by DC Bourone
*****
Footsteps on pebbles as Morales strolled out onto the beach. Duffel slung to the right. Messenger bags sagging to the rear, to the left. With his thick black braid and shaved temples, glint of a gold loop at each ear he could have been an Albanian pimp approving the day no less than himself, equally delighted with his own swarthy charm and his speedy transit to a whorehouse in Greece. Beneath the false skin of vanity a man supremely confident, compact, and lethal.
Morales forty yards to the right, Lou Dillon moving on the left, the smallest men always at the outside wing, as they are faster to the center. And so much lighter to lift when they are hurt...
Billy's men carried grimy Eurail passes and multiple perfect passports, cheap kiosk Nokias with priceless chips, carbon steel Sabatier butcher knives with blades filed to a five-inch wedge, greased with lip balm and tucked into waxed cardboard sleeves. They carried ancient Browning High-Power and Tokarev pistols in their belts and drooping pockets full of magazines, PK machine guns in their duffels with a hundred-round box on the gun and two spares in their messenger bags. Weapons scavenged from the basements and arsenals of a sullen Europe always ready for the next war, weapons as tried and true as a best dog and completely anonymous, identities they could peel off like a scab.
For fourteen years Billy had trained with them, fought alongside them, and finally, led them. For fourteen years he had seen them alive and intact, that miracle which confounded them all. His men were the best he had ever known, his last and only friends. Not just the tip of the spear, they were the shock wave ahead of the spear. They had the heart, the skill, and the tools to torch a hole in the earth and gut all the minions of hell.
But on this day, when the winds...
Of all his sorrows gathered.
It would make no difference.
Gretzky lit the second match.
*****
PRELUDE TO A FIGHT, THE SHAFT OF THE SPEAR
*****
Out on the water torque twitched the boat's hull.
Engines revving to a dull roar.
Exhaust a blue jet.
Getting ready.
All eyes on Gretzky.
Gretzky's attention unambiguous and high on the cliff to the right. Do I see you? Do you see me? His hands moving far under the tarp and pulling back, once and hard and then free. If there were a dragon's swiveling head under the canvas Gretzky might have aimed it by the ears and pulled back on the lips to bare its teeth.
Show me yours and I'll show you mine.
The sound of big men jogging.
Nate and Tate moving away from their hides.
Each man as powerful as a Cretan bull, either could have hurled The Bitch like a discus from the beach to the boat. If Lou and Morales were the tip of this particular spear, Nate and Tate were the unbreakable shaft, Keith and Billy the grip to steer it home.
The engines really screaming now.
Billy inhaling, exhaling.
Warming the blood.
Warming the body.
Keith laughing.
Almost ready.
Billy rising above his warming flesh. Both within it, and without. Only in dreams do we relive real and imagined horror as helpless witnesses and Billy could feel his dreaming soul ascending on a prayer.
Ready. That he would never witness this again.
Set. Screaming engines an unearthly howl.
Go. Gretzky lit the last match.
*****
PRELUDE TO A FIGHT, MEMORIES
*****
And they were off, Keith swinging The Bitch clattering out onto the rocks on her makeshift skid, Billy catching the rear harness. Forty feet to the dock. Four feet to the step. Ten steps. Eternity...
First step.
Keith's mad grin over his shoulder, "We're outta here...."
Second step.
Tate, still jogging, teeth gleaming through his Viking beard and a quick wink, "Almost home. Almost."
Third step.
Morales in a bar in Mykonos, knocking the necks off bottles of Mythos beer with the edge of his hand like a TV ninja. "A kid could do it. If I train the kid."
Fourth step.
Nate Tanavasu surfing, a brown giant on a sliver of board, a whale among whales, whooping in the waves off Waikiki.
Fifth step.
Lou Dillon smashing down hard on a dusty Afghanistan plain, the snowy spires of the Hindu Kush spiking in the distance. His first time on, and off, a horse. "But animals love me."
Sixth step.
To a ride straight as an arrow across a moonlit sea.
