“ The Wasted Lands of the Steppe “

S. Jovian Radheshwar

Binyamin tugged at his clogged nostrils with all the might he could summon up from his aching lungs. Hiding in the mountain cave he had stumbled into twenty minutes before, the sounds of the raging battle deafened his bewildered mind. He felt as though he was about to die, he had started making his final peace with his creator, and he lay undisciplined against the jagged cave wall in southern Turkmenistan. He found peace in the glorious vista now manifesting in the distance near the southern range, perhaps in the old battleground of Afghanistan itself. The Turkic peoples seemed warlike to Binyamin, as he contemplated his life, seemingly flashing before his eyes as he felt the end coming on strong. Visions of the beaches on the Mediterranean, near his home in west Tel Aviv, playing catch with his old dog that he had loved since he was a child, images of his mother calling out to him to return home to be nourished; these nostalgic searches for calm overwhelmed the Mossad agent. He began crying for his mother, who had always been against his accepting the position in the secretive agency, trying to shield her only son from the dangers of the modern world. He remembered that one evening his father had gone to the drugstore, and never returned, he was killed in a drive-by shooting. His killers were Force 17 operatives, Palestinians that never knew the joys of the beach as he did. They were all too preoccupied with war and revenge, and simply never stopped fighting the Israelis.

He would swear that the killers of his father would not go unpunished, and he renewed the blood oaths of his childhood, taught to all good settler Jews in the outlying regions of the people’s territorial aspirations. After the required stint in the army, he signed up for special operations training. Having been taught Arabic as a young boy, the Mossad scooped him up, making use of his North African roots to infiltrate Arab and Turkic groups in the new western alliance’s declared war on terrorism. He was stationed in Afghanistan when it fell to American and Israeli forces in the summer of 2004. Not realizing that the victory was fleeting, as indeed only later that winter the Afghan guerrillas fought their way back into Kabul, he thought that his efforts had been spectacular, infiltrating leadership circles, relaying valuable information back to the controller in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem. When the foreign brigades of Islam marched into Kabul, burning an effigy of Christ on December 25^th, he knew it was all for nothing tangible, it was all for temporary safety. These foreign jihadis and their allies in other regions of central Asia soon forced a series of governments to capitulate under popular hatred and resentment, with notable incidents such as the murder of Islam Karimov, the President of Uzbekistan, by fanatics seeking to unify with the new Caliphate. Sitting in the cave in Turkmenistan, he could see the clouds of mustard gas yellowing the battlefield below, as innumerable dead bodies piled up, mostly American, some Russians and Turkmenis, as well as a few jihadis here and there. He comforted himself to a point, and he thought to himself: “Shit, I’m not going to die today. I have to go back out there and keep living to protect the fucking country”. He was truly disappointed at the prospect of not dying, and his slavery to the war mongerers he had learned to hate would continue for some time, it seemed.

Binyamin gathered his radio, his food pack and his weaponry. After obtaining a reading from his gas mask’s toxicity meter, he confirmed that he would live, as only scant traces of the mustard gas permeated his skin through his body armor. Certainly, only a little bit of more naked exposure to the deadly stuff and he would have been killed by a gruesome series of painful respiratory seizures. The bullets for his Uzi were still plentiful, and that reassured him, gave him an unending sense of security before the types of hellish ruffians he would be confronting as he attempted to make sense of what his next directives would constitute. The nearest area to attempt radio contact with HQ was in an isolated valley some two hundred yards to the north and east, away from the battlefield and its deathly mis-en-scene. Peering out of the cave’s narrow opening, he spied the surrounding sheer cliffs and mountaintops for threats, both human enemies and gaseous clouds of chemicals blowing awry in the windy fall of 2006. The winds of the lower valley perhaps had their endearing qualities, once upon a more forgiving time in man’s story of rape, loot and pillage. Today, the wafts of chemical odors and their yellow clouds of doom hung below, suggesting the emergence of a boundary for the living hell that the Caliph and his mindless minions stood for. To avoid the certain death below, at the foot of the rock, Binyamin retrieved his small hand daggers from his boots, and began the arduous ascent to the side of the mountain near a plateau about thirty feet to his left. Finding a small trail of four, five inches width, he hugged the mountain in fear, lightly stepping towards the clearing. After ten minutes of presumed damnation, Binyamin reached the clearing.

