The Abrupt Physics of Dying Read online

  Suddenly the air exploded above him. A MiG in desert camouflage flashed low overhead, wings heavy with finned cylinders: rockets and bombs. The black maws of the engine intakes gaped against its sky-grey underbelly. The jet pitched up as it passed over and clawed its way into the sky, afterburners searing the air with orange flame. A strong smell of kerosene blanketed him as the jet climbed off towards the plateau.

  He worked quickly, calibrating the instruments, recording the data in his notebook. The salinity was higher than it should be, according to the long-term records, but nothing like the levels he had just measured at Al Urush. He scooped up a water sample and stashed it in his pack.

  A voice echoed around the rock walls of the sinkhole. He looked up.

  The chief stood at the lip, waving his arms. ‘You must go.’ His voice was deep and strong. ‘Hurry.’

  Clay stowed his equipment and raced up the track. It took just a few seconds to reach the top. Beyond a low ridge that ran from the escarpment towards the sea, a thick streak of dust cut obliquely into the blue sky. A column of vehicles was approaching at high speed. ‘Soldiers,’ said the chief, pointing towards the escarpment. ‘Go. Hide in the rocks.’

  ‘I’ll stay.’

  ‘No,’ said the chief. ‘It is not good for you to be here. Please, go.’

  Clay stood for a moment watching the dust spiralling closer. The chief reached out and touched his arm. ‘Please, my friend. It is better for us.’

  Clay sprinted to the Land Cruiser and started the engine. The chief pointed to a gap between two buildings. Clay waved and trundled the vehicle between the mud-brick houses and along a raised dyke that ran between two fields of date palms. He looked back. The tyres were raising no dust.

  Clay turned the vehicle in the direction of the escarpment onto a widened footpath. He followed the path into a dense field of towering boulders and stopped the Land Cruiser at the base of two massive blocks of limestone. The car was completely hidden from the village. He left the Land Cruiser and moved on foot along a goat track that ran parallel to the fault line and then up a steep shale slope until he came to a small promontory. He lay prone on the rock and looked out over the hamlet below. The convoy ploughed to a stop at the edge of the ghayl in a swirl of dust.

  There were five vehicles: three Russian-made military transports and two smaller four-wheeled vehicles with mounted heavy machine guns. A group of villagers emerged from the buildings and walked towards the trucks, led by the chief. Green-uniformed troops jumped from the transports and fanned out among the fields and buildings. Half a dozen other men, taller and more heavily armed than the Yemeni soldiers, dismounted the jeeps. They were bearded and dressed in a variety of camouflage patterns; some wore sunglasses. A Yemeni Army officer with gold epaulettes, and another man, smaller, dressed in khaki trousers, a black T-shirt and cap, approached the villagers. The locals clustered around the officer, waving and pointing. The bearded fighters stood a few paces away, watching, weapons ready.

  Clay pulled the telephoto lens from his bag and attached it to his camera. Then he flipped the bottom of his vest up and over his head so that it formed a shaded cover for the lens, and focussed on the man in the black shirt. His face was obscured beneath the peak of his cap. Clay focussed back on the villagers. The officer stood among the throng, waving a paper in the air, a document of some sort. The tribesmen were arguing with the officer. Raised voices echoed from the cliffs, intermittent on the breeze, Arabic, clearly, but something else, too, words and tones he had heard before, but not here.

  The chief stepped forward, his white robe rippling in the breeze. He turned to face his comrades and spoke, his voice rising on the wind. There was more jostling and shouting, the officer surrounded now by angry villagers. The man in the black shirt disengaged himself from the throng and faced the chief, pulled off his cap and ran his hands through close-cropped hair. Clay’s heart lurched. He clicked the shutter. It was Zdravko.

  Clay shook his head. What the hell was Zdravko doing here? And the Army, these others, these irregulars? Were they searching for Al Shams? Was that why the chief had ushered him away, bid him hide?

  Clay didn’t get a chance to be surprised. A shout echoed through the rocks. A blade flashed in the sun. The officer slumped to the ground holding his abdomen and disappeared under a mob of shouting villagers.

