Cold Snap (19 page)

"Al-Futuwwa," said a man to the side.

The Council leader looked momentarily
puzzled. Then he smiled up at Ghaith.. "Yes...that would be
suitable. We have many officers here, even former colonels. One
more would add to the confusion. You will do well at the
school."

Ghaith had a sick inkling of what lay ahead
when one of the men in the room was called over to the table and
told to take the captain to al-Futuwwa. The man shrugged on the
strap of his KV in a manly fashion and nodded at Ghaith to
follow.

The street was busy with militant activity.
Men rushed back and forth as former Army officers argued about
lines of fire and proper ambush sites. Most of the men around them
listened for a while, then ran off to plan their own personal
strategies on how to welcome the U.S. Armed Forces. The Council had
probably acted wisely in turning down Ghaith's offer to lead men in
battle, but their wisdom was not improving the situation. So much
courage, and so little sense.

Ghaith trailed the insurgent to the edge of a
souk and a low, sand-colored school building. They stooped through
a low door and entered a hallway with three doors on each side.
They entered the first room. Two dozen pairs of dark, shining eyes
turned in their direction.

Some of these boys could be no more than 6 or
7. The classroom had been blessed with desks and tables, but these
were shoved against the wall so that the boys could sit on the
floor, legs crossed. Ghaith could see little point in this, unless
there were plans to pile the furniture onto one of the many
barricades blocking the streets.

At the head of the room sat the teacher, his
well-practiced sternness planted on a face born placid with
indifference. On the chalk board behind him was written two sayings
by Mohammed:

'Were it not for fear of troubling my
disciples, verily I would order them to clean their teeth before
every prayer.'

'God is pure and loveth purity and
cleanliness.'

Good hygiene. Excellent. Ghaith had no bone
to pick with that.

But there was more. No one was about to
accuse the teacher of allowing his students to think for
themselves. Other quotes from the Sunni hadith, riwaya tafsirs that
seemed far too advanced for these boys, cascaded across the chalk
board in a sturdy hand that brooked no contradiction. Underneath
these, as if to reinforce the holy words, was a crude diagram of a
mortar shell, and next to that were drawn several squares that
seemed to tumble towards the bottom of the chalk board. It took
Ghaith a moment to realize these represented ice cubes. The teacher
had apparently been telling his students about the 'ice jacket'
ruse. The American military was exceptionally good at quickly
vectoring in on mortars once a shell was launched. The first method
of counteracting this was to let a seasoned veteran aim the mortar,
then leave it to a hapless volunteer novice to pull the pin and
drop the round, whereupon the novice was almost instantly blown to
bits by counter-battery fire. But if expendable volunteers were in
short supply, one could sheath the mortar round in ice. One had
only to insert the round in the mortar opening, pull the pin, and
run like hell. In this heat, the ice melted quickly, but by the
time it dropped in the tube and cooked off the insurgents were well
away from enemy retaliation. Ghaith realized these boys were the
pin-pullers. After all, now that Fallujah's power had been cut,
there were no freezers available to coat the shells in ice. Perhaps
the teacher was trying to reassure the boys that, if things got to
hairy, they could resort to the ice trick. A lie to steady their
nerves.

Ghaith noted an odd-looking satchel against
the wall near the desks. "What's that?"

"What do you think?" the KV man frowned.

A suicide vest.

"For the student who can recite Sura 2:98,"
said the teacher with a quasi-benevolent smile.

A hand shot up. A boy whose eyes were aflame
with fervent belief announced:

"'On unbelievers is the curse of Allah'."

The teacher glanced at the insurgent and
donned a look of pleasure. The KV man clasped his hands in
appreciation.

Ghaith was sick at heart.

Ms. Cicada was surprised, even astonished,
when Ari showed up yet again in Elmore Lawson's outer office.
Apparently, one rejection nearly always sufficed to send visitors
packing for good. True, on Ari's second appearance he had been
allowed into the inner sanctum, but she had assumed this had been
merely to give Lawson the opportunity to reject Ari face-to-face.
She would have been amazed to learn that her boss had allowed Ari
to follow him home.

