Hunting in the Shadows (American Praetorians) (30 page)

             
“What a day, huh?” Little Bob commented as he stripped off the man-dress and keffiyeh.  He had his vest on underneath.  He hefted his Mk 17, which looked small in his beefy hands, and stepped to the house door, where I was already stacked up.  Juan was right behind him, his own M1A held at the ready.  I swung the door open and we flowed into the house.

             
A thorough clear confirmed that we were the only ones there.  The house was reassuringly empty; there weren’t even any signs of squatters having been there lately.  I pushed Juan, Little Bob, and Paul out on security while Jim, Bryan, and I started hauling everything inside.  Jim told me he had made sure Bryan’s and my equipment was all packed and in the Toyota.  The fact that we had never unpacked all the way since we got into Iraq would have helped immensely.

             
After an hour, I started to get worried.  There was no sign of Nick, Larry, and the Toyota.  They hadn’t called in, either.  I considered calling Nick, but I knew that if they were in a tight spot, the last thing they might need would be an untimely phone call.  I trusted both of them to be professional and keep their heads.  If they needed assistance, they’d find a way to contact us.  It was the same situation as when Larry and I had been out of contact the day before.  We just had to be patient.

             
That’s easy enough to say when you’re not the one pacing a safehouse in what has gone from a non-permissive to an actually hostile city, with a team already down two to wounds and KIA, hoping that you haven’t lost two more brothers only a few days after the last one.

             
I wasn’t sure how long I’d been pacing, my rifle slung in front of me, forcing myself not to try to contact them, when gravel crunched outside, and my cell vibrated.  I snatched it up and answered.

             
“We’re outside,” Nick said.  “Coming in.”

             
I damn near ran to the front door, to see the Toyota creeping through the gate.  It had a couple new holes in it, most notably the spider-webbed bullet hole in the upper center of the windshield.

             
Nick got out of the passenger side and walked over to the house, while Larry retrieved his kitbag from the bed first.  “Sorry it took so long, boss,” Nick said.  “We kind of ran into a militia headed for the old safehouse.  Seems the place was burned for real.”

             
“You got clear, though?” I asked.  “Nobody followed you?”

             
He nodded.  “We’re clean, as long as Jaf didn’t know about this place, too.”

             
“He didn’t,” I said.  “We don’t know for sure if they took him and flipped him before they killed him, or if he’d just talked to the wrong people before today.”

             
“Did you actually see his body?” Larry asked as he walked over, bulging kitbag over one shoulder.

             
I shook my head.  “We were a little too busy getting off the X,” I said.  “Under fire, I might add.  So no, we can’t be sure they killed him right off.  However, under the circumstances, dead or flipped amounts to the same thing, as far as we’re concerned.”

             
Larry shrugged.  “Can’t argue with that, I guess.  What’s our next move?”

             
“Haas is going after another contact, provided he can get there ahead of the death squads,” I said.  “Then we’ll see.”

             
Even as I spoke, there was another ferocious burst of fire from just a few blocks away.  The death squads were being thorough.  It didn’t sound like any part of the city was being passed over.  “At any rate, we’re at 100 percent security until this shit quiets down,” I said.  “If these fuckers come knocking, I want them to get their teeth knocked down their throat.”  I smiled, entirely without warmth or humor.  “I’ve got Little Bob back on the scanner, looking for a target.  As long as there’s plenty of chaos going on here, we may as well take advantage of it.”

             
Both guys thought about that for a second, then nodded, their expressions changing from the hunted to the hunter.  We had all been trained by the US military in some way, shape, or form, and the training was a throwback to the middle of the GWOT in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Most of it was heavily COIN-based, and emphasized reaction over action.  It’s easy to slip back to old methods of thinking when you’re tired, which we all were, and that made it all too easy to start thinking like hunted animals, hunkering down trying to hide from the throngs of bad guys, instead of the predators we were.  I had to fight that, keep us on the offensive as much as possible.  Yeah, we’d had a setback, but that just meant we had to move faster and harder.

