Threatcon Delta by Andrew Britton Read Free Book Online Page A

that suggested someone had been turned, in the lexicon of covert operations. Dina guessed Major Dell would not make explicit mention of that fact in her notes, however. Even a hint of brainwashing or Stockholm Syndrome could ruin a life and career.
    “Then you consider Iraq your home?” Major Dell asked.
    “It’s where I’ve lived for so long,” he replied.
    “Do you still regard yourself as American?”
    “Of course,” he said.
    The response, stated emphatically, carried a lot of weight in his favor. Dina watched Dell make another note.
    “When the soldiers found you, you asked to be reunited with that family before you left . . .” The psychologist flipped through her notes.
    “The Bulanis,” he said, smiling.
    She found her notes on the subject. “You didn’t seem to want to say much about them when we first met.”
    “I didn’t want to say much about anything,” he said. “I felt a little lost.”
    “Will you tell me more now?”
    “What would you like to know?”
    “Do you miss them so much?”
    “That, and I wish I could have helped them more,” he said sadly. “They were among the first people I met. I made”—he stopped and seemed to search for the word—“a crutch for their boy. His foot was gone. I made a strong one from two discarded table legs.” He smiled. “When he was sitting, he used it like a cricket bat, hitting rocks and shards of brick.”
    “How old was he?”
    “Four, then.”
    “You stayed in touch during the entire time you were there?”
    “We were together a great deal. Raheem is Sunni, originally from Algeria. His wife, Shada, is Shiite. They had to move frequently as militias came and went. We often traveled together.”
    “When was the last time you saw him?”
    “Last month,” Phair said. “He is a driver. He has a nice little business, which I suggested to him.”
    “Whom does he drive?”
    “Iraqi soldiers,” Phair said. “They go home every week with their pay.”
    Dell paused to read her notes. “You were not in a good way when the Irish soldiers found you.”
    “Not physically.”
    “Yes, I should have been clearer,” she said. “You were in the back room of a soup kitchen—”
    “That was when the explosion occurred,” he said. “They found me in the front room. I was trying to help poor Kim. Have you ever seen a child make snow angels?”
    The woman nodded.
    Phair said, “That was what she was doing. In her own blood.”
    The woman stopped nodding. She looked at her file.
    Dina put her fingertips to her lips as if she were thinking. The movement surprised her. It was an old tell revealing that she’d had an emotional reaction. She’d trained hard to wipe all such tells from her system and hadn’t exhibited one in years. Something about the chaplain was getting to her.
    “Before you arrived at the soup kitchen,” the psychologist continued, after a decent pause, “your trek to Basra had subjected you to hunger, dehydration, heat, cold, the elements, and occasional abuse. Also malaria and several forms of the flu. And you were nearly killed when someone from a Sunni neighborhood noticed you and followed you.”
    “Yes, I was wearing the clothes of the Kurdish Peshmerga.”
    “They took you prisoner and would have executed you, but you escaped.”
    She paused again. Dina realized that she was trying to find a new way to ask a question she’d tried before. Had he said how he escaped from the Sunnis? If not, that would certainly explain why the military brass doubted whether he had escaped at all . . . or if he had been turned by them and planted back with the Americans.
    The silence continued. Eventually Dell asked, “Why didn’t you leave Basra after you escaped from the Sunnis?”
    “Because I had—a mission,” he said. “I was being exposed to the many faces of God. I was not yet finished with my study.”
    Dell looked over the typed report from the unit that had discovered him. “This says you were found in the street. How