Here's "Zion Burns", a little sidebar story from one of the flashbacks in my novel The Genocide Engine. Enjoy!
Am I ... floating?
Why do I only see darkness?
Can this be death?
I can't hear anything either.
How could death hurt this much?
But I am a shaheed.
The martyred are guaranteed Paradise. Paradise can not hurt like this….
“Tariiiiiq….”
Panic wormed a path under Tariq’s skin. Even his most basic sense of up and down were but phantoms, slipping away from his brain’s clutches. And now that voice….
“Tariiiiq….”
The voice soared around him like a wave of raw heat, formless and menacing. The sound swam around his ears from every point of origin, and nowhere all at once. To finger its source, he knew he must first chisel out of the pitch black vapor exactly where he was.
“Tariiiiq al-Hazmi.”
The panic multiplied, grew like an encroaching, choking fungus. Tariq’s breathing quickened in rhythm with the pounding, swishing, aching nothingness. Attempts at thrashing for a handhold or a foothold, or any sort of firmament, gained him nothing but frustration. He was lost in this indefinable, floating universe with nothing he could see, hear or understand except that stern, raucous voice calling his name.
“Tariiiiiq al-Hazzzmiiii.”
Dammit! Tariq slapped his hand down, unsure if he still owned hands or arms, as only a vague numbness barely whispered their presence.
Can I really be dead? Al-Shabah rarely kills, but usually leaves my kind dismembered….
The gravity of saying that name, even solely within his thoughts, strafed primal animal fear up and down Tariq’s spine.
Al-Shabah.
Al-Shabah….
Oh Allah, the Most Merciful, why is there an Al-Shabah?
Though he couldn’t solidly sense his body, Tariq knew whatever form he occupied was shaking all over, rapidly, and far, far beyond any soothing assays.
If only those shipping waybills weren’t lost…. Only then would I not be here. Only then would I not have had to stare into those glowing green eyes.
Tariq clamped his eyes shut. Or so he imagined, being unable to discern one consuming darkness from the other. With no purchase on the present, his mind clawed at the past, begging his memories to mould any vestige of sense out of the amorphous, timeless gel he floated within.
Such a tiny detail to bring about such a cruel change in Allah’s will.
Al-Shabah hunted Tariq to this very now all because of the lost shipping waybills on his cargo of street children. The little prepubescent ones his men plucked from the street and shipped to Saudi brothels or other clients with similar demands earned him wide ranging accolades from the governments and police of Brazil’s southern states. As long as those in charge never grew wise — and more importantly, the public never grew wise — to those kids’ destinations and purpose, his shadowy backing would never flicker. But when the photographs of over a hundred pint-size, emaciated corpses spilling from shipping containers littered the prime spots of local (then shortly, international) newspapers and television, even someone as connected and insulated as Tariq al-Hazmi would discover himself starving of friends and gorged on enemies.
Not that a man of his many vice-drenched dealings didn’t stake out escape plan upon escape plan. And escaping Brazil now, oh, was that ever an urgent imperative. No sense in try to strap reins on a tornado. The glaring hitch: all such plans burned too much damned time moving Tariq’s men, assets, and sundries across the border. And in all that too much damned time, what lookouts remained loyal sputtered a mobile phone report on the Brazilian Army’s Counter Terrorist Detachment screeching their tires down the self same road leading straight from the nearest town to his ranch.
A well executed ambush with machine guns, assault rifles and a full-on rocket propelled grenade-laced surprise opener knocked the pesky soldiers from their vans and into the wilderness long enough for he and his surviving henchmujs to slink off into the swamp. But dawn stalked down their backs almost as quickly as those Brazilian soldiers did.
So, knowing themselves to be foxes fleeing hounds, Tariq and his fellow child-thieves scouted out a lovely ambush hidey hole, one surely blessed by Allah to grant them a more victorious ambush than the first, vanquishing all who caught their scent. The waiting and the sticky heat and squadron upon squadron of blood sucking insects lanced into their patience, but all those mere nettles were countered mightily by the understanding they were on their own in the Brazilian wilderness. Not until they’d trudged well south of the Argentina border would any of their fellow Hizbollah openly dare to offer support and succor. Not now, not when so many eyes saw Hizbollah and much of the local Arab community under the glow of their blackest conduct. And so, his bodyguard troop clenched their Kalashnikovs and other death launching talismans tightly, awaiting for the black and green garbed troops to stumble into their sights.
But Al-Shabah beat the soldiers to them.
The same Al-Shabah who terrorized the Muslims of the Southern Cone for months tracked them down like dogs, and slaughtered them like pigs.
This same Wraith, the one who randomly struck men of Hizbollah and Hamas in South America, sentencing the victims to hobble through their remaining years with severed, tarred-over leg and arm stumps… he found them all! This same Al-Shabah phantom, who carved messages like "Your mullahs ['prayer men'] are not holy men! They are Shaitan's [Satan's] puppets!" and "There is no jihad! Jahannam [Hell] awaits you all!" on those same amputees’ foreheads with a knife or soldering iron or maybe claws… he was there among them! Tariq only heard the screams first, zinging around the swamp forest. In a rapid-fire flash of time he saw those glowing green eyes as the men nearest his hiding place got cleaved down like wheat before a sickle. Then something struck his head from far off, blackness and ache winked in and out, rationing only fragments of the flimsiest lucidity to his brain: flashing blurs of being dragged through the swamp in a foggy stupor.
“Tariiiiq al-Hazmiiii….”
Tariq could assemble nothing more recent in his memories. The chronic ache and pitch black numbness the only reality.
Hot air crashed through the depths of his lungs, a thick, scorching stench riding on in behind its wake. “Uhhhhhh….” His groan assured Tariq he was alive, though the fresh burning pain raking his insides accorded no comfort to drawing breath.
Tariq’s eyes snapped open upon the roasting of his throat, the lids threatening to cut into his skull as his entire body stiffened.
I can see… see something….
The dark winnowed away some of it’s comprehensive opacity, melting into a black fog where shapes were at least allowed the hope of materializing from. At least he wasn’t blind.
And he could sense others too.
Off to his right and left, Tariq felt the unmistakable presence of other men. He could not focus on any shape, not even to guess at the most generic of names. No room. No furniture. No index points or sense of place. And these men, they were as much a part of the black ether as everything else his corneas processed.
“Tariq al-Hazmi.”
The voice again, spinning around his head one direction, then the other. No sense to be made of how this voice flew on hummingbird’s wings, Tariq only knew he must attempt to answer.
