Hunting in the Shadows (American Praetorians) (47 page)

             
Bryan, Nick, Chad, and Johnny were already heading up the stairs when the four of us came out of the cell block.  Seeing that the rest were moving into the southern arm of the building, I pointed up, and we followed Bryan and the rest up the steps.

             
There was a deafening blast of gunfire at the top of the stairs.  We got up to the upper level, which opened on another room, this one apparently office spaces, to find Bryan sitting on the floor against a desk, cinching a tourniquet around his own leg.  Nick was standing over him, covering the door out.  Johnny and Chad were spread out on the other side of the room.  There were two more dead men slumped next to one of the desks, and a third half in, half out of the door.

             
My little four-man element pushed through the room, aiming for the door.  It opened on a hallway, with more doorways off to either side.  None of them actually had doors in them; they were just openings.  That was going to make this a little more interesting.

             
I took the long axis of the hall, waving the rest to move toward the short end.  We’d clear that first, then move down.

             
As the three others flowed past me, four men came out of the doorways at the far end, in body armor, their rifles up.  All of them looked like brand new Chinese QBZ-03s.

             
I reacted as fast as years of training and some pretty hairy situations had prepared me.  I was barely aiming—I just pumped rounds at chest level as fast as I could, tracking across the narrow hallway.  The reports slapped skull-crushing noise off the walls.

             
Two of them went down immediately, and the other two flinched, trying to get back inside the door.  I shot one in the side of the head as he turned to try to get out of the line of fire, and he fell into his comrade, who ripped off an ineffectual burst at me, that plowed stucco and concrete off the ceiling.  I tried to shoot him, but he was halfway back through the door, and the round smacked into the corpse that was half-covering him.

             
I turned and dashed for the short end door, even as the frag that Bo had tossed in shook the floor.  Just like the flashbang from earlier, it sounded muted.  I was probably going to come through the day with some more hearing loss, provided I survived at all.

             
The room was smoky and dark when we pushed in, with two PPF officers on the floor moaning, covered in blood.  Quick shots finished them off; neither was our principle target, and we weren’t risking leaving live shooters behind us, especially not that day.

             
Having been the last man in the room, I had turned and covered the door, facing more or less down the length of the hall.  When I started to move out, before I could get more than an inch past the doorframe, a storm of automatic fire missed my head by inches, chewing up the concrete and sending fragments whizzing through the air.  I ducked back, letting my rifle hang on its sling, while I dug my last frag out of my vest.

             
“Fuck this,” I pronounced, as I yanked the pin out.  Little Bob also had one in his hand.  We traded glances and nodded.  I dropped to a knee, staying inside the doorway, while Little Bob stood almost on top of me, and then we simultaneously chucked the grenades down the length of the hall.

             
There was some yelling in Arabic and Farsi, then the grenades detonated a fraction of a second apart, filling the hall with noise, smoke, and shrapnel.  Without hesitating, I got up off the floor and moved into the hall, rifle up and ready.  There was a lot of smoke from the frags, but I could make out two silhouettes moving, and dropped them with two rapid pairs of shots.  I don’t think they ever knew what happened after the grenades came flying out of the doorway.

             
There were four more doors to clear.  By that point, without discussing it, we mutually decided to quit fucking around.  As I covered the long axis and the other three stacked up on the first door, Bo tossed another frag in before they flowed in.

             
The room was empty, aside from the lockers on the walls.  There were no windows, which kind of explained why there wasn’t anyone there—you can’t very well defend a building from a windowless room.  Without wasting any time, we were out and moving on the next room.

             
They were ready this time—they must have hidden behind the desks when the frag went in.  Bo was the first man in, and took five rounds in half a second.  His face just disappeared as a round hit him across the cheekbones.  He dropped, already dead.  Mike and I were going in after him, with Little Bob behind us, making sure no one from the last two rooms shot us in the back as we went.

             
My sights filled with the first man, his head and rifle barely exposed over a desk.  It was a tough shot, but while the first round missed, smacking fragments off the desk into his face, the second took the top of his head off.  I tracked in on the next guy to his left, who was trying to lean around the corner of the desk.  He was exposing a little bit more of himself.  I shot him three times, the rounds going into his shoulders and upper chest over his plates.

