Countdown: The Liberators-ARC (3 page)

A car was pulling into the complex's parking lot as Stauer stood up. He ignored it. Walking inside and gently closing the sliding glass door behind him, Stauer padded quietly on stocking feet to the bedroom he'd set aside as an office. The hardwood floor underfoot didn't so much as creak.

Which is just as well. Phillie will put up with my staying on the balcony. She's good about leaving me space. But if I've come inside and not to her she's likely to get a little testy.

Instead of returning to bed, then, Stauer went into the office and closed that door even more gently and quietly than he'd closed the glass one. Only then did he flick on the light.

Even after two years of living here, most of his books were still packed up in boxes in the upstairs bedroom. Thus, the fifteen book cases were half empty. They'd have been even emptier if Phillie hadn't brought down, unpacked, and shelved about a thousand volumes. The walls were marked, too, with little holes, the only remaining traces of the various nick-knacks he'd picked up in service. He'd put them up when he'd first moved in. After a year or so he'd discovered they depressed him more than anything. Fortunately, there were the empty boxes from Phillie's unpacking of books. The plaques, awards, certificates, commendations . . . they'd all gone into the empty boxes and up to the upstairs bedroom, there to await the judgment day or the auction that would surely follow Stauer's eventual death.

He'd left some things out, still up on the walls, or in cases, or on stands. These were his weapons: forty-seven odd bayonets, knives and daggers, two dozen swords, including a matched fifteenth century daisho that had set him back forty thousand dollars, two crossbows, one modern, one medieval, sixteen rifles of various calibers and capabilities, nine pistols, one morning star . . .

Man without a family ought to have a hobby, at least.

He sat down, as lightly as he'd closed the doors and then cat-footed across the apartment.

Maybe I actually should have taken a job, Stauer thought. But what was there available? Office work? Being a body guard for some State Department maggot? Supervising guard details on a gate in Iraq or Afghanistan for seven hundred bucks a day? That shit got old when I was eighteen. And if I'd wanted to do direct action the options were not only limited, I'd have been reporting to some ex-SEAL who inherited a pile of money. Maybe I should have gone with that Ph.D from King's College London . . . but what would have been the point? It's not like I need the money. Military pay isn't extravagant, but when you don't have a family to support, and have no moral qualms about keeping Uncle's fingers off your money, you can invest yourself to a not inconsiderable wealth. Toss in the retired pay and it comes to quite a sum.

But I'm just so bored . . .

And it isn't just me.

Stauer flicked on the computer monitor, a twenty-inch flat screen, and pulled up his email. He tried to keep in touch with old comrades, such as wanted to keep in touch. And the refrain from them was so common as to be stereotypical. "I'd give up a year's pay for just one day back in the jungle . . . I am bored out of my gourd, boss . . . What the hell was I thinking when I punched out? . . . There's no work, sir, not for people like me. Not that isn't government make-work . . . "

Guys, if I knew how to help, I would, Stauer sighed. Maybe we should all get together sometime. But . . . nah . . . when it's over; it's over.

Alone in the bed, Phillie lay on her back, hands behind her head and fingers interlaced. I've never felt this way, she mused, and I don't just mean horny. He looks right, acts right, smells right. Everything's right. I'd be proud to be his wife and bear his children. And I think he cares for me. Loves me? I wish I knew. But if he doesn't, it isn't for anything I've failed to do. He loves history so I enrolled in a couple of history courses at UTSA so we could discuss it. That helped some, but would have helped more if he hadn't thought all the profs but one were idjits. Rollin, Wes said, knows what he's talking about. But then Professor Rollin left for greener pastures, so . . .

And, of course, I can't talk to him much about my job. "Phillie, honey, most of us are quite content to go through life without thinking of ourselves as animated bags of skin filled with obscene glop." He won't even admit he stole that line from that antiwar science fiction writer.

Besides, since the government introduced medical rationing, I've come to hate my job. Why should I talk about something I hate?

Still, we have good times together. We have enough in common to make a go of things. He's met my mom, so he knows I'm going to age really well. We could-

Baaaringngngng.

