by Boston Teran
“And Malek has what . . . a hundred and fifty citizens. Men of good will.”
“We have the night, efendi. And we know where they are.”
“Yes.” John Lourdes looked to the priest, who waited. “Tell him we’ll make a plan. Go in when it’s dark. Punish them as best we can. Run off their mounts. Bomb them, burn them. And get out.”
Hain told this to the priest who asked, “And then?”
“And then, efendi?”
“Then? Retreat back into the hills till we get supplied with money and munitions.”
When he heard this Malek shook his head saying no.
“I know what he wants,” said John Lourdes. “He wants a goddamn dog fight. And he wants a pit dug, less won’t do. They do have dog fights in this country, don’t they?”
“They have dog fights, efendi.”
The guide relayed this conversation to the priest.
Malek slipped his hands under the bandoleer and clasped them together against his chest. “I understand through my actions I have failed as a priest. That I have fallen from the true morality of peace. I am resigned to that fact. I know the more I succeed through warfare, the more my eternal soul is at risk. I am resigned to that, also.” He undid his hands and took hold of the bandoleer. He then touched the holster. “I have chosen . . . chosen . . . to be the agent of these souls, for one purpose.”
Malek squatted and picked up a handful of road dust. “They say only God can create man, but that is half so. Man creates a nation, which is man. And a nation is created only in part by ideas, is created only in part by laws.” He stood and let the dust slip from his palm. “It is also created through the language of moments. Threats defied, persecutions endured, spirits that will neither rest nor succumb, by actions that determine the course of souls.
“There are moments such as these written in all histories. I have read of them from the time of Rome and Greece. From Arabia and Russia. These moments proclaim who the people of those places truly are. And it does not matter if they are celebrated or barely greeted in their time with a word, but that they are true. And I am sure there are such moments as these in America . . . In your Tigziz. I am sure there were such moments told to you as a boy. That you carry now.”
John Lourdes quietly nodded. “We have such moments. I have such moments,” he said.
“Make the fight.”
John Lourdes took off his hat, he swept that arm outward. “Look around you. It’s open country. They’ll run us down.”
The priest grabbed the bandoleer and shook it. He was demanding a fight. John Lourdes walked to his mount and retrieved his field glasses. He began to study the country. It was as he suspected, defenseless. He kept panning the glasses, searching for a tactical advantage.
From where they stood a road led down into the isthmus. He noted there were about a dozen working oil derricks, but many more lay in ruin next to their derelict housing structures. There were others yet that were partly toppled. He asked the guide if the priest could tell them of this. The priest answered how this isthmus had been the site of fighting during the war between the Armenian and the Tartar.
It was the rising of the light and the wind blowing through the high weeds that caused John Lourdes to catch sight of piping by a rusted derrick about a hundred yards out.
He swung into the saddle and headed off without so much as a word. The derrick was on a slight rise that ascended gradually along the road he came from. To reach the derrick he had to cross a wooden span of about ten meters. It had been built over a trench, and in the trench was a pipeline. What he had seen in the weeds was an inlet station and flow tank that connected directly to the pipeline in the trench. A trench, he now noted, furrowed across the width of the isthmus.
He dismounted. From where he stood the isthmus sloped gently down to the sea. What lay between was a half mile of irrefutable testimony to human folly and waste. Ghostly derricks, huge pools of black oil, abandoned barracks, crumbling sheds, hulls of rotted wagons that looked like planters for wild brush. The road went past a street of forgotten buildings falling down upon themselves, and huge storage tanks, one with a side torn away so you could see the Caspian right through it. The derricks that were pumping were connected by a lattice of trenches piping the crude up to the flow station where John Lourdes stood.
Beyond that, at the tip of the isthmus was a graveyard of vessels. Barges, a tug, what looked to be a schooner, all lay sunk in the shallows like grey corpses. On the beach was a huge tanker that must have run aground during a storm, its rusting bow rose up out of the water and shouldered high above the sandy embankment.
