by J. F. Smith
A minute later, just as the waiter brought Matt the coffee he had ordered, a slight motion out of the corner of his eye caught his attention.
He glanced up just in time to see the fabric shop on the corner violently explode into a ball of fire and shattered glass. The force of the explosion knocked the waiter off of his feet and blinded Matt momentarily. When his eyes adjusted, the shop was engulfed in flames and Matt could feel the heat even across the street and twenty-five yards away. His ears were ringing like a bitch and the sounds of screams seemed distant and muffled. Matt stared at the scene in utter shock. He glanced down at the table and saw bits of shattered glass lying on it. He looked back at the fire, and a split-second later, Matt saw a small object fly through the air, propelled directly into the burning shop, followed by a second explosion, this one literally demolishing part of the building where the shop was, which collapsed into a heap of concrete and plaster and glass onto the sidewalk and street.
To Matt’s horror, he knew this was meant for him.
And without even realizing he was doing it, he grabbed the laptop and ran - in the opposite direction.
Chapter 19 – Last Bullet Last Breath
Matt fled, but rather than run down along the more prominent road in front of the café away from the explosions, he turned and ran down a narrower road that ran along the south side of Café Lucien. He could hear screaming and yelling behind him from people still at the café, possibly hurt, but he ran anyway, his heart beating like a snare drum.
The road he ran down doglegged to his right and he turned and followed it. A few yards later, he slowed down and tried to calm the shaking of his hands and heart, and the heaving of his lungs. The instant his own panic ebbed the slightest bit, though, his immediate thought was of the team. He didn’t know if they were in that building or on top of it or even just near it, but he prayed desperately that they weren’t. He glanced down and realized there was blood running down his arm. He followed it up and found a three-inch shard of glass sticking out of his arm, lodged near his elbow. He winced at the sharp pain as he pulled the glass out, then felt around his head and face to see if there were any more flying shards sticking out of him. He didn’t feel any and couldn’t find any more blood, to his relief.
Matt glanced behind him, back towards the horror scene, but he was far enough away that he couldn’t see anything more than the light and smoke from the fire over the tops of the buildings between him and the café. He could hear fresh screams in the distance, though. A white van turned down the narrow street that Matt was on, and he noticed that one headlight was dim, about half the brightness of the other. Suddenly, recognition dawned in Matt as he looked at the rest of the box-shaped van. He remembered one like that before, if only briefly. His blood turned cold and he stood frozen in the mismatched headlights. Fear was a hooded figure behind Matt, whispering things in his ear. Terrible things.
The van stopped about fifteen feet away from Matt, and he saw a man get out of the passenger side. The fear whispering things in his ear now took out an ice cold blade and drove it deep into the base of his spine. The person that had gotten out of the van was an older Arabic man with a white-streaked beard. It might have felt like a lifetime ago to Matt earlier in the evening, but it was all too recent for him to not recognize the leader of the people that would have killed him less than a week ago.
The man with the beard pulled a gun and Matt finally forced himself to act. He darted and ran. He spotted a narrow alley, too narrow for the van, which split off to the left from the street he was on, so he ran down it as fast as he could. It dead-ended into another alleyway. To the right was a dead end, but to the left, he could see where it emptied out onto a larger road with a park on the other side. He prayed he could get to the end of the alley before the men behind him could follow him and start shooting. Matt could hear sirens in the distance now, heading towards the scene. If he could just get to one of those sirens, maybe the Syrian police would help him.
Matt burst out of the alley into the larger road and turned right to continue running, when he was suddenly tackled from behind and fell to the ground.
He started to fight, but the man that had tackled him pulled a gun from his didashah and held it to Matt’s throat, putting a quick end to Matt’s resistance. Another assailant came running up and the two of them yanked Matt up off the sidewalk and threw him into the back seat of a waiting white van. They shoved Matt to the passenger side of the back seat and the one with the gun got in with him, keeping the weapon pointed directly at him. The other assailant got in the front seat, in front of Matt, and then the driver of the van took off. The three captors were yelling at each other, and all at the same time, but the one in the back seat with Matt never took his eyes or the gun off of Matt.
