Busted Flush

Rusty, his knees creaking, got to his feet; Marlon, lying on the ground, began to rake the space between the buildings on full automatic as Rusty came around the pipes and started toward them, shouting and waving his massive arms.

Michael, on the other side of the improvised cover, stood up. He started drumming with all six hands, the multiple throats in his neck pulsing as he shaped and focused the sound as he surveyed the target area. At first it was merely noise (as Marlon continued to fire, as Rusty weaved and roared while bullets pinged from his body). Michael could hear the stacked pipes in front of him rattling in their racks with sympathetic vibrations, and he forced his throat openings to narrow, to toss the sound farther out and focus it—as he had when he killed the Righteous Djinn. He aimed the torrent of percussion between the two buildings, hitting himself harder and harder, his arms flailing. There was a new sound now: a metallic wail as the piping set between the buildings started to respond.

(Rusty took a few more steps, a lumbering, bearlike dance. Marlon’s weapon went silent for a moment as he changed clips. Through the fury of Michael’s drumming, there was a percussive cough, and a smoky lance arrowed in Rusty’s direction, hitting the ground six feet to his left and erupting; Michael saw Rusty lifted and tossed.)

He drummed, grimacing at the effort of finding the right notes, the right timing, and the right frequency. The pipes shuddered and danced angrily in response. He could see figures there, pointing toward him, and muzzle flashes. Bullets whined past him and he forced himself not to respond. The huge pipe above their attackers groaned loudly enough to be audible over the racket and Michael concentrated on it, forcing all the sound toward it; he saw dust and bricks falling as it shook itself loose from the walls, shaking like a wet dog. Dark, thick fluid gushed out in a wide stream.

The man-high steel tube fell, much of the walls of the two structures going with it. He could hear screams as it slammed into the ground, taking out the nest of smaller piping underneath. A dust cloud rose; within, something sparked violently and then there was fire and more screams—high-pitched and desperate.

Michael stopped drumming. Marlon was staring. Rusty had pushed himself back up to a sitting position on the sand, shaking his head as if dazed. Michael snatched his weapon from the ground and ran toward the buildings.

He saw one of their attackers, on his back with his arms outstretched as if he had been trying to escape the fate he had seen falling on him, the bottom half of his body crushed under a section of brick wall. The thick tube of the RPG launcher lay near him.

“Oh, fuck,” he breathed. He stopped. His weapon drooped in his lower hands. “Fuck.”

He stared at the body—at the beardless, smooth face of a child, a face he recognized: Raaqim, the boy who had spat at him yesterday.

None of them were soldiers. None of them looked to be older than their midteens, while the youngest couldn’t have been more than ten. The weapons they’d brandished were a strange collection of ancient single-shot rifles to modern automatic weapons, probably scavenged from a dozen different sources. The RPG launcher had been the most sophisticated and dangerous piece, but it had no more rounds left.

Twenty kids, all told, and not all of them boys. Their surprise attack had cost the lives of three UN soldiers, but twelve of the twenty kids were dead; of the survivors, all had serious injuries. The unit’s medic had done what triage she could; the four worst they’d choppered out to Baghdad after frantic communications to Colonel Saurrat and Barbara Baden; the medic didn’t seem to have much hope any of them were going to make it. They’d laid out the dead children in the lobby of the main building, covering the bodies with whatever sheets they could find, and they’d permitted the villagers to come in to identify the bodies and take them away for burial.

The wails and screams, the accusing glares, the accusations, were something that Michael knew he could never forget. Dabir, his ancient body shaking with rage, had screamed curses over the body of Raaqim. A woman in a black abaya and head scarf had charged at Michael after seeing her granddaughter’s body. She’d reached him before anyone could stop her, beating at him with her fists as she screamed in Arabic, her fists making the tympanic rings boom and crash in a mockery of his playing. Michael endured the beating, his arms at his side like a stunned spider while two soldiers grabbed the woman’s arms and pulled her away, still screaming and wailing, tearing at her clothes, gesturing with hoarse, sobbing cries.