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“And I remember you looking like the wrong end of a goat.”
Rapp pulled the gun back and the big man embraced him.
“Hold your face to the sky, my friend. Let me see you.”
Rapp raised his chin to catch the moonlig
ht and the Iraqi gripped Rapp’s beard, moving his face around to see better.
“It’s miraculous what you Americans can do,” he said sincerely.
In order to not be recognized on his prior operation in al-Shirqat, Rapp had been forced to let Joe Maslick beat his face into something resembling raw meat. That was the only face Gaffar had ever seen—the broken, bleeding, and swollen one Maslick had created.
“More surgeries than I care to remember.”
“Yes, but still . . . it’s incredible.”
“How are the others?”
“They’re managing, but they aren’t soldiers. Fear is a good motivator, but this . . .” He waved a hand around him. “The cold, the boredom, the lack of food. It is hard.”
“How long have you been hiding out here?”
“Two weeks.”
Rapp nodded. Often it wasn’t the terror and exhaustion of combat that beat people down. It was everything in between.
“Come,” Gaffar said. “I’ll take you to them.”
What was left of this part of town appeared to be uninhabited and of no interest to ISIS forces, but still it made sense to proceed carefully. They finally arrived at a massive concrete slab that had tipped against a crumbling wall. Gaffar picked up a rock and tapped it three times against what had once been a lamppost. A moment later the people Rapp had come for appeared at the entrance of the artificial cave.
On the left were two thin men who looked like computer geeks. One seemed to have lost his glasses and was squinting uselessly into the darkness. Mohammed, their leader, didn’t seem too much worse for the wear and neither did his brother.
The Iraqi siblings were the only two men in the world that Rapp had a hard time looking in the eye, so he adjusted his gaze to the woman pressed against Mohammed’s side.
“Who’s she?”
“My wife.”
“You got married?” Rapp said. “Interesting sense of timing.”
“Shada was being auctioned off by ISIS. I’ve known her since we were children. I sold everything I had and used the money to buy her.”
Rapp looked into her dark eyes, taking in the unlined face and black, tangled hair. He had purchased Mohammed’s sister under similar circumstances. This girl was younger and more fearful, but otherwise no different than Laleh had been.
The memory was accompanied by a painful constriction in Rapp’s chest and he pushed her image from his mind. It would come back, though. It always did.
“If there isn’t room for me, I’ll stay behind,” she said as the silence drew out.
“No,” one of the geeks said, a little too loudly. “If anyone is going to stay here, it should be him. He got us into this.”
“Shut up!” Gaffar said in a harsh whisper. “We got ourselves into this. It’s our country to fight for. Our people who have destroyed it. Not his.”
He raised his hand to strike the man, but Rapp caught it.
“Look, all you have to do is hold it together for a little longer. Then this’ll all be over.”
He retrieved the food he’d brought and divided it among them. “Now eat up and gather your gear.”
