by Gabi Moore
“How did you know I was an American?” I asked, letting my hand fall down to my side.
“Did I mention that incidentally, right now the police are looking for a group of Americans who blamed for an attack on Italian civilians last Tuesday night? Apparently three women and one child went missing in Giudecca, and three men were killed in an explosion of some kind.”
He bit his lip, and I could see tears starting to form in his eyes.
“Not that you would know anything about that. You’re a Canadian Tourist, right?”
He stood up and walked away from the table.
My hand reached out toward the small of my back. I couldn’t remember if I had attacked those people or not, and I decided that to be on the safe side, I should be prepared to defend myself in the event that this man thought I did.
“The funniest thing about the current here at Laguna Veneta,” the man continued. “Did you know that there is a riptide that travels exclusively between Giudecca and Lido?”
He walked into the other bedroom and began to lift some of the furniture from its position.
“That’s where we are right now,” he laughed uncomfortably, “Lido.”
I stood up from the table in order to watch him. He didn’t have to pry too hard. The mattress was moved, and some loose flooring was cast aside. Then, the man was on his hands and knees digging through a concrete cell located just below the floor. After a moment, he produced a handgun.
Acting on instinct, I charged at the man.
Chapter 4 - Tyler
The knife was in my hand and soon the hilt of the blade was smashing down on the grip of his pistol hand.
With a smooth sequence of movements, I had positioned myself behind him, just to the left of the hidden alcove on the floor. The blade was pressed up against his throat and I held him just off balance.
He was a strong man for his age, but I still had him. The training that I had used was second nature to me. There was no room for hesitation. Had I had wished it to be the case, he would have been bleeding on the floor beneath my feet only seconds after my attack.
I would have probably killed him, but I noticed a set of dog tags fall down on the floor next to the gun. The tags had fallen out of the man’s closed fist when I had positioned myself behind him. He instinctively reached up to try and pry my arm away from his neck and had dropped the tags trying to defend himself. Seeing the tags brought a torrent of memories to my mind.
“Those are my tags,” I said. “That’s my gun. Why didn’t you tell me you had my things?”
I removed my arm so the man could speak, but I continued to hold the edge of the knife against the weathered skin of his neck.
“I was going to show you,” the old man said, “that I know you are more than you claim to be. Though, I feel as though given your demonstration of abilities, that is no longer necessary.”
I lowered the knife to my side, and I felt him relax.
He stepped over the gun and walked out to the kitchen in order to roll himself another cigarette.
“By the way,” he muttered, “your tags say your name is Tyler Franks. Not a lot of trust shown to the man who saved your life — you can’t even offer a real name.”
While the man was in the next room turning on the kettle once more, for another cup of pacification, I was holding the firearm in my hand.
The weapon felt like a natural extension of my body. Holding the weapon was like a ticket to a private theater. I stood arrested by my thoughts as the major events from the attack came rushing back into my mind.
It was late in the evening when we reached the dock outside of the mainland. The night was clear, and all of us were ready to go. We had been prepped before the flight over to Venice, and each of us knew our positions for the upcoming strike. There were five of us total. An elite team of SEAL operatives taking care of an international terrorist threat before the incident became too big for anyone else to handle.
The organization we were striking against was posing as a set of freedom fighters, but their desire for armaments posed a threat to neighboring countries. The Commander and Chief of the US military called for an assassination job on the primary target before things got out of hand. We were supposed to intercept an arms deal, eliminate the threat, and get out without anyone being the wiser.
The operation was fairly standard, and this wasn’t my first trip overseas for an assignment like this.
One member of our team was a rookie, named Joel, and we all teased him a bit about breaking him in on a mission like this. There was a certain amount of blind, macho, nationalistic bravado that pervaded the group. We all thought it was going to be a clean strike. After all, we were the best, and there was no reason to believe that things would go sideways.
Our equipment was light because this was primarily a stealth operation. The plan was to take the channels up through Venice, and into Giudecca. There was a warehouse building there, adjacent to the waterfront. Our intelligence had informed us that the hand-off was due to take place at midnight.
There were two marks.
One of them was an Afghani arms dealer named Benoit, and the other was the leader of an Italian rebel group we went by the name, Maurice. We thought we would go in, make the strike, get out, and be back home on American soil for brunch the following morning.
We couldn’t have been more wrong.
The boats we took across the water were styled after the classic rowboats of Venice. Wearing raincoats, we were able to disguise our comings and goings without having anyone take a second glance at our equipment. If anyone saw us, at most, perhaps they thought we were a late night athletics club, out for an evening on the water. Of course, the preliminary disguises were completely useless. Nobody was out on the water, and very few people were out on the street. If someone did notice, us, they didn’t give us a second glance.
