Gregory David Roberts - Shantaram

I wasn't angry with them. I'd fucked up. I'd let them sneak up on me-walk up on me, probably. I'd gone there to fight, and I should've been on guard. It was my fault. Somehow, I'd missed them, and messed up, and it was my own fault. All I wanted to do was warn Abdullah. I kicked back feebly at the door, hoping he would hear it and get away, get away, get away...

I fell through perfect darkness, and the weight of all the world fell with me. When I hit the floor I heard shouts, and I realised that Abdullah had wrenched open the door, letting us fall into him. In the dark, bloody-eyed and swollen, I heard a gun firing twice, and saw the flashes. Then light filled the world, and I blinked into the glare as another door opened somewhere, and I saw men rushing in on us. The gun fired again twice, three times, and I rolled out from under the big man to see my knife, close to my eyes, shining on the ground near the open blue door.

I grabbed for the knife just as one of the smaller men tried to crawl over me and out the door. Without thinking, I swept it backwards and into his hip. He screamed, and I scrambled up to him, slashing the knife across his face near the eyes.

It's amazing how a little of the other guy's blood, or a lot of it, if you can manage it, puts power in your arms and pain killing adrenaline in your aching wounds. Wild with rage, I swung round to see Abdullah locked in a struggle with two men. There were bodies on the floor of the room. I couldn't tell how many.

Gunshots cracked and drummed from all around and above us in the other rooms of the building. They seemed to come from several places in the house at the same time. There were shouts and screams. I could smell shit and piss and blood in the room.

Someone had a gut wound. I hoped that it wasn't me. My left hand slapped at my belly and searched, frisking myself for wounds.

Abdullah was punching it out with the two men. They were wrestling, gouging, biting. I began to crawl toward them, but I felt a hand on my leg pulling me backward. It was a strong hand.

A very strong hand. It was the big guy.

He'd been shot, I was sure, but I couldn't see any blood on his shirt or his pants. He dragged me in as if I was a turtle caught in a net. When I reached him, I raised the knife to stab him, but he beat me to it. He slammed his fist into the right side of my groin. He'd missed the killing blow, a direct hit, but it was still enough to make me curl and roll over in agonising pain. I felt him lurch past me, actually using my body for leverage as he pushed himself to his feet. I rolled back, retching bile, to see him stand and take a step toward Abdullah.

I couldn't let it happen. Too many times, my heart had withered on the thought of Abdullah's death: alone, in a circle of guns. I thrashed against the pain, and in a scrabble of bloody, slipping movements I sprang up and plunged my knife into the big guy's back. It was high, just under the scapula. I felt the bone shiver under the blade, diverting the point sideways toward the shoulder. He was strong. He took two more steps, dragging my body with him on the hook of the knife, before he crumpled and fell. I fell on top of him, looking up to see Abdullah. He had his fingers in a man's eyes. The man's head was bent backwards against Abdullah's knee. The man's jaw gave way, and his neck cracked like a piece of kindling.

Hands pulled at me, dragging me toward the back door. I struck out, but strong, gentle hands twisted the knife from my fingers.

Then I heard the voice, Mahmoud Melbaaf's voice, and I knew we were safe.

"Come on, Lin," the Iranian said, quickly and too quietly, it seemed, for the bloody violence that had just roared around us.

"I need a gun," I mumbled.

"No, Lin. It is over."

"Abdullah?" I asked, as Mahmoud dragged me into the yard.

"He's working," he replied. I heard the screams inside the house ending, one by one, like birds falling silent as night moves across the stillness of a lake. "Can you stand? Can you walk? We must leave now!"

"Fuck, yes! I can make it."

As we reached the back gate, a column of our men rushed past us.

Faisal and Hussein carried one man between them. Farid and Little Tony carried another. Sanjay had a man's body on his right shoulder. He was sobbing as he clutched the body to his chest and shoulder.

"We lost Salman," Mahmoud announced, following my gaze as we let the men rush past us. "And Raj, also. Amir is bad-alive, but hurt bad."

Salman. The last voice of reason in the Khader council. The last Khader man. I hurried down the lane to the waiting cars and I felt the life draining from me, just as it had when the big man was hitting me at the blue door. It was over. The old mafia council was gone with Salman. Everything had changed. I looked at the others in my car: Mahmoud, Farid, and the wounded Amir.

They'd won their war. The Sapna killers were gone at last. A chapter, a book of life and death that had opened with Sapna's name, was closed forever. Khader was avenged. Abdul Ghani's mutinous betrayal was finally defeated. And the Iranians, Abdullah's enemies, were no more: as silent as that bloody, unscreaming house where Abdullah was... working. And Chuha's gang was crushed. The border war was over. It was over. The wheel had turned through one full revolution, and nothing would ever be the same. They'd won, but they were all crying. All of them.

Crying.

I let my head fall back on the seat of the car. Night, that tunnel of lights joining promise to prayer, flew with us at the windows. Slowly, desolately, the fist of what we'd done unclenched the clawed palm of what we'd become. Anger softened into sorrow, as it always does, as it always must. And no part of what we'd wanted, just an hour's life before, was as rich in hope or meaning as a single teardrop's fall.

"What?" Mahmoud asked, his face close to mine. "What did you say?" "I hope that bear got away," I mumbled through broken, bleeding lips as the stricken spirit began to rise from my wounded body, and sleep, like fog in morning forests, moved through my sorrowing mind. "I hope that bear got away."

Sunlight shattered on the water, shedding streaks in crystal brilliant slivers across waves rolling swollen on the broad meniscus of the bay. Birds of fire in the approaching sunset wheeled and turned as one in their flocks, like banners of waving silk. From a low-walled courtyard on the white marble island of Haji Ali Mosque, I watched pilgrims and pious local residents wend and weave, leaving the shrine for the shore along the flat stone path. The incoming tide would submerge the path, they knew, and then only boats could bring them home. Those who'd sorrowed or repented, like others on previous days, had cast garlands of flowers upon the shallower, receding sea. Riding the returning tide, those orange-red and faded grey-white flowers floated back, garlanding the path itself with the love, loss, and longing that was prayed upon the water by a thousand broken hearts each wave determined day.

And we, that band of brothers, had come to the shrine to pay our last respects, as they say, and pray for the soul of our friend Salman Mustaan. It was the first time since the night he'd been killed that we'd gathered as a group. For weeks after the battle with Chuha and his gang we'd separated, to hide and to heal our wounds. There'd been an outcry in the press, of course. The words carnage and massacre were spread across the pages of the Bombay dailies like butter on a prison guard's sugared bun. Calls had rung out for justice, undefined, and punishment, unremitting. And there was no doubt that the Bombay police could've made arrests.

They certainly knew which gang was responsible for the little heaps of bodies they'd found in Chuha's house. But there were four good reasons not to act: reasons that were more compelling, for the city's cops, than the unrighteous indignation of the press.