Mojave Winds: Sample Reading

Day after day, he went to work in a city where hundreds of bodies littered empty lots. Kris Klug kept a mental note of how the graffiti evolved on the walls of buildings in green or black paint—things like AVENUE OF DEATH, others scrawled in Arabic: INFIDELS GET OUT or NO OIL FOR AMERICA. In these neighborhoods, the mosques had become mini-fortresses with sandbagged rooftop-fighting positions. Trash filled the streets, which were closed off by makeshift barriers of palm tree stumps, cinder blocks, and barbed wire. After more than a year in Afghanistan and more than a year of this work in the cesspool called Iraq, Kris began to wonder where it was going.

Sergeant Kris Klug, Green Beret, team leader, that’s who he was, and how he saw himself, at least until it ended. He often wrote home to his Uncle Fred, one of his only remaining family, about how Baghdad in August bred nasty thoughts and bad humor. Outside it was 120º Fahrenheit. Inside a Stryker armored truck, temperatures rose to 130º, sometimes 140º. The regular grunts who manned the Strykers sweated as though they cooked in a kettle. Their pants showed damp marks wherever they brushed against their skin. Sweat collected in their goggles and dripped off their mustaches.

Hot desert winds would often waft up thick dark gray clouds of sand and blast everything. During the sandstorms war would stop but the heat intensified—it balled up in a fist and no one could go about the business of killing and looting.

The civil war had already begun, just that nobody admitted it. The first neighborhood they secured was Ghazaliya, a Sunni area in western Baghdad.

Kris’s team was the first to enter the area and feed information back for the Stryker teams. Sunnis had always been hostile to the U.S. presence.  Some seemed suspiciously happy to see Americans. It was the first time in weeks they’d been able to open up their stores and walk outside. Yet they always kept an eerie distance.

Even when they exchanged a cigarette or some other social gesture a gulf separated them. The gap between the occupiers and the occupied dried into a crusty, palpable layer of distrust and resentment. Some Iraqis would come outside, looking pale and blinking in the bright sunlight. Houses stood empty, and the stench and sludge of sewage spewed through the streets where the upper crust of Iraqi society once prospered.

Kris’s unit moved in the shadows and passed enough information to the Stryker teams, the grunts, so they could move in and hit the right priorities. In three mosques the  grunts had uncovered weapons used to attack Americans and Shiites. In the Al-Sadiq mosque, used by the Iraqi Islamic Party, they found IED's buried in the courtyard and mortars hidden in the minarets. The beauty of the ornate mosaics in the mosques could deceive one into calm, spiritual thoughts. At one Sunni mosque they discovered a beheading knife. They rummaged through the Iraqi Islamic Party's headquarters where sandbags and first-aid kits covered bombs. They found coffins used to smuggle weapons and documents detailing how the IIP was running death squads.

For the Army grunts, today was different. They received orders to work directly with a special-forces team. Kris knew this would help boost morale, that’s why he nudged his commanders for it.

At 0500, he met with the squad leaders. “We’re going in to take a suspect, a former general of the Fedayeen Army. We’ve gathered intelligence proving that he’s  organizing attacks. The mission’s code name is Ruby.”

“What’s the code for after we’ve got Ruby?” One of the squad leaders took off his helmet and rubbed the top of his scalp.

“Cucamonga,” Kris responded and watched the Strykers drive out of the forward base to their rendezvous spot near the point of operation.
The Army gunner squad waited in their Strykers on the side of the road near empty lots. Birds worked over the bodies of dead Iraqis that lay there in the early morning, victims of historical blunders. The sight and stench of rot made one soldier puke so loud it scared one of the vultures off from a good meal. 

Kris’s team drove in a beat up minivan, looking like a group of average Iraqis on their way to work. The guys in the Strykers dropped the back ramp to talk. In awe of the Special Forces, the grunts eagerly offered cigarettes and conversation—but no time for that.

Although Kris hid his emotions well, his stomach leaped into his throat as he exited the dirty vehicle and walked up to talk with the platoon sergeant. “It’s a go.”  He scratched his bearded chin and gave the signal to his team to deploy.

