The American Pain: The 56th Man, #8

By J. Clayton Rogers

Ari Ciminon (the 56th Man) appreciates beautiful birds and well-crafted weapons. He yearns for a luxury sedan suitable to his aesthetic palate (a Maserati Quattroporte would suit him nicely). But, after his wife, nothing gives him more reason to celebrate life than fine cuisine. He has adapted reasonably well to fast food since being brought to America to provide Michelin-quality intelligence for the war in Iraq. Yet his discovery of French chef Marie Mumford came as a godsend to his grease-soaked gullet. Her beef bourguignon and simple but elegant soupe de poisson à la rouille invariably leave him mad for more. Her high prices are of small matter to someone of Ari's discerning taste. Of late, however, Madame Mumford has been remiss in her visits to Ari's safe house in Richmond. This is due, in part, to the needs of her husband's parents.
Willy and Ruth Mumford live in a small community near Quantico. Suffering from two different forms of dementia, the isolated couple are cared for by their youngest son, Frank. William Mumford, their older son, is convinced Frank has become involved with shady characters who put his parents at risk. In order to get Power of Attorney over them, William and Marie want to enlist Ari to investigate the situation. If he can provide proof that confirms their fears, the reward will be a year's worth of weekly free meals from the inestimable Madame Mumford. Greedy and hungry to a fault, Ari quickly agrees, though fully aware the job includes changing Willy's Depends.
But Ari is not aware that the situation is far worse than imagined. Frank Mumford has become ensnared in a ring that distributes OxyContin throughout the counties north of Fredericksburg. The drug is legal. The means used to attain it are not. And the ring members are not adverse to using torture and murder in order to maintain control over their territory.
Ari is stretched to the limit as he deals with murderous thugs, demented parents, a wily au pair, a semi-amorous invalid, a daily diet of microwavable sausage biscuits, FBI agents practicing their stalking skills and ground-attack aircraft making practice runs over the neighborhood. The battle between him and the drug gang culminates at a sunrise service on the Potomac River, where he learns everyone and everything is…damned.
It is most disconcerting.

• Language: English
• Publisher: J. Clayton Rogers
• Release date: Nov 12, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393335023

J. Clayton Rogers

I am the author of more than ten novels. I was born and raised in Virginia, where I currently reside. I was First-Place Winner of the Hollins Literary Festival a number of years ago. Among the judges were Thomas (Little Big Man) Berger and R.M.W. Dillard, poet and husband of the writer Annie Dillard.

Book preview

PROLOGUE

The Passage of the Elders

(Beginning)

March 19, 2003

It was not at all like battle.  Which was good because in battle you could see the enemy coming at you.  Even a few seconds spent dwelling on your imminent demise provided a weird, comforting horror.  But not seeing the enemy coming at you, like now, could be equally terrifying.  You were not given a free moment to reflect upon your own worthless existence.  Much technical dogma went into the creation of a cruise missile, but on the receiving end philosophy was reduced to a splatter.  In battle you could see the Warthogs coming down upon you, giving you time to evacuate your bowels if not your position.  The fighters and bombers and fighter-bombers sweeping over Baghdad this night gave little or no warning.  The shocking, infinitely loud bangs were like asteroids rocking the planet.  Many soldiers and residents found a kind of solace: infinite silence.

Shock and Awe, the Americans called it.  Colonel Ghaith Ibrahim was suitably shocked and awed.  But on the rare occasions when he caught a glimpse of ramjet flares shooting across the night sky, he thought: At some point you will have to come down here.  Then we'll see...

But the first course of revenge was survival.  Ghaith had had his fingers in many operational pies over the last decade.  He was multi-lingual, a superb marksman and clever enough to maneuver in and out of Imperial Palace intrigues without getting tortured or shot.  These talents were not particularly rare.  Even the thuggish Secret Police had its coterie of evil geniuses.  What distinguished Ghaith was a memory almost beyond belief.  He could tell you the number of treads on his imported German Storck and which ones were threadbare, although he had last seen the bicycle when he was seven.  He could have memorized the Baghdad phone book, had such a task ever been assigned to him.  On hearing of this miraculous human, one of Saddam Hussein’s sons, Qusay, had given him two weeks to memorize the prison records of Abu Ghraib going back to 1980—which, coincidentally, was when Saddam began immuring political prisoners in the complex.  Ghaith returned to the Imperial Palace within two hours.  Qusay tested him by pulling out files at random and inquiring about dates of arrest, inmates’ method of reform (how they had been tortured) and dates of release...if applicable.  Ghaith answered correctly every question put to him.  Ghaith stiffened when Qusay called his father to tell him about this phenomenon under their very noses.  He listened for a moment, then grinned and put the phone back in its cradle.

