“So,” Sunny says, “how much did you pay for them?”
“Ahhh,” Eli shakes his head. “I buy in auction. Cannot find in shop.”
“Yeah, but how much?”
Eli sighs. “Even you cannot afford.”
That makes Sunny laugh for real.
Before the silence swallows him again.
They drive on.
More scrub.
“You think you’re the Terminator?” Sunny says.
Eli shrugs. “I’m pretty tough.”
“If you’re the Terminator, what does that make me?”
“Easy! You the kid.”
“The kid,” Sunny says, “who tells you what to do.”
“Yes! I know this actually. This my job. Do what you say. Make you happy. You ask me stand on one leg. I do. Shoot that asshole. Sure, why not? Drive you into enemy territory. Oh look, this is what we do right now. You want me to wipe your ass? You want maybe I give hand job?”
“Fuck you.”
“No! Thank you! This I draw the line.”
Miles of dust and nothing.
Eli shakes his head.
Sucks his teeth.
“Boss, where we going? Because all this,” he pats the gun in his waistband, “with only Eli and Mr. Jericho for company, is really bad fucking idea. You don’t see what I see.”
“What do you see?”
“Trap.”
They pass through a small settlement of half-finished plots.
Migrant laborers have set up fires; washing lines are strung between poles.
“I need to know what this motherfucker’s doing.”
“So pick up the phone, dial number. Seriously!”
Sunny shakes his head, opens the window, and flicks the cigarette out.
“The phone isn’t safe.”
“This is not safe, driving alone in this pile of shit.” Eli begins adjusting the stereo. “Doesn’t even have Bluetooth!”
“It’s your car, fuckface.”
“This I know,” Eli nods. “This I use for driving to shops, buying milk.” He gives up on the stereo. “Not for bringing knife to gunfight. Should have brought Porsche Cayenne. Porsche Cayenne has Bluetooth. Porsche Cayenne is bulletproof.”
“Porsche Cayenne is conspicuous. You know what that means?”
“Yes, I know what means.”
“How you say in Hebrew?”
“Is bolet.”
“Bullet?”
“No, asshole. Not bullet. Is bolet.”
Ahead, on a lonely crossroad, a small, canopied kiosk. A man stands outside.
He sees the car coming, holds out a hopeful armful of brochures.
Brochures for property developments.
“One of yours?”
“No,” Sunny watches with disgust.
“You want maybe I run him down?”
“Maybe on the way back.”
“Ha! But I scare him, no?”
Eli accelerates the Bolero into the crossroads, the boxy metal shell bouncing around the road, swerving toward the man before pulling back at the last.
Sunny watches with relish as the poor soul dives out of the way.
And when the dust settles . . .
“Seriously, boss. I should’ve called Papa. Uncle Tinu. Tell them, Sunny is crazy.”
A motorbike rises from behind a mound of earth on a parallel dirt road thirty feet away.
Two men riding, their heads wrapped in white cloth.
Both turn to watch the car.
“Don’t look,” Eli says, his hand creeping toward the gun.
But the bike peels away on another track and heads west.
And they are alone again.
Nothing for miles.
Twenty minutes later, and they are there. Dinesh’s hideout, a villa on the edge of a farming village, fortified, guarded by his loyal men.
Ahead, the road is blocked by tractors and men with rifles.
Eli slows. “Yes, this is bad fucking idea.”
Sunny pulls out a cheap Nokia phone, dials a number. “Motherfucker,” he says, “I’m here. Yeah, a Bolero. Let us through.” He hangs up.
Eli brings the Bolero to a crawl, the roadblock is a hundred meters away, the men and their guns are taking form. Then movement, the tractors begin to reverse, opening a path forward.
“Here we go,” Sunny says.
Eli drives through, along the rubble road to the villa, a raised track packed with fresh, soft dirt. And either side, vegetables.
“Thinks he’s a real fucking farmer.”
When they arrive at the metal gate it opens to show eight men with assault rifles inside.
“This is bad,” Eli says. “This very bad.”
“Keep your mouth shut.”
And there’s Dinesh, emerging from the villa in his white kurta and round glasses, hands clasped behind his back, a grave expression on his face.
Eli eases the Bolero to a halt.
And Sunny opens the door. “Stay here,” he says, then pauses uncertainly. “This motherfucker better have something good to say.”
Two Hours Pass
Eli sits alone on a charpoy under a canopy of white cloth, smoking his Marlboro Reds, his long hair unbound, his legs rakishly crossed, his wrist hanging dandyishly limp as his cigarette burns between his fingers. But the eyes behind the Persol Ratti 58230s are sharks watching the guards patrolling the forecourt. They wear white open-neck shirts and black suits, dark wraparound shades, gold jewelry; they are dressed to appear like government security, but they’re not. They carry Type 56 assault rifles. Fully enclosed front sights. No side mount plates. Probably Vietnam War stock, or sourced from the Nepalese PLA.
Whatever, they don’t know how to use them, he can tell. If it comes to it, he can kill four with his Jericho before they get off a single shot. He plays it through in his head, two would be dead before they even knew what was happening, the other two would be lucky enough to see him fire. Then? Then it would be down to luck, skill, and fate. He allows himself a wan little smile. But how many more are there inside? And what to do about Sunny?
Beyond the bounds of professional objectivity, Eli wavers between pity and contempt when he thinks of his boss. Even with eighteen hundred daily dollar reasons to stay—wired to an account in Zurich—he’s begun to reconsider his position. There’s something soul destroying about being Sunny Wadia’s shadow. His Rottweiler. His court jester. His nursemaid. Eli’s almost nostalgic for the good old days of his youth, when all he had to do was shoot and stay alive. He’s seen a lot of shit these last few Wadia years. More than he bargained for when he signed up.
It started so well.
“Securing venues and working out schedules for a wealthy New Delhi family” was how it was sold in the brochure. A well-paid monotony with all the perks. On his days off, Eli wandered the shopping malls dressed in his favored big-collared floral shirts, his curls splayed on his shoulders, his panther limbs ranging, grinning at the girls.
Then he got selected—for his skin tone, he wagered—to teach a few choice servants how to shoot, how to fight, how to think on their feet in a tactical situation. He kept his mouth shut (his Hindi almost nonexistent anyway) and got on with it. There was a certain pride in guaranteeing these kids wouldn’t blow their faces off loading their own guns.
Then came Ajay.