“Did you know you were bleeding?”
“I was busy. How’s it going?”
“Not good.”
Wally appeared winded; a hundred small wounds slowed him, stopped him from reaching fully into his stroke. Jamie crawled ahead, his legs barely propelling him. He finished three laps behind LB. Torres noted his time. Still dripping, Jamie limped alongside the pool, urging Wally on.
Wally completed his final four laps; when he emerged from the pool, Jamie tossed him a towel. Torres scribbled while the two sat against the wall next to LB.
Torres let the clipboard loose in her lap. She twined her fingers over it, pressing her thumbs together.
“The numbers aren’t good enough.”
Jamie hung his head. Wally ground his palms into his eye sockets.
“I’m sorry, gentlemen.”
LB shot to his feet, flinging the bloodied towel against the wall.
“Then call it a pretest. We’ll do it again in a few days.”
Torres licked her lips, deciding whether to respond. A trickle warmed the back of LB’s arm. Wally motioned him to back off.
“Major?”
“Yes, Captain.”
“Are we close?”
“I can’t determine close. Just go or stay.”
“Maybe there’s something else.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Something else we can show you.”
LB bled on the tiles. Jamie tossed him back the towel he’d thrown.
“That’s bullshit, and you know it. How many times do we have to prove ourselves? Huh, Wally? This kid here.”
LB stabbed a hand at Jamie.
“He took rounds through both legs and got the job done. You went through a meat grinder and still captured that damn ship. Robey wasn’t even supposed to be on board. He saved all our asses and got killed for it.”
LB made no mention of his own role on the freighter.
“Next time you send us on a mission, Major, tag along. See for yourself. Then you can tell me what you know. Those numbers don’t mean shit. Never quit is what fucking counts, Major.”
“LB, sit down.”
“Nah, I’m going home.”
Torres matched LB’s glare, containing herself where he did not. She faced Wally.
“Suggestion?”
Wally stood, clearly worn out. Next to him, just as tired, Jamie rose, not because he knew what Wally might say but to have all three of them on their feet before Torres when he said it.
“LB’s right. Sixty meter underwater swim.”
Torres blinked, taking in the challenge. She set aside her clipboard and walked next to the pool where Wally had just dared himself to swim three lengths without surfacing. She kept her back turned long enough for LB to determine that it couldn’t be done. Sixty meters was longer than anything they’d had to do to qualify at Indoc8, ten meters more than the SEALs’ underwater swim at BUD/S school. Torres, who managed Special Ops teams every day, would know this.
Without a bleeding wing and a cut-up calf, LB could probably have gutted out fifty meters by the skin of his teeth. Wally and Jamie, too. But today, after a grueling PT test that all three of them had failed, not a chance.
Wally addressed the back of Torres’s head, her black ponytail.
“I’ll swim for the three of us.”
Torres stayed fixed on the pool. LB stomped around to confront her.
“I’ll do it. I got this.”
Torres raised her eyes from the water.
“No, Sergeant.” She pivoted. “Captain. In the water.”
“Thank you.”
LB insisted.
“This ain’t fair. He finished last, he’s beat.”
“That’s why he’s the one to do it. Sit down, Sergeant. Or stand. Captain, it’s on you.”
Wally climbed into the pool. Jamie and LB, pressing the towel to his shoulder, walked to the edge to stand over him. Jamie stayed erect on his bad legs. Some of the scabs on Wally’s back had softened during the swim and wept diluted blood.
LB took a knee. “Can you make it?”
“Can you?”
“Not a chance.”
“Then it might as well be me.”
“Yeah. Might as well.”
Wally lacked so much right now, the sunglasses and cool manner, even confidence. He reminded LB of the cadet he first met at the Academy seventeen years ago, the kid who followed him into the Rangers, then pararescue. He liked that kid.
Jamie said “Good luck” and stepped back.
Torres called “Ready.”
LB spoke soothingly, to calm Wally. “Listen. Long smooth strokes. Glide as much as you can.”
Wally tugged his swim goggles over his eyes.
Torres called “Set.”
“You got one shot.”
“Nothing new.”
“Roger that.”
Wally sucked in four fast, deepening breaths.
Torres gave the signal. “Go.”
Wally gulped a last lungful, ducked under, and pushed off the bottom. LB strode alongside while Jamie stayed in place. Under the surface, Wally flowed into the first strokes at a good rate, not rushed, frog-kicking between pulls. LB had to move at a good clip to keep up. Wally reached the wall with five strokes. LB checked his watch: twenty seconds, on target. Wally’s back trailed bloody wisps like smoke from an engine.
The silence in the pool area felt wrong for the stakes. LB began to chant, “Come on, come on.” Jamie joined in. Torres, too, was on her feet.
Wally spun around at the first turn, lunging off the wall. He pulled and coasted three times, steady, past the middle of the pool. Two more strokes brought him within range of the wall. Instead of gliding into the final turn, Wally stroked again.
He pushed off the wall for the final lap but didn’t coast forward as he should have. He took another stroke, then another, hurrying, not slipping through the water any longer but dragging himself, fighting the water. Wally released bubbles to ease the CO2 in his lungs, then burned up two more desperate strokes to pass the halfway point. Extending his arms for the next stroke, with just eight meters left, he was done.
