“Yes, of course. When I returned home, news traveled about how I’d survived, and my classmates and their parents ostracized me. Sometimes I fantasized about eating them. I read about the Korowai tribe and was fascinated. Of course eating another human is part of their culture, but more important, eating another human gives them spiritual power to destroy forces greater than mortality.”
“But eating my ear didn’t give you the power to escape. You’re still imprisoned here.”
“Ah, but I did not finish the whole ear, you see.”
Chris wanted to put a bullet through him, but he exercised patience instead. “I’m not here to judge you. I just want to know where Young is.”
“Why should I help you?” Mordet looked at the cooler and bottle of wine near the doorway. “If you give me a bottle of wine and what is left of your ear in that cooler, you think I’ll tell you where Young is?”
Mordet’s weakness seemed to be his pride in his intellect and his eagerness to rationalize his cannibalism as some mystic gift. “You suggested that if you could finish the ear, your spiritual power would increase, enabling you to escape this situation.” Chris moved his chair closer to Mordet. “Jeffrey Dahmer ate people because his brain was a couple bullets short of a full magazine. I’m just trying to confirm how I should classify our conversation in the report I send to my superiors and our allies.”
Chris gave him the rest of the glass, but he didn’t pour a refill. “Très bien. I am not so strange. If you had walked in my shoes, you would have done the same.” Mordet whispered: “During my senior year of high school—”
“If you’re not interested, I understand.” Chris stood up, turned around, and walked to the door. He picked up his cooler. “I think I know how to write my report.”
“Wait,” Mordet said.
Chris stopped and turned to face him.
“Give me the wine and cooler, and I will tell you where Young is.”
“It doesn’t work that way. After we find Young, you get what’s left of the wine and my ear. I’ll write a report about your belief in your mystic power. Then it’s up to you to prove to everyone that your power is real. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.” Chris reached for the door.
“Patience, patience. I will tell you where he is.”
Chris anxiously fingered the lighter in his pocket. “You can tell the interrogator. If your information helps us rescue Young, you get the wine and my ear. And I’ll update my report. Until then, talk is cheap.”
“This rescue means more to you than Young himself. Why is the rescue so important to you?”
His own kidnapping flashed back to him. The feelings of despair, of terror. The darkness of the pit he’d been kept in. The aftermath.
“Good-bye, professor.”
“Will you leave me your email address in case I think of something more?”
Chris walked out the door without turning back. He wanted to run, putting as much distance between himself and Mordet as he could, but he denied Mordet his influence and walked at a normal pace. He wanted to teleport himself out of this hell—far from the despots and devils. Events after that were a spinning blur to him. He didn’t know if it was the exhaustion of the op, blood loss from his ear, or the soul-sucking interrogation that drained him, but somehow he found his way to his rack and lay down.
Just over an hour later, Little Doc came to Chris’s rack. “Come on! We’re going to get Young!”
They geared up with their teammates and rushed across the grey tarmac to where two Black Hawks and a smaller Little Bird MH-6 helicopter were already spinning up. His adrenaline beat with the thwop-thwop of the choppers’ blades. The helos were waiting for Chris, LT, and his seven men.
Hannah met Chris part-way and shouted above the noise. “The gator took the credit, but it was because of you that Mordet gave us Young’s location!” There was a twinkle in her eyes that he’d only seen when they’d first met, and it made his soul soar.
“No, we found Mordet because of you and your asset!” He wanted to hug her—and he wanted to be finished with the war on terror—but now he had to find Young. Everything else would just have to wait.
“We’ll play pool when you get back!” she said.
He nodded. Hannah was a talented colleague and a good friend, and in moments like this, he wanted to get to know her better. It seemed like the time to say something epic, but all that came out of his mouth were two words: “Thank you!” He turned and sprinted to the chopper without looking back.
