Seven Days From Sunday (MP-5 CIA #1) (12 page)

There was a sudden skirmish and more shouting from the mob. Maaz saw that the Iraqi Security Forces had arrived and were trying to dispel the crowd. Not wanting to lose his camera for a second time, Maaz knew it was time to leave. He quickly moved away from the truck’s bright spotlights, disappearing into the night.

To make it look like a robbery, Adnan had broken a window on the side of the building using a rock. He continued using the rock on the glass, in order to create a large enough opening through which a burglar could have entered. Then he and his sister had entered through the front door using Maaz’s extra set of keys. It had been Adnan’s idea to also take the computer’s monitor and a small television set, just to further ensure the look of a chance robbery.

Daneen felt terrible guilt, but she knew they didn’t have a choice. If the newspaper printed pictures of Ghaniyah, the girl would be doomed – if she wasn’t raped and tortured by Shiites while in prison, al Mudtaji would have her killed. Daneen had reminded Adnan that if Ghaniyah had indeed brought the severed head to the checkpoint, she was most likely in an American-run prison. Adnan certainly hoped so. A prison run by the Iraqi Security Forces was simply unthinkable.

Daneen found it ironic that while much of the world thought that the Americans were cold, heartless thugs, who often tortured their prisoners, she, like many Iraqis, knew the truth – making naked prisoners form a pyramid or making them wear a dog’s collar and leash were simply forms of harassment and humiliation, not true torture. The Iraqis knew torture only too well from years of oppression under Saddam Hussein, and now by some rogue Shiite members of the Iraqi Security Forces. In fact, it hadn’t been that long ago that the U.S. soldiers actually found nearly 200 detainees held in an Interior Ministry bunker. They were all malnourished, many severely beaten.

If Ghaniyah had been arrested, Daneen prayed she had been taken by the Americans. It was her only chance for survival.

She now carried the monitor while her brother juggled the CPU and the television set. They had already walked a good distance from the newspaper office using side streets, and had been fortunate that they had not seen a soul. Her arms were aching, and she longed to put the monitor down. “How much further, Adnan?”

“We’re almost there,” he answered, looking over his shoulder at her. “You okay?”

She nodded in reply. She couldn’t help but wonder what Maaz’s reaction would be when he discovered that the computer containing his photographs had been stolen. Judging by his anger at the Iraqi Security Forces when they had confiscated his camera, she was sure he’d be impossible to live with. She consoled herself that if he was irate, she could just go to the bedroom and lie down, feigning sickness from her “pregnancy.”

The four men from the 2nd Battalion, 5th Marines wore night-vision goggles which enabled them to look around the inside of the dark building quite easily without using flashlights. Gonz glanced at Peterson and Heisman who sat together at a desk working on a computer.

“Shit!” Gonz heard one of the Marines say through his earpiece. The voice continued, saying, “Got a broken window. East wall.”

“Double check security!” Gonz hissed into his headset. “Now!” As the group had entered through the front door, which Heisman had easily picked, the Marines had quickly gone room to room, making sure the office building was secure. But obviously they had missed something. As he headed toward the east wall, Gonz could feel the blast of fresh air.

“West wall secure,” one Marine reported.

Another voice echoed through his earpiece. “South end secure.”

“North end secure. Repeat, north end secure.”

Gonz approached the Marine who was peering out the broken window near a desk on the east wall. He looked over his shoulder at Gonz and shook his head. No one was out there. As the Marine stepped away from the window, they could hear the crunch of broken glass under his heavy boots. “Broken from the outside in. My guess, tonight. Whoever uses this desk would have seen all the glass. And felt the hot air coming in. There’s no way this happened before tonight.”

Gonz nodded. Shit. Was it just a coincidence that they broke in the same night as some burglar? As Gonz quickly headed across the room toward Peterson, another Marine said, “Got something near the front entrance.” Gonz changed direction and joined the man who used a yellow filtered flashlight to focus on the floor. “Missing CPU.” Gonz could see a bunch of plugs that now just dangled to the floor and the visible imprint of a CPU on the carpet. He took the man’s flashlight and trained it on the desk. While a very fine dust was settled on the desk, the outline of a monitor footprint was clearly seen. The Marine saw it, too. “Stole the CPU and monitor?”

