They would stand into the headlights and empty their Schmeissers into the radiator and windshield, then attempt to duck below the road to avoid the grenades’ shrapnel. Saba rechecked the road and debated her decisions. Experience was a hard teacher and she had been well schooled, had learned to be far more careful and better prepared, but her new Iraqi superiors wanted action at any cost, wanted blood on the sword for their orations in the mosque—
Engine whine. Louder. Close, the gears grinding. Headlights washed the rutted road two turns down the canyon’s face.
Saba exhaled, patted Murad’s shoulder, walked to midroad, and shouldered the weapon. The windshield was hers. The English soldier or conscript behind it would die without trial. She would likely die as well and felt the emptiness and adrenaline that accompanied these moments.
Headlights beamed into the sky, then made the turn and blinded her. She fired thirty-two rounds. The truck’s windscreen disintegrated. Twenty more banged from Murad, shredding the truck’s hood and radiator. The truck charged forward. Saba jumped toward the abyss and the bumper missed her. A blinding white explosion flattened her. Shrapnel and fire ripped overhead. She clawed into the road. Gunfire erupted down grade behind the curve where the arms truck would be. Saba rolled to the road’s cliffside edge. Everything was on fire—the explosion far too massive. She sucked a breath, ejected the drum, and slammed another. More gunfire below. Trap. The Iraqi king, or those he trusted, had set this. The driver she’d just killed would be an Arab tricked into his job of driving a bomb. The burning hulk of the truck bomb blocked the curve and illuminated her section of road. Murad and Safiy were in pieces. The arms truck would be English special soldiers or Haganah, and swarming up the road toward her.
MOVE.
Saba scrambled for the cliff she’d descended moments ago. Higher ground. From there she could support Khalid and Jul down grade between the two curves, if they were still alive. She reached a shadowed ledge above the precipice. The second truck was visible below, undamaged three hundred feet before the curve. Nine men stood the road, none in uniform. They slow-scanned the cliffs and searched the road’s edges. Khalid and Jul were prone, their mangled bodies illuminated in the headlights. She swallowed hard, but dead was better than captured.
Five of the men approached the rock face that hid her. She scrambled ten feet higher and ran out of handholds. Two men climbed on her left. She dropped toward them in the dark, then edged right and climbed higher. Marl chunks bounced down the face. A man yelled in Hebrew, then another.
Haganah or Irgun.
More yelling from men Saba could no longer see. She spidered up the rock, the Schmeisser slung over her back. The militiamen were close. Her fingers bled on the rocks; she was panting and almost to the ledge she and the partisans had originally occupied. A last lunge upward and she was over. Saba clawed, rolled, found the two grenades left for this purpose, pulled the pin on one, counted, and dropped it.
The explosion shattered the dark. A man was screaming when she dropped the second grenade. She huddled until it exploded, then ran night-blind toward a barren hill. The hill hid five camels; four would run without riders. If she could make the escape position, the partisans waiting there could encircle the Haganah chasing her and kill them in their own trap. To know which of her new Iraqi commanders had betrayed the partisans, she would have to survive this chase. Saba ran behind the hill, turned four camels loose, and mounted the fifth. This was her desert; these mountains were hers. She rode hard into both, heart open to any outcome.
SITRA ISLAND, BAHRAIN
CHAPTER 5
July, 1936
Hot—no, strike that. Really, really hot—North Texas if there were two suns and more tent preachers. Eddie wiped his forehead and face. And salty. Loud, too, as if most of the old Spindletop oilfield was being erected here on a one-day calendar. England’s heavily armed Royal Marines glared at everything that moved, hard-jawed fellows who looked rough enough to police most of Texas on a bad day. The “Arab Revolt” was a good five hundred miles of desert away, but nothing here looked or acted like that was enough. For sure, Floyd and Benny could use a few of these guys.
Eddie strained to hear Foreman Bill Reno’s drawl over the screech and clatter. Reno was explaining what it was like to build a refinery in the middle of nowhere using drunken fuckin’ Irishmen and illiterate East Indians. Best Eddie could decipher, Bill Reno was behind schedule, didn’t approve of young men on contract from Chicago consuming time he didn’t have, and had zero interest in decoding what the papers in Eddie’s hand would explain was the reason.
