The Hunters (27 page)

Painfully, Hussein leaned forward while Nadif placed a plate of bread on the floor. Not only did his wound hurt; all his muscles felt sore from yesterday's struggle. Hussein snatched a round of bread from the top of the plate and tore it in half. From one of the halves, he tore off a smaller piece and stuffed it into his mouth. Chewed twice, swallowed. The lump of bread went down his throat like a stone.

“Slow down,” Nadif said. “No one will take the food away from you.”

Hussein ripped off another chunk of bread. This time he chewed it four times.

“Slow down,” Nadif repeated. Folded his arms and looked down at Hussein.

Hussein gulped the food again. Yellow Hair poured the tea into cups brought by Nadif. She handed a cup to Hussein, and he took a sip. The hot liquid warmed his tongue and felt good sliding down his throat; he had never tasted anything better than this lightly sweetened tea. He put down the cup and took another bite of bread. This time, he chewed it enough that it did not hurt to swallow.

“The one called Geedi talks too much,” Hussein said to Nadif.

Geedi did not seem to hear. He sat with the infidels and spoke in their language.

“The one called Geedi is a smart young man,” Nadif said, “and the only difference between you and him is a long airplane ride when he was little.”

“I am nothing like him. He is a
kafir
.”

“Then why has Allah smiled on him so? He has a good job. He comes from a good family. Everyone he loves is still alive.”

Nadif's voice broke as he uttered that last sentence. The thought gave Hussein pause as well. Nearly everyone he loved was dead, and while he was still so young. Why was this? Some punishment from Allah? Perhaps because he had not fought hard enough?

Certainly not, Hussein decided. He could not have fought any harder, and his parents had died before he was big enough to wage jihad. And Allah would not have taken someone else's life for Hussein's sins. That would not have been just, and Allah was infinite justice.

Why, then? Hussein took another sip of tea and tore off another piece of bread. He placed the bread in his mouth and chewed it several times, pondering this mystery. He decided the answer was not for him to know, at least not until he gained more understanding and could read.

Nadif stood over him as if he had more to say but could not find the words. Hussein wished he would leave.

“The bread is good,” Hussein said, not so much in gratitude but in hope it would make the old man go away.

“You are welcome,” Nadif said. After a few minutes he added, “Islam demands kindness to travelers. I have shown kindness to them”—he gestured toward the infidels—“and they have shown kindness to you.”

Hussein looked up at the old man and blinked. Did he really mean to say the infidels had done the right thing by Islam?

This was all very confusing.

P
arson and the others passed the day in Nadif's cellar, trying to sleep. The cool earth offered some relief from the sun beating down up top. As evening neared, the fissures of light shining through the cracks in the door began to dim, and Parson knew he had a decision to make.

“Let's move to that bunker when it gets dark,” he said. “We can't stay in this hole forever.”

“Ouais, c'est clair,”
Chartier said.

“What about Hussein?” Gold asked. The boy looked up when he heard his name.

“What about him?” Parson asked.

“Do we take him with us?”

“Hell, no. It'll be dangerous enough as it is. We can't drag a wounded kid with us.”

“If he stays here, Nadif and his wife are still in danger,” Gold said.

Parson pressed his thumb and forefinger to the bridge of his nose. She had a point. A long time ago in Afghanistan, the family who had helped them lost their lives. He didn't care to repeat that horror, but he had no easy options.

“Yeah, I know,” Parson said. “But what if he starts screaming and gives us away?”

“He hasn't done that yet,” Gold said.

“Even if he never does, what would we do with him?”

“Let him get rescued along with us.”

“Rescued?” Parson said. “The little son of a bitch tried to kill us.”

“I know it, Michael. But the little son of a bitch is a boy. In his own way, he's as much a victim of al-Shabaab as anyone.”

“He's an orphan,” Geedi said. “That's probably why they got him in the first place.”

“You guys are killing me,” Parson said. “We can't save everybody in Somalia. We're gonna need a lot of luck just to save ourselves.”

Nobody said anything for a few minutes. Hussein kept glancing around at everybody, and he looked more curious than scared. Parson went through the what-ifs: What if we leave him behind and he gets Nadif and his wife killed? What if we leave him behind and he just wanders off? Does he come back with his friends and take us out? What if he yells for help while we're moving him to the bunker?

The safe option, Parson realized, would be to shoot him right now, and that was out of the question.

In the back of Parson's mind, he knew what he'd do before he let himself say it out loud. What was that old mob saying? Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. This enemy, he'd have to keep close.

“All right,” Parson said finally, “we'll bring him with us. Geedi, tell him he's going for a little excursion tonight. And he better not make any trouble.”

Geedi spoke in Somali, and Hussein looked angry. Parson needed no translation for his response; clearly the boy was saying he wasn't going anywhere.

“He says—”

“I know,” Parson said. “Tell him it's a statement, not a question.”

The conversation in Somali quickly turned into an argument. Parson rolled his eyes.

