The Mirage: A Novel (27 page)

When the guard looked up, a Qaeda commando shot him between the eyes with a silenced submachine gun.

“Right side clear,” the commando said.

“Left side clear,” said another.

“Go,” said Idris. The helicopter touched down on the roof just long enough for the six men to jump out; then the pilot increased power and took it back up to five hundred meters. The commandos sprinted across the roof to the stairwell.

A hallway ran the length of the building’s top floor. A man was just coming out of a bathroom near the middle of the hall, adjusting his belt as he walked, when the lead commando reached the bottom of the stairs. The silenced SMG made a flat sound that might have been mistaken for a cough; the fall of the corpse was louder and more distinctive.

“Ali?” a voice called, through an open door midway between the bathroom and the stairs. “Did you trip over your pants again?” This was followed by laughter. The commando stepped quickly to the doorway. Inside the room, three men sat around a card table. The commando killed them all, then paused, listening. When no one else called out or came into the hallway to see what was going on, he returned to the stairs and exchanged hand signals with his men.

They began a careful sweep of the entire floor. At one end of the hall, a commando opened a door on a roomful of machine tools and saw a teenage boy standing in front of a row of windows. Rather than shoot him immediately, which might have broken the glass and alerted others outside, the commando gestured for the boy to put his hands up. The boy did so, and the commando made him come closer to the door and kneel down facing the wall. Then he shot him in the back of the head. As the boy slumped to the floor, the commando made a quick visual scan of the room, but he didn’t actually walk around the machines, so he didn’t see the second boy, down on one knee behind a lathe, his trembling fingers gripping the laces of an untied sneaker.

The commandos completed their sweep, killing three more people in the process. They regrouped at the top of another stairwell. The lead commando keyed his headset and spoke to Idris in the helicopter: “Top floor is secure. We are ready to go downstairs.”

“Proceed,” Idris said.

“Is there a problem?” Fawzi said.

Amal was frowning. “Are you sure this is the right object?”

“But of course.” Fawzi picked up the lid of the little wooden crate and showed her the attached label, which bore the crest of the University of Iraq at Al Hillah. Scrawled by hand beneath this—rather haphazardly, Amal thought—were the words
PARTHIAN BATTERY, 2ND C. BCE
. “There, you see?”

“Yes, I see. It’s just, this doesn’t look like what I was told to expect.”

Instead of a terracotta urn, the object Fawzi had pulled from the crate was a crude brass bottle, about fifty centimeters tall. The vessel was a flattened sphere with a long tapered neck; its surface, unadorned by any decoration or pattern, was pitted and tarnished, thickly encrusted with grime, except for one small area where someone had tried to rub it clean, exposing a dull shiny spot the size of a half-riyal coin. The bottle mouth was open and the vessel was empty. Amal had a hard time seeing how it could function as a battery.

“You’re sure this was the only object?” she said. “There weren’t any other crates?”

“Not like this one.” Fawzi snorted laughter. “Not unless the Parthians also made home theater systems.” Sobering, he continued: “I hope you aren’t suggesting I would try to cheat you.”

No, never, Amal thought. She wanted to consult with Mustafa, but knew that that might spoil their charade.

But then Mustafa spoke up on his own: “Was there a stopper?”

“What?” said Fawzi. Amal turned around. Mustafa was staring at the bottle with a hypnotic intensity; he was also leaning heavily on Amal’s chair, as though to keep himself from falling.

“Was the bottle sealed?” Mustafa said. “Was there anything inside it?”

“Inside it?” Fawzi gave another snort. “Like what, a double-malt whiskey?” Mustafa didn’t answer, but after a moment he looked at Amal and gave a firm nod.

“Very well,” Amal said. “Let’s talk about payment . . .”

But now Fawzi was frowning. “I’m sorry, I am confused,” he said. “I thought I was dealing with you.”

“You are,” said Amal.

“And this man? Your bodyguard? He’s an antiquities expert as well?”

“As a matter of fact, yes.”

“No.” Fawzi shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. I don’t think he’s a bodyguard, either. He looks stoned. And this one”—turning to Samir—“this one looks scared.” He focused on Iyad next, saying nothing, only staring, then looking back at Mustafa as he noticed the family resemblance. “What is going on here?”

