The Shelter for Buttered Women Read online

  The Shelter for Buttered Women

  An Ari Ciminon Novel

  Book 5

  J. Clayton Rogers

  Copyright 2017

  To My Wife, Christiane

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER 1

  Camp Rustamiyah – Baghdad – Iraq – June 7, 2006 - 2100 hours

  Richmond, Virginia – July, 2008 – The $500 Proposition

  CHAPTER 2

  Camp Rustamiyah – Baghdad – Iraq – June 7, 2006 - 2100 hours

  Richmond, Virginia – July, 2008 – The Shelter for Buttered Women

  CHAPTER 3

  Camp Rustamiyah – Baghdad – Iraq — June 7, 2006 - 2200 hours

  Richmond, Virginia — July, 2008 — A Dispute Over Ownership

  CHAPTER 4

  Camp Rustamiyah – Baghdad – Iraq — June 7, 2006 - 2225 hours

  Richmond, Virginia — July, 2008 — Ice Cream Rules

  CHAPTER 5

  Camp Rustamiyah – Baghdad – Iraq — June 7, 2006 - 2300 hours

  Richmond, Virginia — July, 2008 — Cholesterol Is King

  CHAPTER 6

  Camp Rustamiyah – Baghdad – Iraq — June 8, 2006 - 0000 hours

  Richmond, Virginia — July, 2008 — Women in an Industrial Trailer

  CHAPTER 7

  South of Al Rasheed Air Base – Baghdad – Iraq — June 8, 2006 - 0030 hours

  Richmond, Virginia — July, 2008 — Culinary Interlude

  CHAPTER 8

  Sindabad – Baghdad – Iraq — June 8, 2006 - 0045 hours

  Richmond, Virginia — July, 2008 — Trucks & Bucks

  CHAPTER 9

  Sindabad – Baghdad – Iraq — June 8, 2006 - 0045 hours

  Richmond, Virginia — July, 2008 — A Snack at Ari's Shack

  CHAPTER 10

  Sindabad – Baghdad – Iraq — June 8, 2006 - 0130 hours

  Richmond, Virginia — July, 2008 — Another Bloody Hangover

  CHAPTER 11

  Sindabad – Baghdad – Iraq — June 8, 2006 - 0200 hours

  Richmond, Virginia — July, 2008 — Visiting the Husband

  CHAPTER 12

  Sindabad – Baghdad – Iraq — June 8, 2006 - 0230 hours

  Richmond, Virginia — July, 2008 — Red Masgouf

  CHAPTER 13

  Sindabad – Baghdad – Iraq – June 8, 2006 - 0245 hours

  Richmond, Virginia – July, 2008 – Avon Ladies

  CHAPTER 14

  Sindabad – Baghdad – Iraq – June 8, 2006 - 0255 hours

  Richmond, Virginia – July, 2008 – Secret Cargo

  CHAPTER 15

  Sindabad – Baghdad – Iraq – June 8, 2006 - 0300 hours

  Richmond, Virginia – July, 2008 – Allah's Oriental Carpets & Shooting Gallery

  CHAPTER 16

  Sindabad – Baghdad – Iraq – June 8, 2006 - 0310 hours

  Richmond, Virginia – July, 2008 – Disaster at the Mansion

  CHAPTER 17

  Richmond, Virginia – July, 2008 – Disaster at O'Connor's

  CHAPTER 18

  Richmond, Virginia – July, 2008 – The Buttered Women in Peril

  CHAPTER 19

  Richmond, Virginia – July, 2008 – The Namus at Bay

  CHAPTER 20

  Richmond, Virginia – July, 2008 – Art & Mortality

  CHAPTER 21

  Richmond, Virginia – August, 2008 – Negotiations

  EPILOGUE

  Sindabad – Baghdad – Iraq – June 8, 2006 - 0410 hours

  CHAPTER 1

  Camp Rustamiyah – Baghdad – Iraq

  June 7, 2006 - 2100 hours

  Night is the swan song of empty boasts. This has been known ever since it dawned on Man's distant ancestors that they were slightly brainier than the animals around them. Daylight was reserved for the gathering of food. Leave the cave at night, and you risked becoming food. And in the centuries since, whether one was in a great city or a small town, one sensed an added element of risk if one stepped out after dark. Six miles south of Sadr City, grunts donning their NVDs before going out on night patrol felt the cumbersome weight on their heads, the palpable artificiality, and insensibly quavered.