He wants to see you.  We don't have to go far.  He's just up the hall.

A few minutes later Ghaith was saluting Saddam Hussein.  There was no need for introductions.  More than a decade ago he had been brought before the President by the Secretary of the Northern Bureau of the Iraqi Regional Branch, Ali Hassan al-Majid—Saddam's first cousin, known as Chemical Ali in the West.  He had commended Ghaith on his many sniper kills.  It had been a dangerous assignment for the young man, working alone in the northern mountains as he tracked down arms smugglers.

Your father must be very proud of you, Saddam had said at the time.

It was then that Saddam had learned of Ghaith's talent for language and had personally assigned him to attend negotiations in Iraq's attempt to buy North Korean missiles.  That particular project had fallen through, but over the years Saddam had found other uses for the young Sunni.  Until Qusay brought him into the President's office, however, Saddam had not realized he was dealing with a true prodigy.

The quick-eyed Saddam noted how Ghaith's gaze ran over his superbly-cut business suit.  His tailor was the renowned Recep Cesur.  Saddam's acknowledgement of Ghaith's admiration was limited to a small smirk that briefly took residence in the right corner of his mouth.  While Saddam's sensitivity to philosophical anomalies verged on the non-existent, he had a quirky (and often deadly) perception of irony.  Recep Cesur was a Kurd.  Two-hundred thousand Kurds had fallen under the Sword of Saddam (or poison gas...take your pick).  Ghaith had contributed his mortal share to that statistic.  Yet on that day, for whatever reason, Saddam chose not to boast of his new threads.  Ghaith did not think it likely that Saddam thought this would be in bad taste.  The man was born to preen, among other things.  Perhaps he was tired of redundancy.  He slayed his enemies, but kept them alive when they proved useful.  What else was new?

How is your father? Saddam asked after returning Ghaith's salute.

The cancer has taken hold of him, Mr. President, Ghaith answered sadly, recalling the day Saddam had presented his father with a case of whisky on Pig Island.

'All that is on earth will perish, but the face of your Lord will abide, full of majesty, bounty and honor'.

Ghaith gracefully acknowledged this quote from the Koran.  Under his administration, Saddam must have quoted the surah a hundred thousand times.  He stood and circled around the desk to embrace him.  Ghaith again noted the three blue dots on his wrist, a tribal tattoo that he refused to bleach off his skin.  The tribe meant everything to him.  Then Saddam glanced at Qusay, who told him about the test he had put Ghaith to at Abu Ghraib.  Saddam seemed surprised.  Startled, in fact, and not entirely pleasantly.

"Do we really want someone around the Palace who remembers everything?"

Ghaith would have interpreted this as a death sentence had it been uttered by Uday Hussein, Saddam's truly lunatic son.  As it was, he experienced an uncomfortable itch that he dared not scratch.

Saddam glanced at his watch.  Qusay must have caught his father between important meetings.  The President would not dress this way just to hang around the office.  It seemed he had just enough free time to watch Qusay quiz Ghaith a second time.  Astonished by the results, Saddam fell into the belief that Ghaith was some kind of biological computer, complete with scanning apparatus.  On the face of it, he seemed far more reliable (and safe) than the feeble digital infrastructure at his command.  From that moment on, in addition to his other duties, Ghaith (who understood very little about computers) became something of a cyber-warrior.