They disappeared silently on foot up an alley behind a group of crumbling houses built from grey cinder blocks. Adrenaline rushed through his veins and he seemed to walk a little above the ground.

The Stryker teams took position. Their role was to stand guard and provide backup in case anything went sour. They parked the Strykers in a muddy field covered with garbage and dismounted from the armored vehicles. The neighborhood dogs immediately started barking at them.

Ropes and wooden braces propped up many of the houses. The entire neighborhood had fallen into decay. It bordered on the notorious Ghazaliya area. Kris’s team was already behind “Ruby’s” house.

Maybe it was the barking. Or the presence of the Army squads walking down the street. By the time the Stryker squad approached the front of Ruby’s house, the man had already scrambled out the front, grabbed a woman walking with a little girl, and held a gun to the woman’s head.  Ruby used them as shields from the Stryker squad while the woman cried and clung to her little girl.

Looking all the way through the house’s windows from the back alleyto the street, Kris could see that the squad took positions along the curb, in front of the house,. There was nothing they could do. If they approached Ruby or tried to take a shot at him, they jeopardized the panic-stricken woman and her girl.

Kris and his team had already scrambled into the house silently through the back door. He could see Ruby walking slowly up the street away from the house while holding the hostages in front of him. One of Ruby’s bodyguards bolted out of the house, fleeing Kris’s team. The man pulled a Makarov 9mm pistol and took a shot at one of the soldiers, who fell to the ground, blood spilling from his face. Aw shit. Enough of this crap. He felt his gut tie into a knot when he saw his guys getting hit.

Kris bolted to the front door, looking for a clear angle. The commotion woke up neighbors where flickering gaslights went on in some of the houses, even though the sun had begun to rise. He stood frozen in the doorframe, adrenaline coursing through him. He raised his M16 to his shoulder. First he put a bullet square in the middle of the bodyguard’s back before the man could squeeze off another shot.

Then he turned to Ruby. The only clear shot he had at him was the man’s left shoulder, farthest away from the woman and child. He had to shoot now that he’d drawn attention. In the blink of an eye, he bent his knees, steadied himself against the doorframe, seized the moment, and pulled the trigger. The force of the shot spun Ruby around and laid him out on the cobblestone street. Kris jumped on him, folded his knee on the back of his neck and flattened him to the ground. The woman ran away with the little girl in her arms as the smell of gun smoke scented the morning air.

Small explosions went off inside the house. Kris pinned Ruby face down and tightened plastic restrainers around his wrists. He heard thrashing and yelling from inside the house. His team was clearing the building of Ruby’s own guards. Then the minivan drove up to where Kris stood.

Another one of Ruby’s guards stormed out of the front door, firing an automatic pistol at Kris and the gunner teams.

The Stryker teams returned fire and the guard fell within seconds.

A bullet struck the ground near Kris, ricocheted through his left shoulder and clipped off part of his ear. Larry Larson, another member in  the team, grabbed Ruby and freed Kris to get help for his wound.

A medic pulled him into one of the Strykers, where he could give him some first aid. He was not seriously injured but needed to go to the hospital to check against infection and patch up what was left of his ear.

Kris wasn’t even winded, although his insides chilled as the adrenaline flames turned into nervous ice and the cold sweat was always there and unwelcome after a mission. He stepped mechanically through the mission sequence and called out the “Cucamonga” message over the Icom radio. He switched to the minivan he’d come in. It was all over in fifteen minutes.

Everyone loaded up and rolled out with the dead bodyguards who had tried to defend their leader.

Next to Kris, Larson seated Ruby who wore a grey man-dress. and now sported a blue gunnysack  over his head.

“Scoot your fat butt over!” Larson jabbed Ruby in the ribs with his fist. “We’re going to give you some payback for September 11.”

Kris thought to say how the guy was probably just as surprised about September 11. Iraqis had nothing to do with terrorists, at least until we’d invaded the country. But he said nothing.