“Who—“ he coughed. The syllable hurt to utter. Speaking meant shoving his own breath past that hot, foul air coated in that mysterious, sticky stench.
Light answered his question. Not light dim, or blinking, or distant, or anything akin to subtle, but a scorching hammer fist of candlepower, searing beyond his eyes and into Tariq’s skull, devouring all the black before his face. No more dark to hide everything in indistinction, but instead the dam burst on a flood of light, obscuring everything all the more actively.
The center of this wall of light allowed the penetration of an apparition. As if bleeding through light itself, a blurry, man shaped figure appeared before Tariq. Millennia spent squinting and blinking slowly honed edges on the still almost liquidy blob of darkened man, currently shielding Tariq’s eyes from the worst of light’s unbearable power.
“Who…?” The struggle to achieve a follow-up breath ripped Tariq’s lungs apart. “Who are—“
“Do you not know who I am?”
That voice! The voice echoed deep, booming, ominous, and angry from all sides, as if the very foundations of the Earth demanded an answer. Still, Tariq could not only understand the Arabic, but taste a Persian accent: the flavor of Persian-lilted Arabic his very same Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps handlers fed him on in the Lebanon. Nevertheless, the voice jeweled itself with no further familiarity, and no name to attach it to either.
“Do you not know who I am? I know you very well, Tariq al-Hazmi.”
Details cut a more complete picture out of the haze. Whoever spoke his name wore the black cloak and turban of a sayyid, a Shi’ite clergyman descended from Mohammed the Prophet himself. The clothes, a white beard, and stern, burning eyes were all the tortuous white light and thick, surrounding fog would allow him to claim focus.
And so Tariq summoned an answer, panting with exhaustion through the pain, “No, Excellency, forgive me. I know not.”
Again the voice seemed to echo and shake every molecule within miles. “Who else could bring such light into darkness? Who else would Allah bless to possess a voice to shake both the Heavens and the Earth? And who else would Allah cede the gift of knowing the heart of every man, including yours Tariq, so that he may be judged rightly?”
Tariq’s heart formed an answer his brain cringed in terror to accept. The war of denial inside stole away his energy to speak further.
“You know who I am now, Tariq. And I see your eyes filled with fear instead of gladness.”
Tariq’s panting grew faster and louder, till he could finally hear it in his breathing, and feel it as real as the black ball of fear swelling in his stomach.
“Do you not rejoice at the coming of the Sahib as Zaman [the Lord of Time]? Is it not wondrous to be in the sight of the true Twelfth Imam, the Imam of the Age? Surely you know that only the Messiah, acting on Allah’s will, can bring such light into the deep darkness you have found yourself in. This should be a most beloved moment, knowing I, Mohammad al-Mahdi have loosed myself out of the Occultation in order to appear unto you.”
Tariq felt the tears furrow down his face. As many false Mahdi [Messiah] claimed this self-same title for their own throughout history, something spurred Tariq to believe. His doubt drained away. Some of the fear made way for joy, but enough fear nestled its deep rooted hyphae in his bosom that Tariq al-Hazmi knew he must ask the Mahdi’s purpose.
“You have come to deliver me from Al-Shabah?”
“NO!!!”
The thunder from the answer punched through Tariq from three hundred sixty degrees, hitting him so hard as to lift him upward into flight. Tariq, sobbing as he was, would have prostrated himself immediately, were he able to feel the floor, or his legs. His groveling for forgiveness did not wait, however, degenerating — through terror-propelled eagerness — into one extremely long syllable of babble.
“SILENCE!” Tariq’s compliance hung thick in the fog, as did the Imam’s now unveiled truculence. “Listen carefully, Tariq al-Hazmi. I am Mohammed ibn Hasan ibn Ali, twelfth and last true Imam as Allah’s one true messenger, Prophet Mohammed (Peace be unto him) predicted, the Mahdi destined to bring justice and relief to the world at the Hour of Allah’s choosing. And Al-Shabah is my instrument.”
Noooooooo!!! Can’t be! Can not be! When his throat finally laid hands on his voice again, the protest only squeaked a measly, fumbling seizure on space, time, and attention. “No—“
“You dare contradict he who is without sin?!” The acid in the Mahdi’s tone stung like a rhinoceros-hide whip. “You dare to question one of the Fourteen Infallibles? Oh no, Tariq al-Hazmi, Al-Shabah is God’s Sword Zulfiqar made flesh. And his doings are all the Will of Allah.
“Your disbelief does not surprise me. Your kind has turned its back on Allah the Most Merciful, the Compassionate, all while claiming a false jihad. Did you really think you can waggle your filthy feet at the Word of Allah set in the Qur’an, and then still drink from the streams of Paradise?”
Crushing silence smothered the already awful, hot, sticky air.
“Well?!”
“Wha—, what are you sayi—“
“Silence! You actually believe those chosen by directly Allah to carry out Mohammed’s message to be fools as well? Your shameful audacity,” the Mahdi spat the word like venom, “is a mere symptom of the cancer rotting your brain and your faith. It is apostasy.”
Though he continued to feel his body floating, Tariq’s mind floated and tossed in a new sea, this one swelling ever more turbulent with each verbal whip-crack stirring the waters. “No. No. No.”
“Restrain your tongue, apostate. I will suffer it no longer! You claim to revere the most complete and fully detailed holy words of the Qur’an, claim to bow before Allah in your heart, but look at the gods you do choose to build altars to: Money, Vice, Violence upon the weak, and Oppressing to those most deserving of charity. Most glaring: you abduct little children in order to profit off the sexual desires of those who have turned their backs on God. This is not Allah’s will.”
“They <pant, pant> they are infidel whores.”
Smack! His first distinct sensation in this place: one sharp as knapped glass. The Mahdi’s iron hard blow immediately wrung out a flood of tears and snot.
“Does that sound like the Word of Allah. I know the Word of Allah, even if you’ve slunk back from it. ‘You shall not force your girls to commit prostitution, seeking the materials of this world, if they wish to be chaste. If anyone forces them, then Allah, seeing that they are forced, is Forgiver, Merciful.’ Where in that sura, or any other, is it permitted to call little children ‘whores’ as an excuse to sell them as instruments of fornication? You do not even give them a chance to accept Allah, do you?”
“I—“
“Do you?”
Tariq would only pant and sob in answer.
“Of course you don’t. You and your men never have once. You should have never forgotten ‘Allah is fully aware of all things.’”
The Mahdi let the heavy, aural abyss of silence hook its weight on Tariq’s heart. Only when he sensed Tariq was seconds from assembling the courage to speak again, did his sharp words lance back through the air.
