Hunting in the Shadows (American Praetorians)

by Peter Nealen

  The other angle was gaining information. The more we knew about these men, the better we’d be prepared for whatever actions they might take in the future. Information is power, and in a situation like this, it meant survival.

  The conversation went on well into the afternoon. A lot of chai was drunk, and plenty of friendly talk. None of us actually said much of anything. We didn’t even have to communicate about it; everybody already knew what to do. Nobody revealed any personal or operational details beyond the most bare-bones necessities to keep the conversation going.

  About an hour before dark, Hussein Ali excused himself, ostensibly to go meet with his contact. Shortly thereafter, I stood up and said that we should also go. It was almost time for prayer anyway. Daoud offered to have us stay with the militia, but I politely declined. I didn’t trust security around here, and we had too much crap back at the safehouse. I wasn’t leaving Haas, the prisoner, and Little Bob back there alone overnight, either. Eventually, we might have to take them up on the offer, but for that night, we were going back to our own hidey-hole.

  As we walked out of the main building, it became abundantly obvious that most of the militia had left, apparently because there was no attack on the PPF base imminent. As I got in the van, I remarked, “Looks like the great anti-hardliner militia fucked off.”

  “They started leaving in ones and twos about two hours ago,” Bryan said. “I guess with no raid coming up they decided to go home.”

  “That’s the way these outfits usually run,” I said. “Not terribly disciplined, and everybody goes home at night.”

  “Back to the barn?” Bryan asked.

  “Yep.” I nodded. “Take us the long way round, though.” I had dug out some of the imagery and held it up, pointing to the area around the old Shatt al Arab Hotel, which was now the PPF base these guys had wanted to hit. “Take us by here.”

  He glanced at where I was pointing. “That’s solid PPF territory,” he pointed out.

  “I know.” I fully expected that sooner or later Daoud was going to get a hair up his ass again about hitting the place, so I wanted to at least get a look at it, in case we had to do something about it.

  I shifted in my seat. Sitting cross-legged on the floor was not the most comfortable at my age. Too many miles, too many parachute jumps; the knees didn’t like that position anymore, and my ass cheeks ached from the concrete underneath the thin pad. Bryan didn’t ask any more questions, but just put the van in gear and started out of the factory complex. We didn’t have a lot of time, given that the PPF-enforced curfew was going to start soon, but I really wanted to have a look at the base, just in case. While I hadn’t wanted to launch into the militia’s planned half-baked attack, I wasn’t taking the place off the table as an objective. In part, I’d delayed because I wanted to run my own reconnaissance on it first.

  It only took about a half-hour to get there, following the main streets. The PPF was out in force, but static, manning checkpoints at major intersections, checkpoints we avoided by ducking into the back streets until we were past them.

  The main thoroughfares were lined with market stalls in several places, and there were crowds buying their food for their evening meal. Refrigeration was hard to find in Iraq, and with electrical power still being intermittent at best, even after the new power plants the Saudis had built a number of years ago, it was hit or miss when it could be found. So most people went out to buy their food reasonably fresh for each meal. That actually made morning and early evening the best times to be out and about, aside from the cover of night. There were plenty of people and lots of traffic to get lost in.

  We got up to the main road running along the Shatt al Arab, and turned west, into the sun. I kept scanning the barges and small ships out on the river, and out of the corner of my eye, I could see Jim doing the same. I was hoping that our new contacts would get us a shot at that ship full of Hezbollah fighters coming from Bushehr. We might not be able to move fast enough to hit them on the river, but I didn’t want that bunch of fanatics running around any longer than need be.

  Then we were on Dinar Street, and heading back into the thick of the city, and the river receded, hidden by buildings. We went back to watching for ambushes, IEDs, and checkpoints.

  “Coming up ahead,” Bryan announced. “We’re going to have to get closer than I’d like; the only road nearby goes almost right up to the gate, before it goes around and leads to a canal crossing.”

