Uday and Sarah were, at that moment, in the backseat of his brother Faisal’s road-beaten Toyota Land Cruiser. The SUV had once been registered as a cab, in a time when people had money in their pockets and places to go, and Faisal kept his lighted taxi sign in the trunk and an expired permit sticker in the window on the odd chance he could make a few dollars. The license plate had expired too, but it was one of the few positives of living in Syria these days that things like vehicle registrations and licenses were universally ignored.
The roads south of Raqqa were in abysmal condition: a lack of upkeep, heavy military convoys, and the odd roadside bomb had conspired to turn remote highways into ribbons of black rubble. The Toyota’s headlights bounced an uneven path through the pitch-black desert. They’d advanced ninety miles in four hours, which Faisal claimed as a victory, and were now pressing deep into the lawless expanses of what had once been the Homs Governorate of Syria. On the far horizon Uday saw a group of small buildings, a few with windows glowing dimly from whatever fuel sources remained: oil lamps, generators, candles.
Faisal slowed further as the road degraded to little more than a camel path through the desert. The chassis groaned on every pothole, and he muttered complaints about the damage being done to his longtime means of employment. Uday was silently pleased. His rushed research had so far proved accurate—they’d not encountered a single checkpoint since leaving Raqqa.
“What is that?” Sarah asked, pointing ahead.
Everyone went rigid as two massive shadows materialized out of the night. They were just off the roadbed fifty yards ahead, twin mechanical goliaths. Soon the figures resolved in the headlights, and they all stared at the bizarre sight—in the middle of the open desert, a pair of huge bulldozers.
“At least they are working on the roads,” said Faisal.
“No,” Uday said, having the benefit of insider knowledge. He remembered requisitioning parts for these very machines—and he knew precisely why they were here. “The caliphate does not use such equipment to build. Remember, we are near Palmyra.”
Palmyra. There was no need to say more.
Uday stared out the window and was happy for the darkness. He had no desire to see beyond the machines. To see what he’d been complicit in destroying. Uday had produced countless videos for the caliphate, uploaded thousands of photographs. Many were grotesque and inhumane, bordering on sadistic. Yet it was the images from Palmyra that he’d found strangely haunting, perhaps because they represented something more fundamental—not attacks on bound and helpless humans, but an assault on civilization itself.
He remembered as a schoolboy learning the ancient legends. Hadrian, Tiberius, Solomon—all had walked these same sands over the millennia, visited the same oasis crossroad. The Islamic State had come as well. They did not control Palmyra any longer, but there had been more than one occupation at the height of the caliphate’s reach. Today its fighters were gone, some no doubt having melded into the local populace. At the crest of its domination, however, ISIS had made its terrible mark.
Uday remembered editing videos to put their work on display. Palmyra, one of the world’s most revered archaeological sites, had been declared idolatrous by the caliph. Its ancient stone theater was used as a backdrop for executions, a video Uday himself had uploaded for the world to see. Orders were eventually given to raze every “totem of idolatry.” Structures that had withstood thousands of years of weather and earthquakes and invasions became little more than targets to a cult of religious fanatics who attacked them with dynamite and heavy equipment. Men whose education was drawn entirely from one book, and whose teachers slanted its words into a blueprint for an apocalypse, brought ruin as best they could.
Uday’s hand tensed over the door handle as he watched the great machines slide past his window. Clearly they had been idle since the Islamic State’s pullback. Even so, as the caliphate steadily lost control of territory, he’d heard Chadeh discuss new tactics. Among them—returning teams of infiltrators to places like this, a desperate effort to prove their continued relevance.
He felt a peculiar sensation come over him. “Stop!” Uday shouted.
Faisal stomped on the brakes, and the Toyota skidded to a halt. “What is wrong?”
Uday stared at the nearest bulldozer, only a few yards away. He tried to remember what the mechanic had asked him for over a year ago. What was it?
“Aziz?” Sarah asked haltingly.
Finally he remembered. “Give me a rag,” he said.
“A rag?” replied Faisal. “But what—”
Uday shot his brother a hard look. Faisal reached beneath his seat and produced a stained piece of cloth. Uday took it, opened the door, and walked to the first of the big machines.
It was painted desert tan, a Russian-built behemoth that had been abandoned by fleeing government forces early in the conflict. The caliphate had claimed the earthmovers as a spoil of war, but for nearly a year they had sat idle on the shores of what was then called Lake Assad. In time, the caliph had seen a need and ordered them put into service. Uday was given a list of spare parts to obtain online.
Now he circled the great machine like a bird circling its prey, sharp-eyed and purposeful. Searching for an opening. He thought he saw what he wanted in a recess of the engine bay. Uday went to work using the rag, but quickly realized that his hands weren’t strong enough. He spotted a large wrench on the floor of the driver’s compartment. The wrench’s span wasn’t big enough to grip the housing, so he turned it into a hammer, battering the thick plastic blow after blow. It finally came loose and fell to the dirt, oil spewing onto the ground from a broken line. With his method in place, he had the second bulldozer disabled in less than a minute.
Uday stood back when he was done, completely out of breath. The sleeves of his robe were stained black as he stood back and regarded his work. The two engine oil filters he had ordered from St. Petersburg, necessary for the machines to run, were lying on the ground, their plastic cases shattered and fabric filter rings crushed. Oil oozed from the portals on both engines, dripping down the great treads and turning the sand beneath them black. Leaching back into the very desert from which it might have been extracted.
“Aziz?” Sarah’s voice, wrapped in caution.
He turned to see her standing outside the SUV, a guarded expression on her face.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
He dropped the wrench into the dirt, and found himself smiling. “Yes, darling. I am better than I have been in a very long time.”