Tintin

The Imperial Graveyard

He inhaled a deep breath. Exhaled black reeking smoke through his nose. Usually he didn't inhale, but today he had to. He had to.

Forget that the humidor had long broken. Forget that they had never been packaged right to begin with. Forget that he hadn't seen the woman who had sent them in a straight year. No wonder the package had been shipped from APO to APO for months, until some motivated Lieutenant had tracked him down and paid for back-owed shipping out of his pocket. Forget all that.

With a black felt-tipped pen, he made another mark on the coffee-stained map before him. If the latest intel reports were right, the enemy was now using drones. Not those that flew at 30,000 feet, those that flew at thirty feet and were bought for as many dollars off of the internet. It didn't matter that they were unarmed, they had cameras that could report on troop movements, logistics, readiness. They were the eyes and the hordes with Kalashnikovs and IEDs were the teeth.

He ran a hand through thinning brown hair. Clutched his face for a minute. He didn't know what time it was; time was as shapeless as the dust and the dim orange light of his tent. Night, day, twilight, it was all hot and dry and dusty and dead.

"Sir!" Someone knocked on his door.

"Yeah?"

A heavily pregnant green-eyed woman entered. Stood at attention until he waved her at ease with a hand.

"Sir, it's the journalist. She's ready to see you."

"Thanks, LT." He managed a smile. Straightened out the twin eagles stitched onto his lapels.

"By the way, when do you rotate home? The kid's gotta be due in… what, August?"

"Yes sir," she smiled. "I should be in Alabama long before then."

A new family, back at home in the homeland. That was what he fought for. He smiled.

"Show her in. And then you're released. Thanks for everything, LT."

They shared smiles. The Lieutenant left and said a few words to those waiting outside. As they entered, the Colonel stood up as straight as eighteen hour days would allow and forced a grin.

"Colonel," the reporter said as she entered. "It's been too long. How's the war effort going?"

Straight to business, always working on the next big scoop. That was just like her.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," he reeled her back. "First, let me say, excellent work on busting the smuggling ring. We suspected it for the longest time, but with your help, we should be able to get the funding and manpower we need to win this war."

"Win the war," she said, pulling a pen and notebook out of her knapsack. "Just what does that mean now, Colonel?"

He fixed her with a glare. His deputy, a bald man with water blue eyes, entered and murmured a few implicative words in her ear.

"Our troops are fearless," he said. "And they're fighting hard, every day. One of our squadrons lost its commander a week ago, but we've got them raiding suspected sympathizers right now. We're going to win this one, kid," he said, "with, or without the fake news."

"Fake news," she repeated. Shook her head and then drew an errant lock of hair out of her face. "If those are all your official comments, sir…?"

She waited for him to nod. Put the notebook away, took a seat, and accepted a cigar from him without putting it to her lips.

"Win the war," the Colonel said. He scoffed and nodded at his deputy to close the door.

"I just welcomed our freshest round of troops to the fight earlier today," he said. "One of the kids is seventeen years old—so I spoke to him alone, one on one. I wanted to know what motivated him to join, because I forgot a long time ago. And he told me about that day back in 2001.

"For a while, I felt good about myself. About what I was doing. Then I realized—this kid was seventeen. He was born after that day. He grew up to war and now he's going to fight in it, too."

He shook his head.

"Don't get me wrong. I believe in what we're doing—I believe in wiping the scum that trades in human flesh off the planet. But… how? And at what cost?" he said. Shook his head again. "What's worse is that they don't wear the uniform and they don't play by the rules. Did you hear about Belgium—did you hear about what happened to your country last night?"

The redhead shook her head gravely. Reached down to her knapsack for some reason, as if to comfort it. Or perhaps to comfort herself.

"A cartoonist. A God damn cartoonist. They dragged him out of his house and executed him in the street where everyone could see it. And then they shot up the neighborhood, and the cops, and then each other, so they couldn't be taken alive."

The Colonel comforted himself with a long drag from his cigar. He began to say something else when another rapping came at his door.

"Sir, military police," the Lieutenant's voice said. "Priority one."

At a word they entered, one after the other, both lean and trim and gaunt faced. Their kiffiyehs weren't unlike what the redhead had used earlier that day and their facial hair was all but identical. Just like their faces, their gait, the automatic pistols at their sides.

Normally, now was when they would smile and comment about the weather or how they would be on time but for ice on the road. Normally. Now, they simply stood at attention, one of them with a laptop under his arm.

"Gentlemen?" the Colonel said. "What's… wrong?"

"A new threat, sir," one of the twins said. He opened the laptop and set it out on the table. "We figured you'd want to know about it. This concerns you, too," he said over his shoulder to the reporter.

The reporter stood. Watched as the red logo of a video sharing site appeared, then vanished into a dusty dark room lit by a single dim orange light.

A masked man with a Kalashnikov walked into view. His black shirt bore a monochromatic logo that made his allegiance clear, that made him one among thousands. Many thousand.

