by Sacchi Green
They met the others in a corner behind stacked water barrels, as safe as anywhere else, which wasn’t saying much. The beacons high on the walls were aimed outward, but not well shielded, so some light trickled back inside and made shelter imperative.
Colonel Nisreen Khider was at least able to walk by now, with assistance, though there was still a hazy air about her. Their original plans had allowed time for her recovery. Now there was no telling how soon the dead and the merely stunned would be discovered, and Colonel Khider’s escape as well.
“Ash. Be ready to act sooner than planned. Complication. Enemy killed, not discovered but might be any minute. Stand by.”
The response was instantaneous. “Got you. Ready when you are.”
“Need a little more time here.” Cleo paused. “Got you, too. Always.” There was no time for more.
Shifra left the colonel’s side and leaned close. “What has happened?”
Cleo told her in as few words as possible.
“How soon?”
“No sign of trouble yet. But we can’t wait long.”
A figure approached through the shadows. Ariya crept forward to meet the newcomer, whispered with her, and returned. “Only two guards, that evil woman and one other. Our people are prepared to take down both.”
“Good,” Shifra said. “Tell her to go back and spread the word that we must leave almost at once. Take down the guards. Finish getting the women ready.”
The silence that followed morphed into a subtle stirring of the air, the faint, muted murmurings of hundreds of women alerted to the prospect of escape. If the guards on the outer wall noticed, they might shrug it off as some foolish female business, perhaps a birth, or a death. Or they might not.
Cleo scanned the top of the wall. There seemed to be only two sentries, one in each of the two lighted towers, showing no interest in what went on within the enclosure. If she concentrated, she could detect a gun in the tower on the right, but the guard wasn’t holding it. She stood on a pile of rubble and stared back toward the central buildings. No change. No uproar.
“Ash. Gun in the tower to your left, my right. None in the other. Wait for my signal.”
“Right,” Ash sent. “I’m on it.”
Cleo looked higher, into the night sky beyond the wall. Was that small, dark shadow drifting across the stars a drone?
Just then, Ariya returned and prodded her. “Look, over there.”
A single lantern, bobbing closer, casting an occasional beam across a wispy gray beard and a hand gripping a long staff.
“Go!” Cleo gave Ariya a small shove. “I’ve got this one.”
Ariya took off through the darkness where the wall itself cast a shadow.
Time. Just a little more time for the rescuers to get ready. What was he doing here? Coming to exchange verbal barbs with the woman jailer? Coming to find Cleo herself?
She circled in the shadows until she could approach as if coming from the inner enclosure’s gate, and nearly tripped over a mound of clothing and flesh. From the angle of the head it was clear that the neck was broken, and by the short lash next to the hand, attached to an equally broken arm, Cleo was sure of its identity, even though the face, what was left of it, was unrecognizable. Whoever had taken down the jailer had done good work. A real overachiever.
She moved on, creeping forward into the widest space between the inner wall and the outer, and waited for the old man to come closer.
But he paused some distance away, cocking his head, muttering, and cupping one bony hand behind his ear. He must have heard the hum of unusual activity.
She had to get closer, which meant she had to reveal herself. Her keffiyeh was pulled over her hair loosely, and the loaded end hung down where her hand could grip it at just the right length.
“Effendi…” Her voice was tremulous, timid, child-like. She shuffled toward him, head bowed.
He raised the lantern. “Ah, Green-eyes. So your keeper accepts the offer I sent.” He swung the lantern around, searching the darkness. “What makes the hive buzz tonight? And where is that greedy she-demon?”
She took a few steps more and shook her head, eyes still downcast. If she looked up, he would see her deadly rage too soon. Just a little closer, and she would straighten, stand strong, just as she had finally stood strong, fury driving out fear, all those years ago in New Hampshire. “I do not know, Effendi.”
He stepped back. “Why does she hide? A trap? Has she set a trap for me?” He looked wildly around. “Now guards are coming!”
Cleo did straighten then. Lights were spreading out from the central buildings. The tunnel vision of her fury had almost blinded her.
