Deployed (21 page)

Matthew sat up. “You know what this bench really needs? Coffee, and I mean something other than the weak stuff they’re serving in the nurses’ station. Do you know where we can get some?”

“They have some in the cantina.” Bekah got up, slid the strap of her rifle over her shoulder, and picked up her helmet. She led the way out of the building and tried not to feel guilty leaving Ralph Caxton behind.

25

THE BOY WAITS THERE
with the dead.

The thought pummeled the inside of Daud’s skull. He had first heard about the massacre two hours ago when he and his men had visited with another group of displaced people. He had given away more of the cargo he’d taken from the UN convoy. In return, he had added six more young men to his band.

He had also gotten the attention of Korfa Haroun.

“You realize this may be a trap, Rageh.” Afrah sat behind the steering wheel of the truck he drove. The headlight beams cut holes in the dark night ahead of them as they followed the narrow, winding trail.

“Of course I do. If it is a trap, we will come back.”

“It might be too late.”

“It will not be too late.” Daud looked into the darkness that shrouded the landscape. He tried to remember this group of displaced people, how many children they had among them. He couldn’t recall coming this way. There had been too many trips through the countryside, too many people who desperately needed help they weren’t getting.

“This is just one boy.” Afrah shrugged. “He is probably already dead.”

“But he may not be.”

“And if he is?” Afrah looked at him.

“Then it is God’s will.” Daud knew Afrah held Islam at arm’s length. Why had he said such a thing when he wasn’t sure he believed it himself? But the image of that boy sitting there in the midst of those corpses was powerful and unsettling. He’d reached instinctively for his faith.

Afrah put his attention back on the road. “What if he is not dead?”

Truthfully, Daud had not let himself think that far. Thinking like that would mean giving in to hope, and he did not wish to get his hopes up. It was maddening to think of a child sitting out there in the night surrounded by the bodies of his family and friends.

Daud tightened his grip on his AK-47, then forced himself to relax. If the boy still lived, then Daud would take him away from there. What he would do with him after that, Daud was not certain.

He could not help thinking of Ibrahim and how he had laid his son’s fragile body into the unwelcoming earth. Daud took a breath and promised himself that if the boy was dead, he would bury him. Then he would hunt Haroun all the harder.

They left the trucks a couple miles from where the group of displaced people had set up their little village. Daud walked into the darkness with ten men, including Afrah, and left the others with the trucks and jeeps in case they needed reinforcements or an escape. They had radios now for communication, though they used them sparingly because the Westerners and the al-Shabaab monitored the radio waves.

Afrah walked silently beside Daud. The man carried an AK-47 that looked like a child’s toy in his big arms. He wore an RPG-7 strapped over his shoulder and a pouch of warheads at his side. Since Daud had made his decision to go into the night, Afrah had said nothing further.

The moon sat deep in the night sky, pale and wan, barely illuminating the terrain around them. As they neared the streambed that ran by the area where the people had established their village, Daud heard frogs croaking and the slow trickle of water wending through the stream to his right.

He walked near the water, down in the shallow ditch the stream had carved from the earth over generations. As he made his way, he kept thinking of Ibrahim, remembering how he had taught his son to walk, to throw a ball, to fish off the pier down at the harbor. There were so many things he had done with his boy that his own father had not done with him.

Ibrahim’s laughter and innocence were the things Daud most missed about his son. Ibrahim had been much happier and more open to things in life than Daud had ever been. Sometimes seeing those things in his son had worried Daud, making him realize how vulnerable Ibrahim was.

His wife had seen him fret over such things, but she hadn’t known the reason for his anxiety. She worried about Ibrahim, too, but she never concerned herself with whether Daud could protect her. She had died, and he had not been there.

A short distance farther, Daud came to a halt and took out his binoculars as he stood in the shadow of a boswellia tree. The ragged bark pressed against his right cheek, but he couldn’t feel it where the nerves had burned in his face. He scanned the area ahead and spotted the boy sitting under a towering juniper tree. The people had built
aqals
under and around the junipers, using the natural brush line to disguise the structures.

These people hadn’t been easy to find. Without the map that Daud had taken from the UN driver, he wouldn’t have found them at all.

“There is no one about.” Daud lowered his binoculars. “Only the boy.”

“There is something in the tree.” Afrah stood only a few feet away.

“What is it?”

“I don’t know.” Afrah remained still and trained his binoculars on the tree. “Looks like giant bats.”

Daud looked again, and this time he studied the tree. Strange shapes did hang from it, but he couldn’t make them out. Silently, he put the binoculars away, then resumed his walk. There was no way he could leave the boy there alone.

As he approached the boy, Daud thought he might be asleep. And then he thought the boy might be dead. The man who had brought the message to Daud had reported that the boy was alive when he’d left him but that the boy refused to accompany him.

The boy waits there with the dead.

