Backdrop

by C. G. Cooper

  “Like what?”

  “You remember when we crashed, there was a jet fuel leak?”

  “Yeah.”

  “We’re in luck. That was from one tank. The other one’s on the other side, and it’s fully intact. And, seeing’s how we don’t really need this helicopter anymore...”

  “Oh God,” said Caine, his face draining.

  “The tank is removable.”

  “Oh God,” he said again.

  A spray of bullets struck the metal just outside, causing both men to jump.

  Andy turned to him. “Listen. We have no choice. We got our supplies.”

  “What about the film equipment?”

  “That’s not a joke, is it?”

  “The producer is gonna have both our asses.”

  “I can’t believe this is what you’re worried about. Alright, when the shit comes down, I’ll say I was smoking and tossed a butt out the window, okay? He can sue me for damages.”

  “I don’t know what kind of weapons they got out there. I’m telling you, they blew up a rock.”

  “Stop that. They didn’t blow up a rock. They shot the ground and pebbles got blown out of the way of the bullets. It looks like shrapnel. Your brain plays tricks on you out here, especially when you’re getting shot at. Tell me; you have a mother?”

  The boy shook his head as if he misunderstood. “What?”

  “Your mother. You get along with her?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Father?”

  “Passed away. I got a brother, Frankie.”

  “You get along?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’d do anything for him?”

  The boy nodded, his face twisted in a frown, suggesting a story there. “Mm hm.”

  “Ok,” Andy said, and nodded toward the fuel tank on the other side of the craft. “For Frankie, then.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Hours had passed. Serena Ashburn managed to treat Thompson with exactly the right mixture of deference and sarcastic disrespect that kept him from getting underfoot. It was as if he enjoyed the treatment. She was positive he elicited it on purpose with his behavior. Some men enjoy the dance. In fact, the only thing that seemed to keep Thompson from getting tossed over the wall was the fact that his leg was banged up. Serena tried to force him to let her clean his wound, but he wasn’t having it. He spoke darkly of his injury and how the world would know that his brilliant career had been cut short by the injustice of it, and told her not to waste her time trying to save him.

  Cooper was visibly preventing himself from trying to take control of a situation he would have been able to handle twenty or thirty years ago, and was ashamed of not being young enough to handle now. He was fading with the strain, pushing himself into exhaustion. Ashburn made a decent—if not exactly great—second in command. Orders were carried out without quibbling over details.

  As for the prince, Mansour did as he was told. With no injuries to speak of, he seemed content to exist within the confines of his own little world. From the look on his face, it wasn’t a pleasant one. He was positively grim. Serena tried once again to get into the man’s head. She doubted she could do it now. She’d been trying for quite a while.

  She closed her eyes in quiet reflection.

  When Coles had first asked her to keep an eye on Prince Mansour, she’d felt dirty. It was one thing to tell Cooper that of course she was happy to help the U.S. Government however she could. That was patriotic. It was another thing entirely to have a deputy director of the CIA suggest to her that cozying up to the prince might take her deeper into the mole hill that was Hollywood. But she’d genuinely come to like Prince Mansour. He never abused his status. He had a good heart. It was too early to think of love, but she loved spending time with the royal. He had kind eyes. And his hands were like an artist’s hands, delicate, yet rock sturdy. He had a dry sense of humor that, as far as she could tell, he revealed only to her. It made her feel special. His royal stoicism was merely part of the modest garb he wore in public.

  But how much, when all was said and done, did she really know about him?

  She approached him cautiously. He was diminished here—in stature, in status—reduced to a hunted animal in a pack of equally hunted animals.

  He perked up when as she approached. Straightened himself. Ran a hand through his hair.

  “What’s a nice guy like you doing in a place like this?”

  He shook his head, exasperated. “I’m sorry.”

  “For what? It’s not like it’s your fault.”

  “You’re in my country, and this is the way you’re treated. It is a scandal.”

  “Still better than my last relationship.”

  The prince was not amused.

  “Ease up,” she said, “that was a joke.”

  “Serena,” he started to say.

