Read Online Khomeini's Boy: The Shadow War with Iran by Bryce Adams - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Bryce Adams
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previous night.
Chapter Ten
It was the end of summer in Baghdad, 2006. Adam Malik kicked in the flimsy prefab door to the Sadr City apartment, and Ambrose was first through the breach, wearing dark unmarked fatigues with a .44 in his hand. Malik and the other three marines poured in after him.
Inside the apartment, there was a bearded man dressed like a Sadr City local. He started screaming, “ Raid! Raid! ” in Arabic as soon as the door caved in. He pulled a pistol from the table, so Ambrose dropped to one knee and took him down with three slugs in the chest.
Malik closed the distance and checked the man’s body. As he did, Ambrose screamed at the three other marines, “They were yelling for someone else! Check the back, check the back!” Tesoro and Young complied, while Laurence cradled his rifle and posted up inside the front door, scanning the streets for activity.
Laurence said, “Still quiet out there, but three pistol shots and that much yelling is gonna bring heat.”
Malik had already frisked the dead man’s corpse and come up empty. He looked like any Baghdad Iraqi living in a cheap apartment in a war zone: tired, wired, and old before his time. He was probably thirty, but he looked forty-five. Ambrose looked around the gloom of the apartment. This was his eighth nighttime raid since warehouse 4, and in addition to learning he was a dead shot with a .44, Ambrose and company had learned that he had good night vision, too. Good enough that battle-hardened marines would trust it in a dark apartment in the most dangerous part of Baghdad.
Ambrose gravitated towards the back corner of the one-room space, where a lumpy twin mattress on the floor was covered in what looked like recently-tossed bedding.
He said, “The intel from warehouse 17 was right. This mattress on the floor definitely makes the place look like a safe house.” He pointed at the wall nearest to the kitchenette, where posters of two bearded men glared down onto the table where Ambrose had killed the apartment’s sole occupant. The first poster showed a young, doughy-faced man shrouded in more black than an Amish mourner, with a beard that didn’t quite roughen up his fleshy features. That was Muqtada al-Sadr, the most powerful man in Sadr City, which Muqtada’s militia had named “Sadr City” to honor Muqtada’s powerful Shiite clerical family.
The other man was something new: he looked like a kind, slightly cunning grandfather in dark robes with a black turban. His silvery beard and lively eyes evoked a silver tabby with a mouse caught between its paws. That was Ali Khamenei, heir to the ayatollah Khomeini, Guardian of the Revolution, Supreme Leader of Iran.
“Corporal…” Ambrose said, taking care not to call Malik by his name, “This is the place. This is where our Iranian was.”
Malik frowned, tightening his rifle grip. He spoke through gritted teeth, “There were two seconds between me kicking that door in and you barreling inside. He couldn’t have made it down the back stairs that quickly, no matter who this guy is.”
Ambrose was on his knees next to the mattress, feeling the lumps for anything unusual. He smiled as his fingers slid into a slit on its bottom side. Ambrose reached into it, and felt the crinkle of a thick stack of documents pushing back at him. Grunting, he shoved his hand in further, pulling out what was easily thirty sheets of requisition orders just like the ones he’d been surreptitiously assembling for months from every other intel outfit in occupied Baghdad. All of the sheets had Farsi epigraphy in the margins, written in Sorcerer’s beautiful, swooping handwriting.
But the top document was different: it ended in a sentence fragment, reading, “Consolidate procured materials into warehouse 20, be ready by dawn tomo—” and it cut off. It was all Ambrose could do to keep from crying: they had caught Sorcerer in mid-sentence, and let him slip away.
Ambrose whispered, “Malik, this
Chapter Ten
It was the end of summer in Baghdad, 2006. Adam Malik kicked in the flimsy prefab door to the Sadr City apartment, and Ambrose was first through the breach, wearing dark unmarked fatigues with a .44 in his hand. Malik and the other three marines poured in after him.
Inside the apartment, there was a bearded man dressed like a Sadr City local. He started screaming, “ Raid! Raid! ” in Arabic as soon as the door caved in. He pulled a pistol from the table, so Ambrose dropped to one knee and took him down with three slugs in the chest.
Malik closed the distance and checked the man’s body. As he did, Ambrose screamed at the three other marines, “They were yelling for someone else! Check the back, check the back!” Tesoro and Young complied, while Laurence cradled his rifle and posted up inside the front door, scanning the streets for activity.
Laurence said, “Still quiet out there, but three pistol shots and that much yelling is gonna bring heat.”
Malik had already frisked the dead man’s corpse and come up empty. He looked like any Baghdad Iraqi living in a cheap apartment in a war zone: tired, wired, and old before his time. He was probably thirty, but he looked forty-five. Ambrose looked around the gloom of the apartment. This was his eighth nighttime raid since warehouse 4, and in addition to learning he was a dead shot with a .44, Ambrose and company had learned that he had good night vision, too. Good enough that battle-hardened marines would trust it in a dark apartment in the most dangerous part of Baghdad.
Ambrose gravitated towards the back corner of the one-room space, where a lumpy twin mattress on the floor was covered in what looked like recently-tossed bedding.
He said, “The intel from warehouse 17 was right. This mattress on the floor definitely makes the place look like a safe house.” He pointed at the wall nearest to the kitchenette, where posters of two bearded men glared down onto the table where Ambrose had killed the apartment’s sole occupant. The first poster showed a young, doughy-faced man shrouded in more black than an Amish mourner, with a beard that didn’t quite roughen up his fleshy features. That was Muqtada al-Sadr, the most powerful man in Sadr City, which Muqtada’s militia had named “Sadr City” to honor Muqtada’s powerful Shiite clerical family.
The other man was something new: he looked like a kind, slightly cunning grandfather in dark robes with a black turban. His silvery beard and lively eyes evoked a silver tabby with a mouse caught between its paws. That was Ali Khamenei, heir to the ayatollah Khomeini, Guardian of the Revolution, Supreme Leader of Iran.
“Corporal…” Ambrose said, taking care not to call Malik by his name, “This is the place. This is where our Iranian was.”
Malik frowned, tightening his rifle grip. He spoke through gritted teeth, “There were two seconds between me kicking that door in and you barreling inside. He couldn’t have made it down the back stairs that quickly, no matter who this guy is.”
Ambrose was on his knees next to the mattress, feeling the lumps for anything unusual. He smiled as his fingers slid into a slit on its bottom side. Ambrose reached into it, and felt the crinkle of a thick stack of documents pushing back at him. Grunting, he shoved his hand in further, pulling out what was easily thirty sheets of requisition orders just like the ones he’d been surreptitiously assembling for months from every other intel outfit in occupied Baghdad. All of the sheets had Farsi epigraphy in the margins, written in Sorcerer’s beautiful, swooping handwriting.
But the top document was different: it ended in a sentence fragment, reading, “Consolidate procured materials into warehouse 20, be ready by dawn tomo—” and it cut off. It was all Ambrose could do to keep from crying: they had caught Sorcerer in mid-sentence, and let him slip away.
Ambrose whispered, “Malik, this
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