The Handler by M.P. Woodward

Author:M.P. Woodward [Woodward, M.P.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2022-05-30T00:00:00+00:00

PART THREE

GONE

CHAPTER 24

Five Years Earlier

Dale rolled to his side and squashed a pillow over his head, doing what he could to blot out the clattering growl of the big brown armored vehicles. Ungainly and top-heavy, buried under combat gear, they were headed out on evening patrol, trundling like a herd of elephants through Camp Ramadi, a secret forward operating base sixty miles west of Baghdad.

The late-afternoon temperature bounced off ninety-six. Done inflicting its damage for the day, the sun widened and squatted on the brown hills, partially blotted out by the dust rising from the vehicles.

Dale looked at his watch and sighed. He’d slept for a total of two hours. His olive T-shirt stained with sweat, he stood and watched the patrol leave, happy to see the sun making its exit. This sunset was special—supposed to be his last one in Iraq. It couldn’t have come soon enough.

He breathed the stale air and fanned himself with a three-month-old magazine. The hooch was air-conditioned but subject to frequent power outages, for whatever reason. He’d never gotten the temperature below eighty during the day when he was supposed to sleep. The Army, which officially maintained the FOB, seemed to lack the electrical prowess to keep things running in the walled-off corner where Dale lived, the collective barracks of the men and women called OGAs.

OGA, Other Government Agency in American defense speak, the amorphous nomenclature for Americans on the payroll of a federal agency other than the military. It was mostly CIA, sprinkled with FBI, DEA, and defense contractors who came to town now and then, usually to join interrogations of new detainees. They wore no insignia and they went by nicknames. Dale’s was Gramps.

His little slice of OGA land was at the northwesternmost corner, which put it extremely close to the staging area for the massive Army patrol trucks called MRAPs, a hopeful acronym for Mine Resistant, Ambush Protected. Their hulking diesels rattled on through most of the day as they came and went. When they weren’t running, they were being pulled apart by overworked, hearing-impaired maintenance chiefs who shouted at one another.

Dale didn’t mind too much that he’d missed out on the sleep. He was expecting to catch a helo to Camp Victory for a final chop of his orders, and then on to Baghdad Airport for a flight home. He’d sleep then. The helo was supposed to come for him after chow and the cargo plane was supposed to leave “the sandbox” around midnight.

He only wished it could have been under better circumstances.

Working in a special task force under the administrative command of Ed Rance, deputy Baghdad chief of station, Dale’s SAD paramilitary team had been tasked to root out the command structure of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). The big prize was their commander, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi; but they’d have settled for any battlefield commander, working their way up the line.

The op was called Broadsword. Its AOR, Area of Responsibility, was northern and western Iraq, unofficially extending into Syria.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.