Burn Down the Sky: Part One

Burn Down the Sky is based on a true story. The events and names were changed because the true story is far too sensitive and dangerous to tell. One day I hope I cane tell you all the true story of my travel to the dark side of the war on terror. Until then, this must suffice...

 

                             PROLOGUE

 

 

 

Alan was tired, his mind struggling to make sense of all that had happened. He chanced a look at himself in the car’s cracked rear view mirror. The stress was showing in his face. The lines were deeper, the furl of his strong brow filled with shadows that held the demons and secrets of more than thirty years as a war correspondent. He knew too much, and had seen too much. It was all coming back to him now, and like some tragic drama of old it was all coming to its final, lamentable end. The past had caught up with him, and no longer could he escape it.

 It was an all night drive from Baghdad to Karkuk in Kurdish controlled Iraq. The road was still not entirely secure. More than once the Army convoy, in which Alan had slipped into near Ba’qubah, had come under fire from the inky blackness of the Iraqi countryside. Short on ammunition, the road weary American soldiers had fired not a shot in response, allowing the guerrillas to fade away in the night. There were no casualties, but the ghostly fighters had made their message abundantly clear; no American soldier was safe in Iraq.

At dawn the convoy came upon the remains of a taxi on the outskirts of the city. It had struck a mine no doubt intended for the convoy. Pieces of the white Mercedes lay strewn across the road, as if some furious giant had ripped it to shreds. The mangled corpses of two men and a woman lay where they had fallen in a ditch along the road. As Alan looked over the bodies an Army Captain came up beside him and shrugged.

“Sucks to be them,” said the Captain without a shred of emotion. Alan understood the feeling and could see the strain and fatigue evident in the young Captain’s sweat streaked face. After a while the soul could accept no more of the misery of war and simply shut itself off. Alan understood well enough, but still felt rage boil inside him.

Back on the road Alan did his best to put the images of the dead Iraqis from his mind. It was easier than he expected. They were beyond help and there was no point in lingering over the matter. It was a self-defeating exercise to dwell upon the lives they led, or those they loved. Three decades as a war correspondent had steeled him to such horrors. Alan had seen more death and destruction than he cared to remember. He had much more pressing concerns now. The life of a friend was at stake, and Alan had to believe that it was still possible to save him, never mind that Alan was partly responsible. Time was running out for an old friend and only one man could save him. The more Alan thought about it the more frantic he became, and perhaps worst of all, the more guilty he felt until it eclipsed everything else. Where had it all gone wrong, he wondered, or where had he gone wrong? He knew the question was pointless. Now all that mattered was to put things right.

The sun appeared as a jaundiced disk through the dust and haze of the ancient skyline of Karkuk. The sun seemed to pull itself grudgingly from the snow covered peaks of the Zagros Mountains, which marked the Iranian border some 50 miles to the east. Shepherds tended to their flocks along the road, eyeing the convoy with such scorn that it was easy to imagine that they had fired on the Americans during the night. To the north thick black smoke rose from burning oil fields.

He left the convoy at the outskirts of the city, continuing alone through deserted city streets. He followed the muddy Rukhana River that neatly bisected Karkuk. The city was a confusion of narrow alleyways, unlit streets and sun-baked houses only made duller and less hospitable in the growing light. The city itself was laid out more like the ramblings of a tired mind, than with any organized purpose in mind. The maze of streets frustrated him, for in the half-light it was damn near impossible to tell one block from another. More than once he turned down dead end streets believing them to be the right one. He struggled with a growing fear that he would happen upon some of Karkuk’s more unsavory types. The city was an amalgam of neglected ancient villages that had grown together around haphazard flashes of Saddam-imposed social order. Rising from the ancient neighborhoods were sterile, perfunctory apartment towers and new public buildings. Against the backdrop of rolling green hills and granite gray mountains Alan thought that Karkuk truly was a blemish upon the land.

These were dangerous streets to the unfamiliar, and the city had changed greatly since Alan was here only a few weeks after the liberation of the city from Saddam’s army. He feared attracting attention. Al Qa’eda terror cells were known to be operating among its maze-like confusion and would not hesitate to attack any foreigner. Several foreign workers had been kidnapped in the city and one had already been beheaded as a message for foreigners to leave Iraq. Alan kept a loaded pistol under the seat for just such circumstances, reserving the last bullet for himself rather than face humiliation and murder at the hands of terrorists. Having a weapon blurred the line between journalism and combatant, but then again so did death!

