Xinjiang
SO here they were, back in the mountains after all. The mujahideen, or whoever they were, the guys who’d raided the marketplace, had blindfolded Teddy and Fierros after getting out of town. Taken their rifles. And covered them with heavy sacks of sand. Then rode for jolting miles, upgrade. The road surface had changed from asphalt to what sounded like crush and run, then gravel, and finally ungraded rock. Jolting from side to side, the pickup had climbed the last few kilometers with motor straining.
Ordered out, the two captives, or hostages, or whatever they were now, had had their blindfolds checked and tightened. But—and Oberg had taken this as a good sign—no one had yet offered to tie their hands. Instead, someone had thrust a piece of bread into them. He’d gnawed it hungrily. Thick fried dough, sweetened with honey and garnished with nuts. It had to be what angels ate in heaven.
“Hao,” he grunted. Nice. Then, in an undertone, “Fierros. Ni zai ma?”
“Horosho’.”
Oh yeah. Right. They were supposed to be Russians hunters. Or at least ethnic Russian Tajiks.
Teddy was rethinking that now. That had been in case they ended up in official Chinese hands. Maybe Russian wasn’t the right way to play it with these guys. Or even Tajik.
Of course, that depended on exactly who their captors were.
They climbed a rocky path for what felt like hours. The air grew cool. Evening, or they were really gaining altitude. Maybe both. He grew weak, dizzy. He could hear the airman’s harsh breathing ahead, making heavy weather of it too, but didn’t dare ask for a break. They might get a permanent rest. With a bullet to the head.
* * *
THE entrance to the cave was so low they had to crawl in on hands and knees. Straightening, Teddy grunted as rough hands jerked the blindfold off, taking some of his hair with it. Suppressing a yelp, he blinked into the guttering orange light of torches.
The cave went back into darkness. Bats twittered and squeaked far above. Down here camping gear, camp beds, and tables of rough wood were scattered across water-eroded limestone.
To his left spilled a tumbled mass of masonry and statuary. Dozens of ancient Buddhas lay toppled and shattered, their heads scarred and gouged into facelessness. The rock itself had been carved, obviously centuries before, into a haunting, eye-seducing frieze of … Dancers? Gods? Demons? Whatever they once had been, their images had been hammered apart in a lynch-mob ecstasy of destruction. When he looked down, his feet were shuffling through a crushed mass of ancient parchments, trodden in with centuries of bat excrement.
Ahead, in the direction they were being shoved, the same black banners as had flown from the pickups were draped behind a stone lectern that looked as if it had stood in the same place for at least a thousand years. A book lay open on it, with a Kalashnikov propped against one side. Teddy was pretty sure the book wasn’t The Lord of the Rings.
He turned his attention to the men shepherding them forward, senses sharpened by the knowledge that in the next few minutes he would live or die depending on what his captors decided. The men were all young, and all black-bearded, or trying hard to grow beards and mustaches. Bandy-legged, but with the suggestion they were going to be husky lads. They had the flattish features and darker coloring of the crowd that had oohed and aahed watching the red-clad dancers, not the look of the more slightly built, lighter-complexioned security troops.
Actually, they reminded him of the guys on the caravan ponies. So, obviously, these were the Uighur bandits-slash-terrorists he’d heard about back at the Team briefings. How long ago that seemed.…
The Central Asian states had been fighting Islamic insurgencies long before 9/11. Spilling over China’s western borders, the rebels were giving Beijing a hard time too. The local version of the al-Qaeda and Taliban he’d fought, himself, in Afghanistan.
The terror attack in town squared with that. It suddenly registered that the old merchant had known about it too. He’d warned them not to be in the Han part of town that day.
Teddy was still mulling all this when they shoved him to his knees in front of the lectern. Their captors settled on blankets and began chatting in low voices. One kept working the bolt on his AK, and complaining in a whine. Jerking the bolt, and flipping cartridges out. Making a wagging motion with his hand, as if the rifle wasn’t ejecting right.
Now, to the side of the stone lectern, Teddy noted a large curved sword. Fierros cleared his throat. Breathed, so low Teddy could barely hear him, “Who are these dudes?”
He must be getting nervous. Well, Teddy was too. That was a hell of a mean-ass sword, and it looked well used. The tripod-mounted videocam next to it didn’t look promising either.
