Dead Reckoning Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  PROLOGUE

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

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  BY WARREN MURPHY AND JAMES MULLANEY

  Copyright Page

  For a whole bunch of aunts and uncles: John, Eileen, Mary and Ann, as well as Betty, Dick and Sue.

  For www.warrenmurphy.com, where one of us can be reached; and for www.jamesmullaney.com, where the other one can.

  For www.destroyerclub.com, official home of the Destroyer on the Web (now in Sinanju-O-Vision) … .

  —J.M.

  And especially for Patricia Chute Sapir and Devin Sapir … good traveling companions on our long and winding road.

  —W.M.

  PROLOGUE

  The little sewing shop where toiled Abdullah the tailor was on the edge of the bustling bazaar in the city of Khwajah, two camel marches north of Baghdad.

  It was to this shop on a Saturday afternoon late in May, just a few years shy of the end of the nineteenth century, that a handsome young Turkish soldier came.

  Many natives who lived in the conquered territories of Iraq would spit on the ground wherever the foreigners walked although fear and prudence made certain that they did so long after the soldiers had passed.

  The Turks, it was true, were hated by nearly everyone in Khwajah but Abdullah the tailor did not hate them. The soldiers had always been polite to him. He had rarely had a problem with payment and when he did he merely shrugged it off as Allah’s will and went about his business.

  “Be nice,” Abdullah hissed to his daughter when this particular soldier came into the shop.

  He had already cautioned her the night before.

  “The Ottoman Empire of these Turks is dying,” Abdullah had told his daughter over supper. “They are fighting too much with Russia. Arabia will not belong to them forever. And so it is true that these soldiers will not be here forever. We will marry you off to one before they are sent off to some other stupid war.”

  The Turk was handsome and tall with strong arms and eyes of a strange green that Abdullah had never before seen.

  Abdullah’s daughter giggled and played with the stacks of silk and every once in a while she glanced at the soldier as he searched through bolts of cloth.

  Abdullah wished she would not giggle so much for it was not attractive in one so old. The girl was no longer young, having seen her eighteenth winter a few months before. Of course Abdullah still insisted that she was only fifteen but she could only be fifteen for so long. As her hips swelled, her teeth grew long and heavy bits of her began to sag, it was getting more difficult to get people to believe the lie.

  And so his daughter must be married soon and why not to this handsome foreigner who was poking around his shop?

  The soldier made his selections and Abdullah took his measurements, assuring the young man that the garment would be most elegant, especially on so handsome a Turk. And when the matter of payment was brought up, Abdullah waved it away with the back of one hand and offered a different proposal.

  “Sir, my daughter is young and comely, and will work hard to please you. It would honor me if a good Turkish soldier such as yourself would take her as your bride.”

  Abdullah clutched folded hands to his chest and smiled hopefully at the young Turkish soldier. Behind him, his daughter bit her lip with her big, crooked teeth and batted her eyelashes at her would-be husband.

  The Turkish soldier looked from the little old man to the beaming girl who stood at her father’s side. When the soldier began to laugh, the girl shrank away.

  “Forgive me, sir, but I would not have your daughter as a servant, much less wed one as ugly as she.”

  Abdullah was shocked. He had looked at his daughter all his life with a father’s eyes. To him she was the most beautiful maiden in the Middle East.

  “I—I do not understand,” Abdullah said.

  “That is because you are an Arab dog,” said the soldier to the man whose land he had invaded. “It is not your fault, old one. Not being a Turk, you are stupid by your nature, just as your daughters are ugly by Allah’s design. Only a foreign fool would be dumb enough to marry a homely mongrel girl and only a homely mongrel girl would be desperate enough to marry a foreign dullard. You see now how Allah provides even for the lowliest of his creations? Although you may find it difficult to find even a foreign devil stupid enough to marry one as homely as this child of yours.” Laughing aloud, the handsome young Turkish soldier left the tailor’s shop.

  Abdullah’s daughter was inconsolable. A widower, he had no wife who would know the right things to say to comfort a heartbroken child. The young girl cried for three days, and on the fourth day when she fell silent and Abdullah thought all might be well again, he entered his daughter’s chambers only to discover that she had cut open her wrists and bled to death during the night.

  “I will have my revenge on that Turk and all like him,” Abdullah said to his three grown sons after the funeral of his beautiful only daughter.

  “Do not, father,” his eldest warned.

  “The Turks rule our country, slaughter at will, and take what they want,” said the middle son. “This soldier could have done worse to our sister, father.”

  After his older sons had left him, Abdullah’s youngest son had pulled his father aside. “My brothers are timid men, father,” he had whispered. “They fear for their positions in the community, for their fortunes and their lives. That is why they offer you such counsel. But I tell you there is a way to avenge yourself for your daughter, my sister.” Abdullah’s youngest son was a trader and on a trip to the east had come into possession of an ancient parchment torn from a book that was lost to time. The words were a spell which, when spoken during the proper ritual, would summon an avenging spirit from the shadow realm.

