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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.

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.

“There's a big job in Ramadi and everyone's EOD units are stretched thin.” Pete tossed Fields a bottle of water.

“Thanks, Pete,” he said.

“So I hear you've got some information for me?” Camille said.

“I think I saw your man.”

“You think?”

“It was getting kinda dark and he was dressed like a towel head, uh, I mean like a local. And he was with a girl.”

“An Iraqi?”

“Dressed that way, but I'm sure she wasn't one of them. She stripped to get the convoy to stop. She was as thin as a twig.”

“Where is he now?”

“Somewhere here in the Emerald City.”

“In the Green Zone?”

“Yeah. We were packed to the gills, so they had to ride with Rubicon. I knew you'd want to know more, so I called one of my buddies who works for them. I've been trying to get him to switch over to Black.” Fields picked up the water bottle and gulped down half of it, then let out a sigh. “Anyways, my buddy was in the SUV with him. Jimmy said the guy was some kind of a spook. Apparently he and the girl infiltrated the insurgents and things got too hot for them. Jimmy said she was so dehydrated, they pushed in two bags of saline between where we picked them up outside of Ramadi and here. She was skin and bones. She was definitely American from what Jimmy said. Oh, and he couldn't stop talking about how bad they smelled. Said it was all the guys could do to keep from puking. Now I could identify her for sure. I got a real eyeful when she flagged us down.” Fields flashed a conspiratorial smile at Pete. “You shoulda been there.”

“So does Rubicon have him? Did they take her to the hospital?” Camille tried to get her mind off Fields' intense body odor. It was starting to make her queasy and she worried she might not be able to get the place aired out well enough by bedtime.

“Nope. Said they'd be fine and they got out over by the al-Rashid. Jimmy said they were real cagey.”

“Pete, what was the name of that geologist kidnapped in Anbar a couple of weeks ago?” Camille ran her hand through her hair and leaned back while she tried to come up with an explanation for Hunter hooking up with a woman in that condition. Her best guess was that he had come across a woman being held hostage and she knew him well enough to know that he would either free her or die trying.

“I remember that. The woman was freelancing for an oil company when they grabbed her. One of the al Qaeda splinter groups backing al-Zahrani sent out a ransom demand, then I didn't hear any more. I don't think they have her back yet.”

“Get on the internet and pull up a picture.”

 

Pete handed Camille a color printout of a studio shot of the abducted geologist. She had shoulder length brown hair and the complexion of a movie star. She passed the photo to Fields, stretching herself to get it as close to him as possible, so he didn't have to raise his arm to take it from her.

“Bingo! That's her.” Fields tapped the picture with his index finger.

“Who is she?” Camille said.

“The article is printing out. Just a sec,” Pete said. She took a sheet from the laser printer and glanced at it before handing it to Camille. “Her name's Jackie Nelson—I know who she is now—she's the wife of a Rubicon exec who tried to lure me over to them once.”

“What's his name?”

“Brian Nelson, a VP for Rubicon Petroleum.”

Camille glanced at the photo again. If she didn't know the Rubicon exec's spouse was a geologist, she would've guessed trophy wife.

“Rubicon does oil, too?” Fields said.

“Their fingers are in everything,” Camille said. “Don't you know the Rubicon story? When Dick Cheney left Halliburton to run for VP, some of the execs split off and formed Rubicon Group. The government throws nonbid contracts at them all the time. Rubicon Solutions is the security subsidiary they started after 9/11 and they've also got a consulting firm that does studies for the Pentagon, recommending the mother ship's services. Then, of course, there's their PR firm that constantly reminds the world that everything they do is really for Third World widows and orphans. Think of them as Halliburton's evil twin. Frankly, both of them scare the shit out of me.”

Fields grunted. “Didn't know that. I always thought they were small potatoes because that's where the guys go when they get fired from us or TC. They're known for being a little loosey-goosey. I know one Rubicon shooter who claims he's wanted in—”

“Thank you so much for bringing this to my attention.” Camille stood and extended her hand to Fields. She couldn't stand to look at how his sweaty T-shirt clung to the rolls of his beer belly any longer and she needed to track down her lead before Hunter slipped away. She pulled three one hundred dollar bills from a pocket where she had stashed them in Ramadi and held them out for Fields without looking down at them.

“I can't take that from you, ma'am. I'm happy to help out.” Fields waved his hand.

“Then do me a favor. Take it and go treat your crew to a few rounds of drinks on me.” Camille smiled as she walked him to the door. As soon as he left, she opened the windows and said to Pete, “Find out where Jackie Nelson lives. And check the hospitals, just in case. I want to have a chat with her—tonight.”

