The Hunters

by Tom Young

  “I’ll leave his hands free,” Parson said, “so he can pull himself up the steps if he has to. We’ll help him out of here, and I’ll tie his hands up top.”

  When Parson finished, Hussein cut his eyes at him. The look conveyed pure hate, and it gave Parson second thoughts about whether letting the boy live was a good idea. How many more innocent people would Hussein kill? Would he grow up to drive a truck bomb into the Mall of America?

  Doesn’t matter, Parson realized. We don’t kill prisoners, and we sure as hell don’t kill kid prisoners. End of story.

  “Ask him if he wants me to lift him out of the cellar,” Parson said.

  Geedi spoke in Somali, and Hussein glared at Parson again and shook his head. To Parson, it seemed Hussein’s entire vocabulary consisted of frowns and glares.

  Hussein placed his hands on the cellar stairs at shoulder height. He pulled himself up and placed his uninjured foot on the bottom step. Then he reached higher with his hands, and he pulled himself up one more step. By repeating the effort four times, he reached the top. Hussein twisted himself out of the cellar opening and onto the ground, and Parson could hear Nadif talking to the boy in Somali.

  “Everybody put your body armor back on,” Parson said.

  Chartier groaned, reached for the armor vests, and passed them out. Parson removed his survival vest, slipped his arms through his own body armor, and closed the fasteners. Just feeling the weight of the armor tired him. He put his survival vest back on over the armor.

  Chartier went up the steps next, his revolver in his survival vest and Hussein’s AK-47 over his shoulder. Gold and Geedi followed, leaving Parson and Carolyn Stewart alone at the bottom of the cellar. In the moonlight, Parson saw the actress pause before mounting the stairs, and he wondered what the hell she was waiting for. She opened her mouth to speak, and again she hesitated.

  “Colonel,” she said finally, “I know I helped put us in this situation. I’ll . . . I’ll never forgive myself.”

  Parson didn’t know what to say. Yeah, this was her fault, at least partly. Maybe it was his fault, too. When Gold first asked him to come to Somalia and fly civilian relief missions, maybe he should have just said no. He could have praised her good intentions and then said it was too dangerous. On the other hand, nothing ever got done through intentions alone. He could help put her intentions into motion. Literally. And Carolyn Stewart had come here to help by telling the story.

  “You’ll have to forgive yourself sooner or later,” Parson said. “Everyone else has.”

  Not necessarily true, Parson thought, but that’s what Sophia would have said. And it was the quickest way to move on and get Stewart out of the cellar.

  “Thank you, Colonel Parson.” The actress put her hand on his arm as she took the stairs.

  “It’s just Michael,” Parson said.

  Stewart climbed the steps into the rectangle of starlit night above. Parson took one final look around his temporary refuge and climbed out last.

  A bright sickle moon hung behind the acacia trees. Parson caught a whiff of some kind of food; evidently that’s what Nadif’s bundle contained. Nadif spoke in Somali and handed the bundle to Geedi, who stuffed it into his backpack.

  “His wife has cooked us a bowl of isku-dhex-karis,” Geedi said.

  “Wow,” Gold said. “What’s that?”

  “A mixture of vegetables and meat. He also gave us some bottles of water.”

  “Tell him thanks,” Parson said.

  “I did.”

  Parson held his hand out to Gold, and without a word, she gave him the blanket. It occurred to Parson that the two of them had worked together long enough that they could communicate without even talking. Their rapport reminded him of the way well-trained aircrew members clicked into a team; a glance or the wave of a pen could convey a request or an order.

  With a flick of his wrist, Parson shook out the blanket. He spread it on the ground and reached for the poles Geedi had brought. Parson placed a pole at either edge of the blanket, then rolled the fabric around the poles to form a stretcher.

  “Tell Hussein to lie down and hold his wrists together,” Parson said.