"In the name of the Prophet," he began, "I declare a fatwa on the unbelieving scum, the lying press, the disobedient slaves, the Romans and their supporters." An incoherent rant followed, targeting gamblers, adulterers, alcoholics and homosexuals. Half-literate references to his holy book were made and for a time, the Colonel almost toned it out. He might have, if it wasn't for the chalky whiteness on the reporter's face.

"Something wrong?" he said. No response. He snapped his fingers in front of her face.

"Hey. Kid. You stared down the Serbians in Yugoslavia, don't tell me this little punk intimidates you?"

She swallowed. Shook her head. Paused and stared at the video, which had just switched to an amateur mode. Someone with a camera was walking around a humble little rainy village. The view focused on a little stone home with freshly painted windows—then the camera turned on another masked youth. He said no words. Just laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed.

Back to the original masked man.

"Didn't I tell you," he said, "I'd hunt you down? Perhaps I should have added that those around you will not be let alone. By this time tomorrow, our legions will descend on them like rabid wolves on sheep. In the name of the Prophet, I swear it."

The video went black.

A long time later, one of the twins shut the laptop. Coughed and tried to look away from the redhead, where she stood shivering, biting her nails.

They knew… her home. Her family. Her parents…

"Have-have you told the gendarme?" she said.

"They reacted immediately and took your parents into protective custody," one of the twins said. "Your other relatives—cousins, aunts, uncles—they're being looked after. Extra patrols will go past each of their homes—"

"Extra patrols?" she repeated. "This is the Caliphate we're talking about. They're armed to the teeth with bombs."

"The gendarme are doing all they can," one of the twins said gently. "What with the cab drivers rioting and the youth protesting for jobs, it's more than we can ask."

"Perfect," she snapped. "Just perfect."

An awkward moment passed. She forced her shoulders to relax. Swallowed. Offered a smile to the twins.

"I'm sorry, gentlemen. I'm just… these guys are different and it's…" She swallowed her next words. It's the first time I ever shot someone. Killed someone.

"Anyway. Thanks for keeping me in the loop."

"Anytime," said one of the twins. "By the way, what's your next move? You wrote the story here. Where's the next one?"

So few words. So much was said. It's no longer safe here, not even for you. Get out while you can.

So she thought for a moment. Looked up with a grim smile on her face.

"The Caliph is active in the Philippines, they say," she said. "But no one knows me in that part of the world, and they have no connections with this Caliph anyway. I'll be safe there."

The Colonel laughed. "As safe as a lone woman in a warzone can be." He laughed again, this time joined in by his deputy, the twins, the reporter herself.

"Take care of yourself, kid. This story's important, but you have a lot more to cover," the Colonel said. "Come home in one piece. Alright?"

"Of course, sir," she said. She shook his extended arm—paused—then drew him in for a brief hug. Repeated the gesture with each of the twins.

"And by the one," the latter of the duo said, "follow the rules, alright?"

"Always," the reporter said. She began to smile, to ask which rules she ever broke, when a friendly yip from her ankles made her wince. Her knapsack was open and its contents were wagging its tail, searching for a treat from the twins.

Now that the dog was out of the bag, he could ride freely with her in first class, at least, as close to first class as the allied forces could offer. In this case it came in the form of a series of hard-backed seats crammed into a cargo plane laden with ammunition, helmets, MREs, first aid, bodybags. The tools for waging war and the tools for dealing with its results.

She buckled her belt over the dog and went through the motions of ensuring it was tight and taut. There were no flight attendants here, just a droning grating voice through the old speaker system, then a roar and great lurching jolt when the plane took to the air.

Hours passed. The little white dog fell asleep, a quiet ball of warmth in her life. Yet she stayed awake, eyes darting from here to there, fingernails chewed to the flesh.

The Caliph. The video. The masked man with the Belgian accent and his Kalashnikov and his followers.

No. That was all in the past, the story was written and emailed to the publisher already. And the slaves were no longer slaves, they were free… free to struggle, and starve, just as the millions of others like them struggled and starved in the war-torn homeland.

Something prompted her to check a lighted screen she pulled out of a pocket. Open up the map application, wait for it to synchronize, then zoom out.

She was over central Asia, it seemed. Afghanistan in particular.

The little white ball on her lap fidgeted. Began to growl. She put hr phone away to offer it a few words of comfort. None helped.

The plane lurched. Typical. There weren't enough mechanics these days; needed repairs were wanted repairs in times of austerity. Another lurch. Now the speaker was squaking, mayday, losing altitude, mayday, we're going down, a hundred miles outside of Kandahar, we're going down.

Another lurch. Typical. Darkness and noise. Typical. It was all going to plan. Nothing unusual. No reason to worry. No reason to scream and claw at the belt and drag the little white dog out of the flame and twisted metal and collapse into great vast emptiness.