A real Mexican standoff.
Seconds stretch like taffy.
A shot blasts, deafening in the confined alley.
RANIA
I see it happening. I see Abdul’s finger tightening on the trigger. I do not know who he is aiming at, because Hunter and Hassan and I are all close together now.
Hassan moves like a serpent striking. He jumps in front of Hunter as the rifle goes off, and I see him jerk, jerk, jerk. Abdul is shooting wildly. I am on the ground, unhurt, watching helplessly. Hassan is on the ground, too, but he is bleeding out into the dust. Again.
Hunter is moving, knife in hand, crashing into Abdul. The black blade flashes and Abdul screams. Screams. Hunter growls like a feral animal, rabid and snarling, his blade is a claw and Abdul is dead and gurgling but Hunter does not stop, stabs, stabs, ripping, slashing, killing the killed.
I pull him away, and he almost slashes me before he recognizes me. His face abruptly shifts from one of malice and rage and bloodlust into one of relief, love. Love. That look says so much. His eyes are soft. Where before he was a killer, now he is the lover. He is before me, mere inches away, reaching up to touch me, to kiss me.
Something within me melts. I hear shouting, a vehicle’s engine roaring, tires skidding. Gunfire echoes behind us, answered and silenced by American rifles. I see none of this. Only Hunter’s handsome face. His sky-bright blue eyes on me, taking me in as water to a man dying of desert-thirst.
He shifts forward, and I think he is moving to kiss me, so I wrap my arms around his neck and press my lips to his, but instead of kissing me back his strong mouth is slack and his weight presses upon me.
“Hunter?” At first I am only confused. I pull back to look at him. “Hunter? Speak to me. Please.”
He does not. His eyes are rolling into his head, and he is falling down onto me.
I try to catch him, but he is too huge, too much man for a frail girl like me to hold up. He falls hard, crashing to the ground. This rouses him enough to peer at me through heavy-lidded eyes.
“Rania?” His voice is faint. There is blood on him. Too much. So much. His, Abdul’s. “I’m done for, Rania.”
I shake my head. “No. No. Your friends is here. They will make you okay.” I am having trouble with his language, but I know he is too hurt, too tired to speak mine. “Please. Do not go from me.”
I turn and see Americans in camouflage approaching us. Hunter’s eyes glance behind me and widen in shock.
“Derek?” Hunter’s voice cracks.
“Yeah, man, it’s me. I’m here. Time to go home, buddy.” Derek’s voice is a raspy drawl.
Hunter looks at me with pleading eyes. “Come with me, Rania. I’ll make them bring you. I’ll make you mine.” The last sentence was in garbled Arabic.
“Go with you?” He is still struggling, still fighting to rise, to move; I touch his chest to still him. “I will go with you. Anywhere.” I kiss him gently. “I will go anywhere with you. I love you. I love you.” I repeat it in English and Arabic.
His eyes widen at the words, and I still feel, even now, panic that he will not want me if I profess to love him.
But instead he lifts his arm, straining to move even his own appendage as if it were a great weight, touches my face. “I love you.”
He faints, and I am torn away from him by rough hands, gloved hands and American arms. Pushed away. Dismissed. Ignored.
He is watching me, whispering, pleading. They do not hear him, or are not listening. He is wrestled into the American vehicle, one of those things like a car made into a tank, and at the last his eyes are on me before he faints.
I hear screaming, and realize it is me. My words are unintelligible, even to me. I hear myself as a stranger. Do not take him from me, please, take me with you, please, I love him—but they are heedless, and Hunter is gone and I am alone.
Hassan bleeds into the dirt, and I can hear him gasping.
I kneel beside him. “Brother.” I do not know what else to say; I cannot lie to him now, at the last. “You saved him. You saved me.”
“You are…my sister.” It is all the explanation he has strength for. It is enough.
My hands are on his chest, gloved by his blood, and I am weeping. For him, yes. But for me, for Hunter. For my broken heart. They took him, although he loved me, and would have made me his. I wanted to be his. Someone’s.
Anyone’s.
Hassan dies quietly, watching me until his eyes take on the far-seeing blankness of death, and I know he has gone to be with Allah, if Allah exists.
I kneel in the dirt and the blood-mud, bending over the cooling corpse of my brother, my last connection to anything, and weep.
He was dead, and then he was miraculously alive again, protecting me. And now he is dead again. Truly dead. I smell it on him, the stench of death.
And then I hear them behind me. Angry, wounded, bloody men. Iraqis. I harbored an American.
They want my blood in payment for theirs.
They can have it.
FOURTEEN
HUNTER
I wake to pain, and a sudden, intense need to remember something I’m missing, or something I’ve forgotten.
Fuck if I can remember. Hot lances of raw agony stab through me, arms, legs, chest, lungs, head…my heart. Not my physical heart, but my emotional heart. My core.
Where Rania lives.
I bolt upright, clunking into someone’s chin, causing a curse. “Where is she?” I demand.
Derek is next to me, clutching a bleeding bicep. “Who? And yeah, you’re welcome for rescuing your sorry ass, motherfucker. Good to see you, too. Yeah, don’t worry about me, I’m fine.”
“Where is she?” I’m looking around me, feeling the familiar rumble of the Humvee beneath me.
I see Dusty, driving, turning to glance at me, blood running down his cheek from a deep gash on his forehead, deep enough to show white bone peeking beneath the grooved, flapping flesh. Chink is there, riding shotgun, staring at me, unspeaking, grimacing, dirty, in pain but unbloodied that I can see. Benny, arm creased and seeping blood. Derek, confused, angry at my lack of gratitude.
Fuck gratitude.
“Who the f**k are you talking about, Hunt?” Derek is annoyed and in pain.
“The girl. The blonde girl. Rania. Where is Rania?”
“Oh, her?” Derek waves a dismissive hand. “We left her back there, bro. She was just a native hooker, man. You’re on the way home.”
“Turn around.” I glare at Derek, and he sees the seriousness in my eyes.
“What? Are you f**king nuts?” He leans forward. “No way, man. Uh-uh. That place’ll be swarming with rag-heads.”