Cold Snap

by J. Clayton Rogers

  "I heard shots—"

  When he saw Ghaith taking aim at him the placid face he had been born with drooped in resignation. Coming to life's end was to be expected, but coming to a stupid end by running into a traitor's gun was to be greatly regretted.

  "Drop it," said Ghaith.

  "This is treachery," said the teacher, the gun wobbling in his hand. It was still pointed at the far wall.

  "Sending those boys to their deaths is treachery," Ghaith said. "I think you know that. Drop it."

  The teacher slowly bent over and began to place his gun neatly on the floor.

  There was a breath-sucking blast from the building across the alley and the windows blew in. Ghaith dropped as glass flew like razors across the room. When he jumped back to his feet, he saw the teacher on his knees, looking around in confusion as blood from a cut poured down the side of his face. The gun was still in his hand. He was turning. Ghaith wasn't sure he intended to fire at him and there was no time to find out. He pulled the trigger the instant the teacher began to speak.

  He was glad Al Jazeera wasn't there to see. Or God.

  Racing back to the classroom, he found the boys sprawled on the floor. A few had suffered cuts from flying glass. A few of the youngest were whimpering, though it seemed to Ghaith it was more from confusion than pain.

  "That's good," he said. "Stay that way. The enemy is at hand."

  "But we have to go to the battle!" the sura boy protested, pushing up to his knees.

  "The Americans will take one look at you and pass by," Ghaith reasoned. "Then you can run back to your neighborhoods and begin blowing them up. The enemy, I mean."

  "We need to stop them from attacking our school," the sura boy persisted. "Where is our teacher? We heard shooting. Is he all right? Where are those other men?"

  When Ghaith did not answer right away, he continued:

  "Rise up! Everyone! We have to defend the school!"

  The boys began stirring.

  "Stop!" Ghaith's command was like a hammer on a nail head. The boys froze.

  "Lie down!"

  The boys fell flat. All but the sura boy, who trembled but remained up on his knees. Striding over to him, Ghaith met his defiance with a blazing glare. "Lie down!"

  The sura boy's lips worked fearfully around clenched teeth.

  "Lie down!"

  "Are you going to shoot me?"

  Ghaith had forgotten he was still carrying the Kalashnikov. He went over to the piled furniture and placed it on a desk.

  "See? You are not prisoners. I have no intention of shooting you in the back of the head while your face is on the floor. Not like others you've heard about, maybe even know. But you know what I will do if you don't obey me? I'll slap you so hard your father will mistake you for a pomegranate."

  "My father was killed fighting the infidels," the boy said bitterly. He looked around. "All of our fathers were."

  Orphans with a grudge, Ghaith thought angrily. Perfect weapons straight from the shelves in the misery department.

  "Your fathers were heroes, and you must live to sing their praises." He leaned down to the sura boy, who flinched under his gaze. "Isn't that right?"

  Slowly, the boy lowered himself back onto the floor.

  Ghaith heard a distinctive whine through the broken windows.

  "I'm going to step out for a moment to see how close the enemy is. If I don't come back, stay as you are."

  And pray the Americans don't toss a few grenades into the room before entering.

  He went to the front of the room and picked up a large white rag used to clean the chalk board, tucking it discreetly into his pocket before crossing back to the door.

  He stepped outside.

  He no longer heard the peculiar whine, but that might have been due to another flux of explosions north of the souk. He trudged through the muddy courtyard and stood out on the street. There was no one in sight, but that did not mean no one was looking. He took the rag out of his pocket and began waving it over his head. When neither American nor insurgent shot at him, he waved more vigorously.

  The mechanical whine returned. He scanned the sky and saw nothing but smoke. But the whining grew louder.

  There. The drone.

  He looked directly at it and its camera and flung the rag back and forth violently. The drone buzzed over him and disappeared beyond the schoolhouse. He lowered the rag to give his arm a rest.

  The deep rumbling of tanks shook the ground. These streets were too narrow for M-1's. The Americans must be using Bradleys. He was disappointed when the growling did not approach, but grinded in the direction of the river. Then a different type of engine grunted nearby. It stopped and two infantrymen poked their heads out from a side street. Ghaith raised the rag.

