"Blood Lust" by W Murphy

[tirepanted3]

Chapter 17

The customs inspector zipped open the shoulder bag with a fierce rip of his arm.

"Any contraband?" he demanded, not looking up.

"No," said Kimberly Baynes, holding her chin in one hand, as if in thought. It was the best way to keep her broken-necked head vertical.

"Alcohol? This is a Moslem country. No alcohol is allowed to enter."

"I'm not carrying any alcohol."

"Drugs?"

"No."

"Pornography?"

"Of course not."

The inspector pulled out a fistful of yellow silk scarves. He looked up, his dark sloe eyes questioning.

"So many. Why so many?" he demanded.

"It's an American custom."

"Explain."

"When we have hostages, it's customary to tie a yellow ribbon around a tree. These are my yellow ribbons."

The inspector considered this explanation. Wordlessly he stuffed the yellow tendrils of silk back into the bag and without zipping it closed returned it to Kimberly Baynes.

"Entry allowed," he said gruffly. "Three months. You must not work in that time and you cannot take more money from our country than you brought with you."

He stamped her passport with a pounding jerk of his rubber stamp, saying, "You are hereby permitted to enter Hamidi Arabia. Next!"

The bazaars in the Hamidi Arabian capital of Nehmad teemed with humanity. Arab men in flowing white thobes and headdresses tied with plaited ropelike agals moved like the lords of the desert. The women, mostly in black abayuhs that masked them from head to toe, gave silently before them, their eyes evasive and mysterious.

And joking and laughing U.S. servicemen and women moved through the spectral Arabs in twos and threes for protection, buying fruit from the stalls and sipping soft drinks to fend off dehydration.

Still carrying her bag, Kimberly returned their smiles and winks as they passed. Suggestions that she join them for a Coke were politely declined.

She wanted nothing from any of them. The person she needed to fill the Caldron with blood would show herself. Kali had promised her this. And Kali never lied.

Specialist Carla Shatter still couldn't believe she was in Hamidi Arabia.

Only a few weeks ago she had been a paralegal in Hingham, Massachusetts. Her Army Reserve status was good for nearly five thousand dollars per year in supplemental income-this in return for the weekend training sessions and a month each summer at Fort Devens.

When the call-up came, she had been scared. But her unit was not a combat unit. Their job was military justice, and the very fact that she had suddenly found herself stationed in Hamidi Arabia told her that the United States government had expected to be running war-crimes tribunals.

And since the U.S. Army didn't try war criminals until there had been a war, she had existed in a state of low-level apprehension, certain hostilities were about to break out.

Today her concern was the terrorist threat. U.S. service personnel had been warned that every time they entered the capital they were at risk to pro-Iraiti terrorist attack.

She walked through the bazaar with her eyes open. Despite the brutal heat, her sleeves were rolled down and her regulation blouse was buttoned up to the top button in deference to the sensitive Hamidi mores. She had been told to watch out for the Mutawain-the Hamidi religious police, who could insist upon her deportation for offenses ranging from holding hands with a man in public to brazenly displaying her seductive ankles.

Carla thought it was all a bunch of crap, but at least she didn't have to wear one of those medieval abayahs. They looked hot.

Few U.S. civilians prowled the bazaars these days, so Carla was surprised to see a blond woman in a flowing yellow chiffon dress walking through the dirty street like a Fifth Avenue mirage.

Carla walked up to her, smiling. An American woman to talk to. This was better than a letter from home.

The blond was quick to smile. Carla liked her smile. Of course she was from America, the blond said.

"Oh, where?" Carla asked, barely containing her glee.

"Denver."

"I'm from Massachusetts!" Carla burbled, thinking: Any port in a sandstorm.

They found a Pizza Sheikh whose English sign was repeated in Arabic, and swapped stories while the ice-choked Cokes kept coming and the blazing Arabian sun descended to the superheated desert sand.

Carla learned that Kimberly was twenty-two, a reporter with the Denver Post, and had a "crick" in her neck from sitting too close to the air conditioner on the flight over. Carla thought the way her head kept lolling to the left was more than a crick, but let it pass.

Kimberly asked a lot of boring questions about Carla's job, her unit, the distance to the neutral zone, and other reporter-type questions. When she could get a word in edgewise, Carla asked about home-now broadly defined as the continental U.S.-and hung on every answer.

Strange how fascinating it all was, after so many months stuck in the sand.

Finally Carla stood up, saying, "Listen, this has been great, but I gotta get on the bus back to the base."

"Is that where you're stationed?" Kimberly Baynes asked.

"Yeah, and it's a three mile-ride. If I miss my bus, I gotta walk. No, thank you," she laughed.

"I'll escort you to the bus," Kimberly offered.

"Fine by me."

They walked through the cooling dusk. Sand blew in the air. Sand always blew in the Hamidi Arabian air. The sun was sinking, a breathtaking ball of smoldering fire.

And somewhere between the Pizza Sheikh and the dusty street corner where a khaki bus waited, Kimberly offered Carla Shaner her yellow silk scarf.

"Oh, no. I couldn't take that," Carla protested, laughing. But Kimberly refused to take no for an answer. She even insisted on tying it around Carla's neck for her.

"Over here," Kimberly said, gently pulling her into an alley. "There's more light over here."

Actually, Carla found, there was less light in the alley. That was where it got cloudy. Then fuzzy. Then dark. Very dark.

When Carla Shaner's uniform left the alley, she was no longer wearing it. She lay in the dark alley with her moist purplish tongue collecting windblown sand the way an ice cream cone collects jimmies.

The yellow scarf encircled her throat, tied in an intricate knot that the Royal Hamidi Police were later forced to cut with a knife in frustration.

Kimberly Baynes caught the last bus to the base. More than one serviceman's eyes bugged out at the sight of her generous, button-straining bust. She sat with her arms modestly folded over her chest. One hand covered her name tag.