Khyber Run (23 page)

"Do both trucks have the same size tires? If we could take out a tire on the other truck, so he must ride horseback or walk, he'd be naked to the wind."

"I didn't look at that, and now they are out of sight. The trucks are much the same size, though."

I dressed hurriedly, leaning on a rock because one leg was asleep “How accurate are you with an AK-47, Oscar? Can you take out a slow-moving truck's tire with it?"

"Bet your ass."

I looked at him. His smile faded. His brows rose, then smoothed into the blank masklike face I wanted.

But that moment's expression answered my question. He didn't have any idea what he'd said last night.

Oscar and I crouched in the middle of the road, our borrowed Kalashnikovs on our backs. The weapons, more than our borrowed local clothing, said we weren't American, weren't NATO. The flat, greasy smell of mutton fat hung in a cloud about us. Or at least about me. I couldn't escape it. No more than I could escape Oscar, or the memory of his voice calling my brother's name.

The truck wheezed around a curve, slowly in case a new crater had opened on the other side, and saw us. The truck downshifted, slowed, and blasted its horn. Oscar had his back to it. “Is he in the front?"

I stood, gingerly because my leg was asleep, and stared through the windshield. Oscar, still below hood level so they'd have a chance of tipping the truck if they just ran over him, buried his knife between the front right tire's tread and, just as quickly, yanked it loose.

The Chihuahua came out yapping. He was taller than me. Most Americans are. He outweighed me by a little, not a lot. But he yapped like a dog.

He'd left my brother for the dogs.

I smiled. “Hello, there."

He kept yapping, mixing Dari with Pashto and Arabic and some shit I didn't recognize, swearing he was on a holy mission and my soul would drink burning water forever if I held him back.

I lunged at him, but the numb leg folded under me. With a desperate prayer, I put my weight on the leg I could feel.

The dog turned and leaped back into the truck.

Before he completely shut the door, I caught it and braced against his frantic pull. Smiling, I climbed onto the step and leaned into his face. “I don't believe we have been introduced."

"God protect me!” The driver moaned. “Feranghi and more feranghi! Why did I stop? Why?"

"Because you saw the promise of money?” I suggested in the same language, but my eyes didn't leave Tango. He was so close I couldn't focus my vision, but I didn't have to. He wouldn't be able to focus either, and that might keep him off balance while I clenched and released the muscles in my numb leg, willing it to wake up.

"You spoke English,” he said.

"Yep."

"You can't arrest me. You have no authority here. We're in Pakistan. You'd have to go through extradition and all kinds of shit."

"Please, do not kill him in my truck! Please! I have a family!"

"We are in the land of the Pakhtun. Something you should—” In midsentence, I closed my hand on Tango's throat and turned, bracing against the dashboard and the seat to thrust him out of the cab and onto the ground below.

He hit his feet like a gymnast and turned toward the back of the truck.

I hobbled after him, the nerves in my leg burning to life. He couldn't escape. Not now. But my leg folded at the knee. I couldn't catch him. “
Oscar
!"

A chuckle came on the wind. “Let him come, Zarak."

The dog stopped. Spun to face me.

"No..."

I jumped him, slamming him back against the packed dirt road. His breath gusted out, but he still swung at me.

I punched under his swing, burying my fist in his solar plexus.

He jackknifed, his face purple. I considered a few kicks to keep him down, but I didn't want to explain to Pakistani police why I'd kicked a man to death in the middle of the road.

Instead I dropped a loop of Oscar's 550 parachute cord over each of his fists, flipped the long ends of the cord over his head so they encircled him. Then I planted a knee in his chest and snatched the cord tight, yanking his arms into a parody of a self-hug. I knotted the cords tightly before he could catch his breath or figure out what was happening.

A man fights having his hands drawn behind him. It's an awful lot easier to secure them in front, then resecure them in the rear under more controlled conditions, alhamdillulah.

The driver was praying loudly. I heard hoofbeats and a whinny from the trailer behind the towed truck. I stepped back and unslung my Kalashnikov, in case it wasn't Ali or Abdallah. But it was Abdallah.

I stood back and let him take control. He assured the driver we would not interfere in his escape and in the name of justice offered him a lakh toward a new tire.

The driver recovered his balls and commenced bellowing insults and demands. Two Kalashnikovs clacked, going off safety. The driver shut up.

