by Mark Goodwin
Each time she took a blow to the head, she saw stars, until everything started to go dark. In the distance, she heard a series of clicking sounds which preceded the three Antifa members falling on top of her. Then, everything went black.
CHAPTER 25
Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee. Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands; thy walls are continually before me.
Isaiah 49:15-16
Ava came to when the vehicle she was in took a sharp curve which slung her across the floor. Her left eye was throbbing, but she could still see out of both. She looked up and noticed that she was in the back of a van. The roof of the van had rust spots. It was an old vehicle. Her mouth was filled with the taste of blood and her head was foggy. She tried to sit up, but a sharp pain shot through her side. The sudden discomfort brought her out of her haze, and she instantly remembered what was happening right before the lights went out. Where am I? Ava thought. Did somebody rescue me, or does Antifa have me?
She knew if it was the latter, she had to get out of the vehicle right away and at any cost. Ava called out to the driver. “Where are you taking me?”
“Home.” The voice was of an older man, gravelly and rough.
“Home? Whose home?” Ava gritted her teeth as she rolled over on the musty, faded-green carpet of the van.
“Your home.”
Ava looked into the rearview to see the man’s face. She gasped when she saw his lazy eye. “No,” she said under her breath. She raised her head to see the man’s mouth and throat. Sure enough, a scar began at his lower lip and ran down his throat. Suddenly, she wished she was still back at the church being assaulted by Antifa. Ava dug deep inside, summoning all of her courage. She had to make a move, and she had to do it now!
Preferring death over being chained up in some pervert’s basement for the next twenty years, Ava decided her best course of action was to try to make him have a wreck. There was always the chance that she might live through the collision. But either way, she wouldn’t be this psycho’s slave.
She lunged toward the cab and grabbed the man’s arm, pushing it to the left and causing the van to swerve into oncoming traffic. CRASH!
The man grazed the side of a city bus, knocking off the side view mirror, but managed to bring the van back in his own lane. “Ava! What are you doing?”
“Let me go!” she screamed in his ear. “Why are you taking me?”
“I’m trying to help you. I just saved your life. Those animals were going to kill you! Can’t you see that?” His arm was strong, and he’d obviously had some martial arts training because he twisted her wrist in such a way that she couldn’t move. As long as she was still, it didn’t hurt, but the least little effort on her part caused the most excruciating pain.
“Look, just let me go. I can get you money.”
“Ava, I don’t want your money.”
Ava was sure she already knew the answer, but she asked anyway. “Then what do you want?”
“I want to help you. Just relax and I’ll explain everything when we get to your apartment.”
“If you want to help me, just let me go,” she pleaded.
“Why? I’m not going to hurt you.”
“Yes, you are. I know what you’re going to do.”
Suddenly, the man’s expression changed. He pulled to the side of the road. “You thought . . .? No! You don’t have any idea who I am?”
“Why should I?” Instantly, she saw sincerity in his eyes and shock on his face; his familiar face.
“You’ve never seen my picture?”
“No. Where would I have seen your picture? You were following me at the cemetery. That’s the first time I ever saw you.”
“I thought maybe they’d given you a box of your mother’s effects. I thought maybe you would have had a picture of me.”
Ava was more confused than ever. “At the cemetery, you had that crazy look in your eyes and you were coming right for me.”
He shook his head. “I . . . I . . . thought I was looking at your mother’s ghost. Your eyes, your hair, and you had those yellow daisies. They were her favorite flower.”
Ava was frightened out of her wits. She had an opportunity to grab the door handle, jump out of the van, and run. But she couldn’t. She was frozen by intrigue. “Who are you?”
“I’m your father.” Whether it was true or not, the man’s eyes showed that he genuinely believed what he was saying.
Ava looked at his mouth and nose. They looked so much like the ones she saw in the mirror each morning. Still, it couldn’t be true. She shook her head in a slow, measured motion. “No, you’re not.”
Ava reached for the door handle. “Listen, I don’t know who you are or what you’re trying to pull, but it’s sick. Okay? So just leave me alone!” She flung the door open and stepped out.
Immediately, she collapsed to the ground. Her ankle was busted from the attack.
The man got out and hurried around to her side of the van. Slung over his shoulder was a short-barreled rifle with a silencer on the front. Ava watched as he walked toward her. She figured that was the source of the clicking sounds she’d heard as the Antifa members toppled onto her.
He looked up the street at a wave of armed Antifa protestors heading in their direction. “You don’t ever have to speak to me again. But you can’t stay here. Whoever I am and whatever you think of me, you need my help. At least let me get you home. I’ll put you in your elevator, push the button and then you can crawl to your apartment. But you have to let me help you.
“You don’t owe me a thing. You can hate me or whatever you want, but you can’t expect me to leave my child, my only child, lying in the street for these animals to destroy.” A tear formed in the man’s eye. “That’s inhumane.”
Ava felt like she was in a dream—a nightmare. But, call it instinct or the Holy Spirit, she knew this man was not going to hurt her. “Okay.” She held up her hand.
