River Runs Red (The Border Trilogy)

by Jeffrey J. Mariotte

  This door was at the top of the stairs, with no level space to get a running start. In the darkness he felt unbalanced, so he didn’t want to rear back and kick at it. If he fell down these stairs, he could easily break a leg, or his neck. Surviving the fall might be his worst option; if no one found him, he would stay there until he died of thirst.

  Everybody had to die sometime, but he didn’t want to go like that. Wade loved the water; he hoped to die beneath it, leaving behind only a splintered boat washed up on a sandy spit in some river, not craving a drink in a dark hole beneath Baghdad.

  He pressed against the door. Something snapped and it started to give way at the hinges. He pushed harder, putting all of his weight against it. Wood splintered, the hinge pulled free, and Wade tumbled into a lighted space, landing on his hands and knees on top of most of the door.

  The racket he made was ferocious.

  And yet no one came running, no gunshots echoed though the space, no bullets spanged into the tiled walls around him.

  Regaining his footing, he saw that he had fallen into a mosque. Old, no longer used, but a mosque just the same. It had probably been hit in the early bombing, the days of “shock and awe,” he guessed, but on further reflection he thought the damage might predate even that assault. Massive holes Swiss-cheesed the walls and an intricately filigreed blue dome roof, letting daylight in. The back wall, the one through which he had come, was pockmarked with bullet holes. Wooden benches had been reduced to rubble, and trash, including newspapers (Wade recognized several of the papers that had sprung up out of nowhere in the weeks following Saddam’s fall: The Dawn of Baghdad, A New Day, and Those Who Have Been Freed, mixed in with older, preinvasion copies of Babel and the Iraq Daily, the official English-language paper of Saddam’s government), glass and plastic bottles, greasy food wrappers, flattened shipping cartons with Arabic writing on the sides, covered the floor. This was where the garbage smell originated. For all he knew there might be bodies beneath the detritus. Wade didn’t think his captors had taken this route into the tunnels, because it didn’t look like anyone had passed through here in months.

  He didn’t stand around wondering. Across the big room a doorway gaped, sunlight streaming through. Wade pushed through the debris and outside. He found himself on a city street lined with low, mud-walled buildings and courtyards. Peering over the top of a low wall, he saw a quiet, shaded yard, and beyond that, the Tigris itself tossed shards of sunlight back at him. The sparkle was all show; since the war had started, the Tigris had become ever more polluted. It was not a river he would choose to swim in, but at this distance it looked inviting.

  From the position of the sun, he knew that if he followed the river to his left—to the west—it would eventually lead him to the Green Zone. There he would find Americans, soldiers and diplomats. Until then, he could only hope to encounter a U.S. or an Iraqi patrol, and pray that no militia soldiers or insurgents spotted him. Or anyone else. Americans were about as popular in Iraq as avian flu was in the States.

  He started walking, keeping the river on his right. The streets were strangely empty, as were the skies. He heard no screaming F-16s, no big lumbering transports, no helicopters buzzing overhead. He didn’t even hear any birds. It was as if a nuclear bomb had gone off while he’d been underground. He hadn’t been that far underground, though. He would have felt the blast. If they had survived, his captors would have brought him up, forced him to bear witness to yet another American atrocity.

  Except for the silence, it was a typical Baghdad residential street. Power and phone wires crisscrossed overhead, and here and there obviously illegal splices directed pirated electricity into homes. Buff-colored buildings, some with balconies, faced onto the street. Their yards were hidden behind walls. A few spindly palms brushed the sky.

  Cars and trucks had been parked haphazardly along the sides of the road. Wade kept an eye out for any with keys inside, since hot-wiring wasn’t in his skill set and wheels might make the trip to the Green Zone quicker. On the streets, the smell of shit competed with the river’s odor, because trucks hosed down the dust with untreated sewer water. The aromas of sewage and death had become inescapable inside the city.

