Work Text:
Salim
Sand Caverns
2120 hours
Depth: 144 ft
“You fire that,” Salim breathed, his head cocked to avoid the oily barrel of the carbine rifle bouncing on his right shoulder as he marched, “and my ears will burst.”
He didn’t dare move an inch, but he met Sergeant Nick Kay’s eye out of the corner of his own. “Maybe. Let me put it to you this way,” Nick replied in a stage-whisper. “Would you rather be deaf, or would you rather be dead?”
Salim wheezed out a noise that was meant to be a laugh. “Fair point.” His breath shuddered anxiously out of his lungs. “But I’d rather be alive and uninjured, if you’re really asking.”
Nick didn’t answer; he only flexed his fingers on Salim’s left shoulder, adjusting his grip as he guided Salim down the dim tunnel.
Shit. Fuck. Salim dropped his gaze to the bedrock as it crunched beneath his boots: he could barely make out the shape of them, not with the flashlight on Nick’s rifle aimed directly ahead, a glaring knife that cut only into the belly of the darkness. Well, what did it matter, anyway? His boots had no solution for him, even if he could see them.
Puffing, he subtly worked his wrists in a circle, testing the integrity of his restraints. The flex cuffs held fast. If he could just ─ roll his shoulders a little, get his hands far up his spine enough that he could reach his knife on his hip, he could try to saw through the bulky plastic seal.
He thought about pretending to stumble, maybe, but dismissed the idea: Nick had too solid a grasp on him. Hell, even if he could manage to slip his knife from its sheath, where would he hide it? Up his sleeve? Actually, that wasn’t a bad idea ─ but, shit, no, the other soldier would be watching at the first sign of a disturbance, and Salim doubted he could play both marines for a sucker.
Either way, he was fucked. At the very least, he had to cooperate until they’d reached wherever it was they were planning on keeping him.
Unnatural chattering swept into the tunnel like a sudden rush of water, distant but flooding in after them; without even thinking about the rifle, Salim turned his face sharply to search the darkness at their heels when the stuttering echo sounded nearly on top of them. The lieutenant’s penlight streaked along the cave walls as he frantically whipped his head back and forth to check if they were being pursued.
The brevity of the marine’s movements created a frightening effect: Salim could only catch glimpses of the crypt, as though they were illuminated by a camera’s sporadic shooting, flash, flash, flash, and it served to make the hair on the back of his neck stand straight up. Those creatures were out there somewhere, bearing down on the three of them like a starving pack of jackals.
Yet nothing came screeching in from the blackness, winged and terrible ─ at least not yet, though he had a feeling none of them wanted to wait around and test their luck.
“We’re not alone down here,” Salim whispered. Neither soldier responded. “You gave me your word,” he tried again, with a renewed sense of urgency, “that I wouldn’t be hurt. Now you’re using me as a meat shield?”
“Hey.” Nick squeezed him. “Us? We killed that thing. You did right by me back there. I’m gonna do right by you.” He eased off the pressure. “I’m not tryna hurt you. I’m not gonna try. Just need a little trust here.”
Trust? He fought the urge to laugh unkindly and let out another shallow breath instead. It was tempting to point out that he was the only one risking his neck here in the name of trust, but Nick wouldn’t be convinced to free him, that much was clear. “All right.”
“And maybe don’t move your head too much,” Nick added blithely. “This baby gets hot.”
Salim cracked a wry smile ─ what else was there to do? — but he knew that cooperating to this extent for much longer was a death sentence. The Americans were practically serving him to the demons, all trussed up like a piece of meat.
No. Fuck no. If he was going to die down here, he was going to die fighting like hell to see his son again.
“I want to trust you,” Salim went on under his breath, “but it’s meant to work both ways, isn’t it? Untie me and we can prove to each other that we’re as trustworthy as we claim to be.”
“Hey.” It was the other soldier, whispering sharply from the rear. “Keep a fucking lid on it, boys.”
“What was that?” Salim hissed back, trying to throw the lieutenant a spiteful look over his free shoulder. “I can barely hear you over the sound of you dragging that thing after us.”
The marine stalked along behind them ─ was it astern, Salim thought, in nautical terms? ─ a rifle in one hand and the ankle of a demon in his other. Its wings scraped raspily through the dirt as the lieutenant hauled it, and its head was limp on its shoulders, lolling and jumping when its skull bumped along the rocky, uneven terrain.
Awkward as the angle was, Salim could make out the flush on the lieutenant’s high cheekbones, the open-mouthed way he panted, the flexing of his arm and the tilt to his body as he tugged whatever it was after them. Despite the effort it took to carry the thing, he was managing to keep both pace and his focus; he kept his head on a swivel, scanning the tunnels behind them to ensure that they remained empty.
“You just watch your step,” the marine shot back coarsely, “and your mouth. Ice you’re standing on’s thin enough as is, and I been told I have the devil’s temper: hot as hellfire.” True to his word, the glare Salim caught the lieutenant aiming at him was smoldering. “Don’t give me a reason to melt it. Catch my drift?”
“American poetry.”
“What’s poetic is how I’m gonna bury you in this fucked up tomb,” the lieutenant practically growled, “if you don’t give it a rest.” The disgust in his voice was palpable. “But dyin’ down here might just be what you deserve, huh?”
He seemed convinced that they were enemies. Truth be told, Salim couldn’t even remember his name, but he didn’t expect a pigheaded leatherneck like the lieutenant to have reasonable priorities in times of crises; people like him would rather lay the blame at the feet of the easiest target.
As though he had anything to do with any of the absolutely deranged things that were happening beneath the earth, just because he was Iraqi. He didn’t know what was going on down here any more than they did.
“I’ve done nothing wrong,” Salim spat in frustration, and Nick shouldered him, but the intent behind it wasn’t unkind.
“Let it go,” he said in a quiet voice. “You too, man. Let’s just get where we’re going and figure our shit out from there.”
For a long moment, Salim kept his neck craned, staring coolly over his shoulder in silent challenge; the lieutenant met it, his eyes dark like burning coal, a glossy sheen of sweat on his face and his neck, a layer of grime beneath that.
That’s what thinned Salim’s ire: seeing this foreign man look so roughed up, so human, like he had been down in the dirt fighting for his life the same way Salim had been. No matter their differences, they had more in common with each other than they did with those things from the deep, and their best chance at survival was to work together.
Salim set his jaw in a hard-to-parse mixture of annoyance and consolation, then turned his head away and ended their stalemate.
Regardless, the air between them stayed fraught ─ then, around the corner, a light broke through the tension and the darkness. Salim exhaled shortly with relief at the sight, and the bitchy lieutenant said, “Nicky, get the colonel on the CNR and tell him we’re sixty seconds out.” A beat, then he added, in an almost friendly tone, “And tell ‘im we brought a date.”
Behind him, Salim heard the affirmative click of Nick’s radio. The sergeant stated clear, slow, and quiet, “Dropkick, this is Mailman Three, how copy? Over.”
Whatever their CO’s answer was, Salim couldn’t hear.
“Approaching western passage,” Nick said after a pause, “ETA forty-five seconds, and we got you the early bird special: an Iraqi PW and an unidentified lifeform. It’s one of the, uh, the things we told you we saw. Over.” A strained silence followed. Sensing something was off, Salim glanced back at Nick, forgetting that there was a gun there and practically kissing it as it rode on his shoulder, and he found the sergeant looking equally uncertain. He tilted his mouth closer to the radio. “Dropkick, this is Mailman Three, do you copy? Over.” To himself, and maybe to the other soldier, he muttered, “C’mon, Colonel.”
