Dead Six

This part of town was sleek, modern, damn-near swanky. Most of the buildings looked new, all glass and concrete. It had been less than a decade since the current emir had deposed his father. The old emir had been a pretty typical dictator, and he’d stuffed his Swiss bank accounts fat while most of his people lived in poverty. The current emir was a decent enough sort by all accounts. Sure, he was still ruthless and brutal, but he’d decided that the days of his country being a cultural backwater were done. He’d made friends with the West, told the Fundies to chill out, brought in big-time infrastructure investments, and even went so far as to say crazy, controversial stuff like Israel shouldn’t be burned into nuclear oblivion. Like I said, pretty decent by this part of the world’s standards.

And Al Khor was the shining example to the rest of the world that Zubara didn’t suck anymore. I don’t know if the emir was jealous of the nearby UAE or Qatar, but he was doing his best to keep up with the Joneses. Fueled by oil money, Zubara now had three hospitals, a university, luxury hotels, a big museum, a fancy new zoo, and, very impressively for a city of under a million residents, two Bentley dealerships.

Too bad the emir had stepped on so many toes in the process, because the line of people mean enough to take him down was getting longer and longer.

“Sabah! Sabah! Sabah! Sabah!” the crowd at the end of the street chanted, led by some professional agitator in a black hood with a bullhorn. They were a hundred yards away, and there were probably fifty of them, all relatively young and nicely dressed, probably students, and they were stacked in front of one of the tall municipal buildings. They were waving signs with pictures of a bearded man wearing a purple beret. Since there weren’t any rocks or Molotov cocktails being thrown, it was relatively boring.

I stopped to watch. Jill halted obediently behind me. In true chauvinistic style, I had loaded her with a bunch of bags full of items purchased from the local shops. If you were going to be questioning merchants, it helped to spread a little love in the process. Jill had followed me for hours now, not understanding a word that passed between me and the various people I’d spoken with. I wondered if she was sick of it yet.

Glancing back, I saw that she was waiting patiently, burdened down by fifty pounds of miscellaneous crap that was probably just going to get thrown away after Reaper picked through it for souvenirs. Interviewing merchants looking for Dead Six had been an utter waste of time. Only Jill’s dark eyes were visible under the blue silk scarf. Those eyes drifted over to the protestors, then back to me, wondering what was up.

The sidewalks were relatively crowded with the late lunch crowd, and we were right in front of a cafe filled with government employees, who were trying to eat and watch the protestors at the same time. Nobody was close enough to hear me speak English, so I leaned in.

“General Sabah’s supporters are getting braver. See, with all of the killings lately, his followers are getting fired up that the emir isn’t doing enough to stop it. If the emir loses enough support from the right people, then I bet you money the general is ready to have a coup to restore order, for the good of the people, of course.”

Jill looked around nervously. I signaled that she could speak. “They talked about the general at the embassy. That’s one of the reasons we got the order to get out. He hates Americans.”

There was a concrete bench nearby, and these sandals were hurting my feet. I gestured for her to take a seat. A bunch of pigeons immediately surrounded us. They were probably escapees from the rooftop cages that littered the city. Pigeons here were a delicacy, and these once-fat things were reduced to scavenging for crumbs. I shooed one away.

“Men like him hate whoever is convenient to put them into power, and then they’ll hate whoever’s convenient to keep them in power. Sabah’s side is supported by the Iranians. The emir screwed up. The Zubaran army hardly has any natives in it. Once the people started getting rich, they farmed out all the low-paying jobs to imported labor, and they included the army in that.” I gestured around the street. “Notice that all of the waiters, taxi drivers, janitors, they’re all Indians, Filipinos, Malays, or Sri Lankans? Sabah did the same thing with the military, but he filled it with Iranians and Syrians.”

“So why doesn’t the emir just fire the general?”