All these memories to be someday savored.
Song of this dream to fade away.
It was not to be.
*****
THE FIGHT ON THE BEACH, THE VALKYRIE,
“STICK IT IN AND TWIST”
*****
The first booming shot from the Dushka on the cliff threw a twenty-foot spout at water's edge.
The second took off Tate's right leg just above the knee, spun it away like a stick thrown for a pet.
The third and fourth cracked and splintered rock over Billy's head. The 12.7mm Dushka heavy machine gun fired a slug the size of a thumb at three times the speed of sound, the impacts sounding like a sledgehammer on brick.
Tate falling on his stump and turning on it like a man spinning on a stool, raking his PKM out of the duffel and firing a chalky line up the cliff and driving it home.
A gray ghost lifted out over the water on an orange ball of flame, Gretzky shooting the canvas shroud of his twin 20mm Oerlikon cannons. His swiveling dragon blasting smoking red blossoms up on the cliff, tree branches and rock already tumbling down.
One Dushka, now one more from the opposite cliff walking water spouts in a line and punching smoking bucket-sized holes up onto the beach.
Two Dushkas, not so good.
Morales sprinting in the spiraling pattern of a rabbit chased by a fox through and around those smoking holes, kneeling, propping his PKM and dumping a long steady burst. To the right, to the left. And up again.
All senses, all thoughts, fluorescing at the edges.
Seconds dividing into fractions.
Fractions of fractions.
Time suspended.
Breathe.
Running hard and fast now.
Onto the dock and down the faded planks.
The dock erupting in a geyser of water and splintered boards like it had been bombed as two, three, now four weapons from the cliffs chopped down and blew it up. PKM's by the sound, every thinking man's favorite light machine gun, a real mud gun, could feed gravel, rust, and rounds.
Two Dushkas, four PKM's in a sloping crossfire with the cliffs as a fence, the beach as a funnel, the dock as the choke, The Bitch or the boat and his men as the prize.
Not good at all.
Billy felt Keith try and leap one tight cone of fire, only to land in the next which jellied his lower legs, bone and fabric and flesh blown out onto the churning water.
Definitely a fight now.
Keith down, and Billy dropped his end of The Bitch, ran right over her back and Keith's too, grabbed the harness and pulled, closing up on the boat.
Sound beyond sound, a numbing thunder of kettle drums, battering his body, vibrating the bones of his face, his teeth, shins, and feet, the Oerlikon cannon's breath beating hot on his scalp and parting his hair, feathering the water in a twenty-foot circle around the hull. The deck swarming with men and weapons, contractors at this level considered multitasking not a chore but an opportunity, and Billy already heard the long ripping blast of an MG-42 and the slightly lesser cadence of an FN MAG over his ducking head.
Auditory exclusion cutting in, higher frequencies leaking through the wall of sound, the Oerlikon shells bouncing on the deck sounding like breaking glass, or Christmas bells. Words clear as a child's across a dinner table, "You gotta kneel to get the elevation," reminding Billy he was dreaming thi
s, dreaming every dazzling detail, because he recognized the voice of his medic with the burn ward face, the man now wet from the crotch to the knees, pissing himself but still calm as he coaxed the MAG gunner up, helped him tilt his weapon onto the cliff.
A deep humming chord for such young courage.
Billy at the midline of the boat now, two burly men waiting, Nomex coveralls with belts like construction workers stuffed full of tools, gray hair and freckled scalps, handlebar mustaches and incongruous wire-rimmed reading glasses, faces pasty with tension under the roar of the guns. Senior technicians contracted from NEST to proof The Bitch, and seal her away. One holding his hands out, the other running an ancient milled AK-47.
"Ready, go," Billy said.
He tilted The Bitch up onto the boat, heaved, and the first tech pulled and skidded her away to the steering cabin. The other tech fumbling a reload and Billy caught the falling magazine in midair, reached up and rocked it into the gun, snapped the bolt back with the same hand, realizing this man probably had not seen combat since Gulf War One or even Vietnam.
