by Chris Lowry
He ached all over, but it was a numb pain.
Tubes were connected to veins in both arms.
When he moved his head, he heard Arnoux.
"Ay, you're up."
The medic was tipped back in a wooden chair, legs propped up on the edge of the bed as he thumbed through a worn paperback.
He set the chair down and marched out of the room.
He was back a moment later trailing the Doc.
"Medicine is wearing off," said the Doc. "You weren't supposed to be up for another six hours or so."
He rooted in a drawer and pulled out a syringe.
"It's morphine," he told Brill and grabbed the line leading into his arm.
"Wait," Brill rasped.
Arnoux poured him a glass of water from a pitcher and passed it to him.
"Alright to drink?" the medic asked Doc.
"Slowly."
Brill took two sips of the lukewarm water and his throat relaxed.
His stomach did a quick flip flop but he fought down the nausea.
"He's green," Arnoux said.
"It's a side effect."
Brill swallowed hard and took another sip.
This time his stomach cooperated by only doing a half flip.
"I don't want to sleep," he told Doc.
The man nodded.
"Half measure then," he slid the needle into the line and squeezed the plunger to just below the halfway mark. "Should make the pain bearable."
Brill sipped again.
"How bad?"
Arnoux frowned but the Doc locked eyes with Brill.
"There was some extensive damage. Repeated trauma on top and... on bottom. I put twenty stitches in your head, and about sixty in your rectum and anus. Your colon was perforated so I stitched that up, but a lot of junk got in your bloodstream. I've got you on broad spectrum antibiotics for any infections, and we did some mega dosing on penicillin. I'm still running tests on STD's and AIDS, but we don't do that here. Commander let me send off for them."
Brill nodded, wide eyes staring over the edge of the cup.
"You're going to hurt for a while," Doc continued. "We can get you up and moving tomorrow, and that will help with the healing, but you're on a liquid diet for two weeks, which will let you heal."
"What then?" Brill asked.
Doc glanced over at Arnoux.
The medic shrugged.
"The Commander wants to debrief you. After that, you heal up here and we send you back."
"Where?"
"Johannesburg I suppose. Then America. Back home."
"I can't..." he said softly.
"Can't what?"
"Go home."
Doc double checked the lines in his arms.
"You're going to need some mental help too. We don't provide that here. Hell, we usually just wrap some duct tape around it and keep on going. I nearly used up all my supplies on you."
"Sorry," said Brill.
"No worries mate, I was just joshing. You were cracking wise on the table yesterday, so I was just trying to crack back."
"I don't do crack," said Brill. "But I would if it helped the pain."
"Was that a joke?"
"Supposed to be."
"Yeah, that one needs work. You can ponder it while you're resting up. Commander will see you tomorrow," Doc called over his shoulder as he left.
Brill finished the water and held out the cup.
"May I have some more?"
Arnoux poured another glass.
"He wasn't kidding about the duct tape," said the medic. "I'll help today but tomorrow you get your own water."
Brill sipped the glass slowly.
"Tomorrow," he said. "Who was the guy with the golden eyes? Is that the Commander?"
"That's who you remember huh? No, our Commander is Simon," Arnoux set the paperback in Brill's lap. "You can borrow this while I've got duty."
Brill watched him walk out of the door.
The pain was receding, and he started feeling lethargic.
Two sides to that medicine coin, he thought.
He wished he could think clearly, make a decision.
But the medicine didn't work on shame, or rage or the emptiness he felt every time he thought of Laurette.
He should have asked for the whole dose.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
His name was Simon.
No last name given.
He was the leader of the company, or at least the ground portion of it as far as Brill could tell.
There may have been a de facto figurehead sitting in a high rise in Johannesburg, but this man was the HMFIC.
He was led into the command cabin set up on the edge of campfire in the middle of the clearing.
There was no guard posted at the flaps, but two men sat in chairs by the fire, rifles in their laps as they watched the compound.
Hyper alert. Brill barely acknowledged their presence.
