The Abrupt Physics of Dying (35 page)

He started to slide into the void. Then the toe of his left boot touched something solid. He pushed his left arm out so that only his right hand was still on the ledge above. His left toe was now anchored on the lower ledge. He swung his right leg towards it and
found the edge of the step so that he was glued almost diagonally to the rock face. He shuffled his right forearm ahead in small increments, righting himself, gradually shifting weight to his legs. He stood there for a long time, plastered against the wall, breathing heavily, his hands and feet tingling and his stomach hollow.

He moved along the second ledge. Then he stopped and looked down. Below were three more levels, each about two vertical metres apart and then, further down, a bench of talus sloped up against the canyon wall. It was still a long way down. After he had rested for a while he started to move along the narrow bedding plane. He was about halfway to the start of the third step when the thin layer of rock beneath him gave way and he fell flailing into the canyon below.

The Killing Price

Abdulkader’s craggy bearded face loomed above him. He was lying on his back, his chest and face covered in a film of sweat. The heat was stifling. His head ached from the inside out, as if his skull had been peeled back in a vice.

‘
Al hamdullah
,’ said Abdulkader. ‘Thanks be to God most merciful.’ Abdulkader put a water bottle to Clay’s lips, tilted it. Clay tried to sit up but a barb of pain pinned him to the ground. He moved his legs, his shoulders. He must have hit his head in the fall.

‘Your hand.’

Clay raised his bandaged hand. ‘
Howzit
, my
broer
. I’m sorry I doubted you.’

Abdulkader blinked once.

A gunshot rang out, echoed along the canyon walls. Abdulkader reached his arm behind Clay’s back, helped him to his feet. Raised voices from below, in the direction of the village. More gunfire cracked in the distance, diffracted, faded away up-wadi.

‘Soldiers?’ Clay asked.

‘We must hurry.’

Clay followed Abdulkader down-wadi, moving in the shadow of the eastern cliffs, the wadi floor below on their right, towards the firing. As they neared the pools, the noise intensified, the rattle of automatic rifle fire, the single pops of handguns. Below, a ragged skirmish line strung out across the wadi. Soldiers in green uniforms, a dozen perhaps, had fanned out from the village and were moving up-wadi. Beyond, two vehicles, Army transports, sat apparently
unguarded in the village square. Clay could see two, three, four tribesmen among the boulders, firing at the soldiers, moving, retreating up-wadi. The tribesmen were hemmed in.

Abdulkader turned and handed him a Beretta and two magazines. ‘We must fight our way out.’ Abdulkader started to move down towards the tribesmen.

‘No,’ said Clay. ‘This way.’

Clay led Abdulkader in the opposite direction, away from the firing, towards the eastern cliff. Soon they were skirting the base of the lower pool. Clay stopped at the ledge, the village far below, breathing hard, and looked down. The soldiers had pushed the tribesmen back and were now strung out across the wadi, east–west. As the wadi constricted, the tribesmen were being forced back into a narrowing funnel of crossfire. Puffs of smoke floated up and were caught in the breeze. Tracers zinged among the rocks. The noise was deafening. Abdulkader knelt beside him, raised his Kalashnikov and took aim at one of the soldiers below.

Clay touched him on the shoulder. ‘No. Follow me.’

It took him a moment to find the entrance, stumbling around among the rocks, the firing intensifying below. Everything looked different going in than it had coming out that day, little Mohamed perched on his shoulders. Finally, Clay found the path. Running now, he descended into the rock, down the hewn steps. Abdulkader followed. As they moved deeper into the heart of the rock, the sounds of the battle diminished, muffled. It was cooler here, the walls shaded, close. Down they went, breathing hard, the sound of their footsteps primary now, gunfire fading into the background, then growing again, louder, and then the coastal plain came into view, a narrow vertical slice of it at first, opening up as they moved towards the base of the stairway.

Clay stopped and pushed himself against the wall, the Beretta in his right hand. He could smell the cordite, the blood, that old drug flooding his senses now, an ancient addiction, like nothing he had felt since. Everything was clear, pure, the colours vibrant, living, a
heart beating inside every single thing. The base of the stairway was only a step away, the bluff footpath Mohamed had led him along just short days ago. He could reach out and touch it.

The firing was very close now, just off to the right, magnetic. He could hear the voices, shouts of command, the air hot and close like a lover’s breath. Abdulkader brought his rifle to the ready, checked the magazine. Clay checked the Beretta, fingered the trigger. Abdulkader looked skywards, mouthing something Clay could not make out.