In the weeks running up to what Americans referred to as 'A-Day', Fat'h al-Mubayyin Operations Command (Republican Guard), the Special Forces Brigade and the Mukhabarat General Directorate  had contacted Ghaith with numerous conflicting orders, as befitted a regime on the verge of total collapse.  Now that the confused orders had broken into fragmented word-particles on the jammed radio, he was forced to take command of himself.  He wanted to be in the middle of the fighting, like any good soldier.  But there was no fighting here to speak of, only one-sided slaughter.  Baghdad’s antiaircraft defense let loose with SAMs and 57mm and 37mm pieces, with hundreds of smaller weapons firing from the rooftops.  Yet much of the ordnance fell back to earth, increasing the destruction.  The city had become a vast perversion, like a man who had put his head in a noose in order to ejaculate at death's door.  Only the footstool holding his naked defenseless body had slipped out from beneath him....

His first order of business had been to heed the orders of Uday Hussein.  He was to scramble or entirely erase the identities of numerous government officials at the Mukhabarat's satellite building on Palestine Street.  This included shuffling or deleting photo ID's, fingerprint files and dental records.  To the wail of sirens Ghaith indicated to the computer geeks and file clerks which digital and paper files to delete or burn.  He then, with the assistance of a sweating mulazim, amused himself by planting false medical reports and switching numerous digital images.  The end result was bound to set American intelligence's collective hair on end.  (Hey, these lab results say Mahmud Dhiyab has the urine of a sick mule!)  Having had his fun, Ghaith ordered the clerks to continue the destruction while he sought to cross swords with the Coalition.

But where was the front line?   The decapitation strikes intended to eliminate Saddam Hussein from the picture were over.  While dicking around in the SSO office a full-fledged aerial assault had begun.  Palestine Street was already strewn with rubble, with more raining down every minute.  You would have thought the enemy was just around the corner, when the Coalition armor and infantry was in fact still miles away, no doubt enjoying the show remotely on camera-equipped drones.  Iraqi communications was being swept aside.  Satellite dishes, radio towers and microwave transmission stations were toppling into the slag heap.  If the Americans could have located Iraq's homing pigeons, they would have no doubt bombed their cages.  All of this was of little matter, since there were moments when Ghaith could not even hear himself think, let alone give or receive commands.

Still, someone at the Ministry of Information had to have at least a general idea of how things stood.  Many Republican Guard and Special Republican Guard units had been dispatched across the country to cow the populace.  You couldn't really trust the regular army to subdue a popular uprising, which Saddam feared more than the Americans.  There were plenty of tribes who had no love for the Tikriti clan and were just waiting for the opportunity to pull out the weapons they had smuggled in from Iran and Azerbaijan.  Ghaith had lost touch of main events over the last week and was unsure who was guarding the approaches to Baghdad.  He would need exact locations if he was to shoulder his way into the fight.

The Austin Champ that had brought the colonel to Palestine Street was gone.  The driver no doubt hauled ass with the first air burst.  Unquestionably, by hanging around the main entrance he was making himself a prime target for the beastly Yanks.  Had Ghaith been behind the wheel, he would have thought the same thing.  As of yet the building was undamaged.  It was nondescript, a discreet substation, yet the Americans must know of its existence.  Perhaps, in their godlike confidence, they knew they would soon be sitting here, perusing vital data.  And in its less-than-godlike gloom, the Imperial Palace had thought the same thing—which was why Ghaith had been sent to doctor the records.  In any event, in spite of the chaos and ruin around it, it was beginning to seem the SSO sub-office had been given a temporary pass.

Ghaith's driver had not considered this possibility and had abandoned his commander.  There was a vehicle on fire at the next intersection.  Ghaith grimaced.  Insubordination deserved punishment, but not toasting.  Not in his tolerant opinion.  Saddam Hussein would not have shared this view.  There was no point in being godlike if you did not incinerate your enemies at a whim.  But, lately, Ghaith had been chary of gods.  Their power might be unquestioned, but their common sense left much to be desired.

He waited for another flash of light to check his watch.  As a young sniper he had been made aware of the risks posed by a radium dial.  In the remote fastness of the northern mountains, on either side of midnight a smuggler could spot a faint light a mile away.  Since then, Ghaith had shunned wearing anything that might glow in the dark.  Unfortunately, this did not include his own body temperature.  He wondered if the Americans were watching his heat signature.

He decided to avoid Palestine Street and turned up an alley that would take him behind the substation.  Riotous blasts were funneled into an overheated channel of pure noise between the walls to either side.  Ghaith had little faith that he was any safer here, but the illusion of shelter was better than none at all.

