Khyber Run (20 page)

My ears burned. “To my family! Their help will make the difference of success or failure in this mission."

"Zulu, you haven't seen these people in close to twenty years. Trust me. They will disappoint you. Family always does."

I broke a sweat. “If I were a real Pakhtun, I would have to beat those words out of you."

He grasped my elbow, then let it go. “We'll get our bearings and find a road west. Unless I've misoriented us, a mujahid I used to know runs a smithy a village or two over. He'll get us on the right road."

"Are you certain he's still there and that you can find him right off the bat?"

"Nope."

"Then how is looking for your guy—who might not be there—an advantage over finding my people?"

He looked over his shoulder. “Our escort's turning around. Move."

He broke a run. I followed. We each took a wheel rut and ran, knees high and fists pumping, unsecured packs slapping against our backs. People looked at us, looked at one another, and edged out of the way. Shoppers and shopkeepers farther ahead looked at us and packed their wares hurriedly.

Children run all the time. When one man runs, people assume he's a thief or other fugitive. When two well-armed men run, without anyone crying thief or chasing them, there's a reason. So smart people get out of the way. If that means running, they run.

Questions echoed behind us: What is wrong? Where are they? I don't know. Why are we running? You stay and find out; I have children to raise!

We raced around a corner and through a bazaar proper, vaulting carts and baskets piled with dried dung, and soon landing in a flock of chickens. The chickens screeched and cackled and flew into the faces of old men. I coughed, inhaling down and dust. No good. I spit out a bit of feather and inhaled again through my shemagh.

Oscar slapped a goat, and on his cue I smacked another. The goats bleated and leaped. The rest of the herd exploded in random directions, two in a row landing on and bouncing off an overladen donkey who yelled
yee-haw, enough
! for once in his patiently miserable life and took to bucking. The donkey's pack broke loose, cheap aluminum pots clattering about his hooves and scattering as he kicked.

One kicked pot hit a goat from a different herd, who levitated vertically, turned forty-five degrees and tried to land on a stack of small TV sets. The TVs tumbled onto a yammering teenager in a turban, who balled up his fist and swung at me but missed. A choked bellow and cursing rose behind me.

A goat-abused cow bucked and contorted her bony self like a heifer, blasting out a hair-curling screech utterly unlike a
moo
. Small boys in candy-colored plastic shoes raced through, grabbing at the feet of squawking chickens and getting wing-beaten about the face and shoulders. One boy skidded in a fresh cow pie and fell, the chicken in his grip spewing feathers in every direction. I dodged him, careful not to land a boot on one of those thin brown limbs, but I didn't look back to see if he held on to the chicken.

We took another corner and Oscar dived into the ruins of a...oh no, a toilet. I took a heaving gasp of a breath and threw up into the hole in the bench. A chicken squawked and scuttled out of the way, then pranced back into view and looked hopefully up at me.

Oscar yanked his khaki shirt off over his head and whipped it inside out. The inside was black. He ripped the sleeves off, untucked the tail, and had a black vest over his green T-shirt, like half the men in the bazaar had worn.

I got control of my breathing, forcing myself not to smell, while watching him. I remembered my shemagh and wound it into a quick turban. My shirt wasn't reversible but I had my poncho liner to roll about my torso like the blankets so many men wore. I also yanked my cuffs out of my boots, shaking the sharper wrinkles out of the cloth. Civilians here didn't blouse their pant legs into their boots.

Oscar jammed his sleeves into his pack. I dropped the liner and my pack with it, rolled the pack and the M4 in the liner, and tied the bundle diagonally across my back over the sweatshirt. It wasn't anywhere near as ergonomic, but it worked.

I also noticed there weren't any magazines or shells in my pack. I was willing to bet Oscar had no ammunition either.

He stalked out into the sunlight and the billowing dust. After a moment I followed him. I wove left and right among knots of people babbling about the running men, and what was that all about. When someone asked me, I said God alone knew. And I kept walking.

We found a well-tended canal heading north and walked along the side of it. I wasn't going to challenge Oscar so long as we kept a heading toward the black mountain on the other side of the flag tower.

