But I would not listen. The war I was waging was in my blood and there was always one last mission that I thought would get me closer to winning—to beating ISIS by taking back all those they’d taken. Exposing Barzani. Justice—it was all I lived for. Within six months, I was popping anti-anxiety medication and unable to sleep more than an hour at a time before another nightmare yanked me out of my skin. I’d grab the Android, check the boards, and get back to work.
SINCE THE DAWN of 2017, I’d been living in various small inconspicuous towns around the North Rhine–Westphalia region, two hundred miles west of Berlin. From there, I made daily visits to newly arrived Yazidi families to help them navigate the German sanctuary system. Other times, I shepherded the newly liberated through the rescue network off trains and airplanes and out of smugglers’ vans into hospitals, rehabilitation centers, and safe havens.
Daily messages coming in one after the other at all hours kept me busy with the relentless stream of new cases coming into Germany. Sometimes several a day needed tending to; so many maimed Yazidi orphans with nowhere to turn. Still, I kept my promise to Brownsword to stay on safe soil—most of the time.
Many of the rescued Yazidis remained shell-shocked for months, unable to reconcile that new world of cobblestones and cathedral spires against their collective lifetimes of mud huts, bullets, blood, and sand. I filled out forms and, through the Mosquitos medical teams, arranged urgent care and acted as interpreter between them and the labyrinthine German bureaucracy. Oftentimes, I just sat drinking sweet chai in their cramped rooms that reeked of rancid cooking oil and soiled diapers, listening to heart-rending stories: loved ones lost, butchered, or taken. Most incoming families were clustered around the Westphalia region, and though establishing a predictable travel routine could prove lethal, I had no choice; for so many Yazidis, I was the only lifeline. Every single time I grabbed a moment to rest, eat, or even shower, I hated myself for taking the luxury.
Meanwhile, as more and more ISIS operatives slithered into Europe, associates in Iraq had passed along the message that I’d been marked for immediate killing—days of on-the-run safety in Germany were over. Now, I was living in a covert war zone, and receiving regular reports of ISIS fighters spotted roaming the picturesque streets with devil-may-care audacity, often coming right up to their former Yazidi captives and calling them out by name.
Then, I had stumbled at last right into what I thought would be my most lethal mission against ISIS. Salman was a young Yazidi attorney operating out of Iraq with a wide but covert network of his own, spread along the frontiers of the Middle East and right into Europe. Our common purpose as Yazidis brought us together in the online void, and we kept our sensitive communications distinct from the wider network. From a safe house by the frontier, he’d been tracking ISIS fighters and their slaves as they shuttled into Turkey, and was compiling the constantly evolving data: aliases and precise locations; the identities of the Yazidis shackled to them. Established in comfortable homes with a steady current of funds, ISIS militants became so brazen in their freedom that they held slave auctions inside Turkish towns—many of the sales were listed on the dark web. Between just the two of us, we kept careful track of the auctions and followed the movements of each slave; in secret we raised funds and organized individual extractions and infiltrated sales as best we could; but with few effective contacts in the country, our eager agents faced an army of obstacles. All too often, we failed.
Informed time and time again, the Turkish authorities offered no meaningful support. As the list of Yazidi slaves held in Turkey grew, my rage whetted down to a razor of single-minded resolve. For every one of my people held captive, there was at least one ISIS terrorist lurking nearby like a human time bomb—and no one else had access to that information. If the lives of the Yazidis weren’t worth anything to anyone, that intel was at least worth something to a lot of people.
“Infiltrators—coming into Europe—you sure?” Brownsword said.
“Like rats out of a sewer.”
“Your contact got specifics?”
“Nothing but specifics—addresses, new names. They have their Yazidi slaves with them, and that’s how we track them.”
Days later, Brownsword told me to expect a call from an American who would take my intel and pass it along for verification. My idea was to offer the US government a deal: they get the terrorists, and we free the girls.
LONG TONGUES OF fragrant smoke climbed the crimson walls as we entered Lebanon’s Lounge like shadows and took our seats against a far wall, alone. I was there with Maher, one of a handful of Yazidi cohorts who’d helped me move in and out of safe houses.