The helos were painted a dark green, but in the night, they loomed black. Their blades beat the air with a thwop, thwop, thwop, making the earth quiver beneath Chris’s feet as he neared his Black Hawk. Their rhythm continued to pulse in his blood. He took a seat inside with Senior Chief and their squad. LT and his squad of seven SEALs boarded the other Black Hawk. Two snipers, one starboard and one port, sat on the Little Bird with their legs dangling outside the helo. Diesel fumes struck Chris’s sinuses like holy incense.
This time, instead of carrying the smaller sound-suppressed MP7 9mm submachine guns, Chris and his mates carried the more powerful HK416 5.56 assault rifles, wore bullet-resistant vests, and carried a deadly assortment of grenades. Every available pocket bulged with extra ammo. This was not a stealth mission.
The helos slowly lifted off the tarmac. Clouds blanketed the sky and the world shone green and 2-D from underneath his night vision goggles. One of the snipers flipped his middle finger at Chris’s helo. Chris grinned and returned the greeting.
Soon they picked up speed, and the blades’ thwop, thwop, thwop was drowned out by the roaring wind. The three helos hugged the earth so close and traveled so fast that it looked like the ground would tear off the Black Hawks’ skids. The choppers raced northwest along a dry river bed before speeding north through a valley. They dodged and hurdled sand dunes, houses, power lines, and palm trees before crossing the Syrian border.
Mordet’s men were keeping Young in a dried-up well. Chris knew the tactic all too well. While his parents worked at the US embassy in Syria, he had been kidnapped and held for four days in a dried-up well outside of town, eventually rescued by SEALs. A shiver ran through him, and he tried to push the memory away.
The helos continued forward then flew up at a steep angle, clearing a cluster of two-story buildings. Then the birds dived at the earth like kamikaze planes. At the last moment, their beaks flared up, halting the birds before leveling above an empty field near Mordet’s plantation. Chris and his teammates quickly stepped onto the skids, then hopped down into a field surrounded by a cloud of dust kicked up by the helos.
The two squads moved at double time. The fourteen SEALs swiftly reached their objective, the well. Two armed Syrians emerged from a lopsided farmhouse—only to be picked off by the snipers hovering in the Little Bird above.
Chris looked down into the well with an overwhelming sense of dèjá vu. Suddenly he was a thirteen-year-old boy trapped in that well, again. He struggled to breathe. His chest tightened.
Breathe, Chris. Breathe.
But he still wasn’t getting enough oxygen. He had to pull himself together. He was going down there.
“Young Park,” he forced out. “United States Navy SEALs. We’re here to rescue you!”
Young looked up from the bottom of the pit. “Help me,” he said weakly.
Beanpole and Psycho attached two rappelling ropes to the well, and Chris checked Beanpole’s before hooking in. Meanwhile, the other SEALs lay in a perimeter around them, taking cover in a ditch, behind a tractor and whatever else was available. They created the blocking force for anyone who might disturb the rescue.
“Stand against the wall, Young,” Chris said. “I’m coming down.” The SEALs’ powerful HK416 5.56 caliber rounds cracked the night. Enemy AK-47s staccatoed the air, but the noise became muffled as Chris rappelled into the well—his teammates would take care of the insurgents.
Before Chris reached the bottom, the stench hit him wit
h the force of a cargo ship at full speed. His feet touched the ground, and he immediately put a rappelling harness on Young. Part of the offensive odor came from Young: a mixture of urine, feces, and something else Chris couldn’t discern. He gagged. Young was missing both ears and most of an arm. In that moment, the wounds were Chris’s, and he wanted to kill Mordet.
He attached Young’s harness to the free rope and gave it a tug. Chris’s teammates pulled Young up. Fortunately, the harness didn’t require two hands for balance. Then Chris tugged on his own rope, but there was no response. “Hey, pull me up!”
Chris tugged again, harder. Nothing. “Get me the hell out of here!” Not waiting for an answer, he pulled himself up the rope. He climbed higher and higher—faster and faster. Soon he cleared the top, freed himself from the rope, and took cover behind the well. Oxygen rushed into his lungs like a roaring river.
