Hunting in the Shadows (American Praetorians) Read Online Free Page B

was now sitting in our primary operations center in Erbil, while we were down in Kirkuk trying to sniff out whether or not the Iraqi chaos was going to get pushed into Kurdistan, and Caleb’s team was doing the same thing in Mosul.
    “We got the contact,” I reported, “but not without incident.”  I filled him in on the night’s events.  Then I told him about what Haas had found from the contact.
    He didn’t say anything for a minute, but just mulled it over.  Finally he asked, “What are you thinking?”
    “I’m thinking we need to push down to Tikrit,” I answered without hesitation, “and see if we can get a gauge as to whether this is just an attempt to Arabize Kirkuk like Saddam did in the ‘90s, or if it’s a prelude to an actual offensive against Iraqi Kurdistan.  Or both.  We can’t really figure that out from up here.”
    I could almost see Alek shaking his huge head.  “I need you guys on the ground in Kirkuk.  You guys are the tripwire if something does start heading this way.”
    “So send Hal’s team,” I replied.  “Even if they aren’t planning on pushing past Kirkuk, we need to know if they’re going to try to push the Kurds out of the city.  The Kurds aren’t going to stand for that.  Half this province is already de facto part of Kurdistan, and the client has facilities here.  If this particular tinderbox goes up, we could find we’ve got a hell of a fight on our hands.  And if the Kurds decide to resist here—which they will—you know it’ll spread into Kurdistan proper.”
    “We have Kurdish contacts and support in Kirkuk,” he argued.  “We’ve got nothing in Tikrit.  Hal’s team just stood up; I don’t want to throw them into that kind of a zero-support situation.”
    “So send Hal’s team here and we’ll go to Tikrit,” I said.  “As far as I can remember, even though I’m getting a little old and my memory’s a little hazy, we had jack and shit for support in Somalia last year, brother.”
    “We also lost a lot of good guys in East Africa last year, if you remember,” he countered, his voice tight.
    I clenched my jaw.  He was right.  Even a year later, the holes that those guys had left in the teams still hurt.  Most of them I’d known for years.  We’d all seen some action in the military before we’d gone contract, but I’d never seen the casualty rate we’d endured in East Africa.  A lot of that had been due to the either nonexistent or untrustworthy support we’d gotten from the CIA on that job.  We’d been in the wind, and paid the price for it in the lives of our brothers.  Alek didn’t want to see that happen again.  Neither did I, but playing things too cautious had never gotten a mission accomplished.  None of us had gone into this business expecting to die in bed, either.
    “I remember,” I answered after a moment.  “I knew Hank a lot longer than you did.  I also know that if we weren’t willing to risk losing anybody else, we wouldn’t be in this country right now.  And Tikrit’s not even seventy-five miles away; that’s a lot better than anywhere we were in Somalia.”  I paused for a second.  “I know you better than that, Alek.  Didn’t we start this company precisely to get away from the risk-averse REMFs putting the choke collar on what had to be done?  Since when did you start worrying about playing it safe?  You know that isn’t how we work.”
    I heard him sigh on the other end.  “You’re right.  Damn it.  All right, I’ll get Hal’s team moving down to you.  Keep up operations until they get there.  I’m sure you’ll give them a pretty thorough changeover.  Just don’t go looking for trouble just to break them in.”
    “I’d never do such a thing,” I said, managing to keep my voice level.
    “Yeah, bullshit,” Alek snorted.  “Keep me in the loop, brother.”
    We hung up, and I headed back into the main room to try to catch some sleep.  It bothered me that Alek was