I pointed at the mob. “Because of useful idiots like them. The emir wouldn’t just fire Al Sabah, he’d execute him if he could get away with it. But then half the city would get burned down, and that’s assuming the emir’s got the manpower to take him anyway. I’m guessing probably a quarter of the security forces would go with the emir, if that. Either way, an overt move by either one to topple the other would blow this place right up. I’ve seen it before.”

“Where?” Jill asked, obnoxiously curious.

“Sixteen years ago I helped overthrow the democratically elected government of an African country,” I explained. “It wasn’t pretty. When a country collapses, the scumbags run free, raping and murdering. It’s like nothing you can imagine. Think slaughter on an industrial scale. You take any city, take away their electricity, food, and water for a week, and it’ll turn into Mad Max, guaranteed. And there’s always some asshole ready to take those things away for his own benefit. I’ve seen it up close in Africa twice, Mexico, Chechnya, Haiti, Burma, Afghanistan, you name it, anyplace that has fallen apart, I’ve been there, and I see it coming soon to Zubara. I can smell it.”

Jill studied the mob. “You’ve seen a lot of suffering.”

I snorted. “I’ve caused a lot of suffering. Naw, that’s just what I do. I seek out chaos. I make my living off the men that cause chaos. Assholes like Sabah are my meal ticket. Regular thieves steal from normal people. I steal from assholes.”

“So, you’re trying to say you’re Robin Hood?” Jill scoffed.

“No, of course not. Assholes just have more money, and it isn’t like they can cry to the cops when they get taken. It’s worked out well for me.”

“So, you justify being bad by only victimizing bad people.”

“It’s like karma, or something . . .” I trailed off as I noticed a black limo roll past us. It parked before the protestors at the front of the building. Apparently the mob was blocking the garage. A group of blue-uniformed security forces came down the government building’s steps and surrounded the limo, rifles shouldered. The mob pulled back instinctively in the face of the guns. A young man in a designer suit stepped from the back of the limo.

“I think that’s the Interior Minister,” Jill said. “He’s like the emir’s nephew or something. He came to an embassy function once.”

I surveyed the crowd. The students were full of noise but weren’t so tough facing half a dozen men with rifles. In fact, they were quieter now. The chanting had stopped. The black-hooded agitator with the bullhorn was suspiciously missing.

“Jill, get up. Let’s go.” I stood. She started collecting the bags. I grabbed her arm. “Leave them.”

The emir’s nephew was met by an older man in a suit. They greeted each other warmly, surrounded by their loyal security forces. The young man adjusted his tie and smiled. My eyes narrowed as I picked out one person moving against the tide of the mob. Jill sensed the urgency in my grasp and sped up. We walked quickly back the direction we’d come. “Don’t run. Don’t look suspicious. Don’t look back. When I push you down, cover your ears and keep your head down.”

I glanced back. We were too far away to understand whatever it was the suicide bomber screamed. Probably just a teenager, he opened his vest, exposing stacks of gray wrapping his torso, and raised his arms wide. There was a long moment in time as the security forces and the nephew froze and the crowd right around the bomber instinctively recoiled. The pigeons leapt skyward in a cloud. I threw my arm around Jill’s shoulders and took us both to the pavement.

The blast rippled across the ground and through my lungs. The concussion was massive. A wave of sound and energy rolled over us. Windows half a block away shattered.

Lying there, eyes clenched shut, hands pressed flat over my ears, I kept my weight on Jill, but no secondary explosions came. I uncovered my ears. First I could only hear a high-pitched whine, and that eventually settled into car alarms. Then I could finally hear the screaming of the wounded. As I rolled over, a wall of smoke and dust hung around the front of the government building.

People were wandering, dazed, bloody. Mangled bodies were splayed everywhere. The limo was twisted back into itself, jagged metal protruding. Severed limbs and bits of tissue littered the street. The shattered steps that had held the Interior Minister were coated in a red slurry of ribs and organs. The mob was gone.

Children were crying. A dog was barking. Where the hell had a dog come from? Already people were pulling