Clyde kept his eyes fixed on his opponent’s—rule number one. As the two men circled each other, al-Turki was looking around for a weapon, or something. Clyde didn’t dare take his eyes off the Iraqi to see what he was looking at.
Almost too late Clyde figured it out. Al-Turki had maneuvered around to the point where he had a clear path to the door in the bulkhead. Clyde saw him gather his feet beneath him and make a run for it. Clyde ran him down just short of the door and tackled him around the legs, sending al-Turki face first into the steel deckplates. They skidded for a couple of feet and thumped into the bulkhead; Clyde prayed the impact hadn’t been loud enough to alert the other Iraqis.
Clyde jumped on al-Turki’s back and established control, but not before the Iraqi had struggled to his hands and knees. Al-Turki paused for a moment to gather his strength, then exploded off the floor in another well-executed escape maneuver. If they had been of equal size and strength, Clyde might have dragged him back down, but al-Turki was simply too strong; Clyde ended up on his knees behind the standing Iraqi, his arms wrapped tightly around the other’s waist.
Al-Turki lunged for the door handle. Clyde managed to drag him back half a step, just out of reach. Al-Turki reached down, grabbed one of Clyde’s pinkies, and wrenched it back.
Clyde knew he couldn’t hold on to the Iraqi for more than another three seconds.
He remembered a bridging maneuver that Dick Dhont had used to pin him once.
He got his feet underneath him and thrust upward, lifting the Iraqi straight up in the air with Clyde’s face buried between his shoulder blades. At the same time, Clyde arched his spine as far backward as it would go, bending his body back into a horseshoe. This sent al-Turki’s head plunging down toward the deck like a spiked football, even as his legs flew up into the air.
The imbalance sent them both falling backward, adding the weight of both men to the force with which al-Turki’s head smashed into the deckplates.
For a moment they formed an arch: Clyde’s feet firmly planted at one end, al-Turki’s head at the other. Every muscle in al-Turki’s body suddenly went limp, and the arch collapsed. Clyde ended up lying on his back with al-Turki’s body on top of him.
Clyde rolled him onto his stomach and zipped al-Turki’s wrists together behind his back with some plastic handcuffs he had stuffed into his pocket when he’d abandoned his unit. Then he did the ankles. He dragged al-Turki back among the fuel tanks where he could not be seen from the door in the bulkhead, zipped the wrists and ankles together, and then, just for good measure, zipped the whole mess to a heavy iron loop recessed into the floor. He didn’t really expect al-Turki to wake up, but there was no point in taking half measures. He went through the Iraqi’s pockets and found a number of passports and other miscellanea, but no knives he might use to cut himself loose.
His balls hurt so badly he felt he might throw up, and at least two fingers were broken. Clyde thought of the time Dan Dhont had jogged six miles to the emergency room after an especially perverse chain-saw accident and found the strength to ignore it. He was half-numb from cold anyway.
The wire running from the passenger compartment to the explosives on the tank container was a simple two-strand lamp cord. Clyde wrapped it around his hand a couple of times and then ripped it off.
There were five Russians and three Iraqis left on the plane. The Russians were bad guys, but Clyde knew they weren’t willing to die. On the other hand, some of the Iraqis might be willing to give their lives for this project. The only thing he knew was that he couldn’t walk into the passenger compartment and assault all of them at one time.
Sooner or later someone else was going to come out of that door. Just in case it was a Russian, Clyde dug a Forks County traffic-citation form out of his pocket, stole a pen from al-Turki’s breast pocket, and drew a cartoon of a bomb—a bundle of dynamite sticks hooked up to an alarm clock. And just in case it was an Iraqi, Clyde did some rooting around in the crates and lockers where the crew stored their spare parts and eventually dug up a chunk of iron pipe about two feet long. It wasn’t Excalibur, but it would probably obviate any more wrestling matches.
As it happened, the first person to emerge from the door, some twenty minutes later, was a Russian. Clyde kicked the door shut behind the man and blocked his retreat, then hefted the pipe as a warning. The Russian was suitably shocked to see Clyde alive, then deeply impressed.
Clyde held up the bomb cartoon. The man raised his eyebrows.
Then, realizing a carrot-and-stick approach might be even better, Clyde took out the pen and added something new: a large dollar sign. He handed it to the Russian and said, “Vitaly.”
By way of response, the man pushed up his sleeve a few inches to expose his wrist. It had a red welt around it, obviously from a handcuff that had been recently removed.
So all the Russians were handcuffed up there, except when they were sent back on errands.
“Clyde,” Clyde shouted, pointing to himself.