  At the end of a city block, someone had hauled together the carcasses of three burned-out cars as a barricade. This was the dividing line between neighborhoods, between Sunni and Shiite. Ordinarily, men would be gathered here with guns, but there weren’t any now. Wade passed through the narrow space left for foot traffic. So much for stealing a car, he told himself. That might just complicate things.

  The next block was rubble, burned-down buildings, chunks of stone and concrete, twisted steel, flame-blackened timbers. Both sides of the street had been destroyed, with debris almost meeting in the middle. He picked his way gingerly down the narrow aisle. At the beginning of the next block, another barricade, this one made with materials salvaged from the rubble. Still no guards.

  After ten minutes or so, he finally saw a sign of life.

  A pig, a scrawny sow with ribs showing through her flesh, trotted across the street ahead of him and disappeared into an alley. When Wade reached the alley, he paused, looked around the corner cautiously, in case someone waited there who had released the pig, or whom she had been running from. But the alley was as empty as the rest of the streets. He looked the other way, but the pig was gone.

  The emptiness of the tunnels beneath the mosque had been unexpected, but this was just too weird. People had been fleeing the city—hell, the whole country—by the hundreds of thousands. An Iraqi with a toothache had to go to Jordan, because all the dentists already had. But there were still plenty of people around.

  So where could they be? What had happened to everyone? Wade hated questions that didn’t have answers. He tried to block them out with his rivers, running through their names as he walked, his own private rosary: Belle Fourche, Marais des Cygnes, Coeur D’Alene, Loup, Gros Ventre, Touchet, Sevier, Deschutes, Payette. Arikaree, Apishapa, Chikaskia, Yampa, Yaak.

  After another few minutes, wondering why there had been no boat traffic on the river, he heard a vehicle. At last! Someone was alive.

  The sound came from the direction Wade was headed anyway, toward the Green Zone. With each passing second, though, his heart hammered in his chest, harder and harder. To come all this way just to be shot down by militia soldiers, or worse, by Americans who didn’t realize who he was…

  He crouched down between a white Toyota and a Mercedes panel truck and watched, ready to dive beneath the truck if necessary. When he saw a small convoy of Humvees flying United States colors, he thought he might burst out crying. He had to take the chance. He wiped away a single tear, sniffed, and stepped into the middle of the street, waving his hands.

  The front Humvee braked to a stop, road dust billowing around it like smoke. Long moments passed. Wade couldn’t see them from here but he could envision the barrels of dozens of weapons all leveling on him. One guy with a nervous twitch and it was all over.

  Finally, a soldier—a jug-eared, gap-toothed black kid who looked fresh off the family farm—climbed down from the passenger side of the front Humvee. “Wade Scheiner?” the kid asked. “Sir, are you Wade Scheiner, with CNN?”

  Then the tears did come, and Wade couldn’t stop them, and when the soldiers spilled from their vehicles, shouting his name, recognizing him, he couldn’t even make out their features through the saltwater in his eyes. Saved, he kept thinking, I’ve been saved, I’ve been motherfucking saved at last and I don’t even know how or why.

  FOUR

  Although the tiny kitchen inside the offices of the Voice of the Borderlands newspaper smelled like coffee, only about a teaspoon of black sludge coated the bottom of the pot. Molly McCall sighed and set her mug on the counter with a heavy clack. Monday morning and she by god needed some caffeine in her system before she could face her desk and the story waiting there.

  The story’s intent was serious enough. The American southwest had been rac
ked by a decade-long drought, and a couple of rainy years had done little to tip the balance back. Rather than providing another sober-minded, drowse-inducing explanation of this, however, managing editor Franklin Carrier had instructed Molly to work a local angle. With Halloween behind them, Thanksgiving and the holiday season would rush in soon enough, so Molly had been talking to growers, florists, and party planners about how the drought and the reprieve of the past summer’s rains would affect what plants and flowers would grace El Paso’s holiday tables this year.

