by Samuel Holt
Ross’s notes suggested that he’d been trying very hard to pin down the Barq Cyrenica leaders on exactly who supported them, both politically and financially, but had not been successful. It seemed to be true that Qadhafi had never disavowed them or put any obstacles in the way of their basing themselves within his territory, but that might merely have been political discretion on his part. On the other hand, he might be financing them, or absolutely controlling them. Ross’s frustration in not being able to answer this question was very clear in the notes, and I could see why. If he could name names in his book, fix responsibility on some well-known international figure, it would increase the book’s news value and therefore its sales.
Barq Cyrenica’s object here was the destruction of the mosque, blowing it up during the first day’s prayers and ceremonies, while it was full of dignitaries, as I’d supposed. But what was their method? How did they plan to get through Al-Gazel’s security? I was leafing through the pages, looking for the answer, when a voice said, “A writer hates to see that, you know.”
I looked up. It was Ross, in the open doorway, a long-barreled target pistol in his hand. He smiled at me almost sadly, playing the scene for all its melodramatic potential, enjoying himself. “Skipping about, you know,” he explained. “A writer thinks his every word is golden. Take your time, Sam. You’re in no hurry.”
47
My first thought was: Have they found the bodies? I half-turned, looking out the window behind me, and was relieved to see the same sentry still out there, still seated by the dirt-filled pool. So my luck was bad, but not as bad as it might be, because all I would have to contend with now was Ross and his target pistol, not the entire army of Barq Cyrenica.
And the pool was filled with dirt because they’re digging a tunnel.
The thought just came to me. I wasn’t looking for it, it was probably the only time all day I hadn’t been looking for it, the reason to fill a swimming pool with dirt, and in that moment of distraction I’d seen the pool again, and I’d seen the faint tire tracks leading out across the unmown lawn, and there it was.
Why they needed four months to get set up.
How they meant to get past Al-Gazel’s security.
How they would manage to put an entire vanload of dynamite under the mosque.
When you dig a tunnel, a long and fairly complicated tunnel, one of the major problems you face is what to do with the dirt. A certain amount they could just distribute in the woods back there, but not all of it. The rest had to be stored where it wouldn’t look like what it was, particularly from the air. Police helicopters, small private planes, the helicopters of traffic reporters, all would occasionally pass overhead. A brown or tan swimming pool would look odd from the air, but not impossible, and nothing to cause unusual interest or concern. But a big pile of fresh-dug earth in a woody area behind the controversial new mosque would bring a lot of attention.
I sighed, preparing to deal with Ross. He had his target pistol in his hand, and I had three pseudo-Colts, two tucked inside the borrowed belt and one in plain view on the desk, between the open folder and the word processor keyboard. So now it was time to do my Clint Eastwood impression. “Ross,” I said, keeping my voice very soft, “have you ever killed anybody?”
“I will if I have to.” He was grimly determined.
“How do you think I got out of that room?” I asked him, and picked up the automatic from the desk.
His eyes widened. The guy with the gun wasn’t supposed to be challenged. “Hey,” he said. “Watch that, Sam.”
I pointed the automatic at him. “One,” I said.
“Don’t make me shoot, Sam!”
“Two.”
Face agonized, he threw the target pistol away to his right with a sudden convulsive movement. It bounced on the arm of the easy chair and fell into its seat. Embarrassed, resentful, Ross glared at me, saying, “I can’t shoot a friend, you knew that.”
What I knew—and what he was finding out—was the difference between appearance and reality. “Close the door,” I told him.
He turned to do so, but as he did Doreen came snaking in through the opening, her small face tense and determined. “Doreen!” he said, astonished.
We were both astonished. Neither of us moved as Doreen headed straight for that chair, grabbed up the target pistol, turned with it in both hands, and shot Ross three times. He was still falling when she lowered the gun, looked in my direction, and said, “He attacked me, it was self-defense. You saw it.”
What I saw, when I looked out the window, was the sentry by the pool grabbing his machine pistol and running for the house. Doors down there slammed.
Low and intense, Doreen said, “I hated him. He didn’t care what they did. He was supposed to protect me, and he didn’t care.”
Opening the window, I said over my shoulder, “You can explain it to the guys coming up.” Then I went over the sill.
48
Blundering around in the dark. The distant glow from Ross’s house seen down through the trees behind me was my only guide as I headed out, following the direction the tire tracks were taking when they’d gone beyond the light, just past the new hole in the chain link fence at the back of Ross’s property. The tumbled land climbed steeply back here as I moved up in the general direction of Al-Gazel, hoping to find their fence before Barq Cyrenica found me. I’d climb over it and gladly appear on their security’s television screen.
Except it didn’t work that way. For five minutes I scrambled up into the wooded and eroded hills, taking the easiest route through the tangled underbrush, constantly looking back at those houselights for guidance, and then one time I faced forward to see light ahead of me. A house? The light seemed very dim. Cautiously, I moved forward.
