The imam picked up another Quran. “Yes.” He pointed to the other books on the floor. “Please.”
Max reached out, grabbed the nearest Quran, and stood with it. He wobbled at first, but he didn’t fall over. He put the book on one of the small book nooks located throughout the mosque, and he proceeded toward another Quran. He walked past it and headed for the exit.
The imam called after him, “Aren’t you going to help?”
“When I come back.” Max opened the door. He didn’t give a squirrel’s nut about the imam, his mosque, or Allah’s word, and he had no intention of returning. He only wanted to find out what happened to his brother.
“Say hello to your fiancé.”
The door closed behind Max. What? He wasn’t engaged.
Outside, Max recognized the Anti-Lebanon Mountains in the distance, rising ten thousand feet in the air. He wasn’t entirely sure, but he still had to be in Damascus. He used the mountains to orient himself. He walked to an intersection with intermittent traffic that ran north, south, east, and west. These particular streets didn’t look familiar. He pulled out his smartphone to check his map, but his battery was dead.
His gut told him to go south, so he did, hoping to jog his memory. If he could find last night’s restaurant or his safe house, he had a better chance of finding Tom. The road was ashen, and he passed a block that had been reduced to rubble. For a capital city, there weren’t many people out and about. Maybe he wasn’t in Damascus. A pair of young men with dead expressions carried red plastic fuel containers. It was like walking through the remains of an apocalypse. Max touched his abdomen—his Glock was still there in a concealed holster, ready to smoke check any zombies that happened his way. He tapped his pocket, and his apartment and car keys jingled. Also attached to his keyring was a mini red flashlight. Good.
Then he noticed something on his ring finger that wasn’t there before—a gold ring. Jewelry? He felt his ear lobes for earrings and was thankful when he discovered none.
Gunfire rattled in the distance behind him, but it was too far away to worry about. After three hundred meters, he came to a shop with a sign that read “Home Goods” in Arabic. This seems strangely familiar. At the crossroad he turned west and spotted a grocery store that he thought he’d seen before. He eyed the Al Azal restaurant up ahead.
He was still in Jobar, an eastern district in Damascus, where the medieval Jewish synagogue had stood until 2014, when it was destroyed by civil war bombing and looting. Now Syrian government and rebel forces battled for control of the neighborhood.
Max had just crossed the parking lot of Al Azal when a one-legged man on the opposite side of the lot crossed over to Max’s side and said, “Thief, you stole my goat.”
“I didn’t steal your goat,” Max said.
The one-legged man flared his nostrils. “Last night, you stole my goat!”
“I didn’t steal your goat, but I’ll help you find it.” It was true that Max hadn’t stolen the goat, or at least he thought he hadn’t, but he wasn’t going to help the man find it. He had more important things to do—he had to find his brother.
The man raised his fist in anger and shook it.
Max was still a bit woozy, and he staggered through the front door of Al Azal. The hay-like fragrance of saffron was thick, and black pepper tickled his sinuses. He recognized the rustic interior and jukebox from the previous night, like a familiar biker bar. He and Tom had posed as French journalists and eaten dinner at the table in the far corner. It wasn’t lunchtime yet, and the place was quiet except for a woman wearing walloping big hair, heavy makeup, bright colors, high heels, and bling from head to toe. She chatted anxiously with a young woman at the cash register. The cashier pointed at Max, and Bling turned to face him.
Max became agitated, as if he’d just sailed into the eye of a storm. He stuck with his cover as a French journalist and asked the cashier, “Have you seen a French guy in here, a little taller than me and with longer hair?”
The cashier’s eyes evaded him. “No.”
Bling chattered excitedly: “You must pay me the rest of the money for the engagement rings.”
“I didn’t buy any engagement rings,” Max said.
She aimed her finger at the ring on Max’s finger, as if she was trying to shoot it off.
Max took the gold ring off and gave it to her. “Keep it.”
Bling spoke in a loud, pneumatic tone. “I can’t take back a used ring. And your fiancé has the other one.”
