Team Red

by David DeBatto

  “What does he do, then?” DeLuca asked.

  “Sniffs bombs,” Vasquez said. “Other stuff. Whatever you want him to. You just hold something under his nose and tell him to go find more and he does.”

  “Does he crap inside tents?”

  “Don’t we all?” Vasquez said, grinning. “By the way—your guy is waiting for you.”

  Omar Hadid had been held for two days, but he looked like he’d been in longer. His clothes were rumpled and his eyes were bloodshot. He had a bruise on his temple. He regarded DeLuca with a blank expression. DeLuca sat opposite him.

  “How’ve you been treated?” DeLuca asked. “Can I get you anything?”

  Omar didn’t answer. DeLuca considered what he had to offer. The question was how to win back Omar’s trust. He thought he’d give sincerity a try.

  “If you’re straight with me, I can have you on your way home within the hour,” he told the Iraqi. Omar stared at him again.

  “Why should I believe you?” he asked.

  “I’m sorry about your brother,” DeLuca said. “I really am. I was hoping he could talk to my friend, General LeDoux. The general who wants to meet you. Your brother was essential to what I’m working on right now. I was out of the country when the raid happened. If I’d have been here, I would have stopped it.”

  “You say,” Hadid replied.

  “I’m truly sorry,” DeLuca said. “How’s Kamel?”

  “I’m told that if he lives, he will be paralyzed,” Omar said flatly. “They think his neck may be broken. Among other injuries.”

  “Where is he?”

  “He’s in the hospital, in Ad-Dujayl.”

  “He should be at the CASH here,” DeLuca said. “The Combat and Support Hospital. Some of the best doctors in America are working here.”

  “Thank you, no,” Omar said.

  “Omar, it’s a better hospital. No offense, but I was in yours. Until a little while ago, yours didn’t even have electricity. I know you don’t want him to die.”

  “At least he will die in an Iraqi hospital,” Omar said.

  “If you think that’s going to prove a point, somebody would have to be paying attention,” DeLuca said, “and the only one who is is me, and I already take your point.”

  If DeLuca wanted to reestablish a cooperative relationship, he’d be foolish to try to force Omar to compromise first. He had to show him the way.

  “I’m going to make a phone call,” DeLuca said, taking his sat phone from his pocket. “You can stop me at any point in this call. When I’m done, you can go back to your cell if you want, or we can stay and talk.” He dialed. He waited. “Captain Martin,” he said, “this is Mr. David. I have a code Hazel request. I have a boy with a serious neck injury. His name is Kamel Hadid, and he’s in the hospital in Ad-Dujayl. He’s . . .” He turned to Omar. “How old is he?”

  “He is twelve,” Hadid said. That was younger than Ali had told DeLuca before, but no matter.

  “He’s twelve years old. I want you to find the best neurosurgeon in theater and fly him to the hospital. Hang on a second.” He turned to Omar again. “Has Kamel had X-rays?”

  Omar shook his head.

  “He’s going to need X-rays, too. You’ll need portable equipment because the hospital doesn’t have any. Upon the surgeon’s recommendation, if the boy can be moved, once he’s stable, I want him medevaced to Balad and put on the first plane you can arrange. I want him flown to Logan Airport in Boston, and I want the plane met by an ambulance. I want the ambulance to take him to Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital. ASAP. Call me when you set it up.”

  He turned off his phone.

  Omar Hadid seemed unmoved.

  “Now please bring my brother back to me,” he said. “And then bring his wives back to him. Can you do that, Mr. David?”

  “I cannot,” he said. “I can’t change the past. I can only change the future. As can you, if you work with me. But I understand your grief. If you’d rather be alone with your grief, I’ll have you escorted back to your cell. If you’d prefer to work toward changing the future, I’ll send you wherever you want to go.”

  DeLuca rose from his chair. He turned and walked away. He was in the corridor when a guard caught up to him and told him Hadid wanted to speak with him again.

  Hadid hadn’t moved from his chair.

  “What is it you want?” he asked.