The grassy mountaintop resembled many of the plateaus in the steppe, and Binyamin quickly took cover behind a stray boulder, to avoid sighting by possible enemy elements. His sharp eyes surveyed the terrain as some predatory animal might, and located nothing of concern. He knew the situation could deteriorate, as some Caliphate troops may seek refuge in the event of another allied surgical operation, devastating entire cells surrounding the labeled cancerous ones. He got to his feet, and began running for the valley to the north, to where he could make radio contact again. The landscape blurred by him as F-22’s flew in the opposite direction, preparing the operating bays to commence more surgery on the body politic of the cancer cluster within the Caliphate. The smoke from their exhaust engulfed Binyamin, but as a Mossad agent, he was acclimated to such things, and he ran on, on his mentally plotted course, towards the valley in the near-distance. Despite the unfamiliarity he had with this specific location, he found himself hopping and skipping through the wastes, without the benefit of sight, almost taking childish merriment for a brief instance. Such foolishness he would dismiss instantly, as the machine took over, eagerly seeking the new directives from Mossad HQ. The man became a cheetah, flying across the flatness towards the chasm in the distance.

The smoke gave way after three, four more minutes, and the sight of the traversed regions covered in fumes reminded Binyamin of the day that Tel Aviv had gone under full Smallpox attack alert, as citizens and vagrants alike exalted in their hopelessness and looted and burned the town. They spared only religious monuments, as every business in the town was disfigured, vandalized and subsequently impoverished by the impromptu orgy of humanity in the streets. Both Jews and Palestinians participated in the destruction of structures, sometimes hand-in-hand, as they felt the end was nearing and with lack of better activities, they may as well go out with a bang, a triumph, of sorts. Half the city was killed in the rioting, both by smallpox and by the minions of the Caliphate deployed there in secret days before in anticipation of the attacks. Thankfully, Mossad had vaccinated Binyamin, and his entire family, so they survived. Their neighbors mostly lived, although some elderly and some young children died the tragic death that disease produces. This plateau, and all its desolation, reminded Binyamin of the streets of Tel Aviv following the attack. The people were in shock, and would not leave their homes, only emerging to obtain essentials, to then return to hiding. Some ordered essentials from the internet, exposing the poor courier to the ravages of the new war. The hilltop was empty of enemies and friends alike. Binyamin became confused as to how he managed to isolate himself during the battle below, but he counted his strange luck as favorable, despite the manner in which he had been taught to evaluate abnormality and statistical outliers. He could now see the gorge leading into the valley below, where he could liaison with villagers for things like water and a quiet place to rest for an hour or so as directives came in from Mossad.

Professionally scaling the less steep cliff on this side of the plateau, Binyamin made haste, and arrived at the valley floor in under five minutes. Dressed as an Uighur tribal, with equipment concealed below his black traditional robes, Binyamin felt at ease with the villagers, who now spotted his curious presence. Approaching them slowly, Binyamin began speaking to them in Dari.

“Allah U Akbar” he greeted the old man and young girl now within a few yards of him.

“A Salaam A Luekum” the old man answered back politely. They had the look of death in their faces, though, and Binyamin senses gravity in his tone. This was what he had been waiting for, and now this, this impending doom, this consuming fear.

“What is going on here?”

“The bombs came first, we don’t know from whom, and then there was a cloud of white spray. Everyone is dead.”

“Everyone is dead?” Binyamin asked in half-disbelief.

“Yes, everyone is dead.”

“How recently did this happen?”

“Yesterday.” The old man’s acceptance of the fact was characteristic of fatalistic old Muslims, but he must have concocted some sort of lie to comfort the little girl. But then the little girl spoke.

