Ambush

by Barbara Nickless

  “Bravo!” I said.

  He kept juggling. “Did you bring Clyde?”

  “You remember him? He’s staying with a friend.”

  “That dog went crazy after he lost his partner. That’s what you told me. You wouldn’t let me near him.”

  “He and I both went a little crazy after we lost Dougie.”

  Malik let the ball drop and trapped it under his foot. “But you got better.”

  “And so did Clyde. And you’re getting better, too, aren’t you?”

  He reached out and snatched a hibiscus from one of the bushes lining the walk. He handed the bright-red flower to me. “For your hair.”

  I tucked the flower behind one ear and let the question go while I searched for more innocuous things to ask.

  “Do you go to school?”

  “Not public school. Mr. Zarif says it’s better that we have a tutor.”

  “We?”

  “Javad and Azar. Mr. Zarif’s children. They’re twins.”

  “How old are they?”

  “Eleven. Same as me.”

  “That’s good, isn’t it?”

  “Sure.”

  When I’d first seen Malik, crying in his mother’s home, I’d thought he was older. I’d been surprised to learn he was only eight and tall for his age. Goes to show what I know about kids. Or maybe trauma had aged him beyond his years.

  “Do you like them?” I asked.

  “Sure.” He went still, staring off at something only he could see. “They don’t understand things. They think I’m weird. But they don’t know very much. They’re just kids.”

  Which Malik, perhaps, wasn’t anymore. War steals childhood as readily as it takes lives. “What don’t they understand?”

  “All they know about is stupid parties and video games and Netflix. Azar plays with plastic horses. Javad collects comic books. He acts like they’re so important.” His gaze remained distant, putting me distressingly in mind of some of my fellow Marines. “They’ve never, you know, seen people get blown up. Never seen anyone die. They ask me stuff about it, but I don’t answer.”

  “Malik, I’m so sorry.”

  He blinked, his long lashes glistening. “Javad asked me if I killed anyone.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that. Even as an adult, I’d felt that frustration with my fellow Americans. Whenever someone learned I was a Marine and asked if I’d killed anyone, I was tempted to say, “You’ll be my first.”

  Malik swiped at his eyes. “It wasn’t until I came here that I learned war isn’t everywhere.”

  He’d been five when we invaded Iraq. “Do you miss home?”

  He shook his head violently. “I hated it. Not on the FOB. I felt safe there, even after the bomb killed Fal Mohammed. But everywhere else . . . it was not good.”

  “Fal Mohammed. Meaning he was your uncle.”

  “My mother’s brother. Before he died, he told me to leave Habbaniyah. To go with my grandparents. He said if I stayed, the bad men would find out what happened. Then they would kill me, too.”

  What did happen? I wanted to scream. I was picking my way through a minefield. “Did he mean the spies who took you from the FOB?”

  Malik shook his head. “Fal Mohammed didn’t even know about them. They came later.”

  “Then who?”

  “He meant the men who killed my mother and PFC Resenko. Fal Mohammed said they were coming for him, too. And me, if they found out I’d been there. Then he died.”

  I pressed my hands to my stomach, processing the names. And the hurt.

  “So these other men, the ones your uncle said might . . .” I paused.

  “Kill me,” Malik filled in.

  “Did you see them that night? The night when they hurt your mother?”

  “I heard them. I was late coming home, and I heard them and I hid outside. Two men.”

  “They were insurgents?”

  “They were Americans.”

  I stopped walking. “What?”

  “Americans killed my mother and Resenko. They had other men killed, too. Other Americans. My uncle said they sent your Special Forces into an ambush and made sure they were shot by members of the al-Mahdi militia.”

  “Malik, are you sure? That doesn’t make any sense. Why would Americans want other Americans dead?”

  He frowned and tapped the ball along the grass. “I asked my uncle the same question.”

  I kept pace with him. “What did he say?”

  “He said it was because of his truck.”

  I closed and opened my eyes against the vertigo. “What truck?”

