Chapter 41
the Next Afternoon...
Hasmit, with Ali in tow, hurried back to Yusuf, collected his breath, then spoke rapidly. The young man quickly dismounted and signaled to Derek and Masruq to do the same.
"The tracks lead to a building complex, Yusuf explained to the others in a mixture of languages, hoping that Derek could decipher some of the discussion. To help, he pulled them over to a large, flat stone, picked up a sharp pebble, and tried to draw a plan of what the tracker had described. "He thinks it's a water pumping station... maybe once an electrical generator... damaged during the war... neglected for many years... but obviously still used... for something." To convey the idea of pumping and war damage, he used his hands to churn the air then, with a swift spread of his fingers and a "Kaaa....pfffff....mmm!!!" demonstrated the blast of a bomb.
"So... what do you... in your vast experience... suggest we do?" Masruq asked in R'om-vari, casting a sideways glance at the outsider, whom he doubted understood a single word or gesture. In his opinion, it was a senseless waste of time and breath to try to accommodate the infidel.
Yusuf refused to be baited. "We take a look... without being seen," he replied, pointing to his eyes, then pointing towards their objective. He took his reins and those of Derek's pony and handed them to Ali. "Stay here, but be ready to move... fast," he told the younger boy in R'om-vari. Then, crouching low, he gestured that Derek should do the same, and scurried after Hasmit. The others followed, but Derek hesitated. He returned to the pony, untied his pack from the saddle, then hurried after his companions.
As they reached the crest, the wind whistled around them, tugging at their clothes. Slipping into a cleft in the rocks, they edged forward to look down into the valley below. It was a barren place that reminded the precept of the desert canyons that he knew so well. Abutting the cliff face opposite was an incongruous concrete building... a solid block, with a tower at the far end. A dilapidated wire fence surrounded the site.
"Shuravi?...
Russian?..." Derek suggested as he drew his binoculars from his pack.Yusuf nodded. "Water...," he said in English, pointing out the large pipes that led away from the structure.
The precept studied the landscape. He could see that many of the smaller outbuildings were no more than ruins, but the central complex seemed in reasonably good condition. The windows may have been blown in, but the walls and roof looked sound. He was surprised to see a satellite dish, cables, antennae.... This was no convenient rest stop.... No.... Could it be a communications center, he wondered. "Wait here," he said, and gestured with the flat of his hand that the others should remain where they were. He then crept back past them, out of the cleft, and at a low, crouching run, hurried to a higher vantage point several hundred yards away.
From there he could see the south side of the building... many more wires... high-tension lines running on down the valley... and what might be a transformer. The place might be producing electricity, besides pumping water. There, on the corner of the building, was something that looked like a light... a dark, glass dome suspended from a protruding, steel arm. He focused the binoculars.... The thing looked new. Could it be a camera? From there, it would certainly have a view of all angles... but... as yet... he'd seen no one. Perhaps, the place was automated... perhaps, it operated with minimal manpower... until the group they were tailing had arrived. Yet such a large caravan of supplies spoke of many men... or maybe of a few men, who would be isolated here throughout the winter... or they might have gone on down the valley. He wracked his brain for a mental picture of these mountains. This valley would be part of a watershed system that flowed south towards the Kabul River... unlike the valleys ibn Sikander followed, which faced west. If one followed these streams, one might end up in Jalalabad, he mused.
Movement caught his eye... on the tower. He adjusted the focus once more, and saw a man on watch. Just one man... but with the advantage of height, one man was all that was needed. He scooted back from the rocky edge and hurried to rejoin the others, who were deeply embroiled in vehement, incomprehensible debate.
"Let's go look," Masruq suggested. "We can't tell a thing from up here." For Derek's benefit, he gestured angrily towards the valley.
"No!... We wait," Yusuf replied.
"And while we wait his friend may meet his death," Masruq hissed back.
Derek handed the binoculars to Yusuf, pointed at the tower, then at the potential camera. The young man nodded and passed them to Masruq.
"We can reach those rocks," the older man considered. "Then when he's looking the other way, we can get to the wall... then we'll be out of his line of sight."
Reading the foreigner's thoughts, Hasmit snorted. "He'd have to be blind not to see us before we got halfway down," he said to the others in their own tongue.
Yusuf nodded his agreement. "It's too risky."
