The 56th Man (31 page)

It had been a long year of physical
inactivity for Ghaith. The luxury of jogging ten or fifteen
kilometers had been reduced to seven, then one, then none. If you
ran now, it was to save your own skin--or to rob someone of theirs.
Yet he gained ground quickly after only a few blocks. The men ahead
of him were getting winded. They were in even worse shape. The poor
had never had the luxury of working out. Under the old regime,
unless he belonged to the right crowd, a poor man risked arrest and
torture for just showing his face. And if you were part of the
right crowd, but still managed to get arrested, the torture was
even worse.

They threw desperate looks over their
shoulders. Did they assume Ari was armed? Or could they see the
Americans humping around the corner behind him? Ghaith did not
pause to check. At this point, the infantrymen were as likely to
shoot him as they were the bombers. Ghaith understood how difficult
it could be to tell allies from foes.

His breathing was a little ragged, but he was
pleased to note he could still move easily. During the embargo
nearly everyone had gone hungry, and many, far too many, had
starved to death--mostly infants and the elderly. But Ghaith had
thrived. He was twenty pounds heavier than the average
Iraqi--nearly all of it muscle. The Minister of Interior had been
so pleased with his work that he had given him an honorary
membership at the Nadi al-Said. At least twice a week, and usually
more often, he would work out at the exclusive club's gym. His wife
would sip at a martini while watching their children in the pool.
He did not take her often, though. “Mr. Deputy's” son was known for
his penchant for pretty wives, and if he came to the club and saw
Ghaith's wife, he was sure to satisfy temptation.

Up ahead, one of the bombers said something
to the other. They skidded to a halt and whirled, lowering their
AK-47's. Ghaith jumped into a narrow alley to his right and
flattened against the drab brown wall of the house on the corner.
He could not see the Americans, nor could he hear them. But his
view was blocked by the building on the other side of the alley. If
the platoon commander and NCO's had any sense, and some of them
did, they would understand the bombers might be luring them into
another trap. They would be using hand signals to guide their men
silently forward.

But he couldn't count on it.

The bombers would have no pity. He was
working for the Americans. And he had told them only minutes
earlier that he had fucked their god. They might just blow off his
pecker and let him live with the consequences of his blasphemy. He
looked up. The roof was low. If he could only find something to
stand on--

Too late. There was a squishy sound. One of
the men had stepped in raw sewage as he approached. They were
moving slowly. If Ghaith was armed he could take them both down
when they turned the corner.

"There!" came a shout from up the street.
Frantic English, a dialect unto itself.

“
Coos okt al laglesh,”
one of the bombers swore. The two men saw they had
been spotted by what must have seemed to them like the entire
1
^st
Cavalry Division. Ghaith assumed they were turning to run,
since one of them had just said, “Fuck all this shit.”

Ghaith leapt out of the alley. One man was
still half-turned his way. As he raised his gun, Ghaith jammed his
knuckles into his throat. There was a loud crack and he went down,
making an odd sound like wind through rice paper.

Dalash, the second man, had barely begun to
face his attacker when Ghaith kicked him in the side of the knee.
There was a violent snap and he fell, screaming, his Kalashnikov
clattering on the broken pavement. Ghaith picked it up and aimed it
at the man's head.

"No!" A sergeant ran up, waving his free
hand. "We need them for intel! Don't shoot!"

Ghaith stared at him wildly, unable to
comprehend the dismissal of so obvious a necessity. This man had
just killed some of their own American soldiers. Before that,
Dalash the child rapist had lived a life that deserved only a quick
and ugly finish.

"Sarge, I don't know about that AK," said a
private, forgetting Ghaith knew English.

"Yeah..." The sergeant turned a stern eye on
his Iraqi ally. "Sir, would you please hand that rifle over? It's
United States property, now."

Ghaith, seeing so many guns around him,
knowing that he could get another at any time, placed the weapon
into the sergeant's gloved hands.

Lieutenant Pito joined them.

"Sergeant, secure the perimeter."

"Yes, sir," the sergeant said blandly,
although his squad had already fanned out.

