One Man's War

by Thomas J. Wolfenden

  She only moaned again when he hit a pothole, making the Hum-Vee bounce violently.

  They made their way along the road, and then reached the side road leading up to the settlement that they called home. When they cleared the first set of trees and came out onto the meadow that fronted Tim’s house, Jimenez slammed on the brakes, making Robyn scream in pain.

  His heart fell when he heard her. “Sorry, baby.”

  Out in front of them, on the porch of Tim’s house stood several men, rifles at the ready.

  “What now?” he asked Tim.

  “What now, Taco, is drive up to the house,” he replied, matter-of-factly.

  “That prick Colin is with him! That motherfucker sold us out!” he spat. “Izzy is with them too. He looks hurt.”

  “I see them both. Drive up to the house, and do exactly what I say, okay?”

  Sighing, Jimenez took his foot off the brake pedal and casually drove up to the house, where he parked and shut the engine off.

  Tim looked out at the men standing before him, and did something he’d never imagined himself ever doing.

  He surrendered.

  Getting out of the Hum-Vee, he raised his hands, and then slowly reached into his waistband and pulled his .45 out. He held it in front of his face, finger well away from the trigger. He looked in the face of the soldier standing in front of him, who he assumed was the sergeant. He was the only one who looked remotely military.

  He thumbed the magazine release, letting the magazine fall out of the grip, landing on the dirt at his feet. He then tossed the pistol onto the sloped hood of the Hum-Vee, turned and went to the rear passenger door. He reached in and picked up Robyn as gently as he could. Cradling her in his arms, she felt so tiny, tinier that she’d been when he’d first found her in West Virginia so many years ago.

  Looking at the men blocking his way, he strode defiantly towards them, carrying his precious cargo, breezing by them as if they weren’t there. They stepped aside, unsure of what to do, making room for Tim to walk up the stairs, across the porch and through the front door to his house.

  As he disappeared into the house, all the men stood around looking at each other, none of them knowing what to do.

  “Stay here,” the Sergeant said, and followed Tim inside the house, letting the door slam loudly behind him.

  Chapter 22: Surrender Terms

  Tim laid Robyn gently on her bed and sat down on the edge, taking her hand. Her eyes fluttered open, gazing at him sadly.

  “Daddy, it hurts so bad,” she told him in a soft, childlike voice.

  “I know, baby. You just lay here and rest, and I’ll get Izzy up here to have a look at you,” he said, brushing a few wisps of her hair from her bruised and swollen face.

  Propped up on a shelf over the headboard, he saw an old and familiar friend. He reached up and took hold of the old, tattered, and threadbare stuffed animal, and placed it in her arms.

  “Here you go, baby. Bad Bear will keep you safe for now, okay?”

  “Thank you, Daddy,” she said weakly.

  “I know you hurt right now, but can you tell me what happened?”

  “I fell out of the plane, Daddy. They were shooting at us and I was firing back. I guess Holly didn’t know I was laying on the back ramp when she took off, and I just sort of fell out.”

  “I’m just happy you’re alive.”

  “Am I going to be alright?” she asked.

  “It looks like you hit your head on the runway, so we might have to fix that, the runway that is, but I’ll get Izzy up here to look you over just in case,” he said jokingly, trying to cheer her up.

  “I guess Holly and Walter are safe now?” she asked, her eyes boring into him. His heart fell, and he wanted to scream. He patted the top of her head. “Holly and Walter are someplace where they can’t be hurt anymore, baby.”

  “Good. I was worried for a moment.”

  “Don’t you worry now,” he said. “I’m going downstairs now. I’ll get Izzy to come up to take a look at you.”

  When he was halfway to the door, she asked, “Daddy, did we win?”

  “Baby, you’re safe, and that’s all that matters now, okay? Get some rest,” he said, turning away so she didn’t see the tears in his eyes.

  “Daddy, I love you.”

  “I love you too, baby. Get some rest. I’ll be back later.” He walked out into the hallway, shutting the door behind him.

