Arab Summer Page 10

  “So where does that leave you?”

  “Here in Buraida with a 9mm Ruger with eight rounds in the magazine.” She stood up.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Back over there.”

  “To do what?”

  “I don’t see that I have much choice. The same thing I did last night.”

  “How in the name of Allah do you propose to do that?”

  “I’ll have to figure that out when I get there.”

  “Sit down. Going over there to snoop around and see if Nibmar and company showed up was one thing. Going back there by yourself with only a handgun to do something about it is crazy. They’ve got automatic weapons. They’ll kill you.”

  Sasha remained standing. “I have to do something.”

  Saif looked her in the eye for a long moment, then shrugged and shook his head. He stood up, walked to the closet and opened the door. “I don’t know why I’m doing this, but if you won’t take no for an answer, at least let’s add some additional firepower and plan something.” Sasha arched her head back as Saif turned around holding two smooth-skinned green hand grenades the size of oranges. “These aren’t the real kind, only concussion grenades. They make an amazingly loud bang and a blinding flash. Anyone in the room won’t be able to hear anything for at least 30 seconds, and will be stunned and blinded for a while.” He rested them on an end table, then reached back into the closet and pulled out two more, then produced another Ruger and two extra clips. He must have seen the look on her face because he said, “I already told you. This is Buraida.” He handed her one of the clips, then walked back over and sat in the chair by the desk. “Sit down and we can talk this through. After last night’s hits, the al-Mujari is scattered all over the city. I hear their resources are strained, and they’re disorganized. I think we can come up with something that will work.”

  Saif drove them toward the mosque again.

  “Why are you doing this?” Sasha asked Saif on the way there. “This isn’t your fight.”

  “I don’t know whether it is or not. I’m ambivalent. I have as good a reason to be angry at the royals as anyone, seeing my father’s business destroyed and watching his confidence and energy bleed from him day by day.”

  “It must be heartbreaking.”

  “It is.” He paused, as if thinking. “But I also love Saudi Arabia, our people, our culture. I’m not ready to believe that violently overthrowing the government is the right thing for us. Particularly if it’s to replace the royals with Sheik bin Abdur and his fundamentalist principles and rhetoric. He’d be having us all live in tents again, I’m afraid.” He turned to her. “And I’m doing it because I respect your commitment to Yassar, your courage. You believe in something, or somebody, and you’re not afraid to fight for it.” He started to add something else, but held his tongue.

  Sasha felt her emotions rise. She couldn’t tell if she was reacting out of exhaustion or tension, but she reached out and placed her hand on his forearm. “Thank you.”

  Saif eased the car to a stop on an unlit section of a side street a block from the mosque and cut the engine. From there they could approach the building next to it by cutting through the alleys. He said, “I’ll leave the key above the visor, just in case one of us needs to run for it. If anything happens, meet at my house. Ready?”

  Sasha nodded and got out of the car. She didn’t wait for Saif, but, as planned, climbed over a chain-link fence, crossed a backyard and then headed through an alley toward the mosque. Her stomach was fluttering as she crouched in the shadows across the street about 100 meters down from the mosque. She waited, observing. After five minutes of seeing no one, she crossed the street and started walking toward the mosque. The Chevy Suburban was still parked near the front. She stepped into an alley about 25 meters from the mosque and crouched in the darkness. She reached inside her abaya and grabbed the Ruger. Any minute now.

  After another ten minutes she began to wonder if something had gone wrong, and then heard the explosion and saw a flash like the noon sun a few hundred meters down the street in the opposite direction. She flattened herself against the wall of the building. She heard men shouting and running in the street. A moment later two men carrying automatic weapons dashed past her on the sidewalk in the direction of the concussion grenade. She waited another moment, her heart thumping in her chest, and peered out from the alley toward the mosque. No activity. She took a deep breath, then started walking toward the mosque, at the same time reaching inside her abaya and grabbing the concussion grenade. When she was 10 meters from the door to the building next to the mosque she had to breathe through her mouth to keep from hyperventilating. She passed a narrow alley, saw movement to her right and turned to see the butt of a rifle speeding toward her. She felt a sharp pain in her head and lost consciousness.