Others shared this hope.  Shadows ricocheted like snooker balls in response to every explosive cue that lanced down from the sky.  First one way, then that, then in circles.  When one of them stumbled into him he saw it was a soldier.  Ghaith began to order him to get a grip on himself when a nearby blast lit up the alley and both men fell flat.  On rising, he was greeted by wide, terrified eyes that were visible even after the light shuttered down.

"Allahumma A jirny mina Annar!" the soldier wept uncontrollably.  O Allah, save me from the fire!  The colonel rarely needed to slap soldiers into line.  His voice alone could stiffen spines and send men marching dead-eyed into the cauldron of battle.  But now, as he began to speak, he found his voice quavering, as though a strut had been yanked out from under him.  He might end up instilling more dread than fortitude into the frightened man.  Besides, where could he send him?  He could tell him to follow him to the Medina Division headquarters, but Ghaith suspected it no longer existed.  And if the man bolted?  Ghaith wore a pistol, but he felt no inclination to shoot a terrified soul in the back.  Such an action would have been unworthy of him.  And there was no need to add another body to all the corpses that would need cleaning up once this was over.

Are you wounded? he asked the soldier, who gasped when he looked down at his shirt.

Blood! he cried out.

And plenty of it, said Ghaith.  You didn't know?

The soldier took off, treating Ghaith like an unmanned bullhorn.  He bounced off other soldiers running the other way.  Everyone looked comical when safety was an illusion.  That did not stop the men from trying to find it.  Many of them had dark streaks on their uniforms, or so it seemed in the uncertain light.  More blood?  They did not run like wounded men.

Before the bright flash, before falling down beside the urine-soaked soldier, Ghaith had noted a line of people huddled against the wall halfway down the alley.  He had seen many groups clinging hopefully to the false assurance of brick and cement, but for some reason this one struck him as unusual.  There was some movement, so they weren't all dead.  Yet the movement was feeble.  They were like beings trapped by their own shadows.  Could they be wounded soldiers abandoned by their scattered companions?

He tried to stride calmly to present a good example.  This proved difficult as he was buffeted from both directions by panicked troops, some of whom bore the same triangular red shoulder patch as the first man he had encountered.  What were they doing here?  The 2nd Al Medina Armored Division was posted along the Karbala Gap.  It was hard to imagine so many deserters running so far from their posts.  But here and there he saw the insignia of other units, even a few policemen.  He could only surmise that they had been dragged off the streets of Baghdad and dragooned into a job even more vital than shooting at Americans.

Ghaith went over to the jumble of human forms lined against the wall.  In another burst of light he noted wheelchairs and crutches.  A few in the group were brave enough to raise their faces against the flare of rockets.  Seeing Ghaith's uniform, an elderly man announced:

Thank God!

Ghaith immediately felt defensive.  Did they think he had come to rescue them?  He doubted he could save himself.  He suddenly felt himself raised in the air a quarter-inch and stumbled a bit as he landed.  A man at the front of the group leapt up to steady him.  Ghaith looked around, startled, having never heard the blast that sent him flying.

A man at the back of the group—there were about thirty of them—began to cry out:

What's the point!  What's the point!

The point is...Ghaith began, then stopped.  Yes, what the hell was the point?  He stared down at the man who had helped him.  Who are these people?  Why aren't they in a shelter?

One of our homes was hit by a bomb, the man said.  He was young, a cleric.  The front of his robe was wet.  Not surprising.  Ghaith dared not check his own immaculate trousers for traces of urine.  To his way of thinking, anything that smacked of weakness had to be sternly ignored.

What are you talking about?  Many homes have been destroyed, but not all of them.  These people need to go to their relatives or neighbors.  Go to a shelter.  I see wheelchairs.  Are they injured?

As soon as he spoke he felt a little foolish.  There was no one in the city who did not know about the 1991 Amiriyah shelter bombing in which 408 civilians had been reduced to human paste.  Now the Gulf War pattern was being repeated, with Stealth Bombers dropping bunker busters on Saddam Hussein's suspected boltholes.  Among these was the International Communications Center and its underground shelter.  The body count was probably unknowable.

But the cleric must have gotten the point.  Find a fucking shelter!  Out here you're walking corpses!

