Looking for the Mahdi

by N Lee Wood

  Ed opened the door and took in the scene in a single glance. He was smart enough not to reach for his own gun. There wasn’t a chance he could get it out before I could shoot him.

  “Shut the door, Ed,” I said, kneeling next to Laidcliff, my crippled hands holding the Eclipse out unsteadily. I was trembling violently, the hysterical strength quickly evaporating. I could barely grasp the gun, my fingers not working properly. I had my middle finger, one of the few Laidcliff hadn’t snapped, on the trigger. In a few moments, I knew I would drop it. He did, too.

  He stepped inside and shut the door very carefully behind him, flicking his gaze toward Halton, then stared at me, eyes narrow, thinking. I could see the wheels turning, how to get the gun away, who to take down first, analyze the situation, take advantage of any weakness. He looked more mechanical than any fabricant.

  I shot him.

  That wasn’t why. I shot him because I was tired and hurting, and because I knew it was likely that if I did the humane thing and attempted to take him with us as a prisoner, he would find a way to kill us. I shot him because he was inconvenient.

  The Eclipse quietly made a neat, round implosion crater in Ed’s chest as he thudded back against the door, amazed.

  “Oh, hell,” he mumbled, and died on his way sliding down to sit on the floor. The Eclipse sagged from my fingers.

  I made myself watch as Halton went out and shot the unarmed native man leaning against the sandjeep, waiting patiently for the two Americhurja to finish torturing the enemy infidels. Through the open door, I could see the driver’s face, his mouth an astonished O, before he seemed to leap backwards like a gymnast over the hood of the jeep. His legs quivered slightly and then he rolled slowly off onto the sand.

  It wasn’t a casual thing. Nor was it strictly killing in self-defense. We deliberately murdered them both. I knew I’d have my share of nightmares and the shakes later on. At that moment, the physical pain simply overwhelmed any emotional considerations.

  Halton and I didn’t spend much time in idle conversation. He checked the two other rooms, and found Salim Fareed snoring away peacefully on a tiny bed. The old man would be all right, but he was going to have a hell of a headache and a bloody mess to explain away later.

  Halton also found Laidcliff’s little medical kit. The son of a bitch had lied; there were plenty of chemicals left. He’d just wanted to get his jollies torturing us before he had to resort to more civilized means. Halton injected me with a small amount of painkiller, the worst of the pain dulling almost instantly.

  There was little useful in the jeep’s first-aid kit, bug-bite cream and Band-Aids in with a few rolls of crepewrap, one of which had already been used on Ed’s broken wrist. Halton unwound it from the dead man, and splinted my shattered hands before he rolled the unconscious old man aside to strip the bed. He ripped the threadbare cloth into bandages to stanch most of my wounds, covering it with Laidcliff’s shirt until we could get something better. Except for the one gaping stab under my arm where Laidcliff had cut deep between the shoulder blade and ribs as we struggled, the incisions were all superficial. I’d need stitches, but he had been careful not to cut into any vital body cavities.

  With my chest and stomach wrapped tightly, Halton helped me struggle out of my ripped and bloody pants and into a pair of Salim Fareed’s too-long pants and an oversized qaftan. Blood was already leaking through the bandages, but the dead men had soiled their clothes. I preferred blood to shit. Still, it was going to be interesting trying to think up explanations.

  “Where now?” Halton asked as he gently assisted me into the passenger seat of the sandjeep. I was feeling a bit fuzzy from the drugs, as if the pain were being held three inches all around from my body, but my mind seemed almost abnormally lucid.

  “Back to Nok Kuzlat,” I said.

  Halton looked surprised.

  “Any country friendly to Americans is going to be friendly with CDI,” l explained. “We try to cross the border here, we’ll either be arrested or shot. I’m sure of it.”

  “You need medical help,” Halton insisted. “Soon.”

  I could feel warm blood spreading out on my back, leaking out of the stab wound. “I know. I won’t get it here. They won’t be expecting us to go back to Nok Kuzlat.” The words were slurred, my face oddly numbed. I could feel the break in my cheekbone grinding against the effort to speak. “Hamid’s,” I said simply.

  Halton nodded.