The van. Probably it had been the thick shrubbery on both flanks that had kept me on the van’s new-beaten path even when I couldn’t see it. In any case, there it was, just ahead, facing this way, backed up into a steep gully.
The light came from behind the van, and seemed to flicker and move as I watched, throwing shadows across the scrubby face of the hill. I inched forward, and from two or three car-lengths away I could see through the windshield and through the body of the van that the rear doors were open and men were back there, in the light, moving around.
Unloading the cartons.
I crept forward, and when I’d reached the van, I went down on my stomach to look under it and count feet. Eight of them.
Could I make it away from here, through the thick brush, without getting lost, without these people hearing me, without pursuers from the house finding me? Would I become too turned around to find the Al-Gazel fence?
What was the alternative?
I hate derring-do. Usually you’re merely risking the game and your own personal survival for no good reason, which is the lesson I learned both in the army and on the police. Routine and care and thought are almost always the better way. In Mark of the Vampire, 1935, Lionel Atwill’s police captain summed up the alternatives: “Well? Are we going to sit around and think, or are we going to do something?” I know it isn’t the answer he wanted, but I believe that most of the time we’re all better off to sit around and think.
However, there do come those exceptions to the rule.
Not liking it, I got to my feet, put an automatic in each hand, and walked around to the back of the van.
Here was the scene: Two kerosene lanterns stood on the ground, illuminating the work without sending out a lot of glare to the surrounding countryside. Several feet behind the van, where the rear gully wall turned sharply upward, an oval hole about three feet high and two feet wide had been dug into the ground. The four men were unloading the dynamite from the van, two men toting each heavy carton across the packed-down empty space to the tunnel entrance. Inside, the oval was pitch black, but apparently they had some sort of plastic sheet in there, or something else to make a smooth slide down the slope from the entrance, because each carton was maneuvered into th
e hole, then given a push, and away it went.
The van had originally been full, and was now about half-emptied. Presumably, more men at the bottom of this first slope were dragging the cartons the rest of the way—a quarter mile, perhaps—to an opening readied for them beneath the mosque. So much effort for such a miserable goal.
The men were too involved in their work to notice me. I had to attract their attention, so I stepped clearly into the light and said, “Stop.”
They gaped at me. I’d chosen a moment when they all had their hands full and wouldn’t be able to reach for their guns, and in the uncertain light of the kerosene lanterns they looked angry and surprised and chagrined and humiliated. One of the pair over by the tunnel entrance dropped his end of the carton and reached for his pistol anyway, while the other three just stared.
No more killing, not if we can avoid it. With my righthand gun I fired one shot into the ground at his feet, the sound flat and hard in the night air, like a dog’s bark. I knew it would carry, the people at the house would hear it, so I didn’t have a lot of time. “Don’t die, my friend,’’ I told the fellow with his hand on his gun.
He considered. It was the situation between Ross and me again, except that this time both people knew what the story was. Ross had let me point my gun at him, which had made us physically even and given me the psychological advantage. This fellow knew by looking at me that I wouldn’t let him get that pistol all the way out from under his belt; after a few seconds his hand came away empty.
I gestured at the other two guys with my left-hand gun, saying, “Put it down.” When they looked at me blankly, I pointed the gun at the carton and made downward movements, repeating, “Put it down.”
So they put it down, back in the van from where they’d just picked it up. The fellow who’d decided not to point his gun at me said in heavily accented English, “You should not stop this.”
“But I’m going to stop it,” I told him.
“Our war,” he said. “Our God. Our enemies.”
“My neighborhood,” I told him, and gestured with the righthand gun at the tunnel entrance. “Get in there.” His eyes widened, and he pointed at the hole in the side of the hill almost as though he’d never seen it before, had no idea what it was. “In there? All us?”
“That’s right. Quickly.”
One of the others said something in some language, and all at once they were all jabbering back and forth.
Before they could decide to fan out and attack me from every side, I fired again, this time shooting one of the kerosene lanterns as a dramatic way to hold their attention. It worked, too; a large amoeba of flame from spattered kerosene on the bare ground flared up, showing their startled faces.
For all I knew, only the one guy spoke English, so I spoke directly to him: “I killed them in the house, to get out here. I’ll kill you, too, if you argue. Go in the tunnel.”
His eyes flickered away from me, toward the house. I could see him thinking, working it out. Was it possible this one man had killed all the people in the house? But if not, how did he get out here?
“Quickly,” I said, and spoke more generally. “First, all of you, with thumb and one finger, take your gun by its butt and throw it on the ground.”
“They have no American,” the talker said.
“Then you tell them. Very fast.” I found it not at all hard to portray growing hysteria; letting some of it out, I said, “If it’s easier to kill you all, I’ll kill you!”
The talker spoke to his comrades. It was hard to watch four of them at once in the lesser light of the one remaining lamp, but they did as they were told, littering the ground with sidearms. Then, the talker first, one at a time they climbed into the hole and slid away out of sight.
Close the entrance; but how? Other people inside would have guns, so if I showed myself at the opening, I’d be shot.
