CHAPTER 9

      Tal Afar, Iraq

      15 April 2009

      It was raining, gray clouds bundled over the city. Brody followed Daleel and five of the others, weapons concealed beneath their robes, in a single file through the narrow street. They were going to the mosque for the noon Dhuhr prayer. The street was muddy, the pavement cracked and rutted. Every shop and building was battered, shot through with bullet holes from the heavy fighting that had taken place there two years earlier between Abu Nazir’s IPLA joined by elements of AQI and the U.S. 82nd Airborne.

      Although Tal Afar had been officially proclaimed a “Coalition success” and it was a majority Turkmen, not Arab, city, you could still hear the sounds of one or two rocket attacks and IEDs almost every day. But Brody wasn’t thinking about any of these things. He had a decision to make. His life depended on it.

      The young Turkmen woman in the makhbaz, the bakery shop where he bought the flat bread for some of the group, spoke English. One morning, three weeks ago, when Afsal had walked outside to talk privately with Mahdi and, for a moment, they were alone in the shop, she looked at him and asked, “What is an American doing with these Sunnis?”

      For some reason, maybe because it was the first time a woman had spoken to him in English in six years, or because she wore a braided female Turkmen’s cap that meant she wasn’t an Arab, wasn’t in any way like his captors, or maybe her black eyes held a hint, though it was hard for him to believe, that she looked at him the way a woman looks at a man, he told her: “I’m a prisoner, an American Marine. They captured me.” Then, louder, “Bikam haadha?” How much is that? Because Afsal and Mahdi had just come back in.

      After that, each time he went into the makhbaz, she glanced at him. Even Mahdi noticed.

      “What’s going on with you and that Turkmen girl?” he said.

      “Nothing. We say salaam, hello, that’s all, and I buy the bread, thanks be to Allah,” Brody said.

      “You think she likes you? A foreigner? You think she’ll be like American girls, who all you do is look at them and they spread their legs?”

      “I’m a married man. I have a wife and two children,” Brody said.

      “But you want the Turkmen girl too?”

      “No. Why? Do you want her?”

      “Pah! Turkmen women grow mustaches on their upper lips. Too bad you can’t have a soft Arab woman, American,” Mahdi said.

      “I told you, I’m married,” Brody said as they took their shoes off at the entrance to the mosque. But even here, one of them, Afsal, who had been next to him all along, stayed behind with his AK-­47, scanning the street for IEDs or any cars or carts that might come along with a bomb, or worse for IPLA, an Iraqi army patrol—­more dangerous now because recruits in the new Iraqi Army were nearly all Shiites.

      So they watched him even closer, Brody thought as he bowed his head to the floor in unison with the others in prayer. Except ten days ago, it happened again. Abu Nazir himself had driven by and called Afsal and Mahdi out to his car, leaving Brody and the Turkmen girl—­her name was Akjemal—­alone in the bakery. She motioned him to the side of the counter and spoke quickly, showing him a beautiful round bread with star patterns baked on the top.

      “My uncle Jeyhun is the sheikh of our neighborhood,” she whispered quickly. “He doesn’t want to risk anything here in Tal Afar, but he is willing to smuggle you to Mosul under sacks of flour in his truck. Mosul is not far, maybe sixty kilometers. He knows American soldiers there. He says you can be turned over to the U.S. First Cavalry in one hour. Will you come?”

      “They watch me closely. If they catch me, they’ll kill me. You and your uncle too,” he said, glancing at the shop window. Afsal and Mahdi were still talking by the car.