I've been a Lazy Daisy. I got stuck on this then immersed myself in research for something else and anyway, here's some more Magic Stick. I should be picking up the pace nicely though because I'm stuck on the other story so writing this one is the escape!
Qibla: refers to the direction that should be faced when a Muslim prays.
Zaqquum: a tree that Muslims believe grows in hell. Sinners are forced to eat its bitter fruit (Ad-Dhari) to intensify their torment.
"Lieutenant Benally! In the truck. Now." Baron's breath smelled like he had swallowed all his shares of Mylanta stock. Kai was too far away to notice though, which suited her just fine.
There was no 'how are you' in the afternoon's program and certainly no room for curtsies when she climbed in the back of the truck with the Captain on her heels. Outside the troop carrier, the men broke off the ranks by pay grades. Baron's driver joined the privates who made the trip with their squad leaders while the sergeants huddled together, each group in the farthest edges of hearing range from the forthcoming exchange. Inside, Baron and Kai faced one another in the passenger benches.
"Would you like to guess what I did today?" Kai began to answer. "It's a rhetorical question Lieutenant," he interrupted.
"I had a chat with Colonel Ryan. It seems that the MPs detained a 92 Whiskey last night after he got back from four days leave in Doha. He didn't report for duty you see, in fact he was nowhere near battalion, he was picked up in Kuwait. Of course they let him go this morning when they realized that a water treatment specialist can't do an intelligence analysts' job but I think you know why I am telling you this."
"Is it because the specialist and I have similar name Sir?" The Mylanta dragon exhaled through clenched teeth.
"Identical. What's more the specialist was really surprised to be getting another four days R&R in Qatar because he was just there and that's not the darndest thing either. It seems they can't find the person who bungled not one or two but three sets of orders. Major Waters' XO is on emergency leave. He'd be the one to know but his dog died."
There was no response from Kai, no attempts at blubbering, fruitless explanations, no trembling chins, nothing. Baron's voice dropped to a whisper.
"If I so much as begin to suspect you had a hand in this Lieutenant, if this turns out to be an attempt to…" Baron shuddered thinking of the late Hunter's glory hogging ways and the focus of his outburst changed. "Colonel Ryan left your immediate future in my hands ma'am and I think you are still an asset to this mission regardless of how exactly you landed here. Do not make me regret my decision."
"Yes sir."
"The latest from your colleagues," he said handing her the most up to date dirt that had been gathered on the area. He poked his head out of the back of the truck and found a simple nod of his head enough to gather the squad leaders with him. The trapped air became thicker as the four extra men piled in.
"What's new in Bina today Lieutenant?" Baron asked.
"Everyone's gone sir. There were a lot of jumpy drivers heading out in the morning and a lot more people on foot than the norm. I don't think there's anybody left in town who has the means to get the hell out. Colonel Ghazi's two wives left first thing in the morning and less than ten percent of them were back as when we headed out.
"They have a lookout on the roof of the station and fake policemen on either side of the door. We know Thamir has a reporter with him and it looks as if someone's taken over Ghazi's office so I think it's safe to assume if he can relieve the Colonel of his office, he probably brought along more than a couple of rent-a-cops."
"Ah, the sweet smell of Calvin Klein Ambush," Baron muttered. He looked up, making eye contact with the lieutenant and the four sergeants beside her. "Lyle is still on for tomorrow and what's more he's coming with volunteers from the Red Cross and Amnesty International in case there's a prisoner exchange. They want to make sure we are being diligent about human rights."
"Have there been any changes to our orders Sir?" Kai asked handing intelligence reports that backed her suspicions on to SSgt. Silas to her left.
"No."
"In that case I'd like to request permission to move closer to Thamir, Sir."
"You mean move into town Lieutenant?" Captain Baron asked needing reiteration.
"Yes Sir. Evening prayers are coming up and intelligence confirms the single-officer barracks across the street will be empty for the night. We have plenty of time to move in while they pray and maybe hearing strange noises go bump in the night will rattle them enough to step up the timeline."
"Who do you want to take Lieutenant?"
