Authors: Shawn Hopkins
****
The rain was coming down harder now, and lightning and constant thunder had decided to join the party, rendering the sky void of helicopters.
As Scott approached the cave, running along the stream’s bank, soaked, cold, and miserable, he noticed something that stopped him dead in his tracks. His eyes darted from left to right, every inch of the multi-colored woods swept over by a scrutinizing gaze intent on detecting something other than nature’s handiwork.
Nothing. Just sheets of freezing rain and gusts of wind attacking leaves.
But still...
Scott brought the 417 up to his shoulder and began walking gently by the stream’s edge, mud sucking at his boots. The cave was directly ahead of him, nothing moving around it. It looked calm, quiet. But something still didn’t feel right.
And then he saw it — up behind the tree and across the forest’s floor.
He abandoned his careful approach, the sight ahead of him and what it could mean more significant than the risk of someone waiting for him in the surrounding woods. Racing up the hill, he grabbed hold of the tree’s roots and lifted himself up past the cave’s entranceway. He looked down at the ground in front of him, at the impressions stretching through the mud. An off-road vehicle, light weight…
There were footprints around the tree.
This time Scott just jumped down the hill. “Ed!” he called.
No answer.
“Ed!”
Quiet.
“Ed, it’s me, Matthew. I’m coming in.” He quickly crawled through the hole, shedding some of his weapons and backpack.
There was no light to greet him, just a black void. The candles were out. He should go back and get the night-vision, he knew, but desperation drove him forward. Not hearing the gunshot he half-expected to end his life, he continued crawling through the darkness until his hands found the table. “Ed!”
No answer. In a frenzy, he reached out and swept his hands around the room, not knowing whether he was actually hoping to find a body or not. But there was nothing there.
10
H
e was on
his hands and feet, crawling frantically over the invisible ground beneath him. He could see the light up ahead and pushed himself harder. Despite the complicated terrain of the small tunnel, he paused only long enough to retrieve the HK 417 he’d discarded with the rest of his arsenal on the way into the cave. As he neared the waterfall, now pouring over the face of the entranceway, he grabbed a handful of roots, and, with one final pull, thrust himself through the flowing water and into the open woods beyond.
He was to his feet immediately, stumbling up the mudslide to where he’d seen the tracks. Ignoring all the other markings scattered over the area, he took time only to notice the tread pointing east before desperately following after it through thicker curtains of rain.
The tracks eventually led out of the dense woods and up onto a trail before disappearing a hundred yards away. Scott knew it was risky, running down the middle of the path like he was, out in the open and exposed. Especially when the path was in a valley, wooded slopes stretching up on either side of him. Anyone on the hill would be able to pick him off at his or her leisure. But he couldn’t concern himself with that, not if he hoped to see Edward alive again.
As lightning flashed through the sky and thunder answered in response, Scott wondered who could’ve been driving the small all terrain vehicle and how they would possibly have known about the cave. The only thing that made sense was that Edward left the cave and had then been spotted. But if that was the case, why was he only chasing one set of tracks? If it was the police or military that grabbed Edward, they would have been in larger numbers. Special
Forces then? The same shadow force that was at Ed’s house the night before?
He began to slow, the scenery before him evolving into something else. The hill to his left only got steeper, denser. But the slope on his right began evening out with the path, continuing with it around the upcoming bend. But that’s not what he was looking at.
Just ahead of him, the tire tracks veered off the path to the right and disappeared into the forest. But Scott could tell by the markings in the mud that the driver had been struggling with the vehicle, trying to keep it on the road. He guessed that Edward put up a fight and had sent them speeding off the path.
Something grazed his forehead. Blood trickled down over his eye. He swore and took off running again, following the tire tracks. He ran as fast as he could through the slippery muck, speed his only chance at staying alive. He could hear the bullets exploding into the trees to his right, proving that the sniper was somewhere up in the woods to his left. Blindly aiming the HK 417, he fired up into the sloped terrain.
Then he broke off the path, running diagonally to his right and down a descending slope, seeking the cover of a few trees that stood there beckoning him to their side.
He made it behind them, ignoring the chunks of their anatomy that were exploding past his face, and followed the terrain all the way down to where Edward and the ATV had disappeared behind a wall of tall grass.
Bursting into the grass, not sure if he was still being fired at or not, he started calling out for Edward.
And then he saw it. A hundred feet from where it had gone off the path. It was turned on its side, three bodies still awkwardly straddled to it. “Edward!” Scott screamed, raising the assault rifle and aiming it at the other two men on the quad as he approached. They were both dead, shot through the head and heart. “Ed,” Scott whispered, kneeling next to him, trying to pull his body out from under the vehicle. He stole a glance up across the road to the hill where the sniper, or snipers, were hiding. But they weren’t shooting anymore. They were too busy making their way toward him. Six of them that he could see.
“Edward, it’s Matthew.” He noticed there was blood dripping off his friend’s hand, running down out of his sleeve. Scott swore, stole another look at the enemy closing in. They were almost to the road now. He stood, firing at them, forcing them to take cover. But why weren’t they firing back? He didn’t know, didn’t care. He freed Edward’s body from the quad and dragged him to an open space. Quickly opening Ed’s jacket, he saw where the blood was coming from. The bullet had pierced a lung.
Scott leaned over Edward and put his ear over his mouth. Though very shallow, there was still breath. But Scott knew there was nothing he could do to stop the inevitable. A flood of emotion surged through him, and he reloaded the rifle. Only a hundred feet away now, the six men were crossing the road. Scott shot at them, striking one. And then he saw at least ten more still up on the hill. He looked down to Edward for a second, but his friend’s eyes were still closed. Scott screamed, looked back to the trail.
They were gone.
