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Sweating under the midday sun, Jamal Najib peered over the doghouse, a dead Doberman sprawled at his side. The deafening gunfire had ceased, and he crouched back down. He removed his backpack and lifted up his shirt to inspect the bullet wound. Thanks to Allah, it was only a graze.

His life was spared for a reason, he thought. He must inform the world of the horrifying events he had just witnessed.

Sensing a movement to his right, he twisted around to see Tamara crawling toward him. She carried an infant under her arm, and her clothes were splattered with blood. He crept to her, took the infant, and whispered, "Allah has spared your life too, my dearest cousin."

She did not respond.

He examined the infant boy. Drenched in blood, the body was lifeless.

Gently he lay the dead infant on the ground. "I pray for your eternal happiness in the afterlife." He turned to Tamara. "Are we the only ones alive?"

Her moist eyes were fixed on the tiny corpse, and she seemed in a daze.

Jamal shook her by the shoulders. "Tamara, the child will be much happier where he is going. We must think of our own survival now. We must live to serve as Allah’s instruments of vengeance."

He strapped his backpack on, came to his knees, and looked about. An eerie silence enveloped the garden. Scattered all over the terrace were bloodied bodies. His gaze shifted to the reflecting pool in front of the terrace. Riddled with bullet wounds, two men lay face down in the shallow water. Next to them a little girl floated on her back, her terrified features frozen in death. Jamal groaned at recognizing his three-year-old niece.

After breathing a few profanities, he whispered to Tamara, "As God is my witness, dear cousin, we must take an oath to die rather than let the murderers escape justice."

Seeing no signs of the masked gunmen, Jamal crept out on the terrace to inspect the bodies, hoping some were still alive. He looked for movement. Any movement.

All were dead.

He ran inside the mansion and into his uncle’s office. Rummaging through a file cabinet, he found the three-page document he had prepared a few weeks earlier. After folding it, he placed it inside a canvas-wrapped package in his backpack. He then retrieved his uncle’s car keys from the middle drawer of the desk and hurried back to Tamara. Grasping her hand, he led her to the Mercedes sedan parked on the cement driveway. He dropped his backpack on the rear seat, and they climbed into the car. Taking a final look at the carnage, he offered a silent prayer, then drove off.

Two gunmen were crouched at the sides of the open gate, lying in wait. They opened fire as Jamal drove onto the deserted side street. Pushing Tamara down, he thumped the accelerator to the floor. A spray of bullets smacked into metal. He lowered his head and kept driving. At the next intersection he glanced in his rearview mirror. The gunmen were jumping into a gray sedan.

Then the chase began.

Ten minutes later he was on Al Mansur Street, which had a few pedestrians braving the midday heat. With the gray sedan out of sight for the moment, he swerved the Mercedes to the curb and jammed on the brakes. He reached over, flung open the passenger door, and shouted, "Get out, Tamara! It is best we separate."

"But . . ."

"One of us must survive. Go, for the love of God!"

He pushed her out, and she stumbled onto the pavement. As he fishtailed the car away, he noticed Tamara’s gold bracelet on the passenger seat. If ever they should meet again, he would return it to her. But deep inside, he sensed they had just parted forever.

Racing the Mercedes onto the highway north to Baqubah, Jamal glanced in his rearview mirror and spotted the gray sedan not far behind. But he was confident that on the open road his uncle’s powerful Mercedes could outrun most other vehicles. He was right. Within a few minutes the gray sedan was a mere speck in his rearview mirror.

The city of Baqubah was only forty kilometers ahead, and he had friends there to help him. He passed two checkpoints without having to slow down. Until curfew time, most checkpoints were open to traffic heading away from Baghdad. He was almost halfway to his destination when he pulled in behind a line of vehicles stopped at a military barricade. He lowered the window, leaned out, and peered at the group of soldiers checking each vehicle. Upon recognizing their British uniforms, Jamal sighed in relief. He trusted the British.

After closing the window, he reset the interior temperature control to sixty-eight degrees, and waited. Five minutes passed, and the line of vehicles ahead of him had barely moved. Fearing the gray sedan was about to catch up, he jumped out and ran toward the barricade. As he neared it, the soldiers brandished their assault rifles and ordered him to stop.

Slowing his pace, he threw up his arms.

"Identify yourself," one of the soldiers shouted.

"Don’t shoot! My name is Jamal Najib, and I am a reporter."

The soldier approached him. "Why do you have blood on your shirt?"