“Listen to me, Shaker, you need air. Everyone in the community thinks you’re cracking up. I know a good shisha lounge,” he said.
“Not a chance—I have to stay underground and wait. It’s the only way.” I was barefoot on the floor, clacking away at my Android.
Maher was sitting across from me, drinking from a can of Coke. The carbonated liquid sounded like a swarm of insects, and my guts churned like cement. I saw an image of Bowers in Mosul at the flour factory, running a sleeve across his sweaty face.
Flies, I heard Bowers say. Flies on top of flies.
I rummaged through a bag, pulled out a prescription bottle, and held it up. I took one pill and swallowed it, dry as paper. “All good.”
“You need more than pills. Thought you were going to kill me last time I came in here with food—that was some crazy military move.”
“I’m sorry about that.” And I was. All Maher wanted to do was go out, drink some good Arabian chai. Be a normal person for a night.
“They have cushions on the floor,” he said. “No chairs—just like home.”
“Like home,” I breathed.
“That phone is going to kill you.”
Suddenly, I couldn’t wait to get out of there.
SILKEN CUSHIONS LAY scattered like soft jewels; everywhere the hum of chatter and clinks of cups. Instantly, the perfumed warmth of Shingal covered me like a warm bath, and I let my tired psyche soak in it, grateful for the fleeting moment.
You see? Maher seemed to say, leaning back. The bulb of water gurgled as he sucked in drafts of fragrant smoke.
The tea was good and I drank it down so slowly. Knots buried deep along my spine loosened, and I glanced around. Maher had assured me that he’d had the placed scouted before I went in.
“You don’t even know who to look for,” I’d laughed, but my eyes were roving.
Less than an hour later, two men slinked over to the bar. Right away, I noticed one holding a piece of paper in his hand. At regular intervals now, I shifted my eyes to the pair, who had their wide backs turned. Leather jackets, bulky—easy to conceal a reliable piece in there. Several times, I watched them sip sodas and smoke, but they never turned around.
“Shaker,” Maher said. “When you look away, those guys over there look at you. Every ten minutes. One’s got a paper in his hands.”
“Yeah,” I said. Something wasn’t right.
Cool and agile in his black jeans and faux suede loafers, Maher moved like an elegant predator across the dim lounge, passing along the bar before slipping into the restroom. Trapped against a wall on my silk raft, I tracked the men along my periphery and drank down a full cup of chai. As waitresses floated past through veils of shisha, I scanned escape routes: back doors into an alleyway, kitchen to nowhere certain, front entrance to the main street and plenty of human cover.
“Time to go,” Maher said, sliding back down next to me. He took in a long last puff of tobacco and let it out slowly, shrouding us both in smoke. “That paper has your face on it.”
But I already knew.
THE MEN FOLLOWED us out and would be hard to lose. One had arms like battering rams; when he turned his head, you could see the veins in his neck bulge like taut wires. Moving along the crowded front patio, I suddenly realized Maher was gone, and I looked over to glimpse his dark blue shoes racing
across the intersection. Dodging into a side street, he disappeared.
Then a voice shouted over the din, “Hey, Shaker Jeffrey. How are you?”
I turned now, taking solace in the cover of the populated street. A few young drunkards shoved past and paid us no mind.
“You want something?” I asked, straightening the frayed lapels on my jacket.
“Nadia, she was so good to us,” the second one said, stepping up to me. He had a gash like a claw mark across his pocked face. And he grinned—all gold caps. “I can still taste her.” Then he went on and on talking trash in spit-laced Arabic.
“What are you talking about?” I kept saying. I’d expected a knife or a gun—not words.
“Nadia Murad? Your whoring girlfriend who thinks she’s a celebrity. That was a nice protest you Yazidis put on in Berlin. You and her lighting those little candles together. Your Baba Sheikh can baptize our sabayas all he wants, no one can be a virgin twice. Whatever you got from her, I broke it in first.”
