by Sussman, Ben
Matt’s fingers brushed hers, then fell away. His mouth froze in open-mouthed shock. Legs pinwheeled in the air. Their eyes met as he began to fall.
“Matt!” she screamed.
With a loud ‘whang’, Matt’s hand struck the metal where Ashley’s feet rested. His other hand swiftly joined it, instantly halting his descent. He drew himself up with Ashley’s help and caught his breath as she pulled him back towards the brick wall of the building.
“Thanks,” he croaked.
Before she could answer, bullets spat from the window they had just exited. One of the men was leaning out, drawing a bead on them. There was a smile on his black-stubbled cheeks as he took aim for the easy shot.
Suddenly, a single shot rang out.
The gunman’s forehead popped in an eruption of brain matter. He pitched forward, the remnant of his head leading the rest of his body down to a bloody end on the alley below.
“Nice shot, John,” Matt complimented the air.
“You need to keep moving. All of this noise will surely alert the security in the building,” John responded.
Another of the gunmen appeared at the window across the way. As he brought his weapon up, a burst of bullets chewed the sill by his chest. He immediately ducked back for cover.
Matt grabbed the opportunity to climb the fire escape ladder, urging Ashley ahead of him. At its apex was an unlocked window. Pushing through it, Ashley and Matt hopped down to a darkened room filled with the comforting hum of dozens of servers.
“Back this way,” Matt led Ashley to a server at the end of the row. Finding his thumbprint identifier, he pressed it, causing the gate to instantly pop open. He reached behind the black server box and to locate the correct wires and yanked them out. The green light sputtered to dark. Using both hands, he withdrew the box from its metal coupling and tossed it to the floor. His foot slammed down on to its top with a satisfying crunch that spit screws and plastic.
John was in his ear again. “Use the exit stairs at the east of the building.”
Matt did not hesitate, following the killer’s directions. He and Ashley rapidly made their way down the steps, encountering no resistance. In a couple of minutes, they pushed open an exit door that deposited them in a trash-strewn back alley. They raced around the corner. Matt’s Porsche beckoned from twenty feet away.
Ashley allowed a breath to escape her lips. “Well, that was easy,” she said with a sidelong glance to Matt.
He chuckled, whether from nervousness or the adrenaline still coursing through his veins he did not know. Looking at her, he found Ashley smiling at him.
“I’m glad you’re with me tonight,” he offered.
“I wish I could say the same thing,” she said good-naturedly.
“Ashley, I-”
His words died in his throat as they reached the car. Ashley looked through the windshield and realized why.
Luke was gone.
Twenty-Eight
Two wars and dozens of bloody skirmishes had taught General Abraham Griggs a few important lessons. Chief among them was the ability to narrow his focus and monitor his enemy’s maneuvers from afar. As his eyes tracked Emma Hosobuchi’s movements across the room, he felt practically psychic, sensing her increasing desperation. To the untrained eye, Emma would have seemed perfectly ordinary. To Griggs, however, something was clearly amiss.
He noted the way she was currently hunched over her keyboard. For Hosobuchi, the simple act of sitting down to log on to a computer was usually a relaxed and enjoyable operation, but not now. Emma was leaning forward, one foot drumming a nervous tap dance on the industrial carpet. Her eyes were fixed, almost unblinking, on the screen. Her fingers flew across the keys at a speed Griggs would estimate at around 125 words per minute. If he had grabbed his field glasses from his desk, he did not doubt that he would see the tiniest droplets of sweat beginning to collect on her brow.
Suddenly, she spun in her chair. Their gazes met, both unflinching. She narrowed her eyes and turned back to the screen, unconsciously smoothing the wrinkles in her skirt and taking on a more casual air.
Griggs knew she did not want to appear disturbed to the other workers and least of all to him. The general took some amount of pride that he was the only one in their division that gave Hosobuchi the least ounce of discomfort.
They had been at odds from the moment of their forced relationship. Although many of their colleagues characterized it as a classic example of the clash of the older generation with the new, Griggs felt there was something deeper to it. He had been raised on the battlefield. The son and grandson of decorated soldiers, he had spent every year of his life either on an army base or in a tent waging war. He had dealt with impertinent youths before but Emma Hosobuchi was a new breed. A disaffected private in the field could be screamed at, humiliated or forced to do enough manual labor to bring them back into line. In Griggs’s opinion, a solider was unfit for duty until their shirt was tucked, boots spit-polished and their life was ready to be offered up for the glory of their country.
Emma, however, was nothing like that. She was disheveled in her appearance and abrupt in her personal dealings. Most disturbing of all to Griggs, she had never seen a millisecond of real battle. Her conflicts were ones of pixels fought on a hi-resolution monitor; her weapons were the pecking fingertips on a keyboard. She knew nothing of the terror that came when confronting your enemy in the flesh, nor the honor that came when a foe was vanquished at your own hands. She could not describe to someone the sensation of bullets screaming in your direction, the shuddering fear in your belly traversing a field of landmines or the searing pain of shrapnel.
A knock at the door called his attention away from his ruminations.
“Come,” he called out.
