Terminal Impact Page 16

  Likewise, others from outside the Sunni Muslim world came to this united jihad. Pilgrims of other Islamic sects from Europe, the West, and the Far East. Together, they shared the common dream of an Arab-led Islamic state and a united world of Islam.

  “How much farther?” a voice in the darkness behind the cab spoke through the open back window, the glass removed to make it a crawl space in and out of the hidden compartment.

  “We approach Haditha now,” Abu Omar answered the man, glancing over his shoulder. “There may be roadblocks with inspections before the bridge. You will have to push those crates closed in front of the window and remain silent until we move again.”

  “My poor eyes and nose will never recover,” the man they called Juba said in French.

  “It cannot be helped,” Omar answered. “The Americans have dogs that can smell people and explosives hidden in cargo. The hot peppers, garlic, and onions interfere with the dogs’ smelling. Trust me. You will recover in a day.”

  Juba and one other of the six men hidden in the box came from Chechnya. Born and raised in the Chechen region of Ichkeria, he and his partner had declared jihad under the flag of the Caucasus Emirate.

  Dzhamal Umarov had become known among jihadists as Juba over the past two years, whom they also touted in their propaganda as the Phantom of Baghdad. A sniper menace to the Americans. He had trained as a sniper in the Russian army, along with his spotter, Khasan Shishani, whom the Arabic-speaking Sunni now simply called Hasan.

  While less than fluent in Arabic or Farsi, both Umarov and Shishani spoke beautiful French, fluent without accent. Thus to communicate with Juba and Hasan, Abu Omar spoke mostly French, interspersed with Arabic, and they understood each other very well.

  After the fall of the Soviet Union, Juba and Hasan had disappeared for several years of their youth to the south of France. They lived around Avignon, working in the lavender fields and vineyards, driving cars and guiding tourists, posing as French natives and students at Université d’Avignon. They maintained an on-again, off-again residence in Avignon, and quietly developed a history with French-citizen documentation, student identification cards, and ultimately obtained French passports under the names Davet Taché and Jean René Decoux.

  Documented as French citizens, they lived well in Baghdad, posing as import-export businessmen from Avignon. Their long-held French residence served as their home office.

  Dzhamal Umarov roamed freely in the world as Davet Taché, and Khasan Shishani likewise lived as Jean René Decoux. They both frequently dined at the French and American embassies, getting to know military officers, contractors, and diplomats, and socialized with many in the Western media. They were both dashing, well-mannered, and finely dressed French rogues, braving the dangers of war-torn Baghdad for profit and adventure. And everyone loved them.

  They both had claimed service in the French military as Troupes de Marine, in the Ninth Infantry Regiment, 9e Régiment d’Infanterie de Marine. Davet Taché even wore a French Marine beret badge above a set of jump wings on his stylish leather bomber jacket. Both he and Jean René wore miniature French paratroop emblems and service rosettes on their suit lapels: veterans of foreign military service.

  The two men spoke, lived, and looked like authentic French businessmen and armed forces veterans, keenly clued in on military tactics and strategies, as well as economics and business. Yet without question, they both lived to die for Islam and the jihad.

  Long ago, they had made it a habit to never speak to each other or anyone else in their native Caucasian language. They spoke French. To the Americans, they spoke English with their natural French accents.

  The four others in back with Juba and Hasan were their driver, Mahmoud, who doubled as a bodyguard, and their three full-time bodyguards, Ali, Jalal, and Yazen. The six men had driven in two cars from Baghdad to Baiji. Juba and Hasan rode in the backseat of their Daytona metallic-blue lead Mercedes sedan, with Mahmoud driving and Jalal riding shotgun, while Ali and Yazen followed behind in the Taché-Decoux Trading Company’s Zambezi silver Range Rover. They parked the vehicles with their hotel’s valet service, checked in, changed clothes, and quietly slipped away, unseen.

  They spent the night with Abu Omar, enjoying good food and warm company at his farm, north of Baiji, and before first light, struck out for Haditha, hidden under the mountain of stinking produce. In Haditha, Juba and Hasan would train a new class of snipers in Abu Omar’s jihadi army. They would teach the shooters how to hide in plain sight, or in a rubbish pile, in the fender of a car, or in a darkened room away from the window.

