“Who are we going to see?” Amal asked.

“A bunch of wannabes. Not proper Army, more like junior auxiliaries. The sense I got from the one I talked to is that they were freelancing when they hijacked the truck—which is good for us, because it means they’re anxious to fence the goods. God willing, the deal should go down quickly.” He looked at the briefcase Mustafa was carrying. “You have the cash?”

“Yes.” The riyals in the case had been requisitioned, by presidential order, from a larger stash of drug money recently seized by Halal. It was rough justice, the ransom for Saddam’s property to be paid with Saddam’s own ill-gotten gains.

“Good. Let’s get going, then.”

Samir cleared his throat. “Right,” said Mustafa. “Samir would like the address of our destination, so we can leave word of where we’re going.” In fact, Samir had been pestering him nonstop about this.

Iyad regarded Samir with suspicion. “Who do you want to leave word with?” he asked. “Your mother?”

“Yes,” Samir deadpanned. “If something goes wrong, I’d like her to know where to pick up the body.”

“If it comes to that, you can trust the Mahdis to dispose of your body properly,” Iyad said. “But don’t worry, we’ll be fine.”

“One other thing,” Mustafa said, making a quick check of the other vehicles on the street. “There’s a possibility we may be followed. Not by our people,” he clarified. Or by the Mukhabarat, whom Saddam had promised to call off. “By agents of Al Qaeda.”

“Al Qaeda, trying to enter Sadr City?” Iyad chuckled again. “If only God were that generous . . . Now come on, let’s not stand here all night.”

On maps it didn’t look like a neighborhood that would be hard to get into: a five-by-six kilometer rectangle extending northeast from the canal that ran like a moat between it and Rusafa. What the maps didn’t show, but what could be glimpsed in satellite photos on the Internet, were the clusters of black-clad Guardian Angels who stood watch all along Sadr City’s borders, on every thoroughfare and side street, profiling the incoming traffic. More Angels flocked on the El train platforms, ready to help as well as hinder. The station elevators rarely worked, but a wheelchair-bound El rider could count on being carried down to the street—unless the Angels pegged him as a Baath spy in cripple drag, in which case he’d make his descent even more swiftly, and headfirst.

The most closely watched entry points were those along the City’s northwest boundary, which it shared with the Adhamiyah district. Angels assigned to that border were especially vigilant, and they were matched on the Adhamiyah side by a neighborhood watch of off-duty cops and Baathist street thugs. The two groups of border guards catcalled one another across Safi al Din al Hilli Street, and these exchanges of verbal insults sometimes escalated into physical fights or even full-blown riots.

Iyad approached Sadr City from the southeast, detouring through the New Baghdad suburb and coming up Jerusalem Boulevard. At Habibiya Circle, where the boulevard crossed Port Said Street, the Guardian Angels were encamped on the central traffic island, at least three score men in black sitting on or standing around the civilian-model Humvees they used as interceptors. Inbound traffic entering the circle tended to slow down, the drivers hoping to avoid being singled out, but Iyad kept the cab rolling at a steady speed and waved at the border guards. Several waved back, including one particularly brawny Angel who’d traded his uniform top for a T-shirt that said MAY I READ YOU YOUR RIGHTS, OFFICER?

The taxi continued along the boulevard, passing two cars with out-of-state plates—one from Jordan, one from Qatar—that had been pulled over, probably on suspicion of Driving While Sunni. Farther down the block, a rented camper with a Danish flag on its antenna had been cut off by a Humvee after ignoring a signal to stop. Now the three passengers were being made to stand in the street while the vehicle was searched for contraband. As the cab drove by, an Angel emerged from the back of the camper waving a stack of comic books as if it were pornography.

“Idiot tourists,” Iyad muttered. Samir eyed the unhappy Danes and began fidgeting in his seat, and Iyad, catching this in the rearview, said: “Dude, I told you, we’ll be fine. But if you don’t quit acting nervous it’s going to cause problems.”

“Sorry,” Samir said, and forced himself to sit still.

Mustafa, feeling like a tourist himself, stared out at the boulevard, comparing it to his memories from the early ’90s when Halal had had regular business here. No question, the Mahdi Army had improved some things. Though the district was still ailing from decades of coming in dead last in every city budget allocation, the Army had worked overtime to patch the crumbling infrastructure, filling potholes, repairing sidewalks, shoring up dilapidated buildings, and organizing garbage collection and other services that most of Baghdad took for granted. There was a heavy smell of diesel in the air from the thousands of generators brought in to bolster the unreliable power grid, the fuel to run them being siphoned from Baath-owned tanker trucks and Baath-controlled oil depots.

Traditional street crime, once rampant, was practically nonexistent now. But here and there were glimpses of the price paid for that, the dark side of the new order. Among a row of well-tended shops Mustafa spied a grocery whose front window had just been busted out. The Angel who’d done the deed was still standing there, slapping his palm with a wooden club while the grocery’s tight-lipped proprietor used a push broom to sweep up the glass.

“What’s that about?”

“Don’t stare, cousin,” Iyad said. He shrugged. “Guy must’ve broken a rule. Maybe he stayed open during prayer time or tried to sell something he shouldn’t. Or it could be he didn’t pay his dues.”

“Dues,” Mustafa said, and Iyad shrugged again.

“You think your buddy Saddam doesn’t charge the shopkeepers in his territory for protection? At least here, you actually get the security you pay for.”

At the next corner they stopped for a red light and Mustafa looked up at a pair of billboards on the side of the El tracks just ahead. One billboard carried the ubiquitous AL SADR FOR GOVERNOR poster. The other was an ad for a local cell phone company, with a map of Iraq contrasting its superior coverage area with that of its competitors, the multicolored overlay giving the state a fragmented look that reminded Mustafa of the grocer’s window. He shifted in his seat, and Iyad, thinking he’d caught Samir’s case of nerves, said: “Dude, seriously. Chill out or I’m turning us around.”

The helicopter orbited at eight hundred meters, the camera on its belly automatically tracking the progress of the cab.

Six Al Qaeda commandos sat in the helicopter’s cargo compartment. For tonight’s mission they had dressed in paramilitary uniforms of the Badr Corps—another super-militia, based in Najaf, that was currently disputing the Mahdi Army’s right to represent Iraq’s Shia downtrodden.

Idris Abd al Qahhar was in the co-pilot’s seat. While the pilot focused on maintaining line-of-sight with the taxi, Idris reviewed the rules of engagement with his men. “Retrieval of the object is your top priority,” he said. “All guards and bystanders are expendable. Remember the neighborhood is hostile and any commotion is likely to bring armed reinforcements.”

“What about the Homeland Security agents?” the lead commando asked.

“If you can spare their lives without compromising your main mission, do so. But if you can’t, make sure you kill all three of them, and also any witnesses. Set incendiary charges on your way out of the building. One last thing—this goes without saying, but you are not to allow yourselves to be captured alive.”

“Understood,” the commando said.