"ROUTE IRISH" FROM THE AIRPORT to Baghdad proper was a thoroughly modern freeway, three well-maintained lanes in each direction. From Evan's perspective, the main difference between it and an American freeway, aside from the apparently near-standard practice of driving the wrong way on any given lane, was that from many places cars could enter it anywhere from either side-the asphalt ended on a sand shoulder that usually proceeded without a demarcating fence or barrier of any kind out across an expanse of flat, marginal farmland. So once you got away from Baghdad, where on-and off-ramps and bridges were more common, traffic could and did enter the roadway willy-nilly and not necessarily at designated entrances and exits.
This became a major problem because of suicide car-bombers. In the four days since Colonel Calliston had attached Evan's unit to Allstrong, they hadn't gotten approached by any of these yet, but the threat was real and ubiquitous. On his way through Baghdad this morning, Evan had counted four burnt-out hulks of twisted metal, one of them still smoldering as he drove by after an hour's delay while the powers that be stopped all traffic and cleared the road.
Today his assignment was to pass through Baghdad and proceed up to Balad Air Base, nicknamed Anaconda, about forty miles north of the capital city, and pick up a man named Ron Nolan, a senior official with Allstrong who'd been scouting potential air bases to the north and west for the past week, assessing contracting opportunities. After collecting Nolan, they were to proceed back to downtown Baghdad and make a stop at the CPA headquarters for some unspecified business, then return to BIAP by nightfall.
The round-trip distance was give or take a hundred miles and they had about twelve hours of daylight, but Evan wasn't taking any chances. Movement Control had signed off on his convoy clearance and he had his full package-the three Humvees-out and rolling at oh dark thirty hours. Each of his Humvees had a driver and an assistant driver, who was also in charge of feeding ammunition to the gunner, whose body remained half-exposed through the hole in the car's roof. The heavily armed men alternated roles on successive trips. Evan could have claimed rank and never taken a turn as gunner-as a lieutenant his official role was to be convoy commander, or radio operator-but he made it a point to ride in each car and take a turn at the crew-serve weapon as the opportunity arose.
Today he rode as a passenger in the lead vehicle, in one of the two back seats. Because of the traffic delay, the package didn't pass Baghdad until eight o'clock and didn't make it the forty farther miles to the outer periphery of the enormous Anaconda base-soon to be named "Mortaritaville"-until eleven-fifteen. Even without car bombs, traffic on the road to the main logistics supply area close to Baghdad crept at a near standstill, not too surprising considering the sixteen thousand flights per month that Anaconda was handling.
When they got through the gate, Evan's driver and the second-in-command of their unit, Sergeant Marshawn Whitman, drove for a half mile or so through a city of tents and trailers before they came to an intersection with a sign indicating that the camp headquarters was a mile farther on their right. But Whitman didn't turn the car immediately. Instead, his window down, he stared out to his left at two of the corner tents, one sporting a logo for Burger King and the other for Pizza Hut. "Am I really seeing this, sir? Aren't we in a war here? Didn't we just make it into Baghdad, like, two months ago? Can I get out and grab a quick Whopper?"
***
WHEN EVAN SHOOK Ron Nolan's hand just outside the headquarters tent, he had an immediate impression of great strength held in check. He went about five ten and came across as solid muscle, shoulders down to hips. Square jaw under brush-cut light hair. Today he wore a sidearm at his belt and a regular Army camo vest with Kevlar inserts over his khaki shirt. "Leff-tenant," Nolan boomed, pronouncing the word in the British manner and smiling wide as he fell in next to Evan, "I sure do appreciate the punctuality. Time is money, after all, and never more than right here and right now. I trust the limo's got good air-conditioning."
Evan slowed, jerked his head sideways. "Uh, sir…"
But with another booming laugh, Nolan slapped him on the back. "Joking with you, son. No worries. Ain't no part of a Humvee don't feel like home to me. You know we're planning to stop off in Baghdad?"
"Those are my orders, yes, sir."
Nolan stopped, reaching out a hand, laying it on Evan's arm. "At ease, Lieutenant," he said. "You a little nervous?"
