The Warlord's Son

by Dan Fesperman

  The valley was suddenly quiet, the thrumming noise receding as quickly as it had arrived.

  “Is that it?” Najeeb asked.

  “No,” Skelly said. “They’ll be back.”

  He believed it at first, and for the next five minutes he kept expecting the helicopter’s return, watching for it to come roaring back over the ridge with missiles firing and all coordinates locked in. The last of the day’s light was bleeding into the hills, but surely the chopper had some sort of infrared targeting that could spot the attackers on the slopes above. He listened closely for the throbbing blades, but there was nothing. No sound but the wind. Then, a bumping noise, but it was just one of Razaq’s men, shifting position, moving among the rocks like a snake sliding off to bed. Skelly knew then that the moment had passed, that the chopper wouldn’t be returning.

  “So I guess that’s it, then,” he said. “For now at least.”

  Najeeb said nothing, and Skelly heard him smoothing out a place to rest, lying down. Skelly sagged against a boulder, spent, and reached for his water bottle. The temperature seemed to drop farther as darkness settled into the valley for the night, and he yawned, suddenly worn out now that rescue seemed out of the question. He rested his head on the ground, brushing away a few stones with his hand, and within minutes he was breathing deeply, asleep.

  Only seconds later, it seemed, Najeeb was tugging at his shoulder, speaking softly into his ear.

  “Wake up. Something’s happening.”

  Not yet fully conscious, Skelly pushed himself up with one hand, then thought better of it and tried to stay low. Then he realized it was pitch-black, and no one could have possibly seen him. A pale half-moon sat on the opposite ridge like a white blade poised to drop into the gorge.

  “Where are you?” he rasped, suddenly panicked, his heart going a mile a minute.

  “Right here. Razaq’s on the move. I think he and his sons are trying for some kind of breakout.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Almost eight. Listen.”

  Now he heard it, a slight clank and scuffle. Were they mounting their horses? And if so, why wasn’t everyone doing it—or would that have been too foolhardy to even consider? Skelly also remembered that there were no longer enough mounts for everyone. Perhaps the entire fight would now swing down the highway, leaving Najeeb and him safely to the rear. Somehow he doubted it.

  “Here,” Najeeb said. “Take this. You might need it. I have one, too.”

  It was too dark to see what Najeeb was handing him, but the feel was unmistakable, the cold steel barrel and the wooden stock.

  “Where the hell did you get this?”

  “From one of Razaq’s men who was hit. While you were asleep. I got one for me, too.”

  Skelly had handled a Kalashnikov only one other time in his life, while traveling through Bosnia with a hard-drinking Finn. The Finn had been on his last tour of duty in the Balkans and had gotten fixated on the idea of testing the worthiness of his bulletproof vest before heading home. He’d propped it up in a trench and taken a shot, borrowing the weapon from a bored Muslim militiaman. Then he’d invited Skelly to have a go at it, showing him how the thing worked. Skelly still remembered the bruise the stock had left from bucking against his shoulder, and he felt odd about taking the weapon now.

  “Careful,” Najeeb muttered. “I’ve chambered a round and the safety is off.”

  “Where’d you learn to use one?”

  “Where do you think? Where I grew up you don’t make it to your tenth birthday without firing one of these. I would rather not have to use it now, but you never know.”

  True enough, Skelly supposed. But it was a strange sensation for him, going against every professional instinct. The scribbler was supposed to be the one passive observer, fading into the scenery to wait for the shooting to stop, then emerging unarmed to interview the survivors and tally up the dead. But if a final round of fighting were to commence now, he supposed no one would bother to check his press credentials, especially not in the dark.

  “Okay, then, I guess I’m ready. But damned if I’ll know who to shoot.”

  “Listen. They’re moving again.”

  Skelly strained his eyes forward, and for the slightest moment he thought he saw a slender glint of moonlight on the blade of a sword— or maybe it was just some romantic shred of his imagination, wanting Razaq to be the warrior he once had been, ready to ride off into the pages of an old book, some illuminated manuscript of silver spear points and galloping sultans. Was it the feel of the gun in his hands that gave him these delusions?

