this?” He shook her head, yelling, “Tell me!” When she glared at him, he backhanded her face, bloodying her lips. “This is why I have no sons,” he screamed.
The Waziristanis didn’t speak his language, but they understood a husband’s fury and what had been exposed in the syrupy strains of an infidel’s song.
They pushed Senada to the floor and stared at her husband expectantly. He kicked her once, then again, waving the phone above his head. He began to stomp her.
Adnan stared. He had never seen such violence. He thought of his mother. No woman should be beaten like this. No matter what. But he didn’t dare try to stop her husband. These men scared him.
Senada curled into a ball but could not escape her husband’s kicks. She cried out at each hammering blow from his bare heels.
The gaunt jihadist who’d ordered the fisherman to answer the phone now threw out his arms and stopped the beating. He shouted at his men and one of them dragged Senada to her knees. When she started to collapse, the minion jerked her upright by her thick hair. He leaned over her shoulder, his long black beard pressing against her back, and spoke rapidly. Adnan didn’t understand what the jihadist was saying, and from her lack of response, neither did Senada. The jihadist who was holding her hair forced her to face the man who’d barked the commands.
The leader snapped out more foreign words and his other two men shoved the fisherman to his knees beside his wife. The man’s head hung to his chest, moving slightly side to side. He still held the phone. The head jihadist took it from him.
The Waziristani leader grabbed the Mauser pistol from under Adnan’s shirt and thrust it into the seaman’s hand. He dragged Adnan over to the kneeling couple and forced the barrel of the gun to the back of Senada’s head. The jihadist shouted again and pantomimed shooting. Adnan did not move. The other man shouted three more times, spittle landing on Adnan’s face.
Adnan shook his head: He was a martyr, not a murderer.
The jihadist jammed the gun into the base of the fisherman’s skull, squeezing Adnan’s hand painfully. His commands grew piercing.
“No,” Adnan said, so softly that he might have been whispering. He slipped his finger from the trigger. The others’ eyes grew large. He snatched the gun away and stuck the barrel into Adnan’s face, bruising his cheekbone.
Suddenly the room was so quiet that Adnan could hear Senada’s quick gasps.
Adnan closed his eyes and accepted his fate, knowing that his regrets would span eternity. What would Parvez think—that his friend had been a coward? That he’d lost his nerve and been shot like a dog?
The fisherman yelled “whore” at his wife. She shouted that she’d never loved him. “Do you understand? Never.” Blood dripped down her chin and spilled to the floor. “You’re a pig. My father forced me to marry you.”
Her defiance needed no translation. The jihadist smacked her head sharply with the steel butt of the gun. The blow made her weep, but she directed her outrage at her husband, spitting in his face and screaming, “I love Rafan. Do you hear me? Only Rafan. Not you.”
The fisherman lunged for her. She pulled back. A short jihadist stopped him.
A gunshot made Adnan’s ears ring. Senada’s body crumpled to the floor, eyes open, empty. The fisherman looked at his wife’s body, then at her killer, who met his gaze with a flat stare. The jihadist placed the barrel of the gun between the fisherman’s eyes and mumbled something. Adnan thought it might be a prayer, since the man raised his eyes to the ceiling as he spoke. Then the Waziristani fired again.
The fisherman’s head jerked like a line when the bait has been struck, and his body lay beside that of his slain wife.
Adnan and the four jihadists left the house and squeezed into the Renault. As they neared the harbor, the leader handed the Mauser to Adnan, who stuck it in his pants and carefully arranged his shirt to conceal it.
Adnan felt dizzy and sick to his stomach, but relieved: Martyrdom would still be his.
He prayed to Muhammad … peace be upon Him.
* * *
Crack, crack, crack …
Goddamn AK-47s. Rick Birk knew he would never outlive his fear of that rifle. He hadn’t heard one since Vietnam, yet he’d identified the weapon the instant the first shot had sounded. The North Vietnamese Army had loved them; back in the day