by Peter Nealen
As I walked into our little mini ops room, with Jim at my heels, he tapped me on the elbow. There was a troubled look on his face. “Jeff, what if we can’t get in front of this thing short of going all the way to Tehran and kicking in the Council of Guardians’ door? They’ve been compartmented as fuck so far. What if none of these fuckers knows exactly what the others are doing? How the hell are we going to get in front of that?”
I frowned. Some of the same thoughts had occurred to me, but we’d been too busy to dwell too much on it. Unfortunately, he was right. As much as we hated being reactive, short of knocking off every Iranian we could find stirring up trouble, we might not be able to get the whole picture of the operation before it went down. “We might not,” I admitted. “We’d have to know what the overall plan is, and you’re right, none of them have known the whole picture so far. It’s possible that one of them down here will, in which case we can start rolling up their chain, however loose it is.
“On the other hand, we might not find that overall commander. In that case, we keep knocking off every Qods Force or Jaysh Al Mahdi asshole we can find, and keep looking for the rest. Every one of these sons of bitches that we take down is another monkey wrench thrown in their plan. We might not be able to stop it cold, but we can sure fuck it up as best we can.”
He nodded solemnly. “Fair enough. Let’s get set to go hunting, then.”
An hour later, Haas finally showed up. It was almost dusk; the sun had already sunk into the haze of dust and smoke that obscured the horizon, regardless of the weather, and had lost its strength. The air was already cooling off, though from the sounds of shooting and the chatter over the scanner, the city itself sure wasn’t. It was starting to sound like the death squads were encountering resistance. Good.
There was a crunch of gravel, and Nick, who had spelled Juan at the gate, called inside, “Got a blue Honda outside; it just parked near the gate.” Everyone immediately grabbed weapons and moved to the front of the house, ready to fight, except for Little Bob, who stayed on the scanner, and Paul, who was stuck with rear security. Sucked for him, but it was his turn.
My cell vibrated, and I picked it up. “We’re right outside,” Haas said. “We were running a little late.”
“Fair enough,” I said. “Come on in.” I hung up and looked around. “It’s Haas. Stand down.” Everyone relaxed, sort of.
Haas slipped through the gate with two Iraqis in tow. One of them was wearing a PPF uniform; the other was wearing a black dishdasha. Both were bearded, and looked like brothers. “These are Ahmed and Hassan,” Haas introduced them, pointing to the guy in the PPF uniform, then the other. “I worked with Ahmed many years ago, hunting Moqtada Al Sadr’s militia around here. Hassan is his cousin. Don’t let the man-dress fool you, Hassan has been trained at KASOTC and various other places. He’s worked with me and other OGA assets for several years.”
“What have you got?” I asked. I wasn’t going to tell him immediately about our own targeting. I wanted to know what kind of information he and his buddies had dug up first. It might make our planned hit/ambush of Gilani moot.
Not much got past Haas, though. He looked around, and saw our preparations. “You guys going somewhere?” he asked.
“We might be,” I replied. “Little Bob’s gotten enough hits on a guy named Masjid Gilani that we figured we needed to add him to the target deck. Considering how little information we’ve got here, that pretty much puts him at the top.”
Ahmed said something in Arabic, too fast for me to pick it up. I know a smattering, especially after being in Iraq for the last couple months, but not enough to follow that. Haas nodded, asked a question, then turned back to me. “Ahmed says that this Gilani took over PPF operations about two weeks ago. He says he’s not local; that he’s IRGC Qods Force. Apparently all the senior PPF officers are now IRGC.”
“That’s a hell of a power grab,” Jim said. “How’d they pull that off without anybody noticing?”
Hassan spoke up. He spoke English slowly and quietly. “People have noticed, but Baghdad does not want to confront the Iranians right now. I am pretty sure that the reason they’re trying to beat up on the Kurds in Kirkuk right now is to distract people from the fact they aren’t doing anything about the Iranians down here, or the Syrians and AQI types filtering into Al Anbar. Ramadi and Fallujah are becoming hotbeds of Sunni militias again, but nobody talks about it. The Kurds are considered an easier target, and somebody that all Iraqis can gang up on to hate.”
