The Girl in Green

by Derek B. Miller

  Märta ignores the instructions from the terrorists, and runs to the girl. She closes the distance quickly and wraps her arms around the child, walking her back toward Tigger in a direction that feels like an exit.

  The girl is not safe, Märta knows, but she is no longer alone.

  The girl, shaking, submits to the embrace of this new stranger.

  Another figure emerges, limping, through the door. It is a young man, short and clearly in pain. This time it is Tigger who runs forward. He catches the boy and wraps his arms around him, kissing the top of his head. He has been shot in the leg. He, too, is shaking. Taking Jamal’s face in his hands, Tigger sees he is dehydrated and cold. Tigger can’t tell how much blood he’s lost.

  ‘There’s a helicopter coming,’ Tigger says.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I’m rather counting on it.’

  ‘What if it doesn’t?’

  ‘We’ll find a nice hotel.’

  ‘There are no hotels here.’

  ‘I was pulling your leg.’

  ‘Why would you pull my leg? I’m in terrible pain.’

  Märta’s phone rings. She answers it, freeing one hand from around Adar’s shoulders.

  ‘Hello?’ she says.

  ‘It’s me,’ says Herb. ‘We’re inbound.’

  ‘We have Jamal and the girl. I’m waiting on Arwood and Benton.’

  ‘Where do you want us to land?’

  ‘In the bailey.’

  ‘What’s a bailey?’

  ‘It’s the courtyard to the castle.’

  ‘There’s a castle?’

  ‘You can’t miss it.’

  39

  Herb sits in the copilot’s chair of the EC155. There is a wall of instrumentation, buttons, and a joystick in front of him. He understands the altimeter, the rotor RPMs, the horizon ball, the clock, the fuel gauge. However, the only instrument he could control is the Maglite flashlight mounted on two rings to his right; the rest of the black panel is beyond him. He stares at it, though, because outside the window his helplessness is even deeper.

  The flight path is 150 kilometres. Spaz has mapped a route over Simele and the northern stretch over the Mosul Dam lake. ‘ISIL has no navy — yet,’ the Russian says. ‘But when they do, you remember you heard it here first, OK? The next war, it will be for that water. Assuming the dam doesn’t break and kill everybody first. Mark my words. Everything I say comes true.’

  ‘Maybe you shouldn’t talk so much,’ Herb says. And for the first time, he hears Spaz laugh. It is not comforting.

  Herb turns to look for support from Elise in the back. She is not paying attention, and is instead immersed in a video game of Tetris.

  Spaz changes direction to the south-west, taking them over the spot of the mortar attack and the remains of the Urals. They are avoiding the main roads with their mobile weapons and technicals, and circumnavigating Tal Afar, now being shelled by the military as the Sunni-aligned tribes attack the Shiite population.

  How anything below coheres into a strategy is beyond him.

  A call comes in that Herb answers. It is Märta. She has the Arab kids, she says. She gives him instructions on where to land.

  Herb shouts to Spaz and Elise over the whirr of the blades. ‘Apparently there’s a castle. And we’re to land in it.’

  Spaz does not react, but Elise looks up and smiles. She points to her helmet and the headset system that transmitted the same call to her helmet, too. In a warm Spanish accent, she says, ‘How’s your stomach, Señor Macho Man?’

  ‘Average. Why?’

  ‘It is going to be a bumpy landing.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘If we are landing in a castle, we are landing in a box. The downward pressure of the air from the rotor cannot dissipate easily. So it will bounce off the walls and come back one way or another. It will be a tempest in a teapot.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Do you believe in God?’

  ‘Yes, I do,’ says Herb.

  ‘I find that prayer helps,’ she says.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘It gives me something else to think about, instead of throwing up. Focusses the mind.’

  ‘Landed in many castles, have you?’

  ‘Estates of drug lords. Physics are the same.’

  ‘When this is over, I’m going to take a vacation.’

  ‘You want some company?’ Elise asks.

  ‘I’m married with two kids.’

  ‘Gets lonely out here among all the refugees and insurgents,’ Elise says through the intercom.

  ‘That’s funny, because I feel like I can’t get a minute to myself.’

