Jarvis stole a quick glance to either side and was impressed with the polyglotism of the labels on the crates. Arms from around the world. The cigar guy wasn’t pleased at his curiosity.
“You have pre-paid card, yes?” His voice was higher and lighter than Jarvis would have guessed if he’d been asked to do so. Western-style clothes, light wool pants and white shirt, sleeves rolled up, and a jacket over the back of his chair. The other two men holding guns were in native street garb.
Jarvis nodded at what he assumed was a joke. “Yeah, I hear you don’t take cash.” The man counting US currency didn’t look up.
Cigar guy’s beard was more like five-day stubble, a clean-shave compared to the long, straggly matts on the faces of the other two. Big bird was completely clean shaven, but Jarvis suspected it was genetics and not a razor. He didn’t want to get distracted by looking around to check.
“You want gun. Two maybe. And lots of bullets. Yes.” Not a question.
Jarvis had been thinking a tank would be useful, but might lose him the element of surprise on his mission. “Yes. I like the one you’ve got there.”
The man put the cigar back in his mouth and smoke curled up on either side. “This one is mine. It has initials. You want to see?” He pointed it directly at Jarvis’ face. Jarvis smiled.
“Yeah, it looks good on you. You have any that aren’t personalized?”
Cigar guy waved the gun to Jarvis’ left. “I got plenty. You have credit for one of these, maybe a little pistol, and as much bullets as you can carry.”
The generosity convinced Jarvis the Colonel had probably paid for five times that much equipment, but that was the price of contraband.
“Amal!” Cigar guy shouted in the direction of where he was pointing the gun, behind Jarvis. There was some bumping around and shuffling from the other side of the staircase. He had to look around his enormous guard to see the man emerge. Amal was holding a small crate with Russian writing. He had a large pistol tucked into a belt holding up loose fitting pants and a rifle was slung over his shoulder. He looked like he had been living in a terrorist camp for the last year. Turns out he had been. Jarvis recognized Amal as one of the men from eight years earlier who had been holding Brin’s head while the machete was poised over it. Amal had been young then and he was still young now, but the beard was darker, fuller, and in his eyes was the reflection of many deaths. They also flashed recognition an instant after Jarvis had placed him in the snapshot in his own mind.
Amal came to a full halt. The guy with the cigar looked quizzically at the tableau and Jarvis waited a heartbeat. The crate slipped from Amal’s hands and he began to fumble for his pistol. Jarvis had only the time until his next heartbeat to decide. The guns on the table were five feet away and he wouldn’t have time to wrestle with anyone for them. His guard had a couple of pistols strapped to his body but he might as well be trying to pull a thorn from the paw of an angry lion. There was only one not-entirely-suicidal option. He turned and kicked the big guard in the groin and spun like a half-back around him to cover the few feet to get to Amal. He passed the staircase but going up would only lead to several bullets in his back. He reached Amal just as the gun was coming out of his belt. There was fury in Amal’s eyes and frustration that he couldn’t point the gun at Jarvis and empty a full clip into the American. Jarvis hit him under the chin with his shoulder as he grasped at the gun. Amal was stronger than his slight frame suggested and Jarvis used both hands to twist the barrel toward Amal’s torso. He drove Amal back to create space for the gun to turn away from him self. Jarvis could hear the huge guard with the sore testicles cursing and trying to catch his breath. Jarvis’ attention was on not getting shot by Amal but he could hear shouts from the men at the table and the sound of rifle clips being loaded. Jarvis drove harder with his legs, holding onto Amal’s arm and wrist. He could feel the man pounding on his head with his free arm and the rifle swinging from his shoulder wildly was hitting Jarvis in the hip. He gave one last hard twist and could hear Amal’s wrist snap and all resistance give way. Amal tripped going backwards and Jarvis had the gun in his hand and was able to regain his balance and stayed standing. Amal hit the ground and Jarvis was over him, gun pointed at his forehead. He looked down at the terrorist and then quickly up and back to where he’d been standing a moment ago. The enormous guard seemed no worse for wear after having caught his breath and was literally growling as he walked toward Jarvis. The two subordinates of the cigar guy were coming at him with rifles and were speaking so quickly he couldn’t understand any of the words. Cigar guy was still sitting, but holding his handgun now. Chaos was imminent. Jarvis pointed the gun at the large guard. It would probably take the entire clip to stop him. There was a sharp command from cigar guy that cut through the growing din and halted everyone in their tracks.