We tried to enter the shelter at Al Mustenserya but they wouldn't allow us in, said the cleric.

They were filled up?  Then find—

No, they wouldn't let us in because there are some Christians among us.  It is the Christians who are bombing us.

It sounded medieval, like something from the Crusades.  And it made sense.  America was the Great Satan, the reincarnation of the Europeans who had briefly reconquered Jerusalem from the Righteous Ones.  The Americans, who many Iraqis referred to as Jews.  It didn't matter that the original Crusaders had slaughtered nearly as many Jews (and Christians) as Muslims.  History was a trampoline.  What you believed in depended on wherever you landed.  Ghaith held some fondness for those violent times, when the common man knew the only true belief was in survival.  He thought he would have done well.  Until this night.  Even Genghis Khan couldn't bomb the shit out of you like this.

These are survivors from the Mercy Home for the Elderly branch in At Taifiya, said the young cleric.  We are trying to reach the home in Shaikh Omar.

You crossed the river! said Ghaith, astonished.

The Corniche Ferry is still operating, said the cleric.  Or...it was a few hours ago.

"But you came so far with...these...?"

A new fire provided enough light for Ghaith to study the group, although he had to squint to give faces to the forms.  He found himself in the company of aged, craggy faces.  Some of them betrayed confusion beyond the norm, even under these circumstances.  Ghaith's father had died of cancer, but his mother had succumbed after suffering years of dementia.  There were some in the group who showed the same symptoms as she had.  A horrible animal dread of a world that had escaped their comprehension.  Only now, reality was providing substantial grounds for their fear.  A man braced against the wall, crutches in hand, gave a wail empty of meaning.  A shriveled woman in a wheelchair moaned as she pressed her hands against her head.  Others in the group were in no better shape.  They did not know why the world was falling in on them.  And for most, it had begun falling in long before the war.  There was only one voice of reason:

What's the point!  What's the point!

These people were in obvious need of help.  Yet Ghaith, who could be as provincial as the next man, felt revulsion in their presence.  This was not due so much to their plight (although that added to his squeamishness) as to their association.  The Mercy Home for the Elderly was a Shi'a organization.  While many of the men under his previous command had belonged to that branch of Islam, as a Sunni he held no love for them.  He saw them as uncouth, untrustworthy and misguided.  It went without saying that they thought the same of him.  The Home had connections to Ayatollah Sayyid Hussein Ismael Al-Sadr, to give him his full name and honorifics.  He was related to the Prophet Muhammad through the seventh Shia Imam, which made him very big in Shi'a circles.  This had not stopped the Ba'athists from murdering his prominent uncle in 1980, nor from arresting Al-Sadr.  While walking through a corridor at Abu Ghraib he had asked a guard what that peculiar noise was beyond one of the doors.  It wasn't the screams that drew his attention.  Those were common enough at the notorious prison.  It was the way the screams wavered in and out of earshot with unnatural regularity.  Grinning, the guard told him they had tied Al-Sadr upside down on a ceiling fan and let it run as they tortured him.  Ghaith had grunted and moved on.  He had not been a colonel then and was not allowed more than one question at a time.  Recently, Al-Sadr had been suspected of stirring up trouble among Shi'a insurgents, with assistance from Iran.  Whether or not it was true, the fact that he believed in peace between all of Iraq's religious factions made him troublesome enough.  Saddam Hussein based much of his power on hatred.  Anyone who preached tolerance had to be silenced.

That the Mercy Home might be a cover for a sinister network of Shi'a malcontents naturally occurred to the paranoids of the Mukhabarat.  But looking at the sad lot trapped in the alley, Ghaith had doubts.  Why would any subversive organization burden itself with the elderly, the demented, the woeful detritus of life?  And if indeed the Mercy Home hid enemies of the state that would not matter to its legitimate residents.  Drenched in the delusions and hallucinations of old age, they had their own demons to deal with.

You are far from your goal, Ari said to the young cleric.  Perhaps you should go to the police station on Palestine Street.

What! the cleric exclaimed.  Are you talking about...

He bit off at 'secret police'.

That will be among the first targets, the cleric finished.

It has a hardened shelter, Ghaith reasoned.

Can anything be 'hardened' against this? the cleric cried as an explosion echoed from the direction of the Tigris.  The Americans must be going after the bridges.  Or perhaps not.  An absence of bridges might delay their grand arrival.

