Escape from Baghdad!

by Saad Hossain

  Dagr counted the minutes, and then reflexively ran over probable speeds and distances, pinpointing on his mental map where they were. Such were the tools of the mathematician, but the numbers comforted him little. Too soon, they stopped on the street, as Hassan Salemi’s men voiced their objections. The dull man in the cab shrugged, face closed, ignoring the jabbering of monkeys, his hands repeatedly making the same motion: open the gate, open the gate. Eventually, the color of his skin and the latent power of Blackwater dented even the Shi’a confidence in their own barricade.

  The truck rolled slowly and the driver honked twice, as previously agreed. Hamid and Kinza were at the doors, jacking them open, and Dagr found himself stumbling forward, out of some sick compulsion. It was like the one time he had gone bungee jumping in Dubai. The sunlight hit him and he staggered down like a drunk, the M4 carbine semiautomatic cradled in his arms. His knee banged against the lip of the fender, and he howled in excruciating pain. The truck eased away and he collapsed to one knee, off balance, his helmet slick with sweat. His peripheral vision was shit. He heard the other two landing several meters behind him, exposed.

  Salemi’s men were staring at them, aghast, momentarily frozen around their two round café tables, spending those precious miniseconds trying to register. Dagr saw one putting out his cigarette into a full mug of tea and felt an odd pang for ruining his morning. He remembered abruptly what he was supposed to be doing; his finger automatically tightened on the trigger, and the M4 started roaring in his hand. Bullets sprayed into the ground, hitting nothing, and then the vicious recoil lifted the muzzle up, and he saw the tables being hit, upturned, wood and glass flying. Perhaps he hit something, he wasn’t sure, but from behind he could hear the whine of single shot pistols, as Kinza and Hamid, kneeling, did their business with more efficacy. Men ducked away. Guns roared.

  There was return fire from somewhere in the doorway. Aghast, Dagr remembered suddenly that the bear-man in armor was nowhere in sight. He must have ducked inside for some reason. This plan was shit, he thought, even as something hit him with the force of a mule-kick, punching him back on his ass, the M4 spinning away. The air whooshed out of his trunk. He lay on the ground, paralyzed, eyes circling around floor level to see the tarmac littered with cigarette butts and slow pools of blood leaking from other unfortunates.

  The bear man stood in the doorway, shotgun in hand, calmly reloading. Dagr stared at him, willing someone to kill him, but perhaps they were already dead. The plan seemed sadly awry. He tried to make some effort to move, but his arms and legs were not responding and it seemed pointless in any case.

  The bear man stepped forward, shotgun draped over his arm and pointing down, close enough that Dagr could see the twin barrels. In this last instant, Dagr felt an intense desire to live a few minutes longer, for some miracle reprieve, and the still rational parts of his mind marveled at this pure animal instinct for had he not settled his accounts with life many months ago? Where then, did this yearning to breathe come from, this terrible fear, even as the bear fingers tightened on the trigger.

  There was a loud crack surprisingly far away, and Dagr, who was a mass of pain, could not tell what further damage there was, until he saw the bear man pitching backwards, a mass of smoke coming from his chest.

  Abruptly, a surge of adrenalin cleared away some of the fog, and feeling returned to his extremities. Mikhail. He couldn’t help mapping the trajectory of the bullet and knew that the librarian had somehow saved him. Then it occurred to him that the bear man was still alive, himself wearing Kevlar, and it was now a slow contest of who could rise first. Dagr crawled to his belly and then half slithered away toward the edge of the building then remembered that he was supposed to tank, that Kinza and Hamid were fighting without the benefit of armor or second chances. Indecision gripped him and he ended up sprawled on the ground against a half-wrecked table, behind which one enemy was noisily dying.

  He wanted to take his helmet off but his fingers were stiff and the strap too tight. His chest throbbed. The bruise must be something to see. My ribs are cracked for sure. He laughed weakly, tried to vomit, ended up spitting ineffectually into the dust.

  To his alarm, the bear man showed signs of fight. He had already recovered to a semistanding position when Kinza finally reached him. Dagr saw the shot gun pump, and then his right paw disappeared into a fine mist of blood and bone as Kinza shot him at almost point blank range.

