Beautiful Disaster

by Laura Spinella

  “And did it work? Were they successful?”

  “Two hours later I got a message back at patrol base, a ransom note of sorts, courtesy of Simon Goss. He’d taken my men hostage. I swear, Mia, I’ve never had a feeling like that since. It was like the earth swallowed me whole—or at least I wished it had. I’d sent five men right into the hands of the fucking enemy, a goddamn guerrilla welcoming committee.”

  Mia’s hand covered her mouth as she tried to constrain an awestruck gasp. “Did Goss . . . did he kill them?”

  “No, that would have been too polite. Goss and his men had captured Elite Forces. It’s the top of the enemy food chain. There’s nothing like torturing your biggest adversary. They were desert pirates, and that corner of the world was their ocean. Goss was going to make them suffer before he killed them—that was a given. I thought I understood what being responsible for my men meant. But I didn’t, not really. Not until that moment.” Flynn paused; maybe waiting to see if this time the world would just end it, swallow him whole. Closing his eyes, he began again. “Then, in the middle of everything, the phone rang—I’m thinking it’s Goss with his demands. Maybe for weapons or intel I have a prayer of getting my guys back. And I’m wondering what I’m going to say to keep them alive until I can get them out.”

  “Was it him? What did he want?” Mia asked, wide-eyed and slack-jawed, as if someone had yanked the blindfold off her in the middle of an action movie.

  “It was a stateside call. Central Command would only patch something like that through if it were an emergency or something really important. Turned out that it was Jensen’s wife—his goddamn wife, on the other end of the phone, telling me she just gave birth to twins—a boy and a girl! I could hear them crying in the background while she’s crying into the fucking phone. It was surreal, Mia. Here I’ve got Ellie Jensen from Blue Meadow, Arkansas, gushing over Corporal Kirby Jensen’s firstborn children, and Simon Goss, a fucking psycho terrorist, holding a gun to the heads of five good men in the middle of hell.”

  Flynn snickered at the recollection, running a hand through his mane of hair. It was a needed reminder, the tight buzz cut long gone. “Believe me, I took small comfort in knowing that Jensen wasn’t one of the captured men. His wife, she rambled on, thanking me for taking such good care of Kirby—telling me how much he looked up to me, and that she couldn’t wait to meet me. And here I am, jotting down weights and measurements, that they were blond like Kirby and that she’d already named the boy after him. Then in some military-issue voice, calm and steady, I offered Mrs. Jensen my congratulations. I told her not to worry about a thing, that Kirby would call as soon as he got back from patrol—I even went as far as to promise her that he’d be home to her and those babies soon.”

  A sympathetic smile curved around Mia’s mouth. “Well, what else could you have said in the moment?”

  “Nothing, I guess. In hindsight? I should have told Jensen to go AWOL, hop a fucking freighter home to his wife and babies, smuggle himself out of the country, and never look back, because if he had, it might have changed everything.”

  “I don’t understand. How would that change anything?”

  Flynn cleared his throat. He shifted in his seat, arms folding tight. “After hearing about my men, my first thought was that Alena had lied to me again—that her loyalty was still with Goss. I was furious with her. Maybe more with myself. It was right then that Ruiz and Jensen returned from their security detail. I . . . I didn’t tell Jensen about the phone call, not then. I needed him to focus. There were too many other things going down. I told Ruiz and Jensen about our guys being taken hostage—too fast, not fast enough. I still can’t decide. They knew Alena was an informant, but being subordinates they had no idea about my personal relationship with her. I told them what I suspected: She’d double-crossed me. Goss was holding our guys hostage—that he would most likely kill them before daybreak. Most important, I told them that Alena was the only person who knew where they were being held. We had hours, if that, to get them out. I left orders for them to hold the post while I went to town looking for her. I was praying that I could track Alena down through mutual contacts.”

  “Did you find her?” Mia asked. “Tell me you found her before Goss . . .”

  Flynn felt his gut twist inside out. The sweat that the nightmare brought broke over him. He stared at the iron bars of the balcony, scrubbing a hand over his face. “Not before Jensen and Ruiz did.”

