Hidden Threat

by Anthony Tata

  The class was still. Then one of the students started a slow clap, as if he was in a bad teenage movie, and the rest of the class joined in. Amanda rolled her eyes, gave a “whatever” shrug and moved back to her chair.

  “Well, Amanda,” Dagus began, clearly uncomfortable, “we might be able to fit that one in the Venture graduation edition. We’ll have to see.” He looked away as he spoke.

  “Good poem, Amanda,” Brianna Simpson whispered in her ear. “You’re such a bitch. Who needs a dad anyway?” It was more of a statement than a question.

  Amanda smiled.

  “Mom helped me write it, so I can’t take all the credit,” she whispered back.

  “Who cares? You’re getting published in the Venture. That’s, like, so cool.”

  Amanda looked at Brianna and gave her a fake smile. The bell rang and she grabbed her pack as she hollered over her shoulder, “See you later, Bree. Party tomorrow night. Don’t be late.”

  As she passed Dagus, she gave him a nonchalant wave and kept going. Once in the hall, she hooked a left toward the main entrance. Merging with the steady stream of bodies moving in all directions at all speeds, Amanda began checking off a mental list of things to do before everybody showed up tomorrow evening: get the ice, wrap the gag gifts, and get Gus to tap the keg. She was underage, but hey, this was graduation.

  Exiting the school through the wide double doors, she spilled out onto the concrete apron that ran the length of the school. She stopped to readjust her book bag when she felt someone staring at her. Looking up, she saw Principal Rugsdale looking in her direction.

  “Okay, Garrett, how you doing?” The retired Marine wore an aqua golf shirt with shark fins at all different angles and khaki pants. He was trim and muscular, looking every bit the Desert Storm veteran that he was. He had left active duty with the Marines shortly after that war and pursued his degree in educational administration. In his early forties, he was often mistaken for someone much younger. Generally speaking, the students admired him despite the universal incongruity of bearing affection for one’s principal.

  “Hi, Mister Rugsdale,” Amanda said, smiling. “I’m fine. You?” she added, as she walked past him holding up a hand, which he high-fived.

  “Great season, champ. Almost had it this year.”

  “Horseshoes and hand grenades,” she called over her shoulder as she waved with one hand, wiggling her fingers. She continued walking past his new red Mustang convertible in the number one parking spot.

  “Watch the car, Garrett!” Rugsdale smiled.

  She tossed him a playful look and pretended to touch the car with a finger, removing it quickly as if the red paint had burned her. “You and your cars!”

  ***

  Watching Amanda blend into the antlike swarm in the parking lot, he frowned. He wasn’t sure what it was, but it was something. Her touch, maybe. Yes, that had been it. The simple slapping of the hand, he thought, had transmitted a signal to him. The way some people with arthritis can feel a low-pressure system coming, he had a sixth sense about him regarding danger.

  “I know all about hand grenades,” he muttered out of her earshot. He had started out as a basic grunt in Desert Storm, wounded once in that war. In 2003 he had been recalled in the reserves and sent to Iraq to serve as a public affairs officer, of all things, in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Essentially he escorted the press around and wrote the occasional article for public consumption.

  Standing in front of the school, watching his flock, he nodded to himself. Yes, he knew all about danger.

  ***

  Amanda navigated her way through the parking lot, where she saw her mother’s Mercedes idling directly behind her car. As she approached she noticed the passenger side window silently lowered and stuck her head in.

  “Hi, mom, what’s up?”

  “Doctors appointment. Come on, jump in. I’ll give you a lift.” Her mother was wearing a white silk blouse atop a navy skirt. Amanda noticed the blue blazer was carefully hanging in the back behind the driver’s seat. Her mother’s Rolex watch hung loosely from her slender left wrist as she leaned over and rested her arm on the two o’clock position of the steering wheel.

  “What doctors appointment? I don’t need to see the doctor.” She was really confused now, as she had to get home to make final preparations for tomorrow night’s party the party. “And what about prepping for tomorrow?”

