Hunting in the Shadows (American Praetorians) (28 page)

             
I leaned out of the window, leveling my rifle at the bearded guy who was pointing his HK subgun at us, and tried to double tap him.  Unfortunately, the car went over a brick, or a pile of trash, or something in the street just as the trigger broke and threw my aim off.  The suppressed 7.62 bullets smacked into the storefront behind and above him.  There was more screaming, and the bearded guy fired a burst, that went somewhere overhead.  I could hear the rounds go by, but they didn’t hit the car, so we were still good.

             
Larry had his arm over the seat backs, watching to the rear.  I fired at the plainclothes shooters again, this time getting close enough that the two on the left scrambled for cover.  The other two were spraying lead at us by then, and two rounds smacked into the car door about an inch from my arm.  I swung the barrel and returned fire, pumping four shots at them, but missed.  Just then the car surged backward, as Larry found his opening.

             
We screeched out into the main intersection, Larry spinning the wheel to get us pointed south.  I got thrown around and damned near lost my rifle, but was able to pull myself back inside the window, just as we almost slammed into a PPF car.

             
The PPF painted their vehicles just like the IPs, except using black instead of the IP blue.  There was some Koranic script in gold written on the black, with the usual red and blue light bar on top.  This one was also overflowing with PPF in brown uniforms and black vests.

             
Looking back, I could see the wide-eyed look of surprise on the driver’s and backseater’s faces.  The backseater tried to get his window down, but before I could do anything, Larry had the car back in gear, and was getting us tearing down the road to the southwest.

             
There was the sound of more shooting from the market, where the four plainclothes men were trying to force their way through the screaming crowds to come after us.  I twisted around in my seat, trying to position my rifle where I could get it into action fast if I needed to.

             
Larry was weaving through the traffic like a madman.  Iraqi drivers scare the hell out of me, and Larry wasn’t really helping matters.

Like I’ve said before, m
ost Third World drivers really don’t pay attention to what’s going on around them.  I’ve never been able to figure out why.  Now put that mentality together with a driver doing about twice the speed of traffic, trying to get away from a PPF vehicle that would probably start shooting at any moment.  Not a recipe for healthy blood pressure.

             
We narrowly missed a Bongo truck so overladen with crap that it looked like it was going to tip over, then squeezed between a Land Cruiser and a very nice black sedan with tinted windows, so close that we smashed off the Land Cruiser’s side mirror.  Horns were honking like mad, almost drowning out the snap of bullets as the clowns in the PPF car started shooting at us, even while their driver was swerving in and out of traffic.

             
I caught a glimpse of a blue Opal sedan suddenly swerving out of control, its back peppered with bullet holes.  It smacked into a cart on the side of the road and then plowed into a red, purple, and yellow-painted storefront.  More traffic screeched to a halt or smashed into crap on the side of the street, trying to get out of the line of fire.  Others just kept on going where they were going, either oblivious to the shooting and crashing going on, or figuring that nothing could happen to them.  Think that mindset only exists in the developed world?  Think again.

             
  Larry cut us in behind a lumbering tanker truck, slowing down just enough not to smash into its rear bumper, and then cut a hard right turn into Al Hadi.  We went from what could be a four-lane road back in the States to barely one and a half, hemmed in by blocky stucco buildings and cinderblock walls.  The street was rougher, with cracks in the asphalt, sometimes filled with more trash and standing water.  The ride got bumpier, especially as Larry didn’t slow down overmuch.  I just held on.

             
We rattled past two blocks and found ourselves next to a school.  Larry grabbed the first left turn he could find and rocketed down the next narrow street, which looked a lot like the last one.

             
That street ended in a T-intersection with the next block, after narrowing down so far that really only a single car could get through it.  I was still looking back for the PPF car, along with any others that might have been called in so I didn’t see the white and orange taxi turn onto the street coming toward us, until Larry slammed on the brakes and yanked the wheel to the side with a loud, “Fuck!”

             
We barely managed to stop short of the wall at the corner as the taxi went past us, the driver honking and waving his hands at us.  Larry backed us up, then rammed the car into gear and swerved back onto the street, getting us moving again as fast as possible.  The only other way out of that intersection was back to the main street, and we didn’t want to go there.

             
“We’ve got to get rid of this car,” I said, as Larry slewed us around another corner.  He was trying to thread as much of the maze of Al Hadi as he could, to throw off any pursuit, but if there was a BOLO out for us, the car would be a dead giveaway wherever we went.  “Preferably somewhere quiet.  I’m not getting my charred corpse strung up on a fucking bridge.”

             
“Hell,” Larry said, “you’d be dead.  What would you care what they do with your corpse?”

             
“Okay, smartass, less wisecracky, more drivey,” I replied.  “Just keep an eye out for somewhere we can dump the car.”

             
“I’ve been looking for the last three blocks,” he said.  “I haven’t seen anyplace we can stop without half the neighborhood coming out to see what’s going on.”

             
At that point, we turned onto a side street that intersected with the canal that ran along the northwest side of Al Hadi.  I caught a glimpse of something that gave me an idea.  “Head for the canal,” I said.

             
“We’ll have no cover there, and nowhere to go,” Larry protested.

             
“There are cars parked there.  We should be able to swap out with one of them,” I said.  “Or, failing that, we go swimming.”

             
Larry groaned.  “I really don’t want to take a dip in an Iraqi canal.”

             
“Neither do I, but I haven’t got a better idea at this point,” I said.  “They probably won’t come after us, and if we can get far enough, they might not know where we went.”