“Where would you get the notion enslaving the innocent would earn Allah’s smile? What beastly liar would instruct you that calling defenseless children in captivity ‘whores’ truly makes them so? Have you not sought out the Will of Allah in the Qur’an itself? Or are you the twisted puppet of a mujtahid who has disfigured your soul with false teachings? You should know better! ‘Shall I seek other than Allah as a source of law, when He has revealed you this book, fully detailed? Those who received the scripture recognize that it has been revealed from your Lord, truthfully. You shall not harbor any doubt.’ Not any doubt, Tariq.
“Do you really believe your behavior to be that of one of the Faithful? To be that of one who has submitted himself to Allah?”
His voice pained with desperation, Tariq still conjured up whatever snake-oil courage he could scrape together. “I still serve Allah. I still belie—“
“’O you who believe, do not follow the steps of Shaitan [Satan]. Anyone who follows the steps of Shaitan should know that he advocates evil and vice.’”
“I ha—“
“’They say. “We believe in Allah and in the messenger, and we obey,” but some of them slide back afterwards. These are not believers.’ Do these words sound familiar, Tariq? They should. These are the Word of Allah the Most Merciful, the Compassionate, Himself.
“And take to your heart, so are these His Words: ‘Do not think that those who disbelieve will ever get away with it. Their final abode is Jahnnam [Hell]; what a miserable destiny.’”
Again, the glowing black figure let silence crank the thumbscrews.
“Jahnnam is your destiny, Tariq.”
Tariq railed into choking apoplexy, his voice: stolen, his eyes: bugged out in shock. And just then, the viscous gel housing him surged with scalding heat, searing his skin with a malignant suddenness. Tariq’s breathing cut into short, desperate rapid-fire gasps.
“You have but the very hint of Jahnnam’s flavor on your tongue, a mere whiff of its scent singeing your nostrils, Tariq al-Hazmi. Do you wish for this in eternity?”
A plaintive protest eked out of Tariq’s throat, as weak as the mew of a newborn kitten. “But I am shaheed.”
SMACK! That cast-iron bitch-slap actually blacked him out for a second. But only a second. Then, as Tariq’s bearings returned, so did the cruel, nauseating floating sensation, along with the deep, persistent, and comprehensive burning ravaging his skin and nerves.
“Son of a dog! You are no more a martyr of Islam than a pig eating pagan! Do not dare to wag your pathetic apostate tongue at me! You must be silent! It is wretched apostate Muslims like yourself, who delay my very same coming out of Occultation and into the world to bring peace and succor and Allah’s infinite justice. The world is not ready, because those who insist they do His Will are seduced and twisted by sloth and iniquity. Muslims like yourself.
“The time for discourse is past. Allah is truly merciful, but you must submit to Him. Be cleansed and submit to Allah. Submit to His Will. Submit to the Imam of the Age, who Allah declared is to lead the true believers to Paradise. Submit to Shari’a [Divine Law], which I am bound to enforce, and become my instrument as well. Only Submission with your heart will save you from the fires of Jahnnam. Will you submit? Or will you be damned?”
Tariq continued to cry and gasp, scraping up the will to gaze at the judging figure before him. “Wh—,” <gasp, swallow> Oh, that scorching, viscous air was murderous to speak through! “What would you have me do?”
“I only serve Allah, as you must now resolve to do as well.”
“Wh—, Wh—, What is His Will?”
Again the Mahdi allowed the ache of the silence to fester, to snake its path under Tariq’s red, sizzling skin and toy with his nerves. Tariq squirmed in his searing, floating world, aching with impatience.
“You have sinned egregiously, Tariq al-Hazmi.” Every word still thundered in his ear drums from all directions, clawing into his throbbing skull. “Your first work is to undo as much of that sin as you can.”
“Yes. Yes.” His eyes and face clenched, wringing out a cascade of tears. “Yes, anything.”
“Those dead children on that ship weren’t the only one’s you’ve stolen from their lives, are they?”
A pause and a gulp was all the hesitation Tariq would allow himself. Even in that interval he could feel the Imam’s temper threaten to erupt. “No.”
“’No’ what?”
“No, they are not the only children.”
“And you still have more children hidden away in brothels and warehouses, do you not?”
“I—“ <gasp> “I do.” <gasp, pant>
“Al-Shabah is my instrument, Tariq. He is the flesh and blood executor of Allah’s Will until I reveal myself again. He will rescue those children. And you telling him where you keep them will help cleanse you. Do you understand?”
Tariq’s brain sought to keep up, but even under Holy Duress, asking him to facilitate dismantling his hard-built and extensive empire meant enjoining battle with legions of avaricious demons lurking in the darkened corners of his brain. “I…, I…”
“SPEAK!”
The shock of the entire room assaulting him from all sides with a massive sonic battering ram jolted most of the awe struck hesitancy from his core. Tariq, however, remained helpless and disoriented. “Yes…, I understand. But—“
“There will be no buts! To submit, you must listen, and listen well, only speaking when directed. Now, Al-Shabah has the thumb drive you were captured with hanging on your neck. That thumb drive details the locations when these children are being held, does it not?”
Another wide eyed gasp. Tariq’s well nurtured insolence almost leapt out of his mouth, but the various levels of pain snaring his nerve endings were enough to corner those urges at the pointy end of a mental spear. “Yes…, yes, Excellency. It does.”
“Then you must give him your password, so that he may access the files.”
For a second, Tariq allowed himself to blink. His thoughts assembled themselves, straying away from the pain and doubt, and summoned strength from his well nurtured insolence. “If you are an Imam of Allah, Allah who sees all things, why wouldn’t he know already.” A jackal’s smile preceded his words, “Oh no you don’t, charlat—“
SMACK!
Again, Tariq’s eyes rolled back, his body and consciousness bobbed into blackness. As the wave of light jabbed his eyes awake again, he discovered heat. Where the floating gel before felt uncomfortably steamy and hot, now its temperature swelled towards boiling. His skin began to blister, awash all over with sharp, prickling pain, like being devoured in a bath of fire ants.
“You were given an opportunity to repent! Do not further transgress against the One True God, you wretched Taghid [transgressor]. ‘Fear the fire, which is prepared for the disbelievers.’”
The intense heat of the liquid suspending him boiled and needled ever deeper into his nerve endings, launching red hot searing sensations searing clear to the bone. A deep moan of pain-wracked helplessness caromed into every corner of the room, supplanting the noxious air with the shamelessly naked despondence.
“UHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH—!” SMACK!
