Alone and Unafraid (American Praetorians Book 3) (10 page)

The t
ruth was, I believed him.  As shadowy as Ventner was, I’d been around him enough to know that he’d go through Hell itself to help somebody he considered worth it.   It was gratifying, knowing Ventner, that he thought us “worth it,” but I wasn’t going to read him in on the situation unless I absolutely had to.  I didn’t know for sure how he’d react, and the fewer people on the hit list for knowing about the Project, the better, for the time being.

“What’s the overall situation in the city look like?” I asked, deliberately changing the subject.

He knew that was what I was doing, too, but shrugged it off.  “It’s actually been relatively quiet for the last few days,” he said.  “ISIS and the AAH went toe-to-toe in Yarmouk on Sunday, and mauled each other.  Apparently, Jaysh al Mahdi waited until close to the end, then opened up on both, but ISIS brought reinforcements up and pushed both of the Shi’a militias out of the neighborhood.  The word I’m getting from some of my sources on the street is that Saleh’s not happy with the fact the AAH and the Mahdi Army are still going at it.  Rumors are that one of the JAM leadership got shot for it.”

The Asa’ib Ahl al Haq was a hard-core, Shi’a splinter group that had left the Mahdi Army in 2006, and had since risen to directly challenge the Sadrists. 
They were just as vicious and just as devoted to Khomeini’s Shi’a Islamist ideology; it was all a matter of who was leading.  Of course, that was the root of the dispute between Sunni and Shi’a in the first place…and that fight had been going on for centuries.

“Saleh seems to be holding off pushing into the Sunni parts of the city.  Nobody seems to know why; he’s got the strength to make a go of it.  He’s done more to try to intimidate the Embassy than try to deal with the Sunni neighborhoods.

“ISIS, meanwhile, is pushing more and more fighters into Khadra, Al-Amariya, and Amil.  There are rumors that more of the Sunni groups are coming out of the woodwork, and even that the Islamic Front is sending some fighters from Syria.”

I snorted a little.  “Have the Syrians and ISIS started killing each other yet?”

He chuckled humorlessly.  “Not that we know of, but it’s confused enough that it’s entirely possible.  There are at least five different named irregular groups jockeying to slug it out, and that’s not counting the Brotherhood spooks, the MOIS spooks, and who knows who else.  Keeping track of who’s actually killing who is getting a little difficult.  That said, we have seen fights break out between ISIS and JAI, but that’s nothing new.”  The Jamaat Ansar al Islam was ISIS’ biggest Sunni rival in Iraq, and had been for years.  As Ventner had said, those two being at each other’s throats was just business as usual.

“How are we getting in?” Mike asked.  “This convoy seems like a big fucking target to me.”

“Most of the main highways are secured by Saleh’s troops,” Ventner replied.  “That’s the route we’re taking.”

I frowned.  “Isn’t Saleh trying to force us out of the country?”

He smiled coldly.  “Sure he is.  But since we moved into the Embassy, he’s had to take stock, and he’s being a lot more politic and subtle.  He doesn’t want to bite off more than he can chew, at least not with ISIS and every other Sunni psycho ready to jump at his throat at the slightest hint of an opening.  He’s not as secure as he’d like, especially with the unrest between Jaysh al Mahdi and AAH.  He may be a militant Shi’a asshole, but he’s not stupid.  He’s also canny enough that I know he’s seen the movements we’ve made out of the Embassy already.  If we’re leaving of our own accord, he’s not going to interfere.  He gets what he wants, and doesn’t have to risk soldiers and fighters that he can use against the Sunnis.”

The Baghdad skyline was filling the horizon now, a collection of skyscrapers, trees, and close-packed brick buildings, studded with the minarets of dozens of mosques.  An Iraqi Army checkpoint was also coming up, and Ventner grabbed the US Diplomatic credentials on the dash to get us through.  Mike and I sat back, tried to look inconspicuous, and pushed our rifles out of sight.

