by Scott Blade
Romey had asked me to stick around, but for what? I needed to sleep. I could just as well sleep on a bus out of this town, out of this county, and out of California.
“We got a stop.”
“Where is it?”
“It’s the same direction. About three miles on the edge of downtown. Just head that way,” he said and pointed.
I nodded.
“But the bus don’t stop but twice a day and you missed the first one. I think the second one is at eight p.m.”
I nodded again, turned to walk out the door. I stopped in the doorway, looked across the parking lot, and looked back at him. I said, “Wait ten minutes after I leave. Go over to that dumpster on the corner. You’ll find your gun and bullets underneath it.”
He nodded. I wasn’t going to steal his gun.
“Ten minutes. Not a second more. I hate for some kid to come along and steal it.”
“I got it.”
I walked away, left the empty gun and the bullets like I said. Five minutes later, I was down the street and on my way to find a bench to sleep on, like a homeless man.
CHAPTER 14
I HAD WALKED THE BETTER PART of three miles and was passed by several vehicles going my way like the downstream side of traffic. Most American made. Most in the form of a pickup truck or an SUV. I’d say it was about eighty percent trucks.
The incoming traffic was a slightly different variation. I’d seen about sixty percent trucks, twenty percent SUVs and the rest split between a few big rig trucks and compact cars. Most of the big rig trucks had out-of-state plates, mostly Oregon and Washington.
I started to come across signs that indicated I was nearing the end of town. There were some places to eat, a couple of small shopping malls, and a gas station. On the end of the strip, I found the bus stop that the clerk at the motel had told me about. It wasn’t much. There were two benches with no cushions or covering, but at least they were empty and they were long enough for me to lie down and stretch out on.
The benches were on a service drive off the highway, just in front of one of the strip malls. In between the benches there was a telephone pole with a plastic plaque on it. The plaque was a sign with the bus schedule printed on it. I glanced over it and it was as the clerk had told me. The next bus was at night, at 20:00.
I’d picked the cleaner-looking of the two benches. I brushed off the snow, plopped myself down and lay out straight. The ends of my feet hung off the bench. I stared up at the sky.
Good thing for me that it was overcast. It’d be easier to nap in the daylight, when there was little of it.
I closed my eyes.
CHAPTER 15
MY EYES HAD STAYED CLOSED for probably twenty minutes, although I wasn’t sure exactly. I had power-napped, again. I did this until a voice came from a guy standing directly over me.
The voice said, “Get up!”
I opened my eyes and squinted. I saw four guys standing over me. I looked up, but I couldn’t make out their faces. I felt my cheeks colder than I remembered when I went to sleep.
Snow fell slowly and gently from the sky. I sat up, rubbed my face. I asked, “What is this?”
The voice said, “That’s him.”
I looked at the guy and immediately recognized him. He was big, with a huge nose like a snout. It was the MP from the gate at the base.
He said, “Get him up!”
The other three guys were smaller than him, but just as brawny. Two of the guys were bald, but all three had facial hair and none of them wore it kept up neatly.
I said, “Fellas, what the hell is this?”
Two of them put their hands on me, each taking an arm, and they hauled me to my feet. Now I was awake.
I looked at them, face by face. I said, “Guys, you don’t want to be putting your hands on me.” I was nicer than I had expected, more than I usually would’ve been. Maybe it was because I was tired. Maybe it was because I’d seen the big guy in uniform, not a sailor’s, but a Marine’s. And that still meant something to me.
The MP said, “Shut up!” And he looked around the strip mall, stared at the parking lot.
It was moderately full of vehicles. He said, “Over there.” He pointed at a space between a panel van and a couple of SUVs. Which I didn’t like the look of.
They dragged me off in that direction. I pulled my arms out of their grip and said, “I can walk.”
I walked over to the direction that they wanted me to. My first thought was that they were going to try to put me in their vehicle, but I crossed that off as a possibility because the MP looked around for a certain type of place. He wasn’t searching where he had parked his car. The lot was too small to forget. They wanted me to go to that spot because it was cornered off from street view.
We made it between four big vehicles, including the panel van.
I turned and asked, “What is this about?”
The three other guys circled around me, taking a stance around me like I was the center of a clock face and they were all the right angles that the hands could make. The MP was at the twelve o’clock position, while the others were at the three, six, and nine.
I kept my feet planted, swiveled around and looked each in the eyes. My hands were down by my sides, relaxed and obvious.
The guy behind me, who was the heaviest of the four, asked, “This that boy?”
The MP nodded and asked, “You know why we’re here?”
“If I knew that I wouldn’t have asked twice.”
“Watch yer mouth, boy!” the fat one behind me said. I didn’t look back at him. I hadn’t seen that these guys were the local roughneck types. They were dressed normal for this area. Clean shirts. Clean jeans. Thick coats. But he had spoken with that less-than-educated English, which I’d heard before.
I said, “You planning to do something to me? Cause I’ll tell you now that’s not going to work out. Not for you.”
The MP said, “This him.”
The guy to my left said, “You’re friends with that Islam.” I wasn’t sure if he said it as a statement or a question.