             
I let the two of them head inside, while I went to the back of the truck to grab my own kitbag.  Juan had closed the gate, and was now standing just inside it, peering through a hole he’d punched in the sheet metal, his rifle held ready.  He glanced over as I walked out, nodded, then resumed his vigil.  Bryan and Paul were on the same lookout from the second story, set back from the windows so they wouldn’t be seen.  I glanced up, checking, and saw nothing.  I heaved the bag out of the truck bed, slung it over my shoulder, and followed Nick and Larry inside.

             
I’d give Haas until sundown to come back with his contact.  After that, we were going hunting.

              “I think I’ve got something, Jeff,” Little Bob said.  He was sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall, and still had his earphone from the scanner in.  He pointed to the notepad beside him, which was covered in names, arrows, and question marks.  “There have been about twenty references to Masjid Gilani, usually in the context of orders coming from him.  He also sounds like he’s new; there doesn’t seem to be the familiarity you might expect of a seasoned PPF commander.  Furthermore, all of his orders are related to the purge.”

             
“Have we got anything on the rolodex about a Masjid Gilani?” I asked.

             
He shook his head.  “No, we haven’t heard of him.  If he’s Qods Force, though, that shouldn’t be all that surprising; we haven’t got anything near to a complete roster on them.  I don’t think anybody outside Tehran does.”

             
“How about a location?” Jim asked from over my shoulder.  “Do we know where to find him?”

             
“He said once to bring somebody to ‘Headquarters,’” Little Bob said, pointing to another note on the pad.  “I’m pretty sure the PPF set up its headquarters in the old Joint Security Station, in Al Asma’i, but they could be in the Basra Police Station on the other side of town, too.”

             
“Any idea of security on site?” I asked.

             
“It sounds like they’ve got most everybody out to fill out their tags today,” Little Bob said, “but I’d expect there’s going to be some pretty heavy resistance if we hit either place.  The best bet might be hitting him on the move as he goes home.”

             
“The other question is, is he going home tonight?” Jim asked.  “With an operation this big, the commander might stay up at the station.”

             
“This is Iraq, man,” Little Bob pointed out.  “Since when have you known Iraqis to willingly operate into the night?”

             
“The ISOF did it at Installation Two,” I pointed out.  “I don’t think we can necessarily bank on the old rules applying anymore.”

             
“The ISOF went in at night because they’d been trained by US SOF,” Jim mused, scratching his beard.  “That’s what SOF does, hell, that’s what we do.  The PPF is pretty new, and while their predecessors might have been taught by US Police Transition Teams, how much of that training necessarily got handed down?”

             
I scratched the back of my neck, thinking.  “We need to get eyes on those stations, and verify whether or not this Gilani is there,” I said, half talking to myself.  “Then, when we figure out if he’s moving, or sticking, we can develop from there.”  I looked over at Jim.  “Let’s get ready to either make the hit, or set up an ambush somewhere on the street.  I know, I know,” I said, as Jim raised his eyebrows.  “It’s going to be on the fly and a little rushed, but this might be our best chance to get this guy.  If he’s setting the stage for the next phase of the Iranian takeover here, I want his ass.”

             
“We want him alive, or corpsified?” Jim asked quietly.

             
“Alive, if possible,” I replied.  “If he is the player he looks like he might be, we just might get some useful information out of him.  Let’s start getting things together, and start figuring out a plan here.”

             
As I walked into our little mini ops room, with Jim at my heels, he tapped me on the elbow.  There was a troubled look on his face.  “Jeff, what if we can’t get in front of this thing short of going all the way to Tehran and kicking in the Council of Guardians’ door?  They’ve been compartmented as fuck so far.  What if none of these fuckers knows exactly what the others are doing?  How the hell are we going to get in front of that?”

