Twelve Days

by Steven Barnes

  “Sloan,” Olympia said. “Must be subbing for the producer. Things must be bad over there.”

  Chow’s forehead glistened. “Tomorrow is Christmas Day. Ordinarily this is a time for joy, for communing with the ones we love, for sharing warmth and hope. Because of circumstances beyond our control … perhaps beyond our imaginings … there may be nothing to celebrate tomorrow. Or ever again.”

  Tears streaked her face. “I have children. I think of them. Yes, I am afraid to die, but the concept and finality of death has always been tempered by the promise of renewal. But this winter is said to last forever. And a storm cloud such as many of us have never known … perhaps such as humanity itself has never known … hovers over us, and we tremble beneath its wings. We walk through the valley of the shadow, and it seems we are alone.”

  Olympia looked at Terry, whose expression was sober indeed. “I know her.”

  “Those who published the original Web site have disappeared. No one knows who they are. I do not know the inner workings of the world’s intelligence agencies, but I have heard they have reached out to universities, to news agencies, to private citizens asking for help in identifying those who might have caused … or know the cause … of the calamity which threatens to engulf us.”

  A pause.

  “But I speak now to those responsible, or who know who or what is responsible. I cannot believe in a God who would simply wipe the world out in such a way, although there have always been millennialists. Catastrophists. Apocalyptists. Always. And always, I believed they were wrong. My God is a God of love.”

  “She’s never talked about her faith before,” Olympia said. She was crying.

  Terry slipped his arm around Olympia, and she gripped his hand.

  “This may be a matter of human agency … or it may be divine, or something beyond our ken. I grant that human beings seem unable to do anything to stop this. And I ask for mercy. Tomorrow is the date upon which we celebrate the birth of the Prince of Peace. Whether he was born that day, or if it is merely the day upon which we celebrate it, coopted from pagan rites, is not a matter of interest to me at this moment. What is important, is that I believe humanity has striven to be loving, and kind, to know what is and is not true, to understand itself as deeply as a being can without a cosmic mirror. We have certainly sinned … but we have also loved. I ask for mercy. I ask … I beg … for a Christmas miracle. This is Joyce Chow, saying … good night, and good luck. And … Merry Christmas.”

  Nicki turned the television off. They stared at the darkened screen.

  “I don’t know what is going on out there in the world,” Terry said. “But we’re together, and that counts for something.”

  “That’s a small miracle,” Olympia said. “And if you can gather enough small miracles together, sometimes you can make big ones. Let’s just gather every one of them we can. Like … like stringing pearls…”

  Her voice broke. Nicki hugged her, and then Hannibal, and then Olympia looked up, tears shimmering in the firelight, and Terry joined them. The four hugged each other intensely, snuffling and shuffling a bit, and then finally came up for air.

  Terry spoke first. “Now … the police, fire departments, everything will be busy tomorrow. We can either stay here … see what happens. Or we can try to come down from the mountain.”

  “And go where?” Nicki asked.

  “And go where?” Olympia echoed. “Damned good question. Terry—you said that people were looking for you.”

  “Yes. But Nicki triggered the phone miles from here. We should be safe.”

  She sighed. “Then … let’s stay here. It’s beautiful here.” Their fingers twined.

  “Let’s see if we can get ready for bed. There are rooms, and beds, and I want everyone to be comfortable. Tomorrow is Christmas!”

  Hannibal grinned. “Christmas!”

  * * *

  By eleven o’clock, Hannibal and Nicki were headed for bed. “Night, Mommy,” her boy said. “Tomorrow Christmas! Hope Hani gets lots of presents from Santa Claus. Can Santa find me here? I hope so.”

  The family looked at each other. Nicki looked devastated. “That’s more than I’ve ever heard him say at one time.”

  That comment caught Olympia by surprise. “I thought he talked to you.”

  Nicki looked down. “That’s what we pretend.” She tried to smile, but it wavered. “If he only started talking at the end, how sad would that be?”