  "Good American boys!" he yelled.

  They stared at him.

  He tried to think of something to say that would take their minds off shooting him.

  "Hey, Yanks, want to fuck me?"

  Their looks of disgust told him he had probably missed the mark by a wide margin. One of them lifted his comm link.

  "We got one here that speaks English."

  "Maybe that's the only English he knows," the other grunt observed.

  "I speak the Queen's English very well," Ghaith shouted.

  "A queen!"

  "We got a fucking queen here! And he talks better than the Commander in Chief!"

  Well, why not? Placing one foot daintily forward, he raised the rag in one arm while lowering his head sideways, like a damsel surrendering herself to her fate.

  Several more soldiers passed the first two and took up a position behind the burned hulk of a car.

  "You understand English? Then lie down flat on your stomach, now!"

  "This is a madrasa," Ghaith said, raising his head and cocking it at the building behind him. "There are twenty-four boys inside. Please do not harm them."

  "Lie down! Spread your arms and legs!"

  Ghaith obeyed. The soldiers ran up, guns trained at his head. One of them reached down and flexcuffed him. Others cautiously entered the school house. A lieutenant trotted up and complained to a sergeant.

  "Kinda bunched up here."

  "Spread out, you bozos!"

  The lieutenant's comm link sputtered.

  "Haji is right," came a voice. "There's a bunch of kids in here sprawled out like pigeons."

  "Since when did pigeons sprawl?" the lieutenant said. "Are they all right?"

  "A few cuts and some teary eyes."

  The lieutenant broke contact and swore. "What am I supposed to do with them?"

  "Give them a heartfelt welcome to your bosom," said Ghaith, his face still on the road.

  Over the next quarter hour the soldiers checked the block while the lieutenant spoke to the drone controllers at Dreamland. Ghaith was pulled to his feet and stood against the school building. A guard watched him warily. Ghaith thought of pursing his lips in an air-kiss but chose to forgo that pleasure.

  Several Humvees pulled up and the boys were brought out. Ghaith was happy to see none of them were cuffed, a strange courtesy from the surly officer.

  "Better learn to count in English," said the lieutenant as the boys were piled in and on the vehicles. "We make twenty-three."

  "Please, let me look in the classroom. I need to see for myself. It's important. I am the missing boy's uncle."

  "You don't think you miscounted?"

  "I would have recognized my own nephew."

  "Uh-huh." The lieutenant appraised him. Then he appraised the camera crew dodging from one building to the next, working their way to the head of the column.

  "Al Jazeera," the sergeant said contemptuously. "Want us to take them out?"

  "I hope their camera isn't running," the lieutenant frowned. "Lip readers the world over would have a field day."

  "They already got our guys shooting a Haji in a mosque."

  "We are not responsible for misinterpretations." The lieutenant turned back to Ghai
th. "My men found three stiffs in the back room of the school. Did you have anything to do with that?"

  Ghaith shuffled his feet.

  "I've got a kit in the Humvee to test for gunpowder residue on your fingers."

  Ghaith was sorry to have killed those men, the teacher especially. He had no inherent belief in the insurgent cause, no admiration for the blind courage of the mujahideen. And if the teacher had had the best interests of his students at heart, he would have thrown up his hands and announced that everything he had taught was a lie, that there was no cause good enough to send children to their deaths. But the truth was these men had been intent on killing Americans, a people he was not very fond of at the moment. It had been a waste all round.

  "They were going to use those boys in the mortar crews, weren't they?" said the lieutenant, broaching Gaith's silence. "We found a shitload of 60 and 81-mm ordinance next to the dead men."

  Ghaith looked back at the building. "Alas, it was my doing."

  Warmed by the deed, as well as by the camera being focused in his direction, the lieutenant allowed his sensitivity training to kick in. He nodded at the sergeant.

  "Go ahead, let him see that there's no one left inside."

  "Cut his cuff?"