Fingers sharp and hard as coffin nails bit and curled into Tariq’s cheek flesh, peeling his head backwards against his neck, until Tariq fixed eyes with the pair not three inches of his own: the dark, fulminating pupils of Mohammad al-Mahdi. “You have been given a chance to guide the next blow of The Blade of Evil’s Bane. Be proud. Be strong. Do not stray. Do not fall back into the hell fire. Guide the blow, Tariq al-Hazmi! Repent and submit. Give us the password.”
Tariq’s face began to shiver as he clenched away the tears. His whole body joined in the minor somaquake, trembling and thrashing as it boiled in the gel.
“Give us the password NOW, Tariq!”
His sputtering became more whimper than cough. Lips struggled to remember how to form words.
“Right NOW!”
The Arabic seemed lodged in his throat, as painful to utter as spitting up gravel and glass. “Z—, Z—, Zzzzz—!” <gasp, gasp, gasp>
“Say it! Earn the smile of Allah and be back on the path of the Believer!”
“Uhhhhhh! Zzzzzion Burns! The password is ‘Zion Burns’!”
A pause as the Twelfth Imam turned his head, though those clawing fingers never slackened their iron hard clutch on his facial fat. When the Imam-e Asr nodded his head and turned to face Tariq again, he said nothing, just dropped the child seller back in the steaming gel again, then turned around to march back into the light.
The formless men, all robed and hooded in black pounced out from their positions, ropy hard muscles each seizing a limb of Tariq’s and stretching it taut. “Wait! Waaaaiiit!” <pant, pant> “I have submitted to Allah.” <pant> “What are you doiiing?”
The Mahdi never turned his head, nor faltered in his pace, yet the voice — Oh that voice! — resounded with authority firm and solid as the mountains themselves, echoing from every single swing of the compass needle. “Those who submit to Allah will welcome Allah’s Law. You yourself fully well know what the Shari’a, derived from the Most Holy Qur’an and Sunnah proscribe for the punishment of thieves. And you, Tariq al-Hazmi are a thief of lives. You have stolen young girls from the streets, stolen their dreams and hopes, and clapped them in the chains of sexual slavery! You shall be marked as a thief. It is God’s Law!”
“Noooo!” Tariq’s muscles strained and contracted and pulled at the men holding him, but he could only futilely squirm and wiggle bare inches before being wrenched tauter than before.
“Would you prefer I brand you an oppressor? For the Qur’an proclaims ‘Oppression is worse than murder.’ You surely know what Allah’s punishment for that will be.”
“Uhhhhhhhh—!” The room throbbed with gasps, screams, and pleas growing steadily sharper when the knife cleaved through Tariq’s right wrist, and rolled into an agonized moan when the acrid roofing tar — the same smell that burnt Tariq’s lungs all this time — singed and cauterized the wound shut. The Mahdi melted back into the light long ago, but Tariq al-Hazmi never noticed the dark resurge, being far too busy screaming away the sparkling awakening of his facial nerves as the word CHILD sizzled into his right cheekbone; and a just as cherry red brand spelling RAPIST sunk in the skin on the left.
“Where do you wish to start?”
“Hmmm?”
“Where you wanna start looking in this blery great jackpot you cracked open. There a lovely great cluster of warehouses in Porto Alegre, and let’s not forget this chunky bread crumb trail from Santos clear on all the way up to southern São Paulo. That’s a full night of kicking down doors. Maybe two.”
As with every big gamble first pursued, there wasn’t enough evidence that a serotonin inhibitor/ SP-117 truth serum cocktail, a customized sensory deprivation tank, a jerry-rigged NiteSun helicopter spotlight, a 30 speaker full-surround sound system, and a notebook full of other creative subterfuges and innovations would truly wring more reliable confessions than blowtorches and live jumper cables. Certainly not enough to convince their holding company that owned JagdMaschine Ltda. to fund this little dungeon. But tonight, as Hans mentally catalougued the warehouse addresses scrolling down Kruger’s computer screen, not a pang of regret slithered anywhere inside him at fronting his own personal funds to bolt together something this extravagant.
Hans finished freeing his eyes from the umber coloured contact lenses and delicately commenced working the beard free from his face, straining not to tear neither the beard nor his face, as he’d dabbed the Arabic gum (how’s that for an ironic name?) way, wayyy to liberally thick in his earlier haste. “Call Marius and tell him to have the Pilatus preflighted with a flight plan for Aeroporto de Congonhas [in São Paulo city]. Then direct Teufeltrupp to be kitted up and on the runway in ninety minutes. Geisttrupp and I will hit Porto Alegre. I want all those addresses sent to every single team member’s mobile phone. Send it now, Kruger.”
“O —“ More screams jabbed through the walls and straight into Kruger’s neck muscles. “Ag, man! What’s going to happen to that cockroach?”
“Several of your ‘Uncle Piet’s’ ranches—“
“He is not my ‘Uncle Piet’!”
“No matter. Several ranches in the Transvaal have been set aside for all the Schießkerls as truly fucked and wretched as he is. We’ll see how he likes a transatlantic voyage in a oven hot ISO container, followed by a lifetime of slavery.”
The robes and turban found themselves kicked into a corner while Hans reached for his armored vest and equipment pouch-saturated ballistic plate carrier. “I’d always been satisfied with leaving the jihadist scum to flop along with a few tarred over stumps. But big fish like this…, especially the species of fish that sell children in bulk…, they deserve nothing less than decades of back breaking labour, misery, and the constant nettling doubt of trying to guess whether their precious God has forsaken them.”
More screams lanced through the walls. A soldering iron worked a barbarous, florid path into Tariq’s forehead and remaining hand, scrawling smoking Arabic execrations, branding the man cursed forever. Kruger couldn’t restrain his own shivers at the ceaseless blubbering cries. “How much of this is about Katja?”
Hans only answered with a quick change of expression, his eyes making clear just how little ‘about Katja’ his activities were. The facts couldn’t bear avoidance: when you could absorb other’s languages, dialects, accents, and mannerisms the way a chameleon put on colours; when you could track men running cross country so fast enough to make bloodhounds blush; and when your close quarters combat skills made you appear as a wolverine amongst crippled kittens: damn you to burn in hell forever if you didn’t put those skills to good use often and early. Barring a lobotomy, Hans never, never, never needed to relearn that lesson ever, ever again. “This isn’t about the past, bru. It’s about who we can save right now.”
Favoring Kruger with a warm, cheery look, Hans clapped one hand on his associate’s shoulder, while snatching up his submachine gun with the other. “No more sour looks. We’ve got children to free.”
