Papal Plunder

FOUR

FOUR

THE FACE-TOUCHER IS a big man—as big as any other I’ve seen in Saudi up to now. He stands maybe 6 foot 2, probably weighs in at 240, 250 as well. And I recognize him from before. He’s the guy that pretended to screw the electrical outlet panel onto the wall yesterday. Only now, he’s dressed in the same digital camo uniform as the other guardsmen. Not one of the good ones then.

He starts charging me from fifteen feet away, a police baton in his hand. I lift the pistol and pull the trigger, intending to get off at least three rounds. But instead of sending three bullets into him, the trigger just clicks flatly. That’s why it feels so light. Empty!

At least it makes him flinch in reaction, buying me some time. He slows his approach slightly and twists his body to the side, as if to duck out of the way. But his momentum, like that of a bull, is unstoppable now—even if slightly unfocused for this instant.

The leg restraints are a pain in my ass. I can’t run or step away quick enough or charge into him. I can only shuffle backwards a little to buy some distance for myself.

He realizes I have no bullets and leans into the next three or four steps, looking like he wants to tackle me or something.

I drop the gun and feel for the lonely lamp right behind me now, yanking it around and forwards like a flimsy lance. I jab it at the oncoming man and it causes him to slow down, straighten up, and then bat the object away with his baton. I nearly fall over as I shuffle backwards still, then onto and over the metal folding table behind me, causing a massive noise of metal on concrete as the table slides under my weight. I roll backwards over something hard and end up between the table itself and the back wall. The two metal chairs clatter to the side and I almost entangle the chain between my legs with one. I manage to shove it aside and plant my feet on the floor.

I become aware of a person in white shifting along the side wall, making his way out to the opposite end of the room, to the exit.

Shit.

As if reading my mind, the person stops to see what’s going on, probably feeling that he’s moved to a safe distance. A spectator to a street fight.

OK.

The table squarely between me and the face-toucher. I clench the top between my hands and shift everything threateningly at him. He smiles and shakes his head. He grabs onto his side with the free hand and swipes the baton at me, which I avoid by yanking my head backwards. It’s a classic police baton with another short handle jutting to the side—which is where he is holding onto now. He’s tall enough to easily reach me if I’m not careful. The object that pressed into my back was the ashtray. Along with a cell phone, it was still miraculously on the table and sliding across the surface like a pair of air pucks in a games arcade, cigarette ash and half–smoked butts spilling around it.

The man is strong and he maintains his one-handed pressure on the table. All I can do is to match his force by leaning into it. The chain between my legs is too short for me to be able to get on the table quick enough. I see he plans to land the next swipe of his baton at one of my hands. I anticipate this and let go early. It causes the table to pivot around my right hand. I keep on pushing and the man rotates with the table to my left. I duck and roll to the right picking up one of the now collapsed folding chairs as I try to create some distance between us. But there’s always another wall and I don’t want to be pinned in the corner.

He’s on me again—the table now pushed completely flush with the wall. He gives two large steps in my direction, swiping the baton in front of him like a frightening camo-glad gladiator. I hold the chair by its folded legs, two in each hand, forming almost a metal tray in front of me. It would have to serve as both a shield and a weapon.

I hear the fat guy shouting something in Arabic, my opponent registers it briefly. Why isn’t he getting out of here?

He lands a massive blow from above that I block with the thing in my hands. It causes a flat clash like a broken cymbal to ring through the room. The force sends a shockwave down my arms and pain shoots through the left hand where the two legs pinch the flesh at the base of the thumb. I look up at the chair in my hands and see that the backrest—the part that blocked the blow—has almost completely dislodged from the frame.

He comes with the same kind of chopping action—just in reverse—stepping into me again, seemingly intent to destroy my makeshift shield. I ignore the pain in my hands and let him come.

I need him to repeat this action and I start knocking back at the blows coming down at me, trying to use the frame instead of the backrest. He comes at me like a riot cop with no reservations comes at a protester. A second, a third, a fourth blow I deflect with the frame, each time pinching my hands—threatening to wrest the flimsy metal from my grip. The mass-produced chair in my hands is about to come apart. The space between me and the side wall shrinks with every shuffle I dare give backwards.

