There was a saying in the navy that kept running sadistically through the killer’s mind: if you wait until the last minute to complete the task, then it will only take a minute to get it done. But it wasn’t that he had kept putting off completing the task, the task being this his final objective, he wasn’t a procrastinator; in fact, whenever he did have a rare spare moment, he usually spent it on planning and thinking through the execution of tonight’s objective. But since beginning his work with Refugees First back in March, rarely had he had a spare moment to do just about anything else except focusing all his efforts on assisting the thousands and thousands of displaced individuals and families, many of whom were sick and disabled, all of whom had nothing, who had lost everything to the medieval and barbaric wrath of the Daesh terrorists. Besides, since it seemed as if his services in the region were going to be needed for quite a long time, it never seemed to him as if he had needed to rush to complete the objective... until it did.
After months of negotiations between the Iraqi government as represented by its national security advisor and the heads of the four militias still holding firmly to their respective stakes in the city of Sinjar and surrounding areas, negotiations where until recently it looked like slow but steady progress was being made toward standing down the militias and creating a unified Yezidi force among them, the talks collapsed suddenly and violently after a massive suicide bombing killed dozens, including the national security advisor and two of the militia leaders. Though it wouldn’t be learned until weeks later that the responsibility for the bombing belonged to an already resurging but still dispersed Daesh, at the time ignorant but vicious rumors of blame quickly swirled out of control and served to fulfill the terrorists’ goal of turning the historically ideologically and religiously disparate militias against each other.
And all at once and once again Sinjar was resonating with the pandemonium of war, the sickening yet all too familiar scaling sounds of destruction and of misery and of death. Those few Yazidis who had risked returning to their homes were again fleeing for their lives, and those many more without a home to return to and who now overfilled the displacement camps outside the city were frantically being evacuated to remove them from harm’s undiscerning way.
After changing out of his aid-worker’s garb of a light blue polo shirt with its Refugees First logo on it, khaki cargo pants, and tan tactical boots, the killer changed into a garb more suitable for the terror he intended to soon wreak upon his mark – the terrifying all-black uniform worn by both Daesh senior commanders and those terrorists chosen by them to be holy suicide bombers, war booty he had procured from a bombed-out terrorist warehouse near Dayr az Zawr. As he impulsively began piecing together a uniform that would fit him from the clothes spilling out from the broken boxes scattered along the back wall of the half-destroyed warehouse, he envisioned that someday he would wear the terrorist garb of death in service of that which he had come to Iraq to do, that which he had to do before he could ever return home, a service that he would be performing within the hour... provided his mark hadn’t fled the area like most already had.
Donned now in a long black jacket and a pair of loose-fitting black trousers which he cuffed and tucked into the tops of black leather combat boots, he decided, because of the sandstorm, to wear a large black and grey keffiyeh for his headgear instead of the black balaclava which both he and the Daesh suicide bombers normally wore on their missions of death. After wrapping the scarf around his head, face, and neck in a way that would provide him the most protection, he wrapped a longer, similar scarf around his waist as a sash.
There was one remaining item he needed for the night’s mission, the most important one – its bloodstained, rosewood hilt was sticking out from the backpack that set on the seat next to him. He removed the twenty-one-inch saber from the backpack and then removed it from the scarf he had wrapped its blade in. More war booty. The bloody hand of the terrorist he took it from never had a chance to use it, at least not on him. He carefully thumbed the sharp edge of the saber’s sixteen-inch curved blade of Damascus steel, one inlaid with an intricately beautiful twist pattern. A faint wry smile stretched his tanned, leathery face as he admired the weapon, thinking that a skinny teenaged terrorist like its former owner should never had brought a knife to a gun fight, at least not to one with a crazy old ex-Navy SEAL like himself.
He returned the weapon to its leather sheath and exited the truck, stepping out into the all-consuming black of a late June night beset with turbulent and howling winds that seemed to be growing stronger by the minute, winds thick with sand and dust that bit into any exposed skin and penetrated any vulnerable crevice. He tucked the saber into the sash above his left hip and, after locking the SUV and stashing the key fob into the tailpipe, he took off into the headwind at a brisk double time on a course toward the remote farm where his mark resided, keeping a hand on the saber to secure it and keeping his squinting eyes looking down, out of the stream of sand and dust blowing in straight at him, fixing them firmly on the uneven ground before him.
Exercise was another thing he hadn’t had time for since arriving to Iraq, and it wasn’t long running into a wind determined to thwart his advance before his unworked lungs began burning for oxygen. But he pushed on having no time to lag, knowing he had many times in the past pushed himself on through much worse pain and discomfort and miserable conditions than he was now experiencing.
During his reconnoiter the killer had heard the goats bleating into the night well before the farm came into view, but tonight with the howling of the wind being all he could hear and the blowing dust and sand being all he could see, he nearly ran right into the backside of the small goat pen before realizing it was there. He crouched low next to the rickety fence with its rotting wooden slats and caught his breath before following it around, passing the slanted, three-sided wooden shed where the goats were huddled in tight together against the storm, all the way to the corner of the side nearest the farmhouse.
