Today was Silent Auction day at my Unitarian Universalist fellowship. I scored a lot of great social events with my friends from there, and a cute little antique table. Oh, and the minister won the silent auction items I offered–copies of my three books. Uh oh. Do the Unitarians excommunicate you?

This afternoon I passed the 80,000-word mark on the word count–woo hoo–by writing 2,882 words. Not the best word count this month, but the stack of dirty laundry has demanded to be put through the washer, the clean dishes insisted upon being put away, and the toilets have indicated that if they don’t get cleaned soon, there will be a revolting revolt.

I started and finished a new chapter today, Chapter 29, Another Undisclosed Location, and here’s an excerpt:

Delbert Stodden dozed in the rear seat of the black Suburban as it sped along the country lane. He liked being shuttled from safe house to safe house. First, it meant, in the scheme of things, he was far more important than the dunce of a President he’d helped to elect. Second, it meant he didn’t have to spend evenings with his wife. Her docile, compliant act while they dated had suckered him in—that and she could suck the chrome off a car bumper. They’d married when she was a sophomore, and she presented him with his first disappointment in her: She had finished her degree, then gone for a masters and a PhD. As a result nannies had raised their two daughters, both born within the first two years of their marriage and after which he and his wife had moved into separate bedrooms. 

The nannies were probably why the younger girl was queer. He loathed the fact he had to pretend to accept the way she lived, to pretend to enjoy the presence of the dyke she lived with at family events. If his wife had been out of the picture, he’d have sent the little faggot to a church that would have beat the queer out of her.

When he’d contacted Security Solutions for an “aide” to augment his Secret Service detail—Kennedy and Reagan had both been shot on their watch, after all—he’d been pleased with Dan Burkholder. Burkholder was a man’s man, someone who would kill without asking a lot of questions or having qualms, and Stodden had regretted dispatching him so soon after engaging him. He was pleased, however, that Security Solutions had quickly supplied a replacement just as good or better than Burkholder. The new guy, Dominick Gross, had reviewed the Secret Service’s plans for Stodden and found weaknesses, which he bolstered. The Secret Service resented that, but Stodden had called the head of the service and suggested he tell his men to shut up and deal—and do exactly what Gross told them to do.

Gross looked like a professional body builder, but his eyes showed he had no soul. That suited Stodden just fine. Gross made him feel in control.

“Excuse me, sir,” Gross said. “We’ll be arriving in two minutes. I just got the pictures of the team in the safe house. Don’t leave the car until I confirm them, please, sir.”

“Of course, Dom,” Stodden replied. “Have you heard from Dan about that issue I told you about?”

“The CIA woman? Dan is very thorough, sir. He’ll take care of it and do what he needs to do to make certain he gets free and clear. I suspect I’ll hear from him in a day or two.”

“How do you think he’ll do it?” Stodden asked.

“Dan is quite innovative, sir. Given where they are, he’ll probably make it look like the Taliban punished her for being a sinful woman.”

Stodden liked that thought. “You know, the Muslims have the right idea about women.”

(c)2013 by Phyllis Anne Duncan

Believe it or not, NaNoWriMo is half over. For me it’s been a long two weeks and a day, with some marathon writing sessions I never thought I’d accomplish. I’ve got to get back on some sort of normal schedule, though–I’m running out of clean clothes!

A nice, round number for today–4,440 words, and I even made a pot of homemade soup and a loaf of homemade bread. (Yes, just call me an over-achiever.) The total word count is an unbelievable 74,472, and I have about eighty percent of the manuscript done. I added a scene to Chapter 26 to complete it, and made a good start on Chapter 27, Dostun’s Prisoners. It’s a pretty harrowing chapter, based on a real event, as you’ll see from the excerpt below:

O’Keefe drove the borrowed Humvee, and Mai took shotgun. Two soldiers accompanied them; one manned the fifty cal machine gun, and the other sat with the rest of her team and exchanged war stories and jokes. He wasn’t happy when she asked him not to smoke.

The authorization Frank had procured got them past the airport checkpoint, and they prowled the far end of the runway, around the old Aeroflot hangars, slowly and mindful of land mines. The cargo containers were right where Salim’s brother-in-law indicated, and even before they exited the Humvee, she smelled what they would find. For a second, it took her back to the Balkans, back to mass graves she’d found and catalogued for later exploration.

She had heard the rumor. Dostun had marched into Kabul with hundreds of prisoners the Americans allowed him to ransom back to their families. By the next day, all the prisoners were gone, and many people didn’t think it was back to their families.

O’Keefe used a crow bar on the closest container then stepped back when the rusty door swung open.

Then, they looked into Hell.

Dozens of putrifying bodies, caught in their final throes before suffocation, hands formed into claws, mouths agape. They were piled on top of each other at the doors, fused together so they didn’t spill out onto the ground.

“Holy Christ!” one of the soldiers muttered. The other turned away and puked.

