A Woman From Baram Chah

Updated May 25, 2020

This story was written for my wife during the period in 2018 when she was going through breast-cancer related chemotherapy. (She came through that well, thank you.) Reading to one another is one of our favorite activities. I wanted to write something I could read aloud that would combine all of her favorite kinds of stories. Thus was created this socialist-feminist-utopian revenge caper. And now, more than ever, I think there are lots of people who also could stand to read a socialist-feminist-utopian revenge caper. In fact, I suspect — and selfishly hope — that socialist-feminist-utopian revenge caper will be a genre that will be in demand for some time.

And if you enjoy it, this story takes place in the same post-Crash universe as Any Job Is A Grind.

Image Credit: “GB.AFG.10.0286”by balazsgardi is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Part I
— CHAGAI HILLS –

Pfft-Crack! Sanji thinks she feels the air disturbed as the bullet goes by her left ear, despite cold wind rushing as she runs as hard as she can up the trail. She kicks a little harder and feels the fine gravel her toes flick up and hears the curses of the guardsmen puffing behind her.

I have to get up into the hills. I might have a chance up there.

The heel of Sanji’s palm still tingles where it struck Ruslan’s nose. Her knee too, where it impacted his balls; strange phantom traces of violence that cling to her skin in the mountain air. Ruslan’s Pashtun guards are not exactly what one would call athletic, but they can shoot just fine. Sanji’s priority now is to put as much distance as she can between the guards and herself before turning uphill, where she hopes to lose them in the boulders and switchback gullies of southern Afghanistan’s Chagai Hills. Those hills stand between her and home.

She spent many days of her childhood wandering this little patch of hills that lies just south of the mining complex of Baram Chah. The mine, its village and these little hills are nestled in a basin that sits atop the black volcanic rock of the Chagai Hills, which straddle much of the old Pakistan-Afghanistan border. A very long time ago the Chagai Hills were a volcanic island chain. About three hundred million years ago plate tectonics rammed them into southern Asia. Locked inside the black basalt is one of the largest deposits of copper, beryllium, cobalt and rare-earth metals on the planet.

Sanji is sprinting down a winding back-door trail that will eventually take her into Baram Chah. But she can’t stay on it. Eventually, someone will go back and get a couple of camels and overtake her. The trail bends just ahead, and as she approaches it she hears the rifle crack and feels stinging gravel sprayed onto her shins by another bullet. She turns off the trail into the loose sand and scree, headed toward the hilltop above. The crescent moon has risen over her back and gives a slivery light to the rocks ahead.

She has to slow down and start picking out a route upward. Her heaving breath sounds like the monsoon wind. She passes a large boulder; behind it is a gulley that zig-zags towards the top. If she has gotten herself enough of a lead, it should mask her from the pursuing guards. She stops for a moment and tries to control her breathing, listening. She hears two men down on the trail, bickering softly in Pashtun. She looks upslope. It’s a steep climb, at least a hundred and fifty meters of elevation change. She pulls in a deep breath through her nostrils, exhales and heads up the ravine. These ravines were carved by the spring melt back when winter snows once lay thick in these hills and have left a convenient bed of fine rock and sand to navigate upwards. Her muscles are warmed up now. She pumps her arms, getting into a climbing rhythm.

Ten days ago Sanji and the Baram Chah caravan had been finishing up their spring trading visit to Panjgur, a small town about two hundred and fifty kilometers south, in Baluchistan. She’d spent two days helping Ruslan and Omar, his bagman and haggler, pick over and purchase several lots of scavenged machine parts and electronic controls. The marketing done, she’d been given leave to visit her Uncle Duru. Sanji pistons her legs, her field of vision limited to the silvery gravel and rock walls of the ravine. Her calves and glutes burn and she retreats into the rhythm of her breathing and thinks about her last meeting with her aunt and uncle.

#

— PANJGUR TOWN –

There was something different about Panjgur this spring. The first day she didn’t notice anything consciously, just had a nagging at the back of her sense of Panjgur, a small Balochi town where she had come to trade with Mr. Ruslan the Russian twice a year since she was thirteen. Panjgur, the last place her father had lived as a free man before the war and The Crash. “Uncle” Duru and “Aunt” Shari were Kamal Ashkani’s co-workers and good friends in the city government twenty-five years ago. Duru had recognized Kamal’s round face in hers the first time she came browsing at his market stall three years ago.

Standing in the souk and eating a kabob on the second day, Sanji remembered her father’s lessons on troubleshooting unfamiliar devices. She stood chewing and looked at the whole place as if for the first time. The market square was tidier. The usual windblown drifts of random trash and the ruins of civilization were largely gone. The buildings surrounding the market and caravanserai, which had always been in a variety of states of decrepitude and inhabitation, were now divided more starkly into two classes: obviously inhabited and thus visibly under repair, or uninhabited and undergoing some sort of systematic deconstruction. She saw ordered piles of pipe, bricks and coils of copper cable by those.

Looking harder, she noted the change in the people of Panjgur. The way the merchants looked at Ruslan and his entourage of Pashtun muscle was different. They maintained their traditional polite and subservient attitude toward the armed men, but once the northern traders turned their backs on the Panjguri, the attitude dropped like a curtain. She saw contempt in their faces, Sanji realized.

Uncle Duru’s eyes followed Omar the bagman until he was lost in the crowd, and then he turned a loving, yellow-toothed smile on Sanji and enveloped her in a hug.

“Oh Sanjo! Look how grown you are. We never know from one season to the next if we will see you again.” He held tight, rocking a bit.

From the depths of his robed chest Sanji replied, “So good to see you again, Uncle. As you can see, I’m still allowed to do this work.”

He held her out arms-length gave her a serious look up and down. They hadn’t seen one another in six months. Although the snow didn’t any longer really get thick enough in the hills to make the trip impossible, what little there was, combined with the cold, did not make a winter trip worthwhile.

What is he looking at?  Is he checking that I have all my arms and legs?  No noticeable scars?  Probably.

Sanji Ashkani was a young woman of about 165 centimeters, unusually well-fed and fit for a slave girl from the brutal mines of Baram Chah, with a round and apple-cheeked face and dark brown eyes glittering with curiosity.

He’s just glad to see you here. It means Dad still lives as well.

Those eyes crinkled into a smile as she broke through his reverie.

“Are you going to stand there all day ogling me like one of those?” She jerked a thumb in the direction Omar had headed. “Or are you going to take me home for tea and…” she lowered her voice conspiratorially, “tell me what’s going on?”

“Haha! Just as clever as your father!” Duru waggled a finger at her. “You’ve noticed some things, yes? Come on then!” He bustled around the stall tugging string, dropping the rolled fabric walls and plunging his bales of salvaged clothes and rewound electrical motors into gloom. They went out the back of the stall, walked a short way behind other stalls in the souk and then ducked into a broad alley between two old warehouse buildings. At the end of the alley was the usual wall and gate arrangement of a family residence. Beyond was Duru and Shari’s house; a conventional two-story, pre-Crash cinder block arrangement that they had taken over before Sanji was born. Duru shot the bolt of the metal gate to the little compound and swung the gate open, stepping aside and grinning from ear to ear.

“Behold!”

The house had sat on a good-sized piece of land that Sanji always thought was a small model of the larger world in which it was situated; a tiny, arid town in the backwaters of a planet on which more than half of the human population had died off. On the Indian subcontinent, between deaths and flight, less than thirty percent of the population remained. The yard had been scattered with bits of machinery; some of it working, some under repair, some plain junk. Here were piles of overstock from the salvage business. There was a scraggly kitchen garden surrounded by close mesh fencing. The entire expanse was guarded by a rotating cast of goats and chickens.

“Wha…” Sanji gaped.

What do you call this? New? Certainly. Clean?

Sanji beheld a well-swept sand and gravel lot bisected by a neat little path of smooth river stone. Some sort of impossibly well-engineered wood and PVC planter climbed up in tiers against the north wall, soaking up the sun. She identified tomato and pepper plants among the lushness. Above and behind the wall garden, the same two old solar panels glittered from the roof of the building next door. In the shade to her right was a little chicken house, made from scrap wood in the western clapboard style she’d seen in old picture books, the hens scratching in the yard. Straight ahead up the stone path, the old house was gone. In its place a low, grass-covered dome occupied the center of the lot; an eyebrow window gazed onto approaching guests. Two goats stood atop the dome and gave them a bleat of greeting. The path ended in steps leading down to a sunken entrance.

Duru was doing a little hopping jig of delight.

“Isn’t it marvelous! We built it over the winter! We only just finished cleaning up the yard a few weeks ago. We were so hoping to have it done before your spring caravan arrived.”

“We who? Surely not just you and Auntie.” Sanji goggled at him.

“We, the town! All of us together. It’s the Petrichor girl! Come, let’s go inside, Shari is waiting with tea and breakfast.” He skipped in front of her and headed to the steps that led down into the sunken area, turned and waved her on.

What was that word he said? It doesn’t sound Baloch, Arabic, Russian, or Persian.

Despite the fact that it was only ten o’clock or so in the morning, the Rakshan River Valley was already stifling. It had to be at least thirty degrees. Sanji descended the steps; a broad, shallow stairway made from interlocking concrete paving stones that led down about three meters into a shady circular courtyard. She saw two date palms in large planters and a café table with chairs, already set for tea. Duru was waving like a lunatic at her from a set of sliding glass doors that led into the…house?

In the courtyard coolness wafted up from the rocks underfoot. She passed the table and went through the doors into a neat kitchen. Here there were things she recognized. The stove, the refrigerator, the sink and big wooden kitchen table were all from the old house. Shari stood at the stove pouring hot water from the kettle into a teapot. Despite the heat of the wood-fired stove, the room was almost as cool as one of the managers’ apartments in Baram Chah.

Shari put the kettle down and gave Sanji a hug, cooed at how tall she’d gotten, asked after her father. Shari took up the tea tray and beckoned Sanji to pick up a platter laden with spicy bulgur, dates, and goat cheese. The three of them adjourned to the courtyard and settled down to a late breakfast.

“Must you leave today?” Shari asked while pouring their cups.

“Yes, Auntie. The masters have no reason to tarry here once their business is done.” There followed the awkward silence as Duru and Shari were reminded of the fact that their friend and his daughter, who lived just 270 kilometers north over the hills, were slaves, owned by the Russian-Iranian mining consortium that ran the massive complex in Baram Chah.

Sanji cherished these trips to Panjgur and these get-togethers with her “aunt” and “uncle.” For a few days a year, that little knot that always lived in the pit of her stomach unwound a bit. As gruff and misogynistic as they were, Ruslan and Omar treated her more or less as a valued team member: able linguist, technically astute. On the trips Sanji was able to sample what something like a normal, free life would be like away from the poisonous air of Baram Chah, surrounded by abuse and spared the worst only on the sufferance of the owners and the quality of her father’s work.

What happened here over the winter?

“What in the name of Allah—peace be upon him—is going on here? What was that strange word you used, Uncle? Petri-something?”

“Ah, Petrichor,” Auntie said. “Have you heard of it up there?” she asked breezily.

“What? I’ve never heard the word in my life, Aunt Shari. What does it have to do with this?” She waved her hands around.

“Darling, go fetch her gift,” Shari told her husband.

Duru gulped tea, smiled at Sanji and trotted inside.

Shari settled herself into story-telling mode, topping up her cup.

“Well, last spring, just after your first trip of that year had come and gone, another caravan arrived from Omara on the coast. Brought all the usual stuff, salt, dried fish, scrap to sell. Along with them came two young women from,” and here she leaned forward to whisper conspiratorially, “Europe.”

Sanji raised her eyebrows.

“They stayed all summer and returned to Omara in the fall. They called themselves organizers. They started in with the women of the village, teaching all kinds of things: basic medical care, midwifery, hygiene. They brought vaccines and,” she leaned in even closer and whispered, “contraceptives!”

Sanji stared, a date halfway to her mouth. They both looked back toward the house where Duru was not in evidence.

“They built up a good relationship with us and then asked us if they could talk with the elder council. There they told us of the goings on beyond the ocean. Sanji, it is not all like this,” she waved at the outside. “In Europe, Japan, parts of the Americas, they are rebuilding from the ruins of the old. They shared their news and ideas, they helped us fix things and they left, promising to come back again in a year or two. They left us a library; educational DVDs, manuals and guides and… Where is your uncle? Duru!” she called into the house.

“I’m coming! I wanted to bring along my notebook,” he hollered, arriving laden with a package, a radio and a couple of well-used composition books. Shari relieved him of the radio, which she placed on the table. It was small, about twice the size of the scavenged clamshell cell phones that the masters and supervisors used at camp for local communications.

“I don’t understand. It’s just a radio,” Sanji said.

“It is a short wave radio,” Shari corrected her, “and at night, it picks up broadcasts from the Petrichor.”

“What. Is. Petrichor?” Sanji impatiently insisted as she repeated the unfamiliar word.

Duru could not contain himself any longer. “Petrichor is an English word. It is the word for the smell of rain falling after a long dry spell. It is also what the people in part of Europe are calling their new country.”

