The Abrupt Physics of Dying

by Paul E. Hardisty

  After a while she wiped her face on her sleeve and stood before him. He looked up at her, the candlelight flickering across her face. Was it for the murdered, this offering of tears? Was it for the polluted waters that sickened her as if the poisons flowed through her own veins? She looked into his eyes for a long time and then without a word she reached into her robe and pulled out her pistol and laid it on the floor. He was about to speak when she touched her fingertip to his lips. ‘They did not search me,’ she whispered. Then she reached behind her back and let her dress fall to the ground. She stood naked before him.

  ‘Please,’ she whispered, ‘I do not want to be alone tonight.’

  He pulled her to him. They fell to the bed, mouths locked. She raised her arms above her head, palms open, up. He kissed the salty ridge of her cheekbone, pinning her hands with his own. She closed her eyes. He kissed her cheek and the tip of her nose and the curved cartilage of her ear. She sighed and arched her back. He wrestled off his shirt and threw it to the floor. Her legs enveloped him. The air around him was afire with swirling chemicals, and it was if they were alone in the universe, locked in some furious elemental communication, apart from the chaos of the world; for those few moments they spun in harmony, and when he came inside her it was as if something were being wrenched from within his core, drawn out like un-distilled poison.

  Afterwards, he fell into a cloud of sleep. He awoke sometime later and watched her sleeping under the blanket in the half-moon’s reflected light until he could no longer resist waking her. She pulled his mouth to hers and the touch and the smell of her inflamed him and he took her by the hips and turned her over and pulled her up onto her knees. She tilted her pelvis and buried her sighs in the pillow.

  Later he awoke to the distant sound of gunfire. For a long time he lay holding her, listening to the whispers of the warm breeze that flowed down from the plateau across the plain to the ocean. Her head was resting on his clavicle, hair splayed across his chest. Her warmth filled the bed. He ran his hand over the soft curve of her hip. ‘Are you awake?’ he said.

  Her eyelash flicked the skin of his chest.

  ‘Another mistake, Rania?’ he whispered.

  She held him tight, kissed his chest.

  When he woke again much later he knew she was gone. The depression beside him was still warm, still damp. Her story was on the floor by the bed where it had fallen, the pages scattered. Her handgun was gone. He stood and pulled on his trousers and T-shirt and grabbed the pages. Outside the remnants of a quarter-moon burned in the sky like an eclipsed sun. The village was in a coma of sleep, silent, lost in the rock from which it was built.

  To his left, beyond one of the big boulders that stood like obelisks in the heart of the village, he saw something move, a flash in the moonlight, a person in the shadows. An instant later the figure slipped behind a boulder and vanished.

  Clay moved barefoot in the direction of the obelisk, drawn forward. Reaching the house-sized rock he stopped and looked along the narrow footpath. The figure was moving steadily along the moon-white path, gliding phantom-like in a billowing robe. Clay watched the apparition approach Al Shams’ building, slow and stop before the lone guard standing outside the door. The two figures stood for a moment, as if in conversation, and then the guard opened the door and led the figure into the building. At just that moment, a flash of movement drew Clay’s gaze – two men moving among the rocks beyond and above the building. They glowed in the moonlight like painted targets, despite their dark clothing. The men moved in staggered surges, one then the other, closing on the building. Clay hugged the cold surface of the obelisk, pulse loping. Fifty metres from the building, the men split up. One disappeared among the rocks behind the building. The other man was on the path now, about fifty metres ahead of Clay. He stopped, looked both ways. He carried a short-barrelled submachine gun, H&K it looked like. Boots, black fatigues, flack vest, brain bucket with night vision goggles. Military-looking. Special Forces. The man set off at a sprint towards the building.

