Read Online Outsourced by R. J. Hillhouse - Free Book Online Page A

to the average G.I. “…they are not on the U.S. payroll. And so they are not our responsibility.”
    â€” Time Magazine , April 12, 2004, as reported by Michael Duffy
    Camp Tornado Point, Anbar Province
    The first rays of the morning sun were turning the sky orange and a distant wail of a muezzin called the faithful to prayer as Camille marched into Saddam’s former palace. It had been a day since she’d slept and nearly as long since she’d eaten. Her body was achy and her emotions were whitewater, churning with eddies and undertows with no clear main channel. She and Hunter played rough together and delighted in pushing one another to the edge in their own war games, but the heat of their battles usually resolved in wild passion. During their last vacation they had spent days tracking one another throughout Panama and it ended in a sugar cane field where she surprised him and overpowered him, though she was sure he would claim that he was the one who had prevailed. They had made love there for hours, the sharp blades of the cane slicing their skin. This morning had the appearance of another game, but his mood had not been playful. Their sparring suddenly felt strangely real. She grabbed a handful of M&Ms from her pocket and popped them into her mouth. The M&Ms had saved her life more than once, keeping her blood sugar hyped when her body was ready to tank. She chewed fast and swallowed before entering the headquarters of the base commander, USMC Colonel Michael Lukson. Camp Tornado Point was still officially a Marine base and the contractors were guests even though they outnumbered the Marines twenty to one. An aide showed her inside the colonel’s makeshift office, one of Saddam’s former bedrooms.
    Camille tried to play cool, but the cavernous room screamed for attention.
    It was a bold play of volume and void that had all the class and splendor of an Atlantic City casino. The original furnishings had long ago been stripped away, but gold-plated gargoyles perched atop green malachite pillars protected the granite walls and marble floors. A recessed archway and blue lapis columns framed a life-sized mural of Scud missiles with flames shooting behind them. At least the Iraqi flags on the missiles had been chipped away. Saddam’s military murals competed with fantasy scenes of iridescent dragons menacing chesty blondes that would have been better suited to black velvet than a palace wall. A beam of light shined onto the floor. She looked up, following it to its source. A mortar had knocked a hole in a ceiling dome and it had missed a stylized Saddam leading troops into Jerusalem by only a few inches. She shuddered when she realized she was standing in the middle of Saddam’s wet dream.
    The base commander had set up his office in a corner of the grand room. File cabinets and scavenged office fixtures surrounded a simple wooden desk half covered by an old computer monitor. A wall map of the al-Anbar Area of Operation was tacked over the groin of one of Saddam’s nymphs. The colonel sat at his desk, across from a man Camille hadn’t seen or spoken to since the outbreak of the second Gulf War when she had quit the CIA. Joe Chronister was the reason she had joined the Agency and he was also the reason that she left it to start Black Management.
    Colonel Lukson stared at her, his thick arms crossed. As was custom when in combat, his short sleeves were down, not rolled up in a cuff. One forearm was tattooed with the Marine Corps’ globe and anchor with the words Semper Fidelis above it; the other arm had the image of an alligator on tracs.
    Camille stood perfectly erect beside an empty chair. “Colonel Lukson, sir, I’m Camille Black, president and CEO of Black Management.”
    â€œI know who you are.”
    The large empty room behind her made her uneasy, but she continued to stand in silence, waiting for the colonel. She averted her eyes. The military controlled