The knocking continued. Then came the scrape of Sean’s window being opened.
Kosta drew a canister from his pocket. In the survival catalogs it was sold as “bear mace,” a highly concentrated pepper spray approved for hunters and outdoor enthusiasts. Multiple labels warned that it should never be used on humans. Kosta snapped off the can’s plastic safety. The fire escape trembled with new weight, and here was Sean crawling out his window, a skinny black kid in a Godzilla T-shirt, breathing hard as he climbed out into the cold, his jacket bundled under one arm.
Sean had been one of Kosta’s best dealers. The kid had connects with a whole network of art-type students living in Brooklyn, a market to which Kosta would never otherwise have gained access. Which made it all the more disappointing when Sean missed their last meeting and hadn’t shown up since to pay the dividends he owed.
Kosta whistled. Sean looked up and actually managed to pull off a smile, as if he was going to offer an explanation. Kosta fired the canister, discharging a whooshing cone of white fog into Sean’s face.
For an instant Sean was lost in the blast, but as it cleared Kosta saw the kid’s face, dark and broken by violent sobs. Sean put a hand to his eyes, taking it away from the ladder, and his body weight swung him out over the drop. He snatched himself back to the fire escape with both hands. He began to retch. His feet kicked out. He gurgled and clung for life.
Kosta leaned down, close to Sean’s weeping face. “What’s the deal, playboy?”
* * *
—
A few minutes later Kosta and Sean came downstairs, the kid’s face purple and slimy. Buqa trailed behind, walking backward to cover their rear, just in case Sean had any friends in the building who might get bad ideas.
“Come around front. Check the street,” said Kosta into the earphone. They waited in the entryway, where the fat kid seemed to have abandoned his post. Then came word from Zameer: no sign of police, no neighbors screaming. They decided to take Sean’s wheels, a shitty old Volvo parked on the curb. Reminiscent of the cars back home, thought Kosta: stitched together from cannibalized parts and repainted in gray primer. He shoved Sean into the cramped backseat, where stuffing bloomed from gashes in the upholstery, and once again Kosta felt a longing for the Denali.
Buqa took the driver’s seat, Kosta sat shotgun, and Zameer went in back with the kid. Kosta turned on the radio, found a song he liked. The beats came through as a racket of thuds on the bootleg system, but he kept up the volume in case Sean starting yelling.
The Volvo pulled off toward the Grand Concourse. He saw Buqa nodding along to the music, her relief visible. Even Zameer seemed happy.
Kosta twisted in his seat. “So,” he said to Sean. “You been busy?”
Sean just squinted at him.
“A month ago I give you a package of eight bundles. Supposedly you’re stinging for forty-five each, right? Except, funny thing, you don’t bring nothing back. And now you don’t answer your phone?”
Sean put his head down. The car slowed at an intersection.
“Which way?” said Buqa.
Kosta began to give Buqa directions when he heard a metal snap from the backseat. He turned to find Zameer with his knife out, a little hook-shaped razor, the kind they make for cutting linoleum. Zameer was tickling Sean’s earlobe with the blade.
“The fuck are you doing?” said Kosta, switching to Albanian.
Zameer glared back, sticking out his chin.
In a surge of movement Kosta thrust himself between the seats, grabbed Zameer’s hand and twisted away the knife.
“You fucking listen to me—” he began.
Something hit the car with a gunshot smack. Kosta whirled around just in time to see a figure slam against the front of the Volvo and fall away, vanishing beneath the wheels.
Buqa stomped the brake and the car skidded through the empty intersection.
Kosta punched off the music. He looked out every window, trying to put together what had just happened. The neighborhood was bright and silent—a weekend morning, he remembered—no one on the street except a crumpled shape in the snow behind them, lying between two arcs of tire track.
“The fuck was that?” said Zameer. He’d stopped searching for the knife and was holding Sean facedown against the backseat.
Behind them, a young woman stood up. In the gray morning light Kosta could see she had a pretty face, even with all the blood. The sun was bright on the snow. She turned toward them and began to spin, arms stretched out for balance, looking around as if getting a full picture of the world. Then she teetered and slumped to the ground.
This time she stayed there, motionless in the churned-up snow.
CHAPTER TWO
Coop made his way down a cracked strip of tar, the only highway in Afghanistan. He walked with his weapon slung at the ready, padding heel-foot, heel-foot, stalking the bright apparition that lay ahead of him: a lone pale horse, quivering in the morning light.
The wind blew cold but still Coop sweltered under the weight of his gear: his kevlar vest, helmet, and demolition pack. He was nervous about the horse and it made the sweating worse. Reels of bomb gossip played through his mind as he walked; stories of dead camels lying along the road with jiggered Russian mortars sewn up inside their bellies. Coop was pretty sure he’d only heard of this done to roadkill, whereas the horse up ahead was clearly alive. But that didn’t eliminate the possibility of bioweapons. Recent briefings had stressed the possibility that Iraq had armed the Taliban with WMDs. Could the horse be infected with one of Saddam’s plagues?
His radio crackled, and out came a blare of mariachi trumpets. Coop twitched at the sudden noise, fumbling with the handheld as a voice came over the music.
“Hey Specialist, that horse is like a quarter-klik out, hooah?”
Private Greely, The Fucking New Guy.
“Roger that,” said Coop.
“Sergeant Anaya says maybe his morning PT ain’t sufficient, you have all this energy for walking.”
Coop took a knee, pointing his M4 carbine toward the dirt, and swiveled back the way he’d come. A few hundred meters down the blacktop sat his team’s humvee, where Greely and Anaya were waiting. Coop keyed his radio.
“Private Greely, do me a favor and inform Sergeant Anaya that his ethnic music is compromising my stealth.”
Now Coop heard Anaya’s faraway voice.
“What’d he say? Give me that,” and the transmission cut out for a second, Coop clearly picturing the sergeant wrestling the radio from Greely.
“Hey Specialist Cooper,” said Anaya, coming on the radio, his voice full of mock authority. “Listen, Greely’s calling you out. He bets his Skittles you won’t ride that horse.”