Levon Cade Omnibus

by Chuck Dixon

  Further evidence of the hold ISIS had over the city was the increased presence of jihadis in uniforms of black and desert camo. They loitered everywhere, seated in the shade of doorways, smoking in groups all around the souk.

  The market itself was a sad affair. Every stall that offered food was crowded ten deep with men waving fistfuls of near-worthless cash. The tables had little to offer in the way of fresh food. Merchants had battered case lots of canned goods and surplus American MREs. Small shrunken carcasses hung in rows from lines. Deep fried rats and pigeons. There were plastic jugs of cloudy drinking water and baskets of pistachios with rust-colored hulls.

  More plentiful than edibles were weapons. Every description of firearm was on display along with pallet loads of ammunition all marked with stamps of the United States Army or stencils in Cyrillic lettering. Also body-armor, webbing, boots and all manner of ordnance. All taken from the stores of the Iraqi army when they fled the city under threat of the less than a thousand ISIS fighters who took Mosul for the Islamic State.

  Also in abundance were books. These stalls saw the least business. Only a few white-whiskered browsers sorted through the stacks.

  The mood of the souk was subdued. The usual cacophony of overlapping conversation was gone. The sound of discourse, laughter, haggling, and conversation was muted, constrained.

  Levon and Bazît found a place to sit in the shade of a tattered awning before a shuttered restaurant. They sent Hejar into the throng of hagglers at the food stalls. He returned with a gallon plastic bag of watered-down apricot juice and a greasy bag of rat kebobs.

  “Rat is disgusting,” Bazît said. He peeled a strip of crackled flesh and inspected it.

  “Rat, rabbit or Kobe beef. It all tastes good if you’re hungry enough. But some habanero helps,” Levon said. He dug into a pocket and came up with a tiny dark glass bottle. He sprinkled a dot or two on his rat and handed it off to the others.

  Hejar made approving noises as he munched the flavored meat. They ate the kebobs and shared the bag of juice until it was dry. They sat a while and talked, their conversation hidden under the ambiance of voices in the market.

  “The Plaza Azur is on the other side of the river. We need to cross before dark,” Levon said.

  “Before we do that, you need to come up with new lies, friend,” Bazît said.

  “My Chechen cover has some holes,” Levon said.

  “How did that bastard know you were lying?” Bazît said.

  “Google,” Hejar said around a mouthful of rat.

  37

  The door to the room was unlocked when Lisa got home from school. Merry brushed past her to run to the bathroom. She thought her bladder would burst after spending all day shut in the room.

  Carrie Knox was there when she came out of the bathroom.

  “Can I trust you to stay in your room?” Carrie said.

  “Yes,” Merry said.

  “Without locking you in?”

  “Yes. Can I have something to eat?”

  “I’ll bring something up when I get a chance.” Carrie walked her back to the room.

  Lisa had already changed clothes. She didn’t look at Merry.

  “Going out,” she said and tromped away down the stairs.

  “Have you thought about trying to get along here?” Carrie said from the doorway.

  “Yes,” Merry said.

  “No more phone calls? No more troublemaking?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll be back with a sandwich for you.”

  “Thank you.”

  Carrie pulled the door shut behind her. The lock did not slide into place. She returned within an hour with a PB&J, an apple and a glass of milk.

  “Will I be able to come down for dinner?” Merry said, taking the plate and glass and setting them on the vanity.

  “I don’t think that’s such a great idea,” Carrie said.

  “Can I take a shower later?”

  “Yes. Before bedtime.”

  “Okay.”

  The door closed and Merry was alone again. She ate by the window, watching some kids riding bikes up and down the sidewalk.

  Lisa was the next one to come to the door. It was night outside.

  "Carrie said you could take a shower but then you have to go right to bed."

  “I’m sorry,” Merry said.

  “Just stop talking to me. Stop talking to anyone.”

  Lisa went down the stairs.

  Merry gathered her pajamas and left the room. The hall was quiet except for the sound of the TV from the living room below: muffled voices and the laughter of an audience. The doors along the hall stood open, the rooms dark.

  She locked the bathroom door and turned the shower on. While the water warmed she brushed her teeth, rinsing out the toothbrush and setting it aside.

  The hot spray felt good on her face. She felt itchy after a night and a day spent cooped up in the room with only her borrowed paperbacks and the view from the window for distractions. She washed her hair and scrubbed her body and then spent a long while just letting the water fall across her shoulders. Carrie would probably complain about all the hot water she was using up. Merry didn’t care. Cocooned here in the steamy air, scented with the astringent smell of shampoo, she felt alone in the world. The shower curtain formed a barrier to the world outside. She even hummed part of a song she’d heard on Carrie’s car radio the day before.

  The water was beginning to cool and she turned the tap off. She reached a hand through the curtain for a towel she’d left draped on the rack. It wasn’t there. She ran fingers up and down the bar but the towel was gone, probably slipped to the floor. Merry parted the curtain to step onto the bathmat and froze, one foot in and one foot out of the tub.

  Blaine was leaning against the sink counter, her towel in one hand.

  “You looking for this?” he said. He held the towel out to her.