The van. I ran to its front, and the keys were inside. So were three shovels, leaning against the passenger seat, no doubt the reason for that clammy smell I’d noticed last night.
It was an old small van, badly beat-up by life, but it contained a good engine, which caught right away. Looking out through the opening at the back, I put the van in reverse and drove it hard at the entrance to the tunnel.
I don’t know what shoring-up arrangements they’d made farther along, but near the surface they’d relied on roots and natural density to keep their tunnel open. I drove the van up, the slope increasing so steeply the rear bumper dug a groove into the ground and the straining wheels threw up mud and twigs and dead brush. Then the bumper was over the entrance and the wheels were on both sides, and I could hear the pop-pop of guns going off, bullets caroming from the undercarriage. That was dumb; if one of those had hit the gas tank, it wouldn’t have been good for any of us.
The top edge of the opening stopped the van with a jerk. I shifted into drive and mashed hard on the accelerator, spinning the wheels the other way before they caught and jolted me forward. Reverse again, and back up, the wheels slipping and sliding, the heavy weight of the half-loaded van grinding down into the soft ground. Forward, and I could see the blurred edges of the hole back there, where part of the surrounding earth had already given way.
It was on the fourth hard reverse that the van suddenly side-slipped a foot or two and dropped with a thud, snapping my teeth so hard my jaws ached. I shifted into drive and accelerated, but the van merely slewed and settled.
Was that it? I got out and went back, and the answer was yes. The tunnel sides had fallen in enough for the rear wheels to drop down into the hole, and now the van’s undercarriage was pressed firmly to what was left of the opening. If they tried to dig out from underneath, all they’d do would be bring the van more and more into the tunnel with them.
But what about their friends from the house? First, I threw the car keys far off into the woods. Then I shot all four tires. Then I searched the van, and under the front seat I found the wire cutters I’d been hoping they’d still have with them. And finally I took the surviving kerosene lantern with me (the fire from the other had gone out) and plunged on, looking again for the Al-Gazel fence.
I found it about five minutes farther on, an eight-foot-high chain link fence topped with a spiral of razor wire and liberally provided with metal warning signs that talked about private property and tight security measures without ever mentioning exactly whose property or what measures.
I respect razor wire. If you grab it, you’ll never own those fingers again. The kerosene lantern made it possible to see what I was doing as I clipped an opening in the fence with my borrowed wire cutters, doing just enough so I could slip through. (Without them I guess I would have used the gun to dig a hole underneath.)
On the other side, before proceeding, I disarmed myself, leaving all three guns on the ground there. I continued to carry the lantern, but now I walked with one hand up in the air, to show I came in peace. I had no idea how soon I’d show up on their monitors, or how long it would take them to come out and collect me, so I just kept walking, on level ground now, away from the fence.
I was walking. And then I was lying flat on my back on the ground, the low boom still reverberating, the wind knocked out of me, the lantern gone somewhere, the hill beneath me quaking like a water bed.
49
They weren’t gentle. I told them I could walk and they paid me no attention, just went on carrying me through the woods, four of them holding my four limbs while one went ahead with a flashlight and the last two trailed, shining their own flashlights left and right into the shadowed trees. “I really can walk,” I repeated, and one of the ones behind me said, “Shut up, you.”
It had taken them only two minutes to reach me through the woods, where I lay on my back, catching my breath and trying to figure out what had happened and whether or not anything on my body was broken. I was about to sit up, in fact, when I saw the lights coming and decided the safest thing was to make no sudden moves. I was therefore still lying on m
y back on the ground when they reached me, seven men who looked uncomfortably like the members of Barq Cyrenica, except that they were more neatly and expensively dressed. Flashlights shone on my face, and when I raised a hand to shield my eyes, a tough-sounding voice snapped, “Don’t move!’’
So I didn’t move. They studied me, approached me, patted me down where I lay, and talked me over with one another in a language I didn’t understand. I might have tried to explain myself, but what was the point? These were just the low-level troops, who would eventually bring me to someone of authority; that’s when the explanations could start.
One of them had a walkie-talkie, which from time to time barked in that same language, and the fellow barked back at it, and after a couple of minutes they picked me up and hauled me away with them through the woods. That’s when I told them I could walk, and they let me know they didn’t give a damn.
The mosque loomed in the darkness, with a few lit windows on the ground floor and the rest just a massive domed shape in the dark. The man in front opened a door, spilling more light out onto the ground, and I was carried inside and down a long cream-colored corridor with recessed ceiling lights. I tried to look left and right, catching glimpses of doors, some open and some closed, but my captors were all so close to me and hustling me along so quickly that I got very little sense of where I was.
Then they turned left and, with some difficulty, steered me through a doorway, the man in front switching on the same sort of recessed ceiling light as I’d seen in the hall. When they got me inside, there were more quick orders in that language and I was set on my feet, abruptly and rather roughly. Most of the men left. I stood there swaying, my sense of balance lost for the moment, and the man who’d told me to shut up faced me from near the door, his expression cold and hostile. “You will wait,’’ he said, and turned toward the door.
“For what?’’