Banquo's Ghosts (29 page)

“That’s it then,” Marjorie whispered to Johnson. “We lost your mules to the top lad there and his three lackeys.”

“The same truck guys.” They weren’t moving robotically anymore, free of their protective gear.

“So it would seem. Mujahadeen. Direct from the Esfahan Trigger complex, lately from the Kermanshah railhead, fresh from the quarry and with more juice than us. Unless you want to go over and tell them you’re the daring Peter Johnson and you’re late filing a story for
The Crusader
, so gimme your cruddy mule, you sissy Raghead. Or words to that effect.”

Johnson measured the men with the guns and thought about how poorly the damn magazine’s name would resonate with these thugs. They’d been fighting crusaders for a thousand years. Then thought about having a drink for the first time since his head popped out of the burka. His feet were still somewhat swollen, and he looked at them forlornly. Then with a little pluck, “Well I am kind of over deadline . . . ”

Yep. All the horses and mules were spoken for. The armed Mujahadeen from the trucks expropriated what they wanted—four mules and two horses. That left another four horses for the vice merchants to ride, so Wallets’ people were hoofing it out.

“I’m not worried about losing them, even in the dark,” Wallets explained, “and I didn’t expect to go faster than walking, but I did want to spare your feet. Sorry.”

Johnson shrugged. “If I faint, Marjorie will carry me.”

“Here, have a shot,” she offered. The steroid boom-boom cocktail went into his arm.

The caravan left after dusk. Johnson noticed everyone was dressed so much alike. Khakis, combat boots, and checked kaffiyeh head scarves. In the dark, nobody’d even notice Marjorie was a girl—a reverse of the gender ruse of the last few days. And Johnson and Wallets looked scruffy enough to vanish into any bazaar.

The four mules were laden with two fifty-gallon drums each. You could tell the drums weren’t totally full, as each was hefted into place by two men and sat lashed into a wooden X-cradle over the mule’s back without making the beasts strain. Across the horses’ rear ends hung two
yard-long torpedo shapes, wrapped in thick padding, hung like clock weights. The titanium tubes. The men fussed with them to try to keep the things from knocking against one another against the horses’ hind legs. Clearly, the Mujahadeen considered it something to be avoided.

Before long, they’d gotten it squared away, and the string of men and animals left the open apron of the drive-in movie theater for the darkness of the trees. Wallets let them get a ten-minute head start, not wanting to trail them too close. At first the four Blind Mice followed slowly, trying not to make any noise. There was something dangerous close at hand. Then Marjorie pointed it out, across a canyon: the dark outline of a pillbox, about four hundred yards away.

“Iranian border guards. They call them the Mullahs. In a country full of them, go figure. But they’re more worried about stuff coming in than going out.”

Everyone carried an AK-47, and pretty soon the sling on Johnson’s rifle began to dig into his shoulder in awful ways. For several hours they climbed, the forest opening out, finally giving way to brush and rocks. The trail was clear enough, and when they reached a high ridge, Wallets stopped to let them rest. They could see the others still heading up, gaining distance. What looked from the abandoned drive-in like a final ridge was really just one in a series, and Johnson’s heart sank, realizing they’d be at this all night, ridge after ridge—God knows how much longer. When he stopped to rest, that’s when his feet really told him where he could get off.

Marjorie saw he wasn’t doing so well but offered nothing but tepid tea from a canteen and sympathy. Her caring eyes illuminated for a moment when she lit him a cigarette.

“At least we’re going by trails,” she whispered. “If we weren’t doggin’ the Mujahadeen and their mules, we’d head west and stay off their tracks. Too easy here to meet a bad guy on the way up or down.”

They pressed on; ridge after ridge, down some, but always higher on the climb. The stars hard and clear. Up about five thousand feet, Johnson began to pant hard.

“Here, it’ll keep you breathing, but your feet won’t like it.”

“I don’t care—I gotta breathe.”

It was a little green leaf. “Chew it.”

“Coca?” Johnson wondered with a touch of awe.

“Close. Khat. Another kind of stimulant. Works about the same.”

Johnson didn’t care. The bitter tang on his tongue went right to his head and heart, and the next two ridges blew by so fast he barely noticed. Somewhere in the back of his mind he knew he’d pay for this big time. But it didn’t matter—the bright stars loved him; Marjorie loved him. And he loved her back. When they got out of this, they would marry, have many Mini Marge children who would all know how to shoot wild turkey in the woods. And live happily ever after. With an endless supply of Khat.

Out of nowhere a commotion erupted up the trail, and they could hear it all the way back. The lead mules and horses had met some kind of gang on their way down. A posse. Marge, Yossi, and Wallets surrounded him like clucking hens, shoving him off the path. They stumbled into the rocks, going further and further off the beaten track, while the noise of the altercation echoed off the mountain.

Thirty yards into a garden of stone pillars, they sat on him. Really sat on him, slipping the AK-47 off his shoulder without even a clink. Then split away, taking up firing positions a few yards on either side. Nobody needed to say “hush.” Wallets stared back at the trail, a pair of night goggles at his eyes. Yossi and Marjorie cautiously locked and loaded their guns, quietly hugging their boulders for cover, the muzzles pointing toward the path.

