“Rejoin us, Ayaan. Come down and rest out of the sun, Mohammad.”
The rest of his company already swarmed over the ramshackle machine, taking anything small enough to carry on horseback. The machine had started life as a tractor-trailer, and would end it as scrap.
Once back on the ground, like any good cavalryman, he checked his horse. The beast’s coat shone with sweat, but otherwise all it needed was a rest in the shade. He took a handful of dried corn from his saddlebag and let it eat the grains from his hand.
With his horse tended, and carefully keeping the excitement from his face, Qadim walked over to his commanding officer. “Captain, may I also look among the infidel’s possessions?”
Captain al-Naadi clapped him on the shoulder and smiled for the first time since Qadim had been assigned to his company. “Of course, Mohammad. I hope you find something useful.”
Without undue haste, Qadim made a show of inspecting everywhere for some sort of souvenir. Others had already ransacked the cab but he did it again anyway, and then made his way down the far side of the bed. Some crawled over the accumulated items in the wire-mesh enclosed bed behind the cab, while others inspected the engine. Two men eyed the huge propeller blades but couldn’t figure out what to do with them even if they could remove them.
When no one was looking his way, Qadim dropped to the dirt and rolled under the truck on his back. Near the rear axle, he found what he had put there years ago. Shaped like a pistol with an extra-wide mouth, it had an orange body, now smeared black with dirt and grease. Two pieces of twisted metal held it in place. Qadim cut his finger untwisting them but didn’t dare stop.
When it dropped free, he stuffed it into the front of his white cotton pants and scooted back into the sunlight. He made it back to his horse without anyone noticing, as men either rested or looked for loot. He put the flare gun into his second saddlebag, hidden under the visible one, and breathed a silent sigh of relief.
Maybe he was being paranoid, and maybe nobody would have found it, way back under the truck bed like that. But if they had, the inscription carved into the barrel would have been hard to explain.
To Idaho Jack, a true friend of Shangri-La! From Mohammad Qadim.
#
Chapter 19
Beware of an old man in a profession where men usually die young.
Military axiom
8 miles southwest of Steamboat, AZ
1252 hours, April 14
Jack sat in the front passenger seat. Nipple squeezed into the backseat and never took her eyes off their prisoner. Green Ghost decided against taking Interstate 40 or any other main road back to Overtime. Bridges, overpasses, and other structures afforded perfect ambush opportunities, so he stuck to cross country and small tracks through the open desert.
Riding shotgun, with Nipple’s P229 Combat Compact Sig Sauer aimed at his head, Jack swiveled in the seat and studied her. She felt an almost tangible touch, of her body being probed on a cold slab, like an antelope ready for butchering.
“You’re one beautiful woman,” he finally said.
“Eyes front, creepy old dude, and quit staring at me. I’ve been known to splatter brains for less.”
“You don’t like being complimented?”
“I don’t like being lied to.”
Jack clicked his fingers. “You don’t believe it.”
“You just want something, shitball.”
“My sister thinks she’s ugly,” Green Ghost said.
“She does? What’s wrong with her?”
He shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. She keeps waiting, thinking there’s one special man out there looking for her. She’s waiting to hear all those things women like to hear.”
“Fuck you, B.B.”
“B.B.?”
“Big Brother,” Green Ghost explained. “My sister’s a little different.”
Jack turned back around. Nipple brought the gun up. “Watch it.”
“Listen to Idaho Jack, girl: don’t never trust people like that, men who whisper what you wanna hear. They’ll tell you they’ll take you to all the beautiful places they know, waterfalls, snow-topped mountain peaks, rivers full of clear water and trout, and they’ll kiss you every place you ever hoped a man would kiss you, and tell you such beauty as yours ain’t never walked the Earth before, so’s you can’t ever go back to anybody else without smelling them on whoever you’re with. They’ll ruin you for everybody else.