  She smiled. “You know, I believe that may be the first time I’ve ever heard you say my name?”

  The corner of his mouth turned up. “There are a lot of things you must know about the situation in my country. To me, it is a way of life. But for someone who is not familiar, it can be extremely... complicated.”

  “You looked like you were about to say ‘difficult’.”

  “Difficult, then.”

  “Your Highness, are you proposing to me?”

  He chuckled. “In this place?”

  “What are you thinking, Mansour?”

  “My father is dying.”

  “Oh, dear, I’m sorry to hear—” She froze, as the full import of that statement hit her. “Oh... dear...”

  “I will be king very soon.”

  “Well, that’s... I’m sorry, I don’t know how to react to that.”

  “And the complications of which I speak, they will multiply. You think this is complicated, difficult, as you say. This is nothing. Just wait until my father passes.”

  The sound of a nearby explosion—the end of the world—shattered the silence.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  As Serena Ashburn and Prince Mansour conversed, the young radical brooded in his tent.

  The people who supported him were few. The idea was to convince them that they were many. In order to do that, he had to get them to raise their voices to a fever pitch.

  Death to the infidels. That was the key to their hearts.

  It was possible to make the West the symbol.

  He watched his latest video, having just completed it a moment before. He’d gotten used to talking to himself alone in the breezy outdoors, a sheet dangling behind him to disguise his location.

  In the desert, that which is hidden is that which is preserved.

  Alone, in the breezy outdoors, talking to a multitude that gasped for life. He was their breath.

  “To the infidels, and to all enemies of Allah, praised be His name, your time of pestilence has ended. We are the righteous multitude who cry out for justice. We are the pious, the ones whose children suffer without mercy. We will not rest until death comes to all who oppose Him, the all-knowing. We will rejoice in your lamentations. The king shall die not as a martyr, but as the coward as he is. And his feminine son, crawling into his throne, shall imbue the soiled seat with his filthy apostate blood. It is then that we shall rise up and claim our right in Allah’s holy country.”

  It was okay. Not his best. He could have used a bit more fervor, a bit more poetry. Really, though, it didn’t matter. He had them in the palm of his hand. They’d buy it like they bought everything else.

  He was chewing on a bit of bile in the back of his mouth. The prince. How he hated that weak old woman.

  An explosion in the distance shook the walls of his tent.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  While the prince spoke with Serena Ashburn, Al-Salakhi brooded upon his mission, Major Bartholomew “Andy” Andrews and a second-rate actor named Chris Caine wrenched the cap off a helicopter fuel tank.

  It had been a bitch of a job. And when they’d gotten it off, th
e sickly smell crept into the air like a harbinger of doom.

  The men exchanged satisfied looks. Then Andy opened his multitool and swiveled out a knife. “Stay down.”

  A spray of bullets hit the side of the copter.

  “Damn it,” said Caine. “There’s no pattern to them. They just fire whenever they want.”

  “That’s on purpose,” said Andy, and he crawled toward the cockpit.

  Within, two dead bodies, rather well-preserved in the dry desert air, lay without ceremony or recognition. Instead, they lay as offerings, to appease the God of War, and to Andy and Caine, to be harvested.

  Andy began to cut a swatch of cloth off the pant leg of the pilot. Three feet long would suffice, he reasoned. The man was wearing boxers with Space Invaders on them.

  He crawled back and carefully dipped as much of the swatch as he could into the tank. The rest would wick up the fuel. At least that was the plan. Everything else seemed against their favor today, why not the laws of physics too?

  He heard a sound of rummaging from within the craft. Caine was making his way to the cockpit.

  “What the hell—?”

  Caine, a grimace on his sickly face, was unlatching the bodies from their seats. He then grabbed the co-pilot, the lighter of the two men, and groaned and cursed as he pulled him out.

  “Damn” Andy muttered under his breath, and went to help him.

  The ‘damn’ was for himself. Somewhere along the way, he’d lost his own youthful scheme of ethics. There was the creed for God and Country. Included somewhere in there was one’s fellow humans. But he’d forgotten. God help him, he’d forgotten about that.

