by Glen Craney
“Lady, just hand them over,” one of the goons said. “Nobody gets hurt.”
“Take another step,” she said, shifting her eyes toward the drainpipe, “and I’ll drop them!”
The assailants froze. Their leader lowered his voice as if trying to calm her down, “Don’t do anything you’ll regret.”
“You let us go,” Marly said. “You get the stones.”
The head thug motioned for her to display the rocks. “I gotta know you’re on the up and up.”
She flashed the fragments in her fist and counted them for him like a bank teller. “All seven. Now, give me your cell phone.”
Cas muttered under his breath, “What the hell are you doing?
“Just shut up,” she ordered him with set teeth. “I’m damn tired of being tossed around like your own personal beanbag.”
Cas’s eyes rounded. “Do not drop those rocks down that pipe.”
The head goon pleaded, “Lady, listen to your boyfriend and—”
“You call him my boyfriend again,” she shouted in a rage, “and I’m going to send these damn things into Freon Hell!”
“Take it easy,” the goon begged, risking a step closer. “I can understand you not wanting to be associated with this dirtbag. You sound like a reasonable businesswoman. Let’s talk a deal.”
She held the largest fragment over the pipe. “I’m done talking! Giving me your damn phone! Now!”
Convinced that she was just crazy enough to follow through on her threat, the thug reluctantly slid his cell phone across the roof towards her.
Marly kept the largest Stone fragment hovering over the pipe while she picked up the phone with her free hand. She set the phone on vibrate and memorized the number on its screen. She kicked at Cas. “Give me one of your shoestrings.”
Cas stood frozen. “Have you lost your mind?”
“Just do it!” she shouted, nearly fumbling the fragment down the pipe.
Shaking his head, Cas unraveled the string from his right shoe and handed it to her.
Marly kept one eye on the thugs while she dropped the seven fragments into the small pouch and tied it to the cell phone. She formed a loose loop around one of the pinions in the pipe and tied the other end of the string to the phone. She pulled out her own phone and punched in the number she had just memorized. She warned their attackers, “I’ve got your number on speed dial. If I call that phone, it’ll vibrate like the San Andreas Fault.”
The head goon laughed. “What’s a little shimmy going to do to a rock?”
“You take physics in school, wise-ass?” she asked.
The goon frowned. “No, but—”
“Maybe if you had, you’d know that even a slight vibration can break loose the fissures in stones this old. I’ve got a doctorate in geophysics, so listen up, Gomer. Meteorites have cracks fragile enough to splinter. If this phone starts shaking, your God Stone will go snap, crackle and pop. You might find a few bits and pieces of it, if you’re lucky. But most of it will just go poof.”
The tough guys traded alarmed glances, not sure whether to believe her.
Marly grabbed Cas’s arm and moved him to the edge of the building. They stood directly over the glistening roof of the freshly crumpled Beemer.
Cas realized what she had in mind. “No way. That only works in the movies.”
The gunmen remained deathly still, afraid Cas would drop their phone and set off the vibration.
Marly moved a few inches back from the ledge. “Don’t believe for a second that he won’t turn those pieces into dust! He’s a psychopath!” She stepped back toward the very edge of the roof as if to prove that she, too, was insane. “Now, before he does something crazy that could get us all killed, give him the car keys and drop your weapons.”
The thugs reluctantly complied with her demand. With her free hand, Marly caught the car keys. Cas jumped for the guy’s gun. Kicking one of the thugs off his feet, he fired a shot at the other man, who dived sprawling across the roof.
Marly reached for Cas and jumped with him onto the roof of the car. She rolled off the hood. While he was distracted with shooting at the thugs on the roof, she untied the pouch and dropped the fragments into another dumpster. She hurriedly snapped the empty pouch shut and tied it to the thug’s cell phone.
Across the street from the alley, two other goons waiting in the sedans jumped out and ran toward the sounds of gunfire.
Cas dragged Marly down the alley toward the abandoned Beemer that was still drivable. He fired off another series of rounds into the empty sedans across the street—their tires sank with a loud hiss.
He pushed Marly into the car. The keys were still in the ignition.
He raced the car backwards while Marly held the cell phone out the window, warning the thugs on the roof that she wouldn’t hesitate to press the Send button.
TWENTY MINUTES LATER, WHEN THEY were safely out of range, Marly leaned back in her seat and took a deep breath. She pulled the thug’s cell phone from her pocket and threw it to the floorboard.
The phone began vibrating.
Cas grinned. “That crock you fed those airheads about the phone breaking those fragments apart was Grade A prime bull manure, right?”
“Prime as all the steaming manure you’ve been feeding me for the past week.” She waited another moment for her heart to come back down from her throat. “I did a quick estimate of the aggregate IQ of those apes and figured it wasn’t much higher than yours.”
He kept his hand raised in triumph. “You’ve got promise in the spy business, Miss Galore. Okay, let’s hug and smooch our million-dollar prize!”
She looked at his upraised palm and shrugged.
Cas untied the pouch from the cell phone and snapped it open. Suddenly, it dawned on him what she had done. “What? Are you serious?”
