Paradox (10 page)

They passed their night in what
Leif Baron called a "safe house" in Erzurum. It didn't look much like
a house to Annja, nor strike her as especially safe, as flashlights held by her
companions swept across and around it in the early evening gloom. It was a
rambling ramshackle block of structures rising as high as three scary-leaning
stories, thrown together of cinder blocks, bricks, wood, sheet metal, plywood,
what seemed to be field stone and God knew what else. Random segments were
painted a grim mustard-yellow. The whole thing was cheerless enough to be a
prison, an effect heightened by its being surrounded by high chain-link fences
topped with coils of razor wire.
"A
gecekondu
," Robyn Wilfork said with his usual assurance as
they dismounted from the schoolbus, blinking in the unexpected brightness of
afternoon sun shining through big breaks in the clouds and staring in
consternation at their quarters for the night. "It means 'built
overnight.' There is a loophole in Turkish law that forbids civic authorities
from tearing down unauthorized structures if they are entirely built between
sundown and sunup."
"Just the kind of place where I want to spend the night," Trish said,
with her pack on her shoulder and a green ball cap on her head.
"Might be worse," Jason said. "Might be raining."
Annja looked reflexively upward. A few brave stars greeted her eyes. Only a few
brushstrokes of cloud were visible. Rain did not seem to be in the offing. Nor,
thankfully, did more snow. The air was cool, redolent of petroleum fractions
and what she suspected was a nearby stockyard, but not cold. She thought again
about conditions on Ararat with the early onset of winter weather and shivered
anyway.
The
gecekondu
lay not far from the Euphrates, which the ragtag caravan
had crossed at dusk. Levi said the headwaters weren't far from here. This was
an industrial part of town, near another rail yard, and seemed mostly derelict
at that. Certainly there were no other residential-looking structures in the
area.
The Young Wolves set up portable generators to power lights inside; there was
no electrical supply. Inside the walls were bare and whatever plumbing and
wiring had existed had long since been ripped out by metal thieves or
scavengers. There were pallets on the floors but they smelled, Trish remarked,
as if generations of people had died on them. The newcomers inflated air
mattresses, with which they were thankfully well supplied, and unrolled
sleeping bags on them.
While this was going on, along with a certain amount of sweeping and waving
things in the air in hopes of stirring it and cutting into the mustiness, and
much grumbling, Larry and the Higgins twins were sent off in the lead car with
Mr. Atabeg to forage for provisions.
"How come we have to skulk into this hole in the middle of post-Apocalypse
urban nightmare number three, and then the Bible Scouts get sent off on their
own without adult supervision?" asked Jason, fortunately out of earshot of
the remaining Young Wolves. Baron and Bostitch had repaired with Wilfork and
the rabbi to quarters on an upper story, presumably more sumptuous than what
the ground floor offered. If you set aside the risk the floor might collapse
under you. But, it occurred to Annja, if that happened the floor would collapse
on them, so it was probably kind of a wash.
"I think they want to get them experience on their own in potentially
hostile territory," Annja said. "Then again, they didn't tell
me."
"What if they, like, screw up and bring whoever it is we're supposed to be
hiding out from here down on top of our heads?" Tommy asked. He was
disgruntled because Bostitch had forbidden them to take video of their current
surroundings.
"My guess? That's good for at least three demerits each," Annja said.
After a short while Wilfork came down to step outside for a smoke. Annja
happened to be outdoors in her shirtsleeves doing stretches to work out the
day's kinks.
Wilfork noticed her as his large face, florid as always and looking puffier
than usual, was underlit rather diabolically by his lighter. Puffing furiously
he turned away, as if hoping somehow that if he couldn't see her, she wouldn't
see him.
She marched up to him. "Hey, Wilfork," she said.
He turned around. "Ah, Annja. I didn't—"
"Save it. I wanted to know what was up with your sharp-shooting me on the
bus today about trying to cut short potential conflict. Did I step on your
shadow or something?"
For some reason he seemed to go a shade paler at that. "Be careful what
you say," he said in a semicroak.
"Look. I'm not okay with what you said. I'm trying to prevent bloodshed on
this expedition. At least among its own members."
