Coup D'Etat Read Online Free PDF Page A

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    “Miss,” one of the men yelled out as he walked. “Are you closed for the day?”
    The young woman, who had just shut the door to the café, looked at the approaching soldiers.
    “I’m sorry,” she said quietly. Her eyes stayed focused on the ground. “We’re shut for the day, officers.”
    “Just a sandwich,” one of the soldiers said. He took a step toward the woman. He towered over her. “One sandwich.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “Do you disobey us, little bitch?”
    She stood in silence, a look of fear on her pretty face.
    The old man recognized the colors of the Pakistani Army, dark green khaki, red piping. He felt his chest tightening. He knew he was powerless to do anything. Yet, he felt the words arise from somewhere in the back of his throat.
    “Leave her alone,” he said, a faint bark that made the soldiers heads turn. “Closed!”
    “Shut up, old man,” one of the soldiers laughed. He turned to the woman. “We are hungry. One sandwich from the whore, then we will be gone.”
    The brown dog awoke at the words from the soldier. He was a thin mutt, curly tail, brindle coat thick from six winters outdoors in the foothills of the Ladakh Range. The dog stood and began barking. He moved toward the soldiers, his small white teeth forming a vicious smile. The dog barked and ran toward the Pakistani soldiers, who were across the street.
    The taller soldier turned. He pulled the trigger on his rifle. A thunder crack echoed in the thin air as a bullet tore into the dog’s small head, quieting the mutt, killing him instantly. Blood spurted along the ecru wall of the hut. The woman let out a small cry, a gasp really, at the violence. The old man glanced slowly around him, his heart tightening in fear.
    Yagulung’s dirt road was deserted except for the two soldiers, the girl, and the old man. The young beauty looked at the old man, then at the soldiers, glancing at the nozzle of the Kalashnikov rifle that was aimed at her head.
    She nodded in resignation. What she was about to do was against the law, she knew. Yet fear had gripped her bones.
    “I’ll be back with two meals,” she said, her soft voice trembling.
    The soldiers did not answer.
    She walked to the café. She unlatched the door, then went inside.
    The old man watched as the two soldiers looked at each other. One of the men whispered something. Then they both smiled. They moved to follow her inside the doorway to the café.
    The old man felt fire in his veins. He lifted his right hand, raising it to the small wooden post next to where he sat. He slowly lifted himself up, feeling pain down his left side, in his feet. Such pain, the debilitation of the arthritis, the visiting doctor had told him so many years ago, that would gradually make it so that he could not walk.
    But he did walk, slowly now, step by pained step, the bolts of discomfort tearing up through his legs and back.
    He walked down the gravel road, in a southerly direction, toward the walnut groves. He tripped and fell at the turn that went down the stone walkway to the water hole. He stopped his skull from striking the ground with his old hands. Blood appeared on both hands, where the skin scraped off like tissue paper, but he raised himself up. He saw the topping green of the leaves. The rainbow headdress of one of the woman of the village. But she was so far away. Looking down, he saw that his feet now bled from the soles, so long had it been since he had moved more than a few feet in one day.
    But he kept moving. He walked more than two hundred feet down the rough, rock-strewn path. At the bend near the first grove of walnuts, he saw a young teenage boy. He waved at him.
    “You’re bleeding!” the boy said, running to him. “Your nose is bleeding. So is your mouth. What happened?”
    “Get them,” the old man whispered, pointing toward the fields with his blood-covered hand.
    The boy ran down the line of tall, green stalks. His high-pitched voice, screaming now, wailed