After ascertaining from the first two of these patrols that he was indeed on the correct road to Fahad-and by the way, he could consider himself a prisoner of the Iraiti Army-Remo didn't bother to leave the APC to break any Iraiti necks. He just ran them down where they stood.
The more he did this, the more impressed he was by German engineering. The APC barely gave a bump as it passed over the bodies. And either they were slow to scream or the soundproofing was excellent too.
As he lumbered through the town, Remo made a mental note to look into a German model if he ever had personal need of an armored personnel carrier.
Fahad had been virtually picked clean, he saw with disgust. Some buildings still stood. None had glass in them. Only a few windows had actually been broken by violence. They had simply been removed, sashes and all.
Remo looked for street signs. There were none.
"Damn. They even took the frigging street signs. How the hell do I find Afreet Street?"
A woman in an ebony abayuh ran for cover when he lumbered around a corner. A child threw a rock that bounced harmlessly off his sandwich-glass windshield.
He saw no uniformed troops. But then, he saw hardly anything of human life of any persuasion.
In the center of town was a disturbed patch of dirt that had once been some kind of park. Remo could see the fresh stumps of date trees, evidently carried away to Iraiti lumberyards. The dirt was freshly turned.
"Don't tell me they took the grass too?" Remo wondered aloud.
In the middle of the park, a derrick reared up. Remo was surprised that it too had not been driven back to Irait. But as he made a circle of the park, he saw why.
A man in a white Arab costume hung from the derrick cable by the neck. It obviously served as the local gallows.
Remo braked and got out.
Cupping his hands to his mouth, he called out in English, "Anyone home? I'm an American. Friend or foe, come get me."
A moment passed. A bird squawked somewhere. It sounded hungry.
Then out of the hovels of Fahad, men, women, and children poured. The men were old, the women frantic, and the children, like children everywhere, excited by the commotion.
"Americans!" they shouted. "The Americans have come. It is the Americans."
"There's just one of me," Remo told the approaching stampede. This cooled them off faster than a water hose.
"There is only you?" an old woman asked, creeping from a doorway.
"Sorry. Look, I need to find Omar. Sheik Fareem sent me."
The woman pushed through the crowd. "Omar the freedom fighter?"
"Sounds about right."
"He is behind you, American who has come too late."
Remo turned. The only person behind him hung from a derrick, where a falcon alighted to begin pecking at his eyes. After a few pecks, the bird flew away. He was obviously not the early bird. That bird had taken Omar's eyes long days ago.
Remo addressed the crowd.
"How easy is it to get to Abominadad from here?"
A toothless old man said, "Can you read Arabic?"
"No."
"Then you cannot get to Abominadad from this Allah-forsaken place. What few street signs survive are in Arabic, and the way is long and winding and full of Iraiti dogs." He spat in the dirt.
"I gotta get to Abominadad," Remo said.
"If a man is desperate enough, anything is possible."
"Is that a hint of encouragement?"
"If one is willing to surrender himself to the Iraiti invader," Remo was told, "one might get to Abominadad from here. But only if one is valuable to the Iraitis. Otherwise they will carve your belly with their bayonets."
"Why would they do that?"
"Because they are bored, and they already know the color of Kurani entrails."
"Gotcha. Where can I find the nearest detachment of Iraitis? I need guys who speak English."
"There are Iraitis in the next town. Hamas. It was to Hamas that our young women fled, fearing rape. The Iraitis tortured some of the old women to learn where they went. Now they are dead and the flower of our womanhood are being defiled by these so-called Arab brothers."
"Tell you what, point me to Hamas and I'll see if I can't break a few Iraiti skulls for you."
"Done. But tell us, American, when will the Marines land?"
"They would have landed ten years ago if you'd let them. But now, I don't know. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe never. But if I can get to Abominadad, maybe the Marines won't be needed."
Hearing that, the old woman turned to the others. "By the command of Allah, help this righteous American to find his way to Hamas."
The Iraiti checkpoint leading to Hamas consisted of a beige T-72 tank with a thrown track on one side of the road and a jeep up on blocks on the other. A reclining corporal snored on the tank's fender and another sat behind the jeep's tripod-mounted machine gun, smoking a Turkish cigarette that Remo could smell from three miles away. He was running with the air vents open.
Remo pulled up. The two Iraiti soldiers blinked in stupefied surprise as Remo emerged from the APC, clapping his hands to get their attention.
"This Hamas?" he asked. "Where all the women went?"
Their eyes noticed the bulge below Remo's waist, and the two Iraitis jumped to an instant conclusion.
"You are an American deserter?" one asked. The corporal on the tank. He looked sleepy.
"Maybe."
"You come to trade that fine vehicle for Arab women?"
"That's it." Remo said. "You got it exactly. Take me to the Arab women and it's yours. The pink slip's in the glove compartment."