Appointment In Baghdad

Bolan nodded and sipped his coffee. He’d taken 800 mg of ibuprofen on arriving at the farmhouse and was beginning to feel less banged up.

“What kind of contingencies?” he asked.

“Barb, this was your brainchild,” the big Fed said.

Price nodded and set her mug of coffee on the conference table.

“If the need should arise, we’ve worked out several scenarios to get Mack into Iraq under operational cover. Our most promising cover is dual. We can coordinate your activities through the DNI and CIA. CENTCOM will think you’re Pentagon spooks. Your ‘cover’ for that cover will be employment as private military contractors working for a prestigious international company breaking into the lucrative southwest Asian market.”

“What company would that be?” Bolan asked.

“A Montreal-based firm called North American International, headed by one certain Gary U. Manning,” Kurtzman stated.

“I take it the background check for such contracts was expedited?” Bolan asked.

“I hand-carried the forms through channels myself,” Brognola admitted.

“This means,” Price continued, “that we’ll be able to funnel out special access program funds into legitimate government contracts paid to North American International.”

“Clever,” Bolan stated.

“It is a court of last resort,” Price said. “As far as I was concerned, this was a contingency plan that was never meant to be used. The U.S. government has plenty of assets in place already to deal with conventional problems.”

“But Scimitar isn’t conventional anymore, is he?” Bolan observed.

“No, he’s not,” Brognola said.

The big Fed leaned forward. He nodded once to Kurtzman. The head of Stony Man’s cybernetics team pressed a series of buttons on the table’s console. The lights dimmed and a slab of paneling in the wall behind Brognola slid back to reveal a six-foot HD wall screen. Immediately an olive-skinned, bearded face with blunt features and a patrician nose appeared on the screen. Bolan recognized the man as the individual known as Scimitar.

Brognola took his chewed up cigar out of his mouth and held it between his blunt fingers.

“He realized more quickly than most of his compatriots that no matter what happened in Iraq, post-Saddam, a return to Baathist rule in any form was extremely unlikely. He rapidly morphed his activity away from American resistance into establishing a power base for himself, using the insurgency as a cover with his jihadist allies. His method was, as most effective plans are, simple. Barb?”

Stony Man’s mission controller smoothly took over the briefing. She rose and crossed the room, placing a folder on the conference table in front of Bolan before continuing.

“Initially he set up a small regional base manned by Fedayeen subordinates in the Baghdad slum of Amariyah, along Route Irish,” Price began, using the U.S. military designation of the road running between the Baghdad International Airport and the Green Zone, often referred to in the media as the “Highway of Death.”

Price took a drink of her coffee and continued speaking. Bolan began to leaf through the file as he listened. His fatigue and physical discomfort began to bleed away as his interest in the mission grew with his realization of how important it was.

“Scimitar then withdrew to the west, into An Bar province in proximity to the Syrian border,” Price said.

“He used his Fedayeen troops to control the area, then exploited his contacts with Syrian intelligence as well as secret caches of equipment, weapons and cash to outfit foreign fighters.

“All pretty run-of-the-mill. He maintained credibility as anti-American with both former Saddam supporters and the international jihadists movement. However, Scimitar is no ideologue. He used his connections with jihadists in southwest Asia to begin moving heroin into Iraq. From there he used Albanian mafia connections given him by the Syrian IMJ and the freelancer al-Kassar, to move the heroin out of Iraq, through Istanbul and on to points west in both Europe and America. Ostensibly the funds were used to fund insurgent activity. Mostly it went to purchasing Sunni members of Iraq’s government to give him immunity from scrutiny. He now operates out of a section of the city of Ramadi completely under Iraq national control. He used his connections in the Iraqi government to give up rivals in the area when the National Army moved in. The area, under his orders, remained ‘pacified’ and the National Army was mostly supplanted by local Iraqi police units.”

“Its ranks filled with members of his personal militia,” Kurtzman added.

Price nodded in agreement. “Scimitar owns that city, or that neighborhood anyway. The imams answer to him there, foreign agents take his direction and the police forces are essentially his private militia. It is a quiet sector, a success story for the Iraqi national army in an otherwise blatant embarrassment. He moves funds for operations in Baghdad out of the city and heroin in through it.”

