4
Midnight came and went. 0100 arrived. And a minute after it departed, I stared at the clock.
It is 2 am.
This hour is one which has a mystical significance in my life. It is an hour that I never see on waking early, and seldom see on working late, except when I have some purpose. It is the hour when the old day is really and truly dying, and the new day of human activity has not yet really started. I have been on shift so many many two AMs, and waited, so many many times for the ball of the world, like a great weight, to roll again in its course.
There is a soft knock at the door.
My heart stops. Hampton would never announce his presence in that way.
There is a soft knock at the door.
My heart hardens. If it is my hour to go, then my not going to the door will not make any difference. I stand up, sweep over the few steps, and look through the small security hole. There is a bush of black hair, and a sheen of white skin. It is Mercury West.
I softly pull the door back a crack.
“What is it?”
“I think we need to talk.”
There are some private meeting rooms downstairs. I will meet you at the coffee bar in a few minutes.
He slowly nods, turns away, looks back, meets my eyes, and then walks with a lanky firm command of his foot steps.
I listen as the footfalls on the carpeted stairs fall away. I gather my medical bag, my keys. Brush my hair back a bit in the mirror, take the corner of a cloth to touch up smudges on what little make up I actually do wear, more for UV protection than looks, and set myself down the stairs, after having turned and carefully locked the door. Hampton clearly was delayed, I knew better than to try and find out why.
Entering the lobby, I made a quick survey, motioned to Mercury and led him over to the private booths.
We were soon hunched over with conspiratorial looks on our faces.
“I’m sure you are wondering why I am here and not in the barracks.”
“The thought had crossed my mind.”
“Well my unit is going to be working with many of the private contractors. It made more sense to be here. You are one of the people on my list of PCs working here. We are going to be seeing more of each other.”
“I’m glad to hear it. I love working with professionals.”
“Maybe not as much as you think.”
“Why not?”
“There are some tensions between the civilian and defense authorities over the role that private contractors are taking here in Iraq.”
“I’m not sure I follow.”
“State is now a cesspool of corruption and patronage, maybe it always was, and I just didn’t know it. But the last two SecStates have been abominations.”
“I thought one would have been to your liking?”
“Powell? Sell out of the first order. And Rice? Whore. They are running the State Department as a if it were a private liaison office between certain interests and the government.”
“That is very strong language. Especially directed at someone whose authority for being here is from that same State Department. Do you think it is safe to talk to me?”
“I don’t rather.” He allows the briefest puff of air to pass itself off as a chuckle. “However, I’m going to be straight with you. If you are bad, the Blankwater people are completely unworkable. I’m sure everyone here is dirty in one way or another. You have to be. I’ve gone to the black market over and over again for needed supplies, paid for information on where detonations have occurred, and done things that aren’t condoned in the Bible.”
“So I’m an ally of, convenience. An amie de guerre as it were?”
“I’m here because uniformed people are dying because of the way PCs are conducting their business here. I can’t stop thunder runs convoys and shooting of civilians. But I am going to at least slow down the use of military assets in pursuit of questionable private ends.”
My face is dead calm, but inside. Well inside I am the child with cookies palmed behind her Sunday dress, hoping that the chocolate chips will not melt before the parent stops giving the lecture.
“You are taking an awful chance talking to me.”
“On the contrary, I think you are the low hanging fruit. I know this medical contractor opertaion is bound up in all sorts of things that I don’t know about, and will be told not to know about. But there are a few things going on that I can put a stop to. And I am going to put a stop to.”
“You’ll have to give me some examples.”
“Last month someone called in air strikes to settle a personal score. There were still some of ours there when the strikes came in. Fortunately there were only superficial wounds, but the person calling it in deliberately lied about both the location of our boys, and neglected to report casualties, so that the medivacs would do his own people first.”
“That is ugly. You know just yesterday I had one of our choppers extract two wounded marines.”