Salim held his breath, straining to listen. Then, over the sound of their footsteps, over the sound of Nick’s carbine rustling Salim’s fatigues, over the sound of his own beating heart, he could make out a tinny, faraway voice.
The words were too fuzzy to understand, but the shift in Nick’s expression ─ illuminated by the lamps as they made their approach ─ betrayed his discomfort with the colonel’s response. Salim swallowed hard around the lump that began swelling in his throat, and he was evidently right to worry if the lieutenant’s anticipatory whistle was any indicator.
“That’s promising. He must be nice,” Salim said instead, hoping that a good sense of humor might spare him the worst of it.
“Oh yeah,” the lieutenant mocked in aggressive delight, “real swell guy, if he likes you. Something tells me he don’t like you much.”
Salim’s stomach started to churn. “Nick . . .”
“Just be cool, man, I got you,” Nick assured him breezily. “There, up ahead. I see the passage.”
They all could ─ such a massive doorway would have been hard to miss. The entry point was an ominous, stony mouth in the caves, and between the gate, the threshold was piled high with debris, years worth of sand buildup and fallen rubble. The very air around it tasted stagnant and ancient, and Salim’s mouth was dry with dust. It would make for a good choke point, at least; part of him hoped those creatures would funnel mindlessly into scope, but a bigger part of him hoped they wouldn’t come at all.
The lieutenant clicked his tongue in a signal for attention. “Hey, you first, Nicky, and then you help your new buddy up. I’ll follow behind with this heavy sumbitch.”
“10-4,” Nick said with surprisingly endearing cockiness.
And in one easy motion, he peeled his rifle from Salim’s shoulder and secured it against the crook of his shoulder, swiftly taking point. Before Nick was even in eyeshot, the lieutenant prodded the muzzle of his carbine into a tender spot at the small of Salim’s back.
“You be good now,” he ordered Salim, his voice low and dangerous ─ and, oddly enough, familiar.
Obeying the instinct to see if he recognized him, Salim jerked back a bit to stare at the lieutenant; he must have looked confused, because the marine scowled at him.
“You forget english, suddenly?”
A little bewildered by the sense of deja vu and a lot put off by that asshole, Salim instead focused his attention on Nick in the interim, watching as he scaled the sand drift to its summit with cool efficiency. As the other two neared, he shifted his rifle to the cradle of his left arm and reached down with his right. “I gotcha, big steps,” he said as he twisted his fingers into the front of Salim’s jacket, fisting the material tight.
Not like he could refuse. Salim took large strides as recommended, aiming to brace his footing on the stones in the sand, though it was awkward and stunted without his arms to help keep his balance. Sergeant Kay’s sturdy hand kept him from reeling too hard as he climbed, however, and they made short work of it.
With Nick’s help, he leveraged himself to the top of the drift, and the landscape that stretched out to greet them was as fascinating as it was foreboding.
The temple was not only huge, but in a worrying state of disrepair. Stone pillars lined the hall, seemingly strong enough to keep what remained of the roof from caving in, though there was still sizable damage to the entire structure ─ and not all of the devastation was from earthquakes, Salim could tell just by the dynamite strapped to the columns. There were obvious signs of battle: the eastern passage was riddled with slugs from a machine gun that likely didn’t belong to the Americans, and most definitely didn’t belong to this decade.
He peered down at the sand beneath his boots. This pileup must have been caused intentionally, he realized, and though the knowledge wasn’t surprising, it was unsettling.
A brief peek through the holes in the temple’s roof assured him that they were dozens and dozens of meters beneath the surface ─ the Americans’ ropes ran up through a particularly large gorge, but they were swallowed by the darkness before he could see where they were fastened, making it impossible to ascertain where the next level of solid ground was. Wherever it was, sunlight still wasn’t able to reach it.
(Salim listlessly wondered if the sun was even still out. He had no idea what time it was.)
Deeper in, there were two statues in mirroring placements on either side of the hall, somehow managing to be menacing even while drenched in the light from the lamps. The generator defiantly chugged along beside the furthermost monument, but its mechanical whirring was choppy and fatigued, betraying its wear and tear. Just like the gun, he thought it looked straight out of WWII.
There were a couple of desks and barrels placed sporadically inside the temple, too, signs that this place had once been inhabited, but the largest and most noticeable was the encampment near the eastern passage. The tent was some sort of ─ some sort of research site, Salim figured, something portable but built to last. He thought it might have been canvas or polyethylene stretched over PVC pipe, material meant for long-use and durability. Whatever it was made of, it was clear to him that the soldiers hadn’t brought it with them nor set it up; they had only taken it over.
So characteristic of Americans, he mused to himself, to invade.
“You’ve made yourselves at home,” he muttered, if only to distract from the offputting feeling he was getting from those leering statues, those demolished doors, the thrumming of the generator. It hardly worked, and he continued in a reluctant whisper, “We should not be here. We were not meant to find this place. Nobody was.”
“Sergeant,” the lieutenant said crankily, as he struggled to haul the demon up the sand hill, “you shut your boy up before I do it for you, am I understood?”
Nick led Salim away by his shoulder. “Understood, sir,” he said, pulling an exasperated face at Salim, who only had it in him to shrug, “we’ll meet you at the site.”
They started across the stony floor together, Nick leading from the back, and Salim could just make out intricate designs beneath the dust as his steps disturbed it. This ruin would have been breathtaking in its day ─ now, though, it made for a haunting tableau.
As they entered the tent, Salim observed that the furniture inside was both equally as old as the gun, and that it was all in remarkably decent shape. Most of the cabinets were made of real (albeit distressed) wood framed by what seemed to be wrought iron; whoever had put this hub together clearly planned on an extended stay.
Probably not this extended, Salim thought dryly.
What was infinitely more interesting than the furniture, however, was what was laid out on top. All sorts of fascinating relics, samples, even a skull were carefully arranged over the tables, some with peeling labels and others without. Papers yellowed with age were hung on pin boards or scattered between the artifacts, but Nick marched him along too fast for him to really pause and absorb what they might have read. From what he could make out, there seemed to be drawn diagrams of ancient findings and mapped routes inside the tunnel system, things of that like, along with a substantial amount of notes written in English.
“This is an archeologist dig,” he surmised aloud.
Nick had taken him to the furthest corner of the tent, where he was ushered down onto a folding stool. The metal legs creaked under Salim’s weight as he settled, and Nick answered, “Was.” He retreated and set the iron baton just out of reach, looking gratifyingly apologetic as he did ─ but clearly not enough to cut him loose. “There was an expedition here decades ago. We’ve been kinda piecing together what happened to ‘em. They found something down here.” He broke into a sardonic half-smile, cocking a brow at Salim. “Wanna guess what?”
“I’ll take a guess,” came a voice from behind them. Nick snapped to attention and Salim followed suit, sitting up straight in his seat if only to look poised. As Nick moved aside, Salim saw that the voice belonged to a man he could only assume was their commanding officer. “My guess,” he continued in a curt tone, “is that he’s the Iraqi.”
The Iraqi? Salim briefly wondered if he should have been flattered, but the way Nick eased half his body between him and the colonel was answer enough. Over Nick’s shoulder, the Americans’ CO vehemently mad dogged Salim, as if he was trying to mentally set him on fire. It sort of worked; he was starting to sweat, at least.