             
For a few seconds the room rang with gunfire.  By the time I was on the next man, his head was already a misshapen, broken lump of bone, blood, and shredded meat from Mike’s and Little Bob’s shots, leaking fluids and gray matter on the floor.

             
There was nothing we could do for Bo; that was evident without even checking him.  I checked for a pulse anyway.  Nothing.  He was gone.  I got up, feeling numb, and pointed to the door.  We still had two rooms to clear.

             
No sooner had I gotten to the door, however, when more gunfire rang out from the next room.  Nick, Johnny, and Chad had pushed up and were already clearing the room on the right.  We’d take the left.

             
This time, Mike had the frag.  Bo and I were both out.  He tossed it high, bouncing it off the ceiling, hoping to get it where somebody hiding behind a desk wouldn’t be able to avoid it.  It blew with a
thud
and a storm of smoke and frag, and then we were in.

             
There was only one man still standing in the room.  He was bloodied, but not dead.  He dropped his rifle and lay down on his face with his hands on the back of his head.  Mike moved to him, kicked the rifle out of reach, and wrenched his hands down behind his back to flex-cuff him.

             
There was another man lying on the floor near him.  This guy seemed to have taken more of the grenade blast—he was still breathing, but he was pretty tore up.  He wasn’t so far gone that I couldn’t recognize Qomi from the photos we had.  Whether he’d live to be any use intelligence-wise was up in the air, but we had him.

             
Nick called out from across the hall.  “Room’s clear, Jeff.  What’s your status?”

             
“We’re clear here,” I said.  “We’ve got Qomi.”  I keyed my radio.  “All teams, status?”

             
“First floor’s clear,” Jim reported.

             
“Front outbuilding clear,” Eddie replied.

             
“Objective clear,” I said.  “Hold what you’ve got; we’ve still got AQI to the north and east.”  I was also fully expecting a PPF counterattack—we’d hurt them, and taken down their leadership, but there were still a lot more PPF soldiers than we’d faced here.

             
I fished the ICOM out.  “Hassan, this is Jeff.  Tell Hussein Ali that we’ve taken the station.  He needs to move his men up to secure the perimeter.  Tell him there are AQI fighters to the north.  They’re a little disorganized at the moment, but they’ve got a lot of firepower, and they’ve already set off two bombs.”

             
“Yes, Mister Jeff, I will tell him,” Hassan replied eagerly.  “This is good news.”

             
Sure it was.  I suddenly felt tired as hell.  My ears were ringing, I felt like I had half the desert in my joints, and my head was really starting to hurt.  I shook it off and went to make sure we had the building secured enough to turn back any outside assault.

Epilogue

             
The PPF counterattack didn’t really materialize.  It turned out that Hussein Ali and Mullah al Hakim had enough pull, either through bribes, threats, or blood ties that more of the PPF than I’d expected had gone over.  It was enough to paralyze the PPF and give the friendlies enough time to kill or capture most of the Iranian officers.  Hussein Ali’s cousin had taken the northern base that we’d scoped out a few days earlier, and was in position to be the number three man in the new PPF.

A few
of the Iranians disappeared before they could be rolled up.  I was fully expecting more trouble from Qods Force.  Especially since it appeared that, for the most part, Jaysh al Mahdi had sat this one out.  The Iranians couldn’t afford to let Iraq turn into another Salafist hellhole like Syria had.

             
As for the Salafist fighters who’d tried to blow up the police station, their fire started to kind of peter out once we had the station.  Whether they were listening in on the ICOM or just didn’t have the staying power I still don’t know.  The fact that they had Hussein Ali’s men coming up on their flank probably had something to do with it as well.  They rocketed the general area with 107s that night, but didn’t do much damage.  They were still going to be a threat.

              Mike and I walked into Hussein Ali’s makeshift headquarters.  He’d set up in the lobby instead of Qomi’s office, for some reason.  The lobby was also serving as a casualty collection point.  Wounded militiamen lay on ponchos on the floor, being tended by the few doctors who had joined al Hakim’s group.