“It’s not a country, you old fart. Don’t you listen?” Shari turned back to Sanji. “It’s what they are calling the political, social and economic philosophy that is guiding their rebuilding of their world. But yes, it is named for that lovely smell that accompanies the first rains of fall.” Sanji thought her aunt sounded like a proud student reciting her lessons. “Anyway, the radio has special channels in Urdu and Hindi, news and hours of education and entertainment programs.”

“I stay up all night sometimes listening, and taking notes,” Duru interjected, holding up his bulging notebooks. “You know, it’s fascinating how much, in the last twenty years of just struggling to survive, we’d forgotten that we’d known things; simple electrical work, how to make biodiesel and methane from human waste. Easy, really. I just needed someone to remind me that I knew the principles once upon a time. With a few technical hints and lessons learned from others, we can build all kinds of stuff out of all the junk just lying around.”

Shari raised a hand and cut him off.

“All that. Yes.” Shari put her index finger on the table. “They showed us and practiced with us. If all of us in the town and surroundings worked together,” she paused, raised that finger for emphasis, “and without trying to profit one person from another, we could build great, lovely things again. So that’s what we started to do.”

Aunt Shari finished and proudly folded her arms on her chest as if challenging Sanji to gainsay any of it.

“Here, for you.” Duru slid the package across to Sanji.

It was wrapped neatly with a fold of colorful cloth and sealed with a bit of string. About the same size as the radio on the table.

“Is this what I think it is?” Sanji asked.

“I thought we might let you decide whether or not to risk it,” Duru said.

Sanji felt butterflies flittering in her guts. Curiosity and wonder at what that little box might hold, but also fear of what would happen if it were discovered. Shari and Duru looked at her worriedly.

Until Duru had proudly swung open that gate, the world Sanji knew, including heretofore Panjgur, was basically one of heat, thirst, hunger, disease, radiation, and scraping to survive. In Baram Chah, Sanji’s people had—many at gunpoint—exchanged the random chance of death outside for the two hots and a cot of chattel slavery.

She reached out to hold the parcel, then turned the little package over in her hand—the cotton cloth was a lovely print of peacocks—and looked at the radio standing on the table, then up at her friends. They were looking at her in a funny way. What would she call that look?

That must be what hope looks like, she thought.

#

— TURBAN MAN –

She took the radio, of course. She buried the pretty cloth and string wrapping in her backpack, wrapped in her dirty underwear for good measure. A gross taboo that somehow wasn’t enough to dissuade some strung-out Pashtun boy who had a good rummage. Perhaps he went through her bag with the idea that she ran a bit of poppy on the side, for her father. Not a ridiculous assumption, really. She has plenty of opportunity to do so.

She may be a slave, but even slavery has a social strata, and she has the privileges of a trustee’s daughter. Hormzud Sadeghi, the Iranian man who ran the mine enterprise, made a deal with her father. Kamal Ashkani would keep the machines of the mines running smoothly and use his contacts back in Baluchistan to source spares. His only daughter, Sanji, born a slave in the camp, would be raised to be his assistant and spared service as a whore, a household maid to the overseers and engineers (often a distinction without difference) or, worst fate of all, working in the pit or the toxic chemical separation facility.

The caravan’s usual schedule would have had them back in Baram Chah this night. But the last couple of days had been very hot and their string of new slaves were feeling the effects. So, even though they were just a few kilometers short, they camped for the night at a small, abandoned village just south of the little band of hills that sat in the middle of the Baram Chah basin.

Ruslan sent Omar to bring her into the old earthen house Ruslan had set up in for the night. On the low table in front of his camp chair sat her radio, pooled in its pretty cloth. The only thing more predictable than his offer to have never seen the item in exchange for her lying with him had been the awful smell of his breath as he moved in closer, not waiting for her answer. Her reaction was immediate, honed from years of fending off the advances of older boys and watching and imitating the Russian guardsmen’s sparring. She gave him the one-two: palm strike upward at the base of the nose, knee to the balls. She was out the door and fifty meters up the road before he could catch his breath enough to call out.

#

Sanji rounds a switchback and sees the top of the hill just a few dozen meters higher. She stops and takes a moment to catch her breath. Her legs are trembling and she is gasping for air.

At least halfway to go to the top. Calm down. You’ve got a good start on those guys.

She stretches her arms above her head and tries to breathe deeply and slowly, exhaling softly through her mouth, counting the breaths. When she gets to sixteen, she hears some faint scrambling noises from downslope, a faint curse.

She gives a grunt of effort and gets moving again. She is just getting a rhythm going when she looks up to check the trail ahead and almost runs into the muzzle of a gun.

Sanji screeches in shock and surprise. Strong arms grip her and a hand covers her mouth. She looks past the gun up into a male face, blackened with greasepaint, sporting a beard.

Is he wearing a turban?

“Be quiet and be safe,” the man says in Pashto. “If you are quiet and follow my instructions, we will aid your escape. Nod if you understand.”

Sanji nods emphatically. She can’t catch her breath through her nose. Turban Man nods to the one holding her and the hand is removed, though a strong grip remains on her upper arm. Turban Man’s hand moves from his rifle barrel to his throat and he speaks softly in a language unfamiliar to Sanji. It has hard R’s and T’s. Turban Man listens through an earpiece and nods.

“Come with us.” He lowers night vision goggles over his face and turns up the gulley. Her captor gives her a not-unkind nudge in the back and they follow Turban Man upslope.

They finish the climb, stopping just short of the top of the ridge. Another soldier crouches waiting for them. She sees movement next to that one and realizes there is a fourth soldier wearing a covering of rags and twigs that rendered him an invisible lump of dead brush until he moved. Turban Man huddles in conversation with these two, punctuated by some hard looks in Sanji’s direction. When it concludes, the man in the camouflage cloak and his companion head back down the slope. Turban Man approaches Sanji.

“Why are those men pursuing you?”

No idea who these people are, but they are well-armed and not with the mine enterprise. It looks like they are hiding out here. Tell the truth, Sanji.

“I ran away from my master,” she replies.

This appears to make sense to Turban Man, who nods.

“I have to ask you some more questions now. You need to know that not only your life but ours now depend on your answers, so answer me truthfully. How many are back down there?”

“About fifty. But only ten and the leader, a Russian, are armed. The rest are slaves or camel drivers.”

“What was the purpose of this group?”

She takes him through the trading trip up to the decision to overnight. This takes long enough that she begins to feel chilled, and starts to shiver. Turban Man speaks to her guard, who releases her and heads up to the encampment.

“Do you know if the slavers have electronic communications?”

Interesting the way he says slavers, like it is a bad thing to be.

“The Russian in charge, Ruslan, has a satellite phone. Some of the guards have flip-phones. But those only work on the other side of the hills.” She wraps her arms around herself.

“Najafi is getting you something to keep you warm. Who are you to them? Will they continue to search for you? Will this Russian call for reinforcements?”

As she considers this question, the magnitude of what she’s done hits her. Her shivering becomes shakes and tears well up in her eyes and nose. She sniffles as she answers.

“I am a slave. You understand?”

“I do. That you are a slave is essentially why we are here.” He puts a hand on her shoulder. The first soldier, this must be Najafi, reappears and helps Sanji into a black, poncho-like arrangement. It feels light but as soon as she wraps it around herself she can feel the chill dissipate.

Turban Man waits for her to gather herself, then continues.

“Our mission is to document the atrocity that is being committed here. We very much want to make recordings and leave without our presence ever being known. So, I need to know how much threat whatever has those men chasing you represents to us now.”

Sanji realizes he’s probably a Sikh. What would a Sikh be doing here? Surely this isn’t the Indian Army? Does such a thing even exist any more?

Sanji sniffles and tries to focus.

She explains about the radio and hitting Ruslan. She tells him about her and her father’s status, her role in the caravan. As she does, her thoughts run ahead to what will happen in the morning.

Ruslan will show the radio. What tales will he spin? What conclusions will the owners jump to about my father, about the people in Panjgur? Oh, Daddy! Oh, no!

She dissolves into shuddering sobs of exhaustion and fear. Turban Man and Najafi exchange a harried-parents look. Najafi turns and embraces Sanji, but Sanji pushes off, turns downslope. Najafi darts after her and grabs her in a bear hug.

“No! I have to get back to my father.”

“Shh. Not yet. You are safe here with us,” Najafi says softly. Sanji slumps down and cries, shuddering with fear and frustration. The soldier, Najafi, keeps her wrapped up. Sanji can feel the body armor, webbing and equipment pressing into her back. The soldier smells unwashed. Sweat. Female sweat.

Sanji gasps.

A woman soldier!

“You are going to be okay with us. But we need stealth, precious. Have it out and then we need to go.” The woman speaks softly into her ear, holding her tight and stroking her hair. Sanji heaves sobs into this strange woman’s chest. Najafi stands still in the embrace, holding her tenderly and whispering “you are going to be okay,” and “you are brave.” Sanji can feel the strength in the woman’s arms around her.

Sanji takes a deep shuddering breath.

“Okay. I’m okay. You don’t have to hold me. I’ll stay with you.” Najafi releases her and rises slowly, ready to grab her if she bolts. Sanji gets to her feet and turns to look into this woman soldier’s face. She’s dressed in the same dun-colored lightweight fabric and black poncho. Desert boots, knee pads. Curious helmet that only covers the top and back of the head, night vision goggles flipped up. Only the face betrays her sex. Blackened like the others’ but with fine features, a prominent nose and high cheekbones. The eyebrows are the definitive giveaway, two immaculately manicured, arched black marks above her darting eyes, white and black in the night. She flashes a smile of dazzlingly white, straight teeth.

“What now?” Sanji asks.

“We stay hidden and… Ah!” She notes the man in the bush suit and the other coming back up the ravine. They keep trudging upslope but flash a thumbs-up as they pass. Sanji thinks she sees the second man give her a nod and a small smile but it’s hard to tell with the night vision goggles obscuring half their faces.

“Ready?” Najafi asks. Sanji nods. Najafi clicks her own goggles into place and reaches for her hand. Sanji can see fine in the moonlight but takes the hand anyway.

A few slow, stealthy steps and they emerge onto a small, sunken area, probably an old pond, that is the top of this hill. The lights of Baram Chah and the mines spread along the base of the hills a few kilometers to their north. Sanji gets her bearings suddenly. She has visited this spot several times. It is the perfect place for a picnic and watching the valley.

The camp consists of a few areas of semi-transparent cloth stretched over poles. Under these soldiers are in various stages of settling down. Najafi leads Sanji to one of these areas and bids her to sit. Najafi rustles in a rucksack and produces a pouch which she opens with those bright teeth and presents it to Sanji along with a cup of water from a five-gallon container. Sanji does not need to be asked twice. She hasn’t eaten since the noon rest stop.

This is good! Noodles and some dark spongy stuff. The brown sauce…tangy but not spicy like our food.

She finishes and hands the package back to Najafi who fastidiously tucks it away.

“Get some sleep,” Najafi says.

“But…”

So many questions!

“Daylight will come soon enough. Answers then. We’ve all had a long day.” Brooking no further discussion, Najafi removes her helmet, settles back and hooks a pinkie in Sanji’s poncho.

“Don’t go anywhere without me.”

Sanji reclines against the rucksacks, wriggles to find a comfortable spot and closes her eyes.

#

— OUTPOST –

The sun, well up in the sky, peeks through the camouflage tarp and stabs her eyes. Sanji shoots bolt upright. Turban Man lies stretched out beside her looking relaxed, observing her. He has smile crinkles in the corners of his face under the black greasepaint.

“Good morning,” he says.

“Um. Good morning.”

He points her in the direction of an improvised latrine a few meters away.

“So, what will you do with me now?” she asks him on her return.

“Follow me.” He gets up and walks briskly over to the lip of rock where Sanji had once had her picnics. The canopies provide shade she wishes she’d had on those trips. Turban Man crouches and beckons Sanji to join him at the edge.

Vehicles leave comet trails of dust as they trundle between the town and the massive pit mine eating into the hills at the east end of the valley. The pit and the chemical separation facility emit their own plumes of dust and smoke which rise straight into the air of the hot, windless morning. The sun glares brightly off the massive solar array that occupies a big swath of the open space between the Big Compound, where the masters live, and the mine works.

Najafi and another man are on post here. They exchange a few words with Turban Man who grunts something back in reply. Najafi is busy with headphones and some electronic gear attached to a large antenna, but she flashes Sanji a smile. The male soldier hands a huge set of binoculars to Turban Man, who scans the valley before passing the field glasses to Sanji. “Look down there to the left just past that small hillock. There is your caravan.” He shows her how to adjust the focus on the binoculars.

The caravan must be nearly three kilometers away but she clearly sees the laden camels and the string of slaves trudging along beside. The male soldier next to Najafi says something and taps Sanji on the shoulder. He points to a plume of dust coming south from the town. Three battered Toyota pickups come barreling out of the walled Big Compound, headed to meet up with the caravan.

“May I?” Turban Man asks. Sanji hands back the binoculars, then watches the two dust comets merge. Turban Man hands the bionculars back to Sanji.

“Look by the lead pickup. Is that your Russian?”

