Fearless ; The Smoke Child Read online

She reached the next room on her list and swiped her staff pass through the card reader. She pushed backwards through the door. The stench of stale alcohol hit her immediately. How the hell did these Mexican guys get up for work after all their partying? Her trolley complained as she pulled it through the doorway, and she left it half in and half out, propping the door open to get some air into the room. As she turned, her knees gave way and she let out a scream.

  The baggage handler was lying rigid on the bed, laid out as if by a mortician, in a pool of his own blood. There was no sign of a struggle. A cheap flick knife had been forced and twisted into his right eye, buried up to the hilt.

  *

  Tyler exhaled as the rubber of the front tire lifted from the tarmac runway, and he felt a cushion of air lift the heavy plane into the sky. He settled back and tried to get a couple of hours of sleep before Dallas.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Kandahar Airfield, Afghanistan.

  “We got John Coltrane and a love supreme, Miles says she's got to be an angel” – U2, Angel of Harlem.

  Outside the Dutch PX, smoke was billowing from the wrecked Humvee. Dust turned the air into a thick soup, pouring into everyone’s lungs. Charlie Lockhart felt adrenalin burst from the center of his chest, flooding through his veins. He wanted to run, but the air was thick with debris and so he kept his head down. Staying low, he shuffled closer to a blast wall about two meters to his left. There was a ditch behind it which offered a natural shelter and he slid into it on his stomach.

  Silence descended as quickly as the dust fell to the floor. Logic told Lockhart that the generators must still be humming but his ears were ringing after the explosion. The Humvee was burning furiously, but there was no sound of licking flames. The muted scene was claustrophobic.

  Slowly, his hearing started to return, like he was emerging from underwater. He saw the soldiers across the street scrabbling up, coming together. One of them had reached a shelter point where several concrete slabs surrounded a ditch and was beckoning his friends to stay low and come to him.

  Lockhart was considering a mad run across the street to join them when he felt a hand grabbing his collar and pulling him along the floor. He was dragged out of the ditch and into a building behind the blast wall he had been using as cover.

  Inside the building, the woman who had pulled him out of the ditch manhandled him unceremoniously back to the ground. She pushed him under a table. His hearing was coming back now and he could make out the sounds of sirens some distance away. Scores of vehicles were heading towards the scene, checking for casualties and securing the area.

  The woman squeezed herself under the table next to him. She was mid-twenties, curvaceous and seemed to have spent more time on her appearance than was strictly necessary for military purposes. From the dazzlingly white teeth, he guessed she was American. Her accent confirmed it.

  “You should get yourself a helmet” she chastised. Her body felt warm next to his, and despite the dust and the smoke and the sweat, he found himself conscious of her closeness. Maybe it was a reaction to the near-death experience. Whatever the reason, he wasn’t convinced that the American was feeling the same way.

  She explained that another grenade could rip through the skin of the building, so they stayed low under the table waiting for the all clear to sound.

  They heard two bloodthirsty Thunderbolts roar off down the runway to eliminate any further threat from the men with the grenade launchers. Armored vehicles full of vengeful warriors and hopeful forensics teams were leaving the main gate too.

  The American brushed against Lockhart as she twisted round under the table to face him, her eyes sweeping across him as she did. Slowly, she drew her hand towards him and ran her fingers through his hair.

  “You’re bleeding,” she said, rubbing his blood between her fingers as the all-clear siren wailed through the base. “Stay there.”

  She shuffled out from under the table and strode across the room towards a large green medical cabinet attached to the wall on the opposite side of the room. Ignoring her instructions, Lockhart shuffled out.

  The room was clinical and anarchic all at once. The outside of the blast wall was regulation gray concrete, but its hidden reverse was an orgy of spray paint. As Lockhart looked out at it, the bright pinks yellows and oranges were in complete contrast to the regulation beige buildings and vehicles, the dusty roads and the dowdy uniforms. Manga drawings mixed with colorful patterns, Celtic signs, and Arabic slogans.