“I dunno, Colonel,” Nick said mildly. “He didn’t even have a gun when I found him ─ I mean, there was a corpse with a pistol, which is why he was armed, but I watched him pick that up. Before that? Nah. Just that stick thing.”
The colonel shifted to turn the brunt of his glower onto Nick instead. (Admittedly, Salim was grateful for the reprieve. Better Nick than him.) “That right? Well, that settles it then, doesn’t it, Sergeant? He couldn’t have possibly hidden his rifle somewhere, or lost it in a fight with these monsters you’ve been seeing. Or during another shock, like when Rachel fell.” A muscle in Nick’s jaw twitched. “And he definitely couldn’t have run out of ammo.”
“I get it, sir,” Nick cut in sharply. “Point taken. I still don’t think he’s your guy.” He turned to Salim. “Right, man? Tell him your name.”
He was at a disadvantage here. He didn’t know what “guy” the Americans were looking for, or why the colonel in particular wanted the guy’s head; yet here he was, dealt in at the table without a full hand, and he didn’t even know what game they were playing. Hesitantly, he answered, “Salim Othman.”
“And you know me. This is Lieutenant Colonel Eric King.” Nick ignored the scathing look his commanding officer targeted at him. “You shoot at any Americans down here, Salim?”
It took a lot of fucking willpower not to roll his eyes, but Salim managed to stone face his way through his answer. “I haven’t done anything.”
This time, their conversation was interrupted by the lieutenant, calling from the mouth of the tent, “I wouldn’t say that.”
Salim watched Eric turn around to address his officer, but the sight he was greeted with made him swear aloud: “What the fuck?” Their prisoner was temporarily forgotten as Eric drifted past the table, the muscles in his back tensing up, and Salim could imagine the chill he was getting. He couldn’t make anything out from his vantage point, but he didn’t have to: he knew the lieutenant had brought the corpse. Instead, he scanned the tables idly in search of something that might help him free himself, half-listening as Eric said, “My god. You were right, Lieutenant. What the hell is that thing?”
“Makes your anus pucker, don’t it? They’re crawling all over this godforsaken place. These two boys are taking credit for the kill.” There was a pause, purposeful enough that Salim looked up to investigate, and he found that he’d somehow become the center of their attention. “Far cry from nothin’, if you ask me,” the lieutenant said in an accusatory drawl.
Before he could think any better of it, Salim deadpanned, “Well, I didn’t.”
His answer must have caught the lieutenant way off guard; he blinked, both his eyebrows jumping up high in surprise, before he schooled his expression back into that cool cowboy squint he normally had about him. “The fuck did you just say to me?”
“Yes,” Salim diverted quickly, before he lost what little control of the situation he had, “we killed it. But look at it ─ those things don’t talk. It’s ─ It’s an animal. At least I can speak English to an American. Haha.” As he said it, he nodded at Nick enthusiastically, a signal to back him up. “I spoke to Nick, because I could.”
“Because you needed to,” Eric said icily. “You needed him.”
At first, Salim could only chuckle incredulously, but when Eric’s somber expression didn’t change, he said, “Oh, you’re serious?” He laughed again, a little more unkindly than before. “No offense to Sergeant Kay, but if I had wanted to kill him, I would have. Those demons are sensitive to sound; all I had to do was whistle and it would have taken care of him for me.”
“If you did that, you might have lost his rifle,” Eric pointed out, but he did seem less sure of himself; good. Maybe he could be talked down if things got any nastier. “All his gear, even; flashlight, ammo, guns . . . I know you Republican Guard troops aren’t the brightest, but you’d have to be a special kind of idiot to let one of those things maul Sergeant Kay when what he’s carrying is as good as gold for someone walking around with a rusty pipe.”
Nick stepped in to testify, clapping a hand to Salim’s shoulder. “Hey, this sneaky motherfucker was lurking around the dark.” (Though that sort of terminology was usually meant to disparage, as he understood it, he believed Nick had meant it as a compliment.) “I didn’t even know he was there, so my back was wide open to him. Could have beat me to death and swiped my gear if he wanted to, but he didn’t.”
The lieutenant said, “No shit, Nicky. Noise would have attracted the sumbitch.” He leveled his eyes on Salim. “You ever hit someone so hard you hear that snap as their bone breaks? You know how loud that shit is?”
Salim stared back at him in repulsion, balling his fists up tight at the small of his back, and didn’t answer.
“Yeah,” the lieutenant breathed, “he does. Look at him. He knows.”
Eric’s face had gone red with anger again, his resolve evidently bolstered by the lieutenant. “Kolchek is exactly right: he couldn’t take you out because he needed this ─ this thing dead first,” he said to Nick in a sharp voice. “Don’t be naive, Sergeant. This is the enemy.”
“This man is not the fucking enemy!” Salim watched with growing apprehension as Nick’s head whipped back and forth to look between the colonel and the lieutenant. “You weren’t there. That’s not how any of it went down.”
“And you weren’t there when she fell!” Eric shouted back.
Then, a gun. Eric had whipped it out from its holster with swift accuracy, and pointed the barrel right at Salim’s forehead. The crash of his metal stool hitting the floor echoed shrilly throughout the temple as he sprang to his feet in a compulsive attempt to avoid execution, and all four voices shouted over each other in a bid to be heard.
“What are you doing?! Don’t point that at me!” In his panic, Salim could only think of Zain, and he prayed aloud in harried Arabic, «I seek protection for you in the perfect words of Allah from every devil and every beast, and from every envious, blameworthy eye ─»
“He killed Rachel! He killed my fucking wife!”
“The hell’s the matter with all of you?! I swear to God, shut the fuck up! They’ll hear! What are you thinking?”
“You’re making a huge mistake, Colonel,” Nicky yelled back, and the lieutenant held onto him by the shoulder, keeping him from getting up into Eric’s face.
“Nick, shut up! You too, Colonel!”
But Nick didn’t. “What if you’re wrong and you’re killing someone who doesn't even deserve it? You want that shit on your conscience, man?”
Eric’s voice was a harsh growl, but he’d holstered his firearm. “Like it’s on yours?”
Nick went still.
“Shit, is that what this is about ─” the lieutenant started to ask, throwing his head back in aggravation. “The fucking checkpoint, Nick, really?”
With a hard jerk of his arm, Nick shouldered the lieutenant off of him. It took both Salim and Kolchek aback, if the way he gawked at his sergeant was anything to go by. Nick didn’t seem concerned with him anymore; he only rounded on Eric, and the two men pressed their foreheads together hard, neither willing to back down as they held each other’s eye.
(Salim sagged into the corner of the tent with relief and tried to catch his breath. The Americans could kill each other like animals for all he cared, so long as they didn’t involve him.)
“You don’t get to fucking bring that up,” Nick said in a surprisingly even voice. “All right? Colonel or no colonel. But you know what? Yeah. That shit fucking bothers me. Killing innocent people bothers me.” He withdrew from Eric, and he looked between his colonel and his lieutenant in disgust. “And it should fucking bother you too. No wonder these people think we’re the enemy.”
It was a comic sight, Salim had to admit, to watch two grown, heavily armed men shuffle their weight awkwardly on their feet, looking thoroughly admonished as they exchanged subdued glances. Maybe he had a chance after all.
Nick asked, “And you know what else?”
