Latakia

by J. F. Smith

  Matt was very uncomfortable being forced to remember doing that. Maybe Mope was right that he didn’t have any choice, but it still wasn’t something he was prepared to see himself doing so easily. He was clearly capable of doing something like that, but did he want to be capable of something like that? Matt slumped in his seat a little bit and tried to tell himself that he just wasn’t used to being in such a primal fight for survival.

  Mope said, knowing Matt needed the support, “Might as well get used to it, Matt. There’s gonna be quite a few people wanting to talk about it and a lot of people wanting to congratulate you. Remember what I said.”

  Matt was once again hit with how much Mope meant to him. Why did Mope keep doing this to him? Even now, Mope was trying to protect him and prepare him for what was still to come. Mope had made the most terrifying moments of life, the most difficult things he had ever done, easier. And that made Matt feel the guilt.

  Baya said, “After the explosion, I watched you through the scope. I saw your arm start bleeding. You ok?”

  Matt looked at the dried blood that had run down his arm. “I’m fine. It was just a small piece of glass.”

  “When you ran, I almost took a shot in front of you to try and get you to realize you needed to go back the other way, but you turned down the side of the café too fast.”

  They all talked about everything that had happened the rest of the way back to the ship, but they already knew all the details as Mope had been feeding them audio and describing things to them the whole time through his AARDVAARC. Matt felt downright embarrassed by how they described what he had done that evening. They made it sound like he was a hero.

  ~~~~~

  The hot shower after everything that had happened that evening felt extremely good, but had its own disturbing consequence, too. The sight of just how bloody the clothes he had been wearing were made him feel nauseous before he ever walked down to the shower. When he got under the spray and saw how much more blood washed off of his body, very little of it his own, he had to stop and lean against the wall with his eyes closed to keep from throwing up. It took a long time to let the tension and anxiety from the night wash down the drain. The rule about short “Navy” showers while onboard could go to hell.

  The ship ran 24/7 and he had expected there to be a fair amount of activity on the flight deck when the Nosferatu landed, but instead it was deserted save for two Marines to take their captive into custody and then two flight deck crew. That was it. Mope explained that all other flight ops were delayed and everyone cleared off the deck and out of the hangar until the Nosferatu was stowed and secured below. It was that highly classified.

  Matt was glad for the peace and quiet on the deck, and in the shower. Back safely on board the Iwo Jima, he now realized just how tired and drained he was. He felt empty. Worse, he knew he felt empty for multiple reasons. He had experienced terrible things he never expected to experience in his lifetime. And he had a feeling towards Mope that didn’t seem to be returned. Which made him feel bad about his promise to Brian. Matt felt empty.

  When he eventually pulled himself out of the shower and made his way back to his rack, he was more than ready for bed. Of course, when he got back, his clothes, his sheets and his pillow were all gone.

  Matt was tired and his nerves were shot and he didn’t feel like having Petey fuck with him right then. Just when he was about to go make the angry trek all the way over to their cabin, Petey and Baya walked in.

  Matt scowled at Petey. “Petey, goddammit, I’m exhausted and can’t fight back tonight with you screwing around, man. I just want…”

  Petey smiled and held up his hand, “Slow down, Cornhole. After tonight, there’s no way you’re staying in here by yourself. You’re one of us now, man.”

  Matt looked at him stupidly. He didn’t understand.

  “You’re staying with us tonight, Matt,” said Baya. “C’mon, we’re all ready to crash.”

  Maybe it was a stupid thing, but Matt felt like it was an honor to be invited to bunk with them. He relented and started to follow them to their cabin.

  “Oh, and Petey?” said Matt, trying to make amends for snapping at him.

  “What?”

  “It’s Mr. Cornhole now, dumbass!”

  When he got to their cabin, Mope and Desantos were already crawling into their racks. Baya took the upper rack so Matt wouldn’t have to climb up to it. Matt climbed into the middle rack, facing across to Mope’s. Mope lay in his rack, in his boxers and t-shirt, watching Matt silently.

