Brothers In Arms (14 page)

She showed him the commons room, where two televisions blared news commentary and rock videos, and old sofas and folding chairs provided seating. Then she took him into a dormitory-style sleeping area, with double bunk beds, battered dressers, and a small green locker for each bed. Beside the sleeping area there was a supply room, where blankets were neatly stacked beside a half door.

“They get fresh linen every night?” Youssef said.

“No,” the woman said. “They get a blanket when they check in, and we change the sheets twice a week.”

Youssef lingered behind when the woman went out, then brought out his atomizer and sprayed a fine mist across the stack of blankets and sheets. It took only a heartbeat. Then he followed her out.

“What about during the winter?” he said. “Do you give them coats?”

“Yes,” the woman said. “In here.” She pointed at another door, paused, and then opened it to show him the racks of donated coats inside the room. “If they don’t have a coat, we’ll give them one.”

Youssef walked down the aisle formed by several racks of coats, running his hand along it. He touched the atomizer briefly each time as he walked, his body obscuring the actions of his hand from the woman behind him. He turned and walked back and said, “You are very generous in this country.”

“Where are you from?” she asked.

“My family is from Saudi Arabia.”

“We have some Muslims on the staff.”

Youssef raised his eyebrows. “Really?”

“One man is Palestinian. We also have a family that comes in and works together when they donate time; they are from Jordan. The husband is a doctor here.”

They returned to the front counter.

“Well,” the woman said. “Are you interested?”

“Yes,” Youssef said. “Let me think about it for a while.”

“We’ll be here,” she said, going back behind the counter and taking down the sign. “We could use your help . . . and you’d meet some people.”

“That would be good.”

“If you don’t mind me saying so, you seem lonely,” she said. “My name is Britta. Come by anytime you like.”

“Britta,” he said, rolling the consonants over his tongue. “I’m pleased to meet you, Britta. My name is . . . Youssef. Youssef bin Hassan.”

“Youssef bin Hassan . . . Youssef is Arabic for Joseph, isn’t it?”

“Yes, that would be my name in English,” he said. “Joseph.”

“Joseph, the father of Jesus, who brought a miracle into the world. Maybe you’ll bring a miracle into the world?” Britta said. She smiled. “Helping someone, maybe?”

Youssef flushed as though slapped.

“I have to go now,” he said, stammering.

“Come back anytime,” Britta said. “You’re welcome for coffee or tea.”

“Yes,” Youssef said. “I’ll be back.”

He hurried out the door, leaving Britta looking puzzled. He stood outside for a moment in the bright light, a breeze blowing slightly, the sun warm on his upturned face. He felt water at the corner of his eyes and blinked them rapidly as he walked away and put distance between himself and the homeless shelter. What was wrong with him that other people saw his loneliness so easily? He’d been trained better than that. The woman was harmless and had meant nothing, but her simple gestures of kindness had struck deep in him.

He wandered aimlessly, steering away from the cafés thick with the smell of hashish and marijuana where clusters of people his
own age gathered to smoke and to laugh. He thought of how good it would be to have his five daily prayers with someone else, instead of always being alone in his room. It felt so far away for him, the timeless time of his childhood, the prayers with his family and friends. He had not suffered as so many in the Sudanese training camps had, not like the Palestinians or some of the mujaheddin who had fought the Soviets in Afghanistan. His had been an easy youth, growing up with the wealth of his family protecting him from the troubles of the world outside their villa walls. He’d grown to feel guilty about his wealth and that protection as he’d gotten older, gone to school and gone abroad, and seen for himself how the rest of the world lived. That made him an easy target for the Al-Bashir recruiters, who thought an English-educated Saudi with a trust fund was an important acquisition. First he’d donated money, then the recruiters at the mosque he’d attended urged him to study with them privately, and then came the offer of the training.

He’d gone, excited with the prospect of doing something, and naively thinking that he would be just another soldier in the cause. But the imams and the leadership cadre had other plans for him.

He was, after all, the One.

The inside of the chartered turboprop felt cramped and small to Charley Payne; he was used to civilian jetliners and military aircraft. The roar of the engines was too loud, and the one lone flight attendant had to hunker down when she came through the narrow aisle to offer them peanuts and coffee. Two seats in front of him, Dale Miller was sleeping soundly, twisted sideways in his seat. Directly across the aisle was a male private nurse hired to accompany Rhaman Uday, who sat next to the window and stared out, as he had done since they had departed Minneapolis. Behind him, the rest of the twenty-one seats were empty.

Time in aircraft always passed too slowly. Charley had come to loathe air travel, having spent too many hours in too many aircraft. He would have preferred to have driven with Ford and Harrison and the new members of their augmented team. Dale had chosen to keep Uday under wraps while the team deployed into Central Illinois, and only then move him quickly via chartered aircraft into his new safe house.

Charley had never been in this part of the country before. They had left the rolling hills and lakes of Minnesota behind, and they were now well into the true prairie of the heartland. Long flat fields, remarkably square and uniform from the air, with giant sprinklers in
the center of each square, marched in neat unison off to the horizon. Corn and soybeans were what Dale said they grew out here. Thousands of acres of corn and soybeans, and every so often small towns dedicated to the processing and shipping of them. The turboprop flew low enough so he could see cars on the narrow two-lane roads below.

