Irresistible

by Andrew J. Peters

  Once everyone was on the jetty, Benny led them stalking toward the naval esplanade. They were the vanguard of the operation, which was a nice way of saying sitting ducks. Rebels from a second dinghy would be joining them from another landing point, but it would be up to Brendan’s team to take out however many sailors survived the shelling of the base.

  When the smog drifted, Brendan made out scant silhouettes of freight containers and barracks around the esplanade. Benny pointed out the damage to the shipyard’s main piers nearby. The navy’s biggest craft, a warship that looked like it was at least fifty yards in length, had drifted from the decimated wharf and was listing in the water. Far to the right, Benny pointed out a smoldering sight, and Ibrahim translated to Brendan that it was the airfield control tower. It looked like Bassam had done well striking his targets.

  Brendan heard the clop of soldiers bustling out to the esplanade. His company halted, spread out, and crouched down to various positions at the end of the jetty. Most of the concrete yard ahead of them was cloaked in darkness and a ponderous bank of smoke. The only light was from the barracks farther inland. Stooped down behind Ibrahim at the back of their party, Brendan couldn’t spot the squad he’d heard, and it seemed like no one else in his company could either. Meanwhile, they had no cover at their position. If they didn’t surprise the approaching sailors, they were sitting ducks.

  Frantic voices traveled nearer. Benny stood and rifled off a round of ammunition that scalded Brendan’s ears and rattled his bones. The lead men of the team skulked into the esplanade. Ibrahim clipped Brendan on the shoulder, and Brendan followed in a hunched down, jittery stumble. He dreaded the sightless, open zone ahead of him.

  Bullets burst and ricocheted on the asphalt field. Brendan dropped down flat on the jetty. They’d been spotted. Benny and his lead men fixed in on targets and fired into the smog-filled night. A flurry of agonized cries and collapsing bodies traveled from some distance away.

  His squad was heading farther into the esplanade. Brendan couldn’t lose them, especially Ibrahim, who he was counting on helping him find the detention center. He got up and hurried to the back of their formation.

  Another round of gunfire rang out, this time from a higher vantage. A bullet whizzed overhead and burst open from its casing no more than a foot away from Brendan’s leg. Sharpshooters from towers? Before Brendan could get a handle on anything, Benny and his team sprayed bullets toward one side of the esplanade. A hail of gunshots returned to them, and Brendan watched in disbelief as Benny’s body twisted and collapsed onto the concrete basin.

  A round of crossfire blasted, sending Brendan back down on all fours, ducking his head, praying this would not be his last memory of the world. The exchange tapered off, and two men from the team dragged Benny behind a nearby freight bin. Everyone was heading to that sheltered position. Brendan scrambled over.

  Benny was shadowed on the ground, but Brendan could hear his anguished moans. Kazi took possession of his radio and called in a report to Bassam’s long-liner. Brendan listened for sounds, wondering how long they could hole up in their position, how many sailors with guns they’d have to fight off, and how the hell he’d ended up in this situation. The esplanade was quiet for the moment. He drew up beside Ibrahim.

  “What do we do now?”

  The kid looked like he was receiving Brendan’s voice on a time delay. Like everyone, he was dazed from the crossfire exchange and seeing Benny go down. “We need to take out the towers,” Ibrahim told him. “Otherwise, we’ll never make it to the command center.”

  Police sirens shrieked through the night, from a distance, but growing louder.

  “We also need to take out the bridge from the highway so those reinforcements don’t get across. There’ll be a riot squad here in minutes.”

  Brendan cursed to himself. They were eleven men now with Benny incapacitated, possibly dying from his wounds. Where was the second round of troops?

  “What can we do?”

  “Kazi’s radioing in locations for a missile strike.”

  Brendan looked at their new lead man. He was speaking into the radio handset while glancing at some GPS device on his cell phone. Brendan’s chest shrunk up tight. “They’re going to shell the base again?”

  Ibrahim nodded.

