The Hunters (17 page)

“Can you cover us while I reload?” Chartier asked.

“You got it,” Parson said. He kept scanning, holding his Beretta with both hands.

Chartier had fired three rounds from his five-shot revolver. When he pressed the release latch, the heavy cylinder dropped open like a lead ingot on a hinge. Chartier extracted the empty brass and reached into his pocket for more ammo.

The .500 Magnum cartridges, topped with seven-hundred-grain bullets, put Parson in mind of the bolts on the landing gear of big airplanes. He had killed elk with bullets a quarter of that size. The Frenchman had chosen to arm himself with one of the most powerful handguns commercially available. A hunter could use it as a backup weapon to stop a charge by a Cape buffalo.

Chartier dropped in three fresh rounds and slammed the cylinder closed. He looked over the edge of the creek bank and raised the weapon once more. Propped himself against the creek bank. He let his elbows dig into the soil to brace his arms for holding the big handgun. At that same moment, Parson thought he saw movement in the grass. Not weeds swaying in the breeze, either. Something else.

Carolyn Stewart started to raise herself for a better view.

“Stay down,” Gold whispered.

Parson touched the first joint of his index finger to the trigger of his Beretta. Kept both eyes open as he scanned over the barrel. He swept right to left, pointing the weapon where he looked, ready to squeeze off a snap shot. Or two, or three, or ten.

There.

Among the blades of grass and stems of wilted weeds, Parson made out the unmistakable front sight post of an AK-47.

Parson aimed into the grass and fired double-action. Shooting the pistol in that condition made for a longer trigger pull; with one motion he cycled the hammer to its cocked position and fired. The effort pulled his aim off a bit: The muzzle dipped down and to the right.

The bullet burned a path through the grass. Parson could not see if his round struck anything except vegetation. Just when he felt the pistol's recoil, the AK-47 sight post disappeared.

Chartier held his fire. Wise move by Frenchie, Parson thought. You don't blast through your ammo, firing for effect, when you have only five shots at a time.

Parson waited, watched, waited. Where was that little fucker?

Time stopped. To Parson, the moment felt like an aircraft simulator put on freeze: instruments still showing speed and altitude, but no forward movement. The breeze still rustled, though the world froze on its axis.

Now that Parson had fired, his weapon's hammer remained poised in the cocked position. His next shot would require a much lighter trigger pull, and he could fire more accurately. He felt like a hunter expecting a wounded lion to charge out of the grass. No use in running; you could only stand fast and keep firing.

But instead of a lion's charge, what came was a fusillade of lead. From an unseen position, the boy terrorist opened up on full auto.

The 7.62-millimeter bullets tore over Parson's head. They slammed into the opposite creek bank and churned the soil like an invisible harrow. The passage of that much kinetic energy so near felt like the close strike of lightning bolts, power in its purest expression, raw and formless. The air itself seemed to rip and burn.

Gold grabbed Stewart's shirt collar to keep her head low. Geedi stayed hunkered to the ground.

Parson pumped three rounds in the general direction of the shooter; Chartier fired once:
pop, pop pop, WHAM.

One of the shots must have connected; the storm of bullets from the AK-47 stopped. Parson snapped two more shots toward an enemy he still couldn't see.

“Let's move,” he said. “Now.”

Bent low, Parson led his crew eastward down the creek bed.

P
ain.

Pain like Hussein had never known surged from his right foot. He felt as if an invisible jinn had hacked off his toes with an ax. In fact, for all he knew, a jinn really had brought him this bad luck. Jinns were the descendants of an angel who had defied Allah. Entirely possible that one would try to rob Hussein of his moment of triumph.

Hussein rolled onto his side amid crushed blades of grass and hot, expended cartridges. He did not scream. He ground his teeth and let a moaning whine escape his lips as he exhaled. But he made no other sound. It would take more than an infidel bullet to make him cry. Hussein was a soldier of God.

His foot hurt so much he forgot his hunger. He wanted to look at the wound, but he kept enough of his wits to avoid sitting up. Surely the
gaalos
would see him and get off a better shot next time. They had hit him purely by luck. By the will of Allah, maybe he had hit one of them the same way. No way to find out now.

Keeping his head low, he shifted his weight to his elbow and glanced down toward his feet.

Blood already stained the grass stems, and flies and flying ants began investigating the blood. The sight reminded Hussein of places where hyenas had torn their kill. Even the thought of moving the foot brought more pain. Hussein drew in a long breath. He held the air in his chest, then let it come out hissing from between clenched teeth. He rotated his ankle to look at his toes.

Or what was left of his toes. A bullet, maybe something even bigger than the rounds fired by his AK, had torn off his big toe and the one beside it. A third toe hung by a tendon. Blood streamed down his foot. The blood pumped out with each beat of his heart.

Hussein squeezed his eyes shut tightly. Opened them again. He did not know whether to curse the jinns for causing this wound or curse them for not letting the big bullet strike his head. He could be in paradise by now, a martyr whose work was done.

But that was not Allah's plan. Hussein remained on earth and in pain.

