“Face down! Now!”
His heart was pounding so hard, it felt like it was shaking his body. Then he realized he was actually trembling. He really thought it was over. As he lay on the cold concrete floor, smelling blood and sensing death all around him, he understood his life was soon coming to a close.
And he also understood he had made a terrible mistake in staging his death, telling himself that it was to protect Stella. Now he realized it was more to protect him, to protect him from losing her. He had lost over two years with her and now he’d never see her again.
A Rubicon operator kicked him in the kidneys. The sharp pain was almost a welcome distraction.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Camp Tsunami, Abu Ghraib Prison
The Rubicon prison guard Bobby Carmichael whistled to himself as he waddled into the guard’s bathroom with a package of brown paper towels, dreaming of the mail order bride and the double-wide he was going to buy with his bounty money. With a million bucks, he could even buy a lot in that new gated trailer park just off I-44 in Joplin. He wiggled his butt when he realized that with that much dough he could really go uptown and get himself a white Russian girl instead of one of the Filipinos he’d been saving up for. Whoever Hunter Stone was, he wished he could plant a big one on his cheek. Having that guy on his cell block was the luckiest break he’d had in his entire life.
He glanced at his watch and wondered where Becky and Lew were. Come to think of it, he hadn’t seen Nathan for quite a while either. They were probably having some fun with the inmates and had cut him out of the action again. If they only knew that for once, Bobby was going to be the center of the world. Only four guards were on the cell block instead of the usual seven, but what did he care? It would only make it easier for him to slip the team inside, bypassing the usual searches.
The guard’s bathroom was not something he was going to miss. No wonder the Europeans called them water closets. It was tough enough to take a dump teetering over the stained porcelain squat toilet like a hen laying an egg, praying to god he didn’t lose his balance and fall in, but it was nearly impossible when it felt like those shit-smeared walls were closing in. He wadded up a fist full of paper towels and tossed them into the hole as if he were shooting a basket. He crumpled most of the package into tight wads. Putting his foot there to pack them down the hole as tightly as he could made him want to saw his leg off, but he reminded himself it was for the big bucks.
It was time. He flushed the toilet and left the door ajar. The other guards were too spoiled. They depended upon their comforts and nothing caused a more serious crisis among them than their own toilet overflowing. In another five minutes, they would be screaming for Bobby to drop everything and come clean up the mess. But this time he wouldn’t come.
In a few minutes, Bobby Carmichael would be a millionaire and everyone knew millionaires didn’t clean crappers.
He hurried outside for a smoke, thinking of his very own slinky blonde Rooskie.
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Army investigators were forced to close their inquiry in June 2005 after they said task force members used battlefield pseudonyms that made it impossible to identify and locate the soldiers involved.
– The New York Times, March 19, 2006, as reported by Erick Schmitt and Carolyn Marshall
Camp Tsunami, Abu Ghraib Prison
The glue holding on Camille’s moustache made her upper lip itch, but she couldn’t scratch it because her hands were cuffed behind her back in special breakaway zip-ties. As they were getting outfitted for the job, she broke apart three of them to make absolutely sure she could get free. Even voluntary restraints made her antsy. She reassured herself that it only helped her play the part more realistically-any sane Iraqi being hauled into Abu Ghraib should be a basket case. The six fake prisoners were sitting on the floor, crammed into the back of the stolen Rubicon Ford Expedition. As they wound through the Jersey barriers in front of the outside perimeter gate of the Rubicon-managed Abu Ghraib prison, she fell against GENGHIS. He winked at her and pushed back. She wasn’t sure if it was another come-on or if he was now being chummy.
The Iraqi guards at the main gate were taking forever, talking with their driver about something she couldn’t hear. God, she hoped they got Hunter and didn’t end up trapped inside with him. She imagined herself a wild animal, throwing herself against the sides of the cage until she collapsed in blood and exhaustion. Trailers for prison movies alone were enough to make her want to go outside for a run. She took a deep breath. The SUV lurched forward and she watched out the back window, staring at the razor wire as the giant gates slammed shut.
She kept thinking about Iggy’s question before he cleared her to go on the mission. He had described a scenario in which she believed she had figured out who their insider was. Iggy had wanted to know if she was absolutely sure that if he was carrying a weapon, she could neutralize him without hesitation. She had said yes, but wasn’t so sure she had told the truth.
“RUBY SLIPPER to all units,” the driver’s voice came through a small speaker hidden in Camille’s ear. “We have entered the HAUNTED FOREST.”
Camille thought The Wizard of Oz was an unusual choice of code names for a straight guy, but she understood Iggy’s logic of choosing something all the men were familiar with since there was so little time to prepare the op. She also suspected it was related to his affinity for his own call sign, TIN MAN. The important thing was that even if the Agency and Rubicon had somehow broken into their encrypted radio traffic, the RUBY SLIPPER wouldn’t fit until it was too late.
At the prison entrance three Rubicon employees leaned against the cinder block wall in their wrinkled gray prison guard uniforms, smoking cigarettes and waiting for a new delivery of prisoners to process. If they hadn’t been carrying assault rifles, they could just as easily have been fast-food workers on break hanging in the parking lot. She wouldn’t have been surprised if that’s what they had done in the States before Halliburton started the working-class gold rush, offering white collar salaries for blue collar work in Iraq.
A man who had supersized far too many of his own French fries threw his cigarette to the ground, crushed it with his shiny black shoe and grinned as he watched them drive up. Strange reaction, Camille noted. She hoped it wasn’t some eager new employee’s first day on the job. She took it as a good sign that the others kept puffing away. The SUV backed up to the building. It came to a stop and she tumbled over against another fake prisoner.
One of her men posing as a Rubicon operator walked around the SUV and opened the back hatch. “Get your ass out of my truck, haji,” he said as he grabbed Camille’s shoulder and yanked her from the truck. She twisted her body like a cat as she fell to the ground.
“I didn’t say lie down. On your feet.”
He jerked her up by her arm and she struggled to keep her hands and feet close enough together so she didn’t pop off the plastic ties. She looked him in the eyes, then spat at his feet. The Rubicon jailors laughed, cigarettes dangling from their mouths. Her men unloaded the prisoners.