Damage Control (19 page)

Fidel appeared silently, inching his way into position next to Alan. Alan pointed at the kneeling man. Now there was another, just visible farther down the road.

“What the fuck?” Fidel whispered, bringing his rifle to bear on the road.

“How’s Harry?”

“He’s solid. Nothing up there. I thought you might be dry—came to help.”

“Thanks.”

Someone to the north of their position yelled a long phrase, words well spaced out and distinct. One of the men kneeling in the brush answered, his voice shrill, nervous, and afraid.

“The Gurkhas?” Alan whispered.

“Like that,” Fidel said, ambiguously.

“Cover me,” Alan said.

“Hey, what the fuck, Commander!” Fidel barked as Alan clambered to his feet. His back really was bad.

“Anyone over there speak English?” Alan called. He was standing at the edge of the road, still partially covered by a stunted pine tree and some brush.

“Miracle you’ve lived this long,” Fidel muttered. He actually had a hand on Alan’s ankle, as if to pull him down.

One of the men with his hands in the air turned to glance at Alan. At the same time, two soldiers in darker uniforms
emerged from the scrub farther to the north, their rifles aimed at the high carry, swinging back and forth, and began to move slowly toward him. Behind them, boyish voices called, and Alan heard a whistle in the distance, and the sound of a vehicle. One of the dark-clad figures called something and beckoned, his partner still watching over the sights of his rifle. The men with their hands in the air got to their feet and moved to the road.

Bang.

One of the surrendering men fell clutching his guts, his feet beating rhythmically on the tarmac. The other threw himself flat. Both of the dark-clad men went prone and fired. Something clipped the tree next to Alan, and he felt and heard a
vzzt
just under his nose. Fidel pulled his feet from under him and he went down face-first on to the dirt. He scrambled, crawling backward faster than he would have thought possible, his back pulsing, until his feet went over the edge of the gully.

Alan recovered his carbine, rewound the sling on his left arm, and prepared to fire his last rounds.

“That was smooth, Commander.”

Alan thought of replies—angry, sarcastic, apologetic—and bit them back, stared over his rifle in silence. He heard the vehicle again, moving, changing gears. Well off to Alan’s front, screened by the brush on the far side of the road, a man moved through the brush, and Djalik fired, paused, fired again, and the noise stopped, became thrashing, and gradually stilled.

The only sound became that of the wind in the bamboo and the grass, the chuckle of the stream at their feet, and the distant noise of the vehicle. He waited, sweating, trying to ignore the pain in his back and his hand, and the fatigue that felt like the onset of old age.

He looked at his watch. The second hand was still moving, so it was running, but it said that less than fifteen minutes
had passed since the start of the shooting. That didn’t seem possible.

“I see a car,” Harry called down.

Alan lifted his head. “Djalik?”

“Roger!”

“Report?”

“Nothing moving over here, sir.”

Chief Fidelio nudged Alan. “Bastard shot his own buddy for trying to surrender. Djalik wasted him.”

“Yeah. Can I have your permission to try standing again?”

“I’d wait for those little guys.” Fidelio jutted his jaw expressively down the road, where the two prone Gurkhas had risen to a crouch and were preparing to move forward again. Behind them, others moved, only their hats visible above the grass. The whistle sounded again, and the two moved briskly down the road, now obviously covered by their friends. As they reached the man who had been shot, both crouched; one searched the body while the other aimed his rifle to the east.

A Land Rover Defender crested the rise in the road and halted in line with the helmets in the grass. Two men started forward, clearly officers, one wearing riding boots. The helmets in the grass rose to become distant faces, shoulders, visible rifles, a whole line of them, and they began to move forward. One of the officers asked something in an interrogative shout; one of the Gurkhas on the road pointed toward where Alan was lying.

Alan squinted at Fidel, who managed to give the impression of a shrug without moving the muzzle of his rifle by a hair, and got to his feet.

“We’re friends,” Alan called.

One of the pair by the corpse acknowledged him, pointed north toward the advancing officers. Both Gurkhas moved into the tall grass on the other side of the road, working toward the prone figure. Alan could see Djalik now that he
was on his feet, and Djalik was aiming at something with intense concentration.