Bolan was silent. If ever a target or network had needed taking out, Scimitar’s rated right up there. The problem was not clear-cut, however. The soldier had adhered to an iron-fast rule during his War Everlasting. Cops were off limits.

“I’ll take down the network,” he said slowly, “but crooked or not, I don’t want to draw down on police officers.”

“Mack, this isn’t the bad old days. This situation isn’t even one of corruption per se. Scimitar’s militia hasn’t infiltrated or corrupted the Iraqi police in western Ramadi. His militia simply put on those blue uniforms,” Brognola said. “In the initial months there were honest Iraqis in that police unit. They were found, one by one, hung by their heels from lampposts with their heads cut off. Look for yourself.” Brognola indicated the file in front of Bolan. “Those uniforms don’t represent good street cops gone bad. It’s more like the Gestapo or some kind of disguise. This isn’t New York City, or even Chechnya. It’s like calling those butchers, the Fedayeen, police officers when they operated under Saddam.”

Bolan sat silently. He considered Brognola’s words as he mulled over this worst-case scenario. When he spoke he chose his words with careful deliberation.

“Scimitar has a network. I’m on board with taking that network down. I’m on board with bringing Scimitar down. But I reserve the right to call this off at any time. If I don’t like what I see going on when we get into Iraq, I walk. That’s the deal, Hal.”

“Wouldn’t want it any other way, Striker,” Brognola answered.

CHAPTER FIVE

Carmen Delahunt entered the room at that moment, bearing a slim file containing a computer printout. She also carried the cell phone he’d taken from Aram Hadayet.

Delahunt was an attractive middle-aged redhead who had been recruited from the FBI to become a vital member of Aaron Kurtzman’s cybernetics team.

She smiled and nodded her greeting to everyone in the room, then handed her findings to Barbara Price, who nodded her thanks.

“What did you find, Carmen?” Price asked.

“The Ramadi connection is now dead. I couldn’t discover whether that was because the people at that end knew about the raid or because the numbers are changed daily. However, overall the phone was a treasure trove. We were able to triangulate several geographic locations and assign specific personnel to those coordinates. I did a quick run up on them from our files. We’ve got several known players, and it gave us a pretty good idea about Scimitar’s network, if not his specific location.”

“If he has the Iraqi government bought off,” Bolan asked, “is he still underground?”

“Technically he’s still wanted by U.S. interests. He keeps a low profile, but it’s mainly the fact that the Iraqis run interference for him that keeps him operating outside of the notice of the U.S. CENTCOM there,” Price answered. “Either way, his network is in place. Simply cutting off the head of the dragon would do us only so much good.”

Bolan nodded his agreement with Price’s assessment, then turned his attention back to Delahunt.

“Three numbers proved to be of the most interest,” she said. “The first was confirmed to be that of an arms dealer named Mirjana operating out of Croatia. I have a file worked up on him. He’s known to Interpol but is well connected to the government there. He moves in the same circles as our friend Monzer al-Kassar, but we haven’t connected them specifically, yet.

“The second number is to a former commander in Saddam’s Special Republican Guard. He’s living with relatives in Amman, Jordan. He left Iraq immediately after Baghdad fell and has given no indication of having been involved in anti-American activities. The Defense Intelligence Agency had a workup on him they shared with Homeland Security, and he was given a pass.

“Perhaps the potentially most significant one is to the number of a Syrian National Airlines branch office in the former Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan. It is, of course, well-known that certain elements of Syrian intelligence services operate frequently from these branch offices. I’ve pulled everything we have on the region and that airport for the report.” Delahunt paused, she seemed almost apologetic.

“It’s pretty sparse,” she admitted. “It’s obvious the Syrian diplomat to Ottawa was using his son as a plausible deniability cutout. However, what is unrelated Syrian interest and what is specific to Scimitar remains uncertain at this point. If the youth was using the Toronto mosque to expand Scimitar’s network then such a disparate web as the numbers seem to indicate is a very bad sign. The network is most definitely global and apparently reaches beyond either the jihadist movement or Syrian intelligence.”

“Thank you, Carmen,” Price said, and Delahunt exited the War Room.