  He stood there for a moment to gather himself and wiped his eyes. He took a deep breath and walked down the flight of steps into his living room, where he found the sergeant, standing with his back towards him, looking over the rack of hundreds of DVDs.

  When the sergeant heard him, he spun around and looked at Tim. He thumbed behind him at the rack of DVDs, and asked, “Can you actually watch them, on that TV?”

  Tim stared at him for a moment, and then said, “We’re not here to discuss my flat screen TV or my collection of Hogan’s Heroes reruns.”

  “No, I guess we’re not,” the sergeant replied.

  Just then, two of the sergeant’s men came into the house, laughing. Tim looked at them and blew his top. “Get them the fuck out of my goddamn house!” he screamed.

  The two men looked to the sergeant for direction, who just looked at them and nodded. As they went to retreat back outside, Tim called after them, “And you can get my other two men in here. One’s a doctor.”

  They again looked at the sergeant, who said, “Do it.”

  After they walked out, Tim walked undeterred into the kitchen, followed by the sergeant. He pulled out two bottles of beer from the refrigerator and the sergeant’s eyes lit up. Tim walked over to the round table, pulled out a chair and sat.

  He motioned for the sergeant to sit opposite, and handed him the cold bottle. Dumbfounded, the sergeant took the offered drink, pulled out a chair and sat down.

  Tim twisted off the cap from the bottle, and then took a long pull from the drink. He looked at it, and then took another long swig, putting the bottle down in front of him. Still no words were said, and Tim let the silence hang between the two men like a dark cloud, his eyes boring holes into the sergeant’s head.

  Over the sergeant’s shoulder, Tim saw the front door open, and Jimenez came in helping Izzy, his arm around the man’s waist. Tim pointed to the stairs. “She’s up in her room. Are you okay, Iz?”

  “I’ve had better days,” Izzy said. “I’ll fix myself up after I look at Robyn.”

  “Are you still bleeding?”

  “No, I was able to stop it. It hurts, but I think I’ll survive.”

  “Let me know if you need anything,” Tim replied, and Izzy and Jimenez disappeared to the second floor of the house. Tim gave the sergeant his best sergeant major glare.

  “You’re forgetting who is in charge now, Flannery,” the sergeant said, attempting to regain control of the situation.

  “It’s Sergeant Major, to you, dickweed,” Tim spat. “And we’re not here to discuss who is in charge.”

  “Then what are we here for?” the sergeant said, sipping on his beer, secretly enjoying the ice cold beverage.

  “We’re here to discuss the terms of my surrender,” Tim said flatly.

  “Terms? There won’t be any terms. You’re my prisoner.”

  “I know why you’re here, and if you want what you came for, there will be terms.”

  “Oh, you do, do you? And just how do you know that, and how did you know we were coming?” the sergeant asked.

  “I know a lot of shit I’m not going to tell you, asshole.”

  “Was it that Colin guy?”

  “That asshole?” Tim asked, laughing a little, “No, it wasn’t him. I’ll tell you what, though. Don’t let him anywhere near me.”

  “Or what?”

  “Or, I’ll fucking cut his heart out with a rusty bayonet,” Tim said, leaning forward at the table.

  That piqued the sergeant’s interest; he did want to know why there was so much bad blood betwee
n those two. Maybe what the old man had told him was the truth, that Colin had actually raped and killed a girl. He let it go for now. “Sergeant Major, you killed over a hundred of my men this morning. What makes you think I’m in any mood to discuss terms with you?”

  “I don’t give a fuck about your men, or your mood. That plane your people shot down, the one that’s smeared all over the side of that mountain? Well, that plane had my woman and my four month old son in it.”

  “I’m sorry. That wasn’t supposed to happen.”

  “I’m not in a mood to forgive anything right now. I know exactly why you’re here, and if you want to go back to Washington with at least part of your mission complete, you’ll goddamn well listen to my terms.”

  “Alright, Sergeant Major. I’m all ears,” the sergeant said, motioning with his hand for Tim to continue.

  “First thing is, you’ll leave my daughter and those other two men here when you take me back. Because that is what you’re supposed to do, right? Take me back to DC?”

