Greg Rucka - A gentleman_s game

Sinan righted himself in a scramble, Aamil dropping to a crouch beside him, and he could barely make out his friend's expression, the anger at the noise, the fear of what it might bring. He looked away, focusing instead on the fence, where their escape passage had been cut.

Except it wasn't.

At first Sinan put it down to the darkness, the only illumination from the stars above and the dim ambience of the settlement lights. Breathless from the run and the fall, with Aamil hovering close beside, squinting at the barbed links in front of him, he realized they were in the wrong place. He quickly looked down the length of the wire in both directions, trying to find a landmark, something to place him on the remembered map, but the night had stolen all markers, and with a bubble of fear in his stomach, he realized they were lost.

"Go on!" Aamil whispered urgently. "What are you waiting for?"

"It's not here," Sinan hissed. "It's not here, this isn't it."

Somewhere behind them, a dog began to bark.

"Shit," Aamil muttered, dropping against the slope and freeing his rifle from his shoulder.

Sinan followed suit, pressing himself against the cracked earth, just as the lights began coming on in the houses they'd left behind. The dog continued its alarm, growing more frantic, and he heard another dog joining in, this one sounding closer, to their left. Halogen bounced off the ground above their heads, cracking the darkness, and in its spill he could see Aamil, the fear on his face, and he shared it. If they were lucky, the Zionists would kill them. If they weren't, they'd become prisoners, and he'd heard enough stories from others in the camp to know what that meant. Torture at the hands of the Zionists, how they used water and electricity, how they fed their prisoners the blood and flesh of Muslim children.

"They don't take us alive," Sinan whispered.

Aamil responded with an urgent, spastic nod. They could hear voices in the distance now, alarmed but cautious. From farther away, the sound of the APC's engine coming closer. And the damn dogs were still yapping, and if anything, now it sounded like there were more of them.

Sinan rolled softly onto his back, holding his rifle against his chest. The rifle was a Kalashnikov, his Kalashnikov, fully loaded and ready for work, and he pressed it against him with one hand, reaching into his coat with his other. The grenade in his pocket was smooth and cool and reassuringly solid as he wrapped his palm around it, pulling it free. He glanced to Aamil, waiting for his friend to do the same thing. Aamil hesitated, then licked his lips and quickly followed suit.

The APC was coming along the track now, they could hear the rocks and pebbles crackling beneath its tires, its engine so low Sinan could almost believe it was on idle. The dogs had been silenced, and he strained his ears, trying to make out voices. Lights were being shined along the fence up the road, filling the little gully where they lay, making their way closer.

Sinan watched the beams approaching, felt his heart beat so fiercely in his chest he was certain his rifle would fly from his body. He moved the grenade in his right hand onto his chest, reached over the rifle with his left, slid his index finger through the metal pin. If his throw was true, if Allah was with him, perhaps he could drop it into the APC and take the soldiers with him. It wouldn't be enough to win freedom, he accepted that. Even if the soldiers fell, the settlers were surely armed, it would end the same way. But he would have taken more of these kufar with him, and that was the only thought in his mind now.

"Look!" Aamil whispered, pointing past Sinan and up the length of the gully. "Look!"

Sinan snapped his head around, feeling the dirt grinding into the back of his head, and it took his eyes a moment to register what he was seeing past the light, the darkness in the fence. At its base, near one of the posts, fifty or sixty feet away, the gap that had been cut for their escape.

Aamil was already starting to move, dropping down to the bottom of the shallow gully, rifle in one hand, grenade in the other. Sinan began to push himself forward, to follow, then stopped, watching as his friend prowled farther away. Digging his feet into the earth, Sinan pushed himself up toward the road, peering over the edge of the slope.

The APC was crawling along, the spot now drawing carefully along the fence, when suddenly it stopped moving. He heard a soldier's shouted exclamation and the APC ground to a halt. The spotlight readjusted, focused on the gap at the base of the fence, where the sheeting and wire had been cut and pulled away. Sinan heard weapons being readied, orders exchanged, and the first soldier dropped from the vehicle to the ground, readying his weapon, as another moved to take position behind the mounted machine gun.

Sinan looked up the gully, saw that Aamil had realized what was happening, that there was no way out for him. He watched as his friend dropped to his knees, laying his rifle carefully at his side, and Sinan thought it was odd, but perhaps he was just preparing to throw the grenade. Then Aamil set the grenade on the ground, too, and raised his arms, folded his hands behind his head, and Sinan felt his mouth dry as if filling with sand. The impact of the betrayal was so sudden and so unexpected that, for a moment, he lost his breath.

One of the soldiers was shouting, coming down into the gully toward Aamil, another covering them both, and all under the shadow of the APC's machine gun. Aamil was shoved roughly into the ground facefirst, his rifle and the grenade kicked away. The soldier worked quickly, his knee in Aamil's back, binding Aamil's hands together with a plastic tie. Once finished, he used the cuffs as a handle, jerking Aamil upright, forcing him toward the APC.

Sinan waited until they were about to load Aamil into the vehicle before he ripped the pin from the grenade in his hand. He threw it hard, underhand, heard the soft metallic ring of the handle as it sprang away from the casing. It landed short of the APC, bounced, and Sinan brought the Kalashnikov up and against his shoulder and fired a burst from the rifle, bullets clattering against the APC, striking the armor of the soldier at the machine gun. They shouted, began to react, turning to return fire.

The grenade detonated, just to the side of the vehicle, and Sinan dropped back into the gully, sprinting half the distance toward the gap in the fence. He heard screams but no more shots, and he risked another view, leading with his rifle, and saw that one of the soldiers, bloodied and cut, was trying to regain his feet. Sinan loosed another burst from the rifle, and the soldier slumped against the vehicle, toppled to the ground.

He dropped back again, ran the rest of the way to the gap in the fence, and was about to crawl through when he thought again about Aamil, more precisely, what if Aamil was still alive? He couldn't leave him like this, not if he was still breathing, and it meant he had to check, and already he could hear the doors opening, the dogs going again.

Sinan clambered back up the slope. The lights on the APC still burned but were unfocused, without motion, and he had sufficient darkness to risk skirting the track directly as he made his way back to the vehicle. The soldier who had manned the machine gun was slumped at an almost comical angle on his side, half out of the vehicle, and another was splayed out flat, facing the heavens, at the rear.

Aamil was trying to pull himself into the APC, whimpering with the effort and with pain. Blood flowed from beneath the knee of his left leg, the flesh savaged by shrapnel, and Sinan saw that the grenade had caught his left arm as well. He slowed, cradling the rifle in both hands.

"Aamil?"

His friend started, as if surprised, then released his hold on the APC, leaving a blood smear where his palm had rested. He turned his head and Sinan saw dirt and blood mixed in Aamil's beard, an almost-vacant expression in his eyes. Aamil blinked, as if he needed to reset his eyes.