  "I wouldn't go that far."

  When Ghaith was taken into the classroom he noted that a soldier had written a profanity on the chalkboard, next to Mohammed's holy words on cleanliness. The man guarding Ghaith also saw it, and swore. He ran up to the board and used his sleeve to erase the slur.

  Meanwhile, Ghaith surveyed the rest of the classroom.

  The sura boy was missing.

  So was the suicide vest.

  Ari found it exceedingly annoying whenever he could not determine who his enemy was. This resulted in frequent annoyance. Currently, his list of potential adversaries felt as if it ran into several volumes of densely printed text. In truth, it was only a few pages, but that still presented him with several hundred people who might want him dead.

  In fact, there was no 'might' about it.

  Ari was beginning to feel his years and was no longer so quick to enter dangerous terrain without some form of backup. In the past, in similar situations, he had contacted his personal henchman in Montreal: Abu Jasim, a former double of Saddam Hussein who owed Ari his life, not to mention his pecker. However, as a result of recent events, Abu Jasim found it prudent to uproot his family from Longueuil to parts unknown. He could ask Karen for help, but the slammed door told him she was out of sorts and not inclined to assist him. He thought that Elmore Lawson could be more formidable than he appeared. Yet it was possible he was about the confront ISAF in the flesh. Ari did not want the detective busily filling in blanks about his past. That left only Ben Torson, who had helped Ari before and had a fair grasp on his true identity. He was a soldier, he was able, and he could be trusted. Now Ari had to find out if he would be willing.

  Ben had told him he had gotten a job slinging paint at the downtown Lowe's on Broad Street. Going downstairs to the basement, he went out the sliding door and peered through the trees into Howie Nottoway's yard. Howie was a compulsive yard-putterer. Constantly mulching wood or trimming ditches or replacing landscape timbers on his backyard terraced garden, Howie treated his property like some people treated their living rooms, determined to remove every last speck of out-of-place-ness. Ari would have admired him, except he had seen Howie shake his fist at a harsh winter blast that had loosened a roof shingle. He was a lunatic. But lunatics who had no ardent desire to slit your throat simply for disagreeing were merely eccentrics.

  And there he was, dragging a bagful of leaves across his lawn in the dead of winter. Where had he found the leaves? He had already raked his yard to death. Perhaps they had blown in from the adjoining woods, a few feeble leftovers from autumn. No matter. Ari raced upstairs and grabbed his coat and ran next door.

  "Howie!" Ari exclaimed, as if Howie was the last person he had expected to see in his own yard.

  Howie had been dragging a half-filled brown plastic leaf bag. Apparently thinking this made him look laggard, or unmanly, he whipped up the bag and swung it over his shoulder.

  "Ari!" he shouted, cracking a grin against an icy gust.

  "You're just the man I want to see."

  This seemed to reassure some deep-seated insecurity in Howie, whose grin became warm and real.

  "How's that?" he asked.

  "I need to know where Lowe's is."

  Howie beamed and dropped the bag as though it was a frivolous and unnecessary burden. He was inordinately pleased by any pleasantry between Ari and himself. As though Ari had forgiven him for breaking into his house and searching it, though the subject was never mentioned.

  "Three turns...no, four. Left on Beach Court, down Riverside, down Forest Hill and Semmes, get on Belvedere, left on Broad. A few blocks and you're there."

  Ari felt sympathy for the man. Too often, he had seen diplomats, officers or ordinary citizens nearly fall down with relief when Saddam Hussein or his sons evinced forgiveness for their actions. There was no surety, of course. A man forgiven one day might be tortured and executed the next. Iraqis lived in an emotional lottery, which (more than an embargo-enforced diet) did much to explain their gaunt faces and hollow physiques. Using this criterion, Ari found it hard to comprehend why there was so much fear in America. But there it was.

  "I am most grateful," he said to Howie, who would have preened had he not already taken up the bag.