The one in the front seat, in front of Matt, had also pulled a gun at this point, but the one in back with Matt waved at him to put it away. Instead, the one in front reached back and grabbed the laptop out of Matt’s hands. He hadn’t even realized how tightly he was gripping it at this point and had forgotten all about it.
The fear was so overwhelming that Matt was seeing stars. He didn’t know what else to do. He closed his eyes and the image of the empty room screamed at him, the burning thirst already gnawing at him. How could things have gone so wrong so easily? The leader wasn’t here, which meant there must be two vans. Was all of this just a way to drive Matt to a certain capture? He was just a pig being herded to a certain slaughter.
The driver made his way away from the scene, but didn’t speed or drive erratically, and Matt watched helplessly as the van passed several police cars heading towards the cafe and the explosions while they headed away from the heart of Latakia.
Time ticked away, and the farther they got from the main part of the city, the more the kidnappers seemed to relax and the more Matt’s hopes that something would happen faded. He had no idea what could happen, but he knew the idea of leaving the city made him far more afraid than staying in it.
The farther they went, the more hopeless Matt felt. He didn’t necessarily feel panicked… just helpless. And hopeless. He had taken a chance on this mission, and now what these people had attempted the first time around would finally be completed. He had managed to cheat death, but probably for only a week before the Old Reaper had caught up to him, dressed in a didashah. Matt’s heart sank. He thought to himself – I’ve been on borrowed time, but only one week’s worth… just one small week. Matt barely noticed how easily he resigned himself to what was going to happen as the urban structures began to thin out.
They drove for several minutes on a major road that then hit the edge of town. Here, they passed fewer and fewer cars and motorcycles, and the buildings and development stopped entirely. They were out of the city and Matt fully despaired of where he was being taken and what would happen to him.
Out of the city by several miles, there was no traffic, save for one motorcycle that whizzed past the van on its way out of the city, too, leaving the van behind. There were no buildings any more, just crops of various kinds on either side, along with large cement irrigation pipes laid out next to the road waiting to be buried.
Matt wished he had told Brian he loved him more often than he did. He wished he had told Bret and Jim how much he loved them, too. He couldn’t have ever hoped for better friends. He wished he had told Baya, Desantos, Petey and Mope how much they had come to mean to him. Life seemed to be too many missed opportunities. And when on borrowed time, you ran out of those opportunities all too soon.
Matt looked out the windshield towards whatever was waiting for him at the end of this trip.
Then Matt and the two assailants in the front seat seemed to see it at the same time. At the very farthest reach of the van’s headlights, there was something in the middle of the road. The driver slowed the van slightly trying to understand what it was and the two in front started speaking to each other in puzzled voices.
Matt couldn’t believe his eyes, but even at t
his distance and in only the light of the headlights, he instantly recognized the familiar desert camouflage pattern of the battle dress uniform, and the now very familiar crouching position that the figure directly in the path of the van had assumed.
A second later, the two in front seat started yelling and pointing as they realized that what was in their path was a person. At the exact same time the windshield of the van shattered, causing the driver to swerve slightly before he regained control. The driver sped up and intentionally aimed the van at the figure now only about forty yards ahead.
And one more second later, without any other warning, the head of the gunman in the backseat with Matt completely exploded.
The driver of the van did lose control this time and the van careened off the right side of the road and smashed obliquely into the large concrete pipe section resting there. The van slid along the side of the pipe for a distance before coming to a rest.
Matt had been thrown against the seat in front of him during the crash, but wasn’t hurt. He looked in horror over at the body in the seat next to him, half of the head had disintegrated, the hand with the gun in it hung limply at its side. Matt looked at his hands and arms and realized he was covered in blood, bits of brain and bone. He heard the gunman in the seat in front of him groan, disoriented from the impact. The gunman in front recovered quickly and started scrambling madly, looking for the gun he had in his own didashah.
