Cold Snap

by J. Clayton Rogers

  "I have grave suspicions about you," Ari said, reaching for his vibrating phone. "But I think we'll have to wait to discuss them."

  "I've got two and maybe three towelheads moving in the bushes beside the road," came Lawson's voice on the phone. "Coming my way."

  "I'll be there," said Ari. He went back down the hall and grabbed Ahmad. "Have you stopped your weeping?"

  Ahmad gave him a belligerent look. "Hey, I—"

  "Come."

  He followed Ari into the front room. Ari pointed at Mohammed. "If that one moves, shoot him." He pointed at Ethan. "If that one talks, shoot him." He lifted his phone and called Ben.

  "Can you see men moving in the field towards the road?"

  "I saw them," came a voice strained by effort. "The house is in the way. I'm switching base."

  "Don't forget, Lawson is on the other side of the bushes. Make sure of your target."

  "Okay, I'll tell them."

  "Tell who?"

  "Later," said Ben, the word fraught with effort. He rang off.

  Stepping over the blasted remains of the front door, Ari surveyed the turnaround, saw no one and took a deep breath. He burst out of the house at full tilt, sprinting up the driveway thirty yards before digging his heels in the gravel just out of sight of Bruce Turner's pickup. There was an irritable protest overhead. Turning his eyes briefly upward, he saw that the crow had taken up station in a bare tree by the lane. It leaned in Ari's direction, cawing loudly. Certainly, it was in the pay of the Chaldeans, Ari thought.

  He pushed forward carefully. If a gunfight broke out, Lawson would be shooting in this direction. And Ari wasn't sure where Lawson had placed himself. He assumed the detective would stay by Turner's truck, where he could intercept anyone returning to the terrorists' cargo van—or anyone who took it into his head to hotwire the Sprinter. But he would move back if the Chaldeans outflanked him, knowing how easily they could take him from behind.

  Staying close to the bushes, he made his way up the long curve. He stopped when he saw someone standing in the middle of the lane.

  A young man, almost a boy, was staring straight ahead.

  "That's it, you stay right there," came Lawson's voice.

  Ari edged ahead until he could see Turner's truck. Lawson stood braced against the panel, the gun aimed at the boy in the road. His backward glance told Ari he was fully aware that the other Chaldeans must be working their way through the field to take him from behind. Ari made a curt gesture to catch his attention. Lawson nodded, relieved, but stiffened again when the young man took a step forward.

  "I'll shoot," Lawson warned, his voice shaking.

  The young man shrugged and took another step.

  "It's always the young ones," Lawson complained. "Too stupid to know better."

  Was there a suicide vest under the boy's coat? Ari couldn't tell. The coat was bulky. It was also bitterly cold. Suicide bombers came in all ages. So did stupidity.

  But they were dealing with the man before them, certainly young, certainly not very bright, and definitely behaving like someone wearing a bomb. It might be empty bravado, a show to distract Lawson from his companions.

  Another step forward. Ari took aim at the back of the young man's head. He had left his gloves in the Sprinter and his fingers were freezing. His attention was divided as he looked for movement on the other side of the truck.

  Lawson must have heard something with his remaining ear. He shifted a few inches.

  "Why do you want to do this, boy?" he called out. His wound and frozen lips mangled his words, but they were clear enough. "We're not in Iraq. This isn't a war zone."

  "The world is a war zone!" the boy exclaimed.

  "Is that it? You want to die for Allah? Or are you scoring points for your gang buddies? Those aren't God's men you're hanging around with. They're just thugs. I wouldn't sprain a finger for them. How old are you, anyway? Eighteen? Seventeen?"

  Why was Lawson yacking on like this? Ari wondered. He could be ambushed at any moment. It was as if he was tempting the Chaldeans closer. He flicked the barrel of the Glock, letting Lawson know he could ready to take out the boy. Lawson shook his head. Gritting his teeth, Ari moved slowly to the other side of the lane for a better view behind the pickup. He saw movement and bared his teeth at Lawson.

  The young man took another step.

  "Take a good look at me, boy," said Lawson. "Someone even younger than you did this to me. Was it worth it, turning me into this lump? It's not the dead you want to study. It's...this..." He raised his coat sleeve, exposing the prosthetic hand. "And this..." He pulled back his scarf.

