Baghdad To Boston

By George Sheppard

Tariq Ramzi was living an idyllic life in northern Iraq, existing quietly as a goat herder and living with his new bride in his parent's house.  His future was forever changed when an American Air Force jet, shot down over the Shimak Pass, crashed into his house, killing his parents and his bride.  Inconsolable grief sent Tariq on a quest for revenge; a quest that would take him from Baghdad to Boston.  Driven on by his new found hatred for everything American, Tariq Ramzi became a willing tool in Saddam Hussein's struggle against the West.  That crash initiated a chain of events that unleashed a psychotic killer on the streets of Boston.

• Language: English
• Publisher: George Sheppard
• Release date: Feb 17, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393323372

Book preview

PROLOGUE

Marshfield  outside Boston, July 10th, 2001...

After the first three days, he knew that the location was perfect.  It had taken two days to locate the ideal jogging trail; it had to run through a quiet, well shaded stretch of woods, preferably with large culverts close to the path.  It didn’t really matter that the course was hard packed and dry, but every small bonus was to be appreciated.  Each day he had jogged along the trail in what he considered to be opposite to the general flow of traffic.  Each day he ran at a different time and at a different pace.  It was this time that he had come to enjoy the most . . . the searching out.  On the fifth day he found her, and it became a struggle to control the emotions within.  She was tall, at least 5 feet 8 inches.  Her legs looked trim and well rounded, firm without that ripped effect that he found to be too masculine.  Her hips curved gently to the flat abdomen, and he imagined that he could see the beads of sweat trickle down and collect in the soft indentation of her navel.  With his eyes hidden behind mirrored glasses, he was not afraid to let his gaze rest on her breasts as she drew closer and closer; breasts that strained against the stretch halter top; breasts that moved hypnotically up and down with each stride; nipples that struggled against the cloth to assert themselves.  He imagined how they would feel when the time came.  They would harden against his hand, there would be little bumps around the darkened aureole, and firm mounds would have that thin layer of fat that made a woman feel so deliciously feminine.

As they passed on the trail, he could feel that deep sick feeling in his stomach.  Her face was almost too right; the resemblance was almost too great.  This would be the best one yet.  He would have to make it last as long as possible.  Her hair was long, dark, and straight.  It flowed around her high cheekbones like a veil.  For just a moment, he saw the soft brown eyes  eyes that could stun the senses and steal a soul.  The lips were full and held the promise of softness and warmth with gentle resilience.  It was the face that he had been so desperately seeking.  He would have to be careful not to lose this one.

For the next four days he stayed with the plan.  Each day he could feel the tension and the yearning build, but the schedule must be kept.  He had selected his spot, and now he had to time his run with hers so that they arrived at the exact location as they met.  It was not in him to lurk in the bushes like some snake in the grass.  He wanted to meet her face to face as they ran toward one another.  Besides, it gave him the opportunity to prepare her.  As she approached, he would move slightly to one side to give her room.  He would raise his hand only a fraction in a timid kind of wave.  He had used this method before to great success  always the same jogging outfit, always the same shy greeting, and never close enough to be considered a threat.  When she responded on the third pass with a small wave of her own, he knew that he could now pass her close enough so that she wouldn’t have time to shout or run.  If no other runners were on the trail, tomorrow they would meet in earnest.  This was the day he had waited for, had planned for.  It had to go smoothly.  He was too keyed up to wait another day.  With the adrenaline coursing through his veins, he was approaching the culvert too fast.  She was not in sight.  But, it didn’t really matter.  He began running in place until he saw her rounding the bend, and he started his run toward her.  A quick glance showed that there were no other runners in the general vicinity.  This would be it.  He felt his manhood began to stiffen; he reached around to touch the long, thin weapon taped to his back.  The preparation was about to pay off.  As the distance between them lessened, he knew that he was closer to her than he had ever been, but she didn’t notice.  As her hand raised for the ritual greeting, the time had come.  The toughened fingers on his right hand drove upward into her solar plexus.  The air whooshed out of her lungs, and her diaphragm was paralyzed.  The scream that might have saved her would not come from the lungs that had temporarily ceased to function.  Wrapping his arms around her, he dragged her down the slope of the ditch and into the culvert.  Privacy was guaranteed.