“There you have it,” Brognola said. “Not much to go on. Despite that, they’re the best leads we’ve ever come across concerning Scimitar-specific information. Because of his links to the Iraqi government and what the press would do if they found out, the Man wants this kept Stony Man quiet.”

“I guess the sooner I start, the sooner Scimitar gets taken down,” Bolan said.

“This couldn’t have come at a more inopportune time, Mack,” Price said.

“Able Team is tied up in South America and Phoenix Force has been tapped to provide security on a high-profile VIP working on nuclear proliferation in—” Kurtzman added.

“It’s important,” Brognola interjected.

“That op was set up a while ago through—” The computer wizard started.

“I know.” Brognola cut him off again. “If this trail takes Striker into Iraq, I don’t want him operating in that cesspool alone.”

“I’m somewhat used to working alone,” Bolan said, his voice as dry as an old grave.

“I know, Striker. But this could get damn ugly, and I know you’re used to that, as well,” Brognola said.

He turned to Price. “How many of Phoenix can you peel off that detail?”

Price pursed her lips, obviously conflicted. She was a mission-first person, and she ran Stony Man that way. Still, both operations were obviously of importance.

“I can’t drop the ball on that security detail, Hal,” she said. “I can give him two and that’s stretching it. Not Manning, though,” she added, thoughtful. “He’s my ballistics and explosives number one. He can handle the matter with North American International over secure communications if he needs to.”

Brognola turned back to Bolan. “I can give you two from Phoenix Force. Take them, Striker.”

Bolan nodded. He was pensive for a moment, weighing out the various specialties of each man. McCarter was out, obviously, as he was the team leader. The soldier trusted each man in Phoenix Force with his life; it wasn’t a question of trust. All of them were equally capable in their own ways. It was a question of pure pragmatism that guided his decision now.

“Give me Calvin and Rafe,” he said, referring to Calvin James and Rafael Encizo. “I’d like a dedicated Stony Man pilot if the need comes down to that,” Bolan said. “That could expedite things a lot. Jack, of course, if you can spare him.”

Brognola shifted his eyes to Price. Such matters were her domain.

“I’m sorry, Mack,” she said. “I know how much you trust Jack, but I need him down with Able Team. I can give you Charlie Mott.”

“He’s a good man,” Bolan agreed.

“All right,” Brognola stood. “Now that that’s settled we’ll get Rafe and Cal in here and get them up to speed. I have a meeting at Pennsylvania Avenue I’m late for.” He came around the table and shook Bolan’s hand.

“That was good work in Toronto, Striker. You keep yourself safe on this one.”

Bolan smiled back. If he had a dollar for every time he’d heard Brognola tell him to stay safe…well he’d be ahead by a lot.

“Thanks, Hal,” he said. “I’ll see you when I get back.”

S EVERAL HOURS LATER Bolan sat in the Stony Man Computer Room.

Price manned a telephone, deeply immersed in a conference call. Across the room Aaron Kurtzman worked at his station. He typed on a keyboard with a blunt, staccato rhythm. Maps, weather reports, intelligence bulletins and classified military reports scrolled across his multiple screens.

Bolan shuffled through his travel papers. He had identification as a North American International employee and another set as an Associated Press freelance reporter. His kit held passports, open tickets and visa receipts to bonded warehouses around the region. At his feet there was a black leather satchel that reminded him of a bowling ball bag which was tagged with a Diplomatic Pouch ID.

The suitcase was filled with stacks of money in several currencies. There was no functioning bank system in Iraq, no money wire transfers. Most people, from the government to the U.S. military to street vendors and terror agents, dealt in cold, hard cash.

In the War Room Rafael Encizo and Calvin James were being given their briefings. Bolan looked up as the door opened and Carmen Delahunt rushed in.

She held up a fax sheet and waved it at Price, who nodded and hurriedly cut her connection on the telephone. Bolan slid his paperwork together and put it in the black satchel with the cash before zipping the suitcase closed.

“We just got a break,” Delahunt said.

Price walked over to where Bolan was sitting and sat on a corner of the desk. Bolan leaned forward, resting his elbows on the desktop. Delahunt slapped the fax printout in front of them.