  “Just hop in. It’s a follow-up. Nina’s got the house about ready anyway.”

  Amanda got in the car and turned her head to the right and laid it against the headrest as she closed her eyes. Maybe this doctors visit would be the one, she sighed. Maybe they would figure out what was wrong with her.

  “So, did Gus get the keg?” Amanda asked, breaking the silence.

  Her mother continued staring straight ahead. Her most recent boyfriend, Gustavson D. Randel III, was a writer for Charlotte Magazine. A bona fide Charlotte bachelor, Gus Randel was handsome and smooth. She didn’t particularly care for him, although he had sided with her when she had approached her mom about the party. Still, she wasn’t sure, but she always felt as though he was interested in something besides her mother.

  “I don’t know anything about that, Amanda, remember?”

  “Oh, right. That’s our deal. Gotta keep you clean,” she responded sarcastically. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

  Thirty minutes later they were at the doctor’s office, where she went through a series of blood tests, which she had just had performed six months ago. As she was gathering her backpack to leave, she saw her mother talking to the office assistant at the billing counter. The lady had a round face and whitish blonde hair that was starched in place with hairspray. She had to be over fifty, Amanda thought.

  “Okay, now I need the total bill. I know insurance is going to pay for eighty percent of this, right?”

  “Yes, ma’am, but we will take care of all of that. You don’t need the bill.”

  “You’re new here, aren’t you?” Melanie grimaced at the woman, losing patience.

  “Well, I’ve been here a few months.”

  “I keep very detailed records. Amanda’s father is pretty bad about, you know, keeping up with child support payments and insurance, so I need it all.”

  The office assistant considered her comment and said, “I understand. I’ve had to deal with some of the same stuff.”

  “We have to stick together, don’t we?” Melanie commented as the lady handed her the paperwork in an envelope.

  On the ride back from the doctor, Amanda asked her mother, “What was that all about?”

  Melanie, seemingly occupied with driving, said, “Hmmm? What was what all about?”

  “The doctor visit. Did they figure anything out?”

  “We still don’t know. In the meantime, though, you’ve got to stay healthy, Amanda. Your lipids are terrible. So we’ll keep doing these visits as long as we need to.”

  Amanda stared out of the window to her right as her mother returned her to the school parking lot. She could feel her mother’s eyes on her as she wondered what the hell lipids might be and what it might mean if they were “terrible.”

  “Don’t you worry about anything. We’ve got the party tomorrow night. That’s what you need to be focused on.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Northwest Frontier Province, Pakistan

  Friday Evening

  Mullah Rahman had led his team into the cave after he watched the second helicopter explode early Friday morning. He wasn’t certain about the first one, but there was no question about the second one. The Balkan operators had done well.

  Indeed, very well.

  As they had made haste through the labyrinth from one side of the mountain to the back, through nearly a half mile of complex tunnels, dead-ends, and guarded posts, Rahman made the decision that they would keep going until they were deep inside their Pakistan sanctuary.

  So they walked, carrying their wounded and their spoils of victory, until nightfa
ll. Now they rested in a small village several miles from where the combat took place. Rahman directed his men to conduct triage, secure the prizes from the landing zone, and reload their ammunition quickly.

  The snow had been deep on the top of the mountain but they had been descending most of their trek and now were in relatively bearable temperatures for May. The small village was nondescript with several adobe huts that had been reinforced with mud and straw over the years and now could withstand a 500-pound bomb. He walked into the structure where the wounded were being treated by a team of two doctors. Both men had thick, untrimmed beards and wore scrubs, surgical gloves and surgical masks. The doctors’ compliance with Sharia law was as important as saving lives, thus the long, unsanitary beards.

  On the first table, he saw one of his Pakistani Taliban fighters bleeding from a severed leg. Rahman himself had tied the tourniquet, which the doctor had loosened, but he doubted the young man would survive. On the second table he saw Commander Hoxha, who had taken several shrapnel wounds to the chest. Blood was blowing in bubbles from the right lung as the doctor had removed the battlefield dressing and now worked furiously to patch the sucking chest wound.