  It seemed like a strange take, focusing on those affluent enough to purchase plants for centerpieces. Generally the Voice’s concern was for the less fortunate, those who might pluck some greenery from their own yards (if they had yards) to place on their tables (if they also had tables). She had diligently called on a wide variety of farmers, flower shop owners, even some of the people who set up pumpkin and Christmas tree or chili ristra stands on street corners. Today she planned to work on beating those random bits of conversation into a shape that readers would recognize as a newspaper story.

  She rinsed out the coffeepot, stuck a new filter pack in the holder, filled the pot from the tap and poured the water into the coffeemaker’s receptacle. Whoever took the last cup was supposed to start a new pot. That was the rule. The office was never empty; any time of the day or night somebody might need a cup.

  When it finished brewing, she filled her mug, tossed in a dash of cream, and started toward her desk. The message light on her phone had been blinking when she had come in, but she hadn’t wanted to deal with voice mail until she was fortified.

  She had almost reached her desk when Frank’s voice boomed from the doorway of his private office. “McCall!”

  Molly turned midstride, diverting around Suzi McKellar’s desk toward Frank’s office. He stood in the doorway, his right hand on the jamb over his head, his left hand leaning casually against his hip. Almost everything about Frank Carrier was casual. He wore a tie to the office, but no jacket, and most of the time his tie was tugged away from his throat, collar button open, shirtsleeves rolled back over muscular forearms. He was a tall man, solidly built, with skin darker than Molly’s coffee since she’d added the cream but not as dark as it had been straight from the pot. His hair had begun turning gray in the last couple of years. He smiled as Molly approached, and his soft brown eyes seemed illuminated from within. While he was no candidate for sainthood, at times Molly thought he could groom himself for that role, given the right incentive.

  “What’s up, chief?” she asked when she neared him. Her brother Byrd had bought her the DVD set of the 1950s Superman TV show for Christmas two years ago because, he had said, “If you’re going to be Lois Lane, you need to learn from a pro.” They were both far too young to have caught the show on its original run (she was thirty-three, Byrd four years older), but he had been into comics throughout his teens and had seen episodes here and there. Watching the surprisingly entertaining if cheesy series, she had decided that her favorite aspect was the chagrin with which Perry White responded to Jimmy Olsen calling him “chief.” Ever since, she had done the same to Frank.

  “Inside,” he said, suddenly serious. He met her questioning gaze, but his eyes revealed nothing. Still holding her mug, she squeezed past him. He came in behind her, closing the door.

  In addition to Frank’s cluttered desk, a couple of filing cabinets, a bookcase and a long wooden credenza, the office held a ratty old couch and two visitor chairs. Oscar Reyes, The Voice’s owner, sat on the couch with his hands folded over his soccer ball of a stomach and a dour look on his face. His hair, pure silver, was combed away from that face, which was creased and lined enough to suggest a lifetime of hard labor in the sun.

  “Oh, hi, Oscar,” Molly said. “I didn’t realize you were in here. How are you?”

  Oscar had an office of his own. Some days he didn’t come in at all, but lately he’d been around a lot, closed up in his office, sometimes calling Frank in for private meetings. None of it boded well, she had thought. Neither did this. Were they firing her?

  Oscar smiled, a sincere grin that radiated warmth. “Tired as hell,” he said. “And sore. I spent all weekend working on the lawn and the garden. Edging, trimming, weeding, all that stuff. I told my wife it’s almost winter, why bother, and I thought she was going to tear me a new one.”

  “You should get yourself a Mexican for that kind of thing,” Frank said, settling behind his desk. The curtains were drawn across his window, as they usually were since it just looked out on a little paved parking area in back. On his walls he had hung framed front pages of The Voice. The very first issue occupied the place of honor behind his desk.

  “I got a Mexican for that,” Oscar replied, chuckling. “You’re looking at him.”

  The two men were old friends, and they teased each other mercilessly. Sometimes Oscar retaliated for the racist jibes with attacks on Frank’s homosexuality. Both took the barbs as good-natured harassment. Molly suspected they found it hilarious that a Latino and a gay African American ran the only real alternative newspaper in El Paso. The Voice stuck it to what they called “the lily white El Paso Times”—even though its editor was also Hispanic—as often as they could.

