5

I had been stirred after only shreds of sleep, I was woken up by the persistent piercing chirp of a beeper. I was up and on the phone shortly, a guest at the Ghraib was about to get some quality time. They needed me to be on hand. I was out the door in 15 minutes and to the Zoo in record time. They had choppered him in.

Before the coffee had even begun to work on its consciousness, I was in the "White Room," the tiled cold place where people are talked to at the Zoo. An arab man with a long beard growth is brought in. He is in an orange jumper, and is earing arm and leg irons. He has not been badly beaten yet, and does not look like he's even been roughly questioned.

They roughly push him into a heavy chair. A man with short cropped blond hair, a square jaw, and broad shoulders begins to shout questions at him in Arabic. I recognize him vaguely, he came on board after the army discharged him for being homosexual. His Arabic is good, he knows the local Iraqi inflections, like the "E-ish" "I" sound. He looks nearly apoplectic, but it is, of course, an act.

The prisoner startles and begins letting forth a stream of clearly enunciated words, he sounds as if he is defending himself, as if he is used to talking to people in authority. I don't know very much Arabic, but I have learned to tell someone who has educated, perhaps educated abroad, from common street Arabic.

Immediately our own interrogator's Arabic gets more formal. He stands up straighter, he stops slurring his words. He is still screaming, but now it is a booming bellow.

The prisoner keeps defending himself, his voice raises up that crucial third that is the sound of someone who is rocked back. But he is not beaten by any stretch. Our interrogator is leaning closer and closer to his face, the sheer pressure of his presence is causing the other man to lean back.

But as everyone can tell, nothing has been extracted of any use.

I'm tapped on the shoulder. I know what is coming next. Almost noiselessly behind the prisoner an interrogation tech is walking up behind him with a full syringe. I am over to the equipment area and getting the defibrulator ready. I am not even looking when the needle is slammed into the prisoner's upper arm.

By the time I've hurried the cart into place, he is deep into cardiac arrest. I swirl the electrodes together.

"Get those manacles off and give me some skin."

These people clearly don't know the drill.

"Clear."

My hands, curled like fists behind the electrodes feel the pulse pump as his body spasms. It only takes one this time. The other nurse nods, she has a pulse.

He has a pulse.

Moments later he is coming to consciousness, his body stilling tingling and twitching.

Moments later the blond man is in his face again bellowing. The interrogation tech is next to me, by the prisoner's right shoulder. He takes a thin knife and slits the jumper on the upper arm.

The prisoner screams and begs for mercy.

The interrogation tech is a soft round woman, with dark features. She coos in soft Arabic. Moments later the prisoner is sobbing out something. The tech translates. It is an address. Our asset is at that address.

I don't even worry about putting the equipment back, my bag is over my shoulder and I am to the elevators for the roof. In the sullen waning minutes of dark twilight the rotors of a chopper are warmed up. The red lights are blaring. The sky is clear, but there is a giant swirl of sand low on the horizon, a storm is coming fast. It is coming close. It is coming soon.

God help us all.

6

The bloated sun, an eye of orange that glares through sea of flying sand rises over the clutter of low buildings that is Sadr City. Already we are winged alight in hot pursuit of victory.

I am squatting in the chopper.

One of the mercenaries comes running up to me.

"We don’t' have a surgeon available."

I am deadly calm.

"Has the shooting started there yet?"

"Yes."

"Then we can pick up an army surgeon I know of."

In moments I am on the phone and there is a ringing at the other end.

It picks up.

"You said you wanted to see what we do."

"Christiana?"

"Chryssie is fine."

"Chryssie, yes."

"We are going out. We need a pair of hands, there is a fire fight, some of ours are pinned down."

"Contractor ours?"

"Service personnel ours."

"I haven't heard about it yet."

"We have better humint."

"I'm up for it."

I yell forward instructions to get to the residential hotel.

"We will be on the helipad on the roof. Three minutes. Don't be late."

"I've got your saw bones."

The pilot and team leader gives a smiling thumbs up. His Indian accent floating over the growing whine.

"I knew we could count on Lady Mercy. "

"I've got us patched in."

There was a lift and jerk as the helicopter left the pad.

"We are on the way Sergeant."

"There is some sort of domestic dispute here. We got called in for back up and are pinned down from fire in two positions."