After a hesitation, the Gurkhas vanished behind the clump of brush where Djalik had fired. By the time the officers came even with them, they were leading the wounded prisoner out of the grass. One of the officers stopped. The other came on fearlessly.

“Hello!” Alan called.

“Good day,” the booted figure replied, still coming forward, tall, upright. He didn’t stop until he was extending his hand to be shaken. “Major Rao, Indian Army. Anyone hurt?”

“Commander Alan Craik, United States Navy,” Alan replied automatically, clasping the offered hand. “I won’t know until I see the rest of my men.”

“Spot of trouble?” Rao said. He had a heavy black moustache and tanned skin over eyes so dark they might have been black, and his smile was grim. He had dust all over a very smart uniform, and, up close, Alan could smell his sweat and see that the holster of his pistol on its shining Sam Browne belt was unlatched and ready for use, the magazine pouch empty.

Dignity required Alan to keep his shoulders just as square, meet the dark eyes, and smile back, although his immediate desire was to sit in the road and slump, or maybe simply sleep. “Nothing we couldn’t handle,” he said, trying to match the tone of “spot of trouble.” But that seemed ungracious, inaccurate as well, and he added quickly, “We are grateful for your help.”

The dark eyes were studying him carefully, perhaps too carefully. Alan shifted under their regard. He had to resist the urge to step away. But suddenly the major smiled, his whole face lighting up. “Ahh. You are the man in the picture.”

“What picture?”

“I’ll show you. Do you want to gather your men?” Rao looked past Alan, saw Chief Fidelio for the first time only a
yard away with his rifle pointed full at the major’s chest, and gave a slight start that made him seem more human. He stepped back, nodded at Fidel, and looked at Alan. “I fancy we’re on the same side.”

Alan watched the Gurkhas with the prisoner; saw them dragging bodies out to the road. Djalik was still watching them.

“I think we can at least say we have the same enemies, Major. Show me this picture, and I’ll call the rest of my men.”

Major Rao took a laptop from the back of the jeep. When he switched it on, the Windows start screen was immediately replaced by the Servants of the Earth animation.

“I found this when we took their checkpoint up the road,” he said, pointing north. Then he moved his finger around the pad, clicked, and held the open screen toward Alan—it displayed a crisp photograph of Alan Craik with “Kill on sight” in English and a writing that Alan couldn’t decipher.

“It says ‘shoot on sight,’” Rao said at his shoulder. “In Urdu and Hindi.”

“I’ve seen it before.”

“Any idea why they want you, Commander?”

“Yes.”

Rao studied him, and then nodded. “And it’s not my business. Very well. Want to tell me why you’re here? I’d be willing to help, up to a point.”

“We were headed south, to the housing complex up the valley.”

Rao lit a small cigar, took a drag, and then looked at Alan. “Hmm?” he said.

Alan didn’t want to play games, and answering questions wasn’t going to get him anywhere. “Mohir,” he said.

“I can get you there,” Rao said. He took another drag on his cigar, looked at Alan again. “Very well, Commander. We’ll go together.” His attention drifted away at the sound of a choked scream over Alan’s shoulder.

Alan turned to see that all of the dead had been gathered on the road. Thirteen corpses were lying neatly in a row, already covered in flies. Two short corporals were beating a wounded prisoner.

“I don’t like that, Major,” Alan said as he walked up to the jeep. He pointed at the beating.

Behind him, Rao spoke to one of the Gurkhas. Their officer came up at a trot.

“We could take that prisoner off your hands, Lieutenant.” Rao was clearly speaking English for Alan’s benefit.

“Of course, Major. I should have known you’d want him.”

“Can you spare me a vehicle and two guards for him?”

The lieutenant looked pained, but he nodded. “Yes, sir.” Then he turned to Alan. “You held them with just four men, sir? That must have been wonderful.”

Alan nodded, his mind already on other things.
Wonderful.

Harry and Djalik tossed their guns into the back of Rao’s vehicle. Fidelio waved at one of the Gurkhas, who waved back.

Harry climbed into the back, grabbed Alan’s arm. “Bud?” His eyes flicked over to Rao and back. He raised his eyebrows.

Alan shrugged. “Only game in town,” he said.

Harry nodded. “If we make it to Mohir—”

Alan nodded, his hand on the door of the Land Rover’s cab. “Yeah?”