In the future, he would note the way they watched him, the way they sat on the edge of the chairs, the illusion of looking relaxed to the untrained eye.
He would note the fingers on the trigger guards and the tight straps that allowed the weapons to pivot quickly toward any perceived threat.
Today he noticed only that two men were there and neither called out a challenge to Goggles, the man leading him into the tent.
He hurt.
There was an ache in his bottom that wouldn't leave no matter how many shots of morphine the Doc injected.
The repeated violations, the brutality of it echoed through his mind.
In the two or three day’s he'd been in camp, he needed sedatives to sleep.
He constantly worried.
Did he have AIDS? Would he have a virus?
Visions from high school films flickered through his mind unleashing horrors.
He felt sorry for himself, then guilty that he was alive to feel sorry.
He should just get over it.
He lived, she didn't.
At least he was alive to feel the pain, to wonder.
They hadn't told him when he'd be cut loose, but they must be planning to take him back to the city.
Where he would have to see Laurette's dad and tell him how he couldn't save his daughter.
They would send him back to the states and he would meet with the Senator and Governor and tell them how he failed.
How the rebels raped him.
His vision blurred and he stumbled.
Goggles reached back and put a rough hand on his shoulder to haul him close.
He didn't say a word, just half held, half dragged him into the tent.
“Here we are, Sir,” Goggles called out to the darkness in the rear of the cabin.
It wasn't a big space, but the front half was lit and the back shrouded in black.
A sheer black mosquito net hung at the halfway point, blocking the rear.
A long conference table made of rough sawed planks rested on two barrels at the front of the tent and surrounded by tables.
The table held a map, and desk instruments, a radio perched on the edge of the boards.
The mosquito net parted and Simon stepped out.
He was a completely unassuming man.
Five foot ten or eleven, compact frame of solid muscle.
His hair was military short and sprinkled with gray, which put his age somewhere between forty and sixty.
Sharp brown eyes glared at Brill over a prominent nose.
Simon was dressed just like his soldier's though his combat fatigues weren't as worn. It made sense.
He probably spent more time in the tent than crawling through the jungle to execute missions.
He waved Brill to a chair and nodded to Goggles.
“That will be all Becker.”
Brill twisted his head. Goggles had a name.
Becker. He would remember to use it.
Becker saluted and marched out of the tent while Brill settled into a canvas camp chair.
Simon sat
across from him and steepled his fingers in front of his face as he studied the young man.
“The doctor has informed me of your progress,” he said.
His eyes didn't blink.
Brill glanced at them and looked down at his hands, his feet, withering under the intensity.
“Yes Sir,” he said barely above a whisper.
“Call me Simon in the field.”
“Yes Sir,” said Brill.
“I cannot imagine what you're going through,” Simon said. “But I have seen many men in your position. It's a particularly vicious tool used by the rebels.”
“Yes Sir.”
“Look at me.”
Brill followed the order.
He locked eyes with Simon and felt a twitch as he fought back tears.
“This has broken many men,” said Simon. “It can break you. I'm sitting here looking at a boy and it's like looking at cracked glass. One wrong touch, one strong breeze and it shatters. I can only tell you what I would tell one of my men.”
Brill sat up in the chair and ignored the ache in his bottom.
“Sir?”
“Don't let this break you. It is tragic. It is a horror. But you are alive, and so long as you are alive there is hope.”
Brill slumped back into his seat.
“What have I got to hope for?”
“What do you want? We're going to get you out of here just as soon as you're cleared to travel. And we're going after the rest of the rebel group that escaped. We'll get them for you.”
“Can I go with you?”
“After the rebels? Will that help? Do you want to watch us kill them? Do you want to make sure your captors, your tormentors are dead? Will that help you heal?”
“No,” Brill said in a low growl.
“Then what?” asked Simon. “What do you want?"
"I want to kill them. I want to kill them all."
The Commander studied him again, ratcheting up the intensity two notches.
They were at a crossroads in a complicated situation.
The girl they had been hired to rescue was dead, the boy lived.