Before she could reach for the intercom
button, there was a buzz and Lawson's deep sigh came over the
speaker:

"He can come in."

Ari knew of 'sweet and sour', but Ms.
Cicada's 'sour and sour' was a new taste sensation. Ari grimaced,
as though he had bitten into an unripe grape. He hurried
inside.

The man seated behind the cluttered executive
desk was a portrait of raw misery. He was working his fingers
around his mouth, as though adjusting (with great pain) his
prosthetic. He saw Ari's gaze fall on several prescription bottles.
With his prosthetic hand, he opened a top drawer and swept them out
of sight.

"How is it I knew you'd be back?" he
lisped.

"Because you're a shrewd judge of
character...usually."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"For one, you did not suspect Ethan would
vanish like this."

"Take a seat," Lawson grunted.

"No."

"You're leaving already?"

"No, we're leaving."

There was a metallic creak as Lawson eased
back in his broad chair. "What is this, a painfully inept attempt
at a kidnapping? And I emphasize 'attempt'."

"You will come because it is your duty."

"I also understand the concept of
'limits'."

"Limits?" Ari surveyed the room, as if
someone had told him a unicorn was taking dictation. "I see no
limits."

"Listen, you camel buckaroo, taking a dump is
almost impossible for me, so if you think I'm going out in the
field—"

"What is that on your computer screen? A log
of your reports from your field agents? Very impressive...and
nothing gets done."

"The number one duty in America is to cover
one's ass."

"Yes," Ari nodded. "I think I've seen
something like that. A nation of well-covered asses."

"It took a good lawyer to get my job back,
and one of the stipulations is that I don't take unnecessary risks.
It's bad enough I might croak just walking in here. If I go out in
the field and get knocked over by an irate policyholder, they'll
have plenty of grounds to kick me out the door."

"Would that be so awful?"

"A man without a job is half a man, and since
I'm already down to half..."

"But if you are prevented from doing your job
properly, that also lessens you."

"That's OK. That's why we have rules and
regulations: so no one will be tempted to do their job too well.
We're half-assed, and well-covered."

"I assume you dìd your best in Iraq."

"My best is what got me here." He paused,
growing curious. "What did you have in mind?"

"I want to visit A-Zed Imports."

"I thought you already had."

"I spied upon them from a distance. Now that
they know me, or think they do, I might as well walk on in. It's a
business. People do walk in to do business."

"And you expect me to walk in with you."
Lawson emitted a mirthless yawp. "You want them to laugh themselves
to death, that the plan?"

"I want you to scare them shitless."

The silence that followed was punctuated by
the slow rapping of Lawson's plastic hand on the mahogany desktop.
"You're just loaded with tact, aren't you?" he said finally.

"We must make do with what we have. As I am
sure you have found, your wounds are not of the type that summon
pity, but terror."

"And I do my best to stay out of the public
eye for that very reason," Lawson shot back. "Let me tell you
something, Mr. C. I used to be what we call a big, strapping buck.
Bigger than you, even. I was told I was a handsome man, too. Sort
of a modern Paul Robeson. People looked at me. Women, especially.
Most dudes would lap that up by the bucketful, but not me. I'm not
made that way, inside. I don't like attention. Would you fucking
sit? We're not going anywhere."

"Why did you train so hard to become an
officer, then?" Ari asked, making no move for the chair. "Your men
would be looking at you all the time."

"And I could shut down their gawping quick."
Lawson shuffled a coffee mug to the side. "And stop pretending you
know everything about me. I was a good officer. And I liked that my
men only had to look at me to get the message and follow orders."
He chuckled. "They used to call me Godzilla. Maybe that jinxed me.
Now I'm Godzilla with a glass eye."

"Godzilla?" Ari inquired.

"A monster as big as a skyscraper. Got his
kicks grinding cities into dust."

"Now you can grind the bad people into dust,"
Ari asserted.

"Stop fidgeting."

"I am growing patientless."

"Hmmph." He reflected a moment. "I don't
think I could..."

