Warrior Knight

by Aarti V Raman

  Noor laughed aloud and even Sam grinned as he watched Ziya sputter silently.

  Sam took away the buttering knife from her vicinity and she glared at him too. “Sorry, Zee.” He laughed. “We all know how violent you get when you’re mad.”

  “I am so going to get you, Sam,” she vowed.

  Noor pointed at Krivi who was now eating chips, watching the action unfold as if it was live entertainment. In three dimensions.

  “He was the one who shut you up. Go after him,” she ordered.

  Ziya smiled sweetly and kicked her friend under the table.

  Noor howled and rubbed her shin. “That hurt.”

  “It was meant to, baby. Now eat your sandwich before I stuff it in your mouth. You know how violent I get when I am mad.”

  Noor gave Krivi a solemn look. “She’s getting out of control, Rambo. Do something.”

  Ziya turned those knife sharp eyes and saccharine sweet smile on him, her chip held up like it was a throwing knife.

  Krivi threw his hands up in surrender.“This is too complicated for me to handle, Kid. You’re on your own.”

  ~~~~~~

  Ziya leaned over and gave him a quick kiss on the lips. Surprise and wariness flashed into his eyes before he could censor them. There was the slightest softening on his face as he reached for another chip from the bowl.

  “That’s how you keep a guy under control, professor,” Ziya intoned in a breathy voice.

  She winked at the table in general, even though her lips still burned from the slight contact with his.

  And he was so damn unaffected, damn him, the original mountain man!

  “Keep him fed and satisfied.”

  Noor roared with laughter and Sam chuckled strongly, and even Krivi unbent enough to shoot her an amused smile. Even though the joke had been at his expense.

  Ziya grinned and bit into her two-cheese slice sandwich and couldn’t wait for the proposed Ladakh trip to happen.

  Maybe, the way to this man’s body was through laughter.

  Fifteen

  Sameth Qureshi was a man of action.

  Of follow-through, of course, but primarily a man of action.

  It was this same restlessness of spirit and need to do something that had led to him enlisting in the Army. He was second-generation, Army, his brother was in the Navy and his sister was a lawyer, a QC, back in London.

  Needless to say, his folks appreciated the sister’s career’s choice more than his or is brother’s. Especially him, since Grandpa Qureshi who’d served in the Indo-China conflict of 65 and the Indo-Pak war of 71 had been his role model and his parents’ bane. Junaid Qureshi, retired Captain, had encouraged and supported Sam’s decision much to his parents’ dismay and had written glowing letters of recommendation to his buddies back home that had led to Sam’s acceptance and rise in the army

  His parents didn’t forgive the grandfather or the grandson.

  He didn’t blame them.

  And yet…something inside him had broken at the way his parents had subtly withdrawn from him after he’d made his announcement, the day he’d turned eighteen.

  And he still remembered, vividly, with superior clarity at the way the pretty girl next door had just come and sat down next to him, laying her head on his shoulder and told him that she would always be there.

  Always.

  Such a tiny word for so much commitment and feeling. Everything.

  He gauged his timing and waited till Ziya had taken Noor into the sporting goods’ store for outfit shopping, hopping out before Krivi could finish parking his Jeep.

  “Let’s wait a minute, yeah?” he suggested as he rounded the driver’s side.

  Krivi said nothing and got out of the car, slipping on his Wayfarers and regarded the other man calmly. “What’s on your mind?”

  Sam shrugged and then dug his hand into his jacket. He came out with a red-velvet box. Flipped it open and a not-half-bad diamond winked out of the satin setting.

  Krivi tipped his glasses down and peered at the ring. Then he looked impassively at the other man.

  “I don’t roll that way, Major,” he said, kindly.

  Sam chuckled, and pushed a nervous hand through his hair, disturbing the sweaty spikes.

  “You’re not my type either, soldier,” he shot back. At Krivi’s raised brows he added defensively, “But that’s not why I was showing you the ring for, anyway?”

  “I am not a jewelry appraiser either.”

  Sam flipped the box shut and sighed. “You’ve come to know Zee pretty closely these last few weeks, haven’t you? I was just wondering if she would go for something like this.”

  Now, Krivi looked truly startled. “Ziya?”

  “No!” The word exploded out of Sam. “God, no! Noor. My Noor. The girl I am crazy in love with. Always have been.” Sam sighed. “I thought leaving her in London would do it. Make it go away. A decade away from her and I still can’t think about anything but her. She is…” He hesitated.

  He ended with, “Everything.”