Ghaith granted the cleric's point with a shrug.  Certainly, American smart bombs had gotten smarter since the 1991 Amiriyah disaster.  No doubt their cruel destructiveness had been enhanced to genius level.

Well, they haven't hit the SSO building on Palestine Street.  I know, because we're leaning against the courtyard wall, which is still intact.

The cleric jerked away from the wall in horror.

If you're so frightened of this place, how did you end up here? Ghaith asked him.

The roads were blocked...I got lost...  He squinted towards the end of the alley.  That's Palestine Street?

The blind leading the idiots, said Ghaith, shaking his head.

We're not idiots, said a woman, using the wall to brace her twisted back as she stood.  We just lived too long.

It was unusual for a woman to address a man this way, especially one in uniform.  Ghaith pegged her as a Christian.  If it was indeed Al-Sadr behind the nursing homes, what could he be thinking of, letting the likes of her in?  Before Ghaith could reprimand her, the man next to her pushed himself up on his crutches.

She is right.  I am Usama al-Abd.  This was the man's way of telling Ghaith he was Sunni.  We are of the same faith.

He was making the assumption that no Shi'a in the Iraqi Army could become a colonel.  On the whole, he was right.  Saddam Hussein was famous for catering to the minority Sunnis, who provided his power base.

We are not fools, Usama al-Abd continued.  We are like everyone else on this night: seeking shelter against the storm.  Like you yourself, I presume.

How old are you? Ghaith asked.

Ninety-three.

Ghaith stared at him.  This man had more history under his cap than Ghaith could ever hope to amass.  What is your profession?

I am a truck driver.  I drove supplies to the Russians in an American Jimmy during the Second World War.

He sounded far more educated than a mere truck driver.  It was hard to imagine.  A Sunni driving an American truck in a long-ago conflict.  His family must have fallen on hard times for him to become a driver for the Americans and British.  Yet Ghaith was impressed by the sheer accumulation of antiquity between two covers—or, in this case, within the folds of a human mind.  He looked from Usama al-Abd to the others.  There was a lot of history sitting under his nose at the moment.  History that could be wiped out in an instant if he did not step in to help.

We have to get out of here, said the cleric, moving up the alley, momentarily forgetting his flock.

Where do you think you're going? Ghaith demanded.

I was going to check the street...

The street that way is Hell.  All the streets are Hell.  You know that.

The cleric returned, his head bowed.

Ghaith experienced a twinge of remorse and relented.  Very well...we will scout the terrain.  Let me suggest an alternative to the home for the elderly.  There is a mosque on Mashatal Street, not very far from here.  The Americans are saying they are not bombing houses of worship.  This is not because they believe God will punish them for it.

No, said the cleric grimly.  They are more afraid of bad publicity than Muhammed, peace and blessings be upon him.

They reached the end of the alley.  Palestine Street was lit up by the burning car, as well as the explosive hillocks erupting in other parts of the city, rising like new volcanos.  Ghaith pointed left.

Mashatal Street is just up that way.  The mosque is to the right.

I know it, said the cleric.  It will be the same story.  They won't let us in.

They will if I accompany you, said Ghaith with a deep inward sigh, feeling himself being drawn away from the front.

You would do that?

I—

Suddenly, without perceptible sound, dozens of glowing orbs dropped out of the sky.  From a distance they seemed to float like fiery angels, picking up speed as they finished their arc.  The impression of weightlessness ended when they crashed on the street near the burning car, bouncing and whizzing like maddened dervishes in a widening circle.  Some fetched up against the median that ran down the middle of Palestine Street, only to spin backwards before crashing against the opposite curb.

What are they? the cleric shouted over the loud hiss as several objects dropped into the gutter, only to hop back out.  Will they explode?

One of the objects came close, throwing off sparks.  Ghaith drew the cleric back into the alley.

I know of no such bombs, he said.  I believe they are superheated fragments of metal from a transmission tower.