  “Get him in the doorway,” Kinza said, cool. He was talking to Hamid, who skulked over to Dagr.

  “There’s men on the roof, you fool,” Hamid spat. “Do you want to get shot?”

  Dragged unceremoniously into the hallway, Dagr saw Kinza bent over the bear man, his pistol burning a tattoo into his forehead. The bear man was moaning incoherently, holding up the ruin of one massive arm.

  “Hamid get to work,” Kinza said, waving him over.

  “What you want to know?”

  “Where is Salemi? How many men inside the building, and where,” Kinza said, reloading his Makarovs. “And Xervish.”

  “Easy.”

  Dagr craned his neck, went dizzy, closed his eyes, and then reopened them. He regretted doing so, because Hamid had the bear man’s head in some kind of vise and was probing with two long bent sticks.

  “Pressure points inside the face,” Hamid said, as he worked.

  “Are you alright?” Kinza extended a hand to Dagr, picking him up to a slightly wobbly crouch.

  “Shot in the chest.” Dagr poked stiff fingers into the mangled plates in his vest, and then hissed in pain as they got scorched.

  “You took it well,” Kinza said, poking his head around the corridor. There were muffled sounds over there, and the bolt actions of AK47s being cocked. “Hmm, what we don’t want is a kind of siege here.”

  There was a loud shriek from the vicinity of Hamid. The right arm of the bear man shot up, fingers grasping, and then was still after some muffled swings of a gun butt.

  “Shit, sorry,” Hamid called up. “He’s dead. All he said was Salemi is out with the peacock.”

  “What the fuck, Hamid?” Kinza said. “You’ve crossed the line to absolutely fucking useless now.”

  “Weak heart,” Hamid said, irritated. “The fat fuck had a weak heart. Just spasmed on me.”

  “I thought you were some kind of pro,” Kinza said, poking his head out again. This time there was shouting at the other end of the corridor, and a gun barrel stuck out cautiously.

  “AK47s,” Dagr said. “They’ve got us pinned. Their reinforcements will be coming up the front soon too. Is it too soon to get the fuck out of here?”

  “It’s more art than science,” Hamid said. “There isn’t a fucking textbook for this, you know.”

  “Actually, I thought Cheney might have made one,” Dagr said. “I remember reading something about water-boarding manuals.”

  “You ladies better take cover,” Kinza said.

  He had a grenade out and was holding it rather casually.

  “Cover? Where the fuck do you see cover?”

  “Use the bear guy, quick.”

  “What fucking bear guy?” Hamid howled.

  Dagr got the mountainous corpse up just in time, as Kinza’s grenade went skittering down the floor. His throw had a bit of side spin on it that made it bounce against the wall and roll a few feet into the open doorway presumably jammed with enemy combatants. Said combatants, upon seeing this, tried to kick it back as evidenced by a sandaled foot swinging out. Unfortunately this proto footballer’s technique was amateur at best, and he ended up bouncing it directly off the wall back into his own shin, whereupon it exploded.

  Concussive waves flattened Dagr beneath the bear man. Something hard hit him on the forehead, making his head rattle inside the helmet. He looked down to see the sandaled foot in his lap, blown off neatly at the ankle.

  “He’ll never play again,” Kinza said. He rushed in, Makarovs out.

  “The fat fuck had a pre-existing condit
ion,” Hamid said, following. “Anyone could see that.”

  “Am I supposed to tank still?” Dagr asked, worried.

  The room was a small office, four desks, computers, and a lot of filing but was now a charnel house of grenade shrapnel and blood. The footballer had been blown to pieces. Three others were in various stages of disrepair. As they entered, Kinza delivered the coup de grace to two of them.

  “You want another shot?” He motioned Hamid toward a bearded Fanatic type office worker cringing in a fetal position.

  “Look, I didn’t have a stable work environment,” Hamid said, crouching down.

  “You ok, professor?” Kinza seemed unruffled.

  “This helmet is killing me,” Dagr said. “We should be heading downward. The probable response time for reinforcement is about fifteen minutes.”

