The Illumination Read Free

bidding war for his prize.
    But there was no tomorrow for Ibrahim. As he listened to the sounds of war exploding through his city, war came to him. A rapid burst of gunfire ripped through the windshield and blew his left eye through the back of his head.

1
Five years later
Baghdad
    Â 
    The sand was everywhere—in her throat, in her eyelashes, embedded beneath the screw-on cap of her Gatorade bottle. Dana Landau had always loved the beach, but after three months in Iraq she’d be more than happy to never again feel the grit of sand between her toes.
    â€œA few more minutes and I’ll have the rest of the footage,” her cameraman, Rusty Sutherland, called out.
    â€œMake it fast.” Dana glanced warily around as he panned the wreckage yet again. She’d seen enough. And every minute they were out here, away from the fragile security of the Green Zone, they were in the devil’s hands.
    Her chest tight, Dana picked her way across the bomb-torn terrain in search of a patch of shade.
    Another day, another car bombing,
she thought grimly, turning her back on the convoy of military vehicles that had accompanied them, their driver, and their interpreter to this grisly scene. The strike had taken out two truckloads of newly trained Iraqi soldiers.
    The network had allotted her ninety seconds to sum up today’s chapter in this ongoing odyssey of death, which they’d edit down to a sound bite that could never reflect the enormity of the carnage.
    Dana had busted her buns to snag this assignment. She’dfought for it harder than she’d ever fought for anything, but she had to concede that when she left Iraq next month she wouldn’t miss this danger-fraught nightmare—the thunder of bombs puncturing the night, the stench of burned flesh and rubber, the thin high wails of the children. She’d gladly trade the sandbags piled against the windowsills of the MSNBC villa, the razor wire surrounding it, and all the paranoia, grittiness, and uncertainty of life in a war zone for some humdrum assignment covering schoolteachers on strike.
    But she’d keep that to herself. Her father had always cautioned her and her sister about shedding tears for answered prayers. This stint in Iraq was what she’d wanted, and it was establishing her as a prime-time contender right alongside all the big boys—the older anchors who’d cemented their careers covering battlefields and the world’s hotspots.
    But I won’t miss it—and I damn well won’t ever be able to forget it,
she thought, gulping warm Gatorade as she leaned into the meager shade of a date palm. She’d miss Rusty, though. Having been in Baghdad a full month before Dana had arrived, her cameraman was leaving in the morning for two weeks R & R stateside.
    â€œDone! Let’s get outta here.” Rusty slammed the trunk of the armored car. She knew he was already halfway home, envisioning his reunion with his wife and kids back in Connecticut.
    After Baghdad, American suburbia would be paradise.
    â€œComing.” She pushed herself away from the tree, eager to be on the move as quickly as possible. A quick cell call from an insurgent spotting them out here would be enough to bring a car bomb speeding this way with their names on it.
    As she straightened, the Gatorade bottle cap slipped from her fingers. Swearing, she stooped to retrieve it from the hot sand and spotted something peeking out of the explosion-rocked earth a few feet away. A patch of weathered leather, half buried in the sand. Even from a distance she could see it was decorated with a painted eye.
    Dana crouched and tugged it from the sand. Yep, it was most certainly an eye. A blue eye, rimmed in black, painted on a leather pouch half the size of a playing card. A blue eye was afamiliar talisman, especially in this part of the world; it was used as protection against the evil eye.
    Just like this one,
she thought, touching the dainty silver