Carnifex (74 page)

With hand gestures, the pilot directed Bashir to help him turn the plane around to face into the wind. They did this by the simple expedient of picking up the tail and shuffling sideways, pivoting the plane around the fixed landing gear. Then he'd clapped the Pashtun on the back and bid him on his way.

As Bashir caught his last ground-bound glimpse of the plane, before turning along the rock-strewn path, he saw the pilot pouring fuel into it from a twenty liter fuel can. When next he looked, the plane was already airborne.

Bashir didn't know why he had been selected. He was, and he knew it, the least intelligent of the two brothers. Moreover, the infidel, Fernandez, had made similar offers to both to which both had agreed.

What had decided Fernandez, though he never made this plain, was that Salam had seemed incrementally more likely to seek his own safety and abandon his relatives to their fate than Bashir had. The key to this was that that Bashir, unbeknownst to himself, had broken under beating much later than Salam, and then only after hearing his brother being pounded. "He's the better kid," Fernandez had told Carrera. "He cares more for his family."

Though he didn't know, Bashir suspected it might be something like that. Salam was a good brother . . . but you did have to watch him.

He'd been left off with very little: some food and water, the pack he'd been captured with, his rifle, a bandoleer of ammunition and a
very
small radio. The radio was underpowered, due to its size among other things. On the other hand, it would pick up broadcasts as would any other radio that looked like it; which is to say that looked like a cheap, yellow transistor radio made in Zhong Guo.

No matter about the range; a Cazador team was going to be inserted, at night, close enough to pick up any broadcast. That would not happen for another few days, giving Bashir time to get to his destination. He was instructed not to even try to broadcast for ten days, and then only to send one of two words, "yes" or "no" and, if "yes," a number, for the number of days until the event for which he was waiting was to take place. He was to avoid making other broadcasts entirely except under very narrowly constrained circumstances. Further, if captured and not accepted back into the
Ikhwan,
he was advised to make a place for his parents, brothers and sisters in Paradise.

"Snowbird One reports insertion is complete, Legate," one of the radiomen reported to Fernandez.

"So far, so good," he said. He turned his attention to a tall Pashtian girl sitting in the operations center, staring at a map. Anything on your part, Mrs. Cano?"

Alena shook her head and answered, "No trouble, Legate, or none that I sense." She shrugged apologetically. "It's not something I can control," she explained. "Maybe something will come tonight."

Fernandez nodded. He didn't understand it, but he was too good an intelligence man not to note the more-than-coincidence. "Whatever you can determine," he said, "we'll appreciate."

No one controlled the border. No one could even really define it.

It was a long trek and a rough one, running over foothills that would have been mountains anywhere else on the globe. The air was thin and, more than once, Bashir found himself short of breath. Nonetheless, he pushed on. Who knew? The foreign infidel maniac might go right ahead and hang his family from the multiple gallows Bashir had seen, just inside the walled compound in which he'd been questioned, if he was so much as a day late with his report.

Progress was slow up the mountain. Contraintuitively it was worse coming down. Not only was the way longer, but there was always the chance of falling and incapacitating himself. Somehow Bashir didn't think that evil bastard, Fernandez, would even wait for an excuse before fitting nooses and kicking boxes.

It was with a certain measure of relief, once he neared the base of the mountains somewhere along the ill-defined Pashtia-Kashmir border, that Bashir felt the rifle muzzle's cold touch behind his ear.

Bashir felt naked without his own rifle, as he was prodded and pushed along the well-worn, ancient caravan trail toward what his captors referred to as "the Base." They'd left him his pack, mostly out of laziness, he thought. No matter, the rifle would not save his family. What was in the pack might.

They'd searched the pack, of course; they weren't exactly
incompetent
and, what with the turns of fortune in the war to date, they had every reason to be paranoid. Bashir had a few rough moments when one of them shook his little yellow transistor radio a few times, hard, before laying it down with his other belongings. Fernandez had personally gone over his pack and with considerably more thoroughness. There was nothing inherently suspicious in it. As a matter of fact, there was a bullet hole in it of the right caliber, if anyone cared to take a micrometer to check, to indicate he'd been nearly killed by the infidels. Fernandez had seen to that, personally, too.

