by Richard Fox
The next paragraph was in a different-color ink, the handwriting hurried:
I borrowed the photo from Jennifer’s things. She loved that pic and has lots of copies. I don’t think she’d miss an extra. That was a fun day. Remember it if things get too tough out there. —Cindy
He started to bend the photo, intending to hide the Mattingly couple, but stopped before he could crease the picture. He tucked the edge of the photo into where the electrical box and the wall met. Whenever he woke up, the first things he’d focus on would be the widower and Cindy. He would use every day to bring him closer to avenging Jennifer. Every day to bring him closer to finding O’Neal and Brown. After that, he’d go back to brigade headquarters and see where things could go with Cindy.
Chapter 14
Ritter sat patiently as Sergeant First Class Young went through a list of company business with the assembled company leadership: the commander, the executive officer, and the platoon leaders and sergeants. Even in war, awards, evaluations, and capricious R & R availability needed attention. Guard duty, cleaning details, and other staples from garrison life dominated the times between patrols beyond the wire. After listening to the long lists of musts required of the Soldiers at Patrol Base Dragon, Ritter knew the Soldiers had little time for anything but war and soldiering.
Shelton stood as Young finished, his back to a wall-sized map of his company’s territory in Iraq. A yellow Post-it note bearing several question marks stuck to the map where the Soldiers had been kidnapped. Field desks adorned with a few dusty laptops and radio sets made up the company operations center. A Soldier with his arm in a sling did his best to remain unnoticeable while monitoring the radio.
Shelton’s face was grim, but his voice carried the same edge of authority he’d had in all the years he and Ritter had been friends. “As you’ve figured out by now, the mission to the power plant was a dry hole. Brown and O’Neal are still missing, and we got a whole lot of nothing in terms of intelligence from the whole mess.” He ground his jaw as he looked back at the map.
“I made a promise to every man in this company and to their families the night before we deployed. ‘We’re leaving our homes and our families behind, but we will come home. We all go home.’ Remember that?” Heads nodded. He reached down and touched the note on the map, rubbing its edge between his thumb and forefinger. The question marks were a challenge as much as a mystery.
He turned and jabbed his finger at a wooden placard hanging above the entrance. The placard was worn smooth along the edges; an interstate of hairline fractures marred the surface. Two words were carved into the placard in large block letters: Nunquam Cedite.
“What do those words mean, Lieutenant Marist?”
“We never give up!” cried Lieutenant Marist, a heavyset man with tribal tattoos running from his wrists up his arms and beneath his short sleeves.
“Kovalenko?”
“We never give up!” Kovalenko added with equal force.
“All of you?”
Ritter remained silent as the room boomed with the combined shout. This was not his place. He was a temporary fixture and would remain an outsider for the duration of his stay.
“Damn right we never give up,” Shelton said. “My father had that plaque above the entrance to his company for both his tours in Vietnam. Those words carried him and his men through hard times, same as they do for us. Don’t let you or your men forget that.”
He continued. “Behind you is Captain Eric Ritter. Brigade sent him to us as…What do I call you?” Shelton asked.
“Brigade said I’m an ‘engagement coordinator,’” Ritter answered.
“What the hell does that mean?” Young asked.
“It means brigade thinks the Iraqis are idiots. Idiots who’ll believe that the first Arabic-speaking Army officer they’ve ever met isn’t an intelligence officer.” The right side of his face pulled into a half smile as he spoke.
“Captain Ritter grew up in Saudi Arabia and probably speaks better Arabic than Ali and Frank…Those are our ’terps.” Shelton used the common abbreviation for the Iraqi national interpreters in an aside to Ritter.
“Just tell the Iraqis I’m here to help find our missing; they’ll fill in the rest. But brigade sent me down here with more than just a worthless cover story. We know who ordered the kidnapping—a man named Mukhtar al-Sham.” Ritter slapped a sheet of paper to a whiteboard behind the semicircle of leaders and held it in place with a magnet. His half-truth would hold up without much scrutiny.