Where else did we have a chance of getting replacement ammunition, transportation, or even money? Where else but home?

Women stooping to fill brass pitchers or plastic jugs from the canal covered their faces as we passed, pausing in their work as if stillness could make them invisible. I looked away from them or over their heads. Whatever made them need to dip water from an open canal when there was a well in town, it didn't necessarily mean they were offering their forms or faces for any passing man's appraisal.

Heavy-limbed, gnarled trees grew on both sides of the canal. Sheep ambled among them as if looking for any scrap of green in reach. The larger, sturdier trees to the east had green leaf buds just beginning to show. The more delicate trees to the west were mostly dead gray, but a few had tiny flecks of pink. A pair of men in traditional
shalwar kamiz
were inspecting the budding ones, while two others were spraying the gray ones with a hand pump.

One of the inspectors spoke sharply. The men in the orchard turned to the southwest in unison, and each unfurled a mat or rug. Oscar whipped out his sleeves for us to kneel on.

I felt odd, going through the motions of prayer to avoid looking alien when so often I'd had to hide real prayer so I wouldn't be such an alien on the ship, in my chosen qawm. There was a lesson to be drawn; I struggled to put it in words. But with my hands cupping sunlight, I set aside that effort, clearing my mind to accept any truth offered in this moment of prayer.

Beside me, Oscar whispered, “He will gather us together and will in the end decide the matter between us in truth and justice..."

His words, the matter-of-fact way he said them, sifted into me. I could say the traditional prayer then, letting the wind take my whispered words as the sun warmed my face. The ancient words made me feel whole, comforted an ache I had not acknowledged in so long it had become a scar on my soul.

In the late evening, we stopped at a tiny mosque. A palsied old man was trying to light a lamp at the doorway, but between his shaking hands and the gusty wind, we saw him waste three matches.

"May you not be tired,” I said when we reached conversational distance.

He overreacted, leaping back and sending the lamp sloshing on its hook.

I pretended not to notice. “Please, Uncle, may I demonstrate to my friend this new lighter I have?"

He swallowed, rolling his eyes. One solid-white eye pointed off to the side, but his other eye was dark, probably still worked. He brushed his hands down the front of his vest as if to brush away his flinch. “Of course, of course. Are you well and hearty?"

I nodded to the traditional greeting and ran a hand behind my back.

Oscar mashed the lighter into my palm and slid around me toward the lamp. The old man backed away warily, but Oscar just held up both of his big hands to shield the wick from the wind. Once I'd caught the light, he too backed away and bowed from the neck.

I gave the same bow to the old man. “Is there a hujra nearby, Uncle?"

"Of course. However, because of the foreigners and the army, they cannot invite you to stay there. When the army can break through any gate and carry away one's guests by force, who then dares offer hospitality?"

"Where then might strangers stay?"

He looked piercingly at me, then at Oscar. “I am an old man, but I prize what little life is left to me. If you understand I cannot protect you, nor even shut the gate between you and what brigands may lurk in the night, then you are welcome to stay here, in the courtyard or in the gallery."

I expressed my gratitude and followed him to the courtyard, where he bade us sit. He retired through a curtain and came back bent under a huge bundle of sheepskins.

"This at least I can offer. Take what comfort you may."

On his second trip, he brought a brazier and some charcoal to burn in it. The tea we were served was no more than hot water with mint and a touch of sugar, but a Pakhtun offers the best he has, so we drank it. The steaming cups did feel good. We blessed one another and one another's families.

I broke out packets of heat-and-eat kashi. It wasn't polite for guests to feed themselves, but in hard times, practicalities change the rules. At my insistence, the old man tasted it hesitantly, then encouraged me and Oscar to eat our fill. The old man offered a drizzle of ghee, which was old enough to taste like the yellow oil on movie popcorn, but it definitely improved the kashi.

I spilled a little ghee in my emptied teacup. If Oscar and I both lived long enough, I wanted something to anoint his brutally muscular ass with. Except that focusing on one another like that would shrink our chances of surviving. I regretfully set aside the thought. The ghee would be good with breakfast anyway.