  The laid the two bodies as far as they could away from the copter. They returned for the other two. It was only after they were finished that either of them spoke.

  “I just...” Caine started. “I’m just thinking about how I know my family would want my body to come home. I figure it’s a longshot, but—”

  Andy held up his hand. “No need to explain. You’re a good kid.”

  Caine looked at the bodies. “He’s four, by the way.”

  “Huh?”

  “Frankie, he’s four. Great kid. Smart as hell. Can shoot a basketball... I mean, you know, I hold him up on my shoulders and he...” He clenched his jaw and twisted his mouth, breathing heavily through his nose. “He’s a good kid,” he said finally, squeaking out the words.

  Andy put a hand on the actor’s shoulder and squeezed it gently. “Come on, there isn’t much time. The circle’s closing.”

  He dragged the pant leg fuse out of the tank and in through the busted window of the copter.

  “It’s all small rocks down there. Go limp. Understand? When you hit, try to roll onto your shoulder. You’ll be fine.”

  “Simplify, simple, semper...?” said Caine. “What do they say in the Marines?”

  “In this case, we say, ‘Oohrah’. But I’ll settle for ‘Geronimo’.”

  He lit the fuse. The two men jumped.

  The earth-shattering explosion tore the air to shreds.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Al-Salakhi never tired of the awed silence that fell over a room when he entered. It was this way now. The men had been frantic, speaking over each other, each elevating the argument as new strategies were shot down almost immediately after they were offered.

  But now they fell silent. He let them remain so for a painful minute, relishing the sudden hush, the fear in the room. Yousuf, his chief lieutenant, was among them.

  Within the rocky enclave where they stationed themselves, hidden from all eyes, this main tent was a place for communal planning. It was their War Room. Four times a day, it doubled as a place for worship. Now, it was silent as the grave. Al-Salakhi, the young radical, eyed each man in turn, savoring the abject terror in the eyes.

  “Who among us,” he asked, “is not ready to prove his love of the All-knowing?”

  His followers naturally parted as he took a step further into the room.

  “Who here does not believe?” His eyes continued from man to man, and as he stepped further in, the men naturally formed a semicircle around him. “I see there is no answer.”

  “I have just made another video that is ready for distribution through our usual channels. In it, I declare total war upon all who oppose us.”

  Al-Salakhi knew the power of a strategically placed lie. He hadn’t actually said that. And now, he considered reshooting the video. It was a good line.

  “And so you are committed. So the All-powerful has decreed it.”

  Pious murmurings answered him.

  Eyes from man to man.

  “Eight men,” he said. “Eight men sent to kill two unbelievers. Eight men... lose them in a cheap display of Western bravado.”

  “Saiyid,” said Yousuf, “those eight men have been sufficiently reprimanded and are now on their way to assault the castle.”

  Al-Salakhi bore through the man with an unblinking gaze. “No doubt, as we discussed. Why then, has the rest of the plan not been followed through?”

  Yousuf started to speak. Another gaze from Al-Salakhi stifled him.

  “They were not directed well. They were directed by one whose heart is not pure.” He swiveled slowly, meeting each man’s terrified gaze. It was exquisite. As he completed the scrutiny, his eyes settled on Yousuf. “There are prescribed methods for dealing with unbelievers. Do you not agree?”

  “Yes! Praised be His name!” shouted Yousuf.

  “Those who oppose His word, and the word of the prophet, are less than pigs.”

  “Praised be His prophet!”

  “I have it on authority from most high.”

  “He is the Source of all Life and Truth!”

  “And His word is the law, and His power reigns here on earth and in heaven.” With this, Al-Salakhi drew a revolver and pressed it against the man’s forehead.

  Yousuf screamed once, “Allah-hu-akbar!”

  Blood and brain spattered the wall of the tent.

  “I want you to dispose of this trash,” said Al-Salakhi. “Leave the gore upon the wall. I want you all to see it and smell it from now on whenever you enter this place. God be praised.” He pointed to a man called Nima, a man with whom he’d never spoken before. “Come with me, lieutenant.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  “What in God’s name?” asked Ashburn, as the two men limped into the castle.

