Six Seconds Read online

  They’re going to kill him.

  The convoy is returning fire. The guys from the lead Humvee are on the road burning. A soldier shooting is on fire, shrieking.

  “Grease the mothers!”

  Ghost figures swarm all sides of Jake, climbing onto his rig.

  They’re all over him.

  Pop-pop!

  The American soldier’s trying to pick them off. Rounds whiz-clang off his truck.

  Jake reaches for his sidearm. The mob is pulling at his doors. Coming through his windows, smashing the windshield.

  He’s going to die.

  Someone slams the sidearm from his grip. He claws for his knife, grabbing it in time to slice across an attacker’s throat-his blood spraying. Jake meets his eyes, meets his hate, smells his breath.

  Mitchell’s head watches from his hood.

  Jake’s door rips open.

  They have his arm, someone has his ankle. Jesus. He glimpses a smoke cloud, a grenade sizzling toward his cab.

  No. No. No.

  The searing inferno concussion ejects Jake, propel ling him skyward, arching clear as the ground rises, slam-pounding his breath from his chest.

  In the brilliant sun the last thing he sees is Maggie smiling on the beach and Logan running to him with open arms.

  22

  Cold Butte, Montana

  After Samara finished the breakfast dishes, she made tea and turned on her laptop.

  Jake was on the road. Logan had left for school.

  She had two hours alone before she had to leave for the clinic.

  Using an array of IDs and passwords, she clicked along a complex network of Web sites to check a number of Internet accounts.

  The e-mail she was expecting had not arrived yet.

  Samara clicked to her hidden folder to visit the joy in her life: her husband, her son, her mother and father. She smiled at their faces in the photos as her heart filled with love. For each day brought all of them closer to eternal happiness.

  As it had been destined.

  Samara shut off her computer and gazed at the boundless Montana sky. Soon the world would know the pure, unassailable truth of her action. Soon her name would be spoken by every human being on earth.

  Samara Anne Ingram.

  Her father, John Ingram, was a British archeology student who had been completing his Ph. D. on a dig near Mosul when he’d met Amina, a nursing student working at the site. They fell in love and Amina returned to London with him.

  After they’d finished their studies, John and Amina were married in London, where Samara was born. Her parents settled in the city’s East End, where her father taught at a small college and her mother worked in a hospital.

  Samara’s life with her parents was a happy one.

  Until she lost them.

  She thought of them every day, recalling her mother’s sweet smile and the way she filled their house with the aroma of samoon or khubz, delicious breads Samara loved to eat with jam and honey.

  Her father would sit in his study for hours, smoking his pipe, pondering artifacts of Assyrian ivory, or frag ments of ancient pottery. Often, they’d all go to a local teahouse to talk about art, history or Samara’s goal to become a nurse like her mother.

  She wanted to help people.

  Samara dedicated herself to studying and was ac cepted into university, where she met and fell in love with Muhammad, a medical student from Iraq. He was the intelligent, handsome son of a doctor in Baghdad. Muhammad got along well with Samara’s father and, of course, charmed her mother, who loved to cook for him.

  After Muhammad received his degree in medicine and Samara graduated into nursing, they were married in a small ceremony in London. Then they moved to Baghdad, for Muhammad believed with all his heart that their purpose in life was to alleviate suffering.

  “Together we will help a great many people who need it, Samara.”

  But he’d cautioned her. Life would not be easy in Iraq. They would have to grapple with the devastation of the Gulf War and the sanctions.

  Nearly a year after they arrived, Samara faced her greatest challenge-but it had nothing to do with any hardships in Baghdad.

  Samara was working a night shift when her super visor called her to the phone. It was a British diplomat who’d located her through her British passport. He told her that her mother and father had been on vacation in Greece when their rental car left the road and struck a cliff side.

  They were killed instantly.

  Samara collapsed.

  Only last week she’d learned that she was pregnant and had planned to call her parents in a few days. Over whelmed, Samara feared for her baby. Muhammad rushed to her side. She could not have survived without him. They traveled to London together. He helped her bury her parents, then helped her mourn them while ensuring she channeled love and healthy energy to their baby.

  “It’s just the three of us now. We must work together to get through this,” Muhammad told her on the return flight to Iraq.

  It was a difficult time but Samara drew upon Mu hammad’s unyielding love and resolve and gave birth to a healthy baby boy.

  Ahmed John.

  Their miracle.

  Her little son helped mend the hole in her heart. Day by day she was able to move forward with life which, in Iraq, was getting worse.

  In the years after Ahmed was born, the sanctions continued exacting a heavy toll on the country. Vital medicine was in short supply and not getting through to the people whose lives depended on it.

  Muhammad and Samara didn’t care about Saddam, didn’t care about politics. They wanted the suffering to stop. They wanted to help the children, women and men dying needlessly in their crowded hospitals. Each day they struggled under a regime that seemed to be hated by much of the world.

  And each day Samara wondered how much longer things could continue.

  Then came the day the world stood still.