She stared straight ahead, her face inscrutable.
He gripped her shoulder. “Where are the Stone fragments, damn it?”
Receiving no answer, he started the car and whipped it into a one-eighty turn, speeding back toward the industrial park.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“I’m not letting those Playstation toons get away with my money!”
She reached her leg over the console and slammed her foot against his on the accelerator. They skidded into the curb and came to a jolting stop. “And I’m not going back there!” she shouted. “I won’t get killed for a bunch of rocks!”
“You made a deal with me!”
“This is where I get off! I never agreed to this! You hired me to help you find a rock, not ride shotgun on a suicide mission!”
They fought for control of the wheel.
Finally, Cas surrendered, bitter at her betrayal. “It’s not your son who’s in that prison over there!”
“You’re right.” Marly’s eyes flooded with compassion, despite the adrenaline still charging through her veins. “That’s the one thing we agree on. But I can’t help you anymore.”
Cas’s eyes ringed red and moist. “I’m going back.”
She wouldn’t look at him. “I know you are.”
“Where’d you drop them?”
She hesitated before revealing, “In one of the alley garbage cans.”
“Did they see you toss them?”
“I don’t know. … I don’t think so. But you shouldn’t risk it. Those gangsters may still be snooping around if you go back there.”
Cas waited for her to say something more, but she sat silent, glaring straight ahead. He dropped his chin and muttered, “So, that’s it, huh. You’re abandoning me?”
She nodded. “Call it whatever you want. I’ve had my last gunfight.”
“We’re so close.”
“Close to a couple of coffins,” She couldn’t believe how cold she sounded, but he had left her no wriggle room. “You won’t ever be happy until you fulfill that death wish of yours. But I want my life back.” She got out of the car and, leaning into the open driver’s window, pres
sed a kiss to his forehead. “I’ll call a cab at that Starbucks over there. You go on. You’ve got a plane to catch.”
“What about your part of the fee?”
She stopped, thinking for a brief moment, but then kept walking across the street and disappeared into the coffee shop.
Alone now, Cas looked at his gun, and wondered what its barrel would feel like against the back of his throat. Then he thought about Farid, and realized he still had one thing left to live for.
* * *
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Ghajar, Israel
LED IN SHAME THROUGH HER small border village, fifteen-year-old Zaynah Al Homra swiveled her draped head from side to side, searching through her veil for a dagger to steal from the belts of the male onlookers who glared death at her.
She prayed Allah would grant her the chance to cut her own throat.
Her head flooded with the memories of that time, two years ago, when her father had taken her across the line into Lebanon to watch an adulteress from Bastra be stoned. The condemned woman, with her head also covered, had been forced to kneel in the roasting sun while thirty men circled her and casually chose the rocks that would deliver the most pain. Then, finally, they took turns running at her like cricket players throwing pitchs.
Now, she was being forced to endure that same walk of Sharia justice.
Her father and brothers shoved her down a dirt street. Staggering along, she passed shops where women she had once thought were friends now looked away. The men snarled curses at her and refused to meet her pleading eyes. She hadn’t slept for two weeks, afraid that one of her brothers would slip into her room and blind her, or worse. Tired and dazed, she stumbled and nearly fell.
Blessedly, the shaming entourage reached the mosque, and she was permitted to escape the spectators following them. Her father and brothers pushed her into the adjacent office of the local imam, a bearded old man who was always consulted by the town’s citizens for the implementation of the law. The clergyman looked up from his desk with a sad gaze that suggested he had already heard of the scandal and was expecting their arrival.
Tears of anger flooded her father’s eyes. “My daughter has brought great dishonor upon me.”
The old imam’s accusatory gaze traveled from Zaynah’s face to her abdomen, as if he suspected Satan to be incubating inside her. “Are you with child?”
Her father answered before she could speak. “The doctor has said it is so.”
The imam’s eyes pierced Zaynah like stakes.
“I have done nothing,” she protested. “I don’t know how this happened. I swear—” She then thought better of swearing anything.
The imam scowled at her. “Lying will only bring a harsher penalty.”
Zaynah fell to her knees. All she could remember was being asleep one night about a month ago in her family’s apartment, and then waking up, hours later, on the sidewalk below her building. “I must have been raped.”
Her brothers shouted accusations that she had slithered off that night to fornicate while they were at the coffee house.
“She became drunk with alcohol!” her father insisted. “Or worse!”
The imam kept tugging at his beard. “Worse?”
“Narcotics! Hashish! Who knows? She is a wanton whore who—”
The imam raised a palm for silence. “You said the doctor examined her?”
Her father nodded. “The virgin veil was found penetrated.”
“I’ve never willingly been with a man!” Zaynah cried, shaking. “Never!”
“When did you discover your daughter in this state of sin?”
“She began complaining of the morning sickness two weeks ago,” her father said. “One night, we found her room empty, only a few hours before dawn. She must have slipped out to fornicate with one of the Zionist soldiers who use our women. She tried to cover her sin by claiming that she could not remember where she had been. She also told us another lie.”