  “The one he used to deliver things for the Americans.”

  “He had a hauling business?” To prevent American casualties, the US government outsourced a lot of noncritical tasks. In Iraq, most supplies were brought in by international companies. But local contractors were sometimes used, hauling cargo to the bases in so-called jingle trucks. A lucrative, if dangerous, business. This was the first I’d heard that Malik’s family had an interest there. “Tell me about your uncle’s truck.”

  “He was very proud when he got the contract. He called it—” Malik stopped and closed his eyes. “His future.”

  “His future? Running a truck like that would have made him a target for the insurgents every time he left the FOB.”

  “He paid the Sunnis protection money.” Malik shrugged. “It was always like that. It was safer than being an interpreter, like my mother. But people were still afraid to go with him. So I did. I sat in the front and held his gun.”

  I tried not to shudder at the picture of an eight-year-old kid riding shotgun across the desert. “But something went wrong?”

  “Men from our village came to my uncle. They asked him to go to our border with Iran and bring in a special load. They said if he refused, they would kill him.”

  My brain fired shutter clicks as things began to fall into place. “What was this special load?”

  “Men and weapons. A lot of Iranian soldiers were coming across the border, taking over villages, telling people they would hurt them if they talked, giving them money to stay quiet. Fal Mohammed wanted nothing to do with this, so he went to talk to an American on the FOB. I don’t know who. The man told him to bring in the soldiers and take them wherever they wanted to go. In this way, he said, the Americans would know how to find the Iranians. Then they would capture them.”

  That struck me as crazy. But what did I know about military strategy?

  “So your uncle brought them in.”

  “Yes. He was very afraid. Afraid of the Iranians. And afraid of the Iraqis who made him go. That is why I went with him. So he wouldn’t be afraid.”

  I stopped walking. Malik turned to me.

  “He let you do that?”

  “No.” For a moment, Malik’s expression brushed against gleeful. “I hid until we were many kilometers from Habbaniyah. By then, I knew we’d gone far enough that he wouldn’t have time to turn around.”

  “You were brave.”

  Malik shrugged. “He was my uncle.”

  “So he kept driving?”

  “He was very angry with me. But he had no choice. We picked up the men. One of them told me he was Quds and asked me if I knew what it meant. I said no. He laughed and gave me a coin. A Persian coin. He said our countries would someday become one, inshallah. Which means if God wills it.”

  I nodded. Quds. I didn’t know much about Iran, but I’d heard of the Quds Force. Someone had described them to me as a hybrid of the CIA and Special Forces, and the deadliest fighting group in Iran. They were responsible for all foreign operations and had been designated a terrorist organization by the United States.

  Maybe that was why someone on the FOB had green-lighted Mohammed and Malik’s trip to the border. Capturing a member of Quds would have been a major coup.

  But why give an American team a mission to capture the Iranians and then betray those same Americans?

  “They had a lot of weapons,
” Malik went on. “It took two hours to get everything into Fal’s truck. Then we drove them to a village and left them there. I took a video. With my camera. They never knew.”

  The shock of that fell like a blow. Was this what the Alpha was after?

  “A video of what, exactly? The trucks?”

  “Yes. And the men unloading the weapons.”

  “Malik, that video is very important.” My heart thudded in my ears. “Can you show me?”

  But he shook his head. “After my uncle was killed, I gave my phone to Sergeant Udell. I didn’t want anyone to know I had the video. But I was scared to delete it. I knew it was important.”

  I was breathing hard now, as if running a race. An eight-year-old kid dealing with this. But dammit, of all the people he could have given that to. “Why him?”

  “Because I knew he would protect me. He’s a Marine. And Marines don’t do bad things.” His eyes were on me. “Except when they have to.”

  Or when they themselves have gone bad. I was willing to bet a bottle of Blackadder whisky that Sarge had already given the recording to rogue elements in the CIA or the Alpha. Or more likely a copy; he’d want something for himself. If so, then the video wasn’t the intel Sarge had been sent to my house to find. Or the reason they were hunting for Malik.