It is Ruslan all right. A head taller than anyone else in the group, Ruslan is talking and gesticulating to another man, darker, bearded.

“That’s Hormzud Sadeghi, he runs the mine!”

Turban Man snaps an order, and the soldier and Najafi swing long lenses and shotgun mikes on the gathering.

“Watch and tell me what you see,” Turban Man says quietly to her.

“Don’t you want your binoculars back?”

“No, we are recording everything. I want to know what you are seeing.”

“Okay.” Sanji concentrates on the tableau. “Master Sadeghi looks displeased. Ruslan is talking, waving his arms like he does when he is angry. Now Master Sadeghi cuts him off. Ruslan is yelling to one of his guards. Ah, that one is Angar. He is so stupid. Let’s see, I see Omar, Angar, Gahez, Darab and ah, there is Mohammed in the back of the caravan, as usual. That means Almar and Suliman were the two who were after me. That makes sense. They’re Ruslan’s lapdogs.”

Wait, the soldiers did for them last night.

“Were his lapdogs?” She looks up at him. Turban Man nods confirmation. She puts her eyes back to the binoculars.

“Ruslan and Master Sadeghi are getting in the lead truck. It’s turning around, heading back toward town. The other two pickups are heading south. That’s strange.”

“How many men are in the two Toyotas going south, Sanji?” Turban Man asks her, then turns and speaks to Najafi. Najafi replies while Sanji concentrates on the two white Toyota pickups heading at speed back along the caravan’s morning route.

Back to where Almar and Suliman chased me into the hills.

“Four men in each bed. Two in the cabs,” she says.

“Well done. You may stay here and watch, but under no circumstances are you to move without an escort. I need to discuss this development with my associates.” He speaks again to the man and Najafi in their funny tongue. The male is blond and blue-eyed under the black greasepaint, poncho and short helmet. He smiles at her and pats the ground next to him. Najafi puts down the headphones and follows Turban Man to their little command area. As if realizing that introductions are necessary the blonde man puts out his hand.

“My name is Gustav Horst. A-Salaam Alaikum,” he mangles the salutation in his strange accent.

“Wa-Alaikum Salaam,” she replies, hand to chest. “What is his name?” she asks Horst, pointing to Turban Man.

He looks stymied for a moment. “Ah. Khalsa. Him…um, chief,” he replies in his broken Pashto.

“Where are you from?” she asks.

He looks at her and smiles stupidly. “I don’t speak Pashto.”

Horst gives her a kind but helpless shrug, then digs in his bulging cargo pockets and comes up with a brown paper bag. He rummages and puts a handful of something in his mouth and passes her the bag.

Almonds, some other nuts, little dried berries and pieces of tangy fruits. Such a flavor! Oh! And some chocolate! Such exotic food for soldiers’ snacks. Definitely not from here.

She looks through the powerful binoculars at Baram Chah. Marvelous! She can see her house! The small two-story mud and brick home she shares with her father is one of the original buildings of the ancient village, with a wall and courtyard. No movement there. He will long since have departed for the mines. The old village tucks up into a small defile of the valley. South of its jumble of compounds are the slave quarters proper, a square arrangement of sand-covered quonset huts. South of the slave quarters the railway line from the north terminates over at the mine works.

Twenty to a hut, a single shared hole in the ground for a latrine, a window at either end for ventilation. The slave quarters of Baram Chah have no fences, only guard towers, desultorily manned after dark. Where would anyone go? The nearest human settlement is Panjgur, a waterless two-week walk south. Lashkar Gah and the Afghan territories to the north—also more than a week through empty desert—are firmly in the hands of the Pashtun and Russians. The reward for returning a runaway is enough for a person to live on for a year.

In the year 2052 this is one of the harshest places on Earth. The logistics route that keeps Baram Chah and its facilities in food, water and parts is a very expensive, four thousand kilometer rail line leading up to Siberia, the industrial heartland of the Russian Empire.

As she and Horst watch, an ancient diesel locomotive and a few dozen cars make their way into the valley, clanking towards the rail yard by the mine.

Turban Man, no, Captain Khalsa, approaches with Najafi. He speaks briefly to Horst, who then begins to gather his weapon and water bottles. Sanji looks at the camp. The other soldiers are checking weapons and assembling gear.

“Sanji, you will stay by Sergeant Najafi’s side for the rest of our mission here. I am going to be busy trying to keep us all from being killed,” he says matter-of-factly, as if he were saying “while I run to the shop for some bread and cooking oil.”

“Wait, what? What’s happening now?” Sanji asks plaintively.

“I’ll take it from here, Captain,” Najafi says.

“Carry on then,” he says and snaps her a salute, which she returns.

Khalsa looks down at Sanji. “You are in good hands with Najafi. Do not leave her side, no matter what happens,” he says, then walks to the trail head where five men are assembled. Sanji stands up next to Najafi and they watch Khalsa briefing Horst and the others, including the sniper team from last night. They salute and head down the trail. Khalsa returns to the communications tent and puts on a headset.

Najafi puts a hand on Sanji’s shoulder. “Come, let’s get comfortable.” They lie down together under the camouflage net, and look out over the valley.

“Please tell me what the captain was talking about. What’s happening? What are you doing here?” Sanji pleads.

“Sanji, there are things I cannot tell you until we are safely away from here. This is for your safety as well as ours. What I will tell you is that we are here,” she waves a hand to take in the surveillance gear, “to observe and document what is happening to you and your friends and family at the hands of your so-called masters.”

“Oh. Are you from Petrichor?”

Najafi raises an eyebrow. She takes a moment to look at Sanji again.

Got you.

“Okay, so here is the situation. We’ve been here for two days and we’re supposed to leave late tonight, just after nightfall, marching south of this line of hill for a few kilometers.”

She didn’t answer the question.

“Now, though, we assume those men in the pickups that went back down the caravan trail were ordered to look for you and the two who followed you into the hills last night. If the searchers are diligent or even just lucky, they will find the bodies.”

“And the soldiers that just went down the hill?”

“They will wait and watch. Inshalla the men from the town will find nothing and will give up searching in the heat of midday.”

“And if they do find something?” Sanji asks.

“The searchers obviously can’t be allowed to find our position or get a close look at any of us. Secrecy is important to what we are doing here. That secrecy is now under serious threat.”

“I’m so sorry.” Sanji bows her head submissively in the way that she’s been taught to do to the masters from girlhood.

They’ve come to help us and now I’m going to ruin it all.

“Look at me, little one.”

Sanji raises her head and looks Sergeant Arash Najafi—the first arms-bearing woman she has ever seen—in the eyes. These are a bit red-rimmed and bloodshot from lack of sleep and the dusty conditions, but they look back at Sanji with compassion.

“We have to take you with us. You cannot stay behind here. You have seen too much, and what you have seen the masters would get you to tell them. You have already made some good guesses about us.” Najafi winks at her. “If you stay behind, the masters will make the same guesses, and more. So, you must come with us.” Najafi pats Sanji gently on the cheek with her gloved hand. It scratches a bit but it is gentle.

Father?

She has a vision of her father lying in his bed, alone and dying by inches from the toxins in the chemical separating plant. Of Ruslan whipping him out of bed to join the queue of the dammed staggering toward the pit.

Tears well up. “I can’t leave my father!”

Najafi embraces her, pulling her close. “Shh, my dear. Let it out if you need to but we must be quiet.”

For the second time in two days, Sanji finds herself crying into Najafi’s armored chest. After a moment she realizes she is not crying so much for herself or her father but for all of the people trapped here in this sun-baked wasteland. Grief for a mother she never knew. The hopelessness of them all.

There is a tremor of the earth followed heartbeats later by a rolling boom from the east.

“That’s just blasting at the mine,” Sanji says into Arash’s chest.

“Ah. Just so,” Arash says. The moment has ended. Arash breaks the embrace but continues staring Sanji in the eyes.

“This is going to be difficult. But we are all experienced professionals here.”

Two new soldiers approach. Najafi introduces them as MacInnes and Özil, and they exchange handshakes and clumsy salaams.

“The main thing today will be to keep your head, stay cool and keep thinking. Okay? Can you do that with me?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Sanji says. Najafi produces a floppy cloth hat from her cargo pockets and places it on Sanji’s head. It’s a bit too big but the shade instantly cools her cheeks.

Najafi puts a hand to her ear, looks distant as she listens to something, then keys the box and says something short.

“One of the pickups is headed back to town. The searchers are moving up and down the trail. Doesn’t look like they’ve found anything.” Najafi motions them to take up their observation positions. She hands Sanji the big field glasses, and produces a smaller set of her own. Özil and MacInnes man the surveillance gear.

“This is what our job is supposed to be: waiting, watching and recording. Get comfortable.”

They watch the comet tail head through the gap between the mountains, into the valley until it disappears inside the Big Compound.

Sanji loses herself in memories of her life here. The good ones: her father’s stories at dinner, singing with the women doing chores. Stealing medicine and rare foodstuffs from under the noses of the overseers with her best friend, Azyan. The bad ones: the dead being dumped into a common grave, the sick, trembling with heavy metal poisoning, being whipped into the pit, smuggling a few of their rare table scraps to those in the slave quarters.

Özil breaks the reverie with a comment to Najafi, who nudges Sanji to point their field glasses back to the Big Compound. The Toyota emerges with four more men in the bed and heads back down the caravan trail. Just before it goes around the bend they are able to spot a large black plastic case in the bed.

“You sure there’s no cell phone service in there?” Najafi asks, pointing to where the truck disappeared down the caravan trail.

“No. Not until you round that bend. When the caravans come back from the south, Ruslan and the guards always pull out their phones just as we turn the corner and have a line of sight,” Sanji says.

“That helps, thank you.” Najafi relays the information to the team below over the radio.

More waiting. Sanji searches the area of the mine for any sign of her father’s loose-limbed walk. Nothing.

Arash Najafi puts her hand to her ear again in the way that Sanji has figured out means that she’s listening to the team radio net. She exchanges a worried look with Özil and says something that sounds like it might be an oath.

“What is it?” Sanji asks.

“Those guys in the truck brought a drone with them. They’re setting it up now.”

“Oh. Shit,” Sanji says.

“Yeah.” Najafi checks her watch. “Okay, it’s about one. Sunset is at, say, eight thirty.” She switches to what Sanji is suspecting is English, to talk to Özil.

“What? Tell me, please,” Sanji asks.

“We’re trying to figure out how long we should try to stay in this location. Our ride home is supposed to pick us up well south of here and is scheduled much later tonight. But because…”

A faint crackle of gunfire comes from the south.

“Because of that,” Arash says. “We can’t allow the drone to fly. So, now we see if Sami and his guys can take them all out before someone can make a call back to town.”

They lie, sweating and listening to the sporadic gunfire. Rattling long bursts from the Pashtun Kalashnikovs and disciplined three-shot bursts from the soldiers’ compact rifles.

“Trucks are disabled, drone is down. They’ll be on foot now,” Najafi passes along.

The pace of the shooting slows to occasional, short bursts.

Sanji takes a swig of water and lies with her chin on her hands, sweat trickling down a bit of hair slicked in front of her ear, listening, trying to visualize the battle among the terrain she knows so well.

There is a long lull in the gunfire.

“The three guys that got left behind are surrendering,” Najafi says.

“What about the two on the run?”

There is no answer. All four of them focus on the opening of the pass that will put someone in line-of-sight of the cell phone tower in the Big Compound.

“One down,” Najafi reports.

Through her field glasses Sanji sees a man break out of the pass. He runs holding a simple flip phone in front of him, which he is struggling to operate while attempting to set a new world record in the 5,000 meter run. She blinks as his shoulder explodes in red mist and he goes down, face-planting in the sand and rock. As the crack of the first shot reaches her, another round strikes his head. Sanji is no stranger to bloodletting. She trains her binoculars on the phone. It lies on its side against a small rock, face down.

Arash is staring a hole into the side of Özil’s head. He is looking intently at a tablet attached to one of their antennas and has cupped a hand to one of the headphones. He shakes his head and gives a thumbs-up.

Najafi speaks into the radio, then to Sanji.

“He didn’t get a call off.”

A few minutes later, the black-man soldier from the communications tent brings them more water and meals in pouches. Arash introduces him as Menga. Vultures are starting to gather over the pass behind them and over the body.

“Hey, look,” Sanji alerts them.

Two figures wearing long Kameez shirts trot into view. Through the binoculars Sanji recognizes them as Khalsa’s men. They grab the phone and haul the body back up the trail, looking nervously over their shoulders.

They resume their sweating contemplation of the valley, willing the sun to march across the sky.

Some of the ambush team arrive back at the outpost. They prod along three prisoners. The men in their baggy trousers and Kameez look confused and aggrieved, as if the appearance of foreign commandoes was an unexpected imposition on their daily routine. The soldiers settle them in under one of the canopies, making sure their arms are securely bound and legs hobbled. As these three take stock, they catch sight of Sanji, who they know well, sitting comfortably and unbound next to one of the soldiers that just shot eight of their mates. This sets off a round of muttering and glares.

“You whore! We’re going to see you die by inches,” one of them snarls at her across the clearing.