"Masked gunmen attacked our family home in Baghdad. Some of the blood is from a flesh wound. The rest belonged to a dead infant."

"Then why aren’t you in Baghdad to help with the investigation?"

"Because the killers are after me."

"Let me see some identification."

As Jamal reached for his wallet, from somewhere behind him a gunshot blasted. A knifelike pain exploded in his left chest. He crashed to the ground.

The soldiers returned fire. Jamal rolled over on his back and looked in the direction of the sniper. He saw a gray sedan make a screeching U-turn, then speed away.

Feeling dizzy and sick to his stomach, he lay still.

One of the soldiers, a young man with a cherubic face, ran over to him. "Where do you hurt, sir?"

"My left chest. In the back."

"You mustn’t move. I’ll get you help right away."

"Are you British?"

"Yes, but you must lie quietly to preserve all your energy."

Jamal had no recourse but to trust him. "Please do something for me. What is your name?"

"John Turnbull. I’ll call for an ambulance now."

Sensing he was not long for this world, Jamal said, "While we wait, you must listen to what I have to say."

The soldier spoke to one of his comrades and then knelt at Jamal’s side. "I’m afraid you don’t look too fit at the moment. If you must talk, make it brief."

By the time the ambulance arrived, Jamal had finished his story.

His eyes bulging, the soldier gripped Jamal’s arm. "That was bloody unbelievable!"

“I swear by the Holy Koran I have told you the truth. Now please carry out my wishes.”

Jamal prayed to Allah that the soldier would comply.

Then his vision dimmed, and he closed his eyes for the last time.

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"Captain Liam Casey?"

"Ex-Captain. You are?"

"Lieutenant Bert Pugh."

I squinted at the name tag. His first name was actually Cuthbert.

Pugh was about five-nine—six inches shorter than me. He wore an army uniform that was probably just out of the dry cleaners. His teeth were capped, his nails were manicured, and his dark brown hair was bleached at the temples.

After wiping a corner of the table, he placed his army hat on it, pulled out a chair, and sat opposite me.

I said, "Have a seat."

We were at Pedro’s Steak House, a block away from the alcohol rehab center in Escondido, California. Smoke from the mesquite grill had drifted over the stage, where a tone-deaf country music band blasted "On the Road Again." The woman at the next table clapped in rhythm while her companion downed his third Coors.

I was on my first Coke.

Pugh snapped his fingers at a passing waiter with ginger hair and a shirt of the same color. "Get me a Samuel Adams." He turned to me. "What’ll you have, Captain?"

"Ex-Captain."

"Anything to drink?"

"Nothing, thanks. How did you find me?"

"Someone at the rehab place told me you might be here. How’s it going?"

"Fine. What did you want to see me about?"

"I’m Brigadier General Worthington’s aide, and . . ."

"The only Worthington I know is a colonel."

"He was recently promoted to general. Anyway, he’d like to talk to you."

"Where is he?"

"Washington, D.C."

"That’s a long way to travel for a chat."

"We’ll transport you, of course. He wants you to volunteer for a mission."

I smirked. "Me? I was formally dismissed from the U.S. Army, or didn’t he tell you that?"

A formal dismissal of a commissioned officer is like a dishonorable discharge. And like a criminal record, a military dismissal scars one for life. I could have appealed my case, but didn’t.

I was at fault. Period.

"If you complete the mission, the general will fix your record," Pugh said. "Provided, of course . . ."

"I stay sober?"

"You got it."

I had been sober for ten weeks. Liquor still beckoned me everywhere I went and even while I slept. But I was trying my best to put my life back together. Maybe an emergency department or a doc-in-a-box clinic would hire me until I could get back into my specialty—surgery.

I said to Pugh, "I have another two weeks of rehab. When it’s over, I’ll see the general if I’m still out of work."

Pugh studied his fingernails. "Okay, two weeks it is. But you’ll have trouble finding a job. You know that, don’t you?"

"I’ll manage."

"The general has connections. If you go along with him, after he cleans up your file, he’ll get you on the surgery staff of a top-notch VA hospital."

The offer was hard to resist. Surgery and the U. S. Army had been my life, and working at a VA would be the perfect place for me. Sure I had screwed up, but here was a second chance begging to be taken.

His beer arrived in a frosty glass. It was tall, with a good head and mesmerizing bubbles. Managing to look away, I took a few gulps of my Coke.

A lifetime of no alcohol would be tough. Was I tough enough? Since drying out, I had my doubts about it. But I wouldn’t go down without a fight.

"Are we on?" Pugh asked.

