Amsterdam 2020 (Amsterdam Series Book 2)

by Ruth Francisco

  The blast travels through Salima's body, throwing her on her ass, fragments of wood flying in every direction. Light emerges through the dust and smoke. Hanging rebar and pipes angle to the floor. The whole front of the building is gone. Men duck, stumbling out, coughing, clearing away chunks of brick wall and plaster.

  She clamps her palm to her right ear and tries to stand. Men are shouting, but she can't hear a thing, only a buzzing of a thousand saws. Blood drips from her nostrils, and she uses her veil to staunch the flood. A tremendous pressure builds across her forehead; a pounding throbbing pain stabs between her eyes. She staggers a few feet—she needs air, needs the outside, Air! Give me air!—then vomits.

  A beam crashes down the middle of the room, sending up a new poof of plaster and dust.

  Shirzad is pale, blood from an armless soldier splashed across his chest. “Dirty kafir bastards. I'll get every one of them.” He sees Salima. “Cover your face. You're indecent.” She barely hears him, his voice echoing down a long tunnel. She repeats the words he said in her mind, but doesn't understand his meaning. He must be telling her something important. “Salima Sahin! Cover your face,” he yells.

  At first she is surprised he even knows her name. Then the words sink in. If her head didn't hurt so much, she would giggle—the thought that her uncovered face would, at this moment, throw the staggering, bleeding men around her into a frenzy of desire, is absurd. Small splinters of glass make her fingers bleed. She pulls them out, and rearranges her hijab.

  The Landweer officer who lost an arm lies sprawled in a pool of blood, dead, his face white with dust, his mouth a maroon hole. Shirzad wipes his face with a handkerchief. “A martyr for jihad. God bless him. May seventy-two virgins suck his cock.” He throws his handkerchief on the man's face in disgust, and orders the Landweer officers to follow him outside.

  The beams above lurch a foot. White dust cascades everywhere.

  Salima ducks, then runs, her feet crunching over broken glass and plaster. A vice squeezes her brain, she staggers, aimless, holding her head. A man grabs her elbow and leads her out, where she vomits again.

  Bora has the presence of mind to take her to the nearest hotel to recover. Hotel Lands End. The name seems fitting.

  Oblivious to their injuries, Shirzad rounds up the men, and makes the raid to the underground leader's cabin, a large tool shed on a farm between two canals. They find no one. Frustrated, the men return to town and make a house-to-house search, upending tables, dumping bookcases, shooting AK-47s into the attics. Shirzad finds nothing.

  Enraged at his failure, he storms back to Amsterdam, leaving Salima and the rest of his staff to take care of the injured and dead.

  Of course, someone has to pay. The next morning Bora comes late to the office, sullen and brooding. He meets all morning with outside officers. At noon, he comes back to the office and tells Salima to clear out her desk. He is out of a job and so is she.

  Shirzad is promoted to Supreme Chief of the Landweer, headquartered in The Hague.

  At least he's out of Amsterdam.

  Varken Weg

  A thick mist, almost a rain, fills the forest. It is gloomy and cold, a chill rising from the earth like a cold crypt. Salima and Kaart lead two out-of-shape middle-aged men on a well-traveled part of the Varken Weg, between Vaal and Nijmegen.

  Salima wears jeans and boots, and goes unveiled, her burka rolled up in her pack. While it is highly unlikely she will need it in the forest, she carries it to wear to and from safe houses along the way, and to do shopping when necessary in nearby villages.

  She and Kaart have been ordered to escort two scientists from Aachen, Germany up the Varken Weg to Delfzijl, a small town on the coast of Dollart Bay in the far northeast corner of Holland. Delfzijl is one of the main escape routes for refugees on their way to Denmark. The trip is 235 miles.

  No refugee hikes the entire Varken Weg, dipping in and out of it. Salima varies her routes to include biking, canoing through canals, and trains. Each postbode develops his or her own routes, which are never shared, never repeated.

  She decides they will take the train part of the way, and hike the Varken Weg around the cities. When walking, they need to cover twenty miles a day. She brings extra socks, Vaseline, and mole skin for herself and the refugees.