"As many men as possible Sir; three from first and third squads and four from Sergeants Murphy and Glick plus anyone you can spare to join the guys left behind at each roadblock." There was a silent minute of synchronized breathing shared by the six people in the truck and it stretched near discomfort until Baron spoke.
"Okay." Five pairs of eyes looked at him with varying degrees of surprise.
"SSgt. Silas will help you pick the men. You'll take two trucks. One will cruise up and down the street and make some noise and the other will drop off the men in the blind-spot here," he said pointing out the place in surveillance photos he had in his hand "in case the lookout prays on the roof. If we get lucky they'll rethink whatever stupid shit they are planning for tomorrow and we don't, maybe you'll have enough in the morning to convince the brass that it's time to take off the fucking kid gloves."
Kai delayed her exit after the four sergeants jumped out of the truck when she sensed the unasked question in the wrinkle between Capt. Baron's eyebrows.
"Penny for your thoughts, Sir," she said retying her bootlaces, deciding to stay only as long as her hands were busy on uniform upkeep.
"Ma'am, if you were to…"
"Would you be terribly opposed to say… sight seeing, Sir?" She interrupted like a true plausible deniability guard dog. "I find the local architecture remarkable. I'd love to see it up close, with your blessing of course."
"You should take SSgt. Silas with you ma'am. He is quite the expert in this subject."
-X-
Farooq was Colonel Ghazi's best –only, for anyone into hairsplitting accuracy, lookout. He was also probably the only person to look to him without pity or disdain. Neither man was very clear on just how this had happened and Ghazi, who benefited the most from the ego boosting effect of such respect, was too smart to question Farooq's intent. Captain Baron had been right too, Farooq had too much foresight to pray indoors with his brethren. He had availed himself of clean sand for ablutions and plenty of patience to listen to a recording of Abdul Rauf, whoever he was, singing the call to prayer. Bina's spiritual advisor had been on the first donkey cart out of town that morning.
The lookout, Farooq, was on his hands and needs rubbing sand on his nether-regions when he heard the Humvee approaching. Although he was pretty sure impure thoughts about the little blue sticker on his lunchtime banana were not enough to negate his earlier cleansing, when it came to eating the bitter fruit of the Zaqqum tree for all eternity, he wasn't about to take the chance.
His hands rushed to unsheathe and train the outdated night vision equipment the Colonel had provided from the police's own arsenal towards the source of the noise even though he now knew enough about Humvees to tell that this one could use a look-see in its carburetor. The setting sun bent the shadows awkwardly, delaying actual visual confirmation but he was on the radio trying to raise Sadik nonetheless.
The soldier at the wheel of the Humvee gunned the engine and shone his headlights into the station, making a hard right at the intersection. Farooq cursed under his breath torn between staying in place like he had been ordered and updating the Colonel like he yearned to do. He tried to crawl on his hands and knees to the edge of the roof where the view was better and backed away when the barrel of the mounted M-60 proved too… aimed for comfort. Three buildings east of all his indecision, Lt. Benally, SSgt. Silas and the thirteen men the latter had helped the former handpick, moved into the deserted barracks less than forty feet away from their boy Thamir.
-X-
Approaching the police station under the relative cover of darkness provided a semblance of security to both Silas and Kai but then walking into a proverbial lion's den without helmets or radios and carrying only a sidearm each evened out the Up Shitcreek feel of the thing. They inched closer, attuned to the slightest noise; footsteps, insects doing insect-y stuff, and their own breaths. She could tell where each of the men watching was positioned across the street but that too was little consolation.
Silas tried the door but the scales didn't tip in his favor. Each soldier produced old, weathered lock-pick kits. The staff sergeant pocketed his with gentlemanly deference, turned on his flashlight and watched what looked like a Navajo Indian tickling a lock until it clicked. She stood on her toes of and peered through the slot on the heavy door trying to get a closer look at the other side. He did the same with the advantage of height and nodded. Whoever was supposed to keep watch had outsourced the job to a glass jar balanced on the doorknob; ghetto ADT so to speak.
Something blue in the outermost edge of his peripheral vision caught his attention. Kai was spraying WD-40 on the hinges from a three ounce travel sized can. Silas caught the airborne jar as she pushed the heavy door in and returned it to its place once past.
