Don't Look Back (39 page)

“Please,”
she said.

The voice came from beside her ear, the breath rustling her hair.
“Mujer loca.”

The old woman nodded a final time.
“Sí,”
she said.

The arms dragged Eve backward into the jungle, the grip too tight for her to scream.

Chapter 52

He pressed her through the foliage with the tip of the machete at her kidney. Eve felt the point at intervals, but never did he let it puncture the skin. When she slowed, he prodded her forward with an arm. At turns in the route and when panic overtook her, he steered her roughly, but not so roughly that it was ineffective or detrimental to progress. If she struggled, a callused hand encircled her neck or her biceps, the latent power in his grip evident, a vise that had been cinched just enough to hold an egg unbroken. His experience, when it came to death marches, was evident. In short, he
operated
her.

“Where are we going?”

“Back to my home,” he said in faintly accented English. “I prefer that we have privacy.”

The word wrenched the air from her lungs.

When she’d recovered, she asked, “How do you plan on getting across the river again?”

“We will cross by the fallen log. It is calm enough there.”

“That’s
miles
away.”

He said, “You seem to be equal to the task.”

She could not see him clearly behind her, but she’d caught glimpses and knew that he walked with a hitch that indicated a sore left leg, perhaps a groin pull. One of his bare feet bled, cracked at the outer heel. With every step she contemplated breaking free, but she knew that despite his minor injuries he had superior closing speed. Unless she started with a good lead, he’d run her down.

The Bear of Bajaur.

She was afraid to ask, but she couldn’t stop herself either. “Why do you need privacy? Why don’t you just do whatever you’re gonna do with me here and get it over with?”

“There is a proper way to interrogate. There are acceptable procedures. I cannot perform them here.”

“So that’s what you’re planning on doing. Interrogating me?”

“Yes.”

“Like you interrogated Jay?”

“Yes.”

She walked in silence for a time, doing her best to baby her ankle. “What do you want to know from me?”

“I found the old man and woman in the Jeep. But where are the others?”

“What others?”

“The cripple. And the young man with the fractured leg. They are here, still, in these hills.”

“No,” Eve said. “There was another burro, and they rode him out of here.”

“This,” al-Gilani said, “is why we are going back to my home. So I can take my time with you.”

She decided not to ask any more questions.

They reached a rise of bramble, and he held her to the side and chopped a gap with the machete. She slipped through, thorns scraping her arms, and they continued as before.

“You don’t beg like the others,” he said. “You don’t plead.”

“I’ve learned the value of my words. I’m not going to waste them on you.”

He hooked the hemp backpack, pulling her to a stop as if tugging reins. More yanking ensued as he loosened the top and drew free yet another of her water bottles. He went through her supply as he saw fit. These were the new rules. She was a pack mule and he her owner. He chugged, then started to put the half-full bottle back.

“Can I have some?”

“No.”

She turned to face him, and he permitted it. “If I get dehydrated, I’m no good to you. It’ll slow us both down.”

He regarded her, the bottle at his chest. It was odd to be facing him this close, to make out the strands of his wispy beard, the raised moles around his eyes, the whorls of marred flesh at his chin. The welts along his arms had risen, oozing yellow fluids. It gave her satisfaction to know that they covered his torso beneath his shirt as well. A fresh slice glimmered in his cheek, probably from where a passing sprig had cut him during his pursuit.

He tilted the bottle to her. “A sip.”

The plastic felt odd against her lips, and she realized they were swollen, sunburned. She drank greedily until he tore the bottle from her lips, spilling down her chin.

“You don’t listen with respect.”

“You haven’t earned my respect.”

“Earned.”
Amusement hitched his chest. “You are purely American.”

“Thank you.”

He turned her and gave her shoulder a little prod.

“Wait,” she said. “Why do you do what you do? It’s a dumb question, I’m sure, but I want to know.”