"Surely you're overdramatizing."
"You think so? Really? We've got a bunch of militant, and in fact trained
paramilitary and even military types, who are fervent right-wing Christian
fundamentalists. Then we've got a contingent of equally militant lefty
atheists, or at least scoffers, from Babylon itself—New York City. Throw in the
sort of stresses you get even on a regular expedition—one where you're not
actually on the run from the authorities, you know? And where your official
contact doesn't explode in flames right in front of your eyes? And you've got a
high-explosive mix with the stability of a speed freak at the wrong end of a
three-week binge. What the hell were you thinking?"
He shook his head. "Really, I am sorry. I just have an impish impulse to
stir things up."
"So you can report on it when it all blows? Are you
that
hard up
for a story?"
"Well…hard up may not be too far off the mark."
"What do you mean?"
"This crisis journalism may not be a young man's game. But I somehow don't
find it as easy as once I did. And I find it is my misfortune to grow old in a
world that values youth over experience—and the bottom line above all. It's
easy to look at a 'seasoned' journalist and see someone doing a job you could
hire a fresh-faced journalism graduate to do for half the money."
"That's your excuse?"
"Very well. I confess it bothered me that you seemed to be successful in
calming the waters. Lack of controversy makes for lack of interest in my
chronicle. And then where's my bestseller?"
"So you're looking to hit one big score and then retire? That sounds like
something from a caper movie."
"Well, thank you for so perceptively comparing me to a professional
criminal."
"Sorry. I'm still a little hot over this. You of all people should know
how nasty this could all get in a big hurry, given all that crisis experience
you talk about. Don't imagine that journalistic detachment is going to keep it
from getting all over you if it does blow up. And, by the way, my crew from New York are here as journalists, too, aren't they?"
"By a definition shockingly liberal even by my standards," Wilfork
said.
"Which may say more, or maybe less, for your own prejudices than anything
else. But think about this—if things really start to fly, do you think your
status as direct employee of Charlie Bostitch will shield you? A reformed
commie and alcoholic is not the sort of person the religiously enthusiastic are
going to give too much slack to. Unless you out and out convert to their brand
of muscular Christianity, which I doubt you have."
"Really, Annja. I'm sorry. I meant it as a joke. I see now that it was
inappropriate, as the current cant phrase goes. I'll try not to do it
again," Wilfork said.
He screwed his big pink face up in what was at least a good imitation of
contrition. "I have to confess there's more at stake here than my final payday
and its contribution to my retirement fund—which, yes, I must admit, does enter
into my calculations. I—I still find myself drawn to the excitement. The sheer
adventure. My age and avoirdupois notwithstanding."
"So kicks keep getting harder to find," Annja said. She regretted it
the moment it left her mouth: she didn't mean to sound so witchy. She never
intended to; and she didn't want to participate anymore in any kind of
potentially destructive melodramas.
But instead of taking offense he nodded enthusiastically. "Precisely. I
fear that along with my numerous other addictions, under better or worse
control as they may be, I am also what's currently called an 'adrenaline
junkie.' But I promise to try to restrict my…fixes to what our enterprise provides
in the natural course of things, rather than trying to generate my own."
"Good," she said. "Because if I catch you causing actual danger
to my people, or me, I'll totally kick your ass. That simple."
"You know," he said, "I believe you could, at that." But he
said it with enough of a hint of a smirk to make her think he was simply
humoring her.
Let him find out for himself, she thought furiously, if he really wants to so
badly. Then, taking a deep abdominal breath, she forced herself to cool down.
Don't start pouring gasoline on the fire you're trying to put out, she told
herself sternly.
"Ms. Creed, I bid you good evening."
"You, too," she said with a genuine smile.

* * *

AN HOUR LATER THE FORAGING
PARTY came back bearing cardboard cartons filled with Turkish takeaway. They
ate by the garish light of generator-powered trouble lamps, on folding tables
set up in a one-story segment on one end of the
gecekondu
that seemed to
have served as a garage. The smells of old accumulated grease and oil were far
more appetizing than what pervaded the rest of the structure. The food was
good, washed down with some kind of unearthly Turkish fruit drink and the
inevitable bottled water.
