We followed a Yazidi child through the streets of Sinjar. Our weapons clinked under our Bedouin disguises as we climbed a wall, crawled through a hole, snuck through the ruins of a building, walked a rooftop. It was a child’s route to mischief, in more peaceful times. But these weren’t peaceful times.
ISIS had swept in, killing the men they encountered, without even the pretense of false conversions. Mass graves marked the center of the city. That was two weeks ago. The killings had moved to the smaller Yazidi villages around Mount Sinjar, leaving the city postapocalyptic. Garbage lined the streets and there was no power, since social services were dead. A burned-out car squatted in an alley; an old woman carried a bucket of water to whatever squalid corner she made home. We avoided her. We avoided the orphans huddled in filth, staring at us with a mixture of hope and disease. I’d been here before: Monrovia, Goma, Bangui, Juba, Gao, and a hundred other places whose names I had forgotten.
“You sure about this?” Wildman asked.
No, I wasn’t sure, but what choice did we have?
“The boy knows where to go,” our Kurdish guide said, wheezing as he rolled over a wall.
“Be ready,” I whispered to Wildman, although I knew it wasn’t necessary. In territory like this, we were always ready.
“So, what did you trade for such a little guide?” I asked the Kurd, extending him a hand as we climbed through the remnants of a wrecked market.
He grunted, either from the physical exertion or my question. “I said you will help them escape,” he said.
Is that all? I thought, keeping my eyes on the lookout for the ISIS religious police.
We stopped at an intersection, where a homeless man staggered in an advanced state of disrepair, a target of opportunity for the self-righteous. A block farther, a mother was wrapped around two small children in a doorway, but after that it was eight blocks of shuttered buildings and rutting dogs.
The boy stopped and pointed to a local business; it had no sign out front, but the light blue ceramic tile around the door was unmistakable in a town of earth tones. This was the meeting spot given to us by the man in Mosul. A Saudi. An ISIS informant. The Yazidi boy was a safe bet, by comparison.
“Wildman, stay out of sight and guard our six. Keep an eye on the kid. Boon and the old man, with me,” I said.
“Foocking ’ell, babysitting?” Wildman groaned. Children were like Wildman repellent, but I needed someone watching our backs, and Boon had a good instinct for people. Also, I’d learned the hard way never to trust children in war zones, because they are creatures of supreme survival. I knew Wildman would never be taken in by this boy’s charm.
“Flex-cuff the kid if you have to,” I semi-joked, and Wildman’s expression perked up. Boon shook his head.
“Ready?”
The old man nodded. We slipped around the corner, opened the door, and entered.
The business was a room, lit only by the sunlight through the door. There was a broken cooler for drinks on one wall, and an empty bin for bread. Four men sat on chairs to the right. I suspected they were armed, but no guns were visible. On the left was a counter and a display of cigarettes, also empty. Cigarettes were illegal in the Caliphate.
“Abu Nadel?” the old Kurd asked the man behind the counter, who looked up in shock. He had been talking rapidly on a mobile phone, but stopped when we entered. Now he looked us over, his eyes stopping at the rifle barrels peeking out from beneath our Bedouin robes. He said a few more words before hanging up.
“Abu Nadel?” I asked this time. It was clearly a code name. The man behind the counter clearly knew the code.
“You are from Mosul?” he asked in English.
“That’s me.”
His mouth dropped open. “How?”
He obviously knew we were coming—the ISIS informant, no doubt—but hadn’t expected us to get here so quickly, or maybe not at all. Good. I wanted him to understand the kind of men he was dealing with.
“You have an answer?” I said. If he’d talked with the man in Mosul, I had to assume he knew what I wanted.
Someone shifted behind me. Abu Nadel—or whatever his name was—glanced over my shoulder at his friends.
“Not yet,” he said. “Come back in an hour.”
“No.”
“What do you mean?”
Instead of answering, I opened my black robe and put my hands on my hips, a few inches from the handles of my Berettas. If the men resisted, a two-hand draw with pistols would be faster in close quarters than swinging an assault rifle. Not that I wanted it that way. I didn’t come here to kill anyone. Did I?
Boon followed my lead, as the old man stepped back, out of the direct line of fire.
Abu Nadel didn’t flinch, but he didn’t bother to stare me down, either. He wrote on a piece of paper and handed it to me. It was an address. “Two o’clock. Lunch. It’s the best I can do.”
It was. I was sure of it.
“Now you must go,” he urged, coming around the counter. “It isn’t safe with you here. Naboo,” he said (I might have missed the name), “take him to . . . wherever he needs to go.”
The old man looked at me, and I nodded. I’d gotten as much as I could expect. I let “Naboo” escort us a few blocks, knowing he was there to make sure we didn’t double back and scout the joint. Fine. That was Wildman’s job.
Five minutes later, the Welsh merc showed up at the appointed rendezvous without the kid. “Did you track them?” I asked.
Wildman shook his head. “Four men came out as soon as you left. They scattered like cockroaches. I picked the wrong one to follow.”
Damn. They were smart. They had to be, I suppose, to have survived this long.
“The kid?”
Wildman shrugged. “He was slowing me down.”
“No worries,” I said, feeling worried. “We have an address.”
Wildman spit into the dust. “Sounds like a stakeout.”
It was 0900, and already scalding. Iraq in August was an oven. “Let’s head back to the hideout and get some rack,” I said. “It’s five hours until our meet at 1400.”
A lot could happen in five hours. A lot could happen in a lot less time than that.