“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.
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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 . . .