Very early on in Escape from Baghdad!, before we realize how many murderous forces and literary genres are about to crash into each other, two friends are holed up in a safehouse in the South Ghazaliya neighborhood. Saddam Hussein has just been deposed; outside, the Madhi Army has just finished another minor street battle with a rival militia, and our heroes Dagr and Kinza are in possession of a stash of black market weapons and a captive: one of Saddam's head torturers.
As Dagr and Kinza — one a former economics professor, the other a reckless killer — debate the morality of executing a torturer, the U.S. Army comes knocking, "in their heavy armor and helmets, capable of kindness or casual violence as the mood took them, unreadable, random, terrifying." They bring the promise of salvation or perpetual detainment or sudden death, all hanging on the thread of whim.
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