He swung the weapon to the left, then to the right, his finger already starting to pull the trigger. He peered through the pouring rain, but there was no sign of the remaining soldiers. Or whoever they were. And then a hand grabbed his ankle. Startled, he looked down to see Edward’s eyes half open.
“Matthew.” There wasn’t much life remaining in Edward’s voice.
Scott cradled Edward’s head in his lap, ignoring the bullets that started ricocheting off the quad next to them. “Shhh…” It was the only thing he could say.
A strange smile curled Edward’s lips. “Jack…”And then his eyes grew wide and he reached up, grabbing Scott’s hand. “
Israelis…
” His eyes closed and his hand opened.
Something fell into Scott’s hand.
Spreading his fingers, he discovered the ring resting on his palm. “Edward!”
But he was gone.
Scott would have been more upset had he not been so sure that his own time on this rock was about to expire. He closed his eyes, and his wife appeared center stage in his mind — the last time he saw her, their last kiss. And then came the event and the hell that followed. Judgment was finally catching up with him.
He opened his eyes and saw movement in front of him, knowing they had surrounded him.
But just then a huge explosion came from somewhere behind, engulfing him in its heat.
Ears ringing, he twisted at his waist, Edward’s head still in his lap, and looked up to the hill. It was in flames. He didn’t understand. And then a stinging sensation erupted in his neck, and his vision began to fade. He shook his head, the world heaving, the park rolling like an ocean out before him. He thought he could see a figure approaching him, reaching out to grab him and, with one last faltering remnant of consciousness, he somehow managed to drop the ring into his pocket.
His last thought was, “
Israelis
?”
11
S
ounds came from some other room, a whisper gliding through the crack beneath the door. Talking. It was his mother, but he could only make out fractions of what she was saying, bits and pieces of the whole, an obscure fog of something he understood to be intelligent...
People are trained from birth to think within a small designated space…
But it was strange, as if her voice was stolen and used by someone else — someone in the future that would understand the importance of what it was she was saying. He shifted, straining to hear more of the once familiar voice.
The
voice
… No, his mother had died when he was thirteen. It couldn’t be her.
And it wasn’t. In fact, it never was, the voice masculine. His father’s voice.
The
Orwellian creed — “ignorance is strength” — put forth in 1949, is the perfect example of man’s inability to think.
He was familiar with that creed. But no, this wasn’t right either. His father had killed himself after mom died.
The extent of the hypnosis is almost unthinkable. People still waving the flags of a country that no longer exists.
His teacher at the Farm, giving a lecture to all the young recruits! He remembered that day well, what he was feeling, what he was thinking, wondering if he’d get Operations or Intelligence. He remembered being assigned by the Directorate of Operations and sent to Tehran. No, Baalbeck… Salah Al-Din? Whatever, he knew he was in Islamabad. Or at least Iraq. But then he was pretty sure he was in all of them. He was there right now, in all of them. Every single one. New Delhi, Kabul, Medina, Jerusalem, even London. What he was doing there, he couldn’t tell. Something important. Something dangerous.
He tried to focus on his teacher’s voice…
The real war that is waged is a war for the mind, but the people won’t fight it. Why? Because it doesn’t exist? No, because those waging war on them tell them it doesn’t exist. And so it doesn’t exist. The pairing of ignorance with the death of history has become the ultimate patriotism.
He was confused, disturbed. Nothing he’d ever heard from his teacher at the Farm sounded like this. No, he couldn’t be there, and he wasn’t in the Middle East or Europe either.
Slowly, he began to regain consciousness, gathering enough cognitive awareness to enlighten the words he thought had been spoken by people once familiar to him. In fact, there were no voices speaking the words he’d heard. They were merely products of his own thoughts mixing with faces he once knew, different personalities peeking through his subconscious, checking out this twisted world of his.
Scott finally opened his eyes, and his pupils retreated in the face of a blinding light. After his eyes adjusted, he could tell that the source of the light came from a bulb hanging above him. Instantly, he was back in Iran, back in a room he’d spent years trying to forget. He shut his eyes, concentrated on clearing his head. As the disorientation faded, his senses began feeding information to his brain. There was the light above him, the cold stale air against his face, the faint voices coming from somewhere beyond, and a throbbing headache just getting started behind his eyes.
He checked his motor skills, and everything seemed to work. He could wiggle his toes, clench his fists, and turn his head. But he couldn’t sit up. Lifting his head, he saw that a blanket was covering his body, some kind of make-shift restraint wrapping him to the table. He tilted his head to the side and saw that he was about four feet in the air.
“What do we do with him?”
It was one of the voices coming from… where? He looked over to his right and saw a doorway covered in shadow.
“We find out who he is,” came the response.
It took Scott a few seconds to realize that the people talking were not speaking English, but Hebrew. It was a language he knew well enough to make sense of the conversation, the time he’d spent in the Middle East, specifically Jerusalem, having made the ancient language all too familiar. But he was a little suspicious as to why it seemed the language of choice here. Wherever
here
was.
Before committing himself to a plan of action, he let his mind catch up with his current predicament, remembering running after Edward and the shots coming from the hillside. He didn’t know who could have been shooting at him, but they couldn’t have been UN or NAU troops. Whoever they were, they were either positioned to cover the ATV’s getaway or to take it out. And the explosion that rocked the hillside…
His head was pounding, and he had to push the loss of Edward into the peripheral edges of his conscious, along with everything else that didn’t make sense, in order to concentrate on the here and now.
Whoever had secured him to the table did a good job to keep him from rolling off in his sleep, but that was about it. Either the person responsible was polite or incompetent. Scott wasn’t going to assume the prior and wouldn’t count on the latter. There was enough slack in the restraints to allow him wiggle room, and he began inching his way toward the end of the table.
“Why did you bring him back here?” The discussion was still going on somewhere beyond the darkness.