Hunting in the Shadows (American Praetorians) (7 page)

              We didn’t have long to wait.  The Iraqis weren’t sitting around until nightfall; they moved at midday.  They weren’t making a secret about what they were doing as the 12
th
Division rolled north on the road to Kirkuk.

             
Actually, the IPs were first, riding in an assortment of white-and-blue Toyota pickups and tan up-armored Humvees with PKP Pecheneg machineguns mounted on the turrets.  Behind them came the Army.

             
It was weird as hell, watching that column.  Even as late as some of us had come on the scene—I’d missed Iraq and most of Afghanistan—we had still grown up expecting the bad guys to be using all old Soviet or Chinese knockoffs of Soviet equipment.  AKs, T-72s, Hinds, the whole works.  Now we were looking at what we could only consider an enemy formation, for all we could tell headed to attack our employers and the best ally America had had in the country, decked out in the best the United States had to offer.  The lead vehicles were Stryker combat vehicles, followed by M113s and M1A1 Abrams tanks.  Seeing NSV and KPV heavy machineguns mounted on the Abrams and Strykers made it even weirder.

             
Most of the trucks, travelling between the Strykers and the tanks, were older American 5-tons.  None of the vehicles looked to be in the best shape; they hadn’t had American contractors to help them maintain them for some time.  I’m not saying that Iraqis are incapable of maintaining their equipment; just that most of the time they don’t bother.  Either manual labor is beneath them, or they figure that it’ll work
insh’allah
.  On the other hand, I’d seen Iraqis get the most banged-up piles of scrap to run, somehow.

             
It took a while for the whole column to pass.  As a rule, tactical vehicles don’t move as quickly as civilian vehicles do, in large part because they’re a hell of a lot heavier.  Keeping a column together is also a lot of work, even on an established road.  It becomes especially difficult in a place like Iraq, where the locals don’t think anything of cutting into a military column.  That was why a lot of civilians got their cars shredded by machinegun fire during the war.  In an environment thick with VBIEDs, the locals would act as though they could just drive wherever they wanted, including in with US military vehicles or through checkpoints.  After all,
they
weren’t bad guys, so they had nothing to worry about, right?

             
As we watched the tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, troop trucks, and logistics vehicles roll by, a new roar made both Larry and I look up.  About five hundred feet up, a wedge formation of a half dozen Mi-17 Hip helicopters, older Russian transport choppers that formed the backbone of the Iraqi Air Force’s transport fleet, such as it was, rumbled by, heading north.

             
“Six Hips,” Larry commented.  “That’s most of their inventory, isn’t it?”

             
“It’s supposed to be,” I replied, craning my neck to look out the passenger side window, hopefully without exposing myself too much.  I was trying to see if I could catch a glimpse of who or what the helos were carrying, but no such luck.  The doors were closed, and they were cruising.  “This is big.”

             
“How big, though?” Larry asked, leaning over the steering wheel to look at the helos through the windshield.  “They can’t be going after all of Kurdistan with only one division and a bunch of IPs.”

             
“Maybe the Hips are for something else,” I thought out loud.  “Maybe…”  I snapped my fingers.  “What if they’ve got their own HVT list, and that’s ISOF going after them?”

             
“That won’t be good,” Larry said.  “Especially considering that we very well might be on that list, given the support we’ve given the KRG over the last few months.”

             
I grabbed the intercom.  “Nick, how much of this are you guys getting back there?”

             
“All of it, brother,” Nick told me.  “We’re pretty much live-streaming it to Erbil.”

             
“Including those choppers?”

             
“Yep,” he replied.  “Don’t think I like the looks of that, man,” he said.  “I didn’t think the Iraqis had very many big transport helos.”

             
“They don’t,” I replied.  “Even with the latest shipment from the Russians.”

             
“Big op, then,” Nick said.

             
“Big op,” I agreed.  “Patch me through to the TOC.”

             
It took a few seconds, but Alek’s voice came through.  “Send it, Hillbilly.”

             
“You getting all this, Bossman?” I asked.

             
“Stills and video both,” he replied.  “It’s about what Haas said it would be.”

             
“At least at first glance,” I said.  “I’m wondering, with all the other unrest in this shithole of a country, how they justified using half their Hips to secure one city.  Isn’t there a lot more trouble out by Fallujah and Ramadi right now?”

             
“There is,” he said thoughtfully.  “AQI is pushing hard, with a lot of new fighters coming in from Syria.  Not to mention a couple of the Awakening militias breaking with Baghdad and essentially forcing government security forces out of Habaniyah the other day.”

             
“Holy shit, I didn’t hear anything about that.”  Larry looked over at me with an eyebrow raised.

