D'eannuosity, A Woman Warrior's Odyssey In Iraq

D’eannuosity

A Woman Warrior’s Odyssey in Iraq

By

Carl Reader

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2011 Carl Reader

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. All characters in this book are purely fictional. Any resemblance to any person, living or dead, is strictly coincidental.

1

An Official Intervenes

The pillars passing by him as he walked under the West Wing entry portico were like so many hands of a clock stopped forever on the wrong hour. There were too many hands on the clock, hands stopped on each of her endless adventures imagined and catalogued in his mind. Fallujah. Wandering the desert, adrift in the endless sands, then a captive. The years as a sex slave. All the deaths of her soldiers, her friends. The president, too, knew of her years of trouble and exile and her courage and cunning in facing it all and he admired her importance, but he was powerless before now to right those wrongs, to free her and allow her to take bloody vengeance on those responsible for her suffering. Years before he had told the president of how she tricked the course of war to advantage, of how as a spy her black-robed courage had robbed the enemy of his secrets, his invisibility, and with her invisibility as a woman she broke down their gates and made their cities to fall, although she now dismissed that war in Iraq as foolish arrogance and stupidity, needless mendacity and pointless death. Also known to the president were her sale and enslavement, barbaric and antique things that have no place in the modern world but still exist, but the president did not yet know that she was now in position to regain her freedom, if only he acted.

The bodies of all those women who fought with her, shared her subterfuges, had long ago turned to sand when they abandoned her and would no longer trust her judgment and leadership. The men who survived that war, those who never knew what it was like to rest buried in the desert marked only by helmet and rifle, had come home, while she was still imprisoned in the east. Great generals had marched their armies into Bagdad and then had returned home to die in the public mind, for an army’s march ends in disaster when it does not know how to take the final step to peace. Public opinion no longer trusted the generals who floundered in sand, backed only by foolishness from those in power above, those who killed hundreds of thousands who might still live if only the army and country had not believed their lies. Only D’eannu among those who did the fighting had not come back, still trapped and enslaved by the misguided love of that rich sheik who had purchased her and still held her, although she longed for home.

Now time and understanding had wheeled around on the axis of suffering to bring a new president in to right the stumbling inadequacies of the past. All but those who had profited and profited still from the war and had gorged themselves on death wished to see her home, for she was their enemy. She opposed the profiteers in full, for she had seen profit gut endless numbers of men and women and children for its pleasure. Her survival was little more than a rumor before Armand Menthus strode past those timeless pillars to inform the president that now was the time they could free her if they took care and kept her survival secret and did not anger those who would kill her as soon as they knew of her liberation.

All of the cabinet was present, although not in session, when Menthus entered the Oval Office with his plans to free D’eannu from slavery, from the sexual bondage that her beauty made a dream to most men but a harsh reality to one with money and power. Menthus no longer moved with caution around this president whose knowledge circled the entire world and had made peace with its ways while trying to correct its wrongs. Menthus could be at ease with such knowledge, for it knew and accepted all without prejudice or preconception and worked from a higher understanding. It accepted all things with wisdom and wove good ideas out of its evil intentions. As the men and women of his cabinet stood socializing after their talk on the prejudices and preconceptions of the world that made it so hard to deal with, speaking now of how not to blanket all the earth with one policy but many, Menthus moved into the familiar, comfortable space around the man.

How is it that one view can move so many men to do so many foolish things? he asked Menthus, he also being so familiar with his special adviser that no greeting was necessary. Is there a mechanism in the mind that makes men so foolish to think that only one way, their way, is all that allows life, or is the mind broken when such a mechanism is implanted in it? We say that the more different thoughts in the world, the better, the wiser, the more peaceful the world, if all are tolerated.

Liberal blackwater, sir.

A great booming laugh broke from the president at the joke, for that was an idea to accept, too, although it was twisted.

How often has history shown that to fight for lies or without a good end in sight, or for false reasons, or for no reason at all, makes a bollix out of everything we think we know about ourselves. Yet we’re blamed when things go wrong and those who made the mess are no longer around to clean it up. Bad actions have a life well beyond the life of those who perpetrated them.