They seem...alive.  That last one looked like it saw us, that it was coming for—

I think the way to Mashatal Street is closed to us, said Ghaith.  Suddenly, he was far less certain the shadow of the SSO substation provided much in the way of protection.  The power had gone off but he could hear the deep thrum of the backup generators behind the building, could smell the burning diesel.  The clerks inside were, theoretically, still laboring to fulfill Ghaith's last commands.  He doubted any of them shared his earlier confidence that the Americans would refrain from bombing the station and its intel treasures.  They were either far more dedicated than the soldiers caroming through the alley or they had escaped out the side doors.  Few, he thought, would put faith in the reinforced bomb shelter below street level.  Shaikh Omar it is, then.  Does the Mercy Home there have a bomb shelter?

The cleric shook his head.  The only protection is a roof and our prayers.  We had hoped the enemy would know our locations and not bomb us...

I doubt their spies paid much attention to nursing homes, said Ghaith.  They're here to kill us, not bottle-feed us.

I don't understand, the cleric mused.  If this is Palestine Street, we must have passed Shaikh Omar.

Like you said, with all your detours, it's no surprise.

But—

You have made it far, Ghaith said.  You might have gone in the wrong direction, but at least you were able to move them...  He nodded at the people slumped like rags against the wall.  He caught a whiff of something distasteful.  What is that?  It smells like shit.

Some of them are incontinent, said the cleric.

Ah, said Ghaith.  I believe most of us are incontinent tonight.  We need to go the other way.  How is it you are able to move these people?

It must be done slowly.

That isn't good, said Ghaith.  In another flash of bomb-light he saw many in the group shielding their faces with gnarled hands.  The few who were standing staggered sideways.  There were no sprinters here.  A shadow raced towards him.  Ghaith stuck out a leg and tripped up the soldier, who fell flat.  Picking him up, Ghaith shoved him into a face-to-face.  The best and almost only way to communicate with someone terrified out of his shorts.  The man blindly struck out.  Ghaith gave him a cursory beating.

There...can you hear me?  Help me gather in more volunteers.

What—

If you can't reason with them...  Ghaith demonstrated by tripping another soldier.  Thus.  When we have enough men we will carry these invalids to their destination.  Do you not feel honored to help cripples?

The first soldier did not look honored, but when Ghaith beat the second man he was convinced.  In mathematical progression, each new recruit tripped another running soldier.  After a judicious application of knuckles, there were soon enough volunteers to help the young cleric's elderly lambs.

Why are so many of you covered in blood?  I see no wounds.

Sir... one of the soldiers quailed.

And why do you all look so guilty?  Have you been masturbating into your mothers' ears?

Sir... another soldier murmured between more blasts from the street.  We're part of...you must know...

Know about what?

The trailers.

What trailers?

Near the other end of the alley...to the side, inside the garden wall...

Since this was the direction he intended to go, Ghaith ordered everyone forward.  When they arrived at the open gate facing the alley, he called a halt and peered in.  Several semi-trailers were crammed into the small parking area adjoining a garden that consisted of dusty date palms and a handful of spiky plants.  Two of the trailers were closed.  The doors of the third stood open.  A bound man was kneeling just inside.  Behind him stood a soldier, holding a pistol to a prisoner's head.  The soldier's head jerked up when Ghaith shouted at him.

What are you doing!

Realizing he was facing a colonel, the soldier draped himself in the idiocy of innocence.  The side of his mouth drooped, as though he was tugging at his jaw with his index finger.

Sir? he said, lifting his gun away from the prisoner's head.

Ghaith knew what was happening, but had no idea that it could happen here.  He stormed forward.  A second soldier was several feet further inside the trailer.  He held a flashlight.  It illuminated the interior of the trailer and its cargo of summarily executed prisoners.  Ghaith was appalled.  While he had been inside the substation, smirking at the chaos he was inflicting upon the American's fond dream of easy access to intelligence records, mass murder was being committed in the back yard.  Was it necessary?  He ordered the soldier with the flashlight to turn it on the kneeling man.  He immediately recognized him from his file.

Haidar Zanjani!  You were in Abu Ghraib for slandering a Sunni grocer.  Ghaith whirled on the man holding the pistol.  And this is the enemy of the state you were about to kill?  Just for having a big mouth?  He said nothing against the government.  He was only mad at being overcharged for leeks!

Should I put this away? the soldier asked, the pistol shaking in his hand.

I think you'd better.  What are you doing here?  This isn't a prison.  They keep only records here.

