The Godless One (2 page)

But for Abdul Rahman, it
was on the road from Kuwait City that Ghaith had proved himself,
when the young lieutenant freed him from the burning wreck of a BTR
armored transporter. The men who had been riding in the back of the
open-roof vehicle were scattered like soggy rags when they were
hit. Lieutenant Ibrahim got blood and gore on his boots as he ran
to assist, while continuing to shout orders at panicked
soldiers.

"Get back to your gun!" he
bellowed at two terrified conscripts running for the illusory
safety of the adjoining field. Frightened soldiers, especially
miserable draftees, are famously immune to authority. Yet even as
the fire grew closer, Abdul Rahman took note of the way this pair
stopped, stared wide-eyed but not blindly at Ghaith, and then
returned to their abandoned weapon. It was something of a minor
miracle.

When the missile struck the
BTR the center console had split. The gear tunnel flamed open and
the gear stick and metal flanging around it had weirdly wrapped
around Abdul Rahman's leg, for all the world like a vise created
specifically for the purpose of trapping hapless
corporals.

"No! No!" Abdul Rahman
screamed when the lieutenant abruptly disappeared. Weeping, his
agony growing, he did not register the Apache firing rockets not
fifty meters ahead, whipping thousands of jagged shards into a
chaotic froth. The column was already practically destroyed. Enemy
aircraft on the horizon were lined up in a holding pattern as if at
a busy airport, waiting in turn to unload their ordnance upon the
soldiers and civilians on the road. It was raw murder.

"Oh!"

The lieutenant was back,
this time bearing a crowbar he had retrieved from the roadside. He
jammed it past Abdul Rahman’s leg into a gap in the twisted metal
and began worrying it open. Suddenly, a Lion of Babylon behind them
blew. The lieutenant was thrown forward by the pressure wave, then
turned to look. The tank's commander had seen the HEAT round being
fired and ordered his crew out. They were halfway through the
hatches when it hit. Their screams were cut short when the
unprotected propellant magazine exploded and they were caught in a
2000 degree flame jet that turned them like gory swivel sticks
until they were perfectly roasted.

When the lieutenant turned
back to him, Abdul Rahman noted a surprised look on his face. He
was not accustomed to terror.

"There is none worthy of
worship but Allah! There is none worthy of worship but Allah! There
is none worthy of worship but Allah!"

This was the prayer Abdul
Rahman tried to stitch into comprehensible words. But for the most
part he could only scream
"Ahhh! Ahhh!
Ahhh!"
as the flames scoured his
face.

There was a metallic crack
as Ghaith finally managed to pry open the gear box and grabbed the
burning NCO by the arm. Out he came, screaming to God as the
lieutenant beat at the flames, though whether it was a blessing or
a curse it was impossible to say.

Ghaith fell on top of him
as the dirt was churned by a Gatling burst of 30mm from a plane
overhead. Both of them laughed madly, knowing full well that any
depleted uranium shell that struck the lieutenant would zip through
them both and bury itself in the ground.

Then Ghaith was up,
dragging the screaming corporal a few yards, then hefting him into
his strong arms and racing away from the column. Falling into a
shell hole, he dropped Abdul Rahman hard, ignoring his howls of
agony as he fought to catch his own breath. Before the injured
soldier could piece the frenzied images around him into a
recognizable pattern, the lieutenant was up again, racing towards a
Chinese-made armored personnel carrier and the two men he had
ordered back to their weapon, shouting something that Abdul Rahman
could not understand. Above them, an A-10 had appeared magically
out of the smoke. Abdul Rahman could hear the 12.7mm bullets from
the APC’s machine gun peppering the bottom of the Warthog—and
peppering was the right word, for all the effect the bullets were
having. Suddenly the sky opened up and the men below the plane were
shredded by armor-piercing shells like beef haunches pulled for a
barbecue. The lieutenant gave a brief shout of anger, the only
sympathy for the soldiers he had condemned to death that he would
be allowed before the Warthog drifted his way and he flung himself
to the ground.

