16 bullet had tumbled as it had penetrated his gut. Although the entry wound was tiny, the exit wound in his lower back was bigger than both of her fists. Blood, piss, and feces all blended into his clothing. Herrera was right about the insurgents crowing over his body if they'd found it, but she couldn't help wishing the captain had left it outside anyway.

  It stank and it gave her the creeps.

  Fortunately, Smith carried his wallet in his suit pocket and her bullet hadn't hit it.

  She flipped it open. Sure enough, his I.D. was made out to a ‘John Smith,’ who lived, if the military I.D. could be believed, in ‘Anytown, USA.'

  A thick wad of hundred-dollar bills, a couple of thousand worth, filled the cash section of the wallet. At the bottom, wedged in between some of the hundreds, she found a small smartcard with the cryptic label, Property of The Foundation.

  "Ever hear of something called The Foundation?” she asked.

  "Funny that you say that.” Zach had unfolded a huge map of Iraq and he handed it to her, pointing his hand to the legend. “Looks like this Foundation has better intelligence on Iraq than the military is giving to us poor soldiers."

  The Foundation was printed in some sort of holographic text at the bottom of the map's legend.

  "Oh, and there's some cash here,” Herrera mentioned. “A bunch."

  "How much?"

  "You thinking about stealing Smith's money?” He looked uneasy.

/>   Well, she felt worse than uneasy. She wasn't a lifer. She had plans for her life, plans that the National Guard call-up had put on hold rather than canceling. But if she was right about what was going on, all of those plans were flushed down the toilet now.

  "One of us had better start thinking,” she reminded him. “Figure it this way. We've got a civilian who can call in air strikes. A civilian who just happened to be at the right place the morning after a late-night air strike on a mosque that might have been a hideout for insurgents, but also might just have been a building he wanted leveled. If you think he was just a loose cannon, that he wasn't following orders of someone back in D.C., then you're more I than I would have guessed. And if he's part of some Foundation, then there are going to be others who knew what he found, folks are going to come looking for it, and who aren't going to want any witnesses around to confuse the issues."

  Herrera nodded slowly. “Stealing a dead man's money feels nasty, but I agree. We've got to get out of here. We can't trust the military, we can't trust our government, and we certainly can't trust the insurgents. But if we run, what are we going to do with the, uh, artifact?"

  It was a good question. They could just leave it. Smith had asked if she was a Christian and had seemed happy when she'd told him she was. Based on that, she didn't guess the Foundation was an atheistic organization out to destroy Christian relics. But then again, the Foundation had cold-blooded killers like Smith. If it was responsible for bombing mosques that weren't being used as insurgent bases, then it was also responsible for heavy Iraqi civilian and U.S. military casualties, as well. They might be Christian, but she just didn't trust them with the kind of power that The Cross held—power that had, if she could believe Herrera, literally brought her back from the dead.

  Not that she could really believe Herrera. There had to be some confusion. Battlefield stories could never be taken at face value.

  "We'll take it with us. I figure we've got two hours for whoever runs The Foundation in D.C. to wake up in the morning, read over the transcripts of whatever reports Smith was sending, and then mobilize half the Army to come pouring in to pick up the Cross. If we're still here, we'll be written up as unavoidable casualties in another great victory over the insurgents."

  He nodded slowly. “There is one problem."

  "Getting out of an unfriendly city, surrounded by insurgents and unable to trust our own side, all the while carrying a ten foot-long chunk of wood. That problem?"

  Herrera shook his head. “I was thinking about getting past the insurgents out there now."

  "You're the Captain. Should be a piece of cake for an officer like you."

  * * * *

  Okay, a plan to get past the dozens of insurgents converging on the ruined mosque now, get out of insurgent-dominated Mosul, cross a few hundred miles of CIA-dominated Iraqi Kurdistan, then somehow go somewhere where this Foundation, whatever it was, couldn't catch them. All in a day's work, right? At least his armored company had distracted the aircraft. Now that really would be a party.

  "Captain?"

  "Damn it, Newland. I'm not a Captain any more. Call me Zack."

  "Sure, Zack. You might want to hurry that plan up. Looks like some of those insurgents are coming our way right now."

  Herrera didn't know much about escaping the CIA or miracles, but he knew plenty about fighting insurgents, and even more about surviving urban gangs, which was pretty much what most of these insurgents were, anyway.

  "Arrange Smith like he's crouched down in the corner,” he ordered. “Just in case, don't let him touch the Cross."

  He glanced out the door to make sure they had time. Sure enough, a team of four insurgents was going through the mostly shattered outbuildings. They'd bust down a door, fire off a clip of Kalashnikov cartridges on full automatic, then search. That kind of sloppy operation would have gotten him failed out of Officer Training School faster than shit through a goose, but he wasn't going to complain.

  "Now what?” Newland demanded.

  "Get behind the door. Keep your rifle ready but don't fire it unless you have to. An M16 sounds just enough different from the Kalashnikov to bring every insurgent in fifty miles swarming."