  “Sit, Molly,” Frank urged.

  Molly sat in one of the visitor’s chairs, angling it so she could see Frank and Oscar. She let the mug heat the palms of her hands. “What’s up?”

  “Your brother is about to have a visitor,” Frank said.

  “A very famous visitor,” Oscar added.

  “Byrd is?”

  “You got any other brothers?” Frank asked.

  “Just the one.” Byrd had been in the oncology ward at Providence Memorial Hospital for several weeks. His leukemia had spread to the point that he needed constant supervision and full-time medical care. He was convinced that he wouldn’t be coming out again, and his doctors were beginning to agree. “What visitor?”

  “Wade Scheiner’s on his way to El Paso,” Frank said. “He said he wants to spend time with Byrd while he still can. He’s been in Germany, getting checked out in a military hospital there and being debriefed. A friend at CNN tipped me that he’s headed here.”

  “That’s great! Byrd will be thrilled.” So was she, really. She hadn’t been in touch with Wade much these last few years, but he had been a huge part of her life, as well as Byrd’s, for decades. She had always believed that his example had set her on course for a career in journalism.

  “CNN hasn’t announced where he’s going, just that he’s taking a leave of absence,” Frank went on. “They don’t want him swamped with well-wishers or job offers or any of the fruitcakes who come out of the woodwork after a story like his. So it’s kind of hush-hush. I thought you’d want to know.”

  “Thanks, Frank.” She took a sip of the coffee, waiting for the rest of the story. There was another shoe floating somewhere over her head, and she wasn’t going anywhere until it dropped.

  “One more thing,” Oscar said. And here it comes. She wondered if she should duck. “Scheiner hasn’t told anyone what happened to him in Baghdad. Nothing on the record, anyway. The whole story of his kidnapping, how he escaped, all that. It’s a huge story, and he’s keeping it to himself.”

  “Maybe he’ll do a special report for CNN,” Molly speculated. “Or write a book.”

  “Maybe so,” Oscar said. “And then again, maybe he just needs some time to process everything he went through before he talks about it.”

  “Could be.”

  “The thing is, getting an exclusive on a story like that would be good for The Voice,” Oscar said. The corners of his lips turned up in a kind of dreamy smile that he was probably unaware of. “Really good. The kind of good that boosts circulation, which makes advertisers happy, which allows us to increase ad rates. That kind of good.”

  Things became clear to Molly. “So you want me to work him.”

  “Everyone in America wants to know what happened to him and how he
got away. He’s your friend,” Frank said. “And your brother’s, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “So presumably you’ll be seeing him, spending time together, anyway. We’re not asking you to do anything underhanded. Just try to make sure that if he wants to talk about it, you—and by extension, the readers of The Voice—are the who that he wants to talk to.”

  “You are a newspaper editor, right?” Molly asked. “Because that was one hell of a terrible sentence.”

  Frank nodded, his gaze downcast. “You’re right, it was. I even offended myself with that one. But I think you get my point.”

  “I think so. You want me to prey on an old friend’s misfortunes to hike our ad rates.”

  “That’s a cynical view of it, Molly,” Oscar said.

  “I’m a girl reporter for a big city newspaper. Cynical is in the first line of my job description.”

  “And we wouldn’t want you any other way, Molly.”

  “I can guarantee you one thing,” she said, knowing it would be important to both men. “He won’t give his story to The Times.”

  “Why not?”

  “He hates that paper. To begin with, he thinks their editorial page is somewhere to the right of Attila the Hun.”

  “Was Attila conservative?” Oscar asked, his right eyebrow arching up his forehead.

  “Oh yeah,” Frank said. “One of the first neocons. He was sure the Romans would greet him as a liberator.”

  “Right, I almost forgot. And he hated the gays, too. Or was that the Gauls?”

  “So that’s something, right?” She started to raise her mug to her lips.

  “Don’t do that,” Frank said sharply.

  She paused with the cup at chin level. “Do what?”