The Fist of God

Finally he closed the files of digests.

“Would you,” he asked, “just keep an eye open for anything really odd, anything that just doesn’t make sense?”

Mike Martin was beginning to think he should one day write a tourist’s guide to the flat roofs of Kuwait City. He seemed to have spent an impressive amount of time lying on one of them surveying the area beneath him. On the other hand, they did make superb places for LUPs, or lying-up positions.

He had been on this particular one for almost two days, surveying the house whose address he had given to Abu Fouad. It was one of the six he had been lent by Ahmed Al-Khalifa, and one he would now never use again.

Although it was two days since he had given the address to Abu Fouad and nothing was supposed to happen until tonight, October 9, he had still watched, night and day, living off a handful of bread and fruit.

If Iraqi soldiers arrived before seven-thirty on the evening of the ninth, he would know who had betrayed him—Abu Fouad himself. He glanced at his watch. Seven-thirty. The Kuwaiti colonel should be making his call about now, as instructed.

Across the city, Abu Fouad was indeed lifting the phone. He dialed a number, which was answered on the third ring.

“Salah?”

“Yes, who is this?”

“We have never met, but I have heard many good things about you—that you are loyal and brave, one of us. People know me as Abu Fouad.”

There was a gasp at the end of the phone.

“I need your help, Salah. Can we, the movement, count on you?”

“Oh, yes, Abu Fouad. Please tell me what it is you want.”

“Not I personally, but a friend. He is wounded and sick. I know you are a pharmacist. You must at once take medications to him—bandages, antibiotics, pain-killers. Have you heard of the one they call the Bedou?”

“Yes, of course. But do you mean to say you know him?”

“Never mind, but we have been working together for weeks. He is hugely important to us.”

“I will go downstairs to the shop right now and select the things he needs, and take them to him. Where do I find him?”

“He is holed up in a house in Shuwaikh and cannot move. Take pencil and paper.”

Abu Fouad dictated the address he had been given. At the other end of the phone it was noted.

“I will drive over at once, Abu Fouad. You can trust me,” said Salah the pharmacist.

“You are a good man. You will be rewarded.”

Abu Fouad hung up. The Bedou had said he would phone at dawn if nothing happened, and the pharmacist would be in the clear.

Mike Martin saw, rather than heard, the first truck just before half past eight. It was rolling on its own momentum, the engine off to make no sound, and it trundled past the intersection of the street before coming to a halt a few yards farther on and just out of sight. Martin nodded in approval.

The second truck did the same a few moments later. From each vehicle, twenty men descended quietly, Green Berets who knew what they were doing. The men moved in a column up the street, headed by an officer who grasped a civilian. The man’s white dish-dash glimmered in the half-darkness. With all the street names ripped down, the soldiers had needed a civilian guide to find this road. But the house numbers were still up.

The civilian stopped at a house, studied the number plate, and pointed.

The captain in charge had a hurried, whispered conversation with his sergeant, who took fifteen men down a side alley to cover the back.

Followed by the remaining soldiers, the captain tried the steel door to the small garden. It opened. The men surged through.

Inside the garden the captain could see that a low light burned in an upstairs room. Much of the ground floor was taken up by the garage, which was empty. At the front door all pretense of stealth vanished.

The captain tried the handle, found it was locked, and gestured to a soldier behind him. The man fired a brief burst from his automatic rifle at the lock in the wooden setting, and the door swung open.

With the captain leading, the Green Berets rushed in. Some went for the darkened ground-floor rooms; the captain and the rest went straight up for the master bedroom.

From the landing the captain could see the interior of the low-lit bedroom, the armchair with its back to the door, and the checkered keffiyeh peeping out over the top. He did not fire. Colonel Sabaawi of the AMAM had been specific: This one he wanted alive for questioning. As he rushed forward, the young officer did not feel the snag of the nylon fishing line against his shins.

He heard his own men bursting in through the back and others pounding up the stairs. He saw the slumped form in the soiled white robe, filled out by cushions, and the big watermelon wrapped in the keffiyeh. His face contorted with anger, and he had the time to snarl an insult at the trembling pharmacist who stood in the doorway.

Five pounds of Semtex-H may not sound like much, and it does not look very large. The houses of that neighborhood are built of stone and concrete, which was what saved the surrounding residences, some of which were occupied by Kuwaitis, from more than superficial damage.

But the house in which the soldiers stood virtually disappeared. Tiles from its roof were later found several hundred yards away.

The Bedou had not waited around to watch his handiwork. He was already two streets away, shuffling along, minding his own business, when he heard the muffled boom, like a door being slammed, then the one-second hollow silence, then the crash of masonry.

Three things happened the following day, all after dark. In Kuwait, the Bedou had his second meeting with Abu Fouad. This time, the Kuwaiti came alone to the rendezvous, in the shadow of a deep arched doorway only two hundred yards from the Sheraton, which had been taken over by dozens of senior Iraqi officers.

“You heard, Abu Fouad?”

“Of course. The whole city is buzzing. They lost over twenty men and the rest injured.” He sighed. “There will be more random reprisals.”

“You wish to stop now?”

“No. We cannot. But how much longer must we suffer?”

“The Americans and the British will come. One day.”

“Allah make it soon. Was Salah with them?”

“He brought them. There was only one civilian. You told no one else?”

“No, just him. It must have been him. He has the lives of nine young men on his head. He will not see Paradise.”

“So. What more do you want of me?”

“I do not ask who you are or where you come from. As a trained Army officer, I know you cannot be just a simple Bedou camel-drover from the desert. You have supplies of explosives, guns, ammunition, grenades. My people could also do much with these things.”

“And your offer?”

“Join with us and bring your supplies. Or stay on your own but share your supplies. I am not here to threaten, only to ask. But if you want to help our resistance, this is the way to do it.”

Mike Martin thought for a while. After eight weeks he had half his supplies left, still buried in the desert or scattered through the two villas he used not for living but for storage. Of his other four houses, one was destroyed and the other, where he had met with his pupils, compromised. He could hand over his stores and ask for more by night drop—risky but feasible, so long as his messages to Riyadh were not being intercepted, which he could not know. Or he could make another camel trip across the border and return with two more panniers. Even that would not be easy—there were now sixteen divisions of Iraqis ranged along that border, three times the number when he had entered.

It was time to contact Riyadh again and ask for instructions. In the meanwhile, he would give Abu Fouad