The dying is less severe in effect now, except for those unfortunate few who still have to endure it for others’ stupidity. The dying is in lower numbers, at least, than it was. We simply can’t figure a way to get out of Iraq. My concern now, though, and for a long time, is for D’eannu Christenson. She has done great things for us, for all of us, helped make this fragile and more peaceable stalemate hold. She is now imprisoned by someone we have influence over. Muhammad Sokalypis has her.

Mr. President, we’re about to begin again.

Momentarily distracted by another adviser, the president turned away, but now returned his attention to Menthus for a short time before going back to preside over the meeting.

No one has given more to us than D’eannu Christenson. All of us love her, and thought her lost, dead, since we had not heard of her for so long. We know she disappeared into this giant eastern disaster, but we thought her disappearance was final. Tell our ambassador there to get her released, on my order. Muhammad Sokalypis must relent and release her, or we will bring a great weight down on him.

All of us want to see her come home, and because you said those words, sir, we all will, Menthus replied, but he was not only going to make a secure phone call to Dubai, to our ambassador there, to effect her freedom, but he planned on going himself, after taking care of other business. While he walked past those great time-worn pillars leading from the Oval Office on the way out, recalling all D’eannu’s deeds, he called for a car to take him to the Capitol. Once that was done, he asked for a secure line to our ambassador’s office in Dubai and informed him of the president’s wishes. He also said was on his way to force Muhammad Sokalypis to release D’eannu Christenson with all possible speed.

With his mind occupied with the tasks he had set himself, Menthus soon found himself inside the Cannon House Office Building Caucus Room after the blur of Washington traffic passed by outside his limousine in an instant, the cars like rolling marbles outside the limo’s windows. He stood at the doorway to the caucus room within sight of no representative, for they were in recess, but instead he saw several scores of men and women known to him only from their backroom dealings with the representatives, the lobbyists. They sat in the representatives’ seats laughing and joking, many with bottles of beer or glasses of vintage wine held in their hands or on the desks before them, and empty bottles were strewn across the floor in profusion, as though pigs inhabited the place. Loudly, with shouts of laughter, they were holding a mock vote on who should gain possession of the rights to lobby for Kazakhstan, once that government had been compromised and offered for sale. Bids of billions of dollars were yelled out indiscriminately, slobbering, drunken shouts. Sitting in her mother’s seat, alone among all the company with any claim to legitimate power, was T’Deannu Christensen, dreaming of the time her mother would return and drive out this festering hive of louts and thieves and drunkards. She alone saw Menthus at the doorway and approached him, greeting him warmly with both slender hands on his shoulders and the light of a smile so great its brilliance might have cleansed the room of all its filth, should it have been allowed to shine there.

Finally. I’m so glad you’ve come down from the White House, Mr. Menthus, she said. Please sit. Can I get you anything? We’ll have plenty of time to talk once this room full of drunks has quieted down.

Instead of quieting, the room grew ever louder and more unruly, frenetic, with dozens more lobbyists streaming in to bid for the country of Kazakhstan once they smelled the money gushing from it into the air. Already drunk when they came in, they were practically in a state of euphoric incomprehension after a few moments of continued inebriation in the caucus room. In the far corner, a rock band made a few dissonant attempts to tune their instruments and then the band loudly cracked open the air with their song, nearly drowning out the din, but in the end were unable to do so. Tables loaded with shrimp and warm bread and beef and succulent pork appeared as though floating in on the air on their own, but in reality were brought in by white-jacketed caterers who worked in complete silence. Gluttony immediately attended drunkenness.

I hope you don’t mind if I say it, but you don’t appear you’ve come to join these shameless fools, T’Deannu said to Menthus, loud enough for some of the lobbyists to hear. Everyday it’s the same thing from them, meeting here for this free food and alcohol stolen from government kitchens. Then they slice up the world for profit. It’s so easy for them to live this way, but I tell you, once they’ve grown fat, it’ll be even easier to slaughter them for their crimes, if only a person could return from the dead to do it. It’s been so long since I’ve heard anything from my mother I forget how long it’s been, but if she ever came back I’m sure they’d pray for thinner bellies and quicker feet. It’s gotten so bad there’s nothing left to do but kill them, if we could … they’re nearly the sole power in government now. But what about you? How have you been, and how has your work been progressing?