             
I frowned.  Some of the same thoughts had occurred to me, but we’d been too busy to dwell too much on it.  Unfortunately, he was right.  As much as we hated being reactive, short of knocking off every Iranian we could find stirring up trouble, we might not be able to get the whole picture of the operation before it went down.  “We might not,” I admitted.  “We’d have to know what the overall plan is, and you’re right, none of them have known the whole picture so far.  It’s possible that one of them down here will, in which case we can start rolling up their chain, however loose it is.

             
“On the other hand, we might not find that overall commander.  In that case, we keep knocking off every Qods Force or Jaysh Al Mahdi asshole we can find, and keep looking for the rest.  Every one of these sons of bitches that we take down is another monkey wrench thrown in their plan.  We might not be able to stop it cold, but we can sure fuck it up as best we can.”

             
He nodded solemnly.  “Fair enough.  Let’s get set to go hunting, then.”

              An hour later, Haas finally showed up.  It was almost dusk; the sun had already sunk into the haze of dust and smoke that obscured the horizon, regardless of the weather, and had lost its strength.  The air was already cooling off, though from the sounds of shooting and the chatter over the scanner, the city itself sure wasn’t.  It was starting to sound like the death squads were encountering resistance.  Good.

             
There was a crunch of gravel, and Nick, who had spelled Juan at the gate, called inside, “Got a blue Honda outside; it just parked near the gate.”  Everyone immediately grabbed weapons and moved to the front of the house, ready to fight, except for Little Bob, who stayed on the scanner, and Paul, who was stuck with rear security.  Sucked for him, but it was his turn.

             
My cell vibrated, and I picked it up.  “We’re right outside,” Haas said.  “We were running a little late.”

             
“Fair enough,” I said.  “Come on in.”  I hung up and looked around.  “It’s Haas.  Stand down.”  Everyone relaxed, sort of.

             
Haas slipped through the gate with two Iraqis in tow.  One of them was wearing a PPF uniform; the other was wearing a black dishdasha.  Both were bearded, and looked like brothers.  “These are Ahmed and Hassan,” Haas introduced them, pointing to the guy in the PPF uniform, then the other.  “I worked with Ahmed many years ago, hunting Moqtada Al Sadr’s militia around here.  Hassan is his cousin.  Don’t let the man-dress fool you, Hassan has been trained at KASOTC and various other places.  He’s worked with me and other OGA assets for several years.”

             
“What have you got?” I asked.  I wasn’t going to tell him immediately about our own targeting.  I wanted to know what kind of information he and his buddies had dug up first.  It might make our planned hit/ambush of Gilani moot.

             
Not much got past Haas, though.  He looked around, and saw our preparations.  “You guys going somewhere?” he asked.

             
“We might be,” I replied.  “Little Bob’s gotten enough hits on a guy named Masjid Gilani that we figured we needed to add him to the target deck.  Considering how little information we’ve got here, that pretty much puts him at the top.”

             
Ahmed said something in Arabic, too fast for me to pick it up.  I know a smattering, especially after being in Iraq for the last couple months, but not enough to follow that.  Haas nodded, asked a question, then turned back to me.  “Ahmed says that this Gilani took over PPF operations about two weeks ago.  He says he’s not local; that he’s IRGC Qods Force.  Apparently all the senior PPF officers are now IRGC.”

             
“That’s a hell of a power grab,” Jim said.  “How’d they pull that off without anybody noticing?”

             
Hassan spoke up.  He spoke English slowly and quietly.  “People have noticed, but Baghdad does not want to confront the Iranians right now.  I am pretty sure that the reason they’re trying to beat up on the Kurds in Kirkuk right now is to distract people from the fact they aren’t doing anything about the Iranians down here, or the Syrians and AQI types filtering into Al Anbar.  Ramadi and Fallujah are becoming hotbeds of Sunni militias again, but nobody talks about it.  The Kurds are considered an easier target, and somebody that all Iraqis can gang up on to hate.”