The Irresistibililty of Orbits: Korengal Calling. Chapter Nine. The Seeing Eye.
Title:The Irresistibility of Orbits:, Korengal Calling. Chapter Nine. The Seeing Eye.
Author: ghislainem70
Word count: 2000
Rating: NC-17
Summary: John returns to Afghanistan with Sherlock.
Warnings: graphic violence, explicit sex, torture, non-con, reference to child abuse, brutality, mayhem.
Disclaimer: I own nothing. All honours to Messrs. Gatiss, Moffat, BBC et al.
Chapter Nine. The Seeing Eye.
Sherlock had been told by Tunes on the way down the trail to try and sleep on the helicopter. Sleep whenever you can, he had said.
Sherlock didn’t even try. The helicopter was loud, and fast, and the passing terrain below was still fascinating and new. He tried to look down and find the compound John and the men would be marching on tonight but everything went too fast.
His shoulder throbbed insistently and he told himself that this was another way he was secretly closer to John. He wished that the dislocated shoulder could somehow produce a scar, so they would both have scars on their shoulders. He looked down and flexed the scar on his palm and it made him feel the bond with John, no matter that he was flying away from him now. Just a few days in Afghanistan, and Sherlock felt very different from the man who walked into Spartan’s offices.
Nearly four years, that was how long John had been in Afghanistan; before he got shot by the mysterious bacha bazi boy. Sherlock tried to imagine what that meant, what it must have felt like to have lived each one of those days, as John had done. Only now did he have the faintest idea what it meant, or what it might mean; and only now could he admit to himself that after what he had seen in these few days, that he likely never really would.
Sherlock replayed in his mind certain arrogant assumptions, certain manipulations that he had employed with John, based upon what he confidently had thought he had deduced about John’s experiences, about who John was as a man, as a soldier: A soldier with post-traumatic stress disorder and a psychosomatic limp.
He knew now that he had been as mistaken as it was possible for a person to be.
John’s gentle but proud refusal to either be defined by those assumptions, or to try and correct them, only now took Sherlock’s breath away.
He closed his eyes, but did not sleep.
His fingertips caressed the scar.
* * *
The men of Spartan Outpost Typhon were quietly filing out of the bunkers and efficiently making their way down the trail. George hung briefly behind to take a call on his global satellite mobile phone.
"I can’t talk long, sir. We’re heading out. It’s time for the rendezvous."
"What about Holmes?"
"I sent him to Wright. Like you said."
"And everything is . . . arranged?"
"Yes, sir."
"Good. Watson?"
"Sir, he’s in Typhon recon group, with us, tonight."
"Well . . . you know what to do."
"Sir."
The line went dead and George pulled his pack on and headed off down the trail.
* * *
The helicopter landed at FOB Wright after a mere half-hour’s journey. Lynx helicopters held the world speed record, and this one was traveling light; just one passenger, no cargo. Sherlock said to Mac, urgently: "Mac, wait for me. If they can’t let the prisoner out of hospital, you can take me back to Outpost Typhon. I don’t want to waste precious time on base."
"Not a fobbit, Fifty?" ‘Fobbit’ was the scornful term battle-deployed soldiers in the Korengal and elsewhere used for base-bound pencil pushers and other non-combat personnel, living in perpetual comfort and security on Forward Operating Bases throughout Afghanistan and Iraq.
"Mac, just wait - two hours. If you can. I will know by then whether or not the prisoner’s fit to be interrogated."
Mac looked at him somewhat pityingly. "If you think they’ll wait till he’s fit, well . . ."
Sherlock frowned. "Just wait. Two hours. Forsyte and the men are already on their way to the compound. Unless you get another call, just wait for me."
Mac nodded. He understood. He couldn’t stand more than a few hours himself in fobbit land.
"You got it, Fifty. Two hours. Unless I get called out."
Sherlock shook his hand. "Thanks, Mac."
It took Sherlock a few minutes to find the hospital. FOB Wright was becoming an established base and there were hundreds of sleek, well fed officers and soldiers milling around without an apparent care in the world. Sherlock tramped through the camp with his torn face and sling with the dust of battle still clinging to him and people instinctively gave him wide berth.
When Sherlock found the hospital he found someone apparently in charge and asked for the prisoner. He didn’t know the prisoner’s name, but apparently Sherlock was expected. A man from Spartan, tall (were they all tall?), exceedingly fit, with black hair and blue eyes. Sherlock pegged him as former IRA. The Spartan man escorted him to a separate bunker.
"Where are we going? Why is this man not in hospital? He’s been shot, I was there when it happened."
"We know. It’s a security risk to keep him with the soldiers and civilian wounded. We have a separate sick bay for detainees."
Sherlock nodded. At the end of the bunker there was a room with a closed door and another Spartan man standing guard outside. The Spartan man opened it.
A thin, bearded man was lying on a stretcher, his shoulder bound with bloody bandages. He was hooked to an IV. Sherlock recognized him as the man John had shot on the mountain. There was a male nurse here and a young Afghan man with a clipboard.
"This is your translator, Ahmed. Ahmed, this is Mr. Holmes. He will be conducting the interrogation."
The Spartan man flipped a switch that Sherlock presumed went to a remote audio and video feed.
Sherlock said, "I need a laptop."