  We drove away from Shardamuzh, heading back toward the slums of Nok Kuzlat. I dozed off, waking when the narcotic began wearing off, a throbbing pain in my side. The clearheadedness had gone, my face one solid misery. I had Halton stop for a moment, and help me light one of the cigarettes I’d taken from Laidcliff. He had to hold the cigarette to my mouth, my splinted fingers too swollen and blue to handle a thing. I sucked the harsh smoke into my lungs gratefully. It was the first rush of pleasure I’d had all day, easing the fogginess in my head a little.

  Halton was staring at me, a strange, lost look in his eyes.

  “What is it? What’s the matter?” I said sharply.

  “Who do I belong to now?” he asked, forlorn.

  TWENTY-TWO

  * * *

  Halton pulled the sandjeep off the road miles outside of Nok Kuzlat, homing in on the city with his own internal sense of direction. The sky had darkened to deep cobalt, the first stars popping out. It was a bumpy, agonizing ride, but we managed to bypass the roadblock, and got to within a few streets of Hamid’s.

  My head pounded, the pain worse than any hangover I’d ever self-inflicted. I’d lost enough blood now that I was shivering, my skin cold and clammy. My ears burned, but I was aware enough to recognize the signs of shock. We ditched the sandjeep in a squalid area of Nok Kuzlat’s districts where I knew it would be stripped anonymously bare within minutes. Then we walked to the little store.

  Or actually, Halton walked and I hung on to him for dear life. Somewhere, I was conscious enough to be aware of noise in the distance, the streets in the Nok Kuzlat slums strangely dark and empty. Curtains twitched while impassive eyes followed us behind carved screens and bleak windows. They would see nothing.

  Hamid took one look at me, and rushed me through the back rooms, up the narrow stairs into the family’s apartment. Three other men, teenagers actually, stood up as Halton half-carried me into the family’s ma’gâlees, and pushed me gently down on the living room sofa.

  “Did Ahmat send it?” I asked.

  “Hush,” Hamid said, his eyes aghast as he opened Laidcliff’s shirt and found the strips of cloth completely soaked in blood.

  I fought to sit up, ignoring the stabbing pain in my arm. “Did he send it?”

  “Yes, yes, all has been done as you instructed. It is sent,” Hamid said impatiently. “Now lie back, my friend.” He started calling Allah’s name and Jamilah’s with equal fervor. “Get my wife,” he ordered one of the young men. The boy darted from the room immediately. The other two hovered over Hamid’s shoulders, looking down at me.

  “We can’t stay, Hamid,” I insisted. “We just need to make a phone call. We’ll be gone before the military police find us.” I had some half-baked plans to call GBN for help. “I can’t put you in any more danger, please…”

  “You are not leaving, not like this,” Hamid said firmly, again pushing me back onto the sofa. He started working the blood-soaked shirt off my back. “You’ll be as safe here as anywhere, God willing.”

  “We should call a doctor, at least,” Halton suggested.

  “You can’t call anyone,” one of the boys said. “The phones are dead.”

  “Dead?”

  “Forget about doctors,” Hamid snapped. “All the telephone lines in Nok Kuzlat have been cut, the electricity, too.” Then I noticed the light came from kerosene lanterns which every house in the slums kept on hand for the frequent power outages. “The streets are not safe. The city is in chaos. I wouldn’t worry about the police; they have other things to occupy their
attention at the moment.”

  I was trying to work that one out, when his wife appeared in the doorway, flanked by wide-eyed children.

  She spotted Halton and drew up her yashmak over her mouth reflexively before she realized who he was, then stared at me while holding it in place with one hand. Her eyes widened as she finally recognized me, and dropped the embroidered cloth. “Merciful Allah,” she breathed.

  “I’ll say the prayers, woman. I need some clean cloth, a needle and thread. Hurry up!” Jamilah turned and fled, small children hugging the door frame excitedly. They hadn’t seen this much activity since the Khuruchabjan civil war, which some of them were too young to remember. “You two, get Fuad and go,” Hamid said abruptly to the boys. “Be careful and get back quickly.”

  They nodded and left as Hamid started peeling away the bloody bandages on my chest. Uh-oh. Halton read my thoughts. “I’ll do that,” he said. “Could you please bring some warm water?”

