“If I set you free now, you are in grave danger. Your people have killed our leader.” The old man had his back to Joel, and then he turned to him. “You are on a list and they will want your head. They will stop at nothing. To them, you are not a person. You are an American, and so they will stop at nothing to get you. The pain you feel in your body now is nothing compared to what you will feel if they get you. Understand…leaving now will kill you.”
Joel knew that Washington had approved the mission to assault the compound where Bin Laden was believed to be.
Did they succeed? Did they do it? Joel thought.
“Bin Laden?”
“Yes. He’s dead.”
Joel swallowed hard. For the past ten years, thousands of man hours, intelligence, and bloodshed had been spent gearing up to take out the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks, and now that day in history had finally been marked.
“What do you want with me?” Joel asked, his head in his hands.
“Nothing. I want to bring you to safety.”
“And what is it that you want in return?”
“Nothing…I want nothing from you.”
“Bullshit. You all want something. What’s the price on my head?”
“You believe that we are all bad. It is not so. Some of us are not the radical extremists that you think we are. Some of us want peace. There has been so much death. It has killed so many men, ruined so many lives. If I can spare you, then I have played my part in making peace happen.”
“What is your name?” Joel asked.
“Abdul.” He paused for a moment. “Please ask nothing more about me, for I cannot tell you. It is best you know very little about me. And from now on, I will ask nothing more about you.”
“Just tell me. Are you one of them?” Joel asked.
“One of who?”
“Taliban.”
“No, I am not,” Abdul responded. “Now please, I can tell you no more.”
Abdul handed Joel a cup of water, but this time, Joel put the cup to his lips and allowed the lukewarm liquid to slide down his throat.
After a few moments, Joel removed his trousers, writhing in pain. The fabric stuck to the blood congealing on his inner thigh. He could tell by the smell that his wound was infected. He was in desperate need of antibiotics. If a terrorist wasn’t going to kill him, he knew there was a high probability that septicemia would.
He lay his head down and felt his breathing become rapid. Time was not something that he had much of. Abdul sat over Joel’s body, filled a bowl with water, and used a cloth to wipe the infected area clean. Joel bit into his fist and tried to pace himself, mind over matter, thrashing through the barrier of pain.
Without warning, he felt a sharp blow of a fist connect with his face. It was the last thing he felt before passing out.
***
When Joel opened his eyes, the orange glow of light coming from the oil burner in the corner of the room was the first thing he saw. His head pulsed as if it had a heartbeat of its own. He tried to understand why Abdul knocked him out, and then he realized he did it to block out the pain while treating his wound.
He thought of Mimi and wondered where she was. He wanted to be with her, holding her. He thought of the time they spent an entire weekend in bed, back in rainy England. They’d eaten junk food and watched DVDs. As he lay down in this foreign place, everything felt like a lifetime ago. He thought of the rest of his platoon and asked himself why he was the only survivor. Did it mean something?
The military had been Joel’s life and he had dedicated himself to it in ways that led him to believe he would be nothing without it, but all of a sudden he was left with a nagging feeling that his country had left him for dead without looking for him. If that were true, he wondered why he had spent his blood, sweat, and tears serving the Corps without them ensuring he was brought home to safety. Then he tried to think of the other possibility—they were searching for him but they had to act with extreme caution and vigilance when operating a rescue mission.
His mind was a mess, and for the first time, he was emotional. When a man’s life is in jeopardy, he is forced to think about the things that truly matter to him. For Joel, it was to keep his promise to his wife and return home to her. He thought about the fact he hadn’t been totally honest with her, but he swore if he could just get back, he would fix everything. He would be a better man. He would be the best husband he could be.
Joel examined his leg. The wound was clean and wrapped in an off-white cloth. Fresh blood had soaked through, which was a good sign. At least the earlier signs of infection appeared to have subsided.
He looked down at his feet, blistered and battered. One of his toenails had completely blackened. He gently bent over and touched it, surprised he could bend his body that far. His left arm had swollen to the size of a balloon that looked like it was going to pop any second. Abdul had taken care of that too, as it was tightly wrapped to keep it in a cast-like form.
If Abdul really was the enemy, Joel was sure that he would have taken some sort of action by now, dropped some hint, some clue that he was not the Good Samaritan he claimed to be.
Joel had no choice but to trust Abdul because right now, Abdul was the only person on the planet who could keep him alive. Even if the Corps had issued a rescue operation, his body needed aid.
Joel could hear the sound of footsteps. His body tensed.
When Abdul appeared, he almost cried with relief.
“I bring you food. You must be starving.”
Abdul handed Joel a bowl of rice, which Joel snatched. He devoured the food like a ravenous dog. With every bite, he was filling his hand with more.
Abdul respectfully averted his gaze from Joel. The mouthfuls of food took off the edge of his starvation. Joel began to slow down his food intake, taking the time to chew his food.
“How long have I been here?”