  When Matt was about to turn over to go to sleep, he heard Desantos say, “You made the SEALs look good tonight, Matt.”

  Petey echoed immediately, stifling a yawn, “Not bad for an ass-muncher! Next thing you know, they’ll be wanting to adopt kids and serve in the military!”

  Matt felt warm hearing this, even the sideways moment of praise and sincerity from Petey. But his eyes never left Mope. Mope’s expression remained stolid as he watched Matt and he didn’t seem to hear Petey’s comment. He looked at Mope’s arm, his bicep stretching the t-shirt, the fine black hair on it getting denser towards the wrist, and thought how that arm had been around his shoulder earlier. It hadn’t been much, but he’d take it gladly. He and Mope watched each other silently across the space between them, Mope finally offering a small, crooked smile before he nodded at Matt and closed the curtain on his rack to go to sleep.

  Matt lay there, staring at the curtain over Mope’s rack for a full minute before he closed his own curtain and rolled over to try to go to sleep.

  Chapter 21 – Twenty-Four Karat Gold-Plated Bullshit

  Keisha finally had to yell, “Yo, Riii-derrrr! Rider! Matt!” to get him to wake up. Matt, lying on his stomach, lifted up and hit the back of his head on Baya’s rack above him. He rubbed it a few times before he realized Keisha was standing in the berth next to him.

  He had been having the dream again. There was something weird about it. It should have been a nightmare, being in the empty room with the door open, but unable to leave for some reason. But it didn’t feel like that. What he remembered was feeling sad in the dream. All he had to do was get up and leave the room. Why wouldn’t he just leave if nothing was keeping him there?

  He rubbed his eyes a few times and Keisha said, “You’re a heavy sleeper, you know that? Anyway, Wickland wants to see you.”

  Matt pushed his face back down in his pillow and said, “Now?”

  “As soon as you can. You can clean up if you want. I’ll wait.”

  “Ok, ok.”

  He rolled over and got out of his rack. He looked around and noticed that the rest of the team was gone. He wondered where they were. Then he wondered how they left without waking him up. They weren’t gone completely as their stuff was still lying around, but they weren’t in their racks.

  Matt said, “Lemme wash my face. You don’t need to wait. If Randall’s in the same room he’s been set up in, I know where that is.”

  “I’ll wait.”

  Matt went down to wash his face and found Keisha still waiting on him when he got back.

  As they walked, Keisha asked, “Why are you in with the SEALs now?”

  Matt answered, “They’re big babies and scared of the dark.”

  Keisha looked at Matt like he was crazy. She asked, “Were you part of all that shit going on in the middle of the night?”

  For someone that showed precious little interest in Matt the last time, she seemed much more curious now. But at least he understood why she wanted to wait and walk with him.

  Matt was pretty sure he shouldn’t talk about it, so he asked, “What shit?”

  She looked at him a little suspiciously, like she knew that he knew exactly what shit she was talking about. “They locked this ship down. Locked it down tight. No one on the flight deck. No one on the hangar deck. No one in the passageways except for essential crew. Everyone else was confined to their berths until notified.”

  Matt said, “Huh. I had no idea.�
� It was true, sort of. Then he said, “I thought you didn’t care about asking these kinds of questions.”

  She glanced at Matt out of the corner of her eyes. Matt could tell she was picking up on the fact that she wasn’t going to get any information out of him.

  As they arrived at the door to the cabin Randall had been using, she said, “Whatever went down, it’s not run-of-the-mill stuff.”

  “Maybe you can ask Randall. Maybe he’ll be able to tell you.”

  She rolled her eyes and walked off since she knew she wasn’t going to be able to pump any gossip out of him.

  Matt entered and Randall asked him to sit down.

  “Matt, first of all, thank you for your help with this mission. I speak for a lot of people when I say this couldn’t have happened without you,” started Randall, a little stiffly. Matt immediately wondered why he was still being a formal prick. Didn’t he help give him exactly what he was after?

