“You’re afraid of two women? You, who just saved us all from certain death?”
He didn’t answer. Just shrugged off the sweltering hot suit and quietly wished for an icy cold waterfall he could just drown himself in. The temperature was now a cool fifteen degrees and he was sweating like a pig. And, he was pretty sure, underneath the suit he smelled like one.
Dirt and sweat and fear.
They reached the edge of the parking lot and Noor shrieked as she caught sight of the two men. Sam sighed and said, “Yep. You get the other one, soldier.”
He ran forward to intercept Noor who was crying and babbling, her floor-duster kicking up little circles of dust as she sprinted towards them.
Ziya, Krivi saw, was just walking with slow, measured steps towards them. Her eyes level with his. They revealed nothing, but were pure luminescence. Quicksilver, glowing, like the sunny streaks in her pixie hair. And for a second he wanted to find the same warmth in them that she gave everyone else.
Sam was half-supporting Noor to his own Jeep, who didn’t even bother to turn around and acknowledge the hero of the hour. All of her attention was focused on the man holding her.
Ziya reached Krivi, her hands firmly inside the pockets of her blazer, which she’d buttoned up in defense of the weather.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hey,” he said.
“You didn’t blow us all up.”
“No,” he agreed. Lighting the one cigarette he carried in his pant pocket with a match. “I didn’t.” He drew smoke in.
Ziya stared at the burning paper and tobacco and stated, “But you don’t smoke.”
“No,” he agreed. “I don’t. Can we drive back now? I am in desperate need of a shower.”
Her lovely lips pursed as if she wanted to make an acerbic comment. But she only nodded at the cigarette.
“Finish that before coming in. I won’t have the car smelling of filthy tobacco.”
Ziya turned around and started walking back and Krivi couldn’t help it. He watched her straight back and bent head and started to smile. Really smile. Infinitely glad to be alive, just so he could make her eyes flare up at him again.
He threw the butt on the ground and crushed it under his boot heel and walked forward. Leaving the bomb suit where it was. Lying on the ground next to his half-smoked cigarette.
One of Wood’s earliest memories, were of catching stray chickens at the farm and eating the eggs raw, after stealing them from underneath the big fat mama hens. Foster care had not been much help in Wood’s case, with that monster of a father playing the cops when they showed up and beating the shit out of Wood’s older brother when he got drunk and mean. Mama had split after the brother’s birth and Dad had taken it out on Wood and his brother’s hide.
Wood had learned early on to stay out of the big man’s way and not make any noise. It was the reason why Wood had not said a word till age four.
One night, when the father was whaling on the brother, who never woke up from that beating, Wood called the cops and watched, hiding in the barn with just a one-eyed cat for company, as the cop cars came and took the entire family away. Wood ran into the woods that night terrified that the father would come back and beat the life out of Wood too.
But, Wood had not gotten far. Another man had followed Wood into the woods surrounding the pretty farmhouse in Chesapeake, Maryland. That man had been gentle and spoken in a calm voice and had the kindest eyes Wood had ever seen. That man had given Wood a Snickers bar and a tissue to wrap it in when Wood had only eaten half of it, sitting under the oak tree where Wood had fallen and was crying inconsolably when the man turned up.
That man had taken Wood to a nice clean bed in a strange motel and asked Wood seriously, whether this family, Wood’s family was what Wood wanted. Wood had answered instantaneously, no. The man had asked if Wood wanted a different family, with only, say a dad and no one else. But an exciting fun life, filled with adventure and faraway places, with trips and no school if that was what Wood wanted.
And Wood had answered as instantaneously. Yes.
The man had offered his hand to be shaken by a small, malnourished five-year-old. And had called himself Tom Jones. Wood had called him Dad since that day.
The Woodpecker smiled and bent the thumb of the blindfolded man sitting in front, back all the way. The man screamed; a high-pitched, keening wail. He clutched his ruined thumb and whimpered; snot and tears running unchecked down his face.
The man wept openly.
“Please, please,” he whispered, shrinking into himself. Hunching his shoulders, trying to occupy as little space as possible. “Please, I am sorry. I won’t mess up the order again. I won’t.”
Wood came forward with a cigar trimmer. An unlit cigar was clamped to the terrorist’s lips. The room in which the man, the pizza boy, was tied in was large. Airy. It had plenty of natural light and white curtains. There was a huge white bed on a raised dais with fluffy curtains on the four posts shielding it. A dream cloud of a bed. The sheets were made with military corners because Wood didn’t allow anyone to touch them. The Woodpecker was odd like that.
The pizza boy, Hank was his name, was still dully crying, holding his broken hand to his heart, his thin shoulders moving with the force of his sobs. There was blood on the lower part of his face, pouring down in a thick trickle and a gap where Hank’s nose had been. The Woodpecker moved forward and yanked the thin blond head back in a sharp, painful movement, “If you don’t stop crying, I will reach down and yank your voice box out. You understand?”
Hank cried harder, beyond mere fear now.
“I wanted pizza, you know,” Wood ruminated. “An American specialty, even though it originated in Italy in the nineteenth century. I even specified very clearly, when they asked me, that I wanted half and half. Chicken and pineapple on one side for the carbs, and olives and sundried tomatoes on the other. No peppers, because they mess up my sleep. I stated it, Hank. So clearly.”
“I … I’m sorry for delivering the wrong pizza. I really am. I really am.” Hank started sobbing louder now, his wails echoing off the white walls of the sunny bedroom with the white bed.
“Please don’t kill me. Please don’t.”
The Woodpecker smiled and leaned forward on the table. The blade of the cigar trimmer flashed unholy silver as the terrorist clipped off the butt and it fell down on the carpeted floor in a rush of leaf and tobacco. The acrid scent of nicotine permeated the air around them.
Hank’s already fearful, hysterical, ruined face took on epic proportions of roundness as he heard the methodic way with which The Woodpecker handled the knife.
“Why would I kill you, Hank?” Wood smiled. “I am not an unreasonable person. I just want a little respect. People should respect each other, don’t you think?”
Hank nodded, desperately, like a bobblehead. “Yes, yes. Yes!”
“Good. So you agree that we should be respectful towards one another.”
“Yes. Hell, yes!”
“Then why did you not show me any respect, Hank?” Wood asked, sorrowfully. “Why did you call me all those awful, awful names and said that I could take the pizza if I wanted or I could just eat dirt and die.”
Hank’s eyes, never clear, started streaming again.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry! I won’t ever do it again. I won’t say anything to anyone. Just let me go. Please, let me go. PLEASE!”