Whatever, he thought. He simply held pressure to the gauze that the medic had taped to his ear. Damn that hurt. Just another day in this hellhole Iraq.

Walking across the parking lot to Wong’s Lounge, Albi Azzimi considered what the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood had commanded him to do. A blustery wind hit him in the face and reminded him of the shamals in the Saudi desert.

In bars around the shipping port, he’d heard the local Mexicans tell stories about how the Santa Ana winds stirred up when the devil slept with his mouth open. It happened every year, especially toward the end of summer. Azzimi heard the urban legends that circulated among the Mexicans in the port bordellos and spread through the beer bars so that even the gringos and the immigrants could retell them in their own languages.

El Diablo’s breath flowed in wicked currents from the high desert when the air cooled in the Mojave nights. It ran down the hills, down through the passes and curled your hair and made your nose itch, your lips chap, your skin chafe. Sometimes the hot winds would blast against the Pacific Ocean when the currents brought cold waters in from the north. Along the coast fog swept inland, thick like steam from a teakettle. As the wind rolled down the Santa Ana Mountains, it gained weight, speed, and heat. On nights like that every booze party ended in badly. The devil’s breath irritated wives enough to pull out their sewing scissors when their husbands came home from work.

The intellectual of the terrorist cell, Azzimi was the leader, although he collaborated with a close friend, Didar. Educated in politics and theology, Azzimi displayed some of the features one might expect of an Arab, round dark eyes, long black eyebrows, and long chin and nose, all of which caused him to resemble Nebuchadnezzar, the great ruler of Babylon, who conquered much of the Middle East five hundred years before Christ.

Azzimi led a small crew of four men. Sami Rice, Uday, Mohamet Didar, and carried out the assignments—missions from God, praise be to the Holy Prophet. He waited for two more men, Richard Abdul and Ishmal Kamal, scheduled to arrive from Mexico and join his team any time now. 

Azzimi always dressed in a sort of corporate casual suit without a necktie. Stylish with designer sunglasses and a couple of pieces of gold jewelry hanging around his neck, he sallied about looking the part of a lady’s man, and spoke French, English, and Arabic fluently.

He loved to learn about the local history and wanted to put his mark on it, change it, twist it, paint graffiti over it. He often sat at the bar in Wong’s Lounge on Harbor Blvd., sipped beer, and listened to the arguments about how the port was built out of a shallow mudflat and later dredged to accommodate large cargo ships.

Over the years, his classic Babylonian profile thickened, the angular cheek bone became slabs of roughed flesh like the stone Buddhist shrines near Bamiyan, Afghanistan that his political partners had bombed into vague contours. His chin had lost its clean definition, his nose coarsened and stiffened almost as much as his interpretations of the sacred Koran.

Today as often, he and Didar met in the dark bar and conducted business when two of their dealers came to buy. They moved to a table in the darkest corner of the lounge where they could talk in private,.

In some ways Mohamet Didar was like a brother to Azzimi: both middle aged, except Didar was especially overweight and out of shape. They were equal in holiness and in their connections to the Muslim Brotherhood, all the way to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia. Despite their shared devotion to Islam, they drank together often to calm their nerves. Today, they shared a pitcher of beer in the early afternoon.
Didar was the eldest of this small group at age fifty-eight and proud of his education from Riyadh University, where Azzimi and he had met, both members of a secretive Islamic sect called the Muslim Brotherhood.

Didar spoke Arabic, French, Farsi, and English fluently and was well versed in Islamic culture. Of course, he had memorized the Koran by the age of fifteen. Like Azzimi, Didar was a Sunni from Saudi Arabia. Had they not reached a high level of education and enlightenment from God, the Muslim Brotherhood would never have allowed them to enter the higher echelons. It was an exclusive cult. They had joined it through the Wahhabi sect.

