Khyber Run Page 8

  When Mike returned, he took custody of our saddlebags and packs and bowed out of the action. His gelding was barely three years old, he explained now that we were well away from the paddock with the deceptively hearty-looking mare, and not schooled in the skills needed for this game.

  Echo's voice took on a sound suspiciously close to a whine. “Whose team are we on, then?"

  "The first one to play,” Mike said sharply.

  Echo's exposed ear reddened.

  Three Canadians dressed for cold weather rode by on thick-legged shaggy geldings. Mike whistled, and they wheeled in unison. Their horses stepped toward us in unison.

  "Our teammates, or rather yours. Canadians. They want to win,” he added regretfully.

  The tallest Canadian, in a black shemagh, brandished a fistful of red cloth. “Hello, Meeshell! Hello Osskah! Echo! Et Zul-you! I am Anjou! He is La Salle, and she is La Teton—tell no one! We hope you can keep up, eh?"

  The cloth he handed me turned out to be a red vest, assembled with a stapler rather than stitches. The first good yank would remove it. Which was probably the point.

  Mike's abdication and the even divide between us and them could leave a vacuum in leadership. My guess was that Anjou would step into the vacuum, unless Oscar did.

  Normally the elders of the team direct the action, letting the younger players struggle over possession during the brutal race to a goalpost and back.

  The elders take the boz only for the final few steps to drop it in the circle of justice. They're fully as fierce as any boy on the field, but wise enough to let the boys take the damage. Any man with a white beard has usually had at least one long and sincere discussion with his own back. And the boz is a heavy thing for an older man to lift and sling. Even if this one was a goat instead of a calf.

  Mike shortened his gelding's rein. “For our team to win, the boz has to go around the north post then be brought back to the middle and dropped in the circle. For their team to win, the thing has to be taken around the south post and brought back to the circle. Nobody can trip your horse, deliberately hit your hand, or deliberately knock you off your horse. There's no rule against accidents, which is why they have those helmets and club-handled whips. Nor is there any rule against a face punch or a kidney punch.

  "You Canadians have whips—good for you. You'll be the defensive players. Whoever gets hold of the goat, sling it over to Oscar here. He won't drop it. Once he has the goat, everybody cluster around him and ride hell for hot leather. Questions?"

  "Have any of you played before?” The woman's voice was low, but not too low to carry a challenge.

  We looked back at her. Her gelding shook its heavy head. She shoved her arms through a red vest. “Merde."

  The males flanking her laughed. Shemaghs and shades completely hid their faces, but their body language spoke clearly. They would be a team, and what they wanted from us was to stay out of their way.

  Anjou twirled his whip, which looked locally made. “Listen. When a man grabs the goat, it is wet. The hair, it can slide right off the skin. Grasp not gently. Never gently. I have once played, so among us, I am master."

  "Ooh la la, ooh rah!” Echo laughed, and his mare half reared.

  The Canadians glanced at each other.

  A mounted phalanx charged us. We scattered like a pack of dogs. They reassembled beyond, perfectly posed against the bare-mountain backdrop, and fired their AK-47s into the sky. “We are Afridi! You are geldings who ride mares! Play against bearded men! Or slink away and hide behind your shameful women!"

  Nobody dived for cover. I looked around. Only the media were even looking in their direction, and not all of them were.

  I hid my smile under my shemagh.

  Mike was talking to an unveiled woman who looked a lot like Condoleeza Rice. She was dressed in slacks, instead of showing her bare legs, but her neckline was more suited to the weather and the camera's eye than to the cultural norm. He turned away. She grabbed his bridle. Looked like she was arguing with him.

  Echo nudged me. “Translation?"

  "The Afridi have testosterone. We have loose women.” I leaned over and retied his shemagh.

  "You need to do this where I can see,” he complained. “I keep guessing, and the stupid thing keeps unwinding any way I tie it."

  I smelled his deodorant. Axe, I thought, and wondered why Mike had let him wear a scent that would identify him as NATO to anyone downwind.

  One of the Canadians snorted. “You need to be smarter than the rag, eh?"