“Did you bring these foreigners here?” another adds. Sanji just stares at him, which appears to make him take leave of his senses.

“You fucking cunt, I’m going to cut your guts out slowly and feed them to the vultures. I’m going to make your house-slave father watch before I do the same to him,” he vows.

Scared shitless, they are full of bluster and threats trying to convince each other that they are, in fact, brave.

Najafi growls, rises, pulls off her helmet and tosses it aside, and moves toward the three. It takes her three long-legged strides to reach them. On the fourth she moves as if taking a punt, her boot taking the threatening man on the chin. He is lifted partway off the ground and then rolls over keening in pain. She takes another by the throat.

“Look at me! What do you see?” she hisses, nose-to-nose with the now round-eyed man. His mouth works and he stutters.

“Speak, my brave Pashto ghazi! What is this you see before you?”

“Sergeant!” Khalsa yells, as softly as he can.

“A girl, d-d-dressing as a soldier,” he chokes.

“A WOMAN, dog,” she snarls. “An educated, trained soldier-woman, who has killed far better warriors than you. Slaver. Coward.”

Khalsa is hustling over. “Sergeant, at ease!” he hisses as he approaches.

Arash shakes the Pashtun man by the throat. His face starts to purple.

“Look at my face, brother, and look into your future. Your future, the rest of your life, will look like this. Women with power, women leading men, women teaching men. Begin your journey, brother, by showing some humility and respect.”

Khalsa and Horst arrive and pull her off him.

“Gag those fuckers, please,” she says, turning back to the observation position.

Khalsa nods to Horst. MacInnes brings a first aid kit for the man Najafi kicked, who is bleeding and crying in the dust.

Najafi thumps back down next to Sanji and has a long drink, necking the remains of her water bottle.

It isn’t her brutality that causes Sanji to goggle at Sergeant Arash Najafi. It’s that she’s gotten away with it. Khalsa is furious, but he hasn’t struck her, or bound her, or shot her.

Who are these people that would let a woman soldier and treat men like…like they treat us?

She keeps looking at Najafi, who is lost in thought staring out at the valley. The woman’s face is silhouetted against the cloudless blue sky. Sanji admires her lovely, curving jawline and the bold aquiline Levantine nose. Najafi’s face is dirty and smudged with the blackout grease and dirt, running with sweat. Her neck leads down to strong, sloping shoulder muscles, the kind she’s used to seeing only on men. Sanji thinks Arash Najafi may be the most beautiful woman she’s ever seen.

“Are you okay?” Sanji asks, finally breaking the uncomfortable silence in the camp.

Najafi turns as if noticing Sanji for the first time. She gives a small laugh and smiles. Takes in a deep breath.

“Sanji, you are going to see a new world when we get out of here. It is a new world struggling to be born from the ashes of the old one. But the old world—and everything that caused it to end—lives on in places like this.” She nods toward the valley. “The old world is run according to the timeless human tradition that some people are high and some people are low. And the low and the high are set in their places by God, destiny or whatever. Regardless of how they got there, the low exist to serve the high. The low should meekly accept the premise that this division is the way the world is meant to be arranged. In this system the Earth is also lowly, a resource to be consumed for the wealth and comfort of people, mostly the high people. Does that sound about right to you?”

Sanji thinks this sounds like a pretty good explanation of the way things are, and says so.

“That world burned for a reason, Sanji. The new world—the Petrichor—is people who, having lived through The Crash, have decided that we are living in humanity’s somewhat undeserved second chance. If we are going to make it as a species, we need to start really and truly living all those noble things that the imams and the prophets have been trying to tell us for thousands of years. We have to treat our brothers and sisters as ourselves, and we have to tread lightly on this, our one and only home planet. We have to find a way to be happy, well-fed and safe within the limits of our little spaceship home.

“Many people say the Petrichor way is naïve, soft-hearted, out of touch with the essential brutality of human nature. But the people who say that are almost always the privileged few—the high, and they are almost always MEN—who harness that brutality to maintain their position. They say it because they know the Petrichor removes their privileges, that they must earn what they get through merit and hard work. These high men know that when you actually put our principles into practice, it produces a quite pleasant and productive and pretty happy society in which they are now just another citizen who is expected to contribute to the common welfare. So, they resist and cling on in their grubby heights with all their might.”

Sanji takes a few minutes to turn Arash’s speech over in her head while looking out over the valley. Things look normal, the pace of life slowing in the hot part of the late afternoon. Only the mine continues to work unabated, dependent on the electricity of the sun.

Finally, Sanji replies. “If your new world is one of peace and equality, why are you here making war?”

Najafi gives her a long, appraising look and smiles. “You are a pretty smart kid.”

“My father taught me; we have some books, you know. For example, I know the history of this place. The Americans and the Russians before them. Back before The Crash. They all came promising to make people free, too.”

“Well, it’s a fair question. I’ll tell you this. We aren’t here to stay and we didn’t come to make war. We came to observe and gather evidence so that people will know what is happening here. And perhaps, in time, those responsible can be held to account.”

“You are quite obviously soldiers. Well-trained, experienced soldiers,” Sanji ripostes.

“Well, what do you think our fate would be if we were captured up here, Sanji? What would your masters do with me, for example?”

Sanji looks back out at the valley.

“Yeah. We both know the answer. So, yes, we’re armed because, in order for what we’re doing here to be of any use, we have to survive the experience. Even in those parts of the world that have joined the UN and taken up the Petrichor, those who became rich and powerful remain a law—and a force—unto themselves. Just like here.”

Khalsa comes over and says something tersely through gritted teeth to Najafi, jerking his thumb over to where her football is propped up, face wrapped in gauze. Najafi makes to rise but the captain cuts her off, talks to her some more and stalks away.

“What?” Sanji asks.

“I broke the guy’s jaw. We’re packing up. Moving out at sunset.”

“Are you in trouble?”

“Yes. Abusing a prisoner is a big no-no.” Najafi puts binoculars to her eyes and scans the valley. Sanji joins her and they watch quietly for a while.

“Why did you do it then?” Sanji asks after a minute.

“I grew up in a town near the Black Sea run by some mullahs and their tough guys who had carved out a nice little bit of Salafist empire there in the twenties. We didn’t have slavery, but for a woman our lives weren’t that much different than this,” she waves her hand at the valley, “until the Romanians and UN came. So, I know their type very well.” She jerks her head toward the prisoners. “Before the end, for at least a year, everyone in our little region by the shore had heard that there was something different going on just over the hills. Secret radios, traders gossip. I found out long afterward that the mullah and his followers had been offered an extraordinary sum of money to just get on a boat and go away. But where would they go? They knew enough that the Petrichor was no place for them. It would strip them of all their privilege and make everyone, especially the women, equal. The Shia in Iran wouldn’t have them. There is nothing left of the great Sunni nations to the south except radioactive sand, so they made the choice that all of us would die as mujahedeen, blessed of the Prophet. They put most of the village to the gun as the UN helicopters came over the hills. I was working in the field when I heard the guns and ran into the sea and bobbed there as I watched them butcher the village. The rest of my family was killed—my mother, father, a brother and sister.”

Sanji wants to hear the rest of Arash’s story, but MacInnes and Menga arrive and pack up the camo awning. They leave and Menga returns with a heavily laden pack that he sets beside Najafi, who murmurs what sounds like a word of thanks.

“We have to be very careful now. No cover. Stay low,” Najafi says. MacInnes and Menga pack up the surveillance gear. The sun is low in the west, casting long shadows in the valley.

Sanji looks through the binoculars, watching her house and scanning up and down the road between the mine and the village, hoping to catch one last glimpse of her father. Trying not to be afraid. Her throat feels tight all the time and she has to keep wiping her eyes.

If I can just get one last look at him, it can be like goodbye.

#

— ESCAPE –

Najafi taps her on the shoulder. “Look at the Big Compound.”

Over the wall she focuses on two big armored vehicles, six tires, high off the ground, slit windows and a gun turret on the top.

“Those are the Russians’ security vehicles,” Sanji says. She observes the men loading into the armored personnel carriers. The sun now sits just a hand’s breadth above the mountains in the west.

Najafi barks something over her shoulder and MacInnes and Khalsa slither up. The three soldiers discuss the development. “We are moving out,” Khalsa says. “We will be picked up in the valley, just south of the little village where your caravan spent last night. We will be moving fast. Stay with Sergeant Najafi.” He and MacInnes join the rest of the squad loading up their packs.

Najafi hands the binoculars back to Sanji. “Keep an eye open,” she says. She removes her poncho, settles her helmet and meticulously begins to check her rifle and equipment.

Then Najafi asks for the binoculars from Sanji and has another scan of the compound, then puts the binoculars in her pack and hoists it onto her back. She looks like a tortoise Sanji saw in a book once. Sanji and Najafi join the squad queuing up at the trail head. Nods and a gesture from Khalsa and they head down the trail. Horst goes first. Then MacInnes, then Najafi and Sanji followed by another trooper, the prisoners, Khalsa and the rest of the squad. Two men will stay behind to relay the movements of the APCs. They will have to haul ass to catch up later.

There is still plenty of daylight as they start down what is now a well-known path. By the time they get to the switchback and the big rock Sanji paused at last night, they have descended enough that the sun has gone behind the opposite hill and plunged them into orange-tinted shadows.

At the bottom Sanji sees the results of the afternoon fight. The old Toyotas are full of bullet holes and sitting on their rims. The bodies are sprawled behind the trucks or rocks where they sought cover. Two of the bodies lie up the road a bit, gunned down trying to high-tail it for town.

“The Russians just crossed the railroad tracks. Two or three minutes out. One is going around the other side of the hill, we gotta run,” Najafi tells Sanji over her shoulder as the soldiers start to jog. The prisoners protest but stumble along tied together like camels in train.

This little valley-within-a-valley is barely half a kilometer across. The ruins of the small village lie a few hundred meters south and around the bend. Sanji watches Najafi’s heavy pack swinging and bouncing in front of her and focuses on her breathing.

She hears two pops from behind and turns to look, but the trooper behind her gently pushes her onward. Gunfire pops behind them. She hears Khalsa issuing commands.

At the turn to the village, there is a low wall to their right. The sniper and Horst peel off and take up a position behind it. The rest of the column jogs past as the gunfire behind intensifies into a steady crackle, the echoes filling the valley.

They make the little mud collection of houses and approach the nearest compound. There was a second story which has partially collapsed. The old wall, more than a head high, still stands, reinforced by drifting sand two feet high around the base. Najafi gives the metal gate a kick with her boot and it falls off its hinges with a whump, sending up a cloud of sand and dust.

“In!” Najafi turns and crouches, weapon at the ready, waving Sanji inside. Sanji enters and turns. The three prisoners, red-faced, panting and staggering with the effort of running with arms tied behind them, are right behind her. The man Najafi kicked has blood bubbling at his mouth. Khalsa and Menga follow them. MacInnes jogs backwards with another trooper as they both point their rifles back up the valley. The remainder of the squad must all be back around the bend, where gunfire continues. Sanji hears a big boom.

“Help me!” Najafi says to Sanji. She’s trying to lift the metal door back into the frame. They maneuver the door lengthwise across the opening, bracing it with sand and two old tires lying in the courtyard. As Sanji rolls her tire into place four troopers come running toward the gate from up the road.

“The guys on the hill disabled the APC with a rocket. We’ve covered our retreat with smoke. Bought some time.” Najafi is breathing hard. She and Sanji help the four troopers over the gate in time for Mäkinen and Horst to round the bend at a fast jog.

Khalsa, similarly winded, dictates orders to the soldiers who quickly disperse to find firing positions.

“Sanji!” he snaps.

“Yes, sir!” she says instinctively.

“How many effective fighters would you say the masters have at their disposal?”

How many men with guns are there? Not just the Russians but all their little Pashtun boys too?

Khalsa looks on with the face of a man willing himself to have patience as Sanji runs the numbers in her head.

“There are only thirty or so of the Russians. The two big armored trucks. Maybe a hundred of the Pashtuns. But they are scattered all over the village and the mines. Perhaps another hundred Iranians, and Russian technicians and overseers, but they aren’t fighting men.”

“Okay. Good. That other APC will be coming around the bend in a couple of minutes. It will take them a while to figure out where we’ve holed up. We’ll have a bit of air support in about an hour. Our ride out should be here,” he looks at his watch, then the sky. The sun is behind the hills and the sky has taken on its orangey early-evening glow. “Two hours, twenty minutes.”

Khalsa, Menga, Najafi, Sanji and the prisoners go inside the small house. There isn’t a stick of furniture or decoration. The main room is still relatively intact although in its dustiness and crumbling walls it’s more like a man-made cave than a residence.

“Keep an eye on this lot,” Khalsa orders Najafi, indicating both the prisoners and Sanji. “I’m making you responsible for getting all four of them on the choppers in one piece, understood?”

“Sir, yes sir!” Najafi snaps to attention and salutes.

“Carry on, Sergeant.” Khalsa returns her salute and ducks out to finish organizing the defense.

