Camille smiled at the thought that she was like her father when it came to loyalty, but she knew it wasn’t true. Her father was a true Marine-Semper Fi-always faithful. As much as she had dreamed of becoming the same, the Corps wouldn’t allow her to follow his path. Combat operations were off-limits to women. Her father had seen to it that her long range marksmanship skills could compete with the best scout snipers and her surveillance, weapons and survival skills could match any recon Marine. But as a woman, she would have been relegated to combat support. On the day she graduated from college, she went to the Marine recruiter’s office with her father, but left without signing the enlistment papers and instead called Joe Chronister and accepted the CIA’s offer.
She still resented that she was denied the camaraderie that forged a Marine. But Camille was a girl and girls were supposed to leave their families and their names behind when they married. They changed sides to go with the highest bidder; they were the original mercenaries.
Like it or not, Camille was one, too.
Camille set down her drink. “You know, I used to think Hunter was the only man I’d ever know who had an even stronger sense of loyalty and honor than my father. He’d agonize over doing the right thing when all I cared about was being the best.”
“The floozy might have really gotten under his skin. People will do all kinds of strange things for a woman. I could tell you stories.”
Camille laughed. “You know, the funny thing is he keeps trying to tell me he’s doing it to protect me.” Camille downed the Coke and whiskey, then poured herself a straight shot and raised the glass. “Like Daddy always said, Semper Fi.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
The Green Zone, Baghdad
Entering into the highly fortified Green Zone in the Iraqi capital reminded Hunter of crossing from drab communist East Germany into the glitzy, affluent enclave of West Berlin. West Berlin was a subsidized showcase of just how good things could be if only the commies discovered the wonders of the American way of life. Fast food, relatively safe streets and the absence of poverty in the Green Zone made similar promises to the select Iraqis allowed inside its razor wire and blast walls. Nearly two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, things still weren’t going very well for the East Germans and Hunter suspected the Iraqis would face similar disappointments-if the situation were ever stable enough to remove the blast-proof concrete T-walls, checkpoints and tanks that kept the Americans and the Iraqi government safe from Iraq.
The Green Zone was the safest place in Iraq for all Westerners-all Westerners except him. All he could think about was getting out of there. The zone had a high concentration of security forces which would be searching for him and it also had paranoid Westerners who would turn in anyone accused of supporting the insurgency. It wouldn’t give him much room to maneuver to figure out why Force Zulu had cut him loose. But the red zone-the rest of the country-was too hostile to give him the breathing room he needed to sort things out and formulate a game plan for clearing himself. He needed to fall back to neutral territory-somewhere that wasn’t color-coded. He needed to get the hell out of Babylon.
Once inside the zone, the convoy vehicles dispersed toward their various corporate military camps. They let Hunter and Jackie out near the al-Rashid hotel. He ducked into the shadows and Jackie followed. The Arab man-dress that had saved him in Ramadi made him stick out in the Green Zone, particularly at night without most of the Iraqi support staff around.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to take you to the hospital?” Hunter said.
“There’s not much they can do for me. I want my own bed and I don’t want the press around. I live around the corner.” She took his hand. “There’s no way I can thank you enough.”
“We’re good. I need to get moving.” He pulled his hand away.
“What’s this all about? What’s so dangerous?”
“Good-bye, Jackie. Take care of yourself and get out of this place as soon as you can.” He pecked her on the cheek and walked away without looking back.
“Ray! Wait!”
Hunter kept moving even though he heard her light footsteps jogging after him. He thought about trying to find Stella. She did have a large facility in the bubble, but he couldn’t take the risk of getting nailed by her security if she wasn’t there. The one thing he was sure of from his time at Rubicon was that it had infiltrated Black Management. He couldn’t trust anyone there other than Stella and he wasn’t even so sure about her. She had a temper and he could sort of see how she might really be pissed at him, particularly over him stealing her SUV and not apologizing for standing her up in Dubai. The best thing he could do was to get out of the country, maybe even head to Saudi-no one would expect an American to flee there. But first he needed food, rest and money.
Jackie kept trying to catch up with him. She yelled after him. “You don’t have anywhere…” Jackie gasped for breath, then continued, “…to go…do you?”
Hunter stopped.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The logistics task order contract awarded to Halliburton subsidiary KBR for food and living services in Iraq in 2003 has cost more than $15.4 billion so far, according to the GAO.
– United Press International, December 29, 2006
At the lowest level, Blackwater security guards were paid $600 a day. Blackwater added a 36 percent markup, plus overhead costs, and sent the bill to a Kuwaiti company that ordinarily runs hotels, according to the contract.
That company, Regency Hotel, tacked on its own costs, and a profit, and sent an invoice to ESS. The food company added its costs and profit and sent its bill to Kellogg Brown & Root, which also added overhead and a profit, and presented the final bill to the Pentagon.
– The News Observer [Raleigh/Durham, NC], September 29, 2006, as reported by Joseph Neff
Camp Raven, The Green Zone, Baghdad
As soon as she got word of a possible sighting of Hunter, Camille jogged back to her trailer from the Black Management Ops Center to meet with the informant, one of her employees who had just returned in a convoy to the Green Zone from a job site near Ramadi. She went inside and it reeked of sweat and Pete’s Old Spice, a putrid cocktail. Sitting on one of her leather armchairs was a man in his late forties. His skin-tight tan T-shirt was streaked with dirt and had his blood type written on it with a Magic Marker. Like many of her frontline personnel, he had the Black Management black panther logo tattooed on his forearm. His belly hung over his khaki slacks. He would never pass a military physical and she was surprised he had passed hers, except she knew the shortage of skilled technicians had caused them to loosen up standards in some occupations, particularly for Explosive Ordnance Disposal guys.
Camille extended her hand to the man. “Hi, I’m Camille.”
“Mark Fields, pleased to meet you.” He leaned forward, using his weight to help him stand to greet her, then he wiped his hands on his pants, renewing their dirt coating. “Ma’am, I’m sorry. I would’ve taken time to shower if I knew I was meeting the big boss. We hit a hundred and twenty-three today at the site. Hot enough to make a camel sweat like a pig.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Camille said, even though he reeked of body odor. She stifled a gag as she sat down. “Pete, can you get Mr. Fields a bottle of water?”
“You got it.” Pete walked over to the fridge. “Fields here is an EOD supervisor for a team working on a site near Ramadi. They’re Baghdad-based and they convoy with some guys from Rubicon and Zapata.”
“Whoa. I know this isn’t why you’re telling me this, but why are we going through the risk and expense of the commute when we have personnel at Camp Tornado Point in Ramadi? That road is nasty.” Camille started to raise a hand for emphasis, then stopped herself. She wasn’t there to micromanage.