by Amber Green
But we couldn't leave it for the lascar to discover when they came back by, or they'd identify us well enough to hunt us down. Too bad we didn't know where the ziarat was. That was the traditional place to stow anything too heavy to travel with.
After my first stumble, I hooked a finger into one of the equipment loops on Oscar's pack, so I could follow him by touch and subliminal cues instead of starlight and guesswork. I held on even after the moon rose, not bothering to justify my actions. Oscar didn't object.
Once in a while, I looked back, checking the toothed horizon and trying to see if we were leaving a trail. I kept looking even though I knew full well that the moonlight wouldn't show me anything. I was doing good to put my feet on the ground without stumbling.
When the dew came, though, if anyone did pick up the trail, we'd be leaving easily identifiable boot treads. I gave the loop a tug, and Oscar stopped. I squatted and touched the rock. Still dry. Not too late to cover our tread. But now that I thought of it, the bandage scissors had gone with Echo. I could cut up the spare shemagh with a knife, but it would ravel and leave its own trail.
I put my mouth to his ear, less to bury my voice than for a chance to breathe his male scent. “Socks over boots. Disguise tread print."
He turned his head and breathed against my ear. “Can you find, no light?"
I'm a sailor. I can find anything in the dark. And the socks were easy. But I just nodded, my beard stubble scraping him. A shiver went down my back, and my dick tried to stand. I eased it sideways before fingering open the correct pouch.
We walked on until the moon was dead overhead and then found a new nook to huddle in. Oscar leaned into the rock with a sigh. “We'll crash here."
Thanks for asking my opinion. I just stretched out beside him, though. “Want some jellied sheep brains?"
"Got some?"
"No,” I admitted. So much for getting a rise out of the man. Tiredness settled on me like a blanket.
"What-all did you salvage?"
I pulled a mouthful of water and held it long enough to run through a mental list before swallowing. “My clothes, poncho, liner, a sleeping bag and mat, one bridle, saddle, saddle blanket, and the old-style saddle bag, a sanitary kit, a blister kit, eight meals of halal rations, and a couple more bladders of water.” For water, he'd have only what was in his pack's bladder now. He might not have any food. He was Pakhtun enough not to ask for anything until he was hungry enough to munch live lizards. But I was too Pakhtun to wait for him to ask. “You're welcome to anything you want, of course."
"Anything?"
I wondered at the tightness in his voice. But what did he think, that I'd take the sleeping bag and mat and food, and leave him to sleep hungry and thirsty on the poncho? “Anything."
A hand grasped my dick, which surged to life. “I ask again."
Cupping his hand with mine, I held it in place. “This might not be the right time or place to get all naked and sweaty, Oscar."
"Roger that.” He didn't withdraw his hand. Instead it massaged, pressing, until I moaned. “Half-naked will do. You need to remove the jock, anyhow. We'll be walking a long way, and that'd chafe."
I didn't think so. It was an excuse, though. I'd said the sensible thing. I'd been reasonable. Now my cock wanted to make the decisions for me, and any excuse was good enough.
I shrugged out of my pack while he opened my pants and shuffled them down my hips, then stopped when they entangled my boots. While I worked my way out of my boots, then stripped off my pants, light whispers of noise, no louder than my suddenly harsh breath, told me Oscar was doing the same. I barely remembered to cap my boots with my socks, to keep unwelcome visitors from climbing in.
The compression straps flipped off the sleeping bag, going somewhere in the dark. I didn't care. A calloused hand gripped my ankle, then ran up my bare leg. I shivered. He yanked the leg straight and dropped his weight on me, trapping one knee bent under my belly.
I grinned and flipped him onto his back. He grunted, but rolled away even as I reached for him. My hands closed on bare rock and a pair of boots.
He knocked out my elbows, folding my arms. I twisted to get aim at him, but he held my arms, twisting them behind me like the wings of a roast chicken. My weight, and his, crashed onto one shoulder and the side of my head. My legs—no—fuck—I was pinned but good. My pulse pounded under my skin, and my cock ground into a wad of cloth with an inconveniently placed button.
