Once A Warrior (Mustafa And Adem) (25 page)

"Where are you? You need to see. Adem, he's on TV! Adem's on TV! Why is he
him
again? Why is he dressed like
him
?"

"Wait, wait, I don't understand."

"
Your son
is on TV. Mr. Mohammed is on TV. He's being interviewed, and he says he was kidnapped and rescued and he's cursing someone's family...wait...and someone put a
bomb
, oh my God, Mustafa, what is going on? Why is he doing this—"

"Wait. Wait, love." He couldn't stay in this place anymore. He needed to find a television, an internet connection, something. "Adem will be okay. There are people looking out for him."

"How do you know? What do you know? You know about this? You are okay with this? You lied to me? How could you lie to me? I thought he went after the girl! Not this!" She spoke fast and shrill. He could feel the heat of her voice. "You need to come home. You need to come home now."

"Dawit is dead." Louder than he had anticipated, but there it was. It started him coughing again, clearing the blood or phlegm or whatever it was. "Teeth is pretty bad. They got us. It's bad."

"You come home."

"I can't. Ibrahim...he's dead, too. Can you go to your grandmother's place? Take Deeqa and go. Hurry."

"Where are you?"

"Please...don't stop. Take the pistol. Hurry."

"Mustafa! What about Adem? What have you done to us?"

He took the phone from his ear and pressed the END button. When it started ringing and buzzing again, he dropped it on the ground, stomped on it. Stomped and stomped until it stopped making a noise.

––––––––

A
dem lost his handlers in the crowd outside on the street. They were moving on to the next stage. The explosion had taken off the entire front of the building. Blocks of concrete all over, pipes and smoldering metal, glass, blood. There were a few dead on the street. More wounded. People were flooding in to help. Others behind them were flooding in to shout and raise their fists and incite a near riot. If there were any police or soldiers around, Adem sure as hell didn't see them. He couldn't tell if those were sirens he heard or people. Someone who recognized him had wrapped a blanket around his shoulders. Another had given him sandals so he would not cut his feet. Still others just wanted to touch him, and to plead with him to touch their injured loved ones, say a prayer, please, say a prayer.

He did touch them, many of them, as he was pulled from one to the next as if he were a planchette on a Ouija board. He didn't see them. He mumbled words and the people thanked him until they ran out of breath. At some point another hand gripped his arm harder than the others. He looked to his left and saw a young man, a still-spotty beard, leading him. The pace quickened. They passed more people rushing to the scene, an ambulance finally rounding the corner, the siren going wild while the driver waved the crowd out of the way, yelling at them to move. Adem turned to his right as another young man took his other arm, both of them staring straight ahead, dodging the crowds with ease, until the crowd thinned and they reached a small black car, the front so dinged and mangled that Adem was surprised it still ran.

The young man on his left, Arab, looked barely a teenager. He was the one who got into the driver's seat. The other one, a blockier jaw, thicker eyebrows, opened the back door and told Adem, "In, in. Get in."

He didn't fight it. It had been that sort of week—people kept telling him where to go, where to sit, what to do. He climbed into the back seat, followed by his captor. Who else could these boys be but captors? Not Jacob's men, he was pretty sure. Not fans of his like the crowd they had left behind. The boy driver started the car and ground it into gear. The car popped and leapt and finally started down the road.

No words. The driver drove while the partner checked behind them. Adem sat with his hands in his lap, looking out the side window. He had nothing to say to them. They were zealots, revolutionaries, but certainly not strategists. They weren't the thinking type, but the doing-as-told type. What they were doing, it soon became obvious, was driving Adem out to the shanty town near the port. Scattered makeshift homes made from the rich debris of a busy seaport—wooden crates and pallets, thick plastic tarps, discarded electronics, batteries, wiring. A smart squatter could take a car or boat battery, some wires, and a few fan motors, and have air-conditioning during the brutal shadeless summer days. They could also insulate against the freezing nights. Or they could power a microwave, a couple of burners. Plenty of propane containers around, too. So many looked at this place and saw the poverty, the garbage, or the crime, but Adem wondered if those living here thought themselves somewhat lucky. What other sort of lifestyle did they have to compare it to?