Sanji and Najafi wrangle the prisoners to the side of the single room that still has a roof. They are meek and unprotesting now and regard Najafi with wide-eyed terror. They can hear the crunching as some of the squad take up positions on the roof and the rubble of the second story. Everyone catches their breath and hydrates. The quiet of the early evening returns. A slight dusk breeze comes, still warm but cooling the sweat on their skin. A hawk screeches somewhere.

The respite lasts barely long enough for Sanji’s heart to stop pounding from the run from the mountaintop. The rapid gurgle of a big diesel engine can be heard to the west. Mäkkinen, the sniper, says something from his perch. Sanji hears feet running on the roof followed by her rising heartbeat. The only other sound is that of the APC creeping through the narrow paths of the village.

From the roof there is a loud whoosh that fills the little courtyard with smoke and dust. Two heartbeats later there is a huge explosion to the west. She hears a rifle shot. Then a burst of three. Then there is nothing but the sound of the guns.

The smell and smoke of the gunfire drifts into their room and turns it acrid and grey. The firing is constant; the UN men shout calm guidance to one another. Khalsa returns with Menga, digs in his pack and sends him out with ammo. The captain squats and consults with someone over the radio and then rises to leave, barking a few words to Najafi and pointing to Sanji. His message is clear. “Stay here.”

The three Pashtun prisoners sit against the far wall, their heads either chins on chest or tilted back against the wall, eyes closed and reciting prayers.

Najafi says something to Sanji but she is nearly deaf from the gunfire and yells, “What?!”

“They didn’t have any heavy weapons except what was on the APCs, so we’re holding them off for now,” Najafi bellows.

Menga enters with Horst leaning on him, his face bleeding. Najafi helps get the wounded man on the floor and Menga begins to work on the trooper. Horst seems to be in a great deal of discomfort but not agony. Menga irrigates his eye and applies a bandage to his head. They give him some water and prop him against the opposite wall from the prisoners where he sits with his rifle across his legs, covering both the prisoners and the door.

Horst smiles a little and gives Sanji a thumbs-up.

All during this the gunfire continues its random percussion beat. Louder pops emanate from inside the compound. A steady background crackle from outside. The thunk-thunk of rounds hitting the mud walls.

“Ricochet, caught his cheek and got gravel in his eye. I think he’ll be okay,” Najafi reports into Sanji’s ear.

Khalsa comes back into the room. He’s winded but calm. He shouts to Najafi, jacking his thumb outside. Then he picks up the radio headset and speaks into it urgently.

“Okay, I’ve got to go out on the line. You stay here.” Najafi gets to her feet and charges her rifle. She takes two steps towards the door and then stops, turns to Sanji.

“Do you know how to use this?” Najafi displays her sidearm.

“Sort of,” Sanji says. “I’ve seen them used all the time.”

“Good. Just in case.” Najafi cocks it, hands it butt-first to Sanji, demonstrates the safety.

“Back soon,” Arash says and leaves.

Outside the day has almost faded away and their little room is becoming quite dark. The only illimination comes from the bluish-white light of Khalsa’s tablet. The beat of the firefight has slowed from its frenetic pace to something a bit more waltz-ish, more deliberate.

Have the Russians pulled back? Do they have night vision gear?

On the roof she hears screaming followed by yells and cursing. Some things are universal: the tone of profanity is one of them. Moments later two of the troopers enter, dragging one of their comrades, limp, the head a bloody mess. Khalsa is propped in the corner muttering into the radio and stabbing at his tablet, his face like a specter in its light. He barely looks up as they bring in the body, busy with whatever he is trying to conjure over the radio. He says something to the soldiers working over the body and they instantly cover their ears and crouch low to shield the injured man.

The evening is blasted open by a thunderclap and light so bright it fully illuminates the room, and Sanji recognizes MacInness’s face on the body on the floor. It feels like a giant has just squeezed her whole body.

Where is Najafi? What is this?

She sees Khalsa talking into his microphone, looking intently at the notebook; she looks at the prisoners, their mouths moving in prayer, and realizes that there is no noise save a high whine that is in her head, not out in the world.  She sees another flash and briefly feels the giant squeezing her body. Then darkness.

Part II
— BERGEN –

Bullets spang off the big ore loader Sanji is covering behind. She hugs Abe N’Dele tightly as he gurgles and kicks. Bullet wounds in the chest and neck, drowning in his own blood. She screams out for a medic and can see Stavenger, the squad medic, looking on helplessly, twenty meters away behind his own cover from the hidden machine gun sweeping the approaches to the office block. They’ve been ambushed, the bad guys tipped off they were coming.

“Saan-Ji,” a singsong voice calls her name.

She looks at Brigit, who is waving at her across the café table.

“Earth to Sanji,” Brigit says.

At seven thirty at night the sun still glitters off the Sogenfjord and shines in the eyes of diners in the cafés on the waterfront in Bergen, Norway. The sun bouncing off the aviator sunglasses of Sergeant Sanji Ashkani plays spots onto the table where Mobuku is snowplowing up the last delicious sauce on his plate with a bit of crusty black bread. Behind him two of the restaurant staff stoop while cleaning up a pile of broken crockery. The sudden crash and curses of the busboy dropping his load triggered Sanji back seven months to the Congo.

“I asked if you want to try coffee?” Brigit says. “And then you went all blank. Are you okay?”

Sanji absently scratches at her left calf where a bullet nearly took her leg off not long after N’Dele expired in her arms.

“Sorry, woolgathering. Coffee? Yes, I’ve heard so much about it. Let’s do it.”

The three are out celebrating overcoming the three-hour ordeal that was the final exam in the accelerated summer macroeconomics class at the university. They were in a study group together. Brigit and Mobuku have spent much of the meal complaining about how complicated cooperative economics is; the spiderweb of interlocking workers’ councils and investment funds leaves them shaking their heads in confusion. Sanji nods quietly at these complaints. Brigit and Mobuku are Norwegian born and bred. There are damn few places on Earth that could be considered to have gone through both The Crash and climate change gracefully, but the rugged hills and steep-sided fjords of Scandinavia are near the top of any list. As the saying goes, geography is destiny. The Scandinavian Union was Ground Zero for The Petrichor. All of which makes Brigit and Mobuku a rare thing indeed for humanity in 2059: comfortable children with alarmingly little self-awareness of their privilege. That will change soon enough. As soon as they graduate, they will pay off their cushy college education with four years of social service. Mobuku, who still passably speaks his family’s ancestral Bantu tongue, will surely end up doing work in the remarkably resilient east African region, lucky boy.

Sanji is majoring in electrical engineering. The macro-econ class was a core requirement to be ticked off. But she thoroughly enjoyed it, as she does everything about school and learning. But she recognized all too well the descriptions of classical capitalism, red in tooth and claw, and she shared some of her past with her classmates. They made all of the gestures of empathy and sympathy, Sanji could see that they could not really get their heads around it.

The waiter returns with their special dessert treat: espresso coffee, bits of tan foam encircling the black brew in demitasse cups. At the waiter’s suggestion, he is permitted to add a dollop of cream and a small spoonful of beet sugar to each. Coffee is all the rage now in northern Europe. In the years just preceding The Crash, coffee became more of a luxury good as plants and growing regions were stressed by climate change. For nearly three decades, this once most caffeinated of regions was coffee-less. An entire generation was cut off cold turkey, then gave birth to another who never knew its pleasure (or became slaves to it). The Crash cut the coffee regions off from the rest of the world for two decades. Just in the last few years, a combination of new, hardy cultivars and reconnection to the rest of the world made the black nectar available again, albeit at exorbitant prices.

The three sip as one. The evening onshore breeze wafts up the fjord, cooling the streets. The smell of the coffee reminds Sanji of black, baked earth. The sugar and cream give the taste a hint of cacao. Mobuku scrunches his face in distaste.

“Eugh! This is terrible. It’s like drinking grey water from the cistern,” he says and puts the cup down decisively. “I don’t get what the fuss is all about.”

Sanji sips again. It feels like something is tickling the back of her brain. She gazes at Brigit and cocks an eyebrow. Brigit smiles back over the top of the cup.

“I think I like it,” Brigit says.

Sanji and Brigit finish their coffee, splitting Mobuku’s unwanted cup between them. Sanji finds that she likes hers with a bit more cream and sugar, while Brigit seems fine with the straight stuff.

As they prepare to pay, Brigit and Mobuku try one more time to get Sanji to come with them to an end-of-term party, but Sanji begs off as she has all through dinner.

“I need to call my mom and then I report back to duty on Monday. I’d like to just relax and do nothing for a couple of days.”

“I get it,” Mobuku says, with a grin. “A bit of peace and quiet before you go back to being a copper.”

“Yup.” She nods. Her fellow students know Sanji is a UN Marshal. And all most citizens of the UN know of the Marshals is: hard-faced uniformed coppers making baddies do the perp walk down the jetway in Oslo after being “handed over” by their respective countries to the ICJ. “Handing over” is a phrase that encompasses a world of possibilities: from the literal handing over by local authorities to the Marshals, to things like Sanji specializes in—helicopter-borne assaults on the fortified jungle hideouts of criminals wanted for feed-bait human rights abuses. As in Kindu, last fall. Sanji hadn’t been that scared since the day Arash took her out of Afghanistan seven years ago.

They say their goodbyes and part. Sanji decides to stroll over to the park by the city museum and the old fortress to take in the last of the sun and find a quiet bit of grass to call Mom. The encroaching ocean has forced the residents to raise the level of the docks and the road, but the fortress grounds still stand meters above sea level. She walks past the Military History Museum and finds a spot on the lawn, sits down, puts in an ear bud and places her call. The ringtone goes on for some time and Sanji is about to cut the connection when Arash’s face pops up on the screen.

“Sanji! Sorry, I was just having my first decent wash in about four days. Good to see you, my dear! How did your exam go?”

Arash Najafi has let her hair grow out. It wetly hangs in a shining black wave just past her shoulders to frame her distinctive nose and jawline. Her eyes twinkle in the handheld’s backlight, which also highlights a few strands of grey emerging in that hair.

“Oh, I’m so sorry to pull you away from that,” Sanji says with genuine concern. A decent wash in the field is a luxury of self-care not to be taken lightly.

“No, no, just finished. It’s fine. Tell me how it went.”

“Fine. I felt prepared and finished on time. It was a good class. I liked it but I’m glad to get it out of the way. Looking forward to real engineering classes. Finally. How are things there?”

“Pretty good. Hang on a second and I’ll show you.” She moves and Sanji’s view slews to blurry bare feet, the floor, a sliding door and then steadies on a nighttime cityscape. Scattered lights glitter along the shore next to the drowned port facilities, in the skeletons of the shattered highrises of the city center, and here and there up into the hills that surround the bay. They aren’t the can-see-it-from-orbit density of a fully recovered city like Bergen, but they are numerous enough to indicate that this is a city with a functioning power grid.

“It looks like progress is being made,” Sanji says. She’s never been to the region and it’s difficult to tell anything in the dark, but LED lights instead of open fires are a good sign.

Durban was once the chief port of the nation of South Africa, famed for its mild climate and glorious beaches. With a pre-Crash population of over three million, it had been one of the largest cities in southern Africa.

In the year 2025 4.2 billion people—six in ten—lived in the world’s cities. The fate of the cities during The Crash all followed the same general theme: as power and transport networks broke down, food, water, and resource scarcity caused conflict in the cities. Driven by hunger and violence, billions dispersed from the cities in search of food or land on which to grow it and came into conflict with those in the exurbs and rural areas. These people, who were themselves stretched to the limit, struggled to repulse or absorb them. Some were absorbed themselves. Most of the time these collisions resulted in terrible violence that made the crisis even worse.

The true toll will never be known. There are still many places on Earth where the ground is littered with human remains. The best guess is that in the Lost Years—between 2025 and 2043—somewhere in the neighborhood of two-thirds of humanity died from thirst, starvation, conflict and disease.

Geography is destiny. Populations eventually reached equilibrium with local carrying capacity at various times in various places. This happened as early as 2032 in Russia, Scandinavia and the Pacific Northwest of North America. A bit later in West Africa and South America. Just a few years ago in the region surrounding Durban, which is now part of an expanding new UN member state, the Union of Southeast Africa.

Arash Najafi returned from the mission to Baram Chah with shell fragments in her left leg and ribs. Once out of the hospital, she faced discipline for the mistreatment of the prisoners. She was removed from field duty and posted to the Marshal’s training center in Bergen, where she taught cross-cultural relations and, ironically, de-escalation strategies, in addition to survival, evasion and rescue. It was made pretty clear to her that any further advancement in the Marshal Service would not be an option. But Arash ground it out for Sanji.

Sanji’s first memory after the battle of the little village was seeing Najafi’s face in the deafening chatter of a helicopter bay. There followed a sea voyage of a few weeks during which Najafi helped Sanji grieve. In this Arash was aided by Adrian, a big, friendly Spaniard who was the counselor aboard the ship, as well as the extraordinarily open, friendly and multi-cultural crew who were always available for a smile, a snack or with the time to explain to the inquisitive Sanji what a thing was or how it worked. By the time they docked and went ashore in Oslo, Sanji was in an almost perpetual state of ecstatic wonder at the variety of food, the abundant and free technology and media, and the general state of openness and order of everything around. Sanji then spent about six weeks in the state orphanage in Oslo—the very same that Arash had landed in but that was now several times smaller than it had been in Arash’s day. Sanji underwent more counseling—they were so big on counseling in The Petrichor—and then she left, with Arash as her legal guardian.