A crisply uniformed soldier entered, snapping a salute. “Sir.”
“Shut the door, Feltz,” Griggs ordered quietly.
Feltz complied, approaching the General’s desk.
“Well, what do you have?” Griggs demanded with impatience.
“She’s up to something, sir.”
“I didn’t need you to educate me on that. Do you have anything more specific?”
“We are guessing that something is wrong with FALCON.”
Griggs leaned back in his chair, a feeling of satisfaction blossoming beneath his practiced scowl. He knew the ‘we’ that Feltz was referring to was the cadre of loyal acolytes Griggs had gathered beneath him over the past year. The general made it his business to cultivate relationships with those soldiers that he felt fit his mold. Although they were increasingly outnumbered by those loyal to Emma and her lackey Jason Worth, Griggs knew he could count on them to provide a steady stream of information when he required it.
“Just knowing something is wrong isn’t good enough, Feltz.” He watched the young man deflate before adding, “But it’s a start. Get me something more concrete. I want to know details.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Life is war, son. Whether it’s on the desert sand, the jungle floor or the windowless confines of an ugly government office. We are consistently at battle with those who threaten the status quo of this great country. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“Sir, yes, sir,” the young man answered loudly.
“Dismissed.”
Feltz snapped a salute before turning on his heels and exiting the office. As the door shut behind him, Griggs leaned back in his chair. The pill had brought a permeating warmth to his limbs. With a deep sigh, he spoke aloud to the empty room.
“I’m going to win, Emma.”
Twenty Nine
Specialist Jason Worth made the trip across the office floor with slow, deliberate steps. His right leg was beginning to feel like someone was holding the flame of a lighter against it. The injury he had sustained four years ago usually produced nothing more than a dull ache or occasional tingle throughout the workday. Today, however, it was a throbbing reminder of the stress he was enduring.
He
dodged a worker hurrying past, focused on a paper in his hands. “Sorry, Worth,” the man mumbled without glancing up.
Worth moved on, thinking that it had not been so terribly long ago that he was sidestepping defensive tackles on the football field instead of harried government workers. In high school, he had been lauded for his running abilities and managed to set his fair share of school records. By his senior year, however, he realized that he was not going to get much bigger than he already was; a weight and height that would be quickly dismissed by any meaningful scout. His longing to leave the claustrophobic confines of Chalkville, Alabama was satisfied when an Army recruiter came to his campus. Suddenly, the world seemed wide open. Education, training, travel. Everything was within reach, including an escape from a life that promised to be nothing more than mediocre.
After basic training, Worth was put on the front lines in Iraq. He did his job dutifully and without question, respecting the absolute authority of his superiors. Three years and tours of duty later, Worth was a Private First Class on the road to being the man he always dreamed of.
Then al-Shepta happened.
It was a routine transport mission, with Worth and his unit shadowing a group of contractors that had received a tip about insurgent activity in the dusty village. As they approached, an RPG streaked in from over the horizon, connecting with the armored truck that was at the head of the line. The cars scattered with Worth and his comrades taking position behind a nearby sand dune. The Humvee that contained the contractors squealed into an abrupt U-turn and rushed back down the road in the opposite direction.
Worth returned fire with unseen insurgents as his Captain radioed headquarters for backup. As he peeked over the baking sand, Jason noted something from his vantage point. Where the armored truck had been struck was a smoking black crater. Beside it lay the scattered body parts of the soldiers that had occupied the vehicle. Among them lay an intact body charred on its left side. Worth could not be positive but the man looked like he was moving. He whipped up his binoculars and tried focusing on the injured soldier. Gunfire forced him back down before he could.
“Sir!” he called across the way. The Sergeant Major cupped his hand around the sat phone, ignoring Worth. “Sir!” Jason tried again.
At last, the squad leader looked in his direction. “PFC Worth, what the hell do you need? I’m trying to see if we can get backup here.”
“There’s a man down, sir.”
“What? Where?”
“There,” Worth answered, pointing. The Sergeant Major took his own binoculars and trained them in the direction of the crater.
“All I see is bodies, Worth,” he said, lowering the field glasses.
“I saw one of them move,” Jason pressed. The leader stared at him, assessing. “I think I did, at least,” Worth fumbled under his commander’s glare.
“You think or you know?” snapped his superior.
“I’m pretty sure, Sergeant Major, sir.”
Before Worth could say anything further, the leader’s phone squawked. He held it to his ear, barking something into it before turning back to the men.
“Let’s pack it up. HQ says there’s no need to hold this position.”
“What about backup?” Worth pushed his way towards the Sergeant Major as the rest of his unit hurriedly filed by.
“Not coming. They can’t spare it right now.”
“But there’s a man dying out there!”
“Stand down, Worth,” he was warned with a glare.
“Can’t they even send a medical transport out?” he shouted.
“I said, stand down, PFC!”
Worth saw the rest of his unit staring at him. The leader noted it, too, and Worth knew the man would lose face if he backed down now. Turning away, he pulled his binoculars back up and trained them on the downed man. He could not be sure but he thought he saw the faintest tremor of movement pass the man’s lips. The word “help.”