  Then he heard the creak of leather, the jolting of hoofbeats, and shouts, followed by gunfire, muzzle flashes erupting brightly on either slope. Red tracers arcing wildly down the hillsides. Skelly flinched, gripping the gun tightly, still not accustomed to the sights and sounds. But he couldn’t help but be mesmerized by the beauty of the scene, like some fireworks display gone horribly awry.

  Up ahead there was more shouting and a terrible crashing collision of some sort, like the sound of a great beast going down, followed by more gunfire, the bursts of light strobing and sparking—total sensory commotion for a few seconds, followed just as abruptly by a moment of silence, when all he could hear was Najeeb’s breathing, barely a foot to his right. It was cold, he suddenly realized. Bitingly cold. The ground beneath his knees felt like a grainy slab of ice.

  A few voices tentatively called out. Then came the sound of footsteps, heading their way from farther up the road, too many of them for it to be anything but bad news.

  “What are they saying?” Skelly whispered. “What’s happening?”

  “They have him,” Najeeb said. “They have Razaq, his brother, and his son. It is Bashir speaking, in the road just ahead.”

  Skelly laid down the gun and heard Najeeb doing the same.

  It was over, then. For all of them.

  “So what now?”

  “We surrender. And hope for the best.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  IT WAS DALIYA’S first time in a burqa shop. A university friend had once wanted to visit one on a lark, but at the last minute they thought better of it, figuring their scornful giggles would have been asking for trouble.

  The place gave her the creeps. Burqa shops were monuments to conformity, every wall and rack draped in the same pastels, most of them blue—garment after garment with the same baggy shape and the same shuttlecock top, like a gathering of burial shrouds. So the quicker this transaction went, the better, she decided, darting inside while Professor Bhatti hovered at the entrance, as watchful as a bodyguard.

  The saleswoman appeared immediately. She struck Daliya as the prudish sort. You sensed this even though she didn’t wear a burqa herself. She didn’t need to, since no man ever set foot in the place. She had, however, ostentatiously parked a burqa near the door for when she ventured into the streets. She spoke up just as Daliya found what seemed to be a likely fit.

  “Here,” she said, picking up a second one. “You might want to try this size as well. One of them will probably be perfect.”

  Her voice was surprisingly warm. Perhaps Daliya had judged her too quickly.

  Daliya slipped the garment on over her clothes. It was horribly claustrophobic. The front draped against the tip of her nose and brushed against her lips when she moved her mouth to speak. Her first inclination was to take it off right away, to drop it on the floor and stroll briskly from the shop, never to return.

  Yet there was also a shuttered sense of privacy, which had its appeal. It was like watching the world from a hiding place behind a grated vent, anonymous and unreachable. It would take patience to wear one of these for long, but Daliya supposed that after a while you’d forget it was there. This one fit fine, so she pulled it off and said, “This will do.”

  “You are probably right,” the saleswoman said, “but why don’t you try this one as well?”

  Daliya obliged her, slipping into the next one but finding that it
was so long that the lower hem brushed against her shoe tops with a slight break. When she took a step she felt in danger of tripping on the garment. A few blocks of walking in this and the thing would be filthy.

  “No,” she said, lifting the larger one back over her head. “This one is too long.”

  The saleswoman wore a pained expression. She seemed to be fairly bursting with the urge to speak.

  “Yes?” Daliya asked.

  “I am pleased that you are choosing the path of modesty, my dear. But am I to assume you will be using this garment for travel?”

  “Yes, I will be.” Daliya blushed. If her intentions were this easy to spot, perhaps she’d better rethink her plans.

  “And if it isn’t too much of an intrusion, may I ask where will you be traveling?”

  “To the North-West Frontier Province.”

  “Beyond Peshawar?”

  Such coyness. Why did neither of them just come out and say, “to the Tribal Areas,” which even before the war had seemed exotic and foreign to anyone who didn’t live there. A land of kidnappers and smugglers. Now, more than in any other benighted corner of Pakistan, the inhabitants were also seen as a land of wild-eyed holy men and armed uprisings, of jihad and frenzy. Or such was the popular perception in Islamabad.