The Muslim Brotherhood allowed only a select and devout type of man into its higher ranks, men dedicated to the first five pillars of faith, like all good Muslims, as well as to the six pillar of faith, imposed by Wahhab himself in the 1730s. The Muslim Brothers had taken the solemn oath to give their life in their defensive jihad against all infidels who encroached upon Islam in any manner.

“Over two hundred billion dollars worth of cargo a year,” Azzimi said.

“That’s a lot.” Didar noticed the woman sitting at the bar, legs crossed and pulling at a short blue knit dress that showed her naked white thighs.

“Think about it.”

“What about it?” Didar pulled out a cigar and rolled it around, smelling it under his long hooked nose.

“What if it shut down? It’s one of the largest ports in the United States.”

Didar lit his cigar and grinned, his fat lips curled around the cigar.

Azzimi knew that particular grin. It meant that Didar was thinking.

A few days later Sami Rice answered his cell phone, one of those twenty-dollar ones from Walmart, the disposable kind that no one could track, trace, or tap.

“Take a couple of days to study the port,  the details. Go somewhere out of the area. Buy the equipment you need. Put a package together. Light up an oil tanker.”

“Got that.” Sami’s hands were moist from sweat by the time he hung up his phone.

Sami and Uday wasted no time to put the plan into action. Tall, dark, and handsome foot soldiers, they wore thick black beards cropped close to their faces, making them look almost like twins. They were similar in athletic build, well dressed like Europeans or men on the cover of GQ Magazine, except Uday had dark olive skin. He spoke with a slight Middle Eastern accent and used facial and hand gestures uncommon among Americans. Sami’s Wonder Bread white skin, blue eyes, and vulgar American attitude revealed his origins as a member of the Gen Xers. He dressed as if entrenched in the popular American culture. He’d been in trouble since his teens, auto theft as well as drug and gun possession. His short hair, bleached blond, and  tattoos revealed something of his past. 

Sami and Uday had worked together on projects for several years now and didn’t talk much, only when necessary. They liked it that way. Keep the mind clear and focused. They drove all the way down to a small beach town just outside San Diego. Uday parked the Ford Escape around back and stayed in it admiring the view of the beach, foamy waves hitting flat sands.

Sami took a deep breath of the ocean air as he walked across the parking lot. Seagulls made their screeching calls in the cloudy sky. The beaches down the hill were clean and empty in the morning.

He entered the Army Surplus store. Military equipment carried its own unique smell. The air in the store weighed heavily with gun oil, rubber, and canvas. No suspicions. Sami bought a small black rubber fishing boat, a Zodiac C-200, big enough to hold two men. Folded up in a plastic bag, it included cylinders of compressed air to inflate it quickly. In his shopping cart he loaded a pair of Bushnell binoculars, scuba suits, fins, snorkels, and swimming masks.

Two days later, after a quick meal at a Carl’s Jr. hamburger restaurant, Sami had to get an extra handful of paper napkins to clean up the catsup he’d spilled on the car seat. Uday drove the Ford around before dark to the places they’d already scoped out, where they could watch the ships arrive into the San Pedro Harbor. They stopped at a discrete spot on Sampson Way where they could keep track of the traffic in the port.

Sami pulled a cigarette out of his pocket and motioned to light it.

“No way, dude. Not here. Not now.” Uday bumped Sami’s shoulder and grabbed his cigarette. “The smoke, the glow.”

After three days of nighttime surveillance they learned that at any given time, at least one oil tanker docked to unload jet fuel or other petroleum products. They also made it a habit to listen to the weather reports on the radio.
One night they sat in the Ford Escape for several hours and then when the fog came in they were elated.

Uday had wired the ringer of the phone to two detonating caps. He learned how to do this in Iraq where cell phones were used daily to detonate bombs. There, he’d used gelatin dynamite or regular powder sticks. It took a little practice to connect a cell phone ringer to a blasting cap. The only tool he needed was a pair of needle nose pliers to connect the small wires. He rigged it so that the electrical charge that activated the ringer on the cell phone sent electrical current to trigger the blasting caps. The final step was to tape the cell phone to the blasting cap and bag it all up with the explosives. It wasn’t rocket science. A kid could learn to do this andin Iraq, he’d taught several boys to do it. Later, from another cell phone, he could call this phone that he’d rigged to the explosives. The ring completed the electrical circuit providing power to ignite the blasting cap. They'd already prepared the Semtex wrapped around twenty-two sticks of dynamite and placed it all in a gym bag.