  Clay broke cover and sprinted after the man, bare feet hammering the dust, closing the gap. The man was almost at the front door of the building now. He slowed. Clay was close, ten metres away, in full flight. Gunfire ripped open the night. Loud. Very close. An AK on auto, the buzz of an H&K. From inside the building, behind. Clay crouched in his run, ready to tackle. The man kicked in the door, darted inside. Clay reached the door just as more shots cracked out, flashes in the darkness. He could smell cordite, fear. Without stopping he surged inside, blind without the moon, the muzzle flashes dancing on his retina. His feet hit something and he crashed to the floor. More firing, very close, rounds cracking into the stone walls, splintering wood. He scrambled to his knees as his eyes adjusted. The back door was open, a wedge of moonlight thrown across the floor. A body lay just outside, one of Al Shams’ men, the guard. Inside, the SF man Clay had chased and tripped over, leaking blood onto the floor. In the corner by the back door, shrouded in darkness, Al Shams, and a few metres away, crouching by the side wall, the robed figure. It was Rania. She was holding a pistol. It was aimed at Al Shams.

  ‘No,’ Clay shouted.

  Immiscible All

  He had read the story earlier that night, Rania’s head cradled in his shoulder, his hand on the soft silk of her side, feeling the slow rise and fall of her chest, the flicker of her eyelashes dancing in a dream. It was all there. Everything Clay now knew to be the truth about Al Shams, a man fighting for his people, for dignity and justice in the face of the seemingly unstoppable forces of unbridled greed and deep-seated corruption. Oil and water: one polluted the other. One brought life, the other nothing but suffering, violence, death, an unravelling of things. Western governments, desperate to secure geopolitical advantage in the Middle East, ever-protective of their increasingly fragile oil-dependent economies, were willing to countenance any injustice to keep the oil flowing. The emergence of the new radical Islamic movements was a clear threat.

  Condemning legitimate unrest as terrorism, as in the case of Al Shams, was simply another cost of doing business with friendly regimes. Saleh had told the West what it wanted to hear, that he was fighting terrorism, keeping the oil flowing, all the while supressing dissent. Blood and money. The physical description of what had happened to Al Urush was technically accurate and heart-breaking. She wrote well, with controlled passion, part reportage, part manifesto. It was a call-to-arms for the oppressed, a cry to the people of free nations to wake from their television slumber and act. It was not only here, in the wilds of Yemen, in a tiny village of which no one had ever heard, the tragedy of a few dozen uneducated farmers. It was everywhere, every day. Truth and lies. Loyalty and deceit. Faith and nihilism. Apathy and action. Immiscible all.

  Clay looked at her, uncomprehending.

  Just then he heard footfall behind him, the pulses out of phase with the hammering of his heart. He only had time to turn his head slightly before he was caught on the jaw with a shuddering blow. He hit the ground hard but conscious, getting his elbows out in time to break the fall. He twisted onto his side and looked up. It was Hussein.

  Clay’s mind clattered through the possibilities, facts and suspicions coalescing in his mind. Rania and Hussein had been working together all along. It made sense. He cursed his own naïveté, the arrogance of this manufactured shell he had become: war-hardened cynic, preying on the venal, judging their bankrupt morals, above it all, beyond it. And all the time he had been dancing, the strings jerking his limbs now revealed as cables. All of this took a fraction of a second and coalesced into a surge of anger. He lunged for Hussein’s leg, but Hussein kicked out with the other foot, catching him just below the chin, smashing his larynx. He rolled back, gasping for air.

  Hussein raised his weapon, taking aim. Rania looked at him, no more than a flicker of the eyes. She raised her shoulders, a little breath, almost imperceptible under the dusty shroud.

  A shot cracked out. The sound rang around the stone room. Rania spu
n back against the wall and slumped to the ground. Clay looked up. Hussein lowered his Beretta, glanced down at Clay, strode over to Rania, picked up her weapon, turned and ran out the back door.

  Our Tortured Country

  The sound of gunfire close by echoed from the cliffs, the rattle of a submachine gun answered by the bark of an AK. Bullets smashed into the stonework above his head, shredded the palm-frond roof, filling the air with flying debris. Clay crawled to Rania. She was slumped against the stone wall, her face cast in thin starlight, eyes closed, unconscious but breathing. The front of her burqa was torn, wet with blood. He ripped open the burqa, exposing her pale shoulders. Hussein’s bullet had entered just below her collarbone. Blood welled from the hole in her skin. He rolled her gently onto her side, pulled the burqa aside. That fine pale skin so brutally punctured. Such a small thing. The bullet had passed through her, exiting just above the clavicle. There was a lot of blood, but she’d been lucky. A few centimetres lower and it could have been a lot worse. If he could stop the bleeding, she had a chance.

