by Pinki Parks
“I don’t even know where to begin. There is nothing that could possibly describe the feeling that I have when I look at you. Elation, maybe… or joy. You are my best friend and lover. I wake up every morning with a smile on my face thinking about the life we are going to share with one another. You have my heart. It’s a piece of me that I don’t show to everybody. I feel like you see me like nobody else. We are destined to walk this path together. There’s more I want to say, but I think you get the general idea. I will never be a wordsmith. What you see is what you get.” Bentley touched my hand and gave me the strength to be the man that she was going to spend the rest of her life with.
“Pride, you have the soul of a poet and what you just said touched me. I know that I can trust you with my heart. My dream came true the day I met you. You were my knight in shining armor. The future is uncertain. The one thing I do know is that my love for you will never falter.” I listened intently to the monologue of words coming out of her mouth and my passion for her love overwhelmed me.
The rings were exchanged and the priest declared us husband and wife in the nick of time.
I heard the sound of a helicopter. I shielded my eyes to see a tomahawk getting closer with its menacing gun turrets mounted on the front.
Chapter 3
Bentley
I saw his expression change from complete bliss to bewilderment. The panic-stricken guests ran for whatever cover they could find as the bullets came flying at us. Victor had the foresight to protect their mother by shielding her behind the open bar set up on the beach.
The barrage of bullets scattered across the ground was leading directly to where I was standing. I knew there was no such thing as coincidences.
I grabbed onto Pride’s arm for the necessary support and found strength in his hardened bicep.
“We will talk about this later. We have a duty to get these everyone to safety. Normally, I would fight fire with fire, but I didn’t think about bringing weapons to my own wedding.” Pride could say that, but the same thing couldn’t be said for Justice.
He was in a shooting stance on his knees firing at an overwhelming enemy bent on killing anything in its path. The bullets fired from his chamber made the helicopter veer to the left, but then it was circling to come back again. It was a brief respite that bought us some a few seconds to try to get half of them off the beach. There wasn’t any place to hide. It was an ambush.
“Keep low and keep moving.” I was the voice of authority in the chaos.
There was blood on Pride’s white suit jacket. I carefully surveyed Pride’s body looking for injuries.
“It’s not my blood.” We both turned to Justice and he shrugged his shoulders.
I heard the grunt of pain and wheeled around to find the priest holding his shoulder with blood seeping through his fingers. I ripped off a piece of my dress along the bottom and used pressure to stop the bleeding.
I was looking around at the carnage of people screaming in terror and soaking the sand in their blood. I was making my determination of triage. There were many cuts and bruises, but they could wait until the others seriously injured could be attended to.
Justice had produced another weapon and had given it to Pride. They were both laying down cover fire shifting their attention to an offensive position. They ran into the melee giving the civilians the time they needed to vacate the area. I was using my medical training to get people ambulatory while calling 911 at the same time.
“We’re going to take the fight to them. They’re going to pay for this.” Pride was directing the action. Both he and Justice split up and getting themselves in a position where the helicopter couldn’t get both of them at the same time.
Somebody came down a line from the helicopter, but their ascension from the sky was short lived. Justice stopped his decline by putting bullet holes into his body making him hang upside down by his feet.
Pride faced the helicopter head on, trying to get at the pilot. The tail end of the helicopter was smoking and it was wavering in the air barely staying airborne. Justice knew better than to shoot at the gas tank. An explosion this close to the crowd would be devastating.
I was impressed by his fortitude and willingness to put his life on the line for his extended family and friends. I was ushering those that could walk behind a bluff where there was some shelter. Running for the parking lot was going to put a target on each and every one of them. It was better to hunker in and wait until there was a lull in the action.
Justice and Pride were redoubling their efforts and reloading their weapons on the fly. They weren’t about to let this enemy have a breather and the chance to regroup.
Captain Pride was showing his mettle in the face of overwhelming odds. I was getting a brief glimpse of the man that he was trying to hide from me. It was an eye-opening experience. They were both on the edge of the cliff not backing down for one second.
He suddenly turned in my direction and was waving frantically with both hands. I didn’t know what he was getting all fired up about until I could see the shadow looming over me.
A pair of hands came around to my mouth with the distinct smell of chloroform on a rag.
My feet were dragging on the sand leaving a trail in my wake. I could feel the grains between my toes. My survival instinct kicked in with the threat of unconsciousness taking me by the throat. The helicopter was there to distract me. People were too terrified to move to intervene on my behalf.
Pops was out cold lying a few hundred feet beyond me. I wasn’t sure if he was alive.
I brought my elbow back and made contact with this man’s ribs hard enough to lessen his grip. I slammed my heel back into his kneecap repeatedly making him howl in pain. I cracked his knee, flipped him over my back and he landed awkwardly with the air rushing out of his lungs. The chloroform rag fell uselessly to the sand. The effects of breathing it in made me a little fuzzy around the edges, but I was using the rush of adrenaline to force me to keep my eyes open.
“I may not be able to kill you, but I can hurt you.” His attempt to struggle to his feet was hampered by the sand.