A soldier kneeled next to the first bomber
and pulled out a CLS aid bag. When he opened the bag several items
rained down onto the bomber's chest, including syringes and a pair
of blue examination gloves. He opened the man's mouth, preparing to
insert a J tube. Then he paused.

"Sir, this man's status doesn't look too
hot."

The lieutenant walked over and crouched,
looking at the silent body and the crushed throat. "He doesn't have
any status at all, soldier."

A loud roar announced the arrival of the
Bradley, Captain Rodriguez standing in the turret. He ordered the
driver to stop. He spoke into his microphone and the lieutenant's
head jerked up.

Ghaith had dragged Dalash into the middle of
the street and had pushed his face into the raw filth and refuse
that had pooled in the center. Courtesy of the invasion and
consequent power outages, pumps had failed and sewage formed brown
streams wherever gravity took it. This included Ghaith's rage,
which spiraled downward in a superheated disgust that focused on
the shit in the street. What better place to bury Dalash? Dalash
and his kind? The whole shitty world?

Ghaith wasn't deaf to the shouts around him.
The whole world shouted, so a few added voices of outrage made no
difference to the chorus. He lifted the man's face out of the muck
and slammed it down again. If he didn't drown, the stench would
kill him.

"Watch it! He just killed an armed man with
his bare hands!"

"And watch the spread!" another querulous
voice joined in.

A nervous, familiar face came before Ghaith.
Ropp, the private who had offered him the 'four fingers of death'
all-beef franks earlier that week. He had just seen the friendly
epithet become a grisly reality when Ghaith killed Abu Shihab with
a blow to the throat.

"Sir! Back off from that prisoner!"

No longer mocking. Private Ropp’s eyes were
wide with fear and determination. He was pointing a shotgun at
Ghaith. A Mossberg, favored by the infantry in house-to-house
fighting. Ghaith had been present when word came down from command
that the 5.56 was to be preferred over the 12 gauge, which had too
wide a spread. Shooting an alleged terrorist in his living room
might also bring down everyone else present, including the man's
wife and children. The M16 was more discreet, hitting only what was
aimed at. But here was a Mossberg, pointed straight at Ghaith's
head. Ghaith began to laugh.

That's right. Take me down. Take down
everyone. Take down the whole fucking mess.

The godless mess. God was too great to want
anything to do with Iraq. Too great for the Americans. Too great
for this piece of shit world. They were an experiment gone wrong. A
discarded lab test that they were too stupid to realize had been
flushed down the sewer.

"Sir! Back away!"

Ghaith let go of Dalash and allowed his will
to survive to carry him back several yards. His face felt like
fire. The balaclava scorched whatever it touched. But it was worse
than mere heat. It was a symbol of what he had come to. He had
joined the world of useless anonymity. Not that he had ever been
well-known. But always before he had walked proudly, openly, secure
in his position, or as secure as one could be in this antique,
violent land. He had been a functionary extraordinaire. His
prodigious talents had been rewarded, something that would have
been highly unlikely under the old monarchy his father had
known.

And now he was less than what he had been in
the beginning, a pitiful nonentity swathed in a death mask, like a
criminal facing execution.

"You okay, sir?"

He looked stonily into Sergeant Mastin’s
face. So fresh and healthy. So...unmasked.

"Do you know who I am?" Ghaith asked.

"Well, no. We're not supposed to know who you
are, just so long as you weren't one of those Baathist
assholes."

Baathist assholes. The same Baathists who had
brought modernity and, yes, enlightenment to the country. Ghaith's
education, a secular affair of science and wonders, was due to them
and their leader. Ghaith had been able to marry the woman he loved
because she loved him too, and the despised Baathists gave freedom
to women to marry the man of their choice. Yes, they had brought
wars. Yes, their leading families were despicable. Yet here was
America telling Iraqis how loathsome the Baathists were. America,
at war. America, its leading families and its guiding plutocracy
demanding a laughable transparency from the defeated. America, so
transparent you couldn't see beyond the clouds of money. Except, of
course, for that one day. The whole world saw, then.

