Escape from Baghdad! (33 page)

“We could have sold this, eh?” Kinza said. His face was drawn, seemingly aged overnight. The berserker fury had left him when enough of Salemi's men had died and the entire building had wept blood. Now he seemed numb, an exhausted shell of a man. They were wounded, perhaps seriously, but in the dark their clothes were soaked black anyways with whose blood indistinguishable.

The terror remained in Dagr's eyes though, cutting through all the shrapnel cuts and aches, the adrenaline dump that left his body floating on lassitude. He had seen everything from behind and now could never get the cries of screaming men out of his mind.
We both stayed behind him. If we had been in front of him, he would have killed us. I've never seen anything like this. He would have killed us. He's not human.

“We need food,” Dagr said finally. “Water, blankets, medicine. Anyone bring any money?”

Hamid pulled out a stack of wallets from his vest.

“You looted them?”

“Spoils of war.” Hamid shrugged, lopsided. There was something wrong with his arm.

“It was good thinking,” Kinza said.

“These men had families,” Dagr pawed his way through the wallets, horrified at the way his hands adjusted to this life with such ease. “You never think these Fanatics have wives, children.” There were pictures in the wallets of women, children.

“Xervish had a family too,” Kinza said. His voice was weary. It was a half-hearted attempt. Kinza was no longer concerned about right or wrong. Dagr could read it in his face. In the vastness of the enemy facing them, he simply wanted to
do some damage
before the end.

“I'll get the supplies,” Dagr said finally.

Outside, he walked with a checkered scarf muffling his features, hoping the fugue of dusk disguised him from chance informants. They had crippled Salemi's organizations here, at the heart of his power, but he had other houses, other men. Demons like him did not die easily. Already, Dagr knew, US dollars were changing hands through anonymous text messages offering new bounties on three men who were considered very much walking dead. Whatever favors they had accumulated were spent now. They were on their own.

He entered a sorry-looking corner store, deliberately picking the one with a guttering light and half empty shelves. Some of the commodities were tight, like cough medicine, or even simple bottled water. Many of the familiar local brands were gone, the factories shut. He had a commandeered wallet stuffed with cash, but not enough. Salemi's men had carried little money. They would have to eke it out, and it still would not be enough, not to get them anywhere near Mosul.
Who are we kidding? We're never leaving this city alive.

In the end, he took bandages, antiseptic cream, water, dry Chinese biscuits, and as many bananas as they had, the best he could
do. In the counter, he grabbed cigarettes and matches. They needed hot food but the cafes were out of the question, and most were closed in anticipation of trouble. The shopkeeper stared at him, one hand beneath the counter, holding a weapon no doubt.

“Is there any hot food out there? Any stalls open?”

“No,” said the shopkeeper. “What street are you from,
friend
?”

Dagr looked down, saw to his horror that the wallet in his hand had flipped open, the plastic flap clearly showing a driver's license with the picture of a bearded man with flowing white hair. His gun nestled in his pocket. He quenched the urge to go for it.

“Here's your money.” Exaggerated care to move slowly, keeping his hands visible. He left the cash on the counter and backed out, not waiting for the change.

Back home, he dropped the packages on the floor. Kinza and Hamid were drowsing, each huddled in a different corner, as far away from the cluster bomb as possible.

“Sorry, we have a problem.”

“What? No food in the stores?”

“I used this wallet.” Dagr threw it on the floor.

“You carried a stolen wallet?” Kinza asked. “Without emptying it?”

“I was tired. I didn't think,” Dagr sat down. “It flipped open. The shopkeeper saw the license. He was suspicious.”

“You showed it to a shopkeeper?” Hamid looked disgusted. “Are you insane?”

“Were you followed?” Kinza asked.

“No…maybe…no, definitely not,” Dagr said. “I walked around the block, took a long route.”

“We have to move out of here,” Kinza said.

“Some advice: we're exhausted,” Hamid said. “We need to eat, sleep. We can't get through this without rest. Too many mistakes are made by fools who think they're supermen. I've seen that first hand in the army.”

“Ok,” Kinza said. He slumped down, and the depth of his exhaustion was evident. “You're right. This place can be hardly more dangerous than the streets. But we keep watch. You, professor, get the middle watch, because you fucked up.”

When Dagr spilled out the meager stash of medicine and food, they gathered in the petering light of the single naked bulb, and he realized that his companions were injured far more than he had thought. Kinza with a huge hole in his side and a laceration down his neck needing stitches; Hamid had a useless right arm, tucked in with a crude sling he had fashioned, the bone perhaps fractured, the bullet still inside. It was impossible to tell. They bore their pain with a dull stoicism, too tired to think, and finishing the cold food, fell into deep exhausted sleep.

Dagr, the least hurt of the three, drowsed alone through the night, sleeping in fits, the gun constantly slipping from his hands. Then close to dawn, at the hour of the first prayer, he heard footfalls near their door. He struggled to his feet and lurched outside, thinking to buy some time, sketching together some pathetic bluff, too tired in truth to even panic properly.

It was an elderly man carrying a bag and the grocery clerk with a bulge in his jacket.

“You're those men,” the elder said, “the ones who hit Salemi.”

“No, no for God's sake, I'm just a professor. I was travelling. We got robbed.”

“You had Ibn Waleed's purse,” said the elder.