“I had a hunch,” she said. “So I did a keyword search of the integrated system. I came across an oblique reference to ‘Scimitar’ in an Interpol Asian Liaison report. It was pretty vague, but it was in reference to the Shimmering Raindrop Triad, known to operate out of Hong Kong. The interesting part is that the Agency,” she said, referencing one of the slang terms for the CIA, “has them pegged as a sometime mercenary cutout for China’s Central Control of Information.”

Bolan grunted in recognition at the name. The CCI was a branch of Communist China’s foreign intelligence services. It was mostly known for economic and industrial espionage. It operated out of Silicon Valley and Hong Kong the way the KGB had operated out of Berlin during the cold war.

“Good work, Carmen,” Price said. “What else?”

“Apparently the agency had a middle management mole in the triad. It was a report about that asset, Jigsaw Liu, that mentioned Scimitar. Jigsaw Liu was given control of triad gambling operations in Hong Kong. He was briefly the focus of an Immigration and Customs investigation into human smuggling with the FBI. The Agency stepped in and asked the DNI to squash it, despite the various crimes, because he represents a backdoor into the CCI.

“I have a contact number for Jigsaw Liu’s handler if you want to make contact before you go overseas,” Delahunt finished.

“Might give us a little more to go on before we commit,” Price said, thoughtful.

Bolan nodded. “Every little bit helps,” he agreed. “Check with the Agency man, set up a meet.” He turned to Price. “Go ahead and send Rafe and Cal to Zagreb,” he said. “Have them set up and start initial recon. I’ll handle the meet alone. It’ll expedite the whole operation.”

Price pursed her lips. “Rafe and Cal are probably our best choice for moving through Baghdad unnoticed, but they won’t exactly blend into the Croatian crowds.”

“I’m going to approach Mirjana as a representative of North American International. Don’t have them pretending to be local. We’ll set them up as company reps since they’ll obviously be pegged as foreigners.”

“Good point. I’ll send Rafe and Cal over on a commercial flight. You three can fly into Jordan from Zagreb later and then take a commercial flight into Baghdad International.”

“I’ll call the Agency handler and set up a meet with Jigsaw Liu,” Delahunt stated.

“Let’s make it happen,” Bolan said.

Things were starting to click. He just couldn’t tell if the pieces were falling into place or if this was the beginning of an avalanche.

CHAPTER SIX

Special Administrative Region, Hong Kong

Bolan stood in the alleyway behind the Mandarin restaurant.

Several streets over the sound of a busy Hong Kong night met his ears. Along the waterfront it was quiet. There were no streetlamps, the only illumination coming from bare bulbs set over the back doors of various businesses.

It was quiet enough that he could just make out the gentle lapping of harbor water against the wooden pilings of the piers. The alley he was in stank of urine, rotting vegetables and fish guts. Under a naked bulb casting a weak light, Bolan faced an old wooden door. The paint was peeling and the wood had grown soft with age and the erosion by salty air. A Chinese ideogram had been spray painted in the center of the door.

Bolan recognized the symbol from Carmen Delahunt’s report as standing for the Shimmering Raindrop Triad. Down the alley three Chinese men in their early twenties crouched and smoked, talking rapidly. One of them watched Bolan, dragging on his cigarette. The Executioner thought the youths likely to be security forces. Soldiers in the triads were differentiated by the slang numeric code 426.

Hong Kong had changed a lot since 1997 when the British had returned it to the control of the People’s Republic of China. Hong Kong formed one of only two Special Administrative Regions, the other being Macau. Despite the PRC’s take over, Hong Kong had maintained a high degree of autonomy and was China’s richest city, operating in accordance with terms laid out in the Sino-British Joint Declaration, existing under not Beijing rule, but the Basic Law of Hong Kong.

Under this “One Country, Two Systems” policy Hong Kong kept its own legal system, customs policy and currency until 2047. As a result, the city had one of the most liberal economies in the world and had maintained its status as an epicenter for finance and trade. It had long been a seat for the People’s Republic of China’s espionage efforts. In many ways it had come to replace old Berlin as the spy center of the world, though Islamabad and Amman gave the Asian metropolis a run for its money.

In spite of all this, or more accurately, because of all this, Chinese crime syndicates flourished in the environment. Bolan was about to enter living proof of that as he prepared to attend the meet set up by a junior Hong Kong case officer in the CIA.

