The Girl in Green (42 page)

‘Abu Saleh,' Tigger says, ‘has commanded his people to allow us access to our own and to take them away. He called ahead. You should check.'

‘Abu Saleh is inside? That is excellent news,' the man says. ‘And you have arranged transportation to get your people away?'

‘I expect a helicopter. Soon, I hope.'

‘You are here for Mr Arwood?'

‘I beg your pardon?' Tigger says.

‘Mr Arwood. You are here to save him?'

‘Yes. Not only him, but yes. He is one of ours. How do you know his name?'

The man lowers his rifle now and extends his hand. At first, Tigger thinks he may want to shake, but then he sees him wiggle his fingers, and Tigger understands he's to surrender the pistol he forgot he was holding. The man with the scar takes it and puts it into his own belt, alongside a military-issue Beretta 9mm that is as polished as the day it was made. ‘You won't be needing that,' he says. ‘You are no longer in any danger. You are under our protection now.'

There is something familiar about him. Not his voice or his countenance, per se, but his blue eyes; something about the shape of his face; the scar, too. Try as he might, though, Tigger cannot place him. On a whim, he asks, ‘Have we met before?'

The man smiles and nods. ‘Twenty-two years ago. I was a boy. We met in a minefield. Mr Arwood carried me to safety. You were there. I remember you. And so now we have two things in common.'

‘I don't understand,' Tigger says.

‘We have a common past. And we have Mr Arwood. You said he is one of yours. He is also one of ours.'

‘I see. You are planning to rescue him?'

‘We were. But I like your plan better. Now you will rescue him. And when you are done, and your people are safe, we — the Peshmerga — will stop walking before death, and allow death to lead the way.'

‘We?'

The man taps his finger ring twice against his rifle. When he does, more than eighty men rise from hidden positions in the rocks, and stand silently at attention.

Tigger looks around him, less surprised than angry at himself for being so unobservant.

‘Did you remove those guards? Near the café?'

‘They have been removed from this life.'

‘It is said,' Tigger answers, ‘that the Kurds have no allies but the mountains.'

‘This is true. But we do have friends. And we like to pay back our debts.'

‘Where the hell have you been?' Märta says as Tigger finally catches up to her halfway across a wide-open space in the middle of the fortress. ‘What were you doing out there?'

The explosions they had heard earlier are growing frequent. There is machine-gun fire from helicopters, and return fire from the ground. Jets pass overhead in formation, unaware of the drama being played out below their bellies.

‘You know when you said you thought we were being watched?' Tigger whispers. ‘Well, as it happens, you were right.'

‘What does that mean?' Märta says as they walk toward another corner of the fortress.

Tigger is walking next to her. He becomes aware of his own sweat.

Two of Abu Saleh's men emerge from a tower in the north-east corner, across from the one they exited.

‘Where are they going to land the helicopter?' Märta says. ‘It's nothing but rock outside.'

‘Right here,' Tigger says in a quiet voice. ‘In this bailey.'

‘In this what?'

‘The castle courtyard. It's called a bailey. Sweden is a kingdom. Don't you know your castles?'

‘It's not a very big place to land a helicopter.'

‘We must hope Spaz's name is ironic.'

Abu Saleh turns and stops. He looks at Tigger and his empty hands.

‘Where is my gun?'

‘I suspect you'll see it again soon.'

‘Why are we stopping?' Märta asks. Two more Iraqi jets pass overhead. They are F-16s.

Saleh does not answer, leaving them exposed in the fortress under a warming sun.

‘It's going to be like Ramadi and Fallujah,' Märta whispers to Tigger as they stand in the courtyard watching the jets advance in formation toward a target somewhere beyond the wall that obstructs their view. ‘The people are going to start streaming out of the cities again. We should be back there, preparing to receive them. This is all my fault.'

‘Right now, we're doing this. Can you focus, please? Stop planning?'

‘I can plan or I can scream,' she says. ‘Why are we watching that door there?'

‘That is where our people will soon emerge, or else men will come out to kill us.'

There are more explosions below.

Over the years, Märta has become a connoisseur of explosions. Car bombs. Suicide bombers with vests. RPGs being launched; RPGs landing. Hellfires hitting the ground. C4 blowing up markets. Scuds taking off; Scuds landing. Patriot missile batteries launching rockets; Patriot missiles missing their targets and landing somewhere else. It is hard to keep all the sounds straight, and perhaps useless, but the mind strives for order, and cannot help but seek patterns.

Once, at the base of the Zagros Mountains, she heard a strange and distant explosion. It was low and rolling. It lasted too long. It gained and lost intensity, like an arhythmic barrage of low-calibre mortars falling into a well, miles off.

‘What is that?' she asked an old man who stood beside her, also listening.

‘Thunder,' he said.

‘Märta, look,' Tigger says.

A small figure emerges from the void of the open door at the base of the tower ahead. It is a girl in a shapeless orange dress that is too big for her. She is very young — a teenager. She holds much of the dress bunched at her waist, and pulls what remains behind her through the sand and dust. She has the demeanour of one shivering through rain.

Märta ignores the instructions from the terrorists, and runs to the girl. She closes the distance quickly and wraps her arms around the child, walking her back toward Tigger in a direction that feels like an exit.

The girl is not safe, Märta knows, but she is no longer alone.

The girl, shaking, submits to the embrace of this new stranger.