Thirty feet from the tree, Daud identified what hung from the branches. Haroun had hung the bodies of at least twenty men, women, and children upside down by their ankles. The eyes of the dead were open and gleamed in the weak moonlight as they stared around.

The boy’s chin was on his chest, but his shoulders rose and fell with his breath. He was alive. For the first time since he’d buried his son, Daud felt a little hope come alive within him. He didn’t know whether to hang onto it or crush it before it could grow. There was only so much pain he could endure.

“Boy.” He spoke softly and let the wind carry his voice to the boy.

The boy looked in Daud’s direction. His eyes were as dead as those of the corpses that hung above him.

“Do you know me?” Daud took another few steps forward, alert to every nuance of the land around him. He knew Haroun could have left a team of snipers. Or maybe he had mined the area. He might even have wired the boy with an explosive. There were so many things the al-Shabaab leader might have done.

“I know you.” The boy’s words were listless and dry, and Daud could tell that he’d had nothing to drink for a very long time. “You are Daud.”

“I am Daud.”

“Korfa Haroun wants you to know that he will kill you one day soon.”

Daud took another few steps. “That remains to be seen. I intend to kill him.”

The boy watched him carefully. “Haroun commands many warriors.”

“I learned a long time ago, when I was your age, that it only takes one dedicated individual and one bullet to kill a man. Haroun is not invincible.”

“He is a killer.”

“I know. You were offered a chance to leave by a fellow tribesman after Haroun left. Why did you not go?”

“Where is there to go?”

“You cannot stay here.”

The boy looked at Daud with his dead eyes. “My father died fighting the al-Shabaab in the name of the Transitional Federal Government that swore to take care of us. My mother said we could not stay in our home. So we left. When we stopped here and made our village, there was nowhere else for us.” He paused. “I have nowhere to go.”

“Then what will you do?”

“Stay here.”

“You will die.”

“It is better to die. Then I will not miss my father and I will not miss my mother.”

Lowering his rifle, Daud strode to the boy’s side. “A boy so young should not think so much of death.”

The boy looked up at the tree. “It is all around us. How can I not think of it?” He pointed at the body of a woman. “That is my mother.”

Daud looked at the woman. “Do you wish to bury her?”

A tear trickled from the boy’s eye, but his face remained resolute. “Yes, but I cannot. I want to climb the tree, but I am afraid.”

“Fear is something you should put behind you now. The men that did this took everything from you that caused you to be fearful. Live unafraid now. Live to kill your enemies. It is all they have left to you.” Daud held out his hand. “I will help you bury your mother.”

Digging the grave took an hour. Daud labored with quiet intensity, not speaking because the boy did not speak. Somehow their combined silence gave them strength. They used shovels from one of the trucks that had now set up a perimeter around the area. The sharp edges of the shovels sliced into the ground, and the going was easier than Daud dared hope since the stream was so close and the earth was not baked rock-hard.

Afrah stood guard, also without speaking, but the big man’s hard face spoke volumes to someone who knew him. Their time there displeased Afrah, and Daud could not blame his friend for that.

Still, he knew he would not be able to get the boy to go with him until they had buried the mother.

Near the end of the grave digging, the boy got sick and threw up. For a moment Daud believed he had gone as far as he could, but the boy wiped his mouth with a trembling hand and took a fresh hold on his shovel.

They continued working till it was done. Then Daud ordered that a canvas tarp be brought from one of the trucks. Together, he and the boy placed the dead woman on the tarp, though Daud had to do most of the lifting. When they were finished, they wrapped the woman in the canvas, cinched it with rope, and dragged it toward the open grave.

Because he did not want to simply drop the body into the hole in front of the boy, Daud climbed into the grave and took hold of the corpse. The raw, moist stink of the earth around him reminded him of burying Ibrahim with his mother. The emotions that Daud had worked so hard to suppress almost broke free. He pulled the dead woman into the grave with him, then climbed back out.

Together, he and the boy filled the grave. When they had finished, the boy stared at the mound of fresh-turned earth.

“Do you wish to say something?” Daud stood at the boy’s side.

The boy was quiet for a time. “What should I say?”

“Good-bye. That you loved her. And that you wish her a safe journey.”

“Where is she going?”

“I don’t know.”

“My mother talked of heaven.”

“Then perhaps that is where she has gone.”

The boy looked at him. “Do you not believe in heaven?”

Daud answered him honestly. “There is not much I believe in these days.”

Quietly, the boy lowered his head, bade his mother good-bye and safe journey, and said that he loved her. Then he looked at Daud again. “Haroun said I should hate you.”

“Why?”

“Because you helped cause my mother’s death.”

“I was not here.”

“Haroun said he killed my mother—killed all of them—so you would get the message he wanted me to give. He said if you had not done what you have been doing, he would not have come looking for you.”