Busted Flush

by Unknown

  He’d dropped the coin when Raaqim spit at him. He could see it glinting on the sand. He shouldered his weapon with a flourish of many arms, and nodded in the direction of the houses. “Let’s get this done,” he said. “And be fucking careful.”

  The connection over the satellites was static-ridden and erratic, and Michael had to strain to hear Kate’s voice. “Everything’s still going easy here,” she said. “Clockwork. Last place, there were villagers wandering around and scavenging stuff from the facility, but they scattered when we landed. We had some shouting and cursing, but no real resistance.” The line squealed; he could barely make out the last words.

  “Yeah. Same here,” DB told her, half yelling into the cell phone. Across the lobby of the Administration Building that had become their base, Rusty glanced over at him. “No problems. Makes me happy; I wasn’t looking forward to another dustup with the Caliphate, especially not over oil.”

  “What we’re doing is about people,” Kate said. “That’s what matters. Half the world is suffering because of the embargo. That’s the reason we’re here.” Then, a laugh that made him grin. “That sounded like John, didn’t it?”

  “All you need is a scarab beetle in your forehead.”

  There was silence, and he worried for a moment that she’d taken offense. “Sorry,” her faint voice responded at last. A squawk of static cut off most of what she said afterward. “. . . watch yourself, especially. And see you soon back home, okay?”

  “Right,” he told her. “Soon.”

  “How’s Curveball and the others?” Rusty asked.

  “It’s good,” Michael told him. “Everything’s good.”

  The rest of the day was uneventful. Michael and Rusty toured the wellheads that their team had secured; all seemed well. The evening subsided into semi-boring routine as the workers arrived from Baghdad International: derrick workers whose job it was to get the oil flowing again. The feeds they received from the news channels were full of praise for the work of the teams. Fortune sent word through Barbara that the aces would be brought out within the week—there was more need of the Committee elsewhere with this operation going so smoothly.

  The next day, Michael and Rusty, along with two blue helmets—Lieutenant Bedeau and Marlon, another French soldier—decided to sweep through the refinery area to the south of the Administration Building, where crews were scheduled to begin work. Tomorrow, Michael and the others would be heading somewhere else, landing in some other desert wellhead.

  They walked along a large open area set in the middle of the cluttered refinery: weapons shouldered, their Kevlar vests unbuttoned against the day’s broiling heat—Michael, against orders and his own nagging paranoia, was entirely bare-chested in the fierce sunlight. Marlon was snapping pictures with a digital camera; Bedeau was speaking into a satellite phone, reporting in to Colonel Saurrat’s adjunct. “The refinery looks to be operable,” Michael could hear Bedeau saying in French-accented English. “There’s no—”

  The voice cut off with a grunt. Michael glanced back. Bedeau had dropped the phone and was clutching his stomach with both hands, a look of surprise and shock on his face as blood poured through his fingers and bloomed on his uniform shirt. A strangled, wet cry came from his open mouth as his knees gave way and he crumpled. At the same moment, there was a familiar, chilling metallic chatter: small-arms fire. Something pinged from Rusty’s body and whined away past Michael’s left ear, leaving behind a burning line from his ear to his forehead. He could feel blood sliding hot down his cheek.

  “Shit! Take cover!” Michael screamed. A four-foot-tall set of thick pipe sections was stacked a dozen feet away. Michael took two running steps and flung himself behind them. Marlon was trying to get his FAMAS up when a round took him in the biceps and spun him around; he managed to crawl behind the pipes with Michael, puffs of sand kicking up around him from bullets.

  Rusty hadn’t moved. He stood in the open, pointing to the north and a tangle of steel pipes laced between two buildings a hundred feet away.

  “The fellas are over there,” he said calmly. “I see six or seven of them.”

  “Great,” Michael told him. “Now get the fuck down.”

