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shop and he had a point. It was no Wal-Mart. ‘You can’t go in there without an escort.’
    We stared at each other for a few moments before he sighed wearily and said, ‘One guard only. Young man, you are worrying too much, I think.’
    ‘We can only spare five minutes here, sir,’ I said.
    The principal shook his head at me as if to say that I just didn’t get it.
    ‘Meyers, accompany our dignitary,’ I said.
    ‘Yes, sir,’ Meyers replied.
    The book inside my head played like a bad song that wouldn’t go away:
    1. Do not let the principal enter a doorway first.
2. In hallways, keep the principal in the center.
3. Keep the principal away from windows and alcoves and areas limiting escape and evasion.
    The cousin put his arm around the principal’s shoulders. They walked toward the shop entrance, chatting, laughing. Meyers took up station ahead of them, scoping left and right. A pro.
    I scanned the street. A yellow taxi, with a replacement fender and door panels that gave it a patchwork appearance, drove by slowly, blowing smoke. The driver leaned across the bench seat toward us, eternally hopeful for a fare. Fifty meters down the road, several middle-aged men having a conversation crossed from one side to the other. Nearby, the wind had picked up some dust and blew it into a corkscrew that was moving in our direction. More grit flew into my eyes. I opened them in time to see a woman in a dark blue burka that was billowing like a sail – the bottom hem flapping and whipping around her ankles – walk into the middle of the road, stop, turn around, and then retrace her steps. Two young men on pushbikes swerved to avoid her. A couple of blocks further down, a man pushing a wheel-cart pulled over to sell bunches of bananas.
    The drivers reversed our vehicles and parked them in front of al-Eqbal’s cousin’s shop – one of a group of five with common walls. A narrow alley was at either end of the block. The buildings on the other side of the wide street were mostly unpainted gray concrete, two and three storys, with flat roofs, two windows per floor, no balconies. Some were homes; the living rooms of some functioned as shops, like al-Eqbal’s cousin’s. Over the roofs of these houses rose the imposing mass of TV Mountain. I’d been on its summit years ago when I first came to the ’Stan. The Taliban rocketed our position there, trying to dislodge me and several other special tactics officers while we called in air strikes on their fundamentalist asses. Looking down from the summit, the gray city seemed to wrap itself around the base like a blanket of clothes-dryer lint.
    I spoke into the small boom mike, part of the system that allowed our team members to communicate with each other over short distances. ‘What’s happening?’ I asked Meyers.
    ‘Settling in for the long haul, boss. They’re brewing tea,’ came his reply through my earpiece.
    ‘Tell Mr Big he’s got two minutes left.’
    Stefanovic, Fallon, and Detmond were all Army. They faced out, looking idly toward the mountain, waiting. Their M16s were pointed at the ground. Detmond lit a cigarette. With the principal out of the picture, so was their focus. Our drivers had the engines running. Gangsta crap thumped from an open window.
    To pass the time, I asked Stefanovic, ‘So why did you volunteer for this?’
    ‘Who volunteered?’ he said. ‘I cleaned out my sergeant in a game of hold ’em. It was this or latrine duty. Happens again, I’ll take the crappers. You?’
    ‘Brain fart.’
    ‘You asked to do this shit?’ Fallon said. He glanced at me, seeing but not believing.
    Detmond grunted.
    ‘Got a volunteer joke for you,’ I said to our little formation. ‘A guy walks into a bar with a pet alligator. He puts it up on the bar and says to the freaked-out patrons, “I’ll make you all a deal. I’ll put my dick in this here ’gator’s mouth and keep it there one minute. At the end of that time, the ’gator will open its mouth. If I