Wounded (21 page)

There, a dark face below the red and white of a
keffiyeh
. Wait for it. My finger twitches on the trigger, seeing the rifle in his hands, but I wait. Spring the ambush after they’re committed. Two, three…six…ten. All in a line. I’ve got no grenades, nothing but my rifle and three clips. They’re stopping, now, crowding around the mosque. I see Abdul, striding in the middle of a cluster of heavily armed thugs.
 

Now.

Crackcrackcrack
. I drop two, wet spray, pink mist, red blooms on chests. I don’t get Abdul, who ducks and runs as soon as the gunfire echoes.
 

Crackcrack…crackcrack…crackcrack
. More drop, spreading red life into the dust. They can’t see where I’m shooting from yet, so I keep firing. My bad leg is beneath me, screaming, my good leg supporting my weight, tensed, ready to propel me into flight when they catch sight of my muzzle burst.

They’re dropping like flies. I don’t miss. There are too many of them clustered in the street. They were expecting to ambush, not be ambushed. Thank fuck for Hassan’s warning.
 

Then they see me. Or rather, they see the flash of fire from my M16. I duck behind the rusted hulk of the car, listening to the metallic
thunk
and
ping
of bullets hitting the vehicle, the
snap-buzz
of rounds hissing past my ear. I shuffle sideways laboriously, shifting positions. My chest burns, still-healing muscles not ready to wield a rifle but given no other choice.
 

Hackhackhackhack…hackhackhack
. A few rounds hit too damned close for comfort, plugging through the weakened, rusted, blackened metal. Time to move. I lurch to my feet and throw myself backward, firing into the mass. They’re spreading out now, seeking windows and doors. I move down the alley, duck through a random door, and crawl out the window, ignore the huddled mother and children and aged grandmother in the corner. I flop to the ground roughly, cursing as I try to catch my breath. I roll to my stomach, gasping, panicked as my lungs struggle to release. I hear the muffled sound of a round going past my face, roll again and again, lift the rifle and find the muzzle-burst, fire. Hit, wounding but not killing.
 

Then I hear a sound more welcome than anything I’ve ever heard in all my life: the answering
crackcrack
of M16s in the distance. Marines. I fire again, pinking an elbow sticking out from behind a wall.
 

Crackcrackcrack
.
 

There, from the east. Now AK fire chatters up, individual rifle voices blending into a cacophony. I think I hear four rifles. One fireteam. There, there’s the SAW, short coughing buzz-saw bursts. I could cry I’m so relieved. I make it to my feet, then duck again as bullets whine past my ear, reminding me I’m out in the open. I feel a stinging burn cut along my bare arm, a bullet scratching a red line. I run awkwardly, dragging my stiff leg behind me. I need to tie in with that fireteam.
 

I round a corner and have to scramble back. There’s a cluster of rag-heads—I feel a twinge of guilt at the racial slur, thinking of Rania—
insurgents
gathered with Abdul in the center. They’re surrounding a door, and there’s a lot of shouting, rifles pointing, but no one is shooting.
 

I have to drag a hasty translation from my whirling head:
Give her up, Hassan—No! You’re a devil, Abdul!—One last warning, boy…

 
They’ve got Rania and Hassan cornered. Fucking shitfuck. What do I do? I slip a fresh clip home, peer around the corner, count. Seven, plus Abdul.
 

M16s bark a few hundred yards away, answered by AKs and interrupted by the SAW, and then there’s the glorious sound of an M203 coughing up a grenade, followed by the dull thunder of the explosion. An RPG,
whistle-whoosh
,
boom
. Not far away, moving this direction.
 

I have to fix this. Can’t let that turd-sucker Abdul get his filthy hands on Rania.
 

I lick my lips, drag a burning breath, knead the howling muscle of my injured thigh, wish this was over, wish I was still holding Rania’s sweet soft naked body against mine in the gray dark of dawn.
 

No time for that, dickhead.

Roll around the corner, open fire, swing the barrel horizontally, spraying recklessly, against all training. Hose the fuckers down. Get them looking this way.
 

Bullet pluck at the stone wall and
whizz
and
hiss-snap
; that got their attention, I’m thinking. Wait…wait…drop to a knee, pivot, fire. Blood blossoms, Abdul is yelling, screaming orders. Need him to fucking die.
Fucking die, asshat.
 

