The Identity Mine

XIII

There were few things more beautiful than the desert at night.

The air was untainted by the human stain, the starts glittering with vibrant colors in the velvety black vault of the heavens above to cast a faint glow in the moonless sky that guided him on his journey.

There was no way that he could have crossed into Kuwait via the Safwan border crossing, which was too heavily guarded, as was Umm Qasr port far to the south east as he hiked across the silent hills, careful to stay below the ridgeline.

The journey down the Khawr — as — Zubayr Waterway from Basra had been a short but difficult one, made harder by the police checks routinely made on private vessels traversing south toward Umm Qasr and the Persian Gulf. There was much fear of Iranian sponsored terrorists seeking passage either into or out of Iraq, supporting the uprisings of Islamic State and its myriad splinter groups. It was hard for Abrahem to leave Iraq, but now he was alone and revelling in the solitude and safety the darkness provided, both from his enemies and from the burning hatred that seared his heart, consuming but not replenishing, focusing but blinding all at once.

He would miss his homeland, or at least what was left of it.

Hajjam Island was three kilometres long and provided access to the Persian Gulf for those with a will and a means to evade the Kuwaiti authorities. Patrol ships roamed the coast and inlets seeking out refugees, fugitives and smugglers alike, and were possessed of cameras that could see in the dark. Abrahem Nassir knew better than to travel across the open water at night, but for the time being he was safe.

At the southern tip of the island awaited a small craft that would take him around the floodplain cradling both Warbah Island and Bubiyan Island, the vessel staying within Iraqi waters although perilously close to the Iranian border. From there he would board a private vessel bound for Green Island, an exclusive resort in Kuwait City. Papers had been arranged under false names that would facilitate his exit via the international airport for the west.

All was in hand, so that the end could begin. The speed with which the American troops had closed in on captured journalist Kiera Lomas had surprised everyone, but Abrahem’s people had succeeded in their mission and now her early rescue mattered little. In fact, it may have helped things along.

Abrahem felt a light touch to his step, a jubilance born of the vengeance that flamed in his heart and grew stronger with every passing day. His time had been long coming, and it sometimes felt that he had endured an age of repressed fury and injustice, of being ignored, forgotten, abandoned, the memory of so many lost names burned into his mind, tormenting him like ghosts in his sleep…

Abrahem forced the thoughts from his mind, for they cost him focus and drive. To be a slave to one’s anger was to be imprisoned by one’s life, a Bedouin elder had once told him. Learn to let go of your hatred for it will only serve you well when you really need it, during the night of the long knives, the moment of retribution. Abrahem let the cool night air soothe him as he descended toward the island’s southern tip and saw a tiny light blink on and off in the infinite blackness ahead.

He descended onto the darkened sands, the sound of rollers whispering nearby as Abrahem saw the figure of a man waiting for him alongside a small motor launch that he had hauled up onto the beach.

‘Salaam,’ Abrahem greeted him.

‘We must hurry,’ came the response, tinged with panic. ‘The patrols could return at any moment and if we’re caught we will be…’

‘Relax, Hakim, my friend,’ Abrahem cut him off. ‘The Kuwaiti patrols are timed and predictable, the crews as lazy as they are stupid. We shall reach the ship in time and then you shall be safely on your way.’

A nervous smile flickered like an errant wind across Hakim’s features. ‘There is much to fear, Abrahem. What you have done, it could… it could be dangerous for us all.’

‘What I have done will be a danger only for our enemies, Allah willing,’ Abrahem replied. ‘Have you brought good news from our associates?’

Hakim nodded, pulled a cigarette out from a packet that had been squashed into his shirt pocket. Abrahem reached out and forestalled Hakim’s hand.

‘The light from a cigarette carries far on a clear night,’ he warned. ‘Agreed?’

Hakim hesitated and then stuffed the crumpled cigarette back into its packet as he replied.

‘There have been deaths, of the infidels,’ Hakim informed him. ‘A general shot his own troops and then turned the gun on himself, and then an American pilot bombed his own ship and crashed into it. We detected the transmissions, just as you said we would, and the Americans are concealing the events as you predicted.’