“Keep the good major busy. Okay?”

Alan smiled and climbed into the front. Rao fumbled with the clutch before starting the engine. Under the cover of the first roar, he said, “I might have forgotten the prisoner, Commander.”

“Call me Alan.”

Harry leaned forward over the seat and shouted over the engine, pointed. “Mohir. Those concrete buildings just up the ridge.”

Rao nodded and smiled a knowing smile. “Exactly.”

Then they were rocketing along the tarmac, the grass a blur, headed for the village.

It wasn’t so much a village as a massive prefab housing complex surrounded by a more traditional, if poorer, set of huts made from packing crates and the refuse of the building project. The prefab housing was neat, clean, and twenty storeys high, and every balcony had plants in profusion, with flowers growing off the roof and around the sheer concrete walls on either side. Four of the towers stood around a central square, contrasting with the squalor of the market in the middle and the rows of huts on either side.

Rao drove them up the main road, past a modern petrol station and two restaurants and a seemingly endless row of plywood tea shops and into the square. Carpet-roofed booths ran in disorderly lines around the square and across it, with kitchen wares, chickens, baby clothes and detergent, spices, electronics: anything that the householders in the high-rises might need. In the center stood a tea shop with a flowered trellis and some pretensions to gentility.

Many of the stalls were empty. There were no children and few women. Men stood in clumps, and every eye in the market watched their arrival.

Rao pulled up opposite the first concrete building. “Police station on the first floor,” he said.

Two bodies wrapped in PVC tarps lay on the sidewalk outside, guarded by a constable in a chair with an old FN rifle across his lap. The crowd flowing around the stalls didn’t afford them any space at all; a little girl hopped over one of the corpses as Alan watched. The constable didn’t trouble to shoo the little girl away.

As Rao approached him, he stood to attention. They exchanged greetings, the formalities of rank and service. Alan
stayed in the car, glanced back to see that Harry had stepped down, walked back, and was talking to Djalik through the window of the other vehicle.

“You’re worryin’ too much, skipper,” Fidel said. “If these guys wanted us dead, we’d be dead. And Gurkhas—they’re special. Like Special Ops special. Not the kind to take part in a mutiny.”

Alan grunted. He was suffering post-combat depression; mostly, he wanted to sleep.

Rao came back to the jeep. “They had an attack this morning. The head constable shot one man and the terrorists shot a bystander. They have another prisoner, caught attempting to destroy a water tower.”

Alan nodded. “Can we interview him?”

“Commander, could you give me some idea of why you and three other Americans are so interested in this?”

Alan sighed. “I thought we’d get to that eventually.” He turned so that his back was as comfortable as possible and so that he had the powerful sun behind him and in Rao’s eyes. “I’m an intelligence officer.”

Rao pursed his lips. Later, Alan wondered if he had almost laughed. “Yes?”

“I was involved in a joint exercise with the Indian Army and Navy—”

“Lord of Light. I know it.”

“—when a mutiny, a coup, call it what you will, broke out. One of my people was killed. I got in touch with my admiral, who asked me to find out why the lights had gone out and what was happening.”

Rao nodded as if this were the most natural thing in the world. “And your friend? The black man?” Rao looked around suddenly, stiffened. “Where is he?”

Alan didn’t need to turn his head to know that Harry had wandered off. “I think he went for tea. And to get me a clean pair of shorts.” Alan pointed at the wreckage of Harry’s
spare shorts, which were filthy and still too big. Rao made him feel underdressed.

“It looks like a good market,” Rao ventured. “When it’s open. These people are frightened.”

Alan nodded. “So can we see talk to the prisoner? And maybe the one your guys picked up?”

Rao shrugged. “Of course.”

Harry worked his way through the market, with Djalik, obviously armed, a few paces behind him. The two of them created a zone of increased tension wherever they went. When Harry stopped at a stall, he was inevitably the only customer. When he moved along the market, other customers fled like shoals of frightened minnows. Short of wearing a sign, he couldn’t have been more conspicuous.

He bought things mechanically: a canteen, some clothes for Alan, a candy bar. He was trying to cover his presence in the market and it seemed like a waste of time because there was
nothing
two armed foreigners could do to look safe and natural in the surroundings.