Kingdom Come

by David Rollins

  No, in fact I hadn't given it any thought. But I took a guess at it anyway: “He’s your president?”

  “We were lovers.”

  I blinked. Bo cleared his throat and Jimmy and Alvin shared a smirk and turned away. So Natasha and Petrovich were thrashing the mattress. I supposed that did explain her heightened concern to find Russia’s number one citizen. I tried to rustle up some empathy. “Does Mrs Petrovich know?”

  Storm clouds drifted across Natasha’s face.

  Okay, so maybe I was empathizing with the wrong party. But my ex-wife had done the same job on me, only with our marriage counselor. A little sidebar: I walked in on them. They enjoyed showering together, saving water, while she scrubbed his very small limp dick with her mouth. And, unfortunately, once you see a thing you can’t un-see it, right?

  She assured me, “He said he would make divorce.”

  “Right.” Of course he did. Natasha was, what? Maybe twenty-four? I wondered if she knew that she was as much a victim as Petrovich’s wife. Big swinging presidential cocksuckers were given to spraying their tadpoles around. We’d had a few of them in the White House ourselves. Perhaps on some level Natasha knew this, but her own considerable ego wouldn’t let her accept the possibility that she could be anything less than Petrovich’s main game. More than likely, and unknown to Natasha, her hairy-chested president kept a harem of Natashas. But, as interesting as this Days of our Lives contemplation was, we had more pressing fish to fry. Namely, getting out of here and back to our comfy shipping containers in one piece.

  Natasha pressed her demand. “You can see it is important I get to crash site. Also, I must report.”

  For some reason I couldn't put my finger on, and perhaps in spite of everything she’d told me, her demand didn’t seem to make total sense. Petrovich was either barbecued in the wreckage, or abducted by jihadists. And as for rendezvousing with her comrades, I was reasonably sure that she wouldn't be reporting everything, right? But I let it all go ‘cause, as I think I’ve already stated, that’s the new Cooper way. And besides, perhaps thumbing a lift with the Russians was our easiest ride out, too. “Let me discuss it with my team,” I told her, ladling on some infinite patience. She walked off to find a vacant olive tree to stew under.

  I went into a huddle with Jimmy, Alvin and Bo.

  “Looks like the Russians aren't letting anyone in,” said Jimmy, glancing skyward, avoiding mention of Natasha’s newsflash – a true diplomat.

  “As you know, there is no plan C,” I reminded them. “We’ll have to leg it. Turkey’s just over there.” I pointed north.

  “Thirty klicks as the crow flies,” said Bo, finessing it. “And that crow would be flying over some 2000 foot peaks in these parts.”

  “Molehills,” I said.

  “Not to mention jihadists,” added Jimmy.

  “Not if we stay off the roads,” Alvin said.

  “And embrace the poison ivy.” I threw in.

  Jimmy scoffed. “I ain’t scared’a no salad, boss.”

  “Of course not,” I said. Then added, “We make for Turkey, and if we come across a Russian patrol we can drop Boris and Natasha off. Maybe also bum a ride out if everyone’s okay with that.”

  Alvin was onboard. “Works for me. As they say, keep it simple, stupid.”

  That’s my cue. Check.

  “Well, we already got us transport,” Jimmy pointed out, the ambulance still receiving some TLC from the Syrians. He grinned. “Question is, do we have enough urine ‘tween us to get the sumbitch to the border?”

  “Someone cough up a roll of duct tape and fix it,” I said. “We move when it gets dark. Rest up until three. Bo, Alvin, your watch. Get some eyes on that access road. I’ll relieve you in two hours. I’m gonna take Jimmy and find us some water.”

  “Map says there’s a brook at the treeline,” said Bo, gesturing in the general direction.

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Nope.”

  “Will it babble?”

  “Huh?”

  “Forget it. Camelbaks,” I motioned to hand ‘em over.

  “What about our pit crew?” Jimmy asked, meaning the Syrians and whether or not we were going to take the M4A1 option.

  Alvin gave his Camelbak to Jimmy and scratched his jaw. “There’s always that question. We let ‘em loose, will they give us away?”