He scratched at his arms and then his chest, his eyes distant and glazed with remembrance, grief, or rage. It seemed he was not going to respond, but then he cleared his throat softly. “Palestine, Kashmir, Chechnya, Tajikistan, Burma, Assam, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Ogaden, Somalia, Eritrea, Bosnia, Iraq, Lebanon, Algeria. It is all a single chapter in the same book. And our leaders. Not leaders—whores lying back, spreading their legs for the Zionists and their American dogs. We have suffered under the yoke of it long enough.” He cocked his head, leaned closer, and she could smell his surprisingly sweet breath. “You know nothing of this, do you?”

“Some,” she said.

“Some.” His lip curled. “
Some.
This is why we bring bloodshed to your door. On 9/11 America tasted for a single day what the Islamic people have been swallowing every hour for centuries.” He jabbed a finger into her ribs, bringing a shocking amount of pain. “You are soft. You cannot bear a life of terror with the Sword of Damocles dangling overhead.”

“That’s why you’re here, then? To plan an attack? A nuclear bomb?”

He surprised her by laughing. “A nuclear bomb? Your propaganda does not account for the complications.”

“Such as?”

“Building a nuclear bomb is difficult. And expensive.”

“So you’re planning on what?”

He seized her arm and squeezed, reacquainting her with the true power contained in his fist. “I just want to be left alone.” He spoke calmly as ever, but there was shocking rage behind each word.

“So what do I have to do with it? Or Jay? You’re just killing people at random—”

“As do you.”

“No,” she said. “
I
don’t.”

“Do you vote?”

“Yes.”

“And you pay taxes?”

“Yes.”

“Then you are not exonerated from responsibility. Your vote elects the government that pushes the buttons. You pay the taxes that purchase the planes that bomb our children. You fund the armies that occupy our homes. The American people are at war with us. You speak of
earned
? We have
earned
the right to shed your blood.”

“Nobody earns that,” she said. “And it’s not a right. Under any circumstance. For any reason. You can
do
it.
We
can do it. But let’s not pretend it’s just.”

He finished the water, cast the bottle aside, and scratched at his welts. “What do you know of what is
just
? You disappear into your lives like cattle. Our eyes stay open. We are close to death. Which means we are close to life. You are weak and cowardly. Not worthy enemies.”

Eve felt her jaw firm. “How’s your rash?”

He looked down at his weeping arms, then up, surprised. A smile split his beard. “Let us walk.”

She continued for hours, favoring her ankle, falling into a kind of trance to keep the pain at bay. Aside from the pressure of the machete tip and the occasional grunted directive from behind, she might have been alone. The sky leaked through the canopy in snowflake patterns. They circumvented the lodge, cutting onto the trail to the river that she recognized all too well. Her apprehension mounted as they neared.

He said, “Wait.”

He plucked a guava from a tree, threw it at her, and gestured to a halved boulder. She realized they’d reached the spot where she and Fortunato had heard the jaguar’s cry in the night. Here, when the branch had snapped back into her, Fortunato had caught her in the darkness, saving her from a fall into the termite nest. Hours later he was dead in the river.

When she sat, her muscles instantly clenched, her lower back stiffening so badly that she wondered if she’d be able to rise again. Chewing a guava of his own, al-Gilani rooted in the hemp bag she still wore, coming up with another bottle of water.

He sat on the other half of the cracked boulder, across the trail but still within leaping distance. His eyes did not leave her, even when he tilted the bottle back to drink.

“That’s why you killed Theresa Hamilton?” Eve said. “She was gonna disrupt your plans?”

“My plans?”

“To attack America. Unleash a dirty bomb. Bring down another plane. Whatever.”

“That is behind me now. I told you.”

Parched, she stared at the bottle in his fist. The clear water sparkled. “You want to be left alone to do terrible things to people.”

“Only when they interfere with me.”

“Do the
indígenas
interfere with you?”

“Which ones?”

“The ones you
rape
?”

He rotated the bottle in his hand, swirling the water. “This also you do not understand.”

“Did raping her help drive American troops from your lands? Did it avenge the innocent children killed by our bombs? Let’s call it what it is. You lost your way. This isn’t some higher calling. Killing Theresa Hamilton. Killing Jay. Killing me. You want to protect yourself. That’s all. It’s a selfish motive dressed in a bullshit justification.”