Menthus paused a moment to see if the warning from T’Deannu would sink in with any of the lobbyists, but the frolicking continued, as one woman lifted her dress, bent over and shook her ass at two of the drunken men, laughing all the while.

You know our families have been friends for a long time, Menthus began. Your mother and I went to the academy and then Georgetown law together, and I might have married her if things had turned out differently. I came here because I heard she was home and in the Capitol, but, sadly, I see that’s not true. She is not dead. That I can tell you for certain, and I know she must be held by a man these fools control, a beast fed on oil who rules a savage place wealthy beyond all belief. She will be coming home, and soon, after all these years of uncertainty and deceit.

I know it’s these people, these in this room, who have made her vanish into the world, and I can still do nothing about it. Sometimes, I think it would have been better if her death had been reported to me after the raid on Fallujah. At least then I would have known the worst, instead of fearing it and suffering the tortures and taunts of these low men and confused women everyday. My father is the last house seat that holds out against them. He will not vote for their money and power. He remembers what my mother would have done to them had she lived and he still loves her and he will not give in to them because of her. I know they can destroy me whenever they wish, throw my bones to the wind like old feathers, and they will do so when the time is right.

Seeing he could do little to protect her from imminent danger, Menthus squirmed uncomfortably on the hard bench at the prospect T’Deannu might soon find her end at these low creatures’ hands.

You need D’eannu to step back into her life more than ever, he said, if they have threatened you. You’re right that such people will stop at nothing to gain money and power in government, although it hasn’t been assented to by the popular will. Nobody elected them, nobody appointed them. I wish I could see D’eannu as she was when she first went to Iraq, a picture of strength very willing to destroy the enemy and fully capable of doing so. I wish I could see her here right now, dressed in full combat gear, and then those people would know what it was to fear. I’ll tell you what you must do. You must go to Iraq, where D’eannu was last known. The grip of these lobbyists extends even there, it was the target they chose for invasion for all the wrong reasons, but to close their grip around you will take them longer if you are there than it would while you’re here and you will learn things about her there. They leave dead people behind them as a forest drops its leaves, and they want you to be one of those leaves. You should go as soon as you exit this building. I can have a plane ready for you at a moment’s notice.

I know you have work to do, and I’ll take your advice and leave this country if I must, but I ask you to let me stay and help you here. I can do great things if given the chance, and who would watch these pigs and watch out for my father if I am gone?

It’s best we get rid of them in my way, believe me. It won’t be easy, but it will be done. I’ll have your plane ready within a half-hour of the time you can finally escape this room.

With that, Menthus said good-bye and quickly exited the caucus room. T’Deannu felt the chill of loneliness when he left, but he had put the hope of the destruction of these people in her, along with the confidence that it would happen. There was no getting away as Menthus had, simply disappearing as he came, since it would arouse suspicion of something afoot, and just then David Christensen appeared on the floor by the rock band. The sick man, worn out by worry and intimidation, listened with great sadness to the song of soldiers returning home burned and dismembered, their minds destroyed and their bodies mere cinders, and he cringed in sorrow at the image of their destruction. The song had no effect on the great company of revelers, who drank more and ate more the louder the tale of the warriors’ distress became.

To hear this song makes me think of how I loved your mother and lost her, he said to T’Deannu. I don’t believe there has ever been any woman like her. I don’t believe anyone could ever again possess such extremes of tenderness and ferocity. She’s known all over the world for the good she’s done, but here her fame has been squelched by these fools who dance to tunes they don’t comprehend. It angers and pains me they could erase her existence with an order to do so. It bothers me they plunge the world into such ignorance with the many ways they lie.

They’ll be forced to listen to the war songs soon, and they won’t like the tune, T’Deannu said. Songs like these put heart into me, and can put heart into others. Blame yourself if you can’t end their abuses, because I will end them.

It was as though David Christensen felt a great weight on his shoulder after T’Deannu spoke to him, and he answered softly, his weak voice barely above a whisper.

It’s all I can do to keep them at bay. I can’t stay here among them.

With that, Christensen retreated into chambers after casting bitter glances to all corners of the room. Those glances went unnoticed.

A broken heart can kill a man, but there are other ways to do the job, said Anthony Evans, laughing, with a flute of champagne held tight to his side. We’ll have him gone soon in one way or another. If he dies waiting for his wife, it won’t be any great loss. In fact, it will be a great gain, for us.