They'd discussed the visit briefly before starting at which point they'd split goals, betting the men would be distracted with prayer, unable to see intruders if they were facing Qibla on the west wing of the station, and busy for at least fifteen minutes, maybe longer if they needed special dispensations for the following day. He would check out the basement to confirm Thamir's likeliest position, she'd check out the Colonel's office in hopes of finding an outlined index of his upcoming plans complete with all pertinent, signed confessions in the extended addenda or barring that a clue.
The soles of their boots were ghostly quiet on the tile floor moving in opposite directions down each end of the hallway that made up the hat portion of the T shaped building. SSgt. Silas moved with a little more fluency. His descent into the basement was all muscle memory, recalling every detail of the place he had been able to memorize through the six weeks of training he'd helped impart to the fledgling Iraqi Police.
Lt. Benally's acquaintance with the structure was limited to the blueprints she had fished out of a filing cabinet back at battalion but she had noticed the man praying on far end of the west wing, likely the one assigned to keep watch of the entire hallway, probably the one who'd trusted the glass jar to keep its eye out while he made godly peace and so wisely decided to enter Colonel Ghazi's office through the side door around the bend in the wall.
There was enough moonlight coming through the window to rate the visibility as acceptable. The office was plagued with tacky landscapes, outdated furniture, and a tapestry depicting Mecca at Ramadan, typical in all its glory. She was methodical in visual search of each quadrant of the room from the darkest spot between the two windows then squat to check for false bottoms cursing to when each new drawer proved to be on the up and up.
"Oh where oh where would you hide it Rashid? Oh where oh where would it be?" Kai muttered singsong under her breath rifling through the last drawer. She'd been a naughty lieutenant, hiding her very special interest in the Colonel's guest.
She ran an index finger along the length of the slats of carved wood dressing up the bottom edge of the desk and smiled. Her hand emerged from a pocket wrapped around a dark switchblade and she wedged the sharp edge between the seams in the wood on the left hand drawers but it didn't the budge. The right hand façade though, came off once littlest of pressure was applied by pulling the knife away from the desk. Kai reached in the concave six inch high gap and pulled out the black laptop computer inside.
Hewlett Packard might have been tickled to know it was the chosen brand name of worldly gun running, drug trafficking, white slavery sheiks –although if drunk enough Rashid was likely to insist he had diversified in the late eighties. Lt. Benally clipped a flash drive to one of the USB ports on the side and keyed in a long numeric sequence into the password prompt. Thirty-one seconds later, she was starting at a tidy desktop with a picture of Jenna Jameson as its backdrop. There was nothing holy about the way the actress' legs were spread.
The four gigabyte flash drive in her hand proved insufficient. It probably wouldn't even fit Rashid Sabawi's vacation slides.
"Any data file of crucial importance will be padded to 1.45 GB in size." The ubiquitous e-mail chockfull of helpful tips to evil overlords far and wide by was a lot more popular than she had thought.
Kai turned off the computer off, flipped it over and uncapped the screwdriver on her nifty penlight-screwdriver combo, $7.51 plus shipping on e-Bay. She turned the tiny screw, removed the plastic plate and disconnected the hairy gray wires marrying the hard drive to the laptop. It went into a special sleeve for transport and the sleeve into her breast pocket and the breast pocket covered by her bulletproof vest. Rashid's excited voice some doors away was a low, shapeless noise with words blending into one another too far away to make any sense except for the briefest second when 'alhamdulillah' filtered clearly into the room.
One of Rashid's more enterprising soldiers, this one answering to the name of Asad, though Lieutenant Benally had no way of knowing this as she returned the computer to its hiding place, walked into the room. Mid-thirties Asad was one of a handful of more seasoned men hired to keep tabs on the younger fanatics that plumped Rashid's ranks and worked for a lot less money than seasoned mercenaries with large families to feed in obscure villages in Sudan.