And
such
pain. He had heard fighters say bullet wounds don't always hurt much at first. Something about shock and the will of Allah and the heat of the bullet dulling the pain.

Those people were fools or liars. Nothing dulled this pain. Hussein's foot felt as if someone were sawing it off, crushing it, and burning it at the same time.

“Allah, give me strength,” he whispered to himself.

He wondered if he would bleed to death. Could someone die from a foot wound? Hussein had no idea. Al-Shabaab had given him no first-aid training and no first-aid equipment, except a rag he kept in one of his vest pouches.

Twisting to his left, Hussein opened the pouch and pulled out the rag. The movement caused him to turn his foot just enough to brush the wound against the stalk of a weed, and that sent even more fire shooting up his leg. He clenched his teeth and squeezed his eyes shut until the pain subsided from a raging blaze to a steady boil.

When Hussein was little, he'd suffered a toothache, and an aunt had pulled out the bad tooth with pliers. From that experience, he thought he knew pain, but that was nothing compared to what he felt now.

With his good foot, he beat down some of the grass. He hoped creating a clear spot would let him move around without repeating the mistake that had just caused him so much agony. Hussein bent his right knee and brought his foot within reach.

He gripped the foot with his right hand and felt warm blood flowing over his fingers. If he tied the rag around his foot tightly enough, perhaps the bleeding would stop or at least slow down.

Hussein shook out the rag. Someone had cut it from a dirty bedsheet, to about the size of a man's shirt. The sheet must have belonged to a woman: Pink flowers decorated one corner of the fabric. Not a fitting bandage for a fighter. Hussein did not care. In a minute or two, that frilly flower would be covered with the blood of jihad.

He folded the rag in half lengthwise. Then he folded it again. Hussein raised his mangled, dripping foot as high as he dared. He placed the rag under the arch of his foot, then tied an overhand knot across the top of his foot. He pulled the knot tight.

Oh, the pain.

The knot squeezed the broken bones and torn muscles. The pain made Hussein's eyes fill with water, but he uttered no sound. He sucked air in hard and held it. Underneath the roar of pain, Hussein felt pops and cracks where solid bones should have been.

By now, blood covered his foot and ankle and had spattered all over Hussein's trousers. Splintered toe bones jutted from torn meat in a way that reminded him of a slaughtered chicken.

Now, to cover the wound. That third toe, dangling, presented a problem. No way to save it; the mangled toe could only get in the way.

Hussein knew what he must do. He unsnapped his machete from its sheath, withdrew the long blade. He turned his ankle this way and that, trying to place the machete's cutting edge on the toe's remaining tendon without slicing anything else. Each time the toe flopped, the weight of it pulled at the tendon and sent jolts of pain.

Finally, Hussein contorted himself to rest his bad foot flat on the ground. Holding the machete in his right hand, he touched the tip of the blade to the bloody tendon. The tendon lay across matted, blood-soaked grass.

Hussein gripped the machete handle in his fist and thought to himself:
Allahu akbar.
God is great. He pushed the blade with a stabbing motion.

Perhaps the blade needed sharpening. Perhaps Hussein did not push hard enough. Instead of making a clean cut, the blade pulled the tendon until it snapped.

Hussein's agony soared to new heights. He would have thought one had to go to hell to feel this much pain. He stifled a cry. His eyes streamed. But his mangled toe was gone.

He lay on his back, still gripping the machete. Breathed in, out, in, out. A dome of blue sky wheeled above him. A cloud in the shape of an angel—a good one, he hoped—drifted with the wind. Hussein wondered if that was an omen, or if the pain was bending his mind.

If you are an angel, he thought, if you came from Allah, then give me strength and wisdom.

For a moment, Hussein let his body rest and deal with the shock. The pain rolled back some, like a wave breaking on shore and then sliding away into the ocean.

He hadn't imagined this much hurt was possible. No one should have to feel such pain. Not even an unclean animal like a dog. Not even an infidel. Not even a sinner like the one he'd helped stone. The next time I kill an infidel or a
kafir
, Hussein thought, I will try to do it quickly.

Time passed in a way Hussein could not track. Maybe he'd passed out; he had no measure of how long he had lain looking up at the sky. But there came a moment when he felt strong enough to finish tying the rag around his wound.

The ground felt tacky underneath his foot; perhaps the blood had begun to clot and dry. When Hussein raised his foot, grass and leaves stuck to the bottom of it. The severed toe lay in the weeds. Ants crawled around it, their feelers twitching.

Hussein shifted his hips and bent his knee. Now he could reach the ends of the bloody cloth. He wrapped one end over the wound, carefully, carefully. He let the cloth touch the torn flesh and . . . it hurt. Yes, it hurt, but not like before. Maybe he would actually live through this.

I'll never run like I used to, Hussein thought, and that is a curse. I was so fast on my feet.

But he could still walk. He'd seen people with worse injuries hobbling through the streets of Mogadishu.

Hussein wrapped an end of the rag around his ankle, then over the wound once more. He did the same with the opposite end of the rag, and by the time he finished, four layers of cloth covered the injury. He tied the ends together in a final knot around his heel.

