Mick screamed, and his fedora fell to the ground.
“You son of a bitch!” he barked.
But the bandit raised his blade and instead of taking a small slice of the little man, buried it deep in his neck. The lifeless Mick slumped forward, face first onto the camel’s neck.
“Mick!” Tommy bellowed. “What have they done to you?”
The big man had lost his weapon, and he reached out for the closest bandit with his two hands, like it was possible for him to grab hold of the bearded murderer and squeeze the life out of him. But the bandit swung his blade and landed it square in Tommy’s chest. Tommy dropped off the back of the camel as it took off in full gallop.
That left me alone with the bandits.
Dropping my .45 I slowly raised my hands.
“Let’s talk about this like civilized men,” I said.
The black bearded men surrounded me and spoke to one another in Arabic. Like their clothing, their eyes were black, their voices deep and frightening. The big one in the center smiled at me. His two front teeth were made of gold. The bright desert sun reflected off them. Sparkled.
“Speak English?” I said.
“I do speak English,” Gold Teeth said. “We all speak English. The King’s English.” Then, raising his hand, he pointed to one of the others. “Tie him to his camel.”
The men worked as a team gathering rope, tying my hands behind my back and my ankles, one to the other with a piece of rope that ran beneath my camel’s belly. When they were done, it was impossible for me to move a muscle, other than the muscles in my neck, which I used to look upwards at the bright blue sky. A sky that now was filled with a flock of vultures flying in a circular formation directly above us, the smell of freshly spilled blood proving a powerful and irresistible attractant.
“Aren’t you going to gag me?” I said.
Gold Teeth laughed aloud, his deep, guttural voice carrying across the valley.
“You have a wonderful sense of humor,” he said. “Any man who laughs in the face of death is very brave and very deserving.”
I swallowed something that felt like a brick. Once more I glanced up at the vultures. The big black birds cawed and flapped their wings, patiently waiting their shot at feasting on our flesh.
“Ummm, deserving of what?” I said.
He glanced at his men, and they looked to him like their every heartbeat rested upon a big decision he was about to make.
He said, “I had planned on cutting off your head, and making you ride across the desert like the headless horseman. But I see now that such a death would be too humiliating for a man as brave as you. Instead, I will allow you to keep your head while your camel wanders the endless desert for days and days. Your death will be slow, and it will be agonizing. But it will be the death of a brave man. A proud man.”
“Gee,” I said. “Thanks so much.” Wiping the sweat from my brow. “But perhaps instead of worrying about me, you should worry about your dead. Isn’t it true that Arab’s carry off their dead to be buried by sundown?”
“You attempt to divert my attention,” Gold Tooth said.
“Well, you know,” I said, “it’s my life that’s at stake here.”
“I estimate that it will take perhaps two or three full days and nights to die. Of course, the vultures will have plucked your eyes out by then, and taken bits out of your cheeks, and devoured your ears. Indeed, it will be a slow death, deserving of a man who does not fear death in the least. A man who laughs in the face of fear and pain.”
He smiled again, the sun reflecting off his teeth like sparks from the fire and brimstone of hell. When he released a long, gut-felt laugh, his men laughed along with him. The laughs weren’t loud enough to drown out the gunshot that took off the top half of Gold Teeth’s head, his brains and blood spattering against my face. The laughs ended abruptly when the other two men turned, pulled their rifles from their backs. But they weren’t quick enough for the bullets that entered their black-bearded faces and exited through the backs of their black cloth covered-heads. When they lifelessly dropped out of their saddles, the camels simply walked away, into the sunlight of the new morning.
I shifted my focus to Tommy. He was down on the ground on his side, the revolver in his hand, the blood gushing from the wound in his chest.
“You really know how to shoot that thing, Tommy,” I said. “I’m forever grateful.”
“Least I could do,” he said, “considering I’m about to die on you.”
He attempted a grin then, maybe a half second before he released a gurgle and a final drawn out exhalation. The pistol fell out of his hand and the gushing of blood slowed and then ceased entirely. The Lord had taken him to a far better place than the unforgiving desert. A hot, arid desert that I now faced all alone.
Chapter 3
Water.
Please oh please oh please dear God in heaven, if you exist, find me a drink of water . . . I will be forever grateful to you, and I swear on the old man’s grave I will recite the Lord’s Prayer ten times per day . . .
After five or maybe six hours, I couldn’t work up the strength or the spit to pray aloud. I had to do it all in my head. But then, knowing that it was entirely possible God could hear my thoughts, I still held out a smidgeon of hope that he might hear me. Hear my pleas. But then, my father always claimed he knew what I was thinking too just by looking at my face, and he was about as far from God as they come.
Or what the fuck. Maybe that gold toothed ISIS bastard should have cut my head off after all. It would have been the merciful way to go. Me and my cavernously big mouth.
The camel walked with a slow if not rhythmic, up and down gait, while the vultures flew overhead. I was waiting for the first one to make a diving run, its sharp beak aimed for one or both of my eyes. It hadn’t happened yet, but I knew it was only a matter of time. The vultures were descending and flying tight circles around my head when I made out the discharge from a rifle. One of the vultures dropped to the sandy floor, heavy and dead. Then came a second rifle discharge and yet another vulture fell from the blue sky. The rest of them got the hint, broke formation, and flew off.