I said, “I don’t know what an Islam is, not the way you mean it. I know it’s a religion making up almost two billion people.”
The MP asked, “You’re friends with Turik?”
“So that’s what this is about. I’m afraid I got bad news for you. I don’t know him.”
“You’re that guy they drug in today. I saw you with my own two eyes,” the MP said.
“Sorry. You are wrong.”
“Then why they drag you in?”
“I told you. I don’t know him. You want to know why they dragged me in, then I suggest you jump up several ranks. Maybe go to college. Become an officer.”
He scoffed at me.
The MP wore a thick peacoat, brown and all buttoned up. I couldn’t see if he had his uniform shirt on or not underneath. But he was still wearing his uniform pants and combat boots. He wore a Cleveland Browns ball cap. I liked that team, but I preferred the Cubs, not that I took sides. It was just that at the moment, I was more of a Chicago fan.
I said, “Say what you gotta say so I can go back to my bench.”
The fat guy said, “We don’t like American-hating Islamists here.”
“That’s good. But I’m none of those things.”
The MP said, “They brought you in. I saw it.”
“Yeah. We established that already.”
“They brought you in, which means that you must be linked to that Muslim.”
I stayed quiet.
The MP looked dead in my eyes. He said, “You see that Muslim killed two of my friends.”
I nodded.
The guy to my right finally spoke. He said, “Three of our friends.”
The MP said, “They had families. Sons. Daughters. They had wives.”
I rose my hands up, just above my hips. I kept my palms open and hands flat. I said, “Look, guys. I get your anger. I’m sorry for your friends. But I’m telling you point blan
k. I didn’t know Turik. I don’t have anything to do with the whole thing. I’m just a guy trying to sleep.”
The MP said, “Kelly said you aren’t a nobody. The way I hear it. He said you are a prime suspect. The way I hear it. You are a huge question mark.”
I shook my head and said, “I’m really not. I just want to be left alone.”
I breathed in and breathed out. I could feel fatigue in my breaths. Every time I inhaled, I felt lightheaded and I even fought off a yawn. Not good. It meant that I was so tired, not even adrenaline was waking me up.
In the SEALs, we had four important points in hand-to-hand combat. First, protect your face; second, stay standing and keep moving; third, hit hard; and last, haul ass. I added my own personal points to it. Which means that I threw out three of them.
The first and the second point are second nature to a SEAL. No need to worry about protecting my face when I just protected everything. For the second one, I tried to dance around as much as possible. And the fourth one I always threw out. I didn’t run. Not my style. Not when I was alone. Better to execute your opponents first. Take them out of commission and there’s no need to haul ass.
My personal favorite was the third point. Hit hard. So, I did. No need to talk this out.
The MP said, “Kelly told you to stay in town. If you aren’t with Turik, then why you running away?”
I didn’t strike right off the bat. The MP was the biggest guy and military trained. And the other three had been drinking. That was apparent because I’d smelled the booze on them a mile away.
Therefore, the MP would be the toughest opponent. Best to take him out first. He spoke some more, but I ignored him, concentrated on my tactics. I looked over my left shoulder, clocked the other three guys with my eyes.
The MP said, “I asked you a question. I’m not gonna ask again.”
At least that’s what I thought he was going to say because I palm struck him straight in the big nose—fast, like a bolt pistol used to fire one quick bolt into the brain of cattle for the slaughter. The strike stunned him. His nose cracked and splintered, which wasn’t surprising because it had been a big target.
The guy to my left was my next target, but the quiet guy to my right was a surprise. I shifted, fast to the left. I fired a right cross, fist closed, and from my hip. The guy moved on his feet, dancing left, turning his head—instinctively. I busted a big fist into his left ear. It was hard, not as hard as the palm strike had been, but I knew it did major damage. Maybe busted his eardrum, or at least rang a loud bell in his head.
The guy that had been to my right was now behind me. He wasn’t a big guy, but wasn’t small either. He was wiry and fast on his feet. He’d leapt on me from behind, locked his arm around my neck. He started a rear chokehold. He had strong arms and a powerful grip.
I struggled, weaved around, but he had me.
He spun me to the fat guy. The fat guy said, “You’re gonna pay for that.”
He fired a right jab at me. Jabs are the weakest punch. They come straight out and back in. Not much shoulders or waist thrown in. Therefore, there’s little momentum.
I didn’t wait for his jab. I rocked back on my feet and catapulted forward. The guy behind me was skilled, but had no mass about him. He felt around one hundred seventy-five pounds at the most. I was lighter than I’d been in years, but I still had fifty pounds or more on him. I lifted him off his feet and wrenched him forward. The fat guy’s fist skimmed by my face and caught the guy over my shoulder, right in his eye. Which stunned him and he loosened his grip. I had pulled him far over my back enough so that when the fat guy jabbed him in the face, I jumped back from bent knees. I came up off my feet and used my weight plus gravity. We landed in a heap back on the hard, cold concrete. I tried to ball myself up so that he’d feel all my weight in his stomach.