“This doesn't require any more conversation,” Parson said. “He's going with us or he dies. Simple as that. And he goes gagged and with his hands tied. All this is against my better judgment; tell him he's damned lucky he didn't get caught by somebody with better sense.”

Gold gave that half smile of hers. She sees right through me, Parson realized. Now that she'd talked him into taking Hussein, he was as committed to the course of action as she was.

“We can't carry him that far the same way we got him here,” Chartier said.

Frenchie was right. They'd brought him from the hut to the cellar by simply lifting him on a blanket. Too cumbersome for carrying someone more than a few yards.

“We'll improvise a stretcher,” Parson said. “We can take a couple of poles and roll them into the sides of the blanket. Then two of us can just lift the poles.”

Carolyn Stewart looked around the cellar. “I don't see anything like a pole,” she said.

“Me neither,” Parson said. “Geedi, if you don't mind going up top again, can you see if you can find a couple of fairly straight sticks?”

“No problem, sir,” Geedi said. “I'm sure I can find tree branches or something.”

Hussein started speaking again. Geedi ignored him.

“Tell that kid I'll bitch-slap him if he doesn't shut up,” Parson said.

Geedi said nothing. Gold gave another half smile. Yeah, Parson thought, they both know I don't mean it. Just blowing off steam.

Sometimes it was hard to be a good guy. Good guys didn't always act angelic. Sometimes they got pissed off. And being a good guy was what got him here in the first place.

The crew began to gather up their backpacks and other belongings. Hussein watched everything with interest but said nothing. Evidently, now that he'd been bandaged and fed, pain no longer kept him from taking stock of his situation. Parson could relate; from his own experience he knew you came out of severe pain as if returning from a foreign land.

But with Osama Junior feeling better, would he make a nuisance of himself, or worse? No way to know. For now, he appeared docile enough.

In the last moments of daylight, Geedi headed up the stairs to look for sticks or poles to frame the stretcher. Parson watched him swing open the door to reveal a sky already dim enough to reveal the brightest stars.

“Good man,” Parson said. “If you see Nadif, tell him we're out of here, and we appreciate his help.”

“Yes, sir.”

Geedi eased the door closed, and darkness again cloaked the cellar.

“Every time that door shuts, I feel like I'm in an Edgar Allan Poe story,” Carolyn Stewart said.

“I know what you mean,” Gold said.

Parson had a vague memory of reading Poe in school. Stuff about ravens and pits and pendulums and people getting bricked up behind walls. A hell of a note, Parson thought, that some weirdo writer in the nineteenth century—in his most tortured, drunken imagination—couldn't think of anything as bad as the real things people did in the twenty-first century. Progress.

By the time Geedi came back, night had fallen and the moon was beginning to rise. Bronze moonlight filled the cellar when the door came open. Parson wasn't sure if that was good or bad. It meant he could see to travel without resorting to his flashlight, which could draw the wrong kind of attention. But if we can see in the night, he thought, so can the bad guys.

“Are we set to go?” Geedi whispered.

Parson climbed the steps, the medical ruck over his shoulder and his Beretta holstered in his survival vest. Geedi held two long branches with all the twigs hacked away. The poles weren't entirely straight, but they'd do. Nadif stood nearby, holding a cloth-covered bundle.

“Just about,” Parson said.

“I'll be right back,” Geedi said.

Geedi turned and strode toward Nadif's hut. He went in wearing the clothes he'd borrowed from Nadif. He came out a few minutes later wearing his flight suit.

“We need to get Hussein ready,” Parson said. He placed the medical ruck on the ground. “Come on down and remind him we're going to gag him and tie his hands. Tell him we won't hurt him as long as he cooperates.”

Geedi dropped the sticks and followed Parson down to the cellar floor, and Parson clicked on his penlight. Hussein sat on his makeshift bedroll and looked up. Parson reached down and pulled on the blanket.

“Get off the blanket, dumbass,” Parson said.

Geedi said something in Somali. Hussein rolled to one side and let Parson take the blanket. Parson handed the blanket to Gold, then unzipped a flight suit pocket and removed his handkerchief. He unfolded the handkerchief, took it by two corners, and twisted it into a gag.

The effort triggered a memory of the last time Parson had gagged someone. In that case, it had been an elderly mullah so extreme in his beliefs that even some radicals opposed him. Gold and Parson dragged the mullah through an Afghan winter storm, suffering frostbite and other torments to keep their prisoner in custody. Parson assumed the old terrorist still languished behind bars at Gitmo or somewhere, but that was just a guess. Once he'd handed over the prisoner to proper authorities, the matter went above his clearance and pay grade.

“Tell him to open his mouth,” Parson told Geedi. He recalled asking Gold to say the same thing to the mullah all those years ago.

Geedi spoke in Somali, and Hussein balked, just like the old man had done.

“I don't have time for this,” Parson said. “Tell him his choice is getting gagged or getting knocked upside the head and then gagged.”

“Michael,” Gold said. Once again, a voice in the dark urging compassion.