             
“We just found out about it,” Alek said.  “Apparently a couple of the local sheikhs got sick and tired of being pushed around by Shi’a-dominated IPs, got their men together, most of whom had fought AQI back in the late oughts, surrounded the police station, and ran them out of town.  The government is pissed, but nobody was killed, and they’re running into some unexpected resistance from the Al Anbar provincial governor.  But they will go in to reestablish control sooner or later, that’s for sure.”

             
“How did last night’s raid go?” I asked, my eyes still fixed on the platoon of Abrams tanks, with Iraqi flags flying from their antenna masts, that was rumbling past.  It looked like we were coming up on the rearguard.

             
“Like clockwork,” Alek replied.  “Mike and his boys got back here just before sunup.  No losses.  Abu Fariq is dead, along with most of the trigger-pullers, but Saif is in having a nice chat with Haas right now.”  He chuckled.  “He was a little bewildered when they pulled him off the helo this morning.”

             
“I bet.”  I watched as the final platoon of Strykers brought up the rear of the column and checked my watch.  It had been almost three hours since the column started moving past us.  “The division is almost past, Alek.  We’re going to hold position until dark, then exfil.  I don’t think there’s very much more we can find out from here at the moment.  We were behind the power curve all the way on this one.”

             
“No help for it, brother,” Alek replied.  “Get back here; I have a feeling we might have our hands full, especially if they decide that Iraqis should be controlling the oil fields up here.”

             
That was a possibility I hadn’t thought about.  “You think they’d go after American workers?”

             
“These days, I wouldn’t put anything past anybody,” Alek replied.  “Stay safe, and I’ll be in touch when you get back to Kirkuk, unless something else comes up before then.”

             
“Roger.  Hillbilly out.”

              The rest of the day just crawled.  It’s hard enough to sit in a hide when nothing’s going on, just staring at the mostly empty desert, whiling away the time until sundown.  But we knew there was going to be a lot of work back in Kirkuk, and that column was going to get there before we even started back.  Having to use proper fieldcraft and stay put with that knowledge was tough.

             
Larry and I switched off staying awake; it had been a long night.  You had to get what sleep you could, while you could in this business, especially when you were moving all night.  It was hot, and that made sleep difficult, but we couldn’t leave the engine running with the A/C on, not if we wanted to look like an abandoned vehicle.  So, one of us dozed fitfully while the other watched, and we waited for darkness.

             
The sun lowered toward the horizon, and met the haze of smoke and dust that sapped its heat an hour before it truly set.  Once it was down, and darkness settled over the Iraqi desert, we waited another hour before Larry reached down and started the Bear with a rumble that echoed across the abandoned fields.  After a few moments to let the engine warm up, and to make sure that we were relatively unobserved, we started moving.  Quick comm checks let us know that Jim was already moving.  We also found out just how desperately we needed to get back north.

Chapter 5

             
The safehouse was actually more of a complex of ramshackle buildings on the northeastern edge of Shoraw Village, just outside of Kirkuk.  There were no lights visible, but a single IR chemlight gleamed from the corner of the top floor window, on the furthest east building.

             
We actually beat Jim’s team there; not having to divert to Samarra Dam helped a lot.  There were half a dozen civilian vehicles parked outside the safehouse, but no sign of the other Bear.  I was sure that there were tactical vehicles hidden somewhere, but they would have been carefully camouflaged, especially with Iraqi helos in the air overhead.

             
Larry pulled the Bear up to the southwest side of the buildings and shut off the engine.  We both had our weapons out and our NVGs up.  We wouldn’t even move from the cab without the proper recognition signal.

             
The signal came from a shadowy figure in the doorway a few yards away.  An IR lamp blinked three times.  I reached up and acknowledged with two.  Then I got out.

             
Hal was standing in the doorway, all kitted up, with his OSW FAL in his hands.  I was sure that at least two others from his team were in the windows, watching, set back so they couldn’t be seen from outside, even with thermals.  He held out his hand as I approached.  “Good to see you guys back.  I take it Alek filled you in?”

             
“Somewhat,” I answered, as behind me Larry started opening the tank and helping the other guys get their gear out.  “What the fuck happened?”

             
“Those helos you eyeballed yesterday?” Hal said as he led the way inside.  “They were full of ISOF troops, and headed for the Baba Dome East complex.  They hit the Liberty compound just before it got dark.”  He shook his head.  “It was a good hit; they knew what they were doing, and had obviously rehearsed it thoroughly.  The whole thing was over in less than thirty minutes.”

             
“Motherfuck.”  I couldn’t be much more eloquent than that.  “Did we lose anybody?”

             
“No,” he answered.  “All the teams were elsewhere.  From what I’ve heard, a few of the site security guys might have been shot, but only if they opened fire on the ISOF guys.  They played this one like pros, man.”