He leaned his head out into the aisle and caught the eye of the flight attendant. He held up his empty soda can and gestured for another. She smiled and brought him another full can of cola and said, “Can I get you anything else?”

“A bigger seat and a faster flight, if you’ve got any of those up there,” Charley said, favoring her with a smile.

She laughed and said, “Tall as you are, it’s no wonder you’re uncomfortable. It won’t be long now. We’re almost there.”

“Make this route often?”

“I grew up out here. In Kankakee, which you’ll be going over in a few minutes. I had a girlfriend in college, she was from Decatur.”

“What’s the town like?”

“It’s a good size, about one hundred thousand people. Mostly blue-collar, food-processing and they used to have one of the big Firestone plants there. Not much to do there.”

“The nightlife is lacking, then?”

She laughed and flipped her short black hair with one hand. “Yes, the nightlife is lacking.”

“Will you be staying over?”

“No, sorry,” she said. “We deplane you all, and then we’re right back to our base.”

“You do a lot of these?”

“Lots of medical transport,” she said. “Most of the time we’re going to Rochester, Minnesota to the Mayo Clinic there, but I’ve been on some trips out to Johns Hopkins in Baltimore and other places. It’s easy work, not like hustling to keep a full cabin happy.”

“I was hoping we’d have a drink,” Charley said.

“Not this time, cowboy,” the flight attendant said. The aircraft bumped in the air slightly, and she caught herself with one hand. “I’ve got to get to work.”

She went back to the front of the cabin and tapped twice on the cockpit door, then entered the cockpit. Charley shifted his legs again uncomfortably. There just wasn’t enough room in the seat for him. He looked up at Dale with envy; the younger man had the operator’s knack for sleeping whenever possible against those long intervals they might have to go without sleep. Charley had that knack, too, but being so much taller made it harder to get comfortable.

“We are very high,” Uday said suddenly from across the aisle.

“Yes we are,” the male nurse said. He was short and thin with pinched features and coal-black lank hair that gave him a cadaverous look.

“It is not high enough,” Uday said.

“We’re high enough. We’re just fine,” said the nurse.

Charley studied Uday with interest. The Iraqi was animated, looking out the window with interest, and mumbling to himself.

“Is it high enough for the One, Rhaman?” Charley said.

“It is too high for the One,” Uday said. He looked around the cabin and fixed his lugubrious gaze on Charley. “The One would be inside. Not outside. The dissipation would not be sufficient.”

“What dissipation?” Charley said.

“Particulate formation depends on the amount of moisture,” Uday said in a matter-of-fact tone. “That was the problem in the sad holiday. Many, many products and not enough consumers. The testing was long.”

Charley looked up the aisle to where Dale still slept.

“What is he talking about?” the nurse asked.

“Shh,” Charley said to the nurse. “What testing, Rhaman? Testing during the sad holiday?”

“Saddam wanted a sad holiday,” Uday said. “We all wanted a sad holiday then. We celebrated after the testing. It was a nice party. Very clean. Everyone wanted a bath after the testing.”

“What were they trying to wash off, Rhaman? What was the testing?”

Uday turned and looked out the window. “Testing. There were many tears during the testing. We had a sad party, inside. Inside it
was very clean. We wore hats and masks, and pretended to be doctors. Doctors heal. We did not. Some of them tried, but they were lost. I became lost, too.”

Charley leaned across the aisle and said softly, “What were the doctors doing, Rhaman? What were the doctors testing?”

“Smallpox,” Uday said. “But the vesicles are not so small anymore. Not for the One.”

The handoff at the Decatur airport was handled with military efficiency. As the turboprop taxied toward the general aviation terminal, two Chevy Suburbans with blacked-out windows wheeled across the tarmac and paced the aircraft to its parking spot. The doors on both vehicles opened and men spilled out, creating a rough perimeter around the front exit of the aircraft. As soon as the flight attendant let down the stairway, two men came up inside the cabin. Dale stood to meet them.

Greg Ford was the first in the door. “Hey Dale,” he said. “Ready to move?”

Dale took down his single carry-on bag and said, “Let’s roll.”

Dale, Charley, Uday, and his nurse came down the stairwell. Two steps down and they were ringed with big men, who split the nurse off and put him in the rear vehicle. Uday, Charley, and Dale got into the lead Suburban along with two gunfighters, big silent men who wore photographer’s vests to hide their handguns. Their vehicle led off the tarmac; the other vehicle, crammed with gunfighters and the cadaverous nurse, followed closely behind. The vehicles turned out onto the highway that paralleled the runway of the Decatur airport, and they moved briskly on their way.

Rows of corn and soybeans fell away on both sides of the highway as they went out into the country. Charley looked out the window and thought he’d never been in a place quite so flat, where the horizon fell away with nothing to break the eye except the occasional silo or house. He remained silent, as did the others, during the half-hour drive that took them well away from the city and out into the
flat country. Eventually they turned onto a gravel county road that bisected a huge cornfield, and drove along in a cloud of dust for a mile or more before they came to a roadway that turned at a right angle from the road and went toward a farmhouse and a collection of outbuildings.

As they drove closer, Charley saw other things. A berm had been bulldozed up to provide a backstop for a shooting range right where the front lawn of the house should have been. There was a twenty-five-yard range with a variety of handgun targets set up, and there were rifle benches set up on a hundred-yard range.