Chronister laughed. Camille remained stoic, silently thanking her father, who would’ve beaten her senseless if that had happened to him when dressing her down and she had so much as cracked a smile. She was exhausted and trying hard not to tremble before the Marine. “May I help you, sir?”
“Goddamn piece of Iraqi shit.” Lukson got down on the floor and shoved the caster back into the base of the wooden chair. “I’m still waiting on your answer, Black. Did you threaten Kyle?”
“Sir, no, sir.”
“Come on, Camille. Did you not tell him…” Chronister pulled a pair of reading glasses from his pocket and put them on. He unfolded a piece of paper and read from it. “‘All I care about is eliminating the enemy…and as I see it right now, Rubicon is the enemy?’”
Camille stared straight ahead.
“Answer him, Black.”
“Sir, those are my words, sir. Sir, the only way he could know that is if the Agency is bugging Rubicon offices.”
“What’s it to ya if we listen in on your competitors? What were you doing there?” Chronister gnawed on the end of his reading glasses.
“Black!”
“Sir, Rubicon has been muscling in on Black Management assignments. I suspect, sir, that they’re trying to beat us to big arms caches. I also suspect, sir, that’s why the Agency is keeping an eye on them,” she said stiffly, as if she were at a legal deposition.
“Cut the cloak-and-dagger bull-crap. I don’t have much use for spies and I don’t like mercenaries, but one thing I really hate is a traitor. Fuckers should be shot on sight,” Colonel Lukson said to her as he leaned forward. “The OGA has evidence that a few individuals in Rubicon have been in contact with al-Zahrani’s people. Kyle got too close and they popped him. We’re missing the big guy in this picture and I want to know who he is. We might not see eye-to-eye about spies and mercs, but I think we’re all working from the same field manual when it comes to traitors. You seem like a nice, well-mannered girl. Now do the right thing, sweetheart, and tell us the truth about last night.”
“Sir, I am telling the truth, sir. The only thing I have to add, sir, is that after I left Kyle’s office, some Rubicon troops fired on me and tried to kill me. Maybe they got to Kyle first.”
“Was Mr. Kyle alone when you left the office?” Chronister said.
Camille hesitated.
“Was he alone?” The colonel said, his voice rising with irritation.
Even to cover for Hunter, for some reason she couldn’t bring herself to lie to the Marine’s face. Camille turned toward Chronister as she spoke. “Yes. Kyle was alone.”
Chapter Seven
A sprawling agricultural and smuggling hub on the banks of the Euphrates, Ramadi has long been one of the U.S. military’s stickiest problems. The largest city in Sunni-dominated Al Anbar province, Ramadi has degenerated into a haven for insurgents. Even now, when U.S. forces are working to scale back their presence throughout Iraq, daily combat continues to roil the city.
– The Los Angeles Times, June 11, 2006, as reported by Megan K. Stack and Louise Roug
Ramadi, Anbar Province
Every time Hunter entered Ramadi, he felt like a black man in the Deep South during Jim Crow; there were no friendly faces, only hateful stares and the lynch mob was never far away. The people of Ramadi carried their disdain for the Americans as civic pride. Hunter had been shot at on at least three occasions by the American-trained municipal police force and he couldn’t begin to count the number of times civilians had lit him up. He had personally helped rid the city of scores of insurgents, one bullet at a time, but even after years of campaigns, the main roads were more hazardous than ever for Americans.
Hunter was counting on it.
He took a left into a neighborhood where he had once gone door-to-door trick-or-treating and found enough candy to keep the bomb disposal guys happy for a week. It had taken his Marine unit four days to clear a particularly nasty five square block area and about the same amount of time for the insurgents to return once the Marines had pulled back from the area. The neighborhood had been a real fixer-upper even by Iraqi standards and that was before the Marines had trashed the place searching for insurgent nests. While some parts of Ramadi had pallets of bricks on the sidewalks and residents busy repairing the crumbling walls, mortar holes and twisted metal gates, in this part of town the new occupants hadn’t bothered to cover broken windows. Whoever was living here now was not putting down roots.
The two Rubicon SUVs followed him down the narrow street. His own men were now chasing him. It was time to see if they had learned anything from him. He doubted it.
Time to party in haji-land.
He honked the horn, rolled down his bullet-resistant window and stuck his head outside. The black checkered cloth of his headdress flapped in the wind as he yelled in Arabic, “Help! Americans!”
The language he had once delighted in learning back when he was part of the Marine security detachment at the Cairo embassy now made him cringe. He hated the sound of his voice speaking Arabic; the language of poets and scholars had been reduced to his language of combat. He honked again and repeated himself as he drove circling the block.
Halfway into the second circle, he heard the rapid pop of an AK, then several long bursts of gunfire. He hit the brakes and the Navigator skidded to a halt sideways in the middle of the street, blocking traffic. Hunter jumped from the Navigator shouting, “Allahu akbar.”
The flip-flops were at least two sizes too big, but his toes gripped them as tightly as they could as he ran through the back alleys in search of Khalid the tailor.
He could hear the bullets pelting his pursuers’ armored vehicles and hoped for their sake they had been smart enough to immediately call for reinforcements-it would be their only chance.
Chapter Eight
Private military firms are business providers of professional services intricately linked to warfare. That is, they are corporate bodies that specialise in the sale of military skills. They do everything, from leasing out commando teams and offering the strategic advice of ex-generals to running the outsourced supply chains for the US and now British armies. Such firms represent the evolution, globalisation, and corporatisation of the age-old mercenary trade.
– London News Review, March 19, 2004, as contributed by Peter W. Singer
Camp Tornado Point, Anbar Province
Camille stood in Saddam’s former bedroom before the Marine base commander, ignoring CIA case officer Chronister and staring at a point just behind the colonel at one of Saddam’s murals depicting a serpent constricting around a pin-up girl. Camille was thinking about how much she hated herself for once again protecting Hunter. Using the sidearm she had left him with would’ve been loud and Hunter was the quiet type. She had little doubt he had broken Kyle’s neck shortly before he surprised her in her motor pool. She wasn’t about to take the rap for him, but then again she also had no desire to help Chronister nail him. She may have wanted to hurt Hunter for how he had repeatedly betrayed her, but she was loyal in the face of an outside threat and Chronister had long ago proven himself to be just that.
“Colonel Lukson, may I borrow your office for a few moments?” Chronister said as he shooed away a fly. “I need to discuss some things with Ms. Black in private. I might be able to clear this up so you don’t have to hand the investigation over to the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division.”
“After how they screwed us at Haditha, I’m happy to keep those CID turds from nosing around my base.” Lukson nodded once, stood and walked away.
Camille and the CIA case officer listened to the squeak of his footsteps across the marble floor. As soon as Lukson had left the room, Camille sat down.