  “Just the truth,” DeLuca said. “Same deal as before. Were you housing insurgents?”

  “Was I?” Omar said. “No. But I’ve been living in my office, since the war began. My brother lived at my house. He called me and told me men had come and he could not make them leave. He was afraid that they would kill him if he looked like he was a collaborator, but he was afraid he would be killed by Americans if he let them stay.”

  “Who were they?” DeLuca asked. “Were they working with Al-Tariq?”

  Omar shook his head.

  “They were nobodies,” he said. “Common criminals. One said he was in contact with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, but my brother said he thought this man was a liar who was trying to make himself seem important. My brother was not a strong man, Mr. David. This is why they knew they could use him this way. My brother called me and asked me to come over and make them leave. When I got to the house, it was gone.”

  “They fired on the convoy and the convoy responded,” DeLuca said. “This is within the rules of engagement.”

  “Perhaps they should have just let your tanks drive up and kill them,” Omar said.

  “You fire on us, we’re going to fire back,” DeLuca said.

  “All right,” Omar said. “But what happens when both sides take this position? Who fired first in this war? These men in my house—in the name of defending one’s country, even thieves and drug runners may have a holy cause.”

  “I’ll leave it to wiser men than myself to sort out what’s holy and what isn’t,” DeLuca said. “My focus is on what’s evil. Holy men can choose their own paths toward faith, but evil men are all the same. You know who I’m looking for. If Mohammed Al-Tariq is still alive, I have to find him before he can accomplish more evil. And I can’t find him without help. This is your country. Do you want men like Al-Tariq left free, or do you want them stopped? Because I can stop him if I can find him, but I can’t find him without you. It’s that simple.”

  Omar considered his options, his arms folded across his chest, his head tilted to one side. Finally he leaned forward, placing his hands palms down on the table.

  “I am free to leave?” he asked.

  “You’re free to leave,” DeLuca said.

  “I will make arrangements,” Omar said. “Meet me at the gate tomorrow at noon. I will have a car. You may bring a translator, but you must not bring an armed convoy. I will personally guarantee your safety. Imam Al-Sadreddin will speak with us only if you come to him this way.”

  DeLuca spent the afternoon doing Reicken’s paperwork, reading the reports Dan Sykes and MacKenzie and Vasquez had left him, researching interleukin-4, and skimming the chapter from Current Protocols in Molecular Biology, volume three, section 4, that Dan had photocopied for him, though it was slow going, too much scientific terminology to make it a quick read.

  He sent Gillian O’Doherty an e-mail that read:

  Gillian,

  Any news for me, re the syringes? Sorry if you tried to call—spent the last four days in Iran having guns pointed at my head. There are probably bars in the Combat Zone in Boston where that sort of thing goes on all the time, but it was somewhat novel to me. Let me know as soon as you know anything—the game is afoot.

  D.D.

  He sent another to his wife that read:

  Bonnie,

  I’m sorry to get your latest message and sorrier still that it’s taken me this long to respond. I was on a mission that I can’t really talk about here, but it took me out of the country for a few days and took a few twists and turns that could not have been anticipated. Also, FYI, my phone d
ied, and I was out of touch with everybody, not just you.

  I thought we had an understanding that you weren’t going to do anything until I got back? I thought we had a deal, that whatever was going on between us was going to be put on hold until then. Am I wrong about that, or is that an accurate assessment of how we’d left things?

  I know this is not what you want to hear, but what I’m doing right now is important and needs my full attention. I can’t tell you what that is, however. I do understand how this might drive you crazy. It requires considerable faith, on your part. Maybe you’re right—maybe that’s too much to ask. Maybe it’s easier for me to put everything on hold (and impossible for you) because every minute of my day is filled to overflowing with things to do to keep me distracted and preoccupied. I would like nothing more than to be able to come home to you and have nothing but a solid month of unbroken days to spend talking to you and holding you in my arms and making love to you and getting to know you again. That’s the worst part of this, the way it makes us strangers to each other, again and again.

  Maybe that’s what you can’t stand. I don’t know, right now, how to avoid it. Please don’t do anything until I get back and have a chance to make it right to you.