‘Ready?’ Abdulkader whispered.

Clay looked into his eyes. They were clear, bright. Clay nodded.

Abdulkader stepped out onto the path, wheeled right. Clay followed him in a crouch, Beretta levelled, adrenaline pumping, the rush coming. Two soldiers turned to face them, close. They stood side-by-side, weapons facing up-wadi. The closest one was young, just a kid. His face opened into a question, bathed in the soft warmth of the morning light. Abdulkader’s AK roared. The first round tore into the kid’s side, shearing through his chest. The second round decapitated the man standing next to him. Both bodies toppled to the ground. A third soldier, ten metres beyond the first pair, spun to his right and started to bring his rifle around for a shot. Clay took aim, centred the Beretta’s barrel on the man’s torso, the biggest target. A kind of calm flooded through him, a certainty, everything he’d been taught, the things he’d honed with years of practice taking over. He pulled the trigger three times just as the soldier made to fire. The nine-millimetre slugs hit in rapid succession, a tight grouping that blew open the man’s chest cavity, splintering ribs, shredding his aorta, severing the carotid artery, tearing through the left ventricle. The kid, that’s all he was, probably had a moment, a few seconds maybe, just after, to register a last thought, to perhaps see the shower of blood erupting from his body, to take a last glimpse of the too-blue sky. Other soldiers, five of them further along the line turned, open-mouthed, surprise and terror frozen in their faces. They had been caught in enfilade. At the far end of the line, a man in a black jacket jumped from the path just as Abdulkader opened up
on full automatic. Clay emptied his magazine into the line’s exposed flank. Three seconds later, five more soldiers lay sprawled in the dust, broken and bleeding.

Clay stood staring down at the waste, the Beretta smoking in his hand. Abdulkader was already moving along the line, stepping over the twisted corpses, treading in their blood, tracking it across the sand. Clay took a few steps, stood looking down at the lifeless face of the man he’d killed, the question still frozen in the dark-brown eyes. He was very young. Moments ago he was alive. Now he was not. It didn’t seem possible, had never seemed proper or right or even mathematically feasible, time’s unassailable dominion over life, its ability to rob you of everything. Clay crouched, hung his head, closed his eyes, felt death’s touch, cloaked, merry, grateful.

An AK opened up somewhere nearby. Rounds snapped over his head like electricity, raising the hairs on his neck, the back of his hand. He looked down-wadi. The remaining soldiers were breaking cover and running back to the village, the tribesmen in pursuit. From here they looked tiny, insignificant, like toys. Clay watched one uniformed man stumble, pull himself up, hobble a few steps, then crumple to the ground. The firing was ragged now, dying away. He peered down into the forest of boulders. A glimpse of movement, a flash of black. He waited, breathed deep, everything honed, heightened. There, again, fifty metres down-wadi, a lone figure shuffling between two slabs of limestone, a
Ksyuka
swinging from his neck. There was no mistaking that build, the fair hair. Clay jammed a fresh magazine into the Beretta’s grip, jumped to his feet and set off in a running crouch.

The man was moving slowly, seemingly unaware that he was being pursued. Clay closed on him quickly, caught him in a small clearing, an amphitheatre of tall boulders.

Clay levelled the Beretta. ‘Stop,’ he shouted.

The man froze, hands at his sides.

‘Turn around. Slow.’

Zdravko looked dazed. There was a deep gash on his forehead.
His shirt was bunched up around his midsection, a bloody bandage around his torso.

‘Drop the weapon,’ said Clay.

Zdravko raised his hands. He tried to smile. ‘My friend. Look what you do to me.’

Clay raised his left hand. ‘Yeah, look,
broer
. Drop it.’

Zdravko lifted the strap over his neck and dropped the
Ksyuka
to the ground.

‘Brother, yes. I know when we meet.’ He rapped a closed fist on his chest.

‘Afghanistan. Marines.’

Brothers, then, as he’d suspected. Members of the same fuckedup family. ‘Step back,’ Clay said.

Zdravko backed away.

Clay picked up the
Ksyuka
, squared up, took a deep breath. He kept his voice low, sought as much control as he could find. ‘I’m going to ask you a few questions,
brother
. And if you don’t tell me what I want to know, I’m going to kill you. Right here, right now. Do you understand?’

Zdravko’s eyes flickered. He wasn’t smiling anymore.

‘Who killed Champard?’