Or maybe not. Salim felt the hair on his arms stand up with the shift in atmosphere, the muscles in his thighs and his calves starting to coil tensely as he braced for something he wasn’t even sure was going to happen; but something about the way Nick and Eric were standing near each other, the threatening timbre of their voices, the way they looked at each other . . . Someone might die here.
Though Nick was shaking his head, he never broke eye contact with Eric as he said, “I know for a fact this guy didn’t kill Rachel, ‘cause the way I remember you telling it is that you cut that fucking rope, Colonel.”
He didn’t even see the punch get thrown; he heard it, though, the crack of bone against bone, then the clamoring of Nick’s body hitting the table and knocking it awry. Its legs weren’t even done teetering before Nick was launching himself forward and planting his hands into Eric’s chest in the same movement, and Salim watched him shove hard. As Eric went flailing backwards, Nick followed through with the momentum, his fist colliding into his nose, and Salim heard the impact as though it was a gunshot signaling go.
So he booked it, and his feet hit the ground hard when he made his break for it. The sand scraped sharply under his soles as he ducked past the two scuffling men, narrowly avoiding a wayward elbow as an arm was cocked back for another punch. Breaking through the threshold of the tent, Salim ran, his blood thrumming with adrenaline, but he didn’t get very far. The lieutenant had snatched at him as he darted past and managed to scruff him like a meek kitten, and he was jostled backwards before he could even sprint a meter.
And then there was a real gunshot ─ it was a deafening bang from behind him, and Salim flinched and squeezed his eyes shut. Every cell in his body had frozen, but still he jerked his arms up by pure instinct, trying to raise them in surrender as his lungs hitched and went still in his chest. A beat passed in silence, then another, and when he felt no pain, his shoulders slowly began to unfurl from where they had been hiked up to his ears, and he opened his eyes with a shuddery breath.
“Now,” the lieutenant barked in a steely voice, “ain’t that better? Peace and fuckin’ quiet.” He adjusted his grip on Salim’s uniform, steering him around until he was facing the tent and the soldiers within; Eric and Nick had jumped away from the other, all slack-jawed and wide-eyed ─ Salim looked much the same, he was sure of it ─ but no one had been struck.
Breathing fast and shallow, he glanced at the lieutenant: he had Salim in one hand, and a pistol in the other. It was aimed at the ceiling. He deflated, the air bursting out of him in a noisy gust, and he whisper-shouted, “Are you crazy?! They will have heard that!”
Kolchek manually directed him into braving the ice of his narrowed gaze, his fingers tight in his collar. “You’re damn lucky I didn’t put that bullet between your eyes. You ever pull something like that again, and I will.”
With the warning hanging awfully in the air between them, he pushed Salim forward into the tent.
“Don’t even get me started on you two,” Kolchek was saying as Salim recalibrated his balance, fighting the shakiness in his knees. “Are we in the Girl Scouts or the goddamned US Armed Forces? Fucking embarrassing. Get your shit together, I mean it.”
Salim hesitated just inside the research hub, and when he checked over his shoulder, he wasn’t surprised to see the lieutenant had his gun trained on him again. “Sit down,” Kolchek ordered calmly, “now.”
Deliver me from this, Salim thought wearily, but what else was there to do but obey? Reluctantly, he trooped between Nick and Eric like a kicked dog, and he kept his movements deliberate and slow, paranoid that any wrong gesture he made could be interpreted as unexpected and used as an excuse to shoot him dead.
His seat had been knocked clean over, unfortunately, and it wasn’t until he was standing in front of it that he realized his hands were (literally) tied. Like hell he was going to speak to the Americans right now, so he stuck his boot against the metal frame of the stool, angling his foot between the bars so he could tip it upright. As he did, he heard Kolchek speaking in cutting tones behind him.
“Have a goddamn breather, ladies,” he commanded. “I want you on opposite perimeters to make sure I didn’t attract any uninvited stragglers when I blew my load just there. I don’t care how long it takes, but I don’t want neither of you back here ‘til you’re both cooled off, am I understood?”
“Remember who’s in charge here, Lieutenant,” said Eric, but there was no heat in his voice. “I’m still your commanding officer.”
“Yeah? Until you act like it,” Kolchek shot back, “why don’t you take a fuckin’ walk?”
Eric sucked on his teeth, but he didn’t argue. “Fuck,” he muttered. “I want this man interrogated, and I want,” he hesitated, “whatever that is prepped for autopsy by the time I’m back.” In a wintry voice, he tacked on, “And since you’re the believing sort, Lieutenant, you better pray nobody ─ or nothing ─ heard that gunshot.”
Salim finished leveraging his seat up ─ just with his foot, might he add ─ and he turned around to watch when the marine drawled out an easy, “10-4, sir.”
Eric left first, his fingers interlocked together on the back of his neck as he moped his way out of the tent, heading due west. Nick lingered a little longer, teeming with irritation, and he and the lieutenant stood opposite the other, fixed in a standoff. Then, with a sharp exhale, he stalked outside and made for the east.
There was nobody else to look at now that they were alone. Kolchek stared right back at Salim, and the hushed sound of footsteps grew distant, until the only noise between them was the chugging of the generator and the humming of industrial light bulbs.
He leaned over the desk and silently gestured with the barrel of his gun for Salim to sit down.
Gingerly, he sank into his seat. When he was situated, he chanced an expectant cock of his head. I’ve done my part ─ now you do yours.
It might have been a bold move, considering, but the lieutenant didn’t appear perturbed. He still let Salim sweat a little and kept his gun pointed for a beat longer than he had to, just before he spun it into an impressive twirl on his fingers and holstered it in one smooth, sleek motion.
Peacocking? Yes. Preferable to having it pointed at him? Definitely.
“You’re a lucky sonuvabitch,” Kolchek repeated darkly. “If it weren’t for Nicky, I’d have drilled a hole through ya.”
“And if it weren’t for me, Nicky would be worm dirt, and you would be next.”
The lieutenant dragged his knuckles across the desk as he straightened his posture, but his face remained carefully guarded. Even in the scant amount of time they’d been acquainted ─ minutes? An hour? ─ Salim could tell that this was a man who cared very deeply about how others perceived him. “You really think that’s smart?” he asked, and the tone of his voice was almost genuine. “Threatening me when I’m the guy with the gun, and you’re the guy in the cuffs?”
“I’m not threatening anyone. That’s the whole point,” Salim said impatiently. “Our survival will depend on working together.” Under his breath, he muttered, “Why am I the only one who seems to understand that?”
Kolchek ignored him and changed the subject. “Where’s your rifle?”
Fine. He’d play this game, at least for a bit. Not like he had any other choice. He pressed his tongue into the back of his teeth, squinting up at the lieutenant, then sighed. “In a ravine somewhere. I dropped it during the aftershocks.”
“And this wasn’t your pistol?” He held up the firearm expectantly.
“No. That gun was on ─” The man’s name suddenly halted on Salim’s tongue; Esam. His name had been Esam. “─ on the corpse back there,” he settled on mildly, watching as Kolchek slipped the gun back into a pocket on his ballistic vest. “I dropped my own pistol during the first earthquake.”
And something very strange happened: the lieutenant actually smiled. It was small and didn’t quite reach his eyes, but one corner of his mouth quirked upwards very briefly, and then it was gone. “You dropped both your guns?”