"I'm fine, sir. But I'd be lying if I said Baghdad was my favorite place."
"Well, we won't be there for long if I can help it, and I think I can. Jack Allstrong's a master at keeping doors open." He paused for a second. "So. You regular Army?"
"No, sir. California National Guard."
"Yeah. I heard they were doing that. How big's your convoy?"
"Three Humvees, sir." They were approaching it now, parked just off the pavement. "Here they are."
Nolan stopped, hands on hips, and looked over the vehicles, bristling with weaponry. "Damn," he said to Evan, "that's a good-looking hunk of machinery." Nodding at Corporal Alan Reese, a former seventh-grade teacher now manning the machine gun on the closest Humvee, he called up to him. "How you doing, son?"
"Good, sir."
"Where you from back home?"
"San Carlos, California, sir."
"San Carlos!" Nolan's voice thundered. "I grew up right next door in Redwood City!" He slapped the bumper of the vehicle. "You believe this small world, Lieutenant? This guy and me, we're neighbors back home."
"We all are," Evan said, sharing the enthusiasm although he couldn't exactly say why. "Our unit's out of San Bruno. The nine of us, we're all Peninsula guys."
"Son of a bitch!" Nolan crowed. "I got hooked up with the right people here, that's for damn sure. How long have you guys been over here?"
"Going on three weeks," Evan said.
"Get shot at yet?"
"Not yet."
"Don't worry about it," Nolan said with a grin, "you will."
***
FOR AN OBSCURE and possibly impenetrable reason, they got routed through the mixed neighborhood of Mansour by Haifa Street rather than through the military-only secure road they normally took when coming in to CPA headquarters from BIAP. Ron Nolan's destination was Saddam Hussein's old Republican Palace in central Baghdad, and the line of traffic on Haifa waiting outside the checkpoint to get into the Green Zone-bumper to bumper with weapons off-safe, ready to react-stopped them cold. Nolan extricated himself from his seat and opened his door, stepping out into the street and stretching. Evan, loath to let his passenger out of his sight, overcame his own reluctance-Iraqi civilians were all over the street, any one of them possibly an armed insurgent-and got out as well.
It was late afternoon by now, sweltering hot with nary a freshening breeze. The air was heavy with the smells of roasting meat and fish, manure, oil, and garbage. Haifa Street was wide and lined with three-and four-story concrete buildings, most with at least some of their windows blown out. From the crowd on the sidewalks, including women and children, no one would conclude that they were in a war zone, though. Merchants had lined up where most of the traffic into the Green Zone had to pass, and the street had the air of a bazaar-makeshift stands sold everything from clothing to batteries, toilet paper to money to candy.
Nolan, taking it in, seemed to be enjoying it all. Finally, he caught Evan's eye and grinned over the hood of the car. "We can make it in half the time if we walk. You up for it?"
Evan, reluctant to leave his troops, would have much preferred the relative security of his Humvee, but he also had a responsibility to protect Ron Nolan and get him back to Allstrong, and if that meant braving the streets of Baghdad, this was something different he should do as well. The mutually exclusive options played across his features.
Nolan noticed the hesitation. "Come on, Lieutenant. No guts, no glory."
"Just thinking about my men, Mr. Nolan," Evan covered.
"Hey. If they get to the gate before we're done, have 'em pull over and we'll meet ' em there. But at this rate they won't even be there by the time we're through. And I'd like to make it back to BIAP before dark."
Their Humvee moved forward about six feet and stopped again.
"Either way," Nolan said, "I'm going. You with me?"
"Sure." Evan leaned inside the passenger window and told Marshawn what he was doing.
"I don't like being out of contact," his driver replied.
"I don't either, Marsh. This is all new to me too." He indicated their passenger with a toss of his chin. "But he's going. And things here look pretty calm."
"Yeah," Marshawn said, "the 'before' shot."
They both knew that he meant "before the bomb exploded in the crowded marketplace."
"Let's hope not," Evan said. "And the sooner we get done and leave Baghdad, the sooner we're back home."
