by Chuck Dixon
Hejar set the sand sack down and blew warm air into his cupped hands. The sweat left him with a chill. He wished he was with Bazît. He wanted to be with him inside the hotel. Hejar wanted to kill Daesh. It was all he could think of. He had no home, no family. Nothing to go back to but hollow grief and empty graves. This night, deep in the heart of the enemy’s stronghold, was a night he had thought of, imagined, ever since ISIS arrived in Sinjar. To send Sunni bastards to hell with bullet and blade became his sole driving purpose. Barely twenty years old, Hejar could not imagine a life past this night. His future had died with his family.
The sudden dark left him blind for a few seconds. All ambient noise from within the hotel died to silence. He had not noticed the sounds until they were absent, the hum of fluorescents and muffled music. Hejar blinked hard once, twice. He felt the ground beneath him for the plastic bag of sand. He placed it between his teeth and climbed the concrete wall.
He dropped to the other side into a crouch and moved low, stepping cautiously. His fear was that he might stumble into the pool, into that reeking pit. It was a mortal fear as Hejar, born of the desert, could not swim. He would sink into the freezing murk to join the rest of the dead lying at the bottom of the pool. He skirted the pool, his vision becoming adjusted to the gloom. A hand brushed the rough wall of the hotel, guiding him toward the generator.
In his mind he counted off the seconds as he ran hands over the cold metal surface in search of the standpipe he spotted earlier. He had ninety seconds, one minute and a half before the generator kicked on. In his mind he counted off the seconds.
Twenty-eight seconds.
His fingers found the cap atop the intake.
Thirty-four seconds.
It refused to turn at first. He gripped it until his fingers and palm hurt. With a whispered curse he realized he was turning it the wrong way.
Forty seconds.
He shifted his grip and rotated the cap counter-clockwise. It gave easily and came away. It went into a pocket of his coat as Levon instructed.
Forty-five seconds.
A sharp chemical smell rose from the open pipe. Hejar opened the plastic sack of sand and, using his hand as a makeshift funnel, poured the contents down the pipe. Taking care, he made sure the bag was empty, every grain down inside the fuel tank.
Fifty-two seconds.
He stuffed the empty bag in a pocket and retrieved the cap. He twisted the cap back in place, fumbling on the first two tries to get the threads lined up right. Levon insisted that the cap had to be put back in place. When the generator did not start up someone would come out to inspect it. If everything were as they expected it to be they would believe that some mechanical problems were causing the motor to be stalled. They would not suspect sabotage.
Sixty-seven seconds.
Hejar’s vision had attuned to the dark by now. He moved at a trot for the wall, skirting the edge of the pool easily.
Seventy-five seconds.
Using a café table for a boost, he threw his belly over the top of the wall. He levered himself around and dropped easily into the dark alley.
Eighty-four seconds.
He made his way back along the alley toward the boulevard. His part of the mission now was to get to the truck and wait for his uncle and the American to come to him with Bazît’s daughters. A stuttering cough sounded behind him that settled into a regular thumping sound.
Fingers of light appeared in the alley around him, projected through the diamond pattern of the block wall. The lights inside and outside the hotel were coming back on.
He waited, breath held, for the generator to die.
It did not. Its heart beat regular and strong, somewhere out of sight beyond the wall.
From within the hotel a rash of automatic fire erupted and built to thunder.
Gunny Leffertz said:
“When you’re making your plans have a plan for when your plan goes to shit and then a plan for when that plan goes to shit. Because it will go to shit.”
49
Levon waited, eyes closed. He listened to the street outside. His ears found music playing somewhere, the rhythmic beat of Sufi drums, muted from an apartment somewhere. When the music died to sudden silence he opened his eyes.
The Hotel Azur and surrounding streets were dark.
Bazît beside him, he stepped from the bakery and crossed the boulevard at a fast walk. They approached the front of the hotel at an angle. Coming up on the three sentries from a blind spot.
Levon stepped to the pair who had been talking earlier. He drew within reach before they knew anything. One after the other, he jammed the Browning into their abdomens for a double tap. Their heavy clothing muffled the blasts. Bazît had done the same to the man with the phone. The report of his revolver was louder than the automatic.
“Take his phone,” Levon said. Bazît stooped to pocket it while Levon shouldered his way into the darkness of the hotel lobby. The Yazidi stepped over the bodies of the dead men. No time to conceal them. Every second counted now.
The two men crossed the lobby at a walk. Faint moonlight fell in long purple bars over the furniture and registration desk. There were others here. Shadows only. Muttered voices. No one turned to them or spoke to them as they moved to the stairwell door at the rear of the lobby by the most direct route.
The inside of the stairwell was lightless.
“The phone,” Levon said. He felt it placed in his hand and touched the power tab. Holding the screen light before him, Levon led the way up the stairs.
They moved at a run. Bazît was breathing hard after the third landing, grunting to keep up. Levon beat him to the door that exited onto the seventh floor. It was marked with a ‘six.’ Europeans didn’t begin numbering until the second floor.
Levon waited until Bazît, gasping, caught up. Levon tabbed the phone off and pocketed it. He put a shoulder to the door and popped the handle. They stepped into a hallway dimly lit with a glow from windows at either end.