  The sergeant nodded.

  “You’ll leave this place intact, no looting. You’ll take only what supplies you and your men, what’s left of them anyway, will need for the trip.”

  “Now wait a damn min—”

  “No you wait a minute. You want the codes, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” came the grim reply from the sergeant.

  “If you want the goddamn codes, you’ll agree to my terms, end of fucking story.”

  The sergeant thought for a moment before speaking. “What if I just took everything anyway?”

  “Then you’ll never get the codes,” Tim stated gravely.

  “Oh, you think so? I could tear this house apart. I’ll find them!”

  “Have you ever seen codes for the nuclear arsenal? No, I didn’t think so. I’d never seen them either. So you don’t know what you’re looking for, do you?”

  “I could just beat it out of you,” the sergeant said.

  “I know that you’ve read my 201 File. Do you think that will work? You might as well just put a bullet in me, Sergeant.”

  The sergeant was silent, sensing he’d lost control, and had no clue how to get it back. It frustrated him that his prisoner had gained the upper hand, and he did need the man’s help if he wanted to get back to Washington with the mission complete.

  Tim pushed the chair he was sitting on away from the table and stood, walking purposefully over to the mantelpiece over the fireplace. The sergeant followed him with his eyes, wary that Tim might try some trick. Tim saw his actions, and saw the sergeant place his hand of the M9 pistol at his hip.

  “Don’t worry,” Tim said. “No tricks.”

  The sergeant didn’t reply, and didn’t take his hand from his pistol either. He watched Tim lift up what looked to him to be an original Remington sculpture of a cowboy on a bucking bronco. Tim picked up a notepad, similar to the ones he used while he was still a cop in Maryland. He set the sculpture back down, and walked to the table, sitting down across from The sergeant again.

  Tim thumbed through the notepad, and then tossed it over to the sergeant. “Here, now you have the codes for the bomb.”

  The sergeant paged through the notebook. “These are just a bunch of numbers and letters!”

  “I know,” Tim said. “That’s why you need me to decode them.”

  “There should be a big binder, with plastic laminated pages,” the sergeant protested.

  “There was a big binder. It’s gone now.”

  “Gone where?”

  “They didn’t tell you? I thought they knew,” Tim said, slightly perplexed. Maybe the major had never told this sergeant the whole story after all. That was probably the case, he reckoned, he’d had plenty of officers in the past that only gave him part of the picture.

  “Tell me what?”

  “Really, I thought you knew,” Tim said, now toying with the man.

  “You’d better stop fucking around, Sergeant Major!”

  “Or what? You’ll torture me to get what you want? I know you know all about me. Do you think you’ll ever get any information out of me that way?” When he didn’t get a response, he continued. “Here’s what you need to know. The original codebook was vaporized on a tiny atoll in the middle of the south Pacific last year. That’s a handwritten copy that I’ve encoded, with my own code that I thought up all by myself. It’s the only copy in existence,” Tim lied.

  “I see,” the sergeant replied, tossing the notebook down on the tabletop, “And I need you to decode it.”

  “Pretty much,” Tim replied, downing his beer.

  “And how exactly was this original codebook vaporized?” the sergeant continued, and Tim gave him an evil grin.

  “It sort of goes like this,” Tim said. “There was another man, a sailor. He wanted those codes.”

  “I take it you didn’t give them to him?”

  “Of course I didn’t. He was on this atoll, and had us cornered.”

  “And?”

  “Sergeant, you were in the Ghan, right?”

  “Yeah, what about it?” the sergeant glared.

  “Have you ever heard of someone calling in artillery onto their own position when it was untenable?”

  “Of course I have. Read about it, I mean. I’ve never…” he trailed off, all color draining out of his face. “Are you telling me you launched a nuclear missile at yourself?”

  “That I did.”

  “You’re crazy!”

  “You may be absolutely correct, Sergeant. Now, knowing that little tidbit of information let me ask you another question. If I’m crazy enough to do that, what makes you so certain that when I was upstairs with my daughter, I didn’t do it again?”