Sanji dove full-tilt into her new life, playing soccer, learning to swim, and indulging her omnivorous academic appetite. Three years passed by in a flash. When Sanji aced her secondary exams and got her Scandinavian Union citizenship, she had a choice. She would owe four years of public service either before or after college. Arash made no secret of the fact that she wanted to move on with her life, and there were numerous other UN agencies and cooperatives involved in aid and development pinging her with offers. Just a few weeks after Sanji’s graduation, Arash took a lucrative offer to be a regional manager for UN Redevelopment.

Arash, only in her late thirties, felt re-invigorated by this mission. Sanji, who had experienced a true mother-daughter relationship with Arash for those three years together, felt bereft and alone for the first time since leaving Afghanistan. So, Sanji joined the Marshal Service. It made her feel strong and in control. Sharing the same experiences helped her feel closer to Arash. After Kindu, she now has emotional and physical scars to match and a year left in her hitch.

Arash flips the camera view away from the Durban skyline to herself, walks back into the small apartment, and flops into a chair. “How’s your leg?”

“I feel good. Ran 10k this morning, no pain. Doctors have passed me fit for duty. I report back on post Monday,” Sanji replies.

Arash considers. “And how are you feeling about that?”

Sanji rolls her eyes, she can’t help it. Petrichor touchy-feelies again. I don’t want to talk about feelings all the time.

“I’m fine with it. Really, I’m ready to go back. Momma.” Sanji only calls Arash “Mom” or “Momma” to her face when she feels like she’s being worked into an emotional corner and wants to push away. Arash doesn’t rise to this, but her lips tightening tell Sanji that the bolt found its mark. Sanji, as always, instantly feels guilty because she truly does love Arash like a mother. But finding a mother figure in your teens isn’t the same as having a mother bring you up.

“All right. I trust you to take good care of yourself,” Arash replies calmly. “Let’s change the subject. I have some gossip for you.” She puts on a bit of a smile.

“Ooh, okay.” Sanji, relieved, brightens. “Give it to me.”

“So, the Russian Spring…” Arash begins, referring to the popular uprising last year that paved the way for an actually honest election in Russia this year.

“I’ve been keeping track of that. The new government is making noises of cracking down on the oligarchs. Good luck to them.” Sanji snorts.

“All right, my cynical child,” Arash says, arching an eyebrow. “Riddle me this: if you are a precarious, newly elected, Petrichor-curious government attempting to demonstrate seriousness about delivering on your promises of ending the entrenched mafia oligarchy that has held your nation in an iron grip for more than half a century, how would you approach that problem?”

Touché, Mom. But interesting and not, I think, hypothetical.

Sanji takes a minute to mull the problem, letting her eyes unfocus. The sun starting to settle towards the North Sea looks like an impressionist painting. She tries to recall the facts that she’s gleaned from the feeds.

“We would need an early victory, something to show the public that we’re serious and making progress. It would have to be a person or enterprise that was involved in egregious activities, beyond the pale. That way the oligarchs might think, ‘Oh, they’re just trying show willing, set an example of the worst of the worst, to justify the politics, but they’ll leave me alone.’ Yeah. That would do,” Sanji says.

“You will make an excellent bureaucrat, or politician, one day, dear.” Arash smiles. Then the evil grin that Sanji recognizes from playing board games in the long winter evenings spreads across Arash’s face.

Uh-oh, that’s her “I know how this all is going to play out” grin.

“Anything spring to mind?” Arash prompts her.

Czar Vladimir IV died in 2055, triggering the infighting and recession that led to the Russian Spring. But the Russians’ isolated Internet was still very much that. Very few people in the Petrichor outside of intelligence bureaus knows much about the inner workings of the kleptocracy of the Rus.

“Hello?” Arash taps her finger on the glass of her handy. “Come on. It’s literally as clear as your reflection in the handy screen.”

When she clocks it Sanji is certain that her heart actually, literally skips a beat.

The Baram Chah mines. Of course!

“No!”

“Yes,” Arash says, and then turns the wicked smile off. “So, let me ask you again, my darling foster-daughter, how does returning to duty make you feel?”

They talk. Sanji lies back in the grass as the sun sets. Arash sits in a cute, flowered easy chair looking out over the Indian Ocean.

Sanji cries retelling the Kindu fight. How they ended up capturing or killing the warlords there at the cost of six dead Marshals. Arash tells her about her friendship with MacInnes who died in Baram Chah. Sanji tells Arash about some new research being done in biomimicry, building structures and machines that emulate plants and animals, and how exciting that sounds. They talk about the job until the sun has set. They talk about the difference between revenge and justice. But they don’t talk about the one thing neither of them can face talking about right now: Sanji’s father.

#

— UNS RACHEL CARSON –

As a naval vessel, the UNS Rachel Carson exemplifies the Petrichor philosophy, The old world has left us all we need to build the new world.

The idea of dressing a warship in commercial clothing goes back as far as seafaring itself. She began life in the 2000s as Evelyn Maersk, a 400-meter-long very large container ship that spent The Crash rusting in Copenhagen. In her second life, the blocks of shipping containers that appear to stack almost a hundred meters over the water line are hollow, realistic fakes that fold and open like a puzzle box to create an enormous flight deck.

Rachel Carson sails under sunny skies in the northern Arabian Sea, about 200 kilometers west of the radioactive ruins of Karachi. The crew ran background radiation checks this morning and conditions are near normal due to the fact that the summer monsoon is running in its westerly flow. The flight deck has unfurled and the passengers and crew are getting their first serious exposure to sunlight and fresh air since departing Dar es Salaam twelve days ago.

Company Sergeant Sanji Ashkani, with a fresh stripe on her sleeve, breathes the humid, salty air in deeply through her nose as she leads the combined UN Marshal and Russian FDU squads, sixty in all, in yoga warmups prior to morning physical training. She straightens her arms and presses her torso into up dog, arching her back and compressing her lower back muscles. She holds the pose and focuses herself on the Carson’s wake trailing out into the blue-green Indian Ocean.

The Russian men—they’re all men—have been hand-picked by the new republican government in Moscow to form the cadre of a new, independent federal special police force. Every one is a son or grandson of victims of the oligarchy’s sixty-year grip on Russia. While Sanji was recuperating and taking classes, they were slipped out of Russia to Bergen to begin integrated training with the Marshals. Sanji joined them in August, and soon thereafter the force moved to a spartan base in Eritrea where they worked up for this mission.

The Russians are eager students of the law and have been soaking up the Marshals’ training. But even after six months they still roll their eyes at what they see as the “squishy” aspects of UN culture and paramilitary training. The yoga is part of that. They groan and mock it under their breath each morning at the start of PT. They are kept just on the right side of insubordination by the laser stare of their captain, Joseph Suvorin. Suvorin bought into it as soon as he found that yoga as a warmup leaves his troublesome hamstrings and lower back feeling loose and pain-free after intense exercise. He’s also mentioned to Sanji that he likes the clear-headed feeling he gets from it.

“This is a good way to begin the day,” he told her early on.

Suvorin is looking away and Sanji sneaks a glance at him. He is literally a fair-haired boy of the new Russian Federal Department of Justice, a propagandist’s wet dream. His blond hair stands straight up like a scrub brush. His blue eyes give the Arabian Sea a run for its money in depth and glitter. Captain Suvorin is the great-grandson of a noted chess champion and pre-Crash reformer and fanatically dedicated to the cause of a democratic, reformed Russia. A competitive gymnast through his mid-teens, he is almost preposterously fit, and Sanji likes to drink that in any time she’s reasonably sure he won’t notice.

Suvorin turns his head to look at her and she drops her gaze as she smoothly lowers her torso to the mat. As much as she enjoys looking at him, she finds the whole package just a bit too intense.

So easy on the eyes. But just… It’s like he’s an anti-Ruslan, yet still somewhat Ruslan-like. Not for me.

After yoga the troopers jog a few easy laps of the deck and then are dismissed for a hearty breakfast to be followed by the final mission briefing before they load onto the helicopters. They will fly into a staging base in Panjgur, of all places. In the intervening years, the UN has established an extension office and technical resource center at the old airport. As the troopers file below, Suvorin taps her shoulder.

“A word, Sergeant, if you please.” Under the violent feudal-capitalist system of the last fifty years, Russians have adopted a very formal, mannered way of speaking. One never knows who one’s interlocutor is connected to. Better to be polite than to give offence.

“At your service, Captain Suvorin,” she replies, giving as good as she gets.

“This is an uncomfortable situation for me, so I shall be straightforward with you. I am aware of your history in Baram Chah.”

“I beg your pardon, but that’s no secret, Captain. I helped plan the mission. You were there, as I recall. Why would you be uncomfortable?” she asks, smiling.

“Ah, no. I mean… You see, I have… Well, the FDU has put together what they think is a pretty clear picture of you as a child. Specifically you, your father, and one Ruslan Alexandrovich Popov?”

I don’t get it. He seems either uncomfortable talking about Russian-sourced intelligence, the specific subject, or both.

Sanji swallows hard and focuses on maintaining a neutral expression, a natural skill for a former slave. Aside from Arash and her counselor, Ava, there are maybe three or four other people outside of Afghanistan who know anything about her childhood.

Be curious, Mom would tell me.

“Tell me what you think you know,” she replies.

It is interesting to hear him tell her her own story from the point of view of the slave-holders. The story of Kamal Ashkani, a Pakistani engineer, capable and resourceful, bought out of the Kazakh camps and brought to Baram Chah. His stellar work record. His daughter, Sanji, born to his wife, Rayana, who died of complications of childbirth. Sanji’s own slave record of compliance and work with the trading expeditions. He finally gets to the part of the story Sanji doesn’t know, what happens after she and the Marshals escaped.

“According to the records, your father died under interrogation by Ruslan Popov not long after the incident,” he concludes, eyes focused over Sanji’s shoulder at the sea.

She turns away from him.

I knew. I always knew.

“Thank you, Captain. I need a few moments,” she manages.

“I have more to discuss with you. A change in the mission plan. When you have…processed this a bit,” he says. “I’m very sorry to be the one to tell you.” He clicks his heels and actually gives her a small bow before turning to leave.

She’s together enough to manage to force herself to eat a full breakfast. Some word has been passed among the ranks and she is left alone with her mixture of guilt, grief and rage, her face hot but somehow holding back the tears. She notes the sidelong glances and whispers but cannot bring herself to give a fuck. She empties her tray, takes a deep breath and packs it all away, getting her game face on for the final briefing. This is technically a Russian operation with the UN providing logistical and transport support. Suvorin will be in charge during the raid itself. Briefing them is Captain-Inspector Arnesson, Sanji’s CO, who will remain aboard Rachel Carson as the operations officer, coordinating all the moving parts.

“Company Sergeant Ashkani!” Arnesson calls out.

“Sir!” she replies, standing.

“We have made a slight adjustment to the operations plan. Due to new intelligence we have received from our Russian partners, we’ve assigned you a new role in the plan. Captain Suvorin will be briefing you separately.”

“Yes, sir!” Sanji salutes and sits.

What is going on? We don’t just change up the plan at the last minute! What is Suvorin up to?

Arnesson continues, “Corporal Fellani!”

Corporal Gerome Fellani hops to attention.

Arnesson informs Fellani that he will step in for Sanji during the phase of the operation where she will be operating independently. The entire team is to be re-briefed in Panjgur. They run through the rest of the operation while Sanji stews and frets.

The plan is pretty straightforward and they have sandboxed it dozens of times. Two squads of the FDU, led by Suvorin, will be heli-dropped near the rail line from Helmand and north of Baram Chah. They will take up a blocking position on the rail line. A special train is bringing in the primary investor-operators from Siberia to review the newly modernized ore separation and processing works. That team will stop the train and capture the oligarchs. This is the primary objective of the mission.

Three other squads, originally to be commanded by Sanji, will assault the Big Compound, immobilizing the quick reaction forces there and rounding up the resident managers, including, presumably, Ruslan. After this, they are to secure the village and wait for the rail force to arrive. A fourth squad will land and hold several kilometers away as mobile reserve and as-needed close air support.

The briefing drags on for another hour as each squad leader and key person reviews their part of the plan. Once dismissed, Sanji makes directly for Suvorin.

“You have instructions for me, I believe,” she says coldly.

“Yes, Sergeant. Please, let’s go outside.” He leads her toward the stern, a walk of at least a hundred meters during which Sanji fumes. They arrive on Rachel Carson’s enormous fantail, overlooking the wake sparkling behind.

“I insist that you fully explain this highly irregular change in plan, Captain,” she says, getting right up on him even though he overtops her by nearly thirty centimeters.

He puts up his hands, placatingly.

“Please, Sergeant Ashkani. I have a proposal for you. It is a gift, sort of. If you wish to take it.”