He rose, stepped across the trail, and backhanded her off the stone. The force of the blow knocked her lower jaw sideways to the hinges. The ligaments of her neck burned as if torn. The guava bounced off into the brush, knocking into the fallen termite nest. She stayed down on her knees and arms, her forehead resting on the union of her wrists, drooling a little and waiting for her eyesight to return to normal.

Then she pulled herself up, sat again on the boulder, and looked at him through the tendrils of hair stuck down across her eyes. He took another bite of guava, washed it down with a healthy gulp. A trio of butterflies danced past them and up the trail.

“I realized a truth about Americans,” he said. “What they do, they do to themselves.” He screwed the cap back on the water bottle. “We were ready for a thousand-year war. Poised to deplete. Terrorize. Exhaust. But we did not need to. We brought down the Towers. This is true. We gained a foothold in the American imagination. But you did the rest. Your fear, stoked to a bright white flame, consumed you. You fell captive to your propaganda. Spent trillions on war. Billions on new government agencies and private companies. Bled yourselves to the point of bankruptcy. We didn’t need any suicide bombers.” His shoulders lifted an inch and settled again, a show of loss or perhaps amusement. “That is where Usama was wrong. We didn’t
need
to go to war with you. You defeat yourselves.”

He extended his arm across the trail, offering her the next bite of his guava. He circled his hand impatiently. She opened her mouth tenderly, testing the jaw. Then she shook her head.

He scratched his chest and then his shoulder. Some of the welts had cracked open, leaking a clear, viscous fluid. “You are stubborn. I will have my work cut out for me.”

A small, tender memory caught her off guard. She and Nicolas had been eating French toast, and he’d reached over, put his hand on hers, and smiled up at her. So much of parenting—so much of
life
—was composed of tiny moments like that, gestures all too easily overlooked. She was crying—silently, yes, but she could feel the tears, so she turned her head, knowing that al-Gilani would misinterpret this and not wanting to give him the satisfaction. There to the side of the trail, ensconced around the branch it had weighed down and snapped off, was the giant papier-mâché ball of the termite nest. Letting her tears evaporate, she watched the white dots scurrying anxiously around, enflamed by the guava’s presence.

“What are they gonna say happened to us all?” she asked. “What will our story be?”

“You got lost in the storm. You were washed away. No bodies were ever found. Except the man and woman in the Jeep. They can remain. But the rest of you vanished.”

That he was using the past tense was not lost on her.

“Now stand.”

Her lower back raged as she threw her weight forward onto her legs. Her ankle threatened to buckle. She tottered unevenly. He, too, looked stiff, twisting his torso from side to side in order to limber up.

The machete rose, the flat edge tapping her shoulder, as if knighting her. She turned in the direction indicated. The point found her kidney, prodding her forward.

She started down the trail. There was the familiar branch that had nearly knocked her over two nights ago. She approached, took it in both hands, and pushed into it, bending it nearly to its breaking point.

Then she dropped her weight and let it whipsaw back over her head.

She saw al-Gilani rear up, the branch catching him right across the bridge of the nose. His arms flared wide, and he toppled sideways, losing his balance. Falling backward off the trail, he crashed into the termite nest. It collapsed as he sank into it. He bellowed and flailed, white spots swarming up his arms.

Tearing herself from the sight, she hurtled into the jungle.

Chapter 53

Already Eve could hear him behind her. Roars of pain and fury. The machete whistling through the air, razing foliage. She had not accounted for how his anger would fuel him. Despite her head start, he was making up ground quickly.

She broke into a glade beneath towering trees and spun, panicked. Ahead, massive prop roots, ten feet tall, radiated from the base of a giant banyan tree. They tapered to the ground as they unfurled. She stumbled across the glade and pulled herself over the snake tail of the nearest root, hoping to hide behind it. Her hands burned, scraped by the bark. One root in front of her, one at her back; it was like being in a trench. Ducking her head, she looked around frantically. In the enormous trunk, between the juncture of the roots sandwiching her, rose a slender black hole, a tiny doorway into the tree itself. Wide enough for her to squeeze through?