Once they would place the bomb and return to their vehicle, completing the mission was only a phone call away. Sami would use the disposable cell phone he’d bought at Walmart.

They patiently waited for the right night, the right moment. They had worked out the logistics in detail days before.

Uday parked the Ford at a busy strip mall up the road, not a half mile away. They’d already hidden their equipment in a safe place off the road where they planned to enter the port property.

Sami breathed the cool, moist sea air as they climbed over several obstacles and then cut through a chain-linked fence to the water. Jagged rocks the size of fists covered the beach and bruised their feet as they ambled down to the shoreline. They moved slowly over the rocks while carrying their equipment. It was cold as they slipped in. Once they drifted out into the harbor, their wet suits kept them warm enough as they pushed the raft toward the tanker. They’d already tied large magnets to the raft so they could attach it to the ship’s hull once they got out to where it was docked near the loading tanks.

A coast guard patrol passed by only once before they reached their target, not seeing them. The fog thickened even more after midnight. They couldn’t see the tanker until they floated up close, hanging on to the Zodiac.

Swimming back to shore took them almost half an hour. Using their snorkels, they were able to swim faster by keeping their heads just under the waves. Sami tasted the beach water seeping into his mouth—dirty like some cocktail of fuel and oil. As he swam he shivered as much out of the nervousness. The lights on the water tower helped them to find the hole in the fence. Once through, they hurried along the foggy, dark road where they’d parked the Ford.

Morris Malli, one of the pipe fitters, worked outside on the top deck. Although late, he had to fix a small seepage in one of the joints and prepare loading equipment. Tomorrow morning they needed to unload the cargo, almost four hundred thousand barrels of crude. He hated the night shift, but that was the best he could get and he had to work it for more than two years now on the Mobile Mega, a new tanker.

The high-tech vessel required only a twenty-five-man crew. But that was not really enough, and everyone—at least the blue-collar end of the crew—complained about the workload. That night Morris couldn’t even take a lunch break. He’d have to go straight through until his shift ended at four in the morning. Only another three and a half hours to go. His stomach growled. 

He swiped his forehead with the sleeve of his dirty grey overalls and looked at his watch. Though hungry, he had to get the loading pipes ready for early morning pumping. They were scheduled to unload and move out of the port by end of day tomorrow, a tight schedule.

Management always pushed too hard. Yesterday he’d hardly had time to see his wife and four kids before he was back out here on the pipes again. In a few hours they’d ship out. He wouldn’t see his family for another six days.

Medium build, athletic as hell, he’d played minor league baseball with the High Desert Mavericks before he drank one too many beers and crushed his elbow in a motorcycle spill. Then he took up this new and glamorous career. His father got him into the dockers’ union; otherwise, he’d be stocking shelves at Safeway to support his family. He turned off the acetylene torch and took a quick break to eat one of his wife’s home-baked oatmeal cookies. He couldn’t resist. He grabbed some of the cheese and crackers too. His wife was a good one, took care of him. For a moment, he let his thought roam to her and him together naked and warm in bed.

A loud clang sounded in the fog, like a piece of bare metal tapping against the hull straight down from where he sat. He looked over the guard railing and heard the sound again.

He couldn’t see a thing down there. With no moonlight, the water swirled around in blackness. He radioed the only security guy on the night shift, who said he was up on the top deck at the bow. He’d be there in a minute.

By the time Morris heard the guy walking toward him, he had already picked up his light and pointed it down. The beam found a black rubber raft without its owner.

What the hell was going on? He looked closer, making out some wires and an opened gym bag in the raft. Leaning farther down and aiming his flashlight, he got a better look.

“Aww shit…” Morris Malli uttered into the night.