Cigar guy got up from the table and slowly walked toward Jarvis. Several of the men, including Jarvis, were breathing heavily. Everyone was quiet, only highlighting the tension. Jarvis calculated he could take out cigar guy, which would distract the others, then kill the two guards with guns in their hands. That left the giant, who would have enough time during the killing to get his hands on Jarvis. But if he started with the largest target, the others would shoot him dead. There was no cover and no good options. He decided he’d have to take his chances with Godzilla and shoot cigar guy first. Without looking, he fingered the safety to make sure it was off. It was. Before he could raise the gun, there was a scraping noise down and to his left. A movement caught his eye and as he turned away from the immediate threats in front of him, he saw Amal raising the rifle that had fallen off his shoulder. He pointed it at Jarvis. There was a single shot, loud and painful in the small space. Jarvis didn’t wince, trying to determine where the bullet had entered his body. But Amal’s face took on a shocked expression and he stiffened. The life drained almost immediately as a hole in his chest began to ooze blood. Jarvis whipped back around and began to raise his gun but cigar guy had already lowered his pistol. He blew smoke out of his nostrils.
“Fucking Taliban. Think they can come to me, do business, and ignore my rules. Scum.”
Not the reaction Jarvis was expecting, a sentiment apparently shared by the other three men in the room. Cigar guy’s volatility, though, seemed common. The other men lowered their guns and the tension dissipated.
“The small crate, it has what you came for. Take it and go.” He waved the gun he’d just used on the bleeding Talib on the ground. Then he hardened and loosely held it pointing in Jarvis’ direction. “But if you use anything against my men, I will see you again, yes?”
It seemed a rhetorical question so Jarvis stepped over the dead man and opened the loose top of the crate. He put one of the pistols in the band in the back of his pants and the other under the loose jacket he wore. The clips were conveniently packed into a belt, which he strapped beneath his shirt. Enough for a small assault, which was more or less what he had in mind. While arming himself, he kept an eye on everyone in the room who was still breathing. The three guards shifted uneasily once he had the guns in his hands but Cigar Guy seemed unconcerned.
Except for the look of murder in the giant guard’s eyes, Jarvis thought there was a pretty good chance he’d get out. He backed his way to the staircase, coming close enough to the largest guard that he could hear his breathing and smell the fury on his skin. It wasn’t from the pain in his groin, but from the frustration of not being able to rip Jarvis into small pieces.
“Thank you. I’ll find my way out.”
Cigar Guy laughed. “If you leave alone, you will have a knife in your eye before you cross the alley.” He pointed to the subordinate who’d been counting cash and gave a brief, sharp instruction. The man lowered his rifle, reluctantly, and walked toward Jarvis.
Without much in the way of options, Jarvis turned his back on the guns pointed in his direction and walked up the stairs. He passed the clean room and went through the small, secret opening guarded by the old elf
who stiffened slightly until he saw the money-counting guard a step behind. A moment later Jarvis was back in the alley and everything looked perfectly normal, except he could pick out at least half a dozen men who would have been hacking him to pieces if he’d emerged alone. He headed back to the corner where Saleem would hopefully be waiting. Jarvis noticed for the first time in the last ten minutes that his heart was beating slightly faster than usual.
Chapter Thirty
Saleem wasn’t there but a small, angry mob of men in their twenties and thirties was. They were heading toward the opening to the alley, still about ten seconds away at their current brisk pace. Most wore traditional garb; a few were in Western clothes. All brandished some form of weapon. There were a couple of sticks that looked like they could hit a baseball further than a Louisville Slugger. Several rifles. One rolling pin. The men were all heavily bearded, observing Sharia law regarding facial hair and Taliban law regarding being angry and violent. Jarvis looked behind him toward the alley but he wouldn’t get far, particularly if Cigar Guy’s men decided his hall pass had expired. Too much traffic to cut across the street. Running seemed cowardly. He looked up the street and could make out Saleem’s taxi at a standstill, the wheels cutting toward another unmarked lane as he tried to work his way through the mass of cars to Jarvis. The men would get there long before Saleem did and Jarvis had no idea why they were bearing down on him with anger in their eyes. Jarvis reached behind his shirt for the larger gun hidden there and waited. Pulling it too soon would just agitate others near him and get him shot before the focused mob reached him. The men were only a few steps away now and Jarvis turned slightly to make himself a smaller target, also putting his shoulder against the building’s stone wall for leverage. The mob got to the corner where he stood and their voices were harsh, angry, violent. But they ignored Jarvis. They swept past him as if he were no one of interest and continued another few feet down the sidewalk. Jarvis did not relax his grip on the gun but looked ahead of the passing crowd. He saw a woman, her rich, black hair bouncing on her shoulders, the rest of her body covered by a heavy cloth down to the tops of her shoes. She was walking without haste, looking at the vendors’ stalls, until she heard, or sensed, the furor behind her.
She turned just as the man leading the group reached her. He’d already raised his arm, the thin, mean stick high above his head. He brought it down across her face while he was in full stride. His momentum added vicious weight to the blow and the woman’s shock took a moment to transform into pain. Inexplicably, she did not cringe or turn away. As if mesmerized, she stared at the man even as an angry welt rose from her forehead to chin. The man bumped into her as he came to a halt and sprang back as if touching a hot stove. He raised the switch again and as he did, the other men in his small mob surrounded the woman. Their timing was impeccable, as the woman began to emerge from her surprised stupor and look around for escape. There was none. A man behind her, younger than the others but with a look of vengeful fervor in his eyes visible across the distance to where Jarvis watched, had his rifle in his hands. He drew it back, butt first, and brought it down toward the back of her head just as the first man swung the switch again. It saved her life, temporarily at least, as she tried to cover her face with her hands and bend away from the blow from the switch. Her movement made the younger man miss what would otherwise have been a devastating strike on the back of her skull.