  "You were in Iraq?" asked the young man.

  "Yes. That's where my country sent me."

  "And this is where I have been sent," said the young man, advancing another step.

  "Well, boy...it's your call..."

  The bushes beyond the pickup rattled and three men shuffled onto the lane, guns lowered. At the same moment, Lawson dropped his Berretta, grabbed hold of the truck's handle, and yanked the tailgate.

  Bruce Turner's pit bulls had been remarkably silent during all of this, as if anticipating the moment for vengeance was at hand. They exploded off the truck bed with insane intensity.

  "Shit!" Ari cried out, and ran towards the tree, thinking to join the crow. But when he heard no canine panting at his heels, he stopped and turned around.

  They must have recognized Bruce's killer, because all but one lit out after the three men from the bushes. There was a shout of horror as the hounds went for their throats. They managed a couple of shots at the dogs, then turned and broke back into the field, hotly pursued. But Killer stayed put, not a foot from the young man, staring up at his face, daring him to make the slightest move.

  Ari was not overly fond of dogs, especially killer dogs, but he took the chance and ran up to the young man.

  "Hello," he said.

  The young man, his face transformed by sudden terror, slowly swiveled his head. Ari clipped him on the chin. He went down like a sack of oats.

  Killer gave a dismissive sniff and took off through the bushes. Sighing with relief, Ari leaned down and pulled open the young man's coat. He briefly considered his prospects if he put the exposed suicide vest on the market. What was that computer site called that Ahmad had spoken about? 'Ebay'?

  "Wouldn't you like to be like them?"

  Ari raised his eyes to Lawson, limping forward and nodding towards the field.

  "Pure conviction. The dogs, I mean. They know what they want, and they go for it." He cocked his head when a particularly loud set of screams crossed the harrowed field. "They got one of them good."

  Ari went through the bushes. Three dogs had downed one of the Chaldeans, leaving the other two men to scamper blindly for the treeline. Killer bore in and joined them. Without a doubt, the victim was the one who had pulled the trigger on Bruce. The rest could wait.

  Ari was alarmed when a file of a dozen or so men came racing across the field from the opposite direction, Ben in the lead. He took a few more steps towards the tangled mass of dogs tearing at the downed man. Then he stopped. He didn't particularly want to get closer.

  Ben came up, panting hard. "Ari! We have to stop—"

  "You want to shoot dogs?" Ari asked him.

  But one of the strangers shouted at the dogs in what must have been some kind of universal fang language. The pit bulls did not draw back, but their intensity seemed to lessen. Several men joined the first, speaking the same language and kicking the dogs away from their thrashing, sobbing victim. They looked down at the man and shook their heads.

  "Son, you're lucky you still have a throat," one of them observed.

  "Let them have his throat," said Ari. "He killed their master."

  "That guy we met at the park?" Ben said. His attention went back to the two men running over the corn stubble. "Them, too? Should we take them out?"

  The use of the plural brought Ari back to the newcomers.

  "Oh, Ari..
.I ran into these guys," Ben explained. He nodded at the nearest one, hefting a Remington in the crook of his arm. All of them had hunting rifles. Some, like the R-15, were semiautomatic, which Ari thought mildly unsportsmanlike. "I forgot your name."

  "Moses Gingham," said the man, giving a small and not entirely friendly wave. He stared at the Glock in Ari's hand. "President of the Purple Sow Gun Club."

  "They've had their eye on this place for a month or more," Ben informed Ari. "They saw some suspicious activity—"

  "If it talks like an alien, looks like an alien and smells like an alien—" Moses began.

  "Hey, I think this guy's a goner," said one of the hunters, looking down at the man mauled by the dogs. He pulled away the man's arm. "Oooh, shit. He doesn't have a throat, after all."

  Another hunter raised his arm in the direction of the men near the trees. "Should we take out the rest before they run to cover? Might be tricky prying them out of the woods."

  Ben shrugged. "Ari?"

  "I wouldn't shoot them unless they made a threatening gesture. Then, of course, I would blow their brains out. These are dangerous assholes."

