Fire and Forget

by Andrew Warren

  Caine stands up but does not embrace the man. He takes a step back and gives him a wary smile.

  “I did my job, Takuba. That’s all.”

  Takuba cocks his head and gives Caine a strange look. His smile flickers for a second, then returns. His curled lips once again reveal his blood-red tooth. Caine keeps his eyes on the gleaming stone rather than look into Takuba’s wild, darting eyes.

  “You too modest, man!” Takuba turns to his men. “This man, I tell you, he slayed the Dinka assassin like a dog.” He draws his finger across his throat, and the men cheer.

  “Were your negotiations successful?” Khairi asks.

  Takuba gives the man a small bow. “My movement is in your debt. With the weapons your friends will provide … guns, rockets, tanks … we will rain fire on our enemies and take back what is ours.”

  Khairi nodded. “And we too will remember, Mister Takuba. Your current President has been threatening to lower the oil transit fees it pays on our pipelines. If this cannot be resolved, your government may shut down oil production altogether. No one wants that.”

  Takuba laughs and shakes his head. "Yes, yes, good sir. We talk business later. Now, it is time to celebrate!"

  Another dust cloud kicks up in the distance. Caine’s hand drops to his pistol.

  “Khairi, you expecting friends?” he asks.

  Khairi shakes his head. “No. My people will be staying far away from here. They wish to keep our involvement in tonight’s activities … discreet.”

  Takuba turns and watches the new vehicle approach. He waves off Caine’s concern and laughs. “It’s okay, my friend. You can stop protecting me. These are my men. They bring us the spoils of war.”

  “What are you talking about?” Caine mutters. “What war?”

  The vehicle draws closer. It is a battered old school bus. Ripped and torn camouflage netting hangs from the roof. It flaps in the breeze like tattered wings.

  Takuba walks towards the approaching vehicle. “The arms dealers we meet with tonight, they came bearing gifts. Samples of their wares. My men take the weapons and drive south, to the nearest Dinka village. The home of those dogs who tried to silence me tonight.”

  The bus circles around the camp and comes to a stop. The rear door creaks open. A pair of armed rebels hop to the ground. Over the din of the thumping rap music, Caine hears sobs and screams drift from the smoking vehicle. Tiny figures are herded out the rear door.

  Children.

  The armed men fire their rifles in the air and circle around the huddled mass of bodies.

  Takuba shouts to his men. They leap up, grabbing the children and dragging them away from the bus. The boys line up in the dirt. One of the rebel commanders paces back and forth in front of them, leering and yelling.

  “What the hell is going on here?” Caine snaps.

  “Tom …” Jack’s voice sounds hesitant.

  Takuba watches as a group of girls are led out the front of the bus. His men drag them off to nearby huts. One of the soldiers holds a girl by the wrist and tugs her across the dirt. She looks up, wailing and crying in a dialect Caine cannot understand. Tears stream down her face.

  Caine looks into her eyes. They are wide with fear and terror.

  The man flings her at Takuba’s feet.

  Takuba kneels down in front of her. “Shhhhh. Hush, my lovely. Tonight, I make you my wife. As for tomorrow … heh, we shall see, eh?”

  The girl crawls away from Takuba, but he grabs her foot and yanks her back. His laughter is high-pitched and carries across the night breeze like the barking of a hyena.

  “That’s enough!” Caine steps forward, his pistol clutched in his hand.

  Two of Takuba’s men raise their AK-47 rifles. They shout at him, but he does not understand their words.

  Another man leaps up from the fire and charges towards Caine, reaching for his pistol. Jack steps in front of the man and swings out his arm, striking him in the throat. The clothesline blow knocks the rebel to the ground. He rolls in the dirt, gasping for air.

  “Everybody just chill, we’re all friends here,” Jack says, his voice low and dangerous.

  “This wasn’t part of the deal, Takuba,” Caine mutters. “Let her go.”

  Takuba lets go of the girl. She jumps to her feet and bolts away from the men.

  Without taking his eyes off Caine, Takuba shouts an order.