  “Yes. Well beyond Peshawar.”

  “Then choose the larger one, my dear. You’ll travel more safely, inshallah.”

  “Ah, yes. I see.”

  The woman was right, of course. Everyone had heard the horrible tales of women rapped sharply on the ankles if they showed the slightest bit of flesh when boarding buses or climbing stairs. Most such stories came from the dominions of the Taliban, inside Afghanistan, but not all. And while every tribal area wasn’t alike, who knew what the rules would be in her destination. So Daliya thanked the woman, paid for her purchase and was on her way.

  PROFESSOR BHATTI SEEMED immensely relieved once they were safely back in the car, and Daliya again felt a stab of sympathy. Was this what it meant to be a successful woman, to have every minor pitfall loom as a potential disaster? She looked over at the professor, but her eyes were locked on the road, and for the rest of the drive she seemed oddly preoccupied, as if working something over in her mind.

  By the time they reached the apartment the mood was more relaxed, and they talked for a while upstairs. Shortly before midnight the professor stood, saying, “I’ll brew us a last pot of tea.”

  Daliya heard her switch on a radio in the kitchen, the jangly music accompanied by the comforting domestic clatter of teaspoons and clinking china. A few minutes later the radio clicked off, and the professor emerged with two steaming cups. But her face was ashen, her expression grave.

  “They just came on with a bulletin,” she said. “Razaq has been captured, with all his men. The Taliban have them.”

  “And Najeeb, too, then,” Daliya said, lowering her gaze. The professor slid a teacup to her across the end table. Daliya raised it mechanically to her lips, but she was unable to swallow. She set the cup down and pushed it away, breathing deeply to maintain control. Poor Najeeb. Surely they wouldn’t keep him? The American, maybe, for some sort of ransom. But not the son of an influential tribal malik. And wouldn’t that mean he would end up on his father’s lands, back in his home village of Bagwali, just as he’d feared? Retrieved, but not released. All the more reason she must put her plan into action, and soon, if only to keep from going insane with worry and all the waiting.

  “You’re going to go there, aren’t you?” the professor asked quietly, eyeing Daliya with an expression of intense concentration and concern. “And I’ll confess that I overheard you in the burqa shop, saying you’re going to be traveling to the Tribal Areas.”

  “Yes, I suppose I am.”

  Professor Bhatti nodded, seeming to accept it. Then she gently set down her teacup and leaned closer, speaking in a tone that suggested a confidante more than a mentor.

  “If I were a sane person, a responsible person, I would pick up the phone right now and contact your parents, or even the police. But of course if all I had was responsibility and sanity I never would have reached the place I am in today. I’ve only become cautious in trying to protect what I have. I’ve become a politician, a stagnant and careful politician.”

  “No. That’s not fair. You’ve—”

  “Please. Let me have my say.”

  Daliya nodded respectfully.

  “You’ll need to take some of the same kind of chances if you’re going to rise above this place, but you shouldn’t try doing it alone. So I’ll help you—and God help me, please—in any way that I can. I have the name of someone who might do you some good out there. But before I give it to you, you should know that even in a burqa you’re not going to get very far. Not by yourself. Once you’re west of Peshawar, you’ll need a male escort. Even two women dressed properly can’t get very far unless a man is with them. It’s simply the way things are.”

  “I know,” Daliya said, her voice sounding very small. “I know all of that. Which is why, as I told you before, I have a plan. A strange one, maybe. But a plan.”

  “So tell it to me, then. And I will try to admire it, instead of being appalled.”

  Daliya smiled, picking up her teacup. For the first time this evening she felt a stirring of confidence in what she was about to attempt. She would need luck, for sure, but she knew now that she would at least have the necessary resolve.

  “All right, then,” she said. “But I hope you can stay up later once I have, because there’s a lot of work to do. And I’ll be leaving in the morning.”

