Black Tulip

Never had Sergei seen a curse more quickly fulfilled. No sooner had the words left Vladimir's mouth than a harsh, flat craack! came echoing back from the mountains. He brought his Kalashnikov up to his shoulder. Vladimir did the same. They both relaxed, a little, when they realized the explosion wasn't close by.

Lowering his assault rifle, Vladimir started laughing like a loon. "Miserable son of a bitch walked into one we left out for the ghosts. Too bad. Oh, too bad!" He laughed again, louder than ever. On the mountainside, the Afghans who weren't hurt bent over their wounded friend and did what they could for him. Sergei said, "This won't make the villagers like us any better."

"Too bad. Oh, too bad!" Vladimir not only repeated himself, he pressed his free hand over his heart like a hammy opera singer pulling out all the stops to emote on stage. "And they love us so much already."

Sergei couldn't very well argue with that, not when he'd been the one who'd pointed out that the villagers didn't love the Red Army men in their midst. He did say, "Here come the Afghans."

The wounded man's pals brought him back with one of his arms slung over each of their shoulders. He groaned every now and then, but tried to bear his pain in silence. His robes were torn and splashed— soaked—with red. Sergei had seen what mines did. The Afghan's foot—maybe his whole leg up to the knee—would look as if it belonged in a butcher's shop, not attached to a human being.

One of the Afghans knew a little Russian. "Your mine hurt," he said. "Your man help?" He pointed to the Soviet medic's tent. "Yes, go on," Sergei said. "Take him there." "Softly," Vladimir told him.

A fleabite might not bother a sleeping man. If he'd been bitten before, though, he might notice a second bite, or a third, more readily than he would have otherwise. The dragon stirred restlessly.

Satar squatted on his heels, staring down at the ground in front of him. He'd been staring at it long enough to know every pebble, every [dot] of dirt, every little ridge of dust. A spider scuttled past. Satar watched it without caring.

Sayid Jaglan crouched beside him. "I am sorry, Abdul Satar Ahmedi."

"It is the will of God," Satar answered, not moving, not looking up.

"Truly, it is the will of God," agreed the commander of the mujahideen. "They do say your father is likely to live."

"If God wills it, he will live," Satar said. "But is it a life to live as a cripple, to live without a foot?"

"Like you, he has wisdom," Sayid Jaglan said. "He has a place in Bulola he may be able to keep. Because he has wisdom, he will not have to beg his bread in the streets, as a herder or peasant without a foot would."

"He will be a cripple!" Satar burst out. "He is my father!" Tears stung his eyes. He did not let them fall. He had not shed a tear since the news came to the mujahideen from his home village.

"I wonder if the earthquake made him misstep," Sayid Jaglan said.

"Ibrahim said the earthquake was later," Satar answered.

"Yes, he said that, but he might have been wrong," Sayid Jaglan said. "God is perfect. Men? Men make mistakes."

Now at last Satar looked up at him. "The Russians made a mistake when they came into our country," he said. "I will show them what sort of mistake they made."

"We all aim to do that," Sayid Jaglan told him. "And we will take back your village, and we will do it soon. Our strength gathers, here and elsewhere. When Bulola falls, the whole valley falls, and the valley is like a sword pointed straight at Bamian. As sure as God is one, your father will be avenged. Then he will no longer lie under the hands of the god-less ones . . . though Ibrahim did also say they treated his wound with some skill."

"Jinni of the waste take Ibrahim by the hair!" Satar said. "If the Shuravi had not laid the mines, my father would not have been wounded in the first place."

"True. Every word of it true," the chieftain of the mujahideen agreed. Satar was arguing with him, not sitting there lost in his own private wasteland of pain. Sayid Jaglan set a hand on Satar's shoulder. "When the time comes, you will fight as those who knew the Prophet fought to bring his truth to Arabia and to the world."

"I don't know about that. I don't know anything about that at all," Satar said. "All I know is, I will fight my best."

Sayid Jaglan nodded in satisfaction. "Good. We have both said the same thing." He went off to rouse the spirit of some other mujahid.

"Shuravi! Shuravi! Marg, marg, marg!" The mocking cry rose from behind a mud-brick wall in Bulola. Giggles followed it. The boy—or maybe it was a girl—who'd called out for death to the Soviets couldn't have been more than seven years old.

"Little bastard," Vladimir said, hands tightening on his Kalashnikov. "His mother was a whore and his father was a camel."

"They all feel that way, though," Sergei said. As always, he felt the weight of the villagers' eyes on him. They reminded him of wolves