Homeland: Carrie's Run: A Homeland Novel Page 22

  “Now what?” Virgil said, brushing a fly off his kahi, then taking a bite.

  “Anything on the bugs you planted at Romeo’s house?” Carrie asked.

  “The women were talking. Arabic.” He grimaced. “Need you or Warzer to translate, but Romeo didn’t show.”

  “Which means he’s with Abu Ubaida. He’s inside. That’s what we want,” she told them.

  “What about the intel on the attack in Baghdad?” Virgil asked.

  “We wait till we hear what Langley wants to do. Dempsey’ll tell us tomorrow when he gets back,” she said.

  “You, wait?” Virgil grinned. “Doesn’t sound like you. Getting cold feet, Carrie?”

  “I’ll admit it,” she said. “This place scares the shit out of me.”

  “It should,” Warzer said. “I moved my family to Baghdad, not that that’s so much safer.”

  “I have to admit, I don’t like the idea of waiting. Especially on Langley,” she said. “Once Abu Ubaida goes operational on this latest attack—and we’re talking a week at most—our chance at nailing him and maybe Abu Nazir becomes a total crapshoot.”

  “What do you want us to do?” Warzer asked her.

  For a moment, her eyes searched the walls of the cell as if looking for an answer there. But there was nothing but bits of penciled-in Arabic graffiti, which, except for the occasional invocation of Allah, was amazingly similar to Western graffiti.

  “Go back to electronic surveillance on Romeo’s family. I gave him money. He’ll want to give them at least some of it. I’ll be by in a bit to translate,” she told Virgil, who got up, still holding the tea, and went out, presumably to a holding cell on the second floor where he’d set up his gear.

  “What about me?” Warzer asked.

  “Abu Ubaida is here in Ramadi. I can’t believe some of these Ramadi policemen don’t have snitches. See if you can find out if anyone knows where they’re hiding.”

  Warzer started to get up. She motioned to him. Not sure how to say it, she just said it. “Warzer, do you think these Iraqi police think I’m a whore?” she asked, using the Arabic word, “sharmuta.” “It’s just now, with death so close, there’s so little time . . .” She faltered.

  He looked away, clearly uncomfortable, then back straight at her.

  “Carrie, you’re a very beautiful woman. Truly. For these men, you’re like a movie star from Hollywood. Someone so far out of reach. But also, our world with women is so different. So yes, maybe, a little like a sharmuta. But listen, Captain Dempsey, as a man, I like him. He has courage. But you don’t know him. There are rumors. Be careful,” he said.

  “What kind of rumors?”

  “Money,” he said, rubbing his thumb against his fingers. “Stories about sales of American equipment, medical supplies, ammunition, refrigerators, all kinds of things on the black market. This war is the biggest gold rush in history for companies. Blackwater, DynCorp, KBR. Everyone is getting rich except the people.”

  “Do you know this is true about Captain Dempsey?”

  “I know nothing. I shouldn’t have said anything, except . . .”

  “Except what?”

  “I like you, Carrie. For me, you are the best of America, so good. About you and Captain Dempsey, I should not speak. Only”—he hesitated—“I think you are very lonely.”

  She was talking with the police chief, Hakim Gassid, about informants when Virgil came and got her.

  “You better come see this,” he said.

  She followed him back to the cell where he kept his equipment. On his laptop, he showed her two interior scenes in the entranceway and main room of Romeo’s family’s house.

  “This was last night,” he said, rewinding the footage, people making gestures and moving backward. Then he started playing it forward, with Romeo coming into the house.

  She watched as Romeo came into the entryway and then into the main room. As in most of Ramadi, there was no electricity and the rooms were lit with lanterns and candles. She listened as he greeted his wife and mother and then cradled his children in his arms. Like most Iraqi homes, the furniture was sparse and set along the walls, a carpet on the main room’s floor. So far, everything and the conversation seemed normal, except she noticed he kept looking around. At one point, he got up and picked up a lamp and looked at it.

  He’s looking for bugs, she thought. He knows. Of course he knows. Idiot, she thought, mentally kicking herself. First, he’s not stupid, and second, someone, some neighbor or extended family member, must’ve spotted Virgil, who even on his best disguise day couldn’t pass for a Kurd, not that people wouldn’t wonder what a Kurd was doing in Ramadi.

  She watched him give his wife some or all of the money she’d given him—impossible to tell—and whisper something in her ear she couldn’t hear. And in the distance, even on the soundtrack, she could hear gunfire. As they watched, Carrie quietly translated what she could hear.