All the men were shouting now and a crowd was beginning to gather. Jarvis caught the words for “whore” and “blasphemy” or something similar. This band, sanctioned or not, was patrolling the streets for anyone violating Sharia law. She had gone out in public without proper covering – not the only woman on the street who failed to wear the head-to-toe burkha, but something in her step had caught the attention of the vigilantes. Too light-hearted, too confident. Too happy. Other men in the group crowded in closer, striking the woman until she fell.
Jarvis itched to pull out the guns, to run over, to be the hero. He had seen this before but those times he had been with a squad of well-armed soldiers and it had been easy to intervene. Today, though, he would only be mobbed and maybe killed; at minimum he would end up in a prison. The woman probably wouldn’t be killed, but she would suffer bruises, cuts, and at least a few broken bones. Her face, if the group was particularly fervent, might be sliced and made ugly, an inducement to cover it and her hair from now on. Jarvis’ hands quavered and he made fists. They stayed clenched as he turned and walked toward where Saleem inched toward him. He cut across the barely moving cars and got in. His friend had seen what was happening a hundred feet away and there were tears in his eyes.
“This is not my country. This is not how I want my children to grow up. Taliban are strong again. It is…it is not what Allah wants.”
Jarvis was grim-faced and tried not to look at the crowd watching the men as the taxi crept past the scene. But he did look, he stared hard. Some in the crowd cheered the abusers on. But a few, mostly older men and women but among them some youngsters, were quietly disgusted. They hid their outrage, fearful they might be next. Jarvis looked at them but could feel little optimism as the screams of the woman on the ground faded and she lost consciousness.
“We have a long drive. You can’t come all the way, but if you get me as far as Bar-al-Akar I’ll get a local driver.” Jarvis touched the gun inside his jacket. In his mind, he dismantled it and put it back together. He did it in real-time, skipping no steps and not pretending to go faster than he was capable of – twenty seconds later he mentally stripped the larger pistol tucked in his belt.
“You know I want to help you more, my friend. To do more.”
Jarvis looked at Saleem in the rear view mirror. “You have a family to take care of. You’re already risking too much.” The truth didn’t ease Saleem’s guilt over not taking up arms. He drove silently through the miasma of cars until they thinned at the outskirts of town. The road widened and traffic moved. It was late morning and the heat was beginning to build. Saleem closed the windows and turned on the air conditioning.
Jarvis thought back to the woman he shot in the throat in Mohan’s New York apartment. She knew his name. She blamed Jarvis for the death of her son. It could have been one of the men he’d had to shoot during any one of a dozen firefights. A raid on a village where there’d been collateral damage. But Mohan had been there that day when the RPG hit the school. Children had died along with parents and at least a few of the Taliban who’d ambushed Jarvis. Mohan had been there, part of the capture and near-slaughter of Brin. It had to be connected. He directed Saleem toward the village, along the same road he’d ridden years earlier. This time though he wasn’t in a Humvee, no armored plates or .50 caliber machine guns. No comrades who had his back except Saleem. And no idea what he was walking into except that it was part of the puzzle that led to people dying in the US and Brin struggling in the hospital.
Chapter Thirty-One
They approached the village from the north this time. The day of the ambush the squad had entered from the south, the direction of the border. The view from this side of town was familiar to Jarvis but different, like the Mona Lisa hung upside down. If the recollection of small arms fire and explosions weren’t burned into his olfactory memory, the village would be undistinguishable from hundreds of others.
He knew the length of the town was less than a mile as the crow flew, though the skies were devoid of any life. They’d driven out the day Brin was rescued. Two of the kidnappers were captured the same day, a couple more the next morning, including Mohan. If they weren’t the masterminds then those behind the attack had never been caught. Jarvis directed Saleem a hundred yards along the road after they’d passed the first building and told him to pull over. Saleem did so, reluctantly.
“I will wait here.” His voice was firm.
Jarvis opened the back door but did not get out. “No, head north two miles. The fuel stop, stay there. I’ll call you and then you come – quick. Staying here doesn’t do
me any good if someone sees me getting out and decides you’re a collaborator and ought to lose your head.”
Several men drank coffee in a café across the street. Three women were turning up an alley fifty feet ahead. Saleem nodded. There was nothing useful he could say. Just keep his phone on and his foot near the gas pedal. Jarvis gripped him once on the shoulder and was gone.
Saleem looked in his rear view mirror as he pulled away. Jarvis moved like a scout reconnoitering enemy territory.
Dead East Page 13