God be praised . . .
I made out the sound of camel hoofs, but my eyes were so sun baked and sand scrubbed by then, all I could make out was a vague blur. I was convinced another group of bandits were coming for me, and that this time they would finish the job the others had started but failed at. But when this band of men came upon me, they were not carrying automatic rifles, nor were any one of them carrying the flag of ISIS or any other evil army. They were instead peaceful, smooth, dark-faced men who immediately dismounted their camels and horses, and cut the ropes that bound me.
They laid me out on my back, gave me water and when I could swallow it, some soft food. They also took good care of the camel that had been forced to bear my burden for hours and hours in the hot sun. When I was ready to travel again, they laid me out on a kind of stretcher that was pulled by a camel. We rode for maybe another hour, with me passing in and out of consciousness. When we arrived at the top of a rocky mountain that supported a series of shack-like single-story wood beam structures topped with a patchwork quilt of wood, tin, and fabric, my stretcher was detached from the camel and carried inside one of the structures and laid out on a bed of soft furs.
That’s when I slept.
Slept for what seemed not a few hours, but days and days. When I woke up, it was only the next morning. I was able to walk and hold down some tender goat meat that had been roasted over an open fire pit. I washed it down with hot tea. The old, leather-faced man who made my breakfast and who had been looking after me ever since my rescue, smiled and nodded at me.
“You like?” he said, referring to his cooking.
By then I could have eaten the entire goat, the pelt included.
“Very good,” I said, holding out my metal plate for more, for which he gladly obliged.
I then asked him who he was and if he owned the mountai
ntop settlement. He described himself as a Berber, and this home belonged to him, his wives and their children. He once more smiled and bragged about his eight sons and four daughters. His daughters helped with the cooking and washing while the sons hunted and traded livestock, fruits, and vegetables in the nearby town for much-needed supplies.
“You are nomadic,” I pointed out, and he answered in the affirmative. They lived on the mountain in the winter until the early spring when they moved down to the low ground near the water for the hot months. He didn’t know how to read or write, and neither did his wives or children, but he tapped the side of his head with his index finger and mumbled, “But we smart. Very smart. Very smart people. We don’t live like crazy ants in the city.”
I had to admit the guy had a point. He was living a simple life off a rocky, almost inhospitable Mars-like landscape, but he seemed happy as all hell. How he managed all those wives, however, was a total mystery to me. I’d had trouble handling one of them at a time.
I spent the rest of morning drinking tea and explaining to him who I was, and why I’d been prowling the desert.
“You hunt for buried treasure?” he asked.
“Something like that,” I said, at the risk of making my occupation sound more complicated than it had to be.
“I know a man in the town who would like to talk with you, Mr. Baker,” he said. “We can leave in one hour.”
“What kind of man?” I said.
“A man of God,” he said, tossing another dry log onto the fire. “A priest.” He grinned, bearing gray-brown teeth. “You seem to me the type of soul who could use a priest.”
Chapter 4
Having cleaned myself up as much as possible given the lack of running water, I was dressed and ready to go within the appointed hour. I was offered the loan of a brown and white horse which I mounted while the old man mounted his. Before we left the encampment, one of the kids approached me. He had something gripped in his hand, which he wished to give me. It didn’t take me long to happily discover that it was my .45.
“How on earth did you find this, young man?” I said to the scrappy looking kid.
His father translated the English into their traditional Berber dialect. The boy lit up brighter than a pumpkin. He spoke something rapid-fire in Berber back to his father. The man, in turn, told me, “Like you, my son was seeking out buried treasure when he came upon the weapon. It pleases him greatly to return it to you. The gesture will mean much good fortune for him for the rest of his life.”
One good deed deserves another . . .
Digging into my pocket, I pulled out the wad of dirhams, peeled a few off and handed them to the boy. Both the boy and the father went wide-eyed like they were stunned by my reward offer.
“That is more money than my son has ever earned at one time in his entire life, Mr. Baker,” the man said.
I looked at him with a stern face.
“I hope I haven’t overstepped my bounds,” I said. “Perhaps I should have asked your permission first.”
Slowly he grew another one of his sweet smiles.
“I will allow it,” he said. “Because you are our guest, and the boy will put the money to good use for our family. We can now buy a new camel and perhaps even two more goats.”
“If you’re happy,” I said, “then I am happy.”
The boy greedily shoved the money into his pocket. His father clicked his tongue and tapped his horse with his heels. The horse moved forward at a slow trot. I sat low in the saddle, body weight slightly forward, and gently tapped my heels against my horse’s underbelly. The beast moved forward, and suddenly the two of us were making our way out of camp, down the rocky mountainside, the early morning sun on our backs. It was one of those rare occasions where it not only felt good to be alive, it felt good to be me.
So much for Rommel’s half-track.
