First Citizen (11 page)

“No thanks.”

“Thought not. So … can we fly? We have to.”

“I wonder what kind of reception we’ll get from the Saudi Security Police?” Corbin mused.

“They will welcome us as heroes, of course.”

“Hmmm.”

”Why not? We foiled a kidnapping of American citizens, by agents of a foreign power operating inside the Kingdom. The Saudis are so paranoid they will shit their jellabas when they find out about it.”

“I think they already know,” Corbin said. When I kept quiet, thinking about that, he went on. “Well, work it out. The Ayatollah’s Boy Army is already entrenched in Kuwait and operating freely in the Neutral Zone. The Saudis don’t dare attack directly or the rolling wave comes right on into the Kingdom. Right across their oil fields ... The other option is to hit the Shi’ites economically. Sybil’s plan.”

“Kind of farfetched. … What does she say about it?”

There was a pause from the back seat. “I don’t think she can talk.”

“Well, then …”

“Faisal wasn’t one of them,” Corbin said suddenly. “He was a Wahabi and son of a sheikh. And he couldn’t fly worth a damn, as you said. And that’s the only thing Sybil wanted from him. So he must have been some kind of Security Police plant, to keep tabs on the group certainly—possibly to help them.”

“Sounds reasonable, I guess. … But what does that mean for us? I mean, do we really want to surrender at Jabrin? The government might just fly our asses back out to those people. We could fly to ’Arada, which is over the border in the Emirates. Would they be in on the plot?”

“No, but they’d count the bodies in here and then hold us until the proper Saudi authorities can sort the matter out. Can you make it all the way to the Petramin Compound in Riyadh?”

“You mean, without being spotted? In a bright pink helicopter? Dripping blood out of a smashed-up nose bubble?”

“The Saudi Air Force isn’t that thick in the sky.”

“But those people back at Abaila certainly have radios to warn them with.”

“Right. … What about ditching short of some town and walking in?”

“All right,” I said. “My instruments include a compass and a wristwatch. I have no accurate topo maps of this area. And, anyway, all they would show is rolling dunes. So, you tell me when you think we are ‘short of’ some place, then we find out how far we have to walk.”

“Ouch!”

“Exactly.”

“I guess, then, we fly to Jabrin and trust our luck with that famous Arab hospitality,” Corbin said. “And there’s just a chance that, seeing we’ve gotten free, they won’t have the balls to send us back. They might just play us straight and sacrifice the whole group at Abaila.”

“Think so?”

“Nah!”

But that is exactly what the Security Police did. When we brought the Mixmaster shuddering and groaning into a sideways landing at the Jabrin airstrip, the first people to reach the craft were uniformed police. So they may have had some kind of tipoff. But they came with their sidearms holstered—until they saw the busted plexiglass and bloody tatters hanging off the nose of our bird. Then they all pulled their guns and sank down on one knee to get steady aim.

We climbed out with our hands up. Corbin talked to the nearest man and the man’s pistol for three minutes in that halting, grade-school Arabic he used. I wondered if his phrasebook had words like “terrorist” and “submachine gun.” I was left watching their hands and faces. When I saw both relax, I started to bring my hands down. From there, things happened fast.

Corbin led them back across the runway toward the hangers, walking quickly. He was using the command stride he would perfect later, during the war: hands always in motion, pointing, gesturing, emphasizing, and always in beat with the tempo his feet set. He had a way of looking at the man on his right and talking to the one on his left, wrapping them all in the scope of his thoughts. I do not understand how, but he still held the burp gun that had killed the big terrorist— and the Security men let him carry it.

An ambulance, a converted Cadillac with a truck body welded onto the back and all painted white with red crescents, rolled past us, out to the shot-up helicopter to take Sybil off. I would not see her for another three weeks and then under much different circumstances.

There were a few shaky moments when we were brought to the colonel in charge of the post. From something Corbin said in that strangled Arabic, the colonel must have assumed I was one of the terrorists. They separated us, leveled their sidearms at me, and brought out the handcuffs.

Jay talked fast then, pausing only to find the right words. The policemen hesitated and looked at their colonel. He finally said two words and I was released.