  “They found Alena?”

  “It turned out that she had come looking for me at our base. That’s . . . that’s when things spiraled mercilessly out of control. Mia,” he said, his voice hitting a dull, deadpan stride, knowing it was the only way he could get it out. “It gets . . . I want you to be prepared. It gets pretty gruesome from this point forward.”

  He watched her draw a deep breath, squaring up her shoulders as if bracing for the blow. “I’m still here, Flynn. I’m listening.”

  “Ruiz and Jensen met me outside my barrack. They were a mess, sweaty, out of breath. Jensen, he had scratch marks all over his face, his neck. I thought it was his own blood, and then . . . then I realized there was too much of it. Ruiz, he didn’t look much better. I asked them what the hell was going on? Knowing we were down five men, I thought maybe some of Goss’s thugs had counterattacked.”

  “But that isn’t what happened, is it?” Mia asked, inching back in her chair.

  “I’d give anything to tell you it was.” He’d been staring into the night, focused on a single distant star. Flynn turned toward Mia. Her eyes were wide and unsure, like the moment they’d met, when he’d accidentally scared the hell out of her. This time it would be quite intentional. “Like I said, Alena had come back to base looking for me. Based on what I’d told them, Ruiz and Jensen, they took it upon themselves to interrogate Alena.”

  “They questioned her?” Mia asked

  “It may have started out that way. It always starts out that way.”

  “What . . . what did they do?”

  “They did what they were taught to do . . . what I trained them to do,” he said, still unwilling to take anything less than complete responsibility.

  “What does that mean?” she asked, her voice hardening at the prospect.

  “Look, Mia, Elite Forces . . . it’s not for the faint of heart. Part of our job was to deal with situations that the regular military wouldn’t touch. And sometimes that required tactics—methods for extracting information that most human beings would not condone.”

  “I see.”

  “Do you, Mia? Do you have any idea what I’m capable of?”

  She didn’t answer, focusing instead on his story. “Ruiz and Jensen, they used those tactics on her . . . on Alena?”

  “Ruiz and Jensen had an objective. The objective was to find out where the members of their unit were being held. There had been past situations where the information was vital to national security matters, or to avoid a loss of life—innocent lives. Because of the circumstance, because this was personal, Ruiz and Jensen saw it as an even graver situation.”

  “Goss was going to kill their colleagues . . . their friends . . . their brothers.”

  Flynn nodded, knowing that he was perched on the edge of a story he wasn’t sure he could tell. Finish it, you coward . . . Make her understand. “The second I realized that their injuries were . . . defensive, I raced into my barrack. I’d been in firefights, hand-to-hand combat; I’d knocked the teeth out of some of those desert pirates myself. But I’d never seen anything like this.” Flynn stopped, swallowing down the vomit that rose to the edge of his throat. “It was unbelievable. My barrack looked as if a round of mortar and a tank had rolled through it. The furniture was kindling, broken glass everywhere. Then I saw her. Alena was at the edge of my bed, on the floor—broken into more pieces than anything else in the room—blood everywhere. Ruiz and Jensen, they were standing behind me, giving me a report as if all they needed to do was to put a copy on my desk.”

  �
��Oh my God, they killed her?”

  “Mia, you have to stop thinking of death as the objective. When you put a human being in that situation, it’s what they end up begging for.” Even in the dim light, Flynn could see her face go white. A hollow gaze cast over it, saying that she no longer had any idea who she was looking at. “It’s worse than anything you could have dreamt up, isn’t it? You can’t believe what you’re hearing, can you?” Mia didn’t reply, retreating to the corner of the balcony. Still, Flynn wasn’t sure he’d made his point. “That small ass-whipping you witnessed earlier—what I did to those boys—it doesn’t cover the warm-up for what Ruiz and Jensen did to Alena. Every method they used was one they’d seen me condone—though,” he admitted, “never all at once. Aside from the cops, it’s most of why I got so rattled last night. Exerting force like that—well, it’s something I saw very differently after Alena. I suppose Ruiz and Jensen figured if they applied the whole smash, she’d talk. I’d get back to base, glad to hear the news.”

