Fire & Wind

by Leo Gher

  “And so, the meaning of the term, ‘ghost town.’”

  She wrinkled her nose and curled her upper lip, then demanded, “Just where are we going, Moynihan?”

  “It’s near the Mississippi River, a natural wilderness area called Clear Springs.”

  It was a weird image for a business class railway carriage – two Chicago South Siders dressed in khakis and wearing tanker boots. Lindy glanced out the window, “Doesn’t look like a wilderness to me.”

  As if discovering a disturbance in the force, Jake peeled his eyes slowly away from his smartphone, “It’s in the Shawnee National Forest, another four hours south.”

  “That doesn’t mean a thing to me,” she said, and then, frustrated with his never-ending devotion to his new iPhone, snapped back, “I thought the FAA powers-that-be did not allow electronics on this field exercise.”

  “I’ll pack it away once we reach Carbondale, but I have to meet with Sam before we head back home. Just trying to arrange a place to connect.”

  “Sam Mansour, your father’s friend?”

  “Yeah, he and his wife live in Carbondale. They’re professors at the university, both of them.” The 23-year-old looked up and clicked off his phone. “He’s always kept a journal, and I want to pick his brain… to get some specifics about my brother and his Azerbaijani family.” As expected, Lindy waved a hand for more interaction. Jake wasn’t shy when it came to finding fault with his in-laws. “Strange, the whole bunch, that’s how I remember them. And Conor is… I don’t know, a banker or lawyer of some sort.”

  “That’s not very clear.”

  “Sorry,” he replied. “I just need to know more about them.”

  “Why?”

  Jake did not respond right away, and that frustrated the dark-eyed Armenian beauty. Throughout the summer, Lindy had become more apprehensive about what was driving Jake’s moods and their relationship. It had been on and off lately, satisfying during the on-times, yet not quite what she thought it should be. They’d been together for more than a year, and he had told her that she was the love of his life. But Lindy wasn’t a fool. She understood what love of my life meant – its fickle duality, its tenuous nature, the promises that might or might not be – however, she worried more about his other passion. In recent days, she sensed that something was driving him in a far different direction.

  “Will there be other women in camp?” she asked.

  “More than a campsite this time. And yes, there will be other women.”

  “What’s so special?”

  “Two years ago, the FAA bought a 50-acre tract of land next to this Clear Spring Wilderness,” Jake said. “They have constructed a lodge, a training ground, and a storage facility.”

  “Running water, toilets?”

  “Yes, even hot water.”

  Naturally, Lindy thought, Showers. That made her smile, but she still had another question, “How do we get there? I mean after Carbondale; how do we get to this wilderness area?”

  “CS Camp, that’s what it’s called. The Commanders have built two others, at Panther’s Den and Burden Falls. Both camps are to the west of CS but still within the Shawnee Forest.” Jake continued, “Mike will meet us at the train station. He’s bringing the drone gear, the IEDs, the recons, bug-out bags, and a SnakeRoad Exercise Manual for each of us.”

  “No sidearms this time?”

  “Just what one might carry personally,” Jake pointed to the slight bulge in the cuff of his pant leg.

  “Snake Road?” Lindy piped up, her head twitching backward slightly. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Not at all. Lots of snakes at Clear Springs,” Then matter-of-factly, Jake said. “It’s why we wear tanker boots. Good eats, you know. Just skin them, rinse the meat with salt water to kill the poison, soak’ em in a little egg white and sweet cornmeal, and then fry’ em over an open fire. Good eats… tastes like chicken.”

  “You’ve been there before, right?”

  “Not to CS Camp.”

  “Then how do you know about the snakes?”

  “They are everywhere in the Shawnee Forest,” he said. “You could check it out if you had electronics.” Without blinking an eye, Lindy retrieved an eReader from her jacket. Jake smiled seeing that Lindy didn’t precisely adhere to the rules either, but he said nothing. After a quick eSearch, she was satisfied that Jake had told her more than a few half-truths.

