In the Grey

by Christian, Claudia Hall

  “Nazo?” Alex said under her breath.

  “Got to be why Sumit was looking for you,” Joseph said. “Fairy luck.”

  Alex got up and went to the door. The man looked up. His hair was long, unkempt, and grey. He squinted, causing his blue eyes to retreat into the deep folds of his skin. His mouth was set in a grim line and his skin was burned reddish brown. He had the look of someone who had recently lost quite a bit of weight.

  “Jack Mac Kinney?” Alex asked.

  “Can’t be.” Trece said.

  “Who wants to know?” the man sneered, and Alex smiled.

  “Someone who’s come a long way to bring you home,” Alex said.

  “Don’ have one of those,” Jack said.

  “Bring you back to your wife and children?” White Boy asked.

  “Don’ have those either,” Jack said.

  “Girlfriend?” Alex asked.

  “Never been lucky with the ladies,” Jack said. “No wife, no children, no girlfriend. No family at all, in fact. I’m just Jack. Travel the world, helping out where I can. I probably should have been a priest, but I liked fighting too much when I was young.”

  He nodded.

  “Now that you know my intriguing details, will you come with me?” Jack asked.

  His voice was surly, but not cruel. The team surrounded Alex, and they left the helicopter. Even with their thick winter Fey wear on, Alex was cold. They followed Jack across the snow and ice to the medical tent.

  “In here,” Jack said.

  “No,” Trece stopped Alex outside the medical tent. He and Vince entered the tent to check that it was secure while Alex waited with MJ and Margaret.

  “You may assist if you’d like,” Alex said to MJ. “Margaret, he will need you.”

  “Yes, sir,” MJ and Margaret said.

  “You remember the rules of Islam?” Alex asked.

  “Yes, sir,” Margaret said.

  “You will let me know if you feel weak, or if the pain gets intolerable?” MJ asked.

  “I will,” Alex said. “Joseph, can you get someone to keep an eye on Jack? Now that we’ve found him, I’d hate to lose him.”

  “Yes, sir,” Joseph said. He turned to speak with Troy.

  “Alex,” Trece appeared at the entrance to the tent. “It’s Nazo.”

  Alex gave him a grim nod.

  “The Taliban took their village a month ago,” Trece reported what she already knew. “They killed Emal and Farooq outright. Her father was able to hide Nazo and Felicia. They got news that we were moving toward Kabul and took to the road. Felicia is only six months pregnant; Nazo is eight. The strain and worry has sent them into labor.”

  “Farooq and Nazo lived in Kabul,” Alex said.

  “They moved home to be close to her mother when Nazo got pregnant. Twins,” Trece said. “Nazo is failing. Heartbroken, that’s what Dr. Dalal said. She is asking for you.”

  “And Felicia?” Alex asked.

  “The baby is stillborn,” Trece said. “And she is stronger. She said to tell you she is ‘ghetto born and bred; Army hardened,’ but Nazo . . .”

  He shook his head and Alex nodded. She closed her eyes for a moment and said a silent prayer. In her heart, she knew that Nazo would never survive without Farooq. When she opened her eyes, she nodded to Trece and stepped into the medical tent.

  From the corners of the room, kerosene heaters did little to combat the cold. The wind blew freezing fog into the tent, and Felicia screamed from under cotton blankets. Sher kneeled down, and she grabbed on to his hand. In an effort to turn the baby, Colin had a hand on Felicia’s belly. Sumit worked between her legs. As Felicia squirmed and screamed, Colin pushed and encouraged. Sumit grunted with the strain of moving Felicia’s breached stillborn.

  For all of Felicia’s motion and noise, Nazo lay in still silence and blood. Her bloodstained hands gripped the soaked blankets. Dalal looked up at Alex and shook her head. Khudija leaned over Nazo to wipe her forehead with a soft cloth. As if little bits of her soul were being released with each exhale, Nazo’s breath came out in steamy puffs. When Alex approached, Khudija looked up with tears in her eyes.

  “Hang on sister, hang on,” Khudija said in Pashto.

  “Alex,” Nazo held out her hand to Alex. Alex dropped to a crouch so that her head was right next to Nazo’s. “Thank you. Without you, there would have been no Farooq. Without Farooq, there would have been no life.”

