“Please, sir,” said the attendant from the front of the plane. “We’re about to land.”
“I wouldn’t mind it,” said Chelsea. “It might be fun.”
Johnny took her to Halligan’s, a small pub a few blocks from his house. Like just about every bar in Boston, it was Irish and it was red — Red Sox, that was.
But unlike many, it had a section of quiet booths where you could sit and watch the game in relative quiet. Given that the Sox were playing the Rangers, who were mired in a two-for-fourteen stretch, the place was only about half-full.
The only problem for Johnny was that Chelsea had mentioned the game to Massina, and then to Bozzone, who’d driven to the airport to pick them up. She’d invited both to come along, and to Johnny’s great surprise, they accepted.
So it was the four of them. At least the Red Sox were winning.
No one seemed in a particularly talkative mood until the fifth inning, when, with the Sox up by five, Juan Fernandez was called out on a pitch way out of the strike zone. Fernandez argued and was immediately tossed from the game.
“The umpire was dead wrong,” said Massina. “Look at the replay. The ball was almost a foot off the plate.”
“Why don’t they call balls and strikes electronically?” asked Chelsea.
Massina stiffened. “No. You can’t do that.”
“It’s easy.”
“Doesn’t matter. You can’t do that.”
“Why not? Then there would be no arguments.”
“It’s a human game. Some things computers shouldn’t do.”
Johnny actually agreed with Massina — he wasn’t even a fan of review — but he found himself arguing on Chelsea’s side.
“The strike zone changes with every ump,” Johnny pointed out. “It’s so inconsistent it’s ridiculous.”
“You need space for the human element,” insisted Massina. “It’s a game.”
“A precise strike zone is still human,” said Johnny.
“You need a little leeway,” said Massina.
“Otherwise, there’s nothing to argue about, right?” said Bozzone. “And that’s half the fun of baseball.”
They stayed until the seventh inning. Johnny declined the offer of a ride home — he only lived a few blocks away.
He was disappointed, though, that Chelsea didn’t agree to walk as well. Admittedly, she’d have had a good hike if she did.
He would have carried her on his back.
“What do we do with your bag?” asked Bozzone. It was a large suitcase, though only about half-filled by his dirty clothes and two books he’d brought to read during training but never got around to.
“I can take it,” Johnny said. “Or if you want, if you could, you could leave it at my door.”
“Are you sure?” asked Massina.
“Yeah.”
“You sure you want to walk?” asked Chelsea.
“Yup.” There was no sense backing down.
“We’ll see you next Monday,” said Massina.
Johnny watched them drive off.
I need to ask her on a real date, he told himself. I need a real plan. If I’m serious about dating her.
Gotta give it a shot.
Johnny got a half a block before deciding he didn’t really feel like going home. He turned around and went back to the pub, standing at the bar to watch the rest of the game.
75
Ghadab had never been a foot soldier, but he recognized a losing battle when he saw one. The brothers manning the positions on the southern side of the city moved with the slackness of men half-dead. They dragged themselves back and forth, stopping occasionally to see if they could find a target, but never shooting, as the barbarian government troops stayed far outside of their range. The Syrian army let the artillery do its work, shelling the city with various intensity during the day, easing off at night, though never letting more than a half hour go by without a shot.
The target wasn’t the defenses but rather the residential areas behind them. The government aimed to wear down resistance, terrify the inhabitants, and unsettle whatever patterns of daily life remained. They had done this in Homs when Ghadab was there, spending weeks bombarding the city. That was one thing they got right: they knew war was a corrosive that must be applied endlessly.
Ghadab knew this, too. And for the first time in his life, he knew how desolate it felt.
Shadaa.
Such pain over a woman seemed completely unimaginable — not unlikely but rather impossible. The fact that she had been a slave, an insignificant piece of driftwood tossed to him by the hierarchy, made it even more unseemly. Yet her death wrenched him.
She was a diversion from his path. Ghadab told himself that God had taken her because she was a threat to his destiny. But it was hard to convince himself of this.
For the first time in his life he had felt love. Now he felt pain, true pain.
And something else: doubt.
Doubt in the prophecy. Doubt in the inevitability of Armageddon. Doubt in his role in bringing it to pass.
And what did that doubt mean but the ultimate heresy: doubt in God.
The bunker had been ransacked, all of his men killed. Much of his gear had been taken. There had been a battle; the place when he arrived still smelled of a putrid gas and gunpowder. He had no definitive way of knowing who had attacked, but he thought it must have been the Americans, seizing on the raid for cover to hit him.
They had missed him, but gotten everyone else close. Perhaps even the African, as Ghadab hadn’t seen him since he had gone to see the Caliph.
Walking among the men who manned the city’s defenses, Ghadab considered the idea of staying among them and becoming a martyr with the first assault. It would be an easy thing: stand up and fire as the heretics came on. Stand until a bullet found him.
Would she have wanted that?
More important, did God want that?
The commanders whom Ghadab met gazed at him with the same confused expressions of the soldiers on the front line: dazed, they were so shaken as to be incapable of logical thought. But the most unsettling thing was seeing that same gaze in the mirror when he returned to the apartment he had commandeered.
It was only by the strangest coincidence that Ghadab found the African. He was in the middle of his thoughts, sitting cross-legged on the floor, when two men with rifles barged in. Ghadab, his own AK next to him, looked up at them.
A man walked in behind them. It was dark, and his complexion was dark, and at first Ghadab did not realize who it was. Only when the African spoke did he know that God had sent him.
“You! I thought you were dead!” The African’s shout filled the room.
“I am not dead,” said Ghadab, rising.
He absorbed the African’s embrace, enduring it, but not returning it.
“Are you all right?” asked the African. “You have blood on you?”
“I’m all right.”
“Have you been to the bunker? How did you escape?”
“I was waiting for the Caliph when they attacked.”
“They think you are dead. Your name was added to the scroll of the martyrs.”
“It will belong there soon.”
“No. You must go to the Caliph. He will have something for you.”
Ghadab said nothing.
“You must use your talents to strike back,” urged the African. “You must carry on the battle. Take it to their homes.”
“I’m tired,” said Ghadab.
He meant only that he wanted to sleep, but the African interpreted it to mean that he wanted to leave the fight.
“You mustn’t give up. You have to avenge our brothers. You have to bring about the prophecy.”