Am I ... floating?
Why do I only see darkness?
Can this be death?
I can't hear anything either.
How could death hurt this much?
But I am a shaheed.
The martyred are guaranteed Paradise. Paradise can not hurt like this….
“Tariiiiiq….”
Panic wormed a path under Tariq’s skin. Even his most basic sense of up and down were but phantoms, slipping away from his brain’s clutches. And now that voice….
“Tariiiiq….”
The voice soared around him like a wave of raw heat, formless and menacing. The sound swam around his ears from every point of origin, and nowhere all at once. To finger its source, he knew he must first chisel out of the pitch black vapor exactly where he was.
“Tariiiiq al-Hazmi.”
The panic multiplied, grew like an encroaching, choking fungus. Tariq’s breathing quickened in rhythm with the pounding, swishing, aching nothingness. Attempts at thrashing for a handhold or a foothold, or any sort of firmament, gained him nothing but frustration. He was lost in this indefinable, floating universe with nothing he could see, hear or understand except that stern, raucous voice calling his name.
“Tariiiiiq al-Hazzzmiiii.”
Dammit! Tariq slapped his hand down, unsure if he still owned hands or arms, as only a vague numbness barely whispered their presence.
Can I really be dead? Al-Shabah rarely kills, but usually leaves my kind dismembered….
The gravity of saying that name, even solely within his thoughts, strafed primal animal fear up and down Tariq’s spine.
Al-Shabah.
Al-Shabah….
Oh Allah, the Most Merciful, why is there an Al-Shabah?
Though he couldn’t solidly sense his body, Tariq knew whatever form he occupied was shaking all over, rapidly, and far, far beyond any soothing assays.
If only those shipping waybills weren’t lost…. Only then would I not be here. Only then would I not have had to stare into those glowing green eyes.
Tariq clamped his eyes shut. Or so he imagined, being unable to discern one consuming darkness from the other. With no purchase on the present, his mind clawed at the past, begging his memories to mould any vestige of sense out of the amorphous, timeless gel he floated within.
Such a tiny detail to bring about such a cruel change in Allah’s will.
Al-Shabah hunted Tariq to this very now all because of the lost shipping waybills on his cargo of street children. The little prepubescent ones his men plucked from the street and shipped to Saudi brothels or other clients with similar demands earned him wide ranging accolades from the governments and police of Brazil’s southern states. As long as those in charge never grew wise — and more importantly, the public never grew wise — to those kids’ destinations and purpose, his shadowy backing would never flicker. But when the photographs of over a hundred pint-size, emaciated corpses spilling from shipping containers littered the prime spots of local (then shortly, international) newspapers and television, even someone as connected and insulated as Tariq al-Hazmi would discover himself starving of friends and gorged on enemies.
Not that a man of his many vice-drenched dealings didn’t stake out escape plan upon escape plan. And escaping Brazil now, oh, was that ever an urgent imperative. No sense in try to strap reins on a tornado. The glaring hitch: all such plans burned too much damned time moving Tariq’s men, assets, and sundries across the border. And in all that too much damned time, what lookouts remained loyal sputtered a mobile phone report on the Brazilian Army’s Counter Terrorist Detachment screeching their tires down the self same road leading straight from the nearest town to his ranch.
A well executed ambush with machine guns, assault rifles and a full-on rocket propelled grenade-laced surprise opener knocked the pesky soldiers from their vans and into the wilderness long enough for he and his surviving henchmujs to slink off into the swamp. But dawn stalked down their backs almost as quickly as those Brazilian soldiers did.
So, knowing themselves to be foxes fleeing hounds, Tariq and his fellow child-thieves scouted out a lovely ambush hidey hole, one surely blessed by Allah to grant them a more victorious ambush than the first, vanquishing all who caught their scent. The waiting and the sticky heat and squadron upon squadron of blood sucking insects lanced into their patience, but all those mere nettles were countered mightily by the understanding they were on their own in the Brazilian wilderness. Not until they’d trudged well south of the Argentina border would any of their fellow Hizbollah openly dare to offer support and succor. Not now, not when so many eyes saw Hizbollah and much of the local Arab community under the glow of their blackest conduct. And so, his bodyguard troop clenched their Kalashnikovs and other death launching talismans tightly, awaiting for the black and green garbed troops to stumble into their sights.
But Al-Shabah beat the soldiers to them.
The same Al-Shabah who terrorized the Muslims of the Southern Cone for months tracked them down like dogs, and slaughtered them like pigs.
This same Wraith, the one who randomly struck men of Hizbollah and Hamas in South America, sentencing the victims to hobble through their remaining years with severed, tarred-over leg and arm stumps… he found them all! This same Al-Shabah phantom, who carved messages like "Your mullahs ['prayer men'] are not holy men! They are Shaitan's [Satan's] puppets!" and "There is no jihad! Jahannam [Hell] awaits you all!" on those same amputees’ foreheads with a knife or soldering iron or maybe claws… he was there among them! Tariq only heard the screams first, zinging around the swamp forest. In a rapid-fire flash of time he saw those glowing green eyes as the men nearest his hiding place got cleaved down like wheat before a sickle. Then something struck his head from far off, blackness and ache winked in and out, rationing only fragments of the flimsiest lucidity to his brain: flashing blurs of being dragged through the swamp in a foggy stupor.
“Tariiiiq al-Hazmiiii….”
Tariq could assemble nothing more recent in his memories. The chronic ache and pitch black numbness the only reality.
Hot air crashed through the depths of his lungs, a thick, scorching stench riding on in behind its wake. “Uhhhhhh….” His groan assured Tariq he was alive, though the fresh burning pain raking his insides accorded no comfort to drawing breath.
Tariq’s eyes snapped open upon the roasting of his throat, the lids threatening to cut into his skull as his entire body stiffened.
I can see… see something….
The dark winnowed away some of it’s comprehensive opacity, melting into a black fog where shapes were at least allowed the hope of materializing from. At least he wasn’t blind.
And he could sense others too.
Off to his right and left, Tariq felt the unmistakable presence of other men. He could not focus on any shape, not even to guess at the most generic of names. No room. No furniture. No index points or sense of place. And these men, they were as much a part of the black ether as everything else his corneas processed.
“Tariq al-Hazmi.”
The voice again, spinning around his head one direction, then the other. No sense to be made of how this voice flew on hummingbird’s wings, Tariq only knew he must attempt to answer.
“Who—“ he coughed. The syllable hurt to utter. Speaking meant shoving his own breath past that hot, foul air coated in that mysterious, sticky stench.