With no conscious thought, Matt slid over and grabbed the gun from the lifeless hand of the body next to him. His shaking hand pointed it at the gunman in the seat in front of him, and just as the gunman turned to point his gun at Matt, Matt pulled the trigger with the gun two inches from the man’s face. There was a flash and a deafening crack from the gunshot, and the kidnapper’s face split into two, his head twisted around horrifically, and his body flew back against the dash of the van.
Matt stared at the body, bent unnaturally against the dash, almost pushed out through the smashed windshield from the force of the gun. Matt was completely numb and in disbelief at what had just happened. His head slowly turned and he now noticed the driver of the van screaming in terror and frantically grasping for any kind of weapon.
The driver didn’t have a chance, though. Just as he went to grab the gun that had fallen out of the hand of the kidnapper in the front seat, his head exploded as well. Matt sat, going into shock at the scene, splattered with blood and skin and bone, along with the rest of the interior of the van.
He sat in a fog. Somewhere in the distance, he heard yelling, but the yelling didn’t matter. He just stared at the stump where the driver’s head had once been, blood pouring out and down the seat of the van. Even hearing his name in the distant yelling didn’t matter. He just looked at all the blood. The smell filled his nose, just like it had at the apartment. The smell of rusted iron.
“MATT!!!”
He finally realized the voice wasn’t in the distance. It was right outside. He managed to pull himself out of the fugue state, but only a little. He could see Mope ten yards outside of the van, his rifle raised, the scope against his eye, and pointed at Matt.
Matt said vaguely, “Mope?”
“ARE THERE ANY MORE?!” Mope screamed.
He finally understood the question. “No, they’re all dead,” he replied indistinctly.
Mope lowered his rifle and ran up to the van, tearing open the door to the backseat. He yanked the dead body next to Matt out and boomed, “Get out of the van, Matt! Look at me, Matt. LOOK AT ME, MATT!! Come on, get out! We’ve got to get you out of there!”
Matt slid over and Mope helped him get out of the van. Mope frantically grabbed the goggles covering his eyes and pulled them up over the edge of his helmet to get them out of the way.
“Look at my eyes, Matt. Look at me, okay! You’re ok, Matt! You’re fine. I’m here, and you’re fine. Ok? Alright, Matt?” Mope was pleading with him.
Matt finally came back to himself entirely. He looked at the one part of Mope that he could actually see. He looked at Mope’s eyes and realized it was true. He was ok. It was over. Mope continued to hold his rifle in his right hand, but his other was on Matt’s shoulder.
Matt exhaled deeply. “You… you came after me.”
Matt couldn’t see the bottom half of Mope’s face, but he could tell he was smiling in relief.
Mope said, “Yeah, well, I didn’t have a whole lot else going on tonight, so… ehh, why not?”
Mope put his hand behind Matt’s neck and shook him gently. Matt heard Mope’s deep voice, completely earnest, say, “Last bullet. Last breath. You heard the pledge, Matt.”
But Matt’s shoulders slumped. He said, sadly, “I killed someone, Mope. I put a gun an inch from his face, and… and I… I… A fucking gun, Mope! I… I didn’t… even hesitate.” Matt’s face contorted and the tears started flowing out of his eyes. He started breathing rapidly and his hands started to shake.
Mope let the rifle drop so that it hung in front of his chest. He pulled the black mask down to expose the rest of his face, and then grabbed Matt’s head with both hands.
“Look at me, Matt. I want you to breathe with me. Slowly, we’re going to breathe slowly. Don’t think about anything else but matching my breaths. Look at my face and breathe with me.”
Mope started to breathe slowly and deliberately, his eyes locked with Matt’s, making Matt slow his breathing down and making him not think about shooting the kidnapper. Mope got Matt’s breathing back under control and comforted him, “You did good, Matt. You had to. You had no choice. He would have killed you if you hadn’t killed him, Matt. You had no choice. You did what you had to do.”