  Zdravko grabbed the chief by the arm, dragged him back, away from the mob. Behind, the fighters closed ranks, raised weapons. They were screaming at the villagers. Through the lens, Clay could see their jaws moving under the butts of their weapons, magazines full, fingers on triggers. He snapped off another picture.

  The villagers turned to face the fighters, fists raised, matching them voice for voice. Zdravko and the chief stood in the no-man’s land between the two groups. The chief turned to face his men, palms out, pleading with them. Zdravko drew a pistol, pointed it at the chief’s head. Clay’s heart stopped. Jesus, no.

  Clay was about to jump up, scream at Zdravko to stop when a single shot ruptured the air. The chief’s right knee exploded in a shower of pink mist. He crumpled to the ground, a red stain spreading over his robe. One of the tribesmen broke from the group, sprinted towards his chief. Zdravko raised his weapon and fired three times at point blank range. The tribesman toppled into the dust at Zdravko’s feet. By now the fighters had closed around Zdravko, stood with weapons levelled, a mere ten metres from the villagers. Zdravko stood over the chief, screaming at the villagers in Arabic, waving his pistol in the air, pointing it at the chief, at the mob, at his own head. Clay could see Zdravko’s mouth moving, the spittle flying from his lips, his neck muscles straining, the sweat pouring from his face.

  The chief was shouting back. Another shot pierced the air. The chief screamed in agony, his other knee smashed. The villagers surged forward but the chief turned to them, head craned back, warned them away. Clay could hear his words on the breeze, the voice strong even now, no, go back, don’t. The villagers stopped short, metres now from their chief, from the muzzles of the fighters’ weapons.

  Clay pulled his headscarf up over his face and jumped to his feet. ‘Enough,’ he cried out at the top of his voice, his arms raised over his head, camera still in one hand. His voice echoed through the rocks.

  Though he was a good 200 metres away, every face in the group turned at once in his direction.

  ‘Stop what you are doing and leave now,’ he yelled out.

  Zdravko looked up at him for a moment, dropped his shoulders, lowered his pistol, and then turned away as if he had lost interest. Clay’s heart restarted. He stood where he was, exposed, covered in sweat as if waking from a nightmare. None of the fighters had yet trained a weapon on him. He took a deep breath. Enough, he whispered. Enough.

  By now, other uniformed soldiers were hurrying back to the square, attracted by the sounds of conflict. For a moment it seemed as if the fighters, too, would turn away. Zdravko took a step towards the vehicles, another. It was over. Clay exhaled.

  Then Zdravko stopped, turned, stood staring up at Clay. Their eyes met. Clay’s face was covered, his cap pulled down low. Even so, there weren’t many foreigners of Clay’s build wandering around this part of the Yemen. He was sure that Zdravko had recognised him.

  Moments passed, seconds slowed into drugged minutes as they stared at each other. No one moved. The chief was moaning, conscious still despite his shattered knees. Zdravko looked down at the ground, scuffed his boot through the blood-soaked sand, looked back up. He raised his arm and aimed his weapon at Clay.

  At that range even an expert shot with the Makarov would have difficulty hitting a target. Clay knew that as long as he stood his ground, the chief had a chance. Clay aimed his camera at Zdravko, focussed on his face, the handgun big now, pointing right into Clay’s lens, the muzzle an empty black hole in Zdravko’s sunburnt hand. He clicked the shutter, watched Zdravko’s finger squeeze down on the trigger. The bullet would take about a third of a second to reach him, the sound of the
gunshot about double that. Clay opened his eyes wide.

  ‘No,’ shouted the chief.

  In one movement, Zdravko swung his weapon down and around, pivoted on both feet, and shot the chief through the middle of the forehead.

  The chief slumped to the ground, motionless.

  The fighters stood, silent, weapons trained on the tribesmen, looking at each other as if unsure what to do next. Moments slipped by. Then Zdravko opened his mouth. Clay saw it before he heard it. The muzzles of six automatic weapons flashed. The tribesmen, a dozen in all, disappeared. At that range, it was not a scything down of bodies, but a disintegration, the projectiles tearing flesh and shattering bone, ripping away limbs and faces in a cloud of blood and flying debris. Then the sound, the sickening crack of exploding gunpowder and expanding gases, the metallic clatter of firing mechanisms, the groan of dying men, cried across the rocks and along the cliffs, lingered for a moment in the swirling breeze, and died. Fourteen men lay dead in the sand.