  “And did she tell them?” Mia demanded, whirling around from the corner where she’d staked out safety. “Please tell me she gave them the damn information.”

  “Actually, you can take it as proof positive that enhanced interrogation doesn’t work. She didn’t. Alena didn’t know Ruiz or Jensen, but she did know how situations like that worked. The way she lived her life wasn’t without risk.” He leaned forward and back in the chair, still trying to keep from climbing out of his own skin. “It was the thing I was most looking forward to, taking her away to somewhere safe. Alena was tough. I’m sure the worse it got, the more unyielding she became. Knowing Goss’s location, Alena assumed it was the only thing keeping her alive.”

  “She was trying to hold out until you got back. She trusted you.”

  “Her mistake,” he whispered, “my cross to bear. You see my ongoing issues with that . . . with trust.” Mia wrapped her arms around herself, offering the comfort he couldn’t give. “I told Ruiz to call Central Command for a med-flight team. They looked at me like I was crazy—then they followed the order. Alena was breathing, semiconscious, enough to know I was there. I told her not to talk, that help was on the way. She actually smiled at me, tried to speak, but she was just too battered. I could see it in her eyes; she knew she wasn’t going to make it. I stayed there with her, on the floor, holding her—trying to keep the life from running out of her. Somehow, in the end, she managed enough strength to tell me two things.”

  “What were they?” Mia asked, swiping at tears.

  “Zubara. It was a village about thirty minutes south of our location. I didn’t even know what she meant for a second; I had forgotten why we were there. It’s where Goss was holding my men. I nodded—I couldn’t even think what I was supposed to do with the information, not in that moment. Then, with a last breath, Alena told me that she loved me, that she always loved me. And then,” he said, drawing a shaky breath of his own, “she died.” Flynn folded his hands, as if in a prayer, pressing the laced fingers to his mouth. “The hours after that are a blur, a smoky firefight—I can only remember bits and pieces.”

  “Tell me you got them out, Flynn. Please tell me that Alena didn’t die for nothing.”

  He furrowed his brow and his gaze dropped to the floor. “Three out of five,” he said quietly, still unable to accept anything that had happened that night. “Goss and his men put up a damn good fight. Bradshaw and Gilly—they didn’t make it. Bradshaw had succumbed to torture tactics, not unlike Alena, not long before we arrived. Gilly was killed in the firefight. Jackson, Kroeger, and Lopez, we managed to get them out.”

  “And Simon Goss, did you capture him?”

  “I killed him,” Flynn said, emotion vacant from his voice. “Our exit came by way of a wicked firefight. They were pummeling the chopper with everything they had. Turned out Goss was a good shot, aiming at Lopez from about ninety meters out with a handgun. He missed his head by no more than an inch,” Flynn said, absently brushing a hand over the scar on his shoulder.

  “Bar brawl or jilted lover,” Mia murmured. “Neither,” she said, eyes closed, shaking her head.

  “What?”

  “It was neither. Your scar; it’s from the bullet you took. It saved Lopez, didn’t it?”

  He didn’t reply, continuing, “I managed to get the last shot—right through Goss’s head. I watched him drop to the ground, and I realized that I felt nothing—not revenge or victory or satisfaction. There wasn’t enough of me left to feel anything.” Mia inched forward, a hand moving toward Flynn’s scarred shoulder. He jerked away. He hadn’t wanted comfort then, and he sure as hell didn’t want any now. “On the chopper ride back to base, Jensen, he finally made eye contact with me. I could see it. The realization of what he and Ruiz had done. I swear to God he was going to jump. I grabbed his arm; I told him we’d figure it out. I told him he had too much to live for.”

  “You had empathy for them after what they did to Alena?”

  “Empathy?” he asked, looking queerly at her. “No, I had a responsibility. I was their commanding officer, Mia. Those guys didn’t take a piss without my say-so. Remember what I told you. I was their leader, their sole judge of what was right and wrong. As far as I was concerned, I might as well have been standing in the room, smoking a cigarette while they killed her.”

  “Come on, Flynn. They had to take some responsibility, they weren’t robots. You would have never condoned what they did.”

