Barns-where you keep your cattle. I got what he was saying. Gary needed to keep the prisoners alive and healthy, perhaps even happy, over the extreme long term. How long he could survive on the meat locked up in that corral was anybody’s guess but clearly he meant to drag it out as long as possible.
I got up from my chair and headed outside for some fresh air. On the way out I squeezed Ayaan’s shoulder. She followed me out onto the grass and out of earshot.
“There’s something,” I tried, not knowing quite what to say. “Something you should know. I intend to go after him. I can’t go back to Africa until he’s dead. Dead for real. That means going inside of that tower. In the process I’m going to try to free the prisoners but my main goal is to separate his brain from his body in the most thorough fashion possible.”
She inhaled noisily. “That is impossible.”
I nodded. “I saw how many of the dead he has under his control. I’m still going to try. Will you help me?”
“Yes, of course.” She gave me a strange smile. “There really is no choice, is there? He will not let us approach the United Nations building, not while he still has control. If we are to finish our mission then he must be removed.”
Did I tell her? It could only disturb her-and frankly, she didn’t need the pressure of knowing she actually had an option. In the end though I decided I knew Ayaan well enough that I knew she would want to know.
“He called me,” I told her. “He said he would make the way clear for us. Give us free passage. There’s a price, though. He wants to eat you personally. It’s a revenge thing for the time you shot him.”
Her eyes went very wide but only for a moment. Then she nodded. “Okay. When do I go?”
I stepped forward and put my hands on her shoulders. “I don’t think you understand. He wants totorture you. Todeath. I won’t let that happen, Ayaan.”
She pushed me away. I’m pretty sure that my touching her like that had violated Sharia law but mostly she just didn’t like my attitude. “Why do you deny me this? It is my right! So many others have died! Ifiyah died just so that we could learn a lesson. That girl, the one with the cat, she died for being stupid! You will not let me die for my country? You will not let me die the most honorable death possible? Even if it means our mission is a success? Even if it means you can see your daughter again?”
I opened my mouth but come on. There are no words after something like that. None at all.
David Wellington - Monster Island
Monster Island
Chapter Nine
“Sure,” Kreutzer said, scratching vigorously at his unkempt hair. “It makes sense. She’s an A-rab, right? They actuallywant to become martyrs. It’s a good deal for them-one quick death and then you’re in fucking paradise with your seventy-two virgins.” He considered that for a second. “Or maybe she gets to be one of somebody else’s virgins. Face it, blowing themselves up is what they do best.”
I glared at him. “That’s the most asinine thing I’ve ever heard.” I waved my hands in the air. “She’s a teenager, that’s all. She doesn’t understand what dying really means but she knows for a fact that life sucks. She’s got all these hormones and energy and weird bad culturally created bullshit, fucked up sexuality projected into glamorous ideas of death as transcendence-”
“She’s a soldier.” Jack peeled apart a blade of unmowed grass and put it to his lips. He blew hard and it made a reedy sound, like a mournful bassoon starting a dirge.
“She’s a child.” I said. But of course, she was much more than that. Jack understood her better than I did right then. She was a soldier. Which meant that she could submerge her own self into a larger idea, a context of community that had to be served-her national identity as a Somali, her place as akumayo warrior fighting for Mama Halima. The good of all humanity.