  Sasha woke up in a dusty room that smelled like perspiration and dry-rotted wood. The right side of her head felt like she’d been hit by a truck. Then she remembered: it had been a rifle butt. She was bound in a seated position to a wooden chair, her arms held flat to her sides and immobile, with duct tape wrapped around her torso and the chair back. The room was dimly lit, but enough that she could see Khalid hunched in one corner with Ali, talking in low tones. Two other men sat on either side of the door with automatic weapons across their laps. We must be in the building next to the mosque. Just as she turned her head, Nibmar walked into her range of vision.

  “Welcome back, whore.” She stopped and bent over her, put her face up to Sasha’s, smiling. “You’ll notice your feet are not bound again. Last time it was an oversight on our part. Now it’s because we’ll need you to be able to spread your legs.” She spat in Sasha’s face, then slapped her, following it up with a backhand to the other side of her face. Sasha saw the two men with rifles sit up straight and Khalid and Ali turn to look at her.

  Khalid strutted over and positioned himself in front of Sasha. He leaned over to put his face inches from hers. “Who’s helping you?”

  Sasha felt her pulse in her temples. “No one.”

  He stood up, walked over and smacked her in the face so hard she cried out. He said, “Where did you get the weapons?”

  “In a backyard shed I was hiding in. We’re in Buraida, remember?”

  He slapped her again, then walked back over to the corner with Ali.

  As he sat down, Nibmar said to Ali, “We’ll be leaving as soon as our other two men return.” Then to Khalid, “Do with her what you wish, but please make certain she doesn’t survive until morning.”

  Sasha fought back a wave of hopelessness by gritting her teeth and summoning her hatred of Nibmar. She said, “You’re a traitor to Saudi Arabia, to your husband and to your religion. No matter what happens you’ll die a dried-up, lonely old hag with—”

  Nibmar sprang at her and slapped her again, then started throwing wild punches. “Infidel whore! How dare you talk to me about my religion!”

  By then Ali had crossed the room, grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her back. Sasha’s chest was heaving. She glared back at Nibmar, then laughed at her. “That’s right, Nibmar, your other little mama’s boy will come take care of you. This one is even more of a wimp than Ibrahim was.” At that point Khalid strode up to her holding the roll of duct tape and taped a piece over Sasha’s mouth.

  “Silence, cow. You’ll have plenty of opportunity to moan later,” Khalid said.

  Sasha’s gaze was shooting around the room as she tried to think of something, anything, to get out of there. She stood up, forced into a hunch because she was strapped to the back of the chair, and ran toward the door. She’d almost reached it when one of the men seated by the door smashed her in the shoulder with his rifle, throwing all of his weight behind it. She collapsed sideways to the floor, the wind knocked out of her. He stood over her as she gasped to get air back into her lungs. He picked up the chair by the back, lifting her with it like she was a ten-pound barbell, walked back to the center of the room and plopped h
er down again.

  She heard a knock on the door. The other man stationed by it looked at Khalid, who nodded, and then the man turned and opened it. Saif walked into the room as casually as if he were stopping by to visit friends, his hands in the pockets of his wind-breaker. He nodded to Khalid. Oh my God. Sasha felt her limbs go limp, her hopes sink and tears begin to form in her eyes.

  Khalid said, “Saif, my friend. So you’ve reconsidered?”

  Saif shrugged and said, “I’m keeping an open mind.” He stepped farther into the room and observed Sasha, making no comment.

  “That’s tonight’s entertainment. For later. You can be first if you want. Consider it a signing bonus,” Khalid said. He motioned to one of the men by the door, then pointed to Sasha, then to the back of the room. The man walked over, grabbed the chair Sasha was bound to and dragged her across the room. He opened the door in the rear, walked her through a small anteroom, opened another door and deposited her in a room lit with only a single bulb hanging from the ceiling. Before he left and closed the doors, Sasha heard men laughing from the front room.