And then the clouds closed in again.

"You're not supposed to know me," repeated
Ghaith flatly.

"No, sir," said the sergeant, looking puzzled
that the interpreter would even bring up such a bizarre topic.
"Come on, we have to clear out of here."

"You will...soon enough."

"Sir?"

Captain Rodriguez came storming up. "You want
to explain yourself, mister?"

Ghaith nodded at Dalash, who had been pulled
out of the shit. A combat medic was applying a temporary splint to
his leg.

"
Él debe ser
ejecutado inmediatamente
."

He could not bear the gape of the captain, a
reaction so extreme he might have just heard a donkey talk. Could
an Iraqi not be educated? Could an Iraqi not have a mind? Ghaith
pulled away from Rodriguez and the sergeant and faced the drab,
windowless wall of the house across the street. An ugly house in an
ugly city in a country universally reviled as the ugliest nation on
earth.

Ghaith ripped off the balaclava.

"Here I am!" he screamed. "Here I am, the
godless one!"

He stormed down the street, raising his fist
at invisible watchers.

"You know me!" he shouted at a suburb stoked
with former Shia prisoners. "You know me! I have ripped out your
hearts! I have guided the demons to your doorstep! Forget the
Americans! Look at me and see what it is to be truly godless! Burn
your prayer rugs! Come join me! All of you are godless! Face the
truth! Look at me!"

"Sir, we got a serious death wish here," said
the sergeant, watching Ghaith, then glancing up nervously at the
rooftops. He could not understand a word of what the Iraqi was
saying, but he sensed Ghaith’s behavior was making the place more
dangerous by the second.

Sphinx shifted position during the night.
When Ari awoke he found the cat curled next to his head, like some
foreign agent trying to smother him in his sleep. Having collected
several hours' worth of cat dandruff in his lungs, Ari gave a
mighty sneeze. He watched in dismay as Sphinx jumped up and shot
out the studio door. This was not what he had planned.

Rolling over, he punched the button on the
computer tower, then stood and stretched. He leaned down and picked
up the Tec-9 that he had prudently kept at his side, in
anticipation of a visit from 'Mother' and her two boys. He did not
consider it likely that they would come after him, but one never
knew. He went to the bathroom, slipped the gun under the towels in
the closet, and stared at his face in the mirror just long enough
to foment a mild disgust at his appearance. He went back to the
studio.

The log-on screen had just popped up on the
monitor when Sphinx sashayed back into the studio and took up a
position on the heat signature Ari had left on the mattress. After
giving him a cagy look, the cat stretched, licked its anus, and
folded itself into a near-perfect ball before falling asleep.

Ari slipped down to the garage and took the
bag of flour out of the xB. He went back upstairs and checked to
make sure Sphinx was still on the mattress. He then descended to
the basement and broke open the bag. Pinching out small clumps, he
sprinkled flour around the utility room doorway and along the wall.
He walked backwards up the stairs, spreading flour on several
steps. Mentally gauging the stride of a frightened cat, he laid a
five-foot-wide band of flour at the head of the stairs.

He went to each room on the first floor,
creating a band of all-purpose along the walls. In the kitchen he
was generous around the cabinets and on the counter top. By the
time he had repeated the process upstairs, the five pounds of flour
were fully distributed. Back in the studio, he tossed the paper bag
aside and smiled down on his sleeping visitor.

“
Itla
!
Itla
!" he yelled, stamping his feet.
Get out!

He took his time following the trail. There
was no need to rush. The cat's pawprints were as clear as if it had
been running in snow--and flour on polished wood proved to be
almost as slippery.

Down the upstairs hallway, down the steps,
through the living room...and into the kitchen. The tracks suddenly
disappeared in the gap between the counter and the base of the
stove.

"Ah..."

Retrieving the flashlight he had taken from
the kayakers, Ari went down on his stomach and turned the beam down
the dark tunnel. He saw nothing but the kitchen wall and yellow
furballs that attested to Sphinx's frequent use of the passage.