Dagr glanced back, half hoping to see the backup muzzle of Kinza's guns, but the men were sleeping each in their corner, oblivious.

“Yes, you are them,” the elder said. “They said there were ten of you. I see only three here. Your friends are injured?”

“Half dead,” Dagr said. “They'll fight back all the same. We've got a cluster bomb in there. I've rigged it to explode on a trigger.”

“Oh, keep your bomb.” The grizzled man smiled suddenly.

Dagr stared at him, his brain barely functioning. “What exactly do you want?”

“We've brought you food,” the elder said. He motioned at the shopkeeper. “Faiz said you needed food and medicine.” He brought out an ancient black leather medical bag from inside his jacket. “I am a doctor.”

“What?”

“I'm with him.”

The two moved aside, and a great hulking figure loomed in the doorway, wide faced, wild hair, and beard drizzled with gray.

“Who?” Dagr stepped back in alarm, confused. Then the faint smell of cats wafted up, with half-dredged memories of flashing silver hair in the moonlight and an immense, inhuman strength. He slumped down in resignation. “I thought he'd find us sooner or later.”

Dog Boy was insane. This was clear when he tried to mount Hoffman while simultaneously trying to eat him at the same time. Biting and buggery. Not something to take lying down. Although Hoffman's body was wasted from withdrawal, abuse, and lack of exercise, its underlying structure was still some kind of Marine-issue specimen, albeit of a very inferior kind. Long-suppressed memories of unarmed combat classes came back to him, causing him to flail around trying to effect some sort of judo throw.

Finally, as the choke hold of Dog Boy caused his face to purple and blackout seemed eminent, he reached even further back into his past to barely registered backyard fights and bar room brawls. Teeth and elbows. Some dimly remembered precept that this was unsporting occurred to him. But then so was the tumescent penis jammed into his hip. He found some bit of Dog Boy's forearm and sank in his teeth. His elbow swung back in short, sharp jabs, MMA fashion, scoring along Dog Boy's baying face.

A sickening crunch, broken nose, claret flying, and the pressure eased somewhat. Hoffman pursued this line relentlessly, elbows to the face and then managed to turn somewhat in Dog Boy's grasp and
bring his knees to bear. And finally, he ended with a Hoffman special, which was ramming the top of his skull into whatever delicate apparatus adorned Dog Boy's open neck and jaw, a sufficiently hard blow that sent the lunatic spinning back gasping for air.

The man flopped in place and started blubbering. It crossed Hoffman's mind that he ought to take this opportunity to strangle Dog Boy. Somehow, the idea of choking the life from that mangled, mournful face made him want to cry. It made him realize that despite being a veteran Marine war machine and decorated combat hero, he had never actually killed anyone. He remembered Sabeen's cool finger on his lips and railed at the general unfairness of it all. Things had been going so well with her. Cursing Behruse, he began to tear up sheets to shackle his cell mate.

32: INTERVIEW WITH A LION

D
AGR WAS HAVING TEA WITH THE
L
ION
. I
T WASN'T A PLEASANT
experience. The man was frightening. His face was seamed with old scars, the ragged edged ones from fighting, but also scalpel straight ones from countless operations. They formed a cross-hatched seam across his head and neck, a chess board of pain and humiliation. And his eyes—his eyes were
old
. Weary. Clouded with despair. There was something otherworldly in them but not of the cute fairy variety. This kind of elfin spoke of madness, of eerie darkness and the depths to which the world was deeply fucked up beyond the small patina of normality that coated most lives and the very long way a man could fall once he plunged through this meager safety net. Dagr thought back on the fantastic tale of the watch and shuddered.

“Your friends, they are well?” Afzal Taha's voice was damaged, a bare whisper of force.

“They will recover,” Dagr said.
They're half dead. Kinza is halfway in a coma. They gave me all the armor, and then paid the price
. “Thanks for the doctor.” The Lion had moved them to a different place, a house with actual beds and some form of hygiene. The doctor brought them hot food and looked after their injuries with a dedication that went beyond payment.

“He owes me,” the Lion said.

“Well, you've probably saved Kinza's life,” Dagr said. “Sorry, by the way, about shooting you. That episode didn't turn out so well for us. The neighborhood people told us you were a murderer.”

“I am.”

“Oh well,” Dagr tried to keep his grin fixed in place, “who isn't, these days. They turned on us though, sold us to Hassan Salemi.”

“They tend to do that.”

“So it's very kind of you, really, to come back like this. I thought you would be more interested in shooting us, to be honest.”

“The thought had crossed my mind,” Afzal Taha said. “But the situation is fluid.”

“I see.”

“There is a way for us to live,” Taha said. “All of us.”

“I am a bit confused.”

“The watch.”

“I have it,” Dagr almost tripped himself in his eagerness to get it out. “See, safe. I knew you'd want it back.”

“Keep it.” Taha waved his hand.

Dagr had expected a bullet by this time, the doctor notwithstanding, and his subsequent observations on this man's stability had done nothing to bolster any hopes to the contrary. Thus, with exaggerated care, he put the watch down on the tea table between them in a place he hoped sufficed as middle ground where he wouldn't be accused of disobeying a direct order to ‘keep it' while at the same time making it abundantly clear that the object, in fact, did not belong to him and he was most willing to return it. This bit of mental weaselly left him feeling slightly soiled. With nothing left to do, he sat back and drank his tea.