“Ash! Take down the towers, now. The left one with the gun first.”
So fast it might already have been in Ash’s grip, the top part of the tower tore loose with a sharp, satisfying crack, spilling man and rifle outside the wall. With even more clamor of destruction, the whole structure separated from the wall and smashed to the ground. The other tower followed while shards of the first were still falling. “Now the central buildings. Blast them with everything you’ve got.”
The old man swung from staring at the vanishing towers to see Cleo as she stood straight and fierce and as intent on Ash’s work as if it had been her own.
“Witch!” he spat. “I should have known from your green eyes!”
His staff came at her so fast she couldn’t have dodged if he’d been a step closer. As it was, she sprang back, then forward to grab its end on the return swing, and wrenched it away from him. The effort brought her down, though, at a bad angle. Pain shot up her leg, barely muted by adrenaline. She didn’t even try to stand, just pushed herself up onto her knees as he came at her with his knife. The leverage from her position wasn’t good, but she swung her stone-weighted keffiyeh hard enough to knock the knife from his hand. Then, as Ash sent two huge projectiles roaring above them, he ducked reflexively and she swung again, connecting with his head. He fell, smashing his skull against the ground, while a surge of vicious joy swept through Cleo. There you go, Ishtar, this one’s on me!
But she still couldn’t stand. When she tried, pain lanced through to her core, and when Ariya and the medic ran forward and lifted her the pain was even worse. In what little shelter they managed to find, her mind cleared, at least partially. Whatever Ash had sent arcing overhead could be heard pounding the central buildings over and over, like great hammers of the gods. Or goddesses. “Way to go, Ash! And now…now…” Her mind began to mist over.
“We will carry you, Cleo, all the way.” Ariya’s voice, strained with suppressed tears, could barely be heard over the wild destruction of the central buildings and the screams of men.
“No,” Cleo said with absolute certainty, mind clear again. “Ash will lift and carry me.” With an effort so intense it twisted her face, she sent, “Gates away! Now!”
Chapter 21
Ash welcomed the coming of dusk. They could move on at last, while it was not yet dark enough to make driving without headlights impossible. Headlights might have been noticed from the distant city.
By the time the rocky bluff rose before them, darkness made climbing treacherous. The surface had been scoured smooth by centuries of sand storms, and only a series of rough diagonal cracks provided reliable footholds. Ash, with the strap of the viewing gear’s padded bag slung crosswise over her head and shoulder, clung to stone still radiating leftover heat from the sun.
Mac climbed ahead with a pack stocked with food and drink for the night. Ilham came behind and stopped on a narrow ledge well below the summit, standing guard with her own pack of supplies, and her rifle.
The crest of the bluff was mostly level, with a few dips and high spots. Ash set down her bag in a hollow and knelt beside it, reaching inside to run careful fingers over helmet and visor to be sure they weren’t damaged. The escape had been p
lanned for just before dawn, hours away yet, but if things kicked off sooner she would be prepared to act.
Mac had set up her supplies a few feet away, and when she unscrewed the top of a thermos and said, “Coffee?” Ash gratefully accepted, glad of the hot brew. Even in the desert it was early winter, and the day’s stored heat drained from the stone more and more rapidly now that the sun had set.
At last Ash looked up into the night sky, just light enough yet that the drone’s falcon façade was silhouetted against it. She lifted the programmed helmet carefully from its padding and rested it on her hip, then gazed out over the plain below. Turning slowly, eyes now adjusted to the low light, she oriented herself in the natural world.
To the west were the hills, and then the mountains that had become so familiar.
To the south and southeast was the vast expanse of desert she had come to know well in her years with the Army.
To the north—more mountains, she thought, but too far away to be sure of, and in any case it was the northeast that drew her gaze. To the northeast there was Cleo. And the walled city, outlined in the deepening night by lights along its walls at long intervals and a faint glow from within. Ash remembered thinking that the international Army base approached from uphill at night looked like a palace from some fantastic Arabian Nights tale, but this walled city could have been the real thing, no longer a palace now.
