Team Red

by David DeBatto

  “So where is Halem Seeliyeh?”

  “Jail. Baquba,” Sykes said. “Camp Warhorse.”

  “Yikes. That place is a dump. Go talk to him,” DeLuca said. “Take Mack with you. Find out what he knows about Jamrat. Ask him if he saw any trucks leaving just before the war. ”

  “What do I use?”

  “Use your natural charm,” DeLuca said. “What’s he being held on?”

  “Nothing, anymore,” Sykes said. “He’s too low level to be worth anything. They were going to let him out until he started acting like a dink. Now he’s just staying after school until he learns his manners.”

  “Tell him if he helps us, he can go home,” DeLuca said. “Assuming he’s just a dishwasher and not part of the management. Use your judgment.”

  “Take Mack where?” a female voice behind him said.

  DeLuca turned to see MacKenzie, holding a folder in her arms.

  “Baquba,” DeLuca said. “Camp Warhorse. I’d like you and Dan to talk to a guy there. Dan’ll brief you along the way.”

  “Sheesh,” Mack said with a smile. “The guy’s TL for one hour and already he’s bossing everybody around. I spent the morning digging up stuff on your boy Omar.”

  “Sorry,” DeLuca said. She sounded hurt. Unless he was wrong about that. As his reservist friend Sami had put it, “The best reason not to have women in the military is that if the average guy in the army knew how to deal with women, he wouldn’t have enlisted in the first place.”

  “Have fun then,” she said, handing him the folder. “He sounds pretty interesting.”

  “Can you give me a two-second briefing?”

  “This guy needs more than two seconds,” she told him. “Educated at Oxford, liberal, not pro U.S. but not anti either. Sunni imam but a reform Islamist. Very progressive. His family and Saddam’s family have been putting each other in jail for the last hundred years, mostly because Hadid’s tribal lands stood between Tikrit and Syria. Though their grandfathers were friends. For a while, anyway.”

  “Omar see prison?”

  “Twice, but just for a week each time. My impression was that Saddam and Omar were more or less forced to deal with each other, but neither liked it much, and Saddam was too afraid of reprisals to crack down on Omar the way he did on everybody else. Ba’ath in name only. I’ll tell you one thing—his people really love him. Sort of a Muslim Martin Luther King. Very charismatic. He taught a course in France and tapes of his lectures have been circulating in Iraq for years, all word of mouth, people making copies of copies of copies.”

  “Lectures saying what?”

  “I’m not sure exactly, but my sense is, he’s mostly telling Muslims to wake up and join the real world.”

  “Sounds like the kind of guy we want in power after we leave,” DeLuca said. “Better yet, he sounds like the guy we want to shoot the guy we leave in power and take over the country after we leave.”

  “Good thing we’re not into nation-building,” Sykes said.

  “Good thing.”

  They were interrupted when an agent from the OMT said the south gate had just radioed to say a man named Omar Hadid was asking to speak to a Mr. David.

  Chapter Five

  OMAR HADID WORE BLACK PANTS, A BLACK sport coat, and a white shirt, no tie, opened at the collar. He wore a full beard but kept it closely cropped, his cheeks shaved down to the jaw line. He wore his hair short as well, his hairline receding. He had dark eyebrows and even darker eyes, a penetrating gaze, a handsome man by anybody’s standards, DeLuca allowed, sort of like one of the Bee Gees, only darker. The army hadn’t set up actual interrogation rooms (yet), leaving THTs to improvise, talking to suspects and informants on missions inside circled Humvees, in groves of trees, or in abandoned buildings. On post, DeLuca used a room that had been a machine shed before the war. He’d found a supply of paint and some brushes and had rehabilitated the place to the point where it was about as comfortable as an underfunded American community college conference room.

  Hadid regarded him in silence when he entered. DeLuca leaned against the far wall, his arms folded across his chest.

  “Sheikh Omar Hadid?” DeLuca asked.

  The man nodded.

  “I’m just here to collect information. You can call me Mr. David if you’d like. Can I get you anything to drink?”