  She reached for it and he pulled it back.

  “You been talking about me.”

  Merry said nothing. She drew the shower curtain about her.

  “It’s none of your fucking business what Lisa and I do,” he said. His mouth was twisted in an ugly scowl.

  “She doesn’t love you,” Merry said. Her voice sounded small to her.

  Blaine laughed at that. It was a hawking sound and he stifled it with the back of his hand, his eyes still on her.

  “You’re a skinny little bitch, aren’t you? No titties at all.” He tossed the towel to her. She let it fall to the floor, staying to the scant cover of the sheer shower curtain.

  “Just shut up about me. You don’t want my kind of trouble.” He turned to go, his back to her. She hurried to bend and scoop up the towel.

  He turned back. She retreated into the tub, the towel clutched to her neck.

  “Or maybe you do want some of my kind of trouble.” His lips formed a crooked smile. He reached a hand for her and laughed again when she stepped away to place her back to the tiled wall. Blaine flicked his fingers at her and turned to leave the room. The door snicked shut behind him.

  Merry sank to her knees in the tub, hugging the towel to her.

  She wished her daddy was here. She prayed hard for his return, right now, tonight. She made a whispered plea for her father to come through the bathroom door, gather her up in his arms, and take her away from this place.

  Only her daddy was far away and no one was coming to take her from this house.

  She was all alone in the world.

  No one was going to save her but herself.

  Gunny Leffertz said:

  “The shit you’ll see.”

  38

  They reached the east bank of the Tigris by late morning. They followed a river road south toward the closest bridge, the first of five that crossed the river to the main part of the city. The Al Shohada Bridge was a functionally ugly concrete structure. Four lanes across. A crowd was formed at the center of the span. A periodic roar rose from them and echoed over the slow-moving curr
ent of the muddy river. Like a tide it went up and down in volume as voices joined in response to an electronic hail.

  Hejar walked to the edge of the bank. He pointed to a barge anchored in the shadow of the bridge. A lift crane was moving on the deck of the barge. The roar of the mob on the bridge grew in volume each time it swung out to lower its load into the river.

  They made their way up onto the bridge span and to the edge of the crowd where they could look down on the barge bobbing in the slow current. The gathering was all male. Men old and young. There were children as well. They lined the edge of the bridge, kneeling at the feet of the adults, leaning out for a better view. Two little boys squatted close to Levon’s leg. They nudged each other and pointed, making remarks to one another as though watching a circus parade.

  Down on the deck of the barge, a row of men in orange jumpsuits knelt in a row. Their hands bound behind them. Heads lowered. Other men, clad all in black and masked, moved free on the deck. One of them spoke into a hand mike wired to a radio transmitter slung about his shoulder. His voice squawked from speakers mounted atop the barge’s wheelhouse. He strode back and forth making grand gestures with his free hand. He harangued the watching faces above with quotes from the prophet. Dire warnings to any who denied the will of God. They would share the fate of heretics and infidels. They would pay the price on Earth and in Paradise. They would be scourged from the caliphate. Their blood would wash the Islamic state clean.

  The crane engine rumbled and popped. The chain went taut and was drawn up into the drum. A steel cage rose from the tawny water to swing dripping over the river. On the floor of the cage was a sodden crimson lump. With a squeak the cage was swung inboard and caught by some of the jihadists. It was drawn over the gate and a lever pulled, opening the bottom of the cage like a trap. The cargo dropped to the boards. They used steel hooks to tug the pile apart. It was three men clad in orange jumpsuits like the kneeling men. Their faces were forever locked in open-mouthed masks, eyes bulging, as they'd drowned in the cage. The corpses were dragged to the end of the barge and dropped into the water. Levon watched as they floated, turning in the current, to bump along the hull of the barge before disappearing into the shadows beneath the bridge.

  The crowd on the bridge moved in nervous anticipation as three more men in orange were yanked to their feet and walked to the open cage now resting on the deck. The jihadi on the mike recounted the crimes the men were accused of.

  “This man, this man worships the false prophet called the Christ! Maybe his God will help him walk on water this day!”

  The men along the bridge responded with catcalls and laughter.

  The jihadi with the mike held another man’s head back by the hair and turned him to face up at the audience above. The man’s face was white with terror.

  “And this creature lays with other men! He has already watched his lover go into the cage! Should he be shown God’s mercy?”

  The crowd roared its answer.

  The third captive was dragged to the cage. His bare soles slid on the greasy deck as he tried to plant his feet in place. A fist plowed into his back above the hip. He stumbled forward. The jihadi on the mike pointed a damning finger.

  “Here we have a usurer! He pretends to be loyal to Islam but treats his brothers as a Jew would! Will his money save him from Allah’s wrath?”

  This drew the loudest response from the men lining the bridge. They shrieked and spat. They shook fists and voiced their fury. Levon saw faces turn red with rage, eyes rolling wild as animals in the throes of a killing frenzy.