They would have to tell the father, and the boy would be sent back to the US.
But there was nothing that said they couldn't give the boy a little revenge before they shipped him home.
Revenge and a little blood lust could go a long way to helping the healing process.
Because if the damn rebels had done to Simon what they did to the boy, he would want to same thing.
Salt the earth.
He nodded at Brill and smiled a shark smile.
"And so you shall."
CHAPTER TWELVE
The compound was just under a quarter mile in circumference.
Brill was cleared by the Doc to run. Slowly.
It's how they had him do everything, as if the stitches holding him together would pop and release his insides.
His guts, his shame, his desire for revenge.
It was jogging really.
The damage made him lurch a little, so he shuffled around the inside of the compound wall.
The sun turned the jungle into a wall of heat, thick humidity like cutting through cotton candy.
But it made him sweat.
He relished the heat and the pain and the sweat.
He felt as if he was pushing the toxic sludge of his thoughts out of his mind.
All he had to focus on was running and the rhythm of his footfalls.
His brain could hold a four count and so that was his mantra.
One two three four and again. One two three four.
Over and over until it was second nature and the sweat poured out of him.
He soaked through the tee shirt and pants they provided him.
The combat boots sloshed as the liquid ran down his body and into them.
Each drop gave him vindication, each step exorcised the pain.
He knew it wouldn't go away, maybe never would.
But he could run it out until he was too tired to care.
The Doc had one piece of good news.
No diseases, just a run of the mill bacterial infection that a couple of rounds of antibiotics would clear up.
Brill watched Becker observe him from the front of the hospital tent.
"Think he'll make it?" the soldier asked Doc who stood in the shade beside him.
"Did Arnoux tell you he made a joke when I was stitching him up?"
"He did?"
"Gallows humor. But if you can crack wise after what he went through..."
"Fifty/fifty then?"
"Same chance as all of us."
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
He hit the obstacle course next.
The liquid diet kept him from doing too much.
He couldn't run fast.
So he focused on steady.
He couldn't do a pull up yet, so he focused on hanging.
Anything he could to control his body and rebuild it.
Train it. He would grab a bar and hang for as long as he could, then release.
Brill rested for a few minutes then did it again.
All the while Becker watched him.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Brill wrapped his hand around the butt of the pistol and rested the weight in the other hand.
He held it straight out, arm slightly bent to form a triangle and cocked his head to line his eye up with the sights.
“Use your chin,” Becker instructed.
Brill did as he was told and pulled the gun back toward his face. He pressed his chin against the gun and lined up the sight.
Becker laughed.
“Didn't your mother tell you you'd put your eye out like that?”
He reached out and gently extended the arms again, forming a triangle. He lowered the gun so that the sight was lined up with the chin.
“Practice this move until it's second nature,” he said. “Move your arms from different positions until this becomes a natural pose. Use both hands. It sounds silly but aim with your chin.”
He stood back and pulled his own pistol, aimed and fired off six rounds.
The silhouette etched onto the bark splintered in a tight grouping.
“Now you,” he said.
Brill turned his chin toward the target, squeezed the trigger.
The .45 bucked in his hand and would have slammed into his forehead if Becker hadn't pulled it away from his chin.
“Try again, steady and breath.”
Brill assumed the stance and pulled again. He hit the target, just above the head.
“Better. Concentrate. Look at the head, and the pistol goes where you look.”
Brill pulled the trigger and a dot opened on the forehead.
“Nice shooting,” said Simon from behind him.
“I got him,” Brill smiled.
“Don't get cocky kid,” smirked Becker. “Again.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
They let him rest after two hours. The jungle heat was sweltering and sweat covered his entire body, dripping into his eyes.
“Get some water,” Simon instructed him and watched as Brill jogged to the far side of camp.
“What do you think?” he asked Becker.
“Kintsugi.”
Simon nodded and studied the boy as he sipped water from a jug.
“Highlight the imperfection. You gonna teach him wabi sabi?”
“If he'll take it. Would you have listened at eighteen?”
