We left the kid on the edge of the wadi in the last dry field before Mosul. He had guided us, slowly, for nearly an hour, around a series of half-completed minefields and abandoned trenches. At one point, we passed a bulldozer sitting idle in a field and a pile of plastic pipe and wood. Someone in ISIS had planned on building defensives, but the energy of the men gave out. The fanatics weren’t an army; they had come to cleanse with fire, not dig holes.
Boon gave the boy an energy bar, and then a sniper bullet as a memento. Wildman promised to kill some ISIS for him, and I gave him a thumbs-up. I’d taken a chance on the kid, and he’d done right by us, but the horizon was turning purple, and that meant it was time to go.
One oxbow later, the farmland turned into neighborhoods. We were inside Mosul now, but still hidden ten feet deep. During rainy season, this river would swell to the width of a four-lane highway, but right now it was less than half that.
“Cross the water here,” the old Kurd said.
Everyone except the drivers clambered atop the Humvees and held on as the vehicle inched into the water and snorkeled across. The passenger compartment flooded, and I could hear Boon inhale as cold water engulfed him up to his chest. The engine was breathing through an extended air intake and exhaust system that rose to the cab’s rooftop, above the water. Still, our Humvee slowed at the center of the small river, its tires clawing the mud. For a moment, I thought we would have to use the bumper winch, but then the Hummer staggered free and came up on the other side. Humvees were beasts.
“Everyone back inside.”
We drove up the bank and onto a hilly plain in the middle of Mosul. Six square kilometers of darkness right in the heart of the city, and a perfect shortcut. These were the ancient ruins of Nineveh, seat of the Assyrian empire from the Bible. Now it was just dust and a few marble edifices, reminding me of Ozymandias’s hubris, the pathetic Pharaoh of Shelley’s poem. ISIS had blown up what was left, including the ancient tomb of Jonah, who escaped a whale but not the fanatics.
“Drive west through the ruins,” the old Kurd said, as we continued in blackout drive.
It was nearly dawn, and the adhan, or Muslim call to prayer, would soon sound. Our time was limited. Mosul had the ubiquitous Arab city feel: two-story cinder-block buildings, tangles of electrical wires, parched ground, litter. Thank goodness the Kurds knew the way; it all looked the same to me.
“Here we are,” the old man said. I recognized the automotive garage, owned by a friend of the Mosul resistance, from previous trips into the city. The Kurds got out, opened the garage doors, and swung them shut behind the Humvees.
“Stay here,” I said. “We’ll be back.”
“When?” the old man asked.
“I don’t know.”
We’d come to trust each other, the old Kurd and me. Battle does that.
“Time to put on the man-jammies,” Wildman said, taking off his night-vision goggles. We each put black tunics over our fatigues and wrapped a black turban around our heads, a jihadi disguise that could be ripped off if we got into a firefight. We set out on foot, just Wildman, Boon, and me.
This was the most dangerous part of the journey. We were at the epicenter of ISIS in Iraq, without the firepower or speed of our Humvees. If we were discovered, we would be captured, tortured, and publicly beheaded. There would be no rescue or ransom for men like us.
We walked as casually as we could muster. The morning call to prayer was imminent, and we had to find our contact, Nassib, before the city awoke. I had called in Farhan’s details yesterday, after the Saudi left but before heading to the T-Top. If he was in Mosul, Nassib would know.
“Where should I leave the mark?” Nassib had asked.
“Same place as last time,” I said, hanging up. That was eighteen hours ago. The mark better be up.
I started, alerted by the sound of movement. Twenty meters in front of us, a dog walked out of an alley. It was a stray, the feral kind that crowded cities across Africa and the Middle East. He stopped and studied us. I reached for a Powerbar, hoping to bribe our way out of this, but my cargo pockets were empty. The dog’s curiosity roused, he approached, hair up. My right hand slowly found my knife’s handle under the tunic, but Wildman stepped in front, leaned forward, and stared. The dog stopped, ears flattened backward. Wildman moved forward, and the dog trotted off.
“Allahu akbar, allahu akbar, allahu akbar, allahu akbar.” The drone of the morning prayers whispered over a loudspeaker. All at once, the call erupted from every corner of the city. One by one, lights turned on. The city was awake.
Keep it together, I told myself.
“Hayya’alas-ṣalāh, hayya’alas-ṣalāh!”
We flipped our weapons’ safeties off.
Two more blocks. We double-timed it, running in the shadows.
“There it is,” Boon whispered. The small number 42 was chalked on the side of the building. A normal person would take no notice, and it would soon fade in the sun or wash away in the rain. But to us, it was clear.
“That’s only a few blocks,” I said. Each number corresponded to a prearranged meeting place in the city. Nassib was a member of Mosul’s underground resistance, and he was paranoid of the hisbah, ISIS’s secret police, who were cruel, vicious, and everywhere. Let the CIA have its fancy gadgets. Old-school spy tradecraft, like dead drops and code, never went obsolete.
Using backstreets, we cut our way to our 42: a shuttered Internet café. The first things ISIS did when they took over Mosul, besides convert everyone to Sunni fundamentalism on pain of death, was take over all the bakeries (social control) and cut off access to the Internet.
I gave two knocks. Pause. Three knocks.
A bolt slid open and the door cracked ajar. A bearded face greeted us with a blank smile. Nassib. Before the war, he had been a professor of English. Mosul was a university town, one of the most important in the Muslim world. Now Nassib, like Mosul, was a shell of his former self.
“As-salamu alaykum,” he said. Peace be unto you.
