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Anbar Province

Purples and oranges lingered in the sky when Hunter and Jackie spotted a Chevy Suburban leading a convoy of SUVs, American contractors zooming back to a green zone before nightfall. From the several different makes of vehicles, he guessed several companies had banded together for safety. White signs in English and Arabic on each vehicle warned: D
ANGER.
K
EEP BACK.
A
UTHORIZED TO USE LETHAL FORCE
.

“Here's our big chance,” Jackie said as she started to pull up her dishdashah.

“Don't.” Hunter grabbed her arm. She shook him off, surprising him that she suddenly found so much strength.

“I'll do whatever it takes.” She pulled the garment over her head and waved it at the approaching vehicles. “Help us! We're American! Help!”

The headlights of the first vehicle shined on her naked body. It slowed down, then stopped with the doors cracked open and barrels of assault rifles sticking out. Hunter whispered to her. “This could be a problem for me. Follow my lead.”

“What the hell are you talking about? We're saved.”

“Hands in the air.” Two contract soldiers wearing body armor and carrying AKs hopped out of the Suburban, their weapons trained on Hunter. The doors to the others were partially open and even though he couldn't see the gun barrels, he knew every one of them had an automatic weapon pointed at him. Whistles and shouts came from the convoy.

“Shake it, baby,” someone shouted.

“Put your clothes on, Jackie.” Hunter drew out his words, feigning a Southern drawl.

“I said hands in the air,” the soldier said. “You, too, honey.”

“Get dressed now. Slowly.” Hunter turned his head toward the soldier and shouted. “Roadside strip show's over. She's had enough humiliation.”

She slipped the dishdashah over her head, but the catcalls continued.

“Look, we need a lift. You can tell we're no threat to you. Feel free to frisk me or I can strip off my man-dress and give everyone another cheap thrill.”

“I'll pass on that one.” One of the soldiers patted down Hunter. “I don't suppose you have any ID on you. What are you doing here like this?”

“A mission went south. We're lucky to be alive.” Hunter looked over the vehicles. There were three Ford Expeditions, a Lincoln Navigator and a RhinoRunner. He knew Stella had several Navigators and some Rhino-Runners for VIP transport. But the Ford Expeditions concerned him. They were Rubicon's signature vehicle.

The soldier radioed his supervisor, then lowered his weapon. “There's room in the second vehicle. Welcome back to civilization.”

 

Jackie tugged on an Expedition's reinforced steel door, but it barely moved. Hunter reached around her.

“I got it. These armored things are a workout.”

Hunter boosted Jackie into the backseat and two men scooted over to make room for her. Two others sat in the third row of seats. All were dressed in khakis and ruby red T-shirts, Kevlar body armor and photographer's vests stuffed with ammunition. The real hunters usually didn't go out until late at night, so he guessed most of these guys were probably bomb disposal experts at the end of their work day. Elvis was blaring from the CD player. Hunter kept his head low, trying to shield his face as much as possible, hoping that whatever he had discovered about Rubicon, they wanted to keep extremely quiet and had not issued a general alert to all their troops. He only wished he knew what the hell the big Rubicon secret was that he supposedly knew. He kept racking his brains for clues and he didn't even have many of those except Ashland, the spy he recognized in the tango safe house.

Hunter pretended to check on Jackie, pulling down her lower eyelid, even though it really was too dark to tell if the whites of her eyes were as jaundiced as he assumed they were. She needed more fluids and he could use this to keep the attention on her and reinforce that they were together because Rubicon was searching for a lone runner. “You fellas got a medic kit on you? I need a saline bag to get her hydrated.”

“Sure thing. We've got a medic in the other truck if you need one,” one of the guys behind them said as he reached for a med kit and passed it to Hunter.

“Thanks, but I can handle it right now.” Hunter unzipped the soft case and set an IV bag, a needle packet and an antiseptic wipe on his lap. He handed the kit back.

One of the men in the backseat said, “Jimmy, you got any of that Gatorade left?”

“Yeah.” Jimmy sat twisted to the side, looking out the window, his gun ready for action. He stuck his hand over the seat without turning away. “Here. It's pretty warm though.”

“Thanks,” Jackie said. “Any of you guys have a cell phone,” Hunter elbowed her, but she ignored him and continued, “that I could use to call—”

He put his foot on top of hers and tapped it, then pressed with increasing force.

“You bet,” the guy next to her said and flipped open his Iraqna phone.

“I'm only going to tell him we got out alive,” she said in a low voice as she punched in a number. Hunter reached over and hit cancel.

Two of the men glanced at each other, noting his odd behavior.

