Reckoning

by James Byron Huggins

  Then he would make his move. As soon as the car merged onto the interstate, speed at fifty, sixty. He would strike the passenger, hard, and throw the handcuffs around the neck of the driver, crash them all. A high speed accident. More than likely, they would all die. Especially him, as wounded as he was. But there was a thin chance that an accident would provide an opportunity for escape. Even if it didn't, he would rather die fighting than to surrender to this.

  Frantic screams.

  A rending storm of fire and sparks collided against the driver's side of the Cavalier, and Gage's head smashed with numbing force against the door. Then in a deafening concussion the car was lifted off two wheels, settled down, crashing.

  Gage rolled wildly, concealing his movement within the chaos, and the seatbelt lock was in his hand.

  Collision.

  Grinding metal and a strained engine roar. The Cavalier was locked side to side with another vehicle speeding recklessly along a ramp and then, earsplitting machine gun fire as the driver cut loose with a weapon, the vehicles separating.

  Rolling with the explosive rocking of the vehicle, Gage slammed the steel plate of the seatbelt over the handcuff pin and twisted, pushing violently against the steel pin with all his waning strength.

  Thunder collided against the Cavalier again, driving them in a tangled, screaming, grinding mass off the highway. Gage braced himself against the seat in white flashing gunfire as glass exploded across the interior.

  *

  TWENTY-ONE

  Shadows.

  White light.

  Darkness, light, floating.

  Crossing, rolling over him, beneath him.

  Nothing else.

  Gage rolled his head, opened his eyes, watching, separated from himself. A bearded man, hands clutching the steering wheel.

  Lights.

  You're alive! Think!

  Gage focused, blinking. He was in the backseat of the car. He looked around. No, not that car. Another car. Head aching, he moved, tried to lift himself.

  Ah, pain! So sharp, so much of it.

  Sharp, slicing pain.

  Fight it! Don't give up! Overcome!

  Groaning, tearing open thinly clotted wounds with the effort, Gage rose to an elbow, focusing with a dead gaze at the man, the driver.

  Barto.

  Barto turned at Gage's movement, looked over his shoulder.

  "I got ya, pal," he said, focusing again on the highway. "It was close, but I got ya." He seemed nervous, exhausted. "The cabin or a hospital?"

  Gage took a deep breath. "The cabin."

  Slowly, face twisted with the effort, Gage slid painfully into an upright position, leaning against the door. He looked at his wrists. Blackened in blood. Stickish.

  The handcuff pin had been snapped. Too exhausted to feel any relief, he leaned his head back. He had done it. In the chaos and the confusion and the pain, he had done it.

  Barto shook his head.

  "I thought you'd say that. But you need a doctor, Gage. One of the other two guys didn't even make it. Head on into an embankment. The guy in the passenger seat must have jumped. I didn't see him. You wouldn't have lived either if you hadn't been in the backseat. I'm sorry, but I had to try something. I figured we could all die together if it didn't work. I pulled out of it at the last second. The car's busted up but it'll get us back. I've got the map. We're taking the back roads. We've got two more hours left to go."

  Gage nodded. "Where's my bag?" he mumbled. Dry blood was caked on his lips. Then Gage realized that he couldn't see out of his left eye, felt softly with his fingers to find crusted blood, a contusion, the eye swollen shut.

  "Here." Barto dropped the bag over the seat.

  Gage took the bag, blood everywhere. He had trouble holding it, his grip weak, unfeeling.

  Tired, now. The worst part over. Time to relax, tend to wounds. He foraged blindly, removed the cellophane pack, took out two solid blue pills, both of them high-strength, prescription painkillers, swallowed them.

  "You really need a hospital, man," said Barto, his voice strained.

  Gage laughed brutally, leaned his head back against the seat again. "Keep the speed slow," he mumbled. "Be careful ... We can't risk getting stopped. Just get me home. Sarah knows how to fix me."

  Barto made an indefinite sound, twisted his head nervously. Gage closed his eyes, sensing blood and death, such cold, timeless death, holding him, clutching him with white grinning fingers. Gage struggled, roused his will to resist, but its claim could not be denied.

