Authors: J. T. Brannan
4
Mark Kowalski had been in Bangkok with six friends from his SEAL Team Two platoon, on R&R after a six month tour of Iraq back in 2003. He had a girlfriend back home, but that was only semi-serious; neither one of them had made any sort of commitment, and so Kowalski was going to do what SEALs did best – after fighting at least – and party like his life depended on it.
It had been a long six months, and he needed the release. They all did; it had been pretty much non-stop for the entire tour, one nerve-wracking recon mission after another, several of which had turned into vicious firefights. They had won each engagement decisively, but they had all lost friends on the way; their trip to Bangkok was therefore part R&R, part memorial. It was how they dealt with loss and pain.
The first couple of days had been spent in the pursuit of all of Bangkok’s hedonistic charms, and Kowalski and his friends were finally beginning to relax. Then one night – perhaps a Saturday, Cole couldn’t now remember – the men had become separated.
They had been drinking all afternoon, and some of them wanted to visit the red light district in Patpong. Kowalski had wanted to carry on drinking, and so while four of the team had headed off across town, he and a young SEAL called Taylor Henman had stayed in the bars around Khao San Road.
Eventually, Kowalski and Henman had also become separated, and Kowalski had found himself wandering the streets of Bangkok alone and more than a little drunk. It went against all advice for military personnel on R&R, but they weren’t thinking about rules and safety; they were SEALs, and they’d just been to war. What did they have to worry about in Bangkok?
Kowalski had been leaning against a dirty brick wall in an alleyway outside a rundown bar, trying to stop his head from spinning, when he’d heard it – the low, whimpering moans of a woman.
He had become instantly alert, his feet automatically taking him further down the alley towards the source of the sound.
Despite the alcohol he’d consumed, his mind became clearer and clearer with each passing second, his body sharper and more responsive as the moans turned to cries and then muffled screams.
Kowalski turned one corner, then another, running now towards the sounds, and then he made one last turn and there she was – a young women lying in a pool of blood on the floor, three Thai men stood around her with bloodied knuckles. One had a knife.
The woman was silent now, and still; far too still.
Kowalski launched himself down the alleyway, on the men before they’d even had a chance to turn round and see him.
He took the one with the knife first, tackling him full-force from behind and driving him into his friends, knocking them sprawling to the ground. The man dropped his knife and as he went to grab it Kowalski stamped down hard on his hand, breaking the bones; then as the others were getting back to their feet, he grabbed the first thug by the hair and rammed his head straight into the alley wall, bricks cracking from the impact, dust billowing out into the hot night air.
Kowalski wasted no time; he was trained to act quickly and decisively, and never to give the enemy an inch. Keep moving forward; always push forward.
He lashed out with his right leg in a powerful upwards arc, his boot catching the second man underneath the jaw as he was still rising. The head snapped back and Kowalski knew the man was out before he’d even hit the sidewalk.
He turned just as the third man put his hands around Kowalski’s neck in a Muay Thai clinch position; but Kowalski knew the position and knew what would be coming next – heavy blows with the knees, a trademark of that fighting art.
Anticipating it, Kowalski caught his hand under the incoming knee and – holding onto one of the man’s clinching arms with his other hand – picked him clear off the floor, turning the lighter man in the air and bringing him down savagely onto his bent knee, braced against the ground.
There was a snap and a dull moan, and then Kowalski dropped the man and smashed his head into the sidewalk just to make sure.
All three of the attackers were now out of commission – perhaps permanently, although Kowalski didn’t think so. They were tough; they’d pull through.
After his experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq, Kowalski considered simply killing them; after all, the world would undoubtedly be better off without them.
But he was not a murderer, and death could be kept for the battlefield. Perhaps their experiences tonight might make them rethink their way of life and choose a less dangerous path.
Kowalski certainly hoped so.
He stooped to the body next to him, the young woman lying in a pool of her own blood. He checked her body from top to bottom, discovered a small knife entry wound between two of her ribs, took off his shirt and tied it round her to help stem the flow of blood. All her other injuries were superficial, though unpleasant – her obviously pretty face had been mauled by the men’s fists. Two teeth were missing, and he was sure she had a cracked cheekbone, maybe jaw too.
He wondered whether he should leave her there and go and find help, but thought better of it; who knew if the three young thugs would have friends nearby.
And so he did the only thing he could think of and picked her up in his arms, carrying her out of the dirty alleyway.
It was when they were nearing the end that her eyes opened, taking Kowalski entirely by surprise; they were the most beautiful eyes he had ever seen, at once full of life but at the same time lonely and desolate, revealing depths of soul Kowalski couldn’t begin to understand.
Those eyes looked into his with an intensity he was unable to comprehend, a searching look, a look of trust, wonder and gratitude.
And then she spoke, even though it was just two short words and must have hurt so badly.
‘Thank . . . you,’ she managed, and then she was unconscious again in his arms.
And Mark Kowalski, despite himself, knew that he had just fallen in love.
The days that followed were strange ones for the young SEAL. He’d taken the girl to the nearest medical unit to have her looked at, and they had sent her straight to Bumrungrad International Hospital.
Cole had covered the young woman’s medical bills, and stayed by her bedside. The doctors had wanted to get the authorities involved, but she had been adamant that she didn’t want to let anyone know what had happened.