The picture was a black silhouette of a gender-neutral head and shoulders; a box of tiny text sat next to the picture.
“Oh, that guy,” Marist deadpanned.
The Caliban Program protected its sources and methods with a zeal bordering on the fanatical. If he shared Mukhtar’s photo, the risk that Mukhtar would learn of it was too high. If Mukhtar saw the photo, and if his family’s Iraq home was in the background, this would spoil a potential course of action. If there was one thing the Program liked, it was options.
“Mukhtar is from the Levant—Syria or Lebanon, most likely—and is the emir for al-Qaeda’s foreign fighters in the region. Not sure why he outsourced some talent for the kidnapping. The investigators found two sets of fingerprints on the IEDs left at the site.” He hung a photo of a man with a slack face and a severe case of strabismus—crossed eyes. “This is Abdul Karim al-Gailani. He was detained briefly last year.”
“Do we have any Gailani tribe in our sector?” Park, the executive officer, asked.
“There are a few families along the boundary with Cougar Company,” Young said.
“What kind of relationship is there with the Gailani sheikh?” Ritter asked. The assembled audience answered with a chuckle.
“Hate to break it to you, sir, but out here it ain’t ‘America, fuck yeah’; it’s ‘America, hell no,’” Park said.
Ritter wasn’t surprised by the news. After years of back-and-forth killings, detentions, bombings, and missile strikes, the Army had made few friends in the Baghdad countryside. “What about the Qarghuli tribe? Any headway with them?”
Shelton crossed his arms. “The Qarghulis only rat out the Gailanis or other tribes. We get hit constantly in Qarghuli territory, but the sheikh will talk to us. We did try a medical support visit a little over a month ago. Brought in some doctors and a load of medicine to give out. Didn’t go well.”
“We took an IED on the way in and small arms fire on the way out,” Park said. “Only two Iraqis showed up for treatment, even though the sheikh promised his tribe would participate. We called the sheikh out afterward; his excuse was that we didn’t have any female doctors for their women. They won’t let any man outside of the tribe even look at ’em.”
“That’s…pretty standard for the countryside,” Ritter said. “If we can talk to the Qarghuli sheikh, then we can get him to give up this man.” He tacked up another photo of a meek little man with doe eyes. Groans erupted like they were watching an athlete flub a big play.
“Motherfucker!” Kovalenko shouted.
“You know him?” Ritter asked.
“He said his name was Samir. We caught that piece of shit planting an IED almost two months ago,” Kovalenko said. He flipped through his green notebook, then touched a road intersection on the map. “Got him right there.”
“Who let him go?” Marist asked.
Ritter flipped through Samir’s file and read aloud. “‘Detainee not listed in significant actions tracker as part of terrorist groups or actions. Recommend immediate release with per diem compensation.’”
Kovalenko jammed a finger into his notebook. “He gave us three different names during interroga—”
“Tactical questioning?” Shelton said.
“During tactical questioning,” Kovalenko said. “I told intel that guy would try something funny. He must have given a fake name up at battalion and got processed wrong. I swear to God, when I find the staff pogue that screwed this up I’m going to rip his face off
and wipe my own ass with it.” Kovalenko snapped his book shut and sat back down.
“Tell any Iraqi that’s not shooting at us that there’s a five-thousand-dollar reward for either of them.” Shelton grabbed the photo of Samir and put it on the map near his capture location. “We have a scent. Now we track them down.” Shelton pulled a knife from his belt and tapped Samir’s photo with the tip. “We start with him.”
An hour later, Ritter and Shelton relaxed in Shelton’s room, one of the few private rooms on the entire base. As the company commander, Shelton had such luxuries as a computer connected to the Internet to handle paper work with high headquarters and answer e-mails from families Stateside. He also had a minifridge. Shelton removed a cold can of Dr. Pepper from the fridge and gave it to Ritter.
“You spoil me,” Ritter said from a chair in front of the computer.
“Don’t get used to it; we haven’t had a resupply of pogey bait in weeks, and that may be your last one.” Shelton lay down on his cot and pinched the bridge of his nose.