  Abdullah was no fool. He knew that he was living in a new age when exploration and science had begun to disprove the superstitions of old. But just because something was old did not mean it was wrong and he had faith that some of the old magics and teachings were true. As a good son, his youngest had sold him the parchment for only three gold pieces.

  “But be warned, father, that jinns are powerful spirits, and must be bound to an object so that they might be summoned and controlled. It will follow your commands but be careful what you wish for, for it is in their nature to deceive.”

  And learning the common item his father planned to use as anchor to the spirit in this realm, and offering a final warning to take care, the youngest son left his father.

  Abdullah brought the parchment back to his tailor shop. Bolting doors and windows, he traced the sacred circle on the floor, lit the lamps and candles, put out the object to which the spirit was to be bound on this plane, and offered the incantations as written on the ancient paper.

  When the last word was uttered, a great wind rose up from the east, and a howl like the tortured chorus of all the world’s dead assaulted Abdullah’s ears. Once when he was a boy Abdullah and his father had been caught in a sandstorm. This sound was like the roar in his memory only worse, and when the boarded windows burst open Abdullah expected to be consumed by a flooding sea of sand, but instead the candles flickered out, the oil lamps were extinguished, and the room where he had conducted his ritual w
as consumed by a silence and a darkness made all the more thick and terrifying by the clamor that had preceded it.

  With shaking hands, Abdullah relit one of the extinguished lamps. He nearly dropped it, spilling oil and flame to the floor, when he saw the figure standing calmly within the sacred summoning circle.

  “It has been many ages since one has dared summon us,” the figure in the circle said. “Only I remain, alone I heed the call to this world of mortals.”

  Abdullah was stunned by the ordinariness of the spirit. In appearance, he was a man. Fat of face, with skin of a strange yellow and eyes the shape of almonds. He was clothed in the garments of the wealthiest sultans, and wore rings of priceless gems on his thick fingers. Even his voice was ordinary; clipped and precise, but with a nasal quality.

  “Speak, Arab, that I would know why I am here.”

  Abdullah’s mouth was dry. It took him a moment to find his tongue. “Perfect health,” he said. “For myself and my sons, and their sons. I would have perfect health for my family and all of my bloodline.”

  If the request was too great for the spirit, his expression did not show it. He merely smiled and nodded as if he had heard the same entreaty many times before.

  “There is something else you desire.”

  The spirit had read Abdullah’s face. Perfect health was only so that he might live to see his second wish come true.

  “I want the foreigners out of this land,” Abdullah the tailor said. “I want the foreigners fighting each other. I want them killing one another. I want them dead, spirit. Can you do this thing?”

  The spirit pondered Abdullah’s request, nodding as he considered the words. “Trickier,” he said. And he smiled.

  There was a strange shimmering of air that seemed to envelop the spirit. Before Abdullah’s eyes, the visage of the spirit changed. The fat face and colorful robes melted away. The face became what appeared to be an animated skull, the robes turned the color of night. Long fingers of bone extended from billowing black sleeves, and when the spirit held out its arms, Abdullah backed away in fear.

  “Fear not, old one,” the spirit intoned. “I have changed only in appearance for I have become what you want me to be. No more, no less. What you ask for shall be.”

  And Abdullah was alone.

  The old man searched around the shop but the spirit had fled. No matter. He had gotten all he wished for.

  For several days, Abdullah searched for the soldier who had insulted his daughter and driven her to suicide. He scoured the dusty streets of Khwajah, and at last he found the Turk in the bazaar at the stall of the crazy merchant Dunzyad. The young soldier and his fellows were searching through a pile of foreign fruits and abusing the merchant at his counter.

  The soldier barely felt the punch on his shoulder even though Abdullah delivered it with all his might.

  “Filthy Turkish dog,” Abdullah. snarled.

  It took the soldier a moment to recognize the tailor, which made Abdullah the more furious. Momentarily, a spark lit in the young soldier’s eyes and he shook his head.

  “It is the one I told you about,” he laughed to the Turkish soldiers in his company. “The old garment sewer with the homely daughter. I already told you, old man, that I would marry a camel before I wed your ugly child.”

  The Turks laughed raucously.

  While the foreign devils laughed, Abdullah slipped a dagger from his tunic. Unfortunately he had not asked the spirit to return to him the quickness of youth, and the Turk spied the blade before it could slip into his belly.

  With one hand, the soldier snagged Abdullah’s wrist, staying the blade an inch from his gut. The other hand grabbed the old garment maker by the throat.

  “Your pride has been wounded, old man,” the soldier whispered, his eyes dark with warning. He squeezed Abdullah’s wrist and the knife dropped to the dust. “Leave now, and be happy that you suffer no deeper wounds.”

  The Turk shoved Abdullah to the ground. When the soldiers turned to go, Abdullah pounced on the knife and lunged at the young Turk’s back.

  And then there were a few very loud pops and Abdullah felt slaps to his chest. And then he saw the smoking rifles which had been slung over the shoulders of the Turkish soldiers and were now in their hands. And he felt the warm blood of his life soaking his loose tunic and he was falling in a heap to the dirt of the street.