  In five days, Juba and Hasan, and their crew of four would return to Baiji, where they would change back into their business clothes and return to Baghdad from their trip up the Tigris buying ancient artifacts and jewelry, family heirlooms that dated back a thousand years.

  —

  A baker’s dozen Iraqi soldiers wearing drab green flak jackets and dull green helmets backed up four Haditha policemen, similarly dressed, who ran the Route 19 roadblock a half mile east of the bridge across the Euphrates River that entered the city. The same bridge where just more than a year ago, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had murdered a score of leading citizens and their sons, terrorizing the remainder of the city’s leaders to fall in line behind al-Qaeda Iraq. It was the same day that Jack Valentine had taken his shot at Zarqawi and missed.

  Backing up the squad of Iraqi soldiers and four policemen running the roadblock, First Sergeant Alvin Barkley sat behind an M2 .50 caliber machine gun atop an up-armored Humvee with a reinforcing ring of sandbags piled around the gun turret. He and twenty-two of his company of Marines had come here today to ferret out a reported influx of enemy fighters and arms resupply.

  By State Department agreement with regional and national political leadership, Iraqi soldiers and police had to run the roadblock with American forces as support on request. Not Alvin Barkley’s idea of how to run security. Too many holes in the net. Too many Iraqi cousins let slide without a look. Too many trusted friends waved through.

  The Marine wiped sweat from his eyes with the back of his hand before he looked through his green-rubber-covered binoculars at the approaching truck. He began rolling the focus knob with his fingertip as he watched it come closer.

  Through the mirage, dancing heat waves, and dust-devil swirls, Barkley brought into focus the cab and the two people riding inside the rust-bucket old rig tipping and tilting its towering load as it rattled along the rough road. He sharpened the focus on the gray-bearded old Haj behind the steering wheel. Then he put eyes on the teenage girl riding on the passenger side, a Muslim shawl over her head, draped loosely to allow airflow around her face.

  Young. Pretty. Out of place with the grizzled old man behind the steering wheel.

  “Sergeant Padilla,” Alvin Barkley called down to a Marine with a Belgian Malinois working dog on a leash, “you and Rattler get ready. We got a live one coming our way.”

  “Roger that,” Jorge Padilla answered. He tightened his grip to short-safety on Rattler’s leash, taking a wrap halfway down the lead. Cued, the big black-and-brown brindle Belgian braced, just enough to let his handler know he stood ready to work.

  Rattler had a full set of titanium teeth that replaced most of his original choppers, installed one by one in the several years after he had finished his basic training at Lackland Air Force Base, San Antonio, Texas. A land shark’s land shark, his aggressive bite in the attack mode had eventually broken all of his original canines and uprooted several molars.

  When Rattler clamped on, he did not let go, sometimes breaking teeth but never relenting. Although the titanium implants served the dog well, some of them also gave way under his enthusiasm and also required replacement. Thus, veterinary dental specialists had to devise a way to more substantially anchor Rattler’s titanium teeth, and resorted to titanium reinforcing rods and screws anchored to his skull bones, and instal
led larger, stronger teeth to withstand his fierce bite.

  Now with his mouth filled with the oversized sparkling silver, nearly indestructible metal teeth, giving Rattler a hellish smile on his mostly black face, he could now, quite literally, tear the fenders off a Honda or rip the arms off a man.

  The Malinois wore a Marine Corps desert-pixel-camouflage tactical vest with his corporal rank insignia stitched on its sides. His working dog uniform. Sergeant Padilla had Rattler’s name and USMC embroidered just below the two chevrons and crossed rifles.

  As military working dogs go, Rattler performed at the top of the game, a total land shark, living for the “Kong,” his chewy red-rubber-ball toy that his handler, his “Kong Dispenser,” used to reward him after every task. Rattler loved his job, loved the “Kong,” but loved Sergeant Jorge Padilla most of all. They had lived as inseparable partners for the past five years of the dog’s six years of life. And now Rattler smiled with anticipation of the game. His tongue hanging out, teeth glittering in the sun, lopping drool off his lips.

