Khyber Run

by Amber Green

  "Khallas.” It was over.

  Again, his eyes searched mine. He nodded shortly.

  "Echo, how is he?"

  "Hairline fractures at C1/C2 and at C5. I'm told he was in surgery before the swelling set in, though. They're confident he'll see full recovery."

  A C5 break was the hangman's fracture. “Is he here?"

  "No, Germany. Landstuhl. They have facilities you wouldn't believe."

  Germany. I'd been to Berlin once, a gray city with gray-black streets, steel gray water, mottled gray snow, grayish lumpen food, and gray-white skies. “Will I be staying here, or going back to my ship?"

  "Here, unless you really want to head back to the ship. I've got the use of a place in Plywood Alley for two weeks. Tomorrow, when you're released, you can come stay there. You've got another ten days on TAD, but my unit's on maneuvers—"

  "Cap'n?” A voice rose sharply from beyond the door. “Cap'n Momand?"

  Omar rolled his eyes. “You think you can yell any louder, Kilo? This is a hospital."

  An officer? My brother was an officer?

  Sorrow had been an officer too. Somehow, that part of it struck only now.

  A skinny kid poked his head in the door. “Sir, the MPs have Lima and Delta. Remember yesterday some jerks was up in that prayer tower, dropping candy for kids and shooting them with rubber bullets when...uh..."

  His pale eyes were fixed on my right hand, folded possessively in my brother's. He gulped and red rushed through his face.

  Omar clasped his other hand over mine. “Zarak, this is my radioman, Private Kellner. Kilo, meet my older brother, HM1 Momand. You may call him Doc."

  "Oh! Honored to meet you, Doc."

  I nodded at him, “Hello, Kilo."

  "Cap'n?"

  "Go,” I told them, extracting my hand from Omar's. “Rescue your men. Come back, if you get a chance, and tell me how it went."

  An aide checked my vitals, spoke cheerfully to me in some language that might have been German or Swahili for all I knew, and helped me locate the head. I think I had just agreed to be shaved when Blue arrived: First Lieutenant Mohammed Momand. He looked too much like Echo, and he didn't know what to do with his hands, or where to look, or what to say to me. I shooed away the aide, not before he exchanged a few chipper-sounding words with Blue.

  Blue turned a motorcycle helmet over in his hands and set it on a too-narrow shelf overhead. It fell. He caught it and set it again more precisely. It fell again. He stood and put it on the seat. “I'm sorry. I thought y'all could just arrest him."

  Him. Tango. “The mission was your idea?"

  He shook his head vigorously. “I don't have the pull to authorize any of this. I just knew I couldn't speak enough of the language any more, and I feel like people spit in my food every time I sit down in a restaurant here. Omar's got the local lingo, but he's also got so much fucking responsibility."

  He paced to the door, listened at it, and paced back. “You've always been the one who could do things. I knew if anyone could figure out this mess without creating an international incident, you could."

  "Blue, come here."

  He came to sit on the edge of my cot.

  I touched one polished-gold eyebrow. His flinch hurt. “Did I create an international incident?"

  He stood and paced. “No. At least not yet. And if things stay quiet another twenty-four, we can all relax a little."

  "Then why are you so anxious?"

  He quirked a grin. “Well, you're never going to play the piano again."

  I laughed, shocked. When would I ever play the piano?

  Blue grinned more broadly. Then his face went serious again. “Are you going to disappear on us again? Do you hate us that much?"

  That cut deep, twisting a blade in my heart. “Do you hate me?"

  "No."

  That wasn't a completely true answer. “Are you a Muslim?"

  He squirmed. “Not a good one. I...I sing."

  I remembered the times I'd beaten him for singing with the radio, for sneaking into the piano room when he thought I couldn't hear and picking out tunes of Godless songs. “I am no longer required to act as your father, Blue. Your soul is your own."

  He clasped my hand then and spoke in a rush. “I have a girlfriend. I'd love for you to meet her."

  I smiled sadly. A girlfriend, not a wife. But I'd said the truth. His soul was his own, and I no longer had the burden or privilege of forging the weapon he was becoming.

  The next day, Omar not having returned yet, I was discharged into Blue's care. I reluctantly let him tie my shemagh for me, and even more reluctantly climbed onto the back of his motorcycle. These things had always terrified me, ever since my first ride had ended in a road rash all along my right side. Luckily, his was a very quiet Japanese machine, not one of those helicopter-loud Harleys. Unfortunately, he decided I needed a tour of the city and took me around for many blocks, bellowing information about this landmark, or the musical taste of the assholes in that Toyota.

  Suddenly, I knew where we were. “Stop!"

  I climbed off the motorcycle, and Blue killed the engine. A group of laborers was cleaning out the ruins of the shop where I'd sat waiting for my garden seeds. The man who sang wasn't in sight.

  The baked mud shell of the place remained, but it stank of wet char. “What happened to the man who was here?"

  The foreman, identified by the fact he wasn't holding a shovel, squinted at me, at Blue, and back at me.

  I awkwardly pried off my helmet and unwrapped my shemagh for the sake of good manners. “The man, the mujahid with no hands."

  "That one? He was neither Sunni nor Shia, and then he became too friendly with the English. And so he met judgment. The boy is gone. The English took the girl. She might live.” He shrugged. “Inshallah."

  The English meant me and Oscar and the sergeant. Because of us, because of me, that inoffensive man had been killed, probably beaten to death. His little girl was in a hospital or an orphanage, the boy conscripted or sent for brainwashing. The little girl had a grandmother—was she begging beside the road, under one of these innumerable dusty burqas? My stomach twisted, but I kept my tone calm. “Did they bury his hands with him?"