The man behind him laughed and nodded. “I had her too,” he said.
Before I could react, another figure lumbered up behind me and whispered the name of my beloved like a wet curse into my ear. Right then, my limbs went to steel. In the next beat, a thunderclap of rage rushed out from my core. I whipped around, only to catch an open fist in the hollow of my cheek. The crack was hard and fast, and I stumbled back a pace as pain seared through my jaw. Now all three set upon me, and my arms went up to shield myself from a rabid onslaught of punches. Crouching way down, I scanned the melee for an opening. Maneuvering left and right, I found solid ground and countered with a few hard returns, one right after the other. Each fresh bash pummeled my knuckles to the consistency of crushed grapes; the chapped skin on my bottom lip tore open. Blood smeared my face.
Now, a full-scale battle of fists erupted in the streets, and all I could see were arms and balled up hands coming at me. Women screamed and men hollered. Through the propped- open doors of the lounge, smoke billowed. I could just make out the Assyrian woman behind the bar pressing a phone to her ear. By her red face and jabbering mouth, I knew that she was calling the Polizei.
When the blade came out, I didn’t see it, just felt the tip slide along the shallow flesh of my abdomen as though it were made of butter. Animal instinct propelled me way back, but a thin crimson bloom erupted over my white shirt. Falling to the sidewalk, I heard the wail of sirens. Someone crouched over me with a stack of napkins and hollered for help. Speaking in German, I assured him again and again that the wound wasn’t deep.
SEVERAL OFFICERS ARRESTED my attackers, and then questioned me in the back of the ambulance on the way to the hospital.
“The barmaid corroborates your story, so we won’t keep you.” The officer told me that the other men were illegals—no papers. He asked me if I knew who they were.
“ISIS,” I said. “Probably came in from Syria.”
“You sure about that?”
“They tried to kill me—that makes it pretty obvious.”
“Not to us.”
OVER THE NEXT months, agents would come after me time and again: on narrow side streets, in and out of trains, outside bus terminals; dark-clad Arab men with cell phones pinned to their ears followed my every move. They stole my laptop, hacked into my phone, watched me from cafés, and sent death threats to my family back in the camps.
But I remained undeterred.
The more they chased, the more resolved I became—even after narrowly escaping a gun pressed against my head. Those foot soldiers, and the people who sent them, wouldn’t have been so bothered if I wasn’t winning—at least that’s what I thought. But the truth was, they were getting harder to outrun. Or maybe I was just slowing down. At some point, they would keep their promise and slit my throat, let me bleed out slowly while they filmed it all for my mother. I didn’t want to die in Germany, but I wasn’t going to stop.
There was nowhere else for me to go.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Through the Perilous Fight
THE SCALES OF WAR STARTED TO TIP FAST AGAINST ISIS IN THE spring of 2017, as American naval vessels anchored in the Gulf and fighter jets and drones skidding high over the Jazeera unleashed an avalanche of missiles straight across the beating heart of the caliphate. Australia, the United Kingdom, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Jordan all took part in a relentless and colossal offensive of ordnance against the Islamic State’s infrastructure, pounding away at their oil interests, bases, and strongholds. One after the other, dumbfounded enemy units surrendered their posts and retreated—often cowering under the cover of human shields—out of crumbling towns and burning villages that they would leave booby-trapped in lethal tangles of trip-wire bombs.
By the summer solstice, that demonic and once indomitable force had hemorrhaged well over half its territory, and saw revenue streams of black market crude all but choked off. As the besieged caliphate continued to bleed out, its fighters set aside their sacred lust for jihad and scuttled from the front lines.
Crouched and camouflaged along the smooth desert gullies, my Yazidi cohorts photographed scores of retreating militants, who stood in clusters at the sides of roads to take turns shaving off their telltale beards and change into ordinary civilian clothes, abandoning those black uniforms and flags in dirty heaps like shed skins over the sand. Then, those once ardent warriors filed slowly onto air-conditioned buses that ferried them as returning tin gods back into safe territory. One ISIS commander even ran for Iraqi parliament without any mention ever being made of his affiliations. Meanwhile, other more intrepid militants simply traversed the western frontiers, dovetailing into a ready camouflage of migrating hordes.
