Maze Master

by Kathleen O'Neal Gear

  When Micah tried to shove up on his elbows, to take the cup from her hand, every joint in his body felt as though it had been dislocated, set on fire, and shoved back in place. He collapsed to the goat hides that created his soft bed on the dirt floor. I was in a boat. How did I get here?

  The hut looked like some kind of religious structure. A little mud-plastered church. Anchors and fish dangled on leather cords from the ceiling. Mud had cracked off the walls, leaving an irregular patchwork of stones visible beneath, but where it hadn’t cracked off, chunks of paintings remained. He saw Jesus standing in a fishing boat surrounded by green water. The man had black hair and black eyes, so unlike the blond blue-eyed portraits that flooded America.

  “Who are you?”

  The girl cocked her head.

  “You.” Micah pointed at her. “Name?”

  She smiled and put one hand over her heart. “Jahaza. You?”

  “Hazor.”

  “Huh-zhor?”

  He corrected her. “Hay-zore.”

  Jahaza bent forward and slipped an arm beneath Micah’s shoulders to lift him enough so she could tip the cup of water to his lips. Desperately thirsty, he sucked the cool liquid down like he couldn’t get enough. When he’d drained the cup, she gently lowered him to the goat hides again.

  “Hay-zore, no move now.” She insisted on turning his name into two words.

  Jahaza rose, gave him a gap-toothed smile, and walked over to pull something from a peg on the wall. The pendant, a carved wooden anchor, swayed in her hand as she walked back and knelt beside him again.

  “Wear.” She draped it over his head. “Demons everywhere.”

  “Demons?” he asked in confusion.

  She patted the pendant where it rested upon his black combat suit. “Protect you.”

  Turning, she left. Before she closed the loosely woven brush door, he glimpsed diffuse morning sunlight gleaming through a veil of dust, more mud huts, and a group of five elders standing together talking. Every man carried a Kalashnikov slung over his shoulder. They wore grave expressions. Probably trying to figure out what to do with him.

  “Demons,” he muttered and weakly shook his head. People in remote areas believed in all sorts of nonsense. In Zimbabwe once, his team had been forced to stand by as an entire village nearly destroyed itself over charges of witchcraft, and all because a baby boy had been born with a clubfoot. Americans didn’t understand. This was the Stone Age out here, and there was nothing anyone could do to change that.

  Micah’s gaze drifted around. Where are my weapons? Where are my men? Faint, brief memories of horror flashed behind his eyes, but he couldn’t get ahold of them.

  Four baskets nested to his left, and a large water pot, swarming with flies, stood near the door.

  I was on an op. Then in a boat floating in the Nile … now here.

  He tried to remember the briefing. Tried to figure out where his men were. Logan’s wrinkled face, mouth silently moving, flitted through his thoughts, but that could have been any mission in the past two years. As this could have been any mud hut village in the past two years.

  Trace it back. Forget what you don’t know. What do you know? I know …

  The op took place in September. It was hot, even at night. I remember sand dunes … my men laughing …

  How long ago? Was it still September?

  Outside, Jahaza’s musical voice lilted through the air, reminding him again of the harmonies of whale song.

  When she opened the door, sunlight and windblown sand rushed in. Micah squinted against the onslaught. How long had he been lying here? Hours? Days? Dear God, he had to get back to his team. They must be looking for him. They never left a man behind. Not ever. Even when there wasn’t much to find, they picked up what pieces they could and brought them home in honor.

  For a thirty-year-old kid from Atlanta, it meant everything to Micah to know that no matter what happened he would make it home.

  My team must have packed my body across the desert and put me in that boat. It wouldn’t be the first time they’d saved him. Painful images of a Russian prison camp flitted across his mind. But if they’d saved him, where were they? Why weren’t they here?

  Jahaza carried a clay bowl across the dirt floor and knelt at his side. “Eat, Hay-zore.”

  It smelled like boiled tef, a delicious ancient grain still grown in much of the Middle East and Africa. He’d eaten it before.