  “Under no circumstances should they be allowed to be recaptured,” orders Gerda. “Do you understand?” Her meaning is clear. In the worst case scenario, Salima may have to execute the very men she is trying to save. Salima nods, although she has no idea if she has it in her.

  “We only have eight hours of sunlight,” Salima tells them before they set out before dawn, “which means we will be doing some night hiking. We'll be walking single file. No talking. The cold and damp will suck the energy out of you, but we must keep going. Take these walking sticks. We don't want any twisted ankles.”

  Kaart passes her as they enter the forest to lead the first leg. Slight and dark-haired, he looks far younger than his thirty years. He rocks when he walk, slightly bowlegged, a rifle slung over his shoulder.

  “Do you know how to use that thing?” Salima asks.

  “I've shot it once or twice.”

  “Did you hit anything?”

  “Sure I hit something. Just not what I was aiming at.”

  “That's reassuring.”

  The forest is somewhat warmer, but the moist cold is still bone-chilling. The path is slick, wet leaves slipping under their feet, twigs snapping. The moon slips behind wispy clouds, leaving them in near-total darkness. Kaart leads on, followed by the two scientists. Salima brings up the rear.

  Wildlife thrives in the untended land. Apart from the long-tusked boar, there are deer, rabbit, squirrels, hedgehogs, bats, stoats, martens, foxes, wild dogs. Refugees and animals aren't the only ones to use the forested corridor. Locals hunt, and gather mushrooms and berries. Once smugglers discovered IRH soldiers wouldn't go near the road of buried pigs, they began to use it as a highway for moving contraband.

  Salima hears labored breathing, notices that one of the scientists is limping, and orders a rest. “Let me take a look at your foot.”

  The scientist reluctantly takes off his shoe. For some reason, he hands it to her.

  It reeks, the interior sole covered in blood. She nearly throws it in the bushes. “For Chrissake! Why did you wear these?” She examines the offending foot apparel—polished maroon cordovan leather, rounded missile toes, smooth leather soles. “Did you think we were taking you for Tango lessons?”

  “They are the best shoes I own. I didn't want to leave them.” His face looks crushed, like a school boy. “They're not dancing shoes,” he says weakly. “They're dress shoes.”

  “In case we stop in Stockholm for your Nobel prize? A Nobel prize in stupidity.”

  “Lina,” Kaart warns. “Give the guy a break. He's probably never been out of the lab.” Kaart is also annoyed, although he hides it better.

  “It'll slow us down. Completely preventable. It could easily cost us our lives.”

  Salima pulls off his bloodied sock. “Hold the flashlight,” she says, handing the light to Kaart. A blister has broken on his heel and become infected, with red streaks shooting up his ankle. “Why didn't you tell me about this earlier?”

  “I'm tired of being a burden.”

  “Oh, for chrissake. I thought you said you were a walker. You should know better then to neglect your feet.”

  “I didn't think it was that bad. I have a high threshold for pain.”

  “Didn't you think for a moment that maybe the pain was trying to tell you something?” She taps out antibiotics from a small brown bottle, and hands him her canteen, then sets to cleaning and bandaging. Part of the problem was his bulky white socks. She digs out a pair of finely woven thermal hiking socks from her pack, and carefully slips one on his foot.

  She turns angrily to Kaart, as if it is his fault. “There's no way he can continue like this. We're going to have to risk the train when we get to Roerm
ond. At Nijmegen we'll get out. There should be a shoe store there. We'll hike again until we get to Zwolle.”

  She figures as soon as they get to the station, she'll call Pim to see if he can arrange for a car outside of Zwolle. She is a little embarrassed at how many favors she asks of him. He always comes through for her. She sees no way around it. In any case, they will have to hike the eighteen miles between Groningen and Delfzijl, gangrenous foot or not. The roads are heavily patrolled. They will probably have to hike at night.

  “We'll just have to take it slow.”

  They trudge through a forest of Scots pine. Some enterprising farmers, who gave up their land for the Varken Weg, have planted quick-growing commercial trees among the pig graves, intending to harvest them after the war. Many trees are already twenty feet high, the trunks only a few feet apart.

  Instead of lifting as the sun rises, the fog grows thicker. Moisture drips from the pine needles. They can only see a few feet in front of them. Hours pass, their feet plod forward, their backs begin to ache. An eerie muted hush falls over the woods.