  Spaz interjects, ‘Looks like the military has identified an arms depot. Down there. Look. They are bombarding them with mortars. I’m taking us up to fifteen hundred metres. We will approach the mountains from the north.’

  At a height of eight hundred metres, turning south, they fly into the shadow of the Sinjar Mountains. Rising to fifteen hundred metres, they align with their highest point. On approach, they meet the sun breaking over the castle walls, blinding them.

  Herb’s mobile phone is on, and he receives a text message. A moment later, both Spaz and Elise receive one as well. He and Elise look at one another.

  Herb flips open the old Nokia. The signal, on the GSM system, has automatically switched over to MTN Syria, being the more powerful signal in their location. The message reads: Ministry of Tourism welcomes you in Syria. Please call 137 for tourism information or complaints.

  ‘This place,’ Herb mumbles.

  ‘What?’ Elise shouts.

  ‘Nothing. How high can this thing go?’ Herb asks through the headset.

  ‘Two thousand metres,’ Spaz says. ‘That is the hover ceiling. But it depends on the barometric pressure.’

  ‘That doesn’t give us a lot of manoeuvring space if they don’t respect the emblem, and things get hairy.’

  Spaz and Elise both laugh at the same time.

  ‘What’s so funny?’

  ‘If things get hairy,’ Spaz says, ‘we are going to die.’

  ‘I’m glad we won the Cold War, you know that? You are a depressing, cynical, and mean-spirited group of people,’ Herb says to Spaz.

  ‘It’s not over yet,’ Spaz mumbles as they cross over the castle wall and look down into the bailey.

  ‘How does it look?’ Elise says from the back of the helicopter, putting away her video game and preparing her emergency kit.

  ‘Busy,’ says Spaz. ‘I see three insurgents in the courtyard, a sharpshooter on one of the towers, maybe a machine gunner, and four of our people. But maybe many more inside. I think Jamal is wounded.’

  Inside the tower, Arwood tries to pull Benton up, but is having little success. ‘That’s our ride outside. We can make it,’ he says.

  ‘I can’t believe they got our message.’

  ‘Please get up. I’m shot, too. I can’t carry you.’

  ‘I’m trying.’

  ‘They’re landing. It’s a nice sound. I’ve hated the sound of rotors for a long time.’

  ‘Me, too,’ Benton says.

  The doors to the antechamber and the outside are wide open. As the helicopter lands, the sheet metal slams repeatedly against the old stone walls.

  ‘Come on, there’s a war on the way,’ Arwood says, ‘and you don’t want to be here for it.’

  ‘You mean the military is coming?’

  ‘Well … I think there’s a lot of interest in this place right now.’

  ‘Who did you write to?’

  ‘I called in an old chip with the Peshmerga. We go way back.’

  Arwood, his own leg also shot, uses his upper body to heave Benton to a semi-standing position. Together they have two good legs between t
hem, and with cooperation they make that work for them.

  ‘Why aren’t you in as bad shape as me?’ Benton asks as they hobble into the wind toward the courtyard. He can see a large black man, who must be Herb Reston. He is stepping down from the aircraft, wiping vomit from his shirt.

  ‘I’m American,’Arwood says. ‘We’re upbeat by nature.’

  ‘You’re exhausting, is what you are.’

  ‘All right, Ferris. Here we go.’ And with that, Arwood walks them out, arms around one another, shoulder to shoulder.

  Outside, three men stand around the helicopter. Abu Saleh, the one they call Larry, is holding his headscarf against the wind and is looking displeased. Benton does not look at Abu Saleh as they pass him, but Arwood does. With his arm still around Benton’s waist, he jerks them both to a halt for a final word with his former captor and torturer.

  ‘You’re gonna lose,’ Arwood taunts him. ‘You know that, right? Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but very soon and for the rest of your life. You know that, right?’

  ‘No, we will prevail,’ Abu Saleh says.

  ‘No you won’t. And I’ll tell you why. Because groove is in the heart.’

  A woman Arwood hasn’t seen before hops out of the sliding back door of the aircraft, and helps Adar and Jamal inside. She has thick black hair and a great arse. It’s a pity he’s not planning to get on the chopper with her.

