Rotten Gods

by Greg Barron

  The faces of the mujahedin are as haggard and tired as his own, the eyes red moons of drug-enforced wakefulness. Indecision shows on their faces and they leave him for long enough that he finds his way to his feet, staggering yet determined, moving with them over to where Zhyogal waits.

  ‘You are charged with the mass murder of untold thousands of Muslim civilians, you are charged with sending missiles raining down upon husbands and wives, sons and daughters. You are charged with policies that have brought chaos and division to the world.

  ‘In the year of the Hijra 1424 by our reckoning — 2003 in your calendar — the weaponry of America turned on the people of Iraq. Sources within your own puppet organisation, the United Nations, estimate that more than one million Muslims died, and five times that number were left without homes. Just as your predecessors tore apart Korea and Vietnam, your legacy to the world was the slaughter of hapless villagers and the urban poor of Baghdad, Kirkuk, and Basrah. This you followed up with strikes on the Muslim people of the Middle East. Libya. Iran. Yemen. Somalia.’

  Purcell stands firm. They got smarter after Iraq and Afghanistan. No more large-scale invasions, no GI body counts for the press to get in a froth about, just targeted UAV missions, missiles, and precision bombing raids.

  Zhyogal went on: ‘You supported the Zionist state in its blockade of Gaza, a policy that led to famine and death. You stand judged before God, may praise be upon Him. How do you plead?’

  Edward Purcell lowers his chin. ‘I plead guilty of attempting to protect the people who chose me to represent them. I plead guilty of seeking to destroy the forces of terror wherever they exist in the world, and I plead guilty of attempting to build a better life for those who placed their trust in me.’

  Zhyogal stamps one foot, and the President remembers an eighty-year-old newsreel showing Adolf Hitler doing the same thing. The same incapacity to see that what he did was wrong. The same rage when others did not click their heels and say ‘Jawohl, mein Führer’.

  The President finds himself pondering the nature of evil. It is a word he has used often — a word that probably helped him pluck the presidency from a field of hopefuls. Was Hitler wholly evil? He was ultimately responsible for the deaths of thirty or forty million people, yet he loved and cared for his Alsatian dog, Blondi, had a taste for music, painted, enjoyed cinema, and played practical jokes on his staff. Bashar al-Assad, the tyrant of Syria, was a trained eye surgeon.

  The President sees the gun come up and even the trigger finger moving. He does not see his body falling to the carpet and Zhyogal firing the gun over and over again, long after his heart has been shattered into a bloody mess of tissue.

  Marika picks up her assault rifle and stands, staring out at the night horizon. Neither the shifta nor the aardvark have reappeared, the only sign of life being a horned viper that wriggles across the sand near the acacia, burying itself in leaf litter near the base.

  ‘What will their tactics be?’ she asks Madoowbe when he comes up beside her.

  ‘They will sneak up close and try to take us out one by one, if they can. Chances are that we won’t even see them come.’

  Marika shivers, not just from the growing cold. ‘Great.’

  ‘They are afraid of one thing: the machine gun. We need to stay close to it.’

  ‘Up on the tray?’

  There is a pause. ‘Too exposed.’

  ‘Can we get the gun down, and the mount? Is it too heavy, do you think?’

  ‘We can try. There is a stony rise just over there. More defensible than here.’

  They stand together, almost close enough to touch. Impulsively she reaches up to kiss him on the lips. His eyes glow like bulbs, staring back at her in shock, as if what happened between them is a secret to be kept, never mentioned.

  ‘Do you regret what happened between us,’ she asks, ‘on the night of the sandstorm?’

  ‘Is such a question necessary?’

  ‘I know I’m a crazy Westerner, who wears her heart on her sleeve, but I want to know what you think.’

  His eyes narrow, and for a few seconds he rests his chin on his palm. ‘No. I do not regret it. Do you?’

  Marika thinks for a moment. Even on the most basic level, it was a special moment, a special night. ‘I’ll remember it for the rest of my life.’

  Now Madoowbe does something incomprehensible. He touches her face, whispers a soft and melodic sentence in Arabic, then appears to blow dust from the palm of his hand into her eyes.