Annja fended off several invitations from Bostitch to share the upper-floor accommodations.
He seemed still elated at their action-movie escape from the hotel in Ankara, with spots of color glowing high upon his cheeks. Annja wondered if he might have
fallen off the wagon again. His manner was jovially avuncular. It wasn't far
from that to creepy uncle, though, and Annja was pleased when he didn't press
the issue too hard.
"And keep in mind," Josh called to them as they and the Young Wolves
headed for separate but adjoining compartments, "no lewd
cohabitation."
It sounded to Annja as if the kid were trying a joke. "Hey, now,"
Jason said, sounding sharp. "I just had my heart set on lewd cohabiting.
Just couldn't wait to get right on down to it."
Josh blinked. He seemed more puzzled and a little hurt than offended.
Predictably Zach and a couple of the others growled, though, and seemed set to
start woofing back.
"Jason, stop being a dick," Trish said.
Jason jerked around and shut his mouth. It surprised Annja to hear the blond
woman speak up like that to one of her comrades. Annja had been thinking much
the same thing. She had felt constrained mostly because it wasn't her style to
call somebody a dick.
She didn't have any moral qualms about bad language, nothing like that. Nor
even residual fear of the nuns with their ever-ready bars of startlingly
corrosive soap. It was just that having devoted much of her life to the study
of language, making herself fluent or at least conversant in the major Romance
tongues, past as well as present, she should by God be able to come up with something
better than to just call somebody a dick.
After all, mincing words wasn't her style, either.
With no further static the groups went their ways. Annja likewise refused an
offer from the three
CHM
staffers to join them huddled in a corner of
the room they had staked out as their own to share a pint of whiskey
thoughtfully donated by Wilfork. They muttered about the way Leif Baron had
told the Young Wolves to patrol the perimeter by two-hour watches, a pair at a
time. They speculated in tones half scandalized and half fearful whether the
sentinels were actually armed.
For her part Annja hoped they were. And she was glad there were guards. That
was something she could say for Baron—she doubted anyone would slack off on his
watch. She actually felt secure enough to sleep the whole night through. And no
compunction about doing so—watch-standing wasn't her job.

* * *

THE NEXT DAY FOUND EVERYBODY
semirested and grumpy. Not even Annja had been able to muster much enthusiasm
for a breakfast of cold rice, ground lamb and pine nuts, wrapped in grape
leaves and washed down with grape soda with an especially acrid bite to it, as
if made with too much battery acid.
In a few hours the inevitable battered bus was jouncing and clattering down
what was nominally a paved two-lane road through the broken terrain of the Ağri
plateau, beneath an overcast sky that suggested their respite from snow was
nearing a decisive end.
"Agri Province once was part of the ancient Kingdom of Urartu," Levi was telling an audience of Young Wolves. The Rehoboam Academy alums never
seemed to know quite how to treat the rabbi. They listened attentively, with
eyes wide, as if on the one hand not wanting to miss a drop of the wisdom he
was imparting, and on the other fearing he'd at any moment start trying to
seduce them into worshiping pagan idols. "Urartu is the source of the name
Ararat."
"It might as well be mud, lads," Wilfork said with patently false
heartiness from the seat ahead of Levi's. "Someone blew up a
Turkish-Iranian natural gas pipeline hereabouts in August of 2006. Since then
fighting between Kurd separatists and the Turkish army has escalated into open
but unpublicized warfare."
"Good news is everywhere," Trish said.
Annja's cell phone rang.
Everyone turned and stared at her. Feeling conspicuous she took it out and
flipped it open. "Hello?"
"Creed, this is Baron. Look alive. We might have a situation, here."
At the same time Tommy Wynock pointed out the front window and shouted,
"Whoa! Roadblock!"

"Again?" Tommy said.
"No worries," Trish said. "Mr. Atabeg will wave his hand and
make it all okay."
With much shuddering and squealing of brakes the bus slowed to a stop. Their
forward passage was barred by a stake-bed truck parked across the road.
"Maybe not," Jason said. Tall men in dark caps and long black coats
stepped out into the road in front of the block, pointing Kalashnikovs at the
lead car. "These guys don't look all that amenable to sweet reason."
