Andrew Kaplan - Carrie's run

“You realize, if Romeo’s still alive in there, he’s a dead man,” Virgil put in.

Carrie thought about that. About Walid; his wife, Shada; his children, Farah and Gabir, who would be fatherless; his mother. I’m death, she thought. I bring death to everyone I touch.

“Romeo’s al-Qaeda. The bastard was dead the minute I met him,” she said.

Billings, grinning at that, motioned to PFC Williams, a skinny African-American twenty-year-old who was the radio operator. Williams handed the radio handset to Carrie and showed her where to press the button.

“This is Thelonious One. Come in, Cannonball,” she said into the handset. At her request, they were using jazz code signs.

“Cannonball here, Thelonious One,” said a crackled voice via the encrypted satellite link.

“You have a go here, Cannonball. Do you. .?” She looked at PFC Williams, who mouthed the word “Romeo.” Ironic, she thought. “Do you Romeo?” she said into the handset.

“Romeo that, Thelonious One. Watch yourself.”

“Will do. Out,” she said, passing the handset back to Williams and putting her arms over her head, scrunching herself down into the rocky floor as low as she could go. Next to her, she sensed the others doing the same. The seconds ticked agonizingly slowly as they waited for the attack.

This wasn’t what she’d anticipated when she’d contacted Saul from the Government Center building via the Marines’ AN/MRC satellite radio. She’d first tried his office number, but when no one picked up, she called his cell. Checking her watch, she saw it was a little after ten A.M. Three in the morning in Virginia. Saul picked up on the fourth ring.

“Berenson,” he said. She could hear the sleep in his voice.

“Saul, it’s me,” she said.

“Are you where I think you are?” he asked. She assumed he meant Baghdad.

“Worse,” she said, and told him her intel and what she needed, including the Predator drone authorization from the USF-I HQ, the U.S. Forces-Iraq, General Casey’s headquarters. “Can you stop you-know-who from coming here?” She meant Secretary of State Bryce.

“It might be too late. How the hell did they find out about that?”

“Remember your training story about crabs?” she asked, referring to something he’d said to their class years ago during training at the Farm, that in a closed intel environment, you had agents crawling over each other like crabs in a basket. “When that happens,” he’d told them, “a secret is harder to keep inside than diarrhea.”

“Can you stop it?” he asked. She assumed he meant the assassinations.

“Have to. Saul-Dempsey’s dead.”

For a long moment there was silence on the line. Ask me if I killed him, she thought. Ask me. Finally, he said, “What about you? How’re you doing?”

“Good. I’m good,” she lied.

“You’re a tough girl.”

“Saul, I’ve seen him. With my own eyes.”

“Alpha Uniform?” AU, Abu Ubaida. “What about the big guy?” Abu Nazir.

“Just the first. We’re close.”

“What about your Joe?”

“I don’t think he’s going to make it,” she said.

Her memory of the conversation was suddenly interrupted by a shattering explosion in the factory across the road, sending debris and smoke flying, shaking the ground under them. Seconds later, the factory was hit by a another, equally powerful explosion. Then nothing.

Her ears were ringing, the smell of explosive was all around them and when she lifted her head, all she saw for a few seconds was thick smoke and dust. Through the smoke, she could just make out that the factory across the road was almost completely gone. The roof that had still been on top of the building, the bullet-pocked, crumbling walls-all gone. Nothing was left but pieces of the fence and rubble.

Virgil was saying something but she couldn’t hear him through the ringing in her ears. He stood up and motioned to her to follow. She understood. They needed to get to the warehouse and identify the bodies. See if they could confirm who they’d killed.

After all this, God, I hope we got Abu Ubaida, at least. Abu Nazir would be a miracle. It would make all of this worthwhile, she thought as she, Virgil, Warzer and the two Marines, Sergeant Billings and PFC Williams, jogged across the road, weapons held ready to fire, all of them looking left and right to watch for any mujahideen .

They made their way gingerly into the smoking ruins of the factory. Fragments of concrete and porcelain and machines everywhere. Above them, no roof, only the blue sky obscured by smoke. And yet, there was somebody talking in Arabic. At first, she couldn’t make out the words. As she moved toward it, she heard the sounds of the interrogation they had been listening to on Virgil’s laptop. The interrogator’s voice and Romeo’s screams. Then Warzer shouted. They went over and she immediately understood. It was the charred, headless torso of a man; by his clothes, an Iraqi. A few feet away, they found the head perched on rubble, scorched on one side, but otherwise intact.

Romeo. In what was left of his mouth, someone had shoved the cell phone. Next to the head, a scorched Sony digital recorder still played the sounds of the interrogation.

“Contact him. Aieeeee! He’ll tell you. .,” Romeo’s voice cried out from the recorder.

“Of course he will. What good is that? I need you to tell me.”

“But he’s-ahhhhhh!” he moaned.

Virgil reached down and shut it off.

“ Ya Allah ,” Warzer murmured.

Carrie’s mind was racing. Who would tell them what? This was something new. But what? She went back and touched Romeo’s body. Rigor had well set in.

Usually rigor mortis kicked in after four hours or so, but in the heat of Iraq once the sun came up, it would have sped up, she mused. Bottom line, Romeo was likely killed last night around 0200, 0300. Meanwhile, the others looked around, kicking over the twisted steel remains of machines, crunching over rubble, but there were no other bodies.

“What the hell?” Virgil said, taking off his utility cover and scratching his head.

For Carrie, looking at the jumbled debris, there could no longer be any doubt. It was a trap.

“Get out! We have to get out now! Run!” she shouted. The two Marines started back toward the road from where they had come. “No! The other way!” she shouted.

Suddenly, as if by magic, mujahideen fighters came up out of the ground from camouflaged holes around the factory where they had lain hidden. In buildings and ruins across the way, scores more mujahideen appeared, their AKMs blasting at them. Sergeant Billings and PFC Williams briefly returned fire, then turned and ran after Carrie. As they raced toward the far side, Carrie saw an RPG rocket flash by and she just had time to dive to the ground as it exploded, fragments shredding what was left of a porcelain sink.

The dinging sound of bullets ricocheting off pieces of metal and the steel support posts of a roof that was no longer there ripped through the air around them like metal wasps. She got up and ran on, running like when she was in college, conscious of the others lumbering behind her. There were bullets everywhere. It was impossible not to be hit, she thought.

A machine gun opened up somewhere behind them on the road. Thank God, she thought. The two Marines in the Humvee were firing at the mujahideen who were now coming into the factory after them.

Ahead, she could see one of the Marines from the other fire team in position behind the concrete and chicken-wire fence on the other side of the factory. He was waving them in as the other Marines in his fire team laid down covering fire with M4s, rifle grenades and a light machine gun. From behind she heard shouts and curses in Arabic as the mujahideen running into the factory were cut down by the Marines. She was beginning to think they might make it when she heard Virgil cry out from behind her.