  Instinctively they try to walk softly, six feet between them, Salima now in the lead. She can barely make out the path, but her feet trudge on, fighting drowsiness. All she can think of is keeping up the plodding rhythm, one step, then the next, and then the next.

  A mourning dove deep in the woods sounds a loud, a three pulse fog horn. Another tooting bird close by. One of the scientists trips over a root and catches himself.

  Sensing something, Salima holds up her hand for everyone to stop.

  A startled pheasant breaks from under a beech, with a frightening rattle of wings. Sounds of bushes shaking, twigs snapping, the crack of a thick branch. Clumps of mud thudding on the ground.

  Then a low grunt.

  She smells them before she sees them—a dense, musky smell. Another grunt, and six brindle piglets come trotting toward them, noses in the air, curious and adorable. Salima stops abruptly, and motions the others to get behind trees.

  “Ga weg! Ga weg!” Kaart hollers, clapping his hands and stomping about.

  “Quiet! What are you doing?” she hisses at him.

  A loud series of low thunderous grunts, like the grinding awake of an old outboard motor. A head pokes out of a thicket.

  Sixty feet away, a huge half ton boar glares at them with tiny red-rimmed eyes, pawing the ground, wagging its black snout, grunting. Salima slowly backs up, pulling Kaart with her.

  The boar charges, as sudden as an explosion, yellow tusks flashing, grunting angrily.

  The hikers leap in opposite directions as it crashes past, so closely Salima feels the hairy brush of its long coat and the warmth of its body. It spins on its tiny cloven feet with surprising agility and charges back, a blast of muscular fury.

  Salima grabs Kaart's rifle and shoves him out of the way in one gesture, then aims and shoots. Right between the eyes. The great boar stumbles with a shattering scream, then topples to the ground, skidding several feet before coming to a stop, flinging clumps of mud and grass.

  The piglets scamper into the forest, wheezing and shrieking. The four listen until the squeals fade away and the forest is silent again.

  The whole thing lasts only a minute or so, but it feels like a major assault. All three men bend over, hands on their knees, trying to catch their breath. Kaart recovers first. He walks over to the twitching animal and kicks it. “Jesus Christ! What a monster! He must weigh half a ton! You just dropped him. Where the fuck did you learn to shoot like that? Like a fucking pro.”

  “Is everyone all right?” Salima kneels by the boar, surprised at how hairy it is, almost like a bear. It was a lucky shot. She hasn't shot a rifle or gun since she was twelve. Apparently she still has the instinct.

  But could she do it again?

  It starts to rain, a cold wet wind goes through their coats, icy droplets stabbing their exposed faces and hands.

  Suddenly Salima feels completely drained, and wants nothing more than to make a nest of pine needles and fall asleep. Her body shivers. Hunger twists her empty stomach. “Let's stop at the next farm,” she suggests, turning to Kaart. “We'll tell them there is a fresh boar to dress. They'll be glad for that, and might hide until nightfall. I'm beat.”

  #

  The next day, after a short train ride, a hiking boot purchase, and many hours of walking, they make camp at the edge of a ridge. Here the Varken Weg runs into the Hoge Veluwe National Park in the heart of the country.

  The gnashing rain and bitter cold of the previous day gives way to hazy sunshine. Everyone is less grumpy. Salima feels safe enough to relax a bit and allow a fire.

  The two scientists wander off to fetch firewood, and Kaart claims he's going to shoot a mouflon. They had passed a dozen or so of the sheep, and had stopped to admire their great round horns.

  Salima goes to the stream for water. Chlorinde Dioxide tablets take four hours to work, so setting water to purify is one of the first things she does. Water for the evening meal, water for tomorrow. She fills a pot and water bladders, drops in the tablets, and rests, soaking in the sun. Buttercup and blue columbine flutter by the edge. Tiny red flowers on long grass-like stems create an inviting blanket. She leans on her hands, closes her eyes, and tips back her head.

  She has always loved these woods. It's where her father took her to hunt.