"I'm not arguing, sir. If you got to go, you got to go. But what if you're not at the gate? What are we supposed to do? Where will you be?"
For an answer, Evan shrugged and held up his portable Motorola radio, which was good for about a mile. Nolan, who'd heard the exchange, leaned back to Marshawn. "Budget office, down in the basement of the headquarters building. You can't miss it. But a hundred bucks says we beat you back to the gate."
The traffic gave and Marshawn crept forward another five or six feet before stopping again. The line of cars stretched for at least a quarter mile in front of him. "That's a bad bet for me, sir," he said, "even if I had the hundred bucks."
"I think so, too, Sergeant. That's why we're walking." Nolan snapped his fingers, remembering something, and reopened his back door. Reaching in, he emerged a second later with his backpack, apparently empty. "Can't forget this," he said with another grin, and strapped it onto his back, over the Kevlar vest.
***
RON NOLAN WAITED for Evan to fall in next to him, then said, "And by the way, my name's Ron, okay? Mr. Nolan's my dad. You okay with Evan?"
"That's my name."
"Yeah, well, Evan, I didn't mean to put you on the spot back there with your men, and I apologize. But you can't afford to be tentative here. You've got to make decisions and run on 'em. That's the main thing about this place."
"I just made my decision. But I'm not sure that leaving my convoy was the right one. We've had it drilled into us that procedures are crucial to maintain order."
They were walking shoulder to shoulder at the curb. Nolan shook his head, disagreeing. "My experience says it's more important to trust your gut. And I'm not talking just about deciding in a split second who's a Muj and who's a Hajj"-these were the Mujahideen and the Hajji, the bad guys and the good guys, respectively-"which is life and death and I mean right now. But the business environment here…Christ, what a gold mine! But you've got to see the opportunity and jump, and I'm talking like yesterday, or it all goes away. Did you get a chance to talk to Jack Allstrong at all back at BIAP?"
"A little bit."
"He tell you how he got the airport gig? The one that got us on the boards?"
"No. He never mentioned it."
"Well, it's a perfect example of what I'm talking about. You know what our half of that contract's worth? If you guess sixteen million dollars, you're on it."
"To do what? I saw the trailers, but it wasn't clear what you guys were doing there."
"We're guarding the airport, that's what."
"What about us?"
"What do you mean, us?"
"I mean the military, the Army, the Marines. What about us? We're not guarding the airport?"
"No. You're fighting the insurgents-most of the regular units, anyway. Jerry Bremer, God love him, in his wisdom fired all the Iraqi police and disbanded the military, so nobody's left over here except us contractors to provide security for the people who are coming in droves to do oversight and infrastructure, which is, like, everybody else."
Evan had his hand on the weapon in the holster on his hip. Most of the local people in the street and on the sidewalk were simply stepping out of the way as the two Americans passed by, but many of the children were smiling and jogging along with them-Evan had already learned, along with the Iraqi kids, that U.S. servicemen were a common source of candy from their MRE kits. But Evan had no candy on him and he wanted to get inside the Green Zone as fast as he could, so he kept pressing through the crowd.
Meanwhile, Ron Nolan kept up the patter. "Jack really hadn't been doing too good after he cashiered out. He'd been trying to set up a security business in San Fran, looking into water supply issues and the whole domestic terrorist thing, but it wasn't going very well. So then Baghdad falls, and what did Jack do? Same thing as Mike Battles with Custer Battles. He hopped on a plane with his last couple hundred bucks and flew over here to suss the place out for business opportunities." Nolan spread his arms theatrically. "Et voilà! Couple of months later, sixteen million smackeroos."
"Just like that?"
"Almost. Jack still knew a few guys from when he'd been in, and they turned him on to the airport gig and talked the guy in charge into letting Jack bid on it."
"But how'd he get it?" In spite of himself, Evan found himself taken by the narrative, and by Nolan's enthusiasm. "I mean, I'm assuming he's bidding against the giants, right? Halliburton, Blackwater, KBR." KBR was Kellogg, Brown, and Root. Unbeknownst to Evan, KBR was itself a subsidiary of Halliburton, not truly a separate entity.