Inside of half an hour, the entire force was being mustered. They were breaking out riot guns and grenades, warming up helicopters and light airplanes. I took Corbin aside and asked what was going on.

“We’re going back.”

“They are returning us to—?”

“No, no. Colonel Museddes thinks he can catch the whole group on the ground before they call in support from Oman or the Emirates.”

“You sure of that?”

Corbin shrugged. “We can stay here … if we want.”

“No way. Count me in. Besides—you may need a pilot.”

So we flew back to Abaila. On the first pass, they blanketed the oasis with tear gas canisters. Anyone who came out peacefully, they bound and held for evacuation on a big troopship they had whistled down from Riyadh. The rest they went in after, wearing gas masks and flak vests, and took by force.

I was standing next to Corbin, watching the fun from upwind by the lead helicopter. Then I looked around and he was gone, just a shadow among the swirling gases. When he came back, he was toting a police-issue Ingram and claimed to have bagged four.

“Did you see Faisal?” I asked.

“Nope!” Corbin gave me a big clown smile. “He’s either in hiding or being hid.”

“Should we tell someone about him?”

“Who would you tell?” He slung the empty assault gun into the nearest bird. “And anyway, why spoil his game?”

In Riyadh, where the Security forces dropped us off the next day, we were met by the senior Petramin official and the American consul. They wanted us to leave the country immediately. However, the Saudis moved in smoothly and said we had to stay for the trial, to give evidence against the terrorists. It was an official diplomatic suggestion that our corporate bosses could not ignore. In the meantime, we were put on administrative duty. Which meant Corbin and I did paperwork and kept to the compound.

I understood nothing of the trial. Robed judges and prosecutors droned in musical Arabic. Sybil and a dozen of her lieutenants were seated in a fenced area, like the dock in British courts. She had a neck brace and a head bandage that covered most of her beautiful black hair. Her eyes were puffy. Corbin and I were interrogated through translators. We told the kidnapping story at least three different ways and nobody noticed. Sybil never looked at us and hardly seemed to follow what was going on.

Then it was over and the verdict was in: death for them all. I thought this would be like an American court, where the death penalty is just a distant threat and they would have a dozen years or so of legal footwork. But no, the next day the Saudi government invited us back.

One of the city squares had been cleared of traffic and market carts. A scaffolding had been set up from folding risers, like you might see at a rock concert. Fifty or a hundred thousand people were ranged around this platform, waiting noisily. Corbin and I had box seats with some other Petramin people. Very big people.

At noon, they led out a dozen figures, dressed in simple white pullover gowns like they issue in hospitals. From a distance of three hundred feet, I could not recognize them. Then I saw the one on the near end had long, black hair. They had removed Sybil’s brace and bandages.

One by one, with Sybil last, they were brought forward and their heads laid on a block. A man in classic Bedouin robes swung a great, two-handed, silver-shining sword to cut those heads off. With each swing a mist of blood flew out over the crowd, and the crowd screamed cheers.

Corbin explained to me how big an event this was, a chance for the Saudis to strike back at the Shi’ite threat hovering along their northern borders. The entire country was watching these executions on television. He pointed to a nearby camera, which panned across our box every thirty seconds or so. We were celebrities.

But wait, I said, it was all wrong. The terrorists had been on the royalists’ side, the Saudi side, against the Ayatollah, right? And Corbin said, no, that is not the way it had come out at the trial. The translators had freeformed their own story out of our testimony and not one of the English-speaking judges had contradicted them. All the time he told me this, Corbin never took his eyes off the sword and the flying blood. Beside us, I could hear one of the other Petramin people being sick down near his shoes.

Finally it was Sybil Zahedi’s turn. She walked toward the block and I could see her lips moving. I thought she might be saying a prayer, but no, she was shouting something to the crowd, to the man who was going to kill her, to us sitting a hundred yards away. What she might have been saying was lost in the animal howl of the aroused crowd. It was like watching a silent movie. Two men pushed her down, her mouth still working, and the third cut quickly.

Jay Corbin did not even flinch. I know because I had my eyes on him.