The driver slowed as we approached the checkpoint.  There was a
lot
of traffic, but we pushed around to the edge of the highway and passed most of it by, the convoy tightening up as we got closer to the checkpoint.  The black Suburbans stood out a bit in the sea of white or tan Bongos, Hi-Luxes, sedans, tanker trucks, jingle trucks, and the ubiquitous orange-and-white taxis.  I found my hand on my rifle, down below the seat, praying that Ventner’s confidence in the diplomatic placard wouldn’t be misplaced.

Three IA in chocolate chip desert cammies with slung M16s were waiting at the side of the large awning that formed the checkpoint.  As we rolled up, Ventner held the
diplomatic placard up in the window.  One of the IA held up his hand to signal us to stop.

He walked over to the driver’s window.  The driver, a smaller, sandy-haired guy in a plaid shirt and Oakleys, rolled the window down. 
I couldn’t hear much of what was said, but Ventner turned back to us.  “Passports, guys.”

Fortunately, we had those on us all the time.  It wasn’t just for things like this; if we’d had to E&E out of the country, we wouldn’t have gotten far without them.  While the KRG was for all intents and purposes autonomous, it had still been connected enough with the Iraqi government that we had Iraqi visas.  They were dated
from before all hell had broken loose between Baghdad and Erbil over Kirkuk, but they were still valid.  We rummaged in our pockets, pulled them out, and handed them over.  Mine was a little bent, and Mike’s looked like it had been through the wringer, but they were still legible.

The IA took the passports and squinted at them, firing a question at the driver.  “Yeah, they’re all with us,” he replied.  I was starting to try to calculate how fast I could get my rifle up, even though I knew there wasn’t much I could do from inside the up-armored vehicle.  And a firefight here was not going to end well.

The Iraqi soldier stepped back from the vehicle.  One of his buddies jabbered at him in rapid-fire Arabic, and he looked troubled.  Finally, he went back to the small, side guard shack just off the road, inside the checkpoint.

Ventner looked back at us.  “Relax, fellas,” he said.  “This happens every time.  It’s posturing, not much more than that.”

“And if it’s not?” I asked.

The same humorless chuckle.  “Then things get interesting.  Saleh’s still too mindful of how fragile his position is to necessarily want a dustup in a crowded civilian venue like this, though.  Might turn the general populace against him.”

“Has he told his troops that, though, I wonder?” I muttered.  It didn’t take orders from on high for a situation like this to go bad.  All it took was a nervous or over-eager private with an itchy trigger finger.

However, after about five minutes of sitting there sweating in spite of the Sub’s air conditioning, the Iraqi soldier came back out and handed our passports in through the window.  “Imsh
i,” he said curtly, and pointed into the city.  He wasn’t happy to be letting us go, but apparently his boss had said to keep from rocking the boat at this point.  Apparently Ventner was on the money so far.

As we rolled through, getting the stink-eye from not only the Iraqi troops but also a lot of the normal folks stuck waiting in line, I tapped Ventner on the shoulder.

“There’s a guy with us, the American with longer black hair, an Iraqi chest rig and an AK.”  When he nodded that he remembered Black, I continued, “We need to keep him generally out of sight when we get to the Embassy.”

He twisted around in his seat to look at me.  “Any particular reason why?” he asked.

I kept my expression carefully neutral.  “I’m afraid you’re just going to have to trust me,” I replied.

Frustration flickered across his face
.  “Funny,” he said coldly, after a moment, “that trust seems to be strictly one-way with you right now.”  He sighed angrily.  “Fine.  There’s plenty of empty space around the Embassy at the moment; we’ll find some discreet hole to hide him in, and I won’t even ask any more questions.  Hell, I’ll even tell you where we put him.”  He faced forward again, obviously annoyed that we were being so secretive.

Tough shit.  If he had any
idea of what we were getting into, he’d probably thank us for keeping him and his guys out of it.

We continued on into the city in silence.  Dingy, flimsy-looking market stalls on the side of the highway gave way to gray, tan, and white cinderblock and mud-brick houses on the right, while industrial areas started to rise up on the left.  We went around a roundabout with a large, roofed structure
that seemed to exist just to enclose a painted sign in Arabic, and continued up the highway into the city proper.