  Randall continued, “The provisional security clearance we granted to you is still in place, so I’d like to more fully explain exactly what you helped us accomplish last night. Plus, psych studies have shown that closure and understanding in these circumstances actually help minimize the violation of rules regarding classified information down the road.”

  Matt was happy to get a better understanding of what he had helped do, even if he had to sit through Randall being a patronizing jerk to hear it. He shrugged and said, “Ok.”

  “Matt, please understand that what you’ve helped with is big, and the fallout from what happened last night is continuing even now. The person that you helped capture last night is Shahrokh Al-Hashim. He is an Iranian by birth, but his mother is Syrian. He is, for lack of any better way to describe it, the father of the use of IEDs, improvised explosive devices, in Iraq. This man more or less introduced the use of these weapons in Iraq, helped establish supply chains to provide a steady flow of materials for them to insurgents, helped them adapt these weapons to be more effective over time, and coordinated efforts among Iraqi insurgents. This man used his family ties in Syria to establish a supply chain to get explosives and materials for IEDs from the port of Latakia and into Iraq. Eric Stillman was helping us identify these supply chains here. Al-Hashim found out and wanted to understand exactly how much we knew so he could alter the supply chains appropriately. That’s why you and Eric wound up being kidnapped.”

  “The instant last night we knew the information we leaked to the embassy in Damascus had been acted upon, we knew we had identified the correct leak there. That person has already been dealt with. Today, we’re keeping word of Al-Hashim’s capture as quiet as possible until we can work with the Syrian government to disrupt the supply chains that we know about. We’re just having to act a little sooner on this than we wanted to, but we have to before the supply chains are abandoned.”

  Randall paused, then said sadly, “If you were to ask how many deaths Shahrokh Al-Hashim was directly responsible for, it would probably be a handful. But the number he is indirectly responsible for is staggering, for both Iraqi civilians and coalition forces.”

  Matt didn’t know what to say. All he could do was sit and look dumbly at Randall. This was the person that kept Matt bound in an empty room for three days? Had beaten him to get access to his laptop? That even last night had looked down in evil delight as Matt cowered behind a cement pipe? Matt’s mind couldn’t even comprehend this. This was the kind of person that Matt heard about on the evening news, not stared directly into the malicious eyes of.

  Randall waited to see if Matt had any questions, but when Matt didn’t seem to have any, he continued, “This information, these events, the people, the techniques we’ve used, the equipment you’ve seen in use, is all highly classified Matt, and will be for a long time.”

  Randall went on to step Matt through exactly what he could say and what he couldn’t say when he got home. He explained how hard his friends would press him for information, and how Matt was required to never answer, positively or negatively, these questions. What it amounted to was that Matt had been abducted, the Navy was in a position to secure his release and get him to the Iwo Jima, and then see to it that he got home safely. Any more than that was off-limits.

  Randall looked uncomfortable for a moment. “Matt, the consequences for discussing this under any circumstance and with anyone other than those directly involved in it are extremely severe. It is an act of treason against the United States of America to discuss this in any way other than I’ve described, and will be prosecuted as such, do you understand?”

  Matt was shocked. Why was Randall being like this? After what he had done, did Randall really think that Matt needed to be threatened like this?

  Matt started to say, sourly, “Randall, do you really…”

  “Do you understand, Matt?” interjected Randall sharply.

  “Yes, Randall, I fucking get it,” said Matt, sullenly.

  Randall softened a bit and said, “The government of the United States does appreciate your help, Matt.”

  Matt wanted to say, “Fuck you,” but instead, he just shrugged and stood up to leave. He didn’t even want to waste that much effort on Randall.

  Before he could turn to leave, Randall stood up as well and put his forefinger against his lips. He walked over to a small panel on the wall and flipped a switch that Matt had not paid any attention to the other times he had been in the room.