After pulling her in, he ripped the shorts from her hips.  Good!  She was wearing very thin, white panties.  He had taken a pair with him in case she hadn’t been wearing any.  As her chest heaved in terror in a futile attempt to draw in enough air, he reached out and tore the flimsy halter top and bra from her breasts.  They were round and full; the nipples were rigid in her panic.  It was perfect.  Quickly, he positioned himself behind her, and holding both her wrists in one hand, he drew her back.  He could feel the heat from her buttocks through the silky smoothness of her panties; he could feel the bunching and flexing of the muscle as she tried to struggle from his embrace; he could feel the soft roundness of her breasts under his forearm.  He was so ready that he, too, could scarcely breathe.  In one fluid motion, he reached back and grasped the weapon, a long pointed fragment from his past and placed the point under her sternum.  With one violent movement, the blade slid through her diaphragm and reached up into her heart.  He could feel the wild beating of her heart against his palm.  As the girl convulsed, her heels kicked into the ground and she slammed back into him again and again.  The silky softness hit him and rolled over his senses.  He held her tightly as she died.  He held her in that same position long into the night as his mind wandered back...

CHAPTER ONE

American Air Force Base  Saudi Arabia  February, 2ND, 1991...

General Sam Crawford massaged his temples with his fingertips and listened to the roar of the F16 Fighting Falcons as they lifted off into the sky.  It was the third week of the air campaign, and the results had been spectacular.  But, with 600 sorties a day from this base alone, the wear and tear on men and machines was bound to lead to some type of accident sooner or later.  Crawford had seen it all before.  Complacency and familiarity, especially in the heat of the desert, inevitably became unwanted companions of a smoothly run operation.  But things were going too smoothly to allow him to relax.  And it would not be the fault of the men under his command.  They had performed admirably.  Every detail had been taken into account.  Day in and day out, they held back the sand that crept inexorably into every facet of the military machine.  It was no wonder that abrasive material had been given the name sand paper . It clung to the oil coating the bearings and threatened precision parts with destruction.  While the heat of the desert sapped the energy from the men, the very makeup of the desert itself sapped the life from the machines.  The sense of impending disaster gnawed at Sam Crawford; the men and the planes were his responsibility under any and all circumstances.  It did not matter that these were precarious times  he was at the top of the chain of command.  Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown; the old adage was as true now as it had been 450 years ago.  Perhaps a little liquid bracer would help.

Tilting back in his chair, Crawford used the tip of one perfectly polished boot to slide open the bottom desk drawer.  The bottle of Jack Daniels lay on its side in the drawer.  He could see the amber liquid slosh back and forth inside the bottle.  With a quick look to ensure that the door to his office was still locked, he lifted the bottle out of the drawer and placed it upright on the desk.  It was the middle of the afternoon, and it was comforting to see that the bottle was still over half full.  Ah, it was nice to know that he remained an optimist.  And Crawford chuckled softly to himself.  Any Grade ten student knew the old half full, half empty  bit.  So many knew it that, in fact, it was useless as anything but a childish game.  Even so, it made him feel just a little better.  As he stared at the bottle, Crawford could feel the tendons in his neck start to stiffen.  He could feel the knot in his stomach begin to form.  Almost reluctantly, he reached for his glass and poured three fingers of cool, soothing elixir. This wasn’t the neighbourhood bar, and he wasn’t about to nurse something that he needed to calm his nerves.  In one motion, he lifted the glass and drained the contents.  From long experience Crawford knew that this small libation would last him until he had gone over the flight plans that he had on the desk blotter for Sunday s sorties. Then he would be free to join his men at the Officers Club for some casual conversation before turning in.  Yes, things were going very smoothly, indeed.