Psycho grinned with bloodlust with each insurgent he dropped—he enjoyed the killing too much. Beside Chris lay Beanpole, his neck and face covered in liquid goo—he’d been shot. Chris neither liked nor respected Beanpole, but he was still a teammate, and it sucked some of the life out of Chris to see him injured like that. While Little Doc tried to help Beanpole, Young crouched next to them shaking.
Chris dropped the rappelling gear, stood between Young and the enemy, aimed at the nearest attacker, and squeezed the trigger—two to the chest. The attacker landed on his back with his leg folded underneath him. Chris patted Young on the shoulder. “You’re going home tonight. You’re going to be okay.” It’s what Chris would want to hear, and it’s what Chris intended to deliver.
“Thank you, thank you. I’m going home, I’m going home.” He kept repeating his thanks and that he was going home.
Now the whole inland area seemed to move toward them—there must’ve been nearly a hundred tangos out there, outnumbering the SEALs seven-to-one—despite his team’s talent, the odds favored a SEAL slaughter. If they tried to break contact now, the enemy would overrun them. The SEALs would have to put up a ferocious fight in order to give the enemy enough pause to allow the frogmen to flee.
The enemy raised the volume of their fire to forte fortissimo and advanced on the SEALs. Chris shot a barrel-chested tango, busting his barrel. Another tango stepped in front of Barrel Chest to take his place. There seemed to be no end to them. The air around Chris cracked off like firecrackers, and a round hit him in the gut, punching the air from his lungs. He gasped for air and said a silent prayer of thanks that the bullet-resistant vest had stopped the projectile before it cut into his flesh.
The enemy advanced. Despite the SEALs’ best efforts, they couldn’t slow the assault.
So this is how it ends.
His promise to get Young home had become a lie.
“Mary Poppins, Sierra One.” LT’s radioman spoke their call sign anxiously over the communications net, trying to get in touch with a plane above for backup. “Identify our position, over.”
“Sierra One, Mary Poppins, I identify fifteen friendlies, over,” a crew member onboard replied. Flying at an altitude of nearly a mile in the sky, out of enemy small arms and RPG range but within the plane’s own artillery and cannons’ range, Mary Poppins flew in a wide circle around the battlefield.
“That is correct,” LT’s radioman confirmed. “Kill everything west of us outside danger close!”
“Roger, Sierra One. Kill everything west of you outside danger close.”
Over the noise of the ground fighting, a small clap of thunder came from the sky. The first 105 mm, thirty-three-pound projectile popped the sound barrier as it shot to earth. In the middle of the enemies’ position, the earth exploded, flinging body parts and dirt. The closest survivors lay stunned in a column of rising smoke.
Six seconds later, the smoke cleared, and another 105mm bomb struck the earth, this time on the enemies’ left flank. Most of the insurgents on the right flank figured out it was time to haul booty. Six seconds later, the right flank detonated, obliterating the slow learners.
Meanwhile, the plane’s cannon opened up. Each second, two explosive pom-poms blasted clusters of bad guys.
Enemy bullets stopped popping the air around Chris’s head.
“Pop smoke,” LT commanded over the radio.
Psycho and the rear security SEAL from LT’s squad popped their smoke grenades. Soon the smoke blocked the line of sight between the insurgents and the SEALs.
“Leapfrog back to the primary extract,” LT said. “Second squad, to the helos.”
Chris pulled Young up from the ground. “Run to the chopper!” Chris shouted.
Young didn’t have to be told twice. He ran with Chris’s squad to the Black Hawk and didn’t stop until they arrived safely inside. Doc attended to Beanpole, who was still alive.
Two or three AKs broke out on full auto behind them, but LT’s squad silenced them.
“First squad, back,” called LT. LT and his teammates rose and dashed to the helo. The AC-130 overhead continued to pound the terrorists with 40 mike-mikes.
Immediately after the rest of the men loaded onto the helos, they lifted off the ground. They flew with the doors open because that was the quickest way to enter and exit, especially during emergencies. The helos turned east and pulled forward. “RPG, six o’clock!” a voice came from the rear of Chris’s helo.