Well, how about that? A half-smile, sort of. More of a quarter-smile, really, but either way, Salim echoed the gesture delicately, hoping that he could inspire the lieutenant to be friendlier. He said, playfully faux-defensive, “The ground was shaking! And I was nervous; my hands were sweaty.”
“Republican Guard, huh.” Kolchek fully smiled this time, but it was unkind, and Salim instantly knew his tentative olive branch had been rejected. “Ain’t you supposed to be the best of the best, butterfingers? Saddam’s fuckin’ elite?” His laughter trailed off into a condescending hum. “Hell, you boys mighta won the fight if y’all could hold onto your goddamn rifles.”
A muscle in Salim’s jaw jumped in irritation, and he had to set his teeth to keep from scowling. What fight? It was an invasion, he thought, but didn’t say. What he did say was, “This isn’t exactly an ordinary fight.” And he should have stopped there, he knew he should have, but his ire compelled him to add, “How many of these creatures have you killed?” He held the lieutenant’s stormy glare. “I’ve killed two.”
The lieutenant gestured to the corpse on the floor. “This one, and . . .?”
Salim relaxed into his seat and pointedly tipped his head back, looking down his nose at Kolchek. “That one was my second. My first was at the ravine where I lost my rifle. I fought the demon off with that,” he nodded to his stake, “and killed it. Do you want to hear what happened next? Three of your marines heard the fight and came to investigate. Another demon had also heard the fight and had the same idea. I listened to them get ripped to pieces.” The lieutenant physically recoiled, a sharp jerking motion of his head like he had spit in his face. “Maybe you’re right and I’m not the best of the best, but apparently I’m much better than the marines.”
He knew as soon as the words left his mouth that he’d destroyed what miniscule progress he’d made in building a careful, civil relationship with Kolchek, and though it didn’t matter to him if the lieutenant liked him or not, antagonizing him would only serve to make the situation worse.
Surely enough, the way he looked at Salim was hateful, his throat tense as he grit his teeth in obvious fury.
Good job, he scolded himself mutely, and he could only be glad that there was still a desk between them; at least he’d see the marine coming if he decided he wanted to use Salim’s face to vent some of that anger out.
“So you’re gonna sit there,” Kolchek breathed, “and fucking gloat over watching American men die, then expect me to believe you had nothin’ to do with what happened to the skipper’s wife?”
The wisest thing to do would be to deny his involvement, but Salim was flustered and annoyed and he wanted this interrogation to be over with. “Believe what you want. I’m done speaking with you.”
“Like hell you are. You don’t seem to get the position you’re in right now.”
He leaned forward sharply. “No, you don’t ‘get’ the position that we are in,” he hissed. “None of you do ─ except maybe your friend, and even he doesn’t understand fully. If he did, he would never have tied me up. The demons will kill me! We should be working together!”
“We’re not gonna work with the goddamn enemy! Now it was one of you sons of bitches. Stop dickin’ me around and tell me in plain fuckin’ English: if it weren’t you, then who, all right? ‘Cause I haven’t seen any other Iraqis down here in this shithole.”
“I have,” Salim snapped, and the vitriol in his voice surprised even himself. “They were all dead, just like your marines.”
There was a short beat where the lieutenant pursed his mouth, glaring hotly as his fingers drummed on the desk. Then, without answering him, he bent at the knees to hook the creature’s arm around his neck; Salim didn’t know if it was sympathy or rage that made him drop the subject, but he was grateful for the moment to compose himself nonetheless.
It might have been Dar, Salim thought warily, but he didn’t have any plans to give him up. He was furious with his captain, but not enough to set the Americans on him; he couldn’t be certain, anyways. Dar was just the one who had answered him on the radio, and even that connection had been on the fritz. Could have been anyone shooting at the Americans down here.
He watched the lieutenant take a handful of short, fortifying breaths, and then heave the creature up onto the length of his shoulders, the way he would have if it were a fellow soldier who needed carrying. The demon was much heavier than any man, though, and Salim looked on in amusement as the lieutenant grunted and slowly, steadily began to straighten his knees.
“That’s it,” Salim goaded, feeling petty, “lift with your legs. You’re doing great.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Kolchek wheezed out, his voice taut.
“Looks heavy. Maybe you need a second pair of hands.”
The lieutenant stood almost fully now, his chest puffed out and broad underneath his squared shoulders. “Heavier than you, motherfucker,” he growled breathily, his cheeks starting to flush with effort, “so don’t go pissing me off.”
With a mighty push, he rolled the creature onto the desk, his thigh braced against the edge to keep it from rocking under the clumsy weight he was dropping onto it. The corpse was still a horrifying sight even in death, and Salim found himself scrutinizing the lieutenant to avoid looking at it.
He had leaned a hip on the table while he caught his breath, rolling his shoulders and his head to work the kinks out of his neck, his traps, his spine. When he met Salim’s eye again, he huffed out a noise that could have passed for a laugh. “You enjoyin’ the show, soldier? Just sit on back and relax.”
What show? Salim thought snidely, but he only said, “I did offer to help . . .”
The lieutenant baited,“Yeah?” He worked his way around to face him, propping himself up on the newly designated autopsy table and crossing his legs at the ankle. “You feelin’ helpful, suddenly? Then where the fuck are Saddam’s chemical weapons?”
It took an embarrassingly long moment for Salim to understand what he was being asked, and he couldn’t quite stop the way his mouth fell open once he’d finished processing. “That is what this is all about?” he croaked out. “Why would ─ look around you! Look at where we are!” Aghast, he shook his head in equal parts denial and frustration. “Those men up there were shepherds, and this down here? This is just ─” He shrugged helplessly. “Sand. Just sand. There are no weapons here. It’s a tomb. Why would Saddam hide a weapon depot here?”
Kolchek sat back with his arms crossed tightly over his chest while he took this in. “I fuckin’ knew it,” he finally muttered, though Salim suspected he was talking to himself. His throat bobbed as he swallowed, and he turned a burning glower onto Salim. “So what the hell were you Iraqis guarding? Why were you even here?”
Outrageously, he started to chuckle. Maybe he was losing it; it just all seemed so ironic, or maybe karmic, once he looked back on it. “You know,” he said, “I asked the same thing.” He offered a sardonic smile to the lieutenant. “I can’t give you an answer that will satisfy you. Your helicopters were spotted. My unit followed you, and our captain decided that it didn’t matter what you were after; only that you were after something. We didn’t know why you came here, of all places. There was nothing here to guard.”
Kolchek stayed silent, but Salim could see how white his knuckles were as he gripped onto the edge of the desk.
“It’s funny,” he said, even though it decidedly was not; he laughed either way. “If we had just left you Americans alone for ten minutes, the earthquake would have taken care of you. All we had to do,” he sucked in a shallow breath, “was nothing. We could have just watched you fall.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “I shouldn’t be here.”
“Cry me a fuckin’ river,” the lieutenant said caustically.
Salim didn’t reply. His head drooped low on his shoulders, his heart sinking even lower than that, and all he could picture in the fleshy darkness behind his eyelids was his beautiful son. He might never see him again.
The lieutenant asked, “What are these freaks?”
Reluctantly, Salim opened his eyes and chased down the burning feeling in his throat, making himself swallow once or twice to open it back up. “Your commanding officer said you believed in God ─ is that true?”
“Just answer the question.”