"I'm not asking you to be a man. I want you
to be a monster. You've started well. People approach this office
with great dread. But it's a dread they can avoid by the simple
expedient of not coming. Out there, you will be unavoidable. Like
the Exterminator."

"You mean the Terminator? Hell, I can barely
snuff an ant."

"The people at A-Zed Imports would not know
that. They would think your mechanical hand was made to crush
windpipes."

"It can crush cup handles," Lawson said
ruefully.

"And if we get nowhere, that's when you
demand of them the location of your lost robot son, Ethan."

"You're a trip." Lawson looked across the
room. Turning, Ari saw a framed picture of a previous Commandant of
the Marine Corps. Ari knew instantly who it was. He went over and
read the signature.

"That's General Mike Hagee," said Lawson. "A
good man."

"He looks ominous."

"Looks aren't deceiving," said Lawson,
pointing to his head. "Hagee stomped plenty of bad people."

"The very definition of a good man."

"I happen to think so."

Ari's expression was noncommittal. Lawson
continued:.

"That picture came with my Wounded Warrior
condolence letter. It's a program for vets who got the bejesus
blown out of them. They offer services, counseling…"

"And you took advantage of it?"

"Hell no. I don't feel good. Why pretend? I
kicked the CACO out on his ass. I don't need some do-gooder
feel-gooder telling me that at least I still have my dick." He
mused a moment, and smiled. "You want me to scare the wits out of
some peawit con men? That could be very...enabling." He leaned
forward and pressed his intercom. "Ms. Perch, I'm going out."

There was a pause.

"You mean, down the hall?"

"No, out."

"You mean, outdoors outside?"

"If Henderson calls, tell him to call Avery.
If Avery calls, tell him to contact Henderson."

"And if Thompson or Lee or Ngamo or—"

"Tell them to earn their paychecks. I'll be
back in an hour."

Ari helped him on with his coat. "I'm not
fussy if someone lends a hand, if it saves time."

A door at the side of the office led to a
tiny alcove. Before going out he looked up at a monitor bolted to
the wall.

"You can't see much beyond twenty yards, but
if someone's standing outside with a sawed-off, I can press
this..." He pointed at a small button below the monitor.

"What happens if you press it?"

"Don't know. I almost pressed it when I saw
you the first time. Would have been interesting to find out. But
it's part of the settlement. When I won my case against the company
to get my old job back, I managed to squeeze in a few bonuses, of
which this and the monitor in my office were part of. Do I expect
Security to come bounding around the corner if I press it? Bunch of
lard asses—they'd have a collective heart attack before making it
to the rear of the building. They're there just for show.
Appearance, you know. Everything's appearance. Which is why I most
certainly don't fit in."

"The French had parades to honor their
disfigured soldiers," Ari observed.

"Did they? Well, I'm about as much French as
a toad in a bayou. Get used to me putting myself down. It's part of
my practical adjustment to life."

"Were you putting yourself down?"

Lawson laughed and pushed open the door. They
sucked in their breath as a cold wind hit them face-on.

"I'd better come back in one piece. If a
single nut or bolt is missing, they'll use the video of me leaving
with you against me. 'See? He didn't follow agreed procedure. Now
we can dump him in the sewer.' Sure, I could live off the VA and
government benefits. Sort of. But a man without a job...you
know."

"Your courage is an example to us all," Ari
said, turning to face the building and casting a bravura wave at
the surveillance camera.

"You might be worth killing."

It was only a few steps to his Land Cruiser.
"It'll take a few minutes to set up," he said, hefting his cane on
the crook of his elbow and pressing his remote.

"Perhaps I should drive," said Ari.

"I've seen your Scion cheese-box. I wouldn't
fit inside." He thumped his gloved prosthetic on the flank of his
Toyota and laughed. "Land Cruiser! I love that name. Come out with
a Land Battleship and I'll be the first in line. As it is, if the
Kkangpae Puppets try ramming this, they'll bounce off the
road."

"But do you want them marring your paintwork?
Or do you get a special discount on your insurance?"