The Spartan man said, "We make our own record."
Sherlock said it again, slower this time. "I. Need. A. Laptop. Are you in Intel Team?"
The Spartan man grinned and shook his head. "Security."
"Well, then I presume that is why you fail to understand that I need my own materials and I need to make my own notes and with this arm in a sling I am sure you can appreciate that I won’t be taking notes with a pen." He gave him the full, sneering, arrogant Sherlock treatment.
"If you can’t use your right hand, how will you use a laptop?" The Spartan man sneered back.
"I am perfectly able to type with my left hand, but not write. Now. The longer you hold me up the longer this will take and I’m afraid our man here isn’t looking too keen."
Sherlock waited as the Spartan man went into a nearby room and came back with a laptop.
"We keep it when you’re done," he deadpanned.
Sherlock nodded impatiently.
Sherlock sat next to the translator. The injured prisoner was awake and apparently under the influence of painkillers. He wore a beatific smile.
"Who are you?"
Silence.
"I was there at the caves. I saw you get shot. You’re lucky to be alive, you know. If our soldiers hadn’t pulled you off the mountain you’d be dead now."
The man nodded. "Sons of dogs. I would be a martyr in paradise now." He spat elaborately in Sherlock’s direction, but succeeded only in dribbling on his beard.
The Spartan man made a gesture that expressed how much he would like to assist the prisoner to find paradise.
"All right. Let’s forget about gratitude. Let’s talk about paradise, then."
The Spartan man’s impassive face betrayed a touch of surprise. Sherlock pulled out the burned disc and put it in the laptop. He brought it close to the prisoner’s face. The tinny music played.
"Who is this boy?"
The prisoner’s face lit up. "Ah, paradise, paradise indeed. That is Mahmoud. Beautiful Mahmoud, proud Mahmoud. Sad Mahmoud."
The prisoner began singing some song of love, love of a man for a beautiful mountain boy who stole his heart.
The translator was blushing now and did not want to render the words into English. But Sherlock made clear with a few choice words that he understood most of it, anyway.
"Who is Mahmoud’s master? Where is Mahmoud now?"
The prisoner frowned. "I cannot tell."
"My friend, you could have died today. Allah did not will it. You are a prisoner of the English and the Americans. That is Allah’s will, yes?" Sherlock used the universal expression, "In’shallah," the fatal expression that conveyed Allah’s hand behind every move on the human chessboard.
"If you help us, we can help you. If not, well, nothing is easy." It was no different, really, than the speech Lestrade might give a criminal in London, trying to break a case. Except that he was afraid that if his questioning did not obtain results, the man from Spartan was likely going to take things to another level altogether.
The prisoner shook his head. He would say no more.
Sherlock studied him closely.
"You don’t belong here, my friend. This is not your fight. What did they do to make you leave your farm? You are a farmer, not a fighter. You have a . . .wheat farm. In the valley. You are honored, respected. You have never turned your fields to poppies. Your women are skillful, they are . . .weavers. They care for you, love you, honor you. You have a young son, he is just learning to write.
"But your son may not see his father again. If you help us, things may be different. You have been given this choice. That is the will of Allah, not death on the mountain far from your own fields."
The man had tears in his eyes and he held his hands up as if to supplicate the heavens.
"You are wise, you have the seeing eye. All that you say is true."
"Who owned Mahmoud? What happened to Mahmoud?"
The man trembled and hid his face in his hands.
"Believe me when I tell you that this can happen even to your own son. This boy," he pointed to the screen - "is someone’s son. Help us."
The man cringed.
"Mahmoud - he is dead."
Sherlock nodded. Perhaps John was right. Maybe this boy was the one that was killed. The one Monroe was supposed to have killed.
"How do you know he is dead? What happened to Mahmoud?"
"It was more than one year ago. Mahmoud was becoming of the age of a man. He was proud. He no longer wanted to dance, no longer wanted to be a bacha bazi boy. He begged his master to let him go, or let him fight in the wars. He wanted to . . . find honor."
"And what happened then?"
Sherlock held his breath. The prisoner did not want to continue but under Sherlock’s piercing gaze he faltered, then continued.
"Mamoud’s master would not let him go. He said that when he became the age of a man, he would be the minder for the master’s new boy."
"How do you know this?"
"Mahmoud’s master . . . is of my tribe. Of my district. He is a powerful warlord. I can say no more."
"Let me tell you what I believe, what I see with my - seeing eye. Mahmoud was able to escape, someone helped him get away. And he joined the Taliban, as a fighter in the mountains, over the border he went, yes? Into Pakistan, into North Waiziristan?"
The prisoner nodded miserably. Yes, Sherlock was right.
"And the boy became a fighter in the wars with the West, yes? And he died . . . .in battle?"
Again miserable nodding.
Sherlock touched the man’s arm gently. "Then he found honor, in the end," Sherlock said.
The man shook his head. "Not so. He was . . .desecrated. His spirit has no rest."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that he can never find paradise."
"Why ever not? What happened to Mahmoud?"
The man tried to draw closer to Sherlock, but could not with his wounded shoulder. Sherlock bent over, close to the man’s lips. The prisoner whispered in his ear. The hairs of his beard scraped Sherlock’s neck.
"He was beheaded. And they sent his head back, back to his master."
to be continued . . .
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