Hunting in the Shadows (American Praetorians)

by Peter Nealen

  “So send Hal’s team here and we’ll go to Tikrit,” I said. “As far as I can remember, even though I’m getting a little old and my memory’s a little hazy, we had jack and shit for support in Somalia last year, brother.”

  “We also lost a lot of good guys in East Africa last year, if you remember,” he countered, his voice tight.

  I clenched my jaw. He was right. Even a year later, the holes that those guys had left in the teams still hurt. Most of them I’d known for years. We’d all seen some action in the military before we’d gone contract, but I’d never seen the casualty rate we’d endured in East Africa. A lot of that had been due to the either nonexistent or untrustworthy support we’d gotten from the CIA on that job. We’d been in the wind, and paid the price for it in the lives of our brothers. Alek didn’t want to see that happen again. Neither did I, but playing things too cautious had never gotten a mission accomplished. None of us had gone into this business expecting to die in bed, either.

  “I remember,” I answered after a moment. “I knew Hank a lot longer than you did. I also know that if we weren’t willing to risk losing anybody else, we wouldn’t be in this country right now. And Tikrit’s not even seventy-five miles away; that’s a lot better than anywhere we were in Somalia.” I paused for a second. “I know you better than that, Alek. Didn’t we start this company precisely to get away from the risk-averse REMFs putting the choke collar on what had to be done? Since when did you start worrying about playing it safe? You know that isn’t how we work.”

  I heard him sigh on the other end. “You’re right. Damn it. All right, I’ll get Hal’s team moving down to you. Keep up operations until they get there. I’m sure you’ll give them a pretty thorough changeover. Just don’t go looking for trouble just to break them in.”

  “I’d never do such a thing,” I said, managing to keep my voice level.

  “Yeah, bullshit,” Alek snorted. “Keep me in the loop, brother.”

  We hung up, and I headed back into the main room to try to catch some sleep. It bothered me that Alek was getting so mother hen-ish. I’d known the guy for a long time, and it wasn’t his style. But then, he hadn’t been stuck in the TOC while the guys he’d been fighting alongside a year before were out on the pointy end before. I imagined it was just bugging him to let us go out and do the dangerous stuff while he was relatively safe. Fortunately, I was confident enough that he’d listen to me when I called him on it, if he got too overprotective. It was a dangerous business we’d chosen, and our decision the year before to take any opportunity to hurt the growing tide of Islamist tyranny whenever we could just made it more so.

  It probably wouldn’t take Hal very long to get his team geared up, ready to go, and down to Kirkuk; it was less than sixty miles to Erbil. But they still probably wouldn’t get there until the next morning, so I was going to take the time to get some rest, and let the team do the same, as best we could. Things would get interesting soon enough, I was sure.

  Bob and Juan got back about two hours later. I woke up as they pulled up; I don’t think any of us have a problem with waking up in such situations. Getting to sleep—that could sometimes be interesting. I got up, checked that my 1911 was still on my hip, and stretched. It hadn’t been much sleep, but one thing I’d learned a long time ago, somewhat from watching team leaders who did the opposite, was that a good TL doesn’t necessarily get a lot of sleep. He’s responsible for everything his team does or doesn’t do, and that means being aware of everything that happens. It doesn’t leave a lot of room for relaxation.

  They didn’t come straight in. That would have been asking for a blast from Larry’s shotgun in the face. Instead, the radio crackled.

  “Fort Apache, this is Shiny,” Bob called.

  “Shiny, this is Hillbilly,” I replied. “Send it.”

  “Authentication Five November Six,” he said. “We are out front, coming in. Don’t shoot us.”

  “Your authentication’s good, Shiny,” I said. “Why would we shoot you?”

  “Because Monster’s been on post since we left, and is probably looking for some way to break the monotony by now,” he answered wryly.

  Larry snorted. I just shook my head, though Bob couldn’t see it. “Just get in here.”

  “Coming in,” Bob said. The radio went silent. A minute later, there was a tap on the door, and Bob came in, with Juan in tow. Both were carrying the gear they’d had secreted in the Opal sedan they’d driven out into the city. “Hey, boss,” Bob said, as he set his gear down. “Sounded like there was some excitement down your way. Did you and Jim get a piece of that big blowup down south?”