  “What happens to us? We’ll be in the middle of the fallout,” Brendan said. “Bassam said he wouldn’t strike too far inland. He can’t hit the detention center.”

  The other men worked quickly to push the steel freight container over on one side so its lid faced opposite from the esplanade. The bin toppled down with a giant, hollow thud, and they pried off the lid. They pulled Benny’s body inside and did their best to make him comfortable. Then they cached themselves in the hollow of the freight bin. Brendan stole inside with them.

  A scud missile screamed through the sky on a trajectory that felt like it was no more than an arm’s reach above their heads. An earsplitting explosion of metal and concrete shook the ground like an earthquake. Three more missiles bombarded the base. Brendan tucked into himself, trying to draw in breaths through the foul air. His eyes burned. He coughed out grit and shrapnel fumes.

  Kazi shouted orders. Brendan rubbed his eyes with the inside of his shirt. He watched his team move out from the freight bin. He guessed they’d come back for Benny when they had a chance to get him medical attention. Ibrahim gave Brendan a look and a nudge, but he couldn’t move for a moment. Some primal panic switch inside him had been activated. It was supposed to be fight or flight, but his instinct was telling him to play dead. Ibrahim disappeared around the side of the freight bin. The terror of being left alone finally pushed Brendan to get up and join his team.

  A thicker haze of smoke and dust smothered the esplanade. Brendan pulled up the collar of his shirt to mask his mouth and nose. In two locations, he could see a glow of flames from the missile strikes, but everything else was murky. Maybe the smog would make for better cover, though even with his mouth and nose covered, he was trying desperately not to cough in the foul air and draw attention. Besides the crackling of burning metal, everything was dead still. Kazi led the team into what looked like the barracks area of the base.

  Brendan nearly tripped over a body on the ground. The man was burned and bloody. No gunshot wounds. He looked like he’d been thrown by one of the explosions. Brendan came upon another body, another naval officer, charred, with his limbs twisted in disturbing angles. Nausea welled inside him. Luckily, he’d eaten very little over the past day. Before he could dry heave, a round of bullets sent a shock to his system and buried that impulse. He jumped behind Ibrahim who’d taken cover at the side of one of the barracks.

  Three of the guys rifled shots back at their attackers. Brendan and Ibrahim were safe from the crossfire, but who knew how long their teammates would hold up? Sailors with guns could emerge from another direction. Brendan sank down to his knees, fidgeting with his gun—stricken with amnesia over how to use it. Bullets thudded and pinged against the aluminum wall of the house. He heard a pop and a gasp, and then a guy from their party collapsed to the ground nearby.

  Ibrahim squatted down by Brendan and yanked the gun out of his hands to show him how to pull back the bolt and place his hand on the trigger.

  More rounds of ammunition rat-tat-ted in the night. They were coming from at least two other directions. Behind them, from the boatyard? Brendan couldn’t tell for sure. But the guys around the corner seemed to be taking on less fire. One of them cried out in Arabic. Ibrahim stood and nudged Brendan with his hand. Then the kid went around the side of the house.

  Brendan stood and welded his hands to his rifle in firing position. His internal compass was still telling him to play dead, but he couldn’t be a fink and bail on the other guys who were risking their lives. He’d cast his lot with the freedom fighters, even if he had no stake in their cause. Lord knew, he wasn’t going to be much help, but if by luck, he could do something to spare some bloodshed on his team, he had to do his p
art.

  Mercifully, the crossfire had ceased when he walked into the alley. Through the shadows, he spotted the backs of two men from his team who were surveying the way ahead. Three others were holding positions against the side of one house, and three more against the house on the other side of the alley. With himself and Ibrahim, that made ten. Only one man had gone down.

  Ammunition rifled from spots farther into the base. Kazi cried out and waved the team forward. He was leading them in the direction of the rifle fire. Brendan drew up behind Ibrahim at the rear of the pack.

  As they closed in on the barrage, Brendan heard gut-wrenching cries of men going down. Then, voices in Arabic, shouting to one another, hopped-up on mutiny, gradually familiar.