Since he couldn’t see anything beyond five feet in front of him, the killer had to take a knee while he thought back to all he had seen two nights ago and try to visualize it now in his mind as clearly as he could. What he recalled was that the mark lived alone in a roughhewn fieldstone house not much bigger than a one-car garage, and that it seemed to him then, since the man was without company and the nearest village was over ten miles away, that he must spend most of his time tending to his few goats and the small plot of vegetables off the back corner of the house. Perhaps he was once a proper farmer with a proper life when his wife and sons were still alive and living with him, but as for now it didn’t seem to the killer like there was much living that could be done by anyone living alone in such a lonely, unforgiving part of the world.
The killer had no idea what the layout of the house was inside since during the hastily planned reconnoiter there was a large wiry-haired dog of ambiguous breeding asleep near the back door preventing him from approaching the house. Without knowledge of the layout, he would be at his most vulnerable when first entering the house, provided he could get past the dog. Even though he couldn’t now see it through the sandstorm, he had to assume that the dog was still outside somewhere since he knew most Iraqis would never allow something as dirty as a dog into their house no matter how bad the weather was. But as long as he didn’t inadvertently step on the animal, he doubted it would be able to spot him through the sand and dust as thick as it was.
But he was wrong. As he was making his near-blind, crouching way from the front of the goat pen to the back of the house through a powerful crosswind coming at him like a locomotive, pelting him with sand and dust, he heard a heart-stopping deep-throated snarl just as the dog came lunging at him. Its fangs flashed briefly through the dust and caught him just above the left boot, not enough to do damage to the meaty calf of his leg, but enough to snag his pants and trip him up. He would have fallen hard to the ground if his momentum hadn’t carried him far enough to first slam him into the
back of the house. He turned quickly to face the animal while drawing the saber hanging askew from the sash. The dog continued to bark and snarl ferociously somewhere not far off, but it wasn’t advancing toward him. He relaxed his guard, figuring that the dog must be tied up somewhere between the goat pen and the garden.
Relieved he wouldn’t have to fight off the beast, the killer slid down the wall and rested on his haunches. But even without the fight the damage was done. If the dog’s barking hadn’t woken the mark, then surely the killer slamming into the back of the house had. He was out of breath and had to gasp for air with a mouth filled with grime and sand. His right shoulder had taken the brunt of the crash into the back of the house and it now throbbed with pain. He set the saber on the ground and tested the shoulder by carefully raising it up over his head. The shoulder was stiff and the movement hurt, but at least it wasn’t dislocated. He picked the saber back up and swung it tentatively back and forth with his right hand in a figure eight motion, sparking a pain that burned from the shoulder down to the elbow.
He lay the weapon across his thighs and loosened the keffiyeh to cool off some, but just then the malicious winds turned on him and his sweaty face became pasted with sand and dust. Cursing, at himself, at the storm, at the spiteful gods, he used the ends of the scarf to wipe his face off the best he could and then tightened the wrap back up in a fast, haphazard manner. He rubbed his sore shoulder and sighed. First the weather had turned apocalyptic on him, and now the injury had him wondering whether he was fit enough to complete the mission. Maybe he should just go ahead and give up, he thought. Call the mission a no go, abort it, and return home, not back to the nomadic tent he had been calling home for the past year, but back to his home home. Back to the world.
What would it be like, he wondered, to leave it all behind, all the fighting, all the misery and death, all the complete helplessness, all the ancient hates and grievances, all the pent-up desire for vengeance against Shene’s murderer burning within him, to just walk away from all that, that frantic, unpredictable world he had been living in for over a year and return to a world in such stark contrast to it? He could see his world clearly in his mind, a calm, quiet world where the only sounds he’d hear would be the wind rushing through the leaves or the cows lowing in the distance, a world with its moderate, bearable clime, one rich with many colors but especially the color green this time of year – the swaying green-leafed trees of the wood surrounding his farm, the lush green grass growing around the house and the barn and down the hill all the way to the field where the corn planted there earlier in the year by the farmer he leased the land to would now be knee-high, the stiff, impatient stalks a dark and richly green. Would he ever be able to return to such a life, to live such a life, such a tranquil, predictable normalcy?