The air smelled of cooking grease and hashish. There were men moving in the hall a few doors down. The red glow of two cigarettes made them known. Their mumbled conversation was the only sound. Levon and Bazît moved in their direction, toward the place where the hall ended in a “T” intersection. The cross corridor was where they’d find the rooms that lined the southern wall and the place where Levon saw the girl with the desert twilight eyes. They were seconds from that room.
Then the lights came on.
Hejar clambered over the wall and dropped back into the fully lit courtyard.
He chased his shadow around the pool, following a motor sound. It was coming from somewhere beyond the machine he believed was the generator. A voice called from a window somewhere above. It rose in volume, calling after him, as he hugged the wall to turn a corner toward the running motor.
The generator sat on a concrete pad behind a low hedge in the corner of the courtyard where the wall of the hotel met the decorative screen wall. It chugged away, belching exhaust from a pipe. He searched for the fuel intake and recalled that he had no more sand. The voice behind him continued calling. He sensed movement behind him — a scrape of leather on cement.
Men were coming around the pool. Four men. Only one held a weapon that Hejar could see. A Kalashnikov dangled under the man’s arm on a sling made of knotted rope. They were moving at a casual pace, heads turning to search. They responded to the caller above. Gesturing and arguing in impatient streams of Arabic. Their movement became more purposeful under the directions from above. They moved in a loose spearpoint toward the hedge and the generator.
Hejar stood to full height, his rifle to his shoulder and aimed over the hedge top. He fired a stream at the four men. The closest was the armed man who took three rounds across the chest from inside ten feet. The two to his right fell while the third turned to run. A round took him high in the back followed by a second that entered his skull just above the spine. He tumbled into the pool with a splash. As the boom of Hejar�
�s rifle died away, he could hear shouts echoing down toward him from open windows above.
At a loss as to how to stop the incessant heartbeat of the generator, Hejar stepped back toward the screen wall and emptied the rest of his magazine into the body of the motor. Sparks flew and the air filled with the harsh stink of diesel. The damned thing kept on thrumming, sending power to the lights.
Now there were more men in the courtyard. Hejar slapped a fresh magazine into the AK. He heard a window slide open several floors above him. A man leaned out, silhouetted against the night sky. Hejar sent a long burst upward. Bullets punched the concrete below the window, sending out a spray of fine dust. The man disappeared back inside.
The men in the courtyard opened up, using the muzzle flash behind the hedgerow as a target. Hejar rolled away. Chips of flying stucco rained over him. He lay on his belly and fired at the approaching men from under the hedge. A man fell screaming. The others retreated toward the pool.
He felt brass pelting him from above and flipped to his back. The man in the window, or another, was leaning out firing a rifle down at him. From his supine position, Hejar returned fire, blinded by the flash of his own weapon. Either a hot shell casing or a stray spark ignited a pool of diesel spreading across the pad under the generator. Hejar scrambled to his feet and ran for the screen wall followed by more rounds. The flames around the generator rose up the wall of the hotel in a sudden rush.
Hejar had his belly on the top of the wall and was levering himself over. A round struck his calf as he dropped. He landed hard; his left leg was numb from the knee down. He knew that would not last long. The pain would come. More rounds ripped through the diamond wall in search of him.
On hands and knees he crawled through the trash-filled alley, the AK thumping on his back as he moved. Behind him the fire that engulfed the generator blossomed into a tower of flames. The motor sputtered and coughed and died.
The hotel went dark once more but for the blaze spreading across the courtyard on a lake of ignited fuel.
Gunny Leffertz said:
“Navy guy told me once that a bad plan is better than no plan. Sometimes even a sailor has something we can all learn from.”
50
The power restored, the hotel came to life again.
Levon stepped down the hallway to the two men. He wore an easy smile, mumbling a greeting in Arabic. They were surprised but not alarmed to see him. They were both unarmed. Wearing man-jams and sandals only. They stood by an open doorway. From inside the room came the canned gunfire of a video game and the sound of men shouting in play.
Levon raised the M4 to his shoulder when he was an arms-length from the pair. The smokers dropped with double taps to the head. The faux gunfire from the room covered the sound.
He stepped over their bodies into the room where four men in underwear were engrossed in a shooter game on a big screen. Their actual weapons lay discarded on the furniture around them, their hands occupied with game controllers. One turned at his entrance, his nose wrinkled at the scent of burnt gunpowder.
A six-round burst knocked them all to the floor where Levon finished them with point-blank taps to skulls and center mass. A hot coppery smell filled the room. A thick splat of blood on the TV screen bathed the room in a mottled red hue.
Behind him, Bazît was braced in the door. The Yazidi’s eyes were wild, whites visible around the pupils. The adrenalin was high, cresting. He turned suddenly to look down the hallway. Dropping to a crouch, he fired a long stream from his AK. He rolled away from the door as return fire shredded the door jamb. Rounds came through the walls at an angle, ripping into the carpet and furniture. A haze of plaster dust swirled in the air. Multiple shooters. It wasn’t letting up.
