Free Until Tuesday by Bret Witter, Luis Carlos Montalván

confiscating more contraband and weapons, and arresting more foreign fighters and smugglers, than any other port of entry in Iraq.
    Word also traveled up the Iraq chain of command, through Ramadi to Baghdad. The sheiks were our allies, supposedly, but they were considerably less pleased with our success. Squeezing Al-Waleed meant squeezing a major source of funding for the struggling Sunni power base. That’s why they tried to send more loyal—in other words, corrupt—officers to replace Lt. Col. Emad. That’s why nobody seemed too pleased when Red Platoon joined us at Al-Waleed in early December, bringing our American troop level close to fifty men. When I informed Mr. Waleed soon after that 250 American-trained Iraqi border police were being sent to help him, he was clearly disturbed. The new border policemen, combined with Maher’s hand-chosen men in the regular Iraqi police and two active American platoons, would destroy the old way of business at Al-Waleed.
    Soon after, in mid-December 2003, Mr. Waleed was recalled suddenly to Ramadi. A week or so later, at nine thirty in the evening on December 21, 2003, I headed to the Iraqi border police headquarters for my nightly meeting over cigarettes and chai. The desert had turned cold with the coming of winter, and I could see my breath as Spc. David Page and I walked 250 yards down the wide road that ran through the complex toward the border. Outside the chain-link fence, the world was silent and black, a vast unpopulated emptiness; inside, a feeble yellow light threw shadows over the Iraq Ministry of Transportation office and the thirty or so tractor trailers still parked outside. Even from a hundred yards I could see the red tips of cigarettes, flaring and subsiding in the darkness, and the puffs of smoke from the drivers stuck in the compound, unable to complete their paperwork before the office closed for the night. I heard Page adjust his pistol as we approached the trucks, a reassuring gesture we often made unconsciously before walking up on Iraqi civilians. The scene was peaceful and monotonous, ominous and explosive. That was Iraq. You just never knew.
    “Take the left,” I said to Page, as I veered toward the men gathered in front of the trucks on the right. It was a nightly exercise. We had to push the truckers back into the desert; it was too dangerous to let them stay overnight inside our defensive perimeter, waiting for the customs office to open again after morning prayers. I spoke to the first group of drivers in my limited Arabic, and they nodded, flicked out their cigarettes, and reluctantly climbed back into their rigs.
    Further on, however, a driver shook his head. “ Mushkila ,” he said (“problem” in Arabic), and then in broken English: “No good.” He signaled toward his trailer hitch. I knew this game; it was a nightly exercise, too. Nobody wanted to spend the night along the desolate desert highway, where murders and kidnappings were common, when they could stay inside the safety of the compound fence.
    So I shook my head no.
    “ Ta’al ,” he said (“come here”), flicking his cigarette across the concrete. He walked into the shadows between two trucks and pointed to the rigging behind his cab. I should have sensed something then, I suppose, but I followed him. As soon as I bent to inspect the coupling, the man pushed me from behind, slamming me into the metal hitch and wiring.
    I turned immediately, instinctively raising my right arm to ward off the next blow. That’s when I noticed the second man approaching on the run, a long knife in his hand. I remember a short barrage of body punches and elbows in the confined space of the rigging before the second man hit me full force, with his knife drawn viciously above his head. His momentum carried him into me, an inch from my face, and I tasted more than smelled his breath and felt more than saw the hatred in his eyes as he stabbed downward toward my neck. I shifted my weight, and the