  Hadid shook his head.

  “Have you spoken with your brother?”

  “I have,” Omar said.

  “What did he tell you?”

  “He told me you would not arrest me,” Hadid said. “I told him I believed you were lying.”

  “What happens after this depends on what happens here in this room,” DeLuca said. “You’re in complete control of what happens to you.”

  “If I do as you wish,” the other man said. “But if I should choose not to, tell me—am I still in complete control? Can I leave now? Are we finished?”

  “No, you can’t leave now,” DeLuca said.

  “Then I am under arrest?”

  “You’re not under arrest,” DeLuca said. “I asked you here to ask you questions.”

  “Asked me or ordered me?” Omar said. “If you want the truth from me, I suggest you begin by being truthful with me.”

  “Fair enough,” DeLuca said. “Maybe that will save us both time. Yes, I ordered you here, and I’m assuming you have better things to do today than talk to me.”

  “The hospital in my town needs an emergency generator,” Hadid said. “They’ve asked me to find one. There is no milk in the grocery stores. No one collects the garbage. The elementary school has no books because somebody stole them. All of this comes to me. You ask if I have time for you, Mr. David? You need to ask this?”

  Again, DeLuca’s intuition told him Omar, like Omar’s brother, was someone he could work with, someone who was direct about his self-interest. Omar was obviously smarter than his brother. According to the files in DeLuca’s possession, Omar had no wives or children.

  “If I help you get a generator, would you talk to me?” DeLuca said.

  Omar considered.

  “You bribe me?” he asked.

  “A bribe would benefit only you,” DeLuca said. “A hospital benefits many people.”

  DeLuca waited.

  “It’s not as simple as that,” Omar said at last. “If I’m not there to oversee the installation, they could steal this one just as they stole the last one.”

  “If you help me, I’ll see to it that you’re home by suppertime,” DeLuca said. “And that you get what you need for the hospital. Is that a deal?”

  “What is it you want?”

  “I need somebody I can count on in Ad-Dujayl,” he said. “I need help finding out who’s shooting at us. I need help stopping the insurgency. I need to find out who is funding it, and who is arming it, and who is organizing it. I need to find the people in the Mukhaberat who put their fellow Iraqis in jail and tortured them. And I want to do it so that one day people like you don’t have to worry about milk in the stores or garbage in the streets or books in the schools.”

  “You want a friend,” Omar said.

  “That’s about the size of it,” DeLuca said. It had been his experience that most of the sheikhs and tribal leaders in Iraq had learned over the years, many of them the hard way, that it was expedient to suck up to whoever was in power, which in Iraq meant whoever had the most guns. That was currently the United States, but nobody knew how long the United States was going to be around. Some figured playing ball with coalition interests was the best way to secure power later. Others calculated that after the United States was gone, it would be those who hadn’t played ball who would ultimately prevail over those seen as U.S. collaborators. DeLuca had a sense that Omar was neither, that his power base was secure, now and in the future, and that his personal aspirations were genuinely altruistic.

  “Your army, your bombs, and your missiles have killed our children,” Omar said, sounding calm and reasonable. “According to the Unit
ed Nations, the embargo before the war from 1990 to 1997 resulted in more than 967,000 deaths of children from preventable infections, diarrhea, gastroenteritis, and malnutrition. So how would you feel if people from another country came over and killed your children? This is how you felt when the World Trade Center went down. Could you be friends with the men who did that?”

  “Friends, no,” DeLuca said. “But if I could stop the killing, I would work with them. Just as you can help stop the killing if you work with me.”

  Omar scoffed. “Can I? What difference can I make? What difference can you?”

  “I don’t know,” DeLuca said. “Maybe I could make a difference to only one child. I don’t have a number in my head. To me, one is enough.”

  Omar said nothing. DeLuca took his silence as assent.

  “According to what I’ve read here,” DeLuca said, holding up the folder MacKenzie had given him, “you were educated at Oxford?”

  “Trinity College,” Hadid said. “Later I studied in Paris. And two years religious study in Cairo.”

  DeLuca opened the folder and looked in it.

