Warlord: Dervish Read online

  Copyright © 2011 Tony Monchinski

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 1468012916

  ISBN-13: 9781468012910

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-61916-451-2

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  Also by Tony Monchinski

  The Eden Series

  Eden (Simon & Schuster)

  Crusade (Permuted Press)

  Resurrection (Permuted Press)

  The I Kill Monsters Series

  Fury

  The Revenants

  Bad Men

  Dark Lady

  Fright Zone

  The Venery

  Corregedor Dawn

  Barnaby’s Children

  Onion Town

  Nonfiction

  Big Apple English (Chonghab)

  The Politics of Education (Sense)

  Critical Pedagogy and the Everyday Classroom (Springer)

  Unrepentant Radical Educator: The Writings of and Interviews with John Gerassi (Sense)

  Education in Hope: Critical Pedagogies and the Ethic of Care (Peter Lang)

  Engaged Pedagogy, Enraged Pedagogy (Sense)

  For Randy Ramirez

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Acknowledgements

  Ghosts in the Sand

  No Rain

  The Dirty Dozen

  Evil Never Sleeps

  The Forbidden Valley

  Been to hell and back/I can show you vouchers

  – Lil’ Wayne, No Love

  What will become of you? Will you go back to your people? – May (Sara Kestelman)

  There is no going back for me – Zed (Sean Connery)

  - Zardoz (d. John Boorman, 1974)

  Acknowledgements

  When I first conceived of the idea for Dervish a few years ago, I had something in mind along the lines of a mash-up between The Dirty Dozen and John Carpenter’s The Fog. The novel became something more than that in its planning and execution.

  This is a book that involves military men, but it’s not a military book. I am thankful to Sergeant Mike Little and Chief Petty Officer James Remo Jackson for their technical expertise. Anything that rings true is probably due to their advice; anything that doesn’t is all on me. I also found the following martial-themed books helpful: David Bellavia’s House to House; Sebastian Junger’s War; Bing West’s No True Glory; Tim Pritchard’s Ambush Alley; David Finkel’s The Good Soldiers; and C.J. Chivers’ The Gun. Equally useful was the History Channel’s Lock ‘n Load with R. Lee Ermey and the Military Channel’s Ultimate Weapons.

  My love of the action genre was sparked by the “men’s action adventure” novels I devoured in my youth: Don Pendleton’s The Executioner: Mack Bolan; Jack Hild’s SOBs; Jerry Ahern’s Survivalist and Track series; Gregory St. Germaine’s Resistance; Gar Wilson’s Phoenix Force; and Dick Stiver’s Able Team. My father and my Uncle Mike got me into reading when I was a little kid. They recommended good books and read them with me; my debt to them is profound.

  I want to thank my friend, Doctor Greg Dawes, at North Carolina State University. When I was a grad. student, Greg impressed upon me the importance of keeping abreast of developments in the hard sciences. Works by Michio Kaku, Brian Greene, J. Richard Gott, Paul Davies and John Brockman proved particularly germane as I wrote Dervish. Another professor and friend, Marshall Berman, finally got me to read Dostoyevsky some years ago and I am grateful he did.

  I appreciate the emails I get from readers. They often say something to me like, if this gets made into a movie, so-and-so should star as [fill in the character] and this song should be on the soundtrack. I definitely had some songs in mind and on my IPod as I wrote Dervish: from Drowning Pool (that’s Bodies Jason is whispering at one point in the novel) to Eminem, from DJ Khaled to Children of Bodom and a whole lot of Travis Barker remixes in-between. I tried to capture the frenetic desperation that marks the final fights in one of my favorite action-horror films, Neil Marshall’s Dog Soldiers, as well as the non-stop in-your-face action of a Hong Kong John Woo film. I trust you, the reader, to let me know if I succeeded or failed ([email protected])

  In many ways this is a book about what might have been, about being able to go back into the past to change the future. As such, it’s dedicated to Randy Ramirez, a guy I taught when he was in high school. To paraphrase Jim Carroll: Randy, I miss you more than all the others; this one is for you my brother.