  She nodded and moved. She'd lost her helmet somewhere and her golden hair stuck out like one of those cartoons where a character sticks their fingers in an electrical socket. To Herrera, she looked good. Hell, she looked like an angel. Sure he'd always been a sucker for the blonde, blue-eyed thing. Right now, though, he appreciated the fact that she'd follow orders without asking questions even more than he did her physical appearance.

  The hard rattle of Kalashnikov fire sounded closer. “One shed over,” he murmured.

  She nodded and he realized he was talking for his own benefit, to keep his adrenaline level from raging out of control. He'd always been an armor man, even back when he'd been enlisted, before he'd opted for officer training school. He was used to having a few tons of steel between himself and the enemy. Even in the Abrams, things could get hairy. But he had a lot of respect for people like Newland, people who relied on light body armor and prayer to stay alive.

  He picked up a two-foot-long hunk of rebar from the clutter on the shed floor and took his own position near the door, thankful for the shed's flimsy particle-board walls. If they'd been in one of the stone buildings in the old mosque itself, the bullets would ricochet and kill everyone inside, like his own shots had on his first tour in this war when Saddam's National Guard had dared face his team from inside stone fortresses.

  His heartbeat sounded loud in his ears and he willed himself to breath slowly, silently.

  A booted foot kicked open the door Newland had already damaged, and the rattle of automatic rifle fire came immediately afterwards.

  Smith's body jerked as dozens of bullets riddled his corpse and the odor of death filled the small shed.

  Two tours of duty had given Herrera enough Arabic to understand the shouted celebration. They thought they'd killed an American.

  All four of them piled inside to check out the body. As the fourth entered the small shed, Herrera went into action.

  He quietly struck the rearmost of the insurgents in the back of his head.

  The insurgent slumped and Herrera caught him and tossed him back to Newland, trusting her to set him down silently.

  The second of the insurgents was no harder, but the third must have heard something. He spun around, his Kalashnikov already blasting.

  If the rebel had waited to shoot until he'd seen Herrera, Zack would have been a dead man. Fortunately, he didn't. The weapon's recoil forced its muzzle upward and Herrera was able to duck under the stream of bullets, smash his hunk of rebar into the rifle, and then a knee into the insurgent's groin.

  He followed with a palm-thrust to the guy's head and then turned to deal with the fourth.

  He would be too late, of course. No soldier, no matter how ill-trained, would be caught that unaware.

  But Newland hadn't just been standing there. She must have moved almost as soon as he had. Now she cradled the last insurgent in a headlock that he still struggled against.

  Herrera raised his length of rebar but Newland shook her head. “Two seconds and he's out. We don't have to kill them, do we?"

  Killing them would be smart. If they left them alive, there would be witnesses. The insurgents hated Americans, but that didn't mean they wouldn't take their money. Sooner or later, word would get back to the Foundation that two Americans had survived the helicopter crash and had taken the supposed Cross.

  But Herrera didn't always do the smart thing. He'd fled the slums of Dallas because he hadn't been smart enough to join a gang and kill in cold blood. He wasn't about to start now, even if these insurgents would have cheerfully killed him.

  "We'll tie them up and gag them. It should give us enough time to get back to base.” He doubted they spoke English and most were unconscious, but he wouldn't bet his life on them not understanding what he was saying. And the word Base was
one that had become part of a common vocabulary.

  Fortunately Newland caught on. “It shouldn't be too hard to get past this group and call for a helicopter rescue."

  "Exactly."

  She gestured at the insurgents’ clothing. “Maybe we should take some of their clothes to slow them down even more."

  "Good idea.” They could disguise themselves as insurgents, letting them get through the current mob, at least.

  She wrinkled her little pug nose at the stench—obviously none of these insurgents had access to laundry facilities—or probably any running water. But she got to work stripping off outer garments.

  Three of the four men they'd disabled wore ordinary clothing. Stained trousers that might once have been part of an Iraqi military uniform but were now part of the ubiquitous attire of the Iraqi man on the street. Loose shirts with stained pits and grime that looked like it had started setting during the first Gulf War rather than the second. The fourth wore the desert robes of a tribesman.

  "Intelligence would like to know about this one,” Newland observed as she yanked off the man's desert robes, then took off her own belt to tie his wrists and ankles together.

  "Maybe our reinforcements will get here in time to apprehend him."

  He added blindfolds to the gags Newland was tying. He didn't want them to see him and Newland putting on disguises.

  Fortunately, Herrera wasn't a giant. Still, he was taller than any of the insurgents they'd captured. He yanked the shirt off the largest of the four, stripped down to his t-shirt, held his breath, and pulled on the sweaty garment.

  "You might want to hide that.” Newland gestured at the St. Christopher medal his mother had pressed on him when he'd been sent to Iraq in his first tour.

  He considered it, then stuffed it in a pocket. They were going to need St. Christopher's help if they were going to get out of Mosul alive. He wasn't sure he could believe what he thought he'd seen, but he'd been an alter boy and believed in ordinary miracles. He'd no more leave St. Christopher behind than he'd spit in the holy water.