Now what inconsiderate son of a bitch would be ringing a doorbell this time of night?

"I'll get it, Phillie," Stauer shouted from the office. He picked up a pistol from atop a bookcase standing against one wall and, after checking the magazine well, pulling the slide, and letting it slam forward to ensure the pistol was loaded, walked to the front door muttering foul imprecations the whole way. The federal government, quite despite some recent rulings from the Supreme Court, was being difficult about personal arms, but Texas and a number of other southern and Midwestern states were being equally difficult right back. It was a bad sign, really; everyone said so.

"Dirty, miserable, ill-mannered bastard! Who the fuck calls on someone at three in the fucking morning?" Wes made sure that his muttering wasn't so low that whichever rotten SOB was at the door wouldn't be sure hear it.

He continued cursing while fumbling with the door chain. If there was someone at the door with criminal intent, he didn't want a narrowly opened door restricting his field of fire. No, he wanted a clear path to shoot the son of a bitch, quite despite that the Feds were likely to prosecute these days on civil rights grounds no matter what the local Castle Doctrine laws said.

Chain unhooked, hand grasped around his pistol, Wes flung open the door and stuck the muzzle right against the nose of-

The muzzle didn't waver. Rather, Stauer's head rocked from side to side, as if to bring a jumbled memory to the surface. The scars on his face seemed familiar. The medium tall, slightly pudgy black man slowly and carefully raising his hands over his head looked like . . . but no . . . it's been freakin' years.

"Wahab?" Stauer asked.

The pudgy black face rocked, the nose moving the muzzle up and down with it. "Yes, Wes," the man said in a clipped, almost British accent, "it's Wahab. And I need help."

CHAPTER TWO

God preserve us from our friends.

-Lenin

D-165, Commonwealth Avenue, Boston

Rain came down in a steady drizzle, filling the low points in the streets and soaking everyone in a cold, wet misery. From the left, headlights dimmed by the thin, half-frozen deluge, an automobile came. Ignoring pedestrians, the car passed through a muddy puddle, casting up the filth therein onto sidewalk and foot traveler alike. Overhead, icicles were beginning to form on the trees that lined the broad green strip that divided the street.

"God, this weather is shitty," said one of the party, a black man, tall and thin but with refined, almost Arab, features.

"Shitty it is, Gheddi" agreed an older man, likewise black, "but at least it isn't California."

"What's the matter with California, Labaan?"

"Californians," the older man, Labaan, replied. Though he often, even usually, wore a smile, Labaan lost it everytime the subject of California or Californians came up. And he would never say why.

The car reached them, splashing filthy water from the street onto their coats and trousers.

"Sharmutaada ayaa ku dhashay was!" Gheddi shouted. He shook his fist as he swore at the splashing car. Fuck the whore that bore you. When the car ignored him, continuing on its way without a backward glance, he began to reach under his coat.

"Easy, Gheddi," said Labaan. It was said gently but was an iron-bound order nonetheless. The older man placed a hand on Gheddi's wrist, advising, "We have other business this evening. And we don't need trouble from the local authorities."

Gheddi seemed inclined to argue the point, at first. At least his hand continued to attempt to move under his long woolen coat. After a few moments of vain struggle, he gave it up, returning his hand to his pocket for warmth. "You're right, of course, Cousin," Gheddi admitted. "God will have to avenge me on the ill-mannered pig."

"God will do as He will do," answered the cousin, Labaan, leader of the little family group and the only really fluent English speaker among them. Gray-haired, desert-and war-worn, Labaan spoke calmly. He alone knew this city, having studied here as a young man. Indeed, Labaan had studied at the same school as the group's target. That, however, had been many years and several wars in the past. Now, studies abandoned as useless in the violent, anarchic world he inhabited, Labaan led a small team in the service of his clan. And why not? It wasn't as if he had a country anymore.

No, all I've got left is blood. The whole nation thing turned out to be a lie, and the whole international thing turned out to be worse than a lie. In the end, only blood matters, only blood counts, only blood lasts. Everything else is illusion. Everything but blood is a fraud.