Hakim’s voice was touched with true fear borne of a lack of understanding, the terror of the unknown laid bare for those with the knowledge to see what others could not. Abrahem smiled in the darkness as he gestured to the boat.

‘That is the news that I had hoped to hear. Allah is with us, Hakim, and His wrath shall fall upon the infidels again and again until none of them remain. Come.’

Abrahem pushed the launch out into the rollers, Hakim leaping aboard and grabbing the helm as he pulled on a starter cord. The engine spluttered into life, a puff of oily smoke gusting onto the breeze as the launch turned and accelerated gently out of the bay, the waves helping to conceal the sound of the engine.

‘I am not sure that Allah would approve of what has happened,’ Hakim insisted as they travelled. ‘It is not wise to interfere with His workings, especially the minds of men. And now one of them has escaped.’

Abrahem abruptly sat up in the launch. ‘When? Where?’

‘A woman, the reporter,’ Hakim explained, ‘the Americans found her in Basra and took her away.’

Abrahem sighed and sank back into the boat. ‘She was allowed to escape, Hakim. She will soon be of use to us.’

Hakim’s frown was visible even in the feeble light from the stars above.

‘You allowed her to escape? But what if she remembers and is able to lead the Americans back to us? They will hunt us down, Abrahem, and they will not stop until…’

‘She will not remember,’ Abrahem snapped. ‘There is no gain without risk, Hakim.’

Hakim fell silent as he guided the launch out around the edge of the islands, hugging the shorelines as they eased south. Abrahem found himself grateful for the return of the silence, weary already of Hakim’s voice. No gain without risk. In some ways, Hakim was right. Abrahem had taken a calculated risk in allowing the Americans to liberate Kiera Lomas, given that their early arrival had cost poor Ismael his life at their hands, outnumbered and outgunned. It would attract great media attention and she was sure to undergo a medical examination to determine the state of her health, both physical and mental, before being released. That had been the reason for the appalling abuse by her captors on Abrahem’s orders: to focus the attentions of the physicians elsewhere, to draw them away from the real threat.

None the less Abrahem realized that he could afford to take no further risks, to leave no other channels open to the Americans when they began their inevitable pursuit of him and those in his employ. They always did — the hard line followers of Allah liked to refer to the Americans as infidels and fools, but they were in fact a dangerous and cunning foe who always, as the American cop shows liked to put it, got their man. Abrahem was fervently hoping that this time they would also get their man, but only when it was far too late to matter. He wanted to be there to see their faces when their country collapsed around them, and for that to happen no further risks could be taken. Any plan was only as strong as its weakest link.

‘There they are.’

Hakim’s voice whispered to Abrahem in the darkness and he looked up across the surface of the ocean. The dawn was creeping across the horizon, clear and bright as they closed in on the yacht powering across the seas. Sleek, white, glossy, a chartered vessel hired by rich foreigners for scuba diving and island hopping off Kuwait’s pristine shores, not for picking up illegal immigrants seeking to cross borders. The cost of the trip had been high for Abrahem, but it would be worth it.

Hakim slowed the boat down as the yacht likewise slowed, its powerful engines humming as it moved in gently alongside the launch so as to prevent the wash from its hull rocking the smaller vessel too harshly on the waves.

Abrahem looked up at the deck and saw at least three individuals silhouetted against the dawn sky. Another, no doubt, would be at the wheel.

‘Salaam,’ called one of the yacht’s crew, touching two fingers to his forehead.

‘One to come aboard,’ Hakim called in hushed tones.

The crewman opened a gate in the railings running the length of the yacht’s hull as Abrahem got to his feet and slung his backpack over his shoulders, tightened it in place as with one hand he slipped a wickedly curved blade from his pocket and held it concealed behind his wrist.

‘It is time,’ Hakim said. ‘Good luck my friend, may Allah watch over you.’

Abrahem moved forward and threw his left arm tightly around Hakim’s shoulders as he pulled the younger man close to him.

‘And you Hakim, my friend.’

Abrahem turned the blade expertly over in his free hand and with a rapid, vicious swipe he plunged the silvery knife deep into Hakim’s skull just below his ear. The razor sharp weapon crunched through thin bone and Abrahem felt Hakim stiffen as a sharp intake of breath was suddenly expelled and his body fell limp in Abrahem’s grasp.