  Unless Sarge hadn’t turned it over, and they’d learned about the video from someone else.

  Maybe the Alpha believed the video had ended up in my hands.

  “Malik, who else knows about this video?”

  “I told my mother and Sergeant Udell. Maybe they told people. I don’t know.”

  I ran down the list. Mohammed and Haifa had known about the video, and they were both dead. Haifa had probably told PFC Resenko. He, too, had been murdered.

  “Okay. Okay.” I’d follow that later. “What happened after you dropped off the Iranians?”

  “Nothing. We never heard anything else about them. But pretty soon after that, people started dying,” Malik said. “First my mother and the Marine. That was the night you found me. Then came the ambush, when the Special Forces men were killed. Fal Mohammed said the bad Americans killed all these people because they didn’t want anyone to know about the Iranians and their weapons. A cover-up, my uncle said. And since of course he knew, he was also in danger. He told me the bad Americans didn’t know about me. Not yet. Not back then. But that was why I couldn’t keep the video.”

  I gawked at him. “You’re telling me that Americans murdered everyone who knew about the Iranians and their weapons.”

  “Yes.”

  The world gaped open at my feet, a sudden and unimaginable abyss. What Malik was suggesting, without knowing it, was that there had been a traitor on our FOB. And not a small-time, slip-me-some-cash traitor.

  This was high treason.

  “Malik,” I said gently. “Is it possible your uncle was wrong? Could he have been working with the Iranians? Maybe he decided on his own to pick up these men and their weapons, and the Americans found out? That would explain why he was afraid and why he wanted you to leave.”

  “No! It wasn’t like that. Fal didn’t want to do it. It was the American who told him to go.”

  “And you have no idea who this American was?”

  “No.”

  “Did your uncle say anything about him? Anything at all?”

  Malik shook his head and scowled. The expression transformed him—he was suddenly a cranky preteen.

  “I don’t want to talk about it anymore,” he said.

  The burden of time sat heavy. A single hour to unravel years of mystery.

  “Just one more question.” I weighed my words carefully. “You were close with two men on the FOB. Max Udell, the man everyone called Sarge. And Richard Dalton.”

  He nodded.

  “Did you ever see them again? After you left, I mean. Did they ever contact you?”

  “That’s two questions.”

  “Malik—”

  “No.” He gave the ball a hard kick. It soared into the air, striving toward escape velocity. “Never.”

  The back of the house had come into view. Zarif stood near the pool. He raised a hand and waved for us to join him.

  The last grain of sand had dropped.

  Malik watched the ball land but made no attempt to pursue it. “Mr. Zarif says you have to leave today.”

  “That’s what he said.”

  He didn’t look at me. “You will come back?”

  “Yes.”

  “And then you’ll take me with you?”

  “I’ll come back to see you. It will be your decision whether you want to stay here or go with me to America.”

  “But you promise to return?”

  “I promise, Malik.” And then, even knowing that the most sincere promise couldn’t keep me alive, I dug as deep a hole as I could. “No worries. I will come back.”

  “Inshallah.”

  The child was wiser than the woman. “Yes. Inshallah.”

  He ran to the ball. He kicked it toward the house and started after it, pausing only to give me a long stare under his thick lashes—a look half of defiance, half of plea—before he fled.

  CHAPTER 7

  War was the longest period of my life. I was twenty when I enlisted. But by the time I mustered out three years later, I felt ninety.

  —Sydney Parnell. ENGL 0208 Psychology of Combat.

  When I reached the patio, Malik had disappeared into the house. I wanted to call after him, but I knew our moment—for now at least—had come and gone. It would be easier for him if I let him go.

  Zarif was sitting at a table next to the shimmering pool. The day had eased into a bruised dusk, and evening birds called from the trees. A row of citronella candles flickered on the table, scenting the air with lemon.

  He handed me a newspaper as I approached. “You might be interested in this.”