"Let me sleep on it."

He stood. "Phone me tomorrow, Captain."

"Ex-Captain."

"I’m staying at the Sheraton near John Wayne Airport."

"How come I always got Motel Six on my travels, and you get the Sheraton?"

"Because I know how to play the army game. Obviously, you didn’t."

He took a sip of his beer and left. I gazed longingly at the mostly full glass, then asked the waiter to take it away.

At three o’clock I was at the rehab center for a one-on-one session with my favorite counselor, Dave Garnet. A fifty-something African American, he was a former Marine who had been to hell and back. As always he wore a white T-shirt, faded blue jeans, and military boots.

We sat in his cubicle of an office. It was crammed with a metal desk, a tattered vinyl armchair, and a metal bookshelf brimming over with psychology books.

Peering at me over his half-lenses, he said, "Doc, you didn’t talk much at this morning’s group session."

"Not much to say."

"You never do, do you?"

"Maybe not."

"You’ll be out of the program in a couple of weeks. Think you’ll stay sober?"

"What do you think?"

"I can’t answer that because you don’t talk."

"Okay, ask me a question."

"Why are you killing yourself?"

"Huh?"

"First the booze, now the cigarettes."

"I didn’t drink as much or smoke before going to Iraq."

"How did Iraq change your attitude?"

I bore my eyes into him. "You were in ’Nam, weren’t you?"

He rubbed his stubble of gray hair. "That was a lifetime ago."

"Yeah, and you came out of it a drunk, didn’t you?"

"I did."

"Case closed."

"No, it ain’t closed, Doc. Once a drunk, always a drunk. What keeps me sober, though, is I talk about my addiction and keep out the guilt."

"What guilt?"

He pointed a finger at me. "You should know. The guilt of watching people dying all around you. The guilt of knowing you survived and they didn’t. And the guilt of thinking you were somehow to blame."

"That’s psychobabble bullshit. The misery pushed me into booze oblivion."

"Misery and guilt are often the same thing."

"Okay, so the cure is talking about all the carnage I saw? That’s just too simple, Dave."

"Like I’ve told you before, sometimes even the most complicated problems have simple solutions."

"Right."

"Talk to me about the senseless killing of innocents. Talk to me about the mutilated and the slaughtered children. That’s what bothered the hell out of me when I was in ’Nam. And I’d bet my last dollar that’s what really bothered you in Iraq."

I shuddered at the thought. Memories of my two-year tour of duty in Iraq were gruesome. What had probably driven me to hit the bottle hard was the stress of witnessing and sorting through all the tattered corpses, the blown-off heads, arms, faces, limbs. And seeing the pretty young woman with one eye dangling out of its socket, and the . . .

The kids. The little innocents maimed for life or just plain killed. And their mothers wailing over them, clutching the dead and dying bodies.

Those wails still ring in my ears, especially when I am in a state of twilight sleep. They jolt me up in bed, and I see the kids lying in their blood all around me. I cover my ears and squeeze my eyes closed, but the sounds and images don’t go away.

The wailing mothers fall at my feet, pleading with me to resurrect their children or their children’s limbs. But I have more pressing emergencies. As a physician I must play God, deciding who should live and who should die; who should lose a limb and who should not.

I lie back down and hold the pillow over my face until the carbon dioxide builds up, and I have to breathe air.

Then I’m fully awake, feeling like I should have saved every life that still had a breath or a heartbeat; every limb that clung on even by a thread of skin. But I didn’t, because my training dictates that in war, I must salvage only the salvageable.

To hell with playing God. To hell with triage. To hell with wailing mothers. And to hell with the sanctity of life. No one in Iraq seems to care, so why should I?

God, how I hated what we had done to that nation and what that nation had done to me.

Dave Garnet’s voice seeped through all the commotion in my head. "Talk to me, Doc."

Quickly refocusing, I bolted off the armchair. "Not right now."

"When?"

"Don’t know. Maybe never."

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My apartment, which I had rented after living at rehab for a month, was a typical bachelor’s pad. In other words, a mess. Every so often I’d clean it up, and then it would be a clean mess. But it had everything I needed. A bed, sofa, fireplace, and a fat TV with a small screen. And I was getting used to the feuding couple on one side and the guitar-playing teenager on the other.

I had a shower, then weighed myself: two hundred and fifteen pounds. Ten more to lose. My body, which was a thing of beauty a few years ago, had grown a bit flabby—alcohol comes with calories. But I was off the alcohol now and back to daily workouts at the gym.