  A trio of bullets struck Rusty’s body and caromed away, leaving shiny scratches on his chest. He grunted. “I’m fine,” Rusty said. “Let me try—”

  A stream of orange fire and black smoke raced past well above them and slammed into the side of the main refinery building fifty feet behind. The concussion of the explosion was like a fist, the sound was deafening. Michael could feel the heat of the fire as debris rained down around them. A brick slammed into the sand a hand’s breadth from Michael’s right side, burying itself several inches deep. “RPG,” Michael shouted to Rusty, wondering if any of them could hear anything over the lingering roar. He was trying to wrestle his own M-16 from his back. “That’s why you have to get down, Rusty! Marlon? You okay?”

  The man was cursing loudly in French, and blood stained the sleeve of his uniform. “Fuck,” he said in English. “I think so, but the lieutenant, I think, is dead.”

  Rusty had stooped to grab Bedeau’s body, then came lumbering behind the piping with the others. “How is he?” Michael asked, glancing at Bedeau’s open-eyed stare and already knowing the answer. Rusty shook his head.

  Michael felt his stomach turn over. He gulped acid.

  They huddled behind the pipes. It was the only cover—they had been caught in a large swath of open ground, the nearest building the one now burning behind them: a good twenty running strides away and already a conflagration, vomiting black smoke and fire from the hole the RPG had punched in it. Rifle fire rang from the pipes like a Midwestern hailstorm. To their left and right there was nothing: just sandy ground for a hundred yards or more—a killing field if they tried to retreat.

  Michael could hear more small-arms chatter to the north and to the east—separate firefights on the compound. Someone with a high, thin voice was shouting in Arabic near where Rusty had said their attackers were hidden. Through the din, Michael heard the dull k-WHUMP of another explosion somewhere in the distance, followed by the thrup-thrup-thrup of a chopper’s rotors starting up. He hoped it was one of their people at the controls. Christ, it wouldn’t take many of them to get us all.

  Marlon was moaning as he ripped open his medical pack. Michael helped him apply the pressure bandage to his arm. “Can you still use that?” Michael asked him, gesturing at the soldier’s weapon. Marlon nodded grimly. “Good. Look, it sounds like the others are dealing with their own problems right now. We can’t just sit here and wait for someone to rescue us—and if our friends have another RPG and send it our way, we’re dead. Rusty, you willing to take a few more hits? If we can see the muzzle flashes, Marlon and I can return fire and hopefully take a few of them out, and maybe then we can figure out a way to get the fuck out of here.”

  “Sure thing,” Rusty said. He lumbered to his feet behind the pipes as Marlon and Michael moved to either end of the pipes. Gunfire popped and hissed; Michael could see the glint of fire from the muzzles—their attackers were settled in a snarled nest of piping and flow valves between two buildings; judging by the flashes, there seemed to be five or so separate people with guns. Twenty feet over their attackers, a heavy pipeline bridged the structures. Michael heard the chatter of Marlon’s gun and he pressed the trigger on his own weapon, the recoil slamming into his upper shoulders, his lower set of hands bracing himself on the pipes. The Arabic shouting returned, more alarmed this time, but Michael doubted they’d hit anyone. Michael saw a bloom of fire and smoke—“Rusty! Down!”—and another RPG arrowed toward them. Rusty stood there gaping as the round passed a bare few feet over his head before slamming into the burning building behind them with a new eruption of fire.

  Rusty hit the ground belatedly with a grunt. He stared at Michael wide-eyed, his steam-shovel mouth open. “Yeah,” Michael said. “I know. Cripes. We’re lucky that bastard’s a lousy shot, but we can’t sit
here waiting for him to get more practice.”

  Another bullet ricocheted from the pipes, the sound like a drumstick on the bell of a cymbal. The heat from the fire behind them was searing; Michael began to wonder what was going to kill them first.

  “They be amateurs, these ones,” Marlon spat in his broken English. “Professionals would now spread to come from different angles; but these—they stay all together.” He made a quick sign of the cross. “This is good, yes? If they are well trained, we would be already like poor Bedeau.”

