A young man wakes up in the desert. The wreckage of an ambulance lies smashed against a boulder and charred to a crisp. By the stitches on his head and face, he assumes he was the patient. But why was an ambulance driving through a desert? Where wa...
Siraj also took off his goggles and unlocked the other doors. The three got out as Seiber popped the trunk and took out four big pieces of beige cloth. He handed one to Skyler.
"Here, wrap it around you."
Landau took it and stretched it with both arms. Ragged and tattered. As it was supposed to be. He put it on his back over his shoulders and took one corner and folded it across his chest. The rest did the same, and they continued on foot to the east.
Some minutes went by until they reached the piedmont of a hill. The day was leaking and pouring its golden glare on the soil of the highlands.
"Well, Skyler," said Seiber, pointing towards the crest. "All you have to do is make your way up to the top of that hill, and then go back to the car."
"That's it?"
"Yeah. You walk up there and go back, and Nadim and I will take photos." Seiber put away a bit of fabric to expose a polaroid in his belt. "Siraj will be alongside you, pretending he's your bodyguard for the pictures." He then included Siraj, who was tying his AK-47 strap across his chest. "Don't look at us. Just walk like you don't know we're here."
So they did, following his instructions to the letter. They paced quickly toward the hill while the other two swirled around them, sometimes near, sometimes far, triggering the polaroids and revealing their pictures to the sound of shutters and flashes clacking amidst the dark and gritty silence of the desert.
"Why are they taking pictures of me here?" asked Landau.
"Because these hills are characteristic of this area," replied Siraj. "When the soldiers fanned out here see the pictures, they'll know they're not fake, and that eggplants do grow in Afghanistan."
"Eggplants? What do you mean?"
"You know, your codename, Biadhinjan. That means eggplant in Arabic."
Skyler bit his lower lip and shook his head in a concealed rage.
"That fucking Bee Gee Nazi," he muttered as he turned briefly to Seiber and flipped the bird to his Polaroid.
*****
They took barely fifteen minutes to reach the top. The sun had finished gliding over, unfolding a desert not very different from that in which Skyler had awakened only thirteen days ago. But nobody had assured him he wasn't still there, unconscious, kissing the ground with his eyes rolled up and his mind offering one last lysergic dance prior to the end. Maybe he still was.
"What do you know my brother from?" asked Skyler, with some apathy.
"Six years ago, when the war broke. Nadim and I were living in a small village in the southeast. Then came the mujahideen. They killed almost everyone. Killed my parents, most of my friends. They saw I had a degree in Islamic Law from Takhar University, so they let me live. They also thought Nadim's condition could be useful to identify planes."
"What happened next?"
"We were told that they had spotted a white man wandering around the mountains, and apparently, they feared him to be a Russian reconnaissance agent, so they forced us to go into a nearby cave to look for him. He disarmed and knocked us both out by himself as soon as we entered. When we opened our eyes, we were inside the cave, in a gallery that he and his men were using as a radio station. He told us he had a rule never to kill an unarmed private. I asked him if we were prisoners of war then. He told us we could go if we wanted to, or we could stay with him and go to a safe place as soon as he established a secure trade route. When I asked which side he was on, he replied 'mine.' We have remained with the Leviathan since then and are now part of its intel network of Afghanistan."
"Landau, Siraj," they heard Seiber to their backs, "hurry up, we gotta go!"
Siraj glided down the sand with the quick skill of a gazelle, while Skyler struggled not to slip on the pebbles. By the time he returned, Seiber and the brothers were gathering around the hood of the car, watching, commenting, and exchanging photographs as if they were baseball cards, discussing the next step of the mission.
"It's best on foot," argued Seiber. "Car by daylight'd be suicide. And I won't drive Landau back and leave you two here."
"What if we split up and leave someone here in the car with Landau, then wait for the other two to get back?"
"I don't like to split up. If we do, we double the chances of getting caught. The more eyes, the better."
"Makes sense to me."
"What's going on?" asked Landau upon arriving.
"Good news." Seiber sharpened his smile more than ever. "You're coming with us on a field trip."
"Fuck you, Seiber."
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