The car passed people milling around, trading, chewing khat, smoking cigarettes. Kids still out running around past sundown, unafraid. It was
home
. Everything they needed to live was within reach, regardless of the smell or the illness. They had grown used to it. Adem knew that many of the people here had already been moved from their first attempt at building a settlement at the port, but once the furor died down, they drifted a little farther down the shore and started again.

The car pulled up to a small building, a patchwork of cardboard, plastic, and paper making up the roof, a mish-mash of broken boards somehow holding together as four "walls." There was a space left for "windows" on two sides, and an opening at the front, some sort of hard plastic, as if several appliances had been dismantled and their covers melted together. The next closest shack was at least twenty feet away, a few women sitting out front, only their faces visible.

The driver got out, opened Adem's door, and pulled his arm. "Come on. Let's go."

The other young man stayed in until Adem was standing outside and the driver had shut the door. He then exited the car while the driver held Adem in place. "Wait, wait."

Good, Adem thought. He could wait. The smell of human waste and rotting food and toxic chemicals was overwhelming, but he had dealt with it before, having to live amongst the boy terrorists in Mogadishu and the hospital after his near-beheading. The smell here was not as bad as it could be—the scent of dead people was absent from it.

The partner stepped over to the door and pulled it open, leaned down and spoke to whoever was inside. Adem had a good idea of who that was.

"We're here. We have him."

Adem couldn't hear the reply, but the partner stood up and waved them over. The driver slapped Adem on the upper arm. "Let's go. Go."

Mr. Mohammed straightened himself, gave the kid a look that said
Stop that
. The driver backed up a couple of steps. The sandals Adem had been given were too small. He kicked them off, felt the heat of the ground on his soles. He brushed off the blanket, tossed it onto the car. He removed his glasses, held them up to the moonlight, then cleaned the lenses with his T-shirt. If he was pissing off his captors, they didn't show it. He placed the glasses on his nose and rubbed his palms together.

Only then did he walk around the car and approach the plastic door, held open by the partner's leg. The driver followed until they were standing on both sides of him.

Adem whispered, "Got them?"

Of course there was no answer from Fatima on the other end, behind her rifle again. His captors would've noticed an ear piece. But the wireless mike Fatima had slipped under the collar of his T-shirt was pretty much invisible. The answer to his question came when the driver beside him suddenly seized up, hunched his shoulders and dropped to the ground, dead. The partner's eyes went wide, but he only had enough time to get his hand on the pistol grip at his back before the bullet flew past Adem's ear and struck the young man in the neck, an inch above his sternum. He turned around as if wanting to run but fell forward onto his face.

Adem crouched to enter the shanty home, perhaps eight by eight, a rough guess. Seated in the corner on the floor was the old man, the Benefactor, looking much more fat than he had in Dubai. Perhaps because he was now wearing a simple white dishdasha that billowed around him, way too big, along with the same elaborate keffiyeh he had worn back in Dubai for their meeting. He looked uncomfortable, sweaty. Along the walls of the shack, lines of small propane tanks, opened just enough to hiss out a strong odor of gas, still not enough to overpower the stench of rot and shit and piss from outside.

The Benefactor said to him. "There was no need for this. You should've gone away quietly."

Adem took a step towards him. He hadn't expected the gas, hoped it was only to scare him.

"Back! You stay back!"

Another step. Seriously, it couldn't be a real bomb, could it? He searched the tanks again, this time seeing the trail of wires tucked behind all of them. Oh, shit.

Uzayr's hand appeared from the excess material of his sleeve, holding a pistol.

Adem stopped. He had to hide his nerves. All a bluff. It had to be. Uzayr had too much to live for. He wouldn't kill Mr. Mohammed this way, wouldn't risk sparking the gas. "You should've known better than to pull me into this. I have a reputation to protect."

The Benefactor said, "You're a liar. You're an American. And at heart you're a pussy."

"You believe this is the best way to end it all? Take me and yourself off the field together? Another will fill my place. I'm not worried about that. But what about your people? Can they hold together without your guidance? Like the two outside?"

"I have a million more willing to take their place."

"But to take
your
place?"