  “Of course, yes,” Hamid said, and quickly left the room, batting at the children clustered around the door as if brushing away a flock of pigeons. He bellowed for Jamilah, what the hell was keeping that lazy woman, you kids get out of the way, miserable good-for-nothing wretches…

  Jamilah brought an armful of clean linen, probably their own towels and bed sheets, and laid them on the table next to the door. She kept her horrified eyes averted and tried to pry some of the more inquisitive kids away from the door. Hamid bustled back with a large saucepan of warm water, tugging it away as Jamilah dutifully attempted to take it from him.

  “Leave me be, woman. Go and get more, make yourself useful,” Hamid scowled at her, but his sharp eyes had seen how shaken she was. She glanced at him thankfully before she hurried off.

  Once she had left, he began sponging the worst of the blood from my skin. “She is a good wife,” he said under his breath to me, “but she is not used to this.” He looked at me. “City women,” he explained. “They are too delicate.” For a fleeting moment, I saw the Hamid I used to know. Then he was yelling at you goddamned kids get the hell away from the door right this minute.

  It was strange to see my friend so deep in his role as Old Hamid the Grocer. What had happened to Hamid the Assassin, dour and silently grim? Or maybe that had always been the invented role, and this compassionate family man had been the real Hamid all along.

  But if he kept peeling bandages away, he’d shortly discover I had a secret identity of my own I’d just as soon keep. I did some fast talking, something about Halton being a medic in the Marines— Could we have some privacy? I didn’t want to shame myself in front of my good friend by weeping like a child as I got stitched up. Halton was already drawing up another syringe of painkiller from Laidcliff’s kit, handling the medical equipment like a pro. Hamid, being Hamid, retreated and closed the door without protest. I could hear him stamping around in the hallway issuing curt orders to hide his anxiety.

  Laidcliff had done some ornate work, and it took some time for Halton to sew me up. The injection took the edge off, but he had no local anesthetic. It hurt like hell. I’m not a tough TV cowboy type, biting the bullet bravely in dignified silence. Besides which, I couldn’t bite down on anything too hard, since Laidcliff had ensured I was going to make my future dentist a very rich man. All I could do was lie there, sniveling and whining as Halton got to work. I did try to hold it in as best I could after I happened to look at his stoic face, tears running down to drip off his chin as he stitched methodically.

  I tried to think of other things. “You lied, John,” I wheezed out. He was concentrating on his needlework. “You told Laidcliff you didn’t know where the slipelip was.”

  “I didn’t know,” he said. He didn’t elaborate.

  “Yes, you did. You knew I gave it to Mahmud.”

  “He asked me if I knew where it was, not if I knew who had it.” He pushed the needle through a flap of skin, trying to line it up with the other side as it oozed fresh blood. I held the fingertips of one bandaged hand against his arm, stopping him. He looked at me questioningly.

  “You’re so fucking literal-minded,” I said. He stared at me soberly. “Thank God.” I couldn’t very well kiss him just at that moment, so I fumbled, my hands wrapped the size of baseball gloves, to place his chemical-sensored palm down against an uninjured area of my body. I don’t know if there is such a thing as gratefulness pheromones, but he understood anyway.

  The obscene graffiti Laidcliff had slashed on my chest and stomach stopped oozing blood fairly quickly after Halton had sewn the wounds shut, and all but one of my fingers were simple breaks. My face and the big stab wound under my shoulder blade were going to need some real medical attention soon, however. There wasn’t much Halton could do for my face, but he packed a bed sheet against the stab wound, tying it as tightly as he could without actually breaking my ribs. Then he tied a double sling, cradling my broken hands against my chest like a pharaoh’s mummy to immobilize them. That would keep for a few hours. I hoped. It would also help to camouflage my tiny, hairless boobs.

  Hamid returned with two of the young men, and Ahmat. The boy’s dark eyes burned with anger as he stared at me, jaw clenched.

  “We did as you asked, Kay Bee,” he said, voice thick. “Mahmud found the PortaNet. They had thrown it down the stairs when they found it was empty and left it, but we got it to work again. Your friend in Cairo has relayed the clip. He says it is in several places, and it will be safe. He says he understands.”