Derek was tired of this squabbling. He'd understood none of it, yet could guess the whole conversation. Masruq's tone set off his intuitive alarm.... The man could be trouble. He was rash... which probably made him good in a fight, where someone else did the thinking. How had Zarek described him?... "A strong man, but not very bright." If Derek ever needed someone beside him in a flat-out charge across open ground, it would be Masruq, but here and now, he could be dangerous. The older man resented Yusuf and wanted nothing more than to put the youngster in his place.
The precept gestured for the Afghans to follow him as he retraced their steps back to the horses. Crouching down, he drew a rough diagram of the building in the earth. "Dusk... sunset...." He pointed to the sun, then the horizon. "We'll go then," he said in Greek. He handed his binoculars to Hasmit. "Go... see...." He pointed north and gestured that the tracker should leave now.
Hasmit looked at the glasses, then at Yusuf, who shrugged, eloquently. The tracker left them, skirting to the left and keeping low to the ground.
Yusuf pulled his woolen petou close about him and squatted down beside Derek to wait, while Masruq stomped the earth like an impatient bull.
* * *
An half-hour later, Masruq glanced at the sky.... It would be another hour before the light was lost. It was bad enough that ibn Sikander had given command to the boy, but now this damned kafir... this unbeliever... was giving orders.
He turned to look down at Yusuf. "So are you now giving command to this man... a sick man... a foreigner... a crazy infidel. You can't tell me that our khan would approve of this!"
The young man glanced over at Derek, who was huddled down in his coat and pushtin, with his petou wrapped tightly around his neck. He seemed to be napping. I don't know," said Yusuf, confused, hesitant. "The stories speak of him as a warrior... as well as a man of God... a Sufi, who is not. We're supposed to protect him, but maybe he is not as unwell as we thought.... Maybe there's more there than what we think we see."
"Hah!" Masruq spat. "Maybe you see what you want to see.... You want to believe in fairy tales.... Look at him.... He's soft... not used to hardship.... He can't keep his eyes open. If we weren't here, he wouldn't last five minutes."
"I thought so too, but not now," Yusuf replied. "I've watched him. He's patient.... He waits... and he rests while he waits. That's wise... that's the mark of a 'real' warrior.... You saw his scars.... He's suffered... known pain... and... beneath that shell... he's hard as steel... maybe not physically... but inside..... He's not a man I'd want as an enemy."
"Suffered... maybe... but maybe he was broken... not made stronger." Masruq exhaled loudly, strode over to the horses and began to remove the saddles.
"What's happening?" Ali asked as he helped the older man.
"Foolishness," Masruq growled, as he slipped the bit from the gray pony's mouth. "First we have to follow a boy who's barely grown fuzz on his face... now a mad mystic, who can barely stand, gives me orders!"
The animal's ears swivelled towards him. It pawed the ground, then dropped its head to search the turned up soil for soft roots. Ali struggled to withhold a grin at the animal's dismissal of the older man.
"Even the dumb beasts ignore me," the man muttered.
< < + > >
"Ginge?" Nick groaned, trying to ease the white hot agony that throbbed upward from his right leg into his groin.
After the angry squabble between their captors had subsided, the two soldiers had once more been bound hand and foot and dragged into the dank, empty storeroom. Rats lived here, Nick knew. He could hear them as they came ever closer. "Think of Derek," he silently told himself. "He held on.... He made it."
There they had lain, enmeshed in their pain, barely conscious, for the next few hours. Then it had begun again. Ginge had been hauled out... alone. Nick had listened as the same questions had been asked, again and again. Then the strangled screams had begun once more. Hours later, his friend's unconscious body had dropped beside him. Nick had expected his own torments to begin again, but they had not... not yet.
Every few minutes he had mumbled Ginge's name. At last, he heard a groan in reply. "How ya doin'?" he asked.
"Don' know..." was the garbled response. "Thin' de basserd pull 'af m' teef. Hur's like 'ell.... You?"
Nick heard the voice, but it had grown distant... unimportant. Through the concrete floor, he could hear the throb of heavy machinery. He found comfort in the soothing rhythm... allowed himself to drift into the gentle vibration.
"Inthy...," the Brit said a few minutes later. "You... OK?... Did he getcha?... You know...."
"Don't know," Nick muttered. "Can't tell... all... burns... bad.... I think... maybe...." How high had the boiling water been poured? He couldn't tell through the pain. It didn't matter.... There'd never be another woman anyway. They weren't going to get out of this.... "I'm so cold... col' in...side... so thirsty," he whispered.