Another figure emerges, limping, through the door. It is a young man, short and clearly in pain. This time it is Tigger who runs forward. He catches the boy and wraps his arms around him, kissing the top of his head. He has been shot in the leg. He, too, is shaking. Taking Jamal's face in his hands, Tigger sees he is dehydrated and cold. Tigger can't tell how much blood he's lost.

‘There's a helicopter coming,' Tigger says.

‘Are you sure?'

‘I'm rather counting on it.'

‘What if it doesn't?'

‘We'll find a nice hotel.'

‘There are no hotels here.'

‘I was pulling your leg.'

‘Why would you pull my leg? I'm in terrible pain.'

Märta's phone rings. She answers it, freeing one hand from around Adar's shoulders.

‘Hello?' she says.

‘It's me,' says Herb. ‘We're inbound.'

‘We have Jamal and the girl. I'm waiting on Arwood and Benton.'

‘Where do you want us to land?'

‘In the bailey.'

‘What's a bailey?'

‘It's the courtyard to the castle.'

‘There's a castle?'

‘You can't miss it.'

39

Herb sits in the copilot's chair of the EC155. There is a wall of instrumentation, buttons, and a joystick in front of him. He understands the altimeter, the rotor RPMs, the horizon ball, the clock, the fuel gauge. However, the only instrument he could control is the Maglite flashlight mounted on two rings to his right; the rest of the black panel is beyond him. He stares at it, though, because outside the window his helplessness is even deeper.

The flight path is 150 kilometres. Spaz has mapped a route over Simele and the northern stretch over the Mosul Dam lake. ‘ISIL has no navy — yet,' the Russian says. ‘But when they do, you remember you heard it here first, OK? The next war, it will be for that water. Assuming the dam doesn't break and kill everybody first. Mark my words. Everything I say comes true.'

‘Maybe you shouldn't talk so much,' Herb says. And for the first time, he hears Spaz laugh. It is not comforting.

Herb turns to look for support from Elise in the back. She is not paying attention, and is instead immersed in a video game of Tetris.

Spaz changes direction to the south-west, taking them over the spot of the mortar attack and the remains of the Urals. They are avoiding the main roads with their mobile weapons and technicals, and circumnavigating Tal Afar, now being shelled by the military as the Sunni-aligned tribes attack the Shiite population.

How anything below coheres into a strategy is beyond him.

A call comes in that Herb answers. It is Märta. She has the Arab kids, she says. She gives him instructions on where to land.

Herb shouts to Spaz and Elise over the whirr of the blades. ‘Apparently there's a castle. And we're to land in it.'

Spaz does not react, but Elise looks up and smiles. She points to her helmet and the headset system that transmitted the same call to her helmet, too. In a warm Spanish accent, she says, ‘How's your stomach, Señor Macho Man?'

‘Average. Why?'

‘It is going to be a bumpy landing.'

‘How do you know that?'

‘If we are landing in a castle, we are landing in a box. The downward pressure of the air from the rotor cannot dissipate easily. So it will bounce off the walls and come back one way or another. It will be a tempest in a teapot.'

‘I see.'

‘Do you believe in God?'

‘Yes, I do,' says Herb.

‘I find that prayer helps,' she says.

‘Really?'

‘It gives me something else to think about, instead of throwing up. Focusses the mind.'

‘Landed in many castles, have you?'

‘Estates of drug lords. Physics are the same.'

‘When this is over, I'm going to take a vacation.'

‘You want some company?' Elise asks.

‘I'm married with two kids.'

‘Gets lonely out here among all the refugees and insurgents,' Elise says through the intercom.

‘That's funny, because I feel like I can't get a minute to myself.'

Spaz interjects, ‘Looks like the military has identified an arms depot. Down there. Look. They are bombarding them with mortars. I'm taking us up to fifteen hundred metres. We will approach the mountains from the north.'

At a height of eight hundred metres, turning south, they fly into the shadow of the Sinjar Mountains. Rising to fifteen hundred metres, they align with their highest point. On approach, they meet the sun breaking over the castle walls, blinding them.

Herb's mobile phone is on, and he receives a text message. A moment later, both Spaz and Elise receive one as well. He and Elise look at one another.

Herb flips open the old Nokia. The signal, on the GSM system, has automatically switched over to MTN Syria, being the more powerful signal in their location. The message reads:
Ministry of Tourism welcomes you in Syria. Please call 137 for tourism information or complaints.

‘This place,' Herb mumbles.

‘What?' Elise shouts.

‘Nothing. How high can this thing go?' Herb asks through the headset.

‘Two thousand metres,' Spaz says. ‘That is the hover ceiling. But it depends on the barometric pressure.'

‘That doesn't give us a lot of manoeuvring space if they don't respect the emblem, and things get hairy.'

Spaz and Elise both laugh at the same time.

‘What's so funny?'

‘If things get hairy,' Spaz says, ‘we are going to die.'

‘I'm glad we won the Cold War, you know that? You are a depressing, cynical, and mean-spirited group of people,' Herb says to Spaz.

‘It's not over yet,' Spaz mumbles as they cross over the castle wall and look down into the bailey.

‘How does it look?' Elise says from the back of the helicopter, putting away her video game and preparing her emergency kit.

‘Busy,' says Spaz. ‘I see three insurgents in the courtyard, a sharpshooter on one of the towers, maybe a machine gunner, and four of our people. But maybe many more inside. I think Jamal is wounded.'

Inside the tower, Arwood tries to pull Benton up, but is having little success. ‘That's our ride outside. We can make it,' he says.

‘I can't believe they got our message.'