“What’s going on here is, we’re making a deal,” Amal said. “Come, Fawzi al Walid—whatever unfounded suspicions you have about my men, you know who I am. And I am ready to meet your price, so—”

“Let’s not rush things,” Fawzi said, easing back in his chair. “Let’s talk a bit more, about what your real interest in this object is.”

The stairs came down at the rear of the storage area. The commandos surprised another gang member there, killed him and stashed his body. They paused again to listen. The leader sent three of his men to circle around to the chop shop while he and the other two entered the warren of shelves. They followed the sound of voices until they were right outside the inner sanctum, with just a meter of boxes between them and the chair where Fawzi was sitting. To their left was a gap in the shelves through which they could see Shadi leaning on his AK-47.

“Let’s not rush things,” Fawzi said. “Let’s talk a bit more, about what your real interest in this object is.”

The lead commando slung his weapon and took out a flash-bang grenade. There was a final exchange of hand signals. The commando pulled the pin on the grenade and cocked his arm back, even as a wild-eyed teenager came darting around the shelves behind him holding a machine pistol taken from a dead man. One of the other commandos saw the boy coming and snapped off a shot, but the boy tripped over his own shoelaces and the bullet only grazed his ear. Then the boy cried out “Al Sadr!” and pulled the trigger on the machine pistol.

The machine pistol’s ammunition clip held thirty rounds. Twenty-six hit nothing of consequence; three struck the commando who’d just fired, killing him; and one caught the lead commando in the throat, which, among other things, caused him to lose his grip on the flash-bang. As the unwounded commando pivoted towards the boy, the grenade went off.

Fawzi, Amal, and the others were shielded from the blast by the wall of boxes, but the sudden close explosion of sound stunned them all anyway. The boy continued shouting, his battle cry of “Al Sadr!” replaced by a warning: “Badr! Badr!” The blinded and deafened commando staggered into Fawzi’s parlor. Shadi reacted first, raising up his AK-47, but even the legendarily reliable Russian Orthodox weapon was no match for misapplied duct tape, and it jammed. The commando’s SMG coughed out a bullet that flicked Mustafa’s collar and sent Samir and Iyad diving to the floor. Amal leaned forward in her chair. There was a crack of a pistol shot and the commando fell dead.

A moment of stillness, as smoke curled from the muzzle of the gun in Amal’s hand. Then the gang members running in from the front of the building were ambushed by the other three commandos and a massive firefight broke out in the chop shop. Shouts of “Al Sadr! Al Sadr!” mingled with “Badr! Badr!” and then “God is great!” as the Qaeda men realized they might be outgunned.

Fawzi was staring at the body on the floor and trying to figure out what the hell was going on. Concerned that this thought process would end badly for her and her colleagues, Amal put her own confusion aside and seized the initiative. “It seems I was wrong about being ahead of the competition,” she said. “I wouldn’t have thought the Badr Corps would join forces with Saddam, but I guess it’s true what they say about the enemy of my enemy.” When Fawzi didn’t respond, she continued: “Let me take this cursed object off your hands, Fawzi al Walid. I believe Iyad said your asking price was ten thousand riyals.”

This deliberate lowballing broke through to him. “The asking price was
thirty
thousand,” Fawzi said, glaring at her. “And that was before—”

“AL SADR! AL SADR!”

“Let’s say twenty thousand and be done,” Amal suggested.

“Thirty thousand.”

“Twenty-four.”

“Thirty.”

A stray round passing above the shelves struck a light fixture directly over their heads. Amal managed not to flinch but recognized that she was running out of time and luck. “I’ll tell you what,” she said. “We’ll call it twenty-eight thousand—and two thousand more for your man Shadi here to show us where the side door is.”

“—other men are down and I am cut off. I cannot—”

“Al Sadr! Al Sadr!”

“Abu Musab?” Idris said. “Abu Musab, are you there?” Static in the headset. On the camera feed, he saw Mustafa, Amal, Samir, and Iyad come around the building and run for the taxi. Idris told the pilot: “Take me down there.”