His hot breath gusted across the back of my neck. “Say uncle."
The fuck I will. “There's ointment for chafing in the bag."
"I got half a mind to do you dry, ‘cause you made me work for it."
I clenched my teeth and strained against him. No-go. He hadn't learned his wrestling in a school gym either. “Not if you ever in your life want a chance at round two."
"Can you find that lube one-handed? Count of ten. One. Two."
"Gotta reach the fucking pack!"
"Three."
Only at three did he release my left arm. I snatched the bag to me and ripped it open with teeth and hand while he kept my right arm twisted high behind my back and his weight pinning me from the belly down.
"Nine."
"Here, fucker. Here!"
"A man in your position might speak more politely."
I took a ragged breath. “Here, oh wise and wonderful Uncle. Please take it."
A hand caught mine, but instead of taking the packet of ointment, he stroked down my wrist. Then yanked a loop of cord tight at the wrist. I dropped the packet and twisted, heaving, fighting for real this time, trying desperately to dislodge his weight. But his powerful knees clamped in at my flanks, and he released my right wrist only to reveal a tight bracelet of cord on it too.
My balls drew up tight, proving—if nothing else this night had proven it—that they were not the best part of my brain to trust. I saw stars. “Oh, no, you fucker. No you don't. I don't play bondage games."
"You do tonight,” he said mildly.
The loops jerked my wrists together, too high to give me any leverage to fight him. He knotted the cords with the backs of my hands touching one another. For a moment he let me test them. “Get your knees on the pad, Zu."
Make me, asshole! I bit back the words right in time. Getting fucked with my knees or my cock on bare rock—even cloth-covered bare rock—would be memorable, but not in the way I liked. “Where is it?"
"Left.” He hooked a hand under my shoulder and around my neck, pulling. I got my knees under me on the pad and forced my muscles to relax, hoping to trick him. Once he relaxed too, I could—fuck, do something. Catch him off guard and get to my blade. Cut free. Then find out how much parachute cord I could lay hands on.
But just as I inhaled, ready to shift my balance, an icy drop fell on my shoulder blade. What? Not rain?
Another drop hit my lower spine. Then hard, wet, callus-thickened fingers slid like a letter opener down my crack and bored into my asshole, burning as they stretched and scraped.
No delicate one-finger, two-finger intro here. He shoved in a cold gob of lotion, jabbing in those two stiff fingers and working around. He withdrew them, then jammed them in hard and deep—shoving a grunt out of my mouth—to smear another cold layer.
I pictured him under me, his brown ass clenching around my cock, and then it wasn't any finger. His cock bored in, hard and hot.
I panted, piecing out the pain in bite-size puffs. It had been a long time since I'd had a man that way. Bahrain, I think. Three...four years ago.
I'd been drunk at the time. Drunk enough I might have passed out before the dude finished. No chance of that tonight.
Oscar grunted and reached around to cup my balls. “This would be easier if you'd relax."
It would be a whole lot easier if I was drunk. “You relax when you're tied up?"
He laughed quietly and drove that thing right up my ass.
My prostate spit sparks across my eyes. I gasped.
"Shhh.�
� He released my balls and took a firm grip of my hips. “Rise up a notch."
I obeyed without thinking, shifting around in search of an angle that would make me feel less crammed full. But I was crammed full.
As if reading my mind, he eased out, inch after inch. Then he thrust again, jostling my prostate along the way.
Whoa! Yes! But my forehead skidded along the foam pad, thunked against a rock off the end of it.
Oscar dragged me backward to the edge of the mat. “Just lie down, Zu."
So much for a reach-around. But my face wasn't doing too good at supporting the weight of my upper body, especially with those thrusts. So I let him ride me down, his thighs forcing mine wide apart.
His cock felt like it doubled in size. He pulled, dabbed on a little more cold ointment, and thrust deep, grinding feverishly against my prostate while mashing my hard cock into the foam mat.
Oh, that was new. That was good. “More."
