Amira was an ER nurse. Hadn’t she seen enough violence? Enough shootings, stabbings, car-jackings, sudden and violent death? But here she was, learning how to maim and kill. It didn’t make sense to me.
In my experience, people spied for different reasons: greed, resentment, blackmail, ego, ideology, or a combination of all of those things. Did that mean for Amira it was about ideology: she was angry with how ISIS twisted her religion, so infiltrating them was a way to even the score? I wished I understood.
I was still thinking about her as the forest closed around me, cocooning me in its darkness, its strangeness, encouraging the thoughts and memories of my 29 years, rolling and pitching inside me. And when I dreamed, it was of her eyes.
I slept fitfully and woke just before dawn as a soft footfall penetrated the thin curtain of my consciousness. I rolled to one side automatically to avoid a blow, but became tangled in the mosquito net that I’d hung from a low branch.
Larson laughed as he stood over me, watching as I flailed around, caught in the netting.
“Sleeping beauty, you ain’t,” he grinned, holding a cup of coffee in front of him.
“If you’re Prince Charming, we’re both fucked,” I grumbled, fighting my way free of the netting.
He muttered something under his breath and strode away.
The man walked softly, and he’d returned on foot. His Jeep was nowhere to be seen, and I’d definitely have heard that. Engine sounds travel a long way in the night. He’d probably stashed it a couple of miles away and walked in on foot. All the same, I’d keep an eye on him.
“TODAY I’M GOING to teach you how to make homemade explosives: method one is fertilizer and sugar or ANS; and method two involves hydrogen peroxide.ANS was the mainstay of the IRA because it’s pretty much idiot proof—you grind the prills in a coffee grinder then mix it with sugar in a cement mixer. The hydrogen peroxide stuff is completely different: it’s chemistry and takes longer. We’re going to make both.”
“Um, what’s a prill, man?” asked Clay.
Damn, I was using EOD jargon again.
“Prills are the pellets of any substance formed by the congealing of a liquid during an industrial process.”
“Got it.”
I’d already gone over the key points of pipe bombs again, but saying there was a lot of material to get through was like saying Mount Everest was quite a large hill. And I was getting the impression that I had to pare it down even more.
“In 2010, a crude car bomb was discovered in Times Square. The device was made from petrol—gasoline—propane and fertilizer. But the bomber wasn’t too bright and used a type of fertilizer that isn’t explosive.”
I gazed around at my class.
“It can be tricky to make explosives from fertilizer because of the chemistry involved. I’ll tell you what type you can make use of. Look for one with ammonium nitrate, but you’ll need to mix it in the correct quantities with fuel, and you’ll need a detonator to generate enough energy and…”
Amira raised her hand.
“It seems to me that getting the raw materials is relatively straightforward, but where can you get detonators?”
I glanced up briefly.
“Radio Shack.”
“I’m serious!” she snapped.
“So am I. Wasting time now won’t help when you’re on your own.”
Having her in my class brought out the bastard in me. I knew why—I was attracted to a woman I had no chance with. After this time was over, I’d never see her again.
I turned away, ignoring Clay’s raised eyebrows, and continued the lesson without interruption. Amira sat silently, still wearing her niqab, despite the heat and her collapse yesterday.
After lunch, Smith took over. I wasn’t essential to this section of Clay and Amira’s training, but I sat in anyway.
“On this assignment, you will be under stress,” he intoned, his face hard. “Failure will cost you your lives and the lives of others. You will be isolated. The chances of you being left alone together are low—they won’t trust either of you. You will have no one to talk to, no one to confide in. You will have to rely on yourselves.”
Despite the day’s heat, I saw a shiver run through Amira.
Smith lowered his voice and continued.
“Some agents enjoy the freedom that undercover work offers and decide to do things their own way. Don’t. It will get you killed. Neither of you have the experience to pull that off. Following the plan is your best way of coming out of this.”
Alive.
He didn’t say it, but that’s what he meant: the best way of coming out of this alive.
Clay stared at Smith, his dark eyes unblinking and serious. He wasn’t cracking jokes today. Amira was silent and unmoving. I wanted her to get up and walk away. I wanted her to say that she couldn’t do this. But she didn’t. She sat there, listening, absorbing his words, taking it all in.
“You may begin to feel sympathy for the terrorists as you get to know them. Maybe you’ll feel sorry for them and be motivated to help them. Don’t. They’re excellent liars—they wouldn’t have gotten this far without that ability. Do not trust them. It will get you killed.” He paused. “You die, I have to take a pay cut.”
Clay snorted and grinned; Amira didn’t react.
As the afternoon grew hotter, Smith led us out to a small clearing in the forest where Larson had been busy chopping down some of the smaller saplings to create a shooting range.
Amira was given some basic gun handling training, but her hands were slick with sweat and she found it hard to grip the pistol butt. I was tempted to show her how to hold the pistol steady with two hands, but that was a stance used by both the police and the military—it would be a dead giveaway. Instead, she struggled on, hot and frustrated, her aim getting worse instead of better.
Clay had it easier since his story was that he’d found his faith while in the military, and had seen how his ‘brothers and sisters’ were treated in Iraq. The closer the undercover role to your real personality, the easier it would be to succeed.
