“Well, you just convince them that we’re on the level,” Ed said.

“I’ll do my best.”

“Do better than that, and maybe you’ll live through this day.”

The walls of the palace loomed just ahead. Everything was clearer now. The high wall was topped with looped razor wire. Guard towers stood twenty feet above the wall every fifty yards or so. The windows were gone—replaced by sheet metal with firing slots cut out of them. It was impossible to tell which towers had men in them and which didn’t.

Closer to the ground, the gate was more of a wall than a gate. Luke looked closely. It was a large passenger bus, maybe from the 1960s, its side hung with more sheet metal. Opening the gate meant driving the bus out of the way. Outside the gate, flanking it on either side, were two wrecked armored troop carriers. These were the guard posts.

As the Mercedes pulled up, men with automatic weapons appeared from behind the demolished trucks. At first there were two men, then four, then five. Two men appeared on top of the bus. All of the men had their weapons trained on the Mercedes.

“Calm,” Cole said. “Don’t do anything stupid.”

He powered his window down. Instantly, the muzzle of an AK-47 poked inside the car. The man wielding it wore a green balaclava covering his face.

Cole shook his head. “Watts, you better get that gun out of my face before I get irritated.”

The guy pulled his face covering up to the top of his head, revealing his face. He had a narrow jawline, covered with recent stubble. His eyes were blue. “Cole? What the hell are you doing, man? We heard you got busted. Nobody knew if you were alive or dead. How did you know it was me?”

Cole looked at him. “Because you look like a kid playing Spider-Man, Watts. That’s why. You’re the biggest ten-year-old boy in Iraq. And yes, I’m alive. Took my lumps like a man and didn’t say a word.”

Watts half-nodded, then shook his head. He took in Cole’s face, with the sickly black and yellow shiner and the busted lip. Then he broke into a smile. “Yeah, you look like, uh… you look good, Cole. It’s an improvement.”

Luke noticed there were still two guns pointed at the car on the passenger side. He didn’t power his own window down.

“So I’m alive, I’m back, and I’m ready for action. You gonna open the gate or what?”

Watts gestured with his chin. “Who are your friends?”