  “It was my first go,” Hamid said. “I’ve been out of practice. You can’t judge me on my first go.”

  “Find out how many soldiers in the building,” Kinza said.

  Hamid, muttering, had his ear to the office Fanatic, and his hands in various places. There were needles in his fingers. He looked like a mad acupuncturist. The conversation between the two was terse and seemingly one sided.

  “He’s an accounts clerk,” Hamid said finally. “Takes care of ration cards and shit for Salemi. Thinks there are six or seven soldiers in the top floors. Although sometimes there are two dozen or so if the local cadre is reporting.”

  “So what is it, six men or 24?”

  More hushed conversation, accompanied by squelching sounds, and sharp grunts of what could be high-pitched agony, thankfully muffled by the woolen gag Hamid had thoughtfully included in his field kit.

  “He’s saying he doesn’t know. The armed men meet on the higher floors and don’t really come down here,” Hamid said.

  “You’re not impressing me,” Kinza said. He moved over to the whimpering accountant. “Where is the prisoner?”

  “What?” The man spat out blood.

  “The prisoner. Xervish. Where is he?”

  Hamid applied some pressure.

  “Basement…still alive.”

  “Good,” Kinza said. “How did you find him?”

  “I don’t know…informant.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You must have paid him.”

  “No payment!” The man screamed, as Hamid did something clever. “No payment! I’d know. It was free. I remember that. No payment. Some old man.”

  “Old man? Give me more.”

  “A gift,” the clerk said. “Imam said it was a gift, from the Old Man. I…arrgh…I know nothing else. I just keep the numbers.”

  “Er, I think I hear people coming.” Dagr was craning his head around like an alien because the helmet was too big, and his ears were ringing from the explosion in any case.

  “Ok let’s move,” Kinza said.

  Hamid shot the clerk. “Well I don’t want him moaning on like that.”

  Another room, a disheveled office in which a single man was cowering under his desk, mumbling prayers. This irritated Kinza because he broke stride to shoot the man point blank in the back of the head, covering himself with gore in the process, and coating Dagr with a fair bit too.

  “You’ll have to wash the Kevlar before giving it back,” Hamid said. “Getting blood out is a bitch.”

  “What the fuck was he praying for?” Kinza asked, mystified, as they broke into another little corridor. “I had a fucking gun.”

  A narrow stairway down and they ran into two men sprinting up, both armed with revolvers. Literally ran into, for it was a blind corner. Dagr bowled into them and in his panicked state tripped over the steps, sending everyone tumbling back. He landed heavily on top of a beard.

  “You got one, finally,” Hamid said.

  “What?”

  “You broke his neck.” Hamid kicked the beard twitching beneath him.

  Kinza was pistol whipping the second man in calm, economic one-two movements.

  “Stop it. Stop it,” Hamid said. “He’s dead. You’re ruining the Ernst Thaelmann.”

  Dagr scrambled away from the dead beard. He had pissed his Djalleba, causing an awful stink. He blundered forward into a thick wooden door reinforced with iron bars.

  “Guys,” he said. “I’ve found the dungeon.”

  24: DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS

  “SEVENTEEN PIECES.” DAGR DID THE COUNT, AND THEN THREW UP in the corner.

  Seventeen pieces and a body still alive, hooked into a fairly newish Japanese life support unit. A head lolled on the cot, earless, tongueless, noseless, something barely human, a lone eye. An inventory of parts, lined up neatly in jars, five fingers of the left hand, the square palm, the left forearm; the left foot, the left shin, up to the knee; the right foot; a single eye; a nose; a shriveled tongue. Ears floating like petals in the brine. A scattering of teeth. A mind long fled.

  “It is incredible that he is still alive,” Hamid said. He was being careful. “The man is expert.”

  Kinza was white faced, drawn tight. He seemed incapable of speech.

  “Shall I shut it down?” Hamid asked.

  “He’s still alive.” Dagr looked at the wretch and doubted the veracity of his words. Yet the chest rose and fell in shallow breaths. The animal still struggled feebly in the rib cage.

  “The mind cannot survive this kind of thing,” Hamid said quietly. “He will die from the trauma soon, perhaps two or three days. The pain is constant. It is cruel to revive him.”