  One of the men spins around and opens fire with his rifle. Caine’s eye twitches as he watches the girl drop into the sand.

  “You son of a bitch!” he whispers. The girl wails in pain.

  Caine raises his pistol and lunges forward. Jack loops an arm around his neck. A pistol appears in Khairi’s hand as well, and he brandishes it toward the nearest group of rebels.

  “Get back,” he hisses.

  “Go get her,” Takuba snaps. Two of them trudge towards the fallen girl.

  Jack tightens his grip on Caine’s throat and pulls him away from the men. “Khairi, get his gun, dammit!”

  The older man grabs Caine’s gun arm, pinning the pistol by his side. He struggles to wrench it from Caine’s grasp, but his fingers clutch the weapon with a white-knuckled grip.

  “Let me go, Jack! I swear I’ll—”

  “You’re not thinking right! This is not what we’re here for!”

  “Thomas, you cannot do this,” Khairi whispers. “Or all of this was for nothing!”

  Takuba slides a long, silver machete from a leather holster strapped to his side. He points at Caine with the weapon.

  “Tonight, I will forgive you, my friend. You save my life. So I owe you that.”

  He takes a step closer. His lips curl up, and his teeth look like fangs in the firelight. “But if you ever point a weapon at me again … I don’t kill you. I do worse. The spirits are my allies, Tom. They protect me. And they will curse you!”

  The men drag the girl back to the fire. The fierce glare of anger melts off Takuba’s face, and once again, he cackles.

  “You know what, I think you jealous, huh? You want her for yourself, is that it?”

  Caine grunts in rage as he struggles to break away from Jack’s chokehold. He bucks and claws at Jack’s arm, but he cannot loosen the man’s grip. Jack pulls his forearm tighter, cutting off Caine’s air supply. Khairi wrenches the gun from his fingers. He staggers back, panting for breath.

  Jack glares at Takuba and pulls Caine away from the fire. “We’re leaving. Everyone stay calm. Things got a little out of hand, that’s all.”

  He turns to Khairi. “Get the car.”

  The older man nods and fishes a set of keys out of his pocket.

  Takuba raises his hands in surrender.

  “It’s okay, my friends, I understand. Jealousy is a powerful beast. It can slay the strongest man. But I will fix this. You watch, we be friends again now.”

  Caine’s eyes bulge and he gasps for breath. Again he looks into the girl’s eyes. She is panting. Blood drips from her abdomen and thigh. She moans in pain, a low, guttural howl.

  The men let her go, and she falls to the ground. Takuba stands over her and raises the machete into the air.

  “Now, there is nothing to fight over, eh?” He smiles at Caine, but his eyes are blank, emotionless. Empty.

  Caine’s vision blurs. Jack drags him back from the cluster of armed men. Behind them, Khairi starts the truck. The headlights flare to life, bathing the grounds in harsh white light.

  “We’re weapons, Tom. We can’t fix this, that’s not why we’re here,” Jack whispers into his ear.

  A curtain of black fogs Caine’s view. Between the light and shadows, all detail is lost. He sags in Jack’s arms as he begins to lose consciousness.

  He reaches a hand towards the struggling girl, but she is like a ghost now. All he can see are her eyes. They look up at him, pleading …

  He hears the machete whistle through the air, hears the girl scream.

  “Allah yaghfir Lia,” Khairi whispers. Allah forgive us.

&
nbsp; “This mission is over, we’re gone. We’re out of here,” Jack intones, his words soothing and calm.

  “Fire and forget, kid.”

  Fire and forget …

  Caine’s eyes shot open. The muscles in his abdomen and throat ached, and his tongue felt thick and dry. He had been panting, gasping for breath. The haze of dreams and memories lifted, and his body lay deathly still. The air around him was thick and damp with humidity.

  It had been a six-hour bus ride from the bayous surrounding Lake Pontchartrain to the city of Alexandria. Caine had chosen to base himself in the area due to its proximity to Alexandria Airport. Commercial flights did not use the small municipal airport, but he knew he could get a charter there to Mexico, or Central America. From there, he could get to wherever he decided to go next. It was the only other international airport in the state, aside from New Orleans. Caine didn’t want to risk venturing into a major metropolitan area if he could avoid it.