Gonz said, “See if you can tell if anything else was taken.” The man nodded and left. Gonz went over to Peterson, whose hands were flying across the keyboard. Heisman stood next to him, passing a large magnet over 3.5" floppy disks.

“What have we got, guys?” Gonz asked.

“Using the software interface to destroy the data now.” Peterson kept typing.

“You found the photos then?”

“No problem.”

“Yeah, no problem cause I’m here,” Heisman chided him. “He can’t read their shit.”

“Who can?” Peterson argued.

Gonz looked at the monitor. All the icons were in Arabic.

“How long?” Gonz inquired.

“Five minutes, tops,” Peterson replied. “But I found some Compact Flash memory cards, too.” He could see Gonz didn’t understand, so he said, “Magnet won’t do the trick. I’ll scrub them with an overwrite of their own stuff. Fill ‘em up that way.”

“Check online?”

“Done,” Heisman told him. “The two photos already in print were sent to the A.P. Nowhere else. No other photos sent anywhere.”

“Good. What else then?”

Peterson nodded to Heisman, still working with the magnet. “Just erasing all the disks. Hate to do this to them, but there are disks everywhere. Don’t have the time to see if they put the photos on one.”

Gonz nodded. He didn’t like hurting the newspaper either. It was one of the few Iraqi newspapers that was actually pro-democracy. While that was a bit of bad luck, they had had some good luck, too. First, they had been lucky to retrieve the digital camera that the Iraqi Security Forces still had in their possession. The digital card was missing, and the Iraqi police had insisted that the camera had never had a memory card. Of course, Gonz hadn’t trusted them, but once inside the newspaper office, Peterson had quickly found three camera memory cards inside a desk drawer. Gonz had popped them in the camera and found the one with Ghaniyah’s pictures. The other two were returned to the desk drawer.

They were lucky again to be able to find the photos on the newspaper’s main server. Peterson was erasing all traces of the photos now. The only remaining question was, why did someone break in and take just one computer? The office was filled with computers.

Why that one?

And did it have the photos on it?

Standing in the dark alley, Daneen watched as Adnan removed a screwdriver from his pocket and quickly detached the protective CPU cover, exposing the inner workings of the computer. “What are you doing?” she asked.

“Taking out the hard drive.”

“That’s where the pictures are?”

“Yes,” her brother replied. Even though Daneen had thought they would simply erase the photos from the computer, Adnan had explained that it wasn’t that simple. He couldn’t just drag the photos to the Recycle Bin since that would only be moving them to a new location. He explained that even if he then emptied the bin, there was a good chance that Fadhil could retrieve the photos using some sort of undelete utility program. Their only option was to take the computer. So while Adnan unplugged all the wires and cables from the CPU, Daneen had looked around Fadhil’s desk for any hard copy of the photos. She had found nothing.

Now she wondered what time it was. Curfew would be in effect soon. She had lied to Maaz earlier that evening saying that a good friend needed her. The girlfriend had recently lost her mother to a marketplace bomb, and although Daneen was close to the woman, she knew her friend had gone to Jordan. But Maaz rarely paid attention to such things, and he had easily believed her story that the distraught woman needed comforting.

“How much longer?” Daneen worried.

“Got it.” Adnan held up the hard drive for her to see.

“Now what?”

Adnan put the hard drive in his pocket and quickly put the hard case back on the computer, securing it in place with only a couple of screws. He then placed the small television top of the CPU and picked up both in his arms. “Come on.”

Daneen picked up the monitor and they set off again. They walked several blocks before Adnan turned down a side street. Her arms ached as she followed him, wondering how far they were going to go. Finally her brother stopped outside a small apartment house. “Over here.”

Adnan placed the stolen goods just to the side of a door. He then took the monitor from Daneen and placed it on the ground with the rest.

“You think someone will take it?”

Adnan grinned. “You’re kidding, right?”