It was at that moment
(though neither man knew this until Ghaith visited Abdul Rahman in
the hospital a week later) that both men had a brief image of an
American movie they had seen as children, George Pal’s vision of a
Martian invasion. The aliens were every bit as invulnerable under
their protective forcefields as the Warthogs were in their titanium
armor….

"War of the Worlds?"

Abdul Rahman jumped at these words from
Ghaith, which shocked him back to the present, outside Ghaith’s
house in al-Masbah.

"You shouldn’t allow your hands to
shake," Ghaith continued. "It doesn’t look good in front of the
men. Calm yourself. Only Americans suffer from post traumatic
stress syndrome."

Abdul Rahman gave a small lurch,
suddenly aware of the uncharacteristically broad windows of the
houses on this block, of the potential to draw the attention of
prying eyes.

"I’m glad you didn’t bring your men
along with you to my house," Ghaith said.

"Yes," Abdul Rahman answered, pulling
himself up.

"Listen…not a hundred Highway 80’s, not
a hundred Causeways can keep us down."

Abdul Rahman wondered if the colonel
was pulling his leg. The Highway of Death and the Battle of Rumaila
at the Lake Hammar Causeway had virtually eliminated the men and
armor of the Hammurabi Division in a sordid swelter of human and
mechanistic gore. If this was supposed to be a pep talk, the
examples were grossly inappropriate.

Ghaith patted him on the shoulder. "I
don’t want my neighbors to become anxious about my
very…existence."

"Yes. Let’s go."

"I’m surprised you don’t have a
driver," Ghaith commented as they got into the Audi.

"I wanted to talk to
you…alone."

The colonel gave him
another long look as he pulled away from the curb. "I can see you
have something pressing on your mind. Besides sending a mass
murderer to
Jahannam
, I mean."

Despair leaked from Abdul Rahman like a
toxic cloud as he drove towards Aqba Bin Nafi Square.

"What have you heard?" Ghaith asked
solicitously, as though Abdul Rahman was a student driver taking
his first spin around the neighborhood.

"I can’t let this happen." Abdul Rahman
was breathing hard. His hands seemed to stumble on the wheel. "I
owe you my life."

"What is it you can’t allow to happen?"
Ghaith asked calmly.

Abdul Rahman didn’t answer.

"Let me guess," said Ghaith. "I’ve
angered someone."

"It seems so," Abdul Rahman admitted,
knuckles white.

"Do you know who it is?"

"No."

"Then let me offer another guess. I
think I have angered the illustrious, lunatic elder son of our
illustrious Boss."

Abdul Rahman cried out and pulled off
to the side of the road, almost whimpering.

"Want to know why Uday is pissed off
with me?" Ghaith asked.

"
No
!"

"Then I’ll tell you. It’s just as well
that you enter this with open eyes. Uday took a fancy to the
daughter of an engineer who was working on the Sa'd Project. Those
Germans know their poison gas."

"Stop!"

"Information is everything, Abdul
Rahman. Listen to me. Some day, information will save your life and
the lives of your wife and children."

Abdul Rahman lowered his
head to the steering wheel.
"
La
elaha ella allah—
"

"Stop puling. 'Beware the levelheaded
when they are angry'."

Raising his head, Abdul Rahman saw
Ghaith's eyes darkening and cut short his prayer.

"We’re both in a mess and the only way
out is to think straight…or not think at all, which I don’t think
is possible."

"This German girl…" Abdul Rahman
ventured timorously.

"Someone came into my office last month
and told me straight up that Uday wanted this girl for
his…entertainment. That could only mean he wanted her for his
Palace of Dreams."

"But that’s impossible! If he kidnapped
her and the Germans traced her—"

"Exactly. As if the country wasn’t in
enough of a fix. Obviously, no one wanted the job, which is why it
trickled down to my desk."

"What did you do?"

"I obliged."

Abdul Rahman hissed a protest. "Do you
know what they do in that place?"