  It whispered to him. "I will be cheated no more..."

  Fighting it, sensing his heart tiring, slowing, Gage reached for the adrenaline injection in the medical kit, anything to fight off unconsciousness. But even as his hand touched the canvas backpack he felt the blackness. Pitching forward, he fell tunelessly into dreams of infinite darkness.

  "How badly do you want to live?"

  Sitting on the ground, sweating under the scorching, oppressive North Carolina sun, Gage said nothing. Around him, smothering and also drenched in sweat that rolled over their faces and arms, soaking their green T-shirts to their dirt-grimed bodies, no other member of the Delta Force qualifying team said a word, either. They were awed into silence by the frighteningly formidable, weathered image that stood before them.

  Clad in dirty jungle fatigues, the man repeated the question. "How badly do you want to live?"

  He sounded as if his throat were toughened leather, as toughened and leathery as his face. He was barely over 40 years old.

  Well under six feet and lean, but rounded with muscle like a lion, Sergeant Mac Haynes stood before them. Waiting. He was quiet, revealing nothing. His eyes were dark and narrow, black slits in his face. His hair was shaved on the sides, high and tight, a disciplined military sheen.

  Trying to be inconspicuous, Gage lowered his head, grimacing in the heat.

  It was the fifth day of intensive training in advanced Delta Force hand-to-hand combat. They were learning methods of silent sentry removal and covert entry, acquiring the skills needed to penetrate any security shield or leave a trail of dead soldiers across any nation or jungle in the world. It was a series of hard 20-hour days, of ceaseless fighting and more fighting, endless techniques, termination zones, methods for sanctioning human life. And beyond the dangers of practicing the training techniques without actually killing anyone, the ferocious Delta instructors made it even more hazardous by standing freely and relaxed one moment and in the next hurling a surprise attack that could render a man unconscious.

  The perpetual attacks created a dramatically heightened atmosphere of danger where everyone walked, even to the mess hall, in a ceaseless status of Condition Red, prepared at any moment to evade a fist or kick. Eventually, after he had narrowly anticipated and deflected a dozen brutal attacks that came out of nowhere, Gage began to catch himself reading even the shadows or rustling leaves, the wind, constantly aware of all the movement or non-movement in his immediate surroundings, his body always poised to evade, to attack or counterattack.

  After a while, once he became comfortable with it, when it became so natural that it required little thought, he couldn't imagine what life was like before. It seemed all there was, all there had ever been, this world of combat.

  The five-day course included a session ominously tagged "The Will to Survive." It was scheduled for the last day of the week-long course so that if anyone got seriously injured they could be rolled forward for the rest of Delta Qualifications after being released from the hospital.

  Again, it came.

  "How badly do you want to live?" Sergeant Mac muttered softly, with a thin smile, eyes twinkling in an evil glint. "We're going to find out, ladies. We're going to find out if you'll live or die when you get out there in that ol' mean jungle." He laughed. "We're going to find out about pain, ladies. We're going to eat it. We're going to drink it. We're going to love it." He leaned over them, hands hard as oak hanging at his sides.

  "Do yo
u love pain, ladies?"

  A chorused "hoo-ah," boomed out.

  Sergeant Mac smiled, an aspect infinitely more frightening than a man who screamed. Anyone could scream. Only the truly diabolical ones could smile at you as they pushed the mind and body past the point of human endurance and into madness.

  "Yes, you do," he continued. "'Cause you're all good boys. You love pain because you know the more you love it, the less it can hurt you. You know that if you love pain, then you won't be afraid of it. You can just keep goin'. On and on. 'Cause it's in the mind, boys. In the mind. You don't need no soft bed. You don't need no soft clothes. You don't need no food. Or water. Or friends. You don't need nuthin'. You can live naked in a swamp. You can live in a gator den. Like I do. You can eat rats and sleep in a snake pit. But you don't need sleep. ‘Cause sleep is for them other people – them ones that don't love pain like we do. And you ain't like them. ‘Cause you’re all good boys. So today you're going to take pain, ladies. You’re gonna take pain ‘till you love pain."