  They watched Romeo go to the side of the room, turn over the corner of a carpet, pull up a board from the floor and take out an AKM assault rifle. He put the floorboard back and started to check the AKM.

  The children came back; he talked with them and let them climb over him. The little boy tried to pick up the AKM and Romeo smiled and showed him how to hold it and aim. Then the wife and Romeo’s mother took them away, presumably to bed.

  Something was missing. What was it? She watched the video intently and then she had it. No nervous tic. He wasn’t twitching. It was gone. That miserable son-of-a-bitch liar, she thought. Why did he do it? To gain sympathy in Abu Ghraib? To distract questioners? To help disguise his identity? Or was he just a pathological liar? Everything he said had to be taken with a huge grain of salt. But she knew that already, didn’t she?

  “No tic. Is that what you wanted me to see?” she asked Virgil.

  “Wait,” he said, holding up a cautionary finger.

  The mother, Aasera, came and made tea and brought him a glass. They talked for a bit about the family. He asked her about Carrie, the American woman, and her Iraqi companion, Warzer.

  “I don’t trust them,” Aasera said. “They pretend to be friends, but they are infidels. Why did you bring them to us?”

  “Ama, I had no choice. Inshallah, they won’t bother us again,” he said.

  “Take care. I think she is dangerous, this blond sharmuta.”

  “Enough, woman. Stay out of my business,” he snapped, and waved her away. She darted a suspicious glance at him and left the room. As soon as she was gone, he took out his cell phone and began texting.

  “Can we get what he’s texting and the number he’s calling?” Carrie asked Virgil.

  “That’s not the phone we gave him. Baghdad Station can probably pick it up from Iraqna’s cell COMINT. AQI may have their own functioning cell station. Maybe we can pick it up from the Iraqna company and I can get it from them, but it’ll take a couple of hours.”

  “Let’s do it,” she said, and started to get up.

  “Wait,” he said, stopping her. He sped the video up so that about an hour had gone by when suddenly, she heard sounds from outside on the video and saw Romeo stand up. His wife, Shada, looked at him and asked who it could it be at this hour. He started to ready the AKM, then put it down on the chair and motioned for her to answer the door. He followed her to the entryway.

  As Shada opened the door, four mujahideen with automatic weapons, she assumed AQI, burst in past her, followed by Abu Ubaida himself. She recognized him from the souk.

  “It is late, my brother,” Romeo started to say, but Abu Ubaida cut him off.

  “You have to come now. He wants to see you,” Abu Ubaida said.

  “But my family—I promised them I’d stay home tonight,” Romeo said, gesturing at Shada and his mother, who came into the room.

  “Are you sure you want them involved in this, Walid? He has questions, brother. So do I,” Abu Ubaida said as the four men hustled Romeo out of the house. On the video, Carrie could clearly hear the so
und of car doors slamming and someone driving away as the two women just stood there, staring at the door. Virgil stopped the video.

  “He’s blown, isn’t he?” Virgil said.

  “Yes, but did you hear what Abu Ubaida said?” she said.

  “That was him, wasn’t it?”

  “Hell yes, it was him. Do you realize what this means? He said, ‘He wants to see you.’ There’s only one person who can give Abu Ubaida orders: Abu Nazir himself! We’ve got ’em both! Both in the same place at the same time! We call in a drone and we can eliminate both of them, once and for all! Virgil, you’re a genius!” she said, and hugged him. “Does he still have the cell phone we gave him?”

  Virgil nodded. “So far,” he said.

  “So we can track him?”

  “Have a look,” he said, opening another window on his laptop and showing her a pulsing dot superimposed on a Google satellite image of Ramadi. It appeared to be on Highway 10 in al-Ta’mim District in the western part of the city, south of the canal.

  “Do we know where that is?” she asked.

  “I asked one of the policemen. He says his best guess is that it’s the porcelain factory. He says it’s ruined now because of the fighting, but it used to make sinks, toilet bowls, stuff like that.”

  “We’ve got them,” she breathed. “We need to call in a strike.”

  Virgil frowned. “Unless it’s a trap,” he said.

  It was like a slap in the face. Of course, what was she thinking?

  “What time was the video showing them coming and getting Romeo?” she asked.

  “A little after midnight.”

  She looked at her watch. It was just after eight A.M. So Romeo had been with Abu Ubaida and also, possibly, Abu Nazir for seven to eight hours. Or maybe not. She had to admit there was also the possibility that Abu Ubaida had split from Abu Nazir and that his comments to Romeo had been a ploy. Abu Ubaida had to have found the cell phone she had given Romeo. That cell phone was still on and Abu Ubaida had to assume it was being tracked.