  “Don’t be so sure,” he snapped. “I wanted those men back as much as they did.” There was a visual standoff, with Mia’s mouth dropping open. “There are days,” he confessed, “when my sanity hinges on the belief that I wouldn’t have. But remove that from the equation, remove what I felt for Alena . . . and really, I was worse, because I led them down the path.”

  “Okay, but that still doesn’t explain how you ended up the fugitive, how you ended up in jail for mur—” Mia sat down hard on the chair, her fingertips grazing over her mouth. “Oh, Flynn, you didn’t? No one has that kind of responsibility to another human being. I don’t care what kind of code you lived by. Ruiz and Jensen were responsible for Alena’s death, not you.”

  “It’s not like I didn’t consider that very point, Mia. But look at the situation. The place was crawling with MPs when we got back. As the commanding officer, I was debriefed first. It turned out that Alena had more than a few secrets. She wasn’t just an informant to me; she was a top informant to the United States government. And it became clear fast that someone was going to pay for her death. I stood there, trying to figure out what to say, how to explain it, when I saw that piece of paper on the desk. The one with the information about Jensen’s wife and his two babies. The ones he didn’t even know about yet. I had told Ellie Jensen that her husband would be home soon. Ruiz, his situation wasn’t much different: three kids, a wife, a widowed mother who lived with them. What did I have? Nothing—an old man who hated the fucking sight of me, a mother who I’d barely heard from since basic training. Two of my men were dead because of the mistakes I made. The woman I loved, she was dead because of the methods I condoned. And honestly, Mia, I was standing there with her blood all over my hands—Central Command never questioned my confession. And before you even ask, regretting my decision . . . well, that’s not something I’ve thought about.” At least not until now. He stood and walked to the opposite corner of the balcony, considering for a moment the twelve-story drop and the cement below.

  Chapter 19

  It was too much truth. Mia’s head pounded with it. If Flynn said one more word, she was positive her head was going to explode. No wonder he didn’t know how to tell her; she had no idea how to process it. He should have kept his damn secrets to himself. A jumble of thoughts stuck to her brain, like little yellow Post-its. Flynn’s everything I want. Not to mention, a convicted murderer. I want a life with him. Note to self: He’s a fugitive; they’ll never give him a mortgage. He understands everything about me. Friendly reminder: The simplicity of
your life probably amuses him—like a board game. Flynn had tried to warn her, over and over. She shouldn’t have had the drink, gone for the ride, gotten in bed . . . fallen in love with him.

  “Mia, please, say something, anything.”

  His voice was full of concern. Mia rose from the chair and walked back inside the room, snapping on the light. Somewhere in her mind she thought a change of scenery might alter the situation. It didn’t. She clutched her stomach, pulling tighter on the tie of her robe. The whole sordid story made her insides ache. While she knew there were secrets, she never expected anything quite so tainted. She turned, realizing that he’d followed her inside. Mia opened her mouth to speak, but nothing would come out. Her arm gestured in the air, delivering a stinging slap to her bare thigh. The story he told moved forward and back in her head as she tried to make sense of it. “There’s no way out now, is there? No one would believe you—you’re stuck with this crime as if you committed it,” she sputtered between hiccupping breaths.

  “Mia, I’m not going to argue responsibility with you. That’s not why I told you. And, yes, it’s who I am—Sergeant Peyton Flynn McDermott, dishonorably discharged for behavior unbecoming to a United States Marine. Convicted of second-degree murder, and sentenced to twenty years in a military disciplinary barrack. I’ve lived with it for a long time.”

  “And Jensen, Ruiz, they let you do this? They let you take the blame?”

  “Not at first, not easily. But they were scared, more scared than I was. I’m sure it’s cost them. Doesn’t matter anymore. Ruiz died a few years ago—some god-awful disease. Last I heard, Jensen moved to Canada with his wife and kids. Back then, to be honest, they couldn’t cart me away fast enough. I just wanted out of there; I wanted it to be over. Of course I had no idea that the worst was yet to come. Even when you think you’ve paid for your sins, the subconscious has a way of upping the ante.”