Knife (9780698185623) (12 page)

“Gentlemen. I am going to masturbate. Do not bother me. See you at the brief.”

•   •   •

I
t was early for a brief, 1800 hours.

Like the night before, satellite images were tacked to the thin cardboard strip on top of the whiteboard and individual printouts sat before each seat at the tables. Unlike the night before, the satellite images were of a sprawling city. Clusters of concrete dwellings seemed patched together like the cloth of a quilt, ten or twenty dwellings per block. By the time their CO walked in, nearly forty men had gathered—teams from both squadrons. Guys walking in loose and joking saw the images and got quiet, sat down stiff.

“We traced a number from one of the Tango1 phones found last night to this house,” the CO said. He pointed to the sixth of ten structures running north to south in a crowded neighborhood. “Lots of buildings. Lots of people in the buildings. So we'll have a few more men than last night. At least double, with options for conventional attachments.”

The men crossed their arms and shifted in their seats.

“The exiting squadron monitored numerous HVTs operating in different al-Ayeelaa cells throughout the city. Three of them travel together—Scar1, 2, and 3—and we've got reason to think one of their numbers is the one we traced to this house. They're not soldiers or button pushers. They're former academics. Scientists. They're from the bombing-operations wing of al-Shabaab and rumored to build bombs for Tango1. None of them live in the house, so we believe they're holding some kind of meeting or clinic. Maybe coordinating with others to distribute their operations throughout different parts of the country.”

He ran his tongue around the inside of his lower lip and pointed to the three headshots on the printouts. “Snatch and grab tonight, boys. We want to get these birdies chirping, so do your best to get them alive.”

He was quiet for a little while then, and put his hand on the back of a chair.

“You guys know the risks of areas like this. We want to get these guys without taking unnecessary causalities, our own or civilian, but it can get messy. Watch your sectors and pull out if things get too thick. I'd rather scrap it on the ground than have news crews running in after we leave.”

He paused and nodded to himself.

“As soon as one of these guys pops we'll be getting a 1. So no one at the gym. It's too crowded for the birds tonight. Get the GMVs up and running.”

He left and the men broke into their respective teams, clearing up team-specific issues and then delegating responsibilities and coordinating with others. Shaw and his team drew support. They'd be attached to sniper units on the roofs or staged on the street for immediate insertion on the target.

The city was waiting for them.

A
hmed was nearly eleven. In the pass where he'd been born, lived every single day of his life, that was nearly a man. He'd worked the fields of the valley since he could stand on his own. When he was little his mother would carry him down the sharp rocks and boulders to the irrigable land where a small patch of almond trees sprouted. The walk from their village, nested high in the rocks, took half the day. Sometimes more. They would gather what they could in sacks wrapped around their shoulders and then spend the night on the valley floor. In the morning they would pick again until the sun hit its meridian and then they would climb home. They gathered roots and almonds, whatever they could find. They didn't trade or sell. It was sustenance.

That was years before. The land wasn't the kind of place to get stuck in alone during the dark hours anymore, if it had ever been. The foreigners had flooded through the passes for years and some had even married into the rock. Ahmed's father told him not to play near the villages the foreigners had settled in. Some were farther away and separated by huge rock outcroppings, but most could still be accessed if one climbed in the right spots, took the right trails and tunnels. Eventually the small trails all funneled into a larger village that seemed busier than it had at any time in recent memory. Ahmed was to avoid the large village without question. The foreigners spoke their strange languages freely there and seemed to run the land. They rounded up the able-bodied men until there were just small pockets of families and clans left living among themselves in the rock. Sometimes there were murders. The foreigners had long eyed boys like Ahmed for sexual conquests or conscription, and he was nearly the age where both could be realized. Some might have thought him past it. Whether Ahmed's older brother had joined the foreigners on his own or was taken, it didn't matter. He was gone.

Ahmed's parents worried about him. The tension between husband and wife had built since their son's death. They argued over what to do with Ahmed as the war raged on. He couldn't follow his older brother's path, his father insisted. He should go to school. The son of a respected, hardworking religious man with a well-known uncle would surely be accepted. Maybe he could even go out west. But not to the madrassas. Absolutely not. His mother never said it, but she might not have thought it such a bad thing if Ahmed followed his older brother's path. She still had framed pictures of her dead son in the home, after all. She was the one who kept putting them up after her husband took them down. Ahmed's father blamed his own brother, Ahmed's uncle, for the death. His wife blamed the Americans, shook her hand at their warships when they flew by. Regardless of blame, word reached their village that their daughter-in-law remarried after the death of their oldest son and now lived in the city—at the insistence of their dead son's uncle, no less. It was scandalous. Word had it that the arrangement had been fast, but they had not been consulted or even invited to the wedding. It had been a trying year for Ahmed's family. A test of family and faith.

