those other raven-haired, sand-colored children he couldn’t shake the sense that she was a plant. A crusty-nosed spy from his own tribe of real people, sent to report back about whether he performed with bravery and valor. He knew there was nothing too strange about her coloring. The region was like the hallway bathroom of the high school we call the Earth, where all the paper spitwads of every delinquent passing through merged to form a rippling topography born of every race, color and creed, and betraying none specifically. She wasn’t the only one who looked like she could have been his own mixed-blood cousin. It was the kohl that drove the point home. Look at my eyes, said her face. Taunting.
The rumor—and it came at first as one of those crumbs—was that one of the hajjis, a young man who drifted between the various homes of his kinsmen, had funneled explosives to the ones who killed Wharton. Probably it was true. The guy came and went from the town as he pleased, never collecting enough bad associations to get himself arrested or his house raided, but they knew what he was up to just the same. It ate at Elias for months, knowing that this was the one sure guy on whom he could pin the death of his brother-in-arms, and still the man walked free as a bird. Finally word came that the man was suspected in another grenade attack in the next town over, and they got orders to arrest him. On that morning, as soon as the hajji had wandered from one house to another that was easier to secure, they formed a four-man stack at the door and rushed in. Elias knew this drill. He knew his part, knew the skills so well that they were not conscious thought so much as a dance between his optic nerve and the fibers of his muscles. His eyes transmitted orders across the web of his nerves like a cyborg, and in the moment of it he felt not pride, not competence, but like a most excellent machine. Evolved above his own humanity to something better, specialized exactly, humming along its own perfect code.
They, the squad, were order in the chaos. That was to be expected. The two men in the house jumped up and started yelling, and the woman screamed. A pack of kids ran out the back into the courtyard. A shot rang out, and the older man flew backward into the mud wall beside the black barrel stove, his white caftan blooming with blood, before he slid down, slumped. The woman dropped to the floor, her body lost in a black salwar kameez curling like a snail shell over the baby. Her jeweled shoes stuck out the other side. He aimed his gun at her.
The hajji was already zip-tied and collared. He shrieked in high-pitched pussy Pashto. The words, which Elias could understand to a certain degree, rolled through his mind interpreted but ignored. The baby wailed its haggard newborn scream, and the woman, shaking, peeked out at Elias through the hijab she had pulled across her face defensively. They were Pac-Man ghosts, these women. Eyes floating down the street, loose and disembodied, but don’t be fooled, they’re after you. The pissed-off baby started crying with everything it had, choking and strangling on the end of every sob, like it was pulling that last bit of sound from the bottom of its intestines before jerking down another gulp of oxygen. Elias heard the clunk-clunk-zzzzzzzt of her shoes falling off and somebody zip-tying her ankles. She mumbled something to Elias in pleading, miserable Pashto, but it was muffled by the hijab. He looked at her eyes and thought about those mouthless ghosts, how they ran from you one minute, turned on you the next.
Another soldier secured the woman’s wrists and dragged her out to the courtyard with the hajji, leaving the baby on the carpet. A couple of the children had made it over the high mud walls around the garden, but three remained, huddling in a corner. They did not look as frightened as Elias thought they should. There was a boy of about ten and two girls, one dark, the other with her lined green eyes and crusted nose. The staff sergeant barked a few textbook phrases at the man, trying to milk him for information. From inside the house the baby’s cry drifted out, but listlessly, and the situation started to feel organized