  “And the slipclip?”

  “We burned it.” He pulled out the melted casing of the thin slipclip from his pocket, the one that caused me so much trouble. He placed it carefully on the small table.

  “Majid is dead,” he said simply to Hamid. I closed my eyes, squeezing out the light. “He was drugged, too slow when they got the prison open. The guards shot him.”

  Hamid merely nodded.

  “It’s my fault,” I said softly, staring at the charred remains of the slipclip. “He died for that.”

  “I know,” Hamid said. He was neither going to blame me nor absolve me; it was never that simple.

  A small boy, a half-naked dirty urchin much like any of anonymous thousands swarming through the back alleys of Nok Kuzlat, pushed his way through the crowd and peered in the open doorway. Hamid immediately rose, pulled the child to one side and questioned him in a low voice. The child nodded quickly, and vanished.

  “The palace was taken fifteen minutes ago,” Hamid said quietly. “The Sheikh cannot be found.” He glanced meaningfully at one of the teenagers. The boy nodded, and slipped quietly away.

  Hamid looked at me and smiled gently, the corners of his mouth tugged up under his graying mustache in a cynical lopsided grin. “The government has cut the power and the telephones,” he said, “thinking that is enough to paralyze the city. They are all like my son, forgetting the old ways.” Ahmat didn’t seem chagrined. He had aged since the day I’d met him, the adolescent resentment lost from his brooding eyes. “What do old men know of computers and electronics? That is for young men. The old men have other ways to communicate which have no need of electricity or telephones. But together…” He put his arm around Ahmat and smiled proudly at his son, leaving the statement unfinished. I could suddenly see how much the sullen boy resembled the Hamid I’d once known.

  “Where’s my PortaNet?” I asked Ahmat.

  “Downstairs. It is safe.”

  I smiled, something I hadn’t done for a while. It hurt. “How’d you like to keep it, Ahmat? You and your friends. How’d you like to be the first bureau chief of GBN in Nok Kuzlat?” The boy blinked; his dark eyes widened, instantly seeing the possibilities. “You film and blip your own stories, cover the news here in Khuruchabja. However you want.”

  “Yes!” he said fervently. “We could show the world the truth, yah, inshallah; we will fight back against those who would keep us enslaved with their foul lies and tyranny…” I recognized the rhetoric from all Ibrahim’s propaganda posters. H
is eyes smoldered with a proselytizing fire. I’d seen that look far too many times in the past.

  I shook my head, stopping the tumble of words. “Just a few words of advice, my friend. Be cautious. Be fair.” Be objective, I heard Arlando in the back of my head. “There is no sense in all you young martyrs being willing to die for the cause if in the end the cause has no one left to live for it. And be careful you do not become one of your own enemies in your zeal to rid the world of evil and injustice.”

  “I understand,” he said quickly. No, he didn’t; he just said the words to reassure me.

  But his father did. Hamid nodded slowly, his hand firmly on Ahmat’s shoulder. “We understand, Kay Bee.” Ahmat wouldn’t like it, not at first. But if he was lucky, he’d grow up and learn. Maybe he’d even turn out to be a good journalist.

  Jamilah had returned with clean clothes, a Khuru-styled qabah tunic and Western men’s pants. I shook my head. “The equipment is not strictly a gift, Hamid,” I said. “In return, I need a woman’s dress.”

  Hamid was startled, doubtful. “You wish to disguise yourself as a woman?”

  “It has been done before by better men than me, Hamid,” I reminded him. “What better way to conceal myself? They will be looking for two men, one with injuries like mine.” I pointed with one finger poking out from its sling to my bruised and bloody face. “But who will see them if they are hidden behind an aba’ayah and yashmak? And if I’ve got two black eyes, well, that’s a wife’s private affair with her husband, w’alah, isn’t it?”

  Hamid looked uncertainly at Halton, who smiled tightly, and began speaking in Markundi, his accent one of the mountain dialects to the south.

  “I would ask for a simple man’s dress as well, my friend,” he said. “Something that the army guards along the border will not think unusual. Perhaps also some small packs with goods to carry, papers to show them.”