  “Not the blowup itself,” I responded. “But we did get to play a little.” I filled him in. “Now, what did you guys see out there?”

  “There’s a lot of movement out there for after dark,” Bob said, after downing half a water bottle. It was getting on towards fall, but it was still hot as hell in Iraq. “We sat just outside the Arrafa Canteen and watched something like a dozen militia patrols come and go. There weren’t any bombings or shootings in the area; this felt like command and control. Whether it was AQI or just a glorified neighborhood watch, well, I couldn’t really tell.”

  I looked over at Juan. Just going by time in uniformed service, Juan should have been senior to Bob. Bob separated after just eight years; Juan had retired at twenty-two. But Bob had been with the team and the company longer, and he had been in East Africa. That counted for a lot around Praetorian these days.

  Bob had come to Praetorian with the training, but little of the combat experience. He’d been a pretty-boy newbie with a chip on his shoulder. East Africa had changed that. He’d seen good friends and good operators shot dead and blown apart, not because they’d done anything wrong, but just from the fortunes of war. He’d fought like hell, just like the rest of us, and came out a wiser, more serious, and more mature operator.

  Even so, someone with Juan’s experience could easily have developed a chip of their own, having to be second to a guy like Bob. That Juan showed no sign of any such reaction spoke volumes about his own professionalism.

  He shrugged. “I couldn’t get much of a vibe off any of them myself,” he told me. “I think Bob may be right, some of them were just the local equivalent of neighborhood watch. But these days, that doesn’t necessarily rule out Al Qaeda or Mahdi Army.”

  “Either way,” Bob said, “There’s something going on in Arrafa. I think it bears watching.”

  I nodded. “We’ll definitely send the next set of eyes up that way. Get some water, eat something, and hit the rack for a bit. We’ve got maybe another day on site, then Hal’s boys are going to take over for us. We’re headed for Tikrit.”

  Bob finished off the water bottle. “What’s in Tikrit?”

  “About another fifteen hundred IPs and a mechanized infantry division, that is supposed to be headed here,” I replied. He looked at me sharply.

  “The city’s been strict-IP jurisdiction for years,” he pointed out. “If they’re bringing the Army in…”

  “Yeah, it doesn’t look good,” I replied. “Right now its single-source, so we’re heading south to run recon and see if we can confirm it.”

  “We got contacts?” Larry asked from the door.

  “Nope,” I replied. “This is strictly going to be recon and surveillance.”

  “Fuck,” Juan said. “It ain’t exactly healthy for a Westerner to be walking around any Arab city these days.” He was right. It hadn’t been for a long time. Westerners had become mob magnets a couple of years ago, in the latest Al Qaeda offensive, and it hadn’t changed much since then.

  “Well, that’s why we don’t go walking around in daylight letting ourselves be seen,” I replied. “This is back to old-school Sneaky-Pete stuff. No engagement, no compromise. We’ll have to stay soft the entire time.”

  “So if it turns out they are getting ready to move out, we don’t do anything to stop them or slow them down?” Jim asked from behind me. I ha
dn’t heard him get up.

  “Not at the moment,” I answered. “Like I said, this is strictly reconnaissance. Now, things might change, and we’re going to leave the usual flexibility in the plan to allow for whatever the situation dictates. We are taking demo, just in case we need it, but concentrate on the R&S side for this one.”

  “Shit,” Bob said, as he headed for his little corner of the safehouse. “I just fucking love urban R&S. Nothing like setting up in a building that you think is deserted, and then at about eight in the morning the workers show up.”

  He had a point. I’d been on plenty of urban reconnaissance missions that had gone south when somebody had blithely walked into the hide, not expecting anyone to be there. I also knew of a couple of teams who hadn’t made it back after an incident like that.

  “That’s why we don’t have any officers here to say we can’t think outside the box,” I pointed out. “Get some rest. We still have to keep eyes out until we turn over with Hal, and now we’ve got planning to do on top of that. Hit the rack.”