We made our way across the primary channel, and into the close corridor waterways of Venice. There were no interruptions to speak of, and all of our minds were diligently focused on the task at hand. We were professionals, and we were in our element. The water was a comfortable friend that each of us had trained with as an integral part of our task force.
We exited the inner channels of the closest island and crossed the final waterway over to our strike point on Giudecca. Climbing out of the boats, and tying them up to one of the metal rungs set aside for that purpose was our first step. Leaving behind the coats, and stalking through the streets toward the warehouse was our second step. The warehouse was located in an alcove of buildings, and we only had to negotiate a couple of alleyways in order to find the entrance point. We were early by about fifteen minutes, which meant that we were right on time to intercept the parties before the main event took place.
With the coast clear, we popped the lock on a basement latch and ducked into the building.
The room was dark and smelled like a mixture of metal filings, dust, and the water from the channel. Not a single member of the team made a sound, as we cleared the basement. There weren’t any signs of lie present within the lowest floor of the building.
When we reached the inner stairwell which lead up from the basement, we knew something wasn’t right.
Joel had actually been the first to notice the sound, and the rest of us caught on quickly. A faint sound of crying could be heard through the thick door, and down into the stairwell of the basement. The crying sounded like it was coming from a child.
I began to grow uneasy.
Civilian presence went against the diagnostic plans we had made for our strike. The SEAL team is designed to be adaptive for all possible scenarios. Naturally, we needed to push forward, but I could tell that the rest of the team mirrored my anxiety in moving forward. When an element of civilian vulnerability is introduced into a strike scenario, the stakes are raised. The initial bravado of the attack is replaced by a more pensive and cautious sentiment.
The door which lead toward the first floor of the warehouse was latched
shut from the other side with a deadbolt. Our security specialist produced some military grade lock pick equipment from a leather case attached to his belt and made short work of the deadbolt.
In spite of how quiet we had been throughout the entrance to the building, and in spite of the precautionary oil that was placed on the hinges, the door blew our cover.
The rusted hinges creaked sharply when the door to the main room was opened. The sounds of crying stopped and my heartbeat began to thump wildly in my chest.
Chapter 5 - Tyler
I breathed in deeply through my nose, in an effort to calm myself and regain the level of focus which was required by our mission. The air held the anxiety of the group. Though our training prepared us, the stakes inherent to the situation were getting higher by the minute.
With our weapons drawn, we prepared to enter the first floor, and engage.
I lead the group through the door and made myself vulnerable to the primary attack. The four other members of my team followed me through the door and posted up at the positions mandated by our formula of operation.
We were able to clear the room with little effort, though the dispositions of the hostages were disconcerting, to say the least.
They were bound and gagged around a central pillar in the middle of a vacant floor. There were no other furnishings, and each of them was made to hold their hands above their head. Manacles were around each of their wrists, and rags were stuffed inside of their mouths. I watched their tears out of the corner of my eye as we secured the perimeter of the room.
With no sign of enemy combatants, we posted one man at the first-floor entrance, and one man at the entrance to the stairwell which lead up to the second floor.
Our security man worked through the crowd of seven hostages one at a time, removing their manacles, while Joel offered his consolations.
I remember hearing how soft and gentle he was while he interacted with the hostages. There were three men, three women, and one child in total. I remember being baffled at the hostage selection.
What type of person involves a child in a hostage situation, I thought.
I still recall the way the child’s eyes looked when they were being freed.
There was hardly any trust left within his eyes. The hostage situation had nearly stripped him down to a base level of fear. He didn’t even respond well to Joel’s sympathetic gestures and had to be consoled by one of the women who were set free. We tried to quiet the child down, but we were not successful. In retrospect, we should have simply left the gag in place before we left. Unfortunately, hindsight doesn’t provide any tools to fix previous mistakes.
We managed to undo four of the hostages before the child became too loud, and blew our cover. Even Joel lost his patience and forced the woman who was caring for the child to wrap her hand around the child’s mouth.
The sounds of men walking down the stairs set my nerves on edge. Combat was an inevitable reality, and we were primed to explode.
I grabbed the woman and child by the arm and dragged them over to the basement entrance. Joel followed suit and grabbed the two other women that had been freed by their arms.
We thrust them into the basement.
When I turned around to engage, I had to avoid the eyes of the three men that we couldn’t save. I knew that tears were rolling down their cheeks in that moment.
I’m sure that some of those tears were for the hopelessness present for them in that situation. There was no time to free them, and the chance of them dying in the crossfire was, unfortunately, high. My guess was that if they cried at all, it was because they could have been in a position to fight against their assailants. Instead, they were left helpless, and largely indefensible.
We could all hear the approaching boots on the concrete stairs. The sounds were the proverbial words written on the wall.
