Protect And Defend

chapter 23

MOSUL, IRAQ

The sun was dropping beyond the horizon as the G-5 descended out of a patch of wispy clouds. The city of Mosul spread out beneath them, the Tigris River slicing along the eastern edge of the metropolitan area of two million. Five main bridges connected the old city to its sprawling suburbs. The city's roots were steeped in trade. For centuries it had been an extremely ethnically and religiously diverse place. In the late eighties Saddam Hussein put an end to that. He drove out the Jews, the Christians, and most tragically the Kurds.

Saddam replaced them wholesale with Sunni families who had sworn allegiance to him or were from his hometown of Tikrit. The Kurds were forced out of the city and took refuge in the foothills along the Turkish border, where they continued to build a guerrilla force and live in defiance of Saddam. Since the fall of Saddam, the city had been in flux. The CIA had formed a very effective relationship with the Kurds. Whenever things got ugly in Mosul, the CIA would call their Kurdish friends who were garrisoned to the north. They would roll back into the city and slap down whichever faction was causing trouble. The Shia population this far north was nothing like it was in the south, but that didn't stop Iran from sending in its Badr Brigades to stir up trouble, or al-Qaeda in Iraq from trying to foment violence between the Sunnis and the Kurds.

Rapp looked past the port-side wing and counted the bridges. He couldn't understand why the damn country just wasn't split in three. It didn't even exist in its current state until the aftermath of WWI. For five centuries the Turks, the Kurds, the Persians, and the Safavids had all fought over a piece of land made fertile by the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Then the British and the French came along and decided to redraw the map of the Middle East and everything went to hell. Mosul, thanks to the Kurds, however, was showing real stability. So much so that the pilots felt safe enough to take a straight approach over the heart of the city. If it had been Basra or Baghdad they would have corkscrewed their way down onto the strip. Not an enjoyable way to land.

The plane set down gently and proceeded to the CIA's sector within the base, where the sixty-million-dollar Gulfstream 5 was placed inside a hardened hangar. One by one they filed off the plane and opened the cargo hold. Rapp grabbed his oversized backpack along with two black rectangular cases. He walked to the door of the hangar in time to see two sedans approaching. The first was a Ford Crown Victoria, and the second was a Chevy Caprice Classic. The vehicles were dusty and dented and approaching at a speed that made Rapp a little nervous.

The driver of the first car began waving through the open window. Rapp could barely make out the face of the person on the other side of the tinted windscreen. It was Stan Stilwell, the CIA's chief of base in Mosul. The car came to an abrupt halt and the door sprang open. In the tradition of T. E. Lawrence, Stilwell had gone native. He was dressed in a loose-fitting pair of black dress pants and a gray and black check-patterned dress shirt. His face was a dark shade of bronze, and his black mustache was so thick it looked as if he'd been growing it since puberty.

"Brother Mitch," Stilwell announced as he transferred his cigarette from his right to his left hand. "It's good to see you."

Rapp took Stilwell's hand and met him with a half hug. "How the hell have you been, buddy?" Rapp had known Stilwell for more than a decade. A few years his senior, Rapp had been a mentor of sorts for Stilwell on his first overseas assignment.

"I'm great. Things are good here in Kurdistan."

"I bet. How many girlfriends?"

"A few." Stilwell smiled, revealing a thin gap between his top front teeth.

"You know one of these days you're going to end up with a very angry father on your hands, and he's going to make you choose between castration and the altar."

"No one's caught me yet."

Rapp thought about reminding him of the time he'd had to talk Kennedy out of reprimanding him for one of his unreported dalliances but didn't want to bring it up in front of Ridley. "Famous last words."

"Don't say that."

"I'm just saying sooner or later your luck is going to run out."

Stilwell took a drag from his cigarette. "You're probably right."

"Is everything ready to go?"

"Yep. He's waiting for us back at my place. Give me those bags." Stilwell looked over Rapp's shoulder and saw Ridley. "Hey, boss. How you doing?"

"Stiff," Ridley said in a grumpy voice.

"Good to see you too." Stilwell picked up Rapp's two cases and stuffed them in the sedan's big trunk. "Boss," he said to Ridley, "why don't you ride with Mike in the second car? I don't expect any problems, but there's no sense in making it easy for them."

"Stan," Rapp said as he pointed to Dumond, "meet Marcus."

"Hey, Marcus, let me take those bags from you." Stilwell grabbed the first black case and almost dropped it. "Jesus, what in the hell do you have in here?"

"Equipment."

"No shit."

Rapp walked to the rear of the car where everyone had congregated. Looking at Stilwell he asked, "Did Rob brief you on everything?"

"Not all the details, but I can see where you're going."

"And?"

"I love it."

"What about Massoud?" Massoud Mahabad was MEK's main guy in Mosul.

"He thinks it's great."

"Can we depend on him?"

Stilwell tossed his cigarette to the ground and fished a new one from a crumpled pack. "Massoud is probably the most trustworthy person I've met since I've been here."

"Good. Do we need any extra hardware for the drive?" Rapp was referring to guns.

"No. We won't be stopping."

"Are you sure?" Rapp asked in a doubtful tone.

"If it'll make you feel better, go ahead." Stilwell lifted up the right tail of his dress shirt to reveal a Glock pistol and two extra magazines. "There's a twelve-gauge mounted on the ceiling and a P-Ninety under the dash."

"Good enough for me. Let's roll."

Ridley and Dumond got in the second car and Rapp got in the first car with Stilwell. The first thing Rapp did when he got in the front seat was reach under the dash and yank the P-90 from its spring-loaded grips. The small bullpup submachine gun was extremely accurate and great for tight fights. Rapp slid the breach back to see if a round was chambered and then put the weapon back.

As they rolled toward the main gate Rapp asked, "You been hit since you've been over here?"

"A few times, back when we were driving the Suburbans around." Stilwell shook his head. "It was really stupid of us. Those things just turned us into a big fat target." He glanced over at Rapp. "I won't get in one now."

"Smart move. This door seemed pretty heavy. You put some armor plating in it?"

"Yep. In fact Massoud did it for me. He's making a killing on his auto parts business in addition to armoring old cars like this."

They were waved through the main gate and then zigzagged their way through the big concrete Jersey barriers before they made it to the main road. Stilwell turned north and stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray. He grabbed a clear plastic mouth guard from the dashboard and held it up for Rapp to see. He put it in his mouth and then punched the accelerator. The big Detroit V8 engine roared to life.

"This is the worst part of the trip, right here. It's like the Indy five hundred, but with bombs."

Rapp hurried to put on his seat belt. "What's with the mouth guard?"

"These people are some of the shittiest drivers in the world. One of our guys got in a collision a few months ago. He got hit so hard he bit off his tongue."

Rapp looked over at Stilwell to see if the man was pulling his leg. He noticed him white-knuckling the steering wheel and decided it was no act. Rapp gripped the door handle tightly and swore to himself.