  He seemed to grow happy, smiling. "You're going to take it, and take it, and take it until you fall out on me. Until you know what you truly are, ladies. Until you're lying there in the dirt. Dirt up your nose and in your ears and in your mouth. Until pain is all you know, all you remember and all you want. Until pain is what your mamas fed ya. Until pain is what you was born for. Just pain, ladies, pain."

  Silence.

  Gage shifted slightly, casting a narrow glance at Sandman.

  Wide-eyed, the big black man caught the look, his dark chiseled face frozen, his gaze wide and fixed.

  As two of the 40 members attempting to qualify for Delta, they had volunteered for the course. Friends since they were together in the 10th Special Forces, they had long known about and dreaded this day, along with everyone else. But they also knew that it was a sacred rite of passage into the United States Army's most elite special warfare unit; an ordeal by fire where only the strongest survived for selection into Delta Force, permanently attached to Delta Command, Fort Bragg.

  But first they had to survive.

  They had to survive Sergeant Mac.

  Sergeant Mac stepped forward, smiling. He glanced to the tree-line; the sun barely over the horizon was crimson, hazy. "Now this is what you're going to do, boys," he said. "You're going to put on these nasty ol' packs, here."

  He reached down to grab what Gage knew was a 50-pound pack and his fingers knotted around the material like talons, closing and holding effortlessly as he stood. As he continued to talk, Gage used the moment to also reach down, quickly retying his boots, adjusting them for the long, torturous run over North Carolina hills.

  "Yes sir, you're going to put on these little ol' packs, and you're going to run to that hill way out yonder." He pointed down the road. "No, you can't see it. It's twenty-five miles away. But it was there yesterday. And it's there today. So we're going to run over there. And then we're going to run back. That's fifty miles. With a fifty-pound pack. And then, when we get back, I'm going to watch you do some PT. Until you die." He winked. "'Cause we ain't gonna burn daylight on this, boys. No, sir. We'll still have too much pain still waitin’ for us when we get back."

  Gage took a deep breath, preparing.

  He was already sore and beaten from endless miles of running, training on the obstacle course, the constant punches and kicks. His body was a mass of contusions, the skin mottled from shallow internal bleeding where muscles had torn and blood vessels had burst beneath the brutal impact of fists, shins, or boots. But although the contusions were frighteningly colorful, black and yellow and red, they were rarely crippling. Only painful, as the instructors would repeat. And for those who had sustained massive bruising, like Gage suffered when he failed to anticipate a devastating punch by Sergeant Mac, painkillers were issued.

  Gage had taken three codeine capsules before the day's exercise, and for the moment they allowed him to move his tender, torn muscles without agony. Yet at this stage, with the pain he was in, it was tempting to quit, especially with what he was about to face. But he knew he would never quit. It wasn't in him. He tried not to think about how the codeine would wear off somewhere in the run, leaving him alone with the pain. And he knew they wouldn't be issuing any more. Today, they wanted to find out what he was made of

  Frowning, he finished tying his boots.

  "On your feet!"

  Instantly 40 men in dirty green fatigues were on their feet.

  Gage quickly hoisted his pack, tightening the belt strap to bear the greatest weight. He clicked the shoulder connecter last, allowing as little weight as possible on the shoulder straps, providing some relief for his chest. Then he picked up the M-16, holding port arms.

  "Double-time!" Sergeant Mac yelled out.

  Two columns of heavily packed soldiers moved down the road, Gage and Sandman setting the quick pace, leading each line. Gage knew that the run would cross a large, deforested section of the military reservation, acreage that swirled continuously with chalky red dust, each drifty gust of wind lifting a small cyclone of dirt that would eventually coat their faces with sunbaked clay, clogging their noses, mouths, and eyes.

  A long dirt road, scorching under the summer sun, stretched out before them.

  They ran.

  Gage ignored the grimy sweat that dripped from his forehead, his chin, nose.

  Sweat, sun, smothering heat.

  Miles and miles and miles. Ten miles, fifteen miles ...