  The cage was loaded with the three condemned men and the lock put in place. With a bark of exhaust the crane motor revved up to lift the cage from the deck and spin it out over the water. The operator worked the levers to drop the cage toward the water a foot at a time. As the cage sank into the swirling flow the men climbed the mesh of the cage to stay above the water. The chain was jerked by the current and the cage descended at a canted angle. The men inside began to claw and climb over one another for remaining space within the cage that was still above the water. This only made the angle of the cage more acute. The faces of the condemned were those of feral beasts as they fought for the final breaths they would take in this life.

  The crowd reacted like fans at a sporting event. They shouted mock encouragement to the struggling men. Vile insults rained down on them until the cage finally disappeared under the murky stream. There was a hush as the men watched the flurry of air bubbles turn to a feeble spray and then die away to nothing.

  Cheers erupted as the cage was hauled up once again to reveal its dripping cargo.

  Levon turned away then to walk westward along the bridge. Bazît and Hejar silently followed. The rise and fall of human voices in unison still reached them even when the bridge was out of sight. A shared moan told them that the last of the captives had been fed into the Tigris. The audible sigh of disappointment was followed by a series of celebratory streams of gunfire sent into the afternoon sky.

  They picked their way along a lane partly blocked by the rubble of a building collapsed by a coalition JDAM. They passed beneath an enormous black flag hanging over a street on steel cables. Looted homes and ransacked stores lined the streets. The cyclops smiley face symbol was everywhere in this part of the city.

  “Kurds lived here once,” Bazît said, breaking the quiet shared by the three men.

  “What brings men to do such things?” Hejar said.

  “This is when men settle scores. When there is no law. This is when they show their true faces,” Bazît said.

  “Mosul was not always like this, was it? These men were neighbors. They must have lived at peace.”

  “Without law there is no peace.”

  “They have law. They call their law Sharia,” Hejar said.

  Bazît hawked and spat.

  “Sharia is law without order,” Bazît said. “Did you see a judge at the bridge? Even an imam? That is not law. It is men justifying their basest desires within a mockery of law. They torture. They kill. They rape. And it is all validated by something they call law when it is only their own desires bared naked.”

  “They should all die,” the boy said. His face grew tighter with his conviction.

  “And how should they die? At the end of a rope? A blade across their throats like sheep? Or maybe drowned in a cage in a shitty river?” Bazît said.

  The boy lowered his head. His mouth was a tight line, lips pressed together. His pace slowed and he fell behind the other two men. They made their way along the growing shadows cast by the walls of the urban canyons that grew deeper the closer to the center of Mosul they came.

  Levon kept his thoughts to himself. In his mind’s eye he could see the faces of those boys, younger than Merry, their eyes eager with bloodlust.

  39

  It was late in the night. The TV downstairs was quiet. The house was dark.

  Lisa was asleep. Her regular breathing interrupted now and then by a mewling deep in her throat. She was dreaming. In her dream she was speaking to someone in a conversation held somewhere beyond the wall of sleep.

  Merry could not sleep and was afraid to dream.

  She’d been afraid before. She’d been in trouble before. This time was different. No one was there to help her. No one to listen. No one to care. She was abandoned.

  This fear was worse because she didn’t know what was to come next. The fear all the more gripping because the days ahead were unknown. All of her life had been spent around adults who she believed were there to protect and guide and love her. Now she was in a world where the adults were only concerned with their own desires. Mrs. Knox and Miss Nussbaum were supposed to be her guardians and they only wished that she would be silent about what went on in this house. Neither of them protected Lisa from Blaine. And, if it came to that, they would not protect Merry.

  Each time she closed her eyes she could see Blaine. His mocking gaze. His wicked smile. She stared at the ceiling and forced her thoug
hts elsewhere. Her mind fled to better times, happier days.

  It had been a cold day in the woods. Not a bitter cold. The sun cut the chill where it came down through gaps in the trees that lined the long gravel drive down from Gunny Leffertz’ cabin deep in the Mississippi pines. She joined him on his daily walk down to the battered mailbox that sat where the drive met the roadway. Merry never missed these walks. She was fascinated at how Gunny could manage the path with such assurance. No one who did not already know would ever have suspected that he was totally blind. She never took his hand. Never felt she should offer him help. He didn’t need it.

  Most days they walked in silence, listening to the sounds of the woods. Gunny would break the quiet only to identify noises he heard in the trees; noises Merry would never have paid attention to, never noticed, without his help. Gunny would stop and tilt his head toward the source, holding a hand up for her to stop. Together they would stand, ears reaching out into the shadows under the pine boughs. And Gunny would whisper to her the identity of the animal they heard. The chirrup of a red squirrel. The stamp of a deer’s hoof. The curious yipping bark of a raccoon.

  And some days they would talk. Conversations prompted by questions from Merry.

  “Have you ever been afraid, Gunny?”

  “Afraid of what, honey?”

  “Anything.”

  “Oh, sure. Lots of times.”

  “I thought you’d never be afraid of anything.”

  “Well, there’s all kinds of fear.”

  She walked at his side as he considered his next words.

  “There’s fear of things you can’t change and a fear of things you can change. The first one you can’t do anything about. Getting sick. Losing a loved one. God’s wrath. We all live with being scared like that. Everyday worries. It's the unknown, stuff bigger than us. No shame in healthy respect for that kind of fear."