"Yep. And don't forget DynCorp and ArmorGroup International. The big boys. To say nothing of Custer Battles-actually, they gave us the toughest run for it. But Jack wrestled 'em down and pulled out half the gig." Even in the madness of Baghdad 's afternoon market, Nolan beamed at the memory.
"So what did he offer?"
"Well, first, a low bid, but that was basically because he was clueless and didn't know what it was worth. But the main thing was time. He promised to have almost a hundred and fifty men on the ground out here within two weeks."
"Two weeks?"
"Two weeks."
They walked on for a few more steps, before Evan couldn't help himself. "How was he going to do that? What was he going to pay them with? In fact, who was he going to hire? Did you guys have a hundred and fifty employees in San Francisco you could fly out here?"
Nolan howled out a laugh. "Are you kidding? He had three employees in San Francisco. And he'd paid them off of his credit cards in June. It was the end of the road for him if this didn't work. But it did."
"How'd that happen?"
They'd come almost to the checkpoint while the traffic hadn't budged, and Nolan stopped and faced Evan. "That's the great part. Jack didn't have any more credit. Nobody would lend him any more money back home, so he flew back here and convinced the CPA that they needed to lend him two million dollars against his first payment on the contract."
"Two million dollars?"
"In cash," Nolan said. "In new hundred dollar bills. So Jack packed 'em all up in a suitcase and flew to Jerusalem, where he deposited it all in the bank, then called me and told me to get my ass over here. He was in business."
At the gate, in spite of the crowd pressing up to get admitted, Nolan flashed his creds and the two men breezed their way through the CPA checkpoint-even the grunt guards seemed to know who he was. He and Evan crossed an enormous, open, tank-studded courtyard-at least a couple of hundred yards on a side-that fronted a grandiose white palacelike structure that, up close, bore silent witness to the bombardment that had rained upon the city in the past months-windows still blown out, the walls pocked with craters from shells, bullets, and shrapnel.
Inside the main building, in the enormous open lobby, pandemonium reigned. In a Babel of tongues, military uniforms mingled with business suits and dishdashas as half a thousand men jostled and shoved for position in one of the lines. Each line wended its way to one of the makeshift folding tables that apparently controlled access to the inner sanctum of Bremer and his senior staff. The noise, the intensity, the hundred-plus temperature, and the general stench of humanity assaulted Evan's senses as soon as he passed through the front door.
To all appearances, Nolan was immune to all of it. He hadn't gone three steps into the lobby when he plucked Evan's sleeve and pointed to their right. So they hugged the back wall, skirting most of the madness and making progress toward a wide marble staircase that led down. The crowd on the stairs was far less dense here than in the room behind them.
"What's all that about?" Evan asked as soon as he could be heard.
Nolan stopped at the bottom step. "Those folks," he said, "are basically the ones who got here a day late and a dollar short. I'd say they're Jack's competitors, except most of 'em are angling for subcontracts with the big boys. Basically, the entire country's for sale and Bremer's trying to administer all the deals from this building, from those tables, each of which represents a different ministry, if you can believe that. Seventeen, twenty of 'em. I don't know. And with, as maybe you can see, mixed results. Everybody wants a piece. Thank Christ we're beyond that stage. Fucking bedlam, isn't it?"
But he didn't wait for an answer. Turning, Nolan continued along the wall, Evan tagging behind him, the crowd gradually thinning around them the farther they went along the hallway. After thirty yards or so, finally, they turned a corner. Another long corridor stretched out before them, startlingly untraveled. A man in a military uniform sat at a lone table a little more than midway along, and three other men, apparently civilians, stood in front of him. But otherwise the hallway was empty. The noise and craziness behind them still echoed, but suddenly Evan felt psychically removed from it in spite of the fact that there was still a terrible odor of human waste and-even with holes where the windows should have been-no ventilation.
Nolan never slowed down. If anything, checking his watch, he glanced up at the window openings high in the wall and speeded up. But as they approached the desk, he put out a hand to stop their progress and swore.