Oscar squirmed under the towed truck and out again as rapidly. “Khallas. Broken axle."

I translated.

Abdallah's face dropped. “As God wills, it is meant to be."

Ali arrived with his son, and the two of them slung Tango belly-down over his son's skinny gelding. Ali took the gelding's reins while his son—face aglow—took possession of Tango's mare and all of the tack in the trailer. I collected Oscar's horse and mine, and we rode away before any of the morning traffic happened upon us.

On a side trail, we reined in and offered to gag Tango. I didn't see how he had the wind to yell and swear like that, with a wooden saddle smacking him repeatedly in the chest and belly. He told Oscar he was an American citizen and had rights.

I stroked my beard. “This is true, but you have rejected the US, have you not?"

He twisted to look at me, though his shemagh sagged over his eyes. “Who are you?"

"You know who I am.” I adjusted my sunglasses and did a few stretches. They felt good, but then I hadn't spent much time at all in the saddle yet today. How long would it take to truly get used to riding like this?

More time than I could possibly take.

"No,” he said earnestly. “I don't. But you're American, right?"

I thought about it for a moment, but Oscar wouldn't have used my name back there on the road if it wasn't expected to mean something to him. So this was an attempt at manipulation. I didn't feel like playing his games. “You're lying."

"I need sanctuary. Nanawatai. You have to give it to me if I ask, right?"

"Wrong."

Kam Ali rode close and dropped his hand on my shoulder. “Kill him, son of my uncle. Then you can send your man home with his ears and you can stay with us. We will ride as brothers, always."

I wanted to. We'd ridden, more as brothers than as cousins, a long time ago. But that was a long time ago.

If diplomatic conditions normalized, I could finish my twenty years and retire here. My savings and my pension would go a long way in the local economy, wouldn't they? But if I stayed now, I'd be called a deserter. At best, I'd be a burden on the family. The family didn't look like it could take a lot of burdening.

"I don't understand you,” Oscar said politely. He'd been riding drag, and his shemagh was stiff with dust.

The dog yapped again, wheedling. “Oscar, you can't let foreign nationals take me. I deserve protection."

"Shut up, Tango. Luckily for you, what you deserve has nothing to do with it."

Something occurred to me. “Oscar, what was that about the major's boys taking the blame if we didn't bring this one back for trial?"

He looked at the sky while his mount fidgeted. “I don't know the details, but someone dispatched an army patrol to the murder scene. Given the timing, it doesn't look like they would have been able to save him, but they could have limited the"—he looked away—"the collateral damage. Saved more evidence. But a man riding a beautiful Arabian mare and leading another horse intercepted them near the road and assured them they didn't need to investigate, that this was an OGA matter."

A patrol would have had to hike quite a ways, from the nearest truck-safe road. They'd taken the easy answer. In Afghanistan, the easy answers are almost always the wrong ones.

I still didn't see how having Tango presented for court-martial would save anyone's ass. But maybe not bringing him, after coming so far to get him, would cost Oscar, or Mike. My personal feelings aside, they'd acted to secure justice for a brother marine, exactly as Pakhtuns would have.

I looked at Uncle Abdallah. “Is this telephone such a one that would allow me to call the USA?"

"What telephone?” He asked blandly. “Do you think it will rain today, Wezgorrey?"

"Somewhere on earth, Uncle, surely.” I handed the phone to Oscar. “Tell me you can call the cavalry."

He looked at me a moment, his face still entirely hidden by sunglasses and shemagh, then walked around the skinny gelding and looked down at Tango.

Tango twisted to stare at him, then at me. “In God's name,
baradur
..."

"You're not my brother,” I said coldly.

Twenty-two hours later, a USMC Huey UH-1 Y “Yankee” helicopter, one of the smallest they make, hovered a foot above the ground a mile north of my grandfather's khel. Tango refused to board, so Oscar and I bodily slung him in. Then we climbed in.

Inside, he and I sat at the open bay door, trying to ignore Tango. Oscar pitched his voice under the roar of the motors, the rotors, and the wind. “What did I do?"

I looked out at the morning sky. “You completed your mission. Or close to it."

"So why are you pissed?"

I studied my dusty boot toes. “My name isn't Bravo."

He recoiled.

"
Allahu
!"

I looked up.