Wally went into slow motion, clumsy and muddled. He spread his arms and legs, trying to push through the water one more time, and left them there. His momentum faded. He sank to the bottom four meters from the finish.
Torres spilled her clipboard with a clatter.
LB jumped in.
Wally lay spread-eagled, eyes open behind the goggles. LB lifted him by the armpits. Wally sagged heavily with no buoyancy, lungs empty.
Torres helped haul him out of the pool, flat on his back. Jamie reached under Wally’s shoulders to put him in a sitting position. Torres smacked him across the face.
“Wally. Wally. Wake up.”
Wally stared with unfixed eyes. LB moved the major aside. He lifted Wally’s chin, then slapped him again, harder than Torres, beneath his blind eyes.
“Wakey wakey.”
Wally gasped, jerking his head out of LB’s palm. His gaze revived and wandered for focus, then centered on LB.
“You blacked out.”
“No I didn’t.”
“You did.”
“Did I finish?”
“No. Gave it a hell of a shot.”
“How much?”
“One more stroke.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah.”
Torres stood erect, both hands covering her mouth. She turned away, retreating to the bench for her dropped clipboard.
Wally got to his feet, teetering while Jamie supported him.
“Major. I’m sorry.”
Torres cleared her throat. She spun on the three of them standing side by side.
“W
hat just happened?”
“Apparently, I passed out.”
“Why didn’t you come up for air?”
“Stubborn.”
Torres rattled her head. She hugged the clipboard as if to shut it out of the conversation.
“Did you know that was going to happen?”
“It seemed likely.”
The major surveyed them, Wally and LB slowly bleeding, Jamie on his last legs.
“I suppose it wouldn’t have mattered which of you was in the water.”
“No.”
LB chimed in.
“It’s how we train.”
“To drown?”
“To never quit. Ever.”
Torres threw an unmasked look of concern at Wally, then caught herself. She hid behind her hand, caressing her own forehead. She spoke before lowering the hand.
“Fine.”
Torres walked away from the pool with long strides.
Wally called after her.
“Fine what?”
The major tore the top sheet from her clipboard. She crumpled it and left it on the floor behind her.
* * *
7 Horn of Africa.
8 The pararescue indoctrination course conducted at Lackland AFB, Texas. Indoc is an intense ten-week physical training program. Graduates qualify for entry into the two-year pararescue Special Ops training program known as “the Pipeline” and “Superman School,” recognized as one of the most demanding training regimens in the military.
Chapter 3
Village of al-Husn
Ma’rib
Yemen
Arif shuffled in line on the dry road. In front of him the sandals of two hundred men, another hundred behind, took the same short strides. The eldest of the mourners, the deceased’s three gray-bearded brothers, led the way with their long walking sticks, and the procession moved at their aged pace.
Arif dressed as a Yemeni for the burial, in futa skirt and brown mushadda head wrap. In his belt he’d tucked an onyx-hilted janbiya, the short, curved ceremonial knife particular to Yemen, and tucked behind that a well-worn pocket Qur’an. At the beginning of the long, slow march, he’d unraveled a portion of the mushadda with others in line, to cover his mouth and nose against the dust and climbing sun.
The path to the cemetery wended through a quilt of croplands and sere open spaces. Terraced coffee trees and qat shrubs mingled with emerald pastures of barley grass. In the bare ranges, litter blew loose on the breeze, inevitable in a country used to tossing its refuse out the window, still unaccustomed to Western goods that did not decay. In the distant foothills, a patch of oil pumps nodded without cease.
Far ahead, the cloth-wrapped body of Shaykh Qasim Tujjar Ba-Jalal rode on the upraised hands of his seven sons, spelled by grandsons and tribal leaders. Shaykh Qasim had owned the house where Arif and Nadya lived. It was Qasim two years ago who’d granted the Saudi couple protection and sanctuary in al-Husn. Qasim found the building for Nadya’s office. She’d supported the women’s clinic from her own funds for the first year and a half, until her family froze her accounts, then Qasim found the money. The old man had never met Nadya, but every woman in the shaykh’s household and those of his sons deemed her wise and kind. When Qasim died last evening after prayers, Arif had been reading emails, checking his traps. Nadya soaked in a scented bath to clean away the odors of the day’s sick. A knock came at the door to tell Arif that the shaykh’s grave was being dug by lamplight. Mourning prayers would be held in the square at dawn.
Arif kept his eyes lowered and his face masked, speaking to no one in the snail’s-pace line. Though Nadya was well known and admired in the town’s markets, by the water wells and pumps, all the places for women, very few Yemenis knew Arif. He left it that way. There were other Saudis in Ma’rib and the Wadi Hadhramaut, other expatriate mujahideen like him, plus a dozen old al-Qaeda who’d escaped in a prison break in Sana’a years ago. Arif would gain nothing by associating with them. They were either tired jihadis who couldn’t go home because of blood on their hands or young radicals seeking to dip their hands in more. Arif lived without attention now, anonymously, with no urge to be found or thought notable at all. And his enemy was not so numerous as the enemies of the others, only the Al Saud.