  “Yeah, there’s some comfort,” Michael told him. The gunfire had slowed to erratic single shots. Michael hoped that wasn’t because they were taking Marlon’s advice. The wind was whipping the choking smoke away from them, but flames were gushing from the ruined building and the heat was nearly unbearable—Michael was almost afraid to touch the pipes in front of him. The fire hissed loud and throatily and suddenly leapt thirty feet into the air as a gas line in the building ruptured. They all felt the fiery embrace of the inferno. “We really can’t stay here. We gotta make our move. Rusty, you willing to take a chance on being a target again?”

  The ace’s shoulder lifted and fell. He didn’t look thrilled at the prospect, but he didn’t say no.

  “Okay, then. Marlon, I want you to start firing from your side of the pipes—keep them down as much as you can. Rusty, I’m hoping they’re even worse at hitting a moving target. Head toward them, but zigzag it—maybe about ten steps’ worth, then go down just in case Mr. RPG is waiting. I’m hoping that they’ll be a lot more interested in a fucking big steam shovel coming their way than me.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m going to give them a free performance that’ll bring down the house. I hope.”

  Rusty’s eyes widened. “Oh,” he said, somewhere between question and statement.

  “Yeah.” He touched the wound on his forehead, looking at the blood that stained his fingertips. “Sorry, I don’t have a better idea. Do either of you two?”

  Rusty slowly shook his head. Marlon just stared and clutched his weapon. “Then wish us luck,” Michael said.

  Rusty, his knees creaking, got to his feet; Marlon, lying on the ground, began to rake the space between the buildings on full automatic as Rusty came around the pipes and started toward them, shouting and waving his massive arms.

  Michael, on the other side of the improvised cover, stood up. He started drumming with all six hands, the multiple throats in his neck pulsing as he shaped and focused the sound as he surveyed the target area. At first it was merely noise (as Marlon continued to fire, as Rusty weaved and roared while bullets pinged from his body). Michael could hear the stacked pipes in front of him rattling in their racks with sympathetic vibrations, and he forced his throat openings to narrow, to toss the sound farther out and focus it—as he had when he killed the Righteous Djinn. He aimed the torrent of percussion between the two buildings, hitting himself harder and harder, his arms flailing. There was a new sound now: a metallic wail as the piping set between the buildings started to respond.

  (Rusty took a few more steps, a lumbering, bearlike dance. Marlon’s weapon went silent for a moment as he changed clips. Through the fury of Michael’s drumming, there was a percussive cough, and a smoky lance arrowed in Rusty’s direction, hitting the ground six feet to his left and erupting; Michael saw Rusty lifted and tossed.)

  He drummed, grimacing at the effort of finding the right notes, the right timing, and the right frequency. The pipes shuddered and danced angrily in response. He could see figures there, pointing toward him, and muzzle flashes. Bullets whined past him and he forced himself not to respond. The huge pipe above their attackers groaned loudly enough to be audible over the racket and Michael concentrated on it, forcing all the sound toward it; he saw dust and bricks falling as it shook itself loose from the walls, shaking like a wet dog. Dark, thick fluid gushed out in a wide stream.

  The man-high steel tube fell, much of the walls of the two structures going with it. He could hear screams as it slammed into the ground, taking out the nest of smaller piping underneath. A dust cloud rose; within, something sparked violently and then there was fire and more screams—high-pitched and desperate.

  Michael stopped drumming. Marlon was staring. Rusty had pushed himself back up to a sitting position on the sand, shaking his head as if dazed. Michael snatched his weapon from the ground and ran toward the buildings.

  He saw one of their attackers, on his back with his arms outstretched as if he had been trying to escape the fate he had seen falling on him, the bottom half of his body crushed under a section of brick wall. The thick tube of the RPG launcher lay near him.

  “Oh, fuck,” he breathed. He stopped. His weapon drooped in his lower hands. “Fuck.”

  He stared at the body—at the beardless, smooth face of a child, a face he recognized: Raaqim, the boy who had spat at him yesterday.