Levon rolled over the back of a sofa and charged toward a companion door. He met it shoulder first and the door crashed inward, taking the hinges and a section of the frame with it. Bazît crawled on knees and fingertips and rolled in after him.
The next room was dark and empty. Boots thumped across the ceiling above them. In the room behind them and the hallway outside, men shouted to be heard over the continuing gunfire. Levon pushed a tall wardrobe over. He used it for cover to empty his rifle into the walls in the direction of the outer corridor. The fire out there turned from rolling thunder to the occasional pop. The voices were quieter though the exchange was still furious.
“They’re getting their shit together. We need to get out of this room.” Levon headed for the window and tore the drapes and blackout shade aside. He wrenched the sliding door open and stepped out onto the balcony followed by Bazît. The balcony ran across the face of the building, interrupted only by a section of wrought iron privacy fencing used to separate each room’s balcony from the other. He vaulted a fence to the next balcony.
As he and Bazît reached the corner of the building the lights of the hotel and the street below went dark again.
Hejar struggled to his feet and limped at the best speed he could make toward the street at the end of the alley. The cries of men, trapped in the canyon of the surrounding buildings, seemed to come from everywhere at once.
A searing heat was building in his calf. Every step brought new pain. He could feel his boot filling with blood, the sock sodden with it.
At the end of the alley he slung the rifle under one arm and forced himself to walk normally. The front of the parking garage and the entire street was dark. He stayed close to the shadows as he moved north along the cross street toward the boulevard. Others, all grown men, moved along the street on one errand or another. No one paid attention to him. Only a few turned to look at the black smoke rising up the face of the Hotel Azur.
He reached the boulevard and looked toward the front of the hotel. He hesitated, deciding what to do. To join his uncle and the American or stick to the plan they agreed on. They needed him at the truck. It was their way out of Mosul. But they might need him more inside the hotel. They might be cornered or outgunned and his rifle would tip the balance.
Or they might be dead.
“You are bleeding, brother.” A voice behind him. Arabic.
Hejar turned to see two men close to his age standing behind him. They were clad in black. They had rifles hanging in slings from their shoulders. One wore a web belt, a holster low on his hip like a cowboy gunfighter.
“It is nothing. An old wound. They told me to rest but I did not listen.” Hejar spoke Arabic purely with the thick accent that people told him sounded like a goatherd.
“There is a lot of blood.” One of them pointed down the sidewalk. Fresh blots of blood shone black in the dust.
“I will get it bound when I get where I am going.” He shifted to move off the curb and cross the boulevard. He fought down a wince. The pain was lancing up to his knee, growing and receding with each beat of his pulse.
“You need stitches, brother.”
“A doctor.” They moved closer.
“I will be all right. I will be fine. I only need to get back.” His hand moved to the pistol grip of his rifle, the palm slimy with sweat from the pain.
“At least let us give you a ride,” the gunfighter said.
“Why not?” Hejar said. He hoped his answering smile looked friendly.
51
Levon held a hand up to his friend. He dropped to a knee to pick up bits of white paper that littered the floor of the balcony.
They were trimmed in the shape of flowers, cut by a child’s hand.
“This room,” he said.
“How can you know?” Bazît said.
“Does it matter?” Levon touched a hand to the handle of the sliding door. The room inside was dark. He gave a gradual tug. The door gave a bit.
He turned to Bazît who nodded, gripped his rifle tighter.
Levon flung the door open and tore the heavy drapes down to the floor. Side-by-side, he and Bazît moved into the dark room. There were two queen beds. The room stank of stale cigarette smoke and staler sweat. Magazines scattered on the floor. A
heap of clothing piled in one corner. Bazît kicked the pile. Levon went to a wall and pressed an ear to listen. The gunfire had died to silence as the men searched the floor for them. There was movement in the hallway beyond; men brushed against the wall. Hushed voices in sharp exchanges.
With snapping fingers, Levon got Bazît's attention and pointed him toward the balcony. The Yazidi moved toward the moonlight, rifle raised. Levon flipped one of the mattresses up to place it against the door that connected to the next room. Moving quietly, he braced the second mattress against the door that led to the hallway.
Out on the balcony, Bazît was speaking to someone, calling across the face of the building.
“They are not here. These rooms are empty.”
A response Levon could not hear. A high reedy voice trying to sound commanding.
“What is my name? It is Muhammed Ajai. What is yours?”
Another reply.
“I tell you they have left this floor. I will check the stairs.”
The voice responded but was moving away back along the balconies the way they had come.
Levon backed against a wall by the door to the bathroom. He reached out to test the knob. Locked. He brought the butt of the M4 down against the knob. The cheap white metal parted at the door surface. The knob dropped to the carpet. He kicked out sending the door crashing inward. With the same motion he ducked low into the dark room, jinking to one side of the frame.
A sink, vanity, commode, and bidet lined one wall. Atop the vanity was a pad of hotel stationery and a pair of scissors. The floor below was littered with bits of paper snipped from the pad.
A stall shower with a surround of frosted glass stood in the far corner of the room. He approached with his rifle shouldered. In the corner of the shower a dark shape was slumped. He took the phone from his pocket and tabbed it on.