The Green Zone, Baghdad

Jackie Nelson's apartment might not have been up to middle class American standards, but it was the most luxurious place Hunter had been since he last left the States. He'd slept inside plywood walls in the Rubicon barracks and he worked in cinder block houses or mud brick homes clearing them of weapons and insurgents. The walls of Jackie's apartment were Sheetrock and they were covered not with oriental carpets, mirrors or pictures of some bearded mullah, but with dozens of charcoal portraits and pencil drawings of American troops and Iraqi civilians. The furniture was a jumble of Iraqi antique chests and Ikea basics, but the TV was flat panel; the stereo was Bose and he was sure the beer was cold. It felt almost American. It felt almost safe.

Hunter knew he had to be careful.

“Walk me through it. I want to know how you know your husband won't be coming home tonight.”

“You're as paranoid as Brian is. Like I said, we have a system. See these two drawings?” Jackie pointed at a pen and ink drawing of an Army medic bandaging the arm of an Iraqi girl and at a sketch of a bearded spice merchant in an Iraqi market. “When the one with the medic is on the right, he's in the country. When it's on the left, he's abroad. He's out of the country. Don't worry. Brian never gets home at night.”

“And why do you think he'd still be doing this weeks after you were kidnapped?”

“He's a creature of habit. I could be dead for a year and he'd still be doing it.”

“He travel a lot?”

“Constantly. There's always some big secret project. So secret, he won't even tell me what continent he's going to.” Jackie took a glass pitcher from the fridge and poured two glasses of water. She handed one to Hunter, then held hers up in a toast. “To my hero—Secret Agent Man Ray.”

Hunter flashed her a smile and wished he could forget what the tangos had made him do to her. He couldn't believe she didn't seem to have any memory of it, but then he knew all too well the tricks the mind had to play in order to survive torture. He gulped down the entire glass without pausing. She refilled it.

“Don't you want to call your husband and at least tell him you're alive? You couldn't wait to call him earlier.”

“I don't know whether he gives a damn anymore, but it doesn't matter. He's in Uzbekistan and he doesn't have his cell with him. God forbid that he leave a trail of anything.” Jackie grabbed a box of Ritz crackers and ripped it open. She popped a whole one into her mouth and held the box out for Hunter. “I have to shower. I can't stand being like this a second longer. Afterwards, I'll call my sister.”

“Wait a minute. Uzbekistan? I thought you said he wouldn't tell you where he went.”

“I have my ways.”

“Gonna tell me?” Hunter followed Jackie into the hallway and stood outside the bedroom door, nibbling on a handful of Ritz.

“Why not? You're going to disappear from my life forever after tonight, aren't you?”

“Afraid so.”

“I told you I'm a soil scientist. I do forensics. When I was stateside I did a lot of expert witness gigs—tying soil samples to remote crime sites, that kind of thing.” She opened a wardrobe and pulled out a polo shirt and pair of Dockers and threw them on the bed. “If these don't work for you, help yourself to something else.”

“So you scraped soil off his shoes?”

“I almost forgot shoes. Hope you wear a size eleven, otherwise you're out of luck.” She handed him a pair of deck shoes. “I think he's been cheating on me. I wanted to know where he kept disappearing to, so I analyzed the soil. He's up to something in Uzbekistan, somewhere around Zarafshan.”

“You can be that accurate from little chunks of rock?”

“Actually, it's the microfauna and microflora that are the dead giveaways. Well, it wasn't that easy. In grad school I worked summers for Neuberg Mining Corp. We did some extensive studies of the Muruntau deposits—they were trying to figure out the most environmentally friendly way to get the gold out of low grade ore. As soon as the bastards realized they could buy off the Uzbek government and get away with heat-leaching, my trip there got cancelled along with my job.” Jackie took out a bathrobe for herself. “Anyway, all I have here is an old microscope, but I thought I recognized some plant fragments in the soil unique to that region of the Kyzyl Kum desert. I couldn't imagine what the hell Brian was doing there. Uzbekistan has oil in the south, but nowhere near where the truffles are found. So I sent a sample to a friend in Ann Arbor for an elemental analysis. And guess what she found when she ran an ICP-MS?”

“Not a clue.”

“Gold—along with extremely high levels of methyl mercury concentration in the truffles.”

“You're way over my head now.”

“I was dead-on—Uzbekistan, Muruntau mines, somewhere near Zarafshan. The Soviets were shameless in using mercury in the mining process—that sample could only have been from a gold mine. And one of my old professors confirmed it was the Kyzl Kum truffle.” Jackie walked into the bathroom and grabbed a towel. “I still think Brian's been cheating on me—even if he's doing it in an old gold mine.”

He followed her to the bathroom doorway. “Uzbekistan, huh? You're damn good.”

“I'm damn bored.” Jackie turned on the shower with Hunter watching. “You keep standing there. You planning on joining me or something?” she said in a way that made him think she was flirting with him.

She was one messed up lady and Hunter realized he needed to move on before she latched onto him even more.

“I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be following you. I was curious about what you were saying and I wasn't thinking.” He started to shut the door, then paused. “So your husband works for some kind of a oil company?”

“Yup. Rubicon Petroleum.”