  She extended a brimming wooden spoon to his mouth, and he ate. It tasted good, earthy and naturally sweet. She fed him another bite, and another. As his stomach filled, his senses progressively sharpened.

  Where was his gear? His weapons, mask, goggles?

  My rifle. My pistol.

  He focused on Jahaza. She scraped the bowl to get the last bite and placed it in his mouth. After he’d chewed and swallowed, he asked, “Jahaza? Where’s my equipment? Did you find my rifle?”

  “Rifle?”

  “Yes. Gun. I had two. Did you find my guns?”

  She shook her head vigorously. “Demons needed, Hay-zore.”

  That set him back a moment. “Demons needed my guns?”

  “For old Hizki.” Pain entered her brown eyes. She looked away and rose to her feet.

  “Who is Hizki?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Hizki? Who?”

  She used her free hand, the one without the bowl, to gesture uncertainly. “Word … uncle? Bad sick. Demons make well. So we make trade.”

  As she headed for the door, Micah called, “Hizki was sick so you gave them my guns in exchange for healing him?”

  Jahaza stopped with her hand on the door and looked back at him. Sunlight falling through the weave threw yellow filaments over her skinny body. The fibers in her burlaplike dress glistened. She ran her tongue between the gap in her teeth, hesitating, as though trying to figure out the words, or maybe whether or not she wanted to tell him. “Demons not sick. Bright. Say need guns. Lots of guns.”

  “Why?”

  “Everyone want guns, Hay-zore.”

  She pushed open the door and stepped outside. The five elders remained in their huddle, but their expressions had gone even graver, if that were possible. He noticed for the first time that each wore a different kind of robe, as though they came from different African tribes. They kept glancing at the structure where he lay. Three sticklike children stood around them, looking up with wide frightened eyes. Two of the white-haired men raised their voices, shouting at each other. Their accents were vastly different.

  Micah remembered the ground jolting beneath him. Bombs falling. And two phrases:

  Bir Bashan. Operation Mount of Olives.

  The door closed and Micah tried to use his injured brain to fathom what Jahaza had told him. Had she said demons made the man named Hizki well? Because they were not sick. They were bright. What? Besides, Micah had seen way too many horror movies as a child to believe that demons were bright. Demons were dark. Who in the hell had his guns?

  He suddenly felt ill. The tef was trying to leap back up his throat. He closed his eyes and concentrated on keeping it in his empty stomach.

  These villagers found me, carried me here, and laid me on soft hides.

  Though they were obviously starving, they’d fed him a small portion of their precious food. He probably owed them his life.

  The tef gradually stopped struggling, and the overpowering need to sleep stole through him. He sank back against the hides and watched the fish and anchors suspended from cords on the roof. Wind filtered through the cracks in the hut, and they clicked together like an ancient, sacred wind chime.

  Who were the demons? Another tribe? Foreign operatives? They could be rotten-faced lepers for all he knew. The only thing he was fairly certain of was that they were not demons. There was no such thing.

  Yet … I have odd memories.

  Or rather fragments of memories of silver-suited figures emerging from thick smoke, blinking at him curiously, their eyes inside their hel
mets huge. Somewhere far back in his mind, tremolo whined.

  “They’re probably not memories at all,” he whispered to himself as his pulse quickened.

  More like pseudo-memories. Artifacts of psychic trauma from the battle. Wounded bodies jumbled the brain, making it leap to conclusions, forcing it to weave together disparate facts that actually had no relationship to one another. Every culture had its own history and sacred myths that circumscribed its world. When a man was hurt, he dredged things up from deep inside and turned them into fanciful stories. On occasion, he’d heard wild tales from men he’d been holding in his arms as they died.

  Outside, feet scurried.

  Shouts.

  Brush doors slammed as though people were taking cover.

  Micah listened, hoping to hear Gembane’s familiar footsteps, or helicopter blades shirring air. Praying for the sound of Beter’s weird laugh and the distinctive pounding of Ranken’s combat boots on the sand.

  Why do I have the feeling they’re all dead?

  Momentary panic filtered through him, before his brain denied it again.