The village grave site lay east of al-Husn on the cusp of the desert, ringed by date palm trees. The large Ba-Jalal family plot sprawled in the shade, fortunate for the imam and family but sunny and harsh for the rest of the crowd. Arif loitered on the outer edge of the men pressing close to the imam’s final words. He kept his head bent and let himself be present, away from his computer.
The funeral prayer finished quickly; most of what was said over Qasim had already been intoned in the square after dawn. He’d died in his mid-eighties, still a powerful man, father of seven living sons, outlived three wives. He was being buried a shaykh of the Abidah tribe, pious and faithful to the Prophet.
When the words were done and the imam dropped his arms, Qasim was lowered into his grave without a coffin, on his right side to face Mecca. Working fast before the shade shifted, servants filled in the hole. The three hundred mourners began to file past the sons who arrayed themselves shoulder to shoulder.
Arif moved in the last quarter of the line. He’d only visited Qasim three times in his two years here. He’d seen the brothers more frequently but rarely spoke to them on the streets, in the souk or the mosque. He passed the time in the slow line rubbing a thumb over the keys of his cell phone hidden in a pocket of his futa.
When at last he stepped into the slanting shade of the fig trees, Arif unwrapped the mushadda from his face. He walked with both hands crossed over the janbiya, a pose of grief. Passing the grave, he tossed in a bit of broken pottery, which an old man in line was handing out, a reminder of the frailness of life. Qasim’s grave would have no flowers or headstone, only a small stone marker bearing his name and these bits of clay.
The first and oldest of the sons greeted Arif with a flaccid hand, palm downward, as if Arif was expected to kiss it. His white hand was a sign of Yemeni wealth; this qabil did not work in the fields.
“I will remember Allah and pray for your father.”
“Shakkran.”
The son withdrew his hand to extend it to the next in line. Arif sidestepped to the next brother, and the next, each of the seven progressively younger.
The last one dressed in finery beyond his brothers or any mourner. His black turban gleamed like coal. His hands, the softest of the seven, reached to Arif from the belled sleeves of his ebon robe. Gems studded the sheath of his janbiya beneath a hilt of rhino horn, tucked into a belt stitched in green, silver, and gold.
Arif had seen this youngest son around the village. He drove a car resplendent like his clothing, a dark Mercedes SUV. Unlike his brothers, he kept his beard trimmed to a goatee and wore no rings. Without gray or wrinkles, he was likely in his early thirties, the tallest of the brothers, as tall as Arif. The man covered Arif’s hand with both of his own.
“I will remember Allah and pray for your father.”
“Shakkran, Arif al-Bahaziq.”
The son let Arif’s hand slide free.
“You know my name.”
“You were my father’s tenant. You are now mine. I should know your name. Walk with me.”
“There are others still in line.”
“I have six brothers. My father will be mourned well enough. Come.”
The last shovels of dirt fell on the shaykh, and more shards of pottery were tossed into his grave. The youngest son turned Arif by the elbow.
“I am Ghalib Tujjar Ba-Jalal.”
“Merhabba.”
“Merhabba, Arif.”
Ghalib rested his hand in the crook of Arif’s elbow as they strolled away from the graveside. At their backs, more men of al-Husn gave their condolenc
es, while the servants tamped the grave level with the earth.
Ghalib patted Arif’s arm.
“Muhammad tells us the services due from one Muslim to another are six. If you meet him, greet him. If he invites you, accept. If he asks your advice, give it. If he sneezes, tell him God bless you. If he falls sick, visit him. And if he dies, walk in his funeral.”
“I did not come from duty. I admired your father. I am grateful to him.”
“Of course.”
Ghalib stopped at a fig tree to pluck two ripe fruits. He handed one to Arif.
“These are now my brother Ahmed’s trees. My brother Salah owns the fields there to the east, and my brother Hussein owns the irrigation machines. And so on, you understand. We are many, thanks to the will of God.”
“And you own my house.”
“Your street, yes. My father was more wealthy than people knew. Oil has come to much of our lands.”
“Subhanallah.”
Arif and Ghalib bit into the sweet figs. Neither spoke until the fruits were eaten. Ghalib put his hands before his face to utter a prayer of thanks, then clapped.
“And so, Arif.”
“Yes.”
“You may not know this, but my father took an interest in you.”
“I cannot imagine why.”
“Modesty is the true wealth. I like you.”
“I’m honored.”
“I hope you will do me one more service and pay me a visit. I believe we have much in common. Much we can speak about.”
“I’m a simple man. I live quietly.”
“Yes.” Ghalib spread his great black sleeves. “Exactly.”
Arif folded his hands once more at his waist, over the janbiya. He inclined his head, a suppliant posture. In Saudi, he’d had twenty years’ experience of speaking to those considered his betters.
“With respect, I am not seeking friends.”
Ghalib tucked his thumbs into his ornate belt. He bent backward, lifting his goateed chin. He laughed like a rich man.
“Nor am I.”
Ghalib quelled his glee. He reached into a pocket for a small gold case, to extract one calling card.
The Empty Quarter Page 5
