Deadfall

DEADFALL

By

Michael D. Hartley

CHAPTER 1

The time for the destruction of the false idol had come.

Habib Khadr covered his face with the back of his hand to shield his eyes from little dust devils of sand that twisted across the plain. He passed a dry wadi where two ragged boys fired round stones with slingshots at imaginary targets and a small girl in a cranberry-colored headscarf sat under the shade of the low branches of an apple tree.

Behind the children, army trucks parked beside a low-slung mud-brick house set into the crook of the cliff’s wall. A boy-soldier gripped an AK-47 between his legs and lolled on a chair to guard the door. Beside him, a rust-covered pail lay half buried in the sand. When Habib waved, the boy didn’t smile, but continued to stare at power grids without wires that glinted in the sun.

Habib squinted deep-set dark eyes at the giant Buddha carved out of the distant flesh-colored cliff. Previous rulers had hacked off the statue’s nose, but the legs draped in folded robes of an ancient Greek origin remained defiant and dignified. This statue rose a mere 50 feet and lacked the fame of the Buddha he had blasted into fragments in Bamiyan.

Before the sun sank behind the low-lying hills, Habib glared at the statue’s weathered slanted eyes and thick-lipped smile. Any traces of paint had long since peeled from the face. He rubbed his beard, the blackheads and dry skin in the folds around his eyes resembled dried snake scales.

On both sides of the statue, Habib had embedded plastic explosives into drilled holes and fused the charges with detonating cord so they would explode at the same time. A slow-burning fuse connected to the detonating cord trailed across plowed fields to a cave that looked like a termite hole in the cliff face. The thought of the loud explosion when he blew up the Buddha gave him a certain boyish pleasure. He couldn’t wait. He ran across uneven ground to the cave.

As he approached, he heard a rattle of small stones run like rats down a narrow channel. He looked up at a goatherd with one eye clouded over and two front teeth missing. The boy sat on his haunches on loose shale. He grinned at Habib before he scampered behind a pile of rocks.

Habib climbed in through the cave’s narrow opening and paused to breathe in deep. After the boiling heat, he blinked in the cool darkness. He flinched at a bucktoothed man seated on a munitions box, who held the end of the fuse in his gnarled hands.

“What are you doing, Jamal?” Habib asked, feeling the skin on the back of his neck flaccid and full of needles.

Jamal avoided his eyes and remained silent. Habib heard a flutter behind him as a flock of doves flew in the direction of cloud clusters on the horizon as the land cooled.

“Give me the fuse,” Habib said in the soft voice and seductive tone he used when he talked to women. “I will light it so we can destroy the stone devil.”

Jamal’s left leg quivered under his robe. He put the fuse down beside him on a munitions box, and he grinded his fingers into his temples. “Spirits from inside the statue bounce around inside my head.”

“Are you crazy? That hunk of rock is nothing but sandstone carved by infidels before the whore you called your mother squeezed you from in between her fat thighs.”

Jamal reached for a Kalashnikov and leveled the assault rifle at Habib’s head.

“Come closer and I shoot,” he said.

Habib stood still, listening to his heavy breathing. He knew Jamal to be a fighter, a former bodyguard to a local emir. He had lost a leg in the war against Soviet troops.

“You are a brave man, Jamal. You contributed to our country’s defeat of a superpower. Do not try to stop me. I have destroyed statues in the provinces of Ghazni, Herat, Jalalabad, and Kandahar― even some in Kabul’s National Museum.” He reached down to feel the cool steel handle of his curved knife in a scabbard attached to his belt. “Have you ever seen an edict by the Islamic Emirate reversed?”

Jamal pivoted on his good leg to steady his aim. “I’m not afraid of a bunch of rebellious students who think they know it all.”

Habib rubbed his forehead, his skin seared by hot winds from the baked southern plains. He felt the pounding of his heart. Why did the mullah appoint a local commander who spouted insolence?

“What will you do if soldiers come to find out why we haven’t blown up the statue?” he asked.

“I will fight until I have no bullets. The war has taken everything from my village, even the last scrap of firewood―only this statue remains.”

Habib moved closer and distracted him with soothing words. “I mean you no harm, my old friend. Let me light the fuse. In a few minutes all that will be left of this idolatrous carving is dust.”

The sudden crack of a rifle shot in the valley distracted Jamal, and Habib sprang with the speed of a panther. The rage of his attack took Jamal by surprise and he pulled the trigger. His shots went wild and bullets ricocheted off the charred ceiling. Habib wrenched the Kalashnikov from his arthritic fingers and smashed the rifle butt against the side of his face. Jamal cried out and cradled his bloody jaw. Habib grabbed him, pinned his arms to his side, and held him so close their beards touched.

When Jamal opened his dried lips to scream, Habib clamped his hand over his nose and mouth. He stared down at his bloodshot eyes turned to wide pools of terror. He felt a rage deep within his being, as though a white-hot poker singed his soul.

A harsh voice inside him screamed, “Kill him! Kill him! Kill him!”

He pulled his curved Bedouin knife out of the scabbard and pressed the point into the man’s jugular. Tightening his grip around the cool handle of the knife, he pushed the blade into Jamal’s throat until his scream turned into a choked-off rattle. As the knife sank to the hilt, he could feel his hand touch the taught sinews of Jamal’s wrinkled neck.

Habib’s sweat streamed out of his hair and trickled down to his beard. He twisted the knife before he tugged it out. He pushed Jamal’s body to the floor. His heart still pumped blood that pooled in dust turned black by ancient fires.

Habib strolled to the mouth of the cave. The evening air smelled clean after the musty odor of cooking fat, stale sweat, and moldy blankets. Had he been too hasty to kill Jamal? Did his comrade suffer from a temporary derangement that made him behave in an erratic manner?

The sight of the Buddha mocked him, and he soon dismissed any thoughts of the man he had killed moments ago. He lit the fuse and laid the burning wire with care on the cave floor. He then ran down the hill to the house nestled in the cliff. He pushed his way past the guard and flung open the door. Some soldiers lay curled up on the mud floor, while others sat in a circle and nibbled bones of a goat’s carcass. His wild eyes and bloodstained dishdasha startled the young men.

“Jamal is dead,” he said. “I’m in command now.”

The soldiers eyed him with suspicion as they would an outsider.

“I’ve lit the fuse.” He took a deep breath, jutted out his chin, and waved his fists in the smoke-filled room. “Go outside and see the foreign devil destroyed.”

The soldiers staggered to their feet, shouldered assault rifles, and filed out the door.

Habib followed the soldiers until he could see a clear view of Buddha’s weathered face surrounded by a dust haze. For a moment, nothing stirred in the valley.

He began to count seconds.

When the explosions came, shock waves reverberated throughout the statue. Dust clouds and stones rattled down the side of the cliff to scatter flocks of goats. The noise echoed down the