The Last Good Man

A Matter of Time

Miles Dushane sits on a dusty floor rough with grit, his back to the outside wall of a little second-floor room walled and floored and roofed in concrete. The place must have been meant as a storeroom, but for the past few days it’s served as his prison cell. The closed door is locked with a deadbolt and there is no real window, just a horizontal opening to the outside, tucked under the roofline. It’s screened with a heavy mesh cemented in place to keep the rats out, and it’s too narrow to squeeze through anyway. The mesh admits just enough dusty air to keep the room’s four inhabitants alive.

His three companions might still make it home if ransoms can be arranged, but Americans don’t ransom hostages, so Miles knows he won’t be getting out that way. His value is as propaganda, and only then if his captor, Hussam El-Hashem, devises a particularly spectacular death for him, one aimed at enforcing the bloody reputation of his Al-Furat Coalition. It’s been many years since a simple execution could command any media attention. So while no one’s been crucified yet, Miles Dushane considers it only a matter of time.

Gray light seeps through the mesh along with a muezzin’s amplified call to prayer. It’s the start of another day in the TEZ—the Tigris-Euphrates Zone. Though ostensibly Syrian or Iraqi, large regions within the TEZ are looked on as ungoverned territories. In these areas, warlords and gangsters rule, along with their appointed local councils.

Miles flinches at the rip-roar of an ancient gasoline-powered engine as a scooter shoots past on the street below. He is always on edge, always in a constant state of fear. Closing his eyes, he tells himself to go to sleep again. Sleep is his only respite, but sleep doesn’t come.

He gives up and discovers that the gathering light has given shape to his companions.

They are all men, all bearded and filthy like Miles, clothed in loose drawstring trousers and shapeless tunics, dirty white.

Noël Poulin huddles closest to the door. He’s a French Catholic missionary, called by God to render aid to the suffering children of Syria.

Dano Rodrigues sleeps on his side against the right-hand wall. A Brazilian doctor and avowed atheist, he came to the TEZ as part of a medical mission because he saw it as the right thing to do. He was taken hostage four months ago, along with another doctor, an American, Fatima Atwan. Miles has seen Dr. Atwan twice when they were ordered out to stand witness to executions. At least, Dano said it was her behind the veil.

The last inhabitant of their cell is Ryan Rogers, an American engineer with the good fortune to be employed by a British petroleum company, one with an insurance agency that does pay ransoms—although his is still under negotiation. Ryan lies on his back, the moist sheen of his open eyes just visible in the half light as he stares at the ceiling. That’s how he spends most days.

Miles came to the TEZ to report on the war—a self-perpetuating conflict, mostly conducted among the warlords but with occasional interference from foreign governments convinced they can set things right by bombing civilian towns and highways. He is a freelance journalist. His reporting, informed by his background as a US Army Ranger, earned him a large and lively audience over the nine months he posted from the TEZ. His website fed stories to news outlets around the world. The last time he checked, his video reports had two hundred fifty thousand subscribers.

He suspects his subscriber count has ceased growing since he stopped posting updates.

The dawn light brightens, illuminating dust hazing the air, and defining pockmarks in the walls, surely made by bullets. The stains on the floor might be oil or old paint… though he doesn’t believe that.

He and his fellow captives have been in this cell two nights. Every five or six nights they’re moved to another house in another town. Some of the lockups have been better than this one. Most were worse. His captivity has gone on for weeks. Maybe a lifetime. It’s hard to remember. He has to school himself not to give up. To wait, to watch for an opportunity. Any opportunity to get the fuck out of here—or to at least cause some damage before Hussam El-Hashem orders him killed.

He flinches as Ryan nudges his foot. The engineer, still lying on his back, is now pointing at the ceiling. Miles looks. Something moving up there. Tiny, glimmering wings that belong to a slowly flying insect with a glassy body the size of a rice grain. Miles watches it cruise toward the light leaking through the mesh. That light paints it with detail so that Miles gets a good look at it just before it escapes.

Holy fuck.

Ryan sits up. They stare at each other in the dim light, sharing the realization. Not an insect. A mechanical device, a mosquito drone, used to reconnoiter otherwise inaccessible targets.

Miles explains it to himself this way: Someone is planning to launch a rescue mission.

He fucking hopes he’s right.