Billy deep in the zone now, peak performance against impossible odds, gentle chimes of wonder ringing, at his luck and his gifts while he rode them hard.
"Gun up, go," Billy reminded and the tech swallowed, got on the trigger and back in the fight. Then tilted the stock of his AK away from his mouth, shouted, "You're supposed to get on the boat," and seeing the expression on Billy's face, "I know. Godspeed and good luck."
The other tech back out of the steering cabin on his belly, face sweaty and glasses slipping off his nose, shoving a zip-tied bundle and Billy recognized the oldest version of an RPG-7 launcher on top, iron sights and no optic, heat shield cracked red laminate and probably Chinese, the ribbed green cones of three HE rocket grenades in their canvas carrier.
"Stick it deep. Good luck, son," the tech shouted, and Billy grabbed his gift, shook hands with his eyes.
Another deep chord humming, for these old warriors.
The turbo-diesels at a white hot howl, with the boat clutched like a dragster and The Bitch now aboard the screws dug in at full power cavitated then caught tilting the fragile dock so far into a sucking boil of props Billy had to step up the left side planks to stay out of the water.
The hull passing on his right as he turned towards the beach, bow leaping high and stern down, empty brass spilling off the deck, at least six guns ripping, three on a side, Gretzky spinning the twin Oerlikons on their mount almost 180 degrees back and forth to hit both cliffs, punching out eight thumping rounds with each turn. Gretzky twirling his cannons better than any fat man ever danced with a big-boned girl.
On the near corner of the stern deck as it flew by, a kneeling medic in green scrubs, her surgical mask at her neck and thick black hair in a net, a fierce grooved and pitted Apache face, AK-47 slung at her side with three magazines taped together like a Darfur tribal, she leaned forward and punched her hands out like she was pushing him away and Billy one handed her pitch, a box for his PKM.
A round from the cliffs creased her head and untucked her hair, sent it swirling and she shook out raven medusoid coils, rose from her knees, stood tall and fearless like the Statue of Liberty and raised a clenched fist, screamed "Stick it, stick that blade, stick it in and twist--!" then sank down, hooked her legs around the closest deck rail, raised her AK-47 high and dumped her first magazine at their hidden assassins with one long pull on the trigger.
Her banshee cry both from her heart, and calculated from the deepest core of their shared culture. A song of promise, from the perfect girl for a man who needs to sleep with his weapons. I know you, her music said. Because I am like you, though I am woman. So, I am here for you. I will love you, from any distance. Heal you, when you are wounded. Care for you, when you are crippled. Breathe with you, when you are dreaming. Breathe for you, when you are silent. Hands of my spirit touch you, one to lift your heart, one to guide your sword, when you are far away. And all that I promise? You will promise me. I and I, I and my rare sisters, we Valkyries, we wait for you. Here in this world if you live, or in Valhalla, hall of the slain and hall of heroes, if you die.
There exists no hard and single point.
No answers, within our atoms.
Only vibrations.
Waves.
Overlapping.
Intersecting.
At their intersections?
Infinite intersections?
Of endless infinite waves?
Shape, sound, scent, sight.
Our space, our stars and starlight.
Our every and all and only experience.
Everything we know. Hope. Feel. Describe.
"I am just one string, in a universal instrument."
Billy had composed and tried many phrases to define his life at his edge of all edges and found none better. One string, very small--he considered himself fortunate, not special--just one small string, vibrating, resonating in sympathy with those closest to him. Now the gentle chimes of wonder at his luck harmonized with the deep chords of respect for warriors young and old, with the wild cry of the Valkyrie, with the shriek of the engine turbines as they took her towards the sea.
From all harmonies a single tone.
Someday a Valkyrie to ride with him.
To fly with him, to his final home.
All music of this life, compressed.
To make his spirit, solid.
As a rod of light, driven.
To the beach, and to his men.
Because without them, in this life?
He would be forever diminished.
Diminished, and alone.
*****
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