CHAPTER 51

Turkey-Iraq Border

September

IT TOOK THE TWO-VEHICLE convoy ten hours to reach the border. After passing through the town of Silopi, Turkey, Mo and his men crossed the Khabur River and approached the arched Frontier Gate at Ibrahim Khalil. The men manning the border were Kurdish Peshmerga, the most pro-U. S. troops in Iraq. Despite guarding an international border on behalf of their nation, they wore the sunburst flag of Kurdistan on their U. S. -made woodland BDUs rather than the flag of Iraq. Kurdistan was a nation within a nation, a place the CIA never really left after 1991.

The officer in charge of the checkpoint pointed toward a white Ford F-250 with a PKM machine gun mounted in the rear, operated by a balaclava-wearing Kurd dressed in desert tiger stripe.

CIA.

The skids had already been greased, and Mo passed through the checkpoint unhindered. Two Ford trucks with gunners manning the big guns in their beds fell in with Mo’s van, one in front and one behind. Mo gave them a nod and a thumbs-up, following the lead vehicle in what was now a CIA convoy, returning to a country he had vowed never to set foot in again.

Mo briefly wondered if Landry would survive the journey; it was a long distance to travel wrapped up in a rug with feet, hands, and mouth secured with duct tape, and decided this was an appropriate time for an Inshallah.

The Agency operated with absolute autonomy in Kurdistan, even during the Saddam years. They had organized a coup there in 1995, one that was thwarted not by Hussein or his secret police, but by the national security advisor in the White House. The CIA and Iraqi dissidents had planned the coup early in 1995 but, at the last minute, the White House lost its nerve. Despite having two divisions and a brigade of the Iraqi Army ready to defect to the anti-Saddam forces, Agency personnel received a last-minute cable from Washington ordering them to stand down. Mo had no idea whether the plan for a coup would have succeeded, but having seen far too much bloodshed in the chaos that followed Saddam’s removal in 2003, he believed the risk would have been worth it.

He briefly wondered what his life would be like had that coup succeeded, but quickly brushed the thought aside. He had work to do in the present, an assignment to break and question his treacherous cargo. The tables were turned, and soon Landry would answer for his sins.

⇐ Предыдущая 49 50 51 52 535455 56 57 58 Следующая ⇒