Hunting in the Shadows (American Praetorians) (42 page)

             
“What we must do now is secure Basra against the Salafis and the IRGC,” he said, as though it was the simplest thing in the world.  “Neither of them cares for the people, or their way of life.  Our people wish only to live in peace, according to the dictates of Allah, granted through his Prophet Mohammed, may peace be upon him.  These terrorists want only destruction and death.  So we must deny them.”

             
Drinking a little more chai to buy time to gather my thoughts, I considered what he was talking about.  It was ambitious, rather like a larger-scale version of the old Anbar Awakening movement that had turned the tide in Iraq the last time.  I wondered if it was too ambitious, but it was his call.  As long as we had an exit strategy if this went pear-shaped on him, I was in.  This was what we were here for in the first place; putting the hurt on Islamist fanatics.

             
“How can we help?” I asked.

             
He smiled through his beard, though it didn’t quite meet his eyes.  The Mullah was canny, and I knew he could be trusted to look out for his own and his people’s interests.  I had to keep our mission and our own survival balanced here; he sure wasn’t going to.

             
“You have already begun,” he said.  “In targeting the Qods Force officers who have infiltrated the PPF, you have already hurt the IRGC’s hold on the city, and the province.  I need you to continue doing that.  Once we have the PPF back under our control, we can see to the Jaysh al Mahdi and Hezbollah terrorists who are doing violence here.”

             
“What about Al Qaeda?” I asked.

             
He waved a hand dismissively.  “They have little power here,” he said.  “They can explode a few buildings and cars, but they are not the main threat.  The Iranians have much more influence, and it is them we must deal with.”

             
I nodded my understanding.  I looked over at Mike, who was just watching impassively.  He was a latecomer to this particular scene, and was going to take in as much information as he could before he added anything.  That was just Mike’s way.  He was one of the more cautious of our team leaders.

             
“I doubt we will be able to perform the kind of operation we attempted last night again,” I said carefully.  “The IRGC is alerted now, so we will have to proceed somewhat more carefully when it comes to striking their officers.”

             
Hussein Ali said something then, and Hassan turned to me to translate as he did.  “Yes, that is so.  We must be slower and quieter this time.  They will be ready for another strike like last night.”

             
Hussein Ali and I were on the same page.  We’d taken advantage of the enemy’s belief in the security of their position in Basra the night before.  Now it was time to change tactics.

             
There was another matter, however.  “If we eliminate the current leadership of the PPF,” I asked, “who is going to replace them?”

             
“Hussein Ali will be the new PPF commander,” Mullah al Hakim said immediately.  “Daoud al Zubayri will be his deputy.”

             
So, al Hakim would be the power broker, and his chief militia commanders would be the new authorities.  It wasn’t surprising, and in fact I was slightly more comfortable with Hussein Ali in charge than I might have been with somebody else, to include Daoud.  Hussein Ali had come out and fought with his men the night before.  Daoud hadn’t.  Neither had Said, for that matter, which raised another question.

             
“What about Sattar Said?” I asked.  “I haven’t seen him in a couple of days.”

             
The three men’s faces went hard.  Daoud spat something in Arabic.  I couldn’t catch what exactly he said, but the venom in it was obvious.  “Sattar Said went over to the PPF before the operation last night,” Hassan said.  “He did not know the target list, which is why the operation went as well as it did.  He did, however cause the capture of one of Daoud al Zubayri’s cousins, who was a leader in their militia.”

             
I didn’t doubt that Sattar Said was now on our kill list.

             
“How many of the PPF troops are likely to come over to our side?” I asked.  “There have to be some who actually side with the Iranians by choice.”

             
Al Hakim nodded sagely.  “There are some.  There are many who only see it as a way to feed their families.  Once the Iranians are out of power, most of the PPF will join us.  We are of the same tribes, after all.”

             
I hoped he was right.  I suspected we were going to have to kill more of the PPF than he thought.  It never goes as smoothly as you hope.

             
If I’d known just how hard Murphy was going to fuck us, I’d probably have scratched the contract and run right then and there.

Chapter 26

             
It took another two days before anyone was remotely ready to act.  Two days of cruising carefully around the city in a rotating array of vehicles, snooping around the PPF’s bases and monitoring their patrols.  We saw more of what was going on in the city in two days than we had previously, as all we were doing was watching and listening.

             
It was a violent two days.  More IEDs went off all across the city.  Most were targeting either the PPF or Shi’a mosques, of which there were plenty.  One we were pretty sure was a suicide bomber that detonated in the middle of the Sayyed Ali al Musawi Mosque at prayer time, killing fifty people and blowing the front to rubble.  I don’t know what that fucker was packing, but it was some heavy-duty explosives.

             
There were shootings, murders, a couple of beheadings, and several firefights with the militias and the PPF.  We stayed out of it, concentrating on gathering as much information as we could, while Hussein Ali and Daoud planned and prepared to strike at the PPF’s leadership.  They were also working on some of their contacts with the PPF, cajoling, bribing, or threatening in order to ensure that once they knocked off the Qods Force infiltrators they could take full control of the force.

