Jill studied the mob. “You’ve seen a lot of suffering.”
I snorted. “I’ve caused a lot of suffering. Naw, that’s just what I do. I seek out chaos. I make my living off the men that cause chaos. Assholes like Sabah are my meal ticket. Regular thieves steal from normal people. I steal from assholes.”
“So, you’re trying to say you’re Robin Hood?” Jill scoffed.
“No, of course not. Assholes just have more money, and it isn’t like they can cry to the cops when they get taken. It’s worked out well for me.”
“So, you justify being bad by only victimizing bad people.”
“It’s like karma, or something . . .” I trailed off as I noticed a black limo roll past us. It parked before the protestors at the front of the building. Apparently the mob was blocking the garage. A group of blue-uniformed security forces came down the government building’s steps and surrounded the limo, rifles shouldered. The mob pulled back instinctively in the face of the guns. A young man in a designer suit stepped from the back of the limo.
“I think that’s the Interior Minister,” Jill said. “He’s like the emir’s nephew or something. He came to an embassy function once.”
I surveyed the crowd. The students were full of noise but weren’t so tough facing half a dozen men with rifles. In fact, they were quieter now. The chanting had stopped. The black-hooded agitator with the bullhorn was suspiciously missing.
“Jill, get up. Let’s go.” I stood. She started collecting the bags. I grabbed her arm. “Leave them.”
The emir’s nephew was met by an older man in a suit. They greeted each other warmly, surrounded by their loyal security forces. The young man adjusted his tie and smiled. My eyes narrowed as I picked out one person moving against the tide of the mob. Jill sensed the urgency in my grasp and sped up. We walked quickly back the direction we’d come. “Don’t run. Don’t look suspicious. Don’t look back. When I push you down, cover your ears and keep your head down.”
I glanced back. We were too far away to understand whatever it was the suicide bomber screamed. Probably just a teenager, he opened his vest, exposing stacks of gray wrapping his torso, and raised his arms wide. There was a long moment in time as the security forces and the nephew froze and the crowd right around the bomber instinctively recoiled. The pigeons leapt skyward in a cloud. I threw my arm around Jill’s shoulders and took us both to the pavement.
The blast rippled across the ground and through my lungs. The concussion was massive. A wave of sound and energy rolled over us. Windows half a block away shattered.
Lying there, eyes clenched shut, hands pressed flat over my ears, I kept my weight on Jill, but no secondary explosions came. I uncovered my ears. First I could only hear a high-pitched whine, and that eventually settled into car alarms. Then I could finally hear the screaming of the wounded. As I rolled over, a wall of smoke and dust hung around the front of the government building.
People were wandering, dazed, bloody. Mangled bodies were splayed everywhere. The limo was twisted back into itself, jagged metal protruding. Severed limbs and bits of tissue littered the street. The shattered steps that had held the Interior Minister were coated in a red slurry of ribs and organs. The mob was gone.
Children were crying. A dog was barking. Where the hell had a dog come from? Already people were pulling out their cell phones. Some idiot’s first inclination was to use his camera phone to take a picture of the carnage.
I got shakily to my feet. The café we’d been standing next to was a mess. Tables overturned, awning broken and hanging at a bizarre angle. One of the waiters was down, a giant chunk of hurled glass embedded in his throat, gurgling and thrashing on the sidewalk. Jill grabbed my thobe and hauled herself to her feet. Her facial scarf was dangling down her chest as she looked about in bewilderment, a stream of blood trickling from her nose.
“Got to keep going,” I ordered. I put my hand on her shoulder and propelled her in the correct direction.
“Okay. Okay.” Snapping back to reality, Jill realized her face was exposed and pulled the scarf back into place. We walked briskly down the street, part of a herd of humanity trying to get away from the terror. I guided her into an alley. Already I could hear the first sirens.
The alley was dark and cool. I got us behind a loading dock. “Hold your arms out,” I ordered. Jill was confused but did exactly as I ordered. I ran my hands down the insides of her arms, then through her voluminous robes, patting her down, looking for blood. I’d seen people bleed out from shrapnel wounds to arteries without even knowing they’d been hit. Torso clear, legs clear. No blood except the superficial amount on her face. “Are you all right?”
“I’m . . . I’m fine. All those people . . .”
“Dead,” I responded as I took my radio earpiece out of my shirt. “Nothing you can do about it. Hang on! Carl, come in, Carl!”
“What was that?” he bellowed in my ear.
“Suicide bomber. We’re moving back toward Ensun and the Gamal Parkway on foot. Once we’re clear of the responders, I’ll call for pickup.”
“Stay low and watch your back,” Carl ordered.
“You, too.” I pulled the earpiece out. “We’ve got to keep moving. This place is going to be swarming with security forces fast, and we don’t want to get picked up for questioning.” Jill nodded quickly. Her head was still in the game. Good. I took a handkerchief out of my vest and roughly wiped the blood from under her nose. “Keep your head down and keep up with me.”
We went out the other side of the alley and started walking. The streets were full of workers now as people flooded out of their respective buildings to see what was going on. A pillar of black smoke rose into the air behind us.
The war had just arrived in Al Khor.
We were back in the apartment within an hour of the bombing.
My crew sat around our kitchen table. There was a white leaflet in the center. These things had been posted all over Ash Shamal within minutes of the explosion. I’d had Carl pull over and pick one up from one of the little kids that were passing them out on every single corner in the neighborhood.
The leaflet told all about how over twenty innocent students, most of them from this very district, were peacefully protesting in front of the interior ministry and had been massacred by the emir’s personal guard. Apparently there had been another attack by the Zionist murderers, this one against the emir’s own family, and he was still too emasculated to root them out; rather, he reacted in a heavy-handed and inept way against the innocent students of Ash Shamal’s madrassa. Zubara needed the strong leadership of General Mubarak Al Sabah to get us through these tough times, not the Jew-loving emir . . . so on and so forth.
“That’s such bullshit,” Jill spat as Reaper finished translating it for her. “That’s not what happened at all.”
“Reality never matters,” I muttered. “Just feelings. Get the masses riled up enough and you can do anything. Propaganda doesn’t have to be true—it just has to feel true to enough stupid people. Make them feel picked on, then fill them full of hope about how you’ll change stuff. Works every time.”
“I so hate this place.” Jill put her head down on the table. “Have you got any more of that ibuprofen? My head’s killing me,” she muttered through her arm. Shockwaves tend to have that effect on people. Reaper got her the bottle.