  Tony Monchinski

  Peekskill, NY May 2011

  Well, we’ve had a tremendous third quarter, sir.

  The investors will be pleased.

  The investors are ecstatic.

  For now. But we both know the fickle nature of this beast all too well.

  It’s insatiable.

  To that end, where are we on the Gwanji Project?

  Yes, I was getting to that, sir.

  And?

  The engineers are working out some glitches—

  Glitches?

  Electromagnetic interference.

  I imagine it’s nothing I’d want to go around with my pacemaker.

  Heh-heh, probably not, sir. But they assure me its nothing to worry about.

  Well, good. What’s this I hear about the alpha release being inconclusive?

  Yes, well, that isn’t incorrect, sir. However—

  This better be a really good however. We’ve got trillions riding on this.

  However, without subjects, who can ultimately tell?

  You’re saying…?

  We’re ready to initiate beta release, sir.

  That’s what I like to hear. What’s the hold up?

  We’re assembling test subjects.

  Has that proven difficult?

  Not so much as we’d thought.

  The players have a way of presenting themselves, don’t they?

  That they do, sir. That they do.

  Very well. Keep me in the loop.

  Always, sir.

  War Taking Mental Health Toll on Frontline Troops, Report Details

  By Deirdre Fowler

  Forward Operating Base Alamo, Iran—When Staff Sergeant James Artinian returned from a routine patrol of Mashhad City in the province of Razavi Khorasan, his soldiers noticed something strange. “The Rock wasn’t acting the way he normally did,” Private Sally Nappi recalls, referring to Sergeant Artinian by the nickname bestowed on him by his own troops, a testament to his usual iron discipline and calm under fire. “He went right to his barracks, didn’t say anything.” In the barracks, Sergeant Artinian used his firearm to take his own life, and his suicide has his soldiers and superiors questioning….

  A new report from…reveals that there have been a combined 235 suicides in America’s three theaters of war in the past year. A crisis center on Forward Operating Base Alamo where Sergeant Artinian served has been averaging twenty-five visits a week from soldiers seeking help for a variety of issues ranging from suicide and anger management to alcoholism and economic and marriage counseling….

  While admitting to a dearth of mental health professionals, Department of Defense spokeswoman Jamie Ober voiced optimism in a Saturday morning press conference. “We’re very excited about some new [psychopharmacological] medications that have been green-lighted for the troops,” related Ms. Ober. “These medicines will alleviate the stresses and anxieties our fighting men and women face without compromising their combat integrity.”

  ….The next-generation anxiolytics, marketed by Steinbock LLC, a division of Diogenes Incorporated, are expected to start being distributed to troops within the next month. Their use will be mandatory for front-line combat troops, a stipulation that
has many critics….

  Army Issues More Waivers to Meet Recruitment Needs

  By Deirdre Fowler

  Washington – Given a diminishing pool of recruits in an all-volunteer army, the number of waivers given to United States Army recruits with criminal backgrounds has grown 75 percent in the last two years, Department of Defense records show…

  The Army has implemented a variety of incentives to attract recruits. It has offered enlistment cash bonuses; made room for greater numbers of high school dropouts in its ranks; once again lowered the acceptable minimum passing score on qualifying aptitude test to join; lessened the physical expectations once viewed as a necessity of boot camp training; and further loosened age and weight restrictions…

  The number of “moral waivers” issued to recruits with criminal pasts has also increased, even as the total number of recruits continues to diminish dramatically. Waivers for serious misdemeanors, which comprise the majority of all Army moral waivers, saw the greatest increase. Serious misdemeanors include burglary, robbery, vehicular homicide, and aggravated assault…

  There has also been a significant increase in the number of waivers for felony convictions….For the first time in the nation’s history, applicants with convictions for homicide, drug trafficking and sexual violence are being granted admission to the armed forces…

  The White House has lately been the target of domestic and international criticism after Vice President Sabian floated the idea of allowing incarcerated felons to enroll and serve in the nation’s armed forces, with their time served effectively diminishing their prison sentences…

  Ghosts in the Sand

  “Sometimes,” the kid had said to him, “you just gotta let go…”

  Specialist Jason Aaron wasn’t feeling right and hadn’t been feeling right for some time. He’d sweated through his drab green t-shirt under his ACUs, the sweat plastering the shirt to his torso before drying on him, and here he was sweating through it again. The odor trapped in the t-shirt was rank. Jason wasn’t feeling so well.