  You have to be smarter than the tie, Ricky. My mother's father had stood me in front of a mirror and reached around from behind to knot my necktie. Half-Windsor like this if it's too short for a full Windsor.

  I felt guilty, not missing the old man. Even if he had done his best to make apostates of my brothers and me. I think he'd succeeded with my brothers. One more reason they were all better off without me. I wasn't a good Muslim, but I'd never be anything else.

  Mike evidently won his argument; he cantered over and advised we had the first match, against half a dozen Tajiks in fur-trimmed helmets and riding long-legged stallions. Two of them looked my age, two looked older, with white-shot eyebrows but probably were my age, and one had bushy white eyebrows. Real chapandaz. So much for getting close to the boz.

  I looked at Oscar. “We're about to get slaughtered."

  He tightened his rifle strap. “So?"

  He didn't care? How could a man not care about winning?

  Mike's voice hardened. “I don't have to ask you to make a good show. You're marines. But remember your mission. Your primary objective at this point is to avoid injury to yourself or your mount. Your second is to avoid maiming or killing anyone else, because we don't have time for the paperwork."

  Echo's horse gave another half rear. Not exactly the sign of a confident mount with a calm rider, was it? But unless he fell and broke something, it wasn't likely to be my problem.

  The chapandaz looked at our mares, at the Canadians’ geldings, and curled in on themselves to smother their laughter. Real chapandaz rode only stallions.

  To make a better show, the camera guys insisted on backing us all about fifty meters off the circle of justice. The starter stood straddling the boz, a black goat. He raised a pistol and, amid cries of bismillah, fired a red flare.

  Then he ran for his life, knees high and fists pumping.

  Echo and the Canadians charged the boz in a flying wedge. I rode enveloped in their dust, with Oscar beside me. The chapandaz waited until a Canadian lifted the boz from the ground, then bowled over his horse, took the boz, and galloped for their post.

  Echo rose in his stirrups, yipping like some kind of movie Indian, and raced forward. Coming abreast of the chapandaz, he lunged for the boz, and caught a lash across the face.

  He yelled, then jumped to squat with his feet on his saddle, and snapped a kick at the nearest rider. The rider ducked, but the kick caught him high on the shoulder. He went down in the churning dust.

  I yelled like a madman, the sound drowned in thousands of other yells and cheers. Talk about a foul—a magnificent foul!

  The riderless horse stopped dead. Another Tajik horse danced aside to keep from trampling the downed rider. The third one leaped—or bucked, I wasn't sure. I had no clue who carried the boz.

  Echo was now grappling bodily with one of the chapandaz. A Canadian charged laterally through the mess, wheeled, and came back at us with the black bulk of the boz under one leg and his whip between his teeth.

  I pirouetted left, Oscar pirouetted right, and we laid down a gallop toward our goalpost. As the Canadian caught up with us, we opened to sandwich him.

  Then the post was there. I thought of circling short, but if I did, someone might argue I was the one carrying the boz and that it hadn't circled the post.

  Oscar wheeled about the post. The Canadian flanked him, and I rode the outer circle, urging my mare to keep up and then to plunge ahead to break up the clump of chapandaz
blocking our way. My mare, not being trained as a four-legged fullback, shied to one side and dived between a pair of the big stallions.

  A whip slashed across her nose.

  She reared, screaming, then slammed all her weight onto her front hooves and lashed out with her rear hooves. My spine whip-cracked all the way up and down, and my teeth snapped shut.

  One rein snaked out of my hand. I pulled the other to my knee, but the mare crow-hopped and bucked in a tight circle. All I could do was hold on.

  I was vaguely aware of the chapandaz muscling red-vests to one side of the circle of justice and tearing off toward their own goalpost. It probably took only seconds to settle my mare, but a couple more to get the reins in hand. By then, eight horses were thundering in my direction, dust boiling about them.

  Oscar and his mare stood solidly beside me. He nodded. “Come."

  Roger that.

  Now we had to intercept the boz. It had circled both posts, so whoever threw it into the circle of justice would win.

  We charged the coming mass, and it split around us. A Canadian had the boz again, and Echo had a Tajik-style club-whip. Echo twisted to his left and slashed his whip at a chapandaz. Someone's knife went spinning high into the air, a nice image if CNN could catch it.