“I don’t know.” The “freak” laid motionless on the desk, its fingers coiled up tight — it looked like most of it was like that now, stiffening with rigor mortis. At least that was a familiar concept down here, where everything seemed unnatural. “In mythology,” he said quietly, trying to recall the book he’d half-heartedly perused in Zain’s room just that afternoon, “it is said that the demons of the Sumerian underworld, Kur, prey on those who live here beneath the earth after they have passed on.”
“You’re saying this is, what, purgatory? Hell?”
“It might be.” He held the lieutenant’s eye, hoping his gaze conveyed the gravitas of his words. “We are trapped within the house of ashes, hunted by the things that inhabit this place. What would you call that, if not punishment?”
There was a poignant intermission while the lieutenant absorbed what Salim had said; he didn’t exactly appear to believe it, but Salim could tell by his twitchy mannerism that he wasn’t sure what to believe.
“This fucking satellite,” he eventually mumbled, shifting uncomfortably from where he was half-sitting, half-standing. He ducked his head down and reached up in the same movement, adjusting the fit of his hat on his skull. Though the visor obscured most of his face, Salim could make out the resentful smile on his mouth, and the taut curves of his arm betrayed how riled up he really was. “This fucking country.”
This time, the silence between them stretched on and showed no signs of ending any time soon. The lieutenant seemed completely disengaged now, which was equal parts relieving and concerning. As much as Salim didn’t want to be interrogated, he wasn’t in denial about his circumstances: he needed the Americans.
He just wished it was Nick. At least he was receptive. His lieutenant just seemed like a brick wall.
A very angry one, at that. Salim watched plaintively as the lieutenant seethed from across the room; it was a stoic, put-together sort of rage, but the kind that was noticeable. He wasn’t gnashing his teeth or foaming at the corners of his mouth, and his complexion had evened out underneath the layer of sweat and dirt coating his face, but there was a certain rigidity to his body language, like a rope pulled taut and creaking, close to snapping. He looked a little bit like a cornered animal, Salim thought, trying to make itself look big and mean.
He wasn’t sure why, but he asked, “What happened to her? The wife? Nick said something about a rope.”
The lieutenant didn’t lift his head much, but Salim caught the short flash of his brown eyes as he glanced at him. He didn’t offer an answer.
Salim pressed on. “Until I found Sergeant Kay, the only Americans I saw down here were those marines ─”
“Shut your fucking mouth.”
“I’m just trying to understand ─ and to explain my piece in it.”
“And why the hell should I trust a single goddamn thing you say, huh?”
“Isn’t trust the point?”
“Loyalty,” the lieutenant stressed, his voice hard, “is the fucking point. Who are you loyal to? Saddam fuckin’ Hussein? The fucking guy burying your people in mass graves?”
My son, Salim answered to himself, and he didn’t shy away from the way Kolchek was looking at him; like he was the dictator, like he was the monster down here, like he was the one stalking in the shadows and ripping American throats out with his teeth and watering the dry, dry earth with blood.
“What do you think those things are loyal to?” he deflected.
Kolchek snorted derisively. “Each other?”
“Then we should be loyal to each other as well ─ and we can’t do that if there’s no trust between us. Look, we should know what to call each other,” Salim said patiently, trying to soften his voice in an attempt to seem affable. He gave it a moment, brows drawn up expectantly, but the lieutenant just leaned his weight back on his palms and sucked slowly and audibly on his molars, until the air he squeezed out from his cheek made a smacking noise. “All right,” he said in a cooler tone, “I’ll go first. My name is ─”
“I don’t give a fuck what your name is, man.”
Salim scoffed and jerked his face away in amusement, using the break from eye contact to try and bite his tongue. He failed. “Of course not. Don’t tell me yours, then; I’m sure I can think of something appropriate to call you.”
“It’s Lieutenant if you’re not trying to kiss my ass.”
Salim spared him a cocky, sidelong look. “And if I am trying to kiss your ass?”
The lieutenant started. Then, like he couldn’t help it, he huffed out a laugh, shaking his head to try and obscure the wry smirk he was wearing. “Ass kissin’ don’t work on me; I’m a hard sonuvabitch.”
“You can’t blame me for taking a chance,” Salim said, but he let the subject lie. He didn’t really care what his name was either way.
“Try the colonel,” the lieutenant advised him cheekily. “Now that’s a guy who likes ass kissing.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
Kolchek bent over slightly, resting his elbows on his knees, and he looked up at Salim from under the bill of his cap. “You want my advice?” (Not particularly, thought Salim.) “Worry less about kissing ass, and worry more about doing whatever the fuck I tell you to do. If you’re lucky, you’ll end up in a secure US base, and not in this,” Salim watched as he scanned the area in disgust, “run down, piece of shit temple crawlin’ with creeps.”
“It’s a shame,” he agreed. “It’s fascinating.” Zain would have been crawling up the walls, he’d be so excited.
“It’s a fossil. Should have stayed down here in the dirt.” Kolchek leaned over and spat. “It and the fucking freaks inside of it.”
Salim resisted the urge to point out that, technically, the temple and the freaks inside of it were in the dirt where they supposedly belonged, and that the Iraqis and the Americans were the invaders in this scenario. Something told him it would have been a bit too on-the-nose for the lieutenant to appreciate.
“So,” he said instead, “I’m to be arrested?”
Kolchek’s eyes were dark when he tilted his head and looked down at him. “If you cooperate, yeah.”
“And if I don’t?”
Salim watched as the lieutenant shifted a thigh meaningfully, his hand resting light as a feather on the grip of his firearm.
“Oh. Great,” Salim said, but like hell he was going to let that happen. He was going home. He was going to see his son.
Something in his face must have given him away, because Kolchek said, “I can hear you thinking. Eyes front.” Salim didn’t realize he’d been scanning the tables again until he’d gotten the command. “Not a damn thing in here is gonna save you.”
He had to be realistic. Maybe being arrested wouldn’t be so bad, compared to the alternative. In a careful attempt to be open minded, he ventured, “What’s going to happen to me in custody?”
“Beats me.” The lieutenant shrugged. “That’s way above my paygrade, buddy. Hell, if it weren’t for Nicky, I’d have shot you back in those tunnels where you stood. Saved everyone the headache of figuring out what to do with ya.”
“Well.” Salim popped his mouth awkwardly. “I’m glad it’s apparently not up to you then.”
“Diplomacy ain’t my thing.”
“I can tell.”
The lieutenant chuckled. “Relax, will ya? Right now, this is the safest place in this temple, so you don’t have’ta think about surviving nothing else but me. And me? I’m easy. You just gotta keep me smilin’, and you’ll have nun to worry about. Look at me. I look nervous?” His smile was disingenuous, but he didn’t seem to be on edge at all.
“You’re only so calm because you’re the one with the gun,” Salim pointed out, “and here I am, tied up. You wouldn’t even have to fire if those demons came ─ you’d only have to outrun me.”
Kolchek almost looked delighted; there was a boyish spark in his eye when he braced his weight on his arms, and through his parted lips, Salim could see him tongueing at his canine like he needed to keep his mouth busy, like the alternative would be to smile, or to laugh. “You said it, not me.”
“We making friends in here?” asked Nick from behind them, and they both craned to see him enter the tent. He looked remarkably cooler returning than he had when he’d left.
“Hell no.” The Americans beat their forearms together in greeting. “Listen to me, Nicky: this guy’s still the enemy, even down here. One of ‘em shot at the colonel, you know that. C’mon. Got a bleedin’ heart, man, it’s gonna getcha in trouble one day.”