“I know, I know,” Parson said. “I won't really hurt him. You know, Sophia, we gotta stop meeting like this.”

Gold laughed softly. Apparently the parallels of the situation struck her, too. Though Parson knew she had a sense of humor, he had rarely heard her laugh out loud.

Parson wondered how far those parallels would continue. The old man was a dead-ender, too long radicalized to change his ways. Given Hussein's youth, could he turn his life around? Probably not, Parson figured. A person becoming a terrorist was like a dog getting rabies. Barring a miracle, the only cure was a bullet.

After a little more conversation in Somali, Hussein relented and let Parson approach with the gag. Just in case, Chartier held the AK-47 on the boy as Parson clicked on the penlight and handed it to Geedi. While Geedi held the light, Parson stuffed the gag into the boy's mouth and tied the ends of the handkerchief behind Hussein's head. He took care not to tie the knot too tightly.

“I'll leave his hands free,” Parson said, “so he can pull himself up the steps if he has to. We'll help him out of here, and I'll tie his hands up top.”

When Parson finished, Hussein cut his eyes at him. The look conveyed pure hate, and it gave Parson second thoughts about whether letting the boy live was a good idea. How many more innocent people would Hussein kill? Would he grow up to drive a truck bomb into the Mall of America?

Doesn't matter, Parson realized. We don't kill prisoners, and we sure as hell don't kill kid prisoners. End of story.

“Ask him if he wants me to lift him out of the cellar,” Parson said.

Geedi spoke in Somali, and Hussein glared at Parson again and shook his head. To Parson, it seemed Hussein's entire vocabulary consisted of frowns and glares.

Hussein placed his hands on the cellar stairs at shoulder height. He pulled himself up and placed his uninjured foot on the bottom step. Then he reached higher with his hands, and he pulled himself up one more step. By repeating the effort four times, he reached the top. Hussein twisted himself out of the cellar opening and onto the ground, and Parson could hear Nadif talking to the boy in Somali.

“Everybody put your body armor back on,” Parson said.

Chartier groaned, reached for the armor vests, and passed them out. Parson removed his survival vest, slipped his arms through his own body armor, and closed the fasteners. Just feeling the weight of the armor tired him. He put his survival vest back on over the armor.

Chartier went up the steps next, his revolver in his survival vest and Hussein's AK-47 over his shoulder. Gold and Geedi followed, leaving Parson and Carolyn Stewart alone at the bottom of the cellar. In the moonlight, Parson saw the actress pause before mounting the stairs, and he wondered what the hell she was waiting for. She opened her mouth to speak, and again she hesitated.

“Colonel,” she said finally, “I know I helped put us in this situation. I'll . . . I'll never forgive myself.”

Parson didn't know what to say. Yeah, this was her fault, at least partly. Maybe it was his fault, too. When Gold first asked him to come to Somalia and fly civilian relief missions, maybe he should have just said no. He could have praised her good intentions and then said it was too dangerous. On the other hand, nothing ever got done through intentions alone. He could help put her intentions into motion. Literally. And Carolyn Stewart had come here to help by telling the story.

“You'll have to forgive yourself sooner or later,” Parson said. “Everyone else has.”

Not necessarily true, Parson thought, but that's what Sophia would have said. And it was the quickest way to move on and get Stewart out of the cellar.

“Thank you, Colonel Parson.” The actress put her hand on his arm as she took the stairs.

“It's just Michael,” Parson said.

Stewart climbed the steps into the rectangle of starlit night above. Parson took one final look around his temporary refuge and climbed out last.

A bright sickle moon hung behind the acacia trees. Parson caught a whiff of some kind of food; evidently that's what Nadif's bundle contained. Nadif spoke in Somali and handed the bundle to Geedi, who stuffed it into his backpack.

“His wife has cooked us a bowl of
isku-dhex-karis
,” Geedi said.

“Wow,” Gold said. “What's that?”

“A mixture of vegetables and meat. He also gave us some bottles of water.”

“Tell him thanks,” Parson said.

“I did.”

Parson held his hand out to Gold, and without a word, she gave him the blanket. It occurred to Parson that the two of them had worked together long enough that they could communicate without even talking. Their rapport reminded him of the way well-trained aircrew members clicked into a team; a glance or the wave of a pen could convey a request or an order.

With a flick of his wrist, Parson shook out the blanket. He spread it on the ground and reached for the poles Geedi had brought. Parson placed a pole at either edge of the blanket, then rolled the fabric around the poles to form a stretcher.

“Tell Hussein to lie down and hold his wrists together,” Parson said.

Geedi spoke in Somali again, and Hussein sat on the blanket between the poles. The flight mechanic uttered another phrase, holding his hands together as if bound. Hussein glared and shook his head. Geedi spoke once more, and Hussein shook his head again. Parson rolled his eyes, and he unfastened the parachute cord bracelet from around his right wrist. He unbraided the cord, loops dangling from his fingers. Then he lifted the left pant leg of his flight suit enough to reveal the knife sheathed on his boot.