Light answered his question. Not light dim, or blinking, or distant, or anything akin to subtle, but a scorching hammer fist of candlepower, searing beyond his eyes and into Tariq’s skull, devouring all the black before his face. No more dark to hide everything in indistinction, but instead the dam burst on a flood of light, obscuring everything all the more actively.
The center of this wall of light allowed the penetration of an apparition. As if bleeding through light itself, a blurry, man shaped figure appeared before Tariq. Millennia spent squinting and blinking slowly honed edges on the still almost liquidy blob of darkened man, currently shielding Tariq’s eyes from the worst of light’s unbearable power.
“Who…?” The struggle to achieve a follow-up breath ripped Tariq’s lungs apart. “Who are—“
“Do you not know who I am?”
That voice! The voice echoed deep, booming, ominous, and angry from all sides, as if the very foundations of the Earth demanded an answer. Still, Tariq could not only understand the Arabic, but taste a Persian accent: the flavor of Persian-lilted Arabic his very same Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps handlers fed him on in the Lebanon. Nevertheless, the voice jeweled itself with no further familiarity, and no name to attach it to either.
“Do you not know who I am? I know you very well, Tariq al-Hazmi.”
Details cut a more complete picture out of the haze. Whoever spoke his name wore the black cloak and turban of a sayyid, a Shi’ite clergyman descended from Mohammed the Prophet himself. The clothes, a white beard, and stern, burning eyes were all the tortuous white light and thick, surrounding fog would allow him to claim focus.
And so Tariq summoned an answer, panting with exhaustion through the pain, “No, Excellency, forgive me. I know not.”
Again the voice seemed to echo and shake every molecule within miles. “Who else could bring such light into darkness? Who else would Allah bless to possess a voice to shake both the Heavens and the Earth? And who else would Allah cede the gift of knowing the heart of every man, including yours Tariq, so that he may be judged rightly?”
Tariq’s heart formed an answer his brain cringed in terror to accept. The war of denial inside stole away his energy to speak further.
“You know who I am now, Tariq. And I see your eyes filled with fear instead of gladness.”
Tariq’s panting grew faster and louder, till he could finally hear it in his breathing, and feel it as real as the black ball of fear swelling in his stomach.
“Do you not rejoice at the coming of the Sahib as Zaman [the Lord of Time]? Is it not wondrous to be in the sight of the true Twelfth Imam, the Imam of the Age? Surely you know that only the Messiah, acting on Allah’s will, can bring such light into the deep darkness you have found yourself in. This should be a most beloved moment, knowing I, Mohammad al-Mahdi have loosed myself out of the Occultation in order to appear unto you.”
Tariq felt the tears furrow down his face. As many false Mahdi [Messiah] claimed this self-same title for their own throughout history, something spurred Tariq to believe. His doubt drained away. Some of the fear made way for joy, but enough fear nestled its deep rooted hyphae in his bosom that Tariq al-Hazmi knew he must ask the Mahdi’s purpose.
“You have come to deliver me from Al-Shabah?”
“NO!!!”
The thunder from the answer punched through Tariq from three hundred sixty degrees, hitting him so hard as to lift him upward into flight. Tariq, sobbing as he was, would have prostrated himself immediately, were he able to feel the floor, or his legs. His groveling for forgiveness did not wait, however, degenerating — through terror-propelled eagerness — into one extremely long syllable of babble.
“SILENCE!” Tariq’s compliance hung thick in the fog, as did the Imam’s now unveiled truculence. “Listen carefully, Tariq al-Hazmi. I am Mohammed ibn Hasan ibn Ali, twelfth and last true Imam as Allah’s one true messenger, Prophet Mohammed (Peace be unto him) predicted, the Mahdi destined to bring justice and relief to the world at the Hour of Allah’s choosing. And Al-Shabah is my instrument.”
Noooooooo!!! Can’t be! Can not be! When his throat finally laid hands on his voice again, the protest only squeaked a measly, fumbling seizure on space, time, and attention. “No—“
“You dare contradict he who is without sin?!” The acid in the Mahdi’s tone stung like a rhinoceros-hide whip. “You dare to question one of the Fourteen Infallibles? Oh no, Tariq al-Hazmi, Al-Shabah is God’s Sword Zulfiqar made flesh. And his doings are all the Will of Allah.
“Your disbelief does not surprise me. Your kind has turned its back on Allah the Most Merciful, the Compassionate, all while claiming a false jihad. Did you really think you can waggle your filthy feet at the Word of Allah set in the Qur’an, and then still drink from the streams of Paradise?”
Crushing silence smothered the already awful, hot, sticky air.
“Well?!”
“Wha—, what are you sayi—“
“Silence! You actually believe those chosen by directly Allah to carry out Mohammed’s message to be fools as well? Your shameful audacity,” the Mahdi spat the word like venom, “is a mere symptom of the cancer rotting your brain and your faith. It is apostasy.”
Though he continued to feel his body floating, Tariq’s mind floated and tossed in a new sea, this one swelling ever more turbulent with each verbal whip-crack stirring the waters. “No. No. No.”
“Restrain your tongue, apostate. I will suffer it no longer! You claim to revere the most complete and fully detailed holy words of the Qur’an, claim to bow before Allah in your heart, but look at the gods you do choose to build altars to: Money, Vice, Violence upon the weak, and Oppressing to those most deserving of charity. Most glaring: you abduct little children in order to profit off the sexual desires of those who have turned their backs on God. This is not Allah’s will.”
“They <pant, pant> they are infidel whores.”
Smack! His first distinct sensation in this place: one sharp as knapped glass. The Mahdi’s iron hard blow immediately wrung out a flood of tears and snot.
“Does that sound like the Word of Allah. I know the Word of Allah, even if you’ve slunk back from it. ‘You shall not force your girls to commit prostitution, seeking the materials of this world, if they wish to be chaste. If anyone forces them, then Allah, seeing that they are forced, is Forgiver, Merciful.’ Where in that sura, or any other, is it permitted to call little children ‘whores’ as an excuse to sell them as instruments of fornication? You do not even give them a chance to accept Allah, do you?”
“I—“
“Do you?”
Tariq would only pant and sob in answer.
“Of course you don’t. You and your men never have once. You should have never forgotten ‘Allah is fully aware of all things.’”
The Mahdi let the heavy, aural abyss of silence hook its weight on Tariq’s heart. Only when he sensed Tariq was seconds from assembling the courage to speak again, did his sharp words lance back through the air.