  The day the planes crashed in New York, Pennsyl vania and Washington, D.C. “What madness,” Muham mad whispered as they watched news reports. “Now more people will suffer, Samara.”

  Their sadness was compounded when they learned that two student friends they’d met in London, stock traders, had died in the towers. In the time that followed, the people of Iraq grew uneasy as the United States focused its anger on Saddam.

  The attack unleashed a global storm of accusations and debate over Iraq.

  Some eighteen months after the hijackings, fears in tensified as foreign jets screamed over the city. Huge lineups formed at passport offices, people scrambled to leave Iraq, others hid valuables and moved to the coun tryside.

  Muhammad and Samara knew that the majority of poor people who could not afford to leave the city would need help most if things got worse.

  They were determined to stay.

  Everywhere in the city, Iraqi soldiers had set up heavily armed checkpoints. The streets became deserted as the United States and other nations marshaled forces in Kuwait while Washington issued ultimatums to Saddam.

  Saddam ignored the deadlines.

  The bombings began in the night.

  Shock and Awe.

  Sirens sounded, tracer fire lit up the sky which boomed with a distant thunder that grew louder as it pounded them, explosions shaking the very earth under them. The noise became so loud Samara’s clenched teeth banged together and her rib cage vibrated.

  As Muhammad shielded her, she held Ahmed in her arms and prayed.

  In the aftermath of the bombings, dark clouds rose over the capital.

  The smoke and smells of a burning city under siege filled the streets with funereal, apocalyptic haze.

  Large sections of Baghdad had been destroyed.

  One morning, while going to help at a hospital overrun with wounded, Samara was waiting at a traffic checkpoint in front of a building that had been razed. She spotted a tiny object amid the rubble on the street and went to investigate.

  A small human foot.

  It
appeared to be a little boy’s foot because it was still in a sandal that had a little blue football on it.

  The foot was about the same size as her son’s.

  Samara covered her mouth with her hand.

  What are we doing to each other?

  It was not the first body part she would see on the streets of her city.

  Within weeks U.S. forces had taken Baghdad; and in the months and years that followed, life changed. Many people were jubilant over the demise of Saddam and the promise of a better Iraq, but extremists called upon Iraqis to kill the foreign soldiers who’d invaded their home land.

  The country struggled to recover and rebuild against never-ending violence. Factions fought factions, in surgents continued to wage war against occupying troops. The stream of car bombings, suicide bombings, sniper attacks, hostage takings, mines, booby traps and gun battles ensured that blood gushed through Baghdad’s streets.

  Much of it innocent.

  The nightmare worsened when several foreign sol diers were killed after insurgents ambushed them near the edge of Samara’s neighborhood. Muhammad and Samara were part of the civilian medical response team that rushed to the scene to offer aid.

  Later, word spread that the anguished troops had vowed revenge. That a massive retaliatory operation was coming.

  Days passed without activity.

  It was deceptively tranquil, and dread gripped the neighborhood before it came.

  Unleashed with sudden fury.

  Explosions and gunfire began at three-thirty one morning, ripping through the entire neighborhood as if hell had descended upon them.

  Everything happened with such terrible swiftness.

  Muhammad went outside to assess what his neigh bors knew, when a teenager warned him that it was not over. “Revenge squads” were going door-to-door hunt ing for the ambushers.

  After Muhammad had returned to protect Samara and Ahmed, a patrol smashed open their door. In an instant, soldiers seized Muhammad, beat him, then pulled Ahmed from Samara’s arms. They dragged them into their living room, bound them to chairs, shouting insults and swearing as they smashed their faces.

  Ahmed was crying.

  Samara screamed for him in the chaos.

  Outside, the night screeched with gunfire. Tracers and explosions lit the sky, while inside, the house was in darkness.

  Intense flashlights stung their eyes as the soldiers accused them of being the insurgent ambushers.

  When Muhammad begged, explained that the sol diers should recognize them as medical staff, he was beaten.

  Samara couldn’t see the soldiers’ faces under their camouflage, couldn’t see their shoulder flags. Most of the interrogation was in Arabic, but she’d detected English speakers, along with the reek of alcohol.

  She pleaded for mercy and was punched.

  Then all of her clothes were torn from her, leaving her naked in the chair.

  Muhammad protested. He was kicked, forced to watch as soldiers pinned Samara to the floor. A soldier lifted her exposed buttocks, opened his pants and raped her.

  Samara screamed.

  In the strobe of tracer fire, she saw Muhammad, help less, while the soldiers forced him to watch. Then Samara saw the horrible confusion in her son’s small eyes. Ahmed was crying as she prayed that none of it was real.

  Ahmed looked so tiny in the soldier’s grip.

  Like a toy about to be broken.

  Then a second soldier took his turn with her.

  Then a third.

  Ahmed screamed.

  Outside, the explosions and gunfire became more intense. Suddenly the walls of the living room disinte grated as rounds stitched across them.

  “The shit’s getting too close,” one soldier said.

  American? British? Australian? Contractors?

  “Shoot them! They died in the crossfire! Let’s go!”

  A soldier seized Muhammad, dragged him to Samara and pressed his gun to the back of his head.