With that, he lifted a glass in a toast to the death of David Christensen, and T’Deannu cringed and felt the rage grow within her. She lifted another flute of champagne high in the air and spoke in a loud voice.

I think we should all toast to something else, to the day all of you are driven bleeding from this house. Go! Get out! Go to work at a real job if you want to eat and live a good life, and stop stealing from others. Don’t stay here feasting and taking unlawfully what is not yours. Your work is nothing but thievery. I toast to that day you all die!

Their hate made them silent, and their heads were all turned to T’Deannu. They broke out laughing.

Listen to this tasty young piece of ass, Anthony Evans said. He sipped his champagne. You wouldn’t think such a lovely dark exterior could harbor such dark thoughts. I tell you, I’d like to stuff her mouth with something other than threatening words. You deserve to be here for now, being your mother’s daughter, but I can tell you this: all of us look forward to the day when we have you flat on your back and can count on you as just another one of our dirty little whores, just another page. We’ll kill you rather than let you ruin our business in Iraq.

The thought of a gang rape by these despicable men sickened T’Deannu, but she was too enraged by the insults Anthony Evans hurled her way to let it show.

You might not believe it, but I reject your kind offer of love. If I could ever be elected to my mother’s seat, I would happily take it and prevent all of you from ever making a mockery of this place again with your presence. You may take this seat in an election once D’eannu is dead, but you will never take it with bribes, insults or threats against my father.

Leon Crito saw the mood in the caucus room had turned dark, and with more tact than Anthony Evans had he attempted to steer T’Deannu away from it with charm.

We would never dream of running against you in a district we could not win, he said. Your family has held the seat for too many years and you deserve it should your mother ever pass away. Who was the stranger who came to visit you today? He seemed a kind, intelligent man, someone with bright eyes, a man who has your best interests in mind.

If she told him an aide to the president had come to see her, it would have confirmed a plot against the lobbyists, she knew.

He was a school friend of my mother’s who looks in on me now and again and inquires after her. I keep telling him there is no hope for my mother, but he continues to return, eager to hear otherwise from me.

Drunken men can keep their focus for only a short time, and with that they turned away from T’Deannu, thinking their full glasses were more important than any threat she or her visitor posed. T’Deannu watched over them as they ate and drank and danced like uncoordinated fools to the hard music detailing soldiers’ deaths, until finally they left hours later at night, one by one, to return to their own apartments.

T’Deannu fell asleep in her mother’s chair, locked in, while her father spent the night behind tightly locked doors in a suite above her.

2

Her Eyes Are Wide Open

T’Deannu barely knew that the dawn had tenderly touched the white marble buildings and monuments of Washington with its weak red light, since she was locked in chambers with artificial illumination above and no window to tell her it was time to rise. Soon the sunlight was strong, and although it did not touch her inside, she felt its glow on her and the strength it gave her. Exhaustion had made her sleep a deep and restful one, a rare occurrence for her, for most of her nights were restless and fitful as she waited for the lobbyists to make their final fatal move on her. The dark was special for them, but in the light it would be more difficult for them to get their way with her, to force themselves on her and kill her. She knew they were ready to assemble in the caucus room to plot further disasters for the country and profits for themselves, for it was as though she could hear through walls and across distances. She had notes sent around to many of the congressmen and congresswomen and to each of the lobbyists, recalling them to the caucus room, intending to give them hope of her compliance but in reality plotting to upbraid them further and complain of what they had done to the country. She arose still dressed as she had been the night before, but she felt fresh and alive, with an intense glow about her that only the great can attain when about to perform some astonishing act. She would grind them down if she could, in front of everyone. She pushed a small pistol into the waistband of her skirt at the small of her back and stood straight up, staring at the dark walls for a moment for resolve. She put on her coat to cover the pistol and prayed she would have to use the gun, because using the gun meant some of the lobbyists would die, and no matter what happened to her the idea of their deaths pleased her beyond anything.