After we'd chewed all we could, the old man produced a week-old newspaper. I embarrassed myself by how little of it I could read, but he praised my efforts and helped with the letters I didn't recognize. He assured me the problem was with the newspaper's choice of something-something, using words I didn't recognize that probably meant
font.

If nothing else, this trip was improving my vocabulary.

Oscar sipped his hot water and watched us from the other side of the fire. He'd picked, of course, a vantage point that allowed him to watch both the inner doorway and the outer one without turning his head. From my seat rather nearer the fire, I could look up from the paper to see the dark archway that led to the street. I hoped any movement from the gallery would also catch the corner of my eyes.

Oscar's square face relaxed slowly. When the paper was folded, he stretched and yawned. I did too and helped the old man stand. He tottered away stiffly, leaving me and Oscar with the dusky red embers of the fire.

The old man might not allow himself to bar the door, but he hadn't said we couldn't. While I shoved a wedge under the outer street door, Oscar strung a line at shin height across the inner archway, attaching the line to something blocky, which I assumed was a noisemaker. I high-stepped over it, and we treated the interior doorways the same. Then we moved a few thick fleeces from the heap by the embers and spread them in a completely dark alcove near the gallery stair.

I realized Oscar was undressing. I slid a hand across his undershirt-clad back and over his shoulder and put my lips to his ear. “Do you really want to risk doing it tonight?"

He caught my hand with his callus-hard one. “I don't want to risk dying tomorrow, knowing I could have done it and didn't."

My heart beat harder, throbbing in my temples and in my belly. “Who gets bottom?"

He turned, still holding my hand against his shoulder. “I pay my debts."

That wasn't precisely the risk/benefit analysis I'd expected. I pulled back, but he held my hand. “If this is about squaring a debt, Oscar, never mind. I'm not twenty years old anymore. A night or two without isn't going to leave me all blue-balled."

"Don't talk with your mouth full of shit."

Which one of us is doing that
? I didn't ask out loud, because he was enfolding my hand with both of his. I felt his pulse in my palm, my fingers.

"What's it like to undress with the same man again and again, to learn what he likes and how to tell when something's wrong?"

I sat on my ankles. “You don't know either, huh?"

He hesitated. “I don't like people knowing too much about me."

Those could have been my words. But I wanted to know about him.

In the darkness I slid my free hand down his chest, tugged his undershirt free of his waistband. I rested my hand on his knotted abdomen, listening and feeling as his breathing grew heavier.

My other hand came loose from his grip without resistance. I slid my hands around to his back, but that brought my face too intimately close to his face. I skimmed up the heated skin of his chest instead, his undershirt bunching against my wrists.

His aroma, rich and male, rolled over me. I buried my face in his undershirt, then pulled the cloth free and dropped it. Would it mean I knew him if I could pick him out blindfolded in a crowd?

His belt was unbuckled, his britches open. My hands slid down his flanks, under his waistline, and rested on the twin bulges of his warm, hard ass. “Is any part of you less than perfect?"

He grunted and grasped my sleeves. “Get all this off, because if I have to take it off, it won't be wearable tomorrow."

"Get the cup.” My voice was as deep and rasping as his.
Testosterone. Yeah.

I undressed while he fetched the cup, actually making noise that sounded as loud as an average mouse.

I smelled the ghee then. Ghee always smells warm. He pressed the cup into my hand. “Don't use it all, Zu."

My mouth went dry, but no. Another might never come for us, so I'd use as much as we needed. This needed to be right for him. I spread some on my cock, feeling for gritty particles and realizing I needed to wash in the ghee, since I hadn't washed in the tea. That's what clean bandannas are for, though. Wipe on, wipe off.

Wipe more on. More than three strokes and you're playing with yourself, they say. They're right. So I turned my attention to playing with Oscar. My oiled fingers opened his body, eased the way.

He pressed back against me. I took a cue from his methods and kept the fingering to a minimum. Some men like to chitchat before they dance, and some like their introduction at full tilt boogie.

Full tilt boogie introductions can seriously damage a first-timer. So despite his silent urging I rubbed the ghee in until it absorbed, then applied more. Lots more.