But the pilot, noting the black line of a power cable suspended over the lot, and guessing there might be others he couldn’t see, said: “I don’t think—”

“Take me down!”

So the helicopter began to descend, and Idris took off his headset and unbuckled his seat harness. As he got up to go back into the cargo compartment, there was a loud
crack!
and a hole appeared in the right side of the cockpit windshield.

Idris and the pilot both turned their heads in time to see the second muzzle flash. The shooter was in the tower of a nearby mosque. A Guardian Angel on night watch perhaps, or the muezzin himself, up in his roost after hours and doing what any good Sadrist would do upon spying a black helicopter hovering over the ’hood.

“Son of a bitch!” the pilot cried, blood running down his cheek where he’d been cut by flying glass. His trigger finger twitched on the control stick, but it was an empty gesture. The helicopter was unarmed.

And unarmored. The next muzzle flash had a different shape, the shooter switching his aim towards the tail of the aircraft. A red lamp lit on the control panel, and a recorded male voice began warning of damage to the hydraulic system.

“Take me
down
!” Idris repeated.

But the pilot, in sudden panic at the thought of crash landing amidst a million Shia, shook his head. “No,” he said. “We must abort!” As Idris continued to yell at him, he increased throttle and yanked the control stick hard to the left. The chopper flew away into the night, trailing smoke. The last image on the camera feed before line-of-sight was lost was of the taxi speeding away as well, Iyad laying rubber to escape before the Mahdis could close down the streets.

T
HE
L
IBRARY OF
A
LEXANDRIA

A USER-EDITED REFERENCE SOURCE

Scheherazade

Scheherazade
is the master storyteller in the classic
Arabian folk tale
collection
One Thousand and One Nights.

In
One Thousand and One Nights’
framing story,
King Shahryar
of
Persia
is driven mad with rage when he discovers that his wife has betrayed him. Not only does he execute her, he vows to take a new wife every night and have her strangled the following morning. These executions are carried out, reluctantly, by the king’s grand vizier, until the vizier’s eldest daughter, Scheherazade, comes up with a plan to put an end to the cruelty.

Scheherazade marries the king. On her wedding night, she asks permission to say farewell to her sister
Dunyazad
. Dunyazad is brought to the king’s chambers, where, in accordance with Scheherazade’s plan, she asks Scheherazade to tell her a story. Scheherazade begins the tale but is forced to break off at the coming of dawn. The king, entranced, grants her a one-day stay of execution so that he can hear the end of the story. The following night Scheherazade finishes the first tale and begins a second, earning another stay of execution. This continues for a thousand and one nights until at last King Shahryar, transformed by love, lifts Scheherazade’s death sentence and makes her his queen . . .

I
n the small hours of the morning, Saddam Hussein descended to the deepest cellar of his Adhamiyah estate.

West of the main house, in back of the outbuilding that abutted the lion enclosure, was a plain-looking steel door secured by an electronic keypad. Past the door, a circular stairway descended to a guard room staffed by a half dozen of Saddam’s most trusted men. Two of the men wore the standard Republican Guard uniform and were armed with riot guns. The other four were dressed as if for a heavy contact sport: chest, shoulder, and thigh pads; knee, shin, and elbow guards; groin cups and throat protectors; reinforced gloves and boots; and helmets with face shields that they lowered into place as Saddam entered the room.

The four-man extraction team preceded Saddam and the two gunmen through a long cellblock. The cells were empty and had been for some time, but bloodstains were still visible on some of the walls and a search of the floor would have turned up the occasional tooth or fingernail among the rat droppings.

At the end of the cellblock was another flight of stairs and another security door, beyond which was a brightly lit antechamber containing two chairs. One was a throne-sized easy chair with a matching ottoman; the other was a steel-backed restraint chair that had been bolted to the floor.

The antechamber also contained a liquor cabinet, and Saddam helped himself to whiskey while the gunmen positioned themselves to either side of him and the extraction team continued on through a final security door. From beyond the door came sounds of a man being tackled and pummeled into submission.

The extraction team returned with the prisoner. He was a blond American in his early thirties, tall and muscular. He wore camouflage fatigue pants and a gray
ARMY
T-shirt; a skull in a green beret was tattooed on his upper right arm.