roadblock.
The Al Qaeda man cursed the weak resolve of the insurgency here in northwestern Iraq. Two lazy men were all they could muster for a checkpoint? With such idiocy the Sunnis might as well just hand over control to the Kurds and the Yejezi.
The Yemeni slowed his truck, rolled down the window, and shouted to the standing Iraqi, “Open this gate, fool! There is a sniper to the south!”
The militiaman put down his lunch. He walked purposefully towards the pickup truck in the middle of the road. He put a hand up to his ear as if he did not hear the Yemeni’s shout.
“Open the gate, or I will—”
The Yemeni’s head swiveled away from the insurgent nearing his truck and to the one seated against the wall. The seated man’s head had slumped over to the side, and it hung there. An instant later, the body rolled forward and fell out of the chair and onto the ground. It was clear the militiaman was dead, his neck snapped at a lower cervical vertebra.
The gunman in the back of the truck noticed this as well. He stood quickly in the bed, sensing a threat but confused by the situation. Like his new leader in the driver’s seat, he looked back to the local man in the road.
The bearded militiaman approaching the truck raised his right arm in front of him. A black pistol appeared from the sleeve of his flowing robe.
Two quick shots, not a moment’s hesitation between them, dropped the Egyptian in the truck bed.
Bayliss lay on his back, looking up at the scorching noontime sun. He felt the vehicle slow and stop, heard the shouting from the driver, the impossibly rapid gunshots, and watched the masked man above him fall straight down dead.
He heard another volley of pistol rounds cracking around him, heard glass shatter, a brief cry in Arabic, and then all was still.
Ricky thrashed and shrieked, frantic to get the bloody corpse off of him. His struggle ended when the dead terrorist was lifted away, out of the truck bed, and dumped onto the street. A bearded man dressed in a gray dishdasha grabbed Ricky by his body armor and pulled him up and into a seated position.
The brutal sun blurred Bayliss’s view of the stranger’s face.
“Can you walk?”
Ricky thought it some sort of shock-induced vision. The man had spoken English with an American accent. The stranger repeated himself in a shout. “Hey! Kid! You with me? Can you walk?”
Slowly Bayliss spoke back to the vision. “My . . . my leg’s broken, and this dude is hurt bad.”
The stranger examined Ricky’s injured leg and diagnosed, “Tib-fib fracture. You’ll live.” Then he put his hand on the unconscious man’s neck and delivered a grim prognosis. “Not a chance.”
He looked around quickly. Still, the young Mississip pian could not see the man’s face.
The stranger said, “Leave him back here. We’ll do what we can for him, but I need you to get up in the passenger seat. Wrap this around your face.”
The bearded man pulled the keffiyeh head wrap from the neck of the dead terrorist and handed it to Bayliss.
“I can’t walk on this leg—”
“Suck it up. We’ve got to go. I’ll grab my gear. Move!” The stranger turned and ran down into a shaded alleyway. Bayliss dropped his Kevlar helmet in the cab, wrapped the headdress into place, climbed out of the bed and onto his good leg. Excruciating pain jolted from his right shin to his brain. The street was filling with civilians of all ages, keeping their distance, watching as if an audience to a violent play.
Bayliss hopped to the passenger door, opened it, and a masked Arab in a black dress shirt fell out into the street. There was a single bullet wound above his left eye. A second terrorist lay slumped over the steering wheel. Bloody foam dripped from his lips with his soft wheezes. Ricky had just shut his door when the American stranger opened the driver’s side, pulled the man out, and let him drop to the asphalt. He drew his pistol again and, without so much as a glance, fired one round into the man in the street. He then turned his attention to the pickup, tossed in a brown gear bag, an AK-47, and an M4 rifle. He climbed behind the wheel, and the truck lurched forward and over the lowered chain of the roadblock.
Ricky spoke softly, his brain still trying to catch up with the action around him. “We’ve got to go back. There might be others alive.”
“There aren’t. You’re it.”
“How do you know?”
“I know.”
Ricky hesitated, then said, “Because you were with the sniper team that fragged those dudes at the crash site?”
“Maybe.”
For nearly a minute they drove in silence. Bayliss looked ahead through the windshield at the mountains, then down at his shaking hands. Soon the young soldier turned his attention to the driver.
Immediately the stranger barked, “Don’t look at my face.”
Bayliss obeyed, turning back to the road ahead. He asked, “You’re American?”
“That’s right.”
“Special Forces?”
“No.”
“Navy? You’re a SEAL?”
“No.”
“Force Recon?”
“Nope.”
“I get it. You’re like in the CIA or something.”
“No.”
Bayliss started to look back to the bearded man but caught himself. He asked, “Then what?”
“Just passing through.”
“Just passing through? Are you fucking kidding?”
“No more questions.”
They drove a full kilometer before Ricky asked, “What’s the plan?”
“No plan.”
“You don’t have a plan? Then what are we doing? Where are we going?”
“I
Bayliss was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “Roger that. Plans are overrated.”
After another minute of driving, Bayliss snuck a glance to the speedometer and saw they were moving over the bad gravel road at nearly sixty miles an hour.
The private asked, “You got any morphine in your bag? My leg is hurtin’ bad.”
“Sorry, kid. I need you alert. You’re going to have to drive.”
“Drive?”
“When we get into the hills, we’ll pull over. I’ll get out, and you two will go on alone.”
“What about you? We’ve got an FOB in Tal Afar. It’s where we were heading when we were hit. We can go there.” The forward operating base would be spartan and isolated, but it would be well-equipped for holding off attackers and a hell of a lot more secure than a pickup truck on an open road.
“
“Why not?”
“Long story. No questions, soldier. Remember?”
“Bro, what are you worried about? They’d give you a medal or some shit for this.”
“They’d give me some shit.”
They entered the foothills of the Sinjar Mountains minutes later. The stranger pulled the pickup over to the