***
The town looked like something out of the American Old West of the late nineteenth century. Both sides of the dirt road were occupied with two and three-story wood and brick buildings. There existed the occasional concrete structure, its second floor unfinished with rusted rebar protruding from out of the vertical bearing beams. The place was bustling with vendors taking up most of the sidewalks selling all manner of foods. There was the good smell of fresh meat being cooked over charcoal fires and chicken being roasted on skewers. Street food.
No one seemed to recognize the rules of the road, while innocent bystanders milled in and out of the packed gravel street, oblivious to the motorized traffic which consisted mostly of trucks overstuffed with hay or crates of livestock. Beat up taxis tried desperately to weave in and out of the people without hitting anyone, or without hitting anyone too hard, that is. Mostly the drivers laid on their horns, which seemed to have little or no effect on the people standing in their way as if they were deaf and blind to a full ton of motorized metal about to run them down.
We too weaved in out of the crowd, but it was a hell of a lot easier on horseback. When we made it to the far side of the town, we came upon a stone church. The building was at least a century old, if not a century and a half, and no doubt dated back to a time long gone when Morocco was a staging ground for Christian missionaries who were heading east into then uncharted territories like Nigeria and further south to the Congo’s heart of darkness. Many of those missionaries never made it out of the jungle alive.
Dismounting our horses, I was led to the front, wood doors where my Berber savior, guide, and friend bade me a heartfelt goodbye. We shook hands and for the briefest of moments, hugged tightly. He then left me, taking the horses with him.
Inhaling a deep breath, I opened the door to the church and stepped inside.
Chase the saved. Perhaps even, Chase the redeemed.
Chapter 5
Which brings me to the present and the now . . .
The first thing that strikes me as the thick wood door closes behind me is the quiet. Outsidethe noise of the bustling town is all consuming. But inside this old church, the clamor is almost entirely blocked or, at the very least, muted. The place is empty, the old wood pews vacant and lonely. The candle stand to my direct left supports two or three lit candles. It is the only sign of life in the cool, damp house of God.
Like the architects of the church no doubt intended, my eyes are immediately drawn to the altar. Rather, to the image of the crucified Christ hanging on the wall above the altar. The pale skin, the dark red blood dripping from the nail wounds in the hands and the feet. The streaks of blood that drip down over the bearded face from the painfully penetrating crown of thorns. The many scourge wounds that cover the legs, chest, sides, and back. And of the course, the wound created when the Lance of Longinus pierced it, releasing the blood and water.
If I remember correctly from my new testament studies at Providence College back in the 1980s, Longinus suffered from severe cataracts, reducing his vision to nothing much but a blurry outline (thus the much-detested execution and crucifixion duty). But when the blood and water struck his face and entered his eyes, he was miraculously cured of the blindness.
Whether the story should be attributed to the stuff of legend or reality is up to the individual. An individual with faith in the power of God might accept the story as gospel. A nonbeliever might attribute it along with most of the Bible stories as superstitious hocus pocus.
But I can tell you this: I’ve seen things in my travels and during my explorations that can’t be ignored, or attributed to simple tricks of the light. Uncovering the mortal remains of Christ only to see them disappear right before my eyes, comes to mind. Witnessing what should have been the end of days when the seventh seal on the seventh Bible codice was broken, is another. But of course, only when I uncovered the true site of Jesus' crucifixion, and the physical memory of the holy blood that still resided there, was I able to re-seal the codice and avoid the apocalypse.
Coincidence, or acts of a divine spirit us humans cannot possibly comprehend? That’s the ultima
te question we must ask ourselves. Chase the philosophical.
“Do you like my crucifix?”
The deep, somewhat raspy voice startles me.
It reverberates throughout the stone church. I shift my gaze from the crucified Christ to a man who is standing by an open wood door on the far side of the altar. A door that, no doubt, leads to a sacristy. He’s wearing the black uniform and white collar of a Roman Catholic priest. Putting two and two together, I take him for the man who wishes to speak with me.
“I’m Chase Baker,” I say. “You wish to speak with me?”
He descends from the altar, turns, slowly takes a knee, makes the sign of the cross. Then, slowly raising himself back up in a rather aching manner befitting of his years, he approaches me, a wide grin painted on his face.
“I’m Father O’Brien,” he says. Then, gesturing with his hand to an empty pew. “Please, take a seat.”
I shake his hand and take a seat.
“So, what can I do for you, Father?” I say.
“What I am about to tell you, Mr. Baker,” he says, “is privileged information, of course.”
I shift my focus to the cross and back to him.
I say, “I guess that means whatever you’re about to tell me is between the three of us.”
He glances at Christ on the cross, once more makes the sign of the cross, not like he’s showing off, but more like the act is entirely instinctual. A man who is closer to God than most. Perhaps a man who even speaks to him, and is spoken to.
“Are you a believer, Mr. Baker?” he asks.
“It’s hard not to be a believer when you’re inside a church like this one,” I say. “Of course, this is Morocco. It’s almost entirely Muslim.”
But we have a considerable population of Roman Catholics. We would, of course, like to see more.” He shrugs his shoulders. “But in today’s climate of religious upheaval and unrest, our numbers are dwindling.”
ISIS comes to mind. Murderous jihadi bastards.
Chase Baker and the Spear of Destiny Page 3