             
We didn’t just see the movements of PPF and militias.  The evening of the first day, Jim and Larry came back to the factory that had become the militia FOB.  There were now militiamen there 24/7, though we maintained our own security discreetly.  They weren’t all that diligent in daylight, never mind at night.  We’d had enough experience in the Third World that we had set a watch even before going outside to piss in the middle of the night and finding the guard posts asleep.

             
The two of them came into the outbuilding we’d made into our own little bivouac, carrying the small backpacks they’d carried their comm and weapons in.  Jim hadn’t even set his down before he announced, “Well, we’ve got more trouble than just the Iranians.”

             
“No shit,” I replied.  The bomb in the mosque had just gone off that afternoon.  “The Salafis are stirring shit up, too.”

             
He dropped the pack on his sleeping mat.  “It’s worse than you think,” he said.  “Remember the Khilafah assholes we wasted a few days ago?  Well, judging by what we saw today, they were just a drop in the bucket.”

             
He sat down heavily and started guzzling a bottle of water.  Larry took up the story.  “We were cruising between Al Abelah, Hateen, and Al Hadi.  About half an hour after mid-morning prayer, all hell broke loose in Al Abelah.  We’d been noticing that PPF patrols were avoiding the place, but one of them moved in and got hit, hard.  It was a coordinated attack that turned into a dogpile.  Guys in track suits with AKs, RPGs, HKs, you name it just came boiling out of the neighborhood.

             
“That wasn’t the interesting part, though.  We were getting out of the fire zone, when Jim spotted a dozen guys with covered faces and rifles getting into a couple of Bongo trucks and heading away from the firefight.”

             
“It seemed weird, so we followed them,” Jim said.  “They were good; we almost lost them three times in the streets and alleys.  They weren’t convoying; they only met up about three times on their way out of the city, and they were using some really good counter-surveillance.  Whoever trained them knew their shit.”

             
He took another swig of water.  “They didn’t get to where they were going for over an hour, and covered about half of the southwestern side of the city getting there.  When they finally stopped, it was at that old gas station southwest of the western cloverleaf.”

             
I checked the map.  The cloverleaf was a major intersection between Highway 31 and Baghdad Street.  The gas station was about half a mile from the cloverleaf, on the side of Highway 31.  We didn’t have a lot of information about it, but I’d heard of gas stations being used as insurgent hangouts and meeting places in the past.

             
“Finding a vantage point was a bitch,” Jim continued.  “That’s probably why they picked the gas station.  We were able to slip into one of the parking lots for the commercial compound a little way to the southeast, and had at least a decent view, if not great.”

             
“They parked around the back of the gas station,” Larry added.  “Most of them got out, still armed, and took up some sort of security posture around the trucks.  It looked like they were waiting for somebody.”

             
“Were they?” Bryan asked.  It was a small outbuilding, so pretty much the entire two teams were within earshot.  Most of mine was right there in the room.

             
Jim nodded.  “Oh, yeah.  After about a half an hour, two vans, another Bongo, and a big-assed panel truck pulled up to the station and three guys got out of the Bongo.  They were greeted by one of the guys we’d followed.  They talked for a few minutes, then got back in their vehicles, and drove back into the city.  They split up again, this time with a few of the new vehicles following one Bongo, the rest following the other.  It was a little more overt than they’d been on the way out, but I don’t think they attracted much attention otherwise.”

             
“Did you get an ID on any of them?” Haas asked.

             
Both men shook their heads.  “The contact group all had their faces covered,” Larry said.  “They weren’t wearing any identifying markings, like the black headbands the Syrian rebels were using.  They were trying to be covert, and they generally succeeded.”

             
“Jeff, somebody trained these guys right,” Jim said.  “There was just something about the way they moved, the way they acted.  There’s been some serious professionalism drummed into these guys.”

             
“And we’re pretty sure they were AQI or somebody affiliated?” Haas asked.

             
“They weren’t on the PPF’s side, that was pretty evident,” Jim replied.  “And unless our allies have been holding out on us, that pretty much leaves the Salafists, as far as I know.”

             
“It also begs the question,” Juan said quietly, “how many more fighters are being smuggled into the city?  And is there a way to stop that flow?”

             
“With what we’ve got here?” I asked.  “Not a chance.”  I rubbed my eyes.  I suddenly felt tired as hell.  “We can disrupt, we can be the boogeyman that makes it harder for them to feel safe here, but securing the city against insurgents is going to be the task of our allies, after we help them take over the PPF.”  As if that was going to be an easy task in the first place.  I stood up.  “I’m going to see if I can find Hussein Ali.”  I shook my head.  “I’m going to see if I can find Hassan, then I’m going to find Hussein Ali.  In the meantime, let’s get another team out there watching for more of these motherfuckers coming in.”  I sighed.  “Damn it, it can’t ever be simple, can it?”