“Consulting fucking engineer, my ass.” Foreman Reno spit tobacco juice on his floor. “College boy no fucking less.”
Bill Reno put a small hand in Eddie’s face before Eddie could answer and told the Irishman behind Eddie to move his ass out of the trailer and onto the crane or go the fuck home and sing limericks. Reno reconnected with Eddie’s eyes and asked what the fuck Eddie wanted. Eddie showed him the papers again, suggesting Mr. Reno might want to read them this time—the first part for sure and maybe the last page, the one with the signature.
Bill Reno seemed surprised, bordering on wary, and not laughing. He took the papers. “Where you from, sonny?”
“Oklahoma.”
“Too stupid to find Bakersfield?”
Eddie stiffened. His family wasn’t going to California. Eddie knew the risk but was ten thousand miles from Texas and said it anyway. “Got lost on the Jacksboro Highway.”
Bill Reno paused again, longer this time, his eyes taking in all six feet of Eddie Owen, the burn marks at his temple, the scarred knuckles and thickened nose, then took the papers and read only the signature. Reno glanced up, then down at Eddie’s worn Wellington boots, then the signature on the papers again. “Jacksboro Highway, huh? Down there slummin’ with your college chummies?”
Eddie added an unspoken Fuck you to the respect in his posture.
Reno said, “You know Pappy Kirkwood then, and Sally Rand, up there to the Four Deuces?”
“Yes, sir, I do.”
“And Floyd—”
“Floyd Merewether: two pistols, both nickel-plated. And I know his boss, Benny.”
The foreman’s shoulders responded to Benny Binion’s name.
“I’ve been to college, Mr. Reno, but I’ve been to work, too. And so you know, my family isn’t going to Bakersfield.”
Bill Reno wrinkled the papers in his hand, his eyes wrinkling the same—then closed the gap between he and Eddie so yelling louder than the din wouldn’t be necessary. “Floyd Merewether like to drive?”
“Floyd prefers to shoot people. Fellows like me do Benny’s driving.”
Bill Reno leaned into a drafting table stacked with dog-eared folders and shook his head. “Things so damn bad Benny Binion’s down to college-boy rumrunners?” Reno glanced at Eddie’s hands again, the scars and the burns. “Bring any a Fort Worth with you?”
“Two fifths of JTS Brown. Your name on both of ’em. Sir.”
The weathered foreman fought a grin, the dry skin stretching wrinkles grooved deep from frowning. “Guess one of Benny’s boys can stay.” Reno shoved the papers back into Eddie’s hand, then pointed to a round-shouldered, almost-black Arab robed in some sort of traditional dress. “Wander some with Hassim here. Then you and me’ll have a drink at the shift change, talk about home a sentence or two. See what the fuck you’re really doing here in God’s country.” Reno squinted at him. “And don’t start no shit with the Limeys or the Irish. Rest of us got honest work to do.”
They shook. And Eddie took the Hassim tour—dodging heavy construction vehicles belching exhaust and others with folded-open engine compartments and shirtless men banging wrenches. Burlap-belted material pallets were stacked everywhere and made the hardpan work yard part maze, part obstacle course. Towering above everything were the refinery’s main tank components until the main tank disappeared into the brown dust cloud hanging at thirty feet. The dust cloud mu
ltiplied the heat, suffocating everyone under it.
Closer to the refinery’s core, gangs of men heaved and hammered in the spiderweb of pipes and valves and iron rigging. Grease and rich-burned gasoline fouled what passed for air. Welding torches whooshed and married molten metal under billows of acrid smoke. Oily sweat was the best part of the odor. Eddie noticed two armed Arab guards following them, their expressions almost contempt. The one making hand gestures seemed to be mocking Hassim. Eddie asked who they were.
“BAPCO.” Hassim looked elsewhere. “Bahrain Petroleum Company.”
The Arabs’ leather-holstered sidearms rode high on their hips, hanging from gun belts cinched across flowing white robes. Both guards moved with affected importance. Eddie wondered out loud, “We . . . ah, need Royal Marines and pistol guards to build a refinery?”
Hassim squinted. He seemed confused for an Arab who spoke English a minute ago.
Eddie asked him directly.