The blow was bad. The guy let out a gasp and even spit up blood. My head had slammed back into his when we hit the ground, like dropping a cannonball onto a watermelon. It wasn’t pretty. He spat out a couple of teeth.
I rolled as fast as I could and hopped back up to my feet.
The fat guy looked at me. The odds had shifted. And his expression changed drastically.
The guy who used to be at the nine o’clock position was getting back up. I waited for him to get on all fours, but I stared on at the fat guy. I pretended not to notice the nine o’clock guy. I took a step toward the fat guy and he backed away. The nine o’clock guy was back on his feet.
I turned, quickly, and kicked him right in the nuts. He screeched like a bird and toppled forward, hands grabbing his groin in a desperate attempt to save what was left.
I turned and looked at the fat guy. I said, “Now, it’s just you and me.”
I saw fear on his face and then I felt the adrenaline. It was a little late, but it was there.
“Don’t. Don’t ya hurt me,” he said.
“I warned you,” I said.
“We were only tryin’ to scare ya. We just wanted answers.”
“I’d say you got an answer. Do you know what the lesson here is?”
He shook his head and backed up into the hood of an SUV. I stopped a few feet from him. He said, “What? What’s the lesson?”
“You assumed that you knew me. You assumed that you measured me up. You assumed that I had something to do with your friends getting killed. And you assumed that you four would be enough to take me on. You were wrong.”
He nodded, stayed quiet.
“Get your facts straight next time.”
He nodded, frantically.
“You know what happens now?”
“You…You gonna hurt me?”
I faked him out, like I was going to throw a right cross, but I stopped it.
He flinched, even raised his hands to defend his face.
“Relax, I’m not interested in you. Better avoid me from now on. You see me coming, you turn tail. Got it?”
He nodded and said, “I got it.”
“That goes for your friends here too. Make sure they understand it.”
I turned and walked away, didn’t look back.
CHAPTER 16
I COULD’VE WAITED BACK at the bus stop. I could’ve been on my way out of town, but I decided I didn’t want to be in the area if someone had called the local police. I’d had enough of handcuffs and cops for one day. In case they were looking for me, I thought, Where’s the last place they’d expect to find me?
I sat back in the same diner that I was in earlier. I sat at a different booth this time, but the same waitress was here. She came over to my table and said, “You?” like a question.
I nodded and said, “Coffee.”
“Did the cops talk to you?”
I nodded again, said, “I already spoke with them. Don’t worry. I’m not mad at you.”
She nodded and asked, “You want something to eat?”
“Just the coffee.”
She walked away. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. I could return to the motel and demand that the guy give me another room, but I didn’t leave him with the best impression of me. I doubted he’d forgive me so quickly. I couldn’t sleep on the bus stop bench anymore. My only option was to try and get a ride out of town or wait here all day and then walk back to the bus stop after dark.
Karen returned with the coffee. She said, “I’m real sorry for reporting you to the cops.”
“Don’t worry about it. I already told you I’m not mad. You’re just doing your civic duty.”
She nodded.
I started to look out the window. Then I turned back to her and asked, “Have you ever seen that guy before?”
“Oh yeah. I work five shifts a week. And he comes in here for the last three of them. Every week. Always sits at the same booth.”
“Three times?”
“Yeah.”
“Same times?”
“That’s right. Early morning, before he goes to the base. I guess.”
“He ever come in here
with anyone?”
“Oh, no way!”
“Why did you say it like that?”
“Like what?”
I asked, “You said it like it wasn’t possible for him to come in here with someone.”
“You know. ‘Cause he’s one of them.”
“What?”
“He’s a Muslim,” she said and shifted her weight to one foot. She peered around the diner, like she was looking to see if anyone heard her.
I nodded, stayed quiet.
“I don’t mean nothing bad by it. No one here mistreats him or anything. We just don’t have any of them around here. It’s unusual.”
“Hamber’s a small town.”
“Right. Most of the people been here their entire lives. People don’t leave here. Not normally.”
“What about the Marines?”
“Oh they are all from out of town.”
“Then not everyone here is from here.”
“Not everyone. I mean the locals.”
“Turik was the only Muslim Marine that you saw in here?”
She nodded. Which wasn’t unusual. Neither was it unusual to have a Muslim soldier, not in the rare sense. It wasn’t normal, I supposed. But I had known a few in my time in the service.
I asked, “How do you know he was the only one?”
“You know. Because he was Iraqi or whatever.”
“You mean he was Arab?”
She shrugged and said, “Whatever.”
“Did he ever speak to you? Small talk or anything?”
“Oh sure. He was a nice guy. Normally.”
“You mean he acted differently this morning?”
She nodded.
“What about his uniform?”
“What about it?”
“Did he ever come in here wearing it before?”
“Oh sure. He always went straight to work after here.”
I asked, “He wore the BDUs?”
She had a blank look on her face.
“He wore his woodland pattern uniform. The camouflage outfit that he was wearing this morning.”
She looked up at the ceiling for a quick moment, like she was pulling up files in in her brain. Then she said, “You know. I don’t think so. I think normally he wears a different uniform. Like an officer and a gentleman.”