Ahmed's family didn't have to merely survive. They could thrive by the standards of their country. His uncle was a respected construction worker. Sure, he had a reputation from the war with the Soviets, but most men did in the region. Some good, some bad. Ahmed's father and his uncle had had a falling-out, which had started years before and been sealed by the death of Ahmed's brother. The beginning of the feud was a matter of religious principle, and neither Ahmed's father nor his uncle would acquiesce. The death of Ahmed's older brother did not make things better. The uncle made it known that he was open to reconciliation. He made it known that he missed his nephews and nieces as well. Family was everything.

The family was originally from Oman but had moved so long ago that the pass was home. All the sons of their family had traveled to the region to fight the Soviets in the 1980s. Ahmed's father had been a supporter and brave fighter during the struggle, but that jihad had been carried out within the confines of a defensive struggle—fought against an invading, unprovoked army. What happened now was not jihad, he insisted. It was gangs battling over turf and drugs. Murder. Ahmed's father had made it known that if airplanes were crashed into his home, killing women and children, he would hunt the aggressors down and hang them himself. It was grounds for
takfir
and the perpetrators were
kafir
s. The Prophet would not approve. He'd told his own brother this. When his brother spread his hands before he left for the city and said,
They'll be hunting us in our lands. In our homes. They'll be in the very air we breathe,
he had agreed. And then he thrust a steady finger in his brother's face and said, “And it is you they are hunting. Their bullets will fall like rain, and you summoned the storm.
Inshallah
, may they find their mark.” And then Ahmed's father turned his back on his brother.

•   •   •

A
hmed. You'll come with me today?”

It was the first time Ahmed's father had asked him something he could have simply told him. Ahmed hadn't even finished eating. He still had his fingers in his mouth. Goat milk and wheat on his fingertips. He swallowed fast and wiped his hand on the table. His father had taught him not to rub anything on his clothes. Keep them clean. He wanted to be a proud man, after all. Didn't he? It starts with one's clothes and works inside to the flesh and bone. The heart.

“Yes, Father. I will.”

He smiled and his younger siblings looked up at him from the floor, eyes wide. As if he were flying in the air and might hit the ceiling. His mother shook her head from under a framed photograph of her dead son. She clubbed the wheat in the mortar all the harder. There'd be one less hand to help. His father had an old wooden rifle resting over his shoulder as he stood in the doorway. A bolt-action, cherry-stocked Mosin-Nagant. It took a 7.62 shell and his father had a pocketful. He walked out of the home and Ahmed ran after him while his brothers and sisters finished his breakfast.

“We're hunting,” Ahmed said, out of breath. He chased his father into the rocks surrounding their village.

“Yes.”

“What will we find?”

“Whatever shows itself.”

“What if nothing shows itself?”

“Then we find nothing.”

“Why would we hunt then?”

“Why so many questions?”

Ahmed's father turned around, a few rocks above his son. He looked like a giant. He had a smile on his face.

Ahmed shrugged and they carried on.

They climbed the rocks, father in front of son, pockets full of finger-length rounds and almonds. They drank cool water from young streams. Ahmed gripped the edges of the hard rock with his toes through the thin pads of his sandals. His feet were so rough he probably didn't need the leather he would wrap in rabbit fur in the coming weeks when the snows came. His father often went barefoot. But Ahmed would need the rabbit fur when the snows came. No doubt. Even his father would.

Rabbit. Lynx. Ibex. They were all in the rocks of the pass but stayed hidden. Hunting was banned in the land during the wars, but that was mainly for the foreigners—the Arabs and the wealthy Saudis who came with their falcons and Land Rovers. Ahmed and his family were locals and the government wouldn't enforce the laws. They could hardly keep themselves alive, besides.

The two walked for the better part of the morning. They chased elevation, trading warmth for sunshine and better views. If they looked behind them as they climbed, which they didn't usually, they would see the ice and snow forming at the mouth of the pass on either side of the rocks they called home. The sun brought warmth, and when it ducked behind the clouds the air felt drastically colder. It was strange land. The rocks would have a light blanket of snow on their shoulders for long stretches of the year. Sometimes the green-and-black rock would never show and other times the snow would melt in the sunlight and one might find himself passing through different seasons in the same day.

