Andrew Kaplan - Carrie's run

“No way to know,” Warzer said. “It could have just been bad luck.”

Except it wasn’t. Not when you were playing with a double agent like Romeo, who could feed intel about her, and possibly her team,directly to Abu Ubaida and maybe even Abu Nazir himself. Given that combination, how likely was it that it was random? The conclusion was inescapable.

I killed him, she thought. I am a disaster to anyone who gets near me. Dima, Estes’s marriage, Rana, even Fielding, and now Dempsey. Anyone. She felt like crawling into a corner and never coming out. The loss of Dempsey was a physical pain, like someone had stabbed her in the chest. Except she couldn’t collapse. Not now, not when everything, the entire war, was at stake. Hold it together, Carrie, she told herself. You can feel sorry for Dempsey and yourself later. You have no choice. No one here does-and neither do you.

They drove past a mosque with a pointed gray metal dome that was oddly intact, then turned up a rubble-strewn street. Up ahead, they heard the sounds of automatic weapons firing, and explosions.

Martinez stopped the Humvee and grabbed the SINCGARS radio handset. “Echo One, this is Echo Three. We’re at Red Zone Alpha,” he said. Then he listened and said, “Romeo that. Light the fire, we’re coming in.” He looked back at the others. “Hang on, folks. It’s gonna be like the Fourth of July.”

Martinez put the Humvee in gear and they lurched forward. He stepped on it and they began bouncing over ruts and rubble, pointing at a big rectangular concrete building in the middle of a wide open space. In front of it was a high wall of sandbags. That has to be the Government Center, she thought. Every building on the street approaching it was a total ruin, some with what was left of bedrooms exposed, with dangling scraps of bedsheets and broken picture frames on walls.

As they raced up the street, Martinez gunning the Humvee, the buildings suddenly came alive with flashes of weapon fire and the staccato rattle of AKMs shooting at them, bullets pinging on the steel armor plate. Carrie scrunched down in her seat, thinking, There’s no way we can make it through this. An RPG round exploded in front of them as Martinez swerved, the windscreen suddenly stippled with shrapnel chinks. A bullet went through the open window, barely missing her face.

At the same time, there was an answering roar from the Government Center as Marines at the sandbag barricades and from the windows and roof of the big building poured withering fire on the buildings where the insurgent fire was coming from. There was the loud percussive boom of a big gun. The wall of a building near them exploded in a hail of brick fragments. The AKM that had been firing at them from that building fell silent.

“That’s the Abrams,” Martinez said, talking about the big gun. He floored the gas pedal as they barreled toward a narrow gap in the sandbag barricade and shot through. Martinez whipped the Humvee into a radical ninety-degree turn and pulled up in the shadow of the barricade. By the side of the building, Carrie saw the M1 tank, whose big gun had fired the shot at the building. It had probably saved her life, she thought as they got out and ran inside the building.

Even before they got inside, Carrie was assailed by the powerful stench of urine, rotting garbage and unwashed bodies. She could hear the hum of a generator providing an undercurrent to the almost constant sound of gunfire punctuated by explosions. The Government Center was full of Marines, some at window openings, the windows long since gone, firing at the hulks of shattered buildings surrounding the square. A few Iraqi officials, in unpressed suits, moved like ghosts among the Marines, some of whom, despite the gunfire, slept where they were on the hard tile floors. Others stepped around the sleeping Marines as they worked.

One Marine beside a window opening paused from shooting to eat from an MRE while two other Marines came down the stairs carrying a heavy bucket on a pole that, even wrapped with plastic, reeked of fecal waste.

“Sorry for the stink. No running water,” Martinez said to them. “Commander’s office is on the second floor.”

“Thank you, Lance Corporal,” Carrie said, heading up the stairs. The Marines stopped what they were doing, looking at her as though she was a creature from another planet. As she continued up the stairs, someone gave a wolf whistle.

She almost responded, but the thought of Dempsey smacked her hard, like pain from an amputated limb. Inside she was nauseous, shaking. Was it her meds? I can’t do this, she thought, then realized, There’s no choice. I have to. It wasn’t just the mission, it was the war itself.

She asked for directions from a couple of Marines on the second floor, who just stared at her, then pointed to an office. A hand-lettered sign taped on the wall read, “Lt. Colonel Joseph Tussey, CO Third Battalion, Eighth Regiment, USMC.” There was no door. Carrie, followed by Virgil and Warzer, knocked on the wall and walked in.

Tussey, sitting behind a metal desk, was a trim, medium-sized man, about five eight, his thinning hair cropped in a USMC high-and-tight, his eyes the pale blue of Arctic ice. On the wall next to him was a map of Ramadi with colored pins in it. His look, when they walked in, suggested they were as welcome in his office as a plague of locusts.

“Good morning, Colonel. I’m Carrie Mathison. This is Virgil Maravich and Warzer Zafir. We were working with-” She was about to say “Captain Dempsey” but couldn’t get the words out. It was all she could do not to cry like a girl in front of this grim-looking Marine officer.

“What the hell are you people doing in the middle of a battlefield?” Tussey said. “My men don’t have time to play nursemaid.”

“We don’t need hand-holding. But I am going to need a number of your men and some support, including a drone,” she said.

“I don’t know who the hell you think you are coming in here, but we’ve got a battle on our hands and the only thing I’m going to allow you people to do is hunker down till we can figure a way to get you the hell out of Ramadi-and my hair. Dismissed,” he growled, and started typing on his laptop computer.

Warzer started to leave but Carrie motioned to him to stay. After a minute, Tussey looked up.

“Why are you people still standing here? I said ‘dismissed,’ ” he said, raising his voice.

“I’m sorry, Colonel,” Carrie said. “But I’m going to need some help. At least a couple of platoons or more. And communications. I need secure communications to Baghdad and Langley ASAP.”

“Look, Miss whatever-the-hell-your-name-is, get out of my office now or I’ll have you locked up. And if you think this shit hole smells bad. .”

Carrie motioned for Virgil and Warzer to go outside. She waited till they walked out, then came around the desk and stood right in front of him.

“I understand your situation, Colonel, and believe me, I’m not interested in a pissing contest with you. But before you throw us into whatever passes for detention in this dung heap, let me just pick up a radio handset and I’ll have General Casey, commander of Coalition forces, directly order you to cooperate with me. Besides, when you hear what I have to say, you’re going to want to give me everything you can.”

Tussey exhaled slowly. “Well, ladybird, I’ll say this: you got balls. Sit down,” he said, gesturing at a metal folding chair, and she sat.

“My mission is classified, Colonel. But as of seven hours ago, we located the leaders of AQI, Abu Nazir and Abu Ubaida, the men who are the leaders of the people trying to kill your men this very second. They’re west of here, in the porcelain factory in al-Ta’mim District on Highway 10. Give me the forces and we can kill them,” she said.