“I saw that. You’ve done that several times. I mean giving priority to medivacing over whatever it was you were doing.”
“Yes.”
“Any reason?”
“We get paid a bounty for one thing.”
“It’s just odd that you have that kind of authority. Usually they don’t trust nurses.”
“Are you suggesting something?”
“Is your group out vulturing?”
“I’m not familiar with that term.”
“Making trouble, getting troops drawn into it, and then taking the bounty for being right there.”
He stares straight at me. I have an easy time denying. He’s so off track.
“No, we don’t do that sort of thing at all.”
“But you do do other things.”
“My employers are here to make a profit. And the US Government is one of our major clients.”
“I’m sure. And I don’t mind that.”
“But something is eating at you.”
“Yes.”
“Something more specific.”
“Yes.”
“What is it?”
“Your husband.”
“You know him?”
“Yes.”
“And what bothers you?”
“I think he is a crook.”
If he’s hoping to get me to quiver or give the game away, he’s sadly mistaken.
“What makes you think this?”
“We’ve been assigned together at various times. He seems to know a great deal more about what he shouldn’t know about than I am comfortable with.”
“He’s in security. Of course he does.”
“He’s in the black market. And I think it will come out sooner or later.”
I lean back.
“This is beginning to sound a great deal like a debriefing.”
“It isn’t really. It is a warning.”
“What kind of a warning?”
He drops a napkin on the table, and sketches.
“You’ve followed the spike in violence and civilian deaths in country.”
“Of course.”
“The country is rattling apart. In fact, I will say it, we aren’t going to be able to occupy it much longer.”
“A pull out?”
“Of sorts. Have you been out in the Anbar?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t mean the near stuff. I mean the deep desert.”
“Yes.”
“We don’t hold that, it is more and more under the law of local sheiks. We don’t have enough people to hold this country together, especially when there are as many people in the various private armies from outside, ours included, trying to rattle it apart.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
“It is true.”
“So?”
“This isn’t coming out until after the election, kabuki dance and all of that. But something is going to have to be done.”
“What is that.”
“The military term is ’surge.’ The reality is that we are going to have to withdraw from most of the country, and slam it down in Baghdad.”
“And.”
“There will be blood. Lots of blood.”
“Baghdad has been getting worse and worse, I know that.”
“We are going to bring the boot down.”
“You think this will work?”
“Depends on what you mean by work. Yes, I think we can pacify enough of Baghdad, and it will be easier to control Iraq if all we want is an oil ministry with a flag. it will work, but it will also mean that we will have thrown in the towel on putting this country back together again.”
“So what does this have to do with us?”
“This is going to be the biggest military operation in Iraq since the invasion. There are going to be more bodies, more wounds, more casualties, more carnage than anything you, or I, or anyone has seen. It’s a last throw of the dice to be able to keep a toe hold here.”
“And you don’t want people taking too much advantage of this?”
“I’m trying to save a few boys who would otherwise die in all the taking advantage that is going to go on. I’m trying to keep us from becoming just another pack of jackals.”
“And I fit into this how?”
“I’m advising you to consider whether or not you want to be here for all of this. You can leave any time you like. If you do stay, I think you need to consider carefully whether your current associates are worthy of your trust.”
“I work for who I work for. We are the blood for oil people.”
“I can get another company to pick up your tab.”
“That’s very kind of you. I’ll think about it. Now I need to gets some sleep.”
“You don’t have to do this.”
“There is no flask of oil, hun, that is not mixed with blood.”
Hampton had said that to me: there is no flask of oil, that is not mixed with blood. I’m sure he heard it from someplace.
I get up, but without thinking about it, I give him a pivot of my ass as I stand up. When I get back to the room, Hampton is already on the bed snoring. I see a bottle of very high grade whiskey partially consumed on the dresser, and I can smell the faint touch of lipstick that he has tried to rub off his cheek.
Which is why I knew better than to worry about him.