Bang. Robert Buckwheat Fulton walked gingerly across the grassy field, his rifle generally pointed toward the ground. Bang. Every few steps, he would stop and fire another round-bang-into the head of someone who appeared to him to be still breathing. In all, he did that eleven times-bang-before he reached the spot where an older brother dug with bloody hands to free a younger sister from the pit into which she had been half buried. Wahab followed, his rifle up towards the now empty stands.
"How?" he asked, repeatedly. "There were fifty of them! More than fifty! How?"
"President's Hundred," Fulton said, in explanation, as he took aim at the head of another breather just past the girl. The retired sergeant's voice was pure ice. Bang. "Camp Perry, Ohio. Motherfuckers never had a chance." Bang. He looked down at someone who was not only breathing but conscious. "How do you like it when someone else has a gun and can shoot, asshole?" Bang.
"Oh," Wahab said. He looked over at the girl and said, "We can go now, Robert."
Bang. "Has the kid got his sister free?"
"No point. I mean, yes, but . . . she's dead."
Fulton bit his lip. "I see." Bang.
"Come on, Robert, we must go meet the chief and our attachments to your force."
"Sure. Be just a few more minutes . . . Hey, want a little cat's meat, motherfucker?" Bang.
D-53, Bandar Qassim, Ophir
"I hear there was a disturbance down in Bajuni," the old sept chief, Taban, said to Gutaale at the evening majlis in the latter's palace courtyard. "No one seems to have any details, but apparently a frightful number of young men were put to death by Khalid's decree."
"It's all falling apart down there," Gutaale said confidently. "Even faster than I predicted. Soon we'll be able to take it all."
Taban shook his head doubtfully. Even so, he had to admit that seizing the other chief's only son and heir had been masterful. Or at least, I can't point to any one thing that hasn't worked out as Gutaale predicted. The lands we have demanded have been evacuated and turned over. Unrest is apparently rife in the enemy capital. Khalid's position is said to be crumbling. Still, it doesn't feel right. And I can't explain why.
D-44, Suakin, Sudan
The sun wasn't quite up yet, nor had the muezzin begun the call for prayers. Under a bare lightbulb, in his own quarters, Labaan dipped his canjeero, a thin, pancakelike bread similar to Ethiopian injera, into a side dish of beef, cut small and boiled in ghee. Ordinarily, breakfast, or quaraac, was his favorite meal. This one . . . wasn't. Neither, come to think of it, did I enjoy yesterday's, or the day before's, or any lately. Nor lunch nor supper either.
His fingers dipped the rolled bread, dipped, dipped, then simply opened up and dropped it into the bowl. Standing, Labaan walked toward the part of the building wherein his captive and his gifted slave girl were kept. The guard on the door nodded, respectfully, which nod Labaan returned. The bare coral walls weren't really something one wanted to rap one's knuckles against. Instead, Labaan made a little coughing sound to announce himself.
"Are you and the girl decent, Adam?" Labaan asked.
In answer, there was a rustling of cloth, as if someone were hurriedly dressing, then the hung fabric covering the door was pulled partway aside. Adam, wearing a clean white robe slid out sideways through the narrow opening, closing the door covering behind him. It was dark in the room, Labaan could see.
"Makeda is sleeping," Adam said. "I don't want to wake her."
"You'll spoil the girl, young Marehan," Labaan said chidingly. "But never mind. Even a slave can sleep in sometimes. I assume you haven't had anything to eat yet." The older man inclined his head, saying, "Come on."
The guard wasn't there for the girl; he was there for Adam. As the captive followed Labaan along the coral floor, the guard stepped in behind, his rifle at high port. After all, the boy wasn't chained.
At his own quarters, Labaan motioned for Adam and the guard both to have seats on the floor. The guard laid his rifle down on the side opposite the boy. There was no reason to throw temptation his way.
Once they were seated, Labaan retrieved his dropped piece of canjeero and popped it into his mouth. With his other hand he indicated the tray holding the bread and the bowl of beef. Adam hesitated until the guard reached over, ripped off a piece of the bread, rolled it and dipped it, scooping up some of the beef.
They ate in silence for some time until Labaan said, "I have been thinking about the . . . security arrangements, Adam, and I had a thought."
Adam raised one eyebrow, inquisitively, but said nothing.
"There is a thing the Europeans have, maybe the Americans, too; I'm not sure. It's called ‘parole.'"
"Which is?" Adam asked.
"Your ‘parole' is, among other things, your word of honor that you won't try to escape. I've watched you for some time now. You're a good boy, a good man, really. If you gave me your word you won't try to escape then I can dispense with the damned, bloody shackles. Give you more privacy." Feel like less of a heel, though you don't need to know that.
"It would mean more, this ‘parole' of which you speak, if I had the faintest idea how I might escape," Adam said. "I don't, not that I haven't thought about it."
"I'm sure you have," Labaan agreed. "Be unworthy of you not to at least try to think of a way. Allah knows, I've spent enough time, both before and after your capture, thinking about how to prevent it." The older man's hand swept around, indicating, so Adam thought, not merely the building in which he was held but the entire abandoned city. "So will you give me your parole? You word as a man of honor that you will not try to escape?"
"It wouldn't matter," Adam replied. "With or without my word, I can't leave here. I can't leave the girl. You knew that would happen when you gave her to me, I'm sure. But for what it's worth, fine, you have my ‘parole.' Such as it is."
Labaan nodded, more relieved than happy. "I'll give the orders not to shackle you anymore," he said. "And I'll pull the guards back out of earshot from your door. Who knows; maybe without us listening you'll get that girl with child. Then I'll have a better hold on you even than she is."
"Do you have children, Labaan?" Adam asked. The guard scowled; Adam had no idea why.
For a time Labaan was silent. Then he said, sadly and perhaps a bit distantly, "I had. Two girls. And a wife, of course."
"Had?"
"Dead. Killed."
Adam suddenly felt sick. Sure, Labaan was his kidnapper. But even in that he was only doing his duty as he saw it. In every particular, otherwise, he'd been as kind as he could be.
"I'm so sorry," Adam replied. "Was it my . . . " He let the question trail off.
Labaan shook his head. "Your people? No. No, I don't know who killed them. It was during the troubles that attended the breakup of what used to be a country. But I am sure of two things. One is that the Marehan had nothing to do with it; my family was nowhere near any place your people inhabit."
"And the other?" Adam asked.
Again Labaan went silent for some time. "And the other," he finally answered, sighing, "and the other is that whoever did it, they were not of my people. Which is how I learned that one can only have faith in one's own blood."
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX