Near Death (A Jake Townsend Science Fiction, Action and Adventure, Thriller Series Book 1)

by Richard C Hale

  The crack of the man’s neck breaking seemed very loud in the quiet night as Peter caught the slack body and eased it silently to the ground. He moved quickly to the door and waited in the shadows until he was sure no one had been alerted inside.

  Peter could hear a young female pleading in Arabic.

  “Please—do not make me do this,” she begged.

  “You will do as I command!” a gruff voice answered, followed by a sharp slap as someone struck the girl.

  Time to move.

  Peter checked the door silently to make sure it was not locked. Finding it open, he rapidly turned the handle and was through before anyone could react. He found Omar standing over a kneeling young girl, his small erection standing straight out, the girl’s hand being forced toward it. Movement to his right caused Peter to instinctively pivot to his left. Whipping his left fist violently in an arc behind him, he connected with the unknown man’s throat, crushing his larynx in a painful and brutal blow. He followed through in a complete circle and was upon Omar before the first man had hit the floor.

  Omar was dropping his robes and reaching for something inside them when Peter brought his right foot down upon Omar’s right leg just below and to the side of the knee, snapping the weak joint like a brittle twig. Omar briefly cried out as he went down.

  Peter’s momentum carried his left leg over the falling Omar and as he straddled the terrorist’s body from behind, he bent, wrapped his right arm around Omar’s neck in a sleeper hold, and squeezed until the man went slack, unconscious.

  Peter looked over to see the other man thrashing around on the floor, his hands at his throat and wet choking sounds emanating from his smashed windpipe. The man’s struggles quickly subsided as he died of asphyxiation.

  The young girl had fallen back as she tried to get out of the way of the violence all around her. She now lay curled in a fetal position under a small table against the near wall, shaking and mumbling in Arabic. Peter went to her and tried to calm her, but she shrank from his touch seeming not to hear his words.

  “It’s ok,” he said in Arabic, “I won’t hurt you. He won’t hurt you anymore. It’s over.”

  Peter stepped outside and beckoned to Forook who scrambled across the path and entered the house. He stared at the dead man on the floor and Qayum Omar lying a short distance from him. Forook saw his relative and went to her, speaking in a soothing tone and cradling her in his arms. She clung to him fiercely when she recognized him and sobbed into his shoulder.

  In English Peter said, “He was trying to get her to touch him when I entered. I don’t think anything else had happened.”

  Forook glared at the unconscious Omar and spat in his direction. “Is he dead?” Forook asked.

  Peter shook his head, no. “This one and the one outside are. We must leave quickly. Can she move with us? I need you to help carry our friend to the rendezvous.”

  Forook spoke to her briefly in Arabic and Peter understood her to say she would try.

  Peter grabbed Omar’s shoulders and Forook, his legs, and they carried him outside and over to the low wall which had hidden them only a few moments before. The girl scurried along beside Forook, her haunted eyes searching the darkness.

  Peter said, “We must carry him a quarter kilometer to the north, can you manage?”

  “I will try,” Forook said, and they picked him up again and began moving north along the street. Forook struggled and the girl helped him as they made their way slowly north. They had to pause frequently for Forook to catch his breath.

  No one else was on the street and the houses were dark and quiet. At one point Omar stirred and moaned, and as they set him down, Peter prepared to render him unconscious. The terrorist never woke and soon became silent and still once again. They resumed the trek and arrived at a spot Peter knew to be the rendezvous.

  Lights came on in the distance and a vehicle’s engine could be heard as the lights slowly approached their position.

  Peter asked Forook, “What is her name?”

  “Kessa.”

  Peter had a soft spot for children and despised anyone who would do them harm. He hated to see them suffer. He knelt in front of Kessa and spoke to her in Arabic.

  “You are a brave girl, Kessa. You did not deserve what this man was going to do to you, but I need you to be braver still.”

  She looked at him with wary eyes and nodded slowly.

  “Men will come and ask you what happened. You can tell them about me, but you must not tell them about Forook. They will kill you and Forook, along with your family, if you tell these men the truth about tonight. Can you lie?”

  She nodded. The vehicle was close.

  Peter turned and watched it approach for a moment and then turned back to Kessa.

  “Remember, Forook was not here. A man dressed in black came and killed the two men and took the third man away. You ran home through the streets when the man in black left you alone. Repeat it to yourself many times tonight until you believe it.”

  He smiled at the girl and touched her head.

  The vehicle arrived and two men jumped out, taking Omar and placing him in the back of the beat up Toyota Four Runner. They handed Peter a package and Peter in turn gave the package to Forook.

  He shook Forook’s hand and said, “Be safe.”

  Forook nodded.

  Peter climbed into the back of the small SUV and it drove away. He watched as Forook and Kessa turned and walked up the street. He never knew if they survived or not.

  As Peter lay in his bed, the mission replaying over and over in his mind, he couldn’t help thinking that if Kessa hadn’t survived, she would have been sacrificed for nothing. Tomorrow they would risk everything on the hocus pocus of some crackpot scientist.

  43

  January 18, 2010 4:42 p.m.

  Orange Park, Florida

  When the video was finished, Teri turned her back to the screens, sat on the console and folded her arms across her chest. Jake couldn’t read her.

  When he and Maddy had called her at home, she didn’t want to come all the way back over the bridge, but Jake had insisted, saying it was important. Jake could tell she had been angry. She had stormed into the lab a half an hour later and said, “What!?”

  He showed her the video.

  “What did Bodey have to say?” Teri finally said.

  Jake looked at Maddy and then back at Teri. “I haven’t talked to him yet.”

  “We should probably talk to him, don’t you think? What if this is some kind of computer glitch?”

  “Do you really think this could be a malfunction?” Jake asked.

  “I don’t know what to think,” Teri said, moving away from the console. “You call me back here to watch this—this—I don’t even know what to call it, and then you expect me to have some kind of answer for you?”

  “Teri, I didn’t ask you for an answer. I wanted you to see this because I think it’s important.”

  “All right—I saw it. Can I go now?”

  “That’s all you’re going to say? ‘Can I go now?’ I was hoping for a little more input from you.”

  “Ok. Here’s my input. I think you need to stop this before you do something catastrophic. Maybe we’ve already done something we can’t fix. According to Frank, we’ve knocked something out of balance and you have to restore it, whatever that is.”

  “Teri, I know you’re upset,…” Jake started.

  “Upset? Upset!? Dammit, Jake. I’m terrified! What the hell have we done? Have we created some ‘Twilight Zone’ rip in the space-time continuum? Torn open a hole into our own continued existence? What if we can’t set it right? Have we doomed ourselves or even mankind to extinction?”

  “I don’t know!” Jake shouted, trying to get a word in.

  “What about Frank? He’s lying in a hospital bed, a shell of a man. Is part of him trapped over there while the rest is here? Maybe we’ve denied him his afterlife because his soul has been torn in two, one half stuck here and th
e other in limbo on the other side of that hole we opened up and then slammed shut.”

  “I don’t know!” Jake shouted, the frustration building. “That’s why I need your help! Help me, Teri! I need you to help me.”

  “Whoa—guys,” Maddy said, putting a hand on Jake’s shoulder and one on Teri’s. “We’re all a little frazzled here. Let’s just try and stay calm.”

  “You try and stay calm,” Teri snapped at Maddy, “I’m out of here,” and she turned to leave.

  “Teri—wait,” Jake said, softly. He saw the tone of his voice cause her to stop.

  She turned back, waiting.

  “I’ll stop.”

  She said nothing, but her eyes welled up and a tear rolled down her cheek.

  “I’ll stop this madness, but I need your help to fix this. We need to fix this.”

  She walked over to him, fell against him and held him tight. He was shocked at first, but took her in his arms and held her tight as she cried. Maddy was looking at him and tears were falling down her face. He gave her a look that said ‘I love you’ and she nodded.

  Teri said, “I know what all this means to you. All this for Beth. But I’m scared. Scared for you.” She got herself under control and pulled away.

  Wiping her face with her hands she said, “I’ll help.”

  44

  January 18, 2010 5:10 p.m.

  Orange Park, Florida

  “Can you come?” Jake asked.

  “I just left,” Bodey said. “What’s up?”

  “We have an issue. Can I e-mail you a large file? It’s a video.”

  “Yeah dude. Shoot it my way.”

  “Watch it and call me back. You’ll understand. Oh—and don’t let anyone else see it.”

  “No problem,” Bodey said. “Top secret—got it. Call ya’ in a few.” And he hung up.

  Jake had the file ready, and sent it to Bodey. It took ten minutes to upload. While they waited, Teri wanted to know more about their dreams, so they spent the time filling her in on what had been happening.

  “So in your dream,” Teri pointed to Jake, “you hear Beth telling you to ‘Stop the balance?’”

  Jake nodded.

  “What do you think that means, now?” Teri asked.

  “That’s what’s so confusing,” Jake said. “At first, she was just saying ‘Stop!’ and I thought she wanted me to stop trying to hear what she was mumbling. I mean for the last two years, I’ve been trying to figure out what she’s saying in the dream. Remember, she said to be good to Madison and Lucas, but she also said something I couldn’t hear.”

  “You said at first, what about now?”

  “In a later dream, she says, ‘Stop the balance,’ which makes no sense. I can’t seem to read anything into ‘Stop the balance.’”

  “Jake and I have gone over and over our dreams and still come up empty,” Maddy said. “It’s very frustrating. Jake even thought at one point, Beth was telling him to stop being with me.”

  “In yours,” Teri said, pointing to Maddy, “Ryan says ‘Jake must not be lost.’ What do you think that means?”

  “I felt like it meant I wasn’t supposed to lose him,” Maddy said. “That he and I were meant to find each other and be together. That’s why it didn’t make sense to me that Beth would be telling Jake to stop seeing me and Ryan was telling me not to lose Jake.”

  Teri stood up and started pacing. Jake could tell she was working something out.

  “Frank says in the video, ‘Stop Jake, the balance must be restored.’” Teri was looking right at Jake now. “Almost the same words as in your dreams. Maybe you guys were thrust together because you were getting parts of the message separately? Combine your dreams and what do you get?”

