The Burning Gates
Authors: Parker Bilal
The world grows dark,
The shadows have spread over it,
Now is the glimmer of dusk.
The Epic of Gilgamesh
,
Eighteenth century
BC
Contents
They came out of the wall of sand like figures from a nightmare. In single file. Blindfolded. Hands tied behind their backs, a loop of rope binding them together. If one of them fell the others had to stop and haul him up. Five men, leaning forward against the wind, the weight of the dust storm pressing them back. They seemed to have no sense of where they were going.
The blind leading the blind, was Cody’s first thought.
Some kind of religious dream maybe, but he was too out of it to care much. The sandstorm was so thick you couldn’t see more than five metres in any direction. Black smoke swirled around him. Burning metal and rubber. Sand. Everything was on fire. And death, he could smell death. The smoke choked his throat and lungs. He lay there, gasping helplessly as the ragheads came towards him, stumbling along in single file. Where did they think they were going? It was almost comical. They bumped into one another. One of them nearly fell. They were moving forward in a slow weaving pattern, like a snake dancing.
Cody didn’t know how long he’d been out. His head was still ringing, still trying to piece it together. He couldn’t hear right. The smell of burning metal and flesh was seared into his nostrils. A vehicle on fire. The stench of gasoline. The remains of the Humvee they’d been driving in, with a hole punched right through it. Tyres burning. An IED. They were all dead. That much he was sure of.
When he turned his head he saw the legs and lower body of his buddy Jo Jo. The rest of him was gone. What was it for? They risked their lives every time they went out on patrol, but who were they trying to protect? ‘If we weren’t here, what would the terrorists have to fight?’ If he’d asked the question once he’d asked it a thousand times. It made no sense. Sergeant Andrews had said, ‘Don’t sweat that stuff. Think about the mission. Think about watching your buddy’s back and staying alive. You think any other way and you’ll never make it.’ Fine advice, he thought at the time, except that it didn’t help Andrews. That much he remembered. Routine search. How dumb was that? They’d done it a hundred times. They kicked in a metal door and turned the place upside down. SOP. Standard Operating Procedure. The family all wailing out there in the dark. Old lady and her kids. One of the girls was a looker. Ripe. At sixteen with a body on her that set the men drooling. They went over and flashed lights in her eyes. Pushed her around a bit to see her tits move. Then somebody out in the yard yelled they had something. Flares and AK ammunition. The men were lined up along the wall. Where’d you get this stuff? No answers. The hajjis all mumbling and the interpreter doing his best not to look like a dick. There was a door on the far side of the compound. Sergeant Andrews must have been tired to do something that dumb. A couple of men were on sick leave and they’d pulled night patrols three days in a row. Whatever it was, he yanked open the door without thinking. There was a click. Heat. The whole thing went up. He was knocked backwards. The whole corner of the house had gone. Nearby was what was left of Andrews. Just a headless twitching torso, blackened and burned meat. They lost it then. They turned on the hajjis and beat them, just clubbed them and kicked them until they had no strength to go on. Three of them dragged the girl inside. It must have got out of hand because she freaked out and started screaming. The rest of them were standing around. Her father and brothers were kneeling out there in the dust crying, listening to her screams. ‘Serves you right, motherfuckers.’ Somehow the girl got loose. Hysterical, she climbed out through a window and was running into the darkness. He and a couple of others jumped into the Humvee and went after her. All he could see was the girl’s naked ass jogging into the darkness and Jo Jo next to him was saying how this was one monumental fuck-up. Kept repeating it over and over. Monumental fuck-up. Cody turned to tell him to shut it when they hit something. The lights went out and when he opened his eyes he was in the sandstorm and everyone else was dead. Game Over.
The five ragheads had stopped moving. They stood huddled in a circle, unsure of their direction. He must have passed out then. Either way he closed his eyes and when he opened them again Wild Bill Hickok was leaning over him. Well, it looked like Hickok or perhaps he was thinking of General Custer? Blond hair blowing around his weatherbeaten face. Tapered beard and drooping moustache. Wraparound shades. He was saying something. Cody couldn’t make out the words. He felt himself being lifted up and he drank eagerly from the bottle of water.