An old friend, an old woman, Eustace Cranshaw, was talking in the caucus room among the few congress members who bothered to attend her meeting. She was sneering at them and trying to get out of their grasp, when T’Deannu slipped in take her mother’s usual place, being careful not to show she was armed by letting her jacket slip open to reveal the pistol. Eustace Cranshaw had a daughter who had gone to war with D’eannu and never returned, being the last to die in the torture chambers of Abdul-Ahed Anianas, dismembered and killed by that wild beast in the desert and now forgotten by all but D’eannu. Leon Crito had joined a lobbying firm that represented Anianas in his buying and selling and had made a great deal of money from representing the killer. Leon Crito now stood among the other lobbyists, although he did not know how Eustace Cranshaw’s daughter had died. Eustace Cranshaw’s eyes welled up with tears up when she saw T’Deannu enter and sit down, reminded of her old friend, D’eannu, so much by the girl’s appearance that she nearly mistook her for her mother.

How long it’s been since she was last here, so many years since I worked with my friend D’eannu, and how much I miss her. Why are we here, why are we impossibly here, if she can not be? It doesn’t seem right that she’s still lost in the world, or in Iraq, after so many years away from home. It’s not right to be here and not think of her, since she did so much to make our world light up from all its sorrows and difficulties. I see T’Deannu and think D’eannu and her soldiers have come home, safe and whole, but I know it’s not true. My daughter won’t come home. I don’t know where she is, if she is alive or dead or suffering in sorrow alone, or where D’eannu is. I only know how happy I am to see her daughter still here, and still strong and bright to my eyes.

T’Deannu was trembling with joy and sorrow by the end of Eustace Cranshaw’s speech, and Eustace Cranshaw crossed to her, making her way through the scattering of scowling lobbyists and members of congress, to embrace T’Deannu warmly. T’Deannu let the embrace linger for a moment, feeling the close comfort of a friend for the first time in months, but then remembered the dark-faced men and women surrounding her. She though of what gloomy things she would have to do to pull those leeches off her body.

I wish I had more than one great friend among you, she began, bitterly. She stepped away from Eustace Cranshaw, letting their hands linger together in friendship for a moment before dropping away and continuing savagely, her eyes aflame as she stared at the lobbyists. My mother is lost. My friend’s daughter is lost. Who can say for certain who among you is responsible? All of us can say for sure that all of you had some hand in it, for once you knew where my mother stood, you did not want her here, and forced her away to war, and now we know what kind of people you are and what you did to ensure there was killing in Iraq forever. For years, you’ve harried and plagued my father and accosted me whenever you had the chance, trying to get us to turn our backs to reason, to your dark side, and when we would not, you threatened us and tried to destroy us with vile accusations and lies and even death. Let it end now. Allow me my peace to mourn my mother and set right this house you’ve so corrupted.

In anticipation of their answer, T’Deannu reached behind her to feel for the pistol, while the several lobbyists picked at breakfast sausages and eggs numbly. Only Anthony Evans had the courage to burst through the assemblage to stand beside her, enraged at the claim he and his friends had done anything wrong. None of the congressional members appeared concerned enough at T’Deannu’s word to do anything about them, but that didn’t matter to Anthony Evans.

You rode your high horse in here years ago, and haven’t gotten off it since then, he said. You want to embarrass us for doing nothing more than attempting to keep the country safe, keep you safe, by making war on those who would destroy us, while we made a little profit on the side. I will not apologize for loving my country or making money. We would have solved the problems in Iraq long ago if your father and others like him in congress had allowed us to do what we wanted to do with it. Instead, you impeded the war effort and our companies’ reconstruction efforts and gave comfort to the enemy by blaming us for standing up for our country and its capitalist ways. It’s you who’s aided the enemy by letting him know we would leave eventually, instead of grinding him down to dust to allow us to make a new world out of that dust.

Anthony deliberately put his hand on her back, just above her gun, and then let the hand fall and linger over the curves of her body as further intimidation, but the insult didn’t deter T’Deannu from speaking clearly in reply, and he did not discover the pistol. Further enraged, she went on.

How could I ever turn my back on my father, when he’s never turned his back on my mother or his country? Go and destroy your own family and friends if you wish to take over another country for your ‘commerce.’ How could I ever look my mother in the eye again if I abandoned my father now and gave in to your greed? Work for a cause that would do the world good, rather than abuse the fighters you sent to Iraq so that you and your companies could make money from their deaths. If not, I can promise you by God only a slaughter of you and yours, if you do not pay for the evil you’ve done everyone.