  Officially, the CIA believed him to be a traitor. A rogue agent who had sabotaged an off-books black op meant to expose extremist group ties to the White Leopard drug cartel in Afghanistan.

  Allan Bernatto was his handler at the time. Bernatto’s hired mercenaries stole the Leopard’s heroin and the shipment of arms meant as payment. Then he set up Caine to take the fall.

  In the aftermath, Jack Tyler was killed. Trapped in a collapsed well in the middle of nowhere, Caine watched his partner, his friend, bleed out in his arms. There was nothing he could do to save him.

  Caine went off the grid. The world believed he was dead. After the sting of betrayal, Caine saw no reason to disprove that assumption.

  And, of course, there was Rebecca.

  Bernatto was promoted to the Director of the National Clandestine Service. He was her boss. Caine knew it was safer for her, safer for anyone he cared about, to disappear.

  Caine thought of the last time he had seen her. The sun gleaming in her fiery red hair. Her eyes, wide and concerned. The disappointment in her voice after he lied to her, and disappeared again, to continue his hunt.

  And the chair … the chair Bernatto and his mercenary killer had put her in.

  Caine sat up. He rubbed his hands across his face as if to scrub away the taint of his dark memories.

  Memories … He often suffered nightmares, and they were almost always memories. Dark flashes of the past, snippets of death and pain.

  Caine grabbed his watch from the nightstand. The luminous hands showed that it was three in the morning. He stood up and stretched. It was still dark outside. Neon lights from the fast food joints clustered around the interstate cast a dim glow outside his curtains.

  He dropped to the ground and began a series of exercises. Pushups, situps, jackknifes … He performed each set of repetitions without pause, then moved on to the next exercise. When he finished one circuit, he started the routine over. After a while, his pace began to slow. The tight, lean muscles of his body shimmered with sweat.

  Finally, he stopped. His muscles ached and his body was exhausted, but his mind remained focused and restless. Thoughts of the past continued to tumble through his consciousness.

  Puff Adder. Was he still alive, after all these years?

  Caine opened the mini-bar and removed a bottle of water. He popped it open and took a long sip, then sat down at his desk and flipped open his laptop. He googled ‘South Sudan civil war.’

  There were dozens of articles and videos. The death and destruction that consumed the region was perfect news fodder. No matter how many atrocities they reported, there was always fresh blood being spilled.

  He found the most recent news footage and pressed play.

  “Founded in 2011, after decades of conflict with the Muslim government to the north, South Sudan is the youngest nation on the planet.” A British voice narrated the report. The video showed rows of people walking through the blasted remains of a war-torn village. The crowd of dark figures seemed to stretch forever into the distant horizon. There were hundreds, thousands even …

  “But only two years later, forces allied to President Salva Kiir found themselves engaged in yet another brutal civil war. Rebel forces loyal to former Vice President Riek Machar took up arms against them. The result has been years of bloody conflict. Many fear the killing is inevitably sliding towards genocide.”

  Caine took another sip of water and stared at the screen. The images of refuges dissolved, replaced by soldiers wearing tattered, makeshift uniforms. They were firing battered AK-47 assault rifles on full auto. They swept gunfire across burning houses, schools, and medical clinics.

  “Despite a peace treaty signed in 2015, the violence shows no sign of abating. Since 2013, over fifty thousand lives have been lost in the region. Over 2.3 million people are displaced from their homes and villages. Rape and torture of civilians have become commonplace. Children as young as six years old have been forced to fight on both sides. Oil, water, food, and other vital resources provide the spark in a war that has re-ignited old tribal tensions. The conflict has escalated into a massacre. It is a crisis the United Nations seem unable, or unwilling, to quell.”

  The footage changed to the aftermath of a skirmish. Dead bodies littered the barren fields surrounding the decimated town. Their limbs were askew, their bodies bent in unnatural, twisted positions. Some were missing arms, others legs.

  Land mines, he thought. They killed hundreds that tried to flee from the conflict zone.

