Cold Snap (15 page)

Gunfire and bomb blasts were not unusual, but
the 82nd Airborne, 3rd Calvary and 3rd Infantry had pulled out last
year, leaving a force at an old resort near the city: Dreamland.
The U.S. Army's stay had been marred by an avalanche of willful
misunderstandings from both sides that had resulted in the usual
massacre of civilians. The Americans had marched away in high
dudgeon, annoyed with the residents for preferring their own
well-tested brand of oppression.

The old man who ran the sandwich stand raised
his eyes skyward and moaned, "The Americans!"

Ghaith shook his head." Someone chucked a
grenade, that's all."

The proprietor turned wary eyes on the
stranger, a newcomer to the souk. Newcomers were not unusual. He
had seen men from all over the Levant arriving in Fallujah over the
last few weeks. But Ghaith's silent poise troubled him in way he
could not fathom.

"The Americans can bomb us from hundreds of
miles away."

"Thousands," Ghaith corrected.

"You were in the Army?" the proprietor
inquired.

"You have more questions than a dog has
fleas."

"I only asked one," the proprietor
sulked.

"And it was a good one," came a new voice.
Turning, Ghaith found himself facing a stern-looking man wearing
the white headpiece of a Sunni cleric. While much of the country
shuddered under the newly-empowered Shia, the man was safe enough
in Sunni Fallujah. The two rough types to either side of him were
probably intended to guard him against local thugs, not an opposing
faith.

"I was planning to finish my shawarma, not
hold a conference," said Ghaith, waving the evidence in the man's
face. "But Salam and peace be upon you, for all that."

Annoyed by Ghaith's flippancy, the young
cleric stepped closer. Westerners were often dismayed by the Arabic
habit of standing close, very close, to whomever they were talking
to. The cleric was standing very, very close.

"I know many people in the Jolan District. I
don't know you."

Rudeness seemed to be the order of the day.
By failing to show due reverence to the cleric, by not even
pretending to lean down to kiss his hand, Ghaith was attracting
attention.

"Peace and blessings be upon him, for the
angels are with him," said Ghaith. Recognizing his own severe lack
of conviction, he winced inwardly.

The cleric drew back, as though suspicious of
taint. He was rugged, with

an air of tough street-life about him. Really
no need for bodyguards here. Ghaith had no doubt he could deal with
him, if necessary. But he would have to take out the two men with
him, first—the ones with Kalashnikovs slung over their shoulders.
If it came to a fight, he could probably kill them all, though at
the risk of drawing even more attention upon himself. And Ghaith
was not conceited enough to think he could take on an entire
city.

He was well aware that his mood was as
dangerous to himself as to others. Having obeyed orders from a
superior—a general, no less—he found himself wondering if the chain
of command was as worthless as its commanders. It was obvious that
that old Kurd-killer, General Saleh, was angling for a position
with the Coalition. If he thought he could reconcile the Sunnis
here to occupation forces, Ghaith was willing to let him live with
his delusion. But really, what could he tell the general? Give it
up as a bad job? Your nuances are as bricks in a toilet? But there
were no limits to the stupidity of ambitious men. One might as well
try reasoning with a donkey.

But this was not the real reason for Ghaith's
dissatisfaction. After all, he had stood on the Highway of Death,
all but baring his ass in the American crosshairs. And while it was
those same Americans who had maimed his wife and killed two of his
sons, it was Saddam's regime that had sucked Hell upon itself.
Ghaith's anguish made him more than usually dangerous. And
careless.

"I am called Dr. Ibrahim," said the cleric,
waiting for a response that would betray Ghaith as a Shia.

"And I'm the man you wouldn't want to meet in
a dark alley," said Ghaith.

The guards braced for a fight. Actually, for
a killing. The cleric gauged him narrowly.

"You are without God," he pronounced. "You
are without wisdom."

"I'll grant 'stupid'," said Ghaith.

The proprietor of the sandwich stand had
disappeared behind his shed. Ghaith wondered if he had stumbled
across a neighborhood bully. In an area rife with rough trade, it
would take someone special to stand out.

"We welcome strangers," said Dr. Ibrahim.

"I can see that," Ghaith acknowledged. "You
must have half the Middle East packed in here."

"I apologize," said the cleric. "I meant to
say that we welcome friends."