  "Of course, of course.” He seemed insulted that I'd feel any need to ask.

  "Come on,” Blue urged. “We need to keep moving here."

  I straddled his machine again. They'd given me two weeks here. How many lives could I destroy in that time?

  The shack in Plywood Alley smelled of roach spray. Blue threw open both windows. An air conditioner was set in the middle of the front door. I turned the fan on full power.

  "Fucking noisy,” Blue complained.

  Noisy, yes. Did everything require a vulgar epithet, though?

  But a week ago I'd been the one throwing f-bombs everywhere.

  He checked the fridge, tossed a ginger ale to me, and popped the tab on a can of Coke. “I'd say home sweet home, but I've seen better dog kennels."

  I sat down at the metal desk in the center of the room and elevated my arm in its sling. The pain pills had worn off—or been vibrated off. I wiped the top of the can, then braced the can with my elbow while picking at the pull tab.

  "I swear, Z. You talked to that man like a native."

  "I am a native,” I said quietly. The tab came up, foaming soda all over the lid of the can.

  He paced, fidgeting, looked at me, and paced more.

  I watched him. The room had two reading lamps, two unmade racks with linens folded at the foot, two windows, an empty bookshelf, a two-burner stove, the fridge, and the air conditioner in the door. There wasn't a lot to explore. “What aren't you telling me, brother?"

  "You found the folks? You really went right over there and found them?"

  "The border isn't exactly tight."

  "Are they like you used to be? All inshallah, bismillah, alhamdulillah?"

  My head hurt. My hand hurt. I sipped at the stinging-cold ginger ale. “Where do you t
hink I got it from? Is this a problem for you?"

  He swung his arms, cracking his knuckles against the fridge, and swore. Then he ran his fingers through his spiky white-blond hair. “I've spent all this time trying to prove I can be Muslim yet not be a religious freak. Now I don't know if I meet the standards at all."

  I'd had the opposite discussion with a seaman recruit that Chaps brought to me a month ago, one who had just discovered Islam and thought being obedient had to mean being obnoxiously obtrusive. “Saying these things is a cultural norm, not a religious requirement. There are Christians who don't say ‘Praise Jesus’ out loud five or six times a day, just as there are Christians who do. If you don't pay attention to the words, they're just noises anyway. Their function is to focus your mind where it needs to be."

  He grinned crookedly. “The holy words are just noises. I never thought I'd hear you say something like that."

  I smiled back, though my head hurt too much to really care whether it looked right. “I'm not a teenager any more. From this side of thirty, I can see the difference between mellowing out and selling out."

  He shook his head. “Amazing."

  Why was it so easy to talk tolerance here, when outside this plywood enclave any sign of tolerance was grounds for murder?

  I wanted to go home, suddenly. If home was a reality for anyone past childhood.

  "Are you going to keep volunteering for TADs?"

  "I didn't volunteer for his one."

  He whirled to face me. “What!"

  I raised my hand. “Never mind. Yes, I plan to volunteer for more. Getting off the ship is good for me."

  Oscar wasn't on my ship. Spending time here was no guarantee of seeing him, but staying on my nice safe ship would guarantee not seeing him. I puzzled over the question of why I wanted to see him, when he called me by my brother's name, and set aside the question. I did want to see him. I wanted to hear his voice, too. I wanted to touch his glossy black hair, wanted to feel his gentle lips and rough hands on me.

  And if it was a sin, I'd willingly pay the price.

  Blue paced until I asked him to help me make the bed; then he insisted on making it for me. Then he shut and locked the windows, for security. He said he'd be back at 0730 and would bring me coffee and something halal for breakfast.

  I smiled. I hadn't had coffee in years. But it was nice of him to think of it.

  I took a doubled dose of the medication and lay down. Going to sleep nevertheless seemed to take a long time.

  I woke up in the dark with someone in the room. I waited for him to say something, or to attack, or something.

  "I nearly got you killed."

  Oscar. I relaxed. Really, there was not a single person in the world I would rather wake up to. “By missing the knife? If he had it on him, I missed it too."

  "I still don't know where he hid it."

  I yawned. “He was over near the packs, the tack. It could have been in there. I didn't search his packs."

  "But I know better."

  "I know a lot of things, Oscar. That doesn't mean I always put them into practice."

  "I want you to know one more thing. I never saw you as any kind of substitute for Bravo. For one thing, he was straight.” His tone was raw, harsh. Like he'd been screaming a long time.

  "You're not coming down with an upper respiratory infection, are you?"

  "A cold? Don't think so."

  "Good.” For a medical person, I really didn't like being around people with minor ailments. Colds. Bruises. Hangovers. You tell them to just endure it, and they react like you've repealed the entire Bill of Rights.

  "Should I leave?"

  I thought about it. If an international incident hit the media, he and I would both become pariahs, dangerous people to know. Otherwise, I was probably safe to be around. “It depends. All this could still blow up on us."

  His voice went hoarser. “Don't fuck with me. Just answer. Am I welcome?"

  I threw back the blanket and welcomed him.

  THE END

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Loose Id Titles by Amber Green

  Khyber Run

  Steal Away

  The HUNTSMEN Series

  Lights Out!

  Backtract

  Bareback

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Amber Green

  Being a bespectacled were-grammarian as well as a professional paper-pusher, I submerge myself in fiction in an attempt to find high adventure (as opposed to anything involving actual expenditure of sweat), lots of nookie, or sometimes just a reality that makes sense. Really.

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  Visit www.loose-id.com for information on additional titles by this and other authors.