  The hunters nodded, suddenly blind to Ari's complexion.

  "Now you're talking!"

  "Shucks," another hunter complained. "They made the trees."

  Moses turned to the dogs. Ignoring the blood dripping from Killer's muzzle, he patted it on the head. "You say the master's dead?"

  "I'm afraid so," said Ari.

  "Then I guess he wouldn't mind us taking these fine animals."

  "He's in no condition to protest," Ari agreed.

  Moses shouted something that Ari couldn't make out. Or maybe it was a bark. The four dogs' ears pricked up and they joined the men as they began trotting across the field. As they passed Ari he caught the scent of beer. Lots of it.

  "Is that a wolf pack or a man-pack?" Ari wondered out loud.

  "More like a twelve-pack. You don't have to worry about them, they won't say anything about us," Ben assured him. "They won't say anything about anything."

  "Can you be sure of that?" Ari asked.

  "They're trespassing, they're drunk, they're hunting out of season, they're hunting..."

  "Humans."

  "There's no license for that," Ben agreed.

  But Ari accepted Ben's reasoning at face value. In Iraq, people disappeared every day. By the hundreds.

  Ben was tentatively jabbing his finger towards the woods. "You don't mind..."

  "You want to join them?"

  "It's been a long time since I..."

  "You haven't lost your eye," said Ari. "You eliminated that man out back with a very nice shot. Thank you."

  "Yeah," said Ben, introspective. But only for a moment. "He was a scumbag, right? He was going to kill you and Ahmad. Anyway, you don't need me anymore, do you? I should go after those two terrorists."

  "I thought you intended to become a vegetarian."

  "I'm not going to eat them."

  Ari shrugged. "I think we can deal with the clean-up ourselves."

  Ben took off, Ari's loaner in hand. At the moment, he looked very much like someone who regretted leaving the service. Perhaps he would sign up again. One day, Ari might receive a post card via the U.S. Military Postal Service from the occupation forces in Pyongyang or Tehran.

  He found Lawson wiping the side of Bruce's truck with a handkerchief.

  "You touch anything inside the house? You'd better take care of it."

  Ari reached under his coat and took out an Umo Lorenzo cotton handkerchief.

  "What a shame, spoiling a nice piece of fabric like that," Lawson said, but did not offer to loan Ari his own.

  "I'm drawing a bead on you," Abu Jasim announced as Ari crossed the turnaround.

  "How marvelous your English has become," Ari said, crouching next to him. "Have you taken an American mistress?"

  "No, a Canadian beer heiress in Westmount," said Abu Jasim, moaning. Ari would not have been surprised if it was true.

  "You should not grieve your wife so," Ari admonished.

  "My wives accept it."

  Frowning, Ari studied Abu Jasim's bloodied trousers. "You'll be drowsing on your stomach for some time."

  "Give me a break from all these relaxing vacations in America."

  "I'll come back with Ahmad."

  Inside the house, he found Ahmad sobbing over Mohammed, who was rolling in agony on the floor.

  "I had to kick him again," said Ahmad. "He was trying to—"

  "Yes," said Ari, redirecting Ahmad's handgun towards the wall. When he raised his hand Ahmad flinched, but Ari merely patted him on the shoulder.

  Mohammed looked a little too lively for his liking, so Ari kicked him in the shoulder. Ignoring the howl of agony, he walked over to Ethan, still bound, still staring.

  "Now we shall talk."

  But not yet, as it turned out. Once again, Ari heard mewling from the room down the hall. Thinking he might finally have a new cat—but not entirely sure—he raised the Glock and trod as silently as possible across the antique floorboards. He pressed his ear to the door. The weird whining sounded neither human nor animal—not even mechanical. It was otherworldly, like a micro-planet keening for home.

  Ari swept the door open.

  Bound to a headboard was Sung-Soo Rhee's nephew. The gag in his mouth was cinched by a headband. He had managed to tongue the gag out halfway, so that it dangled like a misshapen sausage over his chin. Seeing Ari, his whine grew louder.

  "Don't you recognize me as your savior?" Ari complained, stepping forward and yanking the headband down around the young man's neck. The gag dropped out. "Or do all Assyrians look the same to you?"

