“Not enough time,” said Jardi. “Look, that scout car.” He pointed to a Russian vehicle on its side at the head of the convoy. “Look at the aerial on that baby. The jets’ll be here in a few minutes.”
That was Jardi too: in the middle of battle, with bullets flying about, he was coolly noting which vehicles had radios — and estimating what their range was and how soon MiGs would respond to the ambush.
Ulu Beg stood.
“It’s time to flee,” Ulu Beg yelled.
But it was too late. Far down the line he saw three men break cover and begin to gallop toward the crippled vehicles, their weapons high over their heads in exultation.
“No,” commanded Ulu Beg, “stop—”
But two more broke from the line and others turned back toward him, frozen in indecision.
“Back,” he shouted.
“We must leave the others,” Jardi said. “The jets’ll be here in seconds.”
But one of the men was Kamran Beg, a cousin, who had been bodyguard to the boy Apo.
Ulu Beg saw his own child rise from the gully and begin to run down the hill.
“What the hell,” said Jardi. “Why the hell did you—”
“I did nothing. I—”
Then they saw the tank. It was a Russian T-54, huge as a dragon. It swung into the enfilade. Tanks had never come this high before. Ulu Beg watched as the creature swung along on its tracks, its turret cranking. It moved with awkwardness, tentative even, despite its weight.
“Down!” Jardi yelled, in the second before the tank fired.
The shell exploded under the first three running men. They were gone in the blast. Others raced up the hill. The machine gun in the turret cut them down.
The small boy lay still on the ground.
Ulu Beg rose to run to him, but something pressed him to the earth.
“No,” somebody hissed in his ear.
Jardi vaulted free and raced down the slope. He had abandoned his rifle and held only a rocket-propelled grenade. He ran crazily, not bothering to veer or dodge. He ran right at the tank.
Its turret swung to him. Machine-gun bullets cut at the earth and Ulu Beg could see them reaching for Jardi, who seemed to slide in a shower of dust as the bullets kicked by him.
He lay still.
The tank began to heave up the ridge toward them.
Ulu Beg saw that they were finished. They couldn’t get back up the slope; the tank would shoot them down. A tank. Where had it come from?
He tried to clear his brain. He could think only of his son, dead on the slope, the brave American, dead on the slope, his men, his tribe, dead on the slope.
But Jardi rose. He was not hit at all. He rose, sheathed in the dust he’d fallen through, and stood, one leg cocked insolently on a stone. A wind came and his jacket billowed. From down the slope they could hear Jardi cursing loudly, almost — the man was crazy — laughing.
The tank turret swung to him again. But Ulu Beg saw that Jardi was close enough now and that the big gun would never reach him in time, and as its barrel swung on to him Jardi fired the RPG one-handed, like a pistol.
The rocket left in a fury of flame, spitting fire as it flew, and struck the tank on the flat part of the hull, just beneath the turret.
The tank began to burn. It fell back on its treads and flames began to pour from its hatch and from its engines. Smoke rose and blew in the breeze.
Jardi threw away his spent launching tube and ran quickly to the boy. He hoisted him and climbed up to them, but he had no smile.
“Come on, get these guys out of here,” he said. “Come on,” he turned to shout at them, “get going, Jesus, you guys, get going!”
The boy was crying.
Ulu Beg was crying.
“You have given my son his life back.”
“Come on, get going,” Jardi urged.
They climbed to the mountains and were over the crest when the first jets arrived.
Ulu Beg smiled in the memory of that day.
Ahead, the mountains loomed.
He reached them at twilight. Toward the end he’d crossed a road and ahead he could see another road, one that crawled up the side of the mountain, but he did not go near it. Cars moved along it. In the falling dark he climbed cold rocks. He found a trickle of water. He tracked it to a pool, and then found the spring. He drank deeply. He sat back. He ate a piece of his dry bread, and drank again. He was in the chill of a shadow but could look out and see the desert, still white and flat and dangerous.
He climbed up. At the top, the city of Tucson lay before him. He saw a city built on sand, on a plain, cupped on all sides by other mountains. A few tall buildings stood in its center but it was mostly a kind of ramshackle newness. It was nothing like Baghdad, which was very, very old, and on a huge river.
God willed it, he thought, and I have made it.
He thought of Jardi and the tank and his son and why he had come to America and he began to weep.
In the morning he rose with the sun. He opened his pack, pushed the machine pistol out of the way, and found his other shirt, a white thing with snap buttons. He pulled the shirt on.
They had prepared him well. But they had also warned him.
“America is like nothing you’ve ever seen. Women walk around with breasts and buttocks exposed. Food and lights everywhere, everywhere. Cars, more cars than you can imagine. And hurry. Americans all hurry. But they have no passion. Any Turk has passion. Among Turks and Mexicans and Arabs, passion runs high. But Americans are even lower, for they feel nothing. They move as though asleep. They do not care for their children or their women. They speak and talk only of themselves.
“In all this, you will be dazzled. Expect it. There is no way we can prepare you for the shock of it all. Even a small city in America is a spectacle. A large one is like a festival of all the peoples of earth. But remember also: the grotesque is common in America. Nobody will notice, nobody will care, nobody will pay you any attention. Nobody will ask you for papers if you are cautious. You need no permits, no licenses. Your face is your passport. You may go anywhere.”
Ulu Beg reinstructed himself in these lessons as he came down the last hill in the dawn light to the road. He moved swiftly. The distance was but a few twisting miles and the cars that sped by paid him no attention. The houses quickly became thick: small places of cinderblock in the sand and scrub. At each house was a car and in some of them men were leaving for work. Ulu Beg walked along the street. He paused to read the sign: SPEEDWAY, it said. He came to a group of men waiting by a corner. A bus arrived and they climbed aboard. He walked another few blocks and again the same thing happened. At a third corner, he climbed aboard himself.
“Hey. Fifty cents,” the driver said angrily. Ulu Beg searched his pockets. They had told him about this. Fifty cents was two quarters. He found the coins and dropped them in the box, and took a seat and rode down the Speedway toward the center of the city.
He got out near the bus station and looked for a hotel.
“Always stay near bus stations. Small places, dirty rooms, cheap. But a hotel, always a hotel. In a motel, they’ll ask about an automobile. You’ll have to explain that you don’t have one. Why not? they’ll ask. They’ll think you’re mad. In America it is exceedingly odd not to have an automobile. Everybody has an automobile.”
He chose a place called the Congress — the name proclaimed proudly on a metal frame on the roof — across from a Mexican theater in a crumbling section of the city. It was a four-story building with a bookstore, a barbershop, and a place that sold gems in it, across from the train station and behind the bus station.
He walked into the dim brown lobby.
A fat lady looked up when he came to the desk.