“Sorry,” he mouthed to Jackie. She flashed him a disapproving look, but seemed to be playing along. Hunter rubbed the alcohol wipe on Jackie's arm, then attached the needle to the IV bag and inserted the catheter.

“What the hell happened to you two out there?” The team leader said from the front passenger seat as he turned down the music.

“Just another day at the office.”

“Not at liberty to say, huh?”

“Sorry. It would make things a lot safer for us if you'd forget we were ever here.” Hunter squeezed the IV bag to force the saline to flow faster as he monitored the traffic ahead. It was heavy and classic Third World style: every man for himself. Signs, regulations and even lanes were treated as suggestions to be ignored. It was a giant game of chicken at seventy miles an hour on roads broken up by bombings, tank treads and neglect.

“I don't know how you spooky types do it. I'll take working with bombs any day. Hell of a lot safer.”

Hunter wanted to get the conversation off them fast and the best way to distract an EOD guy was to get him started talking about bombs. “So do you guys run with ECM?” Hunter knew the vehicles of the best contractors were all equipped with electronic counter measures which would send out signals that detonate any radio-controlled roadside bombs ahead of them.

“They don't do much good anymore. The tangos have imported a passive infrared trick from Hezbollah—thank you Iran.”

“ECMs really don't work?”

“Nope. Not with a totally passive infrared system. You enter the IR footprint of one of those and you're Swiss cheese—even in one of these armored babies.”

“Anything you can do about them?” Hunter said as he watched a pickup overloaded with refrigerators and stoves slow down to give them room.

“The recommendation is to use thermal vision to spot a temp differential from the surrounding objects, but I think your best bet is never to ride in the front vehicle.”

“Head's up. White van tracking us. Over there on the service road,” one of the shooters said as he pointed his AK at the driver.

The Ford Expedition weaved in and out of traffic, speeding up. One hundred ten. One hundred fifteen. One hundred twenty miles an hour and the speed was increasing. Heavy bulletproof windows couldn't always be trusted to roll back up when it counted the most, so the men sitting by the doors cracked them open and stuck the barrels of their weapons outside. Without exchanging a word, the guy sandwiched in the middle passed Hunter his weapon. Hunter shoved the IV bag into Jackie's lap and opened the door just enough.

The white van sped up.

“What do you think?”

“Not good.”

The Rubicon SUV ahead of them swerved toward the ditch, kicking up dust. Suddenly Hunter saw why. A compact car stuffed with a family was in front of them, creeping along the road and they were hurtling toward it. In a fraction of a second, they were on its bumper. The Rubicon driver swung into the shoulder, passing the car on the right, driving into the dust cloud. The Ford Expedition bounced so hard Hunter's head hit the door frame and he started to fall out the door. He grabbed for anything he could find and held on to the seatbelt as he hung outside the door. Even though visibility was only inches, he was staring straight down at a blur of garbage, churned-up earth and discarded plastic bags.

He snagged his foot under the passenger seat and pulled himself upright into the cab. Seconds later they emerged from the dust cloud, four feet from the white van. The van's driver pointed something at him.

Hunter leaned out and started to squeeze the trigger, then he realized it wasn't a gun, but a finger.

“Hold fire!” Hunter shouted, but not in time. The van's window exploded into fragments. The driver slumped over the wheel and the van veered toward them.

“Look out!” Hunter said.

Their Ford Expedition took a sharp left, throwing Hunter back toward the door. He held onto the seat as the door swung open, then back a little. Hunter waited until the ride smoothed out, then held onto the frame, leaned back outside and pulled the heavy armored door shut.

They were back on the main road, again zipping between cars, trying to catch up to the lead vehicles in the convoy. He looked back and saw the white van hit one of the countless decapitated palm trees that line Iraqi highways. Then he glanced at Jackie. She was staring straight ahead, her eyes wide.

The Rubicon team leader turned up the music and Elvis was rocking over his new blue suede shoes.

Jackie whispered to Hunter. “That was a finger. He was pretending to shoot with his finger. He even mouthed ‘Bang.' I saw it right before—”

“Yeah, he was acting stupid and it got him killed. But it's big boy rules out here.” Hunter whispered, trying to keep his voice below the music. Now back in his seat, Hunter squeezed the saline bag as he returned it to his lap. “The Iraqis are fed up with the occupation and it's hard to blame them. Could you imagine carloads of heavily armed Iraqi contractors speeding down the Beltway in DC during rush hour and shooting at any vehicle that spooked them? But as long as we're here, it's got to be this way. A vehicle speeding up to approach a convoy is either a suicide bomber or someone committing suicide. You don't come close to an American vehicle and everyone knows it. That's why we have those little signs warning everyone to stay back. We're authorized to use lethal force. Like I said, big boy rules.”

“It was a finger, for god's sake.”