  Bob waved assent and lay down on his pad. Juan picked out a packet of food and settled himself against the wall.

  Me, I headed back to my own corner. Tomorrow—I checked my watch and corrected myself. Today was going to be a long day. At least I could get a couple hours of sleep before we kicked things off again.

  I rolled out as the sun was coming up. It was the time of day when people started getting out on the streets, going to work or going to the market before it got too hot. The second call to prayer of the day was echoing over the city, along with the pall of smoke from the previous night’s bombing. From the reports that Little Bob was picking up on his scanner, it sounded like several businesses had been torched in addition to the IED blast. Things were definitely heating up in Kirkuk.

  I threw on a collared shirt over my soft armor, made sure my pistol was well concealed, and went for a walk. As Juan had pointed out, in most places in the Middle East, a Westerner on the streets was a mob magnet, and likely a dead man. Here, however, in the Kurdish quarter, things were different.

  In spite of the fact that the US had pretty well abandoned Iraq to its own devices, and by extension, the Kurds, the Kurds were doing their damnedest to create a modern, Western state. Even while the Western states were falling like dominoes, crushed under the weight of debts they could never pay back and torn apart by lawlessness, the Kurds were still trying to get it right. The Kurdish quarter of Kirkuk was about the safest place in Iraq proper for anyone to walk at the moment. It didn’t mean I wasn’t still going to go armed, but I could manage to walk the streets without worrying about getting stomped to death and my corpse dragged through the streets.

  I can’t say I liked Kirkuk, even the Kurdish part. Most of the city, be it Kurdish, Arab, or Turcoman sections, were made up of blocky, dusty brick buildings crammed together on either side of often crumbling streets, with filthy ditches on either side. Everything was covered with a patina of dust, and there were the mingled smells of diesel oil, rot, and shit in the air. The whole place just kind of sucked. From what I’d seen, the whole country was about the same. Erbil and As Sulaymaniyah were better off, but only by degree.

  As I walked, I was greeted by several Kurds, men and women both. In the Arab sectors, women steered clear and didn’t talk to strange men. Kurdish women even held billets in the Peshmerga. It probably helped that they wouldn’t be beaten to death by their male relatives for being seen with a man not their husband or relative. In fact, someone had done that within the Peshmerga sector of control just a month ago. The Pesh had hanged him the next day. There were still honor killings, but the KRG was really pushing hard to stamp them out.

  I didn’t go far. I wanted to be close to the safehouse in case something went bad. I was the team lead now, and couldn’t be out of contact for long. But I’d wanted to get a feel for the city that morning.

  The people I saw and met were wary, furtive. They went about their business, but they were looking over their shoulders. The Pesh were patrolling more aggressively; I saw two patrols in the space of a four-block walk. Loud noises tended to send people instinctively toward shelter. The few I spoke to shied away when I tried to talk about what was going on. People were spooked, and I couldn’t find out by way of casual conversation or observation whether or not it was just the violence the previous night, or if there was something else going on. I turned back toward the safehouse. There was still a lot of work to do.

  It was almost dark when the four SUVs pulled up to the curb across from the safehouse. Bryan was on door watch, and peered through the curtains as they came to a stop. “I think they’re here,” he announced.

  A moment later, the radio crackled. “Hillbilly, this is Dave,” Hal called. “We are in position, authentication Six Juliet Eight.”

  “We have eyes on you, Dave,” I replied. “Come ahead.” I wasn’t too worried about the footprint of either the four vehicles, or Hal’s entire team coming in. The Pesh knew we were here, and in fact, while Liberty might be paying us, we were working for the KRG more than we were for the oilmen. Just kind of the way it worked out.

  Hal was the first one in. He was tall, skinny, and sandy-haired. His callsign had come from the first few Hal 9000 jokes, to which he had responded with an eerie, “I’m afraid I can’t do that, Dave.” We couldn’t turn Hal 9000 into a workable over-the-air callsign, so we just settled on Dave.

  We shook hands as the rest of his team shuffled into the now extremely cramped house. “I hear you guys get to go be Secret Squirrels down south,” he said.

