Free An Enemy Within by Roy David

several more shots.
    She looked about her. ‘Anybody tell me what she’s saying?’
    A man in a striped dishdashah stepped forward. ‘She is saying that they have killed her only son.’
    An Iraqi translator with the soldiers began shouting at the woman. She screamed back at him, spitting venom in her words, tears flooding her face.
    ‘The Americans say they saw him acting suspiciously, that he was driving around the block many times like he was watching them. She says he was giving a lift to a friend to the university where both are students – but the friend was late. She says she told her son never to stop and wait near an army patrol and that is why he was driving round – waiting for his friend to appear.’
    ‘Shit,’ Alex said, shocked, backing away. She’d seen enough. She headed towards the hotel, her stomach churning. Glancing round just once, she caught sight of the body being loaded into the ambulance. The tormented mother sank to her knees, crying woefully to the sky.
    Alex trembled, sending a shiver through to her knees, her eyes filling up. She hadn’t signed up for this. Walking slower, now, her breathing heavy, nausea finally forced her to stop. She put a hand out against a wall – and threw up all over it.
    A film crew scurried past towards the scene, closely followed by an army press liaison man. No one gave her a second glance. They would be too late to capture the scene – she possessed the only picture that mattered.
    She called Greg’s mobile – he was at breakfast. She asked him to meet in her room and to bring her a strong sweet coffee.
    An envelope had been pushed under her door; a list of ground rules for embedded journalists to be signed and handed to the major. She noted it was fifty paragraphs long. Tossing it aside, she went to the bathroom and splashed water on her face.
    Greg tapped on her door just as she was downloading the pictures to her laptop. He waltzed into the room imitating a room-service waiter. ‘Good morning, Madam. Coffee, as requested, khubz – flatbread to you – and jam. Sorry, there is no butter in the whole of Baghdad.’
    She could only manage a thin smile.
    ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked.
    Taking a sip of the drink, she pointed to the screen.
    ‘Wow, what the…’
    ‘The shooting.’
    ‘I slept through it, I’m afraid – you sort of get used to it. I did hear the guys on the barrier outside say they’d bagged themselves another baddie.’
    ‘Bullshit,’ she said, shaking with anger, going into detail.
    Greg let out a low whistle. ‘We’ve got to get a piece out to go with the pics – the bastards are shooting anything that moves out there.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Send them to me and I’ll bang a piece over to the agency in Oz – they have worldwide syndication. Keep your name out of the frame, no byline – don’t want to compromise your work here.’
    ‘And what about you?’
    ‘I’ll take my chance – no byline, either.’
    ‘But what if someone blabs and word gets back here? That’d be the end of your embeds.’
    ‘Fuck them. We’ve got to tell it how it is for Christ’s sake, laugh or cry.’
    Alex considered the options for a few seconds. ‘I’m with you, let’s do it!’ she said emphatically.
    He unscrewed a bottle of water, offered it. She took a long gulp.
    Resting an arm round her shoulder, he pulled her closer, sighing. ‘Call me naïve, but I just can’t believe someone didn’t plan for all this. It’s total bedlam out there, good people like this kid…’ His voice broke away.
    ‘That poor mother,’ she whispered.
    For a few moments, there was silence between them.
    ‘Hardly anything’s working,’ Greg continued. ‘People are queuing four or five hours for a gallon of petrol, risking death stuck in a traffic jam. Aban was saying he thinks it’s going to get an awful lot worse, too, once the various tribal factions start pulling for power.’
    ‘I was sick just now,’ Alex said. ‘I wonder if