  Benton waves half-heartedly to Märta and Tigger. Herb has lifted Jamal into his arms and is climbing into the helicopter with him. Tigger joins Benton and Arwood, immediately placing a pressure pad against Benton’s leg, and raising him higher to further relieve the pressure. For such a skinny man, he is surprisingly strong.

  ‘How did you convince them to let us go?’ Benton yells to Tigger.

  The fortress has never known wind of this kind. The people around Benton look blurred and shapeless through the fog of dust, unleashed and upended by the tumult from the rotors. It is as hard to see as to hear.

  ‘Turns out they fear the devil,’ Tigger yells above the wind. ‘And, as it happens, Märta has his phone number.’

  Tigger does not introduce Benton to Elise Garcia, and instead releases him into her care. She is small but steady, and sure on her feet. She smiles at him as her hands work expertly to strip off his trousers and reposition the pressure pad. She prepares an IV.

  ‘Can I have some water?’ he says, seated and grateful.

  She opens a bottle and rubs his face wet before allowing him small sips. ‘You are severely dehydrated. If you drink too fast, you’ll vomit. The IV will help most.’ She touches his forehead and says, ‘You’ll feel a little better in a moment.’

  Out in the wind, Tigger braces to help Arwood over the steps into the cabin. But Arwood does not take his hand or step inside.

  ‘Did you see them?’ Arwood asks Tigger.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Outside the walls. Did they come? Did you see them?’ His eyes are pleading for an answer.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘With the scar?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He’s close?’

  ‘Yes. What’s going to happen when we leave?’

  ‘Thank Märta and Herb for me,’ Arwood says. He does not shake Tigger’s hand. He does not look at Herb, who is inside the helicopter, tending to the girl. He does not even meet Märta’s gaze; she is trying to make sense of the conversation she can see but not hear.

  Alone, he starts to limp across the courtyard to the first tower, which housed his first cell and leads beyond the walls to the Kurds.

  As Arwood limps away, Tigger yells to him, ‘You’ve lost your mind.’

  ‘I said the girl was alive, and she was,’ Arwood replies. ‘I said we’d save the girl, and we did. I said everyone would be themselves at the moment of truth, and they were. I’m the sanest one here.’

  ‘It’s not the same girl, you know,’ Tigger says, above the whirr of the blades.

  Arwood Hobbes looks over his shoulder through the sandstorm at Tigger. He can see the girl through the window of the helicopter. She is not looking at him.

  ‘Oh yeah?’ he yells. ‘What’s not the same about her?’

  Tigger is the last inside, and he nods for Herb to close the sliding door of the EC155. He does, and climbs into the copilot’s seat to strap himself in. Spaz looks at him, and Herb nods, to indicate they are as full up as they’re going to be. Spaz looks back into the seating area, and watches the blood from the two injured men drip onto his floorboards.

  Benton shouts, ‘Wait a minute, wait a minute. Where’s Arwood? We can’t leave without Arwood.’

  ‘He’s not coming,’ Tigger says, as Spaz increases the rotor speed, and they lift off the ground.

  ‘If he’s not coming, it means he’s staying, and he’s obviously not staying.’

  ‘There are people outside the walls,’ Tigger says. ‘People waiting for him.’

  ‘What people?’ Märta asks, as the helicopter climbs to fifty metres, and then to seventy.

  ‘Some kind of Kurdish assault force,’ Tigger says. ‘They took my gun. It’s why I was late coming in. I thought it best to keep this to myself, given the company.’

  Märta unhooks her seatbelt and rushes to the front between Spaz and Herb. She taps Spaz on the shoulder and yells, ‘Take us south, past the tower and the walls over there. I want to see what’s there.’

  ‘North is safer. It’s where we came from,’ Spaz says. ‘It is where we are going.’

  ‘You can go north afterward. I want to see what’s over those walls, and you’re going to do it now,’ she instructs. Her voice makes it clear this is not a request.

  So Spaz, who has served under worse commanders, turns the aircraft south, drifting over the castle walls to hover briefly over the rocky path that led to the door where Arwood and Benton and Jamal and Adar were first taken.

