It was well past midnight by the time our two Humvees forded the Zab River and entered ISIS territory. We’d been using this series of smuggler trails for months, driving up through the mountains to the north of the highway, where the terrain was rough and people scarce. It was only eighty-five kilometers from Mosul to Erbil on the main road, about an hour’s drive, but this route would take us all night. We let the Kurds lead in their Humvee, out of tradition more than anything. By now I knew the way, but the Kurds had shown it to us way back when we arrived, and it was good to keep them on as guides.
It was our last time through here, I realized, as we topped a ridge and spotted St. Matthew’s Monastery atop Mount Alfaf, one of the oldest Christian monasteries in existence and only thirty klicks from Mosul. It was a miracle it remained Christian.
We followed the switchbacks up Mount Bashiqa. At the top was a craterlike depression, and in it was a secret military airbase, now abandoned. Our Kurdish guides had told us ISIS booby-trapped it, burying hundred-pound bombs in its single-strip runway and surrounding area, so we skirted the lip of the bowl as always. On the other side, we dismounted and walked the last few meters to the top of the ridgeline.
“Ain’t it beautiful,” I said.
Before us spread a vast plain with Mosul in the distance, the second largest city in Iraq. It was a hard twenty klicks: down this mountain, across the desert, through ISIS perimeter defenses, and into a city crawling with ISIS spies—all without being detected. But from up here, it was beautiful.
“The moon’s killing us,” Wildman said. The gibbous moon lit up the desert in ways inconceivable to those raised among wooded hills.
“We’re going to have to take it slow and easy,” Boon said.
“Yeah. But we need to make our meet before dawn prayers.” That was when the city woke.
“Activity to the south.” Wildman pointed. We held up our binos in unison. A convoy was traveling fast on the highway toward the city.
“ISIS,” Boon said. “Six trucks. Humvees.”
Most of ISIS’s military equipment was made in America and captured from the Iraqi army. We’d procured our two up-armored Humvees by ambushing an ISIS patrol on a scouting run a few days after our arrival in Erbil. Usually Boon, Wildman, and I would have split up between the two vehicles, but I’d given one to the Kurds as a show of respect. That had bought a few extra weeks of loyalty.
“Looks like they’re towing artillery,” I said. “Probably heading to the Syrian front by night to avoid air strikes.”
I traced the road ahead of the convoy into Mosul. An ISIS checkpoint guarded a roadblock with an artillery piece pointed straight down the highway. Just beyond, a huge black ISIS flag was draped over a welcome to mosul road sign. Twelve to fifteen crucified bodies lined the road.
“Let’s move out,” I said. “Switch to blackout drive.”
The Hummers hobbled down the mountainside at a nearly vertical angle, the Kurds in the lead. This part of the trek always made me nervous. This “mountain” was little more than a hunk of rock covered with loose dirt, and our path a goat trail. Every windstorm shifted the dirt and disguised the cliff edges, making our guides’ work treacherous. Worse, night vision came at the expense of depth perception and peripheral vision. One wrong move and a Humvee would tumble off the edge. That was why ISIS never came this way. They never even bothered to watch it.
“Easy does it,” I said to Boon, as the path narrowed and the drop-off grew to a few hundred meters.
Buddha calm, I thought, focusing on my breathing. I hated this part, because it was out of my control. But I trusted Boon. Not as much as I trusted myself, but about as much as I could trust anyone, even if he’d stolen my girl.
Funny how it seemed like that now, I thought, as we skidded on the edge, even though Kylah was never more than a friend with an AK-47 and a hell of a set of legs.
“Not gonna miss that,” Wildman said, when the cliff’s edge finally gave way to the desert plain.
The ride was bumpy, but we made good time. When we got close to the city, we found a narrow, ten-foot-deep dry river bed, known as a wadi, our usual highway into Mosul. We followed the muddy oxbows for four kilometers, past orchards and farm buildings. We were one klick out when I saw the artillery.
“Halt!” I yelled to the Kurds through the headset.
Two hundred meters in front of us sat a 155-millimeter cannon, pointed over our heads at a major road junction. There was no movement through my night-vision goggles. Maybe the crew was asleep. Maybe they were aiming.
“Back up,” I whispered. The Humvees reversed around the last oxbow and out of the cannon’s line of sight. We hadn’t seen this gun emplacement before. It was new. I stepped out of the Humvee to caucus with the Kurds, who had lived all their lives within a hundred kilometers of Mosul and knew this land. A vigorous debate ensued in Kurdish, hands gesticulating wildly as they whispered, arguing about the best way around.
“Ah, guys.” Boon’s voice. “Guys. Silence!”
He nodded behind him. Above us, on the edge of the wadi, stood a young boy. He was backlit against the moonlit night, so his expression was unreadable. We froze, as if posing for a portrait, staring at each other in mortified disbelief. I put my hand to my SCAR assault rifle as another face appeared, staring down at us with slanted, devilish eyes. A goat. The boy must have been a herder. We must have woken him, meaning his family was nearby.
If he gives our position away, we’re dead.
Boon held out a chocolate bar, flashing his Thai smile. My index finger moved to the trigger well of my SCAR. The kid didn’t move, but the goat sniffed the air.
The older Kurd spoke. I don’t know what he said, but the child relaxed, shoulders slumping. He disappeared and I lifted my SCAR, but the old man put his hand over my barrel.
“No,” he said. “He will help us.”
I lowered my weapon, and the boy returned with his older brother. They skidded down the wadi bank on their butts.
“The gun isn’t manned tonight,” the Kurd translated, “but there are bombs ahead, buried in the ground.”
Improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, were a trademark of al Qaeda and now ISIS. Some were triggered remotely; others, like those ahead, would blow under the pressure of a Humvee tire. In a wadi this narrow, there wasn’t much hope of getting past them, and culvert IEDs were hard to spot, especially at night.
“Holy hell,” Wildman said, as the boy spoke to the older Kurd.
“For us,” the Kurd translated, “for enemies of ISIS, he knows a way through.”