Well, at least Trinh had missed this. A bullet in the brain was better, any day, than a twitchy amateur executioner with a dull blade and bad aim.
Fierros whispered, “Al-Qaeda? ISIS?”
Teddy pitched his answer so low he could barely hear himself. “Islamics. Not sure what brand. Better let me do the talking.”
“We’re not still Russians, are we?”
“No, that wouldn’t be smart. Like I said, let me talk.”
One of their escorts said something in the language he didn’t know—not Han, probably Uighur—and slammed his shoulder with a rifle butt. The message was clear: You guys, shut the fuck up. Which he did, trying to sit back in a way that hurt his leg as little as possible.
Not too long after, three men came in carrying AKMs. They set them against the cave wall and eased themselves down on the blankets. They looked terribly tired and two were wounded, to judge from the bloody bandages and the wincing as they adjusted their crossed legs. Teddy recognized the one in the center. The driver of the pickup, the guy who’d gestured him aboard with the pistol. The one with the half-white mustache. The handgun was stuck into his belt now, one of the old high-velocity Tokarevs that made you deaf shooting them, but that penetrated helmets and body armor. Not a bad choice for a gunfight, actually. The guy pulled down the book, and Teddy nodded. He’d seen this before, with the Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines. On the operation to steal the rocket torpedo, with Commander Lenson’s TAG team.
It was a drumhead court. The kind that really only pronounced one sentence, and finished up with somebody’s noggin bouncing on the floor.
The Uighurs conferred among themselves, glaring at the captives. Teddy kept glancing at the guy who was fiddling with his rifle and complaining. Finally he reached over and took it out of his hands.
Before they could react he had the magazine out, chamber cleared, and top cover off. He flipped the rifle upside down and shook the piston assembly out onto the blanket. Just as he’d figured, a handful of crud fell out with it. Somehow, probably by dropping it, the guy had gotten sand inside the gas port holes, clogging the piston inside the tube. Which meant it stopped feeding. Yeah, that happened, even with Kalashes. But it was super easy to fix. He stripped the grit off the piston with his sleeve, blew the tube clear, and squinted through the barrel to make sure it was clear too. He reassembled the weapon, worked the action, and laid it back down in front of the rebel.
Who looked with astonishment from him to the judges. Who were also staring, no longer whispering among themselves.
After a few seconds they cleared their throats and seemed to regain some self-possession. The questioning began with the guy on Teddy’s left, in Han Chinese. He wanted to know who they were and why they’d been firing at the police. Or at least, Teddy assumed that was what he meant by jingcha.
He’d been doing some thinking about this even before Fierros surfaced the issue, but held up a hand while he formulated his answer. Trying to project confidence. Dignity. Finally he said haltingly, in his prison Chinese, “Women shi mengyou. Wo shi meigyo ren.”
We are allies. I am an American.
The judges gaped, lifting their eyebrows. White ’Stache looked especially doubtful. He shot some rapid Han Teddy only partially caught. He leaned to Fierros. “Ragger, did you catch that?”
“Something about … how we got here? How we came to Xinjiang, I think.”
The judge on the right put his oar in, jabbing a finger threateningly. “Zhe shi shui de ne? Ta shi meiguo?”
“I think he wants to know if I’m American too. These guys have a way different accent than the guards.”
“Well, goddamn it, answer him.”
Bit by bit, fumbling with a language neither was overfamiliar with, they managed to get across that they were both both fighters, prisoners, captured in the great war raging far to the east and south. They had escaped from the prison camp, and fled over the mountains. “If war still on, we are on same side. We, and you, all brave fighters.” Or at least, that was what Teddy hoped he was saying.
The center guy cocked his head. He seemed to have as much trouble following what they were trying to say as they had putting it out. Their interlocutors conferred in mutters. Then one said something that Teddy made as, “What camp?”
“Camp 576.”
Impressed looks. “That is a hard place. Much sickness. They mine the rock that rots the bones. No one escapes from there.”
“We did,” Obie told him. “But we were five in number when we started.” He explained about Maggie and Vu and Trinh: one giving his life on the live wire, to help them escape; one lost in the mountains; the third shot by the Chinese in town.
The judges nodded, apparently reassured by the high loss rate. White Mustache pressed, “You are American. Army? Air Force?”