The man picked her up gingerly and placed her back in the passenger’s seat. He pulled plenty of slack out of the seatbelt as if he knew her ribs were cracked, then fastened her in. He shut the door, but Antifa was closing in fast.
“Whoa! Where are you going, old man?” One of the Antifa vandals raised his AK-47 at the man claiming to be Ava’s father. POW, POW, POW!
The man charged at the mob raising the suppressed rifle. Ava heard only the sound of the bolt cycling as all seven of the armed thugs in the front row of the demonstration fell to the ground.
The man stood to see if anyone else in the mob was going to challenge him, but they did not. He jumped into the vehicle, threw the van in reverse, and spun out, turning back toward the north. “We’re going to take a detour.”
“Okay.” Whoever he was, he’d saved her life twice in the last twenty minutes. “Let’s say you are my dad. Do you mind if I asked where you’ve been for the last twenty-nine years?”
“China. It’s a long story.”
“Then you should probably get started.”
“I served with the US Army Rangers in the Gulf War. After I got out, I took a job with a contractor who did work for various US intelligence entities. When agencies had jobs that they didn’t want their fingerprints on, they’d get handed down to us. We took missions in Bosnia, Somalia, Haiti. Some of it was combat oriented, eliminating high-value targets, some of it was just delivering supplies, and a lot of times, it was paying off people with pallets of US hundred-dollar bills.
“Some missions, we worked by ourselves, others, we had to coordinate with US military. We worked a lot with Green Beret and Rangers. When we did, we’d usually run ROC drills, rehearsal of concept drills, at Fort Hood. Sometimes, we’d spend weeks prepping for a mission, particularly if it was an extremely sensitive assignment.
“When my team would stay at Fort Hood for extended periods of time, we’d drive down to Austin to blow off steam. One night,
we were at a restaurant, and I saw this girl sitting three tables over. I had the waitress send her a piece of cheesecake.”
“Cheesecake?” Ava listened.
“I know. It was stupid. But it worked. I got her telephone number.
“We started dating. Eventually, I rented an apartment in Austin so I could be near her. From then on, when I wasn’t on a mission or training for one, I was in Austin. Six months later, we exchanged vows and lived together as husband and wife.”
“Wait a minute. Did you get married or not?”
“In our eyes and in the eyes of God, yes. But because of the nature of my work, it was safer for your mom not to have my last name nor for there to be a paper trail indicating that she was somebody I cared about. I planned to retire in five years, then we were going to do a big public marriage.”
Ava watched as the man drove across the Pleasant Valley Bridge. “So, what happened?”
“It was 1995. Kimberly, your mom, found out she was pregnant. I decided to try moving up my retirement schedule. DIA had a job that was going to pay me enough for a year’s worth of work that I could retire. It was going to be my last gig. Twelve more months, then me nor your mom were ever going to have to work again.
“DIA had a station in Hong Kong where they ran operations to keep up the pro-democracy movement in mainland China. The clock was ticking if they were going to make anything happen over there. It was six years since the Tiananmen Square Massacre had taken place. Complacency and defeat amongst the anti-communists was taking root.
“Hong Kong station had less than two years before the island was to be handed over to China. Once the British surrendered the territory, it would become exponentially more complex for DIA to maintain a presence in Hong Kong. Russia was still reeling from their economic collapse, and this was our last chance to take down the Chinese Politburo.
“DIA had been pouring assets into mainland China. They’d established relationships with most of the major players who’d survived the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989. The massacre had a chilling effect on most, but the hardcore anti-communists wanted revenge. In 1989 they’d had nothing to fight back with, but DIA was going to make sure this time was different. My team was given tons of cash to buy up weapons from the collapsed USSR. And believe me, if you had the money, you could buy anything you wanted from the Soviets during the 90s.
“We had to drive the weapons from Russia, through Mongolia, down into China. Me and the guy I was with, Eddie . . .” The man paused for a moment as if he hadn’t spoken that name in eons. Finally, he spoke again. “We’d made six trips already. We were working with the Triads to secure safe passage across the borders. The Triads also supplied us with warehouses in Beijing to stash our weapons. Everything went fine until one day, it didn’t.
“On our last run, Chinese Ministry of State Security forced us off the road in multiple armored vehicles. They shot Eddie in the head. I was determined to fight it out to the death with them because I knew what life in a Chinese prison would be like. I took a bullet in the leg but kept shooting until I blacked out. I’d lost so much blood that I went unconscious.
“The Chinese were determined to find out where those guns were coming from and where they were going, so they didn’t let me die.” The man stared blankly out the windshield. “For twenty-seven years, they didn’t let me die.”
“How did you get caught?”
He shook his head as if the question was less than futile. “Who knows? Triads could have sold us out. A payoff could have been missed. Maybe the wrong guy got sick that day and the man filling in for him didn’t get the memo to let us through. It doesn’t matter now. What happened is what happened.”
Ava could see that it pained the man to talk about it, but she had to know the rest. “Twenty-seven years?”