  I took the paper and unfolded it. The New York Times.

  “Page A12,” Zarif said. “It’s a sidebar to a larger story on American railways.”

  I laid the paper on the table and flipped the pages.

  RTD SECURITY OFFICER KILLED BY TRAIN

  A security guard for Denver’s Regional Transportation District died Saturday night when he was stabbed, then pushed in front of a commuter train at Denver’s Union Station.

  Witnesses say the guard, Jeremiah Kane, a US Marine Corps combat veteran, had approached a homeless man on the main platform. After a brief altercation, the man stabbed Kane, then shoved him in front of an inbound train. According to the Denver Medical Examiner’s office, Kane died instantly.

  The Denver Major Crimes Unit is conducting a search for the suspect, who fled the scene.

  My knees gave out, and I sank into a chair across from Zarif. My pulse roared in my ears as I tried to process Kane’s murder. With a shudder I realized he must have died within an hour or so of Angelo. Two warriors in a long-running war, and the Alpha hunting all of us down, one by one.

  Why now, three years after things went down in Iraq?

  And who else was the Alpha after?

  Sergeant Max Udell wouldn’t be on the list because he’d gone to the other side. That left me, once the Alpha had the intel he wanted. And Tucker Rhodes and Lester Crowe, who, along with Kane, had been on the same fireteam with the murdered PFC Resenko. All three men were present when the Sir and I arrived to take away the bodies of Haifa and Resenko. Our orders had been to cover up how the pair had died so that we could prevent an escalation of violence between American troops and locals.

  Or so we were told at the time.

  I read the article through again, trying to process that Kane, the Marine who had risked his life every day in Habbaniyah, had made it home only to be murdered by a vagrant.

  Kane had a wife and daughters. A home. A life. He’d been a friend to Tucker and, perhaps unwisely, to Udell. The last time Kane and I had spoken, he’d been planning to return to college at some point and work on his dream of becoming
a doctor.

  This was how it ended?

  And which one of us was next?

  A bat flitted overhead. Zarif lit a cigarette and watched me. The tang of tobacco burned through the citrus of the candles. “Wasn’t he in Habbaniyah when you were?”

  “What if he was?” I found the strength to rally a wishful protest. “Kane was killed by a homeless man. It was a horrible fluke. A tragedy.”

  Zarif raised an eyebrow. He’d removed his suit jacket and rolled up the sleeves of his white shirt. His forearms were muscular. They probably hadn’t gotten that way playing golf.

  He stared out over the garden. “Do you believe in coincidences, Ms. Parnell?”

  “No.”

  “Then perhaps this death is more than a horrible fluke. Perhaps it is how it begins.”

  “It began a long time ago.” I closed the paper. “If Kane died because of what happened in Iraq, it shows even more the danger Malik is in.”

  His eyes came back to me. “Did you learn anything?”

  “A few things. Enough of an opening to get my fingernails in. But Malik is—”

  “—as safe here as he could be anywhere. Nothing changes.”

  I rose. “I need to get home.”

  He stood as well. “Your flight leaves later tonight. One of my men will take you to the airport. You will be blindfolded until you are in Mexico City.”

  “Just don’t stab me with anything again.” I picked up the newspaper. “I’d like to keep this.”

  “Please.”

  I folded the paper and tucked it under my arm. “Who are you, Zarif? This home. All these men with their guns and radios and patrols. This isn’t because you work security for a mosque.”

  “No. But I am not at liberty to say more.”

  “How did Strider find you?”

  “I did not ask him.”

  “But you vetted him.”

  “Actually, no. I don’t know anything about him.”

  I shook my head. “You’re bullshitting me. You wouldn’t take an unknown child from an unknown man. Either you know more about him than you’re sharing, or someone you trust asked you to do it.”

  “Someone did. A friend of yours.”

  I blinked. “Who?”

  “Hal Beckett.”

  My breath hissed between my teeth. “Hal’s involved in this?”