Teddy had thought about this. He figured guys like this, out in the hinterlands, might know what U.S. Navy SEALs were. Then again, they might not. There were three initials, though, that pretty much everybody in the world recognized.
“Colonel Fierros here is with the United States Air Force. I’m with the CIA,” he told them.
The effect was everything he’d hoped for. Shock, recoil, outrage; then heated debate. Two of his judges almost came to blows under the torches. But finally Middle Guy shushed them. He pulled the old pistol from his belt and threw it down on the blanket. Pointed at it. Said a word that Teddy figured had to be “disassemble.”
Five seconds later it lay field-stripped into barrel, guide, slide, recoil spring, barrel bushing, slide stop pin, magazine, hammer assembly, and frame. He gave it a beat, then reassembled it. Four seconds.
They brought him a clayey gray paste in waxed paper and the sort of junk drawer a geek teenager might accumulate, filled with old batteries, broken radios, scrap wiring, miscellaneous electrical shit. Then sat back and fingered their beards, watching.
Teddy sniffed the plastic—nearly odorless—and figured it for Semtex, or maybe a Chinese rip-off of the Czech explosive. It didn’t look recently manufactured, but the binder was still malleable. He rooted around in the junk box and came up with a bent nail. He also found a spring-loaded switch.
His mimed request for a tool produced a pair of battered pliers. Which might work …
He bummed a cartridge from the guy whose rifle he’d fixed. Wrenched the bullet out, discarded it and the powder, and packed the case with a teaspoonful of the plastic explosive. He crimped the case by hammering the handle of the pliers with a rock. After straightening the nail, fitting it into the switch, and filing on the switch for a while with another rock so that it held the nail back, he screwed the case into it.
He got up and hobbled on numbed legs across the cave, unraveling a string out of Fierros’s disintegrating blanket. He tied that to a broken statue of a dancing god, lashed the other to his improvised device, and tied that to the stone lectern, despite a frown from one of the judges.
Then stood back and, with a bow and a sweeping gesture, invited them to try it: Be my guest.
“Ni neng xíng de,” said Tokarev Guy. He returned Teddy’s bow. No, you go ahead.
Teddy put his hands over his ears, hoping he hadn’t gotten too generous with the Semtex. Then limped between the stones, catching, as if by accident, his trailing foot on the low-strung string.
The loud crack and flash, the ping of hot steel around the cave, brought shouts and exclamations. Also raucous laughter, as Teddy howled and slapped at his buttocks, which stung like hell. Other fighters ran in from side chambers, weapons at the ready. They got loud explanations in jocular tones, complete with acting out and repeated exclamations of “CIA, CIA.”
Teddy made a production out of rubbing his ass and grimacing, but made sure that when he eased himself down again, it was up front, beside his erstwhile judges. He wasn’t sure which one was head honcho. But they’d had the same problem in the Philippines. With the Abu Sayyaf, there’d been three guys to play to. A clan chief, a war leader, and also an imam, a religious leader. But he didn’t see anybody like either a clan chief or a religious leader here. They all seemed to be fighters, and none over thirty, at a guess.
Which might make it easier. He spread his hands, mustering his Chinese. “Women shi mengyou,” he said again, making it slow. “We are allies. The great war. It is still being fought?”
“Oh, yes. America, China … Zhang still fights.”
“Then we both fight Han. Yes? America on east, Uighur on west. Same enemy. Yes?”
He read mingled agreement and doubt in the murmurs, shakes, and nods. Okay, making progress, but not there yet. He gave Fierros a squint, trying to signal him to quit kneeling in the position of the suppliant, the defendant, and to come over with him, with the council, as it were. After a second squint, the airman got up. His guards looked doubtful, but when none of the judges objected, let him join them. Good, another step forward.
“Let me find out … let me…” Christ, his rice-bowl pidgin wasn’t up to this. “Does anyone here speak English? Russian? How about Arabic?”
The reference to Arabic got dropped gazes. Thought so. Teddy almost grinned.
“Ya gavorit’ nim noga Russki,” said White Mustache, reluctantly. “I speak little bit Russian.”
“Great. Horosho’. Kak vas zovut? And I’m calling you … what?”
“My war name is Tokarev.”