             
“That’s not enough to justify attacking assets of foreign nationals,” I pointed out.  “Not that the US is going to do anything about it, but Liberty was here thanks to an agreement with both the KRG and the Iraqi Federal government.  Their Corporate can produce the documentation to prove it, too.  Fire discipline doesn’t justify the attack.”

             
“Who do they have to justify it to, man?” Hal asked, as we got to the small, field-expedient operations center set up in one of the central rooms.  “You said yourself the US isn’t going to do shit.  Europe’s fragmented, broke, and rioting, and the UN are just lapdogs to the Russians, Chinese, and Iranians now.  Not that the UN was ever effective at anything anyway.  They really don’t have to justify shit.”

             
He had a point.  Still, it wasn’t like it changed anything.  Even though Praetorian didn’t handle site security for Liberty’s assets in Iraqi Kurdistan, they were still our people and our client’s assets had been forcibly seized, in violation of previous agreements.  Not that agreements on paper seemed to matter much anywhere anymore, but we couldn’t, wouldn’t let it go unanswered.  Whether or not we could secure the oil facilities in any sort of permanent manner was up in the air, and from where I sat, looked pretty unlikely, but at the very least, we had to get the people out.

             
“What about the city?” I asked.

             
Hal stepped over to a map of Kirkuk that had been taped up on the wall.  “It’s still calm, for the moment.”  He traced the general line of demarcation between the Kurdish quarter and the Turcoman and Arab parts of the city.  “There’s been some resistance from the Turcomans, but mostly just of the protest variety, easily dispersed.  They haven’t tried to push into the Kurdish section yet; I suspect they’re waiting for morning.”

             
I nodded.  Behind me, Larry, Nick, Bryan, and Malachi came in, lugging their gear.  Malachi asked if he should get mine, but I told him no, I’d get it in a little bit.  Turning back to the map, I focused on the Baba Dome East complex.

             
The Baba Dome oil field had been exploited off and on for decades, but the breakdown of order in Iraq in general and de facto partition of Kirkuk province had effectively pushed the North Oil Co. out of the Baba Dome East complex.  The company’s collapse had contributed, as well.  For several years, no one had done much with the field; most of the wells had been capped or simply abandoned.

             
The Peshmerga taking control of the northeastern half of Kirkuk province had made it possible for Liberty to move in and start exploring, with Kurdish backing.  It was still only in the exploration stage, though, which meant there wasn’t a lot of infrastructure set up yet.  There was the primary compound, where most of the workers lived, the wells out in the fields, most of which hadn’t been restarted yet, and that was about it.

             
The compound itself wasn’t much.  It lay about three kilometers outside Kirkuk City, and wasn’t much more than about five buildings, some tanks, trailers, and trucks.  It had been easy to keep the Bears there; they blended in with the rest of the working vehicles that Liberty had staged.

             
“Do we know where they’re keeping the Liberty personnel?” I asked.

             
“Not yet,” Hal answered.  “We still need to even get eyes on the compound; this kind of caught us with our pants down.  Moving on Kirkuk was always a possibility, but that they’d deliberately come after us wasn’t even on our radar.”

             
“It probably should have been,” Larry said from behind me.  He’d come in quietly while Hal and I were studying the imagery.  “Especially after the lack of response to the Lemonier attack last year, beating up on Americans is the national sport in this part of the world anymore.”

             
“Has there been any official statement?” I asked Hal.

             
“Not yet,” he replied, but Kelso interrupted him from the desk where he had a laptop hooked up to a satellite link and was watching the net.

             
“Actually, it just came out,” he said.  “No video yet, but there is a statement.  Quote: ‘Today, the Iraqi Security Forces have taken steps to reinstate law and order in the Province of Kirkuk. Over the last year, outside forces have increasingly acted to usurp control of the province and its resources from the people of Iraq.  They have created enclaves in the city of Kirkuk where the Iraqi Police are barred from performing their duties, and have acted to remove our precious resources without our consent.  The primary culprits in these acts of treachery and exploitation are the Kurdistan Regional Government, which pays lip service to being a part of the Republic of Iraq while attempting to be its own country, and the American oil company Liberty Petroleum.

             
“’The Kurds, not content with the territory they already held under agreements penned between the Republic of Iraq and the KRG, have now begun to expand beyond their provinces, forcing Iraqi families out of their homes and jobs.  They have done this with the help of Liberty Petroleum’s money, and their hired mercenaries, who kill Iraqi citizens in the night for their oil money.

             
“’The Republic of Iraq can no longer stand by and watch her people in the Province of Kirkuk be oppressed, marginalized, and murdered by American oil interests.  The Americans have taken advantage of our friendship from the years when they helped the Republic of Iraq recover from the disastrous reign of Saddam Hussein, and now are helping themselves to our resources while brutalizing our people.  This must end.