Max was still confused about what in the hell was going on, but he was able to think on his feet. “The engagement is off—you collect the ring from her!” He stormed past her into the kitchen, now beginning to suspect that maybe he and his brother had been drugged. A cook with the word shahada, or faith, tattooed in Arabic script on one of his thick forearms froze midway into chopping parsley and stared at him like he’d seen the devil. Max searched a storage area and inside a large freezer. Nada. He felt like a conspiracy nut waving a gun in a pizzeria and looking for kidnapped children who weren’t there.
He returned to the main part of the restaurant, where Bling gave him a wide berth.
A waitress asked, “Would you like a table?”
“Look, I don’t know who drugged me last night or what happened, but my restaurant review is going to say that your food ain’t memorable!” Max threw open the front door and blew out.
In the parking lot, he was relieved not to see the one-legged man with the missing goat. Even so, he wished a curse on the restaurant: You shifty-eyed sons of bitches drugged my brother and me, and who knows what in the world happened to him. Of all the things in the world you could take from me, you better not have taken my brother, or I will return with a fuel tanker truck and a flamethrower and rain unholy hell down on this neighborhood.
He decided to head back to an apartment leased from a local CIA asset to see if his brother had shown up there, but first he had to make sure he wasn’t followed and that no one saw him coming. He marched through the weeds between a puke-green apartment building and a mangled wire fence. High-spirited talking, cartoonish sound effects, and applause came from the apartment, like noise from a TV game show. Max poked his head around the corner to see if it was clear. It was. He crept through the backyard. More cautious now, he approached within fifty meters of the safe house.
He sneaked through a hole in a concrete wall and glanced back to see if anyone had followed him. No one had. Between the wall with the hole in it and his safe house, the ground was sandy with some weeds poking up—little in the way of cover and concealment, so he picked up the pace to limit his exposure. He panned the open area—clear—and he bounded over the next wall. He landed behind a two-story tan building where the safe house was located and entered. He looked for signs of surveillance, but saw none. Then he climbed the stairs to the second floor.
Outside his front door, Max listened for a moment. Children played nearby and a young woman talked to them, but no sound came from inside his apartment. He slipped the key in the hole carefully and turned it slowly so as not to make noise. He took a deep breath. Then he drew his pistol and opened the door. He rushed inside.
It was a small two-bedroom apartment, and there was no one in the living room. He hurried past books on a small bookshelf and looked in the kitchen. Hungry, he wanted to grab something out of the fridge, but that would have to wait until he finished making sure the safe house was safe. He checked the other rooms but found nothing out of place.
The door to the bathroom was shut, and he hadn’t checked it yet. From inside came sounds, like the steps of someone wearing hard-soled shoes or boots. Max aimed at the door. He would first have to identify who was inside so he didn’t end up shooting his brother. If it was an armed threat, Max would have to get off the first shot before his opponent did.
His heart rate pumped up and his palms became wet. Max took a deep breath to steady his nerves, and he gripped his pistol tighter so it wouldn’t slip out of his hands. Re
alizing he was gripping it too tightly, which could throw off his aim, he loosened up a little.
The toilet flushed. That has to be Tom. Or it could be an insurgent. Maybe this is a terrorist who’s been waiting a long time and couldn’t wait any more to relieve himself. The footsteps sounded again—then a knock on the door. Max aimed and anticipated the door opening. But it didn’t. Is he playing with me?
Max couldn’t stand the suspense any longer. He flung open the door and pointed his muzzle inside. A brown figure stared at him—a goat.
Max stared at it: “Seriously?”
The goat took a step back. Max did, too. Then it charged. Its head planted in Max’s crotch and knocked him on his ass. Max’s head flushed white hot, and the room twisted around in circles. The air whooshed out of his lungs, and he’d lost most of his strength, but he retained his pistol. He struggled to his feet and tried to catch his breath. His stomach churned as if it was about to hurl chunks.
The goat backed up again, stamped the deck, lowered its head and shoulders, and curved its neck.
“Oh, no!” Max said.