  Marika stares as he completes the strange ritual. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘It is an ancient charm from the Qur’an that will make you invisible to your enemies. To protect you.’

  ‘I thought you didn’t believe in that kind of thing?’

  ‘You misunderstood my words. There are some things I will never stop believing.’

  The Somali seems pleased with himself, for when he walks away a smile touches his lips.

  Manhandling the heavy gun down from its mount is more difficult than Marika expects. Mounting screws have corroded in place, holding the heavy flat base to the tray floor. Madoowbe uses a hammer to smash the bolt heads off and together they lug the heavy weapon, then the boxes of ammunition to the rise. Marika begins to dig, using a folding shovel from the vehicle. ‘My granddad was an infantry officer in Vietnam — when I joined up he gave me some damn good advice: If in doubt, run. If you can’t run, dig.’

  ‘Here, let me help,’ Sufia says, and, taking turns with the tool, they work until the trench is deep enough to squat in, and thereby shield their bodies to the neck. On the earth ahead of the trench Madoowbe sets up the gun, sliding back the action and chambering a round, the long belt of cartridges drooping into the ammunition box.

  For the hundredth time that day, Marika raises her eyes skyward. ‘Where are they? For God’s sake.’

  An hour later the shifta come, moving with the stealth of clouds.

  ‘I’d give a thousand bucks for an infrared scope,’ Marika says, then changes position, checking the load on her assault rifle, selecting semi automatic and lying prone, gun butt against her shoulder. Turning to Madoowbe, she whispers, ‘Don’t shoot unless they come this way, OK? They might think we’ve gone.’

  The noncommittal grunt communicates what he thinks of this advice. Marika grins to herself. How could anyone disappear across the desert with a ninety-kilo gun and its mount?

  The shadows are many in number, and Marika sees that reinforcements have arrived. These are men born in the desert, hardened to the business of killing to survive. Their rifles are extensions of their bodies, as familiar as a limb. There are many of them, thirty perhaps, and despite the machine gun, Marika knows that her chances of surviving the night are slim.

  They still don’t know where we are, she says to herself, watching them make for the technical and the smouldering rubber pyre nearby. The grip of the assault rifle becomes sweaty in her hand and she snugs the butt into her shoulder, lowering her head so she can see through the sights, taking one dark head in the ring and resting the pip high in the chest, moving the weapon to follow the man’s erratic movement. How many can they kill if they open fire now? Maybe four or five before the others fall flat on the sand. Not enough.

  Minutes pass before the leading members of the party reach the technical. Now she hears voices, sharp angry words, indecipherable. It becomes difficult to discern who is where, for they start to disperse.

  ‘Get down,’ Madoowbe hisses, ‘they’re looking for us. Whatever you do, don’t lift your head.’

  Marika turns to look at Sufia, crouching between them, still giving no indication of fear, and she experiences a strong feeling of protectiveness. In a short time this tall, proud woman has come to trust her. Dr Abukar, Sufia’s husband, the one who holds the remote control that might mean death for hundreds of human beings, is a man to take seriously. Marika senses that this woman would not have given herself lightly. Looking out into the night, she reaffirms to herself her com
mitment to protect Sufia and take her to safety, not just because it is her duty to do so, but because people like her are important to the world.

  As the shadows disperse across the night, Marika’s unease deepens, and she feels again a conviction that these minutes might be her last on earth. She finds that she is not afraid, but saddened for the feelings of those she will leave behind. Family, friends. Then there are things. Places. The cobalt blue Pacific Ocean, the mountain ranges of eastern Australia. Gum trees. Her flat in Pimlico, London. Even her Macbook.

  Finally, there is the god of the church that figured so strongly in her early life. No prayer comes to her lips. No last-minute reconciliation. Only nothing. The realisation that her destiny is in her own hands. That life and death are so closely intertwined that one cannot be without the other.

  The shifta no longer move predictably, but have scattered, searching. Someone kicks a pebble out to the rear, yet when she turns she sees nothing. Still she scans, using the night-vision enhancing method of moving her head from side to side, looking out from the corner of her eyes as she does so.