Ghaith offered a bland smile and stared at
the flat green upperworks of the nearby Euphrates Bridge, rising
like the fossil of a dinosaur that had died in mid-crossing.
Previous unwelcome visitors—American troops—had dubbed it 'Brooklyn
Bridge'.

There were shouts in the distance. Men began
moving down the narrow lanes as the excited murmurs grew louder,
draining out of the souk like cascading water. The two men
attending Dr. Ibrahim grew distracted and called out.

"They've killed some Americans!" someone
informed them as he raced by.

"Who has?"

"The Brigades of Martyr Ahmed Yassin!"

Dr. Ibrahim's eyes widened, his hard focus
shifting away from Ghaith. "What?" he demanded from another man who
was racing for Main Street.

"Four American soldiers!"

In a second, Ghaith went from being a whale
to a tadpole. Dr. Ibrahim gave him a perfunctory scowl, then began
following the growing mob at a dignified trot.

Ghaith finished his shawarma. Still ravenous
after his tense journey down Highway 10, he reached into the hutch
and draped his light fingers around a warm sabich. Munching away
contentedly, he drifted after the crowd. He had not gone far before
he noticed an odd taste. He frowned at the pita stuffed with boiled
egg and aubergine before realizing it was the air itself that was
tainted.

Colonel Abu Karim Ghaith Ibrahim was all too
familiar with the smell of burning human flesh. It should have been
similar to any choice beef left too long on the grill. During the
1991 uprising, dead people and animals killed by phosgene had been
piled indiscriminately on the pyres, their poison-saturated bodies
emitting toxic clouds as they burned. Phosgene gas was one of the
illicit weapons the ISG was hunting for, but since it was
undetectable after use, they could not prove it had been employed
in the field. The funeral pyres eliminated the evidence of humans
dying in contorted agony.

Ghaith had caught a whiff from as far away as
the highlands. At the first hint of hay-like odor he had hurried
away. But the odor of soldiers roasting in burning vehicles on the
Highway of Death left a stench in his mind, a memory that could be
triggered by a harmless rack of lamb or the smells of cooking from
a kiosk on Palestine Street. Add a little burning diesel and a
thousand screams and that could be a man.

The shouts from Main Street suggested some
kind of maniacal celebration. The noise was punctuated by volleys
of gunfire—normal enough, seeing as Ghaith's countrymen expended
tons of ammunition into the air on the slightest pretext. A
good-sized dog fight alone was worth thousands of rounds. The smell
could be laid to a barbecue—Ghaith had attended enough of them at
the Imperial Palace. But he knew better, this time.

His appetite gone, Ghaith cast the sabich
aside. Reaching the outskirts of the souk, he stood at the edge of
a swirling mob of men and boys. There was an intense whisking
motion in the group. Suddenly, a severed head popped out from the
forest of legs and fetched up at Ghaith's feet. With a shout of
annoyance, he kicked it back, striking a boy in the head. Everyone
laughed but Ghaith and the boy, who had been struck by what
amounted to a fifteen-pound boulder.

He saw two bodies being dragged in the
direction of the river. Though in mufti, it was obvious they were
Americans. Glancing up, he saw several men on the steps of the
mayor's office. To his left were police headquarters and the city
council compound. There were no policemen or Iraqi soldiers in
sight. Two Mitsubishi Pajeros were burning nearby.

"Shwaretek! Shwaretek!" the crowd chanted,
accusing the invaders of being spineless cowards. "There is no God
but Allah! America is the enemy of God!"

Ghaith thought he caught a glimpse of a UAV
overhead. The Americans must be taping every moment and movement of
what was taking place on Route 10. He strode over to the boy who
had been bonked by the severed head and helped him to his feet. "I
heard someone say there were four of them."

"They're roasting in Hell," the boy cried,
massaging his bruised forehead.

"Stop crying," Ghaith commanded. "You're a
man."

The boy hiccupped as he swallowed his
gasps.

"Good. Where are they taking those two?"

"They're going to string them up on the
bridge."

"I don't think we want the whole world to see
that," said Ghaith, tripping a cameraman as he ran by. "These
aren't soldiers."

"Yes they are," the boy insisted. Perhaps the
only Americans he had seen were soldiers.

"Where are the others? Where is the
convoy?"

