by Jaspre Bark
He was transported to a secure facility in the back of a van with no lights and no windows. Not even the guards there were allowed to know its location. The US government wanted full deniability on its existence.
They kept the suspects who were brought to him in cages too small to stand up or sit down in. At first they were just glad to be out of them. Their relief didn't last long once Cortez's got his hands on them. What did seem to last was their inability to tell him anything. No matter how much pain he inflicted.
To begin with Cortez wondered if his paymasters were testing him. Did they distrust his loyalty? Were they trying to see if he could tell a genuine terrorist from a loudmouthed idiot? The people he had worked with before always knew something, even the nuns and the priests. They could usually call up one tiny bit of information to make the pain stop. The name of a neighbour with sympathies, a deal they'd heard about in the street, anything. The suspects Cortez were sent weren't even aware of what they were supposed to be telling him.
Neither were the officers Cortez reported to. At first they wanted to know about the network of secret underground caves that the suspects used. When Cortez failed to get even a shred of evidence out of his subjects, and when the troops on the ground in Afghanistan also failed to turn up anything, command changed their minds.
Next they wanted to learn everything they could about the suspects' terror cells and how they were organised. Who the suspects reported to, how they were recruited, where they met and what they were planning. When, once again, Cortez was unable to uncover any information of note, the officer in charge starting asking for things on the strangest of whims.
Finally they decided they wanted to create double-agents and to get some of the suspects to turn. They were going to do this by getting the suspects to foreswear their religion and convert to Christianity. Cortez was ordered to get them to turn their back on Islam and accept Jesus as their personal saviour. This was where he met his biggest failure yet.
Given enough pain most people will say and do just about anything you want them to. Including spit on their religious icons and call their god a cock-sucking motherfucker. But not the Muslims Cortez worked on. They would sooner give up their lives than their faith. Cortez had never come across such conviction and strength of purpose. It actually earned the poor wretches his respect and grudging admiration.
One of the men they were holding was an Imam. A much revered holy man, who was a great inspiration to the other prisoners. If Cortez could break him, the officers reasoned, then the other men would soon fall into line.
Cortez had worked over some tough bastards in his time but no-one had ever held out on him like the Imam did. He was easily into his sixties but he took everything that Cortez did to him and never gave an inch.
Cortez changed tactics. He decided to learn a little something about the Imam's faith, so he could have something to use against him. As he tore off the Imam's finger nails, worked heated knives into his nerve endings and broke the Imam's toe bones to grind together the jagged ends, he questioned the teachings of Islam. Slowly it dawned on Cortez where the Imam got his strength and endurance. It was his faith. Cortez had never seen anything so powerful.
After a few sessions Cortez forgot about the torture altogether and just asked questions, tending to the damage he had earlier inflicted on the Imam. He now came to see the man as wiser, braver and more saintly than anyone else he had ever met. The Imam's words felt the same to Cortez as water feels to a man about to die of thirst. Something ugly, black and misshapen began to come to life inside Cortez. Something he had long thought discarded. His soul.
Finally Cortez asked the Imam how Allah, in all His perfect love for mankind, could allow a man as devout as the Imam to fall into the hands of a person like Cortez. The Imam smiled and said: "Because He knew that you, above all people, needed Him the most. The evil that we do and the harm that befalls us does not come from Allah. We ourselves are responsible for that. The loving grace of redemption, that comes from Allah alone."
Cortez felt something wet run down his cheeks. He thought at first that he must have accidentally cut himself, but when he put his hand to his face he found it was tears. He hadn't cried since he was a child. Now he couldn't stop himself. He had a lifetime's worth of tears to shed over a lifetime's worth of sins.
He fell to his knees in front of the Imam and offered him his knife. When the Imam declined he held the knife to his own throat and offered the Imam his life in recompense for what he had done. The Imam stood slowly, in spite of the pain, and took the knife from Cortez.
He placed his hands on Cortez. "Do you bear witness that there is but one God and his name is Allah?"
