Ellie got out the SUV. “Stand beside me,” she said to Joe. “And try to look all helpful and local.”
“How do I do that?” he said.
“I don’t know. Try and look harmless.”
Joe didn’t seem sure but he nodded.
Ellie leaned back inside, through the open door. “Hop out but stay back here,” she said to Sameh. “And cover us, okay?”
Sameh nodded.
“Watch the upstairs windows,” Ellie said.
Sameh just looked at her.
“And those barns and things over there.”
“Tell your mother how to give birth,” Sameh said. It meant the same thing as grandmothers sucking eggs, but was the hajji version.
Ellie grinned at her. She knew she was being fussy, but it was only because she was nervous about how this operation went. Sameh probably knew that too, and was being patient, by her standards, for Ellie’s sake.
Sameh got out of the SUV beside Ellie, and took her submachine gun with her. As she went past, Ellie pushed the muzzle down, towards the ground.
“Keep it there, okay?” Ellie said.
“Mother giving birth.”
“I don’t want them scared. Not yet.”
“Yep,” Sameh said, impatiently. “I get it.”
She kept the submachine gun towards the ground, but Ellie noticed the firing selector was on fully automatic. Sameh idly fiddled with safety catches sometimes, and Ellie wished she wouldn’t. Sameh might just have flicked the selector on when they stopped a minute ago, but Ellie had an awful feeling she hadn’t. Ellie had a feeling the selector had been on full auto for a while, and they’d been driving around with it like that in the back of the SUV.
Ellie decided not to say anything. Sameh would just get annoyed if Ellie did. Ellie walked over to the house instead, watching the windows and door, cautiously.
She went up three steps, and onto the porch. The porch was made of wood, and creaked a little as she trod on it. She kept her hand on her sidearm, but didn’t take the weapon out. She tapped on the side of the door with her other hand, and called out, “Hello.”
She hadn’t been quite sure what to expect, but the door wasn’t barred or reinforced. It was just a door, closed against the morning cool, with a wire-mesh screen to keep flies out.
A screen, she suddenly thought, exactly like she remembered people having at home, in Australia, when she was young. She stood there looking at it, thinking about fly-screens and summer and heat. She thought about lawns, oddly, and how she hadn’t seen a lawn in years, but there was one here now.
She glanced over at it. It was a fairly nice lawn, all green and neatly cut.
She heard footsteps from inside the house, and turned back towards it. A man opened the door and looked out at her. He was older, and a bit bent over, and dressed fairly plainly, in much the same way as Ellie was.
That way of dressing was good, Ellie thought to herself. It meant Joe’s clothes bag was helping her fit in.
She looked at the man, wondering what to say. She knew his name. It had been in the message the corporate operations centre had sent her, probably taken from the local property records. She knew his name, and that his farm was barely making money and that he’d had medical treatment for an arthritic hip, but she didn’t think she should actually let him know any of that because doing so sometimes unsettled older people, who weren’t used to the idea of information being so readily available.
“Hello,” she said instead, then added, “Sir,” because she’d seen enough old American TV to know they talked to each other like that.