Bolan turned the knob on the door in the alley and let it swing open. A concrete staircase, littered with multicolored stubs of paper and crushed cigarette butts, ran down to a small square landing. From this landing a second set of stairs led even deeper into the earth under the Mandarin restaurant.

The soldier walked through the door and descended the stairs. The door swung shut behind him and the gloom on the steps thickened. Another naked bulb hung from a cord above the landing below him, and Bolan carefully moved toward it.

The smell of the raw earth around him was dank. He could faintly hear the squeal of rats moving behind the packed dirt walls and rotted timbers. The earth had absorbed decades’ worth of body odor, spilled alcohol and cigarette smoke. He was entering the pit, an underground warren of small rooms and low tunnels devoted to the greatest vice of the Chinese: gambling.

The only legal gambling permitted in the Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong was the horse races sanctioned at the Happy Valley tracks since 1846 or at the relatively newer Shatin facility. This fell far short of satiating the traditional penchant for wagers and games of chance, and in the spirit of ruthless entrepreneurialism the Hong Kong triads had stepped in to meet the need.

Bolan turned the corner in the narrow staircase at the landing. Below him the second staircase halted at a sturdy metal door. A Chinese male sat on a tall, three-legged stool, guarding the door.

As he moved closer in the uncertain light, Bolan saw the butt of a Beretta 92-F sticking out of the guard’s waistband. On the back of the man’s right hand was a tattoo of the same ideogram painted on the door in the alley above them. More ideogram tattoos crawled up the man’s fat neck in precise, if sprawling, patterns. From through the cast-iron door Bolan could hear muted but obviously raucous activity.

The man scrutinized Bolan with narrowed eyes. He barked something in what Bolan took to be Cantonese. The soldier shrugged helplessly, then held up a thick wad of Hong Kong dollars. He said Jigsaw Liu’s name.

The doorman took the bank notes and thumbed through them suspiciously. He looked back up at Bolan and repeated Jigsaw Liu’s name.

“Jigsaw Liu,” Bolan agreed.

The wad of money disappeared into a pocket and the guard rapped sharply against the metal door. It swung open immediately and a skinny, sallow-skinned man with a hand-rolled cigarette clenched between crooked, yellow teeth eyed Bolan up and down. From behind him the noise of the room spilled out.

He said something to the doorman, who grunted and repeated Jigsaw Liu’s name. The skinny 426 nodded once and stepped out of Bolan’s way. The soldier ducked his head and stepped into the chamber beyond.

His senses were fully assaulted as he stepped through the door. The ceiling was low on the long room. The haze of cigarette smoke was thick in the air and looked like a gray-blue fog above the heads of the shouting gamblers. The cacophony of chattering, arguing, belligerent voices was punctuated by the sharp clacking of mahjong tiles. He saw numerous tables filled with frantic men, many clutching their own wads of HK dollars.

Bolan’s gaze wandered across the room, noting additional exits and the hard-eyed men standing sentry on the edge of the gambling pits. Other than the pistol tucked into the waistband of the outside doorman, Bolan saw no other weapons on flagrant display, though he was positive they were present. He’d been somewhat surprised not to have been searched at the door, but he assumed most customers here were local and, from the look of it, older.

The sallow-skinned Chinese man repeated Jigsaw Liu’s name and indicated a gloomy tunnel leading off the main, cavernous parlor. Bolan began to make his way across the crowded room, sticking close to the back wall as he did so. More than one pair of suspicious eyes followed him.

He crossed the chamber and ducked into the narrow tunnel running off at a sharp angle from the parlor. He felt at once exposed and claustrophobic in the hallway. The pit was a perfect place for a trap, and he had a hunch that its proximity to the harbor made the disposal of bodies an uncomplicated matter.

Bolan stepped over the sprawled and unconscious body of an opium smoker. The ancient Oriental habit had become modernized and had morphed into the use of more current narcotics in Hong Kong, as it had in the rest of the world, but there were still more “traditionalists” of opium in Hong Kong slums than elsewhere on the globe. The man’s eyes stared dully, pupils glassy and out of sync with the gloomy light in the tunnel. The man’s filthy, short-sleeved, button-down shirt was stained with vomit. His breathing was so shallow that Bolan at first thought him a recent corpse.