  Light shone from a building ahead. A short distance away, the alley opened up to a yard. A half-dozen bodies littered the ground. All in tan naval uniforms. Kazi took their approach cautiously, directing men to either side of the alley, creeping up on that big opening ahead of them. Sidling forward against the wall of a barracks, Brendan squinted toward the yard. The building on the far side looked like a stone-walled construction, two stories high, topped with a mansard roof and a lookout tower. That had the markings of an administrative building, if not the control center they were looking for.

  Shots rang out from the tower. They were aimed away from the team, though it still made Brendan seal himself to the wall. A single rifleman, he deciphered. A battery of rounds scoured the lookout gallery. In its wake, the tower was silent. The stone house was still. A cheer hailed from a group of men some distance away.

  Kazi called out in Arabic. Boisterous voices returned to him. It was the second team of ground troops. Kazi looked back at his company and waved them on. As they stepped into the yard in front of the building, their rebel brothers emerged from the surrounding alleys.

  The men grasped each other and shouted out in victory. Kazi held a conversation with one of his comrades as they eyed the stone house.

  Brendan gained up on Ibrahim. “It’s over?”

  Ibrahim smiled. “Around the front of the building, they put out the flag of surrender across the door. They’re taking the people inside prisoners.” He clasped Brendan’s shoulder. “We won.”

  Brendan decompressed for a moment. In an odd way, he felt proud. It was a stretch to say he’d done much of anything to accomplish the victory, but like a benchwarmer, he’d been there for moral support and to take the field if the situation turned desperate. He caught Ibrahim before the kid wandered off to chat with the others.

  “I have to find the detention center. Will you help me?”

  Ibrahim glanced at the guys congratulating each other around the yard.

  “Please. Just to take a quick look,” Brendan said. “I have to find Cal.” He had told Ibrahim and his friends about Cal’s situation. Now he prayed he wouldn’t have to go looking for it himself. The men were acting like the base was secure, but who knew what he would encounter searching around blindly? Even meeting a surrendered sailor was dangerous since he didn’t speak Arabic.

  “Okay,” Ibrahim said. “But we have to be quick. As soon as the wounded men are settled in the infirmary, the team’s heading out to rendezvous at the king’s palace.”

  He stepped over to Kazi to let him know they were going, and then Brendan ran after him to thread the byways of the base in search of the detention house.

  BASSAM HAD SAID the detention barracks would be near the administrative center. That didn’t help much, in the dark, trying to keep up with Ibrahim who’d taken off in a brisk jog around a naval base neither one of them had ever set foot in before. They circled around the stone tower building, and then they followed a paved road through rows of shadowy prefab houses. None of them had the familiar characteristics of a lockup facility, though Brendan wondered if they should venture off the road to take a closer look. Ibrahim didn’t break from his jog. Maybe he knew better what to look for. Maybe he was just going through the motions to help Brendan out. Brendan couldn’t tell, though really, anything was possible. They traveled a good distance away from the rest of the team. He worried Ibrahim would try to lead him back.

  At a crossroad, Brendan spotted a facility with a tall barbed-wire fence. He called out to Ibrahim, and they headed over to it. A gate by a scaffold watchtower was open. The rectangular house inside was dark except for a single barred window in the front—perhaps some administrative foyer. The place was eerily still. Brendan followed Ibrahim’s lead, raising his rifle to eye level, anticipating enemy targets, and they crept up to the door, minding the lighted window.

  It was a heavy-duty, steel-frame door that had an intercom on the side. The two men glanced at one another, listening for activity inside. The navy certainly hadn’t put much effort into keeping detainees in lockup during the siege. Could they be so lucky as to be able to waltz right in? Brendan grasped the lever-latch door handle and tried pressing it down and pulling the door open. It wouldn’t give.

  Bullets pounded against the side of the door. Brendan and Ibrahim jumped away from it and got down low. It took a minute or two for Brendan to regain his bearings. Warning shots from someone inside? How were they going to get in with an armed guard waiting for them at the entry to the house?

