Betrayal

Allstrong stood up with his drink and walked over to the map. Staring at it for a few seconds, he spoke back over his shoulder. "Maybe I can talk to Bill. Calliston. Get you and your men assigned to us. How'd you like that?"

"Staying on here?"

"Yeah."

"Doing what?"

Allstrong turned. "Well, that's the bad news. We'd want you to support our own convoy trucks, but there's a lot fewer of them and we're not afraid to drive faster if we need to."

"Where to?"

"Mostly Baghdad and back, but we're hoping to open offices at other bases near Fallujah and Mosul too. Wherever we can get work and beat damn Custer Battles to the punch."

"Custer Battles?"

"New guys. Contractors like us and kicking ass at it. They got the other half of this airport gig and they're going for everything else we are. I'm thinking of having their people killed." Evan nearly choked on his drink as Allstrong came forward with a laugh. "That's a joke, Lieutenant, or mostly a joke. Anyway, as you might have noticed, we're staffing up here. In a couple of months, this place will be hopping. Calliston's going to want to assign us some protection in any event. I figured you guys are already here. It's a good fit. Besides, over time, it's only going to get safer here, I mean the road between Baghdad and BIAP."

"You mean, the one known as RPG Alley?"

Allstrong smiled. "You heard that one already, huh?"

"Rocket-propelled-grenade alley just doesn't sound all that safe."

"It's going to get better."

Evan wasn't about to argue with his host. "You guys don't do your own security?" he asked. "I thought guys like you were guarding Bremer." This was L. Paul "Jerry" Bremer, head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, or CPA, who had set up headquarters to administrate infrastructure and the economy and all nonmilitary aspects of the occupation in Hussein's Republican Palace in Baghdad a couple of weeks before.

Allstrong chortled again. "Yeah. True. Another absurd moment. Guys like us protect civilians and admin staff, but we're not supposed to carry heavy arms, so the military needs to guard our convoys."

"That's beautiful."

"Isn't it? Anyway, if you're interested, I could put in a call to Bill. At least get you guys attached here. Call it a short-term home."

"That might be a start to belonging somewhere," Evan said. "Sure. Call him."

2

"ROUTE IRISH" FROM THE AIRPORT to Baghdad proper was a thoroughly modern freeway, three well-maintained lanes in each direction. From Evan's perspective, the main difference between it and an American freeway, aside from the apparently near-standard practice of driving the wrong way on any given lane, was that from many places cars could enter it anywhere from either side-the asphalt ended on a sand shoulder that usually proceeded without a demarcating fence or barrier of any kind out across an expanse of flat, marginal farmland. So once you got away from Baghdad, where on-and off-ramps and bridges were more common, traffic could and did enter the roadway willy-nilly and not necessarily at designated entrances and exits.

This became a major problem because of suicide car-bombers. In the four days since Colonel Calliston had attached Evan's unit to Allstrong, they hadn't gotten approached by any of these yet, but the threat was real and ubiquitous. On his way through Baghdad this morning, Evan had counted four burnt-out hulks of twisted metal, one of them still smoldering as he drove by after an hour's delay while the powers that be stopped all traffic and cleared the road.

Today his assignment was to pass through Baghdad and proceed up to Balad Air Base, nicknamed Anaconda, about forty miles north of the capital city, and pick up a man named Ron Nolan, a senior official with Allstrong who'd been scouting potential air bases to the north and west for the past week, assessing contracting opportunities. After collecting Nolan, they were to proceed back to downtown Baghdad and make a stop at the CPA headquarters for some unspecified business, then return to BIAP by nightfall.

The round-trip distance was give or take a hundred miles and they had about twelve hours of daylight, but Evan wasn't taking any chances. Movement Control had signed off on his convoy clearance and he had his full package-the three Humvees-out and rolling at oh dark thirty hours. Each of his Humvees had a driver and an assistant driver, who was also in charge of feeding ammunition to the gunner, whose body remained half-exposed through the hole in the car's roof. The heavily armed men alternated roles on successive trips. Evan could have claimed rank and never taken a turn as gunner-as a lieutenant his official role was to be convoy commander, or radio operator-but he made it a point to ride in each car and take a turn at the crew-serve weapon as the opportunity arose.