Chapter 45
"I really don't like this!" shouted Ziad over the roar of the jet engines. "I could have just teleported all of us here!"
"Yeah, and then what?" Shlomi responded. "Reveal that you're a wizard? Fuck that!"
"But I don't know how to parachute!" screamed Ziad.
"What?"
"I said, I DON'T KNOW HOW TO PARACHUTE!"
"Parachute is a noun, not a verb!"
"Wow, now I know how! Thanks, Shlomi!"
"No problem!"
A shrieking alarm noise interrupted their argument.
"Thirty seconds to drop!" shouted the South African commando by the open door, beyond which the open sky roared by at hundreds of kilometers an hour. "Lock and load, people! Oxygen masks on, final check!"
Ziad fumbled with his thick gloves to clip the oxygen mask over his face and slid the heavy tinted goggles over his eyes. He performed a last minute cinching of the various straps that held together the heavy pouches and bags that constituted the kit for a HALO jump (High altitude-low opening).
"Why is all this shit so heavy?" Ziad shrieked into his mask.
"Five seconds!" shouted the commando.
"Oh, sweet God above..."
"Four!"
"Three!"
"Two!"
"Allahu ak-"
Shlomi pushed Ziad out the door.
"Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck!"
The world spun obscenely below Ziad. Worse, it seemed to be spinning faster and faster and faster.
Physics is a real bitch, once you get to know her.
Ziad's breath hissed rapidly in the mask. His eyes were about as wide as they could possibly be.
Having actually paid attention during the safety briefing on the long flight from South Africa to the airspace above a remote part of the Chinese Tian Shan mountains, Ziad knew he had to control his breathing or risk depleting the oxygen bottle strapped to his back.
One breath of the high-nitrogen air of the atmosphere around him could induce decompression sickness. Despite its rather benign name, decompression sickness is when nitrogen bubbles form in your bloodstream which, well, I'm not a doctor, but it fucks you up real good.
Once Ziad managed to control his breathing, he forced his neck to turn and catch a glance of the altimeter on his wrist. 32,000 feet. Shit. Another three minutes or so until he should open the parachute.
Which begged the question: how do you open the chute?
Easy enough. Pull the handle thing.
Ziad remembered hearing the number "500 feet" during the briefing, but he really didn't like that too much. No time for the reserve chute, and really... Was 500 feet really enough to slow him down? Ziad (and the 200 pounds of equipment with him) felt like he was falling at about a thousand miles an hour.
He took the time God had given to him to examine the bleak landscape below. Nothing too extraordinary. It looked quite a bit like Afghanistan. Or parts of northern Iran. He and Dave McCormack had driven through just a few hundred miles to the north and east.
"Why the fuck can't we go to the Bahamas or the south of France for once?" Ziad mumbled into the mask. "Seriously, what is this? Israel? Tajikistan? India? Iran? Indonesia? China? That's like... half of the 'don't go here!' list tourists look at before the decide where to go. Why can't terrorists attack Jamaica?"
Ziad stared at the ground slowly rise to meet him in stony silence for the next two minutes.
"Ah, screw it. That's probably roughly 500 feet."
Ziad reached down and pulled the handle thing.
FWOOMP
And that's the last Ziad remembered about the jump.
Should have paid more attention about how to open the chute, shouldn't you, eh, Ziad?
Don't answer that, Ziad- it's rhetorical. Plus, you're unconscious because the rapidly expanding parachute hit you in the head 'cause you opened it wrong.
Thoughts drifted aimlessly through Ziad's unconscious brain. Stuff like "Why do I get knocked out so often? This can't be good for my health." and then the tangentially related "Didn't I hear something about how this kills brain cells and can cause serious neurological problems later in life?"
Fortunately for Ziad, he wasn't in a permanent coma, so he had to wake up eventually.
Unforunately for Ziad, this meant he had to wake up eventually.
This is unfortunate due to his circumstances: namely, in a cave high in the Tian Shan mountains surrounded by a large number of hard-bitten, ideological, psychopathic, and generally unsavory Islamic terrorists.
Still worse was that one of those terrorists was named Ali al-Jarrah.
What's so bad about that? Oh, just that Ali al-Jarrah is Ziad's father who was supposed to be dead.