  Love, David

  P.S. I’m sending a kid named Kamel Hadid to Brigham and Women’s Hospital for treatment. He’s lost his family and I promised his uncle that I had people in Boston who would look in on him once in a while. Is that something you could do? Let me know if it isn’t and I’ll make other arrangements.

  MacKenzie, Sykes, and Vasquez brought in Faris Saad that evening. They’d found him through his sister and promised him U.S. government protection. He’d been hiding in a small village in the desert, a hundred miles west of Baghdad, when they picked him up. Dan asked DeLuca if he wanted to lead the interrogation, but DeLuca deferred to the team, though he called in Sami Jambazian to act as translator.

  Faris was, understandably, a nervous little man, constantly twitching and looking over his shoulder. Vasquez assured him that he was perfectly safe.

  “We want to know about a load you picked up from the Daura Foot and Mouth Disease Facility in Al Manal.” Sami translated the questions and answers, sitting at the end of the table. Saad chain-smoked cigarettes as he spoke.

  “I do this once. In March. Before the bombing started.”

  “And you were alone? Or with somebody?”

  “With my friend Razdi. Razdi Chellub.”

  “You’d driven with Razdi before?”

  “Yes,” Saad said.

  “What did you pick up?” MacKenzie asked him. “Do you remember what it was?”

  “I don’t know,” the trucker said. “Boxes.”

  “Boxes. What size boxes? Big enough to hold shoes, or big enough to hold air-conditioners?”

  “Air-conditioners,” he said. “Not so big, but big.”

  “How many?”

  “Four or five, I think.”

  “What was in the boxes?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What did you think was in the boxes? What did they tell you it was?”

  “I don’t know. Food, I think.”

  “Food?” Mack said. “Did you lift them? How heavy were they?”

  “Yes. They were heavy.”

  “So you thought they were full of food, but heavy, like canned goods, not bread?”

  “Heavy. I don’t know what. Like a case of wine.”

  “Did they make a sound when you lifted them? Did anything inside rattle?”

  “I don’t remember. I think no.”

  “But you can’t be sure?”

  “No. I was scared. Because of the men. Two men came with us. With guns. They were there when the trucks were loaded and unloaded.”

  “Who were they?”

  “I don’t know. I think Mukhaberat.”

  “Did they say they were Mukhaberat?”

  “They did not have to.”

  “What did they do?”

  “They told us not to stop ever. They spoke to the people when we crossed the border. And when we got to Beirut, they put the boxes inside other boxes.”

  “Where in Beirut did you take them?”

  “To the shipping company. By the docks.”

  “What was the name of the shipping company?”

  “Moushabeck Shipping Ltd.,” the trucker said. “In the Hamra. Where the Corniche ends.”

  “And these men, from the Mukhaberat—they took the boxes from Al Manal and put them inside other boxes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Were these other boxes marked?”

  “Yes,” he said. “In English.”

  “Do you remember what it said?”

  “No,” he said. “Razdi said it was food.”

  “The boxes they put the boxes into? The boxes the shipment went inside of, these boxes were labeled as food?”

  “I think. Some kind of importer of food, I think. Razdi knew. This is what he said to me. Razdi could read English. A little.”

  “But Razdi is dead.”

  “They killed him. They will kill me, too. He told me to hide, as soon as we got back.”

  “These men, the men with guns, they didn’t return with you?”

  “They wanted to, but Razdi did not wait for them. He knew.”

  DeLuca turned to Sami.

  “What do you think? What’s your bullshit detector saying?”

  “This guy’s being straight with us. He’s scared shitless. I’ve got family in Beirut. My cousin Yusef is a cop there. I can ask him to look into it.”

  “Do that,” DeLuca said. “What does he need from us?”

  “He said all he wants is enough money to get to Syria. He has family in Damascus.”

  “How much does he need?”

  Sami asked him.

  “He says he needs a hundred dollars,” Sami said.

  “Give him a thousand, and give his sister five hundred for helping us,” DeLuca said. “Tomorrow you and I are going to talk to a holy man.”