  Still unable to see as well as she wants, Märta slips back into the body of the aircraft and slides open the window. She sticks her head out and looks down.

  Standing, armed, are maybe one hundred men. There, before them all, is Arwood Hobbes and the man with the scar who smiled at her. She watches as the man hands Arwood a Beretta pistol, and Arwood caresses it and hugs the man, who hugs him back.

  The helicopter is taking no one by surprise. It is clearly marked. Arwood, armed and with a new bandage on his leg, looks up and waves to Märta and the other passengers. Under the gaze of her disapproval, he motions the helicopter away and beyond harm as another man hands Arwood an M-16 assault rifle.

  ‘We have to go, now,’ Märta says. ‘Spaz, signal to Louise that we’ve made the pickup and that we are officially on the way back. I don’t want anything to implicate us in whatever happens next.

  Quietly, seated and strapped in, she says, ‘Shit.’

  Spaz presses left on the cyclic, twists the throttle, and raises the collective to turn them northward as the Kurds take their position by the doors. The insurgents are still unaware of what is planned for them.

  As they pass over the northern wall and out beyond the mountain into the vast flatland of Ninawa, two Mi-24 military gunships approach and, without pause, pass them by like dragons before a swallow, leaving the unarmed aircraft to continue on its scheduled route.

  They fly with the sun out the starboard side and slightly behind them, and hear the first barrage of mortars land in the ancient fortress. They will be the last ones to see it; the last to have been held there. By tomorrow it will be a ruin.

  Herb watches what he can, craning his neck through an open window. The last he sees is a dozen or more men emerging with Russian-made weapons and black headscarves from the bowels of the fortress. What he cannot see he can surmise, because military tactics are grounded in engineering. From their elevated position, the superior Kurdish force will weaken the terrorist defences w
ith mortars and RPGs to upset the key strategic positions of ISIL fighters on the towers, who have sharpshooters and machine guns behind defensive positions. The battle mounts were not designed to withstand such firepower, and once the towers have been neutralised, the Kurds will swarm into the courtyard, where they will fight at close quarters to take up the tower positions and use them to lay down suppressing fire. A squad will remain at the entrance to ensure it can’t be used as an exit. Having trapped their enemy, the Kurds will drop grenades into all the rooms their enemies are hiding in, and will work their way downward, forcing their quarry to ground — to be shot, burned, or hacked to pieces. They will take no prisoners and give no quarter. ISIL wants a world without mercy; they will not live in it for long.

  Benton lies back on the soft upholstery of the aircraft. His head sinks into the forgiving cushion, and the cotton soothes his neck. Elise permits him to drink another quarter bottle of water. He tries to sip it slowly, but cannot. She places a cool compress on his head and smiles at him, and returns her attention to Jamal’s leg.

  Benton does not picture the battle or construct the events from the fading sounds behind them. He only imagines Arwood hunting down Abu Larry as he hunted down the colonel. He can see him raising the Beretta to the man’s head, free and alone this time, to make the choice least likely to haunt him for the next twenty years. Benton wonders what Arwood might say as he trains the weapon on his enemy.

  Perhaps, for the first time in his life, he will say nothing at all.

  40

  Adar watches the hands of Elise Garcia, which flow with the expertise and confidence of the baker from her village.

  She sits behind Spaz and Herb. Adar does not wear a headset, and cannot hear Tigger and Märta’s conversation. She rests, unattended to, by the sliding door on a stool secured to the airframe by heavy steel bolts — a place for a doctor or second medic to perch on and work from.

  She has never been in the air before. She has never been a bird, or seen the world from above. Through the massive windows, she can see more of the world than she has ever known.

  The helicopter flies north-east, and she looks north-west, toward Syria, where she used to live. In school, they showed her maps of the border. She looks for it: for the straight and wide purple line that cuts through the mountains, hills, and desert, turning the one land into two places. It is not there. She cannot see countries or colours or tribes, or families, or even cities. She can only see a vast and empty expanse of browns and the glowing sand of the desert that is hungry for more blood. There are white-capped mountains in the far distance, and small explosions across the wasteland that prove man is below and that he is angry.