by Rick Jones
Sayed set the sat-phone aside. In the vehicle with him was Lukose, his driver, and Musha, his gunner, who was sitting inside the bed ready to man the machine gun.
Sayed reached into the open area behind the seats and grabbed a case the size of a hat box. Inside were three NVG units, one per team member. He removed them one by one, started them up, and listened to the whine of their pitch as they powered on. The indicator lights on each one read ‘full capacity.’ Satisfied, he powered them off, stacked them inside the container, and set the box at his feet. Darkness was quickly approaching and the advantage would be theirs within thirty minutes.
Sayed remained quiet.
But when Lukose saw Sayed place the NVGs down by his feet and say nothing, Lukose’s curiosity bested him. So in a tone that said are-you-just-going-to-keep-me-waiting, he asked, “Well?”
“When it gets dark,” said Sayed, “we will engage and slow them down. Ismail believes they are heading toward Iraq because they may benefit from the aid of British and American principals, who will apply enough pressure to Iraqi leaders and allow forces to cross over into Syria.”
“So he wants us to kill their efforts before they get too close,” he stated as a conclusion.
“Exactly. And the boy must not be hurt.” Sayed looked at the box between his feet. Night vision goggles, a marvelous invention to bring night to day, he considered. Then he looked out the windshield and saw the colors of dimming light.
Night was quickly approaching.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
Kimball was one of those people who could understand the Arab language perfectly, but had difficulty when trying to speak it, sometimes getting the syntax wrong, which often brought giggles and smiles to the children he was trying to speak to.
Little Farid laughed the loudest, which brought a smile to Kimball’s face. He didn’t mind the faux pas of his attempts as long as the children found relief in this, even if his efforts were highly comical. What mattered most to Kimball were the genuine smiles on their faces and the pleasantness of their playful actions, such as inviting him to play patty-cake, which he did with tiny Yara.
He spoke to Farid and found him not only smart, but a boy without a vicious bone in his body. While Kimball maintained his game of patty-cake with little Yara, he was also able to sustain an ongoing conversation with Farid, which centered mostly about his relationship with his father, Mabus. And when they spoke Farid’s smile that was so infectious abandoned him. Mabus was not an enjoyable topic of discussion, but discuss him they did.
“He killed my mother,” he told Kimball. “He told her that she had birthed a coward.”
“Farid, you need to know that your father’s actions are not based upon who you are or are not. What your father did to your mother was not your fault. So I don’t want you to think differently, OK?” Although Farid nodded, Kimball could tell that the boy continued to blame himself just by the telltale look on Farid’s face.
“My father wanted me to kill a boy,” he told him. “He wanted me to cut off his head.”
Kimball winced at this. Even though he had committed atrocities in his life, it was appalling to imagine someone putting a knife in a young boy’s hand and having him slice off another’s head. “You did the right thing,” Kimball finally answered. “It takes more courage to go against everything you don’t believe in, than to go against your beliefs and follow along with everyone else who are too frightened to say ‘no.’ That’s true courage, Farid. Remember that.”
But Kimball knew his words rang hollow. After their captures and summary executions, Farid would be back with his father and he would be desensitized to violence. In time, Farid would grow to be a man of little tolerance for those who were not in line with his father’s twisted tenets. He would kill without remorse or contrition. Hate would flower within him like a cancer. And what magic he now held would be forever lost.
Kimball stopped playing patty-cake with Yara for a brief moment, as he pulled Farid close to him. Don’t ever become the man I used to be, he thought. If you do, then you’ll spend the rest of your life seeking salvation and finding nothing but disappointment in your journey.
“What you say is true, Mr. Hayden,” Sister Kelly intervened. When Yara turned to Sister Kelly and wanted to continue with the play of hand-slapping, Sister Kelly kindly rejected her. “Not now, sweetheart,” she told the girl in perfect Arabic. “We’ll play later. I promise.”
Then back to Kimball and in perfect English, she said, “Do you really think the boy will continue to show such fortitude against his father? I think not. In time, Mr. Hayden, he’ll become just like him and he will kill.”
Unfortunately, Kimball reasoned, Sister Kelly was right. They were running low on fuel. Iraq was too far. They were drawing a tail of killers who would murder them in the name of their god. And Farid’s future would be written by the blood of those he would eventually spill.
He looked at the boy. His big brown eyes were beautifully large and filled with innocence. Then he looked into tiny Yara’s eyes and saw the same look of childlike purity and sweetness. It just happened to be the same look that all the children shared.
Kimball looked to the west and saw the sun descending further behind the western horizon. In a few moments it would be completely dark. And within the dark lived the demons of the children’s fears.
The adults would merely explain these childhood fears away as scarecrows who lived nowhere but inside their minds—and that the children were safe.
But tonight the children would not be wrong.
Tonight the demons would show themselves to be true.
And on this night the children would see the devils from their own backyards.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
The sun had set. And stars glimmered in the night sky like a cache of diamonds spread over black velvet.
