CHAPTER 9
Baghdad Forward Operating Base
Operation CODEL was a special one for Team Rhino. All participants, military and civilian alike, agreed on one point: This engagement carried the weight of history.
The occasion: a meeting among both Sunni and Shia sheiks and the US Army’s top command to solidify the American commitment to peace and security throughout war-torn Baghdad Province.
The location: the Russian nuclear power plant on the banks of the Euphrates River, southwest of Baghdad. Long abandoned by the Soviets, the mammoth half-completed facility had been commandeered by Al-Qaeda when the war began as a place to commit torture and murder.
In late 2006, when US forces delivered a healthy load of lead to the enemy and mounted a final push toward the west, Al-Qaeda’s safe haven had been taken over, and the badlands of Baghdad became a little safer.
This seemingly impossible feat was in large part due to an unlikely alliance of Sunni and Shia tribes throughout the region southwest of Baghdad.
With a lot of north-south headshaking, countless cups of chai, and a homicidal quantity of cigarettes smoked with the local sheiks, the US forces had been able to convince the two tribes that the definition of success was playing nicely together.
Since then, the abandoned power plant had been the only setting where US, Sunni, and Shia forces worked under practically the same roof.
There was the pesky issue of total trust—never completely solidified by all members of the tribes.
But with a limitless supply of US dollars for all who renounced Al-Qaeda and demonstrated their support for the cause, the Sunni and Shia were at least civil to one another.
In fact they made it a point of honor not to allow any terrorist attacks in the area.
Still, foreign fighters often crossed into Iraq from Syria, then traveled unmolested to the western banks of the Euphrates River.
For years the local village near the power plant had been sympathetic to the terrorists, its surrounding sands stained with a good deal of American blood.
It was another nasty place for the enemy to hide.
* * *
The civilian guest of honor at tonight’s meeting was Congressman Martin Jennings, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. As a statesman, Jennings was well regarded on both sides of the aisle: He was a social liberal but a military hawk.
Jennings’s father had been an island-hopping Marine during some of the fiercest fighting in the Pacific theater of the Second World War. A Silver Star recipient at Tarawa, Private Jennings had lost a leg protecting his fellow Marines.
The one lesson Jennings senior instilled in his young son: “You don’t fuck with soldiers, sailors, and certainly not Marines.
” Martin Jennings remembered his father’s message.
Even with his otherwise left-of-center ideals, he was fiercely committed to those who had served—including Lieutenant General Chase Montgomery, commander of Multinational Forces/Iraq.
General Montgomery had invited Congressman Jennings to the Russian power plant to acknowledge him as a military ally back on Capitol Hill.
A consummate warrior and a skilled politician, General Montgomery was in it to win it.
His thirty-year career in the Army had been nothing short of historic.
He’d served in the toughest units. He’d done hard tours in Korea and Germany.
He’d taught at his alma mater, West Point, and had earned a master’s degree in National Security and Strategy at the War College.
The general had even made time to get an MBA from Georgetown while on assignment at the Pentagon.
Montgomery had collected his third star after successfully leading the infamous 82d Airborne Division to many victories in the war on terror. The president and the Secretary of Defense had handpicked him to assume the lead in Iraq.
Jennings would be flying to the meeting in a Black Hawk helicopter. Team Rhino would follow in our CSTC armored vehicles, traveling approximately one hundred meters behind an eight-vehicle convoy of US Army forces.
Among the mission VIPs riding in the Army convoy were some CNN reporters and a few straphangers looking for face time with the boss.
Two deputies working for Congressman Jennings—William McKay and Travis Hunter—were less than enthusiastic about being relegated to the trailing vehicles with the likes of mere security contractors.
Back on 15th Street in Washington, bragging rights would be in play at the Old Ebbitt Grill when this congressional delegation—or CODEL—returned, so a photo op with the top brass was career gold.
A photo op with CSTC did not offer quite the same cachet.
After the briefing from the Army commander on routes and protocol, the drive would take about an hour.
Thankfully there had been no significant activity along the routes in the past twenty-four hours.
In fact, Army supply trucks preparing for the big day had made the trip several times in the last week without incident.
There was some good supporting firepower, should things go south.
Always a good day when you don’t get blown up. The odds were in our favor.