  Holding her carefully on her side, he pulled off his T-shirt, ripped two thick strips from the hem with his teeth, rolled the two strips into makeshift compresses, placed the first against the exit wound and rolled her onto her back. He straightened her out, placed the second compress onto the entrance wound and applied pressure. Then he looped what remained of his shirt over her arm and shoulder and tightened it down hard over the compresses. He had just finished tying the makeshift bandage in place when he was jerked to his feet by two tribesmen. Outside, shouts in the darkness, the close hammering of gunfire. He looked around the room. Al Shams was gone.

  He turned to the gunmen, pointed to Rania. ‘She needs my help,’ he shouted in Arabic, straining against their holds.

  They dragged him back a few steps. He twisted and swept out his right foot, taking out one tribesman’s legs. The man toppled to the ground, but held fast to Clay’s arm, trying to bring Clay down with him. Clay crouched, braced his legs, set himself as a fulcrum, closed his arm around the other man’s hands and used the rotational momentum to whip the other tribesman over his shoulder and bring him crashing down hard on top of his kinsman. Grunts as the two bodies collided, took the full force of the accelerated mass. Clay reached down, grabbed one of the AKs, was about to move back to Rania when Al Shams appeared in the doorway. He was unarmed.

  Al Shams looked at Clay, at the two men in a heap on the ground, at the dead SF soldier, at Rania. ‘Leave him,’ he commanded. ‘She needs medical attention,’ he said, stepping inside.

  Clay dropped the AK, ran to Rania, crouched down beside her. A young man, Yemeni, clean-shaven, appeared in the doorway behind Al Shams. He was carrying a stretcher and a medical kit. His face was spattered with blood. The young man placed the stretcher on the ground beside her, crouched down beside Clay. With long, bloodstained hands, he reached for the makeshift bandage Clay had applied. Clay grabbed his wrist, stared him in the eyes.

  ‘I have trained in Britain as a medical technician,’ the young man said in clear, accented English. ‘Please.’

  Clay released his grip. The medic drew back the bandage and inspected Rania’s wounds. His touch was sure and gentle. He glanced up at Clay. ‘This will do for now,’ he said. ‘We must move her.’

  Clay helped him shift Rania onto the stretcher. Together, they carried her through the village. The gunfire had stopped and quiet had descended again like a shroud. Children and old men lined the pathway, whispering as they passed. They took her to a small hut near the wadi floor, placed the stretcher between one set of two wooden trestles, another wounded man laid out similarly nearby, the place acting as some kind of makeshift dressing station. The medic hung a kerosene lamp from a hook in one of the ceiling beams, lit it, and set about cleaning and dressing Rania’s wounds. He worked well, with practiced efficiency, ran an IV, hung the bottle from the ceiling. Then he turned and looked at Clay.

  ‘She is stable for now,’ he said. ‘But there is a lot of bleeding. The brachial artery is damaged …’ he trailed off. ‘I have tried to clamp it, but I am not sure I have succeeded. I’m sorry.’

  Clay looked at the man, over at Rania. ‘Thank you,’ he said.

  ‘Watch her,’ said the medic. ‘Call me if there is any change.’ His English was good, almost mid-Atlantic. ‘I’ll be back soon.’ Then he turned and left the building.

  Clay stood at Rania’s bedside, the pages of her manuscript crushed tight in his blood-stained hand. The sound of her breathing filled his ears, shallow, erratic. Her eyes were closed. It was as if her mother’s Mediterranean pigment had been drained from her skin, revealing the pale of her father’s Nordic chromosomes. Clay had seen that look before. It wasn’t good.

  His mind lurched, pure turbulence. Why had she left him and gone to Al Shams just as the SF types had moved in? It couldn’t be coincidence – things didn’t just happen that way. Had she known they were coming? And Hussein. Alive. Was he working with Al Shams? Did they have some sort of arrangement? Had he shot Rania to protect him? Nothing made sense. Clay walked to the door, peered through a gap between the rough planks. Two guards stood outside. He went back to Rania, sat listening to her breathing, watching her chest rise and fall in the pulsing frailty of the kerosene light.