"I’ve had hints, which is why I feel
sorry for that German shepherd I gave him, even though she was one
mean bitch."

It should have been funny.
Ghaith, at least, laughed, though at the price of seeming gauche
for laughing at his own joke. But Abdul Rahman’s face dropped with
horror. Uday Hussein was not one to take practical jokes in stride.
At a party being held for the wife of the President of Egypt, Hosni
Mubarak, Uday had murdered his father’s personal valet with an
electric carving knife in front of the horrified guests. That
was
his
idea of
funny. He proudly referred to himself as Abu Sarhan…’the
wolf’.

"Colonel…Abu Karim…" Abdul Rahman
despaired, feeling his treachery branching into his conscience.
"Your family…"

"My wife has so many connections in the
Babylonian Palace that I bow to her every night. No one will bother
her or my boys."

"And you?"

Ghaith drew a cigarette from a pack of
Winstons. There was a kind of rivalry in the military concerning
American tobacco—as opposed to the cheap local DJ’s. Abdul Rahman
forced a small smile and took out a pack of Marlboros. Ghaith
nodded, not in defeat, but in acknowledgement of a worthy
adversary.

"What is the plan for me?" asked
Ghaith, blowing smoke.

"The operation that you’re supposed to
observe?"

"Mmm-hmm."

"You’re going to lead it."

"Ah."

"After Abu Nidal and his men kill
you…"

"INTERNATIONAL TERRORIST HIDING IN
BAGHDAD SLAIN AFTER MURDERING IRAQI ARMY COLONEL," said Ghaith,
quoting an imaginary headline.

"Something like that," Abdul Rahman
admitted tightly. He began driving again. As he turned right at
Aqba Bin Nafi Square the waiting convoy fell in behind him. Ghaith
caught a glimpse of a face through one of the driver
windows.

"Omar Pachachi. Good man. But wait,
wasn’t he involved in that attempt to assassinate Bush the Elder?
Can he shoot straight?"

"Please don‘t joke," said Abdul Rahman.
"It’s difficult…"

"It would be an inconvenient world if
victims knew in advance that they were going to be victimized."
Ghaith pondered his own words for a moment. "I might be wrong,
though. It might be the rule." Approaching Mohamed al-Qasim
Expressway he noted a man watching the convoy with open dismay
before scurrying out of sight. "No one needs to know, because it
wouldn’t matter if they did." He turned back to Abdul Rahman. "I
could always refuse to go in. What then? Are you supposed to shoot
me and plant my body in the on the premises after you’re done with
that ANO cretin?"

Abdul Rahman tapped his horn to
convince a driver ahead of the urgent need to get out of the way.
And that was all it took: a tap. The car swerved and nearly ran
over several pedestrians.

"Colonel…you saved my life."

"I like how you keep reminding me. It
reassures me that you haven’t forgotten." He sighed. "But it’s
beginning to look as if all I rescued from the war of the worlds
was the empty shell of a man."

"I’m deeply grateful," Abdul Rahman
said stiffly. "But you’ve offended Uday Hussein."

"True," Ghaith nodded. "You shouldn’t
fuck with a man who has survived eight bullet wounds." The
assassination attempt on Uday had been made in 1996. One of the
bullets could not be removed because it was too close to the
spine.

"There’s no way to save yourself…or
your family…if we don’t go through with this."

"Nor
your
family, I would imagine," said
Ghaith with horrifying complacency. "At least one of the chaps in
your convoy will be a plant from who knows what bureau. Thirty men,
right? I’d say one spy in thirty is average for a mission of this
size. But with this group, you never know. I dare say one of them
has been ordered to shoot the first one of us who balks. Maybe both
of us. And even if he doesn’t shoot us, he’ll report back—" He
stopped when he noted tears on Abdul Rahman’s cheek. "You’re a
soldier! Command yourself to stop, if you don‘t want me
to."

Abdul Rahman got a grip on himself and
nodded.

"If anyone will shed tears, it will be
the SSO, once it finds out its toes have been stepped
on."