Andrew Kaplan - Carrie's run

“Thanks, Corporal. We’ll do that,” she said, and, putting her abaya head covering and veil back on, tugged at Warzer.

They got back on the scooter and drove past the LAV and Humvees, Carrie conscious of every eye on her even though she couldn’t see them. The street they were driving on was completely dark now, the only light the headlight on the scooter.

We left it too late, she thought, feeling a twinge in her spine as if a bullet might come ripping into her back any second. A minute later, one almost did. Driving down the narrow street, she saw a flash of light and the loud crack of a shot rang out. Instinctively, Warzer swerved to the side, then straightened and turned the accelerator as far as it could go. He swerved again, slaloming left, then right. She could see the lights of the police station up ahead, surrounded by sandbags and concertina wire, its flat roof silhouetted against the stars.

Warzer raced straight at it, the scooter bouncing on the potholes in the road. She heard another shot coming from behind that by some miracle missed them. They swerved sharply and turned into a gap in the sandbags to the front of the police station, Iraqi policemen pointing their AKMs at them, shouting in Arabic for them to stop. They stopped and got off the scooter. The instant she pulled off her abaya head covering, revealing her long blond hair, the Iraqis relaxed and waved them inside.

“We left it too late,” she told Warzer, going into the police station.

“We managed. You’re good luck, Carrie,” he said.

“I don’t believe in luck. It better not happen again.”

The intel she had for Saul was critical. She had to get it back to him ASAP, she thought, finding the police commander, Hakim Gassid. “Impossible, al-anesah .” He shook his head. “No cell phones are working.”

“What about land phones, the Internet?” she asked.

He shook his head.

“I have to communicate with my superiors. It’s life or death, Makayib .” She called him “Captain.”

“Maybe in Fallujah, inshallah, there is some way. In Ramadi, al-anesah, is only destruction. You have no idea how beautiful our city was, al-anesah . We would have picnics by the river,” he said wistfully.

It was insane, Carrie thought. She had one of the most important actionable pieces of intel she’d ever come up with, and suddenly, she was in the eighteenth century, with no way to communicate it back to Langley. She had to come up with something fast.

“Have you evermade love in a jail before?” Dempsey asked her. They were on a cot in Hakim Gassid’s office on the second floor of the police station. Outside, they could hear the sound of gunfire and the crump of RPGs answered by the rattle of the machine gun on the roof and the AKM automatic fire from the policemen around the perimeter of the building.

“Have you?” Carrie asked.

“No, but I have, in worse.”

“Where?”

“Back pew of a Baptist church in the middle of a sermon. Her daddy was the preacher. Stella Mae. Great-looking girl. I’m not sure whether she was doing it to get back at Daddy or she just didn’t give a shit, but the pew was about as comfortable as concrete and I kept thinking, They’re going to catch us any second and every dick here has a gun in their car or truck. You?”

“Never did this. Sneaking in a little sex while people are trying to kill me. The Iraqi cops must think I’m a whore.”

“They probably wish their own women were half as sexy. Sorry about the setting,” he said, kissing her neck. “You have no idea what you do to me.”

“Don’t talk so much. Speaking of which, I need to talk to Langley.”

“While we’re doing it?” he said, sliding his hand between her legs, making her crazy.

“Stop it. We can’t use cell phones.”

“I know. The last local cell tower was blown up last week. Even if it was up, they monitor cell traffic just like us. I don’t think anybody back home has a clue how sophisticated the enemy is here. Our best bet is to use the encrypted line back at the embassy in the Green Zone. Touch me right there.”

“Won’t work. I need to be here to run Romeo. Stop, wait a second. Wait a second.”

“Write a report. I’ll take it to Baghdad and send it from there.”

“No good. You don’t have my security clearance level. Oh God, that feels good. Wait. Romeo mentioned a VIP coming in next week. An attempted assassination. Any idea who’s coming in?”

“Me, in just a minute,” he said.

“Asshole.” She pulled his head up by the hair. “Do you know?”

“Secretary of State Bryce,” he said. “Her trip’s supposed to be a secret, but if the hajis already know, we’re blown.”

“I need you to go to Baghdad to stop her from coming. Can you do that?”

“Do this first,” he said, making her arch her back in delight. “Like that?”

“Shut up and pay attention to your work,” she said.

At dawn, Dempsey left the police station for Baghdad in his Humvee. Carrie had made him memorize Saul’s phone number at Langley. Regardless of whether his report got sufficient attention from whatever DIA-CIA liaison he reported to or not, Saul had to know what she’d learned. They had to get Secretary Bryce to cancel her trip to Baghdad. In addition, arrangements had to be made to protect the Iraqi prime minister at the government offices in the Green Zone and to prepare for an attempt to breach the Assassin’s Gate. If there were any problems, Dempsey was to contact her ASAP somehow. Someone said there was a repair crew working on a cell tower, but if he had to, he was to drive all the way back from Baghdad if necessary.

Carrie watched him go. There had been shooting all through the night, and sometime around three in the morning, they’d heard a massive explosion over toward the hospital by the canal. Someone said it was a car bomb at the Iraqi police station in the Mua’almeen District. There was a rumor that more than thirty policemen had been killed. As he drove off, she thought, I shouldn’t have sent him. It’s too dangerous. Every mujahideen in Ramadi has got to be watching him drive toward Route Michigan and the highway back to Baghdad.

Watching the Humvee drive away, she tried calling him on the cell phone on the wild chance it was working, already missing him. But there was nothing. No reception of any kind. Not to mention, her cell battery was nearly dead, with hardly any place to recharge it because electricity in the city was so sporadic.

It was crazy calling him anyway; she felt like a total idiot. What the hell was she doing acting like a teenager? She felt strange, disconnected from herself. Was it her bipolar? Or was it that everything they did here was so dangerous you had to live not just day by day but second by second? She felt out-of-body, like she was watching the dusty trash-strewn street where he drove away and watching herself watching.

A shiver went through her for no reason she could understand. She was never going to see him again, something told her. She shook her head to try to clear it. This was crazy. She still had pills from Beirut, but when she got back to Baghdad, she’d find someplace and arrange for more. She couldn’t shake the uneasy feeling, looking at the area around the police station. Forget bipolar; this place was making her crazy in all kinds of ways.

Although it was still early in the morning, the sun barely clearing the tops of the buildings, she could feel the heat coming. Except for the debris and death, Ramadi could have been anywhere in the Middle East. Strange, she thought. Decisions we make for the most arbitrary of reasons end up changing our lives forever. For her, a decision she had made almost casually at Princeton years ago to study Near East Studies because the geometric patterns in Islamic art had fascinated her had brought her to this.