"Can you describe the casualties."

"I can't see two of ours, they took fire a few moments again, and aren't responsible."

"As calmly as you can, describe the situation."

Garble.

When he patches through again, it is only into his own headphone. The chopper settles down, within moments a pack followed by Mercury West's long but not bulky frame, is in the chopper.

We are up.

The chariot leaps to the air, and sand blisters into our faces as it washes through the opening. It is already hazardous to fly. We are the thread on which those lives hang. At least three of ours, and, our real reason for being there, our asset's girlfriend. We hadn't been torturing her kidnappers, but her other boyfriend. Seems she had been dealing from both sides of the deck. The address? We had already had it.

Torture is like a telegram, you don't send one to get information, but to send a message.

Message sent.

The co-pilot gets the patch through. There is a single screeching wail through the radio:

"Hurry"

"Please dear God. Hurry."

7

"Well I don't think we are in any position to say that what happened out there today was a successful outcome."

"Am I the only person here who thinks what we are being told doesn't add up? We did everything asked, we were in a great deal of danger, and if you want to judge us on outcomes you had better tell us what outcome was desired."

The first speaker was the executive director of the Zoo. Failure clearly had been optioned. The second speaker was our group leader, Rakesh Anand. There had already been verbal fireworks and it was only accelerating. To set the scene a bit more: we are in a briefing room, with claustrophobically small windows set in neat squares along one wall. Present were a number of people from higher up, too many, as well as too few people from the front lines. Clearly, we were in trouble. I was privately sure I knew why, namely, the bit of baked clay I had purloined was being looked for, and that the incident of the morning, where the asset we were being sent to recover was found cut in two with a local crime lord and two freelancing marines shooting back at the soldiers we, ourselves, had called in, was some how related to that. Or something broader perhaps, that our source had promised more bits like that one, and was not going to talk until his, it appears part time, girlfriend was extracted.

I had been keeping my face impassive. I knew that things were spinning out of control in my little corner of this war, and I hadn't needed Mercury to tell me that Baghdad itself was spinning out of control. It is impossible to live in the murder capital of the world and not know that the ground is shaking loose from your feet.

2006 had been a good year for the four horsemen in Iraq. And it wasn't over yet.

"We can't always be forthcoming with all the details."

At this point the representative from the South African firm I work for piped up: "Then outcomes are your affair. I don't mind being a cog in the machine, but I won't be a bullet in a magazine when you need someone to blame. If you want us to hit a mark, tell us what it is, and we will drop a missile through it if we have to. But if you tell us to pick our targets, then don't complain if we don't manage to accidentally hit the one you want."

His voice is edged with a defensive whine of annoyance, but he is not worried. Yes, Blankwater has a very privileged status, and his company does not, but he also knows that his company is one of the elite few that can bring heavy weapons and a full range of options to the table. They are never short of work, and are part of the cloud of contracting companies often called "The Dogs of War."

"We are disappointed that you did not wrap up all the loose ends without needing to be prompted about it."

"We weren't aware that there were loose ends. We were told to go after a particular piece and if possible extract the bearer of it. We did both, and thanks to Chryssie here, saved the bleeders wretched life. And turned an extra profit on the bounty. It was clean, no casualties, and everything in order. Now last night there is an emergency interrogation, which seemed to have turned up nothing we didn't already know, and an emergency extraction into the middle of a live fight between US forces, and for reasons which are not being explained, we seem to be in trouble here."

He paused, and then continued.

"I say someone bollixed this higher up, and they are scrambling."

The Blankwater executive sighed.

"I think we need to let this all cool down for a while, and then do a 3A when tempers have cooled a bit."

After Action Assessment.

There are nods all the way around. Clearly the rules of engagement for this particular conflict need to be refined. Exactly how much blame is to go around for what. And how much money that is going to cost who. We could write this morning off to the bounty, accept that it wasn't that profitable and move on. But I didn't sense that "time to move on" face from anyone. Instead there were tight bunches of muscles on the cheeks and forehead of the men present. Bubbles of fat accentuated by underlying tightness creating scowls and jack o'lantern faces.

The late afternoon assignment seems simple: a basic convoy, and then a return trip to the Ghraib. I catch an hour's sleep in one of the cot rooms at the Zoo, because I am certain it is going to be a long night.