“Where would you get the notion enslaving the innocent would earn Allah’s smile? What beastly liar would instruct you that calling defenseless children in captivity ‘whores’ truly makes them so? Have you not sought out the Will of Allah in the Qur’an itself? Or are you the twisted puppet of a mujtahid who has disfigured your soul with false teachings? You should know better! ‘Shall I seek other than Allah as a source of law, when He has revealed you this book, fully detailed? Those who received the scripture recognize that it has been revealed from your Lord, truthfully. You shall not harbor any doubt.’ Not any doubt, Tariq.
“Do you really believe your behavior to be that of one of the Faithful? To be that of one who has submitted himself to Allah?”
His voice pained with desperation, Tariq still conjured up whatever snake-oil courage he could scrape together. “I still serve Allah. I still belie—“
“’O you who believe, do not follow the steps of Shaitan [Satan]. Anyone who follows the steps of Shaitan should know that he advocates evil and vice.’”
“I ha—“
“’They say. “We believe in Allah and in the messenger, and we obey,” but some of them slide back afterwards. These are not believers.’ Do these words sound familiar, Tariq? They should. These are the Word of Allah the Most Merciful, the Compassionate, Himself.
“And take to your heart, so are these His Words: ‘Do not think that those who disbelieve will ever get away with it. Their final abode is Jahnnam [Hell]; what a miserable destiny.’”
Again, the glowing black figure let silence crank the thumbscrews.
“Jahnnam is your destiny, Tariq.”
Tariq railed into choking apoplexy, his voice: stolen, his eyes: bugged out in shock. And just then, the viscous gel housing him surged with scalding heat, searing his skin with a malignant suddenness. Tariq’s breathing cut into short, desperate rapid-fire gasps.
“You have but the very hint of Jahnnam’s flavor on your tongue, a mere whiff of its scent singeing your nostrils, Tariq al-Hazmi. Do you wish for this in eternity?”
A plaintive protest eked out of Tariq’s throat, as weak as the mew of a newborn kitten. “But I am shaheed.”
SMACK! That cast-iron bitch-slap actually blacked him out for a second. But only a second. Then, as Tariq’s bearings returned, so did the cruel, nauseating floating sensation, along with the deep, persistent, and comprehensive burning ravaging his skin and nerves.
“Son of a dog! You are no more a martyr of Islam than a pig eating pagan! Do not dare to wag your pathetic apostate tongue at me! You must be silent! It is wretched apostate Muslims like yourself, who delay my very same coming out of Occultation and into the world to bring peace and succor and Allah’s infinite justice. The world is not ready, because those who insist they do His Will are seduced and twisted by sloth and iniquity. Muslims like yourself.
“The time for discourse is past. Allah is truly merciful, but you must submit to Him. Be cleansed and submit to Allah. Submit to His Will. Submit to the Imam of the Age, who Allah declared is to lead the true believers to Paradise. Submit to Shari’a [Divine Law], which I am bound to enforce, and become my instrument as well. Only Submission with your heart will save you from the fires of Jahnnam. Will you submit? Or will you be damned?”
Tariq continued to cry and gasp, scraping up the will to gaze at the judging figure before him. “Wh—,” <gasp, swallow> Oh, that scorching, viscous air was murderous to speak through! “What would you have me do?”
“I only serve Allah, as you must now resolve to do as well.”
“Wh—, Wh—, What is His Will?”
Again the Mahdi allowed the ache of the silence to fester, to snake its path under Tariq’s red, sizzling skin and toy with his nerves. Tariq squirmed in his searing, floating world, aching with impatience.
“You have sinned egregiously, Tariq al-Hazmi.” Every word still thundered in his ear drums from all directions, clawing into his throbbing skull. “Your first work is to undo as much of that sin as you can.”
“Yes. Yes.” His eyes and face clenched, wringing out a cascade of tears. “Yes, anything.”
“Those dead children on that ship weren’t the only one’s you’ve stolen from their lives, are they?”
A pause and a gulp was all the hesitation Tariq would allow himself. Even in that interval he could feel the Imam’s temper threaten to erupt. “No.”
“’No’ what?”
“No, they are not the only children.”
“And you still have more children hidden away in brothels and warehouses, do you not?”
“I—“ <gasp> “I do.” <gasp, pant>
“Al-Shabah is my instrument, Tariq. He is the flesh and blood executor of Allah’s Will until I reveal myself again. He will rescue those children. And you telling him where you keep them will help cleanse you. Do you understand?”
Tariq’s brain sought to keep up, but even under Holy Duress, asking him to facilitate dismantling his hard-built and extensive empire meant enjoining battle with legions of avaricious demons lurking in the darkened corners of his brain. “I…, I…”
“SPEAK!”
The shock of the entire room assaulting him from all sides with a massive sonic battering ram jolted most of the awe struck hesitancy from his core. Tariq, however, remained helpless and disoriented. “Yes…, I understand. But—“
“There will be no buts! To submit, you must listen, and listen well, only speaking when directed. Now, Al-Shabah has the thumb drive you were captured with hanging on your neck. That thumb drive details the locations when these children are being held, does it not?”
Another wide eyed gasp. Tariq’s well nurtured insolence almost leapt out of his mouth, but the various levels of pain snaring his nerve endings were enough to corner those urges at the pointy end of a mental spear. “Yes…, yes, Excellency. It does.”
“Then you must give him your password, so that he may access the files.”
For a second, Tariq allowed himself to blink. His thoughts assembled themselves, straying away from the pain and doubt, and summoned strength from his well nurtured insolence. “If you are an Imam of Allah, Allah who sees all things, why wouldn’t he know already.” A jackal’s smile preceded his words, “Oh no you don’t, charlat—“
SMACK!
Again, Tariq’s eyes rolled back, his body and consciousness bobbed into blackness. As the wave of light jabbed his eyes awake again, he discovered heat. Where the floating gel before felt uncomfortably steamy and hot, now its temperature swelled towards boiling. His skin began to blister, awash all over with sharp, prickling pain, like being devoured in a bath of fire ants.
“You were given an opportunity to repent! Do not further transgress against the One True God, you wretched Taghid [transgressor]. ‘Fear the fire, which is prepared for the disbelievers.’”
The intense heat of the liquid suspending him boiled and needled ever deeper into his nerve endings, launching red hot searing sensations searing clear to the bone. A deep moan of pain-wracked helplessness caromed into every corner of the room, supplanting the noxious air with the shamelessly naked despondence.
“UHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH—!” SMACK!