He changes his grip on the baton, now taking hold of the long end, probably intending to use the short end like the head of a hammer or an ax. Then I do it, I whack the chair at his weapon, causing the backrest to finally come undone from the perilously loose riveting. This causes the end of the baton to completely thread through the frame in my hands, and by the amount of force he puts into it I feel how this catches him by surprise. I drive forward while dodging with my head, trying to get as much of his arm through as I can.

Again I am limited by the amount of play between my legs, but the chair does its job. While the frame might not be the best shield against the baton, the two sides of the chair now serve as a fantastic pair of opposing levers on the man’s threaded arm. I pivot around my left foot while twisting the chair, pulling at the one side and pushing the other away. The man lets out a cry, a mixture of pain and surprise—a sound consistent with assholes from all cultures—and he drops the baton when he makes unexpected contact with the wall that I drive him towards.

But without the backrest to stabilize the structure and a compromised frame, the flimsy chair bends and twists from our combined force and I lose leverage as he pulls back in reflex. While his arm is still mostly threaded, my left hand holds with all it can and I let go with the right. This allows me to keep his right arm up as I force it upwards in the tangled chair. I land three hard and fast punches to the soft and strategic parts of his exposed torso, knocking most of his wind out. It also sends three jolts through my sprained little finger. But it hurts the other man more than it hurts me.

Someone in the room shrieks. For a millisecond I wonder who brought the woman in, then I realize it must be the other Arab in the white thobe.

I let the thought hang. The big man in the camo uniform is doubled over in pain. The inevitable slow groan that always accompanies shots to this part of the body bellows forth from his large chest—as uncontrollable and unexpected as the retching that follows a night of binge drinking. I let go of the chair and it hangs from his arm like a post-modern purse as he clutches his side. I shuffle away from him and take the opportunity to catch my breath.

A flurry of white attracts my eye as the other guy decides to finally make a run for it. He’s bent over, trying to open the garage door, struggling to unlock a clasp or something—maybe not even sure how it should be working. I suspect he’s used to having other people do this kind of thing for him. He looks like a ghost in the strobing fluorescent light pulsing from behind us. I have a few seconds before I have to see to him.

The other guy is still lurching from pain, but he is clearly someone that has taken some beatings in his life. He drops the chair to the floor and charges at me like a raging rugby player going into an opponent, hunched over. He wants to drive me into the wall, giving big steps and starting a war cry as he reaches forwards. But this time I have the baton, hidden behind my leg. I feel almost sorry for him as the end contacts him in the face before he even realizes it’s coming. I catch him slightly off center with a loud THOCK! sound, like a baseball bat striking a young tree. I don’t look again. The face-toucher just slops down to the floor, some momentum from the charge still carrying him forward. I step out of the way and a convulsion runs through his body as the nervous system comes to terms with instant death.

I hear the garage door start to unroll. He’s managed to unlock it. It’s dark outside, but some yellow light from outside streams in—maybe streetlights, but I get the feeling this might be a storage yard of some sort. The bottom half of some vehicle is visible through the opening.

I give two short steps and pick up the empty Five-SeveN.

“No you don’t, motherfucker,” I say and toss the empty gun across the room at him.

He looks at me and shrieks again as he sees me hurl it at him. I manage to hit him on the back with the gun and he lets go of the door—it immediately closes again. I approach as fast as I can with the chains still between my legs. He cowers into himself and starts mumbling as he retreats into the corner.

As I cross the room, the older guy still sprawled onto his back where I left him, I bend down and snap open the folding chair they had me sitting on earlier. When I reach the guy in the thobe, I grab him by the collar and haul him over to where we can see each other better.

“Sit down, buddy,” I say as I slam the chair down as dramatically as I can, right by the feet of the unconscious army guy.

He immediately obeys. He’s sweating even more now. I smell him. Or myself—I’d perspired a lot in the preceding two minutes as well.

I go over to where they sat earlier and find the phone that he’d been playing with—the screen of the overly large, very high-end smart phone now sporting a spiderweb crack from having fallen on the concrete floor. I wipe it down on my pants, removing residual cigarette ash from its face. I check it and see it still switches on when I activate one of the few mechanical buttons on the side.

“Unlock it,” I say as I shove it in his frightened, bloated face.

He does.