Mai saw Yuri cross himself, and Salim began a prayer.

“Open them all,” Mai said, “and take pictures.”

Mai turned her back on the scene, walked a few feet away, and took out her satellite phone. Frank picked up almost at once.

“Yeah, what did you find?” he said.

“We found Dostun’s prisoners,” Mai replied.

I watched the grandchildren today, and they were energetic as usual. With the weather flip-flopping from warm to cold to warm to frigid and back again, my sinuses have decided to make me suffer for it. Top that off with a nearly three year old who will go down the steepest slide on the playground 500 times in a row, and my teeth ache from the sinus pressure.

Still, I managed 3,366 words after the kids went home, and I’m now over the 70,000-word milestone. I finished Chapter 25, Kabul Redux, and began Chapter 26, Helpful Circumstances. Here’s an excerpt from Chapter 26:

Kabul seemed looser than when Mai had been here a few weeks before. The burqas were still in abundance, but knots of women walked the streets together without male escorts, headed for the newly opened stores and the open-air markets, and there was progress in that. The Russians, allies again, had arrived and set up an enormous pre-fab field hospital, and Mai and her team passed a long line of old men, women, and children waiting for antibiotics and vitamins.

The humanitarian arm of the U.N. had set up a relief office in an old warehouse, along with the Red Cross and the Red Crescent. Another line, longer than for the hospital, snaked around several city blocks, and they saw people leaving with boxes of food. Yet, there was optimism in people’s faces. They no longer slunk around, eyes on the ground, but walked or ran about with ebullience. Mai thought it too soon, but it was Salim who voiced it.

“They think because the Taliban have left Kabul, the war is over,” he said.

“True,” Mai replied, “only battles have been won, and there are others to fight. Some are too stupid to realize it.” She looked at O’Keefe. “Might want to include that in your first report.”

“Definitely,” he said, smiling.

“We are not far from my sister’s,” Salim said. “She will have tea and some food.”

“I’m sure she has little to spare,” Mai said.

“When we returned to Kabul, I made certain she got re-provisioned,” Salim said. “She is my oldest sister, from my father’s first wife, who died. She and her husband are both lawyers, but the Talibs wouldn’t let her work. Her husband didn’t want to practice the Taliban form of law. She would be honored to give us refreshments.”

“Then, we won’t disappoint her,” Mai said. “Lead the way.”

“And, enshallah, perhaps woman to woman, she can succeed where I have failed in getting you to understand how to cover your hair,” Salim said, his eyes brightening with his joke.

No matter how well she started out with the keffiyeh covering her hair, it took only minutes for it to slip and show more than she should. Keeping it covered would help her credibility when they dealt with sector elders.

“I’ll never be a good Muslim woman, Salim. Surely you know that by now,” she said.

“Oh, but you are a legend,” he said. “The woman who fights like a man, the wife of Saradi.”

“A legend in my own mind, maybe,” she replied. She didn’t know which she was more uncomfortable with—being a woman who fought like a man, or Saradi’s wife. “Why don’t you mind taking orders from a woman?” she asked Salim.

“Well, you have never met my mother—she is far worse than any drill sergeant I ever had. She has all my brothers and brothers-in-law hopping. And, of course, Mohammed, may he be blessed, had a favorite wife who led armies for Islam. That is the history the Taliban are too afraid to accept. Women are the other half of the world. Where would we be without them?”

“I’d be on a boat on the intercoastal or on a Harley in the Rockies if it weren’t for mine,” Hatfield said.

“If she would let you,” Salim said, and they shared a laugh. “Here is my sister’s home. I’ll go in and tell her I bring friends.”

Mai looked the structure over. Like most houses in Kabul, it had a surrounding wall which would lead to an inner courtyard then the entrance to the house proper. She watched him enter the gate, then the rest of them formed a semi-circle, facing out, watching for danger. From doorways and street corners, people watched mostly with curiosity or at least masked any hostility.

“This ain’t a trap or nothing, is it?” Hatfield muttered.

“Of course not,” O’Keefe said. “Salim’s part of the team.”

“Is that our team or the Allah team?” Hatfield said.

“I see,” Mai said, “you’d rather he be part of the Jesus team.”

“Yeah, well, that would make me sleep with both eyes closed,” Hatfield said.

“Dude,” O’Keefe said, “put a lid on it.”

“And you still need to keep one eye open,” Mai said. “I’m an atheist.”

(c)2013 by Phyllis Anne Duncan

Lots of errands today, starting with a doctor’s appointment and followed by a run to Costco. It’s important I have my Sobe Life Water and Alaskan Krill Omega tablets. I had a short night’s sleep–I hate going to the doctor–so I grabbed a nap and didn’t sit down to write until about 1500. However, I did manage 2,415 words in a little over two hours. The first total word count came to 66,667, but, of course, I had to go in and delete one word so the total would be a diabolical 66,666. Bwahahaha!