Ritter picked up a picture frame with a collage of Shelton’s family; each of the three girls had her own photo surrounding a family portrait probably taken days before the deployment.
“Wow, they’ve grown,” Ritter said.
“Yeah, they do that. Problem is, I’m not there to see it. Way it is now, I’ll finish this deployment, spend maybe three months with them all, then start another nine-month deployment prep, and then I’m back here or in Afghanistan for a year,” Shelton said.
“Mary still bugging you to get out?”
“Every time we talk. She says the girls need their father. Says she doesn’t have a husband—she has a long-distance relationship. Stuff like that.” Shelton let out a heavy sigh.
“You thinking about it?”
“No. There’s a war going on. If I quit, someone else will have to take up my slack, and no one’s going to lead my men into battle because I wanted an easier life. I told her all this before we got married. She said she was fine with it. Turns out a woman has a right to change her mind at any moment and with no prior coordination.” Shelton held out a hand, and Ritter handed the frame to him.
“I can’t say I fully understand why you’re out here,” Shelton said. “Colonel Townsend and Reynolds had me on a conference call when they told me you were coming. Townsend seemed a bit annoyed by your move. Reynolds acted like someone pissed in his Cheerios—which is odd. Reynolds is such a kiss ass that if Townsend said we’re fighting the rest of this war in tights, Reynolds would be dancing the Nutcracker Suite by nightfall.”
“You know an awful lot about ballet for a straight man,” Ritter said while trying to figure out the angle to Shelton’s implied questions.
“I have three daughters. Bite me. So, what are you really doing out here?”
“‘Engagement coordinator’ sounds so stupid, doesn’t it? Hibou pulled me into his office and told me to go to your company and help make friends with the locals. See if that can get us anywhere on the search.” This was Ritter’s first blatant lie to his old friend; it certainly wouldn’t be his last.
“Hard to make friends with people who want you dead. This isn’t like last time, where the Jaish al-Mahdi shit heels were polite enough to wear black uniforms and carry weapons everywhere. See ’em and shoot ’em—those were the days. Out here everyone tries to kill us, but none will accommodate us by being easy targets,” Shelton said.
“We’ll see how far my wits and charm can take us,” Ritter said.
Shelton sat up and laid the frame across his lap. “If your durka-durka skills and winning smile do earn us some allies, let me tell you this: we will not work with insurgents. They are all terrorists, and a terrorist is a terrorist is a terrorist. You understand?”
Ritter raised his hands in mock surrender. “You got it, boss.”
This is going to be a problem, Ritter thought. A problem he should have anticipated and a problem he couldn’t solve. Shelton’s shining armor would tolerate no blemishes.
Chapter 15
Abdullah shifted in his plastic seat and tugged at his dishdasha; the mediation wasn’t going well. Sheikh Faisal al-Kurdi had contacted Abdullah’s father hours after Abu Ahmet’s killing spree and insisted on hosting a meeting between the Qarghuli tribe and al-Qaeda before a full-scale blood feud broke out. Abdullah doubted Faisal had any altruistic reason to host the discussion; his tribe bordered both Qarghuli and al-Qaeda territory. Faisal would have to choose a side and make an immediate enemy; this was their last chance to act as a neutral third party.
Al-Qaeda sent their Moroccan, Yousef, as their representative. He listened to Sheikhs Faisal and Majid give long-winded speeches outlining their desire for peace but said nothing. He checked his cell phone constantly.
Faisal raised an arm and waved to a teenager standing in the doorway. The boy darted away and returned a few moments later, carrying a tray laden with small glass cups of steaming hot tea. Abdullah took a cup and looked at Yousef and the second al-Qaeda man through the sunburned liquid; tiny black tea leaves mingled with the dollop of sugar, which had sunk to the bottom. The other al-Qaeda member was barely a man; Abdullah thought his sparse beard was a pathetic attempt to look older.
The boy served tea to each man, and Abdullah’s heart raced. If the al-Qaeda men drank the tea, then there could be peace. Abdullah’s armpits slickened in nervous sweat; had someone told these foreigners about this Iraqi custom? How do they make peace in Morocco?