              By sunrise the next day, I was out in a beater Honda hatchback with an engine that actually rattled, Bryan in the passenger seat.  Once again, we were two tall, broad-shouldered white guys trying to be covert in a city of shorter, generally skinny Arabs.  That was why we stayed in the car, rarely stopped for anything, and wouldn’t get out unless we had to.

             
Things hadn’t gotten any calmer.  It said something about the locals that they kept going out into the streets to go about their business in spite of the bombings and shooting going on.  Granted, they generally ducked inside whenever anything lit off, but they weren’t fleeing or staying hunkered down.  Whether that meant they had a surplus of guts or a deficiency of brains, I couldn’t tell.  The truth was, this was the situation a lot of them had had to live with for a long time now.  Survival won’t necessarily always let you wait around until things are safer.

             
I turned the rattletrap car onto the main east-west road running south of Al Abelah.  The Al Othman Mosque’s minaret was just visible between the buildings, catching the first rays of the sun while most of the streets were still in shadow.  I steered us toward it, crossing the canal that lay on the right side of the street.

The four trucks appeared quickly enough I almost wasn’t able to stop and get us over to the side and in the shadow of a shed that looked like it might be used as a market stall before they ran into us.  The masked men with green headbands in the backs of the
three HiLuxes and a Ranger didn’t pay us any heed once we were out of their way.  Given the amount of firepower they were packing, and the fact that our SBRs were stowed beneath the seats, that was just as well.

“That doesn’t look good,” I remarked.

“Jaysh al Mahdi, you think?” Bryan asked.

“With those headbands, yeah,” I replied.  “Interesting that they’ve started using those as a de facto uniform.  They never used to give a shit.”

“Are we following them?” he asked.

I already had the car in gear.  “The response to a Jaysh
al Mahdi hit squad going into a largely Sunni neighborhood could be enlightening.”

“It could be somewhat less so if we get our asses shot off before we’re supposed to overthrow the PPF leadership and put
al Hakim’s people in charge,” he pointed out.

“We’ll keep well back,” I assured him.  “But the PPF is only a fraction of the problem here.  The more information we can gather about the irregular forces, the better.”

“You’re the boss,” he said.  “I just don’t trust this piece of shit to get us out of harm’s way when everything goes to shit.”

“Better than hiding in a canal all day,” I pointed out.

“Fighting what looked like two platoons all by ourselves?” he retorted.  “You have a different definition of ‘better’ than I do.”

“Says the guy who has always considered ‘blaze of glory’ on the table for planning, regardless,” I mocked him.  “Those last few years behind a desk before you finally got out fuck you up that bad?”

“Fuck you, dude,” he said.  “Fine.  Fuck it, let’s go.”

It didn’t take long.  Whether or not they had just happened to pick a target on the edge of the neighborhood or didn’t want to penetrate too far, the trucks full of
Shi’a jihadists stopped outside a house barely two blocks up the street, near the school.  They piled out and rushed the house, leaving only a handful to secure the trucks.  That they had left guys on security at all said something for their level of training.  I suspected the Qods Force types were doing more than just throwing their weight around in the PPF.

There was an explosion of gunfire from the direction of the house, shattering the early morning quiet.  It was almost immediately drowned out by the muezzin sounding the call to prayer from the nearby mosque, but soon all of the armed men came running back out to the trucks, waving their rifles in the air.  Whoever they had been there to kill was dead, or at least there were enough corpses in the house that they were happy.

The muezzin finished the call to prayer, and almost immediately started ranting in Arabic.  Mine was still rusty, but I understood enough to realize that the torrent of shouted words coming from the minaret’s loudspeakers was a call to arms.

“Decision time,” I said.  “We can sit tight, and try to watch what happens, preferably without getting our heads blown off, or run for it.  Obviously the Sunni militias have some sort of early warning in here, even if it wasn’t early enough for whoever the poor bastards in that house were.”

Bryan didn’t say anything for a moment.  “I know just how good these motherfuckers’ marksmanship is,” he said finally.  “I think staying around here is just going to get us shot for no good reason.”

A second later,
the first fusillade of unaimed, spray-and-pray fire came snapping down the street, blowing dust and grit off of parked cars and walls and shattering a couple windows. I was inclined to agree with Bryan.  I put the car in gear and backed us around a corner, trying to get a compound between us and the bullets.

             
Just as I was putting the car in drive, four gunmen came running toward us from the west, obviously heading for the fight.  They saw us and immediately knew we didn’t belong there.

             
More fire cracked overhead and smacked into the side of the car.  Bryan leaned out of the passenger side window, his 1911 in hand, and blasted the entire mag at them.  We were moving already as I mashed the gas, almost stalling the damned junker of a car, wrenching the wheel over to send us careening toward the canal and out of the neighborhood, so he probably didn’t hit any of them, but it got them to scatter and put their heads down.

             
I drove fast down the narrow side-street, beneath the fronds of a tree that was growing over the top of a compound wall low enough the branches almost brushed the roof of the car, then damn near flipped the car as I downshifted to haul it around to the right, following the canal toward the nearest crossing.  The tires spun briefly in the gravel on the side of the road, sending dirt and rocks cascading into the water, then we were moving.