“What story are you going with, Amira?” Clay asked during a short break.
She glanced up then away, still hesitating.
“I thought we weren’t supposed to talk about that.”
Clay shrugged and smiled.
“Ain’t nobody here but us chickens.”
“What?”
He laughed.
“You don’t know that song? Jump blues? Louis Jordan, 1946? Am I the only one here who knows the good stuff?”
Amira turned away from Clay.
“Only music that is devotional is halal.”
Clay smiled sadly.
“Any instrument is lawful when used for permissible music such as accompaniment to devotional songs.”
She didn’t look at him again.
“I doubt that your chicken song is devotional or permissible.”
Clay sighed.
I wasn’t a praying man—I hadn’t talked to God much when I was younger and not at all since Afghanistan—but I’d always believed that music soothed the soul and there was a time to dance. I couldn’t remember where I’d heard that.
I was surprised when it was Smith who seemed to read my mind.
“‘To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: a time to be born, a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance.’ Ecclesiastes.”
Smith had surprised himself, blinking in the afternoon heat.
“Shit! I don’t know where that came from! Guess those Bible study sessions with sweet Sabrina Olsen taught me some things after all.”
A time to kill.
That’s why we were all here.
Amira
A STORM WAS coming. I could feel the electricity by the way the hairs on my arms stood up, a siz
zle that filled the air with static.
It began with just a few drops plopping onto the dirt at my feet, and I watched with fascination as the yellow-brown soil darkened steadily. I closed my eyes, turning my face upwards, feeling the first cooling drops across my eyelids and the bridge of my nose—the only part of my face that was exposed.
Soon the drops began to gather speed, slipping and sliding off the broad beech leaves and tumbling to the forest floor. The thick canopy was no longer protection against the growing torrent.
“Better get out of the damn rain,” muttered Smith, jogging towards the cabins with Clay.
But I didn’t want to. I wanted to feel the cool drops on my face, feel my niqab grow damp and heavy, feel the splash of rain on my upturned palms.
The sky cracked open and a bolt of lightning speared through the sky. It was wonderful! The most awesome light show on earth, free and fearsome.
The rumbling threat of thunder was followed by a loud crash that made me jump and then burst out laughing.
I felt so alive, so free.
A dash of movement beside caught my eye. It was James, like me, standing in the rain, a huge smile on his handsome face as he allowed the rain to soak him, his arms outstretched, the wet material of his thin t-shirt clinging to his shoulders and the muscles of his chest.
He opened his eyes and grinned at me, his voice rising above the crashes and rumbles.
“Isn’t it amazing!” he yelled, wonder and happiness spilling out of him.
“It’s incredible!” I yelled back, but of course he couldn’t see my huge smile.
Perhaps he knew it was there.
He closed his eyes again, pure joy on his face.
The walls around my heart cracked dangerously and my arms fell to my sides.
Slipping in the mud, I hurried back to the cabin, glancing once over my shoulder.
James was watching me, his expression disappointed.
In my room, with a chair against the door handle, I stripped off my wet clothes, towel drying my damp hair.
It had been a moment of joy, a moment of madness, and now my emotions were dangerously untamed.
I sent up a prayer asking for guidance, pleading for strength.
Karam, I need you! Please, tell me—what do I do?
His silence felt like censure and I was close to tears.
Suddenly, the cabin’s lights failed, and the familiar whir of the generator stilled.
There were voices outside and a moment later, James knocked on my door.
“Smith turned off the power because of the storm. Dunno what difference it makes, but that’s what he said. Sleep well, Amira.”
His voice faded and I started to breathe again.
As the hours of evening slipped into night, the storm grew wilder, howling around the tiny cabin and shaking its frame. The trees creaked and groaned, the smaller limbs snapping and spinning against our cabin.
I’d never known a storm so loud, never heard the wind tearing at the shingles on the roof before. The power of nature threatened to overwhelm our little shelter. I couldn’t sleep with the wind shrieking so accusingly.
Slipping on my niqab, I headed into the darkened living area, edging around the kitchen table.
I squealed when I touched something warm, something alive.
“Don’t freak out,” came James’ voice. “I couldn’t sleep either.”
“I’m going to put a bell around your neck,” I groused, trying to calm my leaping pulse. “You scared the living daylights out of me.”
I heard his quiet laugh and a flash of lightning illuminated his face briefly.
“I should go back to my room.”
My voice was hesitant.
“Whatever,” he said abruptly. “I don’t know how to talk to you anyway, when I can’t see your face.”
His frustration halted my return to the bedroom.
“Because of the niqab? It’s night! You couldn’t see my face regardless!” He didn’t reply and his silence defeated me. “I’m still a person, James. The same person.”
He mumbled something I couldn’t hear, and the low rumble of his voice made me long for human connection that I’d denied myself for too long, the weeks bleeding into months. I wanted to talk. I wanted to hear more than my own voice, or the echoes in my head.
Maybe if Karam had answered me I would have gone back to my room. Maybe not.
I pulled out one of the wooden chairs and sat down, a rustle of material as I pulled my niqab over my head and tossed it onto the chair beside me.