  No question, the probability was huge that Virgil was right. It was a trap. They might have been torturing Romeo this very second, if he wasn’t dead already. They wouldn’t have to torture him much for him to tell them everything he knew about Zahaba, the blond Arabic-speaking female CIA agent and her Iraqi sidekick. She felt queasy. It would make her al-Qaeda’s number one target in all of Iraq. Not to mention, Romeo was her asset, her responsibility. She’d put him into this situation.

  Unless Abu Ubaida still trusted Romeo. In which case, there was a chance that Abu Ubaida had been telling the truth to Romeo and they could still kill both Abu Ubaida and Abu Nazir today. Although she had to admit, the way that Abu Ubaida had spoken to Romeo certainly didn’t sound like he trusted him. What was it Romeo had said to her about Abu Ubaida in the teahouse? He doesn’t trust anyone. Anyone he doesn’t trust, he kills.

  So which was it? Time to decide, Carrie.

  If she called in a drone strike, Romeo would die too, along with whoever was with him in the porcelain factory. If it meant getting Abu Ubaida and maybe Abu Nazir, stopping the assassinations and a civil war that could mean tens of thousands of lives, it was worth it. Romeo was collateral damage.

  But if it was a trap, it meant they knew they had to stop her. Tracking works both ways; the thought stopped her dead. Had they been tracking her?

  “Even if it is a trap, we need to get to the Marine commander and have him order up an attack on the factory,” she told Virgil, motioning for him to follow. As she headed for the stairs, she saw Warzer coming up, his face twisted.

  “Carrie,” he said. “I’m sorry. Truly.”

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “IED. On Highway 11 outside Fallujah. Dempsey’s dead.”

  CHAPTER 31

  Al-Ta’mim, Ramadi, Iraq

  It was the young Marine, Lance Corporal Martinez, who spotted it. A thin metal tube almost completely hidden under some debris in the middle of the street, just sticking out of the pavement.

  “Probably pressure trigger,” he said. He had stopped their armored Humvee just two feet short of it. Another half second and they would have gone over it, and that would have been the end of her. They were all living on borrowed time, Carrie thought, wiping her forehead with her sleeve. The temperature was already in the high nineties. She wore an oversized Marine utility uniform with a desert camouflage pattern, her abaya and personal things in a backpack she kept next to her on the seat.

  They were trying to make their way to the Government Center, where the regional Iraqi Provisional Government, protected by the 3/8 Marines—Third Battalion, Eighth Regiment—were headquartered in Ramadi. She had thought Ramadi was the deadliest place on the planet, but this part of the city was like something out of a World War II documentary. Not a single building was left intact; nothing was functioning, and nothing moved on the streets except a lone skeletal cat walking atop a pile of garbage. Everywhere she looked, there were shattered buildings, the rusting hulks of destroyed vehicles, debris and rotting garbage.

  Martinez backed the vehicle up a few feet, then carefully drove around the metal tube, and they continued down the empty street. Virgil and Warzer, in the backseats, scanned the ruined buildings and rubble for snipers, while Carrie, in the front passenger seat, tried to hold it together, her hands trembling.

  She had killed Dempsey, she kept thinking. The whole operation was crazy, but with the battle ramping up in Ramadi, Abu Ubaida about to move on Baghdad and all her doubts about Romeo, who was at the least a double agent, sending him down Highway 11 had to have been a suicide mission. If she had been tracking Romeo to get to Abu Ubaida, it was also possible Abu Ubaida might have been doing the same, using Romeo to track her and her team.

  Except what else could she do? A pair of assassinations that would launch a civil war was about to start. Romeo wouldn’t have lied about it because if it didn’t happen, she would have destroyed him and his family just by having the Marines be nice and help them.

  There was no choice. She had to get the intel to Langley. Nothing else mattered. Dempsey had been a Marine. He would understand that, she told herself. Only now Abu Ubaida and maybe Abu Nazir were within striking distance of their goal—and Dempsey was dead.

  “Where? What happened?” she had asked Warzer, so stunned she could barely breathe.

  “According to the Iraqi security force, it was just a few kilometers before the bridge into Fallujah. That empty stretch of Highway 11 between the Duban Canal and Lake Habbaniya. Something on the road made Dempsey slow down and when he did, they detonated an IED. They said it left a crater four meters deep in the highway. I don’t think there was much left.” Warzer grimaced.

  Oh God, oh God, she thought. And then the question she couldn’t help asking.

  “Any idea if it was random, or were they waiting for him?”

  “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 O
ne, 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.