“Everyone is dead, my daddy’s dead and my mommy, too.” She seemed prideful of the grisly fact. This suggested that these were Madrasi Muslims, trained for death. Binyamin would have to be very careful with them, to keep his identity and employer a secret. To keep the machine going.

“Mommy and daddy are martyrs; they died fighting the great Satan”.

“Indeed, we all fought against the great Satan yesterday”. The old man reassuringly told the little girl. Binyamin interjected,

“Indeed, I am a Caliphate loyalist soldier, and I need a place to rest quietly for a short time, so that I might regroup and return to the battle”.

“Mister, you follow me to the tents.”

Following the old man to the tent city around the hillside and near the edge of the valley, Binyamin felt tense. This old man may have known what he was up to, but likely he did not, the Mossad training and the years of experience would likely permit Binyamin to outsmart the old waste. Indeed, the old man seemed withered and dying. Somehow, he survived the biological attack he described as the white spray of the day before. He led Binyamin to a small tent along the western line of tents. He quickly left to attend to the little girl, perhaps he was her grandfather, or perhaps all they had left in the aftermath of the battle was one another, security blankets of human beings, witnessing impure deeds of nations consumed by the machine. Binyamin withdrew the radio from his robes, and began the transmission to HQ.

“Agent Netanyahu, seeking next directive, over.”

No answer.

“Agent Netanyahu, seeking next directive, over.”

No answer.

“Are there any new directives, over.”

The deafening silence never ended. The machine was at a halt, perhaps not functioning properly, perhaps broken, perhaps obliterated by hatred. The quiet never ended. Binyamin just sat there, waiting. After the vigil was held for ten minutes, maybe twenty minutes, he grabbed the radio and turned slowly. He found the old man there, waiting for him, clad with Kashalnikov. The bursts of gunfire were preceded by the old man muttering “Die” in Arabic. Binyamin’s body lay on the floor as the old man scavenged his remains, gleefully outfitting the little girl, just outside the tent, with a Mossad gas mask. But the well-oiled machine remained in progress, secured against such simple assaults by Kevlar, the magic fabric. Waiting a few more minutes while the girl and the old man prayed over his ‘dead’ body, Binyamin struggled with the possibility that the HQ in Tel Aviv had been compromised in any way. He was shocked that he hadn’t received new directives; he took it personally, thinking that his handlers were playing sick jokes on him, or perhaps, felt that he had outlived his usefulness, and now ought to be sacrificed to Yehuda. Manipulating his semi-free arm towards his leg knife, he was careful not to make any exaggerated motions, taking special care to remain totally silent, first and foremost. Managing to reach his knife, he executed one smooth motion upon contact with the blade, of grab, release and hurl, and all in a flash the blade flew through the tent, through the canvas, and into the back of the old man, just outside of the tent. Gurgling noises ensued, frightening the little girl into humanity she long ago forsake in the name of Allah.

“AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!” her scream was piercing, however, it seemed as though there was not a soul in the region who could have heard her, save for the enemy, Binyamin, lurking within the knife-throwing tent. Binyamin slowly rose, figuring the girl had no conception of the use of an AK-47, prompting him to venture outside to finish her off. He knelt down, prayed quickly, and exited the tent.

“You be careful of the tent, it might stab you!” warned the little girl.

“I’ll be okay, was that your grandfather?”

“What’s a grandfather?”

“Well, who was he?”

“He was my Imam” she looked saddened, not knowing exactly what had just taken place.

“I am sorry for your loss”

“Its okay, because he’s a martyr now”

With that, Binyamin’s guise came unglued, and he seized upon the little girl’s neck, as he had been trained at HQ, and choked the life-air out of her, to her face’s adjoining reaction of encroaching bliss.

“Kill me, I will be a martyr too! Kill me”

Binyamin’s rage doubled at the sight of the suicidal little one, revealing to him the darkest, driving his soul into darkness at light speed. Soon, the little girl’s body hung lifeless in the agent’s hands, with a gas mask half-applied to her face in a moment of scavenge. Binyamin was now alone, and wondered about in the wilderness for the rest of the evening, after gathering his radio, seeking a new location for transmissions with HQ, to obtain the new directives.