The Faithful Spy (17 page)

“Niner Four Tree,” Takahashi said. “Roger that. You’re cleared for takeoff.”

“Roger,” Jackson said. A cold excitement filled him as he put the handset down.

FAROUK WAVED THE
wand of his Geiger counter over a narrow steel capsule six inches long. The headphones around his ears clicked rapidly, each click a signal that the capsule was emitting radiation. He put the wand over a second steel capsule and again heard the clicking.

Mazen, the mujahid commander, was a giant, the tallest Arab Farouk had ever met. He spoke a rough, peasant Arabic and carried both an AK-47 and a sword strapped to his waist. Since giving Farouk the capsules he had stood quietly by the stairs at the back of the room, nervously watching Farouk flutter the Geiger counter. He fears that he has brought me junk, Farouk thought.

“How many are there?” Farouk asked.

“Thousands,” Mazen said. “Too many to count.”

And with that answer Farouk knew his trip had been worth the risk. Thousands of capsules of cobalt. Allah had bestowed a great gift upon his warriors this night. Khadri would be pleased.

The ring of a cell phone startled him.

“Nam,”
Mazen said, and hung up. “One of our brothers is watching the main road, in case the Americans come this way,” he said to Farouk and Zayd. “But they never do. They fear Ghazalia at night.”

“So?” Zayd said to Farouk. “What do you think?”

But Farouk wasn’t quite ready to share his exhilaration. “Show me the yellow metal.”

Mazen handed him a canvas bag, surprisingly heavy and filled with yellow pellets. Farouk waved the wand over them, and again the Geiger counter woke up, clicking loud and fast. The pellets were uranium oxide, he thought. Yellowcake. Slightly enriched, 2 or 3 percent, though nowhere near weapons-grade. Farouk held up the bag.

“You found these in a barrel.”

“Nam,”
Mazen said. “It was very heavy. We could hardly move it.”

“It was the only barrel?”

“There were four, Doctor.”

Four barrels of yellowcake? Farouk tried to contain his excitement. This was only the start, he reminded himself. They needed to gather the material and then get it to the United States. But there were ways. They would truck the uranium and the cobalt capsules into Jordan. Then to Dubai, or Turkey. East to Pakistan and then Singapore. West to Nigeria and then across the Atlantic to Brazil. He didn’t know the details; Khadri would handle that. But he knew there were ways.

“My brothers,” Farouk said. “You have answered our prayers.”

“Allahu akbar!”
Mazen screamed. Then his cell phone trilled again.

A FEW SECONDS
earlier the Mad Dogs’ Humvees had swung west off Dodge, flicked off their lights, and accelerated toward the barbershop. The Humvees didn’t have jet turbine engines like the tanks, but then again they didn’t weigh seventy tons. They swept down the dark silent avenue at seventy-five miles an hour, the wind pushing back J.C.’s face. He stared down the road through his goggles, looking for movement, but he didn’t notice the small man frantically dialing his cell phone from an Opel sedan.

As they closed in, J.C. wondered what they might find. Probably nothing. He hoped that anyone inside would be smart enough not to fight. The first seconds of a raid were the most dangerous. The Mad Dogs had to hold their fire as they sorted out friends and foes.

BUT TONIGHT THAT
wouldn’t be a problem. Qusay’s alert backfired. By the time his call went through, the Mad Dogs had nearly reached the store. The guerrillas—eight in all, including Farouk and Zayd—could only grab their guns and run for their cars.

THE HUMVEE THUMPED
over a curb and into the narrow parking lot. J.C. saw three guys with AKs running from the shop. He covered them with his machine gun. “Stop!” he yelled.

They turned and fired wildly. Rounds thumped into the Humvee, and another seared by J.C.’s head. Hostile fire, he thought automatically. Rules of engagement permit lethal force. Even before the words were complete in his mind he had put the .50-caliber on target and squeezed its trigger.

Fire flashed out of the weapon’s muzzle. At close range a large-caliber machine gun has unfortunate effects on the human body. One man’s head exploded like an overripe pumpkin; the other two were cut nearly in half. Before their bodies had hit the ground J.C. had already turned his gun on the shop’s front door, where two more men stood, firing hopelessly. This time one survived his initial burst. But not the second.

Five kills. J.C. felt no emotion at all. The mission wasn’t over yet.