  The soldiers tossed a few coins to the merchant at the nearer counter to pay for disposal of the body, and without a glance at the dying old man the Turks melted into the dense crowd of shoppers and were gone.

  On the ground, Abdullah gasped.

  “Leave, flee,” he hissed. “I will shed this temporary pain like a snake sheds skin and when it is gone I will be on your heel once more, Turkish dog.”

  And the pain did ease a little. It was replaced by a cold numbness that seemed to seep up from the core of his being, despite the warm blood that continued to gurgle from nearly a dozen gaping wounds. And, unlike other living creatures who meet with puzzlement those last moments before the inevitable end, Abdullah realized that he was dying.

  Abdullah then called out a single word to the spirit who had betrayed him and that word was, “Why?”

  The spirit came to him then, in the dirt and blood and sweat of the crowded bazaar. Though others could not see it, Abdullah could. The face was ghastly, white flesh pulled tight over bone, eyes sunk deep in blackened sockets, and a smile that frightened the fluttering heart of the dying tailor.

  Although this vision looked nothing like it first had in the back room of his little shop and had grown even more horrifying in appearance since last he had seen it, Abdullah knew in his dying heart that this was the spirit he had summoned to avenge himself upon the hateful Turk.

  “I was to have perfect health,” Abdullah said.

  “And so you have and so too shall your descendants for I keep my word. But perfect health, foolish tailor, meant only that sickness could not touch you. It did not mean that death could not claim you. And so I shall.”

  “You tricked me,” Abdullah gasped.

  “No, I gave you what you asked for even if it is not what you wanted. And your other request I will grant as well, although not as you desired. The foreigners will leave as you requested and they will be replaced by others and then they will leave and still more will come. And they will murder one another and you and those like you will murder them and each other and it will be quite glorious.”

  “I do not understand,” said Abdullah.

  “Of course you do not. How could you, a mere sewer of garments, understand what you have summoned? I tell you that I am what you will me to be. You have wished for death, so death is what I will deliver. The spirit you have raised, foolish one, is the spirit of death. And death delights me.”

  And with those delighted words ringing in old Abdullah’s ears, the spirit vanished to work mischief on the world.

  And the man who had summoned him silently begged forgiveness of his ancestors and from his descendants for the horror he had unleashed upon civilization.

  And in the dust of the Khwajah bazaar, near the fruit stand of crazed Dunzyad, the insignificant little tailor Abdullah Mohammed surrendered his last breath of life.

  1

  He had never had a cold. Not so much as a sniffle in his forty-four years of life.

  When he was little, a virulent strain of measles had attacked the village. Many had died, most of them children. He had watched the bodies paraded past his window, mourners shrieking, dressed in black. In his parents’ house he was healthy and happy and wondered why he could not go outside to play.

  He had never had a childhood experience with the flu virus, which was probably just as well. There was no Sudafed, TheraFlu, NyQuil or the thousand other palliatives that were available in every corner drug store in the West. The only thing in the village to relieve influenza symptoms was aspirin and even that was not available most of the time. When one got sick in his small village in northern Ira
q, one either toughed it out or died. But, thank Allah, flu was not a problem for Mustafa Mohammed and the rest of his family. They simply never got sick.

  As a boy he had once stepped into a nest of cobras and been bitten a dozen times. The other adults were certain he would die but his father knew better. Mustafa sloughed off the deadly venom as if the poisonous snakes had injected him with water. The fang marks had taken a little while to heal. Mustafa remembered that they had itched a little.

  Measles, mumps, chicken pox. Mustafa had never had any of them, nor had his siblings or father or any of his father’s blood relatives as far back as anyone could recall.

  One time there was some funny bug in the water. It was so small that you could not see it with your eyes but it had made everyone in town go from both ends for weeks. All their playmates were ill so Mustafa and his siblings played alone until the Red Cross came and fixed the problem by pouring something in the well.

  The real test came after the end of the first Gulf War when the glorious leader of the great Republic of Iraq flooded Mustafa’s small village with nerve gas.

  Half the village population died overnight. The rest crawled through the poisoned dust, longing for death.

  When the television crew from Frontline came to do a film documentary on the village a decade after the gassing, they found victims blinded, subject to spasms, crippled. They were shocked to find that the effects of the gas had leached into DNA and was being passed down to children born long after the attack. The crew filmed infants with missing limbs or limbs growing where limbs should not grow. The saddest were the children born with only brain stems who were living lives in permanent vegetative states. The television crew filmed everything they could find and then bundled up their cameras and film and left forever. They never asked about the boarded-up house at the edge of the square, the building that had housed three generations of a family that could not fall ill.

  After the nerve gas attack, news of the family that was impervious to the toxin reached Baghdad. When further research revealed that no member of the family had ever fallen ill and that all members of this one unique family had lived in perfect health until extreme old age, trucks came to the village to cart away Mustafa and his relatives.