It was already in the nineties and Camille was breathing hard as she took position between two walled courtyards. Rubicon troops rushed down the street only seconds later. She signaled her chalk of ten men to step out of hiding and surround the two dozen Rubicon soldiers. The Black Hawk hanging above them added to the illusion of superior force, but she knew it was only for show because the numbers were not on their side. They could pick off a guy or two, but once things started mixing up, they’d have to pull out. The Black Management troops emerged from the alleys and circled the Rubicon unit. Camille pointed her M4 at the face of the operator nearest Hunter. Her men selected their own targets.
“Hand him over,” Camille said. “And give me back my gun. The fucker stole it.”
“Is this your gun?” In a split second, the operator drew Stella’s USP Tactical and held it against Hunter’s head. “I’ll hand it back to you after I’m done with it, doll,” he said with a peculiar accent that Camille suspected was South African.
“No!”
“I suggest you inform your men to stand down and permit us go about our business.”
“He’ll do it. Go!” Hunter said, standing perfectly still. “I thought your orders were to let her kill me?”
“They were. But I neglected to mention I got new orders.” The South African cocked the pistol. “What’ll it be, love?”
Camille slowly lowered her weapon and keyed her mike. “All chalks, LIGHTNING SIX. Fall back.” Camille looked Hunter in the eyes and said, “I was trying to save you, not kill you.”
“Touching, but I don’t have the whole bloody day. Lover boy is the only thing holding me up. If he’s dead, I can get out of here. So, love, if you don’t leave in three seconds…”
Just as a Rubicon soldier shoved a hood over Hunter’s head, Camille mouthed, “I love you.”
Camille’s team made it to the pick-up zone in less than five minutes. As they piled into the Black Hawk, she could feel their heaviness: mission not accomplished. And she felt like a personal and professional failure. She wanted to hit something, but knew better than to let her men see her frustration. She had no idea if she could save Hunter now. They apparently wanted information from him, so that meant he probably had a few days, if not weeks, to live, but that was only a guess. Rubicon had the means to make anyone disappear-hell, they did it under government contract all the time. She would never know if the Julia Lewis thing was real, like Joe had said, or if, as Hunter kept trying to tell her, things weren’t what they seemed. She fought back tears as they lifted into the air.
The one surviving Rubicon Mi-8 helicopter was sitting on the ground only a few hundred meters away. They seemed to be having problems trying to jam everyone into the single helo. Rubicon might have Hunter, but they were going to pay the price-starting now. She leaned over to her pilot.
“Order your gunner to target the Rubicon helo’s tail. I don’t want him getting off the ground.”
“With pleasure, ma’am.”
The Black Management helicopter rotated in the air, her guns pointing at the Rubicon Mi-8. They fired a deafening burst and the Rubicon tail rotor splintered as the blades turned into the path of the bullets.
Camille and her men cheered.
Chapter Forty-Six
The Green Zone, Baghdad
Jackie Nelson pressed the charcoal pencil to the paper and made a sweeping line that she could already see as the flowing traditional Iraqi male dress. In a few minutes she tried to capture the mysterious eyes of a man moving about in another man’s clothes, engulfed in a lie. She still couldn’t get the depth of pain and isolation she had seen. She tore the page from her drawing pad and set it beside the other sketches of her liberator, her hero, the guy she knew only as Ray-her secret agent man. Her small kitchen table was covered with charcoal drawings of Ray.
Her husband, Brian Nelson, stuck the large brown envelope he was carrying under his arm and picked up a drawing. Shaking his head, he dropped it back onto the table. “Do you think you should get some counseling or something? For christssake, you can’t draw pictures of this guy for the rest of your life. The embassy flies in a shrink from Amman once a week. How about I have Rubicon pull some strings and get you in to see him?”
“I want to know who Ray is.” She ignored him and started another drawing. “You could learn a lot from him.”
“I’m sure hoping to.”
She raised her pencil from the paper and looked him in the eyes for several seconds without speaking. “You know something, don’t you?”
“I’ve got to go for a short walk.” He broke eye contact and kissed the top of her head.
“Maybe you’re right. I could use a break right now. I could use a walk, too. I guess it would be safe enough to go out if I’m with you.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to stay home? Give it some more time?” He pointed to a drawing of Ray in combat garb, clutching an M16. “Maybe we can set up an exhibit at a gallery when we get home. These really are damn good.”
“You really think so?” Jackie smiled. It was one of the softest things she’d heard from him in ages.
“The swoop of the line says movement to me. I want to see how you develop that.” He motioned to the one she had begun a few moments ago.
“I’m trying to catch the action. I see him running, firing his weapon while he’s using his body to shield the little girl.” Jackie roughed out the figure of the child in seconds. “I can really feel this one. Go on without me. Enjoy your walk.”
Joe Chronister kept the large brown envelope with the file tucked under his shirt as he walked to the site of the dead drop. Camille Black was asking questions about Julia Lewis and he wanted to make sure she got the right answers. He wished he could have done better, but with such short notice the best he could do was to recycle the Julia-Lewis-Fucks-Hunter-Stone file which she had already seen. Camille was a sharp cookie, but she had flipped through the file for less than a minute and he was banking on it that she had missed some things that would feel fresh to her.
A couple of guys were tossing garbage bags into a big blue Dumpster. He ignored them and walked past. A few seconds after he heard the lid slam shut, he looked back to make sure they had gone. He doubled back, slid the envelope with the file in it out from his shirt and peeled off an adhesive strip. Bending over, he slapped the envelope onto the bottom of the Dumpster. With a stroke of the wrist, he marked it with a streak of chalk, trying to imitate the swoop of Jackie’s line, stylizing the Z. He thought to himself that someday he’d have to use the code name Zorro for himself. It was a hell of a lot more fitting for him than “Brian Nelson.”
Chapter Forty-Seven
Civilian employees at the prison were not bound by the Uniform Code of Military Justice…One of the employees involved in the interrogations at Abu Ghraib, according to the Taguba report, was…a civilian working for CACI International, a Virginia-based company. Private companies like CACI and Titan Corp… were permitted, as never before in U.S. military history, to handle sensitive jobs.
– The New Yorker, May 17, 2004, as reported by Seymour Hersh
Camp Tsunami, Abu Ghraib Prison
The scratchy cloth hood blocked Hunter’s sight and he breathed the hot, stale air which he had just exhaled. The heavy material was wet from sweat. His hands and feet were now cuffed with plastic ties. He no longer heard the voices of the operators who had captured him and escorted him along several transfers. A couple of hours had been spent in a SUV, but a lot of the time was spent sitting and waiting. They shoved him through a doorway and he could sense the presence of two, maybe three guards.