"Yes."
"And do you bear witness that the Prophet Mohammed is the messenger of Allah?"
"I do."
The Imam told Cortez to go and shower. Then to leave the compound and to do no more harm to his Muslim brothers.
Cortez stood in the staff shower. The water rarely came out hot, but this time it was ice cold. It didn't matter. Cortez was washing away his former life of sin. The shower was a declaration of faith. He was stepping over a line into a new life. He left the shower and walked out of the compound. No-one bothered to stop him. The world seemed as though it had been created anew. Everything was golden and full of the divine grace of Allah.
Cortez hired a boat and sailed across the Gulf of Mexico. He left it adrift a mile off shore and swam to the coast of Florida. Then he went to pray at the first Mosque he could find. Two weeks later, on the run as an illegal alien, he discovered that although he had never met anyone from a terrorist organisation, he was listed as one of the most wanted members of Al Qaeda.
"Are you out of your mind?" said Greaves, as Linda stretched a line of wire between two crates of high explosive. "Do you know how volatile gelignite is?"
"Not as volatile as seven crazed Klan boys with guns. I merely chose the lesser of two evils."
"It could go off at any moment, you've only got to make the slightest wrong movement." Linda had noticed that Greaves got real sweaty when things didn't go his way. "Will you at least take the belt off?"
"Not until I've set this wire. And me wearing this gelignite was the only thing that got us out of a cave full of pistol packing maniacs intent on killing us."
"Yes, and you left them surrounded by crates of weapons and ammo. It doesn't matter that you took their weapons, any second now they're going to get up off the floor and arm themselves to the teeth. Then who do you think they'll come looking for?"
"So why do you think I haven't taken the gelignite off?" said Linda, answering Greaves' no-brainer with another. "And hold that torch steady. This is even more volatile, especially if I can't see what I'm doing."
She looped the wire around the pin of a grenade and gently pulled it taut. The wire ran across the entrance to the side chamber where they had found all the high explosive. She set it shin high to avoid detection. "We better grab the others and get out of here. We'll be safe if we use that secret entrance you showed us won't we?"
"I doubt it," said Greaves as they ran back to the corridor where Cortez and Anna were waiting in the office. Linda left her belt of gelignite back with the tripwire.
Greaves poked his head round the door of the office and shouted for Cortez and Anna to follow them as quickly as they could. Linda figured that when Frankie and his Klan boys did arm themselves and come looking for them, they'd split up and cover as many tunnels as they could. This meant that one of them was bound to stumble through the side chamber with the explosives and trip the wire. It was just a matter of time.
They had no idea how long they had. As they reached the fissure Linda heard voices approaching in the tunnels below. The Klan boys were gaining on them. What was it about Greaves and Cortez? All she seemed to be doing since she met them was running from people intent on killing her.
They were only a few metres from the entrance when the tripwire set off the grenade, which set off every o
ther high explosive packed in the chamber.
It started as a low rumble vibrating through the tunnel they were crawling along. Then came a searing blast of heat and suddenly the rock around them seemed to be screaming as the tectonic structure of the whole cave system started collapsing.
Everything shook. Linda felt as though she was moving in every direction at once. The seemingly immoveable nature of the stone which surrounded her for miles just melted. Nothing was fixed. Everyone screamed but the din of the earth quaking drowned out the sound.
And finally it ended.
They had all bounced quite a distance back down the fissure. Up ahead of them a cave-in had blocked the entrance. Cortez crawled up towards the rubble and started to move it with his hands. "It's alright. I think I can shift it."
They crawled up to join him, dragging the rubble away. An hour and a half of sweating, cursing and scraping the skin off every knuckle later they finally saw daylight.
It was raining when they crawled out of the cave mouth. By some dumb luck Bertha hadn't been buried by the landslide set off by the explosion. Her armour plating looked sleek and welcoming with the rain running off it. Linda couldn't believe how relieved she was to see her baby.
