Veil of Civility

Chapter Forty-Eight

"The boy is a danger, Abu," Anzor Kasparov said. "All he has done for the last two days is stare at his brother's body. He is making the others nervous."

"Vakha was a good soldier. But Sharpuddin, he is no longer one of us," Ruslan Baktayev said, as he stood at the back door of the abandoned welding service with Kasparov and looked into the fenced-in lot behind the building. Baktayev assumed that at some point in the past valuable equipment had been stored on the lot because wooden pallets had been hung across the entire fence to keep anyone from seeing what was inside. Rusted strands of barbed wire prevented people from climbing over and signs reading beware of dogs had been placed throughout the property. Whatever had once been there was now long gone. Only three empty sea containers and stacks of rusted junk remained. At the mouth of one of the sea containers, Sharpuddin Daudov knelt, looking mournfully into the trailer where the bodies of his brother and two other men lay.

"I will talk to him," Kasparov said, and started forward.

"No," Baktayev said, holding up his arm to stop Kasparov. "We don't have time for this. I will deal with him myself, but later."

Kasparov nodded. Baktayev turned back inside. "Albek," he said to a bearded man who sat near a workbench covered with Kalashnikov rifles. The man looked up. "Anzor and I are leaving now. We will be gone for most of the day. Do not let Sharpuddin leave under any circumstances."

"What do I do if he tries?"

"Stop him. Any way you can."

Albek nodded. "I will take care of it, General. Where are you going?"

"To do some reconnaissance."

Baktayev craned his neck as Kasparov drove through a small, desperate-looking town made up of empty brick storefronts with haphazardly hung out of business banners, sidewalks with clumps of weeds growing between joints in the concrete, and medians with tall, uncut grass. Every building in the one mile stretch of real estate that was marked as Main Street had an antiquated and uncared for appearance, even the court-like building marked City Hall. Overall, Baktayev was surprised. This was the kind of place that he was used to seeing in cities throughout Russia, not the kind of place he had expected to encounter in the United States of America, a country as famous for its wealth as it was infamous for its military excursions around the world. "What happened here?" he asked.

Kasparov shrugged. "A drug called meth, General. The Americans are their own worst enemies. The manufacturing jobs that supported areas like this left for places in other countries with cheaper workers and the idle minds and hands of those who lived here found solace in drugs and alcohol."

"Hmm."

Kasparov turned left and entered a residential area as the town itself came to an end. Here the situation seemed much the same. Small houses with unkempt yards and broken down cars dotted the ill-maintained streets. "This is where I live."

Baktayev sat forward and looked at a one-floor, wood-sided house that appeared to be no bigger than two, maybe three rooms at the most. Tall trees that loomed over the property had covered the exterior of the house in a brownish dust, and a cracked concrete porch with two plastic lawn chairs led to a badly dented screen door.

Kasparov pulled the white cargo van he was driving into the property's pine needle covered driveway and shifted the vehicle into reverse. Backing out, he returned in the direction they had come and said, "I moved here five years ago. I knew that I had chosen the perfect place when I received your first letter from Sheikh Kahraman."

Baktayev nodded. "You've done well, Anzor."

A mile after making a right back onto the main road through the town of Victoria, Kasparov pulled the vehicle to the side of the road a few dozen yards away from a one-story brick building with narrow, metal-rimmed windows. It was clear from the obvious disrepair of the exterior that it suffered from the same blight as the rest of the town. Baktayev smiled as he read the sign that stood in the building's foreground.

"W.N. Page Junior High School," he said aloud. "Praise be to Allah and his servant Sheikh Kahraman. It is perfect."

"Wait until you see the inside."