“Yeah. DIA hired contractors specifically so the agency would never have to admit their involvement with the weapons smuggling into China. It was understood that nobody was coming to get us if we got caught behind enemy lines. That was why we got paid the big bucks.
“The mission was declassified four years ago and Higgins had teams go through all those old files. He was in negotiations with the Chinese for some trade deal and decided he was being too easy on them. He drudged up some files about missing Americans being held in China for this that or the other. He told the Chinese he wouldn’t close the deal unless he got all twenty of us back.”
“Twenty of you? They were all involved with your mission?”
“No. Some were probably contractors like me, some were probably spooks, others were likely drug dealers. We’d all been over there for various amounts of time; thirty years, ten, five, all different. None of us had anything to do with the others.”
“So, you came back two years ago and you just now decided to come look for me?”
The pain in his voice was as obvious as a giraffe in a shopping mall. “Ava, when they brought me back, I was barely alive. I was severely malnourished. I’d had multiple broken bones from the interrogations when I was first captured. Those all healed improperly. I must have had fifteen surgeries that first year when I got back. And that was the easy part.
“For the first segment of my incarceration, I was in a dungeon. No light, no contact with other people, I ate once a day. I’m not sure how long that lasted. Could have been a year; could have been five years. I lost all concept of time and reality.
“I had a few short Bible verses I’d memorized as a child. I said them over and over. That’s what kept me from going over the edge and never coming back. John 3:16, Isaiah 41:10, the 23rd Psalm.
“The surgeries to correct the fused bones and the tendon in my eye that had been severed during the beatings took months. But to convince me that this was real, that I was actually in America, that took longer. My mind, Ava . . .” He shook his head. “I didn’t know who I was. If my memories were real . . . I didn’t know anything. It took a long time. I still don’t always understand what’s happening. That’s why I thought you were . . . a ghost—when I saw you at the cemetery.
“I’d only just come back to Austin back in September. I didn’t know what I’d find when I got here. I figured Kimberly had probably remarried. I didn’t know if she’d had a boy or a girl.
“For whatever reason, I thought you were still a little baby. I know it sounds crazy, twenty-nine years and you still being a little baby, but you were a little baby in my mind all that time while I was in China.
“Reality didn’t set in until after I saw you that day.”
“How did you find out; that she’d died giving birth to me and that I was a girl?”
“The guy from the State Department that coordinated my homecoming, he read my file and he did a lot to help me with my reintegration. He had some files pulled.”
Tears ran down Ava’s face as she listened to the most tragic story she’d ever heard in her life. She cried for the man, for his wife, and for the time stolen from them all. The tale the man had relayed to her was much different than the narrative Ava had told herself about her father’s absence. “What’s your name?”
“Ulysses. Ulysses Adams.”
CHAPTER 26
And ye shall be hated of all men for my name's sake: but he that endureth to the end shall be saved. But when they persecute you in this city, flee ye into another:
Matthew 10:22-23a
Ava watched from the passenger’s seat while Ulysses pulled the van into the back parking lot of the convenience store four blocks up from her apartment building.
“I live in the tall building, up a few blocks.” Ava pointed toward the Riverview Apartments.
“I know.” Ulysses pulled a pack of baby wipes out of his duffle bag. “You should try to clean the blood off your face. We don’t want to look like easy targets if we run into more Antifa, and it’s not a good day to be answering questions from police.”
Ava wiped her face and hands with a couple of the wipes, then stuffed them in a plastic bag Ulysses held out fo
r her.
“We’ll leave the van here.” Ulysses wiped down the steering wheel and shifter for prints. It looked like something he’d done many times before. Then, he folded the stock of the short-barreled rifle and placed it in the duffle bag.
“If the police are looking for you over the shooting, they’ll trace the van back to you. We must have gone through fifty traffic cams.”
Ulysses came around to her side of the van. “It’s not registered in my name. I bought it cash and asked the seller to let me borrow the plates for a week so I could use it until I got the paperwork finished.”
Ava put her arm around his neck and let him help her across the street. “Like a burner phone; a burner car?”
“Something like that.” Ulysses helped her down to the boardwalk, which ran along the river. “Get on my back.”
Ava started to resist but thought of all the piggy-back rides she’d missed out on with this man. She gave in. “Okay. Tell me if I’m too heavy. I can hobble with a little assistance.”
Ulysses hoisted her up, with the duffle bag hanging around his neck.
Ava wrapped her arms around his shoulders. She felt a bond forming between them. She knew in her heart that this man was her father and that she didn’t want to lose another second with him.
When Ava opened the door of her apartment, she couldn’t get Buckley to settle down. He seemed confused by seeing blood on Ava, and he barked continually at Ulysses.
“I’m sorry. Let me put him in my bedroom, then you can come in.” Ava sat down on the floor by the door and held her dog.
“Don’t apologize. He’s doing exactly what he should be doing in this situation. I’ll go get your Jeep. Why don’t you go get cleaned up? I’m sure a lot of that blood isn’t yours.”
Still sitting by Buckley, Ava removed the Jeep key from her key ring. “Thank you.”
Ulysses looked sad. “I wish I’d been here for you before now.”