At precisely 9 o’ clock Saturday evening, General Sam Crawford entered the Officers’  Club without knowing that he was about to initiate a chain of events that would, eventually,

affect the lives of millions.  As he settled onto a stool at the bar, he listened in on the

conversations of the groups of fliers around him.  From the plans he had just seen, he knew which men were scheduled to fly in the morning.  He knew where they were going, and he knew what their missions were.  Crawford had arrived at the club early because he knew that the pilots and their navigators would not be at the club for long.  A morning sortie meant that the crew had to be at the plane at least one hour before the actual flight time.  They would be drinking soda water and turning in early.  When not flying, the pilots could be the wildest of the bunch.  When it came to their plane and their crew on the day of a mission, they were meticulous in their preparations.  They were his men, and Crawford was justifiably proud of them.  And then he heard the toast that he did not want to hear  the toast that gave him fits whenever he heard of it.  Four pilots standing to his right were raising their glasses.

To Kennedy! and they touched the rims of their glasses before sipping the soda water.

To Carter!  And they solemnly repeated the ritual.

To Truman!  And that is when Sam Crawford had heard enough.  The problem had first surfaced in the Korean War for pilots flying Sabre jets.  There was so much information flowing to the pilots from the base, from fellow pilots, and from the instrumentation that the pilot could not focus on flying the plane.  The sensory overload threatened the safety of the plane. In the Sabre jets, the pilots would pull the jack from the earphones and shut down some of the instruments so that they could concentrate on flying the plane.  In the modern theatre of air combat with the increase in the speed of both the plane and the weapons fired at the plane, 15 seconds would be the maximum time limit for such a maneuver.  Through some perverse logic, this was associated with the 15 minutes of fame that everyone would experience at some time in their lives.  It did not require a stretch to see how the Truman from Truman Capote and Andy Warhol could replace the Truman from President Truman.  In an undisciplined gesture of male macho bull, the pilots would go for the 15 seconds of fame if they thought they had a relatively safe mission. The stunt did not count over a place like Newark, New Jersey, for obvious reasons.

Crawford spun off the stool and strode into the group puffed up like an indignant preacher admonishing his parishioners after a wild Saturday night. You men know very well that you are not toasting President Truman, and don’ t give me any of those sheepish grins.  That move is strictly forbidden.  And don t think that the Shimak Pass is going to be a picnic.  This is not the United States of America, and we don’t know where all the Iraqi forces are to be found.  Save those seconds of fame when you are at home in bed with your wives or your girlfriends or all three of you together.  Just don’t pull any crazy stunts while I’ m in charge!  Crawford felt that the last part was pretty clever  it might take some of the righteous sting out of his remarks.  The pilots allowed Crawford to do his thing. They were going to do their thing anyway.  It was this sense of individualism that led them to be pilots in the first place. They could hardly be faulted for being true to themselves.

In their own personal comfort zone, the pilots paid no conscious attention to the man sweeping the floor at the back of the room.  He was almost invisible as he went about the mundane chores assigned to him.  In a poorly disguised attempt to win over the general population around the base, the Americans paid the man a generous hourly wage.  They did nothing to show the man that he mattered to them as an individual.  Simply put, he didn’t  matter.  He was a fixture without any particular appeal.  He was like the man who fired the pistol at track events  completely replaceable . 

History texts are replete with examples where the cold hard currency of the realm failed to buy the loyalties of the people.  Julius Caesar was betrayed by his friends; Anwar Sadat was assassinated on October 6, 1981, in Cairo by Muslim fundamentalists; Indira Ghandi was  assassination by her Sikh bodyguards on October 31, 1984; If the loyalty of a man can be bought, it would be wise to remember that there are two sides to the coin that was used in the transaction. The sweeper was a religious man; he would follow his conscience.  There was no great network of spies.  Everyone knew where to go to deliver any information that was picked up by being near the Americans.  And everyone knew the rewards.  He leaned his broom against the wall and quietly eased out the door.  If the information he had just heard yielded results, he would be paid $25,000 dollars U. S., and he would be a hero.  This would be his 15 minutes of fame.