  The room itself was well lit and much more cluttered than any other Lockhart had experienced in Kandahar. Trestle work surfaces ran around the outside of the room, and a dark Afghan rug covered most of the floor.

  In the center there was what looked like a shining leather dentist’s chair. It was hinged in four different places and had a heavy cylindrical metal base. Around it, there were several chrome stacking-shelves on plastic wheels, full of rubber gloves and sterile metallic instruments. There was a metal sink and a first aid cupboard.

  A full height angle poise light was aimed at the chair casting long shadows around the room, and a thick roll of blue paper sheets was waiting to be turned and torn. A round chrome practitioner’s chair with a cerise seat rested near to the dentist’s chair.

  It looked like a torture chamber, except for the cartoon drawings and mystic charts pinned to the wall, alongside black and white posters of Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis, all lost in smoke and magic. There was an impressive looking iPod dock on one table, and two large wooden speakers which stood four feet tall in each corner.

  Lockhart was still soaking in the room when the woman turned back round from the medical box, with several sealed packages from the trauma kit. She had rinsed his blood from her fingers and gloved up, ready for action. She offered him a latex-clad hand.

  “Kirsten Miller,” she said.

  Lockhart shook her hand. His father had once told him that a gentleman should squeeze a woman’s hand with the same pressure as she squeezed his own. Miller’s hands were delicate for a soldier, but her touch was assured and her handshake was as firm as it was feminine. She didn’t release his hand, and it took him a moment to realize that she was waiting for him to reveal his name too.

  “Charlie,” he said reluctantly, remembering Barr’s instructions. “But people I'm with call me Fearless.”

  Miller raised a well-plucked brow.

  “You're the guy with the grenade stuck to his truck, right? I heard about you.”

  They carried on talking as she went to work, her blue plastic fingers rummaging through his hair. The cut was superficial, but it had bled quickly like most head wounds. She made him lean over the sink as she washed the blood out of his hair. The water was cold and his scalp started to sting. Lockhart was careful to conceal his discomfort because Miller seemed like the kind of girl who would not be impressed by any signs of pain.

  The water ran into the metal sink in reds and browns as dust and blood and concrete washed out. He noticed that Miller’s hands had slowed up, and her actions began to feel more intimate. He could feel her breasts and hips brushing against his back as she went about her work.

  Suddenly the door slammed open and a medic in desert combats, helmet and body protection leaned into the room. It felt like she had crashed in from another world. Beyond the vibrant mural on the blast wall there were emergency vehicles with blue lights flashing, soldiers on high alert, and a Humvee still throwing flames into the air. Chaos, compared to the calm inside.

  “Any casualties?” the medic shouted, as her eyes settled on the couple at the sink. She lowered her voice as she recognized the woman. “Kirsten… everything under control?”

  “We’re all good here, thanks. I didn’t see anyone injured in the road either.” Her voice was low and calm. “Jesus Christ, it landed close though.”

  Miller didn’t turn around or pull away from Lockhart as she spoke to the medic. She carried on working his hair without missing a beat as the medic closed the door beh
ind her.

  After a while, Miller stopped the tap and reached for a fresh towel from on the table. She pulled off her gloves, rinsed her hands, and dried them as she walked over to her iPod. As she walked back to the sink, a mournful piano struck up its first notes. Her gentle hands persuaded Lockhart to turn around from the sink, and she began to scrunch his hair dry with the towel.

  Miller took her time drying the stranger’s hair. She cupped the nape of his neck, her skin touching his for the first time. She had a husband at home. She didn’t have a husband in Afghanistan. Ella Fitzgerald’s heavenly voice wrapped around them like a warm duvet as Lockhart pulled Miller into his arms.

  They didn’t kiss. Instead, their foreheads touched, and they began to giggle like children; slowly at first until they were laughing like old friends as they hugged one another. They had come close enough to death to say that they’d cheated him, and the cheating felt good. Being alive felt good.

