Yousseff stood over the incapacitated, grievously wounded, and bleeding Marak. Copious amounts of blood flowed from his head wounds. Yousseff held the stone above Marak’s head.
“Apologize to my sisters. Apologize now or you will die.”
Between moans and sobs, Marak did indeed apologize. Not only to Yousseff’s sisters, but to his mother, to his father, and to him.
“You are my servant, Marak. Say it.”
Marak said this, too, and in saying it Marak obeyed the Pashtun tradition of nanwatal. Absolute submission of the vanquished to the victor; the loser goes to the winner in utter humility and begs for forgiveness, after which his dignity is considered restored. The winner must accept this, and put aside the differences that had divided them. This was known more specifically in the tribal lands as the way of badal. Yousseff knew the politics of badal and nan-watal very well, and would use them effectively throughout his life. It was badal and nanwatal that made Marak his servant at a very early age.
Yousseff extended a hand to him, squeezed his shoulder, and said to some of the others, “Clean him up.”
The speed and ferocity of Yousseff’s attack astounded everyone present, and Marak most of all. Yousseff had never fought before, and had no history of violence that anyone could recall. Marak was vastly superior to Yousseff physically, and fought constantly, deriving great pleasure from it. Yet, in the space of five seconds, Marak lay on the ground between the Four Cedars, a moaning, weeping mess. On that day, Yousseff gained the respect of the children around him and became Marak’s master. It was a relationship from which they would both profit for years to come.
4
The countdown had been initiated. The audience was diverse and colorful, consisting of the locals from Bazemah (most of the town had turned out), military people from both Libya and the United States, munitions experts, and Richard and his small crew of CIA personnel. A small village of reporters from around the world was also assembled and, of course, Minyar himself, for the benefit of the media and his image. With him, Minyar had a large entourage of security people, counselors, military representatives, and various assistants. A festive atmosphere prevailed.
McMurray had set up monitors to project the countdown that was taking place on a Dell laptop, now ten miles away at Ground Zero. The final countdown had begun. Ten. Nine. Eight…
It was still pre-dawn at the RCMP complex in Vancouver. Indy smiled as he hung up his telephone. At present he was appreciating that, as so often happens in police work, an amazing lead had just fallen into his lap. He had been speaking with Catherine Gray. She was 30 years old and already a Corporal, running the drug section in the Kootenays, headquartered in Cranbrook, BC. She was at work at 6AM, and was as obsessed with finding “the hole” in the border as Indy was. Now maybe, just maybe, she had found something.
“We had a strange situation out of Fernie last week,” Catherine told him. Fernie was a small but scenic mountain town located in the BC Rockies, near the Alberta and Montana borders.
“A man named Benny Hallett showed up at the local clinic with a grossly infected knee. Osteomyelitis, that’s what the doctors said. A dangerous bone infection. He’d been involved in some kind of accident. Somehow he shot himself, or someone shot him in the knee. He was moved to Vancouver General. He’s there right now.” She was speaking in rushed and excited tones.
Vancouver General Hospital happened to be a ten-minute walk from Indy’s Heather Street complex. A short morning stroll. “Well, what’s so strange about that?” Indy asked. “Gunshot accidents are not all that unusual. Accidents happen all the time.”
When she told him what she meant, and who Benny Hallett was, Indy was definitely curious. “I’ll check him out,” he said. He was in such a rush to grab his coat and get out the door that he forgot to turn off the small television sitting in the corner of his cubicle-sized office. “Seven, six, five…” chanted the CBC reporter, live from the Libyan desert.
It was 9am in Washington, DC. Turbee had stumbled in to work ten minutes earlier. He was paler than usual, and there were deep black circles under his eyes. He hadn’t gone out, partied, or done whatever it was his age group did. He just hadn’t slept. Sleep had never come easy for him, and sometimes it was downright impossible. His mind would become obsessed with a mathematical problem and refuse to let go, for days on end. He would pace, talk to himself, and fret at a computer screen all night in his small apartment. In one of these sleepless episodes a few years earlier, he had worked for seven days straight, cobbling together a series of fuzzy search algorithms that had made him millions of dollars. This tendency didn’t bother him as much as it would have bothered someone else — the lack of sleep was bearable. It was the autism and fear of social situations that actually kept him from leading a normal life. The Paxil and Ritalin derivatives he took for his autism didn’t help much with the sleeping, but without them life would have been unbearable, for both him and those around him. He would never have been able to function, even minimally, in the loud TTIC control room.
Dan and the rest of his crew had been at their stations since 6:30 or 7AM. The director glanced up coldly as Turbee entered, one shoelace untied, and unshaven. Was he wearing the same clothes as yesterday? Did he sleep in those jeans? Did he ever even comb his hair? Dan’s disapproving observations were short-lived, as the countdown on the other side of the planet reached its final stages. The large central screens all showed the unfolding drama in Bazemah. One screen was tuned to CNN, two others to BBC and Libya’s own national television network. The countdown was in full swing.
“Four, three, two…” muttered Turbee, sitting down and looking up for long enough to notice what was going on in the world.
The lower Sikarim caves were well lit. They had been created millions of years earlier by mountain run-off penetrating the softer limestone, carving out a cave system that reached for endless miles and to unknown depths. The supply of water was endless and pure, and the power generated by the waterfalls was plentiful. The complex that had been built there had its own hydroelectric generators, utilizing one of the many waterfalls that cascaded from Mount Sikarim. Miles of electrical cable ran through the tunnels, distributing the power rendered by that generator. The cave system’s lower entrance was only 12 miles south of the ancient smuggler’s trail, but was impossible to find without one of the local peasant guides. The main cave opening was hidden beneath cliff formations and foliage, and was used sparingly. Still, its occupants were constantly surveying the skies for the Predator Drones of the enemy. They knew that the Great Satan was corrupt and morally bankrupt, but devilishly clever. And they did not want this hideout discovered.
The people who tended the Emir lived in these caves. There was a large kitchen, stocked with many provisions. This was where the bread was baked, and the vegetables and meats stored. There were sleeping quarters for a number of servants in the various smaller caves. Passageways connecting the rooms to different areas and other passageways made a maze of the endless cave system.