Even without the night goggles, Johnson knew the score. Men were searching. Searching for them. The posse had gotten in ahead, up above, and figured they’d catch them on the way up. And Peter Johnson deeply understood why the Sheik and Yasmine let him free. The cripple fakir in the Kasbah, the goons in the bazaar, the military police waiting in the plaza—nobody gave a shit about Peter Johnson. They cared about the real spies, just like Wallets told him back at the Burka Company, but now he understood the lengths their pursuers were willing to go. Even hinder the smuggling of a great weapon, risk a firefight on a blind mountainside—
anything
to get the deceivers in their midst.

The sounds of arguments faded; the men on the mules with their radioactive burden were free to go, the posse headed down. Yossi’s soft voice whispered, “Mule men say we just cigarette traders like them. No keep up. Must be down below. The posse gang say drum smugglers and vice merchants worthless Jew Monkeys. You just be quiet now.”

Very quiet. The sound of men, a troop clattered down the slope. They went slowly, some splitting off the path to search either side. One paused at the entrance to their stone-pillar garden. He walked in a dozen steps. Then another dozen. From his huddle under a great stone, Johnson saw the man, his face right over an edge of rock. A semi-shaven face, now with a couple days of scruff, a face that needed regular shaving. Very odd for Iran, where every man was required to grow some kind of a beard. Obviously, this group received special dispensation from the authorities to shave, so they could blend in on both sides of the border. No long beards required. Just the ubiquitous Saddam moustache. The searcher looked this way and that, peering intently. He put on his own pair of night goggles. Then looked some more. No one breathed.

A shout from the Posse Boss turned him around. The night goggles dropped from his eyes, and his footsteps faded back out toward the trail. Johnson suddenly wanted to cry Hosannas or kiss the rock. Then he found he’d wet himself.
Hosanna
, no razor blades.

They weren’t going up-up-up anymore but down-down-down. And he was sick and dizzy inside, and his feet throbbed. Up front, the Turk and Wallets were going slower so as not to trip and pitch themselves on their heads. A quarter mile down below, the vague outlines of the laden mules and awkward horses bobbed this way and that in the dark in and out of the rocks. They slowed to a crawl. Wallets didn’t want to catch up with the drum smugglers and the vice merchants. The landscape had also changed. No longer woody, with trees and brush, these hills were bare rock with lichen and little twiggy shrubs.

“Iraq?” he asked Marjorie.

And she nodded. “Iraq. Strange, huh? One side green and lush, the other bare.”

When suddenly the whole caravan stopped short in a bit of a narrow valley. The mules and horses huddled by a stony bank. A small stream
splashed down from nowhere, alongside the rocky trail. Down below, the vice merchants gathered over by one shoulder of rock, the mule drivers crossed the stream to the opposite bank, all in sight of each other, but none too close, as if they didn’t like each other’s company. The animals went down to water; the men warily filled their canteens, hugging opposite sides of the bank.

Looking down from their own perch along the stream, Johnson could see them all quite clearly, even in the faint light of the setting moon. Not a hundred yards away. He splashed water on his face, feeling
wow
, then noticed one of the Mujahadeen mule drivers look up sharply in his direction. Could he see them up above? But no, the man went back to his canteen. “I think we’re safe up here,” Marjorie said. “With any luck we’ll lasso the lot a mile or so on the way down.”

Johnson splashed water on his face again and then stretched out on a flat rock by the stream. It began to dig into his flesh, but his feet hurt so bad he almost didn’t notice. Marjorie tossed him a padded length of stiff Styrofoam padding not half an inch thick. He looked at the stiff, measly thing thinking,
I’ll never be able to sleep on that cookie sheet
—

Dawn inside the narrow barren valley caught him full in the face. The sun over the high ridge beat down. Eight o’clock in the morning. No more than four hours’ rest. Johnson didn’t even remember passing out. He’d slept like a dead thing on that square pizza pan. What woke him was the bartender’s bill for his feet and his head. He’d gone off on some benders before, but this one took the cake for pure pain. A splitting head. He felt like he’d swallowed a salt stick. Whole. He couldn’t even manage to get Margie to toss him the canteen, trying to whisper, “Water . . . ,” but nothing came out. And he couldn’t walk either. Down below the four Mujahadeen were loading the drums on their mules again.

Quietly up the valley the cutting sound of choppers echoed into the rocks. Everyone froze, panicked, looking wildly around. It would be seconds now. Wallets ran to his pack and frantically tried to get inside it. A stream of profanity came out of his mouth, “Christcuntfuckshit!”
Taken completely by surprise, the vice merchants scattered and ran in every direction. The drum smugglers went for their guns and drove their mules across the stream, heading down. Yossi the Turk and Marjorie stumbled a few paces along the trail with their guns and, afraid the mules were going to get away, began to fire. The Mujahadeen ducked behind some rocks and let fly back. A ricochet caught Yossi full in the face, and he fell over swearing in Farsi. More bullets caromed around the rocks, and Marjorie ducked behind a boulder. Johnson saw her face. Very white. Despite the chaos, he crawled down to her. Twenty feet, then closer, ten. Then slumped against the same rock.