  After a while, they headed outside, and Lockhart sat in the doorway, massaging Miller’s shoulders as she leaned back into him. She was rolling a cigarette, lost in the ritual. He was staring at the stars, amazed by their brightness. The Humvee had burned itself out, and the air was still and calm. Billie Holiday was singing about the bubbles in her champagne as Miller took her first drag and blew out for an eternity.

  Chapter Twenty

  Central Mosque, Birmingham. August 2010.

  “Like a phoenix rising needs a holy tree, Like the sweet revenge of a bitter enemy.” - U2, Hawkmoon

  Even after a year, few members of the mosque would associate with Daud because of the shame his brother had bought to the community.

  Daud didn’t mind. His main reason for going to the mosque was not to atone for Ajmal’s actions, nor to defend them. Besides, he did not understand what his brother had been doing when he was bagged, cable-tied, and dragged off on a C-17 to Guantanamo in the middle of the night.

  Daud went to the Mosque to reflect and to ask questions. Maybe he was questioning himself, or maybe he was questioning Allah. He had faith and wisdom in equal measure, so he was happy to believe that he could do both at the same time. Allah might be a supreme being, or he might be Daud’s internal construct. Either way, he hoped for a few answers.

  As he drove towards the Central Mosque along the Belgrave Middleway, he cast a rueful eye towards the rough gray square of concrete surrounded by floodlights on the other side of the busy dual carriageway.

  Only a few short years ago it had been covered with AstroTurf and the two brothers used to play hockey together there. Daud was two years older, bigger and stronger, and always had a new trick to teach Ajmal. They were good times, but now the green carpet had been ripped up, the floodlights were smashed and they had taken his brother from him.

  Daud himself had no interest in Holy Wars, nor the rights or wrongs of Western aggression. He didn’t really care about the motives of the Taliban or America’s thirst for oil. He found the world’s conflicting viewpoints on liberty, capitalism, pornography and a million other subjects tiresome.

  As a Muslim living in the West, he had grown up listening to these arguments every day, and he had grown bored with people’s entrenched opinions and closed minds. What was the point of being so passionate about something that you lost your ability to question your own threadbare mantra? Daud never understood that.

  What distorts life from its perfect path is us, thought Daud. Our emotions; greed, fear, jealousy, envy, pride, lust. It doesn’t seem to matter whether we live in the East or West; we are united in our ability to mess up what could otherwise be a perfect world.

  So Daud had never been a pacifist, or a jihadist. He’d never rejected his faith, but he’d never been a zealot either. He’d just tried to create a quiet, harmless and reasonable life for himself. He wasn’t pious, but he tried to do well by the people around him. As Shakespeare put it, he was a man more sinned against than sinning.

  Daud’s brother had always been thoughtful too. Impetuous sometimes, ambitious in so much as he was keen to please his family, but a calm soul with a good heart. Ajmal couldn’t be a terrorist.

  And yet, Daud had no way to be sure. Neither did he have any way to protect his little brother as he had done all his life. Daud had terrible ideas of what the Americans would be doing to him in Guantanamo. He’d heard stories from Tipton about torture in the camp. His mind was full of images of his brother being beaten, force-fed, drugged, and maybe worse.

  Sometimes, happy moments would enter Daud’s life, and immediately guilt would come rushing into his mind like a tsunami, sweeping the happiness aside as he remembered Ajmal languishing in some lawless place in Cuba.

  The feeling of impotence had enraged his usually peaceful soul, and over time his heart had hardened as he sought a way to help his brother. And now something had happened. A name had emerged. Daud could not free his brother, but at least now he could avenge him.

  He had learned the name of the man who had handed him to the Americans. With a cold fury at his core, Ajmal’s brother began to plan.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Kandahar Airfield, Afghanistan.

  “Moi je t'offrirai des perles de pluie, Venues de pays où il ne pleut pas” – Jacques Brel, Ne Me Quitte Pas.

  The wind had changed, and the smell of the burned-out hummer had eventually become overwhelming. Miller and Lockhart had moved back inside the strange room with its jazz posters and its dentist’s chair. Jacques Brel had taken over from Ella Fitzgerald, and it reminded Lockhart of Laurent, an eccentric old French flat mate he had lived with years ago.