Zdravko looked away, down at the ground, back up. ‘Al Shams kill him.’

‘We both know that’s bullshit.’

Zdravko’s lip curled. ‘Fuck you, Straker.’

‘You don’t think I’m serious, do you?’

Zdravko stared him in the eyes.

Clay slung the
Ksyuka
, pointed the Beretta at Zdravko’s face. Zdravko’s eyes widened. Clay could see him composing himself. ‘I don’t have time to piss around, Zdravko. Who killed Champard? I know it wasn’t you. Who was it?’

‘Ask your terrorist friend, Straker.’

Clay stepped closer, pushed Zdravko to the ground. ‘Why is Mansour for Import faking invoices?’

Zdravko struggled to his feet, defiant.

Clay’s stomach lurched. The pain that had somehow vanished during the battle came roaring back. His whole body was aflame.

Abdulkader called his name. His voice seemed far off, thin, diffuse after the din of the shooting, the cries of dying men.

Clay took a deep breath. ‘I won’t ask again.’

Zdravko spat. ‘Fuck you, son of a whore.’

Clay lowered the weapon and fired once. The pistol jerked in his hand. Zdravko fell to the ground, his knee a blossom of red pulp. He grabbed his smashed limb, screamed in pain. Clay crouched, put the gun to Zdravko’s head. ‘It was me, up in the rocks that day at Bawazir,’ he whispered. ‘I know what you did. I photographed it all.’

Zdravko looked up at him, realisation in his eyes.

‘And if you don’t tell me what I want to know, I’m going to do to you exactly what you did to that chief.’

Zdravko lay clutching his knee, panting.

‘Last chance, asshole.’

Zdravko looked down at his knee, his face contorted in pain. ‘It wasn’t me,’ he cried. ‘I pay someone. They do it.’

‘I know, Zdravko. Who paid you?’

Zdravko’s eyes fluttered, closed. He was going into shock.

Abdulkader was standing behind Clay now, rifle slung muzzle down, staring down at Zdravko’s knee. ‘We must go,’ he said. ‘Now.’

Clay looked up. Abdulkader gazed down at him, stone.

Clay shook Zdravko awake. ‘Mansour for Import?’

‘I pay them.’

‘Who are they? Tell me.’

Zdravko looked down at his knee and closed his eyes, shook his head. ‘Look what you do to me,’ he hissed through clenched teeth.

‘Worse coming.’

‘And I save you, motherfucker. Tell them kill only Champard. No one else. You live because of me.’ Zdravko pounded his chest. ‘You owe me, motherfucker.’

There it was. Rania had been right.

‘You dead, Straker. I fucking kill you.’

‘We’ll leave that to Allah.’ Clay pushed the Beretta’s muzzle into Zdravko’s temple. ‘Last chance. Who did it?’

Zdravko’s eyes widened. ‘Ansar Al-Sharia. They did. Mansour is cover.’

Clay blinked twice. Holy Jesus. ‘Who paid you?’

‘The company,’ Zdravko blurted.

‘Who?’

‘Parnell.’

Clay’s guts somersaulted. He glanced up at Abdulkader. ‘Why, Zdravko? Why did they do it?’

Zdravko’s eyelids fluttered and closed. Clay grabbed him by the shoulders, shook hard. ‘Why, damn you, why?’

Zdravko’s eyes opened, just a sliver. ‘I don’t know,’ he whispered. Then he was gone.

A man appeared behind them, face swathed against the dust. He stopped for a moment then approached, white
thaub
flowing, unarmed. There was no mistaking the misshapen head, the dark intelligent eyes. He stopped a few paces away and looked at Clay. It was over. The wadi was quiet again, dead again. The violence echoed in Clay’s head. He turned and looked out over the plain as the vehicles disappeared into the distance trailing wefts of dust.

Al Shams came and stood by his side. ‘Did you find what you were looking for, Mister Claymore?’

‘Some of it.’

Another tribesman appeared, walked towards them. It was the old cyclops with the hennaed beard. As he walked, he changed the magazine on his weapon, stuffed the empty banana clip into the pocket of his jacket. He nodded to Clay. ‘Two dead,’ he said in Arabic.

Al Shams hung his head, muttered a prayer. ‘We must leave, quickly. They will send helicopters.’ He turned and surveyed the scene, looked at Clay, that single window dark, full of stars. ‘The price is high, Mister Claymore.’

‘Always too high.’

‘God is great.’

‘It seems he is,’ said Clay.