It might be dumb to get all emotional over a big bus like Bertha but Linda had no family left, no network of friends, no-one she could depend on. Bertha was the one thing she had for protection. And she was a beautiful juggernaut. A dream to handle and a danger to anything that got in her way.
"So," said Linda. "All that coke and all those guns we left down there?"
"Buried," said Greaves. "There's no way we'll get them back. That much explosive would have brought down half the cave system. We're lucky to have gotten out alive after your reckless stunt."
"We wouldn't have gotten out at all without my reckless stunt. I hope your little memory stick was worth risking all our lives."
"And a hell of a lot more," said Greaves patting his pocket. "This is going to show us the way to salvation."
Cortez waited for a moment by the entrance he had cleared in the rubble while the others returned to the vehicle. He was not pleased that they lost such a large haul when the cave collapsed.
The guns and drugs could have been bartered for a lot of things. Greaves seemed to think that they got the most important item though. Cortez trusted he was right.
Cortez was pleased to leave Tannenbaum's desiccated corpse lying down there, covered by the ruins of the Company base. He felt as though a part of his life he deeply regretted was now safely buried and laid to rest.
CHAPTER FIVE
This was not a custom of Cheveyo's people, this was a Cheyenne custom. The ritual was to take place in Cheyenne territory between a Hopi and a Navajo. Such was the blurring of the tribal ways in the days following the Great Purification, as the faithful awaited the Fifth Age of Man.
Cheveyo had been challenged. He had not accepted to save face or defend his territory, the usual reasons a brave faced the challenge of the Four Arrows. Cheveyo had accepted to safeguard the Fifth Age of Man and to win back the soul of his leader. Cheveyo believed Hiamovi was a forebear of Pahanna, the White Brother of Hopi prophecy.
The Hopi, which means people of peace and truth, were considered the record keepers of the Native Americans. Cheveyo had been taught since an infant about the Tiponi, the four sacred stone tablets given to the Hopi by Massauu - the Great Spirit - which contained nine prophecies. When the Chief, who was guardian of the Tiponi, fell into evil ways his two sons stole away with the tablets to protect them. The elder brother walked east towards the rising son and the younger brother, Pahanna - which means White Brother - walked west.
When his father, the corrupt Chief, died, the elder brother returned with his tablets and the prophecies they contained. Everything they foretold came to pass. From the arrival of the white man, and the roads and railways he built, to the great plague that wiped him out. This was the time known as the Great Purification. The prophecies state that the Earth will be purified of the evil ones and two forebears will come forward to bring the people together to welcome the return of Pahanna bearing the lost tablets. This will then bring about the Fifth Age of Man, a time of great peace, prosperity and spiritual awakening.
The prophecies also stated that even after the Great Purification, Pahanna may not return. If man fell back on his old ways of greed, corruption and hunger for power then all would be lost. Cheveyo saw all those qualities in Ahiga, in everything he did and everything he said. What's more he saw how Ahiga's ideas impressed Hiamovi. To keep Hiamovi from squandering his destiny, and to ensure the Fifth Age would come about, Cheveyo had accepted the challenge.
As the sun rose Cheveyo stood by Ahiga's side on a flat plain surrounded by woodland, on a Cheyenne reservation in Montana. Behind them Hiamovi and the inner council of the United Tribal Nations bore witness to the challenge.
The rules were simple. Four arrows are fired and the challengers race to where each arrow lands. The first arrow is fired by a neutral party. Whoever reaches that arrow first will fire the next one.
Before the contest the challengers both choose two sectors of land. They prepare hidden traps and snares within these sectors to catch their opponent out. When one of them reaches an arrow before their opponent, that brave fires the next arrow into their own sector, to lure their opponent into the trap they have prepared. It is a contest of stealth and cunning as much as strength and courage.