He was built like a linebacker wearing a grey suit torn from fighting with a woman in a wedding gown. Poor sucker. Pride had made sure I was proficient in hand-to-hand combat every morning before breakfast, we would grapple. It came in handy today. There was a gleaming blade in his hand shining in the sun. I was no longer watching his face, but his actions to predict what he was going to do next. I had been trained to succeed at any cost. My recent deployment had stuck me in an office going over communications for hours on end. But I was ready for him. The bastard crashed my wedding!
He thrust forward and I jumped back in time to avoid the painful injection of the pointed end of his weapon. I saw over his shoulder that Pride was mounting his own attack. He was running with his weapon drawn, but he wasn’t going to take the shot and risk hitting the woman he loved.
Everything was happening in the span of seconds. He came forward again. This time I grabbed him by the wrist and turned his arm around his back to propel him off his feet and back onto the sand. He still had a hold of the knife not letting it go. He was determined to complete his mission by whatever means necessary.
“You fight like a warrior but no woman is going to beat me. I will destroy you, little girl.” He brandished the knife, but I kicked it out of his hand making him hold the hand that had turned numb after the contact.
“I’m a soldier and gender doesn’t mean anything. Don’t make the mistake of underestimating me. It will be the last thing you do.” The knife was in the sand with the handle of the blade sticking out at an awkward angle.
He snatched the chloroform rag from the ground and rushed me. His weight advantage toppled me over, but I used my knees underneath him to propel him over top of me. I flipped over and straddled him with my weight coming down on top of him. He pushed me off easily and I flew to my feet. He slowly stood up and I cartwheeled toward him,
my dress fanned out and wrapped around his head. I came back to a stance with his head at my feet smothered in my mother’s gown. His arms reached up before I could twist his neck. I looked over to find his friend coming at me.
I figured he didn’t come alone and I was right.
I jumped on his torso, squeezed my thighs against his damaged ribs and began to pummel him with straight fists to the face. My knuckles were going to be sore in the morning, but it was worth it to see the look on his face. I was being pulled off of him.
The numbers were against me, but I wasn’t going to go down without a fight. The man with the bloody broken nose stood to confront me and slapped me across the face hard enough to leave a mark. I kicked him in the face and two teeth went flying into the air.
My arm was behind my back close to coming out of its socket. They were rough and punched me in the stomach to make me fall to my knees. In this position, they were vulnerable to my fists of fury. I punched them both in their family jewels and stood up grabbing both of them hard enough to make their eyes water.
I saw they were both packing with bulges underneath their jackets. The one with the broken nose and a couple of teeth missing was coming back for more. I brought my head back into his crotch with a forceful declaration to make his agony quite apparent.
“I don’t know who the hell…you think you are. You’re coming with us…one way or the other. This was supposed to be an easy extraction. You have made it more difficult than it has to be.” He was rocked back, but he had his hands around my waist from behind.
The two men in front of me were begging me with their eyes to let go. Their legs were buckling under the strain of the pain I was inflicting on them. The one holding me from behind was no longer an issue. Pride had grabbed him by the scruff of the neck.
I squeezed a little tighter and the two men both fell to their knees looking like little boys. I let one go and reached into his jacket for his gun. I slapped the taste out of both of their mouths in one fluid motion.
The adrenaline was wearing off and the chloroform I had inhaled was making it hard to concentrate. The disjointed images and this feeling of a shroud coming over the top of me were hard to ignore. I had fought with the fierceness of a lion protecting its cub.
I fell to one knee and dropped the gun with no feeling in my fingers. It lay there mocking me from the sand. I was on my hands and knees barely able to keep my eyes open. In my peripheral vision, I could see Pride had gotten the upper hand. He was behind the assailant on the sand with his arm up around his throat choking off his windpipe.
“Don’t kill him. We need to know what he knows. They came here for a purpose and I want to know who they are working for.” The chloroform was pulling me down into this pit of despair that I was trying to claw out of.
The look in my husband’s eyes was one that I hadn’t seen before. The man’s neck made this audible snap and his body went lifeless. Pride pushed the lifeless body off of himself and came to my assistance with his hand on the small of my back.
“Stay with me, Bentley!” I fell into his arms and reached up with my fingers grazing his cheek before darkness enveloped me.
Chapter 4
Pride
I had tried to get in touch with Commander Riker but I was getting stonewalled. Nobody could give me a straight answer. One person claimed that he was in meetings and couldn’t be disturbed. Another one was under the impression that he was out of town and wouldn’t be returning until the first of the week. It seemed one hand didn’t know what the other hand was doing or, I was being given the run around. It was infuriating to be treated with disrespect.
“The only people allowed in this room are on that list. There will be no exceptions.” I didn’t know what was going on, but how they went after my wife raised a few alarms.
“You have my word that she is perfectly safe. I came when you called because I owe you a debt I can never repay. I might be a mercenary for hire, but I always pay back any debt with interest. I will step into the path of a live grenade to protect her.” Feldman was a rare breed of a seasoned soldier and civilian contractor. His services could be had for the highest bid.
