Free Caravan of Thieves by David Rich Page B

McColl. I told him Dan was dead and a lot of things about himself that he needed to know. No one answered. No guards rushed through the door to beat me up or inject me. I kicked the door. And it flew open.
    I stepped into the hallway and leaned against the wall to steady myself. The drugs were still clouding me and I knew my movements weren’t sharp. I slid along to the room next door. A misshapen rectangle of light tumbled across the desk and onto the floor. No movement. No sound. I looked in. The room was empty. On a corner of the desk was my wallet, the fish knife I had used to cut the net in the river, matches, and the car check receipt from Las Vegas: all the contents of my pockets. Nothing of Dan’s was there. The light hurt my eyes when I checked outside. There was nothing to see but desert.
    The rest of the building was empty. There were eight rooms like the one we were kept in. All empty. The place must have been a storage facility. I walked outside and the sun staggered me with its intensity, made me bow my head and step back inside for a moment. We were in the high desert: scrub brush, gray rocks andsandy dirt, and small patches of Jimson weed and primrose and some blue flower I didn’t know. A gravel drive led away from the building and out of sight around a small hill. A jeep was parked twenty yards from the building. I approached. The keys were in the ignition. There was a canister of gasoline in the backseat. I caught motion out of the corner of my eye and spun around. A roadrunner dashed along the drive, into a swale, and behind a bush. The wind purred softly. I noticed the sound of a bird repeating a call but couldn’t locate it.
    From the top of the small hill, I could see where the drive met the road about a half mile out. No other structures were in sight. I turned and looked back at the warehouse. The darkness and nausea and pain and death seemed as impossible and far off as the sunlight and caressing breeze had a few minutes ago.
    I gathered my stuff from the desk. My wallet was fat with hundred-dollar bills, twenty of them that weren’t there before. I lifted Dan’s body to a spot on the hill, then fetched the gas can. Before I poured gas on him, I stood awhile and considered the right words for the occasion. I kept including liar and con artist, which made me start over. Father was a tough one to include also. Did he cheat time, or did it catch up to him? As in every deal Dan ever entered, the results could be tabulated later and debated: who won, who lost, did revenge mean dealing with him again? Staring hard at the body kept time from stretching out, flat and endless, colorless: the world without Dan. Finally I said, “I promise I’ll find the money, and I promise I’ll kill those fuckers.” I chuckled, thinking he would answer:
I’ve got to go somewhere for a few days. Won’t be long
. I poured the gas and lit him up.

11.
    W atching the flames did not help me focus on Dan or figure out my plans; everything was too vague and formless. My mind drifted back to Kabul and the start of my trip as a Pashtun villager from Lashkar Gah, traveling to Karachi to look for work. The story was that my wife had died and her family was looking after my daughter. I moved along slowly, practicing my story on everyone I met, watching them carefully for signs of suspicion, and listening to their stories carefully for new idioms and for subtleties of the accents. I stayed away from NATO forces completely. The last week, I spent most of my time in a mosque, making sure I was adequately versed on the rituals of praying. It would be hard to sell my act without that. If anyone suspected me, prayer time would be a major test. Praying is bad enough without having people watching you and judging you so you end up praying only that they like the way you pray enough that they don’t kill you. It’s the advanced version of what I used to pray for as a kid: get me out of here. Two foster families made me go to church