  None of them were soldiers. None of them looked to be older than their midteens, while the youngest couldn’t have been more than ten. The weapons they’d brandished were a strange collection of ancient single-shot rifles to modern automatic weapons, probably scavenged from a dozen different sources. The RPG launcher had been the most sophisticated and dangerous piece, but it had no more rounds left.

  Twenty kids, all told, and not all of them boys. Their surprise attack had cost the lives of three UN soldiers, but twelve of the twenty kids were dead; of the survivors, all had serious injuries. The unit’s medic had done what triage she could; the four worst they’d choppered out to Baghdad after frantic communications to Colonel Saurrat and Barbara Baden; the medic didn’t seem to have much hope any of them were going to make it. They’d laid out the dead children in the lobby of the main building, covering the bodies with whatever sheets they could find, and they’d permitted the villagers to come in to identify the bodies and take them away for burial.

  The wails and screams, the accusing glares, the accusations, were something that Michael knew he could never forget. Dabir, his ancient body shaking with rage, had screamed curses over the body of Raaqim. A woman in a black abaya and head scarf had charged at Michael after seeing her granddaughter’s body. She’d reached him before anyone could stop her, beating at him with her fists as she screamed in Arabic, her fists making the tympanic rings boom and crash in a mockery of his playing. Michael endured the beating, his arms at his side like a stunned spider while two soldiers grabbed the woman’s arms and pulled her away, still screaming and wailing, tearing at her clothes, gesturing with hoarse, sobbing cries.

  He was weeping with her suddenly, the tears coming unbidden and unstoppable, hot and harsh, his throat clogged with emotion. Michael had left then, going outside into the heat and glaring sun. He slumped against the side of the Administration Building, his back on the rough stone wall, staring outward toward the oil derricks.

  He touched his chest where the woman had struck him, so softly that he made no noise at all. His throat openings pulsed and yawned, silent. Under the bandage the medic had wrapped around his head, the scabbed track of the bullet throbbed and burned. Part of him wished it had killed him instead.

  Afterward, he’d tried to call Kate and hadn’t gotten her; he sent her a text message: FUBAR. That said it all.

  “Hey.” A shadow drifted over him. Michael glanced up.

  “Hey, Rusty.”

  “Bad deal, huh?”

  “Yeah. The fucking worst.”

  With creaks and groans, Rusty sat down next to Michael. “Kids. I don’t want to fight kids.”

  “None of us should have had to.” Michael glared outward. Against the sky, the derricks were ink lines drawn on a blue canvas, and he’d killed children for their sake. He imagined the blood flowing dark like oil. “This shouldn’t have happened. It shouldn’t have been able to happen.”

  Rusty said nothing more. He and Michael sat there for a long time, each lost in his own thoughts, until the sun slid away and abandoned them in the cool shado
w of the building.

  The old man Dabir stared with slitted, dark eyes at the nervous squad with Michael. He barked something in Arabic and spat on the sand between him and Michael. The squad’s translator spoke to Michael without taking his eyes from the old man or his finger from the trigger of his FAMAS. “He says you are the afterbirth of a syphilitic camel and that you are not welcome here.”

  Michael might have laughed at that, before. Now it only made him feel ill. “Tell him . . . tell him that I want him to know that I had no choice. He needs to know that.”

  That earned a bark of dry, hollow laughter from Dabir. “Allah always gives us choices,” the old man said through the translator. “What choice did Raaqim have? You come here, you take away his father’s job, you ruin our family, you take the land that belongs to us and our people, you steal our oil. Why shouldn’t my grandson defend what was his? Why shouldn’t he fight to take back what you’ve stolen?” Dabir glared at Michael. “I am proud of my grandson. His was a good death. Are you proud, you abomination in the eyes of Allah?”

  Michael clenched his jaw at the torrent of vitriol from the man. “You don’t know,” he told him. “You don’t know the suffering the Caliphate has caused with its oil policies. You don’t know—”