  They stood for several moments, looking to Kinza for direction. He stood hunched over the body, shaking. Tears coursed down his cheeks, fell on the misshapen half face beneath him; the single roving eye stirred beneath the lid, a restless sentinel. Dagr stared at his friend and felt an absurd urge to shoot him in the back of the head now, while he was vulnerable. It seemed to him they would perhaps never get another chance, that Kinza was minutes from becoming enraged, not the irrational simmering anger he had for humanity in general, but a far worse, specific rage, which would unleash some kind of holocaust. He marveled that if he had the courage, he could end this stupidity right now, sink them all into oblivion.

  Where do these thoughts come from? Am I prescient now? Near death, were these unhallowed gifts coming from God? I should have died long ago. I could have taken my own life. Was it cowardice that stayed me? Is there a difference between suicide and murder?

  Dagr, coward at heart, could only stare dumbly, stutter stop the old numb hesitation that dogged his life. The bed swam before him, the slow drip poisoning Xervish with life. They’re keeping this boy alive. Would it be a sin to end him? One of them would, soon. And they would take the body and the parts and bury him perhaps if they fought loose. The huddled body on the white sheets, the travesty of medical care, he looked so small, like a child. Dark memories froze him in time, his daughter in her school uniform, skipping ahead of him, curls flying, her book bag in his hand, unreasonably heavy, the cramp in his shoulder, a twinge in his knee, the signs of age, and he remarked the peculiar contentment he had felt then, that almost-wisdom of becoming old in his mind.

  One-two-three-four

  Get that finger off the floor

  Five-six-seven-eight

  Get that thumb off the gate

  Fire and heat and blinding light. It was darkness that brought peace. There was nothing good about fire, heat, and blinding light. Whose bomb was it, who knew, who cared? Something inside him gibbered I wasn’t there I wasn’t there I wasn’t there.

  The car lifted like a matchbox in a whoosh of sound. Books flew from his hand, the strap torn, charred, his hand miraculously unmarked. He saw her head snap back, the body arcing up, hair flailing, pastel blue sky. He felt the sound of blood drumming in his ears, and too much light in his eyes.

  And then the hospital, the sheets red and then brown and then white again. Of course they took her to the hospital, and the doctor spoke to him like a human because he w
as a professor, an educated man, and his wife staring into space was pretty, with her wild eyes and knotted fingers. They changed the sheets to take away the blood, and there was the acrid cut of disinfectant and the pan with some parts of her gathered, the shoe, the leg—no point attaching it back, although the doctor murmured in his ear that he could do something to tidy up, so he could take the body back with dignity. Family, they said, call your family. This is my family. This is it. It’s over.

  White sheets and disinfectant, it lingered in the cesspit of his mind, crowding his nights. The sibilant breath of Xervish drew him back. He saw the stark lines of Kinza’s face, the desolation contained within. Cut off. Unmoored. We are all the same now. Unconnected links, adrift in time. Ghosts, lurking. God has taken back whatever grace he gave us. We have been removed from the tribes of humanity and now flounder purposeless.

  He thought that he knew why Hamid followed now, why he himself continued to march. Kinza drew them with the strength of his purpose, with that loose promise that there was a cause hidden somewhere, some reason for their existence. And now Dagr thought with sinking heart that perhaps it was all a myth, that Kinza perhaps was as lost as the rest of them, his fury empty, a dashing of tides against the sand.

  Heavy footfalls drummed above, the rough shouts of warriors trying to impose order.

  “They come,” Hamid said, finally. “We’re trapped.”

  “We are where we need to be,” Kinza said after a moment. He pulled out grenades from his bag, two, three of them.

  “What are you going to do?” Hamid asked. “Kill us all?”

  “Tell me, Hamid, what kind of questioning occasions the removal of seventeen body parts?”

  “None,” Hamid said. “This is…something else.”

  “How long did it take?” Kinza asked. “In your professional opinion?”

  “Two to three days,” Hamid said. “Kinza, I was an interrogator. We extracted information using threats and pain. Most of the time fear was enough. This is far beyond anything I have ever seen or heard of.”