"Tell everybody to just stay calm back there," Baron said over the
phone. "Atabeg says he's on top of it."
He hung up. Annja passed along the injunction and reassurance without being
able to fake much conviction.
She had to admit Atabeg had proven effective so far. Twice since leaving their
miserable hideout in Erzurum they'd been stopped by army checkpoints, and once
pulled over by a national army motorized patrol. Each time Mr. Atabeg had dealt
with it with his trademark blend of cheeriness, gesticulation and, she
suspected strongly, a good strong dose of bribery.
But this roadblock was a different thing entirely. Annja hoped this bunch
proved as acquisitive as the National Police were.
Tommy hauled his black camera bag down from the overhead wire-mesh rack and
started to zip it open. "Hey, what're you doing?" Josh asked.
"Gotta get some shots of this, man."
"Not a good idea." Fairlie's handsome young face was pale.
The lead car had stopped. Baron and Atabeg climbed out into the road and walked
toward the men at the roadblock. A moment later Bostitch emerged, and Larry
Taitt from behind the wheel.
"He's right," Annja said to Tommy.
"But this is some great shit!" Tommy protested. "It'll make for
wicked-awesome TV."
"Think how much more gripping the viewers back home will find it when you
videotape your own massacre at the hands of peevish tribals with medieval
attitudes and thoroughly modern weapons," Wilfork said.
"They have guns," Trish said, as if that were a surprise. "I
hate guns."
"Me, too," Jason said.
Annja looked at them in surprise. She thought they were a fairly seasoned crew.
Apparently they either had only visited the tamer parts of the world on their
shoots for
Chasing History's Monsters
, or Doug sprang for a better
quality of local fixers to insulate them from the harsher local realities than
Annja would've given him credit for. Whether you
liked
guns or not was
beside the point. In most of America, especially the sanitized if not quite so
safe as advertised New York City, somebody sporting fully automatic weapons was
cause to alert the media. In much of the third world, it was part of the
scenery.
Annja had no trouble with guns per se. What she had trouble with was people
pointing
them at her. Which unfortunately seemed a form of trouble that was just about
to recur.
"Those aren't the Turkish National Police," Josh said, getting out of
his seat to lean over and look out a window.
"Not army, either," said Fred Mallory. Like the carrot-topped Eli who
sat across the aisle from him the dark-haired bodybuilder seldom said much.
Both seemed content to let others do the talking. And probably the thinking.
The men at the block weren't uniformed, as such. They wore long sheepskin coats
over long smocklike wool shirts and baggy trousers, which was the basic dress
of South Asia from Iraq to Pakistan. Some had on black wool hats, others knit
caps.
The tall man who seemed to be in charge, whose splendid beard and piercing eyes
made him resemble a younger Osama bin Laden, had a flat cap and a 1911-series
Colt .45 or reasonable facsimile thereof stuffed down the front of his
trousers, which were a gray-white-black camouflage pattern. The hammer was
back, Annja could see. It didn't mean the safety was on. In fact the odds were
good it wasn't.
He stood with thumbs tucked on either side of the big angular handgun,
listening as Atabeg expostulated at him. Or so Annja guessed from the way the
short, dumpy Turk, dapper as ever in his utterly inappropriate suit, waved his
arms and hopped around.
"Ladies and gentlemen," Robin Wilfork announced grandly, "I have
the pleasure of presenting to you the Kurds."
"Great," Jason muttered. Annja couldn't tell if that was irony or
not. "And we can't even shoot stills?"
"That verb,
to shoot
," Annja said. "That's kind of key
here. It's the sort of idea we don't want people getting."
"Are they
peshmerga?
" Trish asked hesitantly.
"I'd rather say so, dear, given the Kalashnikovs and beards," Wilfork
said.
Trish was so anxious she neglected to bridle at being called
dear
.
"In Kurdish the name
peshmerga
means 'those who face death,'"
the journalist added helpfully.
"That's encouraging," Jason said.
Annja's cell rang again. It was Baron.
"I thought you were tight with these guys," she said.