“Which was?”
“That strange men were always following her.”
The imam turned on her to demand that she identify these men.
Zaynah cried through tears, “I don’t know them! I saw only shadows!”
The imam hung his head while contemplating what counsel to offer. Finally, he looked straight at her father. “The Prophet, praise be upon him, said, ‘Whoever guarantees me what is between his legs, and what is between his jaws, I guarantee him Paradise.’” With the recitation of the Shia hadith—one of the twenty-five ways prescribed to enter Jannah—the cleric arose and retreated from his office to his private study.
Her father and brothers smiled grimly, pleased with the verdict of death.
Zaynah collapsed and caught herself, bracing her hands against the desk to keep from fainting. Her brothers manhandled her and—
“I wish to marry this girl.”
The men all turned toward the door.
A young man—Zaynah guessed he could be no older than twenty—had been standing at the threshold the entire time, listening to the case.
“Who are you?” her father demanded.
“My name is Gabir Karam. I am from Halta.”
Zaynah’s brothers clenched their fists.
Their father restrained them. Coming closer to the stranger, he demanded, “Did you violate my daughter?”
The youth stole a glance at Zaynah.
She looked at him in confusion, trying to place his face.
“I have never met your daughter,” Gabir told her father. “But I have seen her in the village many times. I believe her to be a woman devoted to Allah, praise be upon Him. It would be a privilege to take her as my wife. And to save the honor of your family.”
On her knees, Zaynah backed away, wondering who this man was and why he claimed to know her.
Hearing the voices discussing the marriage proposal outside his office, the old imam returned from his private study. He tugged at his beard, trying to assess the young man’s unusual offer. “What is your tribe?”
“I am Alawite.”
Mollified, somewhat, from learning that he was from his sect, Zaynah’s father circled the young man to inspect him. “Your trade?”
“I pour concrete for construction.”
“You can support a wife and a child on such a salary?”
The young man nodded. “My father performed the same work. He raised eight children.”
The imam motioned her father to his side. After nearly a minute of intense and whispered discussion, the cleric turned to Zaynah. “Will you accept this man as your husband?”
Zaynah glanced at her suitor, still wondering why he had chosen her, especially now. But she knew, given the alternative, that she had no choice but to accept his inexplicable proposal. She nodded her agreement.
Her father snatched her up by the forearm. He led her toward the door to prevent her from speaking further to her new fiancé.
As they left, her father told the young man, “The wedding will be in one week. Until then, you will have no further contact with my daughter.” Her father opened his cell phone and barked orders to his youngest son to drive their family’s Citroen to the front of the mosque to pick them up.
Forced to stand on the street curb, Zaynah waited in humiliation, burned by the glares of the townspeople gathered around her. When her youngest brother finally pulled up in the car, her father pushed her into the back seat and ordered her to wait inside.
While the men bickered over where to hold the wedding and how it would be financed, Zaynah, sitting alone in the car, saw Gabir, the young man who had saved her, glance coldly at her from across the street. He walked away quickly, unnoticed by the arguing scrum, and darted into a side alley. He kept looking over his shoulder, as if checking to see whether anyone had noticed his departure, then he motioned another man into the alley with him. Much taller and thicker in the waist than Gabir, this stranger joined her new fiancé in the shadows, out of sight of the other men.
She could
not identify the large man’s features, but she saw him count out what looked to be several bills of currency and hand them to her future husband. The two men shook hands, and then the taller one vanished back into the alley. As Gabir stuffed the cash into his pocket, she gasped at the size of her fiancé’s new money roll. Was she to marry a rich man? If so, why had he chosen her, a poor girl?
And why had he just glared at her with such shuddering disdain?
* * *
CHAPTER TWENTY
Dallas, Texas
DECKED OUT IN PINK SWEATPANTS, sunglasses, and iPhone ear-buds, Cas speed-walked down the street bordering the industrial park where he and Marly had encountered the pirates in the Beemers. His jogger’s backpack, two sizes too small, cut into his shoulders, but he hadn’t had time to properly accessorize. Disguised as one of the neighbors out for a little exercise, he passed the same corner again. This time, he risked glancing up at the utility pole to calculate how many seconds he would need to climb it.
The sun was just now dropping below the roofs of the gray buildings, and the twilight traffic had trickled to an occasional passing car. He could have really used a partner with a pair of eyes scouting the next block, but Marly had followed through on her threat and was on a plane back to New York.
He’d have to pull off this one on his own. The clock was ticking.
Seeing no one around, he sat on a crumbling bus bench and quickly removed his tennis shoes. He reached into the backpack and pulled out the cheap golf shoes he had purchased from the same second-hand store where he’d found his garish outfit. With gaff hooks in each hand, he waddled up the pole, making sure to keep three-point contact with the tar-slathered wood. He whispered the Ranger’s rhythmic climbing mantra—“Hand, Charlie, Stroke.”
One false grip and the family jewels would be shaved off.
Hovering on the pole, he paused to check his watch. Only twenty seconds to reach the transformer. Not bad for an old man.