It turned out that the woman was from Japan, and the name she gave the doctors – and Kowalski – was Aoki Asami, despite her passport saying her name was
Yamaguchi
Asami. She was reluctant to discuss what she was doing in Bangkok except that she was ‘trying to get away from things’. Kowalski guessed that those ‘things’ might be related to the man who’d given her the married name of Yamaguchi; she was probably fleeing an abusive husband. But it was mere conjecture – even as the days continued and he managed to get in touch with his SEAL team mates to tell them to enjoy themselves without him, she refused to open up about her personal situation.
But Kowalski didn’t care; there was so many other things to talk about, things from a life Kowalski hardly knew existed. As Asami rested in her hospital bed, Kowalski held her hand and listened to her speak about her country, and many other countries besides – their language, their culture, their traditions, their music, their national character. The woman’s knowledge seemed boundless, especially contrasted to Kowalski’s own.
He had travelled the world, sure. But most of it was spent in combat in the worst hellholes of that world; and time not spent in combat was spent either in training or in partying. Culture was not something that had been on his agenda.
It was something that had been mentioned to him at Officer Candidate School at Pensacola two summers before, and something he had paid lip service to in order to pass out as an Ensign. But the truth was, he had typically divided people into two groups over the years – friends and enemies – and had given no more thought to further cultural niceties.
But Asami started to open his eyes to the beauty all around him, and he was at once amazed by what he was experiencing, and at the same time profoundly embarrassed by his own previous narrow-mindedness.
When Asami was released from hospital, the pair continued to spend time together, travelling round the teeming city of Bangkok to experience some of the things they had been discussing.
To Kowalski, every mouthful of food tasted delicious, the sound of the Thai language all around him like a beautiful song; even the polluted air seemed to smell fresh and sweet. It was as if a veil had been taken from him, and he was seeing the world for the first time, a man rediscovering his senses after years of deprivation.
They had been standing in the warm rain by the Chao Phraya River, Kowalski filled with wonder at the sight of traditional riverboats travelling against a backdrop of gaudy neon lighting, when he had first kissed her.
He might have had a girlfriend back home, and she might have been on the run from an abusive husband, but it seemed like the most natural thing in the world; and Asami had responded in kind, two lovers kissing in the rain.
They made love soon after, and once again, Kowalski had his eyes opened as she taught him to slow down, to appreciate every touch and caress.
His two week break came and went, his SEAL buddies had flown back to the United States, and still Kowalski remained in Bangkok. He had another couple of weeks left before he had to report for duty, and he was determined to spend every moment he could with Asami.
What would happen then, he didn’t know. He was half-planning on inviting her back to the United States with him when the unthinkable happened.
They were asleep in bed in the room they had rented in the Khao Sing Apartments, Kowalski’s arm round her shoulders, her head on his chest, when the door splintered to pieces, wood showering the room.
Kowalski hardly had time to open his eyes before the room was filled with men, three of them hauling Asami, naked, out of the bed, ripping her from him and throwing her on the floor.
Kowalski, also naked, was half-way out of bed when he was struck on the back of the head by something hard and heavy. He saw stars instantly and collapsed to one knee, head spinning.
He vaguely saw movement in front of him, men coming towards him with stilettoes and meat cleavers. In his peripheral vision, he saw Asami being dragged from the room by her hair.
The sight was enough to propel Kowalski into action, and he leapt forward, encasing the arm of the man with stiletto in his hands, twisting the blade sideways into the man next to him, cutting savagely across.
The first man’s grip loosened as the second man dropped to the ground, and Kowalski ripped the dagger from him and plunged it through his neck, blood from the arterial spray covering his face and naked body as he pulled the knife back out.
He never stopped moving, a blur of action in the dark room as he checked a blow from a meat cleaver with his forearm, contacting the attacker’s wrist below the blade. His stiletto went through the man’s heart an instant later, buried so deep that Kowalski couldn’t pull it back out.
Another cleaver arced in at him and he angled his body away at the last moment, the edge of the blade slicing across his ribs, his own blood spurting across the room. But he ignored the pain, bending to collect the dead man’s meat cleaver and hacking away at his attacker’s shins with the brutal weapon.
The man cried out in a feral mix of surprise and pain, and Kowalski jumped to his feet and buried the cleaver through the man’s collarbone, powering diagonally down through the body halfway to the lungs.
The fractured, gruesomely bloody body dropped heavily to the floor and Kowalski realized there was nobody else near him; the others had gone, taking Asami with them.
He picked up another cleaver from the floor and raced from the room, naked and bloodied.
Someone was waiting for him outside, and Kowalski barely managed to duck in time as the club almost took his head off; he cut sideways as he ducked, slicing the cleaver cleanly through his attacker’s abdomen, loops of grey intestine spilling out across the hallway floor.
Up ahead he saw three men dragging Asami with them, turning the corner towards the stairs, and he gave chase, legs pumping as he sprinted down the hallway.
He caught them at the stairwell, hacking down through the first man’s head with the cleaver, fracturing it wide open. He pivoted swiftly to the other side, burying the cleaver through the next man’s face, shattering bones and teeth as it passed through.
The last man was faster, slicing his own dagger across Kowalski’s chest, narrowly missing his throat; and then the dagger was arcing back towards him again and Kowalski managed to get his foot up, kicking the man away.
The thug staggered down two of the steps then regained his balance, pulling Asami down with him, arm round her neck, dagger to her throat.
He screamed at Kowalski in Thai, indecipherable and furious, and Kowalski could see blood begin to leak from Asami’s pale skin as the dagger pressed deeper.
Kowalski regarded the man carefully as he watched him retreating down the stairs with Asami. He raised his hands slowly above his head in pacification, cleaver held loosely as he calculated vectors, angles and timings.