Don Pendleton - Appointment In Baghdad

“This means Scimitar could already be alerted. In fact we have to assume so,” Brognola said. “Carmen is running those cell numbers into Iraq right now, cross-referencing NSA databases. We’re hoping for a triangulation. When we’re done here I intend to fly back into D.C. and follow up on some things Barb has put into motion.” He looked over at Barbara Price whose face was carefully neutral, a sure sign of her displeasure. “Certain operational contingencies we’ve already had in place, in the event that Stony Man was ever called upon to act in Iraq.”

Bolan nodded and sipped his coffee. He’d taken 800 mg of ibuprofen on arriving at the farmhouse and was beginning to feel less banged up.

“What kind of contingencies?” he asked.

“Barb, this was your brainchild,” the big Fed said.

Price nodded and set her mug of coffee on the conference table.

“If the need should arise, we’ve worked out several scenarios to get Mack into Iraq under operational cover. Our most promising cover is dual. We can coordinate your activities through the DNI and CIA. CENTCOM will think you’re Pentagon spooks. Your ‘cover’ for that cover will be employment as private military contractors working for a prestigious international company breaking into the lucrative southwest Asian market.”

“What company would that be?” Bolan asked.

“A Montreal-based firm called North American International, headed by one certain Gary U. Manning,” Kurtzman stated.

“I take it the background check for such contracts was expedited?” Bolan asked.

“I hand-carried the forms through channels myself,” Brognola admitted.

“This means,” Price continued, “that we’ll be able to funnel out special access program funds into legitimate government contracts paid to North American International.”

“Clever,” Bolan stated.

“It is a court of last resort,” Price said. “As far as I was concerned, this was a contingency plan that was never meant to be used. The U.S. government has plenty of assets in place already to deal with conventional problems.”

“But Scimitar isn’t conventional anymore, is he?” Bolan observed.

“No, he’s not,” Brognola said.

The big Fed leaned forward. He nodded once to Kurtzman. The head of Stony Man’s cybernetics team pressed a series of buttons on the table’s console. The lights dimmed and a slab of paneling in the wall behind Brognola slid back to reveal a six-foot HD wall screen. Immediately an olive-skinned, bearded face with blunt features and a patrician nose appeared on the screen. Bolan recognized the man as the individual known as Scimitar.

Brognola took his chewed up cigar out of his mouth and held it between his blunt fingers.

“He realized more quickly than most of his compatriots that no matter what happened in Iraq, post-Saddam, a return to Baathist rule in any form was extremely unlikely. He rapidly morphed his activity away from American resistance into establishing a power base for himself, using the insurgency as a cover with his jihadist allies. His method was, as most effective plans are, simple. Barb?”

Stony Man’s mission controller smoothly took over the briefing. She rose and crossed the room, placing a folder on the conference table in front of Bolan before continuing.

“Initially he set up a small regional base manned by Fedayeen subordinates in the Baghdad slum of Amariyah, along Route Irish,” Price began, using the U.S. military designation of the road running between the Baghdad International Airport and the Green Zone, often referred to in the media as the “Highway of Death.”

Price took a drink of her coffee and continued speaking. Bolan began to leaf through the file as he listened. His fatigue and physical discomfort began to bleed away as his interest in the mission grew with his realization of how important it was.

“Scimitar then withdrew to the west, into An Bar province in proximity to the Syrian border,” Price said.

“He used his Fedayeen troops to control the area, then exploited his contacts with Syrian intelligence as well as secret caches of equipment, weapons and cash to outfit foreign fighters.

“All pretty run-of-the-mill. He maintained credibility as anti-American with both former Saddam supporters and the international jihadists movement. However, Scimitar is no ideologue. He used his connections with jihadists in southwest Asia to begin moving heroin into Iraq. From there he used Albanian mafia connections given him by the Syrian IMJ and the freelancer al-Kassar, to move the heroin out of Iraq, through Istanbul and on to points west in both Europe and America. Ostensibly the funds were used to fund insurgent activity. Mostly it went to purchasing Sunni members of Iraq’s government to give him immunity from scrutiny. He now operates out of a section of the city of Ramadi completely under Iraq national control. He used his connections in the Iraqi government to give up rivals in the area when the National Army moved in. The area, under his orders, remained ‘pacified’ and the National Army was mostly supplanted by local Iraqi police units.”

“Its ranks filled with members of his personal militia,” Kurtzman added.

Price nodded in agreement. “Scimitar owns that city, or that neighborhood anyway. The imams answer to him there, foreign agents take his direction and the police forces are essentially his private militia. It is a quiet sector, a success story for the Iraqi national army in an otherwise blatant embarrassment. He moves funds for operations in Baghdad out of the city and heroin in through it.”

Bolan was silent. If ever a target or network had needed taking out, Scimitar’s rated right up there. The problem was not clear-cut, however. The soldier had adhered to an iron-fast rule during his War Everlasting. Cops were off limits.

“I’ll take down the network,” he said slowly, “but crooked or not, I don’t want to draw down on police officers.”

“Mack, this isn’t the bad old days. This situation isn’t even one of corruption per se. Scimitar’s militia hasn’t infiltrated or corrupted the Iraqi police in western Ramadi. His militia simply put on those blue uniforms,” Brognola said. “In the initial months there were honest Iraqis in that police unit. They were found, one by one, hung by their heels from lampposts with their heads cut off. Look for yourself.” Brognola indicated the file in front of Bolan. “Those uniforms don’t represent good street cops gone bad. It’s more like the Gestapo or some kind of disguise. This isn’t New York City, or even Chechnya. It’s like calling those butchers, the Fedayeen, police officers when they operated under Saddam.”

Bolan sat silently. He considered Brognola’s words as he mulled over this worst-case scenario. When he spoke he chose his words with careful deliberation.

“Scimitar has a network. I’m on board with taking that network down. I’m on board with bringing Scimitar down. But I reserve the right to call this off at any time. If I don’t like what I see going on when we get into Iraq, I walk. That’s the deal, Hal.”

“Wouldn’t want it any other way, Striker,” Brognola answered.

Carmen Delahunt entered the room at that moment, bearing a slim file containing a computer printout. She also carried the cell phone he’d taken from Aram Hadayet.

Delahunt was an attractive middle-aged redhead who had been recruited from the FBI to become a vital member of Aaron Kurtzman’s cybernetics team.

She smiled and nodded her greeting to everyone in the room, then handed her findings to Barbara Price, who nodded her thanks.

“What did you find, Carmen?” Price asked.

“The Ramadi connection is now dead. I couldn’t discover whether that was because the people at that end knew about the raid or because the numbers are changed daily. However, overall the phone was a treasure trove. We were able to triangulate several geographic locations and assign specific personnel to those coordinates. I did a quick run up on them from our files. We’ve got several known players, and it gave us a pretty good idea about Scimitar’s network, if not his specific location.”