“What? A gift? What do you think I could possibly want from that place?”

Suvorin pauses, takes a breath.

“We have arranged to have Ruslan out of the Big Compound during the raid. He will be in Bait Al’Mutia, the House of Pleasure, in the old village. Do you know it?”

“Of course I know it,” she sneers. “How have you ‘arranged’ this?” she says, using the timeless and universal finger air-quotes.

“There are those who work in the mine enterprise who have guilty consciences. With a bit of financial incentive, they have been persuaded to do the right thing and cooperate with us. In exchange for this cooperation, they will be allowed to slip through the operation’s dragnet.”

Sanji’s mouth drops open as she tries to process the implications of what Suvorin has just told her.

“The fuck? Men of conscience!? These ‘men of conscience’ of yours have been enslaving, abusing and murdering my people for twenty years! Every one of them has the blood of a hundred slaves on his hands! And you are telling me that because they’ve figured out which way the political wind is blowing and ratted out their bosses to you, that they get to just walk away? I’m not buying into that, SIR.”

Suvorin digs in his field jacket and pulls out a small packet, taps out a cigarette.

“You’re fucking kidding me.” She rolls her eyes and steps back from him.

“It started as a self-defense mechanism. So many still smoke in Russia. I took it up to fit in during training. Now, well, it helps me cope with stress. It is also a useful prop for gathering one’s thoughts in a difficult conversation such as this.”

He lights up and takes a step back, sparing Sanji most of the worst of the smoke and stench. She crosses her arms and waits, glaring at him.

“It is considered sufficient that they have seen the error of their ways and have given us the information that makes this operation possible. As for escape… It depends on what ‘escape’ means,” he air-quotes back at her. “They will be spending the rest of their lives on the run from their former employers, none of whom are the forgiving sort. They’ll live—for as long as they can—skulking on the fringes of society, trying to remain unrecognized by anyone who might profit from handing them over to those they’ve betrayed; haunted by that place and the things they did there.” He points the tip of the fag in the general direction of Baram Chah. “That is enough. It’s a very Russian form of punishment.”

“Sounds like Russian business as usual to me,” Sanji humphs.

Suvorin looks at the ocean, then at the cigarette as if noticing it for the first time. With a look of self-disgust he flicks it into the water and exhales smoke out through his nose, watching it swirl astern.

“Ah, the western European condescension…” he sighs.

“I’m not western or European,” Sanji cuts him off.

“Then you ape them very well,” he shoots back.

“Fuck you!” She shoves him hard so that he has to take a stagger-step to regain his balance.

Oh shit, what have you done, Sanji you dummy?

Suvorin looks a bit shocked, but stands quietly and appraises the situation. A flicker of awareness passes across his face and he stands to attention. “Please forgive me, Company Sergeant. I was rude and meant no disrespect to you personally. I apologize unreservedly.” He gives her that stupid little bow.

“It sounded racist,” she replies, but relaxes.

“Again, forgive me. I used a very unfortunate phrase to express that it appears you have assimilated very well your foster-nation’s attitudes. Truthfully, I meant no slur against your ethnicity. Please, forgive me. It is important to continue our conversation.” He gestures to the railing and then steps over and leans there insouciantly waiting for her.

Damn, he’s slick. Is it an act? Also, you just, technically, struck a superior officer of a country with which we are in a delicate alliance. If only Arash could see me now.

“Apology accepted. I apologize for striking you, Captain. I hope I can rely on your discretion,” are the words that come out of her mouth. Sanji steps to the rail and offers her hand to shake. He takes it without hesitation and they lock eyes.

So blue. The stereotype is, cold. But there is goodness there, isn’t there?

“Sergeant, I’d like to talk to you now, person to person.”

“All right, you may call me Sanji then.”

“Thank you, Sanji. And you must call me Joe. Sanji, I am going to do some of what you Petrichor people would call displaying vulnerability. Because I think there has been a miscalculation.” He pauses for a moment and smiles wanly.

“Okay. Thank you. Tell me more, I guess.”

This is weird. If he’s got more bad news, why doesn’t he just spill it?

“Ruslan, as you’ve gathered, is still alive, still performing his duties here. He is, always has been, Vor, a made man in the mafia group of Sergei Kumarin, who, as you know, is our primary target.”

She nods encouragement.

“Ruslan is a brutal man, as you also know, of course, but he possesses the cunning and connections of a good mafia brigadier. It is quite likely that he will eventually figure out who is working with us from within the Baram Chah operation.”

“Okay. So? You just pointed out that those people get what they get. Russian-style justice, or whatever. I don’t see your point. What’s the miscalculation?”

“Ah, yes. True. However, if given time, he will probably also be able to piece together who the people higher up the food chain are who are helping us. And those people we do want to preserve.”

“What can he do from prison?”

Suvorin—Joe—laughs ruefully.

“Russian prisons are…not like western prisons. Prison life is like mother’s milk to the Vor. They are cisterns where information collects and is redistributed. Information will flow faster to Ruslan there than it would if we just left him here. No. He needs to be taken off the board. Here is where I must get to the miscalculation.”

It all falls together for Sanji as he talks. She gasps with surprise and puts her hand to her mouth.

“Oh shit. You said you had a gift. Ruslan will be at the whorehouse. You want me…?”

“This was put forward by my superiors. They thought it would be a…” he shrugs helplessly, “goodwill gesture? A perk? I don’t know, it’s all very what I realize in retrospect you will perceive as macho Russian revenge stuff. But this is…how Russians think, still. Truly it was meant to honor you.” He’s gripping the railing and staring at his hands.

He’s really feeling bad about this. Six months in the west and he’s already gone all reflective and self-aware. What am I going to do with this?

Sanji takes a deep breath and joins Joe in gripping the railing staring at the wake spooling out behind them.

“You want me to kill him in cold blood? Do I understand this correctly?” she says.

“Yes. It must be done. We’d thought you might…it sounds stupid, but um…you might be grateful for the opportunity to do the necessary.”

She rocks herself gently back and forth with her arms on the railing.

Oh, Momma. I wish you were here. We’d have a laugh and then figure it out.

She didn’t need Arash, though. She looked aft where a tan smear on the horizon marked the desertified wastes of Pakistan. She thought of the pit. The mass graves of Baram Chah.

“I’ll do it.”

#

— HOMECOMING –

The helicopter carrying Sanji and the reserve squad lifted out of Panjgur just before sunset. Her younger self had never seen it from the air, of course, but she could tell that the town has changed. Flying over the town, she was reminded of looking at the surface of a pond on a sunny day, so much did solar panels glitter from the rooftops. She spied the souk and Duru and Shari’s house nearby, still neat and modern-looking but no longer unique. That afternoon she had sent a messenger into town to inquire about them, but no response had come before the time had come to load up.

They would be in their seventies by now. Not likely.

Now, just before midnight and after a three-hour hike from where she was dropped off, she is atop a small, steep-sided peak that juts up just north of the old town. She sits cross-legged in the very spot where she bird-watched and spied upon the town as a young girl. The night is devoid of bird sounds but she feels intense déjà vu gazing down into the town through magnifying night-vision.

It’s all the feels. Pack it away. Plenty of time to work through it later. Concentrate.

The old village of Baram Chah is a collection of about two dozen traditional walled compounds with mud-walled homes. The old compounds, often rebuilt, are reserved for the Afghan and Pashtun overseers and a few of the trusted house slave families. The old village, unrelentingly tan of streets, walls, houses, is dark; there are no street lights and only an occasional light above a gate or in the homes at this hour.

The slave quarters are arrayed in a square, four long rows of half-buried quonset huts south of the old village. Each hut has a bright light above the door. Guard towers shine bright lights inwards at each corner of the square. At this distance she cannot make out individual guards, but she sees signs of lollygagging; the flare of a cigarette here, a face lit by the backlight of a scavenged video player there.

The Big Compound off to the west of the slave quarters and next to the railway line contains the business offices and armory of the Russian-Iranian joint venture. The walls are three meters high and enclose an array of buildings, garages and living quarters. Well-lit within, the moonless night plunges the spaces between it and the rest of the village valley into blackness.

Sanji concentrates back down on the village, looking for two houses in particular. On the far north side of town is a big two-story sprawl that is the House of Pleasure, the whorehouse where Ruslan is supposed to have been lured this evening. A tan Toyota pickup is parked outside, which indicates that someone from the Big Compound is there.

Next she focuses on another house, two doors down from her old house—which she has determinedly not looked at tonight. This is the home of her childhood friend, Azyan. Joe’s spies have said that Azyan is alive and well and working as a maid and nanny for the assistant overseer. Sanji stopped letting herself think about Azyan a few years ago. Her speculations on what may have become of her friend and partner in childhood escapades were too painful to bear.

Sanji sees a light on in Azyan’s house and decides that now is the time. In the green-hued night vision, she picks her way down the hill. Once on the edge of the village, she has to stop and stay still in the shadows twice to wait for furtive figures in burkas darting through the streets.

House visiting. Sharing food, gossip, medicine. Nothing’s changed. I wonder if Mama Yasim, the midwife, is still alive.

As she approaches Azyan’s house, she hears a baby crying within. She goes around to the back of the compound where there is a small door and a string in the darkness of the alley between two homes. She holds her breath and pulls the string that rings a little bell inside the gate. A dog barks down the hill. She hears noises within, metal scraping, and the small spy door set in the gate opens. A small flashlight framing the gaunt face of an older man, beard shot through with gray.

Allah be praised, it’s Agha-sayb!

Azyan’s father, Sayd Agha, was from old Helmand tribal stock. The family had been reasonably wealthy before The Crash, and how they ended up as slaves in Baram Chah was a legendarily long, sordid tale of betrayal and resistance which Agha-sayb would entrust (and bore) only to the closest of friends. The man was a trustee-assistant to the overseers by day and their implacable enemy by night, always there to smuggle contraband, medicine and anything else needed to make the slaves’ lives more tolerable. He and her father had been close friends.

“Yes?” is all he says, peering out at Sanji with interest.

Sanji has remembered to remove the night-vision headset. She’s wearing Pashtun men’s clothes, a floppy pakol hat and baggy too-large blouse and jameez pants over her UN battlefield dress and webbing.

“As-Salam Alaikum, Agha-sayb, I know you may find this hard to believe, but look closely at me. I am Sanji Ashkani, returned to Baram Chah. Please let me in.”

“What?” He shines his little light in her face. “Impossible.”

Sanji closes her eyes, tips her head up, and turns it slightly.

“Not impossible. Do you remember when Azyan and I stole the sulfa and ibuprofen out from under Omar Amir’s nose, the stupid dog?”

His eyes boggle, mouth forming an “O” of amazement.

“Beard of the prophet! Come to the smuggler’s door, my dear!” and he shuts the spy door.

He believes, all right, or he would never have told me to go there. The old smuggler’s hatch is down here, right?

Sanji hears shuffling inside and she moves along the wall to an old bush. She moves the bush to one side and fishes for the rope half-buried in the sand, heaves and looks down into blackness. In another moment, she sees Sayd Agha’s light playing along steps leading down and under the wall. She descends and Sayd Agha beckons her to close the door and follow.

In the courtyard Sayd Agha wraps her in his arms. She hugs him tightly but she feels him stiffen immediately as he detects the body armor and equipment beneath her Pashtun boy’s disguise pressing into him. He steps back and draws in breath.

“What is this, Sanjo?” he says, using the name everyone called her when she was a little girl.

“You are safe, Agha-sayb. I come bringing wonderful news. Please, may we go inside? Is Azyan here?”

He is less enthusiastic now but his hard-wired hospitality, curiosity and desire to conspire against the masters kicks in.

“Yes, she is. Come in please, dear, and be welcome.”

He takes her into the house. Once the door closes, he calls Azyan’s name. Azyan descends the stairs, a baby in her arms. Azyan and Sanji had practically been twins when they were twelve. The same height, the same general facial structure and long, black hair.

“Aza, it’s me, Sanji,” she says quietly. “I’ve come home and I bring liberation.”

A squeal of joy. Sanji allows herself some tears as Azyan lunges and wraps her in her arms, planting kisses all over her face. This is cut short again as Azyan realizes that Sanji is bristling with armor and weapons under her Pashun mufti. Sayd Agha produces tea. Azyan introduces her baby, but does not mention the father, which speaks volumes. They coo at it together. Azyan is thinner than she should be, her beautiful high cheekbones just a bit sunken, but her opal green eyes shine brightly. The tea is passed around and then Azyan and Sayd look at her expectantly.

“Explanation time, I think, yes?” Sanji says.

“Yes please,” Sayd Agha replies.

“Let me remove this disguise, then,” Sanji says and rises.

She removes her cap and Azyan gasps a bit at her short, close-cropped hair. Sanji grins at her. “It always grows back.”

She removes the vest and unbuttons and removes the loose shirt to reveal the tan BDUs, the web belt festooned with magazines and radio gear, the protective vest and the strap of the assault rifle on her back. She turns her shoulder to the light to show them the insignia there: a white globe over a six-pointed star on a light blue background, the words ‘United Nations Marshals’ in English. Below that on the sleeve, her company sergeant’s insignia, three stripes topped by a globe and laurels.