Only two full days on the job at the Basra hospital, and McKay had fallen into a natural routine of doing her rounds just after dawn before heading to the emergency clinic on the ground floor, which always had its share of sick children, ailing elderly patients and everything else in-between. If they were lucky there would only be a minimum number of bullet or shrapnel wounds. Pretty much like any emergency room in the states. Except of course, the lack of proper diagnostic equipment and medical supplies, which were woefully inadequate compared to American hospitals.

McKay had only one last patient to see. She glanced at the woman’s chart, but it was written in Arabic which meant it was completely useless. She’d just have to wing it. Wouldn’t be the first time. She was glad that at least the room numbers had been given English numeric digits which made it easy to find the correct room. As she approached, she saw that the door was ajar and she pushed it open.

She wasn’t surprised to find that Ghaniyah’s aunt was in a small room that, by American hospital standards, would hold two beds, yet now held a total of five beds, four of the which were occupied by women. What did surprise McKay was to find Ghaniyah standing over one of the women, holding a cup of water to the old woman’s lip. As the woman tried to drink, at least half the contents ended up dribbling down her front. McKay watched as Ghaniyah took a nearby paper napkin and mopped up the liquid. She noticed that the woman was hooked up to an IV and had a catheter. Ghaniyah seemed to sense her presence, suddenly looking right at her. “Can you help me, please?” Ghaniyah asked in English.

“Sure,” McKay replied after a long hesitation. The truth was she was anything but sure. Direct contact was supposed to be by prearranged meetings and certainly not in front of anyone. McKay had to turn sideways in order to slide past the various beds stacked close together. A few of the patients looked at McKay, but no one said a word.

“Don’t worry,” Ghaniyah continued. “Everyone knows I speak English, and you are clearly the new American doctor, so it is not unusual that we should talk.”

“I see,” McKay answered, although such direct contact went against every grain of her CIA training.

“May I see it, please?” Ghaniyah asked, nodding to the chart. McKay handed it to her, and she quickly scanned the two pages.

“Severe dehydration, I can see that much,” McKay announced. When Ghaniyah gave McKay a curious look, the doctor nodded to the IV drip, which was labeled in English. “What’s the cause, does it say?”

Ghaniyah glanced at the chart. “Either influenza or an ulcer.”

“Read off her symptoms.”

“She came in with acute abdominal pain, vomiting and diarrhea.” Ghaniyah made a face. “Whew...”

“What? What is it? Read everything.”

“Loose bowels were bloody.”

McKay kneeled down to check the urine output from the catheter. It read less than three ounces. “When was the last urine output measured?”

Ghaniyah flipped to the second page. “Last night. Nearly three ounces.”

“Did they empty it? Empty the container down here?”

“I don’t know... It doesn’t say.”

“Damn,” McKay muttered, standing.

“Why? What does it mean?”

“Abdominal pain, she vomited and had bloody diarrhea? What else?”

Ghaniyah shrugged. “That’s all.”

“Since when though?”

“Just after noon time, four days ago.”

“Four days...”

“They’ve given her saline solutions to hydrate, anti-nausea and anti-diarrhea medication. I can’t pronounce the names...”

“Treating the symptoms, not the cause.” McKay said under her breath as she studied the IV drip which was nearly empty. “When was this last changed?”

Again Ghaniyah referred to the chart. “Doesn’t say.”

McKay looked at the old woman who was staring at her with clear bright eyes. “How do you feel?”

Ghaniyah quickly translated. The woman muttered something and Ghaniyah explained, “Her mouth feels dry. She wants water, but says she’s too weak to pour some for herself. That’s what I was doing when you came in. Giving her some water.”

McKay poured some more water in the cup, helping the woman take a sip. “Did she eat anything different four days ago? Eat or drink something that didn’t taste right?”

“You think–”

“Just ask,” McKay said sternly.

Ghaniyah did, and the two went back and forth in rapid Arabic. Finally Ghaniyah said, “No.”

“Anything out of the ordinary?”

“It would help if I knew what you were thinking.”