  “Oxford Debate Society president,” he read. “What did you debate?”

  “‘Resolved that the money spent on the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer constitutes a squandering of resources better spent on the remedy of social ills,’” Hadid said sarcastically. “I was for the resolution.”

  “Did it pass?”

  “Yes,” Hadid said.

  “There must have been a lot of royalists in the room,” DeLuca said. “Is that why you were elected president? Because of your persuasiveness?”

  “I suppose.”

  “What were your dealings with Saddam?”

  “My dealings?” Omar said. “Where you come from, what are your ‘dealings’ with the local Mafia boss who extorts protection money from you? Saddam stayed away, as long as he got paid. I saw that he got paid. During the embargo, things came in from Syria, through Ad-Dujayl. Saddam wanted his taxes. I oversaw the collection of such ‘taxes.’”

  “You ever keep any for yourself?”

  “For myself?” Omar said. “No. For my tribe, my city, for the villages, I kept all I could get away with.”

  “You were a member of the Ba’ath party?”

  “They listed my name on their membership rolls,” Hadid said. “It was a way to control me. A way to bind me to their party resolutions.”

  “You were Mukhaberat?” DeLuca asked.

  “In the same way,” Hadid said. “To charge me with betraying state secrets and arrest me, first they had to make a show that I had access to such secrets. One day I received a letter appointing me as deputy director in my district. I asked them, if I am the deputy director, then who am I deputy to? This, they wouldn’t tell me.”

  “How would you describe your politics? Moderate?”

  “Moderation is a matter of context,” Hadid said. “The Wahabis would think me a radical revolutionary for saying women should not be veiled unless they choose to be, and that women should participate fully in society, and democracy is compatible with Islam, and cutting off a thief’s hand or stoning an adulteress is un-Islamic and unacceptable. For calling them the abuses that they are, even though my proofs use sacred texts that the scholars cannot refute. Then again, I suppose to some Western minds, when I say I believe in sharia, and fasting, and the mastering of one’s appetites, or when I say the United States is wrong to support Ariel Sharon because he is as much a butcher as Saddam, overseeing the slaughter of thousands at Sabra and Shatilla, then I suppose I am an Islamic extremist and perhaps even a terrorist.”

  “In a global context, then,” DeLuca said.

  “I suppose I am a moderate,” Omar said. “Islamic teachings must be interpreted in light of contemporary context. I am pro-Islam. I am not anti-West. I read the New York Times every day online. Iraq has never been anti-West, as I’m sure you remember from the days when Saddam was one of your best allies in the Middle East.”

  “You think democracy is compatible with Islam?”

  “Yes,” Hadid said. “But not as you have installed it in Afghanistan, where in every district, the warlords run for office and the people have a choice between voting for them or being shot, and the central government can’t begin to influence what goes on in the provinces. And not as you would have it in Iraq, where Kurds would only vote for Kurds, and Sunnis for Sunnis, and Shiites for Shiites, and Swamp Arabs for Swamp Arabs, and ancient conflicts drive the elections. A nation cannot be host to open dissent or to true freedom without a belief system that unifies it. In your country, it’s the belief in democracy that unifies you. In the Arab world, sharia is the belief system that unifies.”

  “Let’s talk about the WMD,” DeLuca said, taking a seat and sitting across the table from Omar Hadid, who had barely stirred in his chair. “I assume you spoke with your brother about what we talked about yesterday.”

  “I was waiting for you to ask,” Omar said.

  “What did you think when he told you?”

  “What did I think? I was angry at him, at first, for not telling me sooner and for letting a man like Al-Tariq stay in my home, though I understand he did not have a choice.”

  “Do you believe your brother?”

  “Of course I do,” Omar said. “Would you not believe your own brother?”

  “Where do you think Al-Tariq is?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve asked to be informed if anyone sees him. I will tell you if I learn anything.”

  “I’d appreciate that,” DeLuca said.

  “We may differ on many things,” Omar Hadid said. “We do not differ on Al-Tariq.”