  “You wouldn’t have!” the sergeant shouted, his hands beginning to shake.

  “I mean shit, what have I got to lose at this point?” he replied, looking at his watch nonchalantly. “It’s been what, about ten minutes since I’ve been up there? We could all be about five minutes from being reduced down to the molecular level.”

  “You are crazy!” the sergeant screamed, and stood on weak knees.

  “Sit the fuck down, Sergeant,” Tim commanded. “I didn’t. I could have though, so keep in mind what I’m capable of, shall we?”

  The sergeant plopped back down heavily onto the chair, and stared at Tim for several moments, letting what he’d said sink in.

  “So,” Tim said, “shall we revisit my terms of surrender?”

  “Alright,” the sergeant replied, still pale.

  “I go back with you to decode the book. You take what you need, no looting. And lastly, you leave the three people here, my daughter, her man and the good doctor. You have two Hum-Vees, the one out front, and one parked out by the highway. There’s also a deuce and a half parked behind the house here. You can have those, nothing else.”

  “Alright,” the sergeant agreed reluctantly after a long pause. What choice did he have? He couldn’t torture the book out of the sergeant major, he’d never talk. He then asked Tim, “So what assurances do I have that you’ll give up the codes once we get to DC?”

  “None, just my word. Take it or leave it, Sergeant, because that’s the only way I’m coming back with you.”

  “I could shoot you where you sit right now.”

  “You could, but you won’t, will you?”

  “No.”

  “I thought not. One last thing, and I meant it. You keep that Colin fucker away from me, or I’ll do to him what I did to your good major.”

  “What did you do to him?” the sergeant asked, curious.

  “Do you hunt, Sergeant? I mean, have you ever gone hunting?”

  “Like as in deer hunting? Yeah, I used to all the time in upstate Pennsylvania with my dad and brother, why?”

  “So did I. Potter County,” Tim said, reaching down, unsheathing his Ka-Bar and holding it up. The sergeant could now see the dried blood on the hilt, and encrusted under Tim’s fingernails. “So you’ve seen a deer gutted
before.”

  The color that had started to come back to the sergeant’s face drained again, and he nodded in silence.

  “That’s what I did to your good major, and I fed him his still beating heart.”

  “You’re crazy.”

  “After all that’s happened, I’m certain I’d give a good shrink a great paper to write. Just keep that fucker away from me, alright?”

  “Agreed,” the sergeant said, nodding grimly.

  Jimenez came down the stairs and over to Tim, completely ignoring the sergeant.

  “Sar’ Major, Izzy gave her some morphine and she’s asleep now.”

  “How is she?”

  “He’s not sure, but he is sure her arm and one of her legs are broken. He’s trying to set them now, but he needs plaster cast stuff from the clinic in town.”

  “Alright,” Tim said, then turned to the sergeant. “Can the Lance Corporal go to the clinic to get what he needs?”

  “I don’t see why not, at this point. If you don’t mind, I’ll send one of my men with him?” he asked sarcastically.

  “Not at all, Sergeant,” Tim replied.

  Jimenez saw the notebook then. “Sar’ Major, isn’t that the cod—”

  “That it is, Taco,” Tim said, shooting him an icy glare.

  “That’s the—”

  “Don’t you fucking worry about those codes now, Taco. Go and get what you need for Robyn!” he shouted, hoping the man would keep his mouth shut.

  “Roger, Sar’ Major!” Jimenez said with a perplexed expression on his face.

  The sergeant led Jimenez outside, and Tim took the time to get up and get himself another beer, not bothering to get his captor one, and sat back down at the table. He heard a Hum-Vee start, and then pull away. The sergeant came back in and looked at Tim. “I sent your man with one of mine, just in case, you know.”

  “I do. Now if you don’t mind, I’d like to go check on my daughter.”

  “Go right ahead. I don’t need to remind you not to try anything funny, do I?”

  “I’m sure you’ve already got guards around the house. I won’t try anything. I’m good at my word, Sergeant.”

  “I hope so, for your sake.”