“That’s a challenge.”
“But I did it—under oath. Everyone knew I was covering for GENGHIS. And they all understood, too. They’d all been there. But I couldn’t live with it, Camille. My word is everything. They made me a general and sent me to the Pentagon. That’s when I left Delta for the Christians In Action. Lying is a lifestyle with those loveable bastards, so I thought that’s where I belonged.” Iggy picked up a pen and twirled it around his artificial fingers. “Haven’t spoken to GENGHIS since.”
“I understand,” Camille said, even more convinced that she could trust Iggy. Especially considering what it had cost him, his loyalty to GENGHIS would’ve made a Marine proud. “But you’re going to have to work with him and that’s going to involve more than talking.”
“I’m a soldier. You can count on me doing what it takes to accomplish the mission. And we have a mission to finalize right now. You’ll meet your team at twenty-three thirty hours in the bunker to do some run-throughs first. Come as an Iraqi civilian—male, traditional dress.” He looked her in the eyes. “I’m also going to have to ask you a question about a scenario involving our guy on the inside. If I don’t like your answer, I’m pulling you, even if you are the boss.”
“I’d expect no less.” Camille left the room.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Camp Tsunami, Abu Ghraib Prison
Hunter’s stomach growled as he sat naked on the prayer rug, heavy metal music now blaring over the loudspeakers. The one hundred ninety-three cinder blocks had been inventoried so many times that he was ready to name each one like he’d already done with the seven rats that regularly prowled his cell. He did another hundred pushups, but didn’t want to work out too hard since he hadn’t eaten in days and he was starting to feel it. All the water he could drink was a bitter reminder that he had let Zorro extract more information from him than he had ever given the North Koreans or Saddam’s Mukaburat. Handing over his real name was harmless enough, he tried to convince himself, but he knew that was the way it always started. Each scrap was innocuous, you told yourself as you handed over more and more. He understood how denial worked—he had once dated a Catholic girl who called herself a virgin the next morning—time and time again.
He was man enough to admit to himself he had been screwed by Zorro and it wasn’t going to happen anymore. Even though Zorro knew he worked for Force Zulu, he had refused to acknowledge it during today’s interrogation session. It wouldn’t take long for them to realize their only leverage over him was water. Then they’d start withholding it again. Soon enough a point would come when he would have to begin handing them the little details they already knew or die from cascading organ failure. Intense physical pain was less insidious, easier to resist. Old-fashioned electrodes-on-the-balls torture made things very black and white.
Zorro had kept coming back to something called SHANGRI-LA and he seemed to believe that Hunter knew something about it. Hunter assumed it was the code name for whatever Rubicon had going on with the tangos and it was probably related to the arms caches Ashland had accused him of stealing, something that Zorro didn’t seem to care about. He wondered how the strange Uzbekistan connection fit in. Jackie’s husband had worked for Rubicon Petroleum and she claimed he was up to something secretive in Uzbekistan—the same place the al-Zahrani terrorists had trained. It could be a weird coincidence, but he doubted it. No matter how much he thought about it, a clear picture wouldn’t come together.
He opened the Koran and started reading it to kill time, but his mind kept wandering to Stella. She would be trying to find him, but he doubted she stood much of a chance.
The guards on this shift were still playing heavy metal at a deafening level. He wasn’t sure if they had switched to heavy metal to annoy Arab inmates or for the guards themselves to relieve their own ears. Either way, he welcomed the change except that the sound level was about the same as a jet taking off. Constant exposure to the deafening sound left him with a splitting headache that wouldn’t go away for days and he feared he was going to have a hearing loss. He flipped through the Koran, then unexpectedly heard some familiar notes on an electric guitar, but he told himself no way were the guards playing that song to get to the prisoners. It wasn’t right. Not even they would stoop so low as to play the national anthem to torture inmates.
After another chord, Hunter got up. Jimmy Hendrix’ electric guitar was screeching while machine guns, bombs and screams—the sounds of Vietnam, the sounds of Iraq—were going off in the background. He stood at attention in his Abu Ghraib cell, naked, singing “The Star Spangled Banner” while he chocked back tears.
Without warning, the door cracked open and a guard threw Day-Glo orange prison coveralls, an olive-drab hood and a pair of flip-flops at him. He carried an AK-102, the poor Russian cousin of an M4, but he didn’t point it directly at him. Hunter could’ve taken him out, but he saw something in the guy’s eyes; he wanted something from Hunter and he was afraid.
The guard yelled above the music. “Put these on. We’re getting you out of here. Hurry!”
Hunter jumped into the overalls and zipped them as fast as he could.
The guard glanced at the door as he handed Hunter the heavy hood. “Pull this on, too. I’ll stick the strap through, but I won’t buckle it.”
“Did Camille Black send you?”
“And get your hands behind your back so I can cuff them.” The guard’s body was shaking with tension.
“No cuffs.”
“It’s got to look like a prisoner transfer. Get your hands behind your back. We’re running out of time. Do it!”