  Alvin Barkley looked down, admiring the sleek but muscular dog with just the right amount of drop in his hips to win anybody’s Belgian show. He could breach nearly any barrier, or quickly find a way around it, and had a special knack of leaping through windows. Best yet, the athletic animal had smarts that rivaled many human Marines. Perhaps surpassed even a few in Barkley’s company.

  The first sergeant reckoned that having Rattler around gave his Marines an incalculable edge on the often-hazardous road-guard duty.

  His long Dan Dennehy custom-made Bowie strapped to his leg, opposite his special-ordered Lippard Model 1911A2 .45 caliber Close Quarters Battle Pistol tied to his other leg, Alvin Barkley slid low behind the big machine gun and aimed the muzzle right at Abu Omar’s ugly face.

  “Open your blouse,” Omar Bakr al-Nasser ordered Giti Sadiq as he pushed on the brake pedal. The worn-out pads squeaked and ground metal to metal against the drums as the towering old truck rolled to a stop.

  “No!” the girl protested without thinking, reacting immediately modest, and clutched the top of the simple, gray-cotton shirt that she wore. Then she took her shawl and wrapped it tight around her head and shoulders, gripping it firmly around her, but now realizing and dreading the abuse she knew would come.

  Abu Omar looked hard at her, his lips curled. “Do it now!”

  Tears filled Giti’s eyes as she released the shawl, so that if fell open, loose again, away from her ample breasts. Then, one by one, she unbuttoned the blouse and untied the chemise she wore beneath the shirt, so that her bare breasts showed easily to anyone who might look inside the truck.

  Not satisfied that she showed enough, the old devil reached across the cab and gave the girl’s blouse and undergarment a yank open. “You sit there now, so they can see what they like,” he told her. “Stop your sniveling . . . and smile!”

  When the first Haditha cop stepped on the running board and looked inside the cab, he immediately saw the girl sitting there with her blouse opened. He motioned for another policeman to go to the other side and check it out.

  Then, smiling two gold front teeth at Abu Omar, he said, “What is this, grandfather?”

  “A servant,” Omar said, and gave the cop a nasty smile in return. “She does my bidding. Anything.”

  “Anything?” the cop asked, sweat popping on his face, and he brushed his black moustache with the back of his hand as he looked hard at Giti’s breasts rising and falling as her breathing increased.

  She looked straight ahead and put her mind back in Al-Shirqat. Her childhood. Playing with the new goat kids, petting them and cuddling them, and her father scolding her for doing it.

  “Do not fall in love with them, Giti,” he had said. “Soon enough they will be meat on our table.”

  It made her cry, and now tears filled her eyes.

  “Smile for them, girl,” Omar ordered her, and she did her best to do it.

  “Look this way,” the cop on the passenger side said, from the running board, his head inside the cab only inches from her. “Come on,” and he pulled her face toward him with his fingers.

  He smelled terrible, rank body odor, and his breath rotten like his teeth, caked with crud from decay.

  Giti forced a smile at him, then turned her eyes back to the front, where she saw an American Marine with a big knife strapped to his leg walking with another Marine and a fearful-looking dog. Her heart began to pound.

  Inside the plywood box beneath the stacks of vegetables, Dzhamal Umarov, known among al-Qaeda as Juba and among the Americans as Davet Taché, and Khasan Shishani, known as Hasan and as the Frenchman, Jean René Decoux, had armed themselves with AK rifles. Their four men, Mahmoud, Ali, Jalal, and Yazen, likewise filled their hands with loaded rifles, all of them ready to martyr themselves for jihad in a bloody fight.

  Juba pushed the boxes apart and put his head between them. “Whatever these men require to look the other way and let us pass, I will pay double. Tell them that. Tell them I will reward their commander as well. I have a good deal of money. But if they choose to let us die here, so will each of them and all of their families, and God will send them all to Hell. Is that clear?”

  “You heard that?” Abu Omar asked the senior cop, and got a nod back.

  “Good,” Juba said. “Now let’s get moving.”

