Makeen risked a peek through the bars of the cage door. The fat man carried a large metal briefcase in his hand.

“Are they secure?” the military man asked. He also spoke in Arabic, but his accent was not Iraqi.

The fat man dropped to one knee, balanced the case on his thick thigh, and thumbed open the lock. Makeen expected gold and diamonds, but instead the case held nothing but white eggs packed in molded black foam. They appeared no different from the chicken eggs his mother bought at the market.

Despite his terror, the sight of the eggs stirred Makeen’s hunger.

The fat man counted them, inspecting them. “They’re all intact,” he said and let out a long rattling sigh of relief. “God willing, the embryos inside are still viable.”

“And the rest of the lab?”

The fat man closed the case and stood up. “I’ll leave it to your team to incinerate what lies below. No one must ever suspect what we’ve discovered. There can be no trace.”

“I know my orders.”

As the fat man stood, the military man raised his pistol and shot his companion in the face. The blast was a thunderclap. The back of the man’s skull blew away in a cloud of bone and blood. The dead man stood for a moment longer, then flopped to the ground.

Makeen covered his mouth to stifle any sound.

“No trace,” the murderer repeated and collected the case from the ground. He touched a radio on his shoulder. He switched to English.

“Bring in the trucks and prime the incendiary charges. Time to get out of this sandbox before any locals turn up.”

Makeen had learned to speak a smattering of the American language. He couldn’t pick out every word the man spoke, but he understood the message well enough.

More men were coming. More guns.

Makeen sought some means of escape, but they were trapped in the lion’s cage. Perhaps his younger brother also recognized the growing danger. Bari ’s shaking had grown worse since the gunshot. Finally, his little brother’s terror could no longer be held inside, and a quiet sob rattled out of his thin form.