At three in the morning, twenty kilometers from Mosul City, the dry riverbed wound through the boundless darkness like a hideous scar on the earth.
There wasn't a breath of wind in the air, stagnant as a cold iron plate pressing heavily on the chests of every lurker.
The occasional hiss of electric current in the radio headset became the only breath in this world of dead silence.
Samir squatted at the bottom of this "scar," the makeshift open-air command post was so rudimentary it was heartbreaking.
An oil-stained folding table, a few radio communication devices emitting faint green light, an old military computer propped up by an ammo box displaying a satellite map—this was everything he had for commanding five thousand men, given to him by the cousin he despised most, Yusuf.
The cold light from the screen cast an angular profile and a pair of bloodshot eyes deeply sunken in his sockets on his face.