  I glanced at Mazool, Farib and Taymullah – was that their names? They had everything out of the ambulance, doing what they could to clean it up. “Who wants to shoot ‘em?” I asked. “Shall we draw straws?”

  Bo, Alvin and Jimmy went quiet and looked at me like they were seeing me for the first time.

  “Okay, in that case, I volunteer to do it if they give us the slightest provocation, right up to the time we let them off at a vacant cab stand on the border. Agreed?” This was met by a mixed sense of relief, mostly because the decision was made. No one wanted to kill someone they’d shared a ride with, but at the same time there was always the risk that this generosity might turn around and bite us on the ass. Remember SEAL Team Six in the ‘stan? But our Syrians had given us no reason to suspect that they were anything other than who and what they said they were – the national hobby of lying notwithstanding. It was something that couldn't be said with confidence about Natasha. The jury was still out on Igor, though he was Spetsnaz and traveling in Petrovich’s helo. I figured there had to be a reason for that.

  I went over to the ambulance. “There’s water down by those trees,” I said to Mazool who was bagging a handful of old bloody bandages. “We could use any containers you’ve got, and maybe do a couple of runs.”

  “Your helicopter has not come,” he observed.

  “I hope not, otherwise we missed it,” I replied on the basis that one dumb observation deserves another.

  “What do you do? Do you wait?”

  “Turkey. We drive out.”

  “That is dangerous. You need guide. The main roads, they are not safe.”

  “We’ve got Google Maps and Colt is coming along with us.” I patted my carbine.

  “America help us. We help America.”

  That’s the spirit.

  Mazool threw out a couple of sentences at Farib and Taymullah, who fetched two empty bottles and put them in a large heavy-duty plastic trash bag we could use as a bladder. He handed it to me. “Thanks,” I said and both replied with nervous grins like they wanted to trust these Americans, but weren’t convinced that we wouldn't turn on them and hose them down. All in all, sensible Syrians. To Mazool, I said, “I’ll think about your offer.”

  Igor was racked out, snoring, a large hairy caterpillar moving slowly across his forehead. On to Natasha who was sitting in the shade against a tree, flapping the two halves of her flight suit material together to get the air captured within it circulating. “We’ll be back shortly,” I told her.

  “You are going?”

  “Get some water.” I presented the trash bag by way of filling in the picture.

  She perked up immediately. “There is water? Where?”

  I motioned in the general direction. “A babbling brook.”

  “What?”

  “Like a stream, with babbling.”

  “I come,” she insisted.

  I didn’t have a problem. Natasha seemed the type who needed to be kept busy and distracted and she could help me carry the bladder, leaving Jimmy unencumbered to provide security. So there were two good reasons to say yes.

  And then a third and possibly best reason of all presented itself when we arrived at a fast-flowing ribbon of silver splashing over and around smooth black rocks and boulders. Natasha, delighted, immediately kicked off her boots, tossed the Yarygin on the grassy bank and stripped down to her underwear. I pinched myself while she grabbed one of the empty bottles and picked her way over the rocks and settled into a deeper pool in the middle of the stream. “Cold!” she called out, and then leaned back, held her nose and put her head underwater briefly and came to the surface
– there’s no other word for it – squealing. She then removed her sports bra, wriggled out of a G-string that was more string than G, picked up handfuls of river sand and began to scrub herself all over with it, standing occasionally to ensure the scrub was thorough. She did all of this like no one was watching, though of course Jimmy and I were staring as hard as our eyeballs allowed.

  “Thank you, Lord,” Jimmy said for the both of us.

  I’ve seen some women with extraordinary figures in my time, but Natasha’s nudged the dial to eleven. Nothing was too big or too small, her smooth skin was the color of milk coffee and the curves were all just where Hugh Heffner said they were meant to be. And, as far as I could see, all of it was natural, except for down in the southern states, which had been totally deforested. In fact, she was utterly hairless. In truth I always find that a little surprising, and even oddly wrong for reasons I’m not prepared to put my finger on. But I believe in diversity and I’d happily fight for a woman’s right to laser her sausage wallet. That’s what freedom and democracy are all about, and if it’s not, it should be.