  At some point, he couldn’t keep his eyes open any longer. He found himself sitting on the front porch with his brothers, staring at the rain dripping from the pines in the front yard, and all his fears dissolved into contentment. The dirt ruts of the driveway resembled glistening parallel creeks. The amazing fragrance of his mother’s apple pie wafted through the open window behind him. He’d been afraid of something? What was it? He knew he should remember.

  In his dreams, a woman’s deep voice asked in English, “Are they sure he’s a solider? An American? What would he be doing way out here? That can’t be right. Ask them again, Martin.”

  CHAPTER 21

  OCTOBER 5. NIGHT. NEAR EL KARNAK, EGYPT.

  Micah roused at the sound of the brush door clattering open. It required Herculean effort to tug his eyelids up. A slender figure stood in the entry with an oil lamp in one hand, surrounded by a halo of firelit darkness. A tall woman. It was night. Had he slept so long?

  He croaked, “Jahaza?”

  “No, sorry. My name is Anna Asher. Formerly Captain Anna Asher, United States Air Force, cryptography division, stationed in D.C.”

  Everything inside him was telling him to fall back asleep, to go home again where he was safe with his family. Not here …

  He forced himself to stay awake. “Where am I?”

  Asher left the door ajar and silently walked across the little church to crouch at his side. She placed the palm-sized oil lamp between them. “You’re near El Karnak, Egypt. Apparently, some refugee found you floating down the Nile in a reed boat and dragged you ashore.”

  Micah processed the information. “El Karnak? East of Luxor in the Valley of the Kings?”

  “That’s right.” She sat down on the floor beside him, as though she planned to stay awhile. “Jahaza says your name is Hay-Zore.”

  “Hazor. Micah. Captain. United States Army.”

  She had slanting, unnaturally large eyes. Wispy auburn curls framed her forehead, as though she’d been perspiring. “Jahaza wanted me to tell you that she left you clean clothes and water to wash.” She pointed to the folded linen garments. A tawny color, they looked like woven straw.

  Micah just nodded. Being filthy was the least of his concerns right now.

  Asher said, “What were you doing alone in that boat, Captain?”

  “Really wish I knew the answer to that one.”

  “Your combat suit suggests you were injured during a covert operation in Egypt, is that correct?”

  “No idea.”

  Her brows knitted. “You alone, Captain? Should I be looking for other U.S. soldiers in this camp?”

  “Yes. My—my team, I … I have three team members. Please, help me find them.”

  “I will. I’ll start asking around right after we talk.”

  Micah took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Soldiers took care of each other. They wouldn’t leave someone behind, not if they could help it. “Thank you. I appreciate your help.”

  Through the open door, he could see a muscular blond American with a pistol on his hip standing before a fire with an African elder carrying an AK-74.

  “Who’s your friend?” Micah tipped his chin.

  Asher turned to look, and answered, “Dr. Martin Nadai, paleographer and religious studies professor, University of Virginia.”

  “Paleographer?”

  Behind Asher, the fragmented images of Jesus seemed to move in the flickering lamplight, as though the dark man was walking away on the green water.

  “Yes. He’s a specialist in deciphering ancient languages.”

  “What’s he doing out here?”

  As Asher shifted, her voice changed, grew deeper. “You were in a fight, Captain. The villagers say your boat had been bleached white, but the reeds beneath your body were black as night, like a shadow in your shape. They think you are a wounded angel fallen to earth and come to save them.” She paused to let that sink in before she continued, “I hope you’re recalling the shadows left on sidewalks and walls after the Hiroshima atomic blast. I am.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m still alive.” He thought about it. “Aren’t I?”

  Asher’s lips curved into a faint smile, but she was watching him like a wolf does a field mouse. “From the looks of you, Hazor, you barely made it out alive. Who got you out of harm’s way?”

  Dread tightened his chest. The carved wooden anchors and fishes suspended from the roof swayed, flashing in the firelight as though coated with pure gold. “To answer your question, I can’t tell you what the beings were.”

  She seemed confused. “Beings?”

