Brendan DuBois: Dead of Night

As we left, a couple of the soldiers stood out in the road, automatic weapons slung across their backs. They waved and called out, and Peter swiveled in his seat and said, ‘Looks like you’ve got a couple of potential boyfriends there, Miriam.’

She laughed, rested her thin forearms on the rear of our seats. ‘Drive on, Peter. Just drive on. Besides, maybe they were waving at Karen.’

I folded my arms, leaned back. ‘I think Karen is spoken for.’

‘By who?’ Miriam asked.

‘Sanjay,’ I said.

‘Oh,’ she said. I couldn’t figure out what she meant by that one word.

The road narrowed some and Peter concentrated more on his driving. The morning fog hadn’t lifted yet and the fields and shallow valleys were still covered by the slowly moving curtains of light gray mist. Miriam rested her chin on her forearms and said, ‘All this beautiful country. Look at all this land. My father and grandfather, they would have been thrilled to have so much open land around them. Good land, too.’

‘Farmers?’ I asked.

‘Dairy farmers, yes,’ she said. ‘The best. But land in Holland is so expensive. My father never quite forgave my mother for giving him three daughters, and he never quite forgave his daughters for not wanting either to be farmers or marry farmers. Soon, when my parents both pass on, so will our farm. Sad.’

Peter said, ‘Sad, sure, but at least they won’t be gunned down by their neighbors because they didn’t follow the crowd, or because they tried to escape to a nearby town.’

‘True,’ Miriam agreed. ‘Peter, your father? A police officer, as well?’

‘Nope, a solicitor. Like his father before him. But the same disappointment. Didn’t want his son out in the streets, getting his hands dirty dealing with the muck. Poor old boy.’

Miriam chuckled. ‘How like me. Father and grandfather.’

I folded my hands together. Miriam turned to me, gently nudged my shoulder, ‘And you, Samuel? Newspapermen in your family?’

‘No,’ I said, enjoying the brief touch from Miriam but hating everything else that was now going on. ‘No, they were soldiers. My great-grandfather was in the trenches in the First World War. My grandfather was at Dieppe. And my father was in the Canadian Army, as well’

‘Oh,’ Miriam said. ‘Well, your father, he must still be proud of you, then.’

‘You would think so,’ I said. Then the Toyota Land Cruiser in front of us braked suddenly and an arm was thrust out of the driver’s-side window, windmilling excitedly.

Peter slammed on the brakes, causing Miriam to shout something out, and me to bounce up against the seat belt. Peter slammed the gear lever into reverse and backed suddenly. I turned, wondering if we were going to slam into the other Toyota, but Sanjay—surprisingly enough, considering his passenger — was paying attention and had backed up as well. Sanjay stopped about fifty meters away and we carried on reversing to stop about twenty-five meters in front of him. Then I tried to swallow.

Miriam leaned forward. ‘What’s wrong?’

Peter swiveled around in his seat again, his eyes wide and his stare hard. ‘Not sure, but that was the disperse signal Charlie gave us up there. Damn it, with all this bloody fog this sure is a great place for a fucking ambush.’

I was aware of just how exposed we were, and I wished that Peter had kept his mouth shut. I knew the purpose of the dispersal signal: to prevent us from lumping together and thereby making ourselves an easy and attractive target. Our Land Cruiser’s engine was still rumbling in idle and I thought about how thin the metal of the doors and frame around us was. The militias were well armed. A couple of sweeping motions with a couple of automatic weapons and the UN would be out one inspection team.

Miriam said, ‘Jean-Paul and Charlie are stepping out.’

‘So they are,’ Peter said.

I leaned forward, saw them get out, kneel down by the side of the road. I rubbed my hands against my pants legs. Peter suddenly opened the door and said, ‘To hell with this, I’m not waiting here to get gut-shot. I’m going up to see what’s going on.’

Miriam said, ‘We’re not supposed to move without the all-clear signal. Those are the procedures. Right, Samuel?’

I shook my head. ‘Sorry, I’m with Peter on this one. Let’s see what’s going on.’

I joined up with Peter at the front of the Toyota and walked with him as we went up the road, our feet sounding loud on the pavement, loud enough that I imagined gunmen kilometers away could hear us. I swiveled my head constantly as we went up to the first vehicle. Peter just kept looking ahead of us and said, ‘Miriam still back there?’

‘Yep.’

Peter snorted. ‘Nice little Dutch girl. Almost as bad as the Krauts when it comes to following the rules. Karen and Sanjay moving?’

I turned again. ‘Nope. Still in their Toyota.’

Another dismissive noise from Peter. ‘Probably tearing off a piece or something while we’re waiting.’

‘You always this pleasant, or are you trying extra hard today?’

Peter just laughed, a nasal tone I couldn’t stand. We got close enough to hear Jean-Paul and Charlie talking, and Peter called out, ‘What’s going on?’

Jean-Paul stood up from the pavement, brushing at his knees. There were dark areas around each knee, where moisture from the road had soaked through. ‘You should be back there with your vehicle. I didn’t give the all-clear signal.’

‘Sorry, boss. I thought I saw it. Right, Samuel?’

Jean-Paul looked at me, his gaze judging and evaluating me. I had seen that look before, many times, growing up in Father’s household. ‘Well?’ he asked.

‘That’s what we thought,’ I said. ‘We thought we saw the all-clear.’

‘Hmm,’ Jean-Paul said.

Charlie stood up and said, ‘Looks all right, Jean-Paul. Just a spoof.’

Peter stepped around the side of the Toyota. ‘What’s going on? And what sort of a spoof?’

‘There,’ Jean-Paul said. ‘Charlie saw this before we ran into it.’

I got closer and saw the ‘it’. A length of heavy string or fish line, stretched across the road. My throat tightened up and I stepped back. A tripwire. I remembered a slide-show briefing for us new arrivals, weeks ago, on booby traps and their uses. The other end of the tripwire could be attached to anything from a land mine to an artillery shell to homemade napalm. They were called IEDs: Improvised Explosive Devices. Rumor had it that some were built from the firsthand knowledge of local veterans who had served in Iraq years back. Some of the photos in the slide show displayed graphically what could happen to you after a tripwire had been used and one-inch-diameter steel ball bearings had come scything at a human target at waist height. I cleared my throat and said, ‘Charlie, how in hell did you see that?’

Charlie smiled, rubbed at his strong chin. ‘Lucky for us it’s been a wet morning. The dew collected on the string, so I could see it before we ran into it.’

‘Jesus Christ,’ Peter breathed.

Charlie kept on smiling. ‘Doesn’t make much difference,’ he said. ‘Still looks like a spoof.’

‘Like Peter said, what kind of a spoof?’ Jean-Paul asked, still with that schoolmaster’s voice.

Charlie motioned us to the string and we walked to the left side of the road. One end of the tripwire was tied firmly around a sapling, and when Charlie tugged the other end I flinched and both Jean-Paul and Peter swore and backed away, like me, expecting the sudden crump of a booby trap going off.

But nothing happened. The string became limp in Charlie’s hands, and he tossed it to the side, among the tall grass and brush. ‘A spoof,’ he said. ‘A fake booby trap, maybe to slow us down, maybe to give somebody amusement.’