Abdullah drank his tea too quickly, scalding his mouth. He prayed the Moroccan took the hint. Faisal and Majid sipped their tea. Majid gave Abdullah a sidelong glance; he gave Abdullah the same disapproving look from his childhood.
The Moroccan and his man held their teacups by the gold-rimmed lips but didn’t drink. The Moroccan tapped the cup on his armrest and exhaled a slow breath; his lips rumbled in boredom.
“I have sat here, listening to you old men, for over an hour,” he said. “Mukhtar, our emir and leader of the Islamic State of Iraq for this province, ordered me to come here and listen to your prattle. I have paid enough lip service to your quaint peasant customs, and now you will listen to me.” He placed the teacup at his feet and slowly pointed a finger at Sheikh Majid.
“You will send the murderer, Abu Ahmet, to us along with one hundred thousand American dollars to pay the blood debt between us. You will also send five men for martyrdom operations to erase your crimes against Allah. You will provide this to us before the first Friday prayer. From then on, you will pay a ten-thousand-dollar tax every month until the crusaders are driven from Iraq and provide fighting men as we need them.” He turned the finger to Sheik Faisal. “This is not open to further negotiation. Conclude your role as mediator, and we will give you a small stipend for your help.” He quickly rubbed his thumb and index finger together.
Sheikh Faisal reached out to touch the Moroccan. “My friend, you ask for too much. Abu Ahmet will be exiled and a suitable price for your dead—”
“No!” The Moroccan’s shout echoed from the concrete walls. He sat back and placed his foot over his knee, pointing the bottom of his dirty shoe toward Sheikh Faisal. Abdullah’s jaw dropped open; to show the sole of one’s shoe was to imply the receiver was lower than dirt. As far as insults went in the Arab world, they couldn’t get much worse.
“I am done with this. Pay your fine or suffer as takfiri. Choose wisely and choose quickly.” He lowered his foot and knocked his teacup onto the woven rug stretched across the room. The Moroccan and the other man left without another word.
Abdullah lurched from his chair to stop them, but his father yanked him back.
“Father, we can’t—” Abdullah stopped when he saw Sheik Faisal. The elderly man’s face was bright red, quivering with rage.
“Sheikh Faisal, I cannot accept their demands. It will be war,” Sheikh Majid said slowly.
“They insult me, the mediator? They insult me in my own home?” Faisal reached into the cushion of his seat
and pulled out a small flask. He took a greedy sip, amber liquid staining his neat, white beard. He passed the flask to Majid.
“We will fight al-Qaeda with you. The rapes, the taxes, the arrogance! They are worse than the Americans; at least they pay when they harm the innocent.” He nodded furiously as he spoke.
Majid took a sip from the flask and passed it to Abdullah. “I don’t know about the other tribes, but there are rumors of an uprising against al-Qaeda in Anbar Province. We should reach out to them.”
Abdullah drank the whiskey and coughed as it burned all the way down to his knees. The two sheikhs sorted the local tribes and their shared connections, figuring out likely allies. The alcohol’s warmth spread through his chest when an idea struck him. “What about the Americans?”
His father looked at him as if he’d just passed gas. “What?”
“The Americans will always fight al-Qaeda. We can give them information, let them attack al-Qaeda’s base with their helicopters and their missiles. A truce would give—”
His father struck him across the face with a ring-laden hand. It was the same ring, a knob of gold with an onyx gem, he’d used to strike Abdullah when he misbehaved as a child.
“Have you forgotten what those infidels have done to Iraq? What they’ve done to our tribe? They killed two of my brothers in Kuwait all those years ago. Saddam took fifteen of our men for his fedayeen suicide squads, and they never came home. They came here to steal our oil, and they bombed our homes and raped our women. You want to whore us out to them? To hide behind their armored skirts?” Majid shook his head. “You have much to learn before you can be sheikh. Maybe too much. Now be silent.”
Majid returned to conspiring with Sheikh Faisal.