“There was a dust cloud and it was nautical twilight. It's a split-second decision.”

The shooter in the backseat made eye contact with Hunter and grinned. “Road rage, man. Commuting is a real bitch.”

“BK, you saying you're ready to get shipped home to avoid the commute?” the team leader said.

“No way. I'll take this over a civilian job any day. You know when I worked at Burger King I actually had to smile at people? You didn't hear me asking those tangos, ‘You want fries with that?' Those days are over, man. I make in a day what I used to take home in a month. Hey, maybe I ought to start shouting that every time I shoot a tango. It could be my tagline.” BK held his AK, pointed it at a truck and pretended to shoot. It veered off the road and into the ditch. “You want fries with that, tango-man?”

The men laughed.

Hunter didn't. He closed his eyes and saw the van driver pointing his finger at him.
Bang
.

Camp Raven, Black Management Iraqi Headquarters
The Green Zone, Baghdad

The car lights glistened off the shiny silver retro-style trailer in the former parking lots across from the presidential palace. During Operation Iraqi Freedom I
,
when Hunter was fighting his way into Baghdad alongside the legendary Colonel Dunford, Camille quit the CIA and was in Hollywood mortgaging everything she owned and negotiating with a movie studio to buy a luxury trailer that had become too rundown for their starlets. Within six weeks, the trailer was in Baghdad and Camille was courting military brass for contracts in the Green Zone's first speakeasy. The war had been good for business and the current drawdown of troops was a bonanza. Each soldier pulled out meant a vacuum that had to be filled. The Iraqis weren't up to the task and America was too deeply involved to roll over and allow room for al Qaeda to move in.

Enter Black Management.

Enter Triple Canopy.

Enter Rubicon Solutions.

Enter Blackwater.

Only families cared about dead contractors—Pentagon body counts didn't. Relying even more heavily upon the private military corporations, the US was able to quietly maintain a constant level of influence while the American public celebrated the homecoming of the troops.

Alcohol now flowed more or less freely in the Green Zone and Black Management's reputation for the best operators in the Iraq and Afghan theaters pulled in the contracts, so the speakeasy had long ago given way to formal offices. Black Management headquarters had expanded into three low concrete buildings with four-foot-thick ceilings engineered with layers of cutting-edge materials designed to absorb mortar blasts. Two clamshell maintenance hangers housed helicopters undergoing repairs and their Baghdad fleet of Black Hawks, Little Birds and Super-Cobra attack helicopters were parked on the ramp. But upon Camille's insistence, the original Hollywood trailer had been preserved.

Camille stepped inside it, fondling those early dreams.

Sue “Pete” Peterson swiveled in her Aeron chair and jumped to attention as soon as she saw it was Camille. Her hair was even more closely cropped than Camille remembered, but she still wore enough Old Spice to make Camille nearly gag. Pete worked as the Black Management deputy project manager for logistics for the Baghdad area of operations, but whenever Camille was in town, she reassumed her old role of personal aide to the boss.

“At ease. I thought you were going to salute for a minute there,” Camille said.

“Sorry, ma'am. Old habits die hard.”

“We crapped out in Ramadi. The trail's cold,” Camille said as she pulled apart the Velcro shoulder straps of her Kevlar vest. Pete helped her out of it and hung it on a coat rack. Camille was very aware of how the sweat made her T-shirt cling to her breasts. So was Pete. Camille would never admit it, but she liked the attention and Pete was more of a gentleman than most of the guys she worked with. It wasn't that often that Camille let someone make her feel like a lady.

Camille continued speaking. “We must have talked to two hundred shop owners and vendors. Hundreds of people were there yesterday during the riot and they all say they saw nothing. I even believed one or two of them. Iggy back from Afghanistan yet?”

“Tonight. Don't worry. Virgil's holding down the fort, but he hasn't been too happy about it. It's his shot at being the alpha dog and there's no one to play with. It's been quiet lately—real quiet.”

“Quiet makes me nervous. You don't know where the tangos are. They're moving around, regrouping for something big.”

“You want some ice water? A soda?”

“I got it. I miss the old speakeasy days. I could use a cold one right now.” Camille opened an apartment-sized refrigerator and pulled out a can of Coke with white Arabic script. She took a sip, then set it on the coffee table and sunk herself into the black leather sofa, closed her eyes and took a long breath as she savored the air conditioning. The unit for her trailer was twice the recommended BTUs for the space and seemed to be one of the few that could stand up to the desert heat.

“I can send one of the boys for whatever you want and I could rustle up some whiskey a little faster than that.” Pete set a glass of ice on the coffee table in front of Camille and poured the soda into it.

“No need. I'm good.”