“And then, when you are spoilt for humanity and totally dependent on them, they’ll leave you in the most heartbreaking fashion you can imagine. They’ll take out your heart and step on it and you’ll kiss their feet while they do it. They’ll do it just because they can. You’ll finally figure out what they did and why they did it, but you won’t care. You’d do it all over again just for the thrill of feeling their touch one more time. It’s why, back in the old times, they named hurricanes after people.”
“Damn, you’re flat-out weird. No man’ll ever con me like that.”
Jack laughed. “When you finally meet him, you’ll fall harder than most.”
Nipple grimaced at his blackened teeth. “Not me, you crazy fucker. I’ve killed more men than I’ve dated.”
“Dated?” He pulled at the wispy strands on the end of his beard. “Dated… I ain’t heard that word in… hell, I can’t remember. There ain’t no dating any more, not since The Collapse. There’s romancing, I guess, but not dating.”
“Well, fucking excuse me for breathing,” Nipple said. “No man will ever romance me like that… happy now?”
“Dating… where’d you hear a word like that? That’s a word from the dead world, and you two ain’t old enough to be survivors.”
“You mentioned my favorite word, dead.” She pushed the muzzle of the pistol within inches of his throat.
“So angry,” he said, shaking his head. The wisps of his beard brushed the gun’s barrel. “What has Idaho Jack ever done to you?”
“Men lie; you’re a man. Figure it out.”
Along a ridge of heaped boulders, close by on their right, they heard the clack of sliding rocks down the steep wall. Green Ghost veered left in a defensive reflex, expecting an attack, but it was nothing more than some rocks sliding to the desert floor. He exhaled in relief.
“You pissed her off pretty good,” he said to Jack. “Be careful. I told you she’s damaged and dangerous.”
The old man shrugged. “I’m going to die soon enough, it don’t really matter when, but if we don’t hurry up and get wherever we’re goin’, it’ll be stewed in this fuckin’ heat.”
“I know a lot faster way.” Nipple drew a Black Legion serrated combat knife to go with the Sig Sauer.
“That’s enough,” Green Ghost said. “And put that pistol away! The knife, too. We could hit a hole and you might kill him by accident.” He stared at her in the mirror until she did as he told her. “His only crime is irritating you, and that’s something every living person does. Plus, we need him alive.”
“Brother and sister,” Jack said, tilting his head to one side. “You look about the same age, but you seem a lot older, Greenie.”
“We’re twins,” Nipple said. “He’s the guy but I got the balls.”
Green Ghost ignored that. “Here’s the deal, Jack. We need your help. We need to know what’s out here, that’s true. People, bad guys, Sevens, all of it. We’re taking you to the place we live, and I’m telling you now, it’s unlike anything you’ve ever seen before. Once there, you can eat, sleep, bathe, and relax without fear of being attacked.”
Jack started to speak but Green Ghost held up a hand. “That’s all I can tell you for now. But while we’re driving, I also want to solve a little mystery of my own. Last year we were pursuing a party of five people across the desert, seventy or eighty miles northwest of here. They disappeared, apparently kidnapped by other people on horseback, even though we were watching them constantly. Somebody got in and out without us noticing anything wrong. Any idea
s on who might have taken them?”
“Watching them?” Jack said. “When was this?”
“Back in the fall. We started to follow the hoofprints, but were on foot and had other missions to fulfill.”
“Day or night?”
“Night.”
“Remember the moon phase?”
“It was a new moon,” Green Ghost said.
“A new moon, so the desert was dark. Predators like nights like that, because their prey can’t see them coming. Lot more cougars and wolves out here since The Collapse. How close were you to these people?”
Green Ghost did not answer.
“You don’t want to tell me… which means you were far away,” Jack said, surprised. He paused a moment and watched Ghost’s facial response. “Too far for them to see you. That had to have been a few hundred yards, at least. How is it you can see hundreds of yards in total darkness? Either you’re a seer, or you have pre-Collapse technology that still works.”
It was not a question.
“Sear, my skinny white ass,” Nipple said, amused. “The only good sear is what you do to a chunk of meat when you throw it on the fire. Although I prefer it raw.”
The two men ignored her.