“Already has,” Nick said miserably. “Fuck, man.”
Salim watched in fascination as the lieutenant’s face shuttered through a series of complicated micro expressions, before it settled into mild concern. In a low, almost tender voice, he said, “I am sorry ‘bout Rachel, buddy, but I need you to think like a marine.”
Nick met Salim’s eye; he dreaded what he’d see there, but there was something reassuring in the calm way Nick looked at him. “I am,” he told his lieutenant with quiet, easy confidence. “And that’s how I know the colonel’s got this one wrong. He’s looking for someone to blame, and he’s got the wrong someone.”
“Nick ─”
“You think I don’t want to fucking kill the guy who did it?” Nick hissed in a sharp, hushed voice. If he were trying to keep their prisoner from overhearing, he wasn’t doing a great job of it, though Salim at least tried to pretend that he wasn’t listening in. “Huh? You think it isn’t eating me up?”
Salim couldn’t stop himself from pursing his mouth tight, eyebrows jumping up high on his forehead as he quickly searched the floor for something to look at very hard so he could concentrate on that rather than the painfully awkward confrontation unfolding in front of him.
“Nicky, c’mon . . .”
“Nah, fuck that. I told you what she meant to me, man. She was my goddamn future, you know, I had something to look forward to up there, and now we’re down here playing war like toy soldiers when there’s fuckin’ ─ I don’t know what! Monsters! Goddamn! You saw what happened to Merwin.”
The lieutenant’s voice was sharp and almost a little desperate. “I saw it. What did you want me to do?”
“I’m not saying you could’ve done anything! But the fuckin’ colonel ─” Nick cut himself off with a scoff, and Salim braved a peek: the American men were huddled near each other, steely eyed as they drifted towards the mouth of the tent. “He could have held on. I don’t know.”
There was something sad in the way the lieutenant’s brows were drawn low, his mouth pulled down into a frown that was trying very hard not to be a frown, but the emotion showed on his face nonetheless. “You can’t blame him for that.”
“I don’t. I mean, not really.” Nick heaved a sigh. “I just ─ I can’t believe she’s gone.”
Kokchek gripped the back of Nick’s neck, and the tendons in his hand flexed as he squeezed. “I know, buddy. Me neither. But you hear me now: you still got a future up there, and God as my witness, I’m gonna make sure you fucking see it. You understanding me, Sergeant?” There was a pause where the lieutenant wet his bottom lip briefly, and his voice was suddenly more raw when he said, “I know I haven’t always done right by you, but I’m gonna get you out of here. Believe that.”
Nick’s eyes were warm, and he nodded his head mutely as Kolchek spoke. “You’re gonna be right there with me,” he asserted, his voice just as thick with unspoken emotion as his lieutenant’s, and he held a hand up between them, so close his wrist was nearly pressed into Kolchek’s sternum. “Semper fucking fi.”
“Semper fi or die,” Kolchek agreed, slapping their palms together; they locked grips and squeezed, and Nick threw his other hand up to clap it onto the back of Kolchek’s skull, pulling him in. They knocked foreheads brusquely, and then Nick cleared his throat and withdrew.
“Hey, uh, gimme another five. I’m gonna try ‘n’ talk with the colonel, you know, privately. I owe him an apology.”
“You’re a bigger man than me,” the lieutenant drawled, but he motioned with his head in approval.
Nick cracked a weak smile and said, “You and I aren’t big men though, are we?”
Taken aback by this, Salim blinked as the lieutenant’s mouth snapped closed with an audible click, sealing up tight like someone had taken a wrench to the hinges of his jaw and screwed it shut. He stared hard after Nick, his throat working as he swallowed; Nick didn’t see most of it. As soon as the words had left his mouth, he’d landed a couple of affectionate swats to Kolchek’s shoulder, and then he was gone.
The lieutenant turned to watch as the marine made his way towards the other end of the temple; he faced away from Salim who felt, once again, that strange, nagging sensation of familiarity.
Then, all at once, it clicked into place. It was his back that Salim recognized: the broad planes of it, the rucksack tight to his torso, the skin of his arms and the nape of his neck ─ what Salim could see of it beneath the shemagh ─ and that short, cropped brown hair, cut as close to his skull as possible, half-hidden beneath that gray-blue hat.
“I know you,” he said.
Kolchek didn’t turn to him, but he ducked his head down to look at Salim over his shoulder, just out of the corner of his eye. Most of his face was obscured, but Salim watched as the eye swept over him once, twice, slow and measured, before the lieutenant straightened his neck out and returned to surveying the temple. “You don’t fuckin’ know me.”
“I do,” he insisted, “from the ambush. You’re the soldier who let the shepherd go.”
That caught his attention, though he clearly tried to hide it; Salim could still see the awkward twitch in his shoulders before he forced them to be square. He seemed intent on ignoring Salim, but there was agitation in his body language as he turned his head back and forth and scanned the area.
Eventually, he gave in to the urge to turn around; seeing it happen only convinced Salim that he was exactly who he thought he was. He moved the same, careful, and Salim could picture the way he’d leveraged his bare arm back, his palm open and wide, his rifle pointed willingly to the ground. They’d surrendered to each other, he knew it. The ground had opened up and swallowed them whole before he could see the marine’s face, but this was him; it was his back, his arms, his hat, his voice.
“See?” Salim arched his brows. “It is you.”
“Yeah,” Kolchek admitted, “I guess it is.”
And yet this revelation didn’t seem to reassure him; if anything, he looked markedly more uncomfortable than he’d had in the entire time Salim had been acquainted with him. He jerked his head away with a sharp exhale, his cheek bulging out as he pressed his tongue into the inside of it, almost as if he were annoyed with this news.
Then he aimed a crooked look at Salim and said, “Bet you’re wishin’ you took that shot when you had the chance, huh?”
Salim hesitated. Maybe he should have. Maybe it would have been the smartest thing to do: taking Kolchek out of the equation early might have made what remained of the Americans desperate and far more receptive to an alliance. Nick was willing to work with him up until the lieutenant had arrived ─ maybe if Kolchek were dead, he and Nick would be halfway to the sunlight right about now.
But who could know for sure? It could just have easily made the entire situation worse. What mattered was that they were down here, together, and they were human. “No,” he said honestly, “I don’t. I meant what I said: no more killing.”
The lieutenant chuckled, and though the sound was tepid, Salim figured lukewarm was better than cold. He gestured to the demon with his chin, arching an almost playful eyebrow at him.
“Well.” Salim laughed too, warm in his chest, and it felt good. “I’ll make an exception for those things.”
His amused humming trailed off as he studied the corpse, the horrible shapes of it, the awful texture of its skin, the wetness in its mouth. He could still vividly remember every second he spent pinned beneath the first one he’d encountered, the coarse texture of rust and iron digging into his palms as he squeezed the makeshift stake for dear life; the smell of it, rotting and pungent as it howled into his face; the disgusting, fleshy give as the bar sunk into its body.
And then what came after, the elation, the despair, the fear. The lights that flashed in the tunnels above the ravine, and how the sand had whispered under his boots as he crept away like a coward. Maybe he could have called out to them to warn them it wasn’t safe there, but he hadn’t even tried ─ he just ran.
He’d fled through the caverns, the echoes of gunshots and screaming men close on his heels. If Kolchek loved those men half as much as he seemed to love Sergeant Kay, then Salim had been callous about their deaths; but the lieutenant hadn’t exactly been kind to him, either.