“Can I be frank with you?” Pete was the kind of woman who, even if you didn't ask, would tell. It got her into trouble. It got her out of the Army. It got her a job with Camille.

“You always are.”

“We're not a mom and pop shop anymore. You don't need to do this yourself. I heard from Virgil that you went out on a run and led a takedown last night. That's too dangerous for the president of a billion dollar company.”

“We're not there yet. Though the accountants are projecting we'll hit it in November if current trends hold.” Camille sipped her Coke. “Things have gotten hot with Rubicon and I needed to see for myself.”

“Is that all?”

“I like to keep my skills sharp.”

“I hear you on that one. I sneak out every once in a while with the boys just to pop a few fly balls. But that wasn't what I was talking about.” Pete stood and walked over to a cabinet beside the stainless steel sink. “You've been at the Kandahar base so much lately, I've gotten out of the habit of stocking up for you. Looks like all I've got to offer you to eat right now are some corn nuts, pretzels or a stale Ding Dong.”

“Pass on the Ding Dong.”

“Yeah, I wouldn't touch it either.” Pete ripped open a vending-machine-sized bag of pretzels and dumped them into a blue ceramic bowl hand painted with a geometric pattern and stylized Arabic writing. She offered some to Camille, then set the bowl on the coffee table.

Camille bit into a pretzel. “Business is too good in Afghanistan—actually most of our work at the moment is unofficially over the border in Waziristan, tracking down Abdullah. The Taliban and al Qaeda run that part of Pakistan, but no one wants to admit it any more than they want to admit the US is active there. Even though Pakistan is our good friend in the fight on terror, as far as I'm concerned Pakistani intelligence is the most functional part of al Qaeda.”

“The tangos have sure been going after each other without OBL to hold them together.” Pete plopped down in the armchair across from her. Camille sensed there was something bothering her. Pete's expression suddenly became more serious and she continued, “I'll tell it to you straight. You have no business running after this guy.”

“Abdullah? You've got to be kidding. He and al-Zahrani are the world's two most wanted terrorists now that it finally leaked that bin Laden's long dead.”

“Come on. You know who I mean—Stone. I've never seen you put out an alert to all supervisors like this morning. Asking them to grab Stone, sure, but the part about you reserving deadly force for yourself—that was out there.”

“I want him brought in alive. He has some information I need.”

“Right. Come on, Camille. You and I go back to the days when this trailer was sitting at Shuwaikh, impounded by the Kuwait Ports Authority because we didn't have some trumped up permits. The amazing part is I hauled it up to Baghdad in one piece, more or less. Sure couldn't do that now, too damn dangerous.”

“Amazing you wrestled it away from them. I thought Black Management was sunk then and there along with everything I owned. Of course, I thought that several times—like when we couldn't get any operators to join us because they didn't want to work for a woman. Thank god Iggy joined me. He really turned things around. Without him, we wouldn't have hit critical mass.”

“Iggy was sure a magnet for the best operators. But you're selling yourself short. There are a lot of boys who wanted to work with you. You've got star power, too.”

“More like sex appeal. I know these guys. All they think about is pussy and that's all a woman's good for.” She ran her fingers though her hair, pushing it back behind her ears. “You recognized him from the picture?”

“Oh, yeah. And I'm sure I'm not the only one.” Pete grabbed another soda and drank a swig from the can before filling half a glass. She opened a file cabinet and pulled out a bottle of Wild Turkey. She added a shot, then set the bottle in front of Camille.

Camille dumped some whiskey into her Coke too, even though she was more of a vodka kind of gal.

“When did you find out he wasn't KIA?” Pete said.

“Two months ago. What I just now found out was that the Agency helped him fake his death so he could marry someone else—a hell of a way to break off an engagement.”

“Ouch. You gonna take him out?”

“You do know me, don't you?”

“We've been around together and I've seen more than I should.” Pete shook her glass and the ice cubes clinked against the side.

“What you don't know is that I've been hired personally for the job. Temp Agency stuff. He was working for them inside Rubicon and apparently the new hussy is high maintenance. He got greedy and stupid. Sold seized weapons caches to the tangos.”

“You believe it?”

“I believe enough.” Camille took a deep breath. “It's a knife straight into my heart. And the more I find out, the more it gets twisted.”

“What if it's been twisted? You know the Agency. They're not exactly in the truth business.”

“Even if only half of it is true, choosing death over me is enough to make me want to help him get his wish.”

Pete chuckled. “I hope I don't ever cross you, but I gotta say, there's no one I'd rather have watching my back than you. Don't get me wrong. The boys working for us are the best, but they all do it for adrenaline or money. You're old-school like your daddy. It's all about loyalty—loyalty to country, family, friends.”

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.”