  Geedi spoke in Somali again, and Hussein sat on the blanket between the poles. The flight mechanic uttered another phrase, holding his hands together as if bound. Hussein glared and shook his head. Geedi spoke once more, and Hussein shook his head again. Parson rolled his eyes, and he unfastened the parachute cord bracelet from around his right wrist. He unbraided the cord, loops dangling from his fingers. Then he lifted the left pant leg of his flight suit enough to reveal the knife sheathed on his boot.

  Parson pulled the boot knife and gave Hussein a hard look. Hussein placed one of his wrists atop the other. Parson cut a length of parachute cord and tied the boy’s hands. As with the gag, he took care not to knot the cord too tightly. When Parson finished, Hussein looked down at the knife, which Parson had placed on the ground beside the stretcher, out of Hussein’s reach. The boy seemed to stare at the knife with more curiosity than fear; Hussein had almost certainly never seen a knife like that one: a four-inch, double-edged blade made of Damascus steel, layers of pattern-welded alloy that created a sheen of wavy lines. The handle had been fashioned from the antler of a whitetail deer. Parson had carried it on his left boot his entire career.

  “You like my knife?” Parson said. “My dad gave me that a long time ago.” Parson picked up the knife and slid it back into its sheath. “He’s not around anymore.” Hussein looked at Parson almost as if he understood the English. “Guess your dad’s not around anymore, either, huh?”

  Parson did not share the rest of the knife’s story—how in desperate circumstances he had jammed the tip of the blade under the mullah’s fingernail. Parson might have done worse with the knife had Gold not stopped him; at the time, his friends lay dead and wounded around him because of that mullah and his like. A different time in a different war, when Parson was a different person.

  A rip of gunfire echoed in the distance. The sound reminded Parson he was about to try one of the most difficult of combat maneuvers—a retreat under fire. The phrase did not apply fully, though. To begin with, the fighting seemed to swirl all around; Parson didn’t know if he was retreating or advancing. He just wanted to get to a safer place. And he wasn’t under direct fire—though that could change at any time.

  “All right, guys,” Parson said, “let’s get moving.”

  Gold stepped over to the stretcher and bent to place her hands on the poles at one end. Parson took the other end, and together they lifted Hussein. The boy felt lighter than Parson had expected; Hussein lay still with his bound hands across his stomach.

  “Lead the way, Geedi,” Parson said, “and tell Nadif good luck and Godspeed.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Geedi added several words in Somali, and Nadif nodded, his arms folded over his chest. Chartier handed the AK-47 to Geedi, and the Frenchman unholstered his Smith & Wesson. Geedi held the AK slanting across his chest like a pheasant hunter, and he led the way into the darkness.

  30.

  Hussein did not understand why the gaalos were taking him with them. They did not intend to kill him; that was clear enough. They could have done away with him easily by now.

  Maybe they wanted him as a hostage. Hah! That would do them no good. Abdullahi or the Sheikh would no more bargain for him than for a rat. Whatever the strange purposes of these infidels, Hussein did not resist. He let himself be carried through the night like a pasha of old, riding on a throne borne by servants. If the gaalos wanted to keep him close, so be it. That closeness gave him options, possibilities. He might yet find a way to strike these infidels.

  But another thing puzzled Hussein, something that Nadif had said to him when he crawled from the cellar.

  “We pray five times a day, do we not?” the old man had said.

  �
�Yes, so?” Hussein had said. He didn’t really pray five times a day every day. Sometimes fighting prevented it, and sometimes he just forgot. But yes, when he was with other Muslims, which was most of the time, he prayed at least once or twice a day.

  “And how does that prayer end?”

  The way it always ends, you old fool, Hussein had thought. “With blessings on Ibrahim’s offspring,” he had said.

  “Yes,” Nadif had responded. “And Ibrahim’s offspring include all the people of the book, not just Muslims but the Christians and the Jews, too. They call him Abraham. See how close the words are? Ibrahim, Abraham.”

  What sort of nonsense was this? Was it only the words of a kafir? Or was this a truth no one had ever told Hussein?

