Bradley didn’t respond.
He was praying his gut instincts were wrong.
104B
RYAN EXITED THE SOOT-FILLED warehouse, aggravated that terrorists had managed to abscond with the Patriot missile battery—again. A convoy had been hijacked concurrent with the drone attack on Camp Sunshine, yet another blue-on-blue attack.
Ordinarily, satellite reconnaissance would have tracked the Patriot battery in real time, but a sneak attack had pulverized dozens of military satellites. His team was already feeling the effects—GPS malfunctions, intermittent communications, and less than timely intelligence.
Inwardly, Ryan was worried. How long could the military wage a multifront war and prevent nuclear meltdowns while suffering continual insider attacks? How long could the Armed Forces survive with no means to draft replacement Soldiers, no refineries to convert crude into diesel, no economy, and no civilian workforce to replenish supplies?
He followed Mike toward a battered pickup truck and began searching the dead for identification. “Interesting fashion statement. U.S. Army BDUs coupled with IRGC headbands.”
“Yeah, it’s weird.” Waggling a satellite phone, his team leader stood. “Maybe this will point us toward that Patriot battery ... Yo, DJ!”
The Corporal trotted toward them, eyes locked on the phone as if it were a bomb.
“You speak Arabic, right?” Mike rotated the phone toward him, displaying a text message.
“Yeah, but that’s not Arabic. It’s Farsi.”
The tiny hairs at the nape of Ryan’s neck prickled.
An Iranian sleeper cell on U.S. soil?
“Freaking rednecks and their guns,” DJ said, frowning at the carnage. “Killing a bunch of unarmed people.”
Rage and outrage jockeyed within Ryan. “Whoever shot the men confiscated their weapons and destroyed the ammo.”
Cases of ammunition had been loaded into shopping carts and stolen combat uniforms had been set ablaze beneath them, using the fire’s heat to warp the lead and render the bullets unusable.
DJ’s eyes bulged, two bloodshot balls of contempt lunging at Ryan. “So all these dead kids? They’re just my imagination?”
Ryan matched his scowl, the tension between them building like an electrical charge. “News flash: Those kids ate poisoned food. The wrappers are piled up like a snow drift inside the truck bed.”
Yesterday, his Ranger team had shot down an enemy aircraft, a knockoff of a C-130 that was disseminating toxic relief supplies over Gainesville. Like the others the Army had shot down in recent days, this one had been traced to an Iranian base deep in the jungle of Venezuela—a base that no longer existed, courtesy of the U.S. Air Force. He gave a wistful sigh, regretting that they hadn’t captured all of the poisoned cargo, yet grateful the toxin was tanghin, and not some highly contagious biological agent.
DJ’s head was bouncing with a swarm of abridged nods, growing more irate with each passing second. “Shooting innocents? Poisoning innocents? They’re dead. What difference does it make?”
The two new team members, Juan and Victor, traded uneasy glances.
Ryan knew he should let it go, but couldn’t curb his frustration. “Come on, DJ. It’s obvious they stole the candy bars. Didn’t you see the shopping carts? They looted every damned store in the state. And where was all this indignation and empathy for the families slaughtered on their front lawns?”
Head cocked to one side, DJ angrily chewed his bottom lip. “Americans are supposed to be better than this. We don’t kill innocents.” His gaze traveled amongst his teammates as if assessing where each man stood. “They do it; they’re terrorists. We do it; you look the other way. You’re all a bunch of hypocrites.”
“You didn’t answer my question.” Ryan stepped toward him, and Mike’s hand dug into his shoulder, a subtle restraint. “Why does this horrify you when bodies across suburbia didn’t faze you?”
“You are losing it, Man.”
“I saw the warm-and-fuzzy greeting you gave your buddy, Amed Al-Dossari, the traitor who attacked Camp Sunshine with a drone and delivered that Patriot battery into the hands of terrorists ... Are you one of them? Just waiting to make your move?”
DJ’s eyes burned with something beyond anger, a genuine hatred, dark and consuming; then in an instant, it was gone. “I hadn’t seen my cousin Amed in almost ten years. I had no reason to suspect that he’d been radicalized.”