"Me too... an' sick." Nick could hear his friend gag, then vomit and gasp for air. After a few minutes, Ginge spoke again. "Keep swallowin' blood."
Both men once more grew silent in their misery.
At last, Ginge asked, "Inthy... are we gonna make it?... Are we gonna get our shot?"
"We gotta try," the former SEAL replied. "They want us alive... till they can march us in front of the cameras...."
"How?... What they've done to us?"
Nick read the Brit's mind. If they were put on trial... in front of cameras... for the world to see... how would their condition be explained. Nick struggled to think. Derek would be able to think. "Prob'ly have fake survivors... say they beat us when they captured us. Tal...i...ban prob'ly saved us. No one'll know... 'bout your teeth. My burn'll be... accident... tried to es...cape... brought us food an' tea. I tried to throw the hot water.... Prob'ly even show off someone burned worse than me.... Prob'ly be a woman.... She'll be the poor woman I burned.
"Jus' hang in there, Ginge.... We gotta try...," Nick repeated. "We gotta keep wantin' us alive.... It'll pass... soon.... I promise."
< < + > >
Later...
Hasmit moved quietly towards the small group, concealed amongst the boulders at the top of the bluff. The foreigner somehow knew of his return before any of his fellow tribesmen had seen or heard him. He watched Derek stand, stretch his back, waggle his neck, and look expectantly in his direction.
"How did he know?" Yusuf asked, following the precept's gaze and seeing the tracker emerge from the rocks. "I heard nothing.... None of us did?"
"I heard him," Masruq proclaimed. "Only a beardless boy would have missed his footfall."
Hasmit, who was small and light of step, knew his approach had been silent. Masruq was a good fighter... brave, but foolhardy... and a braggart. He considered Masruq's recent behavior unseemly. This mystic was the Rumi-Khan's guest and friend... thus a guest of the entire tribe... and should be treated honorably... with respect.
The group hunkered down around Derek's diagram. Hasmit indicated the far side of the structure. "They have no one on watch," he explained in Arabic, hoping that the foreigner could follow. "They rely on the man in the tower... and he's half asleep. The fence has fallen... but I saw no doors... no entry into the main building, but the way we see."
"No men?... No door?... No fence?" Derek asked hesitantly, unsure he'd followed the Afghan's report.
Looking into the precept's hazel eyes, hoping to see understanding there, Hasmit nodded.
"Cameras?" the precept asked. "Alarms?.... Bbbbringgg... bbbbrrringgg... bbrringg!" He mimicked the sound and flashing light of an alarm system.
At a complete loss, Hasmit shook his head, then shrugged his shoulders.
Derek patted the man on the back and tried to indicate that it was OK. "Yusuf... me." He pointed to himself and the young Afghan, then indicated on his diagram the route he intended to take. "Masruq... Hasmit... hu'nak... there.... Ali... hone... here with the horses. M'leeh," he said, dredging his memory for Arabic. "Goot." Derek reached for his pack. "The sun sets.... Let's go."
Stepping forward, Masruq roughly gripped Derek's arm.... In a mixture of Arabic, Pashtu, and R'om-vari, he said, "You wait here with Ali, we'll go in.... When it's safe the 'boy'... Yusuf... will collect you."
Yusuf felt himself thrust aside, as the precept spun away from Masruq, breaking his hold. Suddenly, he was behind the tribesman with his arm around the shorter man's neck. A knife was in his hand; the sharp, curved blade rested against Masruq's throat. Yusuf, Hasmit, and Ali stared in shock.
"I go with Yusuf," the foreign voice emphasized, obviously intending to be obeyed. "You," he said, as he poked Masruq's barrel chest with his thumb, "and Hasmit... from the other direction. Inta b'tif-ham?... Do you understand?" Derek carefully enunciated in Arabic.
Masruq slowly nodded. "OK." He muttered the only English he knew, and for good measure repeated, "OK."
Yusuf stepped forward, but was careful to maintain a non-threatening distance. "He understands.... Please... let him go."
Releasing Masruq, the precept smiled at the four stunned faces... a smile that
never reached his eyes. "Good," he said in English as he slid his knife back into its
sheath and slipped both into his belt. He then pulled his handgun from the small of his
back, checked the clip, and slammed it back into the handle. "Let's go."
| NEXT |
| CONTENTS |
| E-mail: Dubricus | E-mail: Susan Lay |