  ‘Clay,’ she said, her voice a thread.

  He knelt on the ground beside her. ‘I’m here, Rania.’

  She opened her eyes, blinked in recognition, opened her cracked dry lips to speak, but fell back from the effort. He moved closer, his lips hovering just above hers.

  ‘Stay still,’ he said.

  ‘I tried, Clay,’ she said. He could barely hear her. ‘I tried.’ A breath escaped from her lips and her eyes closed.

  Clay jumped to his feet, hammered at the door. ‘Tell Al Shams I want to see him. Now,’ he shouted in Arabic at the guards. ‘She’s awake. Bring the medic.’

  One of the guards muttered something and shuffled away.

  Soon after, the young medic appeared at the door. Al Shams was with him, carrying a large case. Clay recognised it. The medic checked Rania’s IV, took her pulse. Al Shams stood beside Clay, looking down at Rania. His face was ashen, the lines in his brow like fissures in dolomite, his good eye sunk almost as deep as the dead one. After a moment Al Shams turned to face Clay and placed Rania’s case on the ground. ‘I am very sorry,’ he said. ‘Will she live?’

  ‘She has lost a lot of blood,’ said the medic.

  Clay ran his hands across the back of his head, laced his fingers there. His jaw and throat still ached from Hussein’s blows; he could feel the rough welts of the sutures in the back of his head. An image of Rania lying dead, cold, open-eyed, came unwanted into his head and made him gasp with shame. He thrust Rania’s manuscript into Al Shams’ hands. ‘Read this,’ he said. ‘She wrote it yesterday.’

  Al Shams looked down at the pages. After a while he looked up. ‘Is this true?’

  ‘She gave it to me last night. It’s hers.’

  Al Shams opened Rania’s bag and pulled out a black case about the size of shoe box. ‘What do you know about this?’ he said.

  Clay unfastened the clasps and flipped open the top. Clay had seen military-issue satellite com systems before. He looked up at Al Shams. ‘She is a reporter,’ he said. ‘She needs to file her stories.’

  Al Shams held up the paper. ‘And more?’

  Clay remembered the night at the farm, Rania’s voice behind the bedroom door. ‘What are you suggesting?’

  Al Shams placed the sat-phone back into the case. I seek only answers, Mister Claymore, God willing.’

  Clay looked at Al Shams, dread welling up in his chest. ‘I don’t care who you think she is or what she’s done, we’ve got to save her.’

  Al Shams pushed Rania’s manuscript back at Clay. ‘We are not animals, Mister Claymore. We are not terrorists. But we have limited resources.’

  The medic stood, faced them. ‘There’s no more I can do for her,’ he
said. ‘The bleeding is bad. She must get proper medical attention, or she will die.’

  ‘There is a hospital in Al Mukalla,’ said Clay. ‘Three hours by road. I’ll take her there myself.’ Clay reached for Al Shams’ shoulder. ‘Please,’ he said. ‘Let me take her.’

  Just then Hussein ducked under the low doorframe, followed by two armed fighters. Sweat covered his forehead and dark stains bloomed across the front of his shirt. He was breathing heavily. ‘It is arranged,’ he said to Al Shams, acknowledging Clay with a nod of the head.

  ‘You bastard,’ blurted Clay, closing on Hussein.

  Hussein took a step back and levelled his handgun at Clay.

  Al Shams held out his hand. ‘There is no time for this. If you want her to live, you must hurry.’

  Clay glared at Hussein. ‘What’s arranged?’

  ‘She will be evacuated,’ said Hussein. ‘Back to France. A French Air Force Hercules with a surgeon on board is on its way from Djibouti right now.’

  ‘How the hell did you arrange that?’

  Hussein said nothing.

  ‘Take her to Riyan Airport, Mister Claymore,’ said Al Shams. ‘Abdulkader and Hussein will go with you. Then go to the Petro-Tex facility and get the data you require. Once that is done, Hussein will return here with the information, Abdulkader will take you to the Omani border, and you will be rid of our tortured country.’