Squatting, moving along the safe side of the line of vehicles, Tucker had almost made it to the gate when he realized that the gunfire was in fact close by. Stopping, he saw a handful of men scurrying along just outside the compound, by the barricades that had sprung up along the perimeter's fence. All of the black-clad men had camo'd their faces-Tucker knew that they weren't regular Army. They all carried rifles and belts of ammunition, and they were firing out into the suburbs.
Still keeping low, he sprinted to the gate, where four men-also heavily armed, in matching dark fatigues-were manning the entrance, seemingly unconcerned with the firing going on behind them. Tucker walked up to the nearest of them. "Hey!" Holding up his hand. "Major Charles Tucker. What the hell's going on over there?"
The man, who was not American, looked over his shoulder, then back at Tucker. He shrugged and spoke in a stiltedly correct British accent. "We were taking some fire from over there. Jack Allstrong ordered our men to put them down."
"You're attacking them?"
"It appears so, yes."
"You can't do that. That's against policy."
Again, the man shrugged. "Mr. Allstrong called them out."
"Well, let's get Mr. Allstrong here so he can call them off. You can't conduct an offensive with nonmilitary personnel."
Another man, with the same accent as the first, broke away from his inspecting comrades and got in front of Tucker. "Is there a problem, sir?"
"You bet there's a problem." He pointed to the shooters. "I'm assuming those men are working with Allstrong. Who's in charge here?"
"I am."
"What's your name?"
"Khadka Gurung."
"Where are you from?"
" Nepal."
"Well, Mr. Gurung, I'm a major in the U.S. Army. Private military forces are not allowed to attack insurgent groups."
"But we were fired upon first. From over there." He pointed vaguely to the general neighborhood.
"You were fired upon?"
"Yes, sir."
Tucker pointed. "Was anyone in this line of cars hit?"
"I don't believe so. No, sir."
"But the cars were just sitting here, like they are now?"
"That's correct."
"And none of them were hit?"
"I don't believe so."
"And nobody's firing from over there now?"
"No. We must have driven them off."
"Either that, Mr. Gurung, or there wasn't much of a concerted attack, if they couldn't manage to hit stationary vehicles at less than a hundred yards. Maybe the attack was just celebratory gunfire, which we hear all the time in Baghdad. How about that?"
"That's not impossible."
At that moment, several of the group of commandos broke into a run across an open area toward the Iraqi buildings. "They're attacking, for Christ's sake! That's blatantly illegal. Where's Jack Allstrong now? He's got to call this off. I need to talk to him right away. Do you think you could manage to arrange that?"
Gurung, nonplussed by Tucker's apparent anger, said, "Of course. Please to wait here and I'll try to reach him." In no great hurry, he walked over to a small stucco building that looked as though it had recently been constructed just inside the gate. He picked up a telephone.
Tucker, meanwhile, whirled back to face the first man he'd talked to. "Who are you?" he snapped.
"I am Ramesh Bishta."
"Well, Mr. Bishta, while we're waiting for Mr. Allstrong, can you tell me what's holding things up so badly here? Why can't you get this line moving?"
"The drivers," he explained. "So many do not speak English. It is difficult."
"Of course they don't speak English. They're mostly Iraqis. They're delivering Iraqi goods, doing Iraqi business. Don't you have people here at the gate who speak Arabic?"
"No, sir. I'm sorry, but no."
"How about translators?"
"Again. No. Maybe someday."
Tucker brought his hands to his head and squeezed his temples. He'd personally overseen the transfer of nearly six million dollars to Allstrong Security in the past two weeks and apparently Jack Allstrong couldn't find one local worker to speak Arabic to the Iraqis who needed to get into his airport? To say nothing of the fact that against all regulations he was paying his private commandos to lead offensive military strikes against the civilian population. Tucker had come to believe that Allstrong was playing fast and loose with the chaos that was Iraq, but now he was starting to believe that he didn't understand the half of it.
Gurung returned and informed Tucker than Mr. Allstrong was on the way. The next car at the gate finally got approval and moved on into the compound. The raiding party seemed to have stopped for the moment at the back line of the neighborhood buildings. Tucker took the opportunity to ask Gurung about the dogs.
"I'm sorry?" The unfailingly polite guard shrugged.
"The bomb-sniffing dogs. I would assume they would be here at the gate, checking the cars. The trunks."
"No. I haven't seen these dogs yet. Perhaps soon." Still smiling, the soul of cooperation, Gurung asked to be excused for a moment. He went over to Bishta, and after a short conversation, the two men went and had a few words with their other two colleagues. Almost immediately, they stepped away from the next car in the line and waved it through the gate. And then the next. And the next. The line was starting to move.
Tucker watched for a minute, then stepped in front of the next car up, holding up his hand to stop it. The driver laid on his horn, but Tucker kept his hand up where it was, holding him back. "Mr. Gurung!" he yelled out. "What's happening now? You've kept these people sitting here for hours and now you're just letting them in?"
This finally brought a disturbed frown to Gurung's face. "Mr. Bishta said you told him the line should be moving faster."
"Yes, but, well…you don't just wave 'em in now, for Christ's sake! You still gotta get their papers and check the cars. Maybe you get some Iraqis down here, at least a translator, somebody who can speak Arabic. You get your bomb-sniffing dogs…"
Gurung's expression changed in the middle of the tirade. His focus went to someplace out over Tucker's shoulder and then suddenly he was walking away across the parade ground to intercept Jack Allstrong, who was jogging up. The two men stopped maybe twenty yards from where Tucker stood. After a short exchange of words, Allstrong put a quick, reassuring hand on Gurung's shoulder and then went past him as he strode toward the gate.
At this moment, Tucker, still in the middle of the road, holding up the flow of traffic, got another blast from the horn of the car in front of him. By now truly enraged, he put his hand onto his sidearm and pointed the index finger of his other hand at the car's driver-the warning explicit and eloquent.
Behind him, he heard Allstrong's relaxed voice. "Maybe you want to step out of the way and let my men do their job, Major."
Tucker whirled on him. "How can they do their job and question these people when they don't speak the language?" he said. Without pause, he went on, pointing to the commando team, now hard up against the back of one of the buildings. "But before anything else, you've got to call those men off. They can't conduct an offensive sweep."
Allstrong glanced over to them. "We were being fired on, Major. It's defensive. We have to protect ourselves, and we have every right to."
"Your men here tell me that nothing's been hit. Which makes me doubt there was much of an attack."