“I want my hands free. You don’t know what you’re doing, do you?”
“I’m making five million in five minutes. Hands behind your back.” He pointed the Russian assault rifle at Hunter.
He hoped the guy’s half-assed plan gave him an opening to escape before it got him killed. But he didn’t hesitate to go along with him. He’d rather die from a bullet than organ failure. “Give me the tie and I’ll hold it in place.”
“Whatever.” He handed Hunter the zip-tie.
The flip-flops were several sizes too big and Hunter struggled not to trip over them as the guard shoved him along. The hood obscured everything, but he heard the clank of heavy metal locks and guessed he was almost outside the cell block or had entered another one.
A woman’s voice said, “What took so long? Nathan can’t stay parked at the door much longer. They’re starting to get suspicious.” Her footsteps paced alongside them.
“Stop!” A man shouted. Hunter estimated he was ten meters from them at their six o’clock. He wanted so badly to rip off the mask so he could see, but he knew better.
One of his liberators grabbed him, spun him around, took his arm and started to run. He planted his feet firmly and refused to move, figuring it was his best and only chance. Hunter heard an automatic weapon pop and the guy holding onto him screamed, then let go. He wanted to yank off the hood, but knew any movement on his part would be interpreted as a threat, a threat to be neutralized. So he stood there as he listened to another burst of gunshots and he heard the female jailor scream. He forced his eyes closed and pictured Stella telling him she loved him—that was the last image he wanted to take with him to eternity. In a split second, he was being shoved to the floor. He didn’t resist.
“Face down! Now!”
His heart was pounding so hard, it felt like it was shaking his body. Then he realized he was actually trembling. He really thought it was over. As he lay on the cold concrete floor, smelling blood and sensing death all around him, he understood his life was soon coming to a close.
And he also understood he had made a terrible mistake in staging his death, telling himself that it was to protect Stella. Now he realized it was more to protect him, to protect him from losing her. He had lost over two years with her and now he’d never see her again.
A Rubicon operator kicked him in the kidneys. The sharp pain was almost a welcome di
straction.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Camp Tsunami, Abu Ghraib Prison
The Rubicon prison guard Bobby Carmichael whistled to himself as he waddled into the guard’s bathroom with a package of brown paper towels, dreaming of the mail order bride and the double-wide he was going to buy with his bounty money. With a million bucks, he could even buy a lot in that new gated trailer park just off I-44 in Joplin. He wiggled his butt when he realized that with that much dough he could really go uptown and get himself a white Russian girl instead of one of the Filipinos he’d been saving up for. Whoever Hunter Stone was, he wished he could plant a big one on his cheek. Having that guy on his cell block was the luckiest break he’d had in his entire life.
He glanced at his watch and wondered where Becky and Lew were. Come to think of it, he hadn’t seen Nathan for quite a while either. They were probably having some fun with the inmates and had cut him out of the action again. If they only knew that for once, Bobby was going to be the center of the world. Only four guards were on the cell block instead of the usual seven, but what did he care? It would only make it easier for him to slip the team inside, bypassing the usual searches.
The guard’s bathroom was not something he was going to miss. No wonder the Europeans called them water closets. It was tough enough to take a dump teetering over the stained porcelain squat toilet like a hen laying an egg, praying to god he didn’t lose his balance and fall in, but it was nearly impossible when it felt like those shit-smeared walls were closing in. He wadded up a fist full of paper towels and tossed them into the hole as if he were shooting a basket. He crumpled most of the package into tight wads. Putting his foot there to pack them down the hole as tightly as he could made him want to saw his leg off, but he reminded himself it was for the big bucks.
It was time. He flushed the toilet and left the door ajar. The other guards were too spoiled. They depended upon their comforts and nothing caused a more serious crisis among them than their own toilet overflowing. In another five minutes, they would be screaming for Bobby to drop everything and come clean up the mess. But this time he wouldn’t come.
In a few minutes, Bobby Carmichael would be a millionaire and everyone knew millionaires didn’t clean crappers.
He hurried outside for a smoke, thinking of his very own slinky blonde Rooskie.
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Army investigators were forced to close their inquiry in June 2005 after they said task force members used battlefield pseudonyms that made it impossible to identify and locate the soldiers involved.
—The New York Times, March 19, 2006, as reported by Erick Schmitt and Carolyn Marshall
Camp Tsunami, Abu Ghraib Prison
The glue holding on Camille’s moustache made her upper lip itch, but she couldn’t scratch it because her hands were cuffed behind her back in special breakaway zip-ties. As they were getting outfitted for the job, she broke apart three of them to make absolutely sure she could get free. Even voluntary restraints made her antsy. She reassured herself that it only helped her play the part more realistically—any sane Iraqi being hauled into Abu Ghraib should be a basket case. The six fake prisoners were sitting on the floor, crammed into the back of the stolen Rubicon Ford Expedition. As they wound through the Jersey barriers in front of the outside perimeter gate of the Rubicon-managed Abu Ghraib prison, she fell against GENGHIS. He winked at her and pushed back. She wasn’t sure if it was another come-on or if he was now being chummy.