As other Yazidi associates stood watch along a half-dozen points scattered across the border, scores of militants were jumping the line right into Turkey. Once there, they linked up with ISIS facilitators who guided them into the comfort of established safe houses, often nestled in quiet suburban neighborhoods. Unwilling to give up the spoils of war, many of these terrorists had taken along their Yazidi sabayas, disguised under trembling chadors as submissive Arab wives, who in turn carted their own enslaved children.
Still well-funded and organized, ISIS operatives were now bribing Turkish officials and civil servants, who swiftly proffered the one thing that ensured each incoming terrorist a safe seat inside the Trojan horse of terror that would carry them right into wider Europe—a valid Turkish passport. Now, by the hundreds, unchecked, unknown, and daily, soldiers of the Islamic State were invading the continent. But there was one fatal flaw in the latest plan: those captive Yazidi slaves, who were still stealing cell phones and reaching Salman.
MY ANDROID CHIMED through the dull weekend quiet. From the hard floor, I looked over and stood straight up, glimpsing the name I’d been waiting for—Alex Holstein—flashing across the screen.
“Brownsword briefed me up, but you can still take me through it,” he said, a hint of New York lacing his voice. He sounded just like a cop on one of the American shows I sometimes watched when I couldn’t sleep. “The situation has gotten worse, right? He mentioned passports.”
“Easy,” I said. I’d practiced that conversation over and over. “I told you guys many times. I want to make a deal with the Americans—”
“You reach out to Interpol?”
“Yes, a lot.”
“So, it’s not that simple.”
“Yes, it is—it’s very simple,” I barked. In the background I could hear the chattering monotone of a radio over a low whine of static. Then the voices stopped and there was only the steady breathing of the man at the other end. Leaning against the mildewed wall of my basement room, I slid down to the floor. Conveying it all to a stranger on the phone was like trying to fill a glass with an ocean. “Here’s the deal: I give the American government the exact locations, identities, and movements of ISIS in Turkey—hundreds of them—and they help me and my partners coordinate a rescue-op of the Yazidi women and children.�
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“You’re right. That is simple—to guys like you and me.”
“We can do it right now.” Every night, I’d sat up for hours planning my part of the operation, from infiltration to extraction and transport into Germany. There was a whole network ready to go, and I told him so.
“Those IDs and the passport scheme are going to be game-changers. First thing we need to do is get you the right point of contact, who can haul all you’ve got up the chain and get it processed—fast.”
“Isn’t that you?”
“I’m the bridge—I take people across and fix them up—keep things moving.”
“What do I do?”
“Keep fighting the fight.” He sounded just like Brownsword. “You and your partner carry on compiling data, and wait. Help is coming. Meanwhile, there’s a team already pushing your case for that special visa, the SIV, to the front of the line—and it’s one crazy long line. A lot of people think it’s a matter of national interest that we get you to the States.”
“This mission first—or nothing.” The truth was, I didn’t believe I was ever getting out; of the thousands, I’d only ever heard of a handful of terps who’d received a visa. And even then, the pencil pushing had taken years.
“Right. I’m going to take what you just told me to a couple of guys—both called Mike. One is retired FBI. Joint Terrorism Task Force. Hunted al-Zarqawi back in the day. The other is former SEAL Team Six. I’ll get it to the two Mikes—they’ll know who to hit with this. And whoever that is will probably want to talk to you.”
“We don’t have time to wait to talk.”
“Yeah, you don’t have a lot of time period, Mikey—that’s the cold truth.”
When we got off the line, I just sat there, listening to the low rumble of traffic outside, and watched the light slowly fade and swallow shadows in the room. All through the vacant night, memories overtook me in frantic sounds and voices. The war had been long and full of losses and it was getting harder and harder to keep going and think straight. But I wasn’t giving up. One step at a time, I was finding my way through a labyrinth. In the morning, I looked over to see that the door stood wide open—my laptop was gone.
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