MAZEN RAN INTO
the storage room, his shirt drenched with blood. “You told them,” he yelled at Farouk. “Spy. Jew spy.” Mazen swung his rifle at Farouk, who hunched down, catching the blow in his right shoulder. A dull pain spread down his arm.

“I swear to Allah—” Farouk croaked out the words, feeling his bowels loosen.

“Idiot,” Zayd said to Mazen. “Look at him. He’s more frightened than you.”

Zayd pulled a grenade from his belt, ran to the door, and tossed the grenade into the barbershop without looking out. “
Inshallah,
that will give us time,” he said. The building shuddered as the grenade exploded in the front room.

“Stay here,” Zayd said to Mazen. “Kill as many as you can. Farouk, come.”

Farouk reached for his Geiger counter.

“Leave it.”

Farouk shook his head. He seemed to have forgotten how to speak.

“Fat fool,” Zayd said. “It won’t help you anymore.” But Farouk held on to the counter like a charm. He would not die in here tonight. Allah would not permit it. Not after what he had found.

Zayd turned away and trotted up the staircase. Farouk followed, huffing with each step up. But at the top of the stairs Zayd cursed wildly. A cheap steel lock held the door closed.

ANYPLACE ELSE, CAPTAIN
Jackson would have taken his time, brought up his tanks and reduced the barbershop to rubble, then let the Iraqi cops sort through the pieces. But not Ghazalia, not tonight. Already men were on the street, pointing at the store and his Humvees.

After the initial firefight, the barbershop had briefly gone quiet. Jackson had crept toward the shop, hoping they had killed everyone inside. Then a grenade had blasted out the front window, sending a glass shard into his cheek and a trickle of blood down his face. He was more annoyed than hurt; he shouldn’t have left himself so vulnerable.

Now he stood behind the open armored door of his Humvee, his ear cradled to the company radio as he ordered his Mad Dogs into place. Lieutenant Colonel Fahd waited a few feet away, Dunhill in hand. He hadn’t said anything, but Jackson could see the eagerness in his eyes.

The company’s tanks positioned themselves at the corners of the block, cordoning off the stores so no one could enter or leave. Three cars were parked in front of the barbershop, and J.C. had already taken out five guys by himself. Only a few jihadis could be left, Jackson figured. He clicked on the company radio.

“Blue Six to Blue Tree,” he said. “Tree, it’s your perimeter. We’re going in.”

“Roger that, Captain.”

Jackson clicked off and looked at Fahd. “Ready, Colonel?”

Fahd flicked away his cigarette. “As you like, Captain.”

CRADLING HIS M
16
,
J.C. crept along the building toward the door of the barbershop. Corporal Voss, Captain Jackson’s driver, hid a few feet away on the other side of the store’s busted-out front window. The Iraqi cops were a half step behind him, which J.C. didn’t like. They had no way to communicate if something went wrong. But Captain Jackson had ordered it.

The shop had been quiet since the grenade. But unless it had gone off on its own, guys were still alive in there. J.C. poked his head around the corner of the door to check inside. The store looked like a tornado had blown through it: mirrors cracked to shreds, barber chairs flipped over, and two bodies lying on the floor. Then he saw the door at the back of the shop, open an inch, a shadow fluttering behind. He looked at Voss to be sure Voss had seen too. Voss pointed at J.C., then back at himself. J.C. nodded, and just like that they had a plan.

Voss held out three fingers. Two. One.

J.C. ran across the front of the store toward Voss, a motion guaranteed to draw fire. Sure enough, the door opened and a guy stepped out, AK in hand. Voss shot, popping the guy—a huge man with some kind of
sword
attached to his belt, J.C. saw as he ran—in the shoulder before he could get a round off. The guy spun around and went down as J.C. dived for cover behind Voss.

“Go!” Jackson yelled at the Iraqis. The cops poured into the store, firing wildly, skidding on the pools of blood and bone fragments scattered across the floor. The first cop, the lieutenant colonel, stepped into the back room. A second cop followed, then—BOOM! The store shook as a grenade exploded somewhere in the back, sending metal shards over J.C.’s head. The cop who’d been in the doorway was blown backward by the blast. He landed on his back and didn’t get up.

J.C. crept into the store, Voss a step behind him. He heard only a faint moaning from the back room, and he didn’t think anyone could have survived that second grenade in shape to fight. But he wasn’t taking any chances. Anything that moved was going down. Then Captain Jackson stepped past him and strode toward the door.

