Kurt Schlichter: Indian Country

The lieutenant and another police commando were racing up the hall to rescue him when he stepped out of the Accountant’s room. One of them split off to take care of the girl; from the fury in his eyes, it was pretty clear the lieutenant had seen her.

“Sorry. He pulled a weapon. I had to defend myself,” Turnbull said, shrugging.

They could hear the freed girl’s sobbing now.

“Good,” said the Iraqi lieutenant.

The heart of the U.S. military’s police commando advisory presence in Iraq was at a non-descript compound of buildings at an old Iraqi-turned-American-turned-Iraqi-turned American again army base on the outskirts of Baghdad. It held the hundred or so Green Berets and their support personnel, none of whom were supposed to be there. To the north, on another base, was the official U.S. presence, dedicated to America’s half-hearted efforts against the reconstituting Islamic State, which had been largely annihilated in Iraq under President Trump’s administration.

Turnbull preferred to stay with the police commandos he was working within their quarters – rough conditions didn’t bother him. The benefits of good food and many big screen televisions at the US compound were outweighed by the costs – too many people trying to talk to him and interfere in what he was doing. Plus, the only way to really develop local forces was to embed with them – you had to be there, right beside them, eating with them, fighting with them, even dying with them.

But occasionally he had to come in and, not surprisingly, the colonel wanted to see him. Turnbull walked through the compound toward the command building, listening to the gunfire in the distance. There were a lot of bad guys out there; Baghdad was slowly going to hell again, the bloody gains of the last few years squandered by the feckless hacks in the Clinton White House. He could stay busy here for a while.

Turnbull sighed. It was a pain being at the task force HQ. On earlier deployments, when he was leading a Special Forces “A” team instead of working alone with the indigenous forces, his unit operated almost completely on its own, tens or even hundreds of miles from its higher headquarters. On one Afghanistan rotation, his unit had helicoptered in on October 16th, and Turnbull didn’t see his commander again until December 23rd. Both of them were pleased with that arrangement. But now, there were always plenty of the battalion’s staff weenies and civilian “advisors” around to watch and “help,” and to narc the teams out. If the commander wasn’t so squared away, it would be unbearable.

Things were tightening up on the teams. Less freelancing than before – much less. Instead of running a specified area, cultivating their own contacts, the teams were acting largely on intel other folks gathered. Usually, it was bad. That’s why Turnbull tried to work his own sources, though it was not always possible. Sometimes he had no choice but to take tips from people he’d otherwise be inclined to shoot. The Shia militia, backed and run by the Iranians, had terrific sources. But, of course, they also had their own agenda.

If he was forced to rely on someone else’s source, he always insisted on having a personal chat with the source before going on a mission. What a military intelligence guy or some Iranian spook thinks is important is often a lot different than what the guy kicking in the door thinks is important. And a source provided by an Iranian Revolutionary Guard officer might send you into a trap that ends with your head getting sawed off on YouTube.

Turnbull could be a little more persuasive than some E4 with 16 weeks of HUMINT training at Fort Huachuca. Those guys would talk to the source, and as they were trained, try to create a rapport based on shared values and cultural cues. In contrast, Turnbull would take his .45, shove it into the subject’s face, and count to three. And if the source didn’t interrupt him with some interesting tidbit before he got there, it would be a short conversation.

This was a startlingly effective technique, but it was just one more source of friction between Turnbull and the REMFs, the rear echelon motherfuckers who seemed to live to ensure victory always remained just out of reach. Turnbull found the staff pukes’ short-sightedness tiresome.

They found Turnbull dangerous.

So now, Turnbull worked alone with the natives – everyone preferred it that way.

Turnbull went into the tactical operation center after flashing his ID to the unsmiling guards. Inside, the staff majors and captains glared at him. His clothes were ratty and his unshaven face made him look less like an Army O3 than a roadie for Motörhead.

Turnbull ignored them and went to the back where Lieutenant Colonel Jeff Deloitte was sitting. Deloitte had a cup of coffee and a bad Army haircut. If he had wanted, his uniform could have been covered with so many scare badges –Special Forces and Ranger tabs, Combat Infantryman Badge, airborne, HALO, SCUBA – that they would have made him look like a walking PX.

But that wasn’t Jeff Deloitte. And that was why if some asswipe had tossed a hand grenade into that tent right then, Kelly Turnbull would have made sure he beat his commander to jump onto it.

“I told you I wanted prisoners, Kelly,” Deloitte began. “I mean, not just flunky prisoners.”

“Just didn’t work out that way,” Turnbull replied, pausing before adding a “Sir.”

“It never seems to work out that way with you,” the colonel replied. “You know Kelly, when a commander – and I’m yours – expresses a wish for something to happen, or not to happen, that’s still an order even if he doesn’t announce ‘This is an order?’ You know how command works, right?”

Turnbull just stood there and shrugged.

Deloitte went on. “The MI guys went over the Accountant’s room. The S2 thinks you just dropped the gun.”

“Well, if he didn’t have one, then maybe I mistook his bloody hard-on from raping that teenage girl for a gun. Or maybe I was worried he’d pull a pistol out of the crack of his ass,” Turnbull suggested helpfully.

“You have a lot of anger, Kelly,” he said.

“I have a lot of police commandos whose families that bastard paid to have butchered. Anyway, the rules of engagement allow me to defend myself – at least, they do for now – and I did. I was in fear of my safety and stuff.” Turnbull suppressed a smile at the thought of being court martialed for blasting the Accountant in the nutsack, with him on the stand explaining to the jury of my fellow officers about how the Accountant had been sodomizing a young lady right before the 12 gauge interrupted his party. They’d probably give him a medal.

“Kelly, you’re great at direct action. Great. Too good, because our real mission isn’t doing the trigger pulling. We’re supposed to be training the locals to do for themselves.”

“I can’t lead from the FOB, sir.”

“You also can’t win their war for them all by yourself.”

Turnbull would have ignored it coming from anyone else. And if he hadn’t known Deloitte so well, he might have mistaken his commander’s reticence for weakness. But Deloitte had walked the walk as far as developing indigenous forces. In fact, after turning a primitive tribe of rural Afghans into a top flight fighting force, he and his team had cleared an entire district of Taliban. Deloitte put down his lessons learned in a field manual, and then he taught them in the Q-course at Ft. Bragg. Among his students: Kelly Turnbull.

“One more thing. You have a meeting at 0900 at the embassy annex,” the colonel said. “Clean up.”

“What’s it about, sir?”

“I’m not quite sure. But you’re supposed to have all your stuff ready to go.”

All of Turnbull’s stuff consisted of his guns, a backpack and a duffel bag with some clothes and a single paperback book – some early Vince Flynn novel he had read on the C-17 coming over. No photos, no diary, no iPad. He piled it all into a Blackhawk that had dropped out of the night sky into the base’s landing zone, obviously summoned long before the encounter with the colonel. Turnbull figured it was a temporary assignment or debriefing or something and expected to be back with his commandos soon.