  A Canadian with blood soaking his shemagh rode beside me, his leg jogging against mine. His horse stumbled.

  I automatically pressed my mount to the left, so she wouldn't fall with his, just as he slung the boz at me. “Allez! Allez!"

  I caught one leg, with broken bone jutting through the hide, and dragged the front end of the carcass over my pommel, leaning in the opposite direction to try to balance the weight. The hide tore, sliding the slick mass back over my thigh and down my leg. I fumbled for a better grip.

  Horses and men surrounded me. Whips and fists came out of the dust.

  I leaned sharply over the carcass, and my mare stopped dead. The other riders plunged on, then entangled one another as they turned to get at me again.

  Oscar reached across my saddle and into the neck of the boz, found something to grip, and dragged the lumpish mass squarely over my pommel. “Go!"

  We rode together for the circle, barely visible in the hoof-churned dirt, and flung the broken carcass down.

  My mare huffed and blew wads of brown-stained foam. I slid down and grasped her halter, anxious to inspect the mud-crusted whip-cut across her nose. The tender skin had welted, but wasn't bleeding so much as seeping a bit.

  I felt the bones gently, working from the side to make sure any pain would be from the bones, not from the bruised skin. She seemed all right.

  Two oozing welts decorated the back of my left hand. I couldn't recall being struck.

  Someone was at my back. I turned, but it was Oscar, his back to me, facing a mob of chapandaz, the fox-hatted Tajiks in front. Their faces were animated, amazed; they kept bowing to look under the mares. “Mares? Mares?"

  "Tatar mares,” I said, remembering to use English. “Very fast, but not so strong as yours. In a long game, you would win."

  They grinned. “Very fast. Very fast."

  Then they switched to their language, chattering at me and at Oscar. I felt no threat from them. They'd been shamed by a loss to nonstallions, but were far enough from home to hope no one who mattered would ever hear of it.

  Another group of riders now surrounded Echo; they'd pushed back his shemagh and fingered his short gold hair, talking. He had one hand on his wallet pocket and one on his weapon, but he grinned and let them paw him. I saw his empty knife holster, but for all I knew he could have lost it when doing that kick.

  A woman with a camera elbowed in through the crowd. The chapandaz sprang away as she passed. She thrust a microphone into Echo's face.

  I watched the chapandaz, amused by how the woman's forwardness stunned them. Maybe they thought she was Echo's wife.

  Then I remembered the bloody-faced Canadian. Some cameras had focused in on the three of them, and the bleeding one was still wearing his shemagh. For right now, I was their doc. I should be handing Oscar my reins and making my way over there, to see whether the injury required urgent attention.

  But a man in a sanitized camo uniform and a shemagh like Mike's was leading Mike's overladen gray gelding daintily among the power cords and clusters of newspeople. And Oscar, who had shed his red vest, was pointing his face at me, jerking his head in a way that probably didn't mean my neck is stiff.

  I swung up into the saddle, tossed my red vest into the crowd, and followed Oscar around the back of a CNN trailer, trusting Mike to extract Echo, and leaving the Canadians to handle any prizes or interview requests.

  We rode between clusters of horses and riders, enough to fill the day with five-minute mini-matches. I heard the CIA faceman's voice. The OGA men were flashing ID at a group of riders with stunned, disbelieving faces. The riders were all officers, though, and should be able to take care of themselves.

  Oscar startled me by heading down a tight alleyway, one built for ambush. His mare broke a trot.

  I could follow, or I could head back into the crowd and look for Mike. Given the number of uniforms, shemaghs, and horses, the chances of finding Mike and Echo were pretty slim. So I put my heels in the mare's flanks and leaned forward.

  We emerged from the alley at the edge of a bazaar.

  Sullen, deeply lined faces looked up at us from the closest booths. Not a hand showed. A metallic rattle punctuated by many hard clacks echoed off the scarred buildings, safeties being taken off dozens of unseen weapons.