Hassim checked the guards and told his boots, “There are classes in the desert, as in the West. There is also trouble. BAPCO is the partner with the American oil companies. These guards are Bahrainis, blood relatives to the Shaikh, Hamad bin Isa al Khalifa. I . . . you are not. They protect the Shaikh interests . . . and England’s. Bahrain is a British protectorate. These Arabs wear King George’s guns.”
“Protection from who?”
Hassim glanced toward a knot of five rough-skinned Irishmen in cuffed denim jeans and yellow hardhats with Sinn Féin scrawled on the sides. They crowded and yelled at a bearded, midsize Irishman also wearing a hardhat. His hat was white with nothing written on it.
Hassim whispered, “Mr. Ryan Pearce. He is the line boss for the Irish.”
Mr. Ryan Pearce’s feet were set wide and his jaw jutted forward into the five-against-one argument like he might fight. His hands gave the opposite impression, resting nonchalantly on his hips. He cocked his head back to hear over the din and his hardhat appeared about to fall. Pearce’s left hand steadied his hat; he glanced toward Eddie. Could’ve been a smile there—
Pearce’s right hand exploded into the nearest head. That angry Irishman went down. Two fast left hooks cracked the second man’s ribs and eye socket. He crumpled. The remaining combatants stepped back. Eddie would’ve stepped back, too. It wasn’t hard to recognize real good hand speed and plenty of power. The bearded Mr. Pearce didn’t look angry, just busy. Two KOs, three punches total.
“Asses to work, lads, I’ll look after your mates. You’re buildin’ a refinery for the Yanks, not the Brits, and I’ll hear no more of the politics on a man’s work hours.”
They backed away. Hassim snuck a glance at the Bahraini guards trailing him and Eddie. Hassim’s posture, almost a cower, seemed to apologize. He told Eddie’s shoulder, “Mr. Ryan Pearce. From Belfast; 1925 All-Europe Middleweight Champion.”
Eddie nodded to the bearded Irishman. Ryan Pearce saluted two casual fingers, then reached for the first man he’d dropped. The man staggered to his feet, swaying while Pearce dusted him from shoulder to chest. Pearce spoke to the man’s ear and smoothed the matted hair, then stepped back, allowing room between them. The man rubbed at glazed eyes. Pearce buried a boot in the man’s groin, found a length of board he liked, and pounded the man into the dirt, savage blows that continued until Eddie charged and shoulder-blocked Pearce eight feet back. Pearce stumbled over his own feet but did not go down. Pearce leaned on the board and sized up Eddie, his clothes, his white skin. “And who would you be, lad, to be in my business?”
Hassim jumped between them. “Please, sir, Mr. Pearce. He is Mr. Reno’s guest—”
“The man’s done,” blurted Eddie. “You can’t . . . you can’t just beat him to death.”
Pearce dropped the board, retrieved his white hardhat, and walked calmly into the maze of pipes and tanks.
Hassim spun to Eddie. “This is very bad. An unfavorable man to provoke, Mr. Ryan Pearce.”
Eddie said, “No shit,” and glanced at the three British Royal Marines with both hands on their rifles but doing nothing for the two unconscious men on the ground. “C’mon, let’s get these boys some help.”
The remainder of the tour was less entertaining but no less troubling. Funny how the job counselors at OU’s engineering school had declined to mention the foreign intrigue aspect of the career. The amount of work being performed by the throng of workers could have been completed by half as many men. The Irish were organized in ten-man work gangs, the East Indians in great blobs of brown humanity. The East Indians were achieving more, albeit at the cost of materials disappearing into their dirty tunics and pants. The Indians’ line bosses seemed to notice but not care.
Eddie slow-walked past the section of the completed refinery that he’d be modifying. His stomach fluttered. This was the real deal, “chance of a lifetime” and all that. Gulp. His section had much less activity but no fewer guards. The new Ford trucks were there and waiting, outfitted with the latest arc stud welders and their constant-voltage generators. The good stuff, the giant leap from rivets and boilerplate to oxyacetylene welding to electric arc to arc stud. Eddie asked how long ago the section had been completed.
Hassim furrowed his forehead. “Two months.”
“Been tested?”
Hassim checked beyond both his shoulders, then behind his back. “Who are you to ask this?” It was the most direct the Arab had been.