We passed some palm groves and orchards on the left just before turning off the highway and onto the Dora Expressway.  The city was pretty open up to that overpass, but started to close in as we pushed east.  There were a lot of trees, though mostly inside compounds until we turned north again, heading for the river.

There wasn’t any talking going on in the Sub.  Ventner was probably wondering what the hell he’d gotten himself and his boys into.  Mike and I were scanning the surroundings, taking note of everything.

Ventner seemed to have picked a route that followed a sort of “no-man’s land” between the Shi’a forces and the ISIS.  While we saw a few patrols, either in the digital desert camouflage of the Iraqi Army, the increasingly uniform black and camouflage of ISIS, or the civilian clothing of one of the other myriad militias running around Baghdad, they seemed to be on the defensive.  None tried to stop the convoy, though I spotted plenty of glares of pure fucking hate, from all quarters.

I can’t say it surprised me.  While I was sure there were those in Baghdad like the al Khazraji who had thrown in with us, for the most part, the people of this country had been fucked with and, to their way of thinking, abandoned.  I was under no illusions that Saleh’s placing blame on the US for the chaos his country was currently in was a minority opinion.

We pushed past Dora and took the turnoff to the north, passing several large palm groves and catching glimpses of some seriously swanky houses.  This part of Baghdad definitely wasn’t poor.  The houses we got a glimpse of had obvious security.  One even had several armed personnel and black, up-armored SUVs around the front.  The wealthy
, at least those who were sticking around, obviously were not taking chances with the burgeoning chaos.

The six-lane road crossed another four-lane, with large, turquoise monuments on the median on either side of the intersection.  Then we were moving through more palm groves, the Dora refinery just barely visible between the towering boles of the trees to our right.

As we approached the river, the road split, and our three lanes started to move up.  I’d never been to Baghdad before, and had never seen the “Two Story Bridge” over the Tigris.  Our half of the road rose up on square pylons to cross the river above the southbound lanes, and affording us an excellent view of more very rich houses on the north bank of this curve of the river.  Once again, there was a lot of security in evidence.  Farther off to the west, where the river curved back east, there was a tall skyscraper with a sort of cylinder on top.  I thought I remembered from earlier study that the tower was the central structure of the University of Baghdad.

I was already making calculations and plans for the evacuation
, if we lost the airport.  So far it was open, but that could always change.  I knew that ISIS, as well as the Islamic Front, had seized more than one airfield in Syria and Western Iraq.

The most obvious route would be the river; I didn’t see any patrol boats.  If we went downstream, I would recommend hugging the southern bank, at least at this stretch.  There wasn’t much housing, and there would be fewer lights.
 

Of course, we had to consider means of transport if we used the river; we didn’t have the Zodiacs that we’d used in
East Africa.  While they were presently on the
Frontier Rose
, which was loitering near Bahrain in case we needed seaborne support.  The
Frontier Rose
was a small container ship we’d liberated from Somali pirates on the island of Socotra, in exchange for keeping the ship as a mobile support base.  Most of the crew had elected to stay on once the ship officially changed hands from its bankrupt former owners to Praetorian Security.  Even Sean Summers, who had inherited the captaincy when the ship’s previous captain was executed by the pirates, had elected to stay on.

But Bahrain was a long way away, and even if Sean brought the
Rose
into Umm Qasr, which wasn’t a good idea with Basra having now turned hostile, all the way up the Tigris to Baghdad was a long way to bring Zodes without being spotted.  To make the idea even more untenable, you can only fit maybe eight people with no gear on a Zodiac.  I’d scratched off the river as an escape route before I turned back to the road.

“How many are left at the Embassy?” I asked.

“About five hundred,” Ventner replied.

“Damn.  You guys have been busy.”

He chuckled, his pique apparently gone.  “I don’t see the point in fucking around, and for once the ambassador agrees with me.  Of course, she doesn’t know she does, since she doesn’t know who I am.  I’m Sam Wright, by the way; pleased to meet you.”  He chuckled again, then turned somewhat serious.  “You guys might want to consider some noms de guerre, too; I know somebody has a file with Praetorian’s roster in it, or at least what it was a year ago.”