"What's up?" Evan asked.
Nolan swore again and came to a dead stop. "It would be Charlie Tucker when we're in a hurry. Maybe your sergeant should've taken my hundred-dollar bet."
"Who is he?"
"He's a twerp. Senior Auditor for Aviation Issues. I think back home he was a librarian. Here, he's a bean counter, but mostly he's a pain in the ass for people like Jack and me who are actually trying to do some good and make things happen." But Evan was starting to understand that Nolan wasn't the type of guy to brood about stuff like Charlie Tucker or anything else. He pasted on a brave smile. "But hey," he said, "that's why they pay us the big bucks, right? We get it done."
In the short time it took them to walk to the desk, Major Tucker had processed one of the three men who'd been standing in front of his desk. As Nolan got closer, the man in the back of the line turned and took a step toward them and bowed slightly. "Mr. Nolan," he said in accented English, "how are you, sir?"
"Kuvan!" From the apparently genuine enthusiasm, Kuvan might have been Nolan's best friend from childhood. Kuvan seemed to be in his early thirties. The face was light-skinned, bisected by a prominent hooked nose, and featured the usual Iraqi mustache. Nolan came up to him, arms extended, grabbed him by both shoulders, and the two men seemed to rub noses with one another. They then exchanged what Evan had already come to recognize as the standard Muslim praises to the Prophet, after which Nolan continued. "Kuvan Krekar, this here is Second Lieutenant Evan Scholler, California Army National Guard. He's only been here a few weeks and I'm trying to make him feel at home." Then, to Evan: "Kuvan helped us with some of our Filipino personnel down at BIAP. He's a genius at finding people who want to work."
As Krekar put out a hand and offered Evan a firm and powerful grip, he smiled and said, "All people treasure the nobility of work. If everyone had a job, there would be no war."
"Then I'd be out of a job," Evan said, surprising himself.
Krekar took the comment in stride, his smile never wavering. "But not for long, I'd wager. Even my friend Mr. Nolan here, a professional soldier of some renown, has found meaningful work in the private sector. In any event, welcome to my country, Lieutenant. You're in good hands with Mr. Nolan."
"I'm getting that impression," Evan said.
Krekar brought his smile back to Nolan. "One hears rumors that Mr. Allstrong is going to be bidding on the currency project."
This was the contract to replace Iraq 's old currency, thirteen thousand tons of paper that featured the face of Saddam Hussein on every bill, with one of a new design. Twenty-four hundred tons of new dinars would have to be distributed in under three months. This would involve hundreds of Iraqis in all parts of the country, all of whom would need to be housed and fed in new camps with new infrastructure and Internet services at Mosul, Basra, and many other sites-exactly the kind of work Allstrong was doing now at Baghdad Airport. It would also involve supplying a fleet of five-ton trucks to carry the people and the money.
"It's entirely possible," Nolan said. "Although I haven't talked to Jack in a couple of weeks. And you know, here a couple of weeks the world can change."
"Well, when you do see him," Krekar said, "please mention my name to him. The paper and pressing plants as well as the design elements and the banking issues-I know some people with these skills and perhaps Jack and I could reach an arrangement, if Allah is willing."
"I'll be sure to let him know, Kuvan. If he's bidding at all, that is."
Behind them, Tucker cleared his throat. Krekar bowed a hasty good-bye to Nolan and Evan and then stepped up to the desk.
Backing up a couple of feet, bringing Evan with him, Nolan spoke sotto voce, "Talk about getting it done. If Kuvan's with us on this currency thing, we're going to lock it up. Taking nothing away from Jack's accomplishment, without Kuvan we don't have the airport, and that's no exaggeration."
"What'd he do?"