  Sasha let out a long sigh as best she could with the duct tape over her mouth. She inhaled, her nose stinging from the cold air in the room. She felt desperation clouding her brain, tried to pull her wits together. Think. She closed her eyes and felt another wave of hopelessness. Saif. What had he said in the car? He was ambivalent. He’d either changed his mind and decided to betray her, or had been setting her up all along. But why give her the gun and the concussion grenade if he was setting her up? What difference does it make? I’m dead. She hung her head and started to cry.

  She cried for a minute or two, then lifted her head and took a deep breath. Pull it together. She looked around. A few pieces of furniture, a dusty wooden floor, two boarded-up windows on the left and the single door leading to the anteroom. The only escape was through the windows, and that would be impossible without tools. But she’d noted a window in the anteroom. Maybe. First she’d have to free herself. She checked her bindings. The duct tape lashing her to the chair was secure around her arms, keeping her from lifting them. She shifted in the chair, checking it. It was wobbly and old. If she leaped into the air and fell straight down on her back she might be able to smash it. Either that or hurl herself backward into the wall. Once she’d smashed the chair there might be enough slack in the tape that she’d be able to get her arms free. Then if she couldn’t get the window in the anteroom open she’d at least be waiting for whoever was the first to come into the room with a piece of the chair as a club.

  She stood up and shuffled toward the door, then glanced over her shoulder at the far corner of the room, opting for a run straight at it and a last-minute turn before hitting the wall. Would they hear the chair smash from the other room? Through two doors? Did it matter? She couldn’t see any other options. Quit stalling. Move or die. Her pulse started racing. She flexed her leg muscles, ready to run.

  The door opened and light flooded into the room. Saif! He shut the door, holding a finger to his mouth. What the...? He sat her back down, then opened a pocketknife and started cutting the duct tape.

  “Shuush. This can work,” he said, “but we need to move fast.” He’d freed her from the chair and now pulled the duct tape from her mouth. “Try not to shoot me, too,” he said as he reached into his pocket for his Ruger and handed it to her. “Ali has the other Ruger. I’m sure Khalid is armed. Two men with AK-47s on either side of the front door.” He reached into his other windbreaker pocket and showed her a concussion grenade. “If we both get out alive we’ll meet at my house.” Then he took off his windbreaker and pulled the pin on the grenade, still holding the safety clip in place. He led her back into the anteroom, stopped behind the door and said, “Eight seconds.” Saif let go of the safety clip and it clanged on the floor. He dropped the grenade back into the windbreaker pocket, waited a few seconds, then opened and walked through the door carrying his windbreaker. She heard him say, “I changed my mind about screwing her,” as he was closing the door.

  Sasha’s limbs were buzzing with adrenaline as she moved to the side of the doorway and pressed her back to the wall. She racked the slide on the Ruger, closed her eyes, took a deep breath and held it, waited. Three, two, one...

  She wasn’t prepared for the force of the explosion. The wall shook and the door flew open, and even with her eyes closed she could see the yellow flash. She jumped into the doorway in a firing crouch, the Ruger extended in both hands. Everyone was on the floor, dust and smoke thick in the air. She fired two quick rounds, one into the chest of each of the men on either side of the door. She stepped into the room, now hearing muffled moans, seeing Saif moving. He’s alive. Khalid was still in the corner with Ali, the two of them also starting to move. Nibmar appeared to be unconscious. Sasha started toward Ali, who rolled over with the Ruger in his hand. She fired, putting him down with a round in the chest. Khalid had now sat up and was looking at her, dazed, coughing. She pointed the Ruger at his chest and fired. When she saw he was still moving she put another round in his head. Five rounds, three left.

  Move, she told herself. She knew the explosion would bring others. She knelt next to Saif and whispered, “Are you okay?”

  He nodded, said, “Go.”

