Stephen Leigh - Card Sharks

"That's why we're going in disguised as Palestinians," I said.

"But the Palestinians observe the Treaty of Jerusalem," the Librarian whispered. "What are we doing here with all these guns?"

"The Palestinian government observes the Treaty," I said, "mostly."

"Lot of the Palestinians don't much care for that, Harvey," Billy Ray said. "They still wanna push Israel into the sea. So they turn into evil, wicked, mean and nasty terrorists."

I nodded. Ray was not just a humming bundle of muscle and fury after all. "We're radicals, terrorists, here as allies of the Nur, who's a great buddy to the Ayatollah. We're an arrogant lot of bullies; we have a modus vivendi with Pasdaran . Anybody else who gets in our way, we shoot — and the Palos will do that."

"You mean you treated those boys back there with grandmotherly kindness?" Chung asked, black eyes glittering. He was the only one of us not wearing a kaffiyeh .

I nodded. He gave a too-shrill yip of laughter.

Damsel huddled closer to him. "I'm scared," she said.

Ackroyd caught Billy Ray's eye. He rolled his. Ray gave him a tight grin and a tighter nod. I was glad my face-cloth hid my own expression.

Chung glanced back. "I wonder what they made of me."

"Probably took you for a local. That was the plan, anyway. You and Darius are the only ones who'll pass."

He worried his lower lip with his teeth. "I hope they don't think I'm Kirghiz. I hate it when people think I'm Kirghiz. Back in my unit, they called me 'the Flying Kirghiz.' I hate that."

"Paul," I said, "you're supposed to be Kirghiz. Or Turkmen, which is almost the same thing. They got both flavors in northwest Iran, along with Kypchak and Kazakh and Uzbek."

"Oh my," added Ackroyd.

"What damn difference does it make?" Ray growled.

"I'm Yunnan ," Chung said, in a pleading key.

"What does that have to do with the price of pussy in Pakistan?" Ray asked.

"A lot," Chung said. "We're not Kirghiz."

"Paul, nobody knows what Kirghiz are," I said.

"A nomadic people of the Tienshan and Pamir highlands of Central Asia," Harvey whispered, "belonging to the Northwestern Group of Turkic-speakers. They were the last Turkish rulers of Mongolia, being driven out in AD 924. In the 13th century Jenghiz Khan forced them from the Yenisei steppe to their current habitat."

"Okay, so almost nobody knows what Kirghiz are."

"Paul, old buddy," Ray said with a nasty smile, "lighten up. Yum-yum or Curb-jizz, you're all towel-heads to me."

Chung's round brown face went pale. I could see the muscles knotting under his skin, feel the rage beating off him.

"Ray," I said quietly, "put a sock in it."

He showed me a defiant glower. I matched him, keeping my face emotionless. After a moment, he looked away.

Darius thumped his free fist on the top of the cab for attention. I craned forward to talk to him, glad for the interruption.

"Do you speak Arabic, Major?" he asked.

"No."

"What happens if we encounter real Palestinians?"

"Drive the other way," I said, "fast."

***

Crouching to peer over the five-foot parapet of the apartment roof we watched the woman, so muffled by her chador she resembled an ambulatory black sack, walk down Roosevelt Avenue with a bunch of oranges in a net bag. The two walking guards, their German G3 rifles slung over the backs of their woolly-pulley sweaters, spared her a single surly glance through the darkness and kept pounding their beat. The four boys flanking the gate never even looked her way.

"Jesus," Billy Ray said under his breath. "Doesn't she know there's a revolution on?"

"Life goes on, son," I said. "I've seen it before, a thousand times. No matter how tough things get — and the Tehranis have it pretty easy here, as far as emergency situations go — life goes on. Even if artillery is dropping a few blocks away, people still go to the store and cheat on their wives and goof off at their jobs. Kids still play."

"Gee, you make it sound so attractive ," Ackroyd said. "Almost like having a real life."

"Only Americans think having things easy is a necessary condition of life," I said. "For most people it's a goal, not a sine qua non ."

Billy Ray showed teeth to the Damsel. "Don't you love it when he talks dirty?"

She moved over so her flank was touching Chung, rested her arm on his hunched shoulder. He gave her a strained, slightly furtive look and concentrated back on the street.

Our building lay across the street from the northern part of the Embassy compound. In happier times it had been an upper-middle class apartment. Even though life does go on, the occupancy rate had dropped precipitiously since the street filled up with armed zealots. If they got to raising a fuss in the middle of the night, you didn't want to lean out the window and yell at them to shut up. I felt reasonably safe from chance detection up here.

Darius duckwalked over and grabbed the Damsel by the arm. "Hey," he said. "You're supposed to make me an ace. It was in the deal. Let's get to it, huh, baby?"

"What are you talking about?" She tried to pull away. "You're hurting me."

"Where do we do it?" he asked. "Right here on the roof? I've always wanted to be an ace. I also always loved little blonde girlies like you — "

About that time Ray caught him by the upper arm and threw him across the roof. About twenty feet. He landed hard, rolled over, picked himself up groaning to his knees.

"All right, buddy," Billy Ray said. "If we can't get along, let's get it on."

Darius came up with a Browning High-Power in his hand. Ray moved like a mongoose, crossing the intervening space in three lightning steps and kicking the pistol away before the Iranian could squeeze the trigger. The Browning went skittering across the gravel with a sound that turned my bowels to ice water.

"Harvey," I said. The Librarian was quick on the uptake, I'll give him that. He dropped his Hardy and scrabbled to my side.

The roof became quiet. Very quiet. Ray had grabbed Darius by the front of his T-shirt and dragged him to his feet, preparatory to punching his face in. Darius was digging in a back pocket of his jeans, no doubt for a knife. When he produced it, Ray would pull his arms and legs off and shower him down on the Pasdaran like confetti, I hadn't any doubt.

I grabbed up an AKM, racked the bolt, and fired a burst into the roof at their feet.

It didn't make the slightest sound. A bomb going off would have made no more, though the rolling overpressure would've kicked up quite a fuss once it got beyond the limits of the Librarian's hush-field. The bullets gouged into the asphalt at the combatants feet and stung their legs with gravel. That got their attention.

I pulled a finger across my throat. The gesture signified both cut in the directorial sense and what I would literally do to their gullets if they kept this nonsense up. Billy Ray released Darius, and the two stepped away from each other. I gestured for them to take up positions well apart from one another, then touched Harvey on the arm and smiled at him.

Sound came back. It was very strange, like having a switch thrown: suddenly the city sounds were there again, the distant traffic noise, the faint yammer of an argument from the building next door, a gunshot, blessedly far away.

"Ray, get on the horn to Angel Station. It's time to check in." Since he was strongest, our Wolverine got to carry the AN/PRC-77, which was a heavy beast. Using the radio was a touch on the risky side, with the Abbas Abad garrison less than a mile to the west. But we needed to communicate, and word was that the people who could operate — or at least maintain — the Shah's radio-direction finding equipment were high on the list of purgees.