––––––––

The Shimak Pass  Sunday Morning, February 3 rd, 2:30...

Six men clambered over the tailgate of the Ford Halfton.  They made up three two man teams.  There were three Sidewinder missile launchers, which had been designed as shoulder fired air defences and were better known as Man pads. The missiles were the finest heatseeking missiles that the American factories had produced.  These particular missiles had been acquired during the IraqIran War, and they had been stockpiled for just such an event, foreign jets over Iraqi soil.  It did not matter that the missiles were third generation by now.  It wasn’t as if the missiles relied on radar, which could be easily jammed, anyway.  As well, a radar guidance system provided the American pilots with too much warning, and one of those HARM missiles could follow the radar track back to the station on the ground.  Every jet provided the Sidewinder with the heat source that was required.  The increased sophistication of the radar guided, laser guided, smart weapons was often a drawback; they could be fooled.  For the Sidewinder, the only restraint was that the planes had to come relatively close to the ground before the teams would fire.  These missiles had been expensive, and the team that used their weapon irresponsibly could face a court martial that usually ended very badly for everyone associated with the exercise.  The soldiers knew without a doubt that the sergeant would shoot them on the spot.  They had seen enough sergeants shot for not carrying out orders properly.  They had no illusions about what their sergeant would do to save his own skin.

One short bark from the sergeant sent the men scrambling up the cliff in the dark.  The men knew better than to delay or mutter under their breaths.  They had seen only too often what happened to those who questioned an order.  While in the Iraqi army, they would do what the Iraqi army told them to do, and they would like it. 

After two hours of climbing, the soldiers settled into what seemed to be the mostfavourable firing positions on the sides of the pass.  All they had to do now was catch their wind and wait for the American jets.  If the information was correct, they would be heroes before the day was out.  They could look forward to a promotion, possibly some money, and, most certainly, they would not be sent to the trenches with the rest of the unit.  One lucky shot and most of their troubles would be over.  One foolish shot and all of their troubles would be over.

The Shimak Pass  Sunday Morning,  4:30...

Tariq Ramzi slowly lifted the sheet from the sleeping form of his new bride.  Clad only in skimpy briefs, Rowand was the most beautiful thing Tariq had ever seen.  Her soft breasts rose and fell with each breath.  Small droplets of sweat had formed on her upper lip and between her breasts.  He touched a finger to the drops and tasted her.  The high salt content was a testament to the passion they had experienced the night before.  They had been married 2 months ago, and he still could not believe his great fortune.  Nor could he believe the perfection of the female body.  Softly, he touched the perfect skin behind her knees and just inside her hip.  Lightly, he ran his hand over the sweep from her waist to her hip.  The sight of the small dimples above her buttocks and the feel of the firm, resilient skin over her ribs always made him

lightheaded.  Her full lips were slightly parted, and he could see the gleam of her teeth in the morning light.  Rowand was his dream come true.  She turned in her sleep, and her thick black hair fell across her face.  The slight shift seemed to break the spell, and Tariq found the strength to slip out of bed and begin the day.

Tariq lived in the small three room house with his parents and his new bride.  At 18, he had been the youngest of four boys.  His three brothers had been killed in the war against Iran, and his parents were determined to keep Tariq at home.  They were not about to let their only surviving son go off to war.  Tariq knew this, and he respected the wishes of his parents.  And now that he had his bride, he felt that life was going to be perfect for him.

Tariq grabbed a small loaf of bread and some cheese from the table in the kitchen.  The morning air felt crisp and clean as he opened the small gate and herded the sheep out onto the path.  The tough, little goat at the