Charles Henderson - Terminal Impact

Yasir looked again, and knew he could not end the day without relief, so he threw open the blankets and walked straight at the girls.

“Whores!” he shouted at them, his member still rigid and showing.

Four screaming girls suddenly huddled around each other, covering their breasts and crotches with their hands, crying. Giti ran to the wash pot and used the stirring stick to pull out clothes. It didn’t matter whose or what, as long as the soaking-wet garments covered them.

She threw the steaming-hot white-cotton slips at her three sister slaves, and lastly took something for herself.

Rather than putting on the items, the terrified girls wrapped themselves with the wet underclothing, the hot water scalding their skin.

“You! Fat one!” Yasir said to Sabeen. “Come to me.”

“What will you do with her, Yasir?” Giti pled.

“That is none of your business,” the Arab goatherd retorted. “Best you and the others get dressed and forget everything about this today.”

Giti ran to him, took him by the arm. “Please! Yasir. Master. Take me instead. You can kill me and I will be happy. Do not take Sabeen. She is innocent.”

“She is a whore! All of the men have had her, coming back from Syria. Except me. Now I will have her, too,” Yasir argued. Then he looked at Giti. The white wet cotton slip did not hide her breasts, her dark nipples, or the black hair covering her crotch. It made her nakedness look more lustful to him, hidden but not really hidden.

Sabeen looked at Giti. “No. Please. I will go with Yasir and give him what he needs. I am hardly innocent. As he said, I am a whore.”

“Not in God’s eyes!” Giti said, and began to cry. She feared that the Arab would take his pleasure with the girl, then kill her, out of his own fear of what Abu Omar might do to him if he learned of this breach of trust. Sabeen did not yet fully know Jesus, and Giti could not bear the idea of the girl’s dying before she found salvation.

“Sabeen has no knowledge of lovemaking,” Giti pled, as Yasir pulled the fat girl toward the barns. He snatched a blanket off the lines to use as a bed.

“I will teach her!” he muttered.

“You will have to kill all of us then!” Giti exclaimed, and the old Arab stopped.

“Why?” he said. Then he, too, realized that if he raped Sabeen, he would have to kill all the witnesses of his crime against his master.

“Take me,” Giti said. “Let her go. We promise to say nothing to Abu Omar. You will not be raping me, but enjoying the pleasures that I freely give to you of my own accord.”

“I can give him the same pleasure,” Sabeen said, not wanting Giti to sacrifice for her.

“No!” Giti scolded her.

Then she came close to Sabeen, and whispered, “What if he leaves you with a baby? What will you do? What do you think Abu Omar will do?”

Sabeen realized that Giti already had a baby in her, and once she showed enough, Abu Omar would throw her to the men, who would rape her and kill her and toss her lifeless body on the other dead, with the garbage in the ditch.

“Please, Sabeen,” Giti said, and looked at Yasir.

The old Arab suddenly felt ashamed and let her go.

He looked at Giti and hated himself.

“I am sorry,” Yasir said, hanging his head. “I heard your laughter and saw the blankets hanging on the line. I looked behind them and saw you naked. My lust overwhelmed me. I am a despicable wretch. May Allah have mercy on me.”

“Yasir,” Giti said, and smiled at the shamed man. “I forgive you. God has forgiven you. Poor man, in so many ways you are a slave, too. Just like me, like Sabeen.”

“I am truly sorry,” the sad man said. “I have never done anything so terrible in my life. I am ashamed.”

“I will go with you, Yasir. If you need a woman’s attention,” Giti said. “My own choice. You need love, too.”

“No,” he said. “I must atone. I must wash myself and pray that Allah shows mercy for my weakness. I also have a goat to butcher.”

“You did not see the white oryx?” Giti asked him.

“Only a goat,” he answered as he walked away, humbled, dejected.

“You will find him one day, Yasir,” Giti said.

“God willing,” the old Arab said.

“You are a good man, Yasir,” Giti called to him, as he walked to the barn.

“No,” Yasir said, not turning around. “But thank you for saying so.”

Jack Valentine had fallen asleep watching the house, waiting for the gunmen in the Toyota pickups to leave. When he awoke, he thought he had dozed off for only a moment. When he looked at the house, the trucks were gone. He checked his watch, after eleven o’clock. Exhaustion, lack of food, dehydration had taken a toll on him.

The Marine’s tongue felt thick and so dry that he could hardly swallow. Not a drop of saliva in his mouth. Just sticky goo that clogged on his tongue and throat. Jack’s head throbbed from lack of water, his brain literally shrinking like a grape turning into a raisin.

Lips? Forget about it. They had dried out yesterday, now they cracked yellow and bled.

Gunny Valentine put his spotting scope up and studied the house for any sign of life. Nothing moved.

“Oh, I could use a drink of water about now,” Jack said as he watched the place through the scope. He shifted the optics to the outbuildings, then behind them, behind the house, and back on the house. Nothing moved in the windows. Nothing moved around the house. The front door was closed. No vehicles were parked in the dooryard.

“Wouldn’t it be wonderful if those guys have all gone, and nobody is home?” Jack said, and it hurt to smile, but his heart did lift.

Still, Jack watched. Cautious as a wild animal.

It took all of his willpower to wait a full hour, but after nothing moved, he began pulling himself with his elbows and toes in a low crawl.

He had slipped out of his backpack and put it with his bolt-action rifle in a drag bag that he pulled behind himself. Jack had also taken off his helmet and put it in the bag, too, and wore his flop hat, which allowed him more freedom of vision and a lower profile.

Before he had started, he took out his folding knife and cut a good assortment of camelthorns and weeds, festooning them on his drag bag and himself. His flop hat looked like a big clump of weeds as he pushed himself across the ground toward the house.

Moving with discipline and precision, Jack used the better part of another hour to cover the half mile from his hide to the off side of the barns, farthest away from the house, and the place anyone would least notice him as he rose from his belly to a crouch.

Squatting on his feet, Jack gathered his kit with his left arm, slung the Vigilance rifle on his right shoulder, drew his Lippard .45, and ran to the front door.

Then, standing to one side of the doorway, he quietly lifted pressure on the latch. It wasn’t locked.

So, the gunny took a breath, lifted the latch once more, and pushed the door open from the side. Then he peeked around the jamb and saw an array of bedding rolled and stacked against the wall in the front room.

As he slipped inside, he pushed the door quietly shut behind him, easing the latch closed. While the front room was dark, the next room looked unusually bright. Too bright for sunlight.

He set down his kit by the door and walked, quiet as a cat, to the next room. Blinds were drawn shut; an electric lamp stood by a small chair and desk where someone had been reading and writing.

When Jack noticed the nearly empty tea glass and a smoldering cigarette in the ashtray, his hair stood up.

“Someone’s home,” he said in his mind. “Did he see me?”

Jack searched every direction and saw nothing moving. No sounds but a distant hum, like a small engine on a welder, or a light plant, but far away or well muffled.