“Fiddling while Rome burns,” Little Bob muttered from the corner.
“Pretty much,” Haas replied. “They aren’t confident that they can deal with either the Al Nusrah types coming out of Syria since Assad fell or the Iranians, particularly without starting another civil war. So instead, they’ll try to reassure people that they are strong by pushing those dastardly Kurds out of rightful Arab Iraqi territory in Kirkuk.”
“Makes me wonder why we’re even thinking about trying to disrupt the Iranian op,” Jim said sourly. “Serve these punks right if they get curb-stomped at this rate.”
“The reason is that Baghdad is corrupt as hell, but it’s better than having the Mad Mullahs running things,” I pointed out. “So, how do we get Gilani?”
Haas continued to translate for Ahmed, who went over to the overhead imagery we had of Basra. “He is very hard to get to at the station,” he said, pointing to the Basra Police Station, in As Saymar. “There is a lot of security, mostly PPF troops, but with Iranian officers, some from Qods Force, some from Ansar Ul-Mehdi. Attacking the station would be very difficult.” Ahmed pointed to a location near the Shatt Al-Arab, the broad river that ran from the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates down to the Persian Gulf. “He has a house here. He goes home almost every night, though he takes several different routes to get there, and he does not have a pattern to which route he takes. I do not know how he chooses which route to take.
“He travels in a motorcade, with three armored Mercedes SUVs. He has a security detail of ten men, all Qods Force. He rides in a different SUV each time he moves.”
“Holy shit,” Bryan interrupted. He and Juan had joined us, leaving Paul, Nick, and Larry on external security. “Who is this guy, the reincarnation of Saddam Hussein?”
I kind of had to agree. It seemed to be a hell of a lot of security for a glorified police chief. I looked at Ahmed, as Haas translated.
“Understand, there are many who do not want the Iranians to run things here,” he said. “Mullah Sistani still has many followers in Basra, even though he has been dead for many months now. They consider the Iranian loyalists in the PPF to be traitors, no good. There are those who would be happy to kill Gilani if they got the chance. He is right to be cautious.”
Ahmed pointed again to the house near the river. “Either here, or near the station are where he is vulnerable. He has to come to the house eventually. He is not yet so well connected and grounded here that he can have multiple houses to stay in. So he comes to this house. An ambush here might have the best chance of killing or capturing him.”
I nodded. It made sense. We’d have to get into position during the day, unfortunately, and we’d need enough overwatch to determine what direction he was coming from. We’d also need some equipment and weaponry we didn’t have here; our cache-laying operations hadn’t made it this far south. I started Jim on a list of stuff we’d need Ahmed and Hassan to get, then the rest of us set to planning. I was pretty sure we wouldn’t be able to go that night, but the next night would be game on. We had a lot to do before then.
Chapter 18
“I’ve got him,” Little Bob called. He was still at the safehouse, running the small Aeroseeker UAV that we’d gotten comfortable with in East Africa. “Three black Mercedes SUVs on Al Watan Street, just passing the Sheraton, coming southeast.”
I looked over at Haas. “You ready?”
He flashed me a feral grin. “I wasn’t always a spook wearing a suit,” he said. “Let’s
do this.”
The two of us were sitting in the cab of a dump truck that we’d “tactically acquired” for the evening’s hit. It didn’t have a bucket full of operators, it just had gravel. It was also very heavy, which was precisely what I wanted it for.
We hadn’t had the time or the opportunity to rehearse this part. That was a little unnerving; this was a hell of a thing to try to pull off on the fly.
Still, we were parked, idling, on the side of the street just a few feet shy of the intersection that Gilani was going to have to come through. With Little Bob keeping us updated on the motorcade’s progress, we should be able to time things right.
“Thirty seconds,” Little Bob said. I checked my seatbelt again, and made sure my rifle was secured next to my seat. Haas did the same. He had produced a Vepr .308 from somewhere; none of us seemed to know where. We hadn’t even realized he’d had it.