“A few days. After your men invaded and you were left for dead, I brought you here. If I am honest, I didn’t think you would survive, but God must have a plan for you. I thought the fever was going to take your life, but you pulled through the worst of it.”
“Are they looking for me?”
“I have no knowledge of your country. It’s possible, and if they come, I’ll hand you to them, of course, and you will be free.”
“And if they don’t? How the hell am I getting out of here?”
Joel was met with silence. He searched Abdul’s face for answers, hoping he had a plan.
“For now, my focus is to keep you alive. Beyond that, I cannot give you the answers you seek right now.”
Maybe Abdul wasn’t keeping him a prisoner, but the harsh reality showed that he still was a prisoner in a foreign land.
“Can you at least tell me where I am?” Joel asked.
“You are in the mountains approximately forty miles east of where you invaded. If your people are looking for you, they will find you.”
“Are you going to give them some sort of fucking clue? With all due respect, if they don’t know you took me, how the hell are they going to think to look here?”
“You ask too many questions.”
“So you have a plan? I mean, please tell me you have some sort of fucking plan.”
Abdul turned away and began pouring a steaming cup of hot water into a cup. He handed it to Joel and didn’t utter another word.
Chapter 17
Kanchana
London
In the weeks since Mimi had been away, and with the news of her son-in-law’s death, Kanchana held herself together by keeping busy. That, and secretly harassing the American Embassy for information. This was all done without her daughter having any knowledge Kanchana was working relentlessly behind the scenes to provide answers that might bring Mimi peace.
Kanchana knew unless her daughter was given closure, Mimi would forever be chasing shadows in Texas, trying to feel close to Joel’s ghost in a place that was splattered with his memories, even if she had not sha
red these memories with him.
Kanchana wanted her daughter back home. Mimi was a grown woman, but she still felt the urgent motherly responsibility to make everything right in her life for her.
So she kept trying. She kept doing.
Simon warned her she was meddling again. He told her she should let their daughter find her own path. Mimi had always been a feisty, independent, free-spirited girl. Whilst Kanchana thought this was the best quality in her daughter, she also thought it was her worst.
She’d been surprised when her eldest, Larna, had moved to Yorkshire in pursuit of her career. Larna had always been Kanchana’s dependent sidekick, the daughter in need of her mother’s approval and support. Out of both of her daughters, she never expected Mimi would be the one living minutes from her, just two roads and one left turn apart. Now that she was thousands of miles away, Kanchana felt her heart breaking with every day Mimi was gone. It was as if Joel’s death had taken Mimi too.
Night after night, Kanchana had stayed up with her daughter as she cried herself to sleep. She’d wiped her wet cheeks, thinking she could make it all better for her, just as she had always done, but none of her old tricks had worked one bit. In fact, the opposite was true.
Kanchana couldn’t cut through the layers of grief that Mimi was suffering. So, when Meg came to her and said that she was taking Mimi to Texas, Kanchana had smiled brightly and told her what a good idea it was, but inside she felt she hadn’t been the mother she wanted to be by not being able to put Mimi back together.
On the morning that Mimi left for the airport, Kanchana told herself that she’d be back soon, but when the days turned into a couple of weeks, and then those weeks turned into over a month without so much as a hint of coming home, she started to worry.
Deep down, she had a hunch something wasn’t right. The morning she sat opposite the two officials at the Embassy, she didn’t believe they had been completely transparent. After Mimi was thirty thousand feet off the ground, travelling through the air across the Atlantic Ocean, Kanchana started making calls, and then emails, and then more calls.
Kanchana confided in Simon, saying, “Something about Joel’s death just isn’t quite right.”
“War is never right,” her husband responded. “People die. Families get torn apart.”
They sat in the safety of their living room, Kanchana cradling a cup of peppermint tea in her hand. Simon sat in his armchair, the one he had dubbed his reading chair, but he never actually did any reading in it. It was his nodding-off-in-front-of-the-TV chair.
It saddened Kanchana to think her daughter would never be a mother to Joel’s child. She had dreams for both of her daughters, but somewhere along the line, those dreams had become tangled.
“Without a body, how do they know he’s dead, Simon?” she asked, leaning toward her husband. When she was on to something, her dark eyes turned almost black, her cheeks would redden, and her bottom lip would pout.
“They know. My God, Kanchana, they know so much more than they tell us. These guys are the crème de la crème at what they do!”
“Exactly, which is why I don’t believe that Joel is dead.”
Simon looked at her with an expression that asked for an explanation.
“Well, anybody who avoids telling me an entire account of what happened, or at least what they believed happened, must be hiding something,” Kanchana said.
“Have you mentioned this to Mimi?”
“No. I don’t want to give her false hope.”
“So, love, you’re not convinced either way?”
Kanchana frowned at that. She hated it when her husband challenged her beliefs. Out of all the years they had been married, Kanchana had lived her life by following her hunches, and on the rare occasion she hadn’t, something had gone wrong and she’d scolded herself for not trusting her instincts.