  Randall said, the tone in his voice suddenly very different, “Matt, can I talk to you a little more privately? If you don’t mind?”

  Understanding dawned on Matt like a new day.

  Randall said, “Actually, let’s go up to Vulture’s Row, if that’s ok.”

  Matt followed Randall up to Vulture’s Row, his mind seeing the conversation he had just had in a very different light once he understood that it was between more people than just himself and Randall.

  When they stepped out and looked out over the flight deck, Matt asked, “Who was listening to all that, Randall?”

  “Probably a lot more people than even I realize.”

  Randall continued, “All those threats about treason and prosecution and whatever are the official line, Matt, but I want to talk to you unofficially. I had my doubts about you prior to last night, but you came through, and I’m glad to be wrong. The crap about treason and prison, is, unfortunately, required for us to cover in an odd situation like this and is unfortunately true. But you’re not going to talk, Matt, and I know that. You’re a far better person than that and deserve better than to be treated like this. Even with the very real temptation to talk about this when you get home, I’ve seen how you are with the SEALs. There’s no way in the world you’d put them at risk by talking about their methods or missions. After all, you’re going home, but they’ll still be involved over here as the need arises.”

  The difference in Randall’s demeanor was remarkable, and it made all the difference in the world to Matt.

  “Keep in touch with them, Matt. With them, you can talk about it openly and freely, and you’ll need to. So do just that. It’ll make it a lot easier to carry this around. Just not on the phone and not through emails, please.”

  Randall laughed gently and said, “Actually, based on what they’ve got planned for you, I think you’ll have a hard time shaking them off if you wanted to. What you did was remarkably brave, Matt. It’s rare to have a mission fail so completely so quickly and then two guys turn it around and pull a spectacular win out of it the way you did. You should be incredibly proud of what you did for your country.”

  Randall held out his hand for Matt to shake, sincere admiration in his eyes.

  He said, “There’s one other person that’s specifically asked to speak to you. I’ll go get him if you’ll wait here just a moment. And when you’re done, head on down to the staging area on the hangar deck. The guys want to see you.” Randall left, leaving Matt alone with his thoughts.

  He looked out over the USS Iwo Jima, watching the various colore
d shirts going about their work – flight ops, refuelers, aircraft handling, ordnance, and more. He wasn’t sure how to handle the way people were reacting to what had happened the night before. To him, it felt like it had been mostly uncontrolled panic and one moment of desperation to distract that Al-Hashim person long enough for Mope to do his thing. Was that bravery? He thought about the split-second decision to run across the road in full view of Al-Hashim’s van. He had done it only because he had absolute trust and faith in Mope. Through faith and trust came courage. Maybe it was a little bit brave, then.

  The door out to Vulture’s Row opened a few minutes later, and a more formally uniformed officer stepped out to join Matt. Matt still didn’t know ranks to save his life, but this guy had a lot more stuff on his sleeves and shirt than he had seen before. He was probably in his late fifties, with brown hair gone mostly gray where it hadn’t receded, and a weathered skin that betrayed what was probably a lifetime out at sea.

  He said, “Matt, thanks for waiting for me.”

  Matt nodded and shook the man’s hand.

  The officer asked, “Do you know who I am?”

  Matt felt like he probably should have, but answered honestly, “No, sir, I don’t.”

  The man smiled warmly and said, “I’m Navy Captain Warren McHaffie. I’m the commanding officer of the USS Iwo Jima.”

  Matt said, “Oh,” unsure of the protocol for meeting the captain of a Navy ship.

  “My rank on this ship means I’m included in a lot of information most others on board aren’t. For example, I know that below the flight deck, locked off, is a Nosferatu helicopter, the one you got to ride in last night. I’ve never gotten to ride in one myself, Matt, and I think I’d give my left nut and a buck fifty to be able to, so I’m a little jealous.”

  Matt laughed and finally was able to relax around the captain.