Cold Snap
Authors: J. Clayton Rogers
Tags: #adventure, #mystery, #military, #detective, #iraq war, #marines, #saddam hussein, #us marshal, #nuclear bomb, #terror bombing
COLD SNAP
by
J. Clayton Rogers
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2014
COLD SNAP
PROLOGUE
Baghdad
April 2003
By the time Colonel Abu Karim Ghaith Ibrahim
reached Al-Amn al-Khas Headquarters, separated from Palestine
Street by a high wall, the Americans had already arrived. They
knocked, but there was no one at home. Using bolt cutters and
sledge hammers, members of Site Survey Team 3 broke into the squat,
beige building. They cautiously entered a long, gloomy corridor
that reminded some of them of the cinematic prison cells where
serial killers were incarcerated. Steel doors painted an ominous
orange stretched down the hallway. Windows had been sealed with
concrete. On the alert for booby traps, they moved to what appeared
to be a main door at the far end. With dread and hopeful
anticipation they snapped the chain, then slammed at the steel with
sledge hammers. Finally, the door banged open.
They gasped.
The room with crammed with vacuum
cleaners.
"Weapons of mass destruction, fer sure," said
someone.
By then, Ghaith was on his way to the
Republican Palace grounds. Not the Palace itself, but the Al Hayat
Building, which housed Al-Amn al-Khas's Administrative Center. The
streets were mad with celebrants and looters and it took some time
to walk the five miles. It would have taken longer by car. American
soldiers looked bemused, their cheer qualified by the sight of so
many shops being gutted and so many appliances held protectively in
the air, floating above the mob like some commercial for weightless
gadgetry. The soldiers seemed benign, holding their rifles with the
buttstocks at their shoulders, barrels pointed at the ground, as if
shooting anyone was the furthest thing from their minds. But some
of them must have suspected that the honeymoon between Iraq and its
liberators was almost over. After all, there wasn't much left to
steal.
The theft was of a higher quality the closer
one approached Saddam Hussein's old stomping ground. Radios were
replaced by computers, computers by cars. And then came true
exotica: artifacts from the Baghdad Museum. Ghaith's heart was
already broken. The sight of so much lost heritage left him
unmoved.
The bottleneck at Al Jumariyah Bridge nearly
dissuaded him from going on, but he really had no choice. He was
itching for a job.
Once across the Tigris, he made his way to
Haifa Street, where Sunnis predominated. Ghaith had been raised in
a Sunni household, although his father was lukewarm on religion.
Ghaith himself would have been considered an atheist by his
neighbors, had they seen the big vacancy in him where God should
have been. Yet he could not easily shrug off his upbringing.
Although the streets were awash with looters of every stripe, he
still felt more comfortable here. The Sunni minority had made out
like bandits under Saddam—which, of course, included Ghaith.
He had to dodge his way through the lunatic
crowd toting paintings, ceramics and statuary from the massive
ziggurat of the Saddam Center for the Arts. These were not
treasures of antiquity, but contemporary masterworks. Ghaith's
esthetic eye was sadly underdeveloped. He did not know the row of
men hustling past him was toting a complete collection of the works
of Shakir Hassan Al Said. To Ghaith, they were nothing but smudges,
but they were taking their first steps to the great European
auction houses, where they would be worth a fortune.
The mob grew denser as he approached the
Republican Palace. He would be here for hours just to get within
sight of the gate. There was no need to hurry, but he was naturally
impatient. When a Humvee dug itself into the side of the crowd,
followed by a bright new Range Rover, he unhesitatingly took
advantage of the dangerously narrow gap between the vehicles. The
Rover driver battered his horn, while the soldiers on the Humvee
shifted their M16's in his direction. He jumped up on the hood of
the SUV, resting his back against the windshield.
A soldier hopped out of the Humvee and raced
up to him. "Rouh min hona! Rouh min hona!" he shouted.
"I suppose 'go away' is the first phrase you
learned when you came here," Ghaith said cheerfully.
"You speak English?"
"Obviously."
"Then get the fuck off the car!"
The soldier in the Humvee's ring mount swung
the .50 caliber machine gun around and lowered the barrel in
Ghaith's direction. The soldier on the ground saw this.
"You want to waste everyone in the car? Point
that somewhere else."
"I would dismount with pleasure," said
Ghaith, "but General Garner would not be so pleased."
General Jay Garner was the Director of the
Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance—a mouthful
slightly more awkward than its acronym
"Why's that?"
"I'm his translator."
"Then what are you doing in this crowd?"
"I missed the bus."
The man in the ring mount had turned his gun
skywards. He looked from side to side, studying the crowd. They
were drawing a lot of attention.
"OK, get off the SUV and I'll take you
in."
"I'm perfectly comfortable up here," said
Ghaith, resting on his elbows and crossing his legs. "This hood is
very spacious."
"Like hell," said the soldier on the ground.
"I have to frisk you."
Ghaith slid off the hood and raised his arms.
With brusque efficiency the soldier patted him down. When Ghaith
shifted, he said, "Don't worry, I won't touch your junk."