The guide and the priest rode up to John Lourdes.
“Efendi, what is all this?”
John Lourdes saw there was only a skeleton crew working the derricks far down the isthmus. It would be easy enough to run that few out.
“Efendi?”
“I want you to see that derrick . . . the trench . . . that’s an oil pipeline. See how it crosses the isthmus to those storage drums. In the trench oil has leaked out over years, see those pools.”
“I see it all, efendi.”
“We start the fight in the hills. We try to lure them here. We retreat back down toward the beach. They follow. Then we detonate this derrick and those drums and the trench. We could create a firestorm across the isthmus worthy of God. They’ll be trapped.”
The guide looked and thought and spoke, “And we also.”
“That . . . is what will make the trap work.”
Malek dismounted. He demanded to know what was being said.
“Tell him,” said John Lourdes. “Tell him we can make the fight here . . . but most, if not all, will die. And I believe we will still be defeated.”
The guide told this to the priest, who in turn looked down at the bandoleer and hunted through the beads and rosaries until he found the crucifix with the simple broken cross beam. This he undid, then walked to John Lourdes and strung the leather that held the cross through a button hole in John Lourdes’ vest. He asked the guide something, and the guide replied, “Defeated.”
Malek held the cross and said to John Lourdes, “Defeated.”
Then the priest spoke to the guide, who said to John Lourdes, “That was handed to you by a dying boy at the camp, was it not?”
“Yes,” said John Lourdes.
“And today, after the bombing, at the ironworks, you searched it out.”
“Yes,” said John Lourdes.
“The priest says he understands you well. That you and he are both of the same wilderness. And he wants to know . . . now. Are you prepared to make the fight here?”
John Lourdes looked out upon the isthmus. From the first brutal murders on the quay in Constantinople, to the bombing at the Armenikend, he had been witness to the future, and the stark barbarity that gave birth to it. He saw that a new level of infamy had been ushered into all their lives. And he understood, they did not have the makings for a long fight, so a single and terrifying act would have to be enough to exact their will.
“We’ll make the fight here,” said John Lourdes.
t w e n t y - n i n e
LITTLE OVER one hundred men gathered up around the priest in a camp north of the Baladzhary Station. Malek spoke with passion about the rich history of their people and the daunting task they were about to embark upon to fulfill that history. The men then armed themselves and rode off with the guide leading them.
John Lourdes took the dragoman and twenty of the volunteers to the isthmus. He’d mapped out where charges were to be set, when and how they were to be detonated. He showed the dragoman how a defensive plan was to be executed, where fires were to be started, and when the derrick crews should be driven from the isthmus. They ended at the beach, where the tanker lay upon the shore. It was there, if any of their number survived, that the last of the strategy would be played out.
John Lourdes joined the priest in the mountains. From there they could look down upo
n a starfield of Tartar campfires. They waited as the volunteers muffled their horses’ heads, then secretly marched along the crest trails to their positions. Alone in that uneasy darkness, John Lourdes quietly addressed the priest:
“There is something I want to speak of. I don’t know if it’s good or not, the fact you can’t understand me. The other night on the foundry roof, I answered to myself why I’m here. One word says it . . . Forgiveness. I have been to a place like this once in Mexico, with my father. A man I meant to see dead . . . who I wanted to see dead. A man I led to his death.
“Sometimes there is little reward to what is just. I was dying there, in Mexico, and my father tricked me into staying alive, by giving up life himself. He set a trap for me with his own existence as bait, like a trap we are setting tonight. Yes, like tonight. He proved to be a man I could not ultimately outsmart or outthink. A man like yourself. I’m am here to justify his act, and in the doing ask he forgive me . . . for wanting him dead, for taking him to his end. I understand . . . Please, forgive me.”