  Clay stood frozen, transfixed, finger shaking on the shutter control, unable to breathe. Thirteen years vanished and he was there again, amidst the screams, the noise, the dirt, the rush. He was a witness. That’s what he would be now, for the rest of his life. He had photographed it all.

  He watched as the fighters took out empty magazines and snapped new ones into place, as if unaware of the carnage they had unleashed. Clay stood with the camera glued to his face, his hands shaking. Zdravko was looking right at him. Clay could see every detail of his face, the golden stubble around his mouth, the creases in his forehead shining with sweat, his mouth moving, the meaty hands changing out the Markarov’s mag.

  Clay caught a flash of movement to Zdravko’s left. One of the irregulars raised his rifle. Clay dropped to the ground just as the first rounds clattered into the rock above him, followed a fraction of a second later by the killing chant of the AK. He lay against the ancient seabed, the air above him filled with flying metal and pulverised rock, his insides tumbling, that familiar hollow sickness he’d always felt under fire, had prayed he’d never have to feel again. He hugged the rock, tried to push himself into its nullity, to become like it was, inanimate, uncaring, whole somehow, without friends or brothers or children who needed you, that you needed. The firing stopped. Target lost. Shouts of command echoed and fragmented among the rocks, across the years. He needed to move. Now.

  Clay stuffed his camera into his pack and backed away towards the cover of a ridge of larger boulders that lined the slope. He set off in a low running crouch, contouring the edge of the splay fan, the escarpment cliff to his right, the sounds of shouting falling behind. He looked back across the slope, saw no one. He had covered almost 200 metres, moving away from the Land Cruiser. He ducked behind a cross-banded block of sandstone the size of a bus and sank to the ground, sweat pouring from his temples, his shirt soaked. Somewhere back in the direction of the village, an engine started up, and then another. Vehicle doors slammed.

  And now, in the background, rising like a desert storm, the wailing of women. A long shiver, the tiny feet of a black spider, crawled up his spine. He stood, all clarity now, the old habits kicking in, found a handhold and levered his way to the top of the block. Prone, he edged his way forward over the breakaway until he could see back down the wadi. The Yemeni troops who had fanned out into the village were streaming back to the trucks. Women moved like black ghosts among the bodies of the dead, ignored by the soldiers, crumpled to the ground beside loved ones, screaming their anguish to the sky. Zdravko stood in the open front of one of the vehicles, scanning the slope through binoculars, pointing, shouting.

  Clay took a deep breath. What had he just witnessed? Vengeance dealt? Honour restored? Here, nothing could be judged by the action alone.

  A flash of movement in the rock caught Clay’s eye. Two fighters were making their way up the slope towards the promontory where Clay had stood. They were now between him and the Land Cruiser, but it was clear from the way they were moving directly upslope that they hadn’t seen him. Clay eased his head down, pushed his way back to the edge of the block. Then he jumped to the ground, slung his pack, and set off at a sprint. Carried along on a cross-current of fear and anger, he darted between boulders, working with the terrain, his feet skimming over the stones, ricocheting off oblique slabs, knees bouncing like shocks, moving steadily up-wadi, contouring the slope where the boulders were thick and high. There was no road here. If they were going to follow him it would have to be on foot. They would have to chase him down.

  But too soon the pain came, the indiscipline of the last years shooting like acid through his muscles, his heart fibrillating as his brain commanded the machine to do something for which it was no longer fit. He stopped, chest heaving, leant against a boulder, looked back. Still no one. He ran on, anger propelling him through the distress, stumbling rubber-legged over the rocks. After a while he fell into a rhythm, the sprint long since over, his body working into it now, breathing smoothing out, heart rate stabilising, muscles and tendons answering autonomous commands, and after a while as the endorphins raced through him and euphoria came he almost forgot the danger behind and even why he was running.

  Moving the Ball

  Clay ran until darkness fell, collapsed to the ground, hungry and exhausted. Convinced that he had not been followed, he crawled into a space between two boulders and curled up like a stray dog, the world incomprehensible, the universe swirling above him, pure chaos.