Still, Salim couldn’t quite swallow the guilt ─ whatever the lieutenant thought of him, fine, but he wasn’t going to die knowing he’d been unkind to his fellow man. Allah would forgive him if he only asked, so he said very quietly, “I am sorry.” The lieutenant looked up at him sharply. “What I said about your marines ─ I’m sorry. It was cruel of me.” He shook his head, keeping his eyes on the floor in shame, and said in quiet Arabic, «O Allah, forgive our living and our dead, those with us and those absent, our young and our old, our men and our women.»
The lieutenant inclined his head towards him. “What was that?”
“A prayer. For your marines.” His voice sounded raspy even to himself when he added, “And my soldiers.”
Awkwardly, he cleared his throat and shifted in his seat in an attempt to look more casual than he felt. The wooden desk groaned under the lieutenant’s weight as he moved, and then he said, “Well, I’ll say amen to that.”
Salim looked up at him mildly, letting one side of his mouth twitch into a half-hearted smile. «Ameen.»
“Is that what you were sayin’ earlier?” Kolchek’s eyes were dark but not unkind as he watched Salim from the center of the room. “When the colonel had his gun on you?”
The question caught him off kilter; he wouldn’t have expected the lieutenant to show any interest in anything that didn’t involve ‘the mission’ or ‘the enemy’ or whatever it was American military men fixated on. “It was a prayer, yes,” he answered carefully, a little reluctantly, “but not for the dead. For my son, for his protection.”
Kolchek looked uncomfortable again.
In an attempt to salvage whatever miniscule progress they’d made in repairing the atmosphere, Salim went on. “He would love this,” he told the lieutenant, “the temple, not the monsters ─ well.” He laughed, but the sound was watery, and he had to pause to scrub his shoulder over his face when his eyes started to burn. “Maybe he would,” he admitted, “he loves this kind of thing. What do you call it? Legends. Folklore. Like that big fish that lives in the lake. The Loch Ness.”
“Cryptids,” the lieutenant supplied. “Nessie, Bigfoot, Mothman. Right?”
“Yes.” Salim chuckled. “It would blow his mind,” he emulated an explosion noise with his mouth, “to see what lives down here. And the temple too, of course. He loves history, folklore, mythology . . . He wants to study it.”
“What’s his name?”
Salim paused. An ugly, hateful part of him thought the lieutenant didn’t deserve to know his son by name.
And why should he offer it? It wasn’t important information, not to the Americans, but it was precious to him. What could his intent possibly be?
Why was he the only one who had to make these gestures of trust, anyway? Why was the onus on him to work with the Americans, and not on all of them to work together? Why was he the one who had to extend a hand, open and inviting, and pray to God that someone took it?
He clenched his jaw, his mouth feeling dry, and he reached out. “Zain. His name is Zain.”
The lieutenant’s eyes were steady on him; to Salim’s shock, he reached back. “My name is Jason.”
“Jason,” Salim echoed. “My name ─” He cut himself off when he caught sight of Eric and Nick on their way back from over the lieutenant’s shoulder; they seemed composed now, so their conversation must have gone well, but Salim decided it’d be safest not to speak any more. “Your friends are back.”
Jason turned to greet them, and Salim left them to it; he scrutinized the tables as the Americans spoke, checking one last time if there was anything, anything at all, that might help him out of this predicament. To his immediate right, he discovered there was a bulky portable computer, blackened with inactivity, but there were spools of cables around it, throngs of equipment that must have been cameras or some other type of recording devices. They were going to rig the tunnels, he thought, and keep an eye on every vulnerable point surrounding them.
Sure, it was smart. But what was better than cameras was what Salim saw lying on the table beside all of this equipment: wire cutters.
His heart leapt into his throat. Those cutters would easily eat through the plastic of his flex cuffs. He just needed a quiet moment where he could shuffle to his feet and get his hands on the tool. Hoping he didn’t look suspicious, he glanced at the Americans and focused his attention on their conversation.
“. . . and there ain’t nothin’ down here,” Jason was saying in a low voice. “Didn’t tell me anything else ─ or couldn’t.”
“And you believe him?” Eric asked incredulously.
“I’unno.” (Salim appreciated the honesty, at least.) “Listen, Colonel,” Jason shot a look to Salim, who only just managed to duck his eyes down and pray he looked innocently unaware of what they were saying, “long as he’s wearing that uniform, I’m keeping my guard up . . . but I don’t think he’s the guy who shot at you.”
Salim didn’t even bother to pretend he wasn’t eavesdropping anymore; he looked up hopefully, brows tilting up on his forehead.
“Really?” Eric sounded ─ disappointed, to put it politely. He tried not to take it personally; that meant the man who had apparently killed his wife was still out there. Of course he’d be disappointed. “Fuck.”
“You’re the skipper,” Jason reminded him firmly. “It’s your call.” There was a halting beat where his nostrils flared, like he was sighing and bracing for something. “I told you,” he said roughly, “to bring that goddamn air support. Now I’m telling you that this guy,” he jerked a thumb in Salim’s direction, “had nun to do with what happened to Rachel. I’m hoping that this time, you’ll listen to me, because this isn’t how we do things. We’re not animals.” In a thin voice, he punctuated that thought with a not-all-that-sincere, “Sir.”
Eric shook his head in irritation. “You’re not gonna let me live that down, are you?” he grumbled, but there wasn’t any real fire in his voice. “All right, Kolchek. Duly noted. In the meantime, you and Sergeant Kay are on cameras; I want them running by,” he glanced at his watch, “2200 hours. I need eyes on every passage that leads to this room.”
“Understood, sir.”
“I’m going to speak with him, too,” Eric decided. “I have to be sure. No offense, Lieutenant, but you and Nick don’t often disagree, so you’ll excuse me if I’m hesitant to take you at face value.”
Nick grinned. “Hey, coming from Jason? That was a goddamn glowing review. I dunno if you’ve noticed, but Jason’s kind of an asshole.”
“Shut the fuck up, Nicky,” Jason clapped a hand to Nick’s shoulder and shoved, “and pick up some of those cameras. We got 15 before the hour’s up.”
Nick marched past Salim with a reassuring smile, and he mouthed something that might have been I got you; Salim didn’t dare smile back with Eric looking at him, but he lowered his head and hoped the motion would convey his gratitude. After Nick had hauled an armful of equipment up into his rucksack, his arms, he stepped back out of the way and breezed past the colonel.
“You’ll see,” Nick told him as he walked, “he’s cool.”
Eric’s expression didn’t change, but he did turn to watch as Nick headed for the eastern passage.
Jason had taken Nick’s place in the interim, calmly packing away what he’d needed; from this close up, Salim could see he had freckles dusted over his cheeks.
“Lieutenant,” he said under his breath, so as not to attract Eric’s attention while his back was turned. Jason looked down at him, easy but closed off. “My name is Salim.”
The sound of his laugh was quiet enough that it was very nearly lost in the rustle of his rucksack as he packed it tight, leveraging the rest of the tech and wires under his arm or over his shoulder. “You think I didn’t know that?” he asked rhetorically, but he was almost smiling, and Salim found himself almost smiling back.
Jason left then, exchanging brief goodbyes with the colonel as he did, and he didn’t look back at Salim.
So they weren’t going to be friends; but maybe it was a step in the right direction.
Maybe it was a start.