  “Take it,” I said. “Unless they’re stopping vehicles short of the gate, we’ll just cruise on by and get a good look at their security. If they are stopping vehicles, we should be able to tell before we’re committed.” A quick look at the overhead had showed me Dinar Street travelling along another canal for some distance before reaching the PPF compound. If we had to, we could turn into a park on the canal and turn around, finding a different route to the safehouse.

  As we got closer, the glare of the sun dimmed to a dull red, as it sank into the fug that hung over the horizon, but it was still enough to make it hard to see in the shadows of the compound walls. Not hard enough that we couldn’t see the checkpoint set up about a hundred yards in front of the gate, though.

  “Into the park,” I directed. Bryan was already turning. I reached back for the binoculars in the go-bag behind my seat.

  Bryan found a good spot, under the trees and away from the road. There was brightly colored plastic lawn furniture and some playground equipment, but no one was using it. Basra had become a dangerous place, especially at this time of day. I got out of the van and walked over to one of the bigger trees, hoping to lose my silhouette in its shadow.

  The gate was obscured by other buildings and trees along the canal, and I cussed under my breath. That was the best way in for a PPF Trojan Horse, and I couldn’t see it. We couldn’t afford to get caught by a PPF checkpoint, however. I turned my attention to the rest of the walls.

  Security was pretty good, actually. There were several guard towers that looked like they’d been erected when Coalition Forces had used the hotel as a FOB, and they all appeared to be manned, by at least men with rifles, though I thought I saw a PKP machinegun in the one on the corner.

  I continued to scan, watching the reactions of the guys in the towers to the passing traffic. They were reasonably alert, tracking the cars as they went by. There weren’t any anomalies that I could use to gauge their response time, but I suspected anything headed for the wall that looked like it might be a VBIED was probably going to get lit up.

  I walked back to the van, climbed in, and waved at Bryan to take us back to the safehouse. I didn’t say anything; I was cementing the memory of my observations in my brain for later. I still didn’t think we were ready to take that on, but it was still a viable target.

  There was a lot of work to do.

  Chapter 23

  Hassan and I walked up the street, looking nonchalant, doing our best not to be seen by the man fifty yards in front of us. Across the street, Paul and Juan were doing the same thing.

  This was the Qods Force PPF officer that Hussein Ali’s friend had fingered. I was going to be very wary about this one; given that this guy had replaced the friend as deputy police chief, there was the chance that he’d been fingered simply as part of a vendetta. That was why I was risking four of us, dressed like locals and lightly armed, to corner this guy alive. I wasn’t going to be some disgruntled PPF officer’s hitman.

  We weren’t in the best place to make a grab. We were walking down a narrow street, lined with loose dirt and debris, in the heart of Old Basra. There was some foot traffic, but not a lot, and a few cars. There were enough people around that if things got unpleasant we’d never make it out of Old Basra alive. We were going to have to play this very carefully.

  Largely in order to be inconspicuous, I was chatting with Hassan. He’d turned out to be sharp as a tack, and more knowledgeable about history than most any professor I’d known. He also was street-smart, and knew the ins-and-outs of I
raq better than I could learn in a decade.

  “Back before you Americans left,” he was saying, “More and more of our people sided with the government, because you backed the government, and you had demonstrated that you were strongest. You were stronger than Al Qaeda in the west, and stronger than Jaysh Al Mahdi in Baghdad and the south. Even the terrorists had realized this, and fled to Syria or Iran to wait. They knew you would leave sooner or later. Once you did leave, the government wasn’t the strongest anymore.”

  I nodded, never quite taking my eyes off the target, or rather, a spot just above and to the right of the target’s right shoulder. People have a way of sensing when they’re being watched; if you don’t look directly at them, however, most of the time the cues don’t register.

  “It’s all about being on the winning side,” I offered.

  “Yes, exactly,” Hassan said. “The survival of the tribe comes first. For the more religious, individuals may become shahid, but the tribe has to come first. If the tribe sides with the losers, it may be wiped out, or driven off its territory. So, unless the tribe is one of those making a grab for power, they will side with whatever side appears stronger.”