“Ten seconds.” I was already putting the truck in gear and revving the engine, my foot still on the brake.
“Go.” I released the brake and the dump truck surged forward with a jolt that slammed us both back into our seats. It wasn’t the quickest off the blocks, but it would do.
The lead Mercedes tried to stop as our massive side blocked off the road, but was too close, and crunched into the side of the dump truck hard enough to actually move the big vehicle several feet sideways in a squeal of rubber and twisting metal. Haas and I were thrown violently sideways by the impact, then two more. The other two SUVs were driving just a little bit too close together, and piled up against the side of the dump truck. Fucking perfect. I couldn’t have planned it better.
Shaking off the impact, I unbelted and snatched my rifle clear of its straps. Out on the street, Bryan, Larry, and Nick were piling out of the van and advancing on the wreckage, rifles up. There wasn’t a huge amount of traffic on the streets—thanks to the purge, most people were only going out when they absolutely had to. There were still enough people out and about, however, that the wreck, and the sudden appearance of several large men with weapons, was starting something of a panic.
Haas was already out and circling around the front of the truck, his own rifle up. He moved well, and handled the weapon like he knew very well what he was doing. I clambered down out of the cab and focused my attention on the target.
The impacts had been hard enough that none of the vehicles were going anywhere anytime soon. There was a smear of blood on the inside of the windshield of the lead Mercedes, and the driver was slumped over the wheel, not moving. The guy in the passenger seat looked unconscious or dead. There was some movement in the back, but none of it looked very coordinated. Pulling the crowbar off my back, I smacked it into the gap that had been opened up around the side window, and pried the half-inch pane out. It took some serious wrenching, but it came out. I popped the lock on the door, and wrenched it open with a bang of stressed, bent metal. Haas was right at my shoulder, covering the two guys in the back seat. One of them still had an Uzi hanging across his chest, but he wasn’t moving, and wasn’t reaching for it. He was awake though, if dazed. I don’t think it had yet registered that we were prying our way into the vehicle to kill or capture anybody in it. The other guy started to reach for the MP5K at his side, thought better of it when he looked down Haas’ rifle barrel, and raised his hands.
As soon as I got the door open, I grabbed my knife off my belt, reached in, cut the two backseaters’ seatbelts, and hauled them out into the street, relieving each of them of their weapons as I did so, unloading and then tossing the Uzi and the MP5 into the bucket of the dump truck. Haas put a knee in the back of one of them, while I searched the second thoroughly.
There was the loud pop of a suppressed gunshot from further back in the motorcade. A quick glance that direction revealed Bryan stepping back from the rear vehicle, his rifle still leveled. He looked forward, held up one finger, then put a thumb down. One of the Iranians had tried to fight, and Bryan had killed him.
There were about half a dozen Iranians face down on the pavement now, in various states of wear and tear. Ahmed joined us from the van, which was parked just around the corner, an AK-12 in his hands. The PPF got some good kit; I hadn’t realized that Izmash was selling to the Iraqis. He started at the front, and went down the line, one by one, lifting each man’s head by the hair to peer into his face.
He said something in Arabic, looking at one of the Iranians from the last vehicle. The guy was in pretty bad shape, his face a mask of blood. He was unconscious.
“He says that’s him,” Haas said. “That’s Gilani.”
“He’s sure?” I asked. I was still not entirely certain that Ahmed was necessarily on the up-and-up, or if he was carrying out an intra-departmental or tribal vendetta. We’d find out, sooner or later. I just hoped we didn’t find out the hard way.
Ahmed nodded vigorously in response to Haas’ query. “He says yes, definitely. That’s him.”
“He’d better be right,” I muttered. “Bag him, smoke the rest.” There was a series of suppressed gunshots as we eliminated Gilani’s security detail. Larry manhandled Gilani back to the van, the rest of us following, keeping eyes and weapons outward, watching for anything. I was expecting the PPF to show up any minute now.