Eddie blinked confusion—maybe the section wouldn’t run. A ten-thousand-barrel refinery of this design would be tested in sections, then retested, then all the sections brought online together after they were proven. Kept down the explosions and rivers of fire. Killed a lot fewer people.
“That’s my job, Hassim. What I’m doing here. Has it been tested or not?”
“Yes. There are problems, small but—”
“Like what?” Eddie faced him. “Show me.”
Hassim stepped back, not forward.
Eddie looked around and saw no threat. “C’mon, show me.”
Hassim shook his head, some nervousness affecting his speech. “I am not an engineer; I cannot show. Mr. Reno must discuss this.”
“Need a hand there, lad?”
Eddie turned to the soft Irish lilt and stepped back fast. Ryan Pearce was at a respectful distance, the white hardhat covering his left hand. Eddie stuttered, “N-no; well, yeah, actually I do.”
“That’d be my pleasure, then, wouldn’t it.” He took two steps to Eddie and extended his right hand. “Ryan Pearce, Belfast, Republic of Ireland.”
“Eddie Owen, Cushing, Oklahoma.” The Irishman’s grip was strong but reasonable, a workingman’s hand. “Nice to meet you, Ryan.”
“And yourself.”
“Sorry about the, ah, intrusion.” Eddie nodded back to where they’d met.
Pearce smiled. “I’ll grant you one, Mr. Owen. But that’s all it’ll be. You mind your flock; I’ll mind mine.”
Eddie nodded a wary okay and angled his head at the gauges next to his shoulder. “This ready to go?”
“Right as rain last I heard.” The Irishman smiled at Hassim. “A flap with the cooling tubes, but nothin’ to fret. Be fixing it in the morning if we’ve the parts.”
“How about the rest of the place? We on schedule?”
Ryan Pearce blinked dust out of his eyes and licked it off his lips. “And who might you be, Eddie Owen, if you don’t mind my askin’?”
Eddie explained the maintenance modifications, start-up function agreed upon as his cover. Ryan Pearce nodded while looking away and in both directions. Royal Marines watched from a distance; BAPCO guards watched from closer. “We’re getting there, we are. Be movin’ to the next’on soon.”
“You build these monsters for a living?”
“That I do, Eddie Owen, that I do. Spain’s Tenerife be next, off the coast of Morocco. Be pleased to buy you a pint in the canteen this evenin’. Bring yourself in; you can tell the lads about the Alamo in Oklahoma.” He patted Hassim on the shoulder the
way a father would a favored child, then stepped into the spaghetti of pipes.
Hassim smiled and nodded until Ryan Pearce was a troublesome memory and the closest BAPCO guard had quit inspecting their conversation. “You must be very careful. There are too many secrets here and little safety. Insha’Allah, God willing, we build this plant and move on to better camps . . . if there are such places.”
The heat dropped twenty degrees when the sun finally set, but Eddie still had to wipe sweat out of his eyes. He stepped into the large plank-floor canteen with the same uneasy respect he offered a Fort Worth roadhouse. Could’ve been one, too, if Texas built them with army tent poles, green canvas roofs, and the Irish had settled Tarrant County instead of Ireland. Naked lightbulbs were strung overhead above the din, hazy and half shrouded in cigar smoke. The Irish fiddles were faster than Bob Wills, and men jig-dancing with each other was new. The grit, sweat, and beery humor gone edgy wasn’t.
Ten of His Majesty’s Royal Marines filled the tent’s farthest corner, out of uniform but all with sidearms and none with their backs exposed. The Marines occupied two tables, both cluttered with empty bottles like each Marine had been at it awhile. The empty bottles hadn’t added revelry to their demeanor. Eddie smiled. World travel: gotta love it. At the opposite corner thirty feet away, a glot of East Indians was three deep over and around their long table, yelling and jumping, intent on a gambling game of some type.
Bill Reno waved at Eddie from the near corner on Eddie’s left. Reno’s corner was just beyond the smoky glare of naked lightbulbs. His three empty tables were separated from the saloon’s dust and fray by a row of fifty-five-gallon drums and a drooping rope gate. A bottle of J.T.S. Brown was his centerpiece. Eddie stepped over the rope and added one of the bottles he’d promised.
“Compliments of the great state of Texas, Mr. Foreman.”
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