  She looked into her husband’s eyes.

  His face exploded, splashing warm cranial matter on her skin.

  Ahmed wailed.

  “Shut the fucker up! Let’s go!”

  Gunfire popped.

  Then a brilliant light flashed in the house and it was as if the earth split open.

  It was the last thing Samara remembered before everything went black.

  23

  Cold Butte, Montana

  In Montana, Samara brushed tears from the corners of her eyes and cupped her hands around her tea. A chill had penetrated her.

  Images from the night her world ended still burned.

  In the morning, dust and smoke had arisen from the ashes of Samara’s house. A gentle wind carried wisps of cloud across the smoldering neighborhood.

  The soldiers had vanished.

  Samara was in shock, uncertain she was alive.

  Her ability to feel, to form a thought, to speak, had shut down as scenes unfolded around her in a staccato slide show of horror.

  Ahmed! Muhammad!

  Someone called their names over and over.

  Medical relief workers helped Samara into the rear of an ambulance. They treated her until she shook them off to watch rescuers extract two bodies-one large, one small-from the ruins of her home.

  Ahmed! Muhammad!

  Samara could not, did not, accept that they were dead. It was an evil dream.

  Wake! Wake!

  When would she awake?

  Old women in black robes came to her with solace and prayers, supporting her as she knelt before the corpses set side by side on the ground. The sheets that covered them glowed white against the scorched earth. A hood had been tied around Muhammad’s head.

  His face was gone.

  She took his hand and held it to her cheek, her tears webbed along the dust that encased his skin.

  She felt the warmth of his smile on the day they’d met at the university in London.

  Muhammad.

  She felt his goodness, his spirit, leave this earth.

  Muhammad.

  Then the women pried Samara from him and she watched the workers, faces covered with surgical masks, load him into the truck to take him to the morgue.

  Muhammad!

  She fell upon the smaller corpse.

  Ahmed.

  She pulled back the sheet.

  To see his face in death.

  Her son.

  Her child.

  Her life.

  All who were near were jolted by Samara’s banshee wail that reached a degree of sorrow beyond this earth. Then, like an exaltation of angels, the robed women gathered over her to share the burden of her pain. Samara raised her hands to heaven to ask why.

  A black combat helicopter patrolling the aftermath thudded above slowly. She saw the dark visors of the crew.

  Watching the scene.

  In that instant, her answer had been delivered, although it would not be revealed to her until later.

  Samara looked upon Ahmed.

  Tenderly she slid her hands under the sheet.

  Lovingly she collected her son.

  The old women admonished the relief workers who tried to take him from her and pushed them back.

  Ahmed was weightless in her arms as Samara began walking through her devastated city to the morgue.

  The old women followed, beating their chests with clenched fists, shouting prayers as others joined them to form a death procession.

  As they passed from neighborhood to neighborhood, weary soldiers, fingers on triggers, eyed them, scanning them for signs of an insurgent ruse.

  They glimpsed Ahmed’s small hand that had escaped his death shroud, as if to reach for reason in a time and place where it did not exist.

  Helicopter gunships continued to hover directly above Samara as her tears fell upon her dead son.

  In the time after, people from the hospital, neighbors and kind strangers from relief agencies helped her.

  Samara had a vague and mixed m
emory of what followed.

  She’d been taken to a room in the local mosque.

  Muhammad and Ahmed were naked, side by side on tables where the old women guided her in washing them for their journey to paradise.

  The women prayed as the bodies were cleansed.

  Then they were wrapped in cloths and placed in coffins.

  The next day the coffins were secured to the roofs of cars, draped with flowers and driven slowly in a pro cession to a cemetery on the bank of the Tigris River, one of four rivers said to flow from Eden.

  The coffins were lowered into a single plot to rest together, father by son. Samara’s friends struggled to keep her from throwing herself into the grave.

  Depleted of life, Samara refused to leave the cem etery.

  Hours passed, day turned to twilight, which turned to night and prayers. The old women understood and watched over her. Covering her with blankets and shawls.

  When a new day approached, they made her tea and brought her bread. They sat with her in silence, contem plating the Tigris, a river as old as time.

  A river that knew great sorrows and great joys.

  A river that held the answers.

  And as the sun broke, the old women answered the call to prayer, leaving Samara to gaze upon the Tigris.

  Statue-still, she was a portrait of pain.

  Numb, alone, disconnected from the world, Samara was being transformed.

  Every passing second, every tear, every beat of her broken heart, brought her closer to an awful knowledge.

  The chant of the old women completing the morning prayers ended. Without invitation, one of the oldest among the mourners took her place next to Samara and took her hand.

  Gnarled fingers wrapped in leathery, sunbaked smooth skin traced the lines of Samara’s palm. The old woman studied it in silence for a long moment.

  Then she spoke to Samara in an ancient dialect.

  She had known Samara’s mother and her grand mother, she said, knew her people, that Samara’s tribe was descended from Bedouins, near the disputed region.

  Samara will soon go there.

  She will return to her people and the desert because the next stage of her life is there.