“Sir,” J.C. said. Too late. Jackson was inside.

FAHD WAS DEAD.
Jackson knew as soon as he stepped into the back room. The shrapnel from the grenade had shredded Fahd’s chest; his uniform, once a powder blue, was stained wine-dark with his blood. Even body armor might not have saved him. His legs were torn apart, the left one blown in half at the knee. Only his face was undamaged, its expression strangely peaceful. He seemed to have died instantly. But in the corner under the stairs another man had not quite stopped moving, a huge jihadi who had avoided the worst of the grenade.

Jackson knew he should call a medic for the guy, insurgent or no. Then he looked again at Fahd and decided to wait. Someone touched his arm. He turned, startled, to see J.C.

“Sir. It’s not secure.”

J.C. pointed to the stairs. J.C. was right, Jackson thought. He shouldn’t have been the first man in this room. He wouldn’t be much use to his Mad Dogs dead. He pointed to the stairs. “You and Voss,” he said. “Go.”

FAROUK AND ZAYD
crept along the roof, trying to find a way down while staying hidden from the American soldiers who surrounded that block beneath them. From the street, the storefronts looked like part of a single big building, but up here it was clear that each store had been built separately. Walls separated the roof of the barbershop from its neighbors. In one corner, someone had shoved an empty cigarette pack and a no-name condom wrapper into a hole in the roof’s concrete. Both were yellowed from months in the sun.

Zayd clambered over the wall to the north. Farouk struggled to follow. He came over the wall to see Zayd pulling on a locked door. Beyond it the roof was flat, no staircases down.

The low thump of a grenade sounded from the barbershop. Mazen must have made his last stand, Farouk thought. Zayd seemed unfazed. He turned around and climbed back over the wall they had just scaled. But Farouk felt his spirits sag. They wouldn’t get off this roof unless Allah himself sent a chariot.

J.C. HUSTLED
to the top of the stairs, where a door to the roof hung crookedly, its lock shot open. Voss was just behind him. J.C. kicked the door open and spun right. Voss followed and moved left. J.C. saw two men climbing a wall thirty feet away. But before he could follow, Voss kicked over a grenade that Zayd had tied to the door as an improvised booby trap. The grenade’s handle locked in place.

“Down!” Voss screamed. He desperately kicked at the grenade. J.C. dropped to the roof and covered his face. The world turned upside down as he felt an explosion so loud that it seemed to come from inside his head.

J.C. crawled behind the door toward Voss, but Voss didn’t seem to be there anymore. At least not in one piece. Something else was wrong too. The world had gone silent. “WHO LET THE DOGS OUT?” J.C. yelled. Or imagined he did. “WHO? WHO LET THE DOGS OUT?”

J.C. stood and tried to fire at the guys who’d gone over the wall, but his rifle wasn’t working. Fuck this, J.C. thought. He pulled his pistol and charged the wall just as two more Mad Dogs came up the stairs. They yelled for him to stop, but he couldn’t hear them. Even if he had, he would have kept running.

THEY WERE TRAPPED,
Farouk could see that now. A crazy American soldier ran toward them carrying only a pistol, as Zayd made a last stand, his AK on full automatic, shells pouring out, the gun jumping crazily in his hands, scattering rounds through the night.

Farouk stepped backward. He wanted to surrender, but Zayd would kill him if he tried. He would wait for Zayd to be shot and then, if he was still alive, put his hands up like he had seen in the movies. He supposed he was a coward after all. But he preferred a Guantánamo prison cell to dying on this roof.

The American staggered but then kept coming, firing away. A shot hit Zayd in the shoulder. And just like that the American was over the wall. Zayd turned toward him and kept shooting. Farouk couldn’t believe that he had missed. But the soldier seemed invulnerable. He raised his pistol and fired, hitting Zayd in the chest, then squeezed the trigger again and again.

Farouk dropped the Geiger counter and raised his hands. The soldier was already turning toward him. “Surrender,” Farouk said. “Give up. Give up.”

THE FAT MAN
was saying something, but J.C. couldn’t hear him. He aimed his pistol squarely at the guy’s chest and pulled the trigger.

THE GUN CLICKED,
and Farouk waited for his chest to explode, for the blackness—or whatever happened next—to take him. He ought to feel close to Allah right now. Instead he felt very far away.