  “What about the Jamrat Project? Lanatullah? Alf Wajeh?” Omar shook his head after each question.

  “I heard of these for the first time just this morning.”

  “Would you let me know if you learn anything?”

  Omar nodded.

  “If you want to know what’s going on in the Sunni Triangle,” Hadid said, “you must know Imam Fuaad Al-Sadreddin. He will know what is going on better than I. I would write you a letter of introduction if you’d like.”

  Counterintelligence had been trying for months to get to Al-Sadreddin, one of the more influential Sunni clerics, but so far, he’d been unwilling to talk to anyone from the coalition.

  “Why would you do that for me?” DeLuca asked.

  “There are things you want from me,” Omar said. “There are things I want from you. Right now, there’s something we both want. My brother is not like me. Perhaps I should be more like him, more cautious. If Al-Tariq was in my house and I was there, I would kill him myself. I would find the means. Your President Bush uses the word evil with some frequency, and often incorrectly. It’s a word that applies to Al-Tariq. The Koran is clear against the killing of a human being, but the text allows for the removal of evil. If you can do that, I will help you. After that, I don’t know.”

  DeLuca looked at him a moment, then opened his sat phone.

  “Where do you want the generator delivered?”

  “The hospital is in Ad-Dujayl,” Omar Hadid said.

  DeLuca instant-dialed from his contact list. The phone rang three times before a voice answered.

  “Captain Martin,” he said. “This is Mr. David with a code Hazel request—I need a generator delivered to the hospital in Ad-Dujayl. With a team to install it. What do you have for me? Uh-huh. Would that be big enough to power a hospital? Uh-huh. Hang on.”

  He turned to Omar Hadid.

  “How much fuel do you need?”

  “As much as you have,” Hadid said. “There are tanks in place to be filled.”

  “Send a tanker, too,” DeLuca told the aide to LeDoux. “Tomorrow morning will be fine. Thanks much.”

  He hung up.

  “You’ll have it tomorrow,” he told Hadid. “If you don’t have it by noon, call the post and ask to speak to me.”

  Hadid nodded.

  “Perhaps you
should visit the hospital yourself,” he said. “Room 406. He’s registered under a false name. You might want to speak to him.”

  “Who would that be?”

  “Hassan Al-Tariq,” Hadid said. “Mohammed Al-Tariq’s son. One of them. The other is Ibrahim.”

  “Why’s he in the hospital?”

  “He was shot,” Hadid said. “By whom, I could not tell you. Or why. But the apple never falls far from the tree, as you might say.”

  Back in Tent City, someone with his shirt off was doing pushups in the middle of the floor. DeLuca stood in the doorway watching for a moment. Twenty quick pushups later, the man sprang to his feet, drenched in sweat, threw a rapid succession of punches and jabs at an imaginary opponent with a quick Ali-shuffle of his feet, then turned and saw DeLuca standing there.

  “Sorry,” he said, grabbing a nearby towel and throwing it around his neck. “Gotta catch my PT where I can. I’d use the gym but nobody told me where it is. You the TL?”

  “David DeLuca,” he said, offering his hand. The other man shook it, his grip firm.

  “Julio Vasquez,” the other man said. “I’m a bit early but we made better time than we thought. I’m your new boy.”

  “You a fighter?” DeLuca asked.

  “Naw,” Vasquez said. “I wrestled a bit in college. Freestyle. Back in the world.”

  “What was your record?”

  “Sixty-six and one,” he said, without a trace of bragging in his tone. “I lost the NCAAs in the finals. I was teaching gang bangers in a youth police league when my unit got called. LAPD.”

  “Boston PD,” DeLuca said.

  “I went to college in Boston. Where is everybody?”

  “Dan Sykes and Colleen MacKenzie are at Warhorse conducting an interrogation. You’ll like Sykes—he’s sixth-degree black belt in karate. Maybe you could wrestle him.”

  “Sounds like a bad kung fu movie,” Vasquez said, switching to imitate a dubbed-in voice. “My art is stronger than your Chinese boxing—but now let us fight to see who is better! Warhorse is a shit hole.”