“How we saw them doesn’t matter,” Green Ghost said. “Can you help us or not?”
“You don’t need my help,” Jack said. “If you’ve spent any time at all out here, you already know who did it. It was the Ghosts of the Desert who took them folks, just like they do all bad people who walk these sands at night. I’d figure you know all about ’em, what with you bein’ a ghost, too.”
Green Ghost could not tell if Jack meant what he said or not. “Do these ghosts of the desert ever have real bodies, or are they like fog or something?”
“Oh, as Jesus Christ is Lord, man, I’ve been mostly alone out here for fifty years, but even I can tell when somebody has gone burnt in the brain… I don’t mean ghost ghosts, although I’ve seen plenty of those. Ghosts of the Desert. Apaches.”
“You mean like Govind?”
That surprised Jack. “You know him? I’m impressed. He doesn’t much like strangers.”
“I’ve never personally met him,” Green Ghost said. “But he warned some of my comrades about the Sevens last year, right before the big battle. He might have saved us all.”
“He’s lost a lot of people over the past few decades. Mostly to that horde of locusts down south, meaning the Sevens, but also to that maniac in Prescott, General Patton. It’s made him secretive and suspicious. I can’t blame him. But what’s this about a battle?”
“The Sevens are still a problem, but there’re about ten thousand less of them to worry about now.”
“Jack likes this news! What happened?”
“We killed them. And Patton’s not in Prescott any more. He’s in a cell inside our mountain. Prescott’s in the hands of the Seventh Cavalry now.”
“Well, fuck my pig with a goat,” Jack said. “Ten thousand Sevens dead and Patton locked up? Now I am glad I met you. A friend of mine said something about this but I didn’t believe him, a fellow named Jingle Bob.”
“Never heard of him.”
“No matter. What’s this Seventh Cavalry? Is that what you’re part of?”
“He is,” Nipple said. “I’m only with them ’cause they feed me.”
“Like feeding a mangy dog?” Jack said, finally irritated with her. She jumped forward in her seat, but before she could grab him Jack had a long knife pointed at her chest. She stopped just short of being impaled on the wicked tip. Her heart-shaped face and expressionless blue eyes did something few things had ever done before: they scared him. “This girl ain’t right,” he said. “She ain’t right in the head, Green Ghost.”
“Whoa, now, Jack. Don’t do something you can’t take back. Nipple, sit back down. Now! Don’t make me make you.”
“I won’t forget this,” she said.
“Don’t piss her off, Jack. Please. She’s my sister. If you kill her, you’re gonna make me kill you, and I don’t want to do that.”
Jack laughed. “Truth is, I’m starting to like her.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” Ghost said.
“Oh, gross,” Nipple said. “Just what I need — some pervert twice my age who smells like a rotten armadillo. Where’s a hot guy when you need one?”
Her brother lifted an eyebrow. “Since when do you look for hot guys?”
“When ugly old ones start hitting on me.”
Jack laughed until he started coughing. “Girl, I’ve been wrong about you. You’d make a damned good scraper.”
“Is that what you are?” Green Ghost said, trying to keep the conversation on some sort of track. “A scraper?”
“You think I’m out here ’cause I like roasting in the sun?”
“So what’s a scraper?”
“What do you think? I scrape shit out of the wreckage. Metal is always good; guns are the best but you don’t see too many of them any more. Fuel that hasn’t spoilt, food, animals, whatever I can find. I was headed to Holbrook to pick up some old kitchen stoves I saw there in what they used to call a diner. Wanna know what the most valuable thing is, though?”
“Sure, lay it on me.”
“Seeds.”
“Like acorns and stuff?” Nipple said, curious despite herself.
“No, no, not that kind of seed, although if you know where I could find some appleseeds, I know people who pay plenty for those. I mean, corn seed, wheat seed, cotton is really good, that kind of seed.”
“Crop seeds.”
“Yeah, that’s the word I was trying to think of. Crop seeds. Can’t ever get enough of those, especially anything unusual. Can’t we pull into the shade for a while? Even with the windows down, I’m burning up here. I ain’t so young any more.”