  “The Hama Rules,” I said. Hassan looked at me quizzically. “There was a writer a while back who coined the term ‘The Hama Rules’ in reference to Hafez Al Assad leveling the town of Hama in Syria when the Alawites rose up there. He said, in essence, the key to power was when somebody screwed with you, you kill them, you kill their family, you burn their tents and scatter their flocks. He said that both Assad and Saddam operated on that principle, and that was how they stayed in power.”

  Hassan was nodding. “Yes, that is true,” he said. “And nothing has really changed, except that the government does not really follow those rules anymore. They don’t yet. But Al Qaeda and Jaysh al Mahdi, and some of the other militias are just as brutal as the Baathists used to be, if not more so. How are people supposed to stand up to them when the government is weak, and will not do anything to respond? And if the government is dominated by a tribe that your tribe is traditionally in conflict with, why would you expect them to help you?”

  He paused. The target turned the corner, and Paul and Juan sped up to keep eyes on him. Hassan looked at me, but I shook my head. If we ran after him, we might get made. Better to take it slow and pick him up again further along, even if we had to circle around until we did.

  Catching on, Hassan relaxed, and continued the conversation. We were speaking quietly enough that most people wouldn’t make out what we were saying.

  “That is not all,” he said. “The new Iraqi government was supposed to follow your example. But now the Western democracies are crumbling. Your economies are collapsing, your laws are not followed. Many are saying openly, ‘Why should we follow the West? Their way has failed.’ So people are going back to the way it has always been here. Democracy was a lie, so they listen to the shaykhs and the imams. Some of the shaykhs say to try to live in peace with the other tribes and the Kurds. So do some of the mullahs and imams. Others are saying that the other tribes have robbed them, or been puppets of the foreign infidels. Some of the imams say the Shi’a are apostates, and the mullahs say the same about the Sunni. So the fighting starts again.”

  “But Al Hakim isn’t like that,” I probed.

  “The Mullah, Allah’s peace be upon him, still believes that the Sunnis are heretics,” he said. We rounded the corner, and immediately spotted our quarry a block ahead, still acting oblivious to our presence. Traffic was thinning out, and the sun was starting to go down; we’d need to move in on him soon. “But like the Grand Ayatollah, he does not believe that more violence is the answer to our problems.” He shook his head. “There are too many others who do.”

  “You don’t think this is going to work?” I asked, picking up my pace. A quick glance around showed very little foot traffic—just a few veiled women with small children in tow, on their way home from the markets. Provided we played this right, we could take him down without anyone knowing what was happening.

  “There will always be fighting,” he said, “Unless someone is strong enough to stop it. The Iranians might be strong enough, but we do not want to be ruled by them. So the fighting will continue until one side or another is strong enough for most of the tribes to follow them.”

  That was depressing as shit, but no more than I’d expected in this part of the world.

  Paul and Juan split off to the side, aiming to circle around in front of the target. Hassan and I continued after him, closing the distance rapidly, but without running. We were walking faster than most Arabs I’d ever seen, but no one on the street seemed to be taking notice.

  We caught up to Samir Yusuf Jafari right beneath a thick red-and-green shrub that was growing over the top of a compound wall, just before an open gate. Paul and Juan appeared out of the compound courtyard, standing in Jafari’s way. I sent a pre-staged text message on the small throwaway cell in my pocket.

  Hassan called out to Jafari, running up to him like a long-lost friend. The guy sold it, I’ve got to hand it to him. Jafari looked startled, but before he could protest that Hassan had the wrong guy, the rest of us had hemmed him in.

  Hassan’s tone changed as he spoke, informing Jafari that to run away, fight, or even yell would not end well for him. As he said this, and Jafari looked around at the hard faces surrounding him, realization that we were not Iraqis dawning in his eyes, the van pulled up next to us. It had never been more than a block behind us the entire stalk.