Without thinking further, Worth leapt over the protection of his sand dune. His commander’s voice screamed his name behind him but that was not his immediate concern. Bullets chewed at his feet as he ran in a zigzag pattern across the desert floor. A grenade lodged in the ground fifteen feet away, causing Worth to dive to the side. A geyser of sand erupted, providing him enough cover to make the last sprint to his destination.
Smoke and dirt stinging his eyes, he nearly tripped on the injured soldier. He knelt down and heaved the man across his shoulders. As he stood, he was grateful to hear covering fire being laid down by his unit. Taking a different route back, he hustled as quickly as possible with his weighty load. The helmets of his fellow soldiers were in his sights as he forced himself to dredge up a last burst of speed. He would arrive to safety in mere seconds.
The first bullet struck Worth in his right hamstring.
Crying out, he stumbled forward. His leg screamed in agony but he knew that if he had any chance of surviving, he had to keep moving. Cresting the sand dune, he dropped the injured soldier and was almost behind it when the second bullet hit. It tore through his right thigh and exploded in a burst of blood. He fell down into the waiting arms of his squad.
His commander’s face loomed above him. “Worth, I’m going to have your head for this!” Indistinct swear words followed as Jason began to fade from consciousness.
But Worth was not truly listening. He was face-to-face with the soldier he had risked his life for. At this close distance, there was no mistaking it.
The man had the glassy-eyed look that only the dead wear.
A few weeks later, Worth was brought back to the States to rehabilitate from his wounds. Although the Sergeant Major had wanted him dishonorably discharged because of his flagrant disobeying of orders, the higher-ups deemed it unnecessary. They thought that if the story ever leaked that a young man who had risked his life for a downed soldier was punished outright, the media would pounce on it.
They instead quietly promoted him to Specialist and let their disapproval be known in other, more subtle, ways.
Chief among those was Worth’s recuperation facility. The young man had been in a rural hospital not known for its cutting edge practices before, mainly when he faced injuries from the football field in his home town. Yet, this was a place incredibly different. Men were sent here to die or be forgotten. The doctors there were military men themselves that were one of two types: arrogant young men completing their medical internships or autocratic old windbags serving out their last duty before official retirement. Both groups cared little for their patients. The injured soldiers were nothing more than stumbling blocks on the road to their long-term goals.
In his first week at the facility, Worth laid in a cramped and uncomfortable bed crammed in a room with a dozen other men in various states of distress. Worth counted himself lucky that he retained all his limbs when he felt strong enough to take in his surroundings. Three different doctors took turns flipping with disinterest through the chart hanging on Worth’s bedpost while barely glancing at the young man beneath it.
All pronounced the same verdict in varying language, “You’ll never walk again.”
Each time, Worth swallowed his anger and requested more pain medicine. It was the one request the doctors seemed eager to oblige and Worth lost himself in numbness for days at a time. When sleep came, it was haunted by the face of the dead soldier he had risked his life for. In his dreams, the man was alive. Thanking Worth for his bravery, returning to a girlfriend and family grateful to have him back home. Yet when his eyes opened and the realization slowly seeped back in that he was in a tangle of sweaty hospital sheets, Worth sank back into despair.
It was one of these dreams, however, that brought Worth back from the brink of darkness. In it, he was running back towards the safety of the sand dune, the soldier slung across his back. The bullets struck in a burst of searing pain. Worth crossed back into the safe zone of his unit, flopping the man down on to the ground and staring into his eyes. This time they were lacking
the light of life, empty dark sockets staring back at their rescuer.
“You didn’t make it,” Worth said to the man in his dream.
“No,” the corpse replied. “But you did.”
Worth shot upright in his bed, blinking away the traces of the dream that still clung to his eyelids. The message, whether it was delivered by a ghostly apparition or the dredges of his own subconscious, was clear: embrace the life you were lucky enough to continue. Over his current doctor’s objections, he began to shun his pain medicine. When his head had lost the fuzzy feeling it had grown accustomed to buzzing with, he began his physical therapy. The first day, Worth collapsed on the parallel bars after two steps, his legs numb and useless beneath him. At the end of the first week, he had managed to take one full step without help. After two months, he was able to walk the length of the room with assistance. By the next month, a cane got him around more than the doctors had ever dared encourage him.
After a few months, Worth felt the world may be worth living for after all. It was only when his physical therapist, a gentle bear of a man named Marc, was doing a resistance exercise with him that he was thrown mentally off-balance.
“So what are you going to do when you leave here?” Marc asked.
“Leave here?” Worth responded, fumbling for an answer.
“Sure. Now that you’re walking again, they won’t want you to stick around for long.”
Worth sat back in contemplation. He had spent so much of his recent time focusing on just regaining his will to live and then using its brunt force to overcome his physical challenges, that he had not spent one minute thinking what he might do when he was healed. After his session with Marc, he went to the administration office to inquire what he might be eligible for within the system.
“Not active duty,” the bespectacled official brusquely informed him. “Office work, maybe.”
“Office work,” Jason echoed with a sinking heart. He never saw himself as the type of person who pushed papers around a desk.