  The Army owns the night? You've got to be kidding.

  Naturally, they enjoyed the advantage the goggles gave them. Those black-clad mujahideen skulking the side-streets thought they were invisible after the sun went down. Weren't they in for a royal surprise? But it didn't take much to put the American soldiers in the same position. A slip of the goggles, battery failure, a sudden burst of light magnified into the retinas…and then the infantry and muj were on equal terms.

  The Army owns the night? Well, under certain conditions….

  On this night, though, the soldiers had some relief. No missions were scheduled. The Quick Reaction Force was ready to go, as always, but everyone else was standing down. Why? Officially, no one below the rank of Goddo Supremo was supposed to know. Probably something to do with politics. Unofficially, almost everyone on base had a good idea. Either way, the pause could not have come at a better time. Because the Night chose this night to remind everyone of their frailty.

  The sound began around 2100. A low moan, long and mournful, followed a minute later by a screech that set one's hair on end. And then silence, for maybe ten minutes…before it was repeated. It was impossible to tell where it came from. It wended its way up Muasker Al-Rashid Street, down the Mohamed Al-Qasim Expressway and across Omar Bin Al-Khatab Street. Over Al-Za'franiya, over Seaidya, over the Tigris and the Diyala…until it reached Camp Rustamiyah itself.

  "What the fuck…?"

  "Sounds like fucking Godzilla."

  That was a pretty apt description. Only this sound dragged and repeated. This sound, so hollow yet so full, put a damning footnote on the day just past.

  It was the Night, of course. It was telling all who would listen (and you couldn't help but listen) that the sabre-tooths were lurking outside the cave entrance. Exit at your own peril. Maybe Intel had predicted this, had put a temporary hold on night raids. What lay in wait beyond the wire could only be imagined.

  Maybe it was Godzilla.

  In a bad mood.

  Richmond, Virginia

  July, 2008

  The $500 Proposition

  Ghaith Ibrahim, known to his American friends as Ari Ciminon, had prepared for this moment. For the last month he had strained every part of his moral and physical being. He had even subtracted several cigarettes from his usual daily allotment, and cut back his consumption of Jack Daniels. His liver might not be doing handstands, yet, but his persistent hangover had been reduced to a bearable thumping in his temples. Milestones could also be millstones, but after the beating he had been subjected to at Manchester Docks, he concluded a major tune-up was in order.

  Over the winter he had gone from wheezing after jogging three miles to easily catching his breath after twelve. Seeing this improvement, the pastor from the Methodist church up the street had lured Ari into the two-wheel realm with the gift of a Trek Mountain Bike. Being busy at the time dealing with ATM scams and an elderly spy (as well as killing assorted assassins), he had let the bike sit in his garage for a few weeks. When this bit of excitement had passed, he returned to his job of identifying Iraqi insurgents for CENTCOM. As before, the computer images of death and destruction in the land of his fathers had begun to wear on him. His smoking increased, the flow of whiskey became a flood, his internal gyroscope began to wobble unnaturally. Then he remembered the bike.

  A commonplace assertion was that, once learned, one never forgot how to balance one's self on two wheels. Ari's first two falls might have been exceptions to the rule. He had not mount
ed a bike since he had fled the American Warthogs on the Highway of Death. Even then, he had not considered the mechanics of what he was doing. Abject terror had a way of bringing instinct to the fore. Up to that day in April of 1991 he had not ridden a bike since he was twelve, yet his core musculature kicked in with urgent vibrancy. Under the circumstances, with 30 mm anti-tank rounds flying past him, he would have placed well in the front cadre of the Tour de France.