"There were only four," said the boy. Having
recovered from the blow, the boy ran off.

"You forgot your head!" Ghaith called after
him. The boy didn't hear. Glancing down, he admonished the severed
head: "Why weren't you in a convoy? Why were you so few? Are you
stupid or what?"

A sandaled foot intruded, striking the head
next to the ear and sending it spinning into the road, where it was
quickly lost to sight in the trampling mass.

Tagging behind the crowd, Ghaith approached
the Euphrates Bridge. Two bodies were being strung up on the green
trestle bridge's overhead girders. Combustibles were piled beneath
them.

"This is what Americans do to blacks in their
country," Ghaith overheard one man say to a group. "I saw it in a
film."

The bodies had already been scorched in the
ambush, but the additional stench maddened the crowd even more.
Close to the top of the ramp leading to the bridge a cameraman
zoomed in on the sight. Seeing Dr. Ibrahim near the front of the
mob, Ghaith pushed his way to his side. The cleric's guards closed
in.

"You must not love your city very much,"
Ghaith shouted.

The cleric turned and scowled. "What?"

"The Americans were gone. Now they'll be
back. They'll be killing many of our Sunni brothers. Is that what
you want?"

"This is not my doing," said Dr. Ibrahim,
nodding at the dead men and hitching his hands around his elbows.
"But if the enemy comes, he will pay dearly."

"And it will be worth the price?"

"Of course."

The scream was inhumanly loud. Ari swerved
sharply. So did most of the cars around him, both east and
westbound. It was a miracle no one collided, but an explosion of
horns signaled plenty of jangled nerves.

Ari was sure he would have known if he had
hit a pedestrian. His little Scion would have probably flipped over
anything larger than a pebble. Reassured but still rattled, he
continued down Jahnke Road.

"FUUUCK YOU! FUCK YOU FUUUCK YOU!"

The shout was as loud as the scream, piercing
the closed windows, again sending traffic into an explosive swirl.
Ari managed his luck perfectly, twisting through a gap the instant
before an SUV and Civic banged flanks. He squirted ahead, leaving
behind a loud knot of chaos. The few cars that managed to dodge the
pileup gathered alongside him, drivers visibly swearing, their eyes
wide in angry confusion. Where had the infernal noise come
from?

A black Rio passed him on the left, cut in
front. A loud squeal as it braked. A car in the right lane kept Ari
from escaping that way, but a break in oncoming traffic gave him
leave to cross the double yellow and cut around.

"HEY MUTHAFUCKA, YOU THINK YOU ACE?"

There was a thump. A mild fender-bender. Ari
glanced in his rear-view. The driver was tinted anonymous. He was
tempted to stop dead and cram that invisible face through the
windshield. But the xB was a low-tolerance compactor. Even against
a smallish hatchback Ari would end up canned tuna.

Several cars swerved around him. Seeing a
side road, he gauged the oncoming and darted across, plunging down
a suburban lane.

Tabernak, he thought. Hmmm...Quebecois. Where
had that come from? Of course...Abu Jasim, his indispensable
partner in Montreal.

As if Ari needed confirmation that he was the
focus of attention, the Rio rose up in his mirror. He pulled in
front of a house where Christmas lights remained strung on the
eaves and front yard trees, as if in anticipation of a return visit
from Santa. He reached inside his coat pocket and patted his
Glock.

The Rio turned into an alley and disappeared
behind a row of holly bushes. One good thing about the Scion: it
was supreme in tight spaces. Ari turned in the road in one easy
swoop and backtracked to the alley. The Rio had reached the end,
trailing wintry dust. He was about to follow when he spotted
another familiar-looking car ascending the hill from Jahnke. He
eased off his brake and drifted forward, intending to let the
Sonata pass on his left. But when the car's rear window opened and
something dark poked out, he stopped and reversed.

This was a sedate neighborhood that
dead-ended at the Parkway on one side and at the river to the
north. It provided no shortcuts and traffic was minimal. Ari backed
around at the next intersection with no trouble, except this gave
the man in the Sonata's back seat a clear broadside that could have
ended the chase then and there. But there were no shots. It even
seemed the Sonata slowed to keep from hitting him, but Ari couldn't
be certain. He was too busy avoiding cars parked at the curb.