Sayed had kept his distance. And after disabling all cables to the lamps that would ignite the front and rear lights, their vehicle ran dark. They had donned their NVGs. The terrain once steeped in absolute darkness was now illuminated in green. They could see rocks that were once hidden under the cover of night. They could see rises and inclines, dips and possible tire-damaging ruts. What they had was the advantage to see, whereas Kimball did not. By rendering their lights useless so as not to become beacons, they stealthily moved into position to cripple Kimball’s run.
The landscape before Sayed’s vehicle was rough terrain, but navigable with night vision. Approximately six kilometers in front of them, or three and a half miles away, were Kimball’s mobile units. Their sets of twin beams pinpointed their exact position, four piercing lances of light that could penetrate so deep before hitting walls of impenetrable darkness.
They were moving cautiously slow.
In the bed of Sayed’s pickup stood Musha, who gripped the handles of the .50 caliber machine gun and tested its ability to pivot the weapon from side to side on its mounting post. The weapon rotated evenly—no problems. And an ammo belt was already loaded from the box to the weapon’s feed. Musha was ready.
“Be sure to take out the tires,” Sayed called to Musha through the small sliding window between the cab and the bed. “Lukose will get you close enough to disable both. And aim low, Musha. Always aim low. To aim high is to put the life of Farid in danger. And to put the life of Farid in danger is to put our lives in danger.”
“Get me within a few meters, Sayed. I won’t miss.”
“You best not.”
Lukose pressed down on the gas pedal. Not enough to rev up the engine to a high degree, but enough to quicken their pace and close the gap between them and Kimball’s team. The pickup moved over the rises and falls easily, and bypassed all stones that were large enough to damage axles.
Inside the half-hour they had closed the gap to within half the distance. Another half-hour more they would be on top of them.
Darkness was always the perfect ally.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
“I was never
really good with kids,” Kimball said to Sister Kelly. “It’s just not me, you know?”
“Yeah, well, perhaps you should see yourself differently,” she answered. “It appears to me, Mr. Hayden, that the children find you very much to their liking.”
Tiny Yara was asleep, finding comfort against his lap as he caressed her head with soft and gentle strokes. Farid, however, was widely alert and looking deep into darkness the same way a dog would raise its hackles when sensing great danger.
“It’s nighttime,” said Sister Kelly, referring to Farid’s actions. “He looks for the demons within the shadows of night.”
“And he might not be totally wrong, either,” said Kimball.
Sister Kelly looked toward the surrounding walls of darkness. “You think he’s out there? Sayed?”
“I’m sure he is. But I don’t see his headlights.” Kimball reached over the side of the truck’s bed and slapped the side panel, signaling for Jeremiah to stop, which he did.
Solomon and the second vehicle pulled up alongside them. Isaiah was in the back with Sister Patty. And the children seemed to swarm against them for comfort.
They know, Kimball thought.
Kimball hopped down from the bed and called for his team to join him beyond the earshot of the children. But when tiny Yara tried to hold Kimball’s hand and follow, he had to ease her toward Sister Kelly and told Yara that he’d be right back, even offering her a wink of reassurance.
“I think someone has a little crush on you, Mr. Hayden.”
Hardly, he thought. She’s just terrified of what she cannot see, but knows something out there exists.
He and his team headed for the fringe of light cast from the pickups headlamps. Once there they gathered.
“What’s up?” asked Isaiah.
“Look behind us and tell me what you see,” said Kimball.
They did. Solomon, Isaiah, Jeremiah and Samuel. But it was Samuel with his British lilt who spoke immediately. “I see no bloody lights.”
“That’s right.”
“They can’t be running dark,” said Isaiah. “Too much of a risk on this terrain.”
“And they didn’t bug out knowing we have Farid, either,” said Kimball.
Jeremiah spoke in a manner that sounded more like a statement that a question. “Broke down?”
Kimball shrugged. “Possible. But I’m banking that they have the ability to see at night.”
“NVGs,” Isaiah suggested.
“Which gives them a major advantage.” Kimball continued to stare out into darkness, thinking. They had limited options, he considered. Very few, in fact. In a best-case scenario he could always pray for the best and expect the worst, as seasoned soldiers often did while never becoming complacent. The hope here was to get by without any confrontation at all. But such expectations quickly dimmed in such dark realities; Sayed was out there and closing in. He could feel it.
Kimball looked at the landscape that was lit by their vehicle’s headlamps. The cast of light was no more than ten meters, or just over thirty-two feet. Higher speeds would prove unnegotiable in such territory due to lifting stones or deep ditches too deep to navigate around in time. Slow and steady was the safe measure here. Whereas Sayed had the ability to navigate across the spread at less retarded speeds. The gap between his team and Sayed’s was closing.
“How fast can you go knowing that you need to drive with caution?” Kimball asked Jeremiah.
Jeremiah looked at Solomon, the other driver, as if both were trying to come up with an agreeable number through telepathy. Solomon fathomed a guess for the two of them. “Seventy to eighty kilometers per hour,” he said. Or speeds between forty to fifty miles per hour. “Even at those speeds we’d be pushing it, Kimball. It’s really dark out there and the lights give us only a limited view of what’s directly in front of us. We’ll be blind on our sides and rear. So if somebody comes up from behind . . . we won’t know it until they strike.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” said Kimball. He pinned Jeremiah with a stare. “You know they’re coming, right?”