  “More like Ricky Recon, but yeah, something like that,” I answered. “Alek bring you up to speed?”

  He nodded. “More or less. I’m hoping you guys are going to stick around for at least a day, help us set up, do left-seat, right-seat, that sort of thing.”

  “That’s the plan,” I told him. “We can’t spare more than about a day, though. If what Haas told us is true, we might be on a tight timeline on this one.”

  He grunted agreement. “If the IA’s moving, yeah, I bet. Let us get our shit squared away, and we’ll sit down and go over the turnover. I take it you’ve got a folder for me?”

  I pointed at the ops room. “Right in there.”

  He hitched his kitbag over his shoulder. “Let’s get to it, then.”

  We went well into the night, going over the intel folder I’d worked up for Kirkuk. Local leaders, organizations, factions, neighborhood polarizations, everything was gone over. We had photos of Persons of Interest, and imagery of the city, sometimes block-by-block, which had been extensively written on. There were notes on ethnic and tribal divisions, transcripts of announcements from the mosques and any public meetings, as well as Haas’ notes on any and all of his contacts. It was a very thorough picture of what we’d managed to learn since we’d gotten to Kirkuk. It was still only a tiny glimmer of the ground truth, but it was a start.

  Hal and Sammy soaked it up like sponges, asking pointed questions that sometimes Jim and I could answer, sometimes we couldn’t. The truth was, we hadn’t been on the ground in Kirkuk for much more than a week. They’d pass it all along to their boys, along with requiring them to go through the whole shebang at the next available opportunity. That was the way we worked in Praetorian. The more everybody on the team knew about the situation, the better.

  Jim and I took Hal and Sammy out onto the streets for a while, getting the feel for the city, pointing out the major “poles” of the power matrix as we’d been able to perceive it. The sun was almost up by the time we got back. Fortunately, it had been a quiet night; aside from a few bursts of small-arms fire, there hadn’t been any major incidents. We got back to the safehouse and most of my team bedded down for the day. We’d pack up and get moving after dark.

  Chapter 3

  Night fell over Kirkuk with the usual mingling of the call to prayer with honking car horns, shouts, and sporadic gunfire. There hadn’t been any IED blasts for a few days, and that n
ight was as quiet as ever, aside from the shooting. Of course, in Iraq, shooting wasn’t necessarily a surefire way of knowing that somebody was getting fucked up. These people—and I include the Kurds in this—had a scary disregard for the laws of gravity. They fired weapons into the air to celebrate all sorts of things—weddings, births, funerals. It made it really difficult sometimes to tell when something was going down, or somebody was just really happy, and decided to chance getting one of their own rounds back the hard way.

  We waited until the sun was well down and the bulk of the populace had gone inside before we went to work. Just because we were in technically friendly territory didn’t mean we necessarily wanted a lot of people see where we were going, much less how.

  Bob and Little Bob headed out first, to go retrieve the vehicles we would be using. They were a little special, and so we kept them cached at the Liberty Petroleum compound outside the city, near the Baba Dome East complex. We didn’t want just anybody poking around them.

  While we waited for the Bobs, the rest of us got our gear together. We packed all of it; we weren’t planning on coming back here. Even in friendly territory, we didn’t like to keep a safehouse in one place for long. Hal would probably relocate a day or so after we left.

  We stacked rucksacks and kitbags full of gear and optics just inside the door. It was dark, and most of the populace had turned in, but we didn’t want to chance being seen by wandering eyes, whether human or the electronic eyes of the UAVs that the Iraqis had bought a few years back.

  Then we sat down on our rucks and waited. It often comes to that. You get everything lined up, you’re ready to go into enemy territory, or at least unfriendly territory, and then you wind up just sitting there for a couple hours, trying not to let your mind get too far into how badly things could go, or how short your life could wind up becoming over the next hours. There wasn’t much talking, and most of us tried to sleep, mostly without success. I was still going over the plan in my head, even as I closed my eyes. Had I accounted for all the gear and supplies? Was the route good? Had I gone over all the possible contingencies?