by Jeff Schanz
They shot us up with some kind of drug. Bony got half the injection, I got the other half. No idea what it was. Sodium pentothal, maybe? Some kind of opiate to make us talk easier, or maybe keep us numb longer? I don’t know. Whatever it was, it burned inside me and made me feel even angrier and more violent than I thought possible, plus a little delusional. Even as beat up as I was, I was sure if I could get free I could kill them all with my bare hands, but it didn’t matter with the secure bonds that tied us down. After they injected us, their torture got a lot worse.
The black-scarved guy started in on Bony first. First, he gut-punched Bony, and then the guy made little punctures on Bony's skin with a long, curved blade that looked a scimitar. The goateed guy asked Bony questions about the drug operation. Stuff like: How much did the Americans know? Who sent us? Were we CIA? I don't remember all the questions because I was nodding in and out from concussion, and maybe drugs. But whatever Bony answered, he would get punched some more. I had the weird feeling that the questions didn’t matter. That lasted a while, then the goateed guy nodded and black-scarf started swinging the sword.
He chopped off Bony’s right foot. It came off clean. Bony screamed. Black-scarf didn’t even have time to gloat before he slapped a heated brand to the stump, and then covered the thing in a gasoline-soaked bandage and lit it on fire. Bony wailed for a few seconds before he passed out. He woke up a few minutes later and screamed again. I jerked in my bonds, but I wasn’t going anywhere. I got gut-punched for the effort, then slammed in the head with a piece of wood. I passed out again, and when I woke up, Bony was still alive but had lost the other foot. Same thing had apparently happened with a smoldering bandage on that one too. Bony was no longer sane. He was just crying and babbling. Goateed guy wasn't even asking any questions. They were just torturing Bony for their own sick-as-fuck amusement. We had both told them close to the truth. We had all agreed to say that we were a rogue squad that had chased some guys here and were on our own. We weren't sanctioned by the Army, or anyone else. The CIA probably knew about us, but they didn't ask and we never talked with them directly. Anyway, no one was going to help us, and we knew that going in, so we just agreed to say we went rogue and were on our own, which was almost true. But goatee didn't care. And Bony lost his left hand.
Bony jerked and squirmed but had lost the moisture in his mouth to make crying noises when they burned the stump again. He just wheezed pitifully, incoherent. He should have been dead from blood loss, trauma, or heart attack, or something. I had no idea how Bony was staying alive. But the two assholes weren’t done yet, and for no reason at all, Goatee decided that Bony’s right hand would be next to go.
I was cursing like I had Tourette’s. I had no idea what I was saying, I was just trying to get their focus off Bony. It didn’t work. They just said I’d be next. But I didn’t want to wait. I was trying to delay Bony’s torture any way I could, even with my own death, so I kept hurling insults.
“Hey, you dickless fuckhead! Untie me and I’ll take you on. Just you and me! Let’s go! Or are you afraid? Motherfucking pussy!? After I kill you, I’m gonna fuck your wife. I’ll bet she’s a fucking goat.”
Black-scarf hit me in the head with the flat of his sword, and luckily I didn’t blackout. And I didn’t quit. I have a weird defense mechanism to crack jokes in dire moments, but this time I was intending to piss them off so much they’d just kill us both quickly.
I kept on. “You are dickless aren’t you?! You afraid of me? Forget him and untie me, and let’s do this, just you and me. You dickless pussy! I bet when you jerk off, you have to use a pair of tweezers. Your women become suicide bombers because they’re not allowed to be lesbians, and they can’t stand sucking dicks that smell like a goat ass.”
None of it worked. The bastard just stabbed me deep in the side, then continued to desecrate Bony.
Black-scarf grinned at me when he sliced off Bony’s testicles. Bony cried voicelessly and there was nothing he could do but just keep crying. I was crying for him, too. Black-scarf leered at me the whole time he cut. He threw the bloody flesh to the dogs, who fought each other for it.
They left us alone for a few minutes while they talked in the other room. I had no idea why since neither us was going to live long enough to tell anyone what they said. Or shouldn’t have. It made no sense what they were doing, or why, and why Bony was still alive, somehow. I listened to Bony sobbing and tried to console him, though he wasn’t listening to anyone in this world. He just kept saying the same thing over and over.
“Sorry, Kay. So sorry, Kay.”
Kay was Kaylee, his fiancée, the one that was waiting for him to come home so they could get married. At first, I thought he was apologizing to her for dying before he could get home. But as I listened to him, he sounded guilty. He wasn’t apologizing for dying, he was apologizing for wanting to. He didn’t want to go home, even if they stopped right then. They had taken everything from him, physically and mentally, and he wanted to end it all as soon as possible. He almost got his wish.
They came back in and grinned at me. The last thing they did to Bony was take that big sword and sliced open his abdomen. His intestines fell out like sausage links. They hung down, and some spilled onto the floor. Goatee-guy and black-scarf smiled to each other like this was some fun game they were enjoying. The mongrels tore at the intestines while Bony was still alive. The sound that came from Bony’s mouth was more like a hiss than a scream, and only for a moment before he lost consciousness, or maybe died. I don’t think he lasted more than a few seconds. He was finally still and I turned away and closed my eyes. I chose to believe he died then. I hope I’m right. Hope to God.