Those were things he had never said. Not even to himself, for it was the acknowledgement of some ultimate debt. His voice could not even scale the emotions, so the words just broke. But the priest heard. He didn’t need to know words. He had been ordained with a calling to put everything that was said, aside, and just see.
The priest put out a hand, resting it on John Lourdes’ shoulder. In the possession of just a few dark moments they sat like that, then the priest whispered, “Brother, sometimes the suffering, is suffering enough. I hope this for us all. The wilderness . . . We will cross it together.”
There came the slightest tricklings of gravel where the guide stepped from the shadows. He spoke in a whisper. “All is ready, efendi.”
John Lourdes reached for the flare gun which lay on a rock beside him. He wondered, had the guide heard him? He stood and walked to the edge of the cliff face. All was still down that long succession of valleys. Just the glow of smoldering campfires topped by thin runners of smoke.
He looked to the priest, who nodded. John Lourdes aimed and fired. A flare lanced across the sky, and in the next moments came the ferocious report of gunfire.
Down through that gallery of ledges John Lourdes could see the flashpoint of the Enfield gunbarrels. The explosions started soon after. About a dozen volunteers with grenade rifles were firing down into the camps. Horses had begun to stampede, the gray storm of their dust rising into the night.
John Lourdes watched through field glasses for the first signs of organized resistance. Shadows were scattering from the quake of dynamite. A fire was blowing down through the length of one valley and he caught the spectre of horsemen against the flames massing together and then at a full gallop starting up a trail through the cliff face.
“They’re on the move!” shouted John Lourdes.
The guide gathered up their mounts. John Lourdes walked to the ledge. He fired off another flare, quickly following with a second. The priest was already mounted when John Lourdes swung up into the saddle. The volunteers had seen the signal, and the firing along the ledges had ceased. They had gathered up and were coming on hard in small mounted packs and passing John Lourdes on the trail out of the mountains. The retreat had begun.
Already there were wounded, stooped over or clinging to their saddles. When the last of that citizen company had vanished, the three started down the rocky slopeface at an even trot. About a quarter mile further on they pulled up at a place along the precipice where the rocky trail was wide enough to be taken at a full gallop.
John Lourdes and the guide dismounted by a stake in the ground marking where dynamite had been braced against the stone facing. The priest remained mounted and kept watch. John Lourdes hooked up the charge and the guide reeled the cable down that shaly roadway about fifty meters.
The priest called out. Along the escarpment a heavily armed band of Tartars was pressing after them. They appeared as a single entity with tunics flowing wildly under the moonlight. As they trampled down that stake John Lourdes detonated the charge. The passage and part of the shelf face blew out over the canyon, taking mounted riders with it. They fell into the silent void turning like great stone weights, their screams trailing off desperately till they were no more.
John Lourdes and the guide remounted. They and the priest made their way down through straits of wooded trail until John Lourdes reined in the Arabian and came about. With field glasses he could make out bleak shapes against the gray stone. It was a detachment, maybe a hundred or so Tartars, on the hunt, proceeding with caution.
The mountains fell away to darkness. Their descent all rumor and shadow. At opportune places along the way John Lourdes would have them halt and send out a volley of gunfire, or leave a lit stick of dynamite to blow away a piece of road, slowing the pursuit to a fateful walk.
As planned the volunteers waited in a long swale at the footing of the mountains. The edges of the horizon to the east had begun to lighten when Malek rode among them with John Lourdes and the guide. The wounded were being tended, their number had been struck down by a near dozen. John Lourdes could see in the faces of the men they understood the fight to come would be swift and merciless.
The guide knew first the enemy was upon them. He did not need field glasses—the subtle motion along the haw and withers of the mounts was enough.
“Efendi, they are here.”
John Lourdes took to his field glasses. From the Caspian horsemen in blue tunics were coming, like a wave of ocean upon the earth. “Have everyone mount and be ready,” he said.