Figured. Teddy hesitated. Go with his real name? Probably a bad idea. His Team name? Maybe an op name … But before he could respond, Tokarev was tracing the scars on his face with his finger. “Vy poluch’te eti boyev’ye kitaiski? You get these fighting Han? Or in camp?”
That was an easy lie. “Fighting Han.”
The Uighur laid a hand on his bad leg. Teddy couldn’t help wincing. “And this?”
“Pytali … tortured. By Han interrogators.” No point telling them where he’d picked up the original injury. In the White Mountains, fighting the Taliban.
Tok translated it for the others, who nodded and stroked their beards. Teddy bowed. They bowed back.
“So, you are CIA agent,” Tok said. “Vy tak stary.”
Teddy inclined his head modestly. Time to get the conversation off them and onto their hosts. He said, “Yes, I am old. But not as old as I probably look right now. Please translate this for your friends. I fight Han because my country is at war with Beijing. Zhang is a tyrant. An aggressor. Please tell me why you fight.”
They nodded and milked their beards, and gradually the answers came. “We fight for independent Uighuristan, under rule of true Islam,” said one.
The older guy said, at least as Tokarev translated, “No Muslim should live under the rule of infidels. Those who worship Confucius and Marx are not people of the Book.”
One of the guards, who’d sidled up to join the discussion, put in: “They have taken our land with arms. The mujid must resist until we are free again.”
“We must overthrow Zhang and set up a democracy. Then all can live together in peace, both Han and Uighur. But of course, we were here first.”
Yet another said, “Our brothers in Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Turkey are of one blood with us here in Xinjiang. We must all be united. Can America help us in this?”
Teddy nodded sagely at each statement, contradictory though they were, patting his own beard too, as if taking it all aboard. Murmuring “Ah” and “Ponimayu.”
Presently a small figure draped head to toe in black appeared from the shadows. It waited silently until the oldest guy beckoned. Gave peremptory orders. When it returned, accompanied by several others, the women—if that was what the toe-to-head sacks covered—set out plastic trays of rice, naan, and lamb. Not a hell of a lot of any of these, but apparently as close to a feast as the resistance could muster on short notice. Tea arrived too, steam rising from the cups as a trembling hand poured it. The dark eyes behind the hijab never rose to meet his. “Looks like we’re in,” Obie muttered to Fierros, rolling a piece of bread preparatory to digging in.
“No haircut?”
“Not today.”
“What was all that about? I only followed parts of it.”
“They want to know what we can do for them. I had to make some promises.”
“Promises about what?”
“Weapons. Support.”
“I thought the idea was to get across the border. Get the fuck out of this fucking country. We’re still in fucking China. You know that, right?”
Teddy tested the tea. Way too hot. “That’s still the idea, Ragger. I’m just playing with a different approach here, okay? Trying to establish friendly relations. Feel out a quid pro quo. Maybe plant the idea, they help us out, we got something to offer too. Okay?”
The airman subsided, reaching for the rice and lamb. Teddy grabbed his left hand just in time.
* * *
THREE days later he and Ragger stood under an overhang of rock while the pickup idled not far away, while boys with sticks urged baaing sheep up a plank ramp into the bed. Tok, whose real name was Guldulla, said they had to stay under overhead concealment, and anyone traveling by truck had to remain hidden beneath the sheep while on the road. The Han had drones that watched, and struck from the sky. He and the older rebel, Akhmad, stood a few paces off, letting them say their farewells. The third leader, Nesrullah, had gone over the mountain, into the town on the far side, for supplies.
Teddy doubted that Chinese internal security would have drone coverage out here, in this terrain, but these guys were the local knowledge. They did seem to have an effective lookout system: the shepherds all toted cheap walkie-talkies.
Fierros was dressed like one of the locals. Black embroidered four-cornered hat, long-sleeved black shirt, raggedy pants, cheap Chinese running shoes. With hair all over his face, he might pass. At a distance. If they didn’t get stopped.
Oberg was out of the lice-ridden goatskins too. He had his rifle slung over his shoulder, the one he’d taken off the wounded Han back at the square. Tok had given it back to him. “A fighter needs a rifle,” he’d said. Teddy had cleaned it, and lubed it properly. They’d been able to give him only five rounds for it, but it would do for now.