  Alex squeezed her hand.

  “He . . . They shot him as an infidel, an American,” Nazo said. “They came . . . they came into town yelling for the American. But Farooq . . . gave up the mall and cheeseburgers and . . . knowing the risks, to be with me, in my country, for a new Afghanistan. How did they know, Alex, that he was American? He looked like my grandfather, my father; his parents were Pashtun. Our neighbors thought he was from Pakistan. But they came . . . they came for him and Felicia. They killed Emal. They killed my brother because he refused to give up his beloved. How did they know? She looks . . . she is an Afghan. Her parents emigrated when the Russians were here. She lives . . . Afghan.”

  “I will find out,” Alex said.

  “For me,” Nazo said.

  “Save your breath,” Alex said.

  “I don’t have much,” Nazo gave her a sweet smile. “Farooq wanted to ask you to be an aunt or special friend to our babies. They would not exist if not for you. Two months ago, we signed papers – if anything should happen to us and our family, you were to become their guardian. We were so happy; excited to tell you. I couldn’t wait for my babies to arrive. But now . . .”

  As if gathering her strength, Nazo took a long slow inhale.

  “Now, I must ask you . . . will you take them back to America with you? Will you love them as your own?”

  “Nazo, I . . . ,” Alex said.

  Dalal touched her shoulder and Alex stood up.

  “She won’t make it, Alex,” Dalal said in her ear. “There is nothing anyone could do. Even the best hospital in all the world will not cure her broken heart. She’s only hung on for you. She hasn’t the strength to deliver, and she won’t survive a cesarean. The babies are alive, for now.”

  “Don’t leave my children here, where evil has removed all light from my sky,” Nazo said.

  Khudija made a small sound and began to cry.

  “Alex, please,” Nazo gasped with pain. Her eyes took on a feverish hue. “For love.”

  “I will take care of them,” Alex said.

  Nazo smiled.

  “I knew you would,” Nazo said. “It’s so nice to see Jesse again. Reminds me of spring time, laughter, and . . . love. Everything was so . . . glorious.”

  Her eyes flicked to Alex. For a moment, their eyes held.

  “Love them well,” Nazo said. “Tell them . . . they were . . . loved.”

  Her eyebrows moved up and down as if she was working something out.

  “Farooq?”

  Her face broke into a radiant smile, and she was gone.

  “I’ll take the babies now,” Dalal said.

  “No!” Felicia screamed from the other cot. “Oh God! No! Nazo! No!”

  She tried to get out of her cot, but Sumit ordered her to be still. Felicia started keening with grief. Overwhelmed, Khudija looked at Alex.

  “I’ll assist here,” Alex said. “Go to Sher.”

  “Medic?” Dalal asked.

  “Here,” Margaret gestured to MJ.

  “We have but a minute,” Dalal said. “We must take the twins at once.”

  They set to work. Dalal shouted instructions as MJ began the first incisions.

  “Get me warm towels and clothes,” Dalal yelled. She pointed to a storage cabinet. “They are there.”

  Alex started to move.

  “No Alex, you stay,” Dalal grabbed her arm. She gestured to Margaret, “Go.”

  “Mmp,” MJ pointed to his incision

  “Go ahead,” Dalal said. “We’ll take them together.”

  Dalal loo
ked at Alex. Her eyes scanned Alex’s face.

  “This is it, my friend, you must welcome your babies into this world, now,” Dalal said. “Are you ready?”

  “Uh,” Alex said.

  “Welcome to the club,” Dalal laughed. She touched MJ, “Go ahead.”

  He reached into Nazo’s abdomen and pulled out a child. He set the baby onto the warm clothes in Dalal’s arms.

  “God is great; there is no God but Allah. Muhammad is the messenger of Allah. Come to prayer,” she whispered the traditional welcome for an Islamic baby, the Shahādah, into the baby’s right ear. “We have a boy.”

  Dalal cleared his nose and mouth. He howled at her efforts. Dalal set him in Alex’s arms. Alex wrapped the child tight in the warm blankets. Margaret put more cloth blankets in Dalal’s arms, and MJ set another child there.