Green Ghost pulled three water squeezers out from under his seat and handed them out. “Make it last,” he said. “We can’t stop except to piss, and that’s another couple of hours from now. I want to be home by two thousand hours if I can.”
After drinking half the squeezer, Jack smacked his lips. “Long life to ya, boy. Water is precious out here. What’s two thousand hours?”
“Eight o’clock at night.”
“You still keep time? With clocks, I mean. Will wonders never cease?”
“You know,” Ghost said, “they grow all that stuff you’re talking about in Prescott. Apple orchards, cotton, wheat, barley, pumpkins, you name it. I know for a fact we just sowed a huge cornfield.”
Jack paused and scratched the skin hanging from his neck like a turkey’s wattle. “So Patton is gone, huh? It sounds too good to be true. People out here lie all the time… hell, people lie more than they tell the truth. So tell me why I should believe you.”
“I don’t care if you do or you don’t,” Green Ghost said. “See, Jack, I have no doubt how tough you are, or that you’ve got tricks up your sleeve I’ve never heard of before. Like how you hid that knife so I didn’t find it when I frisked you. Good job; you’ll have to tell me how you did it. But you’ll find out tonight that I’m dealing straight. Besides, I know what I can do, and I know you can’t stop me from doing it. So don’t give me any trouble; you’re going to be a very happy man soon enough. At the very least, you can probably bargain for some seeds.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. And take a hot shower and sit in the air conditioning for a while.”
“Air conditioning,” Jack said. “Son of a bitch. I’d forgotten we used to have that. And you’ve got it at this… what did you call it?”
“Overtime.”
“Strange name. You’ve got air conditioning at this Overtime?”
“Where it’s needed. Most of the base is deep inside the mountain where it’s naturally cool.”
“How big is this place?”
Green Ghost smiled. “Big.”
#
Chapter 20
The past is never dead. It’s not even past.
William Faulkner
15 miles northeast of Winslow, AZ
1518 hours, April 14
Fifty miles west-southwest of where they’d left Jack’s rig, something beeped three times, stopped, then beeped three times again.
“What’s that?” Jack asked.
“It’s coming from you, B.B. What the hell is it?”
It had been so long since the device was implanted, Green Ghost had forgotten it was there. “Son of a bitch,” he said. He braked to a stop and stepped outside the Humvee.
“Why are we stopping?” Jack said with fear in his voice. “This is a very bad idea.”
Green Ghost ignored him.
“Relax,” Nipple said. “He’s not gonna let me shoot you.”
Green Ghost took five steps away from the vehicle, walked back, and then took five steps in the opposite direction. Both times the beeping stopped. Returning to his starting point, he took five steps in both right angle directions from the original axis. It was the second one when the beeping didn’t stop.
Jack and Nipple got out and joined him. “Care to fill us in?” she said.
“All of the Nameless have a similar chip planted inside them. Mine is in my left forearm. It’s designed to beep when it picks up the signal of a cache hidden for our benefit. Which means we’re within five miles of such a stash.”
“What kind of stash? Like, weed?”
“Right, because we spent so much time getting stoned… no, it’s probably guns and ammo, and out here, food and water. Maybe some cash. But who knows what else? It’s like a storage closet for operating in the area.”
“We’re in the middle of nowhere,” Jack said.
“How come I don’t have one of those?” Nipple said.
“It’s this way.” Green Ghost ignored his sister and pointed west-southwest. “As we follow, the beeping should get stronger. If it weakens or stops, we’re off course. It’s got to be in those rocks over there.”
“Those rocks have got to be over two hundred feet high,” Nipple said. “Let’s put this on our bucket list and head for home.”
“Not two hundred feet,” Jack said. “More than five hundred, but it don’t matter because you can’t go up there. See that cave? They say a witch lives there, and the whole ridge is sacred to the Apaches. Govind might have done you a good turn once, but if you go poking around in their sacred places, I don’t think he’ll be quite so friendly.”
Standing at the Edge Page 11