  Lindy Bedrosian was a tough gal, raised in an outdoors family with four brothers. Snakes didn’t bother her; at least the pictures on Wikipedia pages didn’t, so she signed off without making a fuss. Next, the young woman retrieved a pillow from the overhead rack, placed it on Jake’s shoulder, and curled herself into a fetal position. She put her head down, made a slight purr, like an unapologetic mouser on a warm couch, and then fell asleep. They arrived in Carbondale four hours later.

  The week of camp went by quickly, and subsequently, Mike Bedrosian (Lindy’s uncle) had dropped off Jake and Lindy at the home of Sam and Iza Mansour. After dinner that evening, Sam asked, “How was camp?”

  Lindy responded enthusiastically, “Real toilets, and showers, so much better for women.”

  Iza was surprised, “Doesn’t sound like the Clear Springs I know.”

  “And what about the snakes,” Sam snickered. “Any inquisitive wigglers crawl into bed with you, Lindy?” Sam knew the favorite pastime of seasoned campers was to place a snake on the bed covers of one waking up newbie.

  “No snakes allowed in the lodge,” Lindy cackled. “But we saw plenty in the field.”

  Iza added, “We see a few here on the lake, mostly harmless Black snakes.” Sam and Iza lived in a handsome, old rustic house just west of Carbondale. The development was called Lake Chautauqua, 50 or so homes surrounding a man-made lake that had long ago lost its urban panache to scruffy backwoods – just the opposite of Jake or Lindy’s apartment in Chicago.

  Somehow the house on Lake Chautauqua felt familiar to Jake. Not that he had ever visited before, or even seen a postcard of the Mansours’ home. But there were photos everywhere, mostly of family and friends. Sam was a top-notch professional with a camera, and Iza had decorated the walls of every room with his works. Iza and the two girls were the principal subjects, of course, but there were numerous pictures of Jake’s father, Sam and their overseas friends from long ago. There was the photo of Sam and Tom on a Nile River showboat called the Mustafa; Tom and a young woman in a hotel lobby labeled Shepherd Belly Dancers; Tom with Captain Azat on a tugboat named the Hazar-Denizi and, of course, the graduation photo of Jake’s brother, Conor, and cousins Mira and Tali. The large portraits were in color, but the action shots – Sam’s forte – were mostly black and whites. For Jake, it was somewhat unsettling, but by seeing the photos and then talking about them, Jake finally understood Sam’s profound feeling for his friend, Tom Moynihan.

  Once the dinner dishes were cleared and stacked, the Mansour daughters asked if they could go to town to take in a movie. It wasn’t a movie they were interested in, just the going. Natia had just turned 16 and had been driving on her own for a couple of months. Iza worried, of course, but Elene, the younger girl, scolded her mother for being too protective. “We’ll be all right, mama,” she said. “Don’t worry. Natia is a careful driver.” Careful, Elene instinctively knew, was a more reassuring descriptor than good. As soon as Iza had given them her okay, the girls said goodbye and hurried out the door.

  “Let’s have dessert on the deck,” Iza said. “Jake, will you help Sam with the ice cream?” Jake nodded. “We’ll get a bottle of wine.” Lindy followed Iza to the hallway but stopped short of the wine cabinet to view a large, group photo. It was titled The Cairo Gang. As Lindy stood admiring it, Iza had a chance to observe her for a moment. Jake’s girlfriend was stunningly attractive. Her ivory skin stood as a stark contrast to her wavy, dark brown hair, thick eyebrows, and long ey
elashes. But Lindy’s outstanding feature was her Armenian nose – aquiline was the usual term – long and curved, with a prominent bridge, giving it the appearance of being slightly bent. This ethnic nose was the reason why so many Armenian girls go under the knife; it was the reason why plastic surgeons were in such high demand in every Armenian community.

  “This is interesting.” She recognized Sam and Tom, but not the others.

  “That’s the old gang at Café Omar Khayyám,” Iza replied. Pointing to the man in the far left, she explained, “That’s Tom’s old boss, J.K. Burke. He was killed by terrorists. Afterward, Tom was appointed to fill his position as the head of the CoC.”

  “CoC?”