When they reached the first improvised ring
outside the gate the soldier ordered him off the Humvee.
"I need to go inside." Ghaith protested as he
hopped to the ground.
"I'm putting you at the head of the line,"
said the soldier, escorting him to one of the tables in the middle
of the human swarm. "That's good enough."
The soldier spoke to a harassed corporal
seated at the table. "He says he's Garner's translator," he shouted
over the din. "Be sure to check his junk."
He then hurried back to his vehicle.
"Identity papers," said the corporal.
Ghaith, annoyed, felt like acting stupid just
to share his annoyance. "Papers?"
"Show me something with your name, your
picture, and that doesn't have the word 'Ba'athist' on it."
"Ah, you mean my carte d'identité."
"No, I mean your identity card, something
that tells me you weren't a member of the former regime."
"So it is officially 'former'?" Ghaith
asked.
"What's it look like to you?" The corporal
thumbed towards the Republican Palace and the mass of Coalition
troops.
"There's a distinct difference in
atmosphere," Ghaith agreed, handing over papers that identified him
as Al-Sayyid Faisal of Al-Baghdadi.
"Military service papers?"
"I was exempt from service," said Ghaith,
pointing at the nine-story Al-Hayat Building. "I worked over
there."
"That's just an apartment building," said the
corporal warily. He looked exhausted, as did all the other clerks
at the long row of tables. Thousands of Iraqis seeking jobs were
crowding in on them.
"It was also the administrative center of the
SSO," said Ghaith.
"The Special Security Organization? You
worked there?"
"Indeed."
"Then you're a Ba'athist."
"Not all who worked there belonged to the
predominant Party."
"SSO and not a Ba'athist?" The corporal
leaned back, tapping his pen on the table. "You're shitting
me."
"I would not shit upon you in the least. Like
all of these people, I am seeking employment. I merely want to sit
at my old desk."
"And what desk was that?"
Ghaith was tempted to tell him something
guaranteed to draw his interest. The truth would have succeeded
handsomely. Assistant Director of Prison Records for Abu Ghraib and
its many satellites, translator for the German engineers at the
Saad 16 poison gas project, colonel in the Special Republican
Guard, assassin….
Yes, he could certainly gain their
interest.
"I was a clerk, that is all. I know where
files are, I know passwords."
The corporal eyed him hard, but not for long.
There was no time for lengthy inspections in what was becoming
known as the Red Zone, just outside what was becoming known as the
Green Zone. He waved at two infantrymen who came over and stood to
either side of Ghaith. Their unit badges bore red X's and the motto
'Florida and Country'.
"We're at war with Florida?" Ghaith said
humorously.
"'Gators 'n all," one of the soldiers
grinned.
"Frisk him," said the corporal.
"I have already been searched," Ghaith
protested mildly.
"And you'll be searched again after
this."
He bore the search stoically.
"My junk is impermeable," he advised the man
patting him down. Then he wondered if 'impermeable' was the word he
had been searching for.
"We'll see about that."
"Escort him inside," said the corporal.
"General Garner is out of town. Advise Captain Hanson that I
suggest he be taken to that tall building over there. He might be
useful to the 75th."
Feeling one step short of having been raped,
Gaith followed the two peasant conscripts (that was how he thought
of them after the deep frisk) through the gate and found himself
standing in front of another table on the wide lawn of the palace
grounds. The infantrymen repeated what the corporal had said.
Captain Hanson asked the same questions as the corporal, received
the same answers, reviewed the same ID, and ordered two more
peasants to search Ghaith again. During the process, Ghaith ran his
eyes over the multitude of Arab poor wandering the grounds.
"You let this riffraff in, but feel the need
to accost me?" he said, annoyed.
The captain glanced in the direction of the
palace. "Squatters. They were here when we arrived. We're not sure
what to do about them. And we're not accosting you. Body searches
are SOP in this environment."
"Your sop does not requite me."
The captain smiled. "I think your English
might need work, but I'm not sure." He looked at the second set of
rapists. "Take him over to Colonel Jones at the 75th Exploitation
Task Force CP and tell him what you just heard."
As the two infantrymen escorted him towards
the Al Hayat Building, one of them said, "What did we hear?"
"I didn't hear anything," said the second
soldier.
"What are we going to tell the colonel,
then?"
"Give him our compliments and scoot."
Ghaith felt disoriented when he stepped
through the elegant entrance. The last time he had been here the
Americans were on the frontier. Now they were here, loud and brash.
And victorious. The charm offensive that he had worked out in
reasonable detail crumbled before the eyes of the victors, who saw
nothing charming about the land, the people or the dilapidated
state of Iraq. Not that they didn't try to smile.
The guards directed Ghaith to a squat colonel
in desert camouflage. He listened to their introduction for all of
five seconds before cutting them off with a raised hand.
"Not my problem, anymore. We're moving out.
The kiddies and old folks are taking over." He indicated several
young men in civilian clothes toting boxes through the entrance.
"The Iraq Survey Group. Aussies, Brits and the guys in Yankee
baseball caps."
The guards looked perplexed.