  Ari took unseemly pride in the murderous past of his alleged Assyrian ancestors, who had the unfortunately proclivity for boiling enemies in oil. He thought this self-regard must show in his face, because the young man's keening grew more shrill—though at least now it sounded roughly human.

  When he worked off the rope the boy slumped forward.

  "Are you all right?" Ari inquired. "Can you walk?"

  With a shriek that rattled Ari's teeth, the young man bounded up and out the door. Ari chased him as far as the back door.

  "Wait!" he shouted as the former captive took off across the field. "There are mad dogs out there! And worse people!"

  He was not heeded. Ari did not concern himself too much with the escape, suspecting it was temporary. As fast as that boy could run—and he had the blood of an Olympian sprinter in him—he always ended up getting caught. Everything depended on what one did at the finish line.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Mohammed sat up and glared across the room at Ethan.

  "Reserve your scowl for the mirror," said Ari. "Your troubles started long before Ethan hacked into A-Zed. Tell me now how you met Gail and the others, how you joined the radical jihadists and ended up in Nineveh."

  "It's a long story," said Mohammed bitterly. "The cops will be here before I can begin to finish."

  "This is a very isolated area," Ari observed. "You chose it well. I don't think we'll be disturbed for a while."

  "It doesn't matter..." The young man found it difficult to beat back the tears of grief and physical pain. "Gail's dead."

  "She died trying to kill an innocent man."

  "You don't understand..."

  "As you have said before. I admit finding it difficult. For example, the way you killed Abu ibn Abd Al-Samad on the road to Mosul was...quite fanatical."

  "We were told he had to suffer for what he had done."

  "And what did he do?"

  "Well...nothing. He had to suffer for what he was planning to do." Mohammed twisted his battered face up to Ari. "I bet you know all of this already. You're just playing me along."

  "Why would I do such a thing?" Ari asked, pulling up a kitchen chair and easing his sore body onto its thin cushion. "I assure you I am darkness visible."

  "Yeah? The Chaldeans called you 'the Godless
One'. Gail said she had seen a drawing that looked a lot like you. She asked around. There's a rumor that one of Saddam's old henchmen is in the States working for the CIA. They say he has a photographic memory."

  "Ha!" Ari mocked. "A man with such a memory would not be as confused as I find myself now."

  "OK, then, we met at American University in DC. Hasan and Quassim went because they have a large proportion of Arabs and Arab-Americans in the student body. You wouldn't guess it. I mean, the place was set up by the Methodists."

  "Oh?" said Ari, squirming at the thought of Pastor Grainger and his (to Ari's thinking) dreary sermons.

  "It's not really religious or anything, although maybe it was in the beginning. It's over a hundred years old."

  "Al-Mustansiriya University in Baghdad was founded in 1227," Ari observed, a little boastfully.

  "OK, they've got a little bit of a head start," Mohammed shrugged. "I went because I majored in Journalism. AU has an academic partnership with the Ecole Superieure de Journalisme de Paris."

  "Ah!" Ari smiled, turning a gloatful eye on Ahmad, who was leaning against the wall near Ethan. "That sounds much more interesting than knitting pantaloons!"

  "Say what?" said Ahmad, but Ari had already turned back to Mohammed.

  "But it was Gail who was the real gungho student," Mohammed continued. "Big time volunteer, became a member of the Student Union Board. She helped arrange a concert with Ghostface Killah."

  "Really?" Ahmad brightened. "Cool."

  Ari was discomfited by this bit of cultural recognition, which he did not recognize at all. Young people the world over shared secret icons that bonded them in strange societies. Nothing good could come from it. 'Ghostface Killah'? That certainly sounded ominous.

  "Be that as it may..."

  "Sure," said Mohammed. "Well...I had some relatives back in Iraq. We wanted to get them out. We went to all the organizations that help refugees: the Refugee Admissions Program at the State Department, IRAP, the List Project, some others. They were willing to help, but they were all swamped—you can imagine. It would take time, and we didn't have much of that."

  "So you went to A-Zed."

  "We didn't know anything about them at that point. We'd heard that the Chaldeans had a pipeline. Actually, it was Gail who found out. I'm sorry she did. Bunch of Assyrian assholes..."