“Do they have electricity there?” she murmured low to Mac, though there was no one else who could hear her.
“Probably a gasoline generator for lights on the wall, and in the officials’ rooms at the center, but mostly oil lamps for the rest, if any lights at all.”
Ash kept watching the city, imagining it in ancient times. The inner glow could have been a celebration of a royal wedding, or a festival of magic, or even an elaborate ritual where all bowed down before the goddess and worshipped her with chant and sacrifice. Had Ishtar been there? Was Ash only imagining that the inner buzzing had morphed briefly into a purr?
It didn’t matter. Now, that glow could be the concentrated anguish of the hundreds enslaved there, in this war that, as so often in the past, was being fought on women’s bodies.
She shook her head to clear it. Would Cleo laugh at her for getting so fanciful? They had sometimes made up far-fetched stories on long journeys together, but those had been on the raunchy side.
The real question was, would she ever hear Cleo laugh at her again?
She turned to Mac. “I need to use the helmet and visor now to get a look at the gates.”
Mac jerked out of her reverie at Ash’s voice. She had been deep in thought, too, perhaps wondering if she would ever hear Nisreen again.
“Here. Let me.” Mac fumbled with the clasps and helped buckle them under Ash’s chin. Ash could feel the faint trembling of Mac’s fingers and, on impulse, put an arm around her shoulder and gave a quick squeeze. Mac returned the gesture. The sisterhood of fear for loved ones.
The visor showed her a close, brighter-than-life view of the gate, once she managed to get the settings right. The ponderous wooden doors, the iron bands leading to…yes! The huge hinges were anchored to the stone pillars by iron spikes. Anchored to the pillars, but not to the lions’ heads. Looking closer—even closer—the lions were carved from a different type of stone entirely, like granite with a tawny tint. They were easily five feet high and nearly as wide, not part of the massive gray pillars themselves but bound to them by bands of metal like collars.
The buzzing now in her head became a throbbing, though not especially painful. Was it Ishtar’s approval? Her sorrow? Ridicule or illusion? It didn’t matter. The gate would come down, and if the lions were destroyed, what greater honor could there be for them than freeing the women?
She removed the helmet, sat down with it in her lap, and leaned against the food pack. Mac sat beside her. Still hours to go. The rising moon, nearly full, drifted in and out of bands of cloud—or, no, the clouds did the drifting. She watched the moon, the stars—so far away, so removed.
“Nisreen!”
At first it seemed to Ash that the moon had leapt partway across the sky, but in the next instant she realized that a few hours had passed. She must have dozed off. Mac turned to her, the intense relief on her face clear in the moonlight.
“Nisreen can contact me!”
“Cleo?” Ash could feel her presence so strongly it almost felt like touching, but there was no response. After a minute or two of worry and waiting she snapped impatiently, “Sergeant Brown, report!”
That brought an equally sharp retort. “When I’m damned good and ready, Lieutenant!”
At Mac’s questioning look, Ash said, “Cleo can communicate, but she refuses to.” Frustration sharpened her voice. “What the hell is going on in there?” She made the helmet and visor rise to her and settled them in place again. “Did Nisreen say anything useful?”
“Useful to me,” Mac said. “Not to anyone else. She sounds weak, but alert.”
Ash crouched on the highest point of rock, watching the city like a falcon seeking prey. When she zoomed in on the gate, she could almost feel the rough stone of the lion’s head on the left. If she were to exert force… Yes, it would yield, when the time came. And the other lion? More resistant. Her hand tensed, tensed more, then drew back abruptly as the stone loosened with a jerk. She hoped no one had noticed the tremor.
“Ash.”
Relief swept through her.
“Be ready sooner than planned. Complications. Enemy killed, not discovered, could be any minute. Stand by.”
Ash’s response was instantaneous. “Got you. Ready when you are.”
“Need a little more time here.” Cleo paused. “Got you, too. Always.”