  A hundred and twenty degree days, he thought, had a way of doing that to you. But it wasn’t even ten in the morning and nowhere near a hundred and twenty yet. The heat and the stink of his t-shirt. Just two of the million little things that made Jason hate this country, hate this place.

  “Hey, America!” the children were waving, hoping for chocolate.

  On the other side of the barricade, across from Jason, Staff Sergeant Marc Patterson took one hand off the fore grip of his M-4 and waved back at the kids with his gloved hand. No one in their gun team called the sergeant by his given name. They called him Mook.

  “Hey yo’self, future terrorists.” Tucker called back, smiling, his voice high and nasally, loud enough for the other Americans and their interpreter to hear.

  “You ain’t right, Tucker.”

  “What chew mean, Mook?”

  “Shouldn’t talk to them like that.”

  “Puh-lease, Sarge.” To anyone other than the Sergeant, Tucker would have said nigger please. Tucker was black and Mook was black, but Tucker knew better than to talk to Mook like that. “Little sandgook probably got a poster of al-Sadr at home on his bedroom wall. Ain’t that right, Meech?”

  Their interpreter shrugged. “This is possible.”

  He wasn’t sure, but Jason thought it had been Tucker who’d bestowed the nickname Big Meech on their terp.

  Jason looked out on a foreign world through his black sunglasses. The kids, smiling and waving. The women in their black robes, staring at the ground. The old men, their faces lined and eyes empty. The young men would stare back, their eyes hard and cold. The red-and-white and the black-and-white headdresses, each signifying allegiance to some sect. Jason was glad for his sunglasses, relieved he didn’t need to make eye contact with any of them.

  Espada took his eyes off the people for a moment and glanced up into the sky. “Wonder if the Hindenburg’s seeing anything interesting today,” he commented.

  The aerostat hung over the city far above them. Its mooring lines—a perversely long umbilical cord—stretched from the nose cone down through the air, disappearing somewhere in the dust and buildings of the city. An American flag fluttered above the lower rudder. The corporate brand, Diogenes Inc., was emblazoned in red, white and blue lettering across the envelope. Though he couldn’t see it this morning, Jason knew the corporate logo—a blazing lantern—was printed on the starboard side.

  As he stood with the stock of his M-4 tucked into his side, his back to the Hesco barriers that comprised their traffic control point, Jason knew that electro-optical sensors aboard the aerostat were scanning the city. The images were transmitted to someone, somewhere. He’d read that the drones were operated state-side, out of Virginia and Jason wondered if the blimp worked the same way.

  What were the spooks and pencil pushers back at Langley looking at on their monitors? Entire blocks of homes reduced to enormous piles of rubble in the war. Streets strewn with concrete and masonry. Pockmarked ruins amid pools of fetid water and raw sewage. Paths blocked with coils of razor wire. Densely packed, square grids of cement houses linked by cement walls. A labyrinth of courtyards and walls, homes built in such proximity you could leap from one roof to another. The more affluent homes in town, compounds with date trees in courtyards lined by ten foot walls.