I finished Chapter 23, Recalled, and added Chapter 24, Partial Reunion. Here’s an excerpt from Chapter 23:

“I need for you to understand something,” she began.

“I understand all I need to know,” he said.

“No, you don’t. Alexei and I didn’t marry each other for love. Well, I may have had a serious crush, but to him I was just another agent he was training, albeit one he was sleeping with, among several others, but there was no real love between us.”

“You were pregnant. He did the right thing by you,” Kolya said.

“Yes, he was rather old-fashioned in that aspect.”

“No, he was a man, living up to his responsibilities,” Kolya said.

Whatever, she thought. “I’m not going to debate that part of my history with you because I didn’t even know you existed then. Listen to me, please, without interrupting. I was Alexei’s partner, yes, and that came before being his wife; but he wasn’t beyond manipulating me, using me however he could to complete a mission. I wasn’t particularly happy about that then, but as I grew in operational experience, I understood it. He used me to cover up the fact he gave that map to Dostun, and he knew he could succeed because I was at the stage of our relationship where I’d do just about anything he wanted to keep his attention,” she said. “You seem to think he and I had this fairy-tale romance, but we didn’t. I loved him, then I didn’t. He didn’t love me, then he did. He broke my trust more times than I want to think about, but I never once betrayed his trust.”

Kolya gave her a skeptical eyebrow.

“Terrell doesn’t count because that was once and a long time ago,” she said. “Professionally, on a mission, I never once betrayed his trust. Then, I discovered he used me to back him up on that fucking map, and you know and Nelson knew, and Nelson let him do it. So, I’m not particularly happy with Alexei Bukharin right now, but what else is new? Regardless, I have a duty to him, and I’ll fulfill that duty.”

“And that’s all it is? Duty?” he asked.

“At this moment, right now, yes. He’ll get a chance to explain himself, if he doesn’t get himself killed before we find him,” she said.

“That would make it easier for you, wouldn’t it?” Kolya asked.

She wanted to hit him but didn’t have the strength. She settled for pushing him hard enough he almost slipped off the rock where he perched. “Be a shit, Kolya. I don’t want him to die,” she said.

“Why?” When she didn’t respond, he said, “You can’t even say it. Why is it so hard for you to admit you love him?”

“Because,” she began, feeling her throat tighten. She cleared her throat and tried again, “Because every time I do, something happens to damage my trust, and most of those times, he’s the one responsible for that. If I say it, I’ll jinx it, but you need to understand if I lose him, it will kill me. It will, quite literally, kill me.”

We had a threat of snow today, but I may have seen one flake. The sky was pretty gray and gloomy, but it was a bright writing day inside the house–5,216 words. I broke the 60,000-word milestone, with a grand total of 64,251 words.

I finished two chapters today, Chapter 22, Ground Zero, and Chapter 23, Recalled. Here’s an excerpt from Ground Zero:

Harzat Ali was alone in his tent when his lieutenant told him a messenger had arrived for Abdullah Ignatsiev.

“Send him in,” he said.

The young man, a boy really, came in, shoulders hunched, his fingers twisting the pakhool he had removed in deference.

“Come in, come in,” Ali said. “What is your name?”

“Rishaad, sir.”

“And you are related to Abdullah or his wife?” Ali asked.

“I am the youngest son of the youngest wife of Tarife Ignatsiev’s uncle, Najibullah,” he replied.

“And everything is all right at the Ignatsiev household?” Alexei asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“Then, why does Abdullah’s wife bother him at a time like this?” Ali asked.

“I do not know, sir. I do not know what is in the letters,” Rishaad replied.

Ali saw his manner made the boy even more afraid, but he didn’t soften his gaze. “Give me the letters,” he ordered.

Rishaad debated briefly between his duty to his family and angering a warlord of Ali’s reputation. He reached inside the layers of clothing and produced the two letters. Ali took them and lay them aside.

“Were you told to wait for a reply?” he asked Rishaad.

“No, sir. I was to return at once,” Rishaad said.

“Very well. My lieutenant will pay you and give you some food. Did you come by mule or vehicle?” Ali asked.

“Vehicle, sir.”

“My lieutenant will give you some petrol as well. Thank you for being diligent in carrying messages for your family,” Ali said and waved a hand in dismissal.

When he was alone, Ali opened first the message addressed to Abdullah Ignatsiev. A short, simple message: “You and Saradi must come here at once.”

When he was a young Mujahideen, Ali had been sent to infiltrate a Russian unit by serving as a translator. He read and spoke Russian quite well and easily recognized the language on the second letter. That one was longer, and he pondered it after he finished reading it.

Saradi’s wife, whose death drove him to revenge, still lived and was, in fact, too close for Ali’s comfort. If Saradi were to learn this news, he would leave to go to her bed, leaving a gap in his army. Ali, who could understand the lure of a woman, better understood the needs of war.

He took both letters to the brazier and burned them.

(c)2013 by Phyllis Anne Duncan