“Here,” Ahmed said. He looked around at the jagged rock leading up to a steep escarpment. He seemed unimpressed.

“Yes.”

“Why here?”

“Because we shouldn't be here.”

Ahmed felt the rocks under his feet. They gave way and crumbled apart when he rubbed his heels in the dirt. Small pebbles ran off the sides of the escarpment and plunged to the sharp rocks below.

“Why shouldn't we?

“Look down.”

His father pointed to the valley thousands of feet below. Ahmed followed the finger to the sharp blanket of drab rock and earth that seemed to stretch on forever.

“Would you want to fall?”

“No,” Ahmed said.

“That wouldn't be good.”

“No, it wouldn't.”

“That's why we are here. Because we shouldn't be.”

“We'll fall.”

“No. We won't.”

His father climbed on his hands and knees across the loose rock, up the escarpment and onto the narrow base hanging over the rocks below. He took the rifle off his back and crawled forward with it in his hands. The pack on his back looked like a child holding on for dear life. There was a heavy wool blanket in the pack, and the thick warmth rubbed against his spine through the cloth. When he took off the pack he would have a wide patch of sweat across his back. He crawled a few meters out onto the narrow escarpment, then looked back toward his son. A fall wouldn't be good.

Ahmed watched him and licked his lips.

“I'll fall.”

“No. Same as me.”

His father waved him on and turned away, out onto the escarpment and above the valley and sharp rocks below. Ahmed crawled with his face touching the rocks. He could feel dirt on his face and chips of rock clawing at his skin. He closed his eyes and kept moving. Rocks traded places with the dirt beneath him, and after a few moments his head hit his father's foot.

“Okay?”

Ahmed opened his eyes and looked at his father. He nodded and smiled.

His father took his hand and dragged him gently forward. Beside him. The two of them could fit side by side but wouldn't be rolling over or making sudden movements.

“How do we hunt?”

“We wait.”

“How long?”

“However long it takes.”

“And if we don't find anything?”

“Then you climbed a big rock all by yourself. You can brag to your brothers and sisters.”

Ahmed smiled.

His father took out the 7.62 from a cloth pouch he carried on a string around his neck and tucked against his chest. He loaded the rounds into the rifle and closed the bolt. He looked at the rifle, then back at his son.

“This will be loud.”

Ahmed nodded.

“You mustn't jump or fright.”

Ahmed nodded.

“Have you ever shot?”

Some of Ahmed's friends had boasted of firing their fathers' guns. Some even claimed to have brothers fighting in the war. On both sides.

“No.”

“Okay,” his father said. “Another time, then.”

His father looked over the edges of the escarpment and spit. The sparkling glob disappeared into the rocks below.

“Do you know how to spot?”

Ahmed shook his head.

“We can't speak,” his father said. “It'll frighten them away. So we point.”

His father held the rifle in one hand and extended the index finger of his other hand into the air. He pointed to the sky and tapped his finger on the tops of the clouds.
Tap. Tap. Tap.

“We look for movement. When there's none we look for changes in color or patterns. Brown rocks where there should be only black. White where there are only brown. You point. I fire. Okay?”

Ahmed nodded. He held his hand out like his father had done. He tapped the air where he saw fluffy clouds and his father smiled. While he pointed, the bracelet on his wrist loosed from his kameez. The red specks of the cloudy marble rock twinkled in the sunlight. The leather band was tied into two holes expertly drilled into the base of the rock by his uncle's hand.

“That was your brother's.”

Ahmed looked at his wrist. “Yes.” He ran his small fingertips over the leather straps as if rubbing a pet dog or cat.

His father smiled. He patted his son on the head, ran his hands through the soft black hair.

“Now what?”

“We wait.”

They settled into the escarpment, pack and blanket laid over sharp spots in the rock. They waited and talked quietly. Ahmed's father might have thought of the son settled next to him and the one who had been killed months earlier. He might have compared the characteristics of the two and wondered if they would turn out the same, or if the one beside him still had a chance. While they waited for the elusive animals of the rock to show themselves, American fighter jets flew gracefully overhead after their bomb runs. They seemed to cut through the clouds effortlessly, knife the air like falcons.