  “What’s going on here?” Alvin Barkley called to the four policemen crowded on the running boards, gawking inside the truck. He could see the young woman, tears on her face and her blouse opened.

  The senior cop, the one who did the talking with Abu Omar, called out to the Iraqi army sergeant in charge of the squad of local soldiers. He said something in Arabic that none of the Marines understood and their Iraqi translator ignored.

  The Iraqi sergeant intercepted Barkley and ordered him to back off and let the cops do their inspection.

  “It is okay. Trust me on this,” he assured his American counterpart.

  Alvin Barkley didn’t like the look of any of it. He could see the girl frightened inside the truck, her eyes wide open, tears on her face, and a smile forced on her lips.

  “Some servant girl this old man has. She’s nothing,” the Iraqi soldier told him.

  First Sergeant Barkley looked down at the sergeant. “Best you back off, cousin.”

  “You cannot take command here,” the Iraqi protested, and now the senior cop stepped off the truck running board and came over.

  “This is an old farmer we know, coming here for many years,” the policeman said. “He only carries vegetables for the market. He’s old. Harmless. Look at him.”

  “What’s in the truck, under all that shit?” Barkley snapped at the cop. “Hell, he could be hiding a ballistic missile under that load.”

  The cop laughed. “He’s an old man with a servant girl to help him. Do you think they will jump from that truck and kill us here?”

  Barkley looked at Sergeant Padilla and Corporal Rattler. “Check out the truck, Sergeant. Any of these guys get in your way, turn Rattler loose on ’em. Give him that ‘Hot Sauce’ command you showed me.”

  Padilla grinned, remembering how Barkley had suited up in the training pads a few days earlier, playing Rattler’s dummy, and he gave the Malinois his attack command. “Rattler! Hot Sauce!”

  The first sergeant had stood a hundred feet away from the working dog, and in a heartbeat Rattler had “housed” the Marine, bowling him so hard off his feet that Barkley flipped in the air and body slammed the ground. It left the first sergeant dazed, and left the men from his company watching the demonstration laughing their asses off as Rattler locked jaws on the downed Marine and dragged him in circles.

  As they approached the truck, Rattler stayed right at Padilla’s side, focused only on one thing—work. The Kong awaited after a good job done, and the big Belgian loved his reward time.

 
The men on the truck froze as the fearsome dog began working around the front of the truck, checking and sniffing first low, then high, and back low as Sergeant Padilla stepped along, the lead now dropped low and relaxed for Rattler to do his thing.

  As the dog went up the side of the truck, one of the cops whimpered, and Padilla had to remind Rattler to focus on the detection work, sniffing for explosives, weapons, and hidden people.

  Abu Omar sat at the steering wheel, sweat beading off his face now. He watched the dog go low, then high, then low along the sides of the truck. The peppers and garlic seemed to be working. He breathed a bit easier.

  Omar said over his shoulder to Juba, “I think everything will be fine. He smells nothing. Relax.”

  “I cannot relax until we are rolling again,” the Caucasian terrorist posing as a distinguished middle-aged French businessman answered. “We will come out shooting, killing as many as we can. Make sure these brothers surrounding our truck know this, too.”

  Abu Omar nodded, and the cops on both sides of the truck nodded back.

  Sergeant Padilla noticed that Rattler had begun acting differently as soon as he went high on the side of the truck, relaxed down low, but changed mood as he went high again. The mood changes were subtle but distinct cues. Intentionally discreet so that they did not tip off anyone but the handler.

  Once Jorge and Rattler had made the circle around the truck and all seemed clear, he led the dog back to the first sergeant and acted casual for the tense Iraqi audience, as if all were well.

  “Rattler alerted all the way around. They’re hiding something under that load,” he said in a low voice as he walked past Barkley.

  The first sergeant turned and whistled at his platoon of Marines. “Let’s untie that tarp and take down all those crates of produce.”

  “No, no, no!” both the Iraqi Army sergeant and the senior policeman said together. And just as suddenly, the baker’s dozen of Iraqi soldiers surrounded the truck, ready to repel any Marines who stepped closer.