Labaan's was not a high-tech team. They had Bluetooth equipped cell phones, recently purchased at a Wal-Mart. They had pistols; this was what Gheddi had been reaching for, of course. They had a rental van, currently idling a few blocks away on Gardner Street under the control of the fifth member of the group, Asad, the lion. The van was GPS equipped, and there was also a hand-held device, which would be used to find the ship that would take them home. They also had tape to secure their target, the tape likewise courtesy of Wal-Mart. Lastly, for the delicate time between confronting their target and getting him on the ship, they had two surplus atropine injectors, the atropine having been removed and replaced with a cocktail of various drugs that the clan's chief chemist-Come to think of it, Tahir the pharmacist studied here, too. Wonderful city, Boston! Well . . . except for the weather-had assured them would render the boy half insensate but calm and cooperative in a brief instant.

"He should be coming out soon," Labaan said. "Abdi, you and I are the only ones who can identify the boy. You and Delmar go past the entrance to his apartment building. Wait. If you take the boy, I'll call for Asad. If he turns toward us, you call."

"Haa, Labaan," Abdi agreed. Like his cousins, he was tall and slender, with café au lait skin, and delicate of feature. He and Delmar walked briskly to the public transportation stop, a partially Plexiglas enclosed and fully covered shelter from Boston's execrable weather. In theory, the thing had radiant heaters. In practice, these helped little if at all. The two men shivered in a night far colder and infinitely wetter than the worst their barren country had had to offer since sometime around the last ice age. The shelter reeked of piss despite the cold.

"And Gheddi? You get that hostile look off your face. Now."

The air shimmered around the closing door, the result of the overheated air of the apartment meeting the frigid air of the second floor landing. Adam Khalid Hodan, twenty years of age and son and designated successor to his father, Khalid, chief of the clan of Marehan and leader of the Federation of Sharia Courts, shivered in his coat as he locked the door behind him.

Khalid was approximately as religious as Richard Dawkins, but he knew how to mouth the right phrases. Adam, the son, was considerably more religious, though he wanted nothing whatsoever to do with some of the more extreme elements in his father's domain. For that matter, he avoided the big mosque on Prospect Street precisely because it seemed to him to be dominated by the nuts.

And besides, as the boy often thought, there's no requirement to have any man interpose himself between oneself and God.

The apartment was on the second floor, of five, in the converted townhome. Whatever heat there might have been outside of the twenty small apartments of the building had risen to the upper floors.

"God," whispered Adam, "grant that spring come soon to this frozen place."

Physically, Adam, too, was a near match for the men outside who sought him. Perhaps he was a bit darker, as coming from a more southerly province. About them, of their existence or their mission, he had not a valid clue. His father had sent him here-ordered him, really, and much against his will-to further his education for the day he would lead the clan. If his father had thought there was any danger to the boy, he'd neglected to mention it.

Steeling himself against the coming wet and cold, Adam turned toward the door and began to walk the tiled landing to the steps that led down and out. His father could be very touchy about allowances if grades were not maintained. Adam had business at his school's library, across the river.

"Warya, Adam," someone called out before Adam's feet touched the glistening street. He looked and saw someone he'd met, very briefly, in the restaurant down in Roxbury, a countryman, though of a different clan. Odd it was, how clan lines blurred in this foreign place.

"We define ourselves by what we are not," one of Adam's professors had said once, in lecture. He'd found that true, once he'd thought on it. For that matter, what passed for a girlfriend here, Maryam, was not even of his own country, but of a neighbor. Though she'd hardly lived at all in the Dark Continent, she, too, defined herself as "not American, but African," and so she, too, seemed close kin here in Boston.

Pretty and to spare, Maryam was pleasant to be around, except of course when she started speaking politics. Some of what she said, what she had learned from her UN father and his progressive friends, Adam agreed with. But she was depressed, so often, by things beyond her control, and let that depression bleed over to things that were, that the boy wasn't sure their relationship was going anywhere.

Who, after all, wants to live with a steady diet of "brain drain," "rule of law," "reparations," "colonialism," "aid," or "Bob Geldof?"