  ‘Three men, coming this way,’ Sufia says, ‘dead ahead. Can you see them?’

  The hammer of the machine gun adds to the ringing blankness of Marika’s hearing, and despite the flash suppressor, a tongue of flame two or three metres long sears out from the muzzle, lighting the area as if with floodlights.

  Marika sees men drop to the ground. She lifts her assault rifle to her shoulder, trying to pick them up in the sights but mainly firing by feel at the area, squeezing the trigger several times in succession. She turns to Sufia. ‘Can you keep an eye on our rear? Call out if you see anything.’

  Silence follows, broken by the pop-like discharge of Sufia’s rifle. ‘There was just one,’ she says, ‘and I think I hit him — he’s down anyway.’

  ‘Good work.’

  The machine gun fires again, but this time there is nothing visible in the lit area. ‘Sorry,’ Madoowbe says, ‘I’m getting jittery.’

  ‘Where are they? Do you think they might have run?’

  ‘I doubt it. These men live on their reputations for bravery and savagery. They know there are just three of us, and won’t stop until they have us.’ He pauses. ‘I don’t need to tell you that we must resist being taken alive. It would be bad for me, but worse … for women. If it comes to that, please let us make sure …’

  ‘I understand,’ Marika says.

  ‘Have you still got that pistol?’

  ‘Nah,’ she murmurs, ‘no ammo. I left it in the vehicle.’

  Time stretches on, silent but for muffled voices out across the desert.

  ‘What are they doing?’

  ‘Having a conference, deciding how to take us — puffing up their courage, accusing each other of cowardice, discussing what they’re going to do to us when it is over. Some of these men have just lost a brother or a friend, and will be pleading to be allowed to lead the attack.’

  Marika again looks up at the sky, seeing a light moving low down near the northern horizon. ‘Look — what’s that?’

  ‘Probably a commercial airliner,’ Madoowbe says.

  ‘Do they fly across Somali airspace?’

  ‘They would not be silly enough to do so at low altitudes, but at forty thousand feet, yes. There is not a plane or missile in the country capable of flying to those heights.’

  Still watching the light, Marika prays for it to come closer and morph into something that will take them away. Instead it recedes into nothing.

  ‘The shifta are attacking again,’ Madoowbe hisses. ‘Get ready. They will be more determined now.’

  This time the shifta creep from mound to stone with such stealth that when Marika closes her eyes she feels as if she can will them away. Then comes the roar of the machine gun, and in the muzzle flash a number of the enemy are revealed as closer than she believed possible. Panicking, jamming her forefinger back on the trigger, she watches one man drop, then another. Return fire comes in, from two or more men using a boulder for shelter. The heavy machine gun seeks them out, stone chips flying and the air filling with the metallic smell of shattered stone.

  A cry fills the night, and the machine-gun fire illuminates a single shifta, firing a carbine as he runs, screaming indecipherable words of rage. The single-minded charge must have unnerved Madoowbe; his first burst flies wide. Marika also misses, the pin clicking down on an empty chamber as she exhausts the magazine. She has no more spares and has to unclip it and press in loose cartridges from her pocket. She looks up in time to watch the machine-gun bullets chew the suicide charger to pieces.

  ‘That was a distraction,’ Sufia cries. ‘They’ve come up on all sides. They are going to overwhelm us.’

  Again the machine gun fills the night with a long shuddering roar, then falls silent.

  Marika fires again, twice. ‘What’s wrong?’ she calls.

  ‘The gun has jammed.’

  ‘Leave it. Run.’

  Bullets fly as they take to their heels, away past the vehicle and the smouldering, stinking pyre of burning rubber. Running, knowing how close behind death pursues them. On impulse Marika reaches out, taking Madoowbe’s hand, feeling him return the pressure.

  As they reach the lower slopes of a sand dune, a sound drifts across the desert that can only be the heavy beat of a chopper. ‘Do you hear it?’ she cries. ‘It’s them. They’re coming for us.’ Her feet struggle through the soft sand to the summit. ‘Stop running. They’ll be able to see us here.’ She has them visually now, three choppers: all Sikorsky Blackhawks, the UH-60M variant with the glass cockpit and wide chord rotor blades, distinctive to a trained ear.