  Nicki seemed disconsolate. Olympia hugged her. She looked up at Terry. “I wish…”

  “What?” Terry asked.

  “I wish I hadn’t been such a bitch to you, Terry.”

  He laughed. “That’s all right. You were just trying to protect your mom.”

  She tried to find something to say, but words failed.

  “Right,” she said, and on tiptoes, pecked his cheek. “Night.”

  And retreated to her room, Pax trotting at her side. Terry started stacking logs into the fireplace, positioning them carefully. Olivia watched him, surrendering to a sense of calm and familial warmth she hadn’t experienced in …

  When exactly had she? In Liberty City? With her deteriorating, widowed mother? With Raoul, who must have signaled that he was leaving long before he actually left?

  Was it possible that the answer was … never? “I thought you said we shouldn’t have a fire.”

  He frowned. “I think it will be all right at night. I think.”

  As the light and warmth filled the room, she felt as if she was melting into him. “It’s nice.”

  “We deserve a little something, I think.”

  She nodded. “Thank you for taking care of Nicki.”

  “My pleasure,” he said. “Maybe I saved her. But I’m starting to think that all of you saved me.”

  She paused. “Where are you sleeping?”

  “Out here by the fire. The kids have their room, and you can have the other one.”

  She nodded uncertainly.

  “I made a mistake,” Terry said. “And then I very nearly made an even worse one. One I wouldn’t have been able to come back from.”

  “Trusting Madame Gupta?”

  He shook his head. “Yes. I would have delivered Nicki to that bitch gift-wrapped.”

  The heat and light washed over them in waves, warming Olympia as if her heart had been locked in an ice cave. “What about these friends of yours? What were you about to do, and why didn’t you do it?”

  “We met in Iraq,” he said. “We were doing something ugly that got uglier.”

  “What do you mean?” she whispered.

  “Remember when those Blackwater operators got butchered in Fallujah in 2004?”

  “Some men were ambushed? Hanged?”

  “Yes,” Terry said. The firelight transformed his face into a mask of shifting flat planes. “And worse. A lot worse. On March 31, 2004, four Blackwater employees by the names of Scott Helvenston, Jerry Zovko, Wes Batalona, and Mike Teague were ambushed and killed. A pretty pissed-off mob of Iraqis burned and mutilated their bodies and dangled them from a bridge. Our commander-in-chief went ballistic, bless his pointy little heart. And he sent in troops on a general punishment mission.”

  His heavy voice lulled her into a near-trance, as Gupta’s had. She could almost smell the explosives in the air, hear the gunfire, feel the terror.

  “But what the public didn’t know was that embedded within the general chaos were smaller units, tasked specifically with the obscene murder of the men we believed responsible for the attack.”

  Olympia drew back from him a bit. “Obscene … murder?”

  “Yes. A twofer. Revenge, and sending a message. The kind of thing America just doesn’t do. But our commander-in-chief wanted it done. So men were tasked from several different groups, selected by our…”

  He searched for a word. “Let’s just say our history. We were selected, told what was expected, and dropped into the killing zone.”

  “They knew that you and your friends…�
�

  “Would do whatever it took,” Terry said.

  “And…?”

  “And we did what it took,” Terry said. “It was the kind of thing you don’t want to ask about, Olympia. The kind of thing you don’t come back from. We crossed some kind of line. Together. And after we left the service, the five of us kept in touch. There are shielded Web sites where vets do that.”

  “You … did a bad thing?”

  Terry nodded. “By any civilized standard.” He paused. “There is this expression called ‘the outer darkness.’”

  “Yes.”

  “We just called it ‘welcome to the suck’ and left it at that. You don’t shake that off. It lives inside you. Hungry. Like an animal you’ve penned up. If you build a great race car, you want to race it. Study medicine for twenty years, you want to heal someone. And if you practice war … and find out in the most intimate way possible that some part of you craves it … you want to go back.”

  Go back? To something so soul destroying? All she could whisper was, “Oh, my God.”