  “It means Clash of Civilizations,” Iza replied. “The anti-terrorist unit founded by the UN Security Council.”

  “And the others?”

  “The woman next to Burke is Salma Jili, JK’s office manager. She still works at the American embassy in Cairo. There’s Sam, of course, and his girlfriend, Alesha.”

  “Girlfriend?” Lindy hooted.

  “I wasn’t in the picture then,” Iza replied. “And that is Tom with his significant other at the time, Zarifa Kedar.”

  “Conor’s mother?”

  “Yeah, Conor’s mother.” Iza face suddenly stiffened, “She’s dead, you know,” stumbling across the words, “by her brother’s hand. It was a so-called honor killing.”

  “Honor killing?” Lindy recoiled.

  “A monstrosity held over from ancient times. It has been banned everywhere in the Muslim world, but some old clans in Central Asia still see it as a tool to control their membership.”

  There was a sympathetic lull in the discussion, and then Lindy said, “I believe it’s why Jake has come to see Sam. He says there’s so much he doesn’t know about the Kedar family and his brother.”

  “Not an easy tale to tell,” Iza said. “They’re a hard family to understand, the Kedars – the language, the culture, and their particular version of Islam – and they’re dangerous besides.”

  From outside on the deck, Sam shouted, “Hey, you two, where’s the wine?” Then he added, “And Jake wants whiskey.” Iza handed Lindy three wine glasses and a Glencairn, grabbed a bottle of chambourcin and a bottle of Jameson, and then they headed for the sundeck that overlooked the lake.

  After pouring the drinks, Iza asked, “How did two Chicagoans survive Clear Springs?”

  “I wanted to stay at the lodge, but snake-boy, here,” she was pointing at the boyfriend, “would have none of it.”

  “You’re asking about the field exercise?”

  Iza spoke up, “Yeah, what was the reason for five days in the wilderness of southern Illinois?”

  Sam broke in, “More preppers angst?”

  “We’re not Preppers, Sam,” he growled. Jake and many other FAA associates frowned at the idea that they were preppers or survivalists. “We’re stewards.”

  “Stewards of what?”

  Jake couldn’t ignore Sam’s parry, “The goals of the Founding Fathers, and the coming chaos.” But then Jake changed the subject, “Game-training this time. SnakeRoad was all about new forms of combat – drone exercises. Our instructor was a former airman who flew missions over most Asian conflict zones. Only these were petite UAVs, not the big Predator drones used in Afghanistan.”

  Sam probed on, “Did he ever say how many he killed…in Afghanistan, I mean?”

  “I asked one night, but he was reluctant to talk. Maybe it was depression or PTSD, something bothered him about his time there. He said every morning the officers would give each operator a closed envelope with his name written on the outside. Inside was a plain white card with a number. But he said, ‘I never opened it. Didn’t want anything to do with that.’ I guess the burden of knowing how many he had killed was hard to stomach.”

  Upset by the direction of the conversation, Lindy attempted to steer the group back to the CS Camp, “We were on the recon crew, triangulating targets for strike teams. It was a lot like eGaming, but with real targets. Not people, of course, but wilderness targets.”

  That’s when Iza changed the subject entirely, “So Jake, Lindy tells me that you came to Sam learn about the Kedar clan.”

  Sam jumped in, “Not tonight, Iza. Jake and I will talk about Azerbaijani issues tomorrow. I’ll give him everything he needs to know then.”

  Iza replied, “Fine by me, professor.” Professor was code for her being pissed off. “So tell me, Lindy, how’d you two meet?”

  The next day, as they were boarding the train for the return trip to Chicago, Lindy turned to Jake and said, “My goodness, she’s a tall woman.” They waved goodbye to the Mansours, entered the Business carriage, and found their seats.

  “Back in the day, she was called Big Iza,” said Jake. “But it wasn’t what she was, but who she was.”

  “Explain, please.”

  “She was a celebrated journalist in the Caucasus when they met – that’s the who. The what – Sam informed me – Iza was once a famous Olympic basketball player for Armenia, I think. She doesn’t like to talk about it, though.”

