CRADLING HIS M16, J.C. crept along the building toward the door of the barbershop. Corporal Voss, Captain Jackson’s driver, hid a few feet away on the other side of the store’s busted-out front window. The Iraqi cops were a half step behind him, which J.C. didn’t like. They had no way to communicate if something went wrong. But Captain Jackson had ordered it.
The shop had been quiet since the grenade. But unless it had gone off on its own, guys were still alive in there. J.C. poked his head around the corner of the door to check inside. The store looked like a tornado had blown through it: mirrors cracked to shreds, barber chairs flipped over, and two bodies lying on the floor. Then he saw the door at the back of the shop, open an inch, a shadow fluttering behind. He looked at Voss to be sure Voss had seen too. Voss pointed at J.C., then back at himself. J.C. nodded, and just like that they had a plan.
Voss held out three fingers. Two. One.
J.C. ran across the front of the store toward Voss, a motion guaranteed to draw fire. Sure enough, the door opened and a guy stepped out, AK in hand. Voss shot, popping the guy — a huge man with some kind of
“Go!” Jackson yelled at the Iraqis. The cops poured into the store, firing wildly, skidding on the pools of blood and bone fragments scattered across the floor. The first cop, the lieutenant colonel, stepped into the back room. A second cop followed, then — BOOM! The store shook as a grenade exploded somewhere in the back, sending metal shards over J.C.’s head. The cop who’d been in the doorway was blown backward by the blast. He landed on his back and didn’t get up.
J.C. crept into the store, Voss a step behind him. He heard only a faint moaning from the back room, and he didn’t think anyone could have survived that second grenade in shape to fight. But he wasn’t taking any chances. Anything that moved was going down. Then Captain Jackson stepped past him and strode toward the door.
“Sir,” J.C. said. Too late. Jackson was inside.
FAHD WAS DEAD. Jackson knew as soon as he stepped into the back room. The shrapnel from the grenade had shredded Fahd’s chest; his uniform, once a powder blue, was stained wine-dark with his blood. Even body armor might not have saved him. His legs were torn apart, the left one blown in half at the knee. Only his face was undamaged, its expression strangely peaceful. He seemed to have died instantly. But in the corner under the stairs another man had not quite stopped moving, a huge jihadi who had avoided the worst of the grenade.
Jackson knew he should call a medic for the guy, insurgent or no. Then he looked again at Fahd and decided to wait. Someone touched his arm. He turned, startled, to see J.C.
“Sir. It’s not secure.”
J.C. pointed to the stairs. J.C. was right, Jackson thought. He shouldn’t have been the first man in this room. He wouldn’t be much use to his Mad Dogs dead. He pointed to the stairs. “You and Voss,” he said. “Go.”
FAROUK AND ZAYD crept along the roof, trying to find a way down while staying hidden from the American soldiers who surrounded that block beneath them. From the street, the storefronts looked like part of a single big building, but up here it was clear that each store had been built separately. Walls separated the roof of the barbershop from its neighbors. In one corner, someone had shoved an empty cigarette pack and a no-name condom wrapper into a hole in the roof’s concrete. Both were yellowed from months in the sun.
Zayd clambered over the wall to the north. Farouk struggled to follow. He came over the wall to see Zayd pulling on a locked door. Beyond it the roof was flat, no staircases down.
The low thump of a grenade sounded from the barbershop. Mazen must have made his last stand, Farouk thought. Zayd seemed unfazed. He turned around and climbed back over the wall they had just scaled. But Farouk felt his spirits sag. They wouldn’t get off this roof unless Allah himself sent a chariot.
J.C. HUSTLED to the top of the stairs, where a door to the roof hung crookedly, its lock shot open. Voss was just behind him. J.C. kicked the door open and spun right. Voss followed and moved left. J.C. saw two men climbing a wall thirty feet away. But before he could follow, Voss kicked over a grenade that Zayd had tied to the door as an improvised booby trap. The grenade’s handle locked in place.
“Down!” Voss screamed. He desperately kicked at the grenade. J.C. dropped to the roof and covered his face. The world turned upside down as he felt an explosion so loud that it seemed to come from inside his head.
J.C. crawled behind the door toward Voss, but Voss didn’t seem to be there anymore. At least not in one piece. Something else was wrong too. The world had gone silent. “WHO LET THE DOGS OUT?” J.C. yelled. Or imagined he did. “WHO? WHO LET THE DOGS OUT?”
J.C. stood and tried to fire at the guys who’d gone over the wall, but his rifle wasn’t working. Fuck this, J.C. thought. He pulled his pistol and charged the wall just as two more Mad Dogs came up the stairs. They yelled for him to stop, but he couldn’t hear them. Even if he had, he would have kept running.
THEY WERE TRAPPED, Farouk could see that now. A crazy American soldier ran toward them carrying only a pistol, as Zayd made a last stand, his AK on full automatic, shells pouring out, the gun jumping crazily in his hands, scattering rounds through the night.
Farouk stepped backward. He wanted to surrender, but Zayd would kill him if he tried. He would wait for Zayd to be shot and then, if he was still alive, put his hands up like he had seen in the movies. He supposed he was a coward after all. But he preferred a Guantanamo prison cell to dying on this roof.
The American staggered but then kept coming, firing away. A shot hit Zayd in the shoulder. And just like that the American was over the wall. Zayd turned toward him and kept shooting. Farouk couldn’t believe that he had missed. But the soldier seemed invulnerable. He raised his pistol and fired, hitting Zayd in the chest, then squeezed the trigger again and again.
Farouk dropped the Geiger counter and raised his hands. The soldier was already turning toward him. “Surrender,” Farouk said. “Give up. Give up.”
THE FAT MAN was saying something, but J.C. couldn’t hear him. He aimed his pistol squarely at the guy’s chest and pulled the trigger.
THE GUN CLICKED, and Farouk waited for his chest to explode, for the blackness — or whatever happened next — to take him. He ought to feel close to Allah right now. Instead he felt very far away.
Another click. Nothing happened. Farouk sank to his knees and realized he was still alive.
J.C. STARED stupidly at the guy, then at his pistol, which didn’t seem to be working anymore. Out of ammo. Must be. All the adrenaline in his body evaporated at once. Instead of reloading he dropped his pistol and leaned forward until his face was only inches from the other man’s, the fat man quivering, mouthing words that J.C. couldn’t hear or understand, flecks of his spit flying onto J.C.’s uniform. J.C. wanted to tell the guy something, but he couldn’t remember what.
They stayed that way until Captain Jackson pulled J.C. back.
BODY ARMOR MIGHT not have saved Lt. Col. Fahd, but it had sure saved J. C. Ramirez. His Kevlar had stopped two rounds. For his busted-out eardrums, J.C. got an early ticket home, though he desperately wanted to stay with his buddies. For killing six insurgents and attacking in the face of close-range enemy fire, he wound up with the Distinguished Service Cross, a military award second only to the Congressional Medal of Honor.
As far as Jackson was concerned, J.C. deserved the big one. The kid was the best soldier he’d ever seen. But Takahashi, the battalion commander, said that some senior officers wanted to keep the raid quiet. A Medal of Honor would attract attention. Jackson wasn’t surprised, considering how quickly the guys from Task Force 121 had shown up after he radioed in that his company had captured a man carrying a Geiger counter and a Pakistani passport. They had stuffed the guy into one of their Humvees and told Jackson to take the guerrillas’ bodies and cars back to Camp Graphite for inspection. Like he was their damn errand boy.
“We’ll make sure you get credit for this,” said one of them, a Special Forces officer who called himself a