  “God is great; there is no God but Allah. Muhammad is the messenger of Allah. Come to prayer,” she said in the baby’s right ear. “Not identical like their mother had hoped, but beautiful nonetheless. We have a girl.”

  Dalal made quick work of cleaning her mouth and nose. Alex took the girl from Dalal before she realized her arms were full. The girl began to cry.

  “Let me help,” Leena appeared at her side. She held out her arms for a child.

  “No,” Alex said. “It will only make them upset.”

  “But your chest, sir,” Leena said.

  “Alex, you’re bleeding,” Dalal said. “First lesson of parenting: hand off when you can. Let the girls have them.”

  “You’ll keep them near each other,” Alex said.

  “We will,” Margaret said.

  Alex moved to give the boy to Leena and was unable to let him go. Leena gave her a soft smile.

  “It’s only for a moment,” Leena said.

  Alex kissed his face and gave him to Leena. She had a stronger reaction to letting go of the girl nestled in her arms.

  “Sir,” Margaret said. “When our souls meet again, we feel the loss of all the time we’ve spent apart.”

  Alex turned to look at her.

  “Please,” Margaret said.

  Alex kissed the girl’s cheek. The moment she set the girl in Margaret’s arms, the room began to spin.

  “Trece!” Margaret yelled.

  Trece caught Alex before she hit the ground. He lifted her into his arms. MJ blocked him and held up a blood-soaked finger. Trece nodded. MJ wiped his hands on a towel and doused them in antibiotic gel. He unzipped Alex’s coat and pushed through her clothing to look at the wound. He pointed to himself and out of the tent.

  “He has to take care of Alex now,” Trece said to Dalal.

  “There’s not much left to do here,” Dalal said. “I will close up and care for Nazo. She will be ready for burial tomorrow.”

  MJ nodded. Trece carried Alex out of the medical tent, through the ice and snow, and back onto the helicopter. He set her on the floor between the seats.

  “Go!” Trece yelled.

  Zack lifted off for Bagram Air Base.

  F

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  Wednesday evening

  December 15 – 7:17 p.m. AFT

  Bagram Air Base, Kabul, Afghanistan

  Alex opened her eyes. She was lying in a hospital bed. The babies were in a large double incubator next to her bed. She sat up and scooted to the edge of the bed to look at them.

  “They’re sleeping,” a man said.

  Alex had to force her eyes away to see who was talking. Dr. Sumit Roy sat in a chair in the corner of the room. He smiled at her.

  “That’s some scar,” Alex gestured to the line she’d once created across his forehead. “Sorry.”

  “Actually, I should thank you,” Sumit said. “This scar has allowed me to leave my old life and pursue this one.”

  He got up and came to the bed.

  “They are quite safe,” Sumit said. “Let me help you.”

  He helped her back under the covers. He checked her IV lines before sitting down again.

  “You’re out of intelligence?” Alex asked.

  “I’m obviously in enough to gain access to the base and this hospital,” Sumit smiled. “But yes. I am out, mostly. When I came home, after our little adventure, Dalal asked me if we could go back to the life we’d had when we were first married. We waited until our second left for college. The younger two were excited for a change of scenery, so we left.”

  Alex smiled.

  “You knew that,” Sumit said.

  “It’s in your file,” Alex said.

  “It’s a funny thing,” Sumit said. “As a parent, you do things because you want your kids to have everything you didn’t have, everything they desire, and most of all, a chance to live in a safer world. Of course, all they want is you – your time, your love, your wisdom, if only to ignore it. Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined my spoiled-rotten, London-raised children would be happy here, but they love it.”

  Alex smiled. She turned her head to see the babies.

  “I tell you this as you are a parent now,” Sumit said.

  “I am?” Alex asked. “What about Nazo’s family?”

  “The Taliban killed the entire village. No survivors. They burned the houses to the ground,” Sumit said. “We didn’t tell Nazo and Felicia, because they were in such bad shape.”

  “And Felicia?” Alex asked.

  “Heartbroken; angry,” he said. “She will return to America now. They were truly a beautiful family.”

