The Profession Read Online Free PDF Page A

whom recognized the legitimacy of any border and all of whom were certain that, wherever the border was, we Americans were on the wrong side of it. Mosul was then one of the two or three most dangerous places on earth. My company’s AO, Area of Operation, included a dense urban district called the Sumer. The first day I saw it, I understood the place. It was just like home.
    From the start it was clear there was no hope of “victory.” My job from Day One was to keep my Marines alive. How did I do that? I protected my guys by making up personally to the boss of our neighborhood, a tribal sheikh named Abd el-Kadr.
    When I was in high school, I was an all-city basketball player.Because of this, I was known around town; I was friendly with a lot of the mob guys. I would sign balls for their kids or get them tickets to games, that sort of thing. Anyway, the day came when my future was going to be decided. The boss in our part of town was an old Cajun named Jean-Baptiste Robidoux—they called him Robbie—who had a fried chicken and oyster shack that was his “hooch” or his “spot.” He was there every day, in the porch-fronted room off the alley. I forget how it was communicated to me, maybe by one of Robbie’s sons, but it was made clear that I was to show up and pay my respects.
    The scheme was exactly the same in Mosul, except when you went to Robbie’s you had coffee and when you went to Abd el-Kadr’s you had chai tea. But there was the same storefront shop, the same back room, same heat outside in the alley, same sons standing around with guns. At Robbie’s, the weapons were out of sight; at Abd el-Kadr’s, they were in the open. In both places the drinks were served sweet and in little tiny cups. In both places you smoked. In both places you talked about the weather or family for fifteen minutes before you brought up anything of substance. To rush things was bad manners.
    I told Robbie I wasn’t going to college; I would enlist in the Marine Corps instead. He asked if I had given this serious thought. I was a smart kid; he didn’t want to see me screw up my life. I said I had thought about it a lot. Reluctantly, Robbie approved. A job would be waiting for me if I wanted it. I thanked him.
    Robbie handed me three hundred-dollar bills. I was a man now. Actually he didn’t hand me the money; he set it down on the corner of the table. I didn’t pick it up; my daddy did it for me. I had Robbie’s blessing now. It was understood that if the law ever pinched me, I would eat my own ass before I’d give up anything about Robbie or his business. At the same time, if my mother or sisters ever needed something that I or my old man couldn’t provide, Robbie would make sure they were taken care of.
    When I met Abd el-Kadr, I immediately understood thedrill. From the first minute, I was looking to present him with something—a gift of honor, to express my respect and to establish me and my platoon in the same relation to him as I had been to Robbie back home. I hinted around a bunch of times, but the sheikh would never say what was important to him. He was too sly, and the rules of the game said it was my job to figure it out. One day in another part of the city I chanced to come into contact with a young Iraqi hitter showing off his two-year-old Toyota Land Cruiser with a winch on the front.
    How did I snug things up with Abd el-Kadr? I snatched that Cruiser. The move was more of a military operation than 90 percent of the raids, sweeps, and counter-IED ambushes 3/7 ran legitimately. I planned and rehearsed it with my guys for three weeks. The problem was that the buck who owned the Toyota was the son-in-law of the sheikh in his muhalla, who was way up in the Nawari, a powerful tribe in the city. These characters are like desert Bedouin; they still wear the traditional dishdashas, the Lawrence of Arabia robes. There would be a bloodbath if they knew who had hit them.
    We set up a fake checkpoint and took the car in