Mike stepped between them. “All right, enough. We’ve got a job to do.”
105B
KYLE AND BRADLEY TRACKED the murderers back to a campsite. Camouflage netting concealed a green tent, a canvas-domed Floridian igloo, and its entryway was flanked by umbrella chairs. Kyle watched the older man lower the woman’s lifeless body into a seated position. Neck rolled back, arms twisted and hanging limp, she looked like a mannequin.
Why the hell did he shoot her? And why did he bring her back here?
The father dumped twigs, dried leaves, and branches inside a cluster of four blackened cinder blocks, stirring a gray powdery ash that swirled through the sunlight. Watching him start a fire and crown it with a stainless-steel grate, Kyle felt a surge of empathy for the man—driven from his home, trying desperately to care for his son.
And I thought I had it rough, he thought. Sleeping in a bed, showering, using toilets, eating a meal every day, with a Marine Corps Sniper keeping us safe—even in this shitty new world, Kyle was immensely blessed. Why didn’t he realize it before?
The teen forced a four-inch blade into the dead woman’s thigh. A hooked notch in the knife carved through flesh and fabric with one smooth motion, the visual equivalent of fingernails on a chalkboard.
“If this was a drug gang? Or convicts?” Kyle’s hoarse whisper fractured and resonated in the air like the sooty ash particles. “But father and son cannibals?”
Bradley’s head was shaking, a pendulum swinging between disbelief and disgust. “And they’re too nonchalant about it—like it’s routine.”
Kyle stared at the pine needles beneath his knee, his mouth filling with bitter saliva. “I can’t watch this. Let’s go.”
“These cannibals are mobile, barely two miles from Sugar Lake. Do you want to worry about this every time Abby goes to the lake for water?”
Kyle breathed in rapid pants. No air seemed to permeate his lungs.
“You need to make a decision,” Bradley whispered. “Eliminate the threat? Or live with the threat?”
The sound of human flesh sizzling turned Kyle’s stomach. “Why do I have to decide?”
“Because I’ll be gone soon. Take them out? Or take your chances?”
* Moral Dilemma 3B *
Path B: YES, try to eliminate the threat.
Path G: NO, try to live with the threat.
I don’t want to decide.
At the end of “Day 17,” a link will allow you to return to this Moral Dilemma and change your mind—if you must.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
( ( ( PATH 106B ) ) )
106B
“I DON’T WANT TO CHOOSE who lives and dies,” Kyle said, burying his face in his hands, terrified of making the wrong decision. “I wish we’d never stumbled across them.”
“Even if you were blissfully unaware of the cannibals, the danger would still exist.”
Kyle’s mouth dropped open as if to speak, venting only an anguished sigh.
“You can’t wish it away, and you can’t ignore it,” Bradley told him. “And the truth is, you’re gonna have blood on your hands no matter what you do. Your only choice is whose blood. The cannibals? Or all their future victims?”
A numbing sensation settled over Kyle.
Do I want to bear responsibility for killing the guilty? Or for the deaths of innocents?
Unable to rally his voice, he lifted his chin and gave a nod.
Bradley said, “I’ve got the teenager.”
Father and son bounded against the ground, and the nearly concurrent gunsho
ts reverberated around them like a prolonged groan.
Then a haggard, fortyish woman with sunken eyes scrambled from the tent. She drew a trembling hand to her mouth. Head shaking vehemently, her voice raw with grief and desperation, she shrieked, “No-o-o!”
She snatched the bolt-action rifle, the barrel sweeping wildly as if tracking the flight of a honeybee, then she staggered and fell onto her backside, shuddering. She turned the rifle around, butt stock braced against the ground, forehead against the barrel.
Kyle reached out, fingers grasping air as if he could seize the weapon from yards away.
She pulled the trigger, but the gun did not fire.
Unaware the bolt needed to be cycled in order to load a new round, she chucked the rifle and crawled toward her teenaged son. Her expression mutated from grief to revulsion, and her sobs escalated as if his death had been forgotten and rediscovered.
She retrieved the knife. Another tortured scream escaped, then she aligned the tip of the blade to her heart and fell forward, using the ground to plunge the knife deep into her chest.