  “Stop the balance, Jake must not be lost?” Maddy asked, confused.

  “No.” Jake said, understanding now. “Put them in order from the first message to the last. Mine and then yours. My first message was ‘Stop!’”

  “And mine was ‘Jake,’” Maddy said.

  “So, ‘Stop Jake! The balance must not be lost’ is what we would get,” Jake said.

  “Exactly!” Teri said excited. “You guys never could put it together until now so you didn’t get the message. Maddy, you were supposed to stop Jake, so the balance wouldn’t be lost.”

  “Well, we screwed that up,” Maddy said.

  “We better make sure we don’t screw up the next part,” Jake said.

  The phone rang and Jake answered it. “Encephalographic Systems.”

  “Dude,” Bodey said, “you guys got some major shit going on down there. What the hell was that?”

  “Bodey, Teri and Maddy are here and I’m going to put you on speaker.”

  Jake pressed the speaker button so everyone could hear and talk.

  “We’re not sure what it was, but if I had to guess, I would say we opened up a hole between this plane of existence and the afterlife.”

  “No shit,” Bodey said. “That dude in the video looked messed up.”

  “Bodey, this is Teri. Could this in any way be some kind of computer glitch or artifact?”

  “Not a chance. Why do you ask? You guys didn’t see this live?”

  “No,” Jake said. “Well, not all of it. The rift opened up but the part with Frank in it showed up in the playback afterwards. I was checking the system out after things had calmed down and that part at the end was there.”

  “What happened to the guy?”

  “He’s in the hospital,” Maddy said, “on life support. His heart stopped in the chair and the paramedics got him back—or what’s left of him back.”

  “Don’t tell me he’s like cut in half or something.”

  “No—no,” Jake said, “he’s whole. He’s just not all in there. He’s a shell of a man or something—all body and no soul.”

  “You guys have to get him whole again.”

  “Yeah—we figured. That’s the problem. I’m not sure how. Can you come?”

  “I’m already working on it. Cheryl is booking the flight as we speak. It won’t be until tomorrow afternoon, your time. That ok?”

  “It’ll have to be.”

  “All right, you guys be cool. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Ok—tomorrow.”

  “Oh! And make sure that dude doesn’t die,” Bodey said. “I have a feeling we may need him.”

  45

  January 19, 2010 3:31 a.m.

  Orange Park, Florida

  Jake was in the dream again.

  Beth was in his arms but there was no blood. He knew the accident had happened, but she seemed uninjured, eyes closed, a small smile on her perfect lips, as if she were sleeping. He stared at her face and his heart ached for her.

  A faint rumbling could be heard in the distance and Jake watched as Beth’s eyes opened and she looked at him like he had been lost from her, and then found again. The love pouring forth from her eyes made his heart break and tears fell freely onto her perfect face. She reached up and touched his cheek and he gasped at the feel of her.

  “Oh God, Beth, I miss you so.”

  “I’m right here,” she said. “I always have been.”

  Movement to his right caught his eye and he looked up to find Maddy and Ryan walking toward them holding hands.

  “Jake, I don’t have much time,” Beth said. “We have come together because it is very important you understand.”

  “You must make us whole,” Ryan said. “We are all here so you will see.”

  Ryan turned and nodded at Maddy, giving her some kind of signal. She reached out and touched Jake.

  Brilliant white light burst from Beth and Ryan, encompassing everything.

  Maddy now stood next to him and he looked into her shining, green eyes. They were the only things visible within the light and Jake held her gaze for fear of losing all sense of direction. Her eyes grew in brightness and intensity and he knew he had never seen them so beautiful.

  “Oh Jake,” Maddy said. “Do you see? Close you
r eyes.”

  Jake closed his eyes and saw everything.

  * * *

  Jake and Maddy woke together, face to face, her hand touching his cheek from the dream.

  As they both became fully awake, a shuddering ripple of energy passed through them and a powerful vibration shook the house all the way to the foundation. It was as if the house lifted up and then settled again. The bed came up off the floor slightly and then came back down quickly as thunder trailed off into the distance.

  “You were there,” Jake said softly, caressing her face.

  She smiled and nodded. “I was there.”

  “I know what to do.”

  “Yes,” and she kissed him.

  46

  January 19, 2010 0600

  Over The Atlantic Ocean

  Qayum Omar sat shackled to the seat of a Cessna Citation 500, heading south.

  He knew this not because he had been told, but because the sun was peaking over the horizon to his left. He wore a drab gray jumpsuit with no markings or insignia, shoes which were two sizes too big, and his face and head had been shaved.

  Two men in suits sat close to him with one in the seat in front and the other to the right. He had seen their pistols holstered beneath their coats as they moved around getting settled before the flight departed. Neither spoke. The Americans were all business and this suited Omar perfectly since he had nothing to say to these pigs anyway.

  They had pulled him from his cell at 3:30 in the morning and made him dress. Since he refused to shave his face, they held him down and shaved it for him. The Americans knew the importance of his beard and because of that, they had taken a razor to it immediately after his capture and twice a week since. He made them hold him down every time.