"Roger that.” He pulled, thrust, ground, really working my ass, reaching deeper inside me than seemed possible, pulled, thrust, ground, setting a rhythm that lit a deliciously hot glow at the base of my balls.
I focused on the glow, on the way his reaming stoked it like bellows stoked the forge fire. Bigger. Hotter. Hotter. He was short-stroking now.
Without warning, the heat blazed through me. I cried out, bucking against the mat.
"Shh."
Took a second to recognize Oscar's hiss. Just then he went rigid, his strong fingers digging into my hips, and hissed again.
I listened to the wind scouring rock with sand and suddenly hoped he was wearing a condom.
He collapsed against me, warm and heavy, a shield against the cold.
My hands weren't caught between my body and his; they were fisted against the mat. I felt the loops, parachute cord all right, cut cleanly between my wrists. I had no idea when he'd cut me free.
One loop shook off. The other fell free when I thumbed the cut knot.
Oscar rolled to the side and made a reassuringly familiar stretched-latex noise. I could all but see him knotting the condom. “Towel, Zu?"
I reached into the pack, fumbling a little, and found the bandannas. Screw Oscar. I needed one to clean myself and the mat and one to keep ready for next time.
Yeah, next time he'd be the one left with a sore ass. Unless one of us got shot before the chance arose.
I pulled on my long johns and pants and wished briefly I still had a clean pair of socks. Or a spare pair. We'd walked the soles out of both my spares. I left my one pair capping my boots. Cold feet tonight would be worth it when I had dry, aired socks for the walk tomorrow.
I spread the sleeping bag. Oscar and I lay atop it, nestled like lovers so that my poncho liner covered us both. And fuck me—why did I feel so good?
[Back to Table of Contents]
Chapter Thirteen
We woke in the first shiver of predawn light, his morning wood against my ass, mine under my hand. I pinched mine down, moved away from his. He grunted and left the hollow we'd sheltered in.
I took the time to wash my face and hands in a cupful of the icy water.
I thought I heard a shpelai, the bamboo flute shepherd boys played. From far away, the delicate, haunting sighs might have been the sound of moonlight.
My great-grandfather allowed shepherds to play flutes and sing at night, as the sound seemed to calm the sheep. He forbade flutes in the daytime, or close to the hujra where they might lure a man's thoughts outside the track of obedience. The foolish “children's songs” my mother had taught us in Kabul left him sputtering and chewing his beard. Most of all, we boys could not combine singing and instruments.
Even the naat, the women's songs of faith, were allowed to be sung, or played, but not both together. And certainly not where a male might be enticed or distracted from his own observances.
In a city minaret, the muezzin would be patiently holding up two threads, ready to sing out the call to prayer as soon as he could tell the black thread from the white. La ilaha ilallah.
I stretched, ears pricked for raised voices in the cold air. None. Prayers don't need vocalization; only men do. But the coming of this dawn called for unsubdued praise. So I raised my own voice for the first time in months. Maybe a year. Maybe more. “La ilaha ilallah."
The echoes mingled one line with the next. “La ilaha ilallah,” healing over my clumsy enunciation of the classical Arabic. There's something manifestly right about liquid chants flowing over stark rock. “La ilaha ilallah."
When I finished, Oscar scuffed a foot, like knocking on a door, and reentered the hollow.
I bristled, waiting for the snide comment any of my shipmates would have offered. But none came. He simply opened a pack and commenced laying out an inventory of what we had to carry.
I crouched and watched him. I already knew what I'd brought and where it was packed. My control-freak tendencies aren't the jealous kind, though; it doesn't bother me to let other people know all the details too.
Besides, the pause gave me a chance to luxuriate in the peace of the morning. Frost shimmered on the rocks about us, where our breath had collected. The moon rested on a smear of cirrus clouds above the western horizon.
One star hung just outside the horns of the moon. Venus or Jupiter. El Zohra, I corrected myself. El Moshtara.