  He awoke cold, the sky grey, dawn still a few hours off. The wadi here was narrow, the texture of the opposite slope distinct, the caprock frayed into blocks at the escarpment’s edge and toppled down the slope. He set off in the gloom, stiff-legged and thirsty, back towards Al Bawazir.

  He reached Abdulkader’s Land Cruiser by late morning. The vehicle was as he had left it, indistinct, one of thousands in this part of the world, dented panels, scraped paint, smashed light housings, twice re-treaded tyres. Either the soldiers hadn’t found it, or they hadn’t connected it to him. He walked down to the village, to where the men had died. The bodies were gone, the sand swept clean of blood. Even the tyre tracks of the vehicles had been raked away, the spent cartridge cases collected. In his head, he could still hear the screams, the clatter of the machine guns. ‘God is great,’ he said aloud, no one there to hear him. It was always the best ones who died. And the flawed, the undeserving, lived.

  The drive to Al Mukalla was a blur. It was as if the world was collapsing in on him. Never had he felt so utterly alone, so lost. He hammered the steering wheel, screamed into the void.

  A few hours later Clay walked into the front entrance of the hospital at Al Mukalla. The same soldier, one of the men he had bribed before, slouched in the chair by the door, too strung out on qat to notice as he hurried past the admitting desk and through the double doors towards the doctor’s office. A diagnosis of Mohamed’s symptoms would answer some questions: were the illnesses he had seen caused by chemical poisoning as Al Shams and the villagers suspected? Or was it bacteriological, viral – a disease of some kind? Something else, perhaps. Was the whole thing really just about money and politics?

  He came to the office, the same door on the left, the same frosted glass above the doorframe, the sign board. He knocked and turned the handle, pushed open the door. A grey-haired man in a white lab coat sat at a little desk piled with papers. He turned to look back over his shoulder at Clay through narrowed eyes. His face was thin, the skin sallow, almost jaundiced under a fallow grey beard.

  ‘May I help you?’ the man said in Arabic.

  ‘I … I am looking for the doctor,’ Clay stuttered. ‘This is his office.’

  ‘This is my office.’

  Clay glanced at the window, the courtyard, the examination table where Mohamed had laid.

  ‘There must be some mistake. I was here just two days ago. I met with a doctor – I don’t know his name. He said this was his office. He examined a friend of mine.’

  The man swivelled
his chair, smoothed his coat, slid his pen into his breast pocket. ‘Ah, yes,’ the man said in English. ‘I am his replacement.’

  Clay baulked. Jesus Christ. ‘Where did he go?’

  ‘He was gone by the time I arrived.’

  Clay laced his fingers behind his head, looked to the ceiling. ‘Did he leave any records?’

  The man raised his eyebrows. ‘You must know that I cannot …’

  ‘Look,’ Clay interrupted him. ‘My friend, the one he was examining, a little boy from one of the villages, was very ill. His mother is illiterate. I need to know the results of the examination.’

  The man pulled the pen from his pocket, rolled it between his fingers, shook his head. ‘Even if I could show you, I assure you that this office was empty when I arrived.’

  Clay stood staring past the doctor out into the parched courtyard. ‘Thank you,’ he said finally, and walked away.

  That night Clay walked up the front steps of the company guesthouse in Aden and went straight to the dining room. Karila and Parnell were seated at the table, hunched over heaped dinner plates. They looked up at him as he entered.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ said Parnell, shucking the exoskeleton from a prawn. The skin of his face looked as if had just been salon peeled, moist and pale like wet glue.

  ‘This is the dining room. I thought I might eat.’

  Karila raised his eyes to where heaven was supposed to be.

  Clay approached the table. The smell of food sent pangs through him. He hadn’t eaten for more than a day. He pulled out a chair across from Karila, next to Parnell.

  ‘Go get yourself cleaned up, Straker,’ gobbed Parnell, mouth full of prawn meat. ‘This ain’t a sty.’

  Clay looked down at his silt-covered shirt and trousers, his plaster dust hands, and sat. He poured himself a glass of water from the jug on the table, drank it down.