The Benefactor shook his head. He smacked his lips like his mouth was dry. Adem believed he looked...afraid. Who was the real pussy, he thought? Why would he be afraid? The old man said, "You really don't know. I expected you to be smarter than this. And now look at us both. We have failed. And this is what we deserve for failing."

His other hand appeared from his sleeve, this one clutched around a block of wood wrapped in electrical tape, wires running from the bottom to the top, his thumb resting on a button.

Barely loud enough to hear, the old man said, "Goddamn you for this, Mr. Mohammed."

Adem got it. Almost too late. He shouted, "It's not him! It's not Uzayr! I need help here! Help!"

The old man squeezed his eyes shut and let out a moan growing in volume as his grip tightened on the detonator, his thumb squeezing the button.

No time. Adem turned and started for the door. He tripped and fell on his face and covered his head and yelled, "No! No! No!" right as he heard the button click.

He thought about his dad, his mom, Roxy, Sufia. Even Jibriil. All of the events that led to this moment. Covering his head wasn't going to help. Why was he doing this? Why the hell did he agree—

Nothing happened. Nothing blew up. Adem lifted his head. Everything was as it had been, except that a small crowd of squatters were gathered around the door, all crouched, all staring at him. Behind him, the old man's moaning turned into sobbing and then into laughter.

"Thank God, thank God, oh praise be to God, I'm alive, I'm still alive, I'm still alive..." and on and on.

Adem took in a deep breath, gas and all, and said it again quietly. "It's not him."

Chatter among the people outside. One of them pointed at Adem and turned to his friend. "Mr. Mohammed."

Adem pushed himself onto his elbows, placed his right palm against his chest. "At your service."

*

H
e turned off all of the gas cans. The bomb hadn't been a bluff, but it hadn't been put together very well either. He was lucky. He helped the old man to his feet and walked him out to the car, where Jacob had already sneaked into the driver's seat, almost unnoticed by the growing crowd. He opened the back door for the obviously exhausted old man, just an actor. A true believer who had no idea his devotion could actually lead to such a sacrifice. Martyrdom was for the young, he told Adem and Jacob as they drove away.

"What happens to me now?"

Adem looked at Jacob, who shrugged. Adem said, "Questions. I need to know more. This isn't over."

The old man bowed his head. "I'm sorry. I didn't know. I did what he asked the first time, but I didn't know...I really do have a daughter, you know. And a grandson."

"But not Gunfighter. Not Omar."

The man shook his head. "I never met your Gunfighter. I was improvising. My grandson...I haven't seen him in a long time. The man who brought me into all this said I could see him again."

"Maybe."

"You...you're a merciful man. You can take my hands. I would give them gladly to make it up to you. I would give you my allegiance. Please, if you can help me find Omar. That's all I ask—"

Adem turned his head. Of course he was going to forgive the poor man. Of course he would help him find Omar. He would say all of these things, and then turn the man over to Jacob and hope to never see the old bastard again. But he didn't get to say anything, because at that moment the back window exploded and sent them swerving all over the road. The glass stung Adem's ears, the back of his neck. He felt the car jerk and then slide to a stop. He blinked and looked over at Jacob, also riddled with small cuts but otherwise fine. They both twisted in their seats to look behind them.

The old man was dead. The exit wound bloomed from where his nose had just been. He was slumped against Adem's seat.

Jacob shouted, "
Get down!
" and rammed the car into gear. He shouted, "Sniper! Sniper! Find him!"

Adem put his head down around his knees and kept them there. They had Fatima covering them, and Uzayr had his own gunman. Of course he did. Adem turned his face to watch Jacob drive, the man flicking his eyes every which way and racing like mad. He caught Adem looking up at him. Shook his head.

"Fuck's sake, man." Then he looked ahead at the road. "Fuck's sake."

––––––––

T
he next morning, Teeth was still a mess. They weren't sure if he had gotten some sleep, at least between nightmares. A couple of times Ali and Mustafa were awakened by screams, and they rushed to settle the man, keep him quiet. They had a hard time getting him to swallow pills, so they crushed some up, swirled them in a warm energy drink can, and got that down him somehow.