 
Yells in Arabic, curses, and insults are directed at me, and I realize I shouted that last out loud.
 

There’s three left, plus Abdul. They’re coming this way, crouching, firing, sneaking. Abdul has an AK held in one hand, the stock held across his forearm of the fingerless, bandaged hand. Be damned if he’s not fairly accurate that way, too. I back away, knowing I can’t win a four-on-one showdown in the open.
 

They round the corner just as I duck into a doorway, pressing my shoulder tight against the splintering wood. Hesitate, suck up my fear, push down the pain, teeth grinding so hard my jaw aches, sweat running down my face along with trickles of blood from where shards of bullet-sprayed stone peppered me.
 

Deep breath, roll out and fire, drop back. One down. They scramble back under cover. Roll out, suppressing fire, wait…glimpse a body as he peeks out, plug him with ugly holes, drop back behind cover.
 

New clip, last one.

My breath comes in grunting gasps. The pain is winning.
 

Cannot
fucking give in. I grind my teeth and suppress a groan of agony.
 

I see Hassan peek out the doorway, rifle barrel first. He creeps out into the road in a passable tactical crouch, rifle against his shoulder but not tucked up, waiting for a target. I roll out, he sees me, I point at the dead-end alley where Abdul and the last one are waiting. He nods. I hold up two fingers, pat my shoulder to indicate rank, although I’m not sure if Hassan will understand that. It was the gesture Rania first used. Hassan shrugs, holds up two fingers. I mime cutting at my fingers with the knife edge of one hand, then make a fist, and Hassan nods, comprehending.
 

I creep toward Hassan and the alley mouth, muttering
fuck
under my breath with every step. Throbbing pain gouts through me with every motion, every breath, every step, every eye blink. I’m running on stubbornness now.
 

Abdul has to die before I’m allowed to collapse.

We rush the alley at once, together. Abdul is waiting for us, his last man standing next to him, holding Rania captive. The goon has his arm around her neck, one hand groping her breast greedily, the other pointing a pistol at her, near her, not pressed directly at her head.

It’s a standoff. Hassan has his rifle aimed at Abdul and I’m kneeling, my bead drawn on the other one.
 

Tense silence.

Hassan shifts his feet, drawing the gaze of the man holding Rania. It’s all the distraction I need.

Crack
.

Rania bolts the instant she feels his grip loosen. A black hole blooms red in the center of his forehead. Rania is behind me now, Hassan beside me.

Abdul doesn’t even flinch. His rifle shifts between Hassan and me, as if he can’t decide who he’s going to shoot first.

A real Mexican standoff.

Seconds stretch like taffy.

A shot blasts, deafening in the confined alley.

RANIA

I see it happening. I see Abdul’s finger tightening on the trigger. I do not know who he is aiming at, because Hunter and Hassan and I are all close together now.
 

Hassan moves like a serpent striking. He jumps in front of Hunter as the rifle goes off, and I see him jerk, jerk, jerk. Abdul is shooting wildly. I am on the ground, unhurt, watching helplessly. Hassan is on the ground, too, but he is bleeding out into the dust. Again.
 

Hunter is moving, knife in hand, crashing into Abdul. The black blade flashes and Abdul screams. Screams. Hunter growls like a feral animal, rabid and snarling, his blade is a claw and Abdul is dead and gurgling but Hunter does not stop, stabs, stabs, ripping, slashing, killing the killed.

I pull him away, and he almost slashes me before he recognizes me. His face abruptly shifts from one of malice and rage and bloodlust into one of relief, love. Love. That look says so much. His eyes are soft. Where before he was a killer, now he is the lover. He is before me, mere inches away, reaching up to touch me, to kiss me.
 

Something within me melts. I hear shouting, a vehicle’s engine roaring, tires skidding. Gunfire echoes behind us, answered and silenced by American rifles. I see none of this. Only Hunter’s handsome face. His sky-bright blue eyes on me, taking me in as water to a man dying of desert-thirst.
 

He shifts forward, and I think he is moving to kiss me, so I wrap my arms around his neck and press my lips to his, but instead of kissing me back his strong mouth is slack and his weight presses upon me.
 

