Maggie waited by the front gate. In her left hand, behind her back, she held the syringe full of animal tranquilizer. Her thumb was on the plunger, ready, pulsing with her heartbeats.
The guard finished opening the gate. He was a short fat man in a robe, with a big unruly beard.
He jumped when he saw Maggie in her naqib. His flashlight shook in one hand. He clutched the pistol grip of the automatic rifle with the other.
“Besma?” He brought the gun up, level with her midriff, making Maggie jump now.
Think fast.
“My apologies, Sayidi,” Maggie said in her best standard Arabic, her Jihad Nation passport ready. She held it up against the flashlight’s glare. “I somehow managed to get myself locked out.”
“Locked out?” he said, letting go of his weapon, the barrel nose-diving to the ground as the gun hung on its shoulder strap, bringing Maggie immediate relief. Leaning forward, he reached for the black passport. “Who are you? One of the new ones?”
“Yes, Sayidi,” she said. She let him have the passport. He raised his flashlight to examine the document, squinting in concentration.
Maggie leapt forward, bringing the hypodermic up and back down in one swift motion, making him rear back, his mouth opening in surprise as she jabbed the needle into his shoulder, like a dagger.
“Al-La'anah!” he cried, jerking, raising the flashlight like a club.
She blocked his arm with her elbow, leaned in, pressing the plunger all the way down before the needle snapped off in his shoulder. He swore, dropping the flashlight, the beam bouncing. He grasped his shoulder and Maggie landed on top of him, slamming him to the ground with a thump, seizing his throat before he could cry out for help. The flashlight beam came to rest nearby, highlighting the two of them.
He fought against the drug but she straddled his chest, squeezing his throat. He stared up at her with wild, fearful eyes. He flailed and kicked as she rode his big belly with her thighs, like a bronco, hanging on for the duration. It seemed to take forever until she saw his pupils begin to slip into unconsciousness. The synthetic opioid did its work, but not quick enough for her liking.
Finally his eyes shut and his body slackened.
She let go of his neck, sat up, watching him. He mumbled some gibberish in Arabic, drool running from the corner of his mouth.
And then he was out.
She climbed off, straightening herself.
He was still breathing. Sometimes that was debatable with M99. But the dose had been dialed down from elephant. She picked up the flashlight, doused it, collected her Jihad Nation passport, swiped off the dirt, put it away. She dusted herself down.
Two pair of feet thudded toward the gate from beyond, quiet enough that if she hadn’t been expecting them, she might not have heard them at first.
John Rae and Bad Allah came jogging up in their black fatigues, shotguns over their shoulders. Although they wore black turbans, neither man had his face covered yet. They slowed to a walk as they reached the gate. Maggie pulled her hood back.
“Looks like you’ve been busy,” John Rae whispered, nodding at the comatose guard.
“You guys move him,” Maggie said, unhooking the AK-47 from the man’s limp shoulder, slinging it over her own.
John Rae went around to the man’s head, lifted his shoulders. Head lolling in a drug-induced coma, he mumbled something unintelligible in Arabic, while Bad took the man’s feet, huffing with the effort.
“What the hell is he saying, Bad?” John Rae asked.
“Something about wanting to go to the cinema.”
“It won’t be as good as the movie playing in his head right now.”
“True.”
They carried him outside while Maggie quietly shut the gate and joined them. In no time, the guard’s ankles and wrists were secured with plastic ties. A strip of duct tape covered his mouth. They left him face down in the shadows.
“Hope the scorpions don’t get him,” John Rae said.
“It’s no less than he deserves,” Bad Allah said.
“I don’t think anyone saw me deck him,” Maggie said. “But somebody could be waiting for him to return. We better move.” She opened the gate again a couple of feet to let them inside the compound and then shut it behind her but didn’t secure it with the iron pipe. “We’ll leave this unlocked. The PJs might need access.”
“Can you radio that info in, Bad Allah, along with our status?” John Rae pulled his black wrap across his lower face, covering it, while Bad whispered their current status to P One.
“Now to see if Kafka’s parents are here,” Maggie said to John Rae.
The three of them crept across the dirt courtyard, staying in the murkiest shadows on the far side of the buildings. They stopped by an open garage, two pickup trucks under a ramshackle roof. A third truck sat out in the open under camouflage netting. They had seen that from the drone.
She had to tell someone about the bodies.
“There’s a mass grave out there with hundreds of dead bodies in it,” she said. “Yazidis. Some of them children.”
John Rae took a deep breath, let it out. “Jesus,” he said quietly.
“Animals,” Bad Allah whispered, spitting on the ground. “No, I shall rephrase that. I’ve never seen an animal do anything so wicked.”
Now they had to make the mission count.
“The guard asked me if I was one of the new ones,” Maggie said. “Evidently, this place is a drop-off point for Yazidi prisoners. It was in Dara’s notes. But nothing about a mass grave.”
“Focus, Maggie,” John Rae said. “Were here to pick up Kafka’s parents. Nothing more.”
Maggie shook her head angrily. “You can’t ask me to forget those corpses.”
“One thing at a time. A skeleton crew like ours isn’t equipped to stop genocide. We’re here to get Kafka’s folks.”
He was right. But she couldn’t let it go. It was, after all, the reason she and Dara had pursued Kafka in the first place. The grave was just grisly proof of what the operation meant.
“I’ll go first,” she said. “Check things out. See if I can find Kafka’s parents.”
“You can’t very well go inside carrying an AK-47, Maggs,” John Rae said, nodding at the weapon over her shoulder. “Not if you want to blend in.”
In her preoccupation with the grave, she had forgotten about that. She unshouldered the rifle, leaned it against the mud brick wall of the garage. “I’ll start with that main house. That’s where the drone’s FLIR cameras showed the most activity. As soon as I find something, I’ll radio it in.”
“Be careful,” John Rae said. “Don’t let what you saw out there cloud your judgment.”
“Got it,” Maggie said tightly. “Got it.”
With that, Maggie adjusted her earbud, set her Rino’s volume low, pulled her Burqa hood back up. She headed across the courtyard silently to the main building.
From where she lay in the back of the pickup truck, Besma heard the three of them whispering in English just outside the garage. They were planning something. They weren’t jihadis. She’d heard them silence Mustafa, carry him out, shut the gate. A jolt of hope surged through her. Maybe she and Havi would escape this nightmare after all.
She heard light footsteps padding quickly across the ground toward the house. She pulled the tarp off of her quietly and sat up in the bed of the truck. A woman in a dark abaya and hood entered the main building from the side door, bold as you please. Then she saw two men in black jihadi fatigues run silently across the courtyard as well and stand, one either side of the door. They wore night vision goggles, making them look like creatures from another world.