  “And we pulled off a little something extra while we were there. You see, while we were … working … one of the jihadists thought he could end his pain by telling us about a cache of diamonds Saddam had hidden in statues in one of his palaces.”

  “Did it?” She paused. “Did it end his pain?”

  Terry couldn’t meet her eyes. “No.” He paused. “It didn’t.”

  For a moment she wondered where his mind had gone, and then was profoundly grateful she had not the slightest idea. Her savior. Suddenly, the universe had no moral center. Nothing was real, or certain, and “good” was merely a concept.

  No. Her children were good. Love was good. And this man, whatever he might have done, was good.

  He stared into the fire as if counting sparks. Finally and with great apparent effort, he shook himself free of the memories.

  “But we did look into it, the ten of us, and it was true. And we devised a scheme to divide the loot, and smuggle it back into the U.S.”

  “Did you?”

  “No,” Terry said. “We were betrayed by a man named Colonel O’Shay. He misdirected a pickup chopper so that we were late to a rendezvous. By the time we get there, they’d hidden the shit, and said they were afraid we’d double-cross them. Swore that they’d give us our share. Yeah, right.”

  “What did you do?”

  “We waited. Waited for them to rotate out. And the guy we were counting on to get us the location died in a firefight in ’05, and we thought we were screwed permanently. But Lee—”

  “Who?”

  “One of our crew. You met him at the Christmas party.”

  Straw haired. A little puppy-doggish, dominated by Mark and Terry. Yes.

  “Turns out that the dead man had mailed a diary home to his family. Maybe he knew something was coming. Seems that even double-crossers get crossed. Anyway, one of his crew got ahold of it, and found some coordinates that related to one of Saddam’s son’s desert hideaways. Took them ten years, but they’d never stopped looking. And we’d never stopped watching. They found the loot, and we waited for them to make their move. And finally they did. Father Geek—”

  “Who?”

  “One of our merry crew. Real name is Ernie Sevugian. You met him, too. Injured his spine in Iraq, sits in a wheelchair now, smartest guy I’ve ever met. He got through their security, found out when they were planning to move it.”

  “When?”

  “New Year’s Eve. And fly it into Dobbins Air Reserve Base on New Year’s Day. We knew that six months ago. It was going to be Dobbins, Edwards in California, or one of two bases in Texas. One of us was salted near each of them, a year and a half ago, while we waited to see which way they’d jump.”

  “A year and a half…?” she said. “So you and Mark…?”

  “That’s right. We were here on business. And when Geek got the last piece, we concentrated operations here.”

  Comprehension dawned. “You were going to steal it back.”

  He grinned. “That’s exactly right. And were prepared to do whatever it took.”

  She paused. “What if they wouldn’t just … give it back?”

  “Whatever it took.” His smile was a wolf’s. She wanted to back away from him, but managed to stay in place.

  “What then?” She could barely breathe.

  “Then I met Madame Gupta. And she showed me who I really was.”

  “The … the Shakti whatsis? The … uh … cunnilingus trap?”

  She realized what she was saying a moment after the words slipped out of her mouth, and felt a deep wave of embarrassment and … need. She wanted to touch him. But was afraid to at the same moment.

  “Kundalini.” Terry laughed. “It was like all my yesterdays became my Now. Opened the door to tomorrow. Suddenly, I could see what I’ve always sought. I saw myself sitting at her knee, learning, for the rest of my life. And knew that the hijack—getting those diamonds—was the wrong path.”

  “And?”

  “And my friends disagreed. And now I find out that she’s … just another kind of monster.”

  “What do you think she wanted?”

  “She saw something special in me. Something in Hannibal.”

  Olympia nodded, but in her heart and mind, the images of all Gupta had done for Hani, and of the nightmare she had put him through, warred until it was hard to even think. “She says she wants to help him. To … recruit him.” Suddenly she wanted to scream, and only the fear of frightening her children caught it in her throat.