  Many years had passed since then, but a reasonably consistent regimen of jogging had kept his quadriceps in tune, while his own peculiar version of shadow boxing (plus some serious hand-to-hand combat) maintained his upper body. Riding a bicycle? A snap. And so it proved when he forged onto the road. He pedaled throughout the neighborhood, then beyond, forging through traffic with the alacrity of someone who had learned to ride in downtown Baghdad. Fortunately for him, most American drivers were averse to running down wayward cyclists, while those not so considerate were treated to spectacular displays of maneuverability, loud oaths, and an occasional kick in the fender.

  Pastor Grainger, one of the few people to know the location of the former Iraqi agent's safe house, had shown up at his doorstep one day for a morning spin. Wearing a vented helmet, he leaned against his immaculate bike and hopped on his toes, giving a visible rendition of the pleasure to come. Ari tried to beg off. He had spent a long evening reviewing images of atrocities committed in Kandahar, fueling the dreary task with the usual allotment of whiskey and cigarettes. With predictable consequences. Gauging the hungover man before him, Grainger nodded sagely and said:

  "Let's sweat it out."

  Ari was tempted to slam the door in the pastor's face, but he had few friends that he trusted in America. Truth be told, if Grainger had known everything about this one-time assassin, the friendship would have ended abruptly. Not wanting to alienate him, and realizing what the pastor suggested was for the best, Ari acquiesced. He left the front door open as he retrieved his bike. He was no longer fearful of a cat escaping

  Clearing his lungs of leftover smoke and squeezing JD out of his system took a little longer than he had anticipated, but after ten or so miles he began to feel the nicotine-free oxygen begin working on his system. Pausing on a stretch of the James River Trail that ran parallel to a railway track, Grainger nodded approvingly.

  "Better. Right? You feel better?"

  Ari's deep breaths were a bit too crinkly, but he nodded.

  "Good." Grainger pointed at the embankment beyond the tracks. "You'll need a couple more weeks of work-out before we can take you up there."

  Raising his eyes, Ari saw only trees. Then a pair of voices floated down, hidden in the undergrowth, moving rapidly. He gave Grainger an inquiring look.

  "That's the mountain bike trail."

  "That is my ultimate destination?"

  "As soon as you're in better shape and buy a helmet. There's a northside trail, too, on the other side of the river. It's pretty rough. We usually do both at one go. I'm thinking…you might want to hike it, first, just to see if it's something you can handle."

  The trail passed very close to Ari's house on Beach Court Lane, so he performed a preliminary reconnaissance. He concluded only a lunatic would risk riding a bike across the boulders, narrow cliff edges, low overhangs and numerous ball-banging impediments.

  But, apparently, there were a lot of lunatics in Richmond. He had to step aside for quite a few bikes as they slammed down the uneven terrain or bucked their way uphill against formidable obstacles. He encountered one bicyclist who had taken a tumble and was rubbing his bleeding shin. Considering the rocks where he had skidded, he could have just as easily broken his neck. He jumped up at Ari's approach and grinned sheepishly.

  "Falling off a bike…" he shrugged, like someone caught in a childish faux pas.

  "'A horse of good breed is not dishonored by his saddle'."

  The cyclist frowned. "Uh, I guess…but I'm not a jackass."

  Ari played back the old Arab proverb in his mind as the cyclist re-mounted and resumed his jaw-cracking way downhill. No…his translation was correct. But now he could see where someone might not consider it flattering.

  He was mildly nonplussed by the number of women among the mountain bikers. Well, perhaps they were enabled by their youthfulness. Circling the forty-mark, Ari prided himself on his fitness. Yet he did not make a fetish out of good health—hence all the boozing and smoking. Obviously, Grainger thought he was in fine fettle, but there was a risk. He could not easily dismiss his natal culture, where to be shown up by a girl was the most brutal of insults. On the other hand, there was always the possibility that he could show them up. So he purchased a helmet identical to the pastor's.

  And two weeks later found himself sprawled painfully across a ragged rockbed on the northern leg of the Buttermilk Trail.

  Since he was the last in line, his predicament was not immediately noticed. But only a few minutes passed before Grainger raced back and found his missing cyclist.

  "Falling off a bike…" Ari shrugged.

  "Are you all right?"

  "My self-esteem is grievously bruised," said Ari, drawing back his legs as a pair of cyclists rumbled past. Both were women.