The guide told the priest, and the priest commanded the men. John Lourdes’ horse was beside the guide’s. Before he swung up into the saddle he asked Hain, “In Van . . . you chose to come. You said—”
“I know what you are asking. Why am I here? Efendi . . . every man is entitled to his secrets. And his fires.”
He now understood the guide had overheard him talking to the priest the night before. John Lourdes then rode up out of the swale, and the men followed. He kept looking to the west.
“Efendi . . . from the mountains.”
The detachment that had been at their rear was fanning out over a ridge, the pumice rising from the force of their hooves. The riders fired their rifles into the air to let the Armenian volunteers know the raw of combat was approaching.
John Lourdes did not want to retreat too soon to the isthmus. He wanted it to look as if the priest and his men were driven there, so he kept his field glasses to the west, for that was the last and only avenue of escape.
The men herded up around him and the wind coming from the sea blew violently that morning and the grass bent then crested against the saddles. Hats were lost, and the coats of the volunteers spread up and out like blackened wings. What the wind would do with the fires to come, thought John Lourdes.
He watched the sun inch across the landscape. He stayed with its slow and irrevocable journey whispering, “Come on . . .” until the light finally flooded over the plain and he could see Rittmeister Frank and the main body of men.
“You have been excellent at eluding and escaping,” he had told John Lourdes at the bar, “but eventually that must end.”
t h i r t y
HAT SMALL COMPANY of men pressed on through the high grass running from the enemy toward that unearthly place of volcanic mud and cracked strata, taking a slender road through its parched landscape toward the oil derrick on the rise at the point of the isthmus.
The first Tartars to close upon them were those coming out of the hills. They were not so formidable a number, and John Lourdes had the men halt and cover the road.
They spread across that cremated area, kneeling, lying prone, their rifles shouldered. John Lourdes had chosen this place to make a momentary stand. He’d had the dragoman plant dynamite there and when the Tartars swept past that spot, the charge was detonated.
Humans as well as beasts were catapulted. Craters of naphtha burst into flame, the
ground began to smoke. The remaining Tartars tried to outflank the riflemen but their mounts could not traverse the rivers of mud. They slipped and struggled and the viscous liquid clung to their legs that buckled or seized up, and the horsemen were naked targets collapsing under a barrage of gunfire to die where they would blacken and fossilize.
From the east and the west the enemy came on with punishing resolve. Those with the swiftest mounts were already making their cumbersome way through that place where the ground was like cracked pottery. John Lourdes ordered the guide to have the men pull back beyond the derricks. Their dust swept up and through that steel and wood well tower, hooves clopping across the timbered span above the trench as they retreated into the isthmus. The three remained by the derrick to watch the oncoming assault when a flare cut across the sky.
With field glasses John Lourdes found Rittmeister Franke. The captain was studying the distance with uncanny vigilance. For a moment the two men watched each other across the battlefield. The captain was slowing the attack, while scanning the landscape for threats.
“He’s reading us,” said John Lourdes. “He senses something isn’t right.”
The priest called out to the guide asking what was wrong and Hain swept his rifle across the frontier where the attack had stilled. The priest rose from his saddle. He saw, and understood. He eased back down and spoke with decided calm. “Tell our friend here, I will bring them. Leave me. Both of you. Do as I say, and hurry! I will be enough.”
This John Lourdes did not want to do, leave the priest, but the priest ordered him. He and the guide then galloped down the slope to where the volunteers waited.
Malek turned his mount toward the derrick standing at the pitch of the rise. John Lourdes watched as he removed something from his robe. With the wave of a hand, a flag shook loose. Homespun and ragged, with the sunlight pouring through the struts and shorings of that well tower, Malek held the flag aloft.
The firing had been at long range but John Lourdes now saw the several hundred riders by the Caspian surge toward the isthmus. Whether Rittmeister Franke had signaled the order, or it was a spontaneous reaction to the priest’s defiant act John Lourdes would never know.