  ~~~~~~

  Krivi smiled; a warm, genuine smile. “I think if you say that, verbatim, when you give her the ring, she probably won’t say no to you. The law of averages is on your side on that one.”

  Some of the tension left Sam’s taut face. His eyes were considerably lightened when he asked, “You mean that? You think I could say that and she won't hit me for taking so long to do it right?”

  Krivi shrugged, because all of this conversation was making it very hard for him to keep his objectivity. And more important, he didn’t understand why he was having this conversation with the Major in the first place.

  The man had seen him defuse a live bomb, he should know better than to think Krivi could understand matters of the heart. Or, women!

  “Yeah. Reasonably sure. I think,” he added cautiously.

  Sam chuckled again but it was a stronger sound.

  Then Krivi stopped him from leaving and asked, “Ziya and me…where did you get that notion from?”

  Sam smiled, a knowing smile. “Well, for one, Dada Akhtar hasn’t taken his shotgun to you for dating his darling Ziya. Secondly, Noor has a nose for this kind of thing that’s freaking unbelievable. And lastly, well, man, your eyes give you away.”

  “I thought my eyes were unreadable,” he murmured, taken further aback by all these revelations.

  “I am a man. And I am a man in love. So I know how it feels like,” Sam assured him.

  “I am not in love, Sameth,” Krivi said in a quiet, deadly voice.

  Sam gave him a very unsettling smile. “With a woman like Ziya, it’s only a matter of time, soldier. Be prepared for the fall. It hurts a lot, but they make it better too. So it kind of balances things out.”

  “We’ll see.”

  ~~~~~~

  Sam pulled ahead and was almost at the store when he looked back and noticed that Krivi had not moved from the parking spot. In his Wayfarers and beat up jacket and worn jeans, he had the whole tough guy look going for him.

  But Sam didn’t just see the tough guy outside; he knew Krivi was tough all the way through.

  And he knew that for a loner like Ziya, a loner like Krivi was the natural fit.

  “You coming?”

  Krivi strolled forward, his eyes hidden behind mirrored sunglasses but Sam could have bet a month’s pay that he had just given the hardened ex-soldier a whole new direction to think about.

  ~~~~~~

  Ziya looked in amused shock as Noor trailed through Srinagar Sporting Goods and Adventure Trails with all the purpose of a torpedo.

  So far, she’d picked out camping beds, two tents (three would be overkill for a party of four, Zee!) and an assortment of camping items they didn’t really need. Rappelling harnesses, snow boots and utility belts that could hold flashlights, flares and flare guns and a one liter bottle of liquid.

  And now she was making noises about buying hiking shoes and cute matching jackets for both of them.

  And
, since Ziya had a meeting scheduled with the cricketer’s agent for two in the afternoon, which was ten thirty am GMT, she only wanted to hurry this process along. She had camped with nothing more than a battered tent and a bedroll, she could deal.

  Not Noor.

  Noor was not what you’d call, a Nature Girl. She was citified through and through.

  And she wanted to be prepared for the Rapture if it happened on their cool, weekend camping trip.

  Besides, the episode in the mudroom had given her new hope, a renewed vigor so to speak, that maybe Sam was weakening. Maybe he did love her enough to marry her. If not today, then next week. Next year.

  Well, she needed at least six months to pull together a decent wedding, even if she had been planning it in her head since age twelve.