“There. I’ve taken off the niqab. Now we’re just two people, two voices in the dark.”
And we were, but it was the sudden flashes of light that were thrilling as I caught glimpses of James watching me.
“I’ve always loved lightning storms,” I said. “My sister was scared of them and used to hide in the closet, but I’d go sit in the window and watch them with my brother. Did you know that there’s no thunder if the lightning is over the ocean?”
James laughed softly.
“Yeah, I knew that.”
“Of course you did.”
There was a pause.
“You’ve got a brother and a sister?”
Oh no. Why did he have to ask that?
I didn’t reply because I didn’t know what to say and I was afraid that I might say too much.
“It must be nice,” he said, his voice reflective, “to have family.”
The resignation I heard touched me.
“You don’t have any family?”
I thought he wasn’t going to answer because the silence was strung out between us for so long, a thin thread that could snap and be lost forever.
“I probably do,” he said at last, his voice truthful in the darkness. “I don’t know who my dad was. I vaguely remember my mum, but I was taken into care when I was six. I haven’t seen her since. I might have half-brothers or sisters by now, but I don’t know.” He paused. “I was close to my grandfather even though I only saw him once or twice a year. He died three years ago.”
My heart softened as I imagined James as a small boy, how lost he must have felt, lonely and abandoned with nothing constant in his life, not even a parent.
“You’ve never wanted to find your mother?” I asked cautiously.
“No. She didn’t come back for me, so why should I?” He paused. “She might not even be alive for all I know.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No reason why you should be sorry,” he said gruffly. “You didn’t abandon your kid.”
“No, but I’m sorry anyway.”
There was silence between us before he spoke again.
“I know I’ve been tough on you, tougher than I have on Clay, but it’s because you’re the least trained. What you’re doing is dangerous. Are you sure you want to do this?
“Yes,” I said.
It was half truth, half lie.
“Okay,” he sighed. “I’ll do my best to train you before I go home.”
“Where do you call home?”
He gave a harsh bark of laugher.
“Wherever the Army sends me. I bought a flat in Reading, just outside London, so I’d have somewhere one day. I rent it out, but that’s all. I didn’t want to live in Aldershit.”
“Really? There’s a place in England named Aldershit?”
He laughed.
“Nah, not really. It’s called ‘Aldershot’ and it’s a big squaddie town. But it’s a dump, so everyone calls it ‘Aldershit’.”
It sounded sad to me, but his voice had cheered up again.
“When did you join the Army?”
“When I was eighteen.”
“That sounds so young.”
“Best time to be trained—the body can take it,” he chuckled. “Once you get past 30, everything gets harder. Carrying all that pack weight around in your Bergan—your rucksack—it’s hard. Or try wearing 80 pounds of bomb suit made of Kevlar and armour plating: stand, kneel, stand, kneel, l
ie down, kneel. It kills your knees and back. I’ll be an old man if I make it to forty.”
If.
I hated that he said that, but he was right. There are no guarantees in life. I knew that better than anyone.
But I was fascinated and I wanted to keep him talking. Now that we’d started.
“Obviously you don’t usually spend your life playing Hansel and Gretel in the woods and teaching people to make bombs, so what do you do, James?”
He laughed quietly, the sound lost under a loud crash of thunder that made me jump.
“Most of my work is the complete opposite: neutralizing devices wherever they’re found. The team gets call-outs several times a week.”
I was shocked.
“So often?”
“Yes, but a lot of those calls are about devices from the Second World War, believe it or not. Every time there’s building work in Liverpool or Manchester or any of the port cities, someone digs up a rusting bomb, and we get called in. The Germans bombed the hell out of London during the Blitz from September 1940 to May 1941. Millions of tons of explosives were dropped, especially on the docks where shipping brought food and supplies right up the Thames to the city. About a third never functioned and just got buried over time. Those devices are more than 70 years old now, so they can be pretty unstable from lying in the ground all these years. But the oldest device I ever neutralized was a mine from the First World War. It was found lying half buried in mud outside a major naval base on the South Coast, and the tide was rising. That was a tough one.”
I tried to picture it in my mind—James in his bomb suit, sinking and slipping in mud as the tide kept coming, rising higher and higher, time running out, but not being able to rush, the clock ticking.
“That sounds … really dangerous.”
If he heard the quaver in my voice, he didn’t comment on it.
“I don’t think about it.”
“How can you not?”
He paused, and I wondered if I’d pushed too far, but eventually he spoke.
“I have to switch off my emotions when I work. I have to concentrate on the job. If I stopped to think that I might lose my hands this time, or see it explode in my face, I’d lose focus. I have to analyze the task ahead. I have to see it in my mind, each step that will lead to me stopping the device from functioning.” He paused. “I’m told it’s like being a surgeon—that if you start to think about the person you’re operating on, that they’ve got a wife or husband or parent or child waiting for them, that you wouldn’t be able to concentrate on slicing into their flesh with a scalpel and working your way into a body cavity. I concentrate on getting the outcome I want, and that’s what I think about when I’m doing my job.”
TICK TOCK (EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) Book 1) Page 7