The blast blossomed like a fiery rose, clawed at the sky, and ripped the rear door of the railway car completely off its hinges. A moment later, as the smoke cleared, two objects sailed into the opening. There was a dull click as they hit the deck in unison, an agonizing moment — like the space between two frames within a motion picture — and the grenades exploded.
Gulzhan waited for a few more seconds before he leapt into the breach, his Kalashnikov nestled in his arms. His eyes pierced the gloomy darkness. The car was deathly still. Of the three guards, two were ragged heaps, and the other lay motionless, blood streaming from his nose and ears.
Gulzhan smiled. He motioned to his men and they began to clear the rear car of debris. Gulzhan reached into his jacket, removed a compass, and took a careful reading. When he had marked off the direction, he plucked his prayer rug from the pack that Uhud carried on his back. He spread it out across the floor. Then, grabbing a pair of crates, he began to build a makeshift minbar.
Uhud and the other men wired the railway car with explosives. Gulzhan watched them as they worked. Uhud moved like a dancer, lithely, with none of the mechanical precision with which the others went about their tasks. He bent over like a river reed, like a willow in the wind, picked up the charges and mounted them carefully around the base of the four walls, following the directions on the diagram in his hand. Uhud was a pleasure to watch. He always had been.
In a few minutes, Gulzhan had finished stacking up the crates. He climbed up on the second highest step, turned toward his men, and said, “In the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Ever Merciful, all that we are about to do we do in Your name.” Then he quoted from the Qur’an, saying, “‘Oh ye who believe, equitable retribution in the matter of the slain is prescribed for you: exact it from the freeman if he is the offender, from the slave if he is the offender, from the woman if she is the offender.’”
He paused and looked at the men about him. They stood in rapt attention. Even Uhud the Beautiful was captivated by his words. Gulzhan continued, saying, “‘Allah has the Power; Allah is Most Forgiving, Ever Merciful. Allah does not forbid you to be kind and to act equitably towards those who have not fought you because of your religion, and who have not driven you forth from your homes. Surely, Allah loves those who are equitable. Allah only forbids you that you make friends with those who have fought against you because of your religion, and have driven you out of your homes and have aided others in driving you out. Whoso makes friends with them, those are the transgressors.’”
With that, Gulzhan descended from the pulpit. He smiled at Uhud, looked about the car, at the way the charges were laid out, the punctilious contour of the lines, when he glimpsed something out of the corner of his eye. He turned. The wounded soldier stirred. He inched his hand along the deck, his fingers clenched about his weapon. He was aiming it at Uhud’s back.
Without a moment’s pause, Gulzhan pulled out his knife — curved as a scimitar — and brought it down across the soldier’s neck. The severed head flew like a soccer ball across the car, spinning and spurting blood. It came to rest at Uhud’s feet. The men jumped back. Uhud raised his gun and fired into the bodies of the remaining soldiers. They jumped and rattled. They bounced in the hail of bullets as if they’d been electrocuted. Then, everything was still. Smoke lingered in the air.
Uhud looked up at Gulzhan. His eyes were wide, charged with emotion. Gulzhan just smiled and knelt down on his rug. He began to pray. Uhud stepped back. He looked down at the headless, bullet-ridden soldier. He kicked him once, with uncompromising violence, between the legs. Then he moved quickly to the rear of the car and signaled to his men to follow.
Set in a corner of the railway car was a large metallic container. Two of the men lifted the cover with difficulty. Uhud pulled out a pair of heavy leather gloves from his satchel and slipped them on. When they had removed the top of the container, one of the men handed Uhud a shiny metal cylinder, pipe-like, with a machined lid made to screw down tightly to create a seal. Uhud took off the lid. Then, with painstaking concentration, he reached into the kiln-like container with a ladle and began to remove the powdered material. Little by little, he filled the cylinder. When he was finished, he screwed the lid back on the tube and gave it to the man beside him. They handed him another cylinder, identical to the last. Once again, he reached into the container and began to fill the second cylinder. It took him only a few minutes to complete the job. He screwed the metal top back onto the tube, tightening it carefully. Then he turned toward Gulzhan, saying, “It is done.”
Gulzhan looked up from his prayers. His eyes were dreamy, distant. “Allah is merciful,” he said, rolling to his feet. Uhud handed him the second cylinder. Gulzhan stared at it for a moment, turning it in his hands, and then stuffed it into his vest. He looked at his watch. They were precisely on time and this filled him with both satisfaction and pride. He smiled at his men. The operation was going like clockwork. He loved this feeling. Nothing could compare: No money; no woman; no house; no food. Nothing. This was what he lived for, when the world hummed perfectly, when everything he’d dreamed of finally came to pass. In an imperfect world, this was the closest thing to heaven. “You have done well,” he said and his men puffed up with pride. Gulzhan was parsimonious with praise. Those four simple words meant more to them than their lives. He had seen to that. He had worked hard to make it so. “It is time,” he said and leapt from the rear of the train.
Uhud followed him with the rest of the men. When they had gone about fifty yards down the tracks, one of the guerrillas erected a video camera on a tripod. The remainder of the men took up their positions in the rocks. In only a few minutes, everything was ready. Gulzhan gave the signal at exactly 9:00 AM, Uhud hit the switch on the transmitter, and the railway car disintegrated in a wave of light, strange pirouettes of fire, bright Arabic calligraphy and illuminated scrolls of flame. It was all being captured on tape, Gulzhan knew. Digitally imprisoned. El Aqrab would be proud.
As the smoke cleared, Gulzhan and Uhud came together, hugging like father and son. “Be careful,” Gulzhan said. “I’m sure you must be tired after your journey.”
“You worry too much. You’re like an old woman,” Uhud replied. “Everything’s as it should be.”
Gulzhan nodded. He stared at his lieutenant. He patted him gently on the shoulder. “As it should be. You’re right,” said Gulzhan. Then, without another word, he started back along the path to where they had parked the trucks.
Gulzhan climbed up into the nearest MB-814. Two of his men got in beside him. He watched as Uhud and the rest of the guerrillas mounted the second truck, another battered Mercedes Benz. “Wait,” said Gulzhan. “You have the tape?”
The man beside him nodded, patting his jacket.
Uhud’s truck began to crawl along the narrow track that paralleled the snowy pass. Gulzhan watched it gradually recede. “‘Lord, Thou dost comprehend all things in Thy mercy and knowledge,’” he prayed, ‘“so grant Thy forgiveness to those who repent and follow Thy way, and safeguard them against the punishments of hell.’” Then he turned and looked out the window. He stared at the snowy ground, the whiteness of it all, the crystalline perfection. “Allah, forgive me,” he said.
Uhud’s truck made its way along the circuitous road down toward the Caspian Sea. As it neared the town of Zhetybay, across an open plain, an armored car materialized from behind a stand of boulders and crashed against the old Mercedes-Benz. Uhud felt his face smash up against the windshield. A moment later, as the truck careened into a ditch, he glimpsed the soldiers in the fields around him. He pulled at the handle but the door was jammed. And then the truck tipped over and the earth rushed up to meet him.