  “What are you thinking, babe?”

  “Hmm?” Noor tipped in a couple of cans of insect repellant into their already full cart.

  Ziya tapped her nose and said, “You have that look on your face. The pugnacious look that got me in trouble with the Dean of Canal Primary.”

  Noor grinned and shook back her waterfall of model-perfect hair.

  The shop attendant who was following them at a discreet distance swallowed. Noor was a sight to behold when she was shopping, and not just because she looked like a supermodel as she did right now.

  “You have no idea, Ziya. No idea.”

  She looked at the attendant and smiled sweetly. “I want to look at your military style jackets. I saw some on display. Do you have anything in my size? Medium?”

  The attendant’s gaze darted to her chest and Ziya burst out laughing.

  She shook her head and dragged her friend away from the poor befuddled man.

  ~~~~~~

  Spying Krivi enter the shop looking like the poster boy for Sports and Adventure, she abandoned Noor to the jackets and went up to where he was browsing through the gloves section.

  “See anything you like?” she asked provocatively.

  His hands clenched on the gloves and he shook his head.

  “None of these would come in handy for the places I have been.”

  She touched a finger of the glove he was holding. “What about the place you’re at, right now?”

  “Ziya.” Her name sighed out of him, before he could stop himself.

  She leaned up, not too much because she’d thought ahead and was wearing her black low-heeled boots. And she tipped his glasses down so she could look into those hard eyes.

  Ziya gave him a frankly appraising look that heated his blood despite the severe control with which he tried to control his heartbeat.

  “Krivi, it’s not that big a deal if you kissed me, you know,” she said, conversationally.

  “I know.”

  She caught the glove he was clenching with her own grip. “Then why don’t you? We are dating, have been for quite some time, I think. So why haven’t we taken it further?”

  ~~~~~

  Krivi took a step back, the first ever, for him.

  She kept those merciless, ancient eyes trained on him. And she didn’t come forward.

  “I don’t want to talk about it here.”

  Ziya shrugged, let go of the glove. “Think about it,” she suggested. “Your boss won’t fire you for having improper thoughts about her.”

  Then she walked back, and he had to watch those feminine hips on that slim form walk away and he thought improper thoughts about his boss that would have gotten him fired in practically every organization. Including his own.

  Didn’t stop the thinking though.

  Sixteen

  Hotel Ciudad De La Corazon

  Cancun, Mexico

  May 13, 9pm

  The Woodpecker was horny.

  It didn’t happen often enough for Wood’s way of thinking. But when the urge hit, it had to be satisfied. And right then.

  So, Wood headed to a bar right in the heart of the city, four am and picked someone up. A couple of drinks, cooing sweet nothings in Spanish for twenty minutes and the mark was primed for some good, hot action.

  They had done it in the disgusting toilet stall, once, then again. And then Wood had brought the girl home.

  Tonight Wood was in the mood for some slow, sweet loving.

  Champagne, some more cooing and it had resulted in very satisfying sex of the head-banging variety. Now, the girl was sleeping, her silken back tangled in the white sheets so that part of her hip showed through, and Wood stroked it down in a light motion.

  The girl, not more than seventeen if she was a day, sighed and moved sinuously against the touch.

  They made them young in Mexico, Wood thought cynically.

  “Why do you fuck for money?” Wood asked her, bending low to speak in the girl’s ear.

  The girl moved her head, her masses of black hair falling in a silken curtain on the pillow, on her thin, browned shoulders. Wood could see the faintest tan line on her back and touched that too.