“RPG, six o’clock!” others in the middle of the chopper echoed.
“RPG, six o’clock,” the pilot acknowledged. He banked the helicopter hard and turned south.
Gravity pulled mercilessly on Chris, and somebody bumped into him, almost knocking him off his bench. It was Young: unable to hold on with one arm, his feet slid out the door and kicked Chris. He had remembered to connect a tether to Young, securing him to the helo, but in all the excitement, he couldn’t remember if he’d secured himself.
Chris strained to hug the helo, but gravity continued to pull at him, and the wind continued to whip his body mercilessly. He was losing his own grip. If I can hold out just a little longer—until the RPG passes and the helo straightens out.
Boom! The RPG blew up, shaking the helo. Chris slipped. His heart leaped just before Psycho caught him, stopping him from falling off.
The Black Hawk leveled off, and Chris no longer had to fight with gravity. He noticed that he had attached his tether. He looked around and was glad to see that no one appeared injured. Now they were in the homestretch. More importantly, Young was free. Chris exhaled long and hard.
Psycho put his mouth close to Chris’s ear and shouted above the wind, “When we get back, are you really going to give Mordet that piece of your ear?!”
“Are you on meth?”
“It wouldn’t be very reverend-like of you to break a promise!”
“Mordet can eat my badonkadonk!”
Psycho laughed. “Be careful what you wish for!”
“I’m finished!”
“What do you mean?” Psycho asked.
“I mean I’m finished with this shit! I’m not going to re-up!” The words came out of his mouth so naturally. It was what he had to do.
Psycho’s face became serious. “Really? What are you going to do?”
“Become a preacher!” Chris said.
“You’ve got to be shitting me!”
PART ONE
…Lord, I believe; help thou my unbelief.
— ST. MARK 9:24
3
_______
SPRING 2014
The darkened sky dumped rain on the roof of a church in Dallas while Chris stood behind the pulpit and opened his Bible to St. Mark 9:14-29. As he looked out across the congregation, a beautifully familiar figure entered the church and took a seat at the end of a pew near the back.
Hannah. It’s been years.
She lit up God’s house with a devilish grin.
He smiled, too, wanting to run to her and greet her, but he had a sermon to finish. “Jesus approached his disciples,” he continued, “where they were gathered around a
rguing with a group of people. A father explained that his son was possessed by an evil spirit. The boy had seizures—foamed at the mouth, scratched and bit people. Sometimes the evil spirit caused the boy to throw himself into fire and water. The father asked Jesus’s disciples to cast the evil spirit out—”
Chris’s parents had told him about the terror they’d felt when he was held hostage in Damascus. As he gave his sermon, he thought of their pain. And his own.
“—And so it is with us,” Chris summarized. “With a little bit of sincere faith, we can perform stellar miracles.”
The head minister had given Chris the useful advice to include personal anecdotes in his sermons, helping the listeners connect to his messages more easily, but now only the horrors of war came to mind, and Chris dared not share them, so he concluded his sermon.
Three women, including Hannah, lingered to talk to Chris. In the back, men and women socialized with each other, and the rest filtered out the door. “I really enjoyed how you explained the story of the father and his son,” a not scantily endowed woman in a lemon-yellow jumpsuit said.
Chris politely thanked her. Her husband was an alcoholic and had frequent brushes with the law. Chris and Reverend Luther had helped her out more than once when her husband was incarcerated. Many of the members had come to Chris and Reverend Luther for counseling regarding personal challenges. Some people have the misconception that only good people attend church, but churches are like hospitals—they are for the sick and afflicted, and in this world, everyone is sick and afflicted.
A second woman, wearing a flowery rose-red dress, also complimented Chris on his sermon. She was a single mother struggling to raise her teenage son, Ben. Chris’s peripheral vision spotted Ben. Todd Koak, a middle-aged member of the congregation who never minded his own business, cornered the kid. On any given day, Ben was a little awkward, but now he seemed particularly uncomfortable. “Excuse me,” Chris interrupted Ben’s mother then walked to where the young man and Todd stood.
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