             
Hussein Ali and Daoud al Zubayri were talking in the corner.  Hussein Ali looked up when we walked in, and waved the two of us over.  Doing my damnedest not to show my exhaustion, I went over to them.

             
Both men shook our hands and embraced us.  Hussein Ali was about as expressive as ever—I’d never want to play poker with that man.  Daoud al Zubayri was beaming.  I’m not sure he quite realized how much work was left.

             
Hassan joined us after a moment, but not before my Arabic was pretty well spent.  “Mister Jeff and Mister Mike,” he said, “there is something Hussein Ali wants to show you.”  Hussein Ali hadn’t said anything, so obviously this had come up before we’d gotten there.

             
I just nodded.  Hussein Ali waved for us to follow him, and led the way into the cell block.

             
Some of the prisoners we’d seen when we’d cleared the cell block were still there, others had been moved.  Hussein Ali took us to the back cells, which were walled in with concrete and had solid doors.  The PPF man at the door pulled out a set of keys and opened the door for us, then stepped back.

             
Inside was a man in a camouflage jacket and khaki pants.  He was bearded and burned brown by the sun, but his eyes were gray.  He was about as Arabic as I am.  He’d been shot, and his wounds had been hastily treated, but he was obviously still in a lot of pain.  He was lying on the floor—there weren’t any furnishings except for a bucket that stank of shit and piss.

             
“He was found wounded among the Salafist casualties,” Hassan explained.  “Hussein Ali ordered him taken alive because he spoke English.  He thinks you might know who he is.”

             
I shook my head.  Mike was studying him intently.  “Jeff, I think I know this guy,” he murmured.

             
I looked at him in surprise.  “Really?  From where?”

             
“I’m not sure.  He looks familiar, is all.”  Mike’s long face was furrowed in a frown.

             
I crouched down next to him.  “Can you hear me?” I asked, my voice flat, as much from tiredness as from any sort of interrogation technique.  We’d have to get Haas in here for anything good.

             
“Yes,” he said quietly.  His voice was weak and laden with pain.  “You’re Americans?”

             
“Yes, we are,” I said.  “I’m figuring you are too.  Though why you might be in with a bunch of Salafist terrorists kind of escapes me.”

             
He closed his mouth tightly, and stared at the ceiling.  “Look, bud,” I said.  “I really don’t give a flying fuck who you’re with or what your mission might be.  You were running with AQI.  As far as I’m concerned, that seals your fate right now.  If you talk to me, I might be able to make sure you don’t have to meet Haas’ pliers before the end.”

             
He twitched at that, his eyes flicking to my face for a second before turning back to the ceiling.  There was real fear there.  “Hit a nerve, huh?” I said.  “I wouldn’t particularly like the idea of that guy working my fingers and toes over with hand tools, either, much less my nuts.”

             
“Who are you with?” he asked quietly.

             
“Doesn’t matter,” I told him.

             
“It does matter,” he said.  “I know Chris Haas from a long time back.  If he’s here…”  He looked at me.  “Somebody must have fucked up.”

             
“No shit,” I replied harshly.  “You did, when you signed on with AQI.”

             
He shook his head weakly.  “Not like that.  I was an advisor.  Working on orders.”

             
“Orders from whom?” I asked.  I suddenly had a really bad feeling about this.

             
“From high up,” he said.  “Iran’s got to be stopped, that’s policy.  These guys were the best option.”

             
“Oh, fucking hell,” I said.  I stood up.  “Are you telling me that Langley is trying to support AQI to go after the Iranians now?”

             
“How fucking stupid are they?” Mike demanded.  “Some of these fuckers have been killing Americans since 2003.”

             
“Enemy of my enemy,” the man on the floor said.  “National Command Authority thinks the nuclear threat from Iran is more dangerous at the moment.  But apparently somebody didn’t get the memo.”

             
“Apparently,” I replied.  I wasn’t about to tell this guy anything about our operations, or that Haas had quit whatever agency he’d been with years before.  “We need to deconflict this clusterfuck, fast,” I told him.  “Who do we contact?”

             
“He’s here under a State cover,” he said.  “Goes by the name of Collins.”

             
Mike and I looked at each other.  “That motherfucker,” Mike said.