Leaving the US Embassy, Song Heping's bulletproof car drove down the empty streets of the Green Zone.
Outside the car window, the scene looked like a carefully constructed movie set—clean roads, neatly trimmed trees, brand-new buildings, starkly contrasting with the chaos and decay in the civilian areas of Baghdad just beyond the wall.
The eastern part of Illiguo was slowly recovering, but the northwest remained a festering wound.
The people living in Baghdad were constantly under the shadow of infiltration attacks from the remaining extremist forces in the direction of Ozham.
He checked the intelligence updates on his phone again.
There were two new messages in the encrypted channel:
The first was from Abu You: "Barzani's vanguard has reached a point 50 kilometers north of Kirkuk, about 800 men, carrying light armor. The main force is still assembling."