“Wa-Alaikum Salaam,” I replied. And unto you peace.
We followed him inside the abandoned café, which smelled of food. I hadn’t realized how hungry I was. The room was bare, as our meeting places always were, except for a large platter of rice and lamb on a nice carpet.
“Welcome, friends. Eat!” Nassib said, spreading his hands generously, although he could not hide his nervousness.
We sat cross-legged on the floor and ate, out of both respect and hunger. Next to Nassib were two resistance fighters and a slight, uneasy man. The stranger was young, probably midtwenties, with the golden complexion of the Arabian Peninsula, an unscarred face, and good teeth. He was dressed in the local style, but he was clearly from the Gulf.
“The prince is not in Mosul,” Nassib said. “But this is . . . I’m sorry. No names. This man knew Prince Farhan.”
“I am honored,” the young man said in English, although his primary emotion was clearly nervousness. “You are well-known here. They fear you as Zill Almaharib, Shadow Warrior.” I nodded to acknowledge the compliment. “But I know you are kind. You helped a friend of mine last month. Her father was sick, too weak, and . . . notorious to go to the hospital. You carried him out.”
The phrases weren’t metaphors. We had killed a lot of jihadis in our two months, and I had carried an old man half a klick to our waiting Humvee. He was a scholar, I was told, a world-renowned expert in seventeenth-century Persian poetry. That seemed like something ISIS had no reason to hate, but of course, they hated everything.
“I remember,” I said. “How is he?”
“Dead.”
“And your friend?”
The man looked at the floor.
“Let no good deed go unrewarded,” Nassib said sadly. He had no doubt dragged this young man in to settle his debt to me, even though my efforts had been futile. Maybe Nassib was hoping to settle his own accounts as well. He didn’t need to worry. I wasn’t keeping a tab.
“Why are you looking for Farhan?” the man asked.
“I’m being paid.”
“To bring him home?”
“Probably.”
The young man waited. “Do you know his father?”
“No.”
“He is a leader in the Kingdom’s spy agency, the General Intelligence Directorate. He runs the terrorist capture and interrogation program for the Saudi and American governments.”
Secret renditions, I thought. Helping America in its war on terror, one black site at a time. “This isn’t about politics,” I said. “I’m here to make sure Farhan is safe.”
“Oh, I’m sure Farhan is safe. He’s a hard man to kill.”
“What do you mean?” Wildman asked, piqued by the challenge. I shot him a look that said: We’re not here to kill the prince.
“Farhan is part of the Emni, ISIS’s special forces unit. He saved me.”
“Where?”
“In Aleppo, the mother of all battles. I was a foot soldier for ISIS. The Syrian army had us surrounded while helicopters dropped barrel bombs on us. Hundreds were killed, ISIS and civilians alike.”
He paused, the memory still painful. Aleppo was Syria’s Stalingrad.
“On the third day, the Syrian army charged our position. We had run out of ammunition. We resorted to hand-to-hand combat. Two of my friends were killed. I was shot in the leg. Three Syrian soldiers approached me, one pulled a knife and smiled. Farhan appeared from nowhere, like a ghost. He killed them all. He is not a monster, as some people say. He is a hero. Like you.”
I didn’t like that comparison. Not at all.
“Where is he now?” Wildman asked.
“I don’t know. After the battle, they sent me here, where I . . . saw the error of my ways. I never saw Farhan again. That was a year ago.”
I waited. That wasn’t enough. Nassib wouldn’t risk bringing this spy here for nothing. He knew more.
“Where is he now?”
“They say he was kidnapped by his family and returned to Riyadh,” the young man said, “but now he is back in the Caliphate. I heard the military council discussing it yesterday. They offered a reward to all mujahideen fighters.”
“A reward? For what?”
“Farhan’s head.”
Nassib sucked in air between his teeth, and the resistance fighters shifted uncomfortably. Nobody liked to think about beheadings.
“Why is ISIS hunting him?”
“I don’t know. Only that he did something haram, forbidden, before he was kidnapped. The Shura Council declared him apostate.”
A death sentence. “Then why would he come back?”
The stranger looked up at me. “Farhan wasn’t alone. He traveled with companions. Rumor has it they were deserting the Caliphate, that they were on the road to Turkey when he was taken. Rumor also has it that his companions are still there, in hiding.”
“Where?”
“Sinjar.”
Sinjar. I should have known. Sinjar was the final stop on the road to Syria, and a complete shit show. As Kylah had told me, ISIS controlled the town and was waging genocide against the Yazidis who had fled to a mountain nearby, while the Americans pounded the fanatics from the air. Those still in the city were no doubt under siege, starving and desperate.
“I know the city,” the older Kurd offered, speaking for the first time. “I have friends there.”
This is a bad idea, I thought.
I turned to the stranger. “You know more,” I said. “You were one of them.”
He nodded. “Yes. For a short while.”
“But enough to get you killed if your ISIS contacts knew.”
He nodded again. “But also enough to know a place. If Farhan is in Sinjar, you will probably find them there.”
I glanced at Boon, who nodded subtly. This was a long chain of trust, but Boon felt confident in it, and Boon had a sixth sense about these things. He had been a Buddhist monk, briefly, plus he had twenty years of battlefield experience. Nothing got past a man like that. Not even, apparently, Kylah.
“Sinjar is dangerous,” Nassib said. “It is surrounded by ISIS, and the countryside is crawling with jihadis.”
“Good,” Wildman muttered, reaching for a piece of goat.
That was it. The three of us had agreed. We were going to Sinjar.