Ash spoke to Mac without turning. “A problem. They need to get out soon, but they’re not ready yet.”
Waiting took more strength than action could. The rocky summit offered only limited space for pacing, but Ash strode back and forth over what little there was. Mac seemed preoccupied in connecting with Nisreen, apparently on matters more personal than news of what was happening.
“Ash.”
She stopped in mid-stride.
“Gun in the tower to your left, my right. None in the other. Wait for my signal.”
“I’m on it.” Ash focused her visor on the guard towers and the wall between, and waited. And waited. What was going on?
When Cleo’s signal came—“Ash! Take down the towers, now! The left one with the gun first!”—Ash was so ready she moved her fingers a mere tenth of an inch and felt the wooden struts pull apart from the base by five feet. The figure inside the lookout structure stumbled, arms flailing, then clutched at a railing, mouth gaping in what must be a scream, while Ash sent the whole tower swaying like a palm tree in a wild hurricane. She felt the cracking of wood, the grating of stone, as she wrenched the entire lookout away, shook it until both man and rifle tumbled out, and smashed the whole stone tower to the ground. Then she sent the gun flying far into the night, and ripped the other tower away from the wall. The heat of battle, of power, surged through her.
“Now the central buildings. Blast ’em with everything you’ve got.”
They were in sync now, as much as they’d ever been. Even more. Ash felt the old high. She tore loose the great stone lion head on the right, raised it high, and watched it arcing over the city, followed by the one on the left. The drone must be following her eye motions without any adjustment on her part, because suddenly she could see inside the walls. Beneath the soaring lions’ heads, the masses of prisoners organized by the rescuers waited to pour out from their roofless enclosures. The few visible guards scattered in terror as the fierce stone heads sailed above them, parting the air with a roar like a double tornado, and slammed down on the headquarters—where there were flimsy, makeshift roofs until the heads came down onto them and smashed through in erupt
ions of jagged splinters. She raised the lions again, made them smash through time after time, then landed them intact on the rubble.
“Gates away! Now!” Cleo’s command came through firm and clear.
Ash seldom needed gestures anymore, but now, standing precariously on a high point, she raised both arms. The rush of blood in her veins and hum of triumph in her head made her feel like the conductor of a Wagnerian orchestra directing a crescendo.
Crack! The right side of the gate tore away to the outside, bringing rocks from the pillar with it, and she swore she could hear the splintering and crashing from even so far away. She wrenched the remaining gate from its crumbling pillar, then made the shards of wood and iron and stone part like the Red Sea, leaving a wide, clear path. Two women came out, stepping from shadows into a beam of bright white light. Light?
A second drone had appeared, pouring light onto the roadway. It was joined by a third, zooming from side to side, and up and down, as though scanning the scene. Maybe even recording it. If the situation hadn’t been so grimly real, Ash would have felt like she was in a movie. What the hell was going on?
And where was Cleo? One of the first two out Ash recognized as Shifra, with a tall silver-maned woman leaning on her for support. Could that be Nisreen? Then Ariya and the medic followed, supporting someone between them. Cleo! With arms strung around her helpers’ necks for support, slowing them down. Behind them a stream of other women poured through the dust and rubble of the pulverized gateway.
“Cleo!” Anxiety burned the word into Ash’s brain.
Cleo’s thoughts rang clear in her head. “Lift me, Ash! I’m okay, just can’t walk. Leg out of commission. We can do this. I’ll point the way. Make me fly!”
The urge to snatch Cleo to safety was nearly overpowering. But Cleo would resist, and the mission would fail cataclysmically. Meanwhile the goddess brayed for more blood, for extermination of the enemy, with no room for mercy, or focus on the escaping women, or any rational thought. Ash pushed her back and seized control of her own mind. She had to listen to Cleo now, not the supernatural entity inside her head. She funneled her frustration into power, groped for Cleo, found her, and lifted her to stretch out parallel to the ground. Mac moved close to brace Ash’s back in her effort, and Ilham soon joined them and knelt on the stone to keep Ash’s legs stable.