Fingers sharp and hard as coffin nails bit and curled into Tariq’s cheek flesh, peeling his head backwards against his neck, until Tariq fixed eyes with the pair not three inches of his own: the dark, fulminating pupils of Mohammad al-Mahdi. “You have been given a chance to guide the next blow of The Blade of Evil’s Bane. Be proud. Be strong. Do not stray. Do not fall back into the hell fire. Guide the blow, Tariq al-Hazmi! Repent and submit. Give us the password.”
Tariq’s face began to shiver as he clenched away the tears. His whole body joined in the minor somaquake, trembling and thrashing as it boiled in the gel.
“Give us the password NOW, Tariq!”
His sputtering became more whimper than cough. Lips struggled to remember how to form words.
“Right NOW!”
The Arabic seemed lodged in his throat, as painful to utter as spitting up gravel and glass. “Z—, Z—, Zzzzz—!” <gasp, gasp, gasp>
“Say it! Earn the smile of Allah and be back on the path of the Believer!”
“Uhhhhhh! Zzzzzion Burns! The password is ‘Zion Burns’!”
A pause as the Twelfth Imam turned his head, though those clawing fingers never slackened their iron hard clutch on his facial fat. When the Imam-e Asr nodded his head and turned to face Tariq again, he said nothing, just dropped the child seller back in the steaming gel again, then turned around to march back into the light.
The formless men, all robed and hooded in black pounced out from their positions, ropy hard muscles each seizing a limb of Tariq’s and stretching it taut. “Wait! Waaaaiiit!” <pant, pant> “I have submitted to Allah.” <pant> “What are you doiiing?”
The Mahdi never turned his head, nor faltered in his pace, yet the voice — Oh that voice! — resounded with authority firm and solid as the mountains themselves, echoing from every single swing of the compass needle. “Those who submit to Allah will welcome Allah’s Law. You yourself fully well know what the Shari’a, derived from the Most Holy Qur’an and Sunnah proscribe for the punishment of thieves. And you, Tariq al-Hazmi are a thief of lives. You have stolen young girls from the streets, stolen their dreams and hopes, and clapped them in the chains of sexual slavery! You shall be marked as a thief. It is God’s Law!”
“Noooo!” Tariq’s muscles strained and contracted and pulled at the men holding him, but he could only futilely squirm and wiggle bare inches before being wrenched tauter than before.
“Would you prefer I brand you an oppressor? For the Qur’an proclaims ‘Oppression is worse than murder.’ You surely know what Allah’s punishment for that will be.”
“Uhhhhhhhh—!” The room throbbed with gasps, screams, and pleas growing steadily sharper when the knife cleaved through Tariq’s right wrist, and rolled into an agonized moan when the acrid roofing tar — the same smell that burnt Tariq’s lungs all this time — singed and cauterized the wound shut. The Mahdi melted back into the light long ago, but Tariq al-Hazmi never noticed the dark resurge, being far too busy screaming away the sparkling awakening of his facial nerves as the word CHILD sizzled into his right cheekbone; and a just as cherry red brand spelling RAPIST sunk in the skin on the left.
“Where do you wish to start?”
“Hmmm?”
“Where you wanna start looking in this blery great jackpot you cracked open. There a lovely great cluster of warehouses in Porto Alegre, and let’s not forget this chunky bread crumb trail from Santos clear on all the way up to southern São Paulo. That’s a full night of kicking down doors. Maybe two.”
As with every big gamble first pursued, there wasn’t enough evidence that a serotonin inhibitor/ SP-117 truth serum cocktail, a customized sensory deprivation tank, a jerry-rigged NiteSun helicopter spotlight, a 30 speaker full-surround sound system, and a notebook full of other creative subterfuges and innovations would truly wring more reliable confessions than blowtorches and live jumper cables. Certainly not enough to convince their holding company that owned JagdMaschine Ltda. to fund this little dungeon. But tonight, as Hans mentally catalougued the warehouse addresses scrolling down Kruger’s computer screen, not a pang of regret slithered anywhere inside him at fronting his own personal funds to bolt together something this extravagant.
Hans finished freeing his eyes from the umber coloured contact lenses and delicately commenced working the beard free from his face, straining not to tear neither the beard nor his face, as he’d dabbed the Arabic gum (how’s that for an ironic name?) way, wayyy to liberally thick in his earlier haste. “Call Marius and tell him to have the Pilatus preflighted with a flight plan for Aeroporto de Congonhas [in São Paulo city]. Then direct Teufeltrupp to be kitted up and on the runway in ninety minutes. Geisttrupp and I will hit Porto Alegre. I want all those addresses sent to every single team member’s mobile phone. Send it now, Kruger.”
“O —“ More screams jabbed through the walls and straight into Kruger’s neck muscles. “Ag, man! What’s going to happen to that cockroach?”
“Several of your ‘Uncle Piet’s’ ranches—“
“He is not my ‘Uncle Piet’!”
“No matter. Several ranches in the Transvaal have been set aside for all the Schießkerls as truly fucked and wretched as he is. We’ll see how he likes a transatlantic voyage in a oven hot ISO container, followed by a lifetime of slavery.”
The robes and turban found themselves kicked into a corner while Hans reached for his armored vest and equipment pouch-saturated ballistic plate carrier. “I’d always been satisfied with leaving the jihadist scum to flop along with a few tarred over stumps. But big fish like this…, especially the species of fish that sell children in bulk…, they deserve nothing less than decades of back breaking labour, misery, and the constant nettling doubt of trying to guess whether their precious God has forsaken them.”
More screams lanced through the walls. A soldering iron worked a barbarous, florid path into Tariq’s forehead and remaining hand, scrawling smoking Arabic execrations, branding the man cursed forever. Kruger couldn’t restrain his own shivers at the ceaseless blubbering cries. “How much of this is about Katja?”
Hans only answered with a quick change of expression, his eyes making clear just how little ‘about Katja’ his activities were. The facts couldn’t bear avoidance: when you could absorb other’s languages, dialects, accents, and mannerisms the way a chameleon put on colours; when you could track men running cross country so fast enough to make bloodhounds blush; and when your close quarters combat skills made you appear as a wolverine amongst crippled kittens: damn you to burn in hell forever if you didn’t put those skills to good use often and early. Barring a lobotomy, Hans never, never, never needed to relearn that lesson ever, ever again. “This isn’t about the past, bru. It’s about who we can save right now.”
Favoring Kruger with a warm, cheery look, Hans clapped one hand on his associate’s shoulder, while snatching up his submachine gun with the other. “No more sour looks. We’ve got children to free.”