From up above came the sudden roaring of two F-15 Eagles, fighter jets on their way to watch over the coast, but so close above they rattled the room and sent several of the drunken lobbyists tumbling to the floor, where they smashed their heads and bled. The stood up, laughing and touching the blood tenderly. An old senator and opponent of the war, Senator William Feather, had managed to stay on his feet solidly at the roar of the jets, not pushed weakly to the ground by them. Out of place here, he alone among the representatives sneered at those cruel weaklings on the floor who could not personally tolerate the mere suggestion of violence but inflicted it on others so they could profited tremendously from it when it was far from them and they were safe.

Mark my words, said the Senator. D’eannu is coming home soon, and then you fools with broken heads on the floor will have hell to pay and a slaughter to suffer. Do you think you could send her away on false pretenses, do your best to have her killed, have her suffer rape and worse, and she would think kindly of you? I said when she went that she would be gone at least ten years, perhaps more, and so it’s been, many more, and now I’m saying she is near home and you will pay by her hand for every crime against the country and mankind that you have committed.

This warning, too, was greeted with drunken laughter.

What stupidity. You’re a silly old man if you think every flight of a jet fighter overhead means that we have done something wrong, said Pollman Split. Go home and scare your children will tales of ghosts and gloom and doom, not us. We don’t scare that easily. We know our exceptionalism, and what great things we’ve done for the country in invading Iraq, and if we make a little money from it, what of it? D’eannu died long ago, a coward, in Iraq, and if you had joined her it would have been no great loss to us. We would have been spared the obstructions of congress to war if that had happened, although nearly all of you have cooperated with us as our lapdogs. T’Deannu threatens us, but I advise her to warn her father he must vote with us, or the slaughter might turn the other way.

T’Deannu reached around and drew the pistol from her skirt and pushed Anthony Evans away from her harshly.

You say my mother is dead, and I say you’re most likely right, but I wish only to fly away now as those jets just flew over our heads, to discover whether she is alive or gone forever from us, as you say. I’ll only be away a short time, and if I get out of this assembly alive, I will find her. If I do not, I will still come back and oppose you until death makes it impossible to do so. I’m finished with arguing with you, with appeals to you, for you have no good nature.

T’Deannu stepped back to retreat from the mass of lobbyists, and she found Armand Menthus there, now beside her, to protect her further from the crowd of cowards and thieves.

What disgusts me is that all of you have been allowed to foment this putrescent war, then fail in the raising of Iraq, take great wealth from this death and disaster, and no one has spoken up against you, Menthus said. It bothers me, too, that the entire community has watched you perpetrate this with a cloud of confusion over them, never questioning you once, as you looted and prepared death for many thousands, you liking it because it meant money to you. Why are crimes so easily accepted in America when the men who commit them claim to be patriots?

Why have you come over from the White House to stir up such unwarranted troubles? asked Leon Crito, for he had discovered who Armand Menthus was. You worry the entire country, and risk a bullet to the brain, because we’ve made a few billions with honest work and a paltry few thousand have died from doing the work we chose for them? What if D’eannu did come home? Do you think she would survive for ten minutes in this house, against all those who so rightly oppose her? Do you think she could ever regain her seat, or restore peace? We’ve pushed our agenda too far along for that to happen, and the world we’ve made will remain as it is despite people like her. There is no future but the one we’ve dictated.

Their point seemingly established, the lobbyists were quick to disperse from this distasteful scene, hate in their gazes, so Menthus led T’Deannu out a secret way from the Capitol Complex. He would not have them near her. They flagged down a taxi but went only two blocks in it before changing to another and then almost immediately another. They found themselves on the banks of the Potomac, with memories of cherry blossoms in full bloom above their heads and the Lincoln Memorial within view. T’Deannu bent to wash her hands in the river’s water, as though the waters could cleanse the black issues of her heart during their cool flight toward the sea.

Yesterday, you promised you would get me out of all this damned mess and help me find my mother, no matter where in the world she might be, she said. I think everyone wishes to hinder me in that, most of all these damned lobbyists, who would sooner see me dead than lose one penny from their pockets.