Hamid Lahm shook his head. “We are prison guards.”
Behind the bill of his dusty cap and the black sunglasses, Josh Reames presented a blank stone mask. “I heard about some super-hot police action types who got sent out to a prison in the middle of nowhere. Been cooling their heels ever since.”
Hamid Lahm just sat and stared at the American.
Josh asked, “What were you and your men, you know, back in the bad old days?”
Hamid Lahm replied, “I forget.”
Josh smiled. A quick flash, there and gone. “That good, huh.”
The man shrugged. “Maybe.”
“What’s your name again?”
“Hamid. Hamid Lahm.”
“Okay, Hamid, how many guns did you bring?”
“Myself and three more. Good men.”
“We’ve got the three here, and another playing spotter from the roof overhead. And look over there. The green Proton with the dent in the driver’s door.”
“Yes. With two men. Can they fight?”
“They better, they want to stay on my team.”
Hamid asked, “What is happening?”
“Maybe nothing. But we got word from friends on the street that a deal could be going down. You understand that word, Hamid, deal?”
“Trouble, yes. I understand.” Hamid turned to scout the terrain beyond the shadows. “You have no Iraqi allies of your own?”
Josh lost his trace of humor. “Our allies are Sunni. The word is, today’s target is this market, which is all Shia, like the mosque you see over there. What stripe of cat are you, Hamid? I don’t mean offense, but this is too close to becoming a free-fire zone for any messing around.”
“I am Shia.” Hamid used his chin to point to his man loitering by the cafe’s farthest pillar. “My second-in-command, Yussuf, he is Sunni. The man over there eating apricots, he is Christian. The one beside him is Shia like me. All my men are two things, Josh Reames. They are Iraqi first. And two, they are very good at their job. The best.”
All three of the American soldiers were watching Hamid now. Reames said to the man seated at his right, “Go get our new buddies a couple of Cokes. You’d like a Coke, wouldn’t you, Royce? They serve them warm here.”
But as Josh’s man rose from his seat, the other one said, “Heads up.”
Above the blaring horns and the music and the shouts and the din, Marc heard something new. A parade appeared around a corner and immediately dominated the market. The procession entered the stalled traffic and split like streams flowing into a river delta. Men and women alike wore knee-length black shirts and black head-kerchiefs or headbands adorned with Arabic script. Hundreds and hundreds of them, most banging tambourines or blowing reed instruments. They poured around the stalls and entered the traffic. When the group stepped into the road, the traffic horns stopped blowing.
Hamid raised his voice to be heard above the clamor. “Some Shia say twenty-eight days of Ramadan fasting not enough. So they add another week. They dance to the mosque for the prayers. They don’t like these celebrations and buying and happiness. They say this is insult to final day of fasting.”
Josh leaned across the table. “Our source tells us the attack is against these guys. We’ve been authorized to use all force necessary.”
“I must warn my men.” Hamid rose from his chair. “This could be very bad indeed.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
B ut the attack did not come.
The procession gradually filtered through the mosque’s gates opposite the police encampment. The traffic began crawling forward again. The stallholders resumed their cacophony. The heat was just another element of a very intense wait.
Twice Josh and Hamid rose and led their men through the market and the square and the traffic. Marc walked the route first with Josh and then with Hamid. Gradually, Marc could look beyond the crowds and the noise and study its various components. Which meant he could spot what was not normal, what did not fit. Or so he hoped.
A single main road ran into the square fronting the market’s entrance. The cafe where the two teams had set up their command post stood directly opposite this main artery. Four narrower roads fed off the square, but these were mostly blocked by market stalls. The mosque dominated the right-hand side of the square’s entrance. The police base stood behind blast walls directly opposite the mosque. Traffic approached the square from the front, did a slow U-turn, and headed out the same way. Many drivers used the slow pace as an alternative to parking. Trucks were unloaded. Shoppers passed from their idling cars to shops and back again.
When the teams returned from their second circuit, sunlight had invaded their space at the cafe. Josh and his men retreated farther back and around the corner, holding on to the receding shadows. Marc felt the waiting intensify to where he could count the individual dust motes dancing in the still air. Everything he saw was carved with crystal clarity. And still they waited.
Josh’s second-in-command was a hatchet-faced man named Frank. At one point he slid his chair over close to Marc and said, “Josh told me you’re looking for the missing trio.”
“It’s why I’m in Iraq,” Marc confirmed. “You know them?”
“I met Claire. Wish I knew her better.” Frank pulled down his collar, revealing a series of long scars that clawed his neck and shoulder. “Frag from a roadside bomb. Claire was the duty nurse when I came in. You know about Josh and Hannah?”
Josh glanced over, gave them a long look, then turned away. Marc replied, “Josh mentioned it.”
“Claire kept an eye on me. Long as I was laid up, she was there.” Frank struggled for a moment, then offered, “The lady has healing hands.”
“And heart,” Josh murmured.
Frank nodded once. “I never had much time for, you know.”
“Faith,” Marc offered.
“It just didn’t seem to have any place in the life I led.”
“Hard to have a life without it,” Josh said to the heat and the light.
Frank nodded a second time. “Claire, she didn’t say much. Little mite of a person. But it was there. With her.”
“I understand,” Marc said. “All too well.”
“Whatever, whenever,” Frank told him. “Anything that might bring those three home, I’m your man.”
Josh gripped his friend’s arm. A silent thanks between warriors. He let his hand drop and asked Hamid, “Think maybe it’s a false alarm?”
“What I think,” Hamid replied, “is we have more hours of daylight.”
“You got no problem with hanging around a while longer?”
“I spent two years guarding prisoners,” Hamid replied. “I and my men, we are professionals at waiting.”
“I hear you.” Josh rose to his feet, his men moving with him. “Think maybe we’ll mosey around again.”
“ ‘Mosey,’ ” Hamid said. “This word I do not know.”
“Give the market another look-see. Smell the wind. Taste the danger up close and personal.”
“Mosey,” Hamid repeated. “I am liking this word.”
Josh gave them an elaborate salaam and left with his men. Hamid watched them move away. A few minutes later, Hamid’s three men entered the shadows and slid into the vacant seats. The silence gathered. The minutes turned to stone.
Finally, Hamid said, “Sameh el-Jacobi is a man of honor.”
“And his family.” Marc thought of the previous night and shook his head. “They invited me to dinner. His little grand-niece truly shook me up.”
Hamid smiled at that. He translated for his men, then said to Marc, “This is Leyla’s child, yes? How old she is?”
“Bisan is eleven years old. She looks eleven. But she thinks and talks…”
Hamid translated this as well. Then he replied, “Bisan is an Arab eleven. An Arab woman.”
They were all grinning now. Yussuf said something, and they all laughed. Hamid said, “Yussuf says, this your last and final warning.”
“Sorry, I don’t follow.”
“I know this family. I ran the police station near their home. Bisan’s mother, she very beautiful, yes?”