  Men. Women. Children …

  Caine slammed the laptop closed.

  He clenched his fists and stared at the empty wall. Then he closed his eyes, trying to force the grim images from his mind. But it was pointless. Even if he could forget the video, he could not forget what he had seen with his own eyes.

  Caine was no stranger to death and murder. He had seen things, done things … things that were the stuff of nightmares. But the carnage he had witnessed years ago, the bodies sprawled across those barren, blood-red sands … That place was its own special hell.

  If the man known as Puff Adder was still operating in the region, if Bernatto was there with him …

  Caine took a long, slow breath. Coincidence or not, this clue was the next link in the chain. If Puff Adder was still alive, then he was living on borrowed time. Time gifted to him by Caine, years ago.

  The cheap mattress creaked as Caine slipped back under the covers. He did not sleep. His unblinking eyes pierced the darkness like twin verdant suns. He watched the dusty blades of the ceiling fan spin round and round until the first light of dawn.

  Chapter Seven

  “Director Paulis, you can’t be serious!” Rebecca slapped her palms down on the conference table. “Josh Galloway has not filed his latest call report, he has not answered any of the pre-arranged code phrases we have left for him. Local assets have confirmed he has not been seen at any of our prearranged dead drop locations. How much more do you need to declare the man is missing!”

  Michael Paulis, a heavyset African-American man dressed in a gray suit, with salt and pepper hair and a neatly trimmed goatee, glared at Rebecca. He took a sip from a glass of water. “Are you finished, Director Freeling? Because this is beginning to sound an awful lot like insubordination to me.”

  “With all due respect, Director Paulis, I’m not trying to be insubordinate. I’m trying to follow standard procedure. We haven’t even begun to assess extraction plans, and you’re telling me this is a non-starter? Since when do we leave our people to the wolves without even trying to—”

  “For the last time, Rebecca, there is nothing standard about this situation.”

  The director stood up and leaned over the table as his voice rose in volume to a deep, angry rumble. “I don’t expect you to like it. I don’t like it myself. But by Presidential Order, Sudan and South Sudan are off limits to all operations for the time being. I trust you've read your briefings? There's been a civil war raging in the south for years, with atrocities committed on both sides. Now their government
has finally agreed to negotiate another ceasefire with the rebels. The United States has a checkered past in that area, and the President doesn't want us anywhere near this thing in case it blows up in our faces.”

  Rebecca pulled her hair back and exhaled. “I know the situation there is volatile, I just don’t understand why—”

  “You don’t understand because you don’t want to understand!” Paulis gathered the photographs and papers she had presented him. He slid them into a file folder and tossed it across the table to her. “If you would stop for a minute and think about this rationally, you’d come to the same conclusion I have.”

  She looked up at him as she grabbed the folder. “And what conclusion is that, sir?”

  “That you’re letting this situation affect you on a personal level. You’re putting your feelings for Galloway ahead of your responsibilities as the D/NCS. Just like you did with Thomas Caine.”

  Rebecca blinked. “I beg your pardon? Sir, how can you say that after reading my report? My instincts about Caine were correct. Bernatto framed him for Operation Big Blind. If it wasn’t for Caine, Bernatto could have succeeded in sparking a war between China and Japan. And God knows what would have happened if Ted Lapinski’s cyber-weapon had fallen into the hands of—”

  Paulis raised his hand and nodded. “Yes, Director Freeling, I've read your report. And for what it’s worth, I believe every word of it. But without Caine coming in to debrief, the quality of this intel is always going to be questioned. That limits my ability to act on it. Instead, he's running wild on his own private vendetta. FBI Counter Intelligence received a lead that he was sighted in Louisiana. You know who else is in Louisiana? The DNI. Who, I might add, has also gone missing.”

  “You can’t think Caine would—”

  “Until he turns himself in and is properly debriefed, I don’t know what to think.”

  Paulis turned around and took a few steps from the table.

  “I take it this meeting is over?” Rebecca asked in an icy voice.

  “Follow me. I think we both need a change of scenery. OPSEC is all well and good, but I can only sit in a room without windows for so long.”