“Something is not sitting well with me, Simon. I feel it!”
She saw how easy it was to get her husband on her side, and she felt a rush of love for him. She wanted to kiss him. No matter what reservations he had, at the end of the day, Simon was always playing on her team.
“We will start making calls. Just don’t get upset if we hit a wall with it.”
Deep down, Kanchana knew she would find something. She had always been a determined woman, especially when it came to her children.
“Thank you,” she said.
Tears pooled in her eyes. She promised herself she would find out the truth because Mimi deserved to know. Even if the truth hurt, at least she could heal.
Kanchana remembered the day that Mimi brought the tall, dark, handsome American to her door. He looked like one of those models who should be standing at the doors at Abercrombie & Fitch, but she also knew he was trouble. She didn’t know how and she didn’t know when, but she knew her daughter was going to be crying many tears over this man. Kanchana had let him in anyway because she had never seen Mimi’s eyes light up like fire, at least not until Joel had come into her life.
***
Mimi
Mimi woke to the hazy morning sunshine. She hadn’t slept very long, perhaps only three hours. She wondered how she’d fallen asleep at all.
For a moment, she lay still. Her stomach was in knots. As soon as she tried to remember why, it all came flooding back to her, making her heart drop. This is the news she had been dying to hear. She had prayed for it. She had willed it. But now, everything had changed. She no longer belonged to just him—at least her heart didn’t. She wanted to cry, but didn’t have the tears. Guilt caught in her throat and she couldn’t find the words to speak. When she got out of bed, the tension in her muscles sent tremors through her body.
There had been so many times when she had reached into the darkest depths of her mind and asked herself how Joel had been killed. Was it quick, or was it a slow painful death?
Her vivid dreams had shown Joel face down in dirt with blood pouring from an open wound. Whenever she reached for him, he had suddenly lifted his head, only when his face turned to her, it wasn’t Joel. It was a face she’d never seen before. Now, she had received confirmation that Joel was alive, but too many things had changed. She had discovered Joel was dishonest to her, she had slept with his estranged brother, and she had fallen in love with another man.
After the call the previous night, Austin had left the room.
He didn’t say anything. She stood, paralyzed by shock, and then she let out a cry that sounded inhuman. She threw herself onto the already creased duvet. She could smell Austin’s aftershave clinging onto the fabric, a stark reminder that she had already given half of her heart away and now the man she promised it to was coming back to her, expecting it to be untouched by another.
As she lay on the bed, staring into space, she felt the vibration of the phone persistently shaking. She fumbled around, looking for it. When she took it into her hand, she saw that she had seventeen missed calls from her parents and one text message.
Kanchana: Mimi, call us immediately. God has answered your prayers.
Kanchana: They found Joel…He’s alive, Mimi, he’s alive!
The American Embassy had tried to contact Mimi back at her flat in England, but when they failed, they reached her parents. Her mother had been the one to receive the information. She’d obviously told the embassy that Mimi was in Texas with Joel’s brother and they’d called.
Mimi still loved Joel, despite his hidden secret.
She felt a mix of emotions—lost but no longer empty, relieved but incredibly fearful.
Chapter 18
Austin
When Austin stepped outside into the warm sunshine, a bird soared above in the perfectly blue sky, the feathers on its wings struck by the mid-morning sun.
He found Mimi standing by the fence, looking out to the land where the horses grazed peacefully. It was a contrast to the storm raging in Mimi.
Austin approached her with caution, careful not to get too close. She looked so fragile and beaten down by emo
tion he thought the touch of his hand would be enough to make her shatter into a million tiny pieces.
“Are you okay?” His face was twisted. His green eyes were full of despair.
She nodded quickly, but as she took a breath, tears streamed down her face.
He wanted to take her in his arms, to tell her everything would be all right. But instead he said, “I want you to leave.”
She took the palm of her hand and wiped her face. “You don’t mean that.” She paused and looked at him. “Do you?”
“Yes. This is so fucked up, Mimi. You don’t belong to me. You belong to him.”
“But…God, Austin, I don’t know what the hell I’m thinking or feeling.”
“I don’t care. The truth is I got caught up in everything with you. I felt sorry for you. I pitied you.”
“Austin, stop!” she cried. “You don’t mean that.”
“Mimi, I do. The truth is you were my final up-yours to my dear brother.”
“You’re lying.”
He took his hands out of his jean pockets, placed them on her sunken shoulders, and looked firmly into her eyes. “No, I’m not. Everything I told you about loving you was a lie. And this, what we had, was nothing but revenge. Joel played it well, the son of a bitch. He even cheated death. Now get your goddamn bags packed and get the hell out of my life.”
She jolted back, falling out of his grip.
Austin stood in silence after the hard slap connected across his left check. It caught his lip, making it bleed. She turned on her heel and ran away, her long hair flowing in the breeze behind her.
He stood there for a second, but it seemed like an hour. He walked a little, and then for the first time in his adult life, he cried.
Till Death Us Do Part Page 13
