“I have much children. Please,” the Iraqi said in English.
“It’s over. They can’t hurt you anymore.” Hunter slowly walked up beside Jackie, put his hand on her shoulder, then grabbed the barrel of the gun with his right hand, spoiling her aim while his left hand came off her shoulder, took hold of the stock and pulled it to him.
He jacked a round, aimed the AK into the tango’s kill zone and squeezed the trigger.
The wailing stopped.
Hunter lowered his head and turned away. Earlier in the day he had actually looked forward to the moment when he would kill Fazul for what he had done to Jackie Nelson and for what he had made Hunter do to her. Now there was neither revenge nor justice in what he did, only mercy and mercy made him feel a little more human in a place where he didn’t want to feel anything at all.
Chapter Twenty
“You won’t find MI6 agents in any country where you can’t buy a cappuccino.”
– Foreign Correspondent, Australian Broadcasting Corporation-TV [Australia], March 29, 2005, interview with Craig Murray, former ambassador for the British Crown
Anbar Province
The sun was finally lower in the sky and the temperature was only moderately miserable when Hunter and Jackie climbed into the old VW Beetle that Fazul had returned in. The lanky Arab was slumped against the date palms, fingering Muslim prayer beads and muttering something to himself. Hunter had taken his cell phone, but had assured him that he would call one of the numbers on speed dial and tell them where to find him after they made their escape. He turned the key, but the car didn’t make a sound. The only thing that seemed to be going his way was that Jackie was snapping out of it and she didn’t seem to have any association between him and the repeated rapes. Unfortunately he did.
He got out of the car and slung the AK over his shoulder. “You know how to start it by popping the clutch?”
“Yeah, I had one of these when I was in grad school.” After slurping down most of the bucket of water, her voice was stronger. She crawled into the driver’s seat, stomped the clutch and shifted into gear.
Hunter hiked up his man-dress and dug his feet into the sand and braced his hands on car. The metal was almost too hot to touch, but he would’ve picked up burning coals to get out of there. Hunter pushed, but felt resistance. “Steer it away from the loose sand.”
The car gained traction and started rolling faster.
“Pop the clutch! Now!”
The engine started.
Hunter glanced back at Omar. He was still fiddling with the beads, probably praying. He opened the driver’s door and threw the AK into the backseat.
“Move over,” he said. “You still need a lot more fluids. Dehydration affects judgment.”
“That didn’t really happen, did it? Oh my god. You’re not going to tell anyone?”
“I have nothing to tell and no one to tell it to,” Hunter said. If only this were the first time he had had this conversation. Iraq had a way of testing morals and sooner or later, everyone failed. Revenge was too easy, the opportunities too many. Multiple combat tours had taught him that it only took a moment of righteous rage to guarantee a thirst for justice that would never be quenched and a faint taste of blood that would never leave his lips.
Hunter stuck his head out the window and spat, even though his mouth was dry.
The insurgent’s safe house was in the middle of the desert with no real road leading to it, only a trail that had been packed firm from years of constant use. In spots the desert rippled across it, hiding it from view. So much of Iraq was covered with hard, baked sand, but in this area it was as loose as it was in Saudi. The late afternoon sunlight cast shadows that made the path even trickier to follow. He couldn’t believe that anyone was foolish enough to bring a vehicle with such low clearance through the desert. The road forked and he chose what appeared to be the firmer path. He navigated between ruts and drove as fast as he dared-which was only a little faster than he could’ve walked it.
A nearly full water bottle rolled out from under Jackie’s seat. “Hey, the gods are finally smiling on us.”
She opened it and drank, then passed it to Hunter. He drank less than he wanted to and handed back the bottle without looking over at her.
“You haven’t told me your name,” Jackie said.
“Ray.”
“Is that your real name?”
“Real as it gets.”
“So you’re CIA?”
“Don’t overestimate the Agency. Most of them are cocktail party pimps. It’s their local whores who screw the muj, not them.” His voice was clipped.
“Somehow I didn’t think my husband Brian sent you.”
“He might have sent someone, but it wasn’t me.”
“Then what were you doing there, posing as one of them?”
“It’s complicated.”
She sighed and turned away from him. “I liked you a lot better when you first rescued me.”
“I liked me a lot better then, too.”
After a half hour of silence, Hunter spotted a line of palms, then he saw trucks and cars moving by, but the closer they got to the highway, the more loose sand covered the road. He stopped and got out to make sure that he was still on it. He was. A hundred meters later, the wheels spun in the sand, digging deeper and deeper.
Don’t you have that guy’s cell phone still in your pocket?” Jackie said.
“You want to call AAA?”
“I could call my husband.”
“You really want to give the muj your home number when their cell phone bill arrives?”
Hunter walked around the car, then ahead where he thought the road was, but his feet sunk into the soft sand. He returned to the car.
“We’re going to have to walk to the road,” Hunter said. “Even if we get it out, we can’t get through this. We’ll get stuck again. I don’t know how the hell he got it here, unless maybe we should’ve taken a left back when the road branched.”
“I don’t know if I can make it,” Jackie said.
“I’ll get you there.”
He dug through the junk in the Arab’s backseat, then through the trunk searching for food or water. The guy had stashed away a bottle of whiskey, assorted porn magazines, but no more water. “You did the right thing letting the other Iraqi live. The guy’s not al Qaeda. At least I don’t think this is one of their training manuals.” Hunter held up a dog-eared copy of Playboy.
With Hunter carrying the AK, they set out for the highway. Lingering alongside a highway in twilight was not his idea of a good time. With their night vision equipment, the Americans ruled the night, but twilight was happy hour for the insurgents-time to lob off a few mortar rounds or ambush a convoy rushing back to the safety of a green zone. The weak, shifting light of dusk played tricks on night vision goggles and Black Hawk pilots and others patrolling the main convoy routes could easily be confused. Friendly fire was the last way Hunter wanted to go.
“So what are you doing here in Babylon?” Hunter said.
“I came with my husband. He’s an oil exec.”
“I thought this was one of those posts where they didn’t allow spouses.”
“He’s got some kind of pull. I’m a soil scientist and there was going to be all kinds of work for geologists because of the oil. Petroleum is not really my thing, but I’ve got the degrees.”
A herd of camels grazed in the distance. Hunter couldn’t tell if there was anyone with them or not. “The work didn’t come through or what?”
“Oil here is a disaster. They’re not back to prewar levels and if anyone tries to tell you they are, they’re lying. There’s no need for geologists here. No one’s looking for new fields. They need engineers to get things running again and to keep patching them up after they’re sabotaged. They could also use about a billion guards to protect the pipelines and the facilities.” Jackie stumbled and Hunter caught her by the arm before she hit the ground.