"Well, you know I told you it was all about getting a lot of feet on the ground here in a couple of weeks. Jack promised he could do it, and the CPA believed him-he's a persuasive guy. But still, push came to shove and Custer Battles was beating us getting guys to work for them at every turn. Jack had no idea where he was going to find guards and cooks and all the other bodies he was going to need. So, it turns out that one of Jack's old Delta buddies does security for KBR, and he turns him on to Kuvan, who's connected to this endless string of mules-Nepalese, Jordanians, Turks, Filipinos, you name it. You give these guys a buck an hour, they'll do anything for you-cook, clean, kill somebody…"
"A buck an hour? Is that what they're making?"
"Give or take, for the cooks and staff. Guards maybe two hundred a month." Nolan lowered his voice even further, gestured toward the desk. "But don't let Tucker hear that. Jack bid it out at around twenty an hour per man, but as I say, Kuvan's a genius. His fee is two bucks an hour, which takes our cost up to three an hour, so we're hauling in seventeen. That's per hour, twenty-four seven, times a hundred and sixty guys so far, with another two hundred in the pipeline. And the more we bring on, the more we make. Like I told you, you play it right, this place is a gold mine. How much they paying you, Evan, two grand a month?"
"Close. Plus hazard duty…"
Nolan cut him off with a laugh. "Hazard duty, what's that, a hundred fifty a month? That's what our cooks make."
"Yeah, you mentioned that." The news disturbed Evan-a hundred and fifty dollars extra per month and he faced death every day.
After a little pause, Nolan looked at him sideways. "You know what I'm making?"
"No idea."
"You want to know?"
A nod. "Sure."
"Twenty thousand a month. That's tax-free, by the way. Of course, I've got lots of experience and there's a premium on guys like me. But still, guys like you can finish up here, then turn around and come back a month later with any of us contractors, and you're looking at ten grand minimum a month. A six-month tour and you're back home, loaded. This thing lasts long enough, the smart-money bet by the way, and I go home a millionaire."
***
UP AT THE DESK, Major Charles Tucker looked like he could use some time in the sun. He'd sweated through his shirt. He sported rimless glasses, had a high forehead, and nearly invisible blond eyebrows-a caricature of the harried accountant. And he made no secret of his disdain for Nolan. "Let's see your paperwork. Who signed off on it this time?"
"Colonel Ramsdale, sir. Air-base Security Services Coordinator."
"Another one of Mr. Allstrong's friends?"
"A comrade-in-arms. Yes, sir. They were in Desert Storm together."
"I'm happy for them." Tucker looked down at the sheets of paper Nolan had handed him. He flipped the first page, studied the second, went back to the first.
"Everything in order, sir?" Nolan asked with an ironic obsequiousness.
"This is a lot of money to take away in cash, Nolan." He gestured to Evan. "Who's this guy?"
"Convoy support, sir. Protection back to the base."
Tucker went back to the papers. "Okay, I can see the payroll, but what's this sixty-thousand-dollar add-on for"-he squinted down at the paper-"does this say dogs?"
"Yes, sir. Bomb-sniffing dogs, which we need to feed and build kennels for, along with their trainers and handlers."
"And Ramsdale approved this?"
"Apparently so, sir." Nolan leaned down and pretended to be looking for Ramsdale's signature. Evan stifled a smile. Nolan, punctiliously polite, somehow managed to put a bit of the needle into every exchange.
"I'm going to have somebody in audit verify this."
Nolan shrugged. "Of course, sir."
"Sixty thousand dollars for a bunch of dogs!"
"Bomb-sniffing dogs, sir." Nolan remained mild. "And the infrastructure associated with them."
But apparently there was nothing Tucker could do about it. Nolan had his form in order and it was signed by one of the Army's sanctioned pay-masters. He scribbled something on the bottom of the form. Then he looked up. Behind Nolan, the line had grown again to four or five other customers. "Specie?" Tucker said.
"I beg your pardon," Nolan replied.
"Don't fuck with me, Nolan. Dollars or dinars?"
"I think dollars."
"Yes. I thought you would think that. You're paying your people in dollars?"
"That's all they'll take, sir. The old dinar's a little shaky right now."
Tucker made another note, tore off his duplicate copy, and put it in his top right-hand drawer. "This is going to audit," he repeated, then looked around Nolan and said, "Next!"