  Our mares slowed to step carefully, avoiding insult and assault by what felt like a breath here and a few inches there. The wind whistled through ropes and cables and up my sleeves and down my collar, finding all the sweat from the game and chilling it.

  I shivered and didn't bother to hide the fact. I was too busy watching for the slightest signal, the rise of a leader who would cry for the death of the infidel, the foreigner, the invader.

  Two horsemen waited at the far edge of the bazaar: Mike and Echo. We joined up without a word and stopped half a mile later to rearrange the baggage. Then we quietly rode east to rendezvous with Golf and his trailer.

  Only after we stopped in a parking lot did I notice Echo's reins tied loosely and lying on his lap. His gun hand was fine, but the other had swollen so much his fingers looked like meat balloons. The two on the pinkie edge of his hand stood out at the wrong angles.

  "You did have the option of requesting medical attention at any time,” I scolded.

  "Yeah.” He dismounted gingerly, holding the hand out. “Can you still fix it?"

  Rapid swelling was a bad sign, but some of it might be attributable to his excitement level. I pulled down my medical kit. “Did you feel or hear anything snap?"

  "No, sir."

  Sir? He was in pain, then. He hissed as I touched each finger, feeling out the injury, but didn't jerk away. I couldn't be certain with this much swelling, but it felt like a simple dislocation of his pinkie and ring finger. A little jab of morphine would help, but I didn't know if any had been packed, did I? And every moment's delay would increase the severity of the swelling, the chance of complications.

  "You're not going to yank on it, are you, Doc?"

  "No. I'm going to assume you're an adult and can cooperate in your own treatment. Pull very slowly and smoothly against my pull, okay?"

  I laid his hand across my thigh, took a grip, and pulled the digits straight out, stretching the tendons to maximum and using my other hand and thigh to press the butt ends of the two dislocated bones into place. One slid smoothly into place but the other gave a little snap.

  "Fuck!” He spasmed against my shoulder.

  I held pressure a moment, for pain control, then eased up. I'd never done two fingers together before, but the most cooperative patient wasn't likely to hold still twice.

  Out here I couldn't send him through ultrasound to make sure everything had gone back in place, and that no bones had ch
ipped or cracked lengthwise. But from what I'd seen, the degree of swelling he maintained tomorrow would be a reasonably accurate indicator.

  If he couldn't use the hand tomorrow, I'd send him home for surgery. I may not be a physician, but I'm a doc, and I can do that.

  Meanwhile, there were consequences to address, and if that medical kit didn't have some splints at the very least, it wasn't worth carrying. I moved Echo's hand to his own lap. “Don't move."

  Mashallah, splints of all kinds. I selected two glorified Popsicle sticks and a roll of self-adhesive stretchy tape. Another section of the kit had ibuprofen, Decadron, and Tylenol#3 along with the forms to document each tablet of that last. “Have you ever had an adverse reaction to a painkiller or to any medication?"

  "Not allergic to nothing, Doc."

  Mike's shadow fell over him. “Zulu."

  "Sorry. Zulu."

  I kind of liked Mike for not fucking with the kid until his fingers had been fixed. And I took a perverse pleasure in signing the controlled substance sheet Zulu.

  I made Echo eat a squirt-pouch of cheese over a retort brownie so the pills wouldn't hit an empty stomach.

  Then, while Echo played with something he found extraordinarily funny on his computer, I learned my way around the rest of the medkit. It was nonstandard in all the right ways and good in every other way, except there was neither morphine nor any effective equivalent. I guess having to track and account for a narcotic would probably ratchet the paperwork to a higher level than anyone wanted to deal with.

  I had also inventoried and rearranged my assault pack by the time Golf arrived with his horse trailer.

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  Chapter Eight

  Chunks of the road had broken away every few yards. To anyone who insisted on staying in one lane, the road would be impassable, at least without doubled tires or treads.

  Golf soldiered on, driving on the left here and on the right there, sometimes driving down the middle while Toyotas and bicycles and donkey carts swerved left and right around him. He recited zaboor—psalms—in English under his breath the whole way, so quietly only two or three words at a time reached me in the sweaty center of the backseat. Beside him, Mike held a pistol on his lap and his rifle between his knees.