  “Come!” Natasha called out and gestured with one hand as she poured water from the bottle over her breasts with the other, washing away the black sand. The water formed dual waterfalls around nipples that were pink and large and standing out like a couple of volunteers. There was no doubt in my mind that this was a show put on for a reason. Nudity? Breasts? Nipples? It’s just the human body, right? What’s the big deal? Okay, I get it, but I also get that Jimmy and I were being manipulated by a master. Or, I should say, mistress. Maybe knowing what was inside that flight suit would make us a little more amenable to suggestion.

  The sand on her belly was next to be sluiced. Knowing I was being manipulated didn't mean I refused to buy into it. I am, after all, just a man with all the pathetic inconsistencies that come when the head dangling between your kneecaps takes over the decision-making. In fact, at that moment, my one hope was that she would turn around and waterboard her ass.

  I gave her a wave that said, “No, we’re good. Just happy to stand here and watch you turn around and wash your tush, if you would be so kind.” It was a complex sort of a wave.

  Natasha shook her head, disappointed, I convinced myself, because I had declined to join her in a frolic. It didn't even occur to me that the invitation might have been for Jimmy.

  Jimmy said, “On a mission in Iraq one time, we saw a guy giving it to his goat. Crazy. You never know what you’re gonna see incountry.” He cleared his throat, adding, in case there was any question, “This is way better.”

  I was too engrossed to weigh the comparison, but I knew what he meant. I thought I was coming here to fill a trash bag with water.

  Natasha thrashed her flight suit on a rock, rinsed it and wrung it out a couple of times, the muscles working in her shoulders, legs and arms. Nice muscle tone, too. Okay, Petrovich, assuming you’re still with us, you’re a lucky son of a bitch. This is what I was thinking as I crouched and filled the Camelbaks, the remaining bottle and then the trash bag.

  Natasha managed to wriggle back into her wet flight suit, which resulted in more great viewing as the motion involved quite a lot of topless jiggling. Finally dressed, she picked her way back across the rocks and rejoined us on the bank, grinning like she’d forgotten that she’d fallen out of a helicopter in the middle of Jihadland. She squeezed the remaining water from her underwear and draped the pieces on a shoulder.

  “I feel better,” she told us.

  “Me too,” I said and Jimmy agreed.

  “You should bath. You need to.”

  I informed Jimmy, “She means you. I smell like roses.”

  Natasha put her socks and boots back on, checked the Yarygin and pocketed it. She flicked her hair back over her head. This squeaky-clean Natasha was a big improvement over the previous one, who could have been a fugitive from The Walking Dead. Now that her hair wasn’t plastered against her head with dried blood and bits of intestine I could see that it was brown to golden with lighter streaks, cut fashionably short but with a long jagged fringe that swept across her unlined forehead. Her skin was smooth with a light tan, a sprinkle of freckles over the bridge of a strong, straight nose. Lips? Yeah, she had them too – on the full side and, because of that fullness I supposed, always slightly parted. While I found it a stretch when she first told me, now I could believe the Kremlin would choose her big green eyes to feature on recruitment posters. No doubt adolescent Russians in their thousands jerked off to her poster hung on their bedroom walls. Sex sells, and Natasha was hard sell. Problem was she knew it. No one’s perfect.

  “You wanna give me a hand with this, Sarge?” I asked her. The water-filled bag weighed a good sixty pounds.

  A voice in my earpiece announced, “Boss, tangos inbound.” I dropped the bag while Jimmy dropped to a knee. I pulled Natasha down beside us.

  “Hey!” she squawked, or tried to, my hand tight around her mouth.

  Fifteen

  Ronald V. Small @realSmall

  ISIS, we are coming to get you. Be afraid, be very afraid.

  Abdullah Abdullah prowled out of the trees with five fighters as two vehicles carrying the balance of his men converged on the ambulance. They circled it, kicking up clouds of dust that filled the airless morning. The jihadist counted four silhouettes in the dust cloud, one of them an American soldier caught out in the open, his hands raised.