             
“I hope you’re right,” Larry said, as he wrenched the wheel toward the canal.

             
He pulled us up next to a small brown hatchback, coming to a screeching halt in a cloud of dust.  I was halfway out the door before we’d even stopped moving, my rifle still held close to my body to keep it from being too terribly obvious that I was getting ready to throw down, and moved to the car.

             
The hatchback was locked, and I didn’t necessarily want to break windows to get in.  It might not look too out of place; there was another car a few hundred yards down that had plastic taped over the driver’s side window.  But I just didn’t want to take the chance.

             
We never got the chance to jimmy the door, either.  Two PPF trucks came tearing down the road from the north, and we both turned and jumped into the canal.

             
I plunged up to my neck in rank, green water.  Trying to keep my rifle out of it was a losing proposition; I’d have to clean the shit out of it later, but at the moment, concealment was our primary concern.  I looked at Larry, pointed north, took two deep breaths, and went under.

             
I didn’t even try to open my eyes; I didn’t want to think too hard about what kind of infections I was probably going to get from this little swim in the first place.  I stayed close enough to the side to be able to reach out and touch the mud, guiding myself by feel.  I had no idea where Larry was, but I hoped he wasn’t too far behind.

             
My lungs started to hurt, the oxygen starvation signals flooding my brain.  I had to breathe.  I didn’t know for sure how far I’d gone, though I was pretty sure it wasn’t as far as I’d been able to go when I was still a Marine.  My body started the involuntary gulping that was a pretty good indicator that I was going to have to come up for air soon.  I just hoped it wasn’t somewhere there was a PPF trooper looking down at the water.

             
I rolled on my back as I rose to the surface, managing to just break the surface of the water with my face, instead of bursting out gasping.  I still sucked down as much air as I could fill my lungs with before going back down.  I didn’t even bother to look around; distance was paramount at this point.  I briefly worried about Larry keeping up, but dismissed it.  Larry could take care of himself.  Diving to the bottom again, I struck out for the north, trying to get another twenty-five or thirty meters.

             
I could taste the shit-water in my mouth as I went.  It wasn’t pleasant, but I had more important things to think about.  Like staying down, pushing past the growing pain in my tissues from oxygen deprivation, and trying to get as far as I could before coming up.

             
When I came up again, it was in a clump of dank vegetation.  I stayed up for a while this time, sheltering in the reeds, my nose just above the water level.  I
hurt
, especially as I looked back and saw that I’d covered almost a hundred yards, underwater.  Hell, I hadn’t been able to do that in the training tank back on Pendleton, all those years ago.  I guess duress tends to make you perform better.

             
There was a rustling in the reeds behind me.  Peering through, I could just see Larry’s big, bald head sitting in the reeds, about as far out of the water as I was.  He carefully looked over, trying not to disturb the reeds, and made eye contact.  We didn’t say anything, didn’t even move, but enough was communicated by that look.  We were both good, and we needed to stay in place.

             
Above, on the edge of the canal, I could hear talking in Arabic, as the PPF looked around the car we’d ditched.  It sounded like they were pretty sure it was the right vehicle, but couldn’t figure out where we’d gone.  I unmistakably heard somebody who sounded like he was in charge order searches of the nearby buildings.

             
I hoped like hell they didn’t look in the nearest spot, but I figured it was unlikely.  As long as we stayed very still, we should be overlooked.  It might take some time, but eventually, they’d leave, and we could move out.

             
With another wordless exchange with Larry, I settled in for a long wait.

              It was past dark when I finally dared to move from my hiding place.  I was itching from whatever was in the water, and I hurt from holding essentially the same position for almost eight hours.  I eased out of the reeds, trying not to rustle them too much, and planed out in the water, starting to swim.  I kept to a slow breaststroke, taking care not to splash.  I heard the faint rustle and ripple behind me as Larry followed.

             
In places the canal got so shallow and clogged with trash, rotting vegetation, and debris that we were essentially crawling instead of swimming.  I wasn’t planning on going all the way to the end of the canal; if memory served that was where a major road crossed it, and we wanted to stay the hell away from major roads that night.  Two big Westerners was one thing, two big Westerners who were dripping wet from swimming in a canal were going to attract attention, even this late.

             
About another two hundred yards down, I slowed to a stop, and signaled to Larry that we were getting out.  There was a road on the west side of the canal, but there weren’t any vehicles on it at the moment.  We’d cross, then go into the next canal on the other side, before trying to slip into the darkened, run-down outskirts of Tareq on the far side.  I wanted to stay away from the walled, well-lit warehouse to the southwest.

             
It was a struggle to get out of the canal.  We were soaked, the walls were muddy and crumbling, and while the swim had loosened our muscles some, we were still both tired and sore.  I was able to scramble up onto the side of the road with Larry pushing me, then I reached down and hauled him out.  The guy’s even heavier when he’s soaked.

             
Another quick look around for anyone watching or vehicles coming, then we jogged across the road, squelching and dripping, leaving muddy footprints on the dusty road.  We slid, slithered, and stumbled down into the far canal, splashing far more than I wanted.  I winced at the sound, and froze in the water, watching and listening.  Aside from dogs barking in the neighborhood beyond, there was no sound, no activity.

             
While narrower, this canal was almost as deep as the one we’d just climbed out of.  The water came to my neck.  The walls were also a lot steeper.  Now that we were in it, I realized that it was going to be a lot more difficult to get out again, and was probably going to make a lot more noise.  Fuck.