  The girl squirmed and drew her leg up, resting it against Wood’s hip. “It is a job. Like any other,” she answered sleepily.

  ~~~~~

  Sleep leached her of the hardness that was a trademark of whores and strippers all over the world. Now, she was just a warm woman, sleeping on a clean bed, with a lover who had treated her well in the night. Well, technically it had been a whole day since they had hooked up.

  And Helena was seriously hoping they could continue for a while, and not just because of the sexy moves her new john had.

  Wood made sure of her pleasure and not many clients were as considerate. Not to mention the five hundred dollar bottle of champagne and the kickass room in one of the nicer hotels in the beach town.

  Yeah, Helena wanted this arrangement to continue for many reasons.

  “I know,” Wood said, because it was a statement that echoed.

  Wood was very good at killing people with bombs. Always had been, since the IRA induction. Wood remembered, the grueling training sessions, the endless Strat-Talks and the countless tests they had conducted. Then, finally, had come the Weapons and Ammo Classes.

  Snipers, rifles, guns and pistols. Machine, sub-machine, automatic and semis. The mixed martial arts training. And the Survival 101 training.

  And then, one fine autumn day, Wood had been taken to a very special class.

  Bombs.

  The building of one, through the use of everyday materials had fascinated Wood right from the start more than guns and rifles and the rat-tat-tat of bullets.

  The first one had been so special: a sweet little construction with iron files as shrapnel bought from a local hardware store in Dublin.

  The making of the bomb had been indescribable. That gorgeous, destructive beauty.

  All the different ticking parts, the mechanism, the precision. The different ways you could mix it and match it, depending on what end result you wanted. And then, the end result. Oh god, the lovely, lovely rush of watching a piece of metal and wood and shrapnel explode…

  There was nothing like watching a bomb go off. Not since that very first time in Dublin.

  Not even sex.

  It was more than orgasmic.

  It was spiritual. Communion with a maker.

  Or, maybe becoming a maker and a destroyer at the same time.

  Wood privately thought that if God was the Creator and everyone revered him then Wood should be worshipped too. For the easy, almost poetic elegance of destruction.

  But more important, Wood loved the planning and the execution, the production and the ideation with reverence and passion. It was true that if you truly loved your job, you would be very good at it.

  Wood was a prime example of this adage.

  But it was still just a job. A high-paying, extremely lucrative career, if you wanted to get all fancy with the words, but at the end of it all it was a job. Something Wood did.

  There had to be more than life than this.

  Killing people. Torturing them for information. Making a lot of money i
n the process.

  Wood examined the feeling inside for a moment, while idly stroking Helena’s naked spine.

  Disquiet? Could it be disquiet? Was there more to life than just your job? Was the disquiet because Tom practically disapproved of every move Wood made? Like, killing Raoul the canary who sang to his stripper of the big deal that was going to happen in December... the research that was being conducted in the bowels of Mexico and the United States, in a lab that no one knew about.

  Terror being brewed in a new way.

  Terror that would shock the world into sitting up and take notice of the world’s most notorious terrorist.

  The Woodpecker.

  Wood smiled coldly.

  Yeah, Tom had been careless once and left the file open on his desk.

  And Wood had peeked through it idly, to see if the fool good guys were any closer to catching Wood than they had ever been. They weren’t, of course, Tom would never let anything happen to his protégé. His beloved child.

  He had always promised Wood that, and if there was one person Wood believed it was Tom. Blindly, as a child would a loving parent.

  Sometimes Wood wondered if Tom would turn out to be like the rest of the world. Intent on putting an end to the terror and destruction Wood was so good at. And wondered about what Tom would try to do if Wood tried to kill him.

  Wood wondered then about the different ways to kill Tom. Tom was very skilled, highly devious and even more cunning than sometimes even Wood could fathom.

  It was like playing chess with three different computers at the same time. Futile and exciting.

  Except, Tom was Dad.

  And Wood felt slightly ashamed after having such horrible thoughts about the father who had raised Wood. Sure, the raising had been in the killing arts, in espionage 101 and the School of Disguise, but it was an education nonetheless. Not many people could claim to know the four different styles of martial arts and be proficient at using a fork to kill another human being.

  Go for the jugular, twist the tine in as deep as it would go and watch the blood pour out. Or, failing that, go for the femoral artery. The blood loss would kill as surely as a bullet to the head.