He knew for a fact someone was in Colonel Ghazi's office; it was a gut thing and he trusted his gut because it had kept him alive for a great many years. The nagging suspicion that prompted his random check was not based in suspicions that his sophomoric trick with the glass jar had been ineffective. Oh no. He was there because he knew this was the likeliest location for Rashid's petty cash –half a mil in hundreds and fifties, and if the shifty radio operator or even British born reporter for Al-Jazeera were skimming cash, they'd have to cut him into the deal. His favorite wife really wanted a Juicy Couture track suit and at $98 bucks a pop, He was very much into overtime.
Asad moved in on the desk with his finger on the trigger of his AK. He did so cautiously, planning to surprise Sadik with his pimply hands on the money but jumped back dumbfounded when he recognized an American uniform on Lieutenant Benally squatting behind the desk with a silenced pistol drawn in her right hand and a plank of wood in the left. He had time to aim and pull the trigger but not to react when the AK jammed and the lieutenant lurched forward, ramming the vicinity of his robed knees with her whole body causing him to fall back on his elbows.
The rifle fell just out of reach, by Kai's equally estranged handgun. She swung the wood at his head. It missed by a half inch when Asad squirmed out of the way and onto her. They reached and grabbed each other's necks. His grip on her neck was better than hers. She tried to turn her head, to bite him, to get him off her before he could have enough time to think to yell for help. One man was still doable. However many were busy telling Allah all about what they were planning to do in his name… that was Shitcreek.
She would have kissed Silas when he pulled Asad off of her. She would have kissed him for a lot less but the whole hide-saving bit was about as good an excuse as any. Asad's surprised scream came out as a muted trill in SSgt. Silas' chokehold as the latter pulled the former to his feet. Kai recouped her gun and returned the façade to the foot of the Colonel's desk when Asad went limp in Silas' grip. It was harder to gauge weight and build of a man in a dress. Silas loosened his arm muscles slightly and realized, a second too late at least for Asad's sake, that doing so had been a mistake.
The sound of the casing hitting the tile was louder than the single shot from Kai's silenced pistol. Silas saw the suppressor and looked down at her holstered M9 when he recognized a much lighter P22 in her hand. He wiped the dead man's blood off his face as more of it ran down to his bulletproof vest and began dragging him behind the desk. Lt. Benally hiked up Asad's shirt and removed his thin prayer rug from around his waist. She used it to wipe the blood spatter on the floor and then wrap the bloody head. They made it back across the street in fifty eight seconds flat without a single word said.
Silas had never been happier to see his dreadful helmet or his rifle as when he fell beside Pvt. Dumphy who'd been keeping watch on both and began getting the equipment back on. It took the young private a beat to see the blood on his sergeant and he jumped him, straddling the older man on the floor in order to check for injuries.
"Are you wounded Sergeant?" He yelled hysterically trying to get the stained body armor off him and shaking his half-secured helmet.
"Dim, stop," Silas yelled back at seemingly deaf ears. Dumphy kept pawing at his clothes. "Dim, stop it goddamnit, it's not my blood," he added slapping him hard across the face. "It's not my goddamned blood."
Pvt. Dumphy rolled off SSgt. Silas with his cheeks glowing red in the darkness. There was too much tension in the room for laughter to take ease the awkwardness. Lt. Benally finished with her helmet. She slipped her longer, heavier M16 over her head.
"Listen up. You, you and you," she said pointing at men with each pronoun," are staying here. You two stick to your windows and you cover that door; everyone else, we've got seconds to get across the street with SSgt. Silas.
"You two," she continued speaking to the men who would stay behind. "Don't you fucking shoot at anybody in an Iraqi Police uniform unless you can see his face, in fact that goes for all of you. Thamir, the Colonel and Rashid will be taken alive, no ifs ands of buts about it. Rashid is tall, clean shaven about 180 pounds. He has light eyes. He, especially, better not be dead in the morning."
Kai tapped Pvt. King in his right shoulder as he joined the Indian file making its way out of the room.
"Not you," she said. "I want you on the roof, behind cover. Soon as you hear the first shot fired I want you to take out their lookout. I don't care if it takes a grenade and they get a new skylight; I want that fucker dead."
"Yes ma'am."
Pvt. Avery King didn't have to wait very long at all.
Well then, that's that.
Thy Author.