Shit.
That's gonna suck when Ziad wakes up.
So, Ziad promptly woke up.
The first thing he saw when he opened his eyes was a very large beard.
"Hello," he said in Arabic.
"Hello," replied the beard. "My name is Osama bin Laden. Your father speaks very highly of you."
"Oh, fuck."
"Perhaps later." bin Laden replied.
Ziad sat up against the wall of the cave.
"Wait, what?"
"I didn't say anything," said bin Laden before standing up and walking off to do something in another part of the cave.
The cave was outfitted with naked light bulbs hanging from a buzzing wire. That light provided the necessary illumination for Ziad to see piles of weapons and the men who presumably knew how to use those weapons.
All of the men sported enormous beards, and looked really angry.
"International terrorism... It seems like a real sausage-fest, doesn't it? All these hot dogs and no buns. Probably why they're so angry," muttered Ziad.
At the far end of the cave was a truck on top of which was a half dozen or so large wooden crates with South African flags stenciled on the tops.
"Fuck."
A man entered the cavern, bearded (naturally) and wearing worn military fatigues. He turned towards Ziad and stared at him for a few seconds.
"Ah, Ziad! My son! It's been far too long! How's your mother been in my absence?"
"FUCK."
"Is that how you greet your father?"
"Well I just did, sooooo... Yeah?"
"I forgot what a sarcastic little prick you are."
"Great job on the parenting, there, Dad."
Osama bin Laden turned toward Ali and said, "Ali, there's no time for this. The South Africans are moving quickly up the valley. The Chinese are coming up the other side. We need to move the bombs now. Either take Ziad with us, kill him, or stay with him to be killed. Your choice."
"You go." said Ali, "I'll get rid of him on my own. I'll take the motorcycle out."
Osama nodded and waved for the other terrorists to get on the truck. He climbed into the driver's seat and started the engine.
The truck zoomed out through the entrance of the cave and Ziad heard it burning rubber down the dirt path outside.
Ali pulled a pistol out of a pocket and put it against Ziad's forhead.
"All you had to do, Ziad... Was stay out of my business. Why couldn't you just blow yourself and a couple of Israelis up like a good boy? When Mariam ran away I was so proud of you for staying. You ruined that when you failed to get revenge for my 'death.' You were supposed to die. That's who you are. You were supposed to be a soldier of Allah, a martyr! I made you to continue my legacy against the Zionists and the Great Satan of America. Why do you think I sent you to be trained by Hezbollah? Do you think I wanted you to just grow up and be a normal teenager? NO!"
"Well, I'm sure as shit not a normal teenager."
"Clearly. Now, make peace with Allah before you join him in paradise." Ali tensed his finger on the pistol's trigger.
"No need for that."
Ali relaxed a little.
"Oh? And why not?" he asked sarcastically.
"Because I haven't exactly spent the last two years sitting in Beirut jerking off to Israeli porn."
"Please do tell."
"Well, for one thing I spent a few months murdering guys in an Indonesian prison and now have a higher body count than you. In addition, I met a really cool guy named Mad Dog who taught me Pencak Silat. Since you're probably too ignorant and stupid to know what that is, I'll tell you. It's an Indonesian martial art that teaches me how to do this-"
In the blink of an eye, Ziad had caught Ali's wrist, twisted it around, broken it, and relieved him of the pistol. The pistol then took a nice trip deep into Ali's cheek, the sharp edge of the front sight scraping the skin and drawing blood.
"Pretty useful, huh?" Ziad quipped. "Those Indonesians may not be the greatest muslims ever, but they know their shit."
Ziad pressed the pistol deeper into Ali's cheek.
"Now, how is it that you're not dead?" he asked.
"Rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated," Ali mumbled around the gun.
"Clearly. I suppose you faked it all to join up with the Big Boys with their Big Toys, instead of messing around with the Israelis? Seems like you."
"Mumble mumble." mumbled Ali.
"Well, I won't tell you to make peace with your God, because you have none."
Ziad pulled the trigger.
Ali's brains sprayed across the rocks.
The echo of the gunshot faded.
Ziad stood, finally, and took a few steps toward the exit of the cave. He turned back to the corpse.
"See you in Hell, Dad."