  The people. Faces chiseled granite, lined from a lifetime of fear and uncertainty, privation and want, dictatorship and invasion. Old men squatting on their haunches, sipping chai. Dishdashas and kaffiyeh-wrapped faces. Robed sheiks stepping in and out of their luxury sedans, ringed by their personal security details. Western volunteers in the employ of humanitarian organizations, trying to minister to local nationals without armed escorts, fodder for future kidnappings and beheadings. Ill-disciplined Haji patrols overseen by American advisors. Down-armored Humvees moving through the streets that could fit them at ten miles an hour; dour-faced men and women in the turrets manning fifty caliber machine guns and automatic grenade launchers. Somewhere—anywhere—everywhere, black-hooded insurgents, the Iraqis and Syrians and Saudis, the Italians, Chechens and Filipinos, ready to pop up with their RPGs and AKs and chest rigs, waiting to obliterate the infidels and themselves. Seventy two virgins and jihad, freedom and democracy, a clash of civilizations.

  The Americans and coalition forces behind their five-ton, reinforced concrete Texas barriers. Their wire basket Hescos lined with moleskin, filled with twenty-five tons of rock and sand. Berms of earth, defensive positions thrown up by bulldozers. This city, their area of operations, their COP far from the nearest Forward Operating Base. The CHUs—air-conditioned aluminum housing units the size of shipping containers—where grunts like Jason, Mook and Tucker laid their heads down when time and circumstance permitted. Where the kid, Rudy, had laid his head down when the kid’d had a head to lay down, before he was just another slab of charred meat waiting to be shipped back home.

  A once proud country, a once mighty empire, a cradle of civilization, hobbled, looted, occupied. Was this what they watched in Langley, in the artificial chill of their air conditioned cubicles?

  The same sights, day in and day out. Jason knew them well. They’d been out here for a week, guarding this barricade, denying access to the street behind. The street led to the souk, the market. The barricade itself made little sense to Jason. The people came and went, generally steering clear of him and the other Americans. They could get to the market through the side streets. Any Muj or his brother could psych themselves up watching a martyr video, shrug on a vest of C4 and rusty nails, bypass their TCP and detonate themselves in the middle of the bazaar.

  The barricade was meant for the cars. If you wanted to drive down to the market, you had to stop and talk to the Americans first. Further up the street were the staggered Jersey barriers, the signs in English and Arabic warning drivers to STOP. Their barrier was undermanned, in Jason’s estimate, in Mook’s estimate. They had five men on it and Meech, but Meech wasn’
t there to fight and didn’t have a weapon. It’d come down as a frago the week before and developed into something all its own, and Jason felt vulnerable, as he knew the other men did.

  As far as the locals were concerned, Jason and his guys were alien invaders. Jason got that. He understood that. The men of his fire team were similarly attired. Digitalized camo fatigues; Kevlar helmets and black, wrap-around shades; body armor with ceramic plates; elbow and knee pads strapped on and throat protectors in place; bullet- and heat-resistant gloves; compression bandages, tourniquets, boots; two hundred and forty rounds of 5.56mm for their M-4s in eight, thirty-round magazines. Sixty pounds of armor and ammunition. Jason had sweated through his t-shirt, it had dried on him, and he was sweating through it again.

  And it wasn’t even ten o’clock in the morning.

  He hadn’t been feeling well for some while, and he suspected it had little to do with the heat. He took a pull from his Camel Back, the water warm.

  “Hey, America!” one boy had broken from another pack and approached the Hescos and sandbags, waving something in his hand. The kid was dirty and disheveled, maybe eleven years old. M-4 barrels rose to meet the kid, but Mook was already moving forward with Big Meech, intercepting the boy, keeping him back from the TCP. Jason looked around, unsure what to do, then followed, positioning himself between the barrier and their sergeant.

  “What you got there, Abdul?” Mook asked the boy. Big Meech started to speak to the child in Arabic but the boy ignored him and spoke directly to Mook with whatever English he possessed.

  “You like DVD America?” The child smiled and Jason was struck by the white of his teeth under all that dirt and grime.

  “Let me see what you got, Abdul.”

  Jason looked the boy over, knowing Mook already had. None of them put it past the insurgents to rig a kid in a suicide vest and send him up to the barrier. It’d been done before. They did it with women. Pregnant ones too.