  “For your great adventure,” the professor said, smiling uncertainly.

  “Yes,” Daliya said. “Great, and probably foolish. But an adventure for sure.”

  So Daliya told her, and the professor was very admiring.

  But also quite appalled.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  BASHIR’S MEN MARCHED them at gunpoint to Heserak, then loaded everyone into six pickup trucks in the dark. That was when Najeeb spotted Haji Kudrat, who stood at the middle of the action in a dirty gray kameez and a thick woolen vest, shouting orders.

  A nearby lantern lit his long, weathered face and bushy auburn beard. A swirled black turban sat regally on his head, like a layer cake with licorice frosting. He was obviously Pashtun, yet his crinkling almond eyes betrayed a touch of Hazara, the beleaguered peoples supposedly descended from the hordes of Ghengis Khan.

  When Kudrat wasn’t speaking he was scowling, an expression both imperious and impressive. Strapped to his neck was a large pair of binoculars, which around here was as clear a symbol of authority as a jeweled mace. A holstered pistol was suspended from a canvas military belt.

  A man poked Najeeb in the back with a gun barrel, letting him know it was time to stop staring and get on board. But he’d seen enough to recognize Kudrat as a long-ago visitor to his father’s house. The man had made quite an impression even then, sprawled on the cushions of the hujera and inhaling deeply from the hubble-bubble, his voice never losing its tone of command even as his eyes glazed over. Unlike others who were subjected to his father’s lavish hospitality— most of whom wound up being treated more as hostages than as guests—Kudrat had seemed to come and go as he pleased, a mark of his stature. A week after his departure a convoy of trucks had arrived from Peshawar with crates of grenade launchers, escorted by a pale and talkative American. So even then the man had known how to use connections, and now he was directing everyone like a imperious traffic cop. When others approached for orders they kept a respectful distance, as if further permission were required to move closer.

  For all his apprehensions, both for himself and for Skelly, who’d hardly spoken since their capture, Najeeb found the atmosphere of this place oddly comfortable. He couldn’t say it was to his liking, but there was a distant familiarity from his boyhood. There was an almost holiday feel in the air, an electric charge of men in motion, fueled by the ripe promise of coming violen
ce. It was a mood that seemed to have its own smell, like that of an approaching storm. All the more reason to keep Skelly nearby.

  They now sat next to each other in the back of the pickup, a white Toyota. Skelly’s shoulders were bunched against his own. Skelly was taking notes, which he’d been doing almost continuously for the past hour, as if finally emerging from the stuporous roar of the firefight. Four of Razaq’s men were in the truck with them, one of them oozing blood from his left thigh, his pants glistening darkly.

  The engines revved, and the first of the trucks pulled out. Theirs was next in line, but just as they were getting under way Bashir ran up, signaling the driver to halt. He glanced into the back, flashing a thumbs-up to Najeeb. Then he leered with triumph when he saw that Skelly had a notebook out, and waved the driver on. It really was beginning to seem that the man had invited them along simply to have a personal scribe, someone to document his name for the world at large. He’d obviously also enjoyed sending Skelly ahead to taunt Razaq. There was some currency in that sort of notoriety, Najeeb supposed, but he wondered if the businesslike Kudrat would approve. And it hadn’t seemed to alter their status as captives. If Skelly and he were truly special, shouldn’t Bashir be letting them ride up front? Najeeb supposed he should feel anger toward the man, but he felt weariness instead. It would be like throwing a tantrum over the doings of a hawk, or a vulture. It was simply the man’s nature, his fool’s way of living and surviving.

  “Think we’ll be okay?” It was Skelly, finally speaking up. His eyes were glassy. From what Najeeb could see of the scribbling in his notebook the words were barely legible, more the result of compulsion than careful observation. He reached up to feel Skelly’s forehead. Hot and dry.

  “You should take more of your pills. They may not feed us for a while. And if we ever get a chance to leave, we will need to move right away.”

  “Think we’ll really get one?”

  Najeeb didn’t know, so he didn’t say. Skelly nodded, as if he understood.