  Rahman looked at Hoxha’s gear, piled in the corner on the dirt floor. He saw the tactical vest with empty AK-47 magazines, the AK-47, and an M4. Hoxha had radioed in to Rahman that he had captured an American rifle, always a prized possession of Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters. Often these weapons hung over the fireplaces of Muslim fighter homes the way American Civil War muskets hung over mantels in Virginia. Rahman picked up the M4 with all of its high tech gadgetry. He popped out the magazine, which still had several rounds packed against the spring. He pulled back on the charging handle and ejected a solitary 5.56 mm round which tumbled across the room.

  “Not in here,” the doctor working on Hoxha called over his shoulder to Rahman.

  Rahman nodded and left the operating room, moving into the room he used as his headquarters when they were operating from this village.

  He sat on the rug cross-legged and placed the M4 in his lap, studying it. He was experienced with its predecessor, the M16, and the two weapons looked essentially the same other than size. Rahman held the M4 up, the single light bulb hanging from the ceiling providing a weak yellow hue. There was no name that he could see on the weapon, but it did have a serial number just above the magazine well. The numbers were meaningless to him. He adjusted the weapon so that the light would shine on the opposite side. As he turned the rifle, he heard a sliding, scraping noise in the butt-stock, as if something were loose.

  He turned the weapon so that the muzzle was pointed down at the floor and he was staring at the machined backing of the telescoping stock. He saw a detent button and a cutaway portion of the butt. Similar to the M16, but smaller again, he knew this was where the soldiers normally carried their weapons cleaning gear.

  He pushed on the button, pulled on the miniature trap door and turned the weapon upside down.

  Into his lap fell a 4 GB flash drive.

  CHAPTER 4

  Hindu Kush, Afghanistan

  Saturday

  Sergeant Lance Eversoll sat inside Colonel Zachary Garrett’s command Humvee as it idled in the daylight. A bright sun had squeezed the purplish gray from the morning and now reflected off the white snow, making him thankful that he had his dark Wiley X sunglasses. He had parked the vehicle at the base of the mountain where the helicopter had crashed, and he had been monitoring radio transmissions for a full day since.

  As soon as they’d gotten word of the crash, another helicopter had ferried in a full platoon of infantry to secure the site. There were nearly one hundred people floating around the area, and with the enemy about four thousand feet above them in the mountains, no less.

  Right up there, he thought, looking at the top of the inhospitable ridge. He visualized the explosion and then the aircraft plummeting into the crevice below. He had listened to the entire fight on the radio, and his heart sank when he heard the reports from the AC-130 pilot that Colonel Garrett’s aircraft had gone down in a fireball. Moments before the crash, the radio had crackled with the constant stream of spot reports that the team had rescued the Navy SEAL. Eversoll had pumped his fist with a definitive Yes!

  Then came Rampage’s excited voice from the AC-130 gunship that they were concentrating fire on approximately twenty Al Qaeda moving toward the aircraft.

  Seconds later the pilot reported the explosion.

  He had participated in the subsequent rescue mission that had taken all of Friday and now into Saturday. Mortuary affairs soldiers milled around the wreckage like scavengers looking for scraps. There wasn’t much left. The Kunar River raged and tumbled at the bottom of the abyss. Some of the bodies had been found a mile downstream. Still others had yet to be located.

  Then the call came over the radio that the rescue operation had officially changed to a recovery operation. There was no one to rescue.

  Sergeant Eversoll wiped his forehead with his sleeve and then placed his advanced combat helmet back on, snapping the chinstrap tight. He gritted his teeth as he whispered the warrior ethos to himself. Always place the mission first. Never accept defeat. Never quit. Never leave a fallen comrade. These were words for a soldier to live by, he thought to himself. And to die by.

  He refused to believe that his role model was gone.

  “Sir,” he said, turning to Lieutenant Colonel Chizinski. “Sir, are they certain that they found Colonel Garrett’s dog tags?”