  The shifta, too, have seen the aircraft come, but rather than melting back into the desert, they continue to come, the fusillade of bullets intensifying now.

  ‘They know they’ll be safest right on top of us,’ Marika says, ‘and that the choppers won’t pick us up under heavy fire.’

  ‘I’ll stay here and hold them off,’ Madoowbe hisses, ‘you keep going with Sufia. Get to a safe distance so they can pick you up.’

  ‘No! I won’t leave you.’

  His hand grips hers. ‘Listen. This is not a matter of your preferences. You have a job to do — now do it. Go!’ He takes his hand away, lifts his weapon to his shoulder and fires twice. ‘Do it. Hurry. Make it worthwhile.’

  ‘Hell,’ Marika sobs out, ‘don’t do this to me, Madoowbe.’

  ‘Don’t say anything,’ he shouts back, ‘just go.’

  Marika feels her heart breaking as she bends and kisses him on the cheek. ‘You are the bravest of men,’ she says, ‘and I will carry you always in my heart.’

  The two women, so different, from such disparate backgrounds, run down the soft slope of the dune, no words necessary. The ground is firmer in the valley between two dunes as they run headlong between patches of thorn bush scarcely discernible in the darkness.

  ‘The next dune,’ Marika says between deep breaths, ‘they can pick us up from there.’ Turning back she sees the lights brighten as the choppers continue to move closer. Tracer rounds arc up to meet them, and the chain guns hammer back in response, shooting flame ten or more metres towards the ground.

  Sufia does not reply, but Marika hears her footfalls behind her. The dune is close now, the first slopes made up of dry sand that clings to feet and ankles, doubling the effort. It all seems too much, but still there is the sound of fighting and yelling behind. Gunshots that make her wince each time they come.

  The words this heroism must not be in vain becomes a mantra in her head. Over and over to the rhythm of their flight and the gunshots behind.

  The sound of following footfalls stops and Marika turns to encourage Sufia along, eyes falling on the shadow that has appeared from nowhere; the glint of a knife and skin in the lights that pour from the choppers. The knife moves to Sufia’s throat, behind it teeth bared in a savage and triumphant grin.

  At first Marika thinks this must be one of th
e shifta who has somehow edged his way around the firefight on the dune. Then, however, she sees the desert fatigues and the thin moustache. She sees also fresh burns covering one side of his face and the glint of an earring.

  Somehow, despite what appear to be terrible injuries, Captain Wanami has followed them across the desert, and now he holds the power of death over the one woman in the world who might help prevent disaster at Rabi al-Salah. From his lips comes a stream of Somali, which Marika has no hope of translating, yet the venom and hatred is unmistakeable.

  Holding the assault rifle by the barrel, she swings it like a baseball bat, the stroke growing in power as she brings her shoulders to bear, until the heavy wood stock strikes Wanami in the side of the head with a sickening thud. He goes down, dropping the knife, and Sufia is free.

  Marika reaches for the other woman’s hand, hearing her frightened sobs. ‘Run,’ she screams. They take flight together, but when Marika turns she sees that Wanami is back on his feet, dazed, taking first one step and then another after them. Still holding Sufia’s left hand in her right, she doubles her speed, half pulling the dazed Somali woman after her.

  The soft sand is impossibly unstable. Their feet slide back one pace for every two forward, and the ascent becomes a real physical ordeal, even for Marika who once thought herself as fit as — fitter than — any young woman of her age.

  ‘Not far now,’ she grunts, ‘hurry.’

  Finally, the sand shelves into the flattish peak of the dune, and Marika glances back. Wanami is no longer in sight, and her eyes move to the firefight just a few hundred metres away, the choppers hovering overhead, out of range.

  ‘Shit,’ Marika cries. ‘If we don’t do something they won’t even know we’re here — they’ll fly out again.’

  Unbuttoning her shirt, and slipping it from her shoulders she lights a match from the box in her pocket and holds it out while the shirt catches fire, the flames flaring high. She waves the burning garment backwards and forwards, keeping on until her hands scorch from the heat.