"
Akbarrrr
!” Tango tackled me like a fullback, driving me out through the open bay. We fell.

I clawed and kicked in the rushing icy air. My fingertips brushed Tango's sleeve. I caught his wrist, locked my fingers about it. A shocking jerk jolted up my arm, and I stopped falling. We both stopped, though the wind tore at our clothes.

I dangled one-armed from the end of his arm. He thrashed, but I held on, eyes closed against the blasting wind, waiting for my weight to tire him. He stopped thrashing. I squinted against the wind and saw a dark sleeve coming at me, with a leading edge of glittering steel.

My own choora found my free hand and arced up to meet his. Blocking that first wild slash sent a thrill through me, gave me strength and speed to slash back. The long tip of my blade caught in his sleeve.

I had to yank it free. I needed to concentrate on jabbing, not slashing. Jabs would be harder to block.

Tango seemed to be hanging from the dark mouth of the helo by his knees, but from his renewed struggles—even with my weight dangling from the end of his arm—he'd like nothing better than to plunge headfirst into the afterlife.

If anything held him to the helo, it would be Oscar. If anyone could hold him, my lifeline, Oscar could.

His blade came at me again, edge-first at my gripping arm. I thrashed, turning my body so his blade slashed along the back of the arm. Blood spilled into the wind—a lot of it. He must have cut to the bone. That would hurt, inshallah, bad and soon. If it didn't, I'd be dead.

Losing my extensor tendons there wouldn't keep me from holding on. I had to protect the vulnerable inner surface of my arm; if he damaged the tendons that clenched my fist, I would fall.

I had to do a chin-up to reach him, stabbing for the axial nerve plexus in his armpit. He elbowed my blade aside, so I cut his arm where I could reach it. More blood gushed into the torrential wind.

I couldn't tell what was noise, what was cold, what was wind. They all beat at me.

I parried his next swing, and another, then pulled up again to jab for something that would count. The wind swung us both, or my gyrations did, or his did.

Blood poured up my arms, hot at the cut but cold as it coated my elbows. If I shifted a single finger from wrist or from knife hilt, the slick blood would keep me from ever gripping again.

He screamed profanities worded as prayer. He wanted to die. Wanted to take me with him, as an apostate to serve him forever after this life.

If I died today, inshallah, it would be with true prayer in my mouth. “La ilaha ilallah!"

He slashed at me again and opened a nick just below the elbow of my gripping arm. Blood spit a red trail in the wind.

I aimed, did my pull-up, and opened the brachial artery in his chest. In exactly the hollow where I would have rested my head, had I died in Oscar's arms.

Tango cut at me again, desperately, and I slashed open his inner arms, one and then the other, sending his knife flying into the ice-laden wind. Blood spurted.

I didn't blink fast enough. It blinded me.

I hung on. Tango's struggles weakened and stopped. The wind pounded at me, flapping my loosening shemagh against my face and ears until the cloth whipped away, fluttering, like a kite without a string.

Oscar was shouting. I couldn't hear. Noise. Cold. Noise. Wind. Grit stinging my face and arms.

Grit? Sand...ground?

I opened my eyes and through the blood smear saw sand, pebbles, a straggly line of za'atar bushes scratching at my ankles. I let go and fell. The ground hit me, knocked the wind from me. But that wasn't the problem. I was...cold. Tired. Sleepy.

Something heavy and limp landed beside me. Then Oscar jumped and crouched over me, blocking out the sky. The sky darkened behind him.

"Don't fade, Zu. Hang on."

He pried open my eyes and poured icy water under my lids. Then hunched over me as the wind rose, beating at me and trying to freeze my scarf to my face and jaw. My arm hurt. He was pouring a powder into the wound there. A soothing heat built up, and the blood went from spurt to ooze.

Some part of my educated mind whispered the name of the clotting agent, the rules for using it and how...how to...

"Zulu! Stay with me!"

I remembered my brother's body, my cousins’ bodies, my uncles’ bodies, all lined up and most of them identified. My grandfather guided my hands, showed me how to wash what was left of Hamid's torn body, the right side and then the left, how to bind his ankles and turn his face toward Mecca. I wept, and my grandfather's tears fell hot as blood on my neck, but his voice never wavered as he told me death was but the second birth, less painful for most, and necessary to open the way to true life.