  River Road was not really the straight line inferred by Howie's directions but a twisting two-way road that plunged and rose like waves from the James. Nonetheless, Ari treated it like the shortest distance between two points on a geometric diagram. It did not occur to him that the police might be so frivolous as to pull him over for reckless driving. There were far more serious crimes to attend to. He knew that for a fact.

  Crossing Lee Bridge was a visual treat. The James was far more vibrant than the brown, sluggish twins of Baghdad, the Tigris and Euphrates, choked with debris and bodies. Of course, Ari and Abu Jasim had made their own contribution to Richmond's channel cats, but that particular body must be far downriver by now—and much the worse for wear.

  Once over the bridge, he passed the Virginia War Memorial. He was about to make a U-turn to go back for a look when he spotted a sign for Hollywood Cemetery. This was where Elmore Lawson had taken his boy years ago, where those who had fallen were very resistant to getting up again. He turned left. Cutting across two blocks of what had once been a blue collar neighborhood, with houses a hundred years old or more, he came to the cemetery entrance. Several bearded men who reminded Ari of Taliban sentries were standing next to an adjoining stone mason shop that specialized in grave markers. They were being watched by a uniformed police officer who appeared both amused and wary. Ari stopped next to the three men, who glowered down at him. He lowered his window.

  "Is this the resting place of the great war hero, Jefferson Davis?" he asked.

  Taken aback, the man holding a Confederate flag lowered the butt of the staff to the ground. He was shivering. In tattered gray, their uniforms provided little protection against the cold.

  "Who wants to know?"

  "Only a visitor from another land."

  "No kidding."

  "Since my arrival, I have heard of two heroes, Jefferson Davis and Frank Drebin. Would Mr. Drebin happen to be buried here, also?"

  The re-enactors exchanged glances, their bushy eyebrow twisting in confusion. The flag man looked at the cop and decided niceness was the best policy. For the interim.

  "Yeah, President Davis is buried here, up next to the river."

  "Was he every bit as great as they say he was?" He gave the uniforms a meaningful glance. "Is that why you are standing here in the blistering cold? Are you an honor guard?"

  "Confederate States Constitution Day. And yes, he was a great man."

  "I'm not standing out here for him," groused one of his companions. "He wasn't so terri
fic."

  "What do you mean?" countered the flag man.

  "Well, he lost the dang war, for one."

  "All right," said the flag man, losing some of his Southern twang. "He had some issues."

  "That Varina was a foxy issue," the third man said, wiggling his eyebrows.

  "Get serious," barked the second man. "We're here because the Confederate flag represents pride, not prejudice."

  "Jefferson was a great man, for all his..."

  "'Issues'? There was only one loon loonier, and together they busted the South."

  "Don't bust my chops unless you want the favor returned."

  The next thing Ari knew, they forgot about him and his dark complexion and began arguing about some fellow called Braxton Bragg. This alerted the policeman to imminent trouble. He nudged his radio, as though cautioning the men against letting the debate get out of hand.

  Leaving them to their arcane scholarship, Ari drove through the entrance. A guard stood in a small parking lot across from the gothic-style building that held the cemetery office. He was staring up the hill, a worried expression on his face. Ari pulled up next to him and asked the same question he had asked the flag bearer.

  "Sure, sure...best just to look at the map." He nodded over his shoulder. Ari stepped out and walked over to a plaque set in a boulder almost half the size of his car. Etched in bronze was a map of Hollywood Cemetery, with prominent internees numbered and footnoted. John Tyler, Ellen Glasgow, Fitzhugh Lee, James Monroe, George Pickett, James Branch Cabell, Douglas Freeman…. He located Davis and picked out his route.

  "Is there trouble brewing up there?" the guard asked. Rather than take his hands out of pockets, he pointed by nodding beyond the bars of the tall, iron wrought fence.

  "I think those men are too cold to desire a fight," Ari observed.

  "It's too cold to be standing out there in the first place." The guard shook his head. "Pesky re-enactors."

  "Re-enactors?"

  "Dressed up like they're part of the Army of Northern Virginia. Usually they wait for summer and reenact battles at one of the historical fields around here, but every so often you run into a group that wants to make a point."

  "Which is?"