On summer nights in Kabul, when I was very small, we'd sleep on the roof instead of in the brick-oven apartment. My older brother Hamid and I would pillow our heads on our father's arms, and he would tell us about the stars, the planets. Years afterward, I realized my father's eyesight was too poor to see what he described so well. How hard had he studied to be able to teach us?
I unfolded the printout with the photos of the man who had killed my little brother. There was another printout with it. More photos.
Two shots of a magnificent gray mare, a classic Arabian beauty. A pixilated zoom-in of her laughing young rider. A group photo, showing the rider between Tango and Mike, with an arm draped around each of them. Oscar stood to Mike's left, with Mike's arm draped over his shoulder and the rider's hand resting on it, but he remained indefinably separate. The four of them wore T-shirts with sweaty dark patches, and their faces shone with sweat. The rifle barrels rising behind them wore condoms to keep the sand out.
Mike and Oscar and my brother. And the man who'd murdered him.
My brother. Ben. Sorrow. My hands shook. I braced my wrists against a frost-rimed stone, waiting for the sun to come up so I could see his face more clearly.
He'd always loved Arabians, always wanted one. I was glad that dream, at least, had come true.
I remember teaching him to shoot, with an old Winchester. My mother had put a stop to the lessons, but not soon enough.
He was born shortly after my father's death, and to my grandparents’ distress had been named Sorrow. In the US, he became Benoni, then just Ben. He'd been so mischievous, so full of life and fun.
I'd enlisted when he was what, ten? And seen him only once since then. So yes, I'd abandoned him, but if I hadn't enlisted, the four of us would have been split up. Foster homes could sometimes stretch to accommodate up to three siblings together, but I made four. So we would have been split, two to one home and two to another. Which meant that when I aged out of the system, I would leave one brother alone among the infidels. Without me, the three of them had a chance to stay together.
Sunlight spread around me. Ben had grown up well. His eyes were deep, but not hollow. His teeth were straighter than mine or Omar's. If I'd never had my nose broken, I still wouldn't have those even, balanced features. Some Bollywood actor playing me might look like this man.
My brother.
I folded the page, eventually, and managed to make it slide into my map pocket.
Apart from his rifle and knife, Oscar had a wicked-looking machine pistol. I didn't recognize the style and suspected it was unauthorized. Especially since he hadn't shown it before. His three-day assault pack also held s
ome energy bars, meticulously coiled black rappelling line, and a hank of 550 parachute cord. He had one two-liter water pack that was full and one nearly empty, a jar of iodine pills and a cup filter to purify found water, and a solar ground still—a square of plastic and a cup. That would have been useful last night. It might yet turn out to be useful, depending on what water we could find in the course of the day. He had bullets for the rifle, four magazines for the machine pistol, a pocketknife, two pressure bandages and a packet of blood-stop powder, some camo safety pins, a spare shemagh, and the clothes he was wearing. Everything else was lost with his horse.
"You don't carry your phone on you?"
He shook his head.
"GPS was in your saddlebag?"
He nodded, his lips a straight line across his face.
I had the sudden urge to reassure him. “We know where we are, and we know where we're going. Unless we have to detour around another lascar, all we need to do is follow the map."
He looked over his shoulder, then back at me. “Got a map?"
Well no. The maps had been programmed into the iPad and the GPS. Which the mujahidin took. Which brought another problem front and center. “They'll know where we're going."
"No. If they break the encryption without erasing the data, which isn't a given, they'll find villages marked. They won't know why we're interested or which is our goal. Did the ‘din last night say anything to indicate whether they think we're worth ambushing?"
His voice became more animated and less clipped as he spoke. I felt knots in my chest untie in response. “They saw the landing site. The consensus appeared to be that three riders with a spare came by horse, then left by helo, abandoning the horses."
He grunted and measured off a length of the smallest cord. “Pack up. I'll lace the load on you."
In a pig's aye-aye. I pulled myself together and shook out the reflexive anger. He had the rank and the skills. I'd be his pack ass if it let him do what he was good at, because maximizing his prowess maximized my chance of success. “I'll need a quick-release knot."