  Pieter was an avid hunter, which was unusual for a Dutchman. At that time, the country overwhelmingly disapproved of hunting. Every year various groups petitioned the Minister of Land, Nature, and Fishing to prohibit the barbaric practice. Pieter paid no mind. He had learned to hunt on his family's estate in Gelderland, before it became a National Park. Hunting connected his family to their heritage.

  By seven Salima knew how to disassemble a rifle, clean and oil it, and load it. Dutch law said you had to be eighteen to get a hunting license, but Pieter taught her to shoot at nine, and began taking her on hunting trips. At ten she learned to skin and gut a rabbit, pluck a goose, and dress a deer. A year later, she downed her first stag.

  She was a naturally good shot, and practiced after school shooting rats on Uncle Sander's farm with a .22 caliber rifle.

  Hunting season opened on October 15th for hare, pheasant, wood pigeon, and mallard duck. Often on weekends they went to forested areas near the German border. Several times a year, they went to Norway to hunt elk with two or three of his buddies. Often they hunted in the snow, the temperature hovering around zero, the snow crunching beneath their snowshoes.

  She never felt closer to her father than when they hunted.

  At night, when they sprawled around the camp fire, a gentle stupor hung over them after a long day of hunting, a rich meal of roasted venison, and strong liquor. Rafik always brought a guitar and played Turkish ballads. Salima loved the low rumble of their voices, how they chaffed one another, almost to the point of fighting, then backed off good-naturedly. She loved the gravity of their middle-aged bodies, how their clothes and beards smelled of wood fire and tobacco. She loved their percussive hugs, slapping each other on the back. And when someone stumbled, the roar of laughter.

  They seemed funnier and more relaxed than when they were with their wives and girlfriends. And surprisingly candid. One man wanted a divorce, but couldn't bear to leave his kids. Another planned to quit his job as soon as his Internet business took off. Another couldn't get over the death of his father. Another talked about his ex-wife until everyone told him to either go fuck her or shut up already.

  Happy memories make Salima sleepy and sluggish. She gazes at the water with fuzzy focus, enjoying the setting sun on her shoulders, the smell of warmed grasses, the sounds of birds.

  She nearly dozes off, when she feels a cold metal barrel press behind her ear.

  “Get up whore.” Slowly she turns, the barrel moving sharply under her chin. She sees a face dark against the sun.

  There are two of them—deserters, still in their gray uniforms, dirty and torn, without their red turbans. Both
armed with AK-47s and pistols, grinning broadly at their unexpected find.

  “Unveiled and dressed like a man. You wouldn't be one of those Resistance bastards, now would you?” She doesn't respond. “A gypsy maybe?” He leans his cheek against hers, his breath stinking of dead rats. “What did that last bitch say she was doing?”

  “Looking for mushrooms,” prompted the other.

  “Before we raped the living piss out of her. You wanna go first?”

  “Nah, go ahead. I'll keep the rifle on her.”

  The first one shoves her to the ground with his foot, and she struggles. He kneels on her thighs, undoing her belt. He slaps her across her face, and she cries out. While he leans back, trying to yank down her pants, she squirms, working her left hand behind her back to her shoulder holster and hunting knife. He slaps her again. “Hold still, bitch. It'll go easier for ya.”

  She relaxes as if obeying him, calmed by the familiar feel of a knife handle in her palm. She squints, focusing through her tearing eyes, planning her next move. Waiting until the right moment.

  His filthy fingers work his zipper with one hand, leaning on her shoulder with the other, then wrenches apart her thighs. “You like a good fuck, don't ya. I can tell.”

  Hand on his cock, the soldier fumbles between her legs. She arches her back and throws one arm around his neck, as if overcome.

  The other soldier looks away, distracted by cries from men in the distance. “Joris. Someone's coming.”

  In one swift gesture, she whips out the knife, jabs hard up under his right ribcage, jiggling it back and forth into his liver. The sharp blade makes a squelching sound. Joris yelps, squirming to get away, punching her face and shoulders. She wraps her legs around him, squeezing tight, and pushes the knife deeper. His body bucks, blood spurting over her.

  Confused, the other soldier doesn't risk a shot and kicks at her. She endures the pain, and holds on until she feels the body weaken, his shoulders going limp. She pushes the body off, grabs the second soldier's rifle by the barrel, turns it, and shoots him point blank in the head.