‘How bad is it?’ he spluttered. There was a ringing but his hearing was coming back.
‘Broken ribs, a busted arm. Some shrapnel in your shoulder. You’ll live.’
‘The others.’
Hickok lowered the bottle. ‘What’s your name, soldier?’
‘Jansen, Cody, sir. Private First Class.’
‘Well, Cody, you’re one lucky son of a bitch, I can tell you.’
He squinted at the insignia on Hickok’s shoulder flashes. Crossbones and some kind of animal like a dog, only it wasn’t a dog.
‘What are you, Special Forces?’
‘Hell, no. We’re the goddamn horsemen of the apocalypse.’ Hickok threw back his head and laughed. Cody knew then who they were. Contractors. Mercenaries. Soldiers of fortune. The whole team wore uniforms with the same insignia on the shoulder; a red circle with a green jackal over crossbones. Private contractors pretty much did what the hell they cared to, and earned about ten times what any ordinary grunt did into the bargain.
A Latino named Raul bandaged his wounds.
‘Who are they?’ Cody asked, nodding at the Arabs.
‘Insurgents.’ Raul chuckled. ‘We do it sometimes, just to fuck with them. Tie them up and let them go. They don’t know which way to run. Tires them out, gets them panicked. They’re out in the open but they can’t get away.’ He laughed some more. ‘It softens them up for interrogation.’
‘Are we going back to Dreamland?’
‘I don’t know, man. I just follow orders.’
As they were about to lift him up to place him in the back of one of the SUVs, a tall man dressed in black strode up. On his head he wore a bandanna, also black, tied pirate style so that the tail hung down his neck. He had a fancy shoulder holster in which nestled a big chrome-plated automatic, a Desert Eagle by the look of it. A nice piece. There weren’t many men who would dare walk around in black. It made you stand out. He looked like some kind of Viking god come down from Valhalla to give them all a hand. He came over and knelt beside Cody, resting a hand on his shoulder.
‘You’re safe now, son. We’ll take you back to your unit.’
‘No.’ Cody grabbed him by the wrist. ‘I’m not going back there.’
The man smiled. ‘Don’t sweat it, kid, you can stay with us until you’re better.’
Cody watched him walk away.
‘You’ll be all right, kid,’ said Wild Bill. ‘We have our own palace outside Falluja. You can rest up there.’
‘Who is that guy?’ Cody asked.
‘That, son,’ grinned Hickok, ‘is God, or the closest you’re going to get to him in this life.’
Cairo, September 2004
Makana stood by the ferry station watching the sunset drape its cloak over the city. By the time September came around the summer heat usually began to diminish and the nights to cool down, bringing some relief with them. It hadn’t happened yet, but hopefully it would, and soon. For now purple and magenta streaks cut the sky like the flying banners of some old, forgotten army. There was something unfinished about this city, he decided, as if the medieval world refused to let go its grasp. It added to that sense of confusion, as if the present might just be swept away from one day to the next, and all would return to how it was in the days of the Mamluks, or the pharaohs even, when this was nothing but a patch of sand and a river. The more you looked at it the less substantial the present appeared. A thin layer of flood water that had washed over the old world and left behind ugly buildings and flying buttresses like listing shipwrecks scattered about.
Right now it was a city preoccupied with war. Ever since the invasion of Iraq. Over the last eighteen months the protests had died away and most people had resigned themselves to the fact that nobody was going to pay any heed to their demands, but there remained an undercurrent of anger and resentment, a sense of betrayal. The occupation of another Arab country by a Western power, a Christian one at that, put everyone ill at ease. The government did its best to reflect the common sentiment, with the president issuing statements of sympathy for the Iraqi people and calling for the restoration of power as soon as possible. Few really believed this was any more than amateur theatrics to keep the people at bay while not upsetting the Americans.