  The side door slid open as it pulled abreast of us, and Hassan curtly ordered Jafari to get in, as he reached into the man’s pocket and took his cell phone. Paul had already divested him of his Glock. Glaring daggers at us, he complied. He wasn’t suicidal. Good. Maybe we could get somewhere with this after all.

  We ushered him into the van without much resistance, and followed. Bryan slammed the door shut, and smacked the back of the driver’s seat. Larry accelerated smoothly away, taking us on a roundabout route back to Al Maamel.

  Nobody said a word the entire ride, aside from a curt “Iskut,” from Bryan when Jafari tried to talk. The jab of a pistol muzzle in the side of his neck got the message across more clearly than the word.

  It took almost an hour to make the drive, with Jafari starting to sweat. No one but Hassan and Bryan had said a word, so while he might suspect we were Americans, he couldn’t be one hundred percent sure. He had no idea where he was going, or why we’d taken him. I wanted him to have as much time as possible to wonder.

  When we pulled into the factory complex in Al Maarmel, there really wasn’t anything more to clue him in. There were militiamen everywhere, but none of them exactly wore patches or uniforms, so they could be anybody. With the proliferation of weapons from, well, everywhere, since the civil wars that had wracked the region, he wasn’t going to tell much from who was carrying what. Glancing out, I even spotted a fat guy in a Blackhawk tac vest, carrying a short-barrel AR with a scope that was longer than the forearm.

  We pulled the van all the way inside the pigeon-infested main factory building. When the doors opened, Haas, Jim, and Little Bob were waiting, along with Daoud and Hussein Ali, with their respective entourages. I didn’t see Said anywhere.

  The Iraqi militiamen stepped forward to haul Jafari out of the van, and they weren’t gentle. Hussein Ali said something, and Hassan translated, “He says his man will question him. We will know everything we need soon.”

  I almost pitied the guy. Haas’ interrogations could be brutal, but I did not envy him the next few hours. I still hoped we’d gotten the right target. If this was just a former PPF man’s grudge, I was going to be pissed.

  The militia gunmen carted Jafari off to a back room of the factory, while Daoud and Hussein Ali stayed. Daoud offered us chai, and though I wasn’t exactly in the mood to drink tea while the interrogation proceeded, there wasn’t really a polite way to refuse. We were going to be here for a while anyway. We moved to the o
utbuilding that had been set aside for the commanders, where we sat down, drank chai, talked, and waited.

  The sun was down by the time Hussein Ali’s man came back. If Hussein Ali had looked like a hard old bastard, this dude was even harder. His eyes were dead, like a shark’s. He had a sheaf of papers in his hand, covered in scribbled Arabic writing, which he handed to Hussein Ali before walking out, all without saying a word.

  The former Colonel looked over the notes from the interrogation and nodded with satisfaction. He handed them to Daoud then turned to us.

  “The Qods Force man has given us the names of all their people in the PPF, as well as several Jaysh al Mahdi and Hezbollah meeting places, where they meet with the Qods Force men,” Hassan relayed. “He says there are also the homes of the Qods Force men in the PPF, so that we can strike them when they least expect it.”

  “So much for the compartmentalization we saw up north,” Jim muttered.

  “They probably think they’re well-established enough here not to need it,” I replied. I turned to Hassan. “May we see the list?”

  Daoud handed it to Hassan. I couldn’t read it, but he started skimming it and reading off a few of the names and addresses. If that list was good, we could make one hell of a sweep. I wanted to see all of them marked on a map before we did anything.

  “Hussein Ali,” I began, “my men and I are uniquely trained for this sort of mission. If you would allow us twenty-four hours to plan and prepare with some of your men for support, we could take down most of the Qods Force officers in Basra in a night.”

  Both Hussein Ali’s and Daoud’s eyebrows went up when Hassan translated that. They began talking quickly, as Jim turned to me. “Just from the length of that list, Jeff, that’s going to be a hell of a night.”