  The people of what book? The Quran, of course. Hussein could not read it for himself. That was the problem with missing school. Hussein could know only what other people told him, so he had to judge the trustworthiness of anyone who told him anything. He had once heard an imam say the past before Mohammed introduced Islam was called Jahiliyya, the time of ignorance. Hussein wondered if he would be in his own time of ignorance until he learned to read.

  The gag infuriated him; they had trussed him up like an animal, and he hated them for it. At first the gag nearly choked him, but now that it had become soaked with his saliva, it was less uncomfortable. Hussein ground his molars into the fabric, hoping perhaps to chew through it, spit out the gag, and shout so loud that the faithful could hear him in Mecca. No luck with that, however. The effort accomplished little other than making his jaw sore.

  His foot throbbed, but not with the blinding pain of earlier. The bandaged foot hung over the end of the stretcher, and it bobbed in the air with each step taken by Yellow Hair and the one called Parson. Maybe the wound would heal now, and Hussein would lose no more than the toes already blown away. He had seen other people with serious injuries that began to rot. A bullet wound to a hand, for example, could worsen into the loss of an arm. Something to do with poisons getting into the blood. Hussein supposed the clean bandage the gaalos had put on him might spare him the loss of his entire foot. Maybe this was all part of Allah’s plan: to let him take whatever benefit he could from these infidels, then kill them when he got the chance.

  Or he might have to settle for merely escaping. For now, at least, Hussein was bound and unarmed. He resented the way the infidels handled his weapon, his rifle, with which he had already fought so bravely. At the moment, the one called Geedi carried it, up front as he led the way into a stand of trees. The other white man, called Shartee or something, held that tremendous pistol and walked behind Geedi. Behind the stretcher walked the other woman, the one with the reddish hair like Hussein had never seen before. She said little to the others, but every now and then she looked down at Hussein and gave a stupid smile. He wished she would stop it.

  The moon, though narrowed to the crescent that symbolized Hussein’s faith, gave off light bright enough to throw shadows. Somewhere in the forest, a night bird called. The infidels moved with caution, concerned with every sound. Well might you worry, Hussein thought. You do not belong here and we will kill you, one way or another.

  More gunfire sputtered, way off. Hussein wished he knew what was happening with the battle, where his al-Shabaab brothers had gone. But of course, he had no idea.

  Something made the infidels stop. They spoke in hushed tones, the scraping of their foreign words sounding even harsher when whispered. Yellow Hair and Parson set down the stretcher. Hussein raised himself on his elbows and tried to look around, but he could see nothing; they had placed him in the middle of a thicket of parched grass.

  Obviously, the infidels had seen or heard something that worried them. Soldiers of God, perhaps?

  Hussein tried to cry out, to call to his brothers in arms. Because of the gag, only a growl escaped his throat.

  Parson fell on him as soon as he made that sound. He shoved Hussein flat on his back and clamped a hand over his mouth. Parson whispered something to the other gaalos. Hussein tried to struggle against the fingers digging into his cheek, the palm pressing down on his lips. He felt as if he would suffocate, and in a moment of animal panic, he had to force himself to breathe through his nose.

  Hussein expected the end to come now. The sinners wanted him quiet; surely they would slit his throat. At any moment, the one called Parson would reach with his free hand to pull that marvelous boot knife that looked so much like the tooray that Hussein dreamed of owning. Parson would do what Hussein would do if their situations were reversed: He would place the tip of the knife at the hollow of his throat and thrust the blade upward.

  How much would it hurt? No matter. The pain could not last long; Hussein had seen people bleed to death much faster than one would expect. These gaalos would not see him cry or lose his water. He would enter heaven a proud martyr.

  Come on with it, then, he thought. What are you waiting for?

  • • •

  With his left hand a vise over Hussein’s mouth, Parson reached for his Beretta with his right. He listened as intently as he could, and he hoped his years around loud airplanes hadn’t robbed him of the ability to hear a twig snap. Geedi had seen movement up ahead and had given the raised-fist signal to stop. Movement didn’t necessarily mean enemy, but Parson doubted the local villagers would traipse around in a forest at night with al-Shabaab in the vicinity.