  Imam Fuaad Al-Sadreddin had been, by some accounts, the second-most-powerful man in the Sunni Triangle, after Saddam himself. Saddam’s government had been largely secular, Baghdad a city of nightclubs and bars where alcohol flowed freely and women could walk the streets unveiled if they chose to. To a certain extent, the war with Iran was an armed confrontation between strict and loose Islamists, with the forces commanded by the radical Ayatollah Khomeini waging a holy war against the infidel Iraqis. Sadreddin had formed a partnership with Saddam, as he had to do, but it had been an uneasy partnership. Saddam knew Sadreddin could turn the Sunnis against him, and Sadreddin knew Saddam could turn his army against him. Each had spies inside the other’s houses.

  Omar arrived at a gate outside the mosque, where he spoke with an armed guard, then turned through the gates and down a drive to the mosque, which was guarded by at least a hundred heavily armed men sporting AK-47s and assorted small arms. The mosque was impressive, about a thousand years old, with golden onion domes and six-story minarets, decorated with brightly colored tiles of gold, red, blue, and black, with armed guards manning the balconies. The prayer hall inside was large enough to hold five hundred prayer rugs side by side, Omar said. Brightly colored murals on the walls of the liwan depicted ancient Islamic tales.

  Sadreddin was seated on the floor, at the head of a massive rug woven in intricate patterns of black and red and gold. He was dressed in a black robe, his head bound in a black turban. Despite his age (he was nearly eighty), his hair and beard remained a dark black, such that he’d earned the nickname the Black Monk among certain members of the intelligence community who’d been trying to contact him. DeLuca was the first Westerner he’d met with.

  DeLuca, Sami, and Omar Hadid sat opposite the imam, who did not offer food, as had every other Iraqi DeLuca had ever met formally. Omar had told him not to expect the kind of hospitality he’d been shown elsewhere. Sadreddin believed the United States occupiers were true infidels, en
emies of his faith and of everything he stood for. He was only meeting DeLuca, Omar said, as a personal favor.

  Omar spoke for a few minutes. Sami didn’t bother trying to translate, indicating to DeLuca by facial expression and gesture that Omar was saying all the right things. Sadreddin’s bodyguard was a former Iraqi Olympic wrestling champion named Goliath, Omar had explained, who’d never lost a match and had therefore escaped the wrath of Saddam’s son Uday, who’d made it a practice to torture Iraq’s international athletes when they didn’t perform well. Goliath was about six foot eight, DeLuca guessed, and maybe 350 pounds of solid muscle, with a heavy beard, cut close, and no discernible neck.

  When Omar was done speaking, Sadreddin stared at DeLuca, who hadn’t felt such a stare since Sister Michaeletta caught him spitting on her jade plant. Then Sadreddin spoke. Sami translated.

  “I will have Sunnis sitting on the command council,” Sadreddin said. “I will give you the names. They will represent us in the interim government, and in what will follow. The Sunni people will not be ruled by Shiites.”

  “He doesn’t beat around the bush, does he?” DeLuca said to Sami. “Tell him I will take the list of names to my friend General Phillip LeDoux, who has the ear of Paul Bremer.” Sami translated. The imam spoke.

  “He wants a guarantee,” Sami said.

  DeLuca considered lying as one option, but thought of Sister Michaeletta, who had taught him that lying only got your knuckles rapped with a metal ruler. Sadreddin didn’t look like he had a metal ruler on him, but you couldn’t be too careful.

  “I can’t make such guarantees,” DeLuca said. “Anyone who tells you they could would be lying to you. I did not come here to lie to you. I came to seek your help finding Mohammed Al-Tariq. If you help me, I guarantee I will make certain that General LeDoux and Mr. Bremer are aware of your concerns. They’re both of the belief that all the peoples of Iraq must be represented on the governing councils, and that such ruling bodies must not be used to exact revenge or redress ancient grievances. I’m also certain that once General LeDoux receives the list of names I will give him, he will want to meet with you to discuss those names, once he has had time to look at them.”