  He nodded. “They surrounded me. They must have carried me and put me in that boat. Though … though it could have been my team. I vaguely remember American voices. And Russian. On the other hand, maybe I walked to the river and got into that boat myself. I honestly can’t remember.”

  She touched his combat suit, as though cataloging the scars and dents, which he’d done himself over the past few days, and been equally stunned that he’d survived whatever had happened to him. Without his new combat suit, he was certain he’d be dead.

  Asher quietly asked, “When you called them ‘beings,’ what did you mean? You didn’t know what tribe they were?”

  He shook his head. “No. I meant I don’t know what they were. They seemed … Jesus, how do I describe it? I was delusional, I think. They were silver ghosts, coming at me through the smoke.”

  She held his gaze. Then she reached out to tap his left wrist. “Did they give you this?”

  Micah twisted to look down and saw the festered wound. It had swollen so badly it was hard to tell what had caused it. “Could be shrapnel. Why do you believe the creatures did it?”

  “Creatures?” She gave him a half smile, then returned her attention to his wound. “Well, you probably can’t see it, but I’ve been studying your wounds for three days, and this is definitely a puncture wound. You have another on your upper arm. You were inoculated, Captain. Do you know who did this? Was it a Middle Eastern man, early forties?”

  “The army probably gave me the shots. But I don’t recall that.”

  Micah grabbed his left arm and turned his wrist so he could examine the purple knot. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he was putting fragments together … Cold hands had stuck a needle in his vein … carried him to a boat … set him adrift on the Nile River. They had saved him. For what purpose?

  “Antibiotic?”

  “No. The swelling is a histamine response that looks more akin to—”

  “Vaccination?” Adrenaline prickled through his veins, waking him up, making him pay attention. “Against what?”

  “Captain, think back. Did you see any faces? Was it a black-haired man who vaccinated you? Middle Eastern features?”

  Micah stared at her. “Why would you think that?”

  She reached down to move the l
amp slightly to the right, then squinted at the flame. With her head bowed, her lashes cast shadows on her cheekbones. “Hazor, I don’t know how long you’ve been recovering, or what kind of damage your memory has sustained, so let me tell you what’s been happening for the past nine days.”

  He sank back against the goat hides, preparing himself for the worst he could imagine. “I would appreciate that.”

  Anna Asher frowned at him, as though assessing his ability to deal with the information, before she said, “Communications worldwide were knocked out four days ago. Probably some sort of—”

  “Electromagnetic pulse?”

  “That’s my guess, though no one out here knows for sure.” She ran a hand through her auburn waves and heaved a worried sigh.

  He didn’t respond. He was working the problem. At last, he said, “Nuclear war?”

  “Unknown. On our journey to this camp, every night we watched distant firefights light up the sky. Lots of planes. Lots of bombs. It was constant for four days, then diminished, and finally shut off like a light switch.”

  “How long ago did the bombing stop?”

  “The day we arrived here. Three days ago.” She clenched her jaw, as though to stave off the truth. “While we’ve been restocking our supplies and trying to find transportation to get out of here, we’ve noticed the flood of refugees fleeing from the Middle East into Africa has dried up.”

  “Flood of refugees? Who would head for Africa? I’d go anywhere but here.”

  “It seems to take longer for darker skinned people to get sick. A few even seem to be immune. This part of the world may have looked like a refuge. For a while the trails were filled with every nationality. We—”

  “A refuge from what?”

  She nodded as though just understanding that he didn’t even know the most basic of facts. “Captain, there’s some sort of plague running rampant across the Middle East and Europe. Maybe America, for all I know.” The fear in her voice spread across her face.

  “I—I recall there was a plague. Why aren’t you or your friend sick?”

  “I can’t answer that.” A swallow went down her throat. “I think we’ve just been lucky.”

  Anna Asher’s attention was completely focused on his expression. For a few moments, he felt curiously as though they were the only two people left alive on earth, and she knew it, but didn’t want to tell him. She sat so still, it was riveting. Like being hypnotized by a cobra.