“You think I am a horse, woman, and out to stud? You have exhausted me. Not even a naked belly dancer could excite me. Now I must go and make war.”
He kissed the foreheads of his two sons, six and eight, patted his one girl, who was ten, where she slept, and went out to the car. The sergeant driver must have seen the lights in the house. He was ready with the back door of the sedan open.
Back at the motor home, Lieutenant Salman was in the middle of an exchange on the phone.
“Just a moment. Colonel Hamdoon is here. He will tell you.” The lieutenant held his hand over the phone. “This idiot wants to know when his army unit will be returning because he has a horse show he must attend.”
Colonel Hamdoon took the phone. “What is your name, rank, and unit?” He waited for the reply. “Captain, your job is to work with your infantrymen, not worry about your stupid horses. This is a joint military exercise with the armor and air force. We are not sure when it will end, but your horse show will not be a factor. When is your unit set to leave?”
He listened. “In four hours. So, don’t you have many other tasks to perform rather than worrying about your horses? I’d advise you to do your job, Captain. I have your name and unit. I’ll check on you later.”
Lieutenant Salman grinned as the colonel hung up the phone. “I tried to tell him that, but he kept reminding me he was a captain and I only a lowly lieutenant.”
“You did well. Any problems in my absence?”
“One convoy of trucks with food and ammunition is stalled forty miles outside of town. One truck is holding up the convoy.”
“Contact the radio and tell them to instruct the convoy commander to push the stalled truck off the roadway, leave it, and continue his trip and to make up the time he has lost. He must reach his designated area on time.”
“Yes sir.”
“Anything else?”
“Two company commanders can’t be located. They were on leave in the mountains.”
“Promote the next officer in line as company commander and get them moving on time, or tail feathers will burn.”
An hour before dawn, Saddam Hussein walked into the motor home, and the sergeant shrilled for attention. Lieutenant Salman and Colonel Hamdoon came to attention.
“Gentlemen, at ease. I won’t distract you long from your work. My reports show many units racing toward the border. We have released an announcement about the maneuvers being held and that no one needs to worry.”
He stepped in front of Lieutenant Salman. “Lieutenant, you are hereby promoted to captain. Here are your bars. Wear them proudly.” He moved to the colonel. “Old friend Jarash, comrade of many struggles, you are now to be known as Brigadier General Hamdoon.” He pinned gold stars on the new general’s collars and saluted him smartly. He turned to go, and the sergeant called for attention again. Then the tall man with the heavy black mustache and black hair walked out of the trailer and stepped back inside his armored limousine.
The sudden promotions took a moment to register, then the sergeant led a great cheer and the captain joined in. After a few cheers, General Hamdoon shook hands with both men.
“Now, I believe it’s time to get back to work.”
Just at dawn, the sergeant returned with food and cooked breakfast for the three of them.
The phone rang less often now. General Hamdoon decided that he and the driver would leave the GHQ at noon and drive to the assembly point some twenty miles from the border. He would keep in contact with Captain Salman by radio on the hour. Otherwise, the captain would solve the problems getting the last units out of their barracks and on the road from several different towns.
He sent the sergeant out after more food from the supply rooms at the army base. They wanted field food that would last: canned food and loaves of bread, other canned and dried meat and fish. They stored it in the motor home. They refilled the water tank with potable water, and then they were ready.
The roads west were packed with army units. Usually, both sides of the road were taken over by trucks and tanks moving west. Roads were good and handled the traffic well as far as Ar-Ramadi on the Euphrates River. From there the track led almost due west and almost at once into the areas of wadi and desert. For a time, the trucks followed one of the oil pipelines that in better times had transported oil through Syria to ports on the Mediterranean.
This same route had been used several times for maneuvers. In places, road building crews had filled in wadis for easier crossings. Trucks began to fail and pull out of the way. Men and matériel were overloaded into other trucks and the movement continued.
After six hours, they crossed the Wadi Hawran. The direction turned slightly to the southwest now as they were still well north of the desert community of Ar-Rutbah.
Soon units pulled to the side and found their location. Many of the support elements were farther from the border. Some of the infantry and tanker units moved closer, but none within twenty miles of the border with Syria.
When General Hamdoon reached his assigned location a little under twenty miles from the Syrian border, he had the driver bring his motor home next to a pair of tanks and what looked like two companies of infantry. His rig came to a stop, and he got out and stretched his legs in the desert heat. The air-conditioning in the motor home had made the drive less taxing than on the other men.
He soon made radio contact with one of the military aircraft flying over the area and asked the pilot about any buildup on the Syrian side. The aircraft, while staying on the Iraqi side of the border, could see thirty miles into Syria, and the copilot reported that they could make out no buildup or any movement of large numbers of troops or mechanized units toward the border.
The general nodded and went back to his small desk. He sipped at a cold orange juice from the refrigerator and invited the captain and sergeant to participate.
They would sleep now and be up as soon as it was midnight. From then on, there would be much to do.
Captain Hadr saw the motor home pull in beside his tank and frowned. It must be some high-ranking officer to rate such glorious transportation. He had sweat 250 miles in his tank since yesterday early in the afternoon. He was exhausted, dirty, and hungry.
Captain Hadr was not at all amused by this call to arms for a mere exercise, a maneuver. He was one of the tanker reservists called up to take a tank into the battle line. Twice before, he had done the same thing, killing a week of time on each occasion. During both exercises, his small business had lost money. He figured that his partner had profited during his absence by pocketing what otherwise would have been company money.
Now another of these sudden calls to arms. When he saw someone come out of the motor home, he snorted. A damn general, no less. He would expect to be protected. Once they started their fake charge toward the Syrian border, he would be rid of the general. Since everyone knew that generals never came within twenty miles of any fighting.
Captain Hadr had left his wife and three small boys back in Ba’qubah, north of Baghdad, with the promise that he would be back within a week. He had pleaded with his brother-in-law to take care of their small accounting business while he was gone. The man was ten years older than Captain Hadr, which meant he had ten years’ more experience in cheating his partner. Sometimes Captain Hadr hated the army. He knew it was necessary, but why such a large one?
Some said there were 440,000 Syrians under arms. Active military, not counting reserves. That was well over 2 percent of the entire population. He had heard that many of the Western nations had less than one-half of 1 percent of their population in the military.
He shrugged at last and ate his evening meal of dried fruit and water. He soon would run out of both. He had learned not to rely on the food supply from the Iraqi Tank Corps. He went back inside his tank and looked at the maps.