  By Parson’s standards, calling this terrain a forest was a stretch. The trees did not grow thickly enough to meet most Americans’ definition of a wooded area. But according to the VFR charts, a coastal forest grew in this area. At the moment, Parson wished for thicker cover.

  He held his head up above the grass and scanned into the trees as best he could. Parson could make out only the silhouettes of Geedi and Chartier paces in front of him—Geedi poised beside a tree with the AK, and Frenchie crouching with both hands on his revolver. At the back end of the stretcher, Gold watched and waited. Unarmed, she could do little else. Carolyn Stewart kneeled behind Gold, probably panicked, but sensible enough, thank God, to stay quiet.

  For whatever reason, Hussein lay still under Parson’s grip. For a few seconds the boy had squirmed; the struggle reminded Parson of catching a big bass and having to hold the damned thing down to keep it from flopping all over the boat. Then suddenly Hussein had relaxed, and Parson thought he knew why. The kid probably believed he was about to be killed. No problem, Parson thought. Let him think that for a few more minutes.

  Parson put his thumb against the safety of his pistol. He wanted the weapon ready to fire, but he didn’t want to make a loud click. With only the slightest pressure from his thumb, he eased the safety lever toward the firing position. His lungs burned; he realized he was holding his breath. Parson let out the stale air just as the safety lever seated. If the mechanism made a click, he did not hear it. A single cumulus cloud, jaundiced by the yellow light of the moon, drifted overhead.

  And the woods erupted with gunfire.

  From maybe fifty yards away, an automatic weapon spewed rounds in the general direction of Parson and his crew. Muzzle flashes blinked like a rapid-fire strobe light. Bark, wood chips, and other debris filled the air; Parson felt shards of something sting his face.

  Geedi returned fire with the AK.

  A sledgehammer blow struck Parson in the side. Slammed the very air from his lungs. He’d felt that force before, and he recognized it immediately: a high-velocity round striking body armor.

  He fell flat to the ground, on his back. Now Parson saw nothing through the grass. He struggled to fill his lungs again, gripped the Beretta with both hands, and rolled to the right. Ignored the pain in his side. Out of the grass now, he could see two sets of enemy muzzle flashes. He took aim at one and began firing his pistol.

  Above the roar of automatic weapons, Parson could discern no report at all from his nine millimeter, though he felt the recoil o
f each shot. He did, however, hear the deep slam of Chartier’s magnum.

  Somebody cried out; Parson couldn’t tell who.

  The firing stopped. Was it over?

  From up ahead came a long moan. Then voices in Somali. Clicks and the sound of a bolt snapping closed. Someone was reloading.

  The shooter let out a war cry before he resumed firing: “Aaaaggh . . .” Then the sound of the shooter’s weapon drowned out his scream.

  Now Parson could see the muzzle flashes again. The flashes swept around like a child playing with a sparkler; the bastard was spraying all over the forest. Or maybe he was wounded and staggering. Parson aimed at the source of the flashes and pulled the trigger. He fired once, twice—and then he felt the slide lock open. Empty.

  The woods fell silent.

  Parson took in a long breath, resisted the temptation to run forward to check on Geedi and Frenchie. He listened closely again, and he heard nothing but faint rustles, perhaps the sound of hot brass cooling on the ground.

  “Everybody all right?” Parson called.

  “I’m good,” Geedi said.

  “I’m fine,” Gold said.

  “Me, too,” Stewart said.

  Hussein sat up and made a grunting sound through his gag.

  “Watch him,” Parson said to Gold.

  “Will do.”

  Parson felt for a spare magazine in his survival vest. He ejected the empty mag from his Beretta, let it fall at his feet, and slapped in the fresh one. Thumbed the slide release to close the weapon. That left the Beretta in a cocked, ready-to-fire condition, and Parson kept it that way. He did not waste time looking on the ground for the spent magazine.