  “But for what?” she croaked. “What does she want? What does she want to teach him, or what does she want him to do? He’s just a … a boy!” She suddenly squawked, as if someone had let the air out of her, and she collapsed into Terry. Perhaps the strength that had sustained her for so long had suddenly drained away, and she just sobbed in his arms, until whatever poison within her had, at least temporarily, been nullified by gentleness.

  “More than that. But I don’t know if we’ll ever know. Tomorrow, we’ll see what’s next. Try to get down out of the mountains and away from them.”

  She watched the fire crackle. “Fire has always seemed alive to me,” she said quietly. “It eats, and breathes, and moves, and makes children.” She tried to smile, and failed. And then spoke the thought she had struggled so hard to repress. “What if the world really is ending?”

  “Then it doesn’t matter where we are,” he said.

  “I’m glad we’re together,” Olympia said.

  “Me, too.”

  She got up, and walked to the door of her room. She looked back at him. For a moment she was about to ask him to stay with her, make love to her in an ancient ritual of reassurance as old as our first chittering ancestors in the treetops.

  “Terry?” she said.

  “Yes?”

  “That thing in Fallujah. Was that … the worst thing you ever did?”

  He hesitated for a moment. “No.”

  She swallowed. “What was?” Her eyes were very steady on him.

  “Happened about six years ago,” he said. “In some mountains in Central America. I was there with some guys, pruning back some guerrillas. We needed the cooperation of the locals, and one of our men…” He paused, as if trying to find the right way to say it. “One of our guys, Sergeant Remmy Jayce, had been one of us in Fallujah. He was a wild man, and sometimes that’s just what you need.”

  “But not this time.”

  “No. Not this time. Jayce got drunk. Raped the daughter of a local headman.” He inhaled, then let it out slowly. “They demanded that we turn him over to them.”

  She had to work her mouth a few times before anything would come out. “What did you do?”

  “We … I turned him over. He was a long time dying.” He met her gaze evenly.

  “Jesus,” she said.

  “Yeah,” Terry said. “He saved our asses in Iraq, and I gave him up in Central America, and the last thing he said to
me was that it was okay. He’d fucked up, and knew it.”

  “And … that made it worse?”

  “Yeah. That made it worse.”

  If she had been considering asking him into her bed, that door had slammed shut. He was a massive, solid shape near the firelight, indistinct. Barely human.

  “You were friends?”

  Slowly, almost imperceptibly, he nodded. “Right is right,” he muttered. “Right is right.”

  This man, this good man had given up a friend to avenge a wronged woman. And even though that friend had forgiven him, he could not see the good in what he had done.

  He stared at her like a wounded animal.

  “Need to be alone,” he whispered, his voice such a rasp that she could barely understand him.

  Alone with his memories, and his thoughts, and his regrets.

  And … she saw him. Perhaps for the very first time, really saw him. Wondered that he could have done so much, so many terrible things, and still retained any vestige of the very real humanity … and even chivalry … he had exhibited. Wondered how in the hell he had managed to preserve his heart.

  And she wanted him. But for the both of them, that moment had passed.

  “Merry Christmas,” he said. “Sleep well.”

  “You, too.”

  And she closed the door.

  * * *

  Terry lounged around for a time, gazing into the fire as if seeking meaning from the flames. Fire was alive, in its way. Olympia had said that, and he agreed. It breathed, it ate, it reproduced. Fire and man had co-evolved, each becoming more complex and powerful in the company of the other.

  In its eternally shifting light, could he make any sense of what had happened? Could it speak to him?

  If it could, what would it say?

  He didn’t know how long he sat there, but the crackle and shifts of light were hypnotic. At last, discontented with the shape of his thoughts, Terry stood, stretched, yawned, and circumnavigated the room, preparing to shut down for the evening. Suddenly, he felt the fatigue that adrenaline had kept at bay for … how long? How long had it been since he’d slept? Two days? Three?

  Hannibal had apparently shifted the site of his cookie-sorting activities to the dining room table. Lions and tigers and bears, oh my, all in their edible rows. He chuckled and popped a predator shape into his mouth. Chewed. Slightly stale, but sweetening as he ground it to paste.