The Iraqi guards at the main gate were taking forever, talking with their driver about something she couldn’t hear. God, she hoped they got Hunter and didn’t end up trapped inside with him. She imagined herself a wild animal, throwing herself against the sides of the cage until she collapsed in blood and exhaustion. Trailers for prison movies alone were enough to make her want to go outside for a run. She took a deep breath. The SUV lurched forward and she watched out the back window, staring at the razor wire as the giant gates slammed shut.
She kept thinking about Iggy’s question before he cleared her to go on the mission. He had described a scenario in which she believed she had figured out who their insider was. Iggy had wanted to know if she was absolutely sure that if he was carrying a weapon, she could neutralize him without hesitation. She had said yes, but wasn’t so sure she had told the truth.
“RUBY SLIPPER to all units,” the driver’s voice came through a small speaker hidden in Camille’s ear. “We have entered the HAUNTED FOREST.”
Camille thought The Wizard of Oz was an unusual choice of code names for a straight guy, but she understood Iggy’s logic of choosing something all the men were familiar with since there was so little time to prepare the op. She also suspected it was related to his affinity for his own call sign, TIN MAN. The important thing was that even if the Agency and Rubicon had somehow broken into their encrypted radio traffic, the RUBY SLIPPER wouldn’t fit until it was too late.
At the prison entrance three Rubicon employees leaned against the cinder block wall in their wrinkled gray prison guard uniforms, smoking cigarettes and waiting for a new delivery of prisoners to process. If they hadn’t been carrying assault rifles, they could just as easily have been fast-food workers on break hanging in the parking lot. She wouldn’t have been surprised if that’s what they had done in the States before Halliburton started the working-class gold rush, offering white collar salaries for blue collar work in Iraq.
A man who had supersized far too many of his own French fries threw his cigarette to the ground, crushed it with his shiny black shoe and grinned as he watched them drive up. Strange reaction, Camille noted. She hoped it wasn’t some eager new employee’s first day on the job. She took it as a good sign that the others kept puffing away. The SUV backed up to the building. It came to a stop and she tumbled over against another fake prisoner.
One of her men posing as a Rubicon operator walked around the SUV and opened the back hatch. “Get your ass out of my truck, haji,” he said as he grabbed Camille’s shoulder and yanked her from the truck. She twisted her body like a cat as she fell to the ground.
“I didn’t say lie down. On your feet.”
He jerked her up by her arm and she struggled to keep her hands and feet close enough together so she didn’t pop off the plastic ties. She looked him in the eyes, then spat at his feet. The Rubicon jailors laughed, cigarettes dangling from their mouths. Her men unloaded the prisoners.
“You boys gonna stand there lollygagging all night or you gonna take these here peckerwoods off my hands,” rEBEL, their driver said, turning on his thick Cajun accent. He was one of the smartest and sexiest operators she had. “They’re stinking my truck up to high heaven.”
“Hold your horses, farm boy. Six prisoners tonight, huh?” a lanky blond man said, an AK-102 at his side. His moustache was so ratty that it made Camille feel pretty good about hers, at least until he lowered his head and started studying her face more closely.
REBEL tried to distract him away from Camille. “So you boys ever get to watch girls going after one another like in all of them prison movies? I bet it’s nonstop lezzie action in there.”
The young guy looked over at him and laughed. “Yeah, that’s all we do all night in there, watch chicks getting it on with other chicks. It’s a rough job, but somebody’s got to do it.” He pulled out a scuffed, off-the-shelf Motorola walkie-talkie. “Open up, Milford. I want back in before the girls hit the showers.”
The steel door buzzed open and the guards shoved Camille, GENGHIS and the other four operators inside. She was sweating from the plastic-wrapped C-4 taped to her belly to help conceal her breasts. A USP Tactical pistol was stashed in an ankle holster under her dishdashah. They all had weapons and night vision equipment stashed under their Arab dresses. The insider was supposed to ensure that the walk-through metal detector was broken. In case he didn’t come through, she was ready to draw at the first sign of problems.
The lock clanked shut behind her and it echoed in her head. Then
it was drowned out by radio chatter from their driver. “TIN MAN this is RUBY SLIPPER. SCARECROW has entered the WITCH’S TOWER.”
“Copy that,” Iggy’s smooth voice said over the earpiece.
“TIN MAN, RUBY SLIPPER again. The MUNCHKINS have returned and report everything in place for POPPY FIELDS,” the driver’s voice said over the radio. The advance team was now safely back inside the SUV and the explosive charges were set.
The Rubicon jailers stopped the prisoners outside a set of bars through which Camille could see the main cell block. The cells were stacked two high and they were packed with Iraqi men. Two guards pointed AK-102s at them while the big jailor’s walkie-talkie squealed. She didn’t know which one was their insider. She didn’t want to.
“Bobby,” the voice said over the walkie-talkie. “The john’s flooding us out again. Get up here now!”
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