The caravan trail met a rough road. There the party waited until a four wheel drive vehicle, bearing three armed men, came along. One of the men in the vehicle, not the driver, had one eye badly afflicted with cataracts. Bashir was turned over to these, along with his rifle and his pack. He told the mounted group exactly what he'd told the previous captors. Bashir learned that the man with the cataracts was the leader and that his name was Moshref.

He told Moshref, when asked, "I was working for Mohammad Shah, leading groups into Pashtia to fight the infidels. We got ambushed." That was all true. The lies began shortly thereafter. "I was on point, with my brother," here Bashir shed a tear he didn't have to feign but had had to practice. "He was the older. He held off the infidels while I made my escape. I think he must be dead." Sniff. "You know how the infidels are able to see at night."

"The light of Allah guides our bullets, though," the driver said. "What are the crusaders' toys compared to that?"

The vehicle bounced along for what seemed many miles before crossing a narrow, rickety bridge and entering a broad, steep-sided valley. Bashir thought he saw bunkers, well hidden and in places connected by trenches, along the crests of the surrounding ridgelines. In the center of the valley, dominating it, stood a great massif. Streams churned and frothed to both sides of the massif before joining and flowing out from the valley. There were many women by the streams, washing clothes by pounding them on rocks. Children, hundreds of them, played near their mothers. It would have all looked very normal but for the large number of armed men training a bit further out, and the air defense guns on the high ground, pointing skyward.

"You understand, Brother, that we can't just take you at your word," Moshref said. "The infidels are clever, vicious and ruthless. Nor are all the faithful, faithful in truth. We've caught infiltrators before."

Moshref's finger pointed to the right, indicating a spot where a dozen large wooden crosses stood, a man hanging on each, nailed through wrists and ankles. All the men were dead, and even the freshest corpse showed much flesh missing.

Children played around the feet of the crosses.

"We deal with them as Sura Five commands," the cyclops said casually.

Since Bashir had very good reason to believe he was the very first infiltrator to make it to the fortress, he wondered if perhaps the dozen corpses were those of truly innocent men. If so, it said nothing good about the notions of justice held by Mustafa's followers in the valley, nor about Mustafa, himself.

"I just came here to continue the fight," Bashir said. "For the sake of my brother."
The best lies contain truth,
Fernandez had advised him.

"Mustafa will probably want to talk to you himself."

It was several days before Mustafa made an appearance. Bashir didn't know if the leader had been there all that time or had just arrived.

"Tell me about it," Mustafa commanded Bashir. His assistant, and second in command, Nur al-Deen, sat quietly to Mustafa's side, looking intently into Bashir's face.

The three sat on cushions on the floor of a room leading off from a deep, sloping tunnel carved into the rock. Bashir had the impression—he wasn't sure quite why—that the tunnel went much further into the ground.

Bashir almost missed the question, looking about the room. The walls were bare and at least reasonably dry. The cushions rested on a rug, predominantly red, with blue, green, brown and black geometric decoration. The style was called "Baluch." The rug covered most of the floor, though a foot or two of bare rock were visible near where floor met wall. Other furniture was at a minimum, two crude and rough wooden chests, a small table, and a bookcase. There were more cushions piled in one corner but these would only be brought out if Mustafa had more guests. The guards, naturally, did not sit but stood with rifles in their hands.

"Tell me about it," Mustafa repeated.

"Ah. Excuse me, Sheik. I was just—"

"Never mind that. Tell me about it."

Bashir told his story.

"That entire party never arrived," Mustafa said, when Bashir had finished. "When another patrol went to investigate, it, too, disappeared. This was the work of the Blue Jinn."

Blue Jinn was a name the movement had given of late to Carrera. They had their reasons. Besides the eyes which were said to resemble those supernatural creatures, he seemed to them the embodiment of vicious malevolence, much as the Blue Jinn of legend.