Ten paces off, squatting in the shadows, Dandan waited. A shadow herself, in the black cloak that covered her from bare feet to crown. That was her name. Dandan. They’d assigned her to him after he’d made clear he intended to stay. Rather to Fierros’s annoyance. Teddy wasn’t sure of her status. Slave? Volunteer? Temporary wife? Hostage? As far as the rebels were concerned, women seemed to be on a par with sheep. She didn’t seem to be Uighur. He doubted she was even thirteen, though it was hard to tell, and they had no language in common. But she looked old enough for the basic purposes. To cook his naan, and keep him warm at night. Beyond that, he was still too weak to be good for much. Although he had ambitions.
He told the pilot, “Tok says they’ll have you over the border tonight. Deliver you to somebody who can get you to the embassy. Couple days and you’ll be back in uniform, dude. And they’ll be counseling you about that beard.”
“You’re really not coming,” Fierros said, not for the first time. As if he couldn’t believe it.
“These guys are pretty hopeless right now. Just small-town bandits. But they could be made into a significant resistance. Cause Zhang some real headaches. Pull maybe as much as a couple divisions out here, if I do this right.”
“You don’t think we’ve done enough? You and me?”
“This war’s not over.” Teddy gripped Fierros’s hand again, then wrapped him in a guy hug. They held it, unembarrassed after all the nights spent cuddling in the mountains. “But you gotta get back. Tell them what we got here, and what we need. Primarily comms, to start coordinating. An A-team, if they can spare one. If not, I guess I can run things for a while. But they need weapons—LMGs, rockets, grenades, ammo. Mines, for the roads. All these guys have is worn-out AKs and some construction-grade explosive they stole. Send boots. Food. Medical supplies. Ballistic vests. Gas masks. Water treatment. But mainly, we need comms.”
Water and ammo and comms, a voice from his past said in his head. Who had that been? Oh yeah. Old Master Chief “Poochin’” Stroud. Never have too much ammo, Stroud had always said. And Let the fucking officers display the fucking leadership. You just make goddamned sure everything’s there when your troops need it, and it all works.
Fierros stepped back, but kept a hand on Teddy’s shoulder. “You really okay, Obie?”
“Yeah—yeah. But hit that ammo button hard, okay? And comms—squirt transmitter, a prick-one-seventeen or the new one, if they can spare one. With lots of batteries, or a solar. There’s a lot of resentment here. Akhmad says if he had the weapons, he could put two hundred fighters in the field next week. Anything they can get to us, air drop, even mules over the border, we can build this thing into a real pain in the ass for the fucking Chinks.”
“What about you, Teddy?”
“Me?” Since his vision on the mountain—or hallucination, or whatever it had been—he didn’t seem to want anything. He, himself, didn’t seem to matter so much. If something was going to happen, so be it. Then he remembered the slip of paper he’d prepared. “Oh yeah. Here, I wrote down the measurements. That’s in centimeters. If they can make me some kind of a brace for my fucking leg, that would be cool.”
“Sure, of course. What else?”
“What else? Oh … a thin-blade knife. And maybe a case of beer, if they’re really … no, that wouldn’t go down with the fucking mujes. Can you believe now we’re on the same side? Scratch that. The beer, I mean.”
The airman scuffed the dry pebbly soil, not meeting his gaze. “I meant personally. You told me about Salena. Your girlfriend? What do you want me to tell her? And that Japanese woman. Your producer, you said?”
“Hanneline.” Teddy took a breath, peering out from under the shelf at the distant mountains. The last of the sheep were loaded. The driver was beckoning.
On the far side of those snowcapped peaks, Tajikistan. But not safety. The war seemed to have spread while they’d been prisoners, from what he was able to gather from BBC World Service on the single little radio the rebels had. The whole world seemed to have been dragged in, one by one, while they’d been starving in camp. And it didn’t seem as if the Allies were winning.
Salena? She was a distant memory. A scene from a film he’d watched long ago.
Hanneline, his mother’s friend, his old agent? He could hardly believe he’d wanted to make movies once. He couldn’t even remember the name of the project now. No. That was all gone. Blown away, like the pollen of the poppies, lost on the thin cool wind of the Tien Shan.
You have always done My will.
There was no such thing as choice. There was no such thing as chance.
Teddy Oberg said, “Just tell them that the guy they used to know is dead.”