Cheveyo said a silent prayer to Massauu, the Great Spirit, as Avonaco, the neutral Cheyenne brave, drew back his bowstring and aimed the first arrow. Cheveyo asked to be as swift as the deer, as wise as the owl and as cunning as Coyote.
Cheveyo and Ahiga leapt forward the minute they heard the bow string twang. Cheveyo had stolen a slight lead on Ahiga by the time the arrow had completed its arc and hit the ground. Although he was probably ten years older than the Navajo, his body was leaner and less heavily muscled, built for speed not combat.
He increased that lead by tiny increments as they advanced on the fallen arrow. There it was, sticking out of the ground by another bow and arrow, where the plain gave way to the woods. With his heart pounding and the air burning his lungs, Cheveyo reached it first. He grabbed the bow, aimed the arrow into his first sector, deep in the woodland, and let it fly.
Ahiga crashed into him as he let the arrow go and held up his hands with a mocking smile as if to say it was an accident. Cheveyo knew it was an attempt to ruin his aim.
Ahiga charged into the woods. Cheveyo followed, content to hang back and stay on his tail so as not to give away the exact location of the arrow. As soon as he could, Cheveyo lost Ahiga and circled round to the safe route he had planned.
Padding quietly through the trees without disturbing the undergrowth he made his way to a small clearing. In the centre stood the trunk of a tall conifer tree. The top part of the tree had been chopped off about fifteen feet from the ground. The arrow Cheveyo fired stuck out of the top, right in the centre of the trunk's rings.
The remaining branches that stuck out of the trunk had been cut back to the length of a few inches to make hand holds. As Cheveyo entered the clearing Ahiga sprang out of the undergrowth and pushed past him, knocking him to the ground.
Ahiga leaped and grabbed hold of the lowest branch, hauling himself up and reaching for higher hand holds. He made his way around the trunk as he got closer to the top and the arrow.
Seconds from the top Ahiga swung himself up to a branch that came away in his hand. He flailed madly and reached out for another handhold. That too came away as did the other branch he was hanging on to. They had been sabotaged to break under his weight.
Ahiga fell and hit the ground in the exact spot that Cheveyo had planned, crashing through a light covering of saplings, twigs and loose dirt into a ten foot pit with sheer earth walls. The fall knocked the air out of him. He tried in vain to climb out but the soil of the walls just crumbled and he slipped back down with every attempt.
Cheveyo grabbed hold of the lower branches and hauled himself up by the safe hand holds that he had carefully memorised. He picked up the bow and the third arrow that were lying next to the second.
"Well help me out then," Ahiga called up to Cheveyo, before he pulled back the string of the bow.
"And let you continue with the challenge? Would that be wise?" There was nothing in the rules that said a challenger should free his opponent from a trap.
"It would be fair and honest. I thought the Hopi were a people of peace and truth. Or is that just a lie you tell, to keep your squaws and their mothers happy?"
"I will let you continue," said Cheveyo. "But not because you call the honour of my people into question. We of the Bear clan have a tale. It concerns a snake and a hare. While the hare was feeding on a root, the snake crawled through the long grass and made ready to pounce. Misfortune struck the snake however and a dead branch fell from a tree, pinning him to the ground. The snake called out to the hare to use his powerful back legs to kick away the dead branch and free him. The snake promised he'd be so grateful he would never harm another hare. The hare was a kindly soul and instead of running he came to the snake's aid and kicked away the branch, whereupon the freed snake opened his jaws and swallowed the hare whole.
"The hare's soul went to heaven and Massauu the Great Spirit called the hare to him. He asked the hare why he had freed the snake and placed himself in danger. The hare replied that if he had not freed the snake then the sin of murder by neglect would have fallen on his shoulders, and that would have meant not joining the Great Spirit in the afterlife. 'The snake has enjoyed a meal,' the hare said. 'But I will enjoy an eternity with my creator, which is a far greater prize'. For this reason the Great Spirit exults the hare above all other animals. Only the hare was brave enough to do the right thing in spite of the danger he was in."