107B
PUFFY CLOUDS PROJECTED islands of darkness onto Lake Apopka, and the shadows skimmed the water’s surface, propelled by a lazy breeze. A belt of saw grass straddled the boundary between land and water, swishing softly like whispering voices at a wake.
Bradley had been sitting along the shore for half an hour, cloaked behind a tangle of wild bushes, lost somewhere between remorse and a gnawing sense of worry.
Unintended consequences, he thought. Yet on some level he understood that even the right decisions were never painless, never without a vein of regret.
Kyle hadn’t spoken since the incident, eyes fixed and unblinking, skin so pale it seemed nearly translucent. Occasionally, his face contracted like a bellicose fist, as if reliving the grisly event, then relaxed back into detached neutrality.
Lousy timing, Bradley thought. He had deliberately cornered Kyle, forced him into an untenable choice. The wisdom of Gramps’ gentle, diplomatic approach was becoming evident—a little too late.
“For what it’s worth,” Bradley began, “even if you’d chosen to walk away, I would’ve come back and ... taken care of it.”
Kyle’s head tilted. His damning glare bored into Bradley. “Then why did you make me choose? Was this a game to you? Some kind of perverse test?”
“Hell yeah. I wanted to know if you had the balls to protect Abby.”
The words fell in a downpour then mutely sunk in, penetrating imperceptibly like a puddle seeping into earth.
Did I just say protect Abby? Instead of protect everyone at Sugar Lake?
Inexplicably, Kyle began to laugh, an unnerving, inappropriate cackle that made Bradley nervous.
“I ... am such ... an idiot,” Kyle mumbled. “My daughter is surrounded by sharks, and I’m worried about the lifeguard.” He paused to draw in a deep breath. “Girls Abby’s age are being raped on playgrounds; cannibals are butchering people; and I’m worried about my daughter sleeping with you.”
Bradley’s emotions ricocheted like a pinball caught between celebration and apprehension. He wanted to say something, to change the subject, but his words dispersed like jackrabbits spooked by a predator.
“I overreacted when you kissed Abby.” Kyle cleared his throat, magnifying the tension. “Do you love my daughter?”
The question hung thick in the air, an asphyxiating invisible haze. There was no way out, no way around, only through. “Look, Kyle, I didn’t want to. I tried not to. But ... Yeah.”
“And if something happened to me, you’d look out for her?”
“Of course,” Bradley said. Hadn’t he been doing that for the past two weeks?
Kyle’s thumb and index finger massaged his closed eyelids then pinched together at the bridge of his nose. “This ... relationship needs to progress on Abby’s timetable—not yours.”
“That goes without saying.” The phrase take advantage was buzzing like a housefly trapped within his skull.
“I know you’re a good man, Bradley. And someday, when you’re a father, you’ll understand.” Kyle hesitated as two sandhill cranes glided gracefully over the lake.
Bradley sighed, sensing the conversation was not finished. The respite was like the eye of a hurricane, a few peaceful seconds before it battered him again.
“I want your word,” Kyle said, attention swooping from the birds back to Bradley, “that you won’t make me a grandfather.”
Air rushed from Bradley’s lungs, and the resulting sound was a Frankensteinlike synthesis of a cough, a groan, and a laugh. “Sir, I will not let that happen.”
“And I don’t want to see any more amorous displays. Use a little discretion.”
“Understood.”
“Then consider this resolved. But you damned well better keep your zipper up ... until she yanks it down. And I don’t care if you are a Marine Corps Sniper. I’ll find some way to kick your ass. Or at least die trying.”
108B
WHEN KYLE RETURNED home, Abby was on the lower deck by the lake, her rifle propped against the chaise lounge. The sight was a drizzle of vindication on his inflamed conscience. He would keep his daughter safe—even if he had to march into hell to do it.
“Hey, Sweetie-pie,” he said, settling onto the chair opposite her.
Her eyes met his, icy and laced with indignation. “I really hate it when you call me that. Why do you always treat me like I’m five years old?”
He flashed a crooked smile and said, “I think that assessment is a little harsh ... Although, I did overreact when you kissed Bradley.”
“Dad, he came within seconds of getting shot.” Abby paused to steady her voice. “And I never would’ve known what it was like to kiss him.”
