Quest to Heal Iraqi Boy Became a Final Mission

On Jan. 20, Freeman went online and tried to get a new case off the ground. He had come across the medical file of a critically ill girl younger than Ali Abdulameer. Again, he set out to beat the odds.

"These are very poor and do not have a G-Series passport," Freeman wrote in an e-mail to a colleague at the military's National Iraqi Assistance Center in Baghdad, referring to passports with enhanced security features. "A trip to Baghdad might be out of their reach financially. If we get close to something happening on this, I can raise the money."

That evening a group of English-speaking armed men wearing what looked like American military uniforms and badges drove up to the building in a convoy of at least six GMC trucks.

The men stormed into the building and detonated sound bombs and grenades. Freeman was in his office and didn't get to his weapon in time. He and three of the soldiers who reported to him were abducted at gunpoint.

It was among his biggest fears. The conventional wisdom among soldiers had it that they'd save their last bullet for themselves rather than fall into the hands the enemy alive.

"We all talked about that," said Capt. Henry Domeracki, one of Freeman's close friends in Iraq. "You know what they do -- cut off our heads, burn us."

The attackers drove into neighboring Babil province, several miles away.

"That is the hardest thing when I think about Brian," Domeracki said. "We know that he was in the car with the cuffs on. We know he was praying, asking God to look after his kids."

The gunmen abandoned five of the vehicles. Iraqi soldiers later found the bodies of two soldiers handcuffed together in the back of one of the vehicles. Freeman's body was left on the ground. All three had been fatally shot. The fourth soldier was found alive, but died en route to the hospital.

Abu Ali was notified the following day by an interpreter who worked with the soldier. He was crushed, but understood he needed to mourn in silence.

"I could not express myself openly," said Abu Ali, who asked that his full name not be published out of concern for his safety. "If I were to express myself openly they'd know I deal with Americans and if they knew I deal with Americans they'd call me a traitor."

Freeman's group of close friends in Iraq -- "The Dirty Dozen," they called themselves -- were inconsolable.