The Crisis by David Poyer Read Free Book Online Page B

shoes slippery on the sun-heated scree, does she make out the path.
    They climb for hours, until her thighs ache and her head spins again. The boys trail after them, chattering at first, then silent. The woman halts to rest, but not often enough. They sweat out the water and there’s no more. Birds soar, balancing on the wind.
    High above and far away, a thread dangles from heaven. It flutters and sways, like spider silk in the wind. Only as they approach does she gradually make out a resting place at the top of the trail, at the foot of a cliff that flies up and up so far she can’t tip her head back enough to see the top. When they reach it, wheezing, dizzy, there’s an ancient pavement set withbits of colored stone, a picture of a man in a brown robe with a circle around his head, holding up two fingers.
    In the center, where the colors are worn, sits a large woven basket. The woman urges her toward it. Zeynaab resists, weeping in terror. The woman tries to persuade her, but all she hears are broken words, like jagged shards of pottery that gouge at her ears.
    The woman puts her hands on her. Her voice grows soft. Is this the voice of a witch? Is this the voice of a mother? She struggles, begging the driver to help her. He turns away, his profile hawklike. She shudders, the world spins, the mountain’s about to fall on her.
    Â 
    WHEN she comes to again she’s curled in the basket. When she peers up, loose strips of blue cloth interlace above her. A rope curves upward until it vanishes. The basket revolves, creaking and swaying in a way that grips her heart.
    She knows where she is now: in the bowl with the birds and bunnies on it she used to eat from when she was small. There are the birds, down below her. They’re free, released from the hard forever of porcelain.
    She stares at the cliff passing a few arm’s-lengths away. Strange plants with gray spines grow on it, clinging in the crevices, and around them bright butterflies weave like the colored yarn on a carpet loom.
    Then the basket revolves, and she sees only bright blue of empty sky, and below it, so far away she can hardly imagine it, stretch so very many miles of foothill and desert over which they must have driven in the truck. She shivers in the witch’s basket gazing out at the whole world, so wide and small now she can’t see her village, can’t see the road, can’t see her old life, which, she finally understands, whatever happens now, is forever gone.

3
Eskan Village, Saudi Arabia
    T HE air force captain had stopped fighting the night before, after Teddy fucked her for a couple of hours. Zoned out, like they did when you got them quieted down. Turning over when he told her to, doing what she had to, but without a word. When the alarm sounded he lay with an arm over his eyes, listening to the unquiet peep. Then rolled over.
    She shifted under his weight, half acquiescent, until she came awake. Then she fought again, trying to kick, scratch, but too late.
    When he pulled out, feeling supernaturally alive, the world was still dark outside the curtains of the room in the gated village the Saudis kept the Americans confined to except when they were actually under orders. He shaved and brushed his teeth with quick strokes, then dropped to the slick tile and did one hundred slow push-ups and a hundred sit-ups.
    When he went back in, sucking deep breaths, she was sitting up, holding the sheet to her chest and lighting a PX Salem with shaking fingers. Her dark hair was snarled, mascara streaked, face swollen. She was Air Force, some logistics type who got things in and out through Saudi customs. He’d gone down to the pool, swam a few laps, then got out and walked the perimeter, picking the best body out of the baking flesh on display. The Look, a caramel latte at the PX Starbucks, and back to his room.
    â€œDon’t smoke here,” he told her.
    â€œFuck you.”
    â€œAgain?”
    â€œThat wasn’t