  “Allahu akbar!” Abdullah shouted. Americans! Fuckin’ jackpot! “Hostages! Take hostages!” he said in Arabic and urged his men to follow as he advanced in a crouch at the double. “You are surrounded! Drop your weapons!” he yelled into the choking dust. His men were excited, adding their own demands in Arabic, and the noise and the sense of victory filled Abdullah with elation. The Amir will surely reward me for this. He headed straight to the big black American sergeant, kicked his rifle away, ripped out the earpiece and tore the mike off his head. “We can’t have you communicating, can we, Sunshine? Where are your friends? Nearby?”

  The sergeant said nothing.

  Abdullah directed one of his men to search the American. He patted him down, removing an M9 from a thigh holster, a smaller caliber Ruger from behind his back, a ka-bar from a scabbard between his shoulder blades, some smaller throwing knives from a belt around his left arm and a set of knuckledusters attached to a small blade inside his webbing. Impressed by the haul, Abdullah said, “A boy scout, eh? Come prepared, have we?”

  The American glanced at him and looked away.

  “Hands on your head, fingers interlocked. You know the drill.” The soldier was slow to move. “C’mon, you ‘eard me.” The American did as he was instructed. “There you go. Wot’s your name? Don't be shy. Out wif it.” Abdullah pulled and tugged at the sergeant’s webbing until the nametag beneath was revealed. “Baker. Well, Sergeant Baker, as they say back home, you’re nicked.”

  Abdullah ran his eyes over the other hostages – three men. Syrians. He recognized one of them instantly. “I know you, don’ I?” He turned back to the sergeant, a black man like himself. “You’re on the wrong team, mate. Your ancestors were children of Allah. The Crusaders have poisoned your mind. Not much I can do about that. A little late to be embracing the Merciful One now.” He instructed two of his men to tape the American’s hands behind his back and called out to the fighters patting down the Syrians, “Bring ‘em here.”

  The three men were brought before him, shoved along by AKs. Abdullah coughed, the thick dust catching in his throat. “So, you find our fellow jihadists you was lookin’ for?” he asked Taymullah.

  “Why are our hands tied?” Mazool said in Arabic. “These infidels captured us, stole our transport.”

  “It’s true, Amir,” said Farib. “We were about to counterattack and take back the ambulance.”

  Abdullah was doubtful. “I fink you is SDF. ’At’s the troof, innit?”

  “No, no,” Taymullah implored him. “We are Ad-Dawlah al-Islamiyah. You took our flag. Do yo
u not remember?”

  “I remember, fool. An’ all you Syrians are fuckin’ liars.” He lifted his AK and rested the muzzle on Taymullah’s sternum. “I fink I will kill you and let Allah decide the troof. If you are who you say you are, you’ll be welcomed in Paradise. An’ if not?” He shrugged.

  “No, no, Amir. We beg you. We want to enter Paradise as martyrs.”

  “You must fink I came down in the last shower,” Abdullah told them as a flicker of movement in the corner of his eye proved distracting. Or was it an unfamiliar sound? Whatever, it caused him to glance over his shoulder where he saw, in a pall of choking dust, a huge man holding a jihadist over his head like a set of dumbbells. As Abdullah watched, the giant dropped the man onto his massive thigh and a crunch was heard that reminded Abdullah of snapped breadsticks. The man then tossed the corpse aside, dusted off his hands and took several steps toward Abdullah.

  Huh? Realizing his peril, Abdullah remembered the AK and started to raise it, but it was suddenly and expectedly kicked out of his hands by … Wha…? A long serrated blade slick with blood was pressed hard against his jugular. Jihadists! Where, where are you? And then Abdullah saw that they were all on the ground lying still. Dead. How? Er …

  Baker read Abdullah’s amazement and explained, “It’s what we do, asshole.” The sergeant’s hands might have been tied behind his back, but not his forehead. He crashed it down onto Abdullah’s cheek, which burst apart like a snowball hitting concrete.

  ***

  “Ooh, that’s a real nasty shiner you got there,” I said when the man’s eyelids fluttered open. In fact, it looked like he had a small polished black and purple bowling ball for a cheek. “Gonna be hard claiming you walked into a door with that one, buddy.”

  “Fuckin’ ‘ell,” the jihadist swore quietly as tweety birds and pain did a little synchronized swimming around his head.