Abrahem released the body and let it fall over the side of the launch with a crash of water as he leaped up to the yacht’s side and hauled himself aboard. The crewman before him barely had time to react, opened his mouth to shout a warning before Abrahem thrust the clenched knuckles of one hand deep into the man’s thorax.

The crewman’s throat collapsed, strangling off the warning as his eyes bulged and he staggered back from the railings. Abrahem slashed the blade across the man’s belly and he gagged and bowed over at the waist, one hand instinctively trying to hold closed the deep incision that had split his stomach open and sprayed dark blood across the pristine white deck.

Abrahem grabbed the man’s hair and hauled him backwards through the railing gate and hurled him over the side. The crewman hit the water even as Abrahem launched himself toward the bridge as a shout of alarm went up.

Two men charged him, shouting in Arabic as they rushed in across the deck, shadowy figures hunting him down like demons.

Abrahem slipped the pack from his back and hurled it into the face of the furthest man as he dropped down low and brought the blade up into the belly of the nearer. It was a clumsy blow, designed more to frighten and pitch him off balance than to kill him. The man yelped as he saw the blade coming and hurled himself to one side over a deck locker, and Abrahem turned to face the second man as the rucksack hit the deck alongside him.

Abrahem slashed out with the blade, caught the man’s forearm with a faint spray of blood that provoked a cry of pain as his attacker jerked aside and swung a heavy — looking metal bar of some kind at Abrahem’s skull. Abrahem ducked the blow easily and drove the point of the blade straight forward into the man’s plexus. The weapon sank with a rasp deep into the man’s body and he gasped, his eyes wide as Abrahem twisted the blade and yanked it out. The serrated edge tore at the man’s flesh and the grooved surface of the blade allowed blood to spill in torrents as the man screamed in pain and fear and collapsed onto the deck.

Abrahem turned and saw the other crewman fleeing for the bridge. He dashed up the steps and slammed the door behind him, his panicked face looking out of the window as he locked the door.

Abrahem leaped across the deck and up the steps in pursuit. He could see the ship’s captain screaming down the radio, his face contorted with fear, and the crewman cowering alongside his captain with his gaze fixed on Abrahem.

Abrahem smiled as he watched the captain staring at his radio in confusion, unable to understand why he could not raise the coastguard. Fear of the unknown. Abraham’s rucksack contained a modulating frequency jammer sufficient to block all radio channels within a limited distance by decreasing the signal — to — noise ratio, a device stolen from the American soldiers when they abandoned Basra to anarchy and bloodshed.

Slowly, Abrahem turned and retrieved the rucksack from the deck, then carried it to the bridge. He unpacked the jammer and showed it to the captain through the window. Despair ripped across the man’s face as he recognized the device.

‘Give me the boat, and I shall give you your lives,’ Abrahem called through the window.

The two crewmen looked at each other and then shook their heads in unison.

Abrahem shrugged and then pulled a 9mm pistol from the rucksack, aimed, and fired twice straight through the glass.

Both men barely had time to scream before they were hit. Abrahem turned and with a sharp blow from his right elbow he smashed the rest of the window and reached in and unlocked the door. He shouldered the door aside and strode onto the bridge to see both men lying on the deck, gripping their wounds and weeping as they begged for mercy. Both men had voided their bowels, a sickly stench permeating the air. Death, it was always so undignified, not like in the Hollywood movies where a single gunshot dropped the victim instantly. It was a gruesome, painful, drawn — out experience both for those dying and those witnessing. But it was also necessary, especially now.

‘Go in peace, Inshallah,’ he said.

Abrahem fired two more shots, both of them this time impacting the victim’s skulls with a thud that silenced their pleas. Then he calmly put the pistol away and began the onerous task of disposing of the bodies over the side of the yacht, making sure that their bellies were slit open before he did so to ensure that the expanding gases of decomposition did not cause the corpses to float on the ocean surface to be found by the patrols or the coastguard.

As soon as his grim task was complete, Abrahem turned the yacht for the Kuwaiti coast and eased the throttles open. He had a long journey ahead of him, and he did not want to miss his flight.