"It was the grace of Allah and the courage of my brother that allowed me to bring word," Bashir supplied.

"Indeed. We will remember your gallant brother in our prayers. For the word and the warning you have brought us, you have our thanks. How may we repay you?"

Bashir shrugged. "To allow me to continue in service to the cause is repayment enough, Sheik. To allow me to repay the infidels for my brother . . . "

"So be it then," Mustafa agreed. "You will stay here and join our fighters for now. In time you may be sent back to continue the holy campaign to drive out the crusaders, and to gain your just revenge. For now . . . eat, rest, grow healthy, and train to serve the cause."

Mustafa turned his attention to the guards. "Assign him to the company of . . . Noorzad."

The guards led Bashir away. After he was gone Nur al-Deen announced, in his Misrani accent, "He's lying."

"Why do you say so?" Mustafa queried.

"That's the problem; I don't
know
why. But he
is
lying. I sense the touch of the Blue Jinn or one of his evil minions upon him. He should be killed."

"And lose a likely gallant fighter for the cause? I think not. Besides, my friend, you forget." Mustafa's finger pointed towards the ceiling. "We have the greatest of plotters on our side. If this man is lying, or a spy, Allah will point him out to us before he can do more harm than He is willing to permit."

A religious argument was the most difficult to refute. Nur al-Deen bowed his head slightly, in acquiescence.

Changing the subject, Mustafa asked, "How progress the arrangements for greeting our guest?"

"The new cave in which we will shelter his craft from observation"—now it was Nur's turn to point a finger skyward—"is almost complete. We're having to do it by hand as an explosion that size would be bound to attract unwanted attention from the infidel. Fortunately, we do not need to build an airfield."

"As I said, Nur. We have the greatest of plotters on our side."

Noorzad's company proved to be made up entirely of other Pashtun, Bashir discovered. Whether that was a cause for relief or not, let alone rejoicing, remained to be seen.

The commander, himself, was little cause for joy. Short, stout, ugly and taciturn, Noorzad had little to say to the newcomer. He looked Bashir up one side and down the other with a single cold, suspicious, blue eye. He asked a couple of questions, then announced, as if daring contradiction, "Marwat tribe."

The commander was frightening. Bashir bobbed his head in agreement. "Yes, sir, from around Daman. Speen-Gund. Begu Khel." Daman was a small settlement in north-central Pashtia. The later two terms were subdivisions of the Marwat tribe, Speen-Gund harking back to an acrimonious (and bloody) split within the Marwat on Old Earth. Seven centuries and a few thousand light years were
no
reason not to keep up a good feud.

Turning to one of his lieutenants, Noorzad commanded, "Get the names of his people. Send word to our people in Daman for anything that is known of this man. In the interim, he can dig. Take his rifle and give him a pick."

For the first time Bashir was glad that Fernandez had taken in his family. It was the custom of the Legion to punish the families of their opposition. They also had a considerable ability to identify the proper family from what they called "DNA." Bashir didn't really understand that, though he believed it. It was said by his people that, even with a suicide bombing, if the infidels found so much as a scorched bit of bone or hair, or a drop of blood, they would visit vengeance on the family responsible.

Since his brother's body had been reported as found and immolated at the site of the ambush where they were captured, there would be nothing inherently suspicious about the disappearance of his parents and siblings. That was the infidel way. That it was also close to the time honored tradition of his tribe and his larger people only gained respect for the infidels.

Bashir did not have to labor alone. With picks and shovels, litters and wheelbarrows, it seemed that Noorzad's entire company—of about ninety fighters, Bashir thought, though he could not count that high—was involved in the labor. "Labor" was an understatement.

The rock overhang underneath which they excavated pushed out perhaps four meters, or maybe even five, from the vertical. The men had chipped their way in about twice that, so that there was a cave of sorts fifteen meters deep and twenty five or thirty in breadth. Not that Bashir counted in meters.