The goat charged, but this time Max sidestepped it, and the animal missed him. Max considered shooting it, but decided against the noise. He holstered his pistol and hopped on the menace, forcing it into submission. Then he dragged it out the front door, shoved it into the hall, and slammed the door.
Still nauseous and a bit loopy, he did remember that his phone needed charging, so he found an electrical outlet in the living room and plugged in his charger and phone. Electricity often went out in Damascus, but now his phone lit up.
The doorknob to the front door jiggled.
Max drew his Glock and aimed. He figured it was probably that troublesome goat, but he was prepared just in case it wasn’t.
A tall guy entered the doorway and aimed in Max’s direction.
“Tommy!” Max grinned.
Tom smiled, too. “Max!”
“You okay?”
“Barely,” Tom said. “You?”
“Somebody drugged me, and I did some crazy-ass shit I don’t remember. And a goat head-butted me in the family jewels. Other than that, I’m fine.”
Tom shook his head. “The goat outside our door?”
“It’s evil.”
“Someone drugged me, too,” Tom said. “And Daesh kidnapped me.”
“Holy shit—I’m glad you made it back.”
“I was hoping I’d find you here, too.”
“You clean?” Max asked.
“Probably not. You?”
“It’s like they knew we were here from the moment we arrived. Now I seem to remember you dancing like a fool with your shirt off, and me cheering you on.”
“That’s more than I remember.” Tom walked over to the refrigerator and opened it.
Max dropped his keister on a stuffed chair next to his charging phone, picked the phone up, and accessed a hidden app for texting their boss, Willy. He typed a brief SITREP, reporting their situation.
Tom fetched an apple, sat down on the couch, and bit into the red fruit. “We should get our blood and urine tested.”
The United States no longer had an embassy in Syria, but the Czech Republic did, and they let America run a US Interests Section, mainly for emergencies. The Czech Republic Embassy was only a twenty-minute ride west. In contrast, the closest American embassy was in Amman, Jordan, a three-hour drive south. “Let’s go to the Czech embassy.” Max’s phone wasn’t finished charging, but he finished typing his SITREP and added: Let the US Interests Section at the Czech Embassy know we’re coming. Then he tapped SEND.
Chapter Eleven
Unlike Cain, who killed his brother Abel, Max was his brother’s keeper, and he watched him for signs of poisoning as they descended the stairs. Tom’s face wasn’t pale or red, and he didn’t miss a step as they parted with the safe house and goat.
“What?” Tom asked.
“Nothing.”
At the ground floor, Max bounded over the back wall, his brother at his side. They dashed across the sand and clumps of weeds. The hole in the wall was a good ambush spot—or bad ambushee spot, depending on one’s perspective. Max crept carefully through the hole to the other side. Then he slipped into the parking lot of the puke-green apartment building.
“Daesh took my pistolet and phone,” Tom said, “but I can drive.”
Max reached in his pocket, grabbed the keys, and tossed them to Tom.
They hopped into a gray Kia Sorrento SUV—its bullet-resistant windows and body, blast-resistant floorboard, and fake patches of rust courtesy of the Agency. The truck came alive with a growl and leaped forward.
Max wanted to smoke check any zombies, so he drew his pistol and held it in his lap. Low-viz ops such as this often traded off the heavier firepower of assault rifles for the concealability of compact pistols, but now that the enemy seemed to know of their presence, concealability was as useful as an ejection seat on a helicopter. On top of that, Tom was down a pistol. “Wish we had our M4s,” Max said.
“Ditto.” Tom drove into Zombieland. They passed a row of five-story buildings whose fronts and tops had been ripped off, the exposed rooms hollowed out and blackened. Whole corners of buildings sagged as if a giant had jumped on them, leaving only the middles standing tall. Beside one of the buildings rested a black BMW with two men in it. It was the only vehicle in this ghostly neighborhood except for Max and Tom’s.
Max and Tom rolled by a Leaning Tower of Pisa and a building flattened like a stack of tortillas. Max glanced back to see if the BMW followed, but it didn’t. Maybe it’s nothing.