Black-scarf didn’t waste much time crowing about Bony’s death, he jabbed me with his sword, widening up the wound in my side he had stabbed before. It was pretty deep and damaged some organ and caused a good amount of blood and other fluid to gush out. More dogs came in and two of them waited underneath me for what they thought was coming. Goatee asked me one question: Did the CIA know we were here?
How the hell would I know? I assumed the CIA knows everything, but they probably didn’t care who was here, including us. But I told him to go blow a camel. I told him it looked like he had camel semen stains on his shirt. I figured I was dying no matter what, and still wanted to provoke the asshole to kill me faster and skip the torture. I called him a few other things I can’t remember. Black-scarf looked positively giddy as he lifted the sword back to chop off one of my feet.
That’s when the whole place blew up.
At the time I had no idea what had happened, but later I found out it was a drone strike that the CIA had ordered. Apparently, they had spotted The Russian’s helicopter heading to our village, thought the place was sparse enough to risk the collateral damage, and hit the building where they had seen The Russian go in. They didn’t get The Russian, but they accidentally freed me. Just a dumbass piece of luck. But at the time, it felt like the hand of God coming down to smite the evil assholes. They say anticipating a drone strike is scarier than the actual blast, but whoever says that hasn’t been in a drone strike. I was. Everything just became color and pain. Red, yellow, white colors all swirled around me, and ten thousand things pelted me like a squad of Mike Tyson’s punching me all at once. I blacked out almost immediately, which didn’t last long. I was conscious soon enough to feel stuff still raining down on me that had blown into the sky.
The building we were in became nothing more than a blackened concrete shell with burning debris piled up in it. No roof, no tops of the walls, and the interior was just smoldering splinters. I saw the place where Bony had been, and he was gone. Black rubble was there in place of him. I hoped he had disintegrated. He didn’t deserve to be a corpse like that. Being obliterated was better. As for me, the blast had broken up the thing I was tied to. I have no idea what blocked the blast killing me, but something did. The ropes were still on my wrists, not attached to anything, anymore. I managed to ge
t to my feet, even though my equilibrium was screwed, and I couldn’t hear anything other than a loud ringing in my ears. There was blood all over me, I had no idea how much of it was my own.
I saw the goateed guy dazed and sitting on the ground clutching his leg. His only leg. His other leg was on the other side of the room. The black-scarved guy’s sword was lying on the ground. I picked it up and approached the goatee guy.
I told him, at least I think I told him, I still couldn’t hear well, that he didn’t deserve even one leg. So I hacked at the leg. It almost came off. I didn’t have any equilibrium to aim. I was going to leave him there to a pitiful life, but then I decided I had seen soldiers who had both legs removed and still lived decent lives. So I swung the sword at his head, and again it almost came off. Not quite. Close enough.
I looked around for black-scarf. He and I were gonna have it out before I left. I imagined an epic fight, but it ended up very differently.
He was outside, crawling along the ground, trying to hold in his intestines from a shredded abdomen. Karma is a bitch. I kicked him until he turned over, then put my boot into his mangled guts. He squealed like a pig.
“God isn’t great,” I snarled. “He doesn’t give a fuck about you, or he wouldn’t let some infidel chop off your hands.”
I took my time. So help me, I enjoyed every second of it. I cut off each foot and hand, then I sliced the tendons in his knees and elbows.
I kept taunting him. “And if there’s virgins in heaven, you aren’t going to have a dick to fuck them. So, enjoy your dickless time in hell.”
I buried the sword through his crotch, into the ground underneath him. He screamed louder than I ever recall hearing anyone scream and flailed at me with his bloody stumps. He had so much savage rage and wouldn't stop even when the tendons and muscle started to unravel, it was eerie. I finally took a fence post and slammed it through his open stomach and into the ground. He was staked to the ground, right through his guts, and pinned by a sword in his crotch, and he didn't have hands or feet to pull either of them out. When I left him he was still barely alive and cursing me in some language I didn't recognize.
The entire village was in hiding. The streets were empty. I took dead goatee-guy’s pants and sandals and put them on, then found an AK-47 in the ruins of the building the drone had hit, and slung it on my back. I took the gasoline they had used to burn Bony’s stumps with and splashed it on all the bodies including black-scarf, who was somehow still alive. I lit the thing and walked away.
I was too much in shock to know what I was doing, but apparently, I walked all the way to the Afghan border before I lost consciousness from blood loss. I should have been dead. Somehow I wasn't.
They told me an Army company was running a convoy near the border and found me. I woke in a hospital and wondered if the whole thing had been a dream. But the stitches in my side, and the pile of dog tags, told me it wasn’t. My recovery was hailed as a miracle because they said my injury should have been fatal without immediate treatment, and it had been a few days before they found me.
It took a few more days just to get me in a state to talk. The Army and the CIA both wanted to debrief me, along with a psychiatrist. I told them I was going to tell this story only once, then never tell it again. Ever. So the psychiatrist recorded the session and shared it with everybody.