  The camp was dry, but Miller rustled up two tumblers and a bottle of Jack Daniels from somewhere. They clinked glasses and Lockhart lay back in the dentist chair, letting his eyes wonder around the posters and charts on the wall, before settling back on the woman sitting next to him.

  “What is this place, anyway?”

  Miller explained that as well as working in Kandahar’s hospital, she ran a tattoo parlor on the side. She explained that she mostly worked for favors like the rug, the iPod and the whisky. Occasionally money exchanged hands. When Lockhart asked her whether her tattooing was legitimate, she looked at him innocently and explained with a smile she was a great doctor.

  “What’s your blood type?”

  “A-B negative,” Lockhart answered. “But I don’t think I’ll need a transfusion after tonight’s scratch.”

  “That’s rare blood; you’re about one in a hundred.” Miller sounded impressed, as if his blood type had been a matter of his own choice.

  “What if you needed a transfusion? How would I know what to give you?”

  Lockhart understood at once. Miller made money tattooing blood types onto soldiers and contractors. Not legal, not officially condoned, but the authorities tolerated it because it was useful. Lifesaving, potentially.

  Soldiers who came into the hospital in need of blood would usually have their blood type written on their helmets or on their body armor. But recently the severity of some IED blasts had charred the details and made it difficult to get blood into them without either waiting for medical files or taking a gamble.

  The tattoos worked much better, unless the roadside bombs obliterated whichever limb had been marked. That was happening more and more, and now some patrols were going out having already fixed tourniquets to each of their limbs, ready to tighten up, in anticipation of getting something blown off. It was morbid, but Miller could testify to the fact that it had saved at least three lives while she had been in Kandahar.

  “Let me do you?” Miller asked. “You’d be my very first A-B negative.”

  Lockhart looked at her, feeling like a rare butterfly.

  “Not until we’ve finished the bottle,” he said. Miller smiled and poured them another drink.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  D-Fac Number 4, Kandahar Airfield.

  “Oh the sun beats down and melts the tar up on the roof,

  And your shoes get so hot you w
ish your tired feet were fire-proof.”

  – The Drifters, Under the Boardwalk

  Like every meeting place on the camp, the dining facility was protected by a tall concrete blast wall around its perimeter. The queue for food snaked round the outside of the building and along the inside of the blast wall. There were four main dining facilities on the airfield and twenty thousand hungry mouths. They were busy places. The inside of the facility was bright and bustling, with soldiers coming and going from table to table. Charlie Lockhart got through the main doors and swiped the card that Captain Barr had given him.

  There were about five hundred people seated inside the dining hall, being fed by an army of chefs. In the center of the room was a cold buffet, with meats, cheeses, salads and breads. Local contractors working for the catering firm were serving roast beef, pork and chicken from the hot buffet with steaming vegetables. Further down there was a selection of curries and pastas. One wall was lined up with refrigerators full of bottled water and pallets of Coca Cola. It was like home from home.

  The lights were bright, and the mood was fairly cheery. Above the tables, there were flat screen televisions showing breaking news from back home.

  The food was good, and because he had nowhere else to go, Lockhart took his time and watched the television screens as he ate. He had attempted to disconnect with home life during his adventure, but information was a drug.

  As he reconnected with news that seemed unimportant compared to his recent experiences, he fiddled absently with the bandage covering the new tattoo on his wrist. The material had turned a dusty shard of beige. Nothing stayed white in Kandahar for very long.

  Miller had painted a tiny tattoo on the inside of his wrist, with his blood type and the word دون خوف written underneath it.

  “It means without fear,” she said. Lockhart had liked it immediately. After two dangerous days, it felt like a well-earned battle scar. He was smart enough to know that one day the memories of the attack on the convoy, the exploding concrete blast walls, and all the beautiful memories of the desert would become dulled by time. The tattoo would be a souvenir; a momento mori.