  Caine collapsed onto the floor, alert, breathing, exhausted.

  Andy fought to remain standing. Ashburn braced him on the arms with her firm hands.

  “My God,” she said, “are you okay? What happened?”

  “We’re fine. But the helicopter’s toast, I’m afraid.”

  “I wanna go home,” Caine said flatly, staring at the ceiling. “The ocean’s rough and cold, but it feels great. Especially at dawn. That’s where I want to be right now. I want to go to sleep and then wake up and be sitting by the ocean as the sun comes up.”

  “The sun goes down,” said O’Brien. “West Coast, remember?”

  “Hey, shut your mouth,” said Andy. “He’s had a long night.”

  “I’m from Jersey, dumbass,” said Caine.

  “Well,” said Andy, “that solves that.”

  Prince Mansour approached cautiously.

  “Your Highness,” said Andy, “we need to have a serious talk about your country’s hospitality.” He looked at O’Brien. “In private.”

  The kid scoffed and turned to speak with Caine.

  Andy, Mansour, and Ashburn moved to a corner of the room.

  “Listen, Your Highness, with all due respect, I really don’t care about your petty infighting here. You guys can all obliterate each other, for all I care.”

  “Andy!” said Ashburn.

  Mansour held up a hand. “It’s okay. Continue.”

  “But when you start to involve innocent civilians, that I have a problem with.”

  “You say, ‘you’,” said Ashburn, “like it’s his
fault.”

  “Isn’t it?” he said, looking Mansour in the eye.

  “Your Highness,” said Ashburn, “you don’t have to take this crap.”

  “I realize,” said Mansour, “that you have been sent to monitor the situation by the CIA, Major Andrews.”

  “No shit, Sherlock. What else do you know?”

  “I know something you don’t know. And I am ashamed of it. My uncle, the one at the party who had the heart attack. He was poisoned.”

  “Okay.”

  There was a groan from Ashburn. “Oh God...”

  “I’d like to hear more about that,” said Andy.

  “A drug called succinylcholine. Accelerates the heart. Virtually undetectable. Someone spiked my uncle’s drink with it that night. You said there was a man running from the place. I believe it was George Marno.”

  “What?” exclaimed Ashburn.

  “Who the hell’s George Marno?”

  “He’s a production assistant for the Saudi crew,” said Ashburn. “But I don’t understand. Are you saying he poisoned your uncle?”

  “I believe he was ordered to do it.”

  “Based on what?”

  “On deductions I have had the time to make since we’ve been here.”

  “Out with it,” said Andy.

  Ashburn slapped his arm. “Ease up on him, will you?”

  “Listen, I’m through with kowtowing to the prince here. I have no allegiances to any crown. Me and that kid over there have been through hell and back out there, and it’s this guy’s fault.”

  “It’s not his fault!”

  “Some of it is,” said Mansour. “As you might say, indirectly it is my fault.”

  Ashburn put a hand to her forehead and let out a heavy breath.

  “Now’s the time, Mansour,” said Andy. “Tell us what you know.”

  “At the party, Marno kept pressing me to have a drink with him. He was a little drunk himself, or at least I thought he was. I refused, saying I had a lot of people to meet, which was true. But he was insistent. Finally, it was me, my poor uncle, and two of my other relatives, and George Marno. Marno was very drunk. He had a magnum of champagne in his hand that he’d been carrying around like a baby in his arms. He said it was a rare vintage that he’d been saving for me, as he put it, his ‘most venerated acquaintance’. There was a lot of commotion at this point. He tried to drag me away from my family, but I resisted. He seemed to become irritated. I insisted that we have the drink at that moment. In truth, I wanted to get it over with, as he was becoming a nuisance. We even joked that I could have the good champagne while the rest of my family would drink the cheap stuff. He poured glasses for all of us, muttering under his breath to me that he really wanted a word with me in private. I politely assured him that such a time would come, but tonight was all about pleasure, not business. I think that poison was meant for me, not my uncle.”