could trust, and the ones who were closest to him by blood. As long as we could trust him, we could probably trust the rest.
That was, of course, provided we got out of this alive in the first place. If not, trust and motives were a moot point.
Chapter 7
Malik died an hour before sunset. He’d hung in there for hours, but the blood loss was just too much. His breathing got slower and shallower, and then he was just gone. Two of his cousins and his brother dug his grave, after using a bit too much water to wash his body. There was no white sheet to wrap him in, nor did we have a coffin, obviously, which his brother, Jamail, was more than a little upset about. Hussein Ali took him aside for a few minutes and talked quietly to him. When they came back to the rest of the group, Jamail still looked unhappy, but they proceeded to wrap Malik’s face in a black and white keffiyeh and laid him in the grave. He was covered by the time it got dark, with Jamail and his cousins praying over the grave for another half hour once the burial was completed. It wasn’t the three-day mourning and praying period that was required, but Hussein Ali apparently made it clear that the requirements of survival meant that sure as hell wasn’t going to happen.
We didn’t have a lot in the way of pyro to destroy the trucks, but what we did have were rags and diesel. A few of the rags we could have used for bandages later on, but I wasn’t going to leave the vehicles intact, at least not with the gear we were going to have to leave behind. If we’d been able to strip the gear out, then fine, I’d have left ‘em where they were. Burning them was going to put a huge fucking beacon into the sky, but I was not leaving the gear, SBRs, and extra comms intact for the enemy. We’d stripped off most of the ammo we could use in personal weapons, but there was still a lot left.
While we were prepping the trucks, I pulled Black aside, and handed him Malik’s AK and chest rig. “We don’t have the luxury of bringing dead weight with us on this,” I told him quietly. “Get this straight, though. One of us will be watching you at all fucking times. You make the slightest move wrong, and we’ll kill you and leave you in the ditch. Understood?”
He looked me in the eye without flinching or wavering. He took the chest rig and slung it over his shoulder before taking the AK and quickly checking the chamber. “Understood. You’re the boss.”
I watched him for a second more, but he was as cool and collected as he had been ever since he figured out he wasn’t with the Project anymore. I went back to making sure everybody else was ready to move.
Yeah, Renton had stressed that we shouldn’t necessarily be totally up-front with our distrust of Black. However, I was reasonably certain that it wasn’t a great idea to go straight from treating the guy like a prisoner to being all buddy-buddy. That would be guaranteed to make him suspicious, and nullify the whole reason for granting him some degree of trust in the first place. We’d have to ease into this.
Jim stayed back by the trucks while the rest of us stepped off. He waited until the last man was about a hundred yards distant before going around the trucks, lighting the diesel-soaked rags hanging out of each fuel tank. Once the last one was burning, he ran to catch up.
I was about midway in the formation, such as it was. I waited until I could see Jim moving, dimly lit by the rising flames, then I hoofed it forward. Hussein Ali might be commanding his kin, but I was in charge of this lash-up, so I was going to be where I could steer the point man. Since Cyrus was walking point, that only made sense anyway, given how froggy he was getting.
We weren’t moving fast. Just hustling up toward the front of our scraggly column was painful enough. Yeah, it was a flesh wound in my thigh, and a shallow one at that,
That was, of course, provided we got out of this alive in the first place. If not, trust and motives were a moot point.
Chapter 7
Malik died an hour before sunset. He’d hung in there for hours, but the blood loss was just too much. His breathing got slower and shallower, and then he was just gone. Two of his cousins and his brother dug his grave, after using a bit too much water to wash his body. There was no white sheet to wrap him in, nor did we have a coffin, obviously, which his brother, Jamail, was more than a little upset about. Hussein Ali took him aside for a few minutes and talked quietly to him. When they came back to the rest of the group, Jamail still looked unhappy, but they proceeded to wrap Malik’s face in a black and white keffiyeh and laid him in the grave. He was covered by the time it got dark, with Jamail and his cousins praying over the grave for another half hour once the burial was completed. It wasn’t the three-day mourning and praying period that was required, but Hussein Ali apparently made it clear that the requirements of survival meant that sure as hell wasn’t going to happen.
We didn’t have a lot in the way of pyro to destroy the trucks, but what we did have were rags and diesel. A few of the rags we could have used for bandages later on, but I wasn’t going to leave the vehicles intact, at least not with the gear we were going to have to leave behind. If we’d been able to strip the gear out, then fine, I’d have left ‘em where they were. Burning them was going to put a huge fucking beacon into the sky, but I was not leaving the gear, SBRs, and extra comms intact for the enemy. We’d stripped off most of the ammo we could use in personal weapons, but there was still a lot left.
While we were prepping the trucks, I pulled Black aside, and handed him Malik’s AK and chest rig. “We don’t have the luxury of bringing dead weight with us on this,” I told him quietly. “Get this straight, though. One of us will be watching you at all fucking times. You make the slightest move wrong, and we’ll kill you and leave you in the ditch. Understood?”
He looked me in the eye without flinching or wavering. He took the chest rig and slung it over his shoulder before taking the AK and quickly checking the chamber. “Understood. You’re the boss.”
I watched him for a second more, but he was as cool and collected as he had been ever since he figured out he wasn’t with the Project anymore. I went back to making sure everybody else was ready to move.
Yeah, Renton had stressed that we shouldn’t necessarily be totally up-front with our distrust of Black. However, I was reasonably certain that it wasn’t a great idea to go straight from treating the guy like a prisoner to being all buddy-buddy. That would be guaranteed to make him suspicious, and nullify the whole reason for granting him some degree of trust in the first place. We’d have to ease into this.
Jim stayed back by the trucks while the rest of us stepped off. He waited until the last man was about a hundred yards distant before going around the trucks, lighting the diesel-soaked rags hanging out of each fuel tank. Once the last one was burning, he ran to catch up.
I was about midway in the formation, such as it was. I waited until I could see Jim moving, dimly lit by the rising flames, then I hoofed it forward. Hussein Ali might be commanding his kin, but I was in charge of this lash-up, so I was going to be where I could steer the point man. Since Cyrus was walking point, that only made sense anyway, given how froggy he was getting.
We weren’t moving fast. Just hustling up toward the front of our scraggly column was painful enough. Yeah, it was a flesh wound in my thigh, and a shallow one at that,
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