“This is the insignia of the United Nations, Agha-sayb. Do you remember the day I disappeared, the battle seven years ago?”

He displays a gap-toothed grin. “Oh, how low the masters were brought! Twenty bodies lined up inside the Big Compound. They turned everything upside down looking for…” His grin disappears and he trails off.

“It’s all right, Agha-sayb, I know about Father.”

Apologetically he begins to explain. “We knew nothing, of course. Only that you were missing. Ruslan…”

“Please, Agha-sayb, I can’t hear that right now. But I want to hear about it. Later. I have a mission tonight and we must hurry. Here is the very short version: The UN Marshals escaped the battle and took me with them. Today I return as a UN Marshal myself. There are a hundred others waiting in the hills as we speak. Inshallah, by morning the masters will be in chains and you will all be free. As for Ruslan…I need someone to get me inside the House of Pleasure this evening because I have it on good authority that he is there. And I have something for him.”

Sayd Agha says he will take her and try to talk her past Mama Bizma, the madam, who will have no livelihood without the masters. Tall order, he says. He leaves to get his shoes and coat. Sanji removes the rest of her Pashtun-man garb and starts nervously checking her gear. The baby fidgets in Azyan’s arms while the mother stares at Sanji.

“Oh, Sanjo, you look…” Azyan looks perplexed but with a smile.

Sanji returns the smile as her stomach flips a little.

“The UN Marshals that saved me, one of their leaders was a woman. I looked at her like you’re looking at me. She became my foster-mother. Here.” Sanji takes Azyan’s hand and puts it to her upper arm, shapes Azyan’s fingers around her bicep and flexes. Azyan giggles and squeezes Sanji’s firm muscle. They look at each other through misty eyes.

“I’m going to kill Ruslan, Azya.”

“Good.”

“If things go well tonight, you will only hear gunfire down at the Big Compound. You and the baby stay in the house. I’ll be back.”

Sayd Agha enters and takes in the scene; his daughter’s hand around Sanji’s flexed arm, Sanji’s hand on hers, their eyes locked, standing close.

“If time is of the essence then we must go,” he says.

Azyan puts another kiss on her cheek, and Sanji leaves with Sayd.

It’s only a short way to the House of Pleasure. As they approach quietly, Sayd Agha leading the way, Sanji has the most incredible sense memory; the smell of the sand combined with shit, piss, bread and rice.

The smell of home. No, not home. Childhood.

They approach the gate.

“Stay around the corner a moment while I have a word with Mama Bizma, to see if she will listen to reason,” Sayd Agha says. She retreats out of sight, poking her head around the corner. Sayd Agha rings the bell and the doorman appears. He looks shocked to see Agha-sayb, and says as much.

Oh, shit. What happened to his wife? And sons? Only he and Azyan in the house. How selfish of me.

The doorman ushers Agha-sayb in and the gate closes. Sanji looks at her watch. 12:54. The operation is supposed to kick off at 1:05, which is when the train is scheduled to arrive at the place chosen for the interception. She fits her earpiece in, fingers the transmit button on her chest.

“Able Bear Actual, this is Python,” she whispers.

“Python, this is Able Bear Actual. Please give sitrep,” Joseph Suvorin in the hills a few klicks away replies.

“I am in position and will begin Phase One momentarily,” she says.

Phase One, in which I kill Ruslan in cold blood.

“Copy. Good hunting,” Joe finishes.

She pokes her head around the corner. Sayd Agha, Mama Bizma and the doorman are back in the gateway. Mama Bizma and the doorman do not look cooperative.

“Away with your fairy tales. I’ll not risk my neck for some mystery girl to come in and bother the big Russian. Are you crazy?” Mama Bizma shakes her fist at him. “Go home and take care of your little bastard grandson.”

Right. They aren’t going to cooperate. Gain the initiative through surprise, use speed and purpose to maintain it. Door’s open. Let’s go.

Sanji runs toward the door, covering the ground in a long breath. The doorman doesn’t even see her coming until the rifle butt takes him in the side of the head. He drops like a sack of rice. Sanji is on Mama Bizma and she bears the woman to the ground. Sanji covers her mouth and pins her as she begins to scream.

“Come in! Close the gate!” she hisses at Sayd Agha. He complies, staring at Sanji straddling the middle-aged madam who writhes on the ground. Sanji gets him to pull a roll of tape from a pouch on her thigh and they manage to gag and cuff Mama Bizma. The doorman is breathing shallowly, unconscious. He is bound and gagged as well.

“Stay here if you like but be quiet,” she tells Sayd Agha. He nods.

“I’ll keep the gate for you.”

“Thank you.”

The house is a two-level mud construction. There is the traditional big main room and the “entertaining rooms” that have been cobbled on now and then over the years, their age discernible by the relative age-darkening of the mud. There is a large light-colored section off to the left that has glass windows. Rose-colored light comes through the gauzy curtains. Sanji hears soft music and some laughter at various places inside.

Speed and purpose.

She goes to the front door, takes up position to one side, and pushes it open a crack, peering inside. Two women in harem-girl cosplay garb, all gauzy robes and sparkly underthings, are lounging on cushions taking tea.

Sanji slips through the door, gun up, coving the women. They give little whoops of surprise as they notice her. Sanji smiles and puts her finger to her lips.

“Ruslan?” she whispers.

They look at one another, then at her. She turns slightly to show the insignia on her shoulders. They squint, confused. She points the rifle at them. They point in the direction of the new addition.

“Go to your rooms. Stay there,” Sanji says, and proceeds down the hall, scanning it with her rifle. She hears music from the room on the right. Some sort of Russian rock-folk. Sanji takes in a deep breath, lets it out through her nose and kicks the door open.

He’s older, of course.  His head is shaved but she detects stubble growing around the top sectors of his shiny crown.

Bald denier.

Rounder too, a noticeable paunch around his waist. He’s still imposing, though, over two meters and probably a bit over a hundred kilos. He’s reclining naked on the cushions, his penis limp and pink. The room is lit by pink and light blue lanterns, carpeted floor strewn with lounging cushions. A striking blond woman kneels behind the big man, massaging his temples.

“Police! Freeze!” Sanji yells in Russian. Although this isn’t the kind of place where that command could be expected to ever be heard, it has the desired effect. Ruslan twitches and yelps as if voltage has been applied. So does his companion, causing her to sprawl backward onto the carpet.

“Ruslan Alexandrovich Popov, I am placing you under arrest under warrant of the Russian Department of Justice. Place your hands on your head. You, woman. Lie face down.” As she speaks Sanji takes one, two, three steps into the room and stands at Ruslan’s feet, rifle pointed between his eyes, sighting down the barrel.

He has to die knowing. Otherwise what’s the point.

“Look at me,” she says needlessly. He can do little else. “I am Sanji Ashkani. My father was Kamal. The Russian police are going to take your bosses to prison tonight. But not you. Your sentence is to die knowing you were killed by a slave girl.”

Sanji recognizes the look on his face. She’s seen it before on the faces of petty warlords and oligarchs when their guards are dead or surrendered and the previously unthinkable accountability for their actions stands before them. It’s a mixture of revelation and shock. She always imagines them thinking, “What do you mean, I’m not invincible?” It has always, until now, been a deeply satisfying look.

Now, while you still have the nerve.

She squeezes the trigger. It doesn’t budge.

What do you mean, you’re jammed?

She spares a split second to glance down at her rifle with a look of betrayal. Ruslan lets out a little “Huh” of discovery and lashes out with his leg, sweeping her legs from under her.

As she’s halfway down she knows she’s dead if he gets on top of her. So, while she hits hard, she’s rolling as soon as she’s on the floor. Ruslan is fully stretched out on his back, weight on his elbows from the lunging sweep that took her. She gets herself up into a crouch as he comes in low, trying to tackle her. She rolls, hoping his momentum will take him over her. It half-works. He overshoots but reaches out and grabs her trailing hand, uses it as a brake, stands and yanks her towards him. She knows the punch is coming and lowers her chin, taking it on the crown of her head. She sees stars, feels his knuckles crackling along with the bones in her neck.

He roars and pivots his hips, swinging her, slamming her against the wall next to the door. He gives her an elbow to the jaw and then pins her to the wall by the neck with his forearm and leans into it.

Sanji’s vision is greying out. The blood pounding in her head feels and sounds like a mallet in her temples. He spits in her face.

“Fuck. Federal police? About what I would expect of those faggots, to send a little girl to do a man’s job. I’ll do you like I did your rag-head father.”

He’s got her right wrist in a grip that makes the small bones grind. His forearm against her throat is bearing her up on tiptoes against the wall. She tries to knee him but he twists his pelvis.

“Naughty. I remember.” He grins, showing tobacco-yellowed teeth.

She plants her left boot on his hip, reaches down and fumbles for her fighting knife on the ankle with fingers tingling. As her vision tunnels down to two little circles centered on that yellow grin, she swings the stiletto into his neck and cranks with all her might.

#

She’s lying on something soft. She tries to open her eyes but can’t. They are stuck shut. Her face feels wet and sticky. She tries to move her arm to wipe at her face, and the agony in her neck makes her cry out.

“Lie still. You are safe,” a voice says. Then she feels hands plucking at her gear. She smells perfume. The hand pulls at her earpiece and pushes the transmit button.

“Able Bear Actual, this is Cobra. Phase One is complete. Need medic at this location.”

There is a long pause. Sanji hears commotion in the halls.

“We copy you, Cobra. What is Python’s status?” Suvorin on the radio, the flat voice of an officer preparing to hear casualty reports.

“Python is stable but not mobile. The target is down.”

“Roger that. Phase Two target is coming into range. ETA five minutes. Once the target is in the bag we will dispatch the reserve to your location.”

“Copy that. Cobra out.”

“Who are you?” Sanji tries to ask, but it comes out as a croaking whisper that sends electric tingles of pain through her neck.

“Lieutenant Inna Polkovna, FDU. I’m the woman who was in the room. I’m sorry I didn’t help you sooner. He was pretty fast for an old big man. But you were faster.”

There is more commotion in the hall; she hears Sayd Agha and one or two other male voices arguing with the women of the house and Polkovna. It takes them a few minutes to sort out who’s who. Soon, Polkovna is gently wiping the stickiness from her eyes and Sanji opens them.

Sayd Agha stands to one side of the doorway holding a crowbar. He looks grim but determined, standing straight. He catches Sanji’s gaze and nods at her.

“Blessings be upon you, Sanji Ashkani,” he says quietly, almost mouthing the words.

Ah, it hurts to move my eyes.

She looks down her nose past her toes and sees two boys draping a blanket over Ruslan’s naked form, sees the blood all over her. His blood. She hears helicopter sounds in the distance. Closes her eyes.

Okay, safe enough for now. I’m done, I think.

#

— EPILOGUE –

Sanji stands in the doorway of her aunt and uncle’s old house in Panjgur, stretching and yawning. Azyan looks up from the tablet she’s reading. Tea and breakfast things are on the table in the sunken courtyard. Above they hear the sound of the boys tear-assing around in the yard.

“Good morning, sleepyhead. When did you come to bed?” Azyan asks.

“’Bout four. Long call with Matthew and the team in Edinburgh working out problems in version two of the pipe printer.”

“Progress? Tea? Or there’s coffee if you like.”

“Tea’s fine. I think I’ll take it easy today. Yes, good progress. We should have a test model here in a month or so.” Sanji strolls to the table, leans over for a kiss, then sits and pours tea.

“Super. Dad will be glad. The sooner they can get some local water supply, the sooner the mine cooperative committee will get off his back about the cost of bringing it in from the coast.”

Sanji laughs and stirs in sugar. “Put the slaves in charge of the enterprise and ten years later they’re just as focused on the bottom line as an oligarch.”

“Because they get to keep a third of the profits. Some of them are already rich enough to be oligarchs,” Azyan replies, and they both give a ‘humph’ of irony.

“Speaking of my dad,” Azyan turns the tablet to face Sanji, “he reminds me to tell you that the co-op will pay to fly you to the funeral.”

Sanji looks at the headline. “Hero of Russia, Leader of ‘The Untouchables,’ Joseph Suvorin Lies In State In the Kremlin.” Photographs; one of the flag-draped coffin, another of a line of mourners extending from the gate of the Kremlin out into Red Square and snaking into the distance.

“What do you want me to tell him?” Azyan asks.

“That I’m sorry he’s dead. But I left…a lot behind in that room doing Joe’s business. I don’t regret it and I’m proud of everything he accomplished since. But I never want to be a part of that warrior’s world again. I’ve earned the right to do what I’m doing, actually helping fix the world.”

“I know, darling. I’ll tell him again, it might sink in this time. You know how those old Afghan men are. You are a Ghazi hero to them.”

“And that’s fine. Let them have it, they aren’t wrong. But I’m not obligated to play that role for anyone anymore. Let’s see if I can be an engineer hero now.”

Azyan reaches out for her hand.

“You are. The old world…”

“Has left us more than enough to build the new one,” Sanji finishes.

# # #