On his third attempt the soldier managed to slide his gun into his holster.  I don't know...we were brought here by...and told to...why did you tell me this man's name?  I don't want to know his name.

It was obvious what was happening.  The Mukhabarat wanted to eliminate as much home-grown opposition as was possible before the city was occupied.  They had brought the condemned to a lowly substation, hoping to spread the blame.  See?  Even computer geeks could kill.  Ghaith studied Haidar's heavily damaged face.  The battering had not happened here.  This was the work of pros, not hapless draftees.  That was why the soldiers in the alley had been running in random terror.  With luck, one might escape the bombs.  But not the guilt.

Cut him loose.  I suppose the other trailers are topped off with corpses?

The man with the flashlight and the man with the gun exchanged cringes.

You are lucky I don't let Haidar rape the both of you.  See the holy man over there?  After you beg his forgiveness, I want you to help us get this lot of elders to shelter.  Treat them with respect.  Your parents might be among them.  You respect your parents, don't you?  If not, I see no reason for you to remain among the living.  Leave the flashlight with me.

The man who had been about to kill Haidar removed the prisoner's bonds.  Then he and the man who had held the flashlight ran across the courtyard.

I would get away from these trailers, said Ghaith, helping Haidar to his feet.  They make fine fat targets for the enemy airplanes.  I would also get away from this building, which might be in their crosshairs.  Stay away from Palestine Street.  Get out of Mustansiriya.  But don’t cross the river to Mansour.  In fact, get out of Baghdad altogether.  Make that Iraq.  Do you have any relatives in America you could stay with?

Haidar pressed a noise out of his mouth.  It was then Ghaith realized his jaw was broken.  When he let go Haidar began to collapse.  Ghaith caught him and whistled at the would-be executioner, who was about to slip out the gate.  Reluctantly, he began making his way back to the trailer.

Pick up your feet, Private.  I have been known to shoot soldiers who drag their feet in the dust.

This was not true, of course, but the private did not know that.  He closed the distance at a trot.

Zanjani is incapacitated.  We will take him to the Mercy Home with the others.

Sir...?

Do you know what the Americans said when they stopped short of Baghdad during the Gulf War?  No, of course not.  You were too young.  They said, 'you break it, you own it.'  Even idiots can have moments of wisdom.  This man was already broken, but you were about to rob him of life.  You are a responsible party.  So now you own him.

The private seemed ready to weep.  Ghaith gave him his death-stare and the tears died.

Yes, Sir.

You'll have to hold him up.  You might even have to carry him.  Check the wheelchairs in the alley.  If you find someone dead, toss them out and use it for Haidar.  But only if they're dead.  Look closely.  Some of these old people only seem dead.

Haidar murmured a protest when the private lifted his arm and draped him over his neck.  This was the man who had been on the verge of murdering him only a minute earlier.

Do not fret, Ghaith reassured him.  See this knife strapped to my belt?  If this soldier hurts you any more I will slice him into bits and feed him to the dogs.  I will begin at his treasured manhood.

In spite of his broken jaw Haidar managed a thin smile.  He pressed his arm heavily on the private's neck.  Even with the assistance of a human crutch he staggered perilously as he was escorted to the gate.  If the private could not find a wheelchair, someone might have to double-up.

He ran the flashlight across the bodies piled in the trailer.  There was no movement, but that did not mean no one was alive.  But there was no time to search for survivors here or in the other trailers.  Shifting this lot around would take hours even if Ghaith brought in all the soldiers beyond the wall to assist him.  Right now, their timeline was reduced to seconds.  He hated to close the trailer doors.  If the Mukhabarat could have read his mind, he would at this moment be at the bottom of that pile.

CHAPTER ONE

Ari was bound to be skeptical if someone planted a pile of gold before him and told him every last troy ounce was his.  Fate was two-faced.  It had allowed him to cross paths with the lovely Rana, whom he married, and who twelve years later crossed paths with the American bomb that had maimed her.  One had to always keep the balance in mind.  That was, after all, why the former Ghaith Ibrahim was now Ari Ciminon.

Madame Mumford was presenting him with the pleasant side of the coin: the inexplicable, unjustified stroke of luck.  Which, at the moment, he preferred