“Hunter?” At first I am only confused. I pull back to look at him. “Hunter? Speak to me. Please.”

He does not. His eyes are rolling into his head, and he is falling down onto me.

I try to catch him, but he is too huge, too much man for a frail girl like me to hold up. He falls hard, crashing to the ground. This rouses him enough to peer at me through heavy-lidded eyes.

“Rania?” His voice is faint. There is blood on him. Too much. So much. His, Abdul’s. “I’m done for, Rania.”

I shake my head. “No. No. Your friends is here. They will make you okay.” I am having trouble with his language, but I know he is too hurt, too tired to speak mine. “Please. Do not go from me.”

I turn and see Americans in camouflage approaching us. Hunter’s eyes glance behind me and widen in shock.

“Derek?” Hunter’s voice cracks.
 

“Yeah, man, it’s me. I’m here. Time to go home, buddy.” Derek’s voice is a raspy drawl.

Hunter looks at me with pleading eyes. “Come with me, Rania. I’ll make them bring you. I’ll make you mine.” The last sentence was in garbled Arabic.

“Go with you?” He is still struggling, still fighting to rise, to move; I touch his chest to still him. “I will go with you. Anywhere.” I kiss him gently. “I will go anywhere with you. I love you. I love you.” I repeat it in English and Arabic.
 

His eyes widen at the words, and I still feel, even now, panic that he will not want me if I profess to love him.

But instead he lifts his arm, straining to move even his own appendage as if it were a great weight, touches my face. “I love you.”

He faints, and I am torn away from him by rough hands, gloved hands and American arms. Pushed away. Dismissed. Ignored.

He is watching me, whispering, pleading. They do not hear him, or are not listening. He is wrestled into the American vehicle, one of those things like a car made into a tank, and at the last his eyes are on me before he faints.

I hear screaming, and realize it is me. My words are unintelligible, even to me. I hear myself as a stranger.
Do not take him from me, please, take me with you, please, I love him
—but they are heedless, and Hunter is gone and I am alone.
 

Hassan bleeds into the dirt, and I can hear him gasping.

I kneel beside him. “Brother.” I do not know what else to say; I cannot lie to him now, at the last. “You saved him. You saved me.”

“You are…my sister.” It is all the explanation he has strength for. It is enough.

My hands are on his chest, gloved by his blood, and I am weeping. For him, yes. But for me, for Hunter. For my broken heart. They took him, although he loved me, and would have made me his. I wanted to be his. Someone’s.

Anyone’s.

Hassan dies quietly, watching me until his eyes take on the far-seeing blankness of death, and I know he has gone to be with Allah, if Allah exists.

I kneel in the dirt and the blood-mud, bending over the cooling corpse of my brother, my last connection to anything, and weep.

He was dead, and then he was miraculously alive again, protecting me. And now he is dead again. Truly dead. I smell it on him, the stench of death.
 

And then I hear them behind me. Angry, wounded, bloody men. Iraqis. I harbored an American.
 

They want my blood in payment for theirs.

They can have it.

FOURTEEN

HUNTER

I wake to pain, and a sudden, intense need to remember something I’m missing, or something I’ve forgotten.
 

Fuck if I can remember. Hot lances of raw agony stab through me, arms, legs, chest, lungs, head…my heart. Not my physical heart, but my emotional heart. My core.

Where Rania lives.

I bolt upright, clunking into someone’s chin, causing a curse. “Where is she?” I demand.

Derek is next to me, clutching a bleeding bicep. “Who? And yeah, you’re welcome for rescuing your sorry ass, motherfucker. Good to see you, too. Yeah, don’t worry about me, I’m fine.”

“
Where is she
?” I’m looking around me, feeling the familiar rumble of the Humvee beneath me.
 

I see Dusty, driving, turning to glance at me, blood running down his cheek from a deep gash on his forehead, deep enough to show white bone peeking beneath the grooved, flapping flesh. Chink is there, riding shotgun, staring at me, unspeaking, grimacing, dirty, in pain but unbloodied that I can see. Benny, arm creased and seeping blood. Derek, confused, angry at my lack of gratitude.
 

Fuck gratitude.

“Who the fuck are you talking about, Hunt?” Derek is annoyed and in pain.