Betrayal

"How about translators?"

"Again. No. Maybe someday."

Tucker brought his hands to his head and squeezed his temples. He'd personally overseen the transfer of nearly six million dollars to Allstrong Security in the past two weeks and apparently Jack Allstrong couldn't find one local worker to speak Arabic to the Iraqis who needed to get into his airport? To say nothing of the fact that against all regulations he was paying his private commandos to lead offensive military strikes against the civilian population. Tucker had come to believe that Allstrong was playing fast and loose with the chaos that was Iraq, but now he was starting to believe that he didn't understand the half of it.

Gurung returned and informed Tucker than Mr. Allstrong was on the way. The next car at the gate finally got approval and moved on into the compound. The raiding party seemed to have stopped for the moment at the back line of the neighborhood buildings. Tucker took the opportunity to ask Gurung about the dogs.

"I'm sorry?" The unfailingly polite guard shrugged.

"The bomb-sniffing dogs. I would assume they would be here at the gate, checking the cars. The trunks."

"No. I haven't seen these dogs yet. Perhaps soon." Still smiling, the soul of cooperation, Gurung asked to be excused for a moment. He went over to Bishta, and after a short conversation, the two men went and had a few words with their other two colleagues. Almost immediately, they stepped away from the next car in the line and waved it through the gate. And then the next. And the next. The line was starting to move.

Tucker watched for a minute, then stepped in front of the next car up, holding up his hand to stop it. The driver laid on his horn, but Tucker kept his hand up where it was, holding him back. "Mr. Gurung!" he yelled out. "What's happening now? You've kept these people sitting here for hours and now you're just letting them in?"

This finally brought a disturbed frown to Gurung's face. "Mr. Bishta said you told him the line should be moving faster."

"Yes, but, well…you don't just wave 'em in now, for Christ's sake! You still gotta get their papers and check the cars. Maybe you get some Iraqis down here, at least a translator, somebody who can speak Arabic. You get your bomb-sniffing dogs…"

Gurung's expression changed in the middle of the tirade. His focus went to someplace out over Tucker's shoulder and then suddenly he was walking away across the parade ground to intercept Jack Allstrong, who was jogging up. The two men stopped maybe twenty yards from where Tucker stood. After a short exchange of words, Allstrong put a quick, reassuring hand on Gurung's shoulder and then went past him as he strode toward the gate.

At this moment, Tucker, still in the middle of the road, holding up the flow of traffic, got another blast from the horn of the car in front of him. By now truly enraged, he put his hand onto his sidearm and pointed the index finger of his other hand at the car's driver-the warning explicit and eloquent.

Behind him, he heard Allstrong's relaxed voice. "Maybe you want to step out of the way and let my men do their job, Major."

Tucker whirled on him. "How can they do their job and question these people when they don't speak the language?" he said. Without pause, he went on, pointing to the commando team, now hard up against the back of one of the buildings. "But before anything else, you've got to call those men off. They can't conduct an offensive sweep."

Allstrong glanced over to them. "We were being fired on, Major. It's defensive. We have to protect ourselves, and we have every right to."

"Your men here tell me that nothing's been hit. Which makes me doubt there was much of an attack."

Allstrong pulled himself up to his full height, his usually affable expression suddenly harsh. "Maybe you missed the mortar attacks last month, Major, that punched holes as big as Volkswagens into the runways out here and killed four of my workers and wounded twenty more. Or the rifle fire that shot my office up and, oh yeah, killed another two of my guys." It was Allstrong's turn to point to the low-lying buildings. "That neighborhood over there is a breeding ground for attacks on this airport, and it's my job to stop them."

Tucker stuck his chin out. "There's no attack going on now, Allstrong. You either call your men back or I swear to God I'll personally intervene with Calliston and even your buddy Ramsdale to cut your funding off. We don't need wildcat contractors playing cowboys out here. You play by the rules or you don't play at all."

By this time, Gurung had come up near them. Allstrong glanced again at his commandos, then nodded to his employee. "Radio them to come on back in," he said. "Fight's over for today." Then, back to Tucker, "But that isn't why you came out here."