  “Not Armenia,” Lindy chided. “She’s Kurdish and a Muslim. She’s not Armenian. I’m Armenian. Bedrosian, remember? I would know if she were Armenian.”

  “Iza saved his life once,” Jake recounted the story told by his father. “In the Armenian Highlands, that’s where they were ambushed by raiders.”

  “Patriots, Jake, we call them patriots,” Lindy scolded. “So, tell me, what did Sam say about the Kedars? And what, of importance, did he reveal about your brother?”

  “He called him a prince, or something like that. He’s the head of the Kedar family and the Zebeqi Nation – a cult, seeking its rightful place in the Muslim world.”

  Lindy asked, “Tied to the Azeri government, then?”

  “Like a hand to glove.”

  After Jake had stored their gear in the overhead, he sat down, and then turned to Lindy and announced, “I’ve made a decision.”

  She eyeballed Jake curiously. “Yet another scheme?”

  “Call it what you will,” Jake replied, “but I’m going back to Azerbaijan.”

  Lindy moaned, “Why would you want to go back to that goddamn place? We have other pressing work!” For Lindy, Azerbaijan was more than a sore spot in the conversation. She was steeped in the bad blood and the cultural rancor between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

  Jake said, “I’m going there to find two men, and wring the truth out of them.”

  “You know these men?”

  “I know them – a guy named Rasuli and a guy named Qurb,” Jake said. “After that, I will dig up my father bones, salvage his soul from that heathen ground. I plan to bring him home, and give him a decent burial.”

  “Seems like a big effort for someone you say you didn’t love all that much,” Lindy was reminding Jake of his own words, “even if he was your father.”

  Father. Jake thought of that day seven years ago when he had made a promise to Tom’s soul and to himself. Then he said to Lindy, “I also gave my word to my mother that I would bring Tom’s body home, that he would have a proper funeral mass, and Catholic burial at St. Andrew Cemetery.”

  11

  FAA

  The following day, downtown Carbondale was hectic and loud. Saturdays in the fall were farmers market days, eight blocks of a mishmash: vegetable dealers, fruit sellers, organic egg peddlers, a man sharpening knives, a woman selling ceramics, beekeepers, hawkers of herbal medicines, coffee grinder vendors, and more. Years ago, the city fathers had decided to locate the market not on Main Street, but one block west. That way, the hubbub of activity could easily be noticed, but shoppers and bargain hunters would not obstruct the traffic flow through town. At the market’s northern closure, there was a municipal parking lot and a warehouse that served as a swap meet. Visitors
could buy collectibles, antiques, toys, kitchenware, cheap perfume, and vintage clothes – junk of all kinds. At the south end, there was a small park and a myriad of restaurants. Mary Lou’s was the oldest and most celebrated. Biscuits and gravy and homemade sausage were its long-held staples. Eventually, most shoppers found their way to Mary Lou’s, and that’s where Sam and Iza were enjoying breakfast today.

  Iza wanted to talk about Elene. She was turning 13, and predictable hormone-infused rudeness was rearing its ugly head. I hate you was the rant that worried Iza the most. Mother and daughter had already had several conversations about hate. Sam, however, was not paying attention. Jake Moynihan matters filled his head. Frustrated by Sam’s silence, Iza decided to shift gears. “So, Sam, what did you and Jake talk about?”

  “It was a strange conversation. We talked about the trip we made to Baku for Conor’s 18th birthday.”

  “And about Tom’s death?”

  “Yes,” replied Sam, but then he paused to reconsider the question. “We talked about that, of course, but Jake’s memory of what happened and mine were very different.”

  “Did you talk about that?”

  “Not really. It was awkward back and forth. Jake wanted to know about the Kedars: who they were and what they did. He said, ‘I hope to understand who the boss is, and what their affiliations are.’ And, oddly, he wanted to find out if his father had left any inheritance for Conor. He also had questions about the Zümrә company: how it operated; its military and political connections.”

  “Sounds like he’s planning a visit.” At that moment, a server interrupted with coffee and Mary Lou’s famous biscuits and gravy. It was a coed Iza thought she knew. “You’re Cynthia, right?”