They gave me a purple heart and sent me home. I was a civilian again and was supposed to go and live my life. But I had already lived my life. My squad had walked into Hell, and I was the only one who walked back out. I would’ve given my life for any one of them and they all died instead of me. Why did I deserve to live? Why couldn’t the assholes have tortured me first, and when the drone hit, Bony would’ve been the one to get revenge and go home to his fiancée. My life didn’t feel like mine anymore. God was dicking around with me. Whatever life I was being allowed to live, it would have to be an entirely new one. So I buried the old one and tried to forget, until now.
* * * *
Brandt took a deep breath and looked down at Lia. He hoped she wasn’t too disgusted or disturbed by his explanation of what happened to him six months ago. But just as she had told him painful memories to help him understand her, she needed to know this in order to understand him. She looked back at him with doleful eyes, tuned into his every word.
“When I got home, I lived with my brother,” he said. “He couldn’t understand what I had been through, even though he tried. But I was consumed with vengeance. I couldn’t think of anything else other than getting back at The Russian, destroying him regardless of what happened to me. I talked to the CIA, but they dicked me around. The FBI didn't want to deal with it and considered him the CIA's problem. Some people in high places in the LAPD had been bribed, so even good cops told me to give it up. I even talked to my buddy in the U.S. Army Special Forces, but he said he couldn't do anything without authority from much higher up, and they all knew it was damned near impossible to catch this guy. Frustrated and impatient, I decided to take matters into my own hands. I was going to destroy The Russian by myself, even if I had to do it bits at a time, starting with blowing up his facilities until he got pissed and came after me. And if I died in the fight, then all the better. I had a death wish. And I wanted to take as much of him with me as I could.
“I finally got his attention. So much so, that he found out exactly who I was and came after my brother in a hit that was supposed to look like a simple home invasion. My brother isn’t a weakling and defended himself well, and wasn’t hurt. But he had a wife, too, and it was a matter of time before they would come again. So I got my brother and wife safe, sent them to Canada, then I went underground. The Russian had only one more big facility in southern California. I destroyed all the rest in that area. He couldn’t find me, so I set a trap.
“I acted like I had confederates. I told one of his lackeys that I had set explosives in his last facility, but I’d stop my guys from blowing it if they let me meet with The Russian and take a hefty bribe, then I’d stop and maybe I’d switch sides.
“We set up to meet at a marina. They told me The Russian lived on a big yacht, and tended to stay in international waters a lot, so he was way offshore. They were going to drive me out there to meet with him. I had snuck down to the marina the previous night, planning to install a bomb with a remote detonator, but I was surprised to see there was already one there. Apparently, these assassins like to blow up their evidence, which could include their boats. Easier than washing blood off of it, I suppose. Anyway, I knew the lead guy would have the detonator, and he would probably come on board with me, subdue me somehow, and eventually kill me and blow up the boat remotely. But I had other plans. I’d let them think they had me at their mercy, and then I’d kill them, and drive the boat right into The Russian’s yacht and blow it.
“Three guys got out of the car at the marina. They were definitely assassins just pretending to be associates. I had guessed everything right so far. Two got on board with me, and one followed in another boat. I hadn’t counted on two guys with me, but maybe I could still swing it. They had a GPS with the yacht's location. I guess they didn't figure it would matter if I knew it. Once we were past the marina, one guy tried to tie me up. He failed and died with my screwdriver in his throat. I kicked the other guy overboard. The following boat picked him up, then sped up to catch me. I hit the throttle and headed out where I hoped the yacht was. We got somewhere near your island when my boat ran out of gas. It had never been intended to go that far. Overconfident assholes. They caught me, started shooting, and I ducked low. When they tried to board me, I jumped and hit the remote detonator. Boom. You know the rest.”
Lia blinked and shook out her arms. She hadn't moved during the entire story and the circulation needed to be reinvigorated. She sat up too far into the sunlight, then ducked back just below the shaded area of the wheelhouse. Then she grimaced and stood all the way up anyway, risking the exposure. She stepped over to Brandt and hugged h
im. He hesitated, then put his left arm around her. She held him for several seconds before she let go and ducked back down onto the bench.
“I’m so sorry, Brandt,” she said. “But I’m glad you were able to tell me.”
He nodded. “We have a few things in common, I guess. I’m glad you told me your story, too.”
She smiled sadly. “We’re a pair, aren’t we?”
The thought was both appropriate and ironic. “That we are.”
CHAPTER 26
The little trawler was safely tucked into its slip at the Catalina Island marina. Brandt helped Lia off at the stern and she bounced around on the dock enamored by the sight of everything. The sun was fairly strong at mid-morning, so she had snapped open her mother’s old parasol. Her clothing covered everything except her face, and the parasol would keep that in shade, plus she had added a pair of dainty white gloves to her ensemble. She was about to start walking down the dock with Brandt when she noticed something on the boat.
“Lia?” she said, looking at the stern of the trawler.
Her shortened name was painted there. It was the last thing Brandt had done before he had gone back to get the map from her library.
He shrugged. “A boat has to have a lucky name. I thought you’d like it.”
