Moseby tucked in his chin, moved out of Gravenholtz’s line of sight.

Gravenholtz grabbed the shadow warrior by the back of the neck, held him up for all to see. “He’s not dead, don’t worry.” He beamed as the shadow warrior groaned. “See? Fedayeen are hard to kill. We’re going to play with this one for a long time.”

The crowd cheered.

“Give him a week, he’ll be ready again.” Gravenholtz tossed the shadow warrior onto the rocks. He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. Touched his ear and winced. He kicked the shadow warrior, looked up at the rim. “I’m thirsty. Which one of you peckerwoods wants to buy me a drink?”

The crowd roared.

Moseby joined the throng moving slowly back through the woods, listening to their happy voices, their obscene glee in the fate of the shadow warrior, their delight in the prowess of their redheaded champion. They were right. Moseby had never seen a shadow warrior beaten like that. Not by anyone other than another Fedayeen, and Gravenholtz was no Fedayeen. What was he, though?

Moseby peeled off from the group, shivering now as he remembered his promise to teach the redhead a lesson. The shadow warrior was fast and skillful, deadlier than Moseby had been in his prime, and he was long past that point. Yeah, the shadow warrior was good, but Gravenholtz was better. Clouds slid across the horn of the moon, darkening the night as Moseby made his way back toward the shack. He walked heavier now and there was ice in his guts. He wasn’t tired. Shadow warriors didn’t get tired. That’s what they told themselves anyway. No, Moseby wasn’t tired. He was scared.

Chapter 12

Leo squirmed as Rakkim shoved his head through the hole in the painted plywood. His Ident collar caught for a second, making him howl.

“Smile,” said Rakkim, sticking his own head through a hole.

The camera buzzed. The photographer yawned, handed Rakkim two photo buttons as they stepped from behind the plywood.

Rakkim pinned a button on Leo’s chest, pinned the other one on himself. Rakkim and Leo pictured as white-robed angels carrying assault rifles.

Leo wiped his nose. “I think I’m getting a cold.”

“Could be malaria,” said Rakkim.

“Yes…yes, that’s possible,” said Leo. “Sleeping on the beach…all those mosquitoes. This country is a hellhole of disease and poverty and…” He pressed a hand against his forehead. “I’ve got a fever.”

“Sounds like elephantiasis. Maybe leprosy.”

Leo pursed his lips. You could fool him, but not for long. “How amusing. How droll.”

They pressed their way through the swarm of tourists surrounding the Mount Carmel memorial, the monument to the Branch Davidian martyrs a bigger draw than the nearby Waco rodeo and cow palace. Late afternoon, the air heavy, sweat cutting trails through the dust on their faces in the East Texas heat. The two of them strolled among suburban families wearing DAMN THE ATF T-shirts, and teenagers with David Koresh masks pushed back on their foreheads as they munched fried Snickers bars. Rakkim led Leo toward Stevenson’s Fair Deal Emporium.

All the skin on parade made it hard not to stare: bare arms, bare legs, bare midriffs, short shorts and tube tops and hip-huggers. Hard to tell the harlots from the housewives here. A change since his last visit over three years ago. The Belt was Christian, but evidently the holy rollers had stopped demanding modesty among believers, more concerned with simply maintaining the faith. Let the Muslims fight to the death over doctrine, the Belt needed whatever unity it could maintain.

Rakkim listened to the twangs and drawls, the low, laconic slur of the delta, the rapid-fire urban hustle of Atlanta-layers upon layers, the sights and sounds and smells of a thousand small towns. Young toughs bulled their way through the crowd, eyeing the cutie-pies as they puffed away on foul cheroots. Small black remote-controlled helicopters dipped and soared overhead. A little girl wailed at her snow cone fallen to the pavement as her father dragged her to a stand selling personalized, gold-embossed Bibles.

A trio of nuns walked past arm in arm, delicately eating individual kernels of kettle corn they plucked from small paper bags. The youngest nun blushed as she licked her fingers and Rakkim smiled, imagining the exquisite conflict her pleasure must give her. The young nun turned back, glanced at Rakkim, held his eyes for a moment. He watched her hurry away, tiny feet kicking up dust, and Rakkim thought of the devout women back home, faces circled by head scarves, some masked behind veils, hair tucked out of sight…he felt again the erotic charge of those women not completely of this world.

Leo stood entranced before a holographic info panel detailing the attack and siege of Mount Carmel by federal authorities that began on Sunday, February 28, 1993. The panel blended actual news footage with re-creations that showed the Feds pounding on the door of the compound attempting to serve David Koresh with a subpoena for illegal weapons. In the shootout that followed, four federal officers were killed and David Koresh wounded. The siege began with approximately one hundred Davidians holed up inside Mount Carmel, surrounded by FBI, ATF, and army National Guard units. Rakkim dragged Leo away from the panel as a beatific Koresh lay bleeding, attended by white-robed children.

Leo tugged at his Ident collar. The narrow titanium collar wasn’t tight-it was the idea of it that chafed. Rakkim didn’t blame him. The collar was necessary, though. Only way for an outlander like Leo to escape notice was to hide in plain sight.

Who’s ever going to believe I’m a retard? Leo had asked as Rakkim slipped the collar around his neck.

You haven’t got the skills to pull that off, kid. I’m just asking you to look like a loser. Rakkim’s hand had darted out, lightly brushed across Leo’s scalp. Clumps of hair drifted down until Rakkim slid his knife back, admiring his handiwork. Leo’s hair was gouged, as though cut by someone either indifferent or incompetent. That’s better.

Plenty of Idents in the Belt. Indentured servants-the poor, the slow-witted, the unlucky, all of them trading years of their lives to learn a trade or pay off a debt. Idents always looked out of place. Even more important, Idents didn’t draw attention. Between Leo’s baby fat, bad haircut, and the too-small T-shirt Rakkim had bought for him, Leo might as well be invisible.

Rakkim saw another Ident following a family of four, the Ident huffing and puffing as he lugged bags of souvenirs in one hand, holding an umbrella over the mother with the other. The Ident was white, the family black. Sarah said one of the few good things about the second civil war was that race was now irrelevant. Nobody lost a job or a house because he was the wrong color. Things like that only happened because of important differences. Like being the wrong religion. Christians were tolerated in the Islamic Republic, but they were second-class citizens, passed over for promotion, kept out of the choicest real estate. In the Belt, all Christians were equal, but in many places, Catholics were still treated with suspicion. A young man from All Saints High School looking for a college scholarship would do well to start attending the Power in the Blood Tabernacle.

The Ident stumbled, almost dropped a package, apologizing, head lowered. Rakkim spotted a couple of stolid Texas Rangers, a black and white team, each well over six feet tall, their oversize Stetsons seeming to float above the crowd. During the war, the Rangers became a law unto themselves, keeping the peace by any means necessary. The story went that there wasn’t a white oak in Texas that hadn’t been a hanging tree, but while most of the Belt had been wracked with riots and looting, the streets of Texas stayed safe. Almost thirty years after the truce between the Belt and the Islamic Republic, the Rangers still operated as judge, jury, and executioner.