             
“’This evening, soldiers of the Iraqi Special Operations Forces captured the chief Liberty Petroleum personnel in Kirkuk Province in a lightning raid on their headquarters.  Several of their mercenaries were killed in the raid, but it is believed that there are more at large within Kirkuk.  The Ministry of Defense is offering one million dinars for any information that leads to the capture of these mercenaries.  They have done enough damage to our country.  May Allah smile on our forces, and grant them a quick victory.

             
“’Allahu akhbar.’”  Kelso looked up.  “That’s it.”

             
There was a pause as we let it sink in.  “Well, fuck,” Hal said.  “This just got an order of magnitude nastier.”

             
“Pretty standard, though,” I pointed out.  “When all else fails, blame the Americans.  We’re the biggest scapegoats in the world, especially now that we can’t really do shit.”

             
“Heh,” Larry grunted.  “The US government might not be able to do shit.  We, on the other hand…”

             
“We can, and these assholes are about to find that out,” I finished for him.  I turned to Scott, who was on the link back to Erbil.  “I need to talk to Alek.”  He nodded, and started getting Alek on the line, while I turned back to Hal.  “We need eyes on that compound, thirty seconds ago.  And we need to make contact with Rizgar; if they’re not there, we need to find where they are, ASAP.  I am not letting these motherfuckers hold them for long.”  I was pissed.  I was also undergoing an intense feeling of déjà vu.  The shitstorm in East Africa last year had been about finding American hostages.  Now here we were again, thousands of miles away, but facing the same problem.  Only this time, we didn’t even have the mild support of the CIA.  We were on our own.  “They just miscalculated.  They just don’t know it yet.”

             
  “What have you got in mind?” Larry asked me quietly, as Hal went to the door to yell for Jack and Rex.

             
I stared at the imagery.  There wasn’t anything new to see there, but it gave me something to focus on while I thought.  “We find ‘em, preferably within the next twelve hours, go in, get our people, and fucking kill every fucking one else on site,” I said.

             
Larry just nodded.  As barbaric as it might sound to the plant-eaters, it was pretty much our modus operandi anymore.  You fuck with us, you pay the bill, and we don’t worry about any hand-wringing before or after.  Hostage takers die.  People who kill our clients die.  People who try to kill our clients die.  It’s that simple.

             
The safehouse became a beehive of activity as the rumble of the second Bear announced Jim’s arrival with the rest of the team.  Nick stuck his head into the ops center.  “Jim’s back.  You want him in here?”

             
I looked over at him and nodded.  “Along with anybody who’s not stowing gear or getting the trucks stabled.  We’ve got a lot of work coming up.  The Iraqis decided to grab our clients tonight.”

             
“Oh fuck no,” he said.  “All our gear’s inside; I’ll get everybody in here.  The Bears can wait.”  He started to duck back out, but I stopped him.

             
“Make sure one of the Bears at least is getting prepped to go back out,” I told him.  “Rex and Jack are going on a little recon.”  He nodded and ducked back out to round up the rest of the team.

             
Even as I spoke, Rex and Jack came out of the back rooms with their gear, headed out toward the front and the Bears outside.  Soon thereafter, the rest of my team started coming in, and we got down to business.  Sleep would have to wait.

              As it turned out, after everybody had been brought up to speed on the situation, we had to wait anyway.  I spent some more time on the link with Alek, but there was very little he could provide in the way of new information that could affect operations down in Kirkuk.  We had to wait for Rex and Jack to get back.

             
Most of the time we spent prepping gear and going over what-if scenarios.  They were how we kept our minds agile, and kept the team on the same page when it came to combat drills.  If such-and-such happens, we’ll do this.  It’s kind of like the Immediate Action drills we ran in the military, but we try to keep things a little more flexible and basic.  The high-end operators aren’t the best because they have fancy ways of doing things.  They’re the best because they’ve trained to unconscious competence at the basics.

             
When we weren’t rehearsing or getting gear ready, we caught what sleep we could.  Unfortunately, that still meant I didn’t get much.  Team lead can be a demanding job.

             
About half an hour after I went down, Sammy woke me up.  “We’ve got some chatter out there, Jeff,” he said.  “Sounds like the Iraqis have a patrol out looking for us.”

             
I sat up and rubbed my eyes.  I had been lying on a thin pad on the concrete floor, next to my gear.  “They’re transmitting in the clear?”

             
“Yeah,” he said.  “Fucking sloppy, but it doesn’t sound like these are ISOF.  Those guys know how to use SINCGARS.”  Sammy would know.  He’d been with a MTT that had trained some of the ISOF troops.  Possibly some of the ones out there that had hit the Liberty compound were his former students.  “They sound like IPs,” he went on.  “Probably moonlighting for that hundred mil in dinars the government promised if they find us.”