Of course with the Russian threat still out there looming darkly over his shoulder, could there ever again be such a normalcy to return to? And what about RJ? Even if the Russians had decided to cut their losses, would he ever be able to return to her, or she to him? Would she ever be able to forgive him for treating her the way he did, for abandoning her with a lie, telling her he was leaving to protect her from the Russians, when in fact they both knew he was leaving just so he could return to the battlefield, to the only place where he had ever felt he belonged, the only place where he felt as if he wasn’t losing his mind? For the first time he admitted to himself that he missed her, and that maybe he even needed her. Yes, he told himself, he did need her. Maybe it could be possible, he thought as his chest filled tight with a sudden surge of longing and hope, the two of them together again. Maybe if he started seeing a therapist like she had wanted him to, like he knew he needed to, and maybe if he stayed on his meds, maybe she would accept him back. Maybe they could even—
A light flashed on in the house and instantly damned the killer’s distracting thoughts of hopeful maybes and what ifs back to the prisonous void of his subconscious from where they came, back to where they belonged, where they would remain. A cold, comforting anticipatory chill streaked down his back, mobilizing him as the dull light shone out into the night from a small, shoulder-high window just above him to his left, casting a sickly yellow glow onto the sand and dust swirling madly against the house. No thoughts of pain or of injury or of home or of RJ filled his mind as he held the saber in a tight grip by his side and stood back up. The only thoughts that were there now were icy, vengeful ones of how he was finally going to kill the man who had killed Shene; how he, the killer, driven by his own ancient code of justice and honor would take pleasure in killing the man, someone driven by, crazed by, insane archaic religious rules and beliefs that found honor in cutting open the throat of an abused and pregnant twelve-year-old girl. Those were the thoughts that filled his mind as he inched his way silently over to the window and waited.
When the window raised open with a begrudging squeak and the barrel of a rifle came jutting out from it, the killer reacted immediately. A low guttural growl escaped his throat as he, in one swift motion, stowed the saber back into the sash and grabbed the barrel with two hands, yanking the weapon free from the unsuspecting hands that held it and flinging it deep into the black of the storm. He then reached in through the window and grabbed his mark by his long black beard and began pulling him out through the window by it.
But the mark was strong and he resisted furiously. The killer had been able to pull him only halfway out the window before he caught hold of the sides of the wooden frame and held on, alternating as he did in calling out desperately for his God’s protection and cursing the killer, calling him Daesh scum and other insults.
The killer tugged hard on the beard, trying to yank the mark free from the window until a handful of hair ripped from the mark’s chin, sending the killer stumbling backwards as the mark wailed in agony. But the killer quickly recovered his footing and, before the mark could pull himself up and back into the house, was able to reach in through the window and grab him by the back of his loose trousers and yank him the rest of the way out of the house in a flip, backside first. But even then, though his shoulders were almost twisted out of their sockets, the mark still held tight onto the frame of the window.
The killer sighed impatiently and cursed back at the mark in his own Kurdish tongue of Kurmanji. He then grabbed him by his bare feet and began pulling and tugging on them until he was stretched out straight from the house. But still the mark wouldn’t let go. The killer dropped the feet, remembering the saber. He drew it from the sash, positioned himself, and then swung the weapon hard enough to chop the mark’s right hand off at the wrist and sink the blade deep into the wooden frame. The mark’s agonizing scream drowned out the roar of the sandstorm and even that of the dog still barking and snarling crazily somewhere nearby, but still he held onto the window. Impressed by the mark’s resolve, the killer let him dangle from the window by his remaining hand while he took a moment to catch his breath.
It took him both hands and the extra leverage of a boot braced against the wall before he was able to free the saber from the window frame, but once he did, he set its blade against the wrist of the mark’s left hand hard enough to draw blood. “Let go of the window or lose it,” he said loud enough to be heard over the din of the night, the barking of the dog, and the man’s futile pleadings to an at present indifferent God.
The mark released his grip and dropped hard to the hardpacked ground, twisting himself awkwardly as he fell so as not to land on the bloody stump where his hand used to be. He sat himself up slowly and leaned back against the house, cradling the stump against his chest. He found his severed hand on the ground next to him and picked it up. He stared at it dumbly, turning the bloody, dust-caked thing this way and that as if he were trying to figure out how to reconnect it to the bloody end of his arm.
“Do you know why I’m here?” the killer asked almost playfully as he looked down on his mark.
The mark looked up at the killer, his dark eyes squinting against the blowing sand, squ
eezing out tears that ran tracks down his dusty face. “Because you are a boot-licking Daesh son of a whore who has no value for life, that’s why.” He tried to spit at the killer but his mouth was too dry and he only loosed a spray of spittle down what remained of his bloody beard.
The killer wanted to laugh at the irony of what he had just heard, but instead he nodded thoughtfully. “Well, you’re partially right. I certainly don’t place much value on life, at least not on the lives of those who murder innocent young girls.”
This confused the mark. “What are you saying? You Daesh pigs have murdered thousands of innocent people. You have murdered my wife and my sons. None could have been more innocent than them.”
Standing in the glow of the light from the window, the killer slowly unwrapped the keffiyeh from his head, revealing his long, wavy blond hair and thick, golden-brown beard. With the scarf now hanging off his shoulders and down the front of him like a liturgical stole and with him looking down calmly at his mark, he looked almost saintly, like an image of an angel one might find in a child’s Sunday School lesson book from days past, albeit an angel dressed all in black.
Seeing this unlikely image before him, the mark’s eyes opened briefly in surprise before closing in a squint again against the sand. “Wh-who are you?” he asked.
“I am the one who has been sent here to seek justice for the murder of your niece, Shene Abdullah,” the killer said as he slowly brought the saber up into a striking position.
The Good Kill Page 49