  She didn’t have much time. Sasha saw the roll of duct tape on the floor, ran over and grabbed it. She stepped behind Nibmar and taped her mouth, then her wrists. When Sasha was finished taping, Nibmar opened her eyes, not seeming to recognize Sasha or know what was happening. Sasha stepped over to one of the dead guards, picked up his AK-47 and slung it over her shoulder, then strode back over to Nibmar and pulled her to her feet. She was wobbly but she could stand. Sasha smacked her in the face a few times and pushed her toward the door. “Come on, First Wife. I’m taking you back to Yassar so you can tell him about your friends in the al-Mujari. Outside or I’ll kill you here.” She grabbed Nibmar by the hair and forced her through the door in front of her, checked both directions, then herded her toward the Chevy Suburban. She took a chance the keys were in it—no luck. Not in the ignition or over the driver’s side visor. God! Time wasted. She’d have to make it to Saif’s car.

  She had started pushing Nibmar across the street when Nibmar began to resist, swinging her elbows and trying to kick Sasha. Sasha stood her up and smacked her in the face with the Ruger, pushed her forward, but when they reached the alley Nibmar lay down and refused to budge. “Alright, then I’ll have to drag you.” Sasha hooked her arm through Nibmar’s taped wrists, hoping the duct tape would hold, and started dragging her into the alley like a sack of rocks. Now she heard shouts and footsteps in the street behind her. She got another surge of adrenaline and turned back to see two men racing up the street toward them carrying automatic weapons. Sasha dropped Nibmar and slid the AK-47 off her shoulder. She crouched and took aim. One man kept running and died from the first burst, the second dived behind a car 50 meters away. Sasha put her face next to Nibmar’s ear and said, “Make your choice. Run or die here.” Nibmar got to her feet and started running down the alley just as the return fire from the other man ricocheted off the wall next to them. Nibmar was in front of Sasha when they emerged from the alley into the backyard, so Sasha grabbed Nibmar’s hair again and guided her to the chain-link fence, pushed her as she climbed, then threw her over it. Sasha leaped over it herself, then muscled Nibmar toward Saif’s car.

  She stuffed Nibmar in the passenger seat and drove off, holding the Ruger to her head. Now what? At that moment Nibmar swung her arms at Sasha, pushing away the Ruger long enough to allow her to grab the steering wheel. She yanked it and the car swerved and crashed into a truck parked at the curb. Sasha’s head hit the steering wheel, dazing her. Nibmar was crumpled half on the seat and half on the floor. The Ruger had fallen from Sasha’s hand. She opened the door to look for it on the floor just as a spray of automatic weapon fire shattered the windows of the car. She pressed herself to the ground, grabbed the AK-47 and crawled to the back of the
car. She couldn’t see where the fire was coming from. She felt her pulse throbbing in her temples, was aware of the soreness in her back, the pain in the side of her head from the rifle butt, now in the front from the steering wheel. She tried to slow her breathing. Focus.

  She raised herself up to peer over the trunk of the car and saw a starburst of muzzle flame from the shooter. Now she could see his shape crouched behind the fence a block away in the wash of the security lights from the building behind him. She ducked down and crawled forward, around the front of the car, then past the truck she’d crashed into. She peeked out from around the truck’s fender. She could still see him. She took a deep breath, exhaled, then rose up and braced the AK-47 on the hood of the truck and fired. She saw the man go down, then she ran back to Saif’s car. No! Nibmar was gone.

  As she stared into the empty front seat of the car, she heard the crunch of someone’s foot on the gravel behind her, then a shot shattered the windshield next to her head. On instinct, Sasha rolled, hearing another shot as she righted herself and came up firing at the shape she saw five meters away. The burst from the AK-47 flattened Nibmar in the street. Sasha walked over and kicked the Ruger away from her. She felt for a pulse. Nothing. Good riddance, bitch. She picked up the Ruger and ran.

  Sasha waited in Saif’s backyard for an hour before he arrived. “Are you okay?” he asked.

  Sasha was so exhausted and emotionally spent that she only mustered a nod. “You?”

  “I see you broke my car” was all he said as he opened the back door and motioned her in. “I’ll need to borrow my father’s to drive you back to Riyadh. It’s a good thing you’ll be sitting on my right, because I can’t hear anything out of my left ear.” They tiptoed into his study and closed the door. “You’re a mess. I suppose the first thing you’ll want to do is take a shower.”