  “So brutal, even for the Taliban,” Alex said. “Any idea why?”

  “Felicia said they were looking for Americans – CIA spies,” Sumit said.

  “How did they know?” Alex asked. “Nazo kept saying that. How did they know?”

  “I’m out of that business,” Sumit shook his head. “But I know you’ll figure it out.”

  “How do you like being a doctor again?” Alex asked.

  “I love it,” Sumit said. “I love being this kind of doctor – no magic pills that are supposed to cure everything, no insurance companies or government service to beg services from, nothing but straight forward, basic medicine. It’s wonderful. Dalal is in heaven. Once in a while, the Medecins Sans Frontières come through to remind me that I don’t want to return to my old life.”

  “I know that feeling,” Alex smiled.

  “Yes,” Sumit said. “I bet you do.”

  “How are Sher and his bride?” Alex asked.

  “I don’t think Khudija has taken her eyes off Dalal even for a moment,” Sumit smiled. “And Sher is smart, motivated, and dedicated to his people. They remind me Dalal and I when we were first married. They are just learning about each other, excited to be in the world, and scared to death. I think they’ll be happy, and we’ll enjoy having them.”

  “Well, thank you,” Alex said.

  “Actually, thank you. We can use the help,” he smiled. “I should let you rest. Before I go, let me tell you about your son and daughter.”

  “They are mine?” Alex asked.

  “I’ll let your team tell you about that,” he said.

  She nodded.

  “The only question is about their lungs. They are on oxygen for now,” Sumit said. “The boy is a tiny bit stronger than the girl, but she is gaining fast. They will need to stay under the lights for maybe a month; maybe longer. It depends on how they do. They aren’t able to eat yet, but that’s fairly normal for a premature birth. For what they have been through, they are shockingly healthy.”

  He smiled.

  “You are also shockingly healthy,” he said.

  “I remember passing out,” Alex said.

  “The body blow knocked your stitches loose,” he said. “They operated to be sure they didn’t miss anything. You’ve been out since the surgery.”

  “I feel nauseous, like I usually do after surgery,” Alex said.

  “By all means vomit,” Sumit said. “Don’t let me stop you.”

  She smiled, took the nearby bowl, an
d put it on her lap.

  “Don’t let me stop you,” Sumit said. “I’ve seen plenty of vomit in my life, and you’ve seen plenty of mine.”

  Alex threw up into the bowl. He took the bowl and dumped it in the bathroom. He returned with a towel.

  “I’ll see myself out,” Sumit said.

  “Any idea what the ‘joke’s on you’ means?” Alex asked.

  “Besides the obvious?” Sumit asked.

  Alex nodded.

  “A long time ago – gosh, maybe even thirty years ago – there was this conversation that went something like: ‘What if there is nothing else?’ ‘What if there’s no answer to your questions?’ Another way of saying that is: ‘if you believe there’s a system to all of this, then the joke’s on you.’”

  “Chaos Theory?” Alex asked.

  “Sure,” Sumit said. “Individual particles or beings long for order. This order is created out of chaos. Yet the slightest change will send everything back to chaos. We humans like to believe there is a greater plan or system underlying everything, when in truth, chaos is the basis of everything.”

  “There is no deeper meaning or system to life,” Alex said.

  “Right,” Sumit said. “Because the foundation of everything is chaos, the smallest change in any condition can result in vast differences in the final outcome.”

  “The Butterfly effect – butterfly flaps its wings here, and there’s a Tsunami there,” Alex said.

  “Sure, a bad example, I think, but sure,” Sumit nodded. “People talked about it a lot more in the 1980s and 90s, before the radical and religious became so loud.”

  “If you believe in God or order . . . ,” she started.

  “The joke’s on you,” Sumit said. “Exactly. There were a couple of groups who were big proponents of creating little incidents to destabilize the whole.”

  “Terrorists,” Alex said.

  “We called them militant groups then,” Sumit said. “But you’re right, terrorism is based in chaos theory. Create a small action in a public place; say, for example, kill five people in a marketplace, and the market will die because people are too afraid to go.”

  “With technology, you terrify people who weren’t anywhere near your action,” Alex nodded.

  “That’s exactly right.”