from the SUV, walked into the lights of the Iraqi jeep. He squinted to block out the white glare. Clutching his identification papers in his left hand, he held both hands overhead and wore a grin he didn’t feel.
An Iraqi soldier, one hand clutching the pistol grip of his submachine gun, approached Doyle and snatched the papers from his hands. Releasing the submachine gun, the soldier grabbed Doyle’s arm, spun him and shoved him hard against the vehicle. Over the rumble of the jeep’s engine, Doyle heard the rustle of paper as the soldier pored over the American’s identification documents. Doyle’s heart speeded up and he forced himself to take deep, even pulls of the exhaust-tinged air to keep his thinking clear.
“You are French?” the soldier asked.
“Oui. I mean, yes,” Doyle said, switching to Arabic.
“It says here you are a journalist. Where is your monitor?”
Doyle shrugged, smiled. “I am a nature photographer. The information ministry decided I didn’t need an escort in the swamplands. I am unimportant.”
The soldier grunted, continued poring over the forged papers. “The information ministry obviously erred,” he said without looking. “Wouldn’t you agree?”
“I was supposed to meet with my monitor tonight before I return to my hotel. He was going to check my pictures. I cannot take my film from the country without his approval. Please, I do not want problems.”
“When are you leaving?”
“One week,” Doyle lied.
The soldier’s machine gun hung loose on its strap from his right shoulder. Spare clips were sheathed on his belt. Doyle watched as the soldier, a stout man in camouflage fatigues and a beret, traced a stubby finger across the paper until he reached the line bearing Doyle’s departure date. A moment later the soldier refolded the papers, stuck them in his shirt pocket.
The stout man locked eyes with Doyle. “Why are you here?” he asked.
“I told you—”
“I mean, in this neighborhood. After dark. According to your papers, you’re staying at the Continental Hotel, which is nowhere near this place. Why are you here?”
Doyle felt his palms moisten, his mind begin to race. Crossing his arms over his chest, the American agent leaned down toward the soldier. He gave the man a conspiratorial wink, hushed his voice as though sharing with an old friend. “I‘ve been away from civilization for a while,” he said. “I’m here looking for a little companionship. I was supposed to meet someone.”
Prostitutes frequented the area. Doyle expected the man to understand, perhaps cut him some slack. Instead the man shot him a look that screamed disapproval.
Great, Doyle thought, three hundred, fifty thousand soldiers in Iraq. I get the one puritan.
“I thought you were going to meet your monitor.”
Doyle grinned. “There’s always time for this, my friend. You know?”
“Whom are you freelancing for?”
“Liberty News Service.”
The man opened his mouth to reply, stopped when the door of the white Toyota Land Cruiser opened. A tall, lanky soldier armed with an AK-47 stepped from the vehicle and approached them. With the headlight glare at his back, the man’s face was black as night until he came to within a few feet of Doyle. At the same time, the Soviet-made chopper, which had been cruising overhead in wide, lazy circles, gunned its engine and disappeared into the night, the beating rotors diminishing to a distant hum.
“Who is he?” the tall soldier asked. Doyle recognized the Republican Guard insignia on the man’s tunic and felt a cold splash of fear roll down his spine.
“A journalist,” the first Iraqi replied. “He should not have stopped here unaccompanied. He was told to report directly to his monitor.”
Giving Doyle an appraising look, the soldier spoke over his shoulder to his comrade. “A journalist? For whom?”
“I’m freelance.”
“He’s with Liberty News Service. He told me that.”
A glint of understanding sparked in the Republican Guard soldier’s otherwise impassive stare before snuffing itself out. His lips curled into a smile that didn’t reach his eyes.
“Let him go,” he said.
The first soldier started to protest, but the other man held up a hand to stop him. “His papers. Give them to him and let him go. We must not delay him any longer.”
In less than a minute Doyle was back in his car, stuffing his forged papers back inside his pants’ pocket and watching the Toyota Land Cruiser roar down the road. Doyle’s heart hammered against his rib cage and adrenaline caused his hands to shake. He puffed on a cigarette to help calm his nerves.
Something was wrong. Let him go, the man had said. No looking at the papers, no shaking Doyle down for a bribe, nothing. Doyle knew he should have felt relieved. He didn’t. He felt like a condemned man taking the first step on his last mile.
Keying the SUV to life, he piloted the vehicle to his rendezvous with Stone.
FORTY-FIVE MINUTES later Chris Doyle met Jon Stone and Stephen Archer at an abandoned factory, poorly lit with boarded-up windows. The place stank of machine oil, dust and Archer’s wintergreen chewing tobacco. Doyle had armed himself back at the hotel. A .40-caliber Glock pistol rode in the small of his back, obscured by his shirttails.
“You sure no one followed you here?” Stone asked as he shut the door behind Doyle and locked it.
Doyle shrugged. “Reasonably so. I changed clothes, walked several blocks and took one of our standby cars. Switched papers so I look like a Russian national. That’s why it took me so long to get here.”
Stone nodded, apparently satisfied.
Doyle turned and uttered a curt greeting to Archer, a small, bald man whose skin bunched in heavy folds at the base of his skull. Archer grunted, tamped down his tobacco with the tip of his tongue. The little man stood off to one side, splattering the floor with thin, brown streams of tobacco juice and swirling them with the toe of his boot so they made odd patterns in the dirt. At first, Doyle had considered Archer disengaged, perhaps even stupid. Just like everything else Doyle seemed to encounter, it all was an act. Archer could read and explain complex research reports issued by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology or defuse a nuclear warhead without taxing his mind.
Doyle carried his equipment bag on his shoulder. Slipping it off, he set it on the floor carefully. An uneasy feeling in his gut told him something was wrong.
“What’s the extraction plan?” he asked.
“Washington says it’s a go,” Stone said.
“What the hell?”
Doyle whirled toward Stone, found him standing less than eighteen inches away, arms crossed over his chest. Stone coiled and uncoiled his steroid-enhanced pectorals, biceps and triceps, causing them to writhe under his shirt like a bag of snakes. Consciously