They didn’t disappoint. Three black-and-white PPF trucks, their light bars flashing, came screaming up Tamuz Street. The dump truck had blocked a good portion of Al Watan Street, but not all of it. They’d come around that corner before we could get away. We only had one other option.
Dropping to a knee in the street, half behind a white Nissan sedan, I leveled my rifle and waited. Around me, Bryan, Nick, Haas, and Ahmed were also taking up positions behind cars and whatever other cover we might be able to find, however shitty. That’s a big problem with urban combat. Cover is hard to find on the street.
The lead truck came around the corner with a squeal of tires, and was met with a wall of lead. I pumped half a dozen rounds into the hood and windshield, and I wasn’t the only one. The windshield crazed with cracks and bullet holes, and the truck suddenly swerved drunkenly, going up over the striped curb and smashing into one of the trees growing on the corner.
There was a screech of brakes behind it. A moment later, a pair of hands held a stockless AK out from the hood of the dump truck, and sprayed half a mag in our general direction. Several more suppressed gunshots forced the PPF gunman back further into the shelter of the engine block. That didn’t provide the shelter he might hope for, though. Another trick to fighting in the street: cars and trucks make lousy cover.
I dropped to my side on the pavement, lining up my rifle on the boots barely showing underneath the dump truck. My estimation of the PPF’s training went down a little more. They were bunched up on the other side of the truck, a regular forest of shiny black leather boots visible behind the wheels. I opened fire.
Rounds ripped through feet and shattered ankles. Several of the PPF gunmen dropped to the pavement, screaming in agony, only to have their cries silenced by more follow-up shots. I wasn’t picking my targets that specifically; I had a target area, and I was pumping bullets into it. I wasn’t in the best shooting position available, though I was glad I’d practiced shooting from side prone before we’d come back overseas.
Any shooting from the direction of Tamuz Street stopped. In the dying light, I could see some of the bodies being dragged away, and other black boots running hard in the opposite direction. I clambered to my feet and pointed to the van. “Let’s go, get moving!”
Larry already had Gilani in the back, insensate and zip-tied. The rest of us scrambled over and piled in, though I made sure that at least somebody was watching rear security the entire time. I was last on, and swung the doors shut. “Go!” I yelled at Nick. The van lurched as he pulled us out onto the street as fast as it could accelerate, which wasn’t all that fast.
We were not out of the woods yet, not by a long shot. Once the PPF found out that Gilani had been grabbed, they’d lock the city down as tight
as they could. There were enough checkpoints set up to make movement around Basra difficult as it was, but now it would get far worse. We had to be out of the target zone before they could get their shit together.
Nick pushed to the corner, then hung a hard right, taking us toward Corniche Street, where he turned right again, following the street to the southeast, along the Shatt Al-Arab. Swaying and bouncing around in the back, the rest of us were trying to check each other for holes. It would really suck to bleed out from a bullet wound you didn’t even know you had thanks to the adrenaline dump, and with that single long burst of AK fire, somebody could very well have gotten hit.
Fortunately, we eventually figured out that Larry was the only one with any blood on him, and it was Gilani’s. By then we were speeding down Corniche Street, past the docks and well-lit attractions such as the Al Salam Ship/Hotel docked on the edge of the river. The lights glittered off the water, and seemed to race with us as we went. It was almost full dark now.
We came around a curve, then crossed a narrow bridge over the Alkhora River, and kept pushing past the Al Talemi Hospital before we finally started to slow down. A little bit farther and Nick pulled us onto a side street just short of the first security checkpoint for the Alburadieiah Water Treatment Plant. We didn’t want to get stopped by anybody that night.
Several twisting blocks later, we pulled into a shadowed palm grove, behind a cluster of walled buildings, and Nick killed the engine. “Dump site,” he said, “everybody out.”
The lot of us piled out of the van. There were two sedans waiting in the shadows, which we’d bought for a few thousand dinars each. They were junkers, but right now we just needed wheels that hadn’t been seen at the ambush site. We split up with Larry, Gilani, Haas, and I in one, and Nick and Bryan in the other. Without much talking, we loaded up and drove away in different directions. We knew where we were going.