After a week of sobriety the puffiness had left my face, which wasn’t—isn’t—much to look at anyway. Green eyes, flat nose, unruly rust-brown hair, and a prominent chin with a deep cleft you could hide breadcrumbs in.

The phone rang, and I answered it.

"Liam?"

"Who’s asking?"

"Jeff Worthington."

"Hi, Colonel."

"I’m a general now."

"Oh yeah, Cuthbert told me. Congratulations."

"You probably don’t mean it, but thanks anyway. The reason I called is to urge you to take on this very important assignment. Will you come to Washington?"

"Haven’t decided. Tell me about the assignment."

"I can’t tell you much over the phone except that you’ll be traveling far. You’ll be on full captain’s pay, and if you succeed, I’ll make your record squeaky clean."

"Cuthbert told me that, too."

"You’re currently in rehab?"

"Another couple of weeks."

"How’s it going there?"

"Fine. I’m still sober."

"Okay. I’ll see you here as soon as you’re done."

"Haven’t agreed yet."

"You will. This mission is for your country, Liam."

"Come on, General. Save that line for your wet-behind-the-ears recruits."

"I should have known better. How about as a personal favor to me?"

I chuckled. "A personal favor for the guy who got me dismissed from the military?"

"You know I had no other choice."

"Guess not."

"But now I’m in a position to reverse everything. Can we count on you?"

I sighed. "Okay, see you in Washington. But don’t hold me to anything after that."

The next midmorning I was back at the rehab center. It wasn’t top of the line. Nothing like the ones where celebrities are rehabbed long enough to apologize for whatever they had done to force them there in the first place. But I was okay with the New Beginnings facility because the counselors were okay.

We sat at a circle of run-down chairs in a run-down room. The walls lacked paint, and the floor lacked a dozen vinyl tiles.

Dave Garnet glanced around the room, then his gaze settled on a woman I hadn’t seen before. "Looks like we have a visitor today," he said.

The woman smiled and stood up. "I am Lilly Jones. And I am an alcoholic."

I eyed her. In her mid-twenties, I guessed. She wore a rumpled gray blouse, loose jeans, and scuffed sneakers. Her skin was tan and her hair was black, twisted into a bun at the back of her head. Her horn-rimmed glasses covered enormous blue eyes. Not bad looking really, if she did something with her hair and clothes. And she could use a pair of more attractive glasses.

Dave said, "Welcome to the group, Lilly Jones. Do you plan to enter our program?"

"I’m considering it."

"Great. We have no secrets here, so tell us about yourself and how you got hooked on the poison."

She spoke with an English accent—sort of like the British royalty. "I was born and raised in London, England. I was introduced to vodka in college, and soon I couldn’t get away from it. After graduating, I worked as a buyer for a clothing company. They fired me when I arrived at work totally inebriated. Then I came to America, ready to start all over."

Sounded like a standard story, but also sounded like a rehearsed speech. I imagined there was a lot more to her tale.

So did Garnet. "That’s good for starters, Lilly. But if you do decide to enroll here, we would like you to fill in all the details. Keeping things bottled up makes recovery really tough."

She sat down. The group meeting went on, with Mrs. Forster talking about her husband, Mrs. Kent talking about her teenager, and Jim Rabowski talking about his Rottweiler.

I had nothing to say.

The meeting ended, and we had sandwich lunches in the dining room with the food-stained brown carpeting. We ate at a long pine table that had names and doodles carved all over it. Lilly Jones sat opposite me. The guy next to her—I forget his name—talked at her nonstop about Jesus. Lilly stared into the distance, occasionally nodding her head.

I downed my roast beef sandwich in a hurry and dashed outside for a Marlboro. A moment later Lilly came to my side. I noticed her glasses were off, which made her blue eyes sparkle in the sunlight. Quite striking, really.

She made a face at my cigarette. "Do you smoke?"

"Are you with the antismoking police?"

She laughed. "Hardly. It’s just that you look too healthy to have the habit."

"Am I about to hear a sermon?"

"No, I had enough of sermons during lunch. How is rehab working for you?"

"Okay, I guess. Seventy-one days sober, another thirteen and a half to go."

"Then what will you do?"

"Celebrate and get drunk."

Her big blue eyes grew bigger. "I hope that was a joke."

"And not a very good one. Are you going to join our group?"

"We’ll see."

I doused my cigarette in the outdoor ashtray, and we went back inside. The afternoon meeting lasted two hours. Lilly said nothing, and neither did I. She looked at me every so often though, as if she were studying me.

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