Kyle stared past her, fearful that she would use that same rationale to justify more than kisses. “Abby, when I saw you and Bradley, my mind jumped to the worst-case scenario. What if you end up pregnant? With no doctors, no hospitals, complications could cost you your life ... I’ve already lost your mother. I couldn’t bear to lose you too.”
Abby sat upright on the chaise lounge and swiveled toward him. “Come on, Dad. The chances of me getting killed in a firefight are way greater than me dying in childbirth.”
She has a point, he thought as unwelcome realizations filtered into his mind. If his headstrong daughter was hell-bent on sleeping with Bradley, nothing he said or did would stop her. And instead of delaying the timeline, his objections might actually accelerate it.
Abby studied him for a beat then said, “Dad, I’m sorry for antagonizing you this morning. In retrospect, I guess my impulsive reaction wasn’t the most mature way to handle things.”
Kyle opened his arms to her, an invitation eagerly accepted. “I’m sorry too. I guess a part of me just doesn’t want to let you grow up.”
( ( ( 55% Complete ) ) )
( ( ( DAY 16B ) ) )
Saturday, March 1st
109B
JUST AFTER SUNRISE, KYLE hurried down the hill from overwatch, yawning and rubbing his bleary eyes, anxious to get some sleep. That midnight-to-sunrise shift was reeking havoc with his circadian rhythm; and his forty-eight-year-old body was protesting mightily.
As he reached for the retractable screen on the front door, his heart vaulted into his throat, and a fierce pain radiated outward from his chest.
Two figures stood in the shadows of the family room. A forearm was wrapped around Abby’s neck. A handgun was pressed against her temple.
Memories of the intruder rushed back.
The paralyzing fear.
The powerlessness.
Then Kyle realized Bradley was holding the gun.
What the hell?
Before he could finish the thought, Abby whirled and grabbed the barrel, forcing it away. She leaned left, downward, using her body weight to twist the gun, and knocked Bradley off balance. He tripped over her outstretched leg, tumbled onto a layer of couch cushions, and Abby emerged w
ith the gun trained on him, backing up.
It was just a self-defense lesson. Kyle drew a deep breath, trying to combat the adrenaline coursing through his veins, knowing that his prospects of sleep had just evaporated.
Bradley was back on his feet, facing Abby, the weapon trained on her chest. This time, Abby’s movements were so fast that he couldn’t discern how she’d managed to strip the weapon from his hand.
The lesson devolved into a playful wrestling match. Kyle watched them rolling across the family room floor, laughing as if the entire world hadn’t collapsed around them.
Bradley looks at her so lovingly. Adoringly. The way I used to look at Jessie.
The thought evoked conflicting emotions, sorrow over losing the love of his life tinged with a little joy; because in this shitty new world, his daughter had managed to find a little happiness.
110B
CAPTAIN RODRIGUEZ continued paging through a file, perusing documents like a speed-reader the entire time Ryan was speaking. The man was an unproven quantity, a baby-faced fortysomething with deep bronze skin, humorless dark eyes, and a reputation as a stickler.
“That’s a serious accusation you’ve leveled against the Corporal,” Rodriguez finally said.
Standing at attention, Ryan felt the first trickle of sweat along his neck, like an advance guard of scouting ants clearing the way for a battalion.
“Look, Staff Sergeant, I would love to prevent another insider attack, but the man is innocent until proven guilty. I can’t ruin his career based solely on your suspicions. Maybe he’s just an unemotional guy.”
Unlike Zugarra, Rodriguez’ features provided no barometer of anger, no indication where his personal red zone began, and Ryan pressed on. “Sir, he wasn’t unemotional over the dead jihadists in Astatula. And the traitorous drone Pilot who attacked Camp Sunshine and facilitated the Patriot battery theft is his cousin. I’m just asking for an investigation—”
“De-nied. Guilt by association is not evidence. And neither is a suspicion based on his Muslim faith.” Rodriguez’ right hand slapped an open personnel file on his desk—Ryan’s file. “I understand there’s some history between you and Dia Jawad Al-Zahrani. Is that what this is? Retribution?”
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