Jeremiah nodded.
“I’ll man one gun. Isaiah will take the other. I’ll watch the rear and north side. Isaiah will watch the rear and south side. If we see anything, even a glimmer of moonlight against the face of the windshield, we’ll open up.” Kimball looked skyward. The moon was in its crescent phase, which made it hardly beneficial in this case since it didn’t cast a single ghostly beam. “Stay very close to one another,” he added. “And don’t get separated.”
They immediately broke and galvanized themselves with urgency. Kimball manned the weapon to the pickup on the right, with naked terrain to his rear and north. Isaiah took the other truck, the one with Sister Kelly, with the terrain just as naked to the south. But before they could take off, tiny Yara was standing at the back of Kimball’s truck with her arms held out to him in an inviting gesture to be lifted onto the truck’s bed.
Kimball turned to Sister Kelly, who was in the opposite truck. “What can I say,” she told him. “I told you, she has a school-girl’s crush on you. Girls can tell these things.”
Kimball shook his head in a way that said I-haven’t-got-time-for-this-and-we-really-need-to-get-going, then lifted her into the pickup and eased little Yara to the truck’s rear, where she found comfort and smiled to Kimball.
Kimball rolled his eyes.
And Sisters Kelly and Patty laughed, finding humor in a moment where there shouldn’t be.
As soon as the trucks picked up momentum and headed east, Kimball maintained vigil by keeping a watchful eye. But the darkness was absolute. If the demons were out there as the children suspected, then they would be close enough for their reach to be deadly.
Kimball wanted to prevent this. But in the end as darkness reigned, he knew it would be like trying to grab a comma of smoke within the grip of his hand, only for smoky wisps to slip through the grasping fingers of his clenched fist.
Sayed was coming.
This Kimball knew.
And there was nothing he could do about it.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
Fiumicino Airport
Rome, Italy
The distance from the Fiumicino Airport in Rome to a landing strip managed by U.S. and British forces along the Syrian-Iraq border is approximately 1400 miles. The trip via a chartered jet provided by Alitalia Airlines would assure touchdown in less than three hours’ time. With communication between the pontiff and the bishops of the Holy See to leading liaisons, both political and military, of U.S. and British institutions inside Iraqi borders, it didn’t take long to establish a covert agreement between the allies to allow a Vatican military force to use Iraq as a launching pad for a search-and-rescue operation. Additional preparations were made with British authorities for the use of a pair of Stryker’s, which was agreed upon by political constituents in London.
Plans were made. And a contingency force of Vatican Knights were quickly assembled with Leviticus leading a four-man unit into Syria, which would leave the Church completely vulnerable with no one from its High-End Defense Unit remaining behind, namely the Vatican Knights.
Prior to the plane taking off, Father Auciello handed Leviticus a tablet that had live footage from what appeared to be an aerial view. The tablet was linked to a satellite that bounced thermal images as the current mode, given that night had fallen. Two pickup trucks were running eastbound at approximately eighty kilometers per hour, or roughly forty-eight miles per hour by American standards. To their rear and coming up fast from approximately two kilometers northwest of their position was a third vehicle, which was moving at a speed of 100 kilometers per hour.
“This is a live feed coming from the Office of the SIV,” said Father Auciello. “We’re bouncing signals from the satellite to this device. Since Kimball’s phone is down and there’s no viable way to communicate, we can at least follow their progress.”
Leviticus traced a finger over the tablet’s screen. The
third vehicle was starting to angle towards the group. “And this here,” he said, tapping a fingertip on the third image, “is the hostile?”
“Yes. They’re closing at a rate for which the Time of Intercept will be approximately three minutes.”
Leviticus could clearly see that the pickups running side by side had their twin beams on, causing two sets of cone-shaped lights to penetrate the darkness by about thirty feet. The approaching truck ran with no lights at all, which meant that they had the obvious advantage of night vision.
Leviticus turned to Father Auciello. “Are we prepared on the other end?” He was talking about the Strykers that were awaiting them at the American-British airfield along the Iraqi-Syrian border.
Father Auciello nodded. “The British Consulate in Baghdad has forwarded London’s demands of complete support to the field command. Two Strykers will be waiting. The United States has also weighed in and will airlift the vehicles forty kilometers inside the Syrian border before turning back. They cannot venture any further, even though the U.S. and Britain can fly drones and recon planes along the Iraqi-Syrian border for security purposes. But they cannot venture too deep into Syria without the action considered a hostile one, since Syria remains a sovereign nation. Even if it is by the thinnest acknowledgement by the world community that they remain so.”
“If they fly us forty kilometers in,” began Leviticus, “about how far out will Kimball be once they run out of fuel?”
“Approximately four-hundred-fifty kilometers.” Leviticus did a quick calculation: 270 miles. Then he continued to watch the tablet and hoped that the trip to Iraq would not be one of irrelevance. “And if this goes down and Kimball’s unit is crippled at this point, how far away are they from Iraq?”
Auciello hesitated a moment before speaking. “Seven-hundred-fifty kilometers,” he finally said. Or 450 miles.