He was driving a beat up yellow Audi by choice. It wasn’t at all the kind of vehicle most outsiders would choose, allowing him to blend in with the native population. Despite its appearance the Audi was reliable and relatively easy to repair in an emergency. It was well worth the three hundred Dollars he had paid for it in Baghdad.

Near a freight yard, where the tracks ended at a small Muslim cemetery, Alan turned down a filthy little passageway. He pulled the Audi close to the wall and stepped out, his legs rubbery and unsure after the long ride from Baghdad. The morning air was still cool and helped to wake him a little. It was dark there, the early morning shadows hiding deep entranceways and spider holes capable of concealing a hundred assassins. The air was heavy with the scent of baking bread.

Across the street an old Kurd was pissing against the wall. Somewhere an old woman was threw a tirade, disturbing the morning quiet. It surprised him to think that after all these years he should fear John Byars, but that’s what it had come to. His heart beat mercilessly and the cold sweat of abject terror ran along the hollow of his spine. Alan Kirby had been near death a thousand times, but this time it was different. It was a terror he could not quantify into words, which to his journalistic soul, created more of a conundrum. Alan looked up and down the passage to be sure that no one was watching and went quickly to the address Byars had given him.

Just as he had been instructed Alan only knocked once and waited. There were scuffling sounds from within the mud-brick building, as if someone there had been surprised there. It was some time before Byars finally answered the door. This time Byars didn’t smile at his old friend, only pursed his lips. It succeeded in making Alan feel foolish.

John Byars was short, but as sturdy as a tree trunk. They were roughly the same age, both of them having reached Vietnam almost three decades before as young men. Byars looked much older though, a consequence of three continuous decades of war and the transgressions of life in the CIA. Alan thought back over the years and his tumultuous relationship with Byars, the bloody ditch in Vietnam, Maria and the coup in Buenos Aires, and with the Mujahedeen in Soviet-occupied Kabul. With a beard and the clothes of a Kurdish peasant Byars looked the part of a Peshmerga freedom fighter. Whatever he was up to in that disguise Alan did not want to know. What he had learned from Byars over the years was the stuff of nightmares, and enough to darken the soul of any man who learned such secrets. And Alan could feel how his soul had darkened for what he knew.

It was obvious that Byars had been up all night. By the looks of the ashtray on the small table by the door he hadn’t been alone either. Indeed the stale air of the small room was heavy with cigarette smoke. A second door led to a separate room. A colorful hand woven blanket covered the door. Alan’s gaze kept drifting to it, as if attempting to see through the tight weave. He had the feeling that someone was there, listening to everything they were saying. Doubtless they were the demons conjured in Byars schemes

“Al, I wish that I could say that it’s good to see you,” said Byars

“We’ve come a long way, John. Maybe this time we’ve come too far for our own good.”

Byars lit a cigarette and squinted through the smoke. He paced around the room. “Long way from that ditch in the A Shau back in ‘Nam, buddy. What is it about us that we keep cropping up in each other’s lives in these God-awful shit holes?”

“I keep digging for the filth in the world, and every time I turn over a shovel full there you are. Beginning to think that it’s not a mistake.”

“Mistakes are for fools. The World is a very different place from when you and I first landed in Vietnam damn near 35 years ago. Shit, that’s a lifetime. The risks got bigger, the enemies more exotic, the game more confusing until it got all muddled.”

“But you still play the game.”

“Still got my eye on the ball,” Byars smiled knowingly

“Do you?”

“Do you, Al?”

“Call it off, John. Call off the hit. It’s a mistake and an innocent man will die,” Alan was almost pleading. Byars crushed the cigarette out in the ashtray and thought a moment. He looked at Alan darkly and motioned to a pile of cushions and pillows upon the stone floor.

“Nobody is innocent, not from where I stand, Al.”

“I won’t let you murder an innocent man!”

“Its already in motion, and the stakes are too big on this one to call it off. He’s guilty, if not of this crime, then certainly others.”

“John,” Alan hated to find himself begging, but what else could he do? “John, he’s a friend for God’s sake.”

“Sit, and let me see if I can explain any of this to you.”

Alan fought fatigue, fought sorrow that still hung fresh and hot in his chest, and he fought his own fevered thoughts. Memories ran wild through the unguarded doors of his tired mind. He fought to gather them before they wreaked total havoc there He fought to understand their relevance and why they came to him now and in this place. It took him a moment to understand, looking now over the long tough road of his life…