  Chizinski looked at Eversoll with sullen eyes.

  “Chopper exploded with a full tank of gas then fell four thousand feet into a damn crevice. They’ve only found the remains of four people.”

  “What about the other ten?”

  “Still looking.” Chizinski coughed into one hand and opened the other to reveal a charred piece of metal half the size of a credit card. “The colonel’s dog tags were in the wreckage.”

  Eversoll took the identification tag in his gloved hand and stared at it, touching the last remains of his commander: Zachary A. Garrett; O-Pos; 227-54-0987; Methodist.

  “His buddies called him ZAG,” Eversoll whispered more to himself than to Chizinski. He handed the piece of metal back to the lieutenant colonel. He stared into the sun and looked at the ground two hundred feet below them.

  He returned his gaze to the high mountain from which the helicopter had fallen. “What did the team up there see, anything?”

  “Not a damn thing other than some blown up mannequins in burqas.” Chizinski was angry too. “They went up there after the Air Force bombed the hell out of the place, though, so you might say they disturbed the crime scene.”

  “Damned AQ probably already snuck out the back door, don’t ya think?”

  “Probably.”

  After a moment, Eversoll had a thought. He looked at Chizinski and then back up at the ridge. “Sir, you think we can do an op up there?”

  “No need. Everything we’re looking for is down there.” Chizinski pointed into the gorge. Two rappel stations had been set up, nylon ropes tied around the winches of two Humvees. They actually had to climb down ropes to get to the crash site. “That’s the only op we’re going to be doing for the next few days.”

  Eversoll never removed his eyes from the top of the mountain towering over them like an impenetrable fortress.

  I don’t believe it, Eversoll thought to himself.

  Just then, a soldier clawed his way over the edge. He was a black sergeant whose face was streaked with mud. He scrambled over the lip of the cliff and went to one knee, then stood. Brushing himself off, he loosened the backpack he was carrying, then slipped it off his shoulders.

  Eversoll watched him as he carried the bag toward them and then pulled several baggies from the inside, laying them on the hood of the Humvee.

  “Five more identification tags. No more bodies. That thing burned, exploded, and then burned again, it looks like. After that, everything washed downriver.”

&
nbsp; Sergeant Eversoll looked at the tags. He knew them all. Driscoll (married with a baby on the way); Burns (father owned a cattle ranch in Wyoming); Svitek (loved to write, even did some poetry); Jackson (his first roommate at Fort Bragg, just bought a house with his new wife).

  And Garrett. It was the other tag. Soldiers carried two, one on the long chain and one on the short chain.

  There was no doubt, Colonel Garrett was dead.

  CHAPTER 5

  Spartanburg, SOUTH CAROLINA

  Saturday Evening (Eastern Time Zone)

  Saturday for Amanda was filled with the brisk handling of chores to set up the house for the party. Finally, with a chance to relax, she pulled on the lever of the keg.

  “Whoo-hoo!” Amanda screamed, as foam sprayed everyone near her, mostly young high school males seeking her affection. “Another one bites the dust!” She sang the lyrics to the Queen song as if she’d been raised during that era thirty years ago. “Another one down and another one down, another one bites the dust, hey, hey!”

  Suddenly there were two football players wearing Hawaiian shirts doing the bump with her, but not to the lyrics she was singing. Rather, they were grinding to the heavy bass rap chatter of Snoop Dog filling her plush suburban home.

  “Hey, guys,” Amanda said, teasing just a bit and then sliding from between them. She wore a see-through lace blouse over a light-green satin camisole that offset hip-hugger jeans. She was showing about six inches of midriff, which was enough to display the diamond bellybutton ring and a lean, narrow-hip figure honed by the best swimming coaches money could buy.

  “Gus! The keg’s broken,” she called into the study. She opened the door and saw him intently focused on the computer.

  “Broken?” Gus looked up with a smile on his face. “Is this your Southern way of asking for help?”

  “Maybe.” She gave him a sheepish smile.