Kismet moved into view again, and bent over Higgins, ministering to his broken arm. “I hope you feel better than you look, my friend.”
“Said…dead…”
“You must mean Colonel Saeed. He told me you were dead, too.” Kismet made a rough noise, and it took Higgins a moment to realize that it was a chuckle. “I’d say he was half right. For both of us.”
“Where…?”
“He’s gone. They’re all gone.” Kismet glanced around furtively. “I don’t know what’s going on. I searched the whole building…hell, the entire compound. There’s no one here. It’s like they abandoned it. This is probably some elaborate ploy, but what choice do we have?”
Higgins felt a throb of discomfort as Kismet wrapped a length of cloth around his right forearm, but nothing like the agony he’d earlier experienced.
“There,” the American said. “That’s best I can do with what I’ve got. Any other serious injuries I should know about?”
Higgins impulsively shook his head and immediately regretted it.
“That’s what I thought,” Kismet replied, commiserating. “Come on, let’s get you on your feet.”
Kismet’s guarded enthusiasm was contagious. Tapping into a fresh vein of resolve, Higgins felt his strength returning and with only a little assistance from the American, was soon standing more or less on his own; Kismet kept a steadying hand on Higgins’ left biceps.
Kismet stopped abruptly before they reached the exit. “Well I’ll be damned. Look at that.”
Higgins strained to focus his good eye, and followed Kismet’s pointing finger to a tabletop just to the right of the door. Lying there, as casually as one might leave their coat draped over the back of a chair, were a pair of unsheathed kukri knives. Kismet scooped them up and pressed one into Higgins’ left hand.
As his fingers curled around the carved wooden hilt, he felt a strange mix of emotions: pride, that he would have yet another chance to die as hundreds of Gurkhas before him had, with his blade in hand; weary resentment, at the fact that circumstance had denied him relief from his suffering, and instead conspired to place him once more in harm’s way; and a singe grain of desperate hope. The blade was a symbol of all those things, but for practical purposes, it was next to useless. He couldn’t hold it in his dominant hand, and was nearly blind to boot… if fate brought them once more into contact with the enemy, it wouldn’t be much of a fight.
But as Kismet had indicated, the building in which they had been held captive was abandoned. They found a storeroom that contained, among other things, uniforms with the red triangle insignia of the Republican Guard sewn on the shoulders.
With no little help from Kismet, Higgins donned a uniform and even managed to stuff his feet into a pair of unlaced boots. As a disguise, it wouldn’t pass even the most cursory inspection, but he felt less vulnerable with his nakedness covered.
With Kismet leading the way, they ventured outside the building. Dawn had broken, but there was no activity whatsoever in close proximity to the structure. Look’s like something from a bleedin’ Mad Max movie, Higgins tried to say, but his cracked lips wouldn’t form the words.
Kismet nevertheless seemed to understand. “Yeah, I don’t like it either.” Hefting the kukri, he turned slowly, scanning in every direction for some indication that their captors were waiting to spring a trap. If they were there, they were well hidden.
A dust-streaked Toyota Land Cruiser was parked nearby and the two men headed for it. Kismet opened the door for Higgins and offered a steadying hand as the latter slid into the passenger seat, and then circled around to the driver’s side. The American searched all the usual places for a spare key, and finding none, shifted the transmission into neutral and popped the hood. He was away only a few moments before the engine turned over and rumbled to life.
“Handy trick,” Higgins managed to say.
Kismet nodded as he slid into the driver’s seat. He reached over the steering wheel and insinuated inserted the tip of his kukri into the gap between the wheel and the steering column. There was an audible click as the locking pin released, and the wheel moved in his hands. “Now we run the gauntlet.”
Higgins nodded weakly. There was no way this was going to work, but then there was also no reason for the Republican Guard to have abandoned their compound. Events were now so far beyond his control, the only reasonable course of action was to keep moving toward whatever was going to happen.
But nothing did happen.
Kismet wandered through the walled enclosure until he found an open gate leading out onto a paved road. The guardhouse beside the gate appeared empty as well, but beyond that, there was at least some evidence that the world had not come to an end without them. Kismet swung the Land Cruiser out onto the road and headed south, away from the city.
Much of what followed was a blur for Higgins. Several hours and perhaps hundreds of miles slipped by in a pain-induced fugue. He awakened from time to time, mostly when Kismet stopped to top off the petrol from the spare cans mounted to the vehicle’s bumper, but if anything more dramatic than that occurred, it escaped his notice.
In the years to come, Higgins would marvel at the miracle of their escape; it seemed like a religious mystery, something comforting that was meant to be accepted on faith, and which would only be diminished by too many questions.
It would be more than two decades before he would have reason to think about it differently.
PART THREE
Grave Secrets
NINE
The sun was just starting to brush the tops of the trees that lined the west fence as Joe King finished his last pass with the big riding mower, and steered the machine onto the gravel path leading back for the shed. No sooner had he dismounted to throw open the wooden doors when the automated sprinklers activated and droplets of water began falling on the immaculate — and freshly cut — emerald green turf.
Just made it, he thought as he got back on the mower and coaxed it forward a few more feet, into its parking spot. It had been a busy day. His plan to get an early start on the north lawn had been derailed when, on his way out, he’d noticed some fresh graffiti — the third time in as many weeks. He’d spent the better part of the morning scouring paint off the weathered marble and picking up the litter — fast food wrappers and beer bottles — that had been left behind by the vandals. The first time it had happened, he had called the police, but aside from taking the report and suggesting that maybe some additional security measures were in order, the officer had been of little help. Joe understood. From their point of view, it must have seemed like a victimless crime. Indeed, aside from being put off his schedule a few hours, what harm had been done?
But it wasn’t so much the fact of the vandalism that concerned Joe, as the tone and message of the graffiti: swastikas, triple-Ks, and a variety of slurs ranging from the old classics to some Joe had never heard before and only barely grasped.
What did you expect? He had thought to himself as he scrubbed the last bits of paint from a tombstone. Keepin’ one of the oldest cemeteries for black folks in the county. ‘Course the rowdies are gonna make it all about color.
In the end, he’d managed to get the north lawn cut before the sprinklers came on, and now the defaced graves were the furthest thing from his mind as he pulled the shed doors closed and shackled them with a padlock. He knew it had been a slow day up at the office — folks weren’t, contrary to the old joke, dying to get in, at least not into a plot at the Ashley Rest Memorial Gardens, which suited Joe just fine — and that meant plenty of time for Candace to whip up one of her spectacular suppers. He quickened his pace, skirting along the edge of the stately manor that now served as the chapel, and aimed for the adjoining building, a small but adequate single story house that he and Candace called home.