Then we were allowed to leave the country. We became a nine days’ wonder back in the States. Corbin was interviewed on at least four video talk shows and I had two radio spots when they could not get him. There was a ceremony at the White House with the vice president giving us the Medal of Freedom. Finally, Petramin paid us a nice severance and left us on the street. … That seemed to be another suggestion from the Saudis.

After a brace of years, I had had my fill of taxi flying for rich corporoids or hauling the beer around in a jungle war. So I headed west, unfroze the rest of my stash, and set up in the business I knew best, selling kiddy ass, loosely basing myself in Carson City, Nevada. My front was talent scout and booking agent for a fictitious Chicago modeling school. You see, the prettiest girls—and boys—never feel very secure and need to test themselves against the plastic faces they see every day on video and in the magazines.

Let me tell you: All of Nevada is not the same. A misinterpretation of local statutes for which, in Vegas, they would give you steep bail and a dozen continuances, in Carson City they do not even bother taking through the desk sergeant. They take a hank of tow rope out of their Jeeps and look around for a lamp post. Confronted with such an angry crowd during my first month back in the business, I had to walk through three citizens to find a stretch of pavement with running room. Even now I look over my shoulder anytime I get ten miles this side of the State border.

So, about six months after separation from the oil company I was in Portland, with no forwarding address that anyone knew, when I got a call from Corbin.

“You used to be in the service, in Nicaragua, didn’t you?” he asked right off.

“How did you know I was in Nicco?” My voice dropped about an octave.

“Your Petramin records, of course. Do you know anything about—conditions there?”

“You mean today?”

“No, at the end of the war, just before we blew Managua away.”

“I saw the American side of it.”

“Any reactions?”

“Yeah, palefaces should not be allowed to wage a war. They know scoot about etiquette and taking coup.”

“Uh—right. Look, can you—could you come down to San Francisco and help us with a case we’re putting together?”

“What kind of case?”

“A prosecution. We’re taking one of the colonels apart over the war.”

“What he do?”

“Killed a lot of people.”

“Hell, we all did that.”

“Yeah, but this one got caught.”

“When do you want me?”

Inside of two days, Corbin said, and he gave me an address. So I went down to help him prosecute Colonel Donald L. Beyer, the Butcher of Boaco. And after that I never left his side—Corbin’s, that is.

The address he gave me was on lower Montgomery Street, three entire floors of an elegant old granite-faced building that was only six floors tall, a luxury low-rise in that soaring part of the city. The name, in gold letters raised half an inch, was Knox, Schnock, Hughes & Thayer, Attorneys. Corbin was listed, in a gold-colored decal on the building directory, third from the end among the junior associates.

“They hired me mostly on the wave of publicity, I think,” he said as he led me back through the shelves of law books to his cubicle. It was a work station built out of chest-high fabric partitions; it contained a data terminal and three square feet of desk space. There were just the two chairs.

“You need a pilot in here?” I grinned.

Corbin shook his head. “Tell me about Managua, the last days. … And by the way, you aren’t still on active reserve, are you?”

“Nope, I got clean of that shit.”

“You didn’t sign anything with the government—”

“Only about a million forms.”

“But nothing which promised you would not reveal what you saw on duty in Central America?” he prompted.

“Does not matter. I will not be sworn in a court of law,” I said firmly.

“Why not?”

“My reasons.” Who could know what charges were still pending against me in California from the old days? I had three bail bondsmen on my payroll at one time, from all over the West.

“All right. … We can find others to testify. Just tell me what you saw.”

I told him. Although I had not been personally involved in the house searches that followed the siege of Managua, I knew enough troops who were. There was not much hand-to-hand fighting because by that time the population was out of ammunition, long out of food and water, and completely out of spirit. The Marines rounded up ghosts, pale-eyed children, old women, young boys with rust-pitted weapons and bloated bellies.

Of course, I had heard rumors about genosquads, but I never met anyone who had served on one. The camps they set up on the east of the city at Jinotepe, Masaya, and Tipitapa were just that—refugee and resettlement camps. No executions, no gas chambers, no fiendish experiments, no cremations, no ashes to scatter. But those stories reflect the temper of the times.