Matt sniffled and nodded slightly. He felt for sure he would have already gone insane were it not for Mope.
“Actually, you did amazing, Matt. Fucking incredible comes to mind. You have more in you than you can possibly imagine. Right here, Matt. Right here,” said Mope, beating his fist lightly on Matt’s chest as he said these words.
Matt couldn’t help but think that if that was what ‘fucking incredible’ was, he wasn’t sure he wanted it.
But then Matt suddenly shot a torrent of questions at Mope, “Where did you come from? How did you find me? How did you get here? Are the other guys ok? Did they get hurt? Where are they?”
And then Matt actually got a little testy. “Hey, you SHOT at me! I was in that van that you were shooting at!”
Mope smiled one of his rare smiles, the mic of the AARDVAARC still hooked into the corner of his mouth. He chuckled and patted Matt on his shoulder.
“That’s more like it. You may have been in the van, Matt,” said Mope through a lopsided grin, his smile lines deeper than ever. “But I’m a good shot. Even among SEALs, I’m a really, really good shot. Especially with moving targets.”
Matt repeated, “Are the other guys ok? Where are they?”
“They’re fine, Matt. No one was immediately by the explosion. Actually, Baya was on that roof, but he was on the south end of the building. I was closer over to the park. Petey saw you run and saw the van follow you and was about to go after you. When you popped out of the alley by the park, I saw the guys grab you. I couldn’t get a clear shot because you were fighting them. As soon as the van drove off with you, a guy on a motorcycle came by and I knocked him off and took his bike. I followed behind you guys, and when we got out of the city, I raced ahead and set up in the road. I told Petey, Desantos and Baya to all get back to the extraction point and start arranging a new extraction for us, farther inland.”
Words could not describe the relief Matt felt to hear that they were all safe.
Mope said, “Ok, I’ve got to clean up the van just a little. I want you to go sit against the pipe over there. Don’t look inside the van, ok? Just don’t even look at it at all.”
Matt nodded. He went and sat in the dry dirt against the pipe a few yards away from the van. Mope dug around, doing whatever he needed to do inside the van. Matt looked back towards the city and t
hought he could see lights in the sky over it. A few minutes later Mope came back and handed Matt a clean rag to wipe the blood off of his face with.
“Did you manage to grab any of the bad guys?” asked Matt.
“No, the explosions and the fact that you ran shot those plans to hell,” said Mope, sitting down next to Matt. He pulled out a bottled water from his pack and handed it to Matt. “We’ll rest a minute, then take the motorcycle and go a little further away from town and away from this van. With the explosion, there’s a lot of Syrian helos over the city, so we’ll have to wait for that to die down some before we try another extraction.”
Matt drank some of the water and handed the bottle back to Mope, who drank some as well. He tried to not look at the van, but felt his eyes inexorably drawn back to it at the same time. Every glance he couldn’t prevent made him feel a little sick.
Mope said, “You had to do it, Matt. You understand that, right?”
Matt sighed and said, “I know. I know I did. Even with no choice, even knowing what would happen if I didn’t… I just don’t have to… like it.”
Matt started to relax a little, and the silence of the Syrian countryside east of Latakia surrounded them. He looked back down the road leading back into the city and noticed headlights headed their way. It was bad enough to see a car approaching, but it got much worse when he realized one headlight was noticeably dimmer than the other.
Chapter 20 – Look Up
Matt should have felt the terror rise up in him again. But it didn’t this time. He was nervous at the sight of the approaching headlights, but not scared. Mope had noticed the headlights as well.
Matt felt it then, down inside of himself. Through faith and trust came the courage. It felt like nothing Matt had experienced before. When the approaching lights were almost illuminating their spot, Matt asked Mope, “You swear to God you’re a really good shot, right? Will you promise me you are?”