Our only chance was to prepare to strike first and hope that our training was sufficient enough to compensate for our lack of surprise advantage.
Joel and I were in a poor starting position when the attack first went off. I had to find an appropriate place for the most vulnerable of the hostages. I know that Joel felt the same way; that was humanity, not training.
With three guns leveled toward the entrance to the second-floor stairwell, the first few members of the opposing force made their way through the door.
The attack started with a single point of entry.
A lone gunman walked through the door. He had a black bandana wrapped around his face, and he carried a semi-automatic rifle. I heard the man begin to shout in Italian about how three of the hostages were missing, but his voice was truncated by a single shot of a silenced pistol. Even with the silencer, the weapon was loud enough to signal to everyone in the area that a gunfight had begun.
The man’s voice trailed off in a gurgle, as he choked on the blood seeping out from his neck.
The man who was covering the door shot low for the head and ripped open the man’s neck with a single bullet. As his body slumped against the wall of the stairwell, more voices went off in alarm. Those soldiers who remained in the hallway didn’t pour out to meet their fate as the others had but instead barked orders to regroup, and modify their attack. The first man’s life had amounted to warning flag for the benefit of his fellow terrorists.
I would have hated to have the sum of my life be a warning shot, but you get what you are looking for, as they say. Perhaps, he thought he was doing God’s work.
I still remember the loud noises made by the voices of the terrorists. Subtlety was completely absent in their procedure. I grew arrogant in that moment, thinking that they were amateurs.
Our team rushed to the door to position ourselves on either side of the stairwell. We knew better than take the enemy from low ground, and held our position in spite of the fact that we were itching to finish this battle quickly.
Standard operating procedure is to shut the lower door, or clear enough of a path so that in the event of a grenade, there is enough room to escape. Accessing the door wasn’t an option, and if we cleared a wider path, not only would we be in danger of getting shot, but we would be in the bullet path for the hostages, and the certainty of incidental casualties would increase.
A grenade bounced off of the floor at the bottom of the stairs and skidded across the room toward the central pillar.
My heart dropped into my stomach, and I watched as Joel dove toward the grenade. He tried to cover the blast up with his body or kick it out of the way if there was enough time. I knew there wouldn’t be enough time to manage and when I saw Joel head over toward the grenade, I knew that it would be the last time that I saw him alive.
Heroes are different than humanitarians, or at least, they are not always the same thing.
When the grenade went off, the three men were blasted with a spray of blood from Joel’s now shattered body. The life was gone from his body, but what was shocking was that the explosion was sequenced and much larger than I had anticipated. A series of explosions went off near the central pillar, as though coming from within the pillar itself.
I watched as the lights of the explosion illuminated the entire room, sending scatter shots of marble and concrete into the air around us. The three men attached to the pillar didn’t have a prayer of survival. There was only one thought in my mind, and it wasn’t even my own survival or the safety of the team.
Why? was all my mind was able to articulate.
I couldn’t understand why the terrorists would eliminate the hostages.
The chaos of the explosion knocked the remaining members of the team into the wall closest to the stairwell. We were losing ground and our composure.
While we were caught off balance, the remaining members of the terrorist team came down the stairs and opened fire. They were walking into a pincer attack, but unfortunately for our team, the firefight ended up causing casualties on both sides through friendly fire, as well as through enemy engagement.
As much as I don't like
to say it, our training went out the window in the height of that emotionally volatile situation. We lost our cool and opened fire. The results of our actions were a series of loud explosions erupting from the barrels of our weapons.
Following the gun blasts, there was also the sound of blood splattering on the wall. There were cries that rose into the air while the bodies were falling down to the floor.
I thought about the two women and the child in the basement. I prayed that they would find some way to escape and that they would stay well out of the way of the firefight.
The terrorist group continued to pour down the stairwell, and we were overwhelmed by their numbers.
When considering the general theme of the events to follow, I can only imagine how much more valuable it would've been to be consciously responsive, instead of instinctually operative.
There's a certain type of movement that takes place when the body reaches a peak state of arousal. Time tends to stop, and all actions around me become slow motion. I can only attribute this to the endless amount of training that I performed as a SEAL operative. The trance state saved my life to be sure, but I can’t help but wonder if things would have ended up differently if we had all retained a bit more control of our awareness.
Both bodies and shell casings hit the floor, and I was in a state of meditative purity. Only two people were standing at the end of this second assault. One other operative from the team and myself are eliminated the entire terrorist threat. The initial threat had been eliminated, the casualties were great, but the conflict was not over.
The remaining soldier and I turned to see the door first floor burst open, revealing a SWAT Team of Italian Police Officers.
The SWAT Team wasted no time in making immediate snap decisions about who we were, and why we were in the building.