  Grainger chuckled, but ranged his head from side to side as he did a quick survey of Ari's body. "Perfect."

  "Pardon?"

  "I've seen a lot worse," said Grainger. "Gashes, compound fractures…"

  Have you seen men roasted alive in a tank turret…?

  "Yes, I am most fortunate."

  "Need help getting up?"

  "Don't be absurd."

  With a look of amused resignation, Grainger took a step back and watched as Ari wobbled to his feet. He took hold of one of the bike handles and tilted it up for inspection.

  "Your chain has slipped off," Grainger observed.

  "Ah, then I was not at fault. One cannot predict mechanical failures."

  "It looks like you may have been cross-chaining. You might be more careful when you're shifting gears."

  Affronted by the possibility that the fall was due to pilot error after all, Ari lifted the Trek's rear wheel and spun the chain back onto the cassette.

  "That helmet came in handy."

  Reaching up, Ari probed the gash in the outer shell.

  "That could have been your scalp."

  "So it would seem," Ari groused. "Proceed."

  Grainger seemed on the verge of saying something in the vein of 'Are you sure?' Instead, he said, "I admire your pluck," and turned around to catch up with the group, presumably far ahead.

  'With a Prayer Over the Bars Mountain Bike Club'. In Ari's case, it had been more of an expletive, but otherwise the Methodist-sponsored organization was aptly named. The members were, on average, slightly older than most of the other riders on the trail, with Grainger topping out at only a couple of years younger than Ari himself. Perhaps the pastor would have been less solicitous had he known Ari's real motive for signing up. Or perhaps not. True, Ari was trying to improve his fighting trim, but he had no intention of returning to his former avocation. No longer an assassin, he was just trying to survive. He was not particularly enamored with the idea of survival. After facing death so many times, staying alive began to seem rather blasé. But his wife and son's survival might become more problematic if his usefulness to the Americans came to an end. And death, by definition, would put an end to that usefulness. Rana and Qasim were far away, in California. He could not even speak to his wife on the phone, because among other injuries her vocal chords and ears had been blown away by an American bomb. But she was still with him, every day and every night. His soul belonged to her.

  Mind over matter. A pleasant conceit, but Ari doubted that was how most mountain bikers overcame obstacles. Perhaps that was how he had ended up crumpled on the rocks. He had thought he could dominate the terrain through sheer will. True, there was an element of that present in the athletic psyche. More balanced minds might consider the attitude borderline suicidal, but f
or a brief moment Ari had thought he could command the rocks to step aside and let him through.

  Now he knew better. He begged the rocks to forgive his presumption and made it down the rest of the slope without incident. He finished the rest of the leg by himself, dodging oncoming bikers on the narrow trail, negotiating a broken boardwalk and swatting his way through overhanging kudzu vines. By the time he reached the parking lot the others had already mounted their bikes on their vehicles and were available to give Ari an embarrassing pep talk as he emerged onto the trailhead. Circling their victim, they made it impossible for him to escape their hearty bombardment of cheer and commiseration. A couple of them went so far as to admit that they, too, had gone head over arse on the Buttermilk. Because of his dark complexion, Ari suspected Grainger had encouraged the club members to be solicitous towards him. If that was true, it was just another form of racism. Being as prejudiced as they came when confronting Shia and certain lowly tribes in Iraq, he was in no position to condemn these venomous good wishes. He suffered them with a grim smile.

  Ben Torson hung back from the group, grinning sheepishly but saying nothing. Ari had met Ben at Grainger's church while looking into the disappearance of one of the pastor's Arab parishioners. Alas, Mustafa Zewail had lost his head in a crime as vile as its perpetrator, but at least Ari had made new friends and helpers. Ben had assisted in the track-down of Uday Hussein, the allegedly dead son of Saddam. He had also given Ari a hand in dealing with a gang of bombers that had put Richmond on edge for several months.

  Ari had also met Ben's charming wife, Becky, who even now was participating in the church's power walk team in an attempt to work off the weight she had gained while her husband was posted overseas. Several grueling months had resulted in the shedding of ten pounds. Ben asserted she would soon be joining the mountain bikers.