"There are
peshmerga
and there are
peshmerga
," Baron
said. "These aren't my guys."
Annja looked uneasily out the window at the lean bearded men in their long
sheepskin coats and black sheepskin caps. Wolves in sheeps' clothing for a
literal fact, she thought.
"What do you want us to do?" Annja asked.
"Sit tight and stay frosty," the former SEAL said. "I told you,
Atabeg's got us covered."
Right about then the
peshmerga
leader pulled the .45 out of his pants
and shot Atabeg point-blank. The muzzle was about a handspan from the stickpin
of the smaller man's necktie.
"Shit!" she heard Baron shout. He grabbed Charlie and threw him
bodily into the ditch by the roadside. He flung himself on top of his boss.
Trish screamed.
Atabeg staggered back. A dark stain spread across the front of his shirt and
his necktie was burning with a smoky blue flame. The
peshmerga
leader
shot him again and he fell on his back with arms flung out. The fez came off
his head and rolled a few feet away, revealing the bald spot on top of his
head.
As the other
peshmerga
raised their Kalashnikovs and began to lash the
ditch where Baron had thrown Bostitch with bullets the bus door was kicked open
inward. From outside came a billow of new falling snow, a knife-edged chill,
and a spate of angry Turkish. The bus driver leapt from his seat, dashed out
the door, ran off up the side of a hill, and was swallowed from sight as the
blizzard outside intensified.
"Cowardly heathen," one of the Young Wolves spat. Annja sympathized
with the driver. He hadn't signed on for this. He sure wasn't getting paid enough.
An immense-looking broken-nosed AKM assault rifle came in the door, seeming to
tow a tall man in a cap behind. He swept the bus with dark eyes and the muzzle
brake of his rifle. He favored Annja with a gap-toothed leer and then started
toward the back of the bus, evidently intent on securing the men—the only
opponents he considered worthy of notice.
Eyes blazing, Annja watched him. As he came abreast of her she lunged at him in
a tigerish leap.
She caught the gunman totally unaware. Her sudden onslaught sent him staggering
several steps backward, slamming his head into the steel pole behind the
driver's seat. At the same time she grabbed the forestock of his weapon,
controlling it, driving the barrel up.
He triggered a burst, shatteringly loud in the confines of the bus. Though she
felt the sting of flame from the flashes from the cuts in the muzzle brake,
Annja scarcely heard the terrific noise. She was totally intent on her target
as a burst ripped through the ceiling over Wilfork's head, causing the
journalist to vanish to the floor with a yip of dismay.
It was an old-school Soviet-era rifle and it packed quite a kick. The full-auto
recoil jarred the weapon loose in the stunned man's grip. Annja wrenched it
away. She butt-stroked him in his bearded face.
He fell to the floor, holding up an arm to defend himself. It didn't help.
Gritting her teeth in rage she smashed the metal butt-plate into his face and
the side of his head, battering him into the slushy, gritty rubber runner that
covered the steel floorboards.
She stopped. Slowly, she straightened. The gunman lay unmoving at her feet.
Blood totally obscured his face.
The bus was silent as the tomb. The firefight crashing merrily away outside
sounded like fireworks from a distant stadium.
"That ought to hold him," she said. She was aware that all of
them—the
CHM
crew, Young Wolves, even hardened trouble journalist
Wilfork—were staring at her as if she'd just turned into a pterodactyl.
"Watch him anyway, in case it doesn't," she said.
Jason raised an ashen, trembling face to her. "Annja, what are you
doing?"
"What needs to be done. Keep your heads down."
She was out the open door into the snow. The Kalashnikov was a familiar,
comforting weight in her arms. I'm glad I could take care of that one without
the sword coming out, she thought. We might actually survive this fiasco, and I
don't want questions asked that I definitely don't want to answer.
She barely felt the bite of the air, the snowflakes hitting her face like tiny
wet slaps. She ran straight up the same ridge the driver had disappeared over,
headed toward a clump of rocks already thoroughly mounded over in white. If she
was going to do any good—if she was going to do anything other than catch a
round and go down—she had to get to cover fast.