  The little time hanging out with gun-toting insurgents inspired a newfound boldness. He looked to the barred window, set up his gun, and blasted a round into the thick polyurethane glass. The gun’s action made him stumble backward and sent a stinging pain into his shoulder. Brendan shook it off and fired another round. They had to get into the house. Cal was locked up in there. The glass didn’t shatter, but it was cracked enough to be pounded through with the stock end of his rifle. Then he could fire right into the guard’s station and hopefully scare him away.

  Ibrahim meanwhile sprayed rounds at the lock in the door. They kept at that racket until Brendan heard Ibrahim calling out to him. His partner had eased up to the door. Brendan heard a frantic voice inside. It sounded like some guy might be talking on a radio. He heard a rustle of movement fading farther into the house.

  Brendan kicked at the door, hoping it was wobbly from the damage to the lock. Ibrahim helped him pry it open, and they went guns-first into the lobby.

  The lobby was barren—an unattended counter window next to a locked gate—but rustling sounds gave away someone fumbling beyond that window. Ibrahim swung over to the window, poked his gun into the station, and pointed the muzzle firmly at a target. A man’s pleading voice called out to him in Arabic.

  Brendan scurried over. A man in a naval uniform and cap was curled up on the floor, against a door into the facility. He was just short of opening it up with his ring of keys but now held up his hands. His face was wildly frightened. Ibrahim shouted at him, and he kept repeating back the same words.

  “He says there’s no one in detention,” Ibrahim told Brendan.

  “Tell him to open up.”

  Ibrahim worked on that with a threatening conversation and the threatening pointing of his rifle. The guy got up off the floor and cowered over to the counter where he pressed a switch, releasing the lobby gate.

  Brendan stepped through the gate into the facility and found the back door of the guard’s station. He pounded on it. Keys jangled and scraped against the lock on the other side, and the door swung open. The guard drew back from Brendan as he entered, shifting his glance back and forth between the two men—Ibrahim with his gun pointed at him from the counter, Brendan with his gun readied in his hands. The guard’s rifle lay on the floor, presumably thrown aside because he was out of ammunition.

  The guy shook his head and pleaded with Brendan.

  Ibrahim told him, “He says they haven’t had anyone in detention since yesterday morning.”

  “Would he tell the truth?”

  Ibrahim shrugged. “I think so. He’s really shaken up. The only guard on duty. You see the place is deserted.”

  “Tell him to give me the keys.”

  Ibrahim conversed with
the guard, and the guy spoke back, shaking his head. He told Ibrahim something and very gingerly drifted to his desk. The guard picked up a clipboard and showed it to Ibrahim, pointing at what looked like a sign-in sheet. Then he followed Ibrahim’s instructions to get back down on the floor with his hands held up.

  Brendan stepped over to take a look. Just one line was filled out on the page with several columns. Numbers, names maybe, nothing he could read. Could Ibrahim make sense of it?

  His partner looked at him soberly. “One entry. Callisthenes Panagopoulos. Brought in October 2nd, released October 3rd.”

  Brendan’s heart plunged. Then he slammed his hand into the cabinet above the desk. “What the fuck?” He paced around. He felt like an angel of fate had swooped down from the heavens and pissed on him. One day too late. How could he be so goddamn unlucky?

  He shouted at the guard, “Where did he go?” Brendan didn’t wait for an answer. “What did they do with him? Where is he now?”

  The guard backed away from him, shaking his head. Ibrahim translated some questions. The guy’s response didn’t sound encouraging. Brendan wiped his face. He was ready to throw his fist into the wall.

  “He says he doesn’t know,” Ibrahim said. “He was taken to the courthouse.” The kid gazed at Brendan steadily. “We’ve got to get back to the others. They’ll be leaving soon.”

  “You don’t understand. The only reason I came was to find my husband. Tell this guy he’s got to give us information. Where’s the courthouse? Where would they have taken him after that?”

  “He could be in a dozen places. A police station. A prison in the city. They could have transported him to a facility out of town.”

  “I’ll check every one of them.”