  Perspiration soaked Gage's fatigues to black, then red with the dust of each plodding step. But Gage wasn't thinking about it, about anything. Somewhere he began, as usual, to pass into the zone, somewhere in himself, forgetting everything else, just running. He moved mechanically with the spell of mindless effort, of endurance. Nothing else there, thought gone, just running, the distance, road and dust. One step after another.

  His eyes became fixed and his hands went rigid, melded to the stock of the M-16 with the sap like resin he had sprayed on each palm. His numb feet shuffled, one step after another, another and another; dust swirling, step after step.

  Miles and miles, heat and sun.

  In the zone, mindless, a machine.

  Then Sandman, laboring. "This is ... insane,” the big black man whispered, leaning forward against the heat. "People die doin' this!"

  Silent, Gage nodded, awakened from his stupor, careful not to catch the wrathful attention of Sergeant Mac. But inside, where it mattered, he was only running. He felt nothing, knew nothing, because he knew that's how he would survive. He wouldn't be here. His body would do it for him. He would run until his body quit, his legs went out, or heat took him. But he wouldn't be thinking about it. Until the real pain came when everything would change. It would make him mean, pushing his soul back to his mind, where he would have to embrace the pain and the death or quit, quit everything. Because pain wrapped around death would do that; it could scare you, break you. The only way to beat it was to love it, to embrace it, to not be afraid of it.

  He wondered how much he could love it, how much he could take before it broke him. He had come close before to truly embracing it but he had never pushed his body to the point of death. The fear had always defeated him. He had not wanted to embrace the pain when it was wrapped around death. But today, he knew, he would face death.

  He would know if he could embrace the pain.

  Five miles more, Gage no longer aware of the sweat on his brow, no longer blinking at the stinging droplets that pricked his eyes. He stared straight ahead, moving, always moving, one step after another. No, don't think about how far. There's only one step, here, and another. That's all. Never think about how far.

  Behind them an ambulance moved slowly along, ready to catch the first to surrender to heat exhaustion, the first who could not bear the pain. Then a cadence broke out and Gage joined it, singing out, keeping step to the words until it was gone. And then another began and he joined that, too, as they neared the halfway point, seeing the hill in the nea
r distance.

  Sergeant Mac was running beside him.

  "We're almost there, ladies!" he boomed out, hearty. "Keep it up! We've got a long way to go before we get home! Gage! Give me a cadence!"

  Gage led the call, keeping the pace regular, rhythmic, his mind coming back with the words. He watched the crest of the hill, felt the weight increase on his legs as they climbed the slope.

  Sandman groaned beside him, breaking count, falling back.

  Losing a face of sweat Gage looked to the side to gain the big man's attention, to yell out the count. Then Sandman groaned and lurched forward, hands tightening on his rifle, keeping the cadence.

  They climbed the hill, to the top.

  "Ten minutes, boys!" Sergeant Mac called out, leading. He turned at the crest, hands on his hips, watching as the two columns parted, separating down each side of him, red-baked soldiers collapsing in the dust, hastily pulling canteens, pouring water over face, chest, into upturned mouths. The jeep, filled with fresh, cool canteens, was waiting. But instead of going to it for water they fell like dead men over the red hillside, scattered soldiers with open mouths heaving breath in the airless heat.

  Sandman fell prone to the dust and rolled to his side, gasping, mud-colored chalk swirling over him in unfelt wind. It was Gage, alone, who moved on floating legs to the jeep, his mind passing something, moving to something else inside himself, something that had begun feeding on the pain, enlarged by it, angered by it.

  Yes, today he would know.

  He would know all there was to know about pain.

  Moving directly and without stopping to the jeep, Gage picked two fresh canteens, traded his empty ones. Then, feeling the anger that gave him the strength to embrace the real pain, the main center of all that he had feared, he turned steadily and walked back to the crest of the hill.

  He stood 20 feet from Sergeant Mac, rifle in hand.

  Leathery face reddened by the dust and the sweat, Sergeant Mac turned and walked two steps through a sea of sweating, collapsed bodies before he noticed Gage standing on the crest, staring at him. He stopped in stride, eyes narrowing like gun sights.