They rode past a mosque with a five-story minaret posted above a four-story base, nine stories in all. The tip-top of the structure was gone, and only the vertical shaft of the minaret remained. A ten-foot-long rectangular wall of the minaret seemingly floated in midair, clinging to nearly invisible threads of steel. The four stories at the base of the mosque were pockmarked with holes big and small.
He checked behind again. “We’ve got company—black BMW.” It kept its distance—not too far, not too close.
Tom looked in his rearview mirror. “I see it.”
“Let’s find out if they’re following us.”
Tom turned right. The BMW did, too—not too fast, not too slow. “Once could be a coincidence,” Tom said.
Tom turned right again—so did the BMW. “Twice is no coincidence,” Max said.
“Maybe they know who drugged us last night,” Tom said.
“Let’s ask them.”
Tom made another right, and after the turn, he sped off the road and parked beside the crumbled concrete of a caved-in structure. There they hid. The BMW cruised past.
Tom backed out of hiding and followed them surreptitiously.
Max slapped the dashboard. “Surprise, bitches.” He looked over at Tom and saw he had his seatbelt on, and now seemed an appropriate time, so Max buckled up, too.
The BMW maintained its cool, like its occupants didn’t care that they were being followed. Abruptly the car turned right and took off like a hawk out of hell. They do care.
Max and Tom gave chase. Tom sped past the same apocalypse row, Tower of Pisa, and mosque with the floating wall.
The BMW bolted down a debris-strewn street, dodging chunks of building and a trash dumpster that was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Tom dodged them, too. Then they picked up speed—scrotum-shrinkingly faster.
The BMW swerved into a turn. Its smoking tires laid down black streaks on the dusty pavement and screeched. Tom overshot the turn. The burned-out concrete frame of a building grew large, and Max thought, So this is how it ends—taken out by an inanimate object. This is so embarrassing.
Tom let off the gas and pumped the brakes, but their momentum took them up on the sidewalk and directly at the building. Concrete rocks and pebbles slid beneath them, but Tom regained control and narrowly missed hitting the edifice.
The engine growled, and the SUV leaped off the sidewalk. A
head, the BMW had slowed down, and Max and Tom gained on it. The vehicle swerved as the passenger hung his weapon out the window and sprayed AK fire.
Bullets struck the front of their SUV, and one hit the windshield in front of Max’s face. Max’s heart and breathing stopped. In that moment, the whole world froze. Then he remembered the bullet-resistant glass and realized he hadn’t been hit. His heart pumped again and he could breathe. Another bullet struck the window between them and one hit above Tom. The shooter continued fire until he’d spent his magazine.
Max rolled down his passenger window. “My turn.”
Tom pulled up on the BMWs left side. Max blasted at the driver, a little man who cowered and scrunched down in his seat while keeping the BMW on the road. Max’s shots missed. The gunman in the passenger seat presented a bigger target, so Max fired at him. The shoulder fabric on his shirt twitched—direct hit. It wasn’t a killing shot, but it had gotten his attention. Max aimed at his face and squeezed. The shooter’s head smacked sideways like a cue ball and bounced off the passenger window.
Tom sideswiped the BMW and ran it off the road. The vehicle skidded out of control until it hit the concrete structure of a burned-out building, stopping the car cold.
Tom slammed on the brakes, sliding to a stop. Then he backed up and parked on the side of the road next to the BMW. Its front was smashed. Max wanted to interrogate the driver, and he wasted no time as he hopped out and ran to the Bimmer. In the passenger seat was the shooter, his piñata popped and his candy leaking onto the leather upholstery. The driver’s airbag was deployed and bloodied, and the small man’s head seemed buried in it, but upon closer inspection, his head was on the floorboard. The airbag seemed to have decapitated him.
Chapter Twelve
Contrasting the apocalypse that was eastern Damascus, Tom drove with Max through paradise—palm tree–lined streets, embassies, and bank headquarters—in western Damascus. The Papal Embassy, Saudi Arabia Embassy, Al Baraka Islamic Bank, and International Committee of the Red Cross surrounded the Czech Republic Embassy.
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