The sounds of battle came from farther away now. The booms, pops, and stutters of gunfire gave no indication of who was winning and where Hussein should go. He wanted to rejoin his al-Shabaab brothers. They would help him if they could, but that depended on many things. If we must move quickly and you are wounded, he'd been told, we will give you the gift of a mercy bullet.

Hussein did not want that kind of mercy. He hoped to go to paradise, just not today. If Allah had wanted to bring him home, the bullet that had just crippled Hussein would have killed him.

I have been spared for a reason, he concluded. I will fight on and learn that reason. I cannot run but I can still shoot. I can still kill those
gaalos
.

What glory he could earn if he caught or killed them now. All the al-Shabaab brothers would honor him. Even the hateful Abdullahi would have to respect him.

Hussein thought of a traditional children's tale his mother had told him and his sister when he was little. He used to love hearing the story at bedtime. It was one of the few things he could remember about his mother.

There once was a fine prince from the city of Harar. Tricksters and deceivers within his father's court caused the prince to be cast out from the palace. He fended for himself through travels across Somalia, fording rivers and crossing deserts. He always treated animals with kindness, and the animals returned his goodwill.

One day, the prince saved a mouse from some boys who were chasing it. He threw his coat over the mouse, and when the boys came running up, he told them the mouse had disappeared down a hole. You might as well find something else for amusement, the prince said.

When the boys left, the mouse squeaked in gratitude. She told the prince she would return the favor if ever she got the chance. The prince doubted that a mouse could do him any good, but he thanked the mouse for her courtesy and went on his way.

Later in his travels the prince came across a magnificent mansion with golden gates and windows of crystal. Surely such a wealthy household will give me shelter, the prince thought, so he called at the gate.

The gatekeeper tried to warn the prince away. My mistress is the most beautiful woman in the world, the gatekeeper said, but evil magic has possessed her. Every man who sees her wants to marry her. She says she will agree if the man passes a test. But she kills the man if he fails. The tests are always impossible.

Intrigued, the prince ignored the warning. When he saw the woman, he realized she was indeed the most beautiful woman in the world. He accepted her challenge as the gatekeeper shook his head sadly.

The woman gave the prince this test: He must hide from her for three days. She would use her magic to try to find him, and if she found him, he would die. She would give him a one-day head start.

The prince set out from the mansion, running as fast as he could. He found no safe place to hide, and he realized he would soon lose his life for being so foolish.

His friend the mouse found him in distress. The mouse had an idea to save him, though it would require great courage. She could lead him through a hole in the ground to the throne of the King of the Jinns. The woman, even though possessed by evil, would never think to look for him in such a scary place.

The plan worked. When the third day passed and the beautiful woman had never found the prince, the evil spell was broken and kindness returned to her heart. The woman and the prince married and lived happily ever after.

Hussein knew very well there was no such thing as happily ever after. Still, he thought some of the story's lessons applied: Think for yourself and do brave things—things no one else would do—and you may find reward. He could not run, but maybe he could walk.

Only one way to find out. Hussein raised his shoulders off the ground. He rolled to his left and put most of his weight on the side of his hipbone. The motion jarred his wounded foot, and it hurt. Hussein winced, but he found he could bear the pain.

He propped himself with the heel of his left hand. Rested for a moment. Shifted his right knee, slowly, slowly. Rotated himself until he crouched on his hands and knees. The new position of his legs brought a new kind of hurt. Now the wound throbbed like the beat of Bantu drummers.

Hussein felt queasy. He paused to let his mind clear. Spat into the grass.

He knew he was about to face tests of his courage and strength like never before, and the first test involved merely raising his head. Would an infidel bullet blow his brains out?

The danger did not matter. To walk, he had to get up. He shifted his eyes from the ground and the ants to the tops of the grass and the sky. Extended his elbows so he could see above the grass.

No shot came. The field of dry grass waved like swells on the ocean, moving to a breeze that caressed Hussein's face. Smoke drifted above a distant tree line. Someone's thatch-roofed house was burning. The firefight had died down enough for Hussein to hear the rumble of a truck engine. He had no idea whose truck, and he saw no other person. Hussein knew Abdullahi may have gathered unwounded al-Shabaab survivors and left him to fend for himself.

Now his next test. Hussein reached for his machete and slid it into his sheath. Snapped the sheath closed. He grabbed his AK-47 and stood it with the heel of the stock to the ground.

Hussein used the weapon as a crutch. He placed his good foot flat on the ground. Inch by inch, he raised himself nearly to a standing position. His left leg supported most of his weight, and the rifle took the rest. Hussein picked up his wounded foot and put the heel to the ground.

Experimentally, he shifted a little of his weight to that heel. Now the Bantu drummers drummed loudly. He lifted the rifle and stood straight. Still, no bullet came his way.

Hussein took in a deep breath, picked up his wounded foot, and set it down in front of his good foot. He tightened the muscles of his face. Once again, he whispered, “Allah, give me strength.”

He took a step. Oh, yes, it hurt. All the angels and all the jinns knew it hurt. But Hussein was standing, rifle in his hands.

He took another step.

Hussein was walking.

Hussein was a soldier of God.