Fortunately the gunman on the bus had been flying solo. Apparently the
peshmerga
felt one bus full of foreign infidels only required one fighter. The others,
maybe a half dozen or so including the leader, still stood blasting happily
away at the defenders in the ditch.
The Americans were shooting back gamely. But it was handguns against assault
rifles. It was not as hopeless as it might seem at that close a range. A burst
from a Kalashnikov wasn't going to kill you any deader than a good handgun hit
to chest or head, Annja thought. And presumably the Americans were bothering to
aim. That was more than the Kurds were doing. They were ducking down behind
rocks or the vehicles to reload, then standing bolt upright to blaze off their
whole magazines in the general direction of the foe.
But there were only Leif Baron and Larry Taitt, who had joined his boss and
bodyguard in the ditch, to return fire. Presumably one or the other was sitting
on Charlie Bostitch's head to keep it down. Their worst problem was they could
seldom get a shot of their own off for the torrent of bullets streaming their
way. It was one of the relatively few circumstances where handheld full-auto
fire really did provide an advantage: the superior if unaimed Kurd firepower
kept the American pair all but suppressed.
We're about to change that, Annja thought grimly. Using the big metal lever on
the side of the stamped-steel receiver she switched her weapon from full-auto
to single-shot with the famous loud "Kalashnikov clack." She winced
at the sound.
No one noticed. The noise levels were too high, and anyway, as she knew too
well, when somebody was shooting at you directly, your whole world tended to
narrow to pinpoint focus on that person. And his gun. Even a highly trained and
seasoned special warrior like Baron would be able to spare little perception
for anything but the enemies firing him up.
She snugged the rifle's steel butt-plate against her shoulder. Having been
trained in classic rifle marksmanship by one of the many military mentors,
serving and ex, whom she had sought out, the first time she'd tried to shoot an
AK, she'd gamely thrust her face down to try to get a proper cheek weld on the
wooden stock. It was uncomfortable and felt unnatural with the rifle's upright
design. She'd persevered.
Her reward was a savage whack like a home-run swing from a baseball bat that
left her cheekbone first numb and then aching for two days. She missed a target
she could have dead-centered with a handgun at that range by a good five feet.
Not just the silhouette, either: the whole piece of paper,
and
the
three-by-four-foot piece of plywood it was stapled to.
With that sharp lesson she'd meekly accepted instruction in proper AK
technique. With an assault rifle like that you didn't press your cheek to the
stock, but rather held your head up, as one of her older Special Forces
teachers had taught her. It was easier to sight that way, anyway, since the
Kalashnikov's profile was much higher than a bolt-action rifle's. It did make
for a less stable shooting platform. Then again, assault rifles weren't
designed to engage targets three hundred yards away with minute-of-arc
accuracy, either.
But the farthest enemy gunman in sight wasn't fifty yards from her, and at that
kind of range even a bunged-up third-world AK was more accurate than a pistol.
Fortunately the Kurds fought the way most third-world fighters did: standing
right up in the open and blazing away, either from the hip or holding their
rifles up and out in front of them with the butts actually clear of their
shoulders. Which worked fine if your enemy fought the same way. Or was shooting
full-auto from more than a hundred yards away or so, where they'd hit man-sized
targets only by accident.
To the side of her field of vision Annja saw one Kurd fall backward, downed by
bullets from one of her companions. Almost directly in front of her, though,
was a cagier fighter, better trained or better seasoned. He knelt behind a rock
with the buttstock held to his shoulder and pulled off short bursts instead of
hosing the landscape a magazine at a time. Clearly he was the most dangerous
opponent. Aside from the fact he was more likely to hit one of her friends he
was also hard for one of them to hit, since he actually used cover.
She lined up the black-capped head between the ears of the rear sights and the
hooded post of the front sight. Using the best form she could she let out half
a deep inhalation, caught it and squeezed the trigger. It was like working a
rusty gate latch but she managed to hold true until the trigger broke sear and
the gun went off with a ringing bark and kicked her shoulder hard.
She let the weapon ride up in recoil then brought it down with proper
follow-through. Then she moved toward another target. Even before the rising
barrel had obscured her vision she'd seen the shooter's head jerk and a cloud
puff out beyond it, dark in the dull afternoon light.