“I wouldn’t call you away from something important unless it was of the utmost urgency. She is my life and I will not let anybody take her away from me. I have some business at one of our many safe houses.” One of her attackers was dead by my hand and the other one was most likely reporting back his failure to his boss.
The other one had been captured by Victor. He had made a gesture to me when the ambulance was taking Bentley to the hospital after the attack. He looked a little squirrelly. He opened the back of his rented Wrangler. Inside was one of her assailants bound and gagged struggling to free himself from his bonds. I had put my hand on my brother’s shoulder and we shared a poignant moment between brothers.
Justice and my mother had flown out on the next available flight. She tried to argue with me, but I was quite insistent she gets as much distance from the scene of the crime as she could.
Victor was babysitting at an undisclosed location and no doubt had his finger on the trigger to intimidate his hostage. The police were ineffectual and I was tired of answering their questions. I had to call in a favor to turn the investigation over to the military.
“Pride, this is the reason why I have never gone down the aisle. I can’t even imagine someone using a loved one for leverage against me. I don’t have any immediate family. I’m pretty much a ghost moving from one country to the next. I work better alone. I know you don’t want to leave her, but she is in safe hands.” He probably thought I was overreacting.
This was a hospital dedicated to military personnel.
“No woman in their right mind would want to wake up to that ugly mug. You have left a trail of broken hearts around the world.” I was poking fun and he was slightly amused by the way that I was assassinating his character.
“I never put a gun to their heads. They willingly follow me to my bedroom. I give them exactly what they are looking for and they leave with a smile on their face. I do have fleeting thoughts about the uncertain future.” He was never going to change his spots no matter how much he professed to the contrary.
I had a watchful eye on those doctors and nurses to make sure nothing was out of the ordinary. I scrutinized every detail including what they were wearing on their feet. It was always the little things that could trip up someone’s attempt to breach the inner sanctum. I wanted to stay, but my interrogation techniques were waiting to be utilized.
Leaving the suspect to stew for a few hours was a good tactic to loosen his lips.
“I never suspected anything like this was going to happen. I should’ve been more prepared for any eventuality. My brothers came to the rescue. They showed amazing strength and bravery.” I was relieved to know that my brothers and my mother had survived.
“I know I shouldn’t ask, but this kind of thing would have been a jurisdictional nightmare. They would have been fighting to see if this fell under the purview of a Federal investigation.” Feldman was always a little too curious for his own good.
I had people in high and low places. It was good to know where the bodies were buried metaphorically and literally speaking.
“I had the ambulance redirected to keep my beloved out of civilian hands. They are ill-equipped to handle a contingent of soldiers forcing their way through their doors. I wasn’t going to take any chances. Those at the scene have been questioned extensively and my people are piecing together the details of what happened.” I wasn’t comfortable with the unknown variable of those doctors and nurses looking after her.
“You can’t keep her here for very long. I’m speaking from personal experience. Your recollection of events leads me to believe that the Russians are involved. That guy you killed, was a Russian spy. They have long arms and resources. I hope you have a plan.” Feldman was never one to mince words.
When she was fully recovered, I was going
to take her someplace safe and wait for the heat to die down. I knew that she was going to be stubborn, but I was damned and determined to put my foot down. The best way to avoid leaks was to not tell anyone where you were going.
“The only reason why I haven’t taken her out of this place is that she hasn’t woken up yet. The doctors believe that she had an allergic reaction to the chloroform. It’s been almost 12 hours since the incident.” I wasn’t showing it, but I was breaking apart inside worrying about her safety.
The hospital was under military direction. I was well aware the enemy could infiltrate just about anywhere. Feldman’s suspicion that the Russians were involved didn’t surprise me. I thought maybe this had something to do with what had transpired between my wife and Commander Riker. She was half Russian. Was this a family dispute of some sort with some kind of feud unsettled? I had more questions than answers.
The smell of antiseptic was overpowering. I could hear the snap of latex gloves. I was very sensitive to any outside interference. My hearing was highly tuned to the slightest noise that would mimic a gun being cocked. The janitor sloshing the water in the hallway had me cocking an eyebrow. Everybody was under suspicion.
“You’re lucky to be alive. Whatever happened to the helicopter? It sounds like you did some considerable damage.” His words were grating on my last nerve, but he was always under the belief information was the key.
“The helicopter was found abandoned in a farmer’s field on the other side of the island. I’m a desperate man looking for answers. It makes me dangerous and unpredictable in the field. They have no idea what I am capable of when pushed into a corner. It still haunts me the way that my wife looked at me when I killed that guy.” I could hear her telling me not to, but the blood in my veins were trained to react, to defend myself against an attacker.
“It looks like somebody has a bone to pick with you. I believe her father is on the warpath. He has been stopping in every couple of hours for a progress report. Don’t blame him for lashing out. I would probably do the same thing in his shoes.” Feldman was motioning with his eyes and I followed his gaze to Frank walking down the hallway with a purpose.