Terminal Rage

by Khalifa, A. M.

Focused eyes.

  Honed skills.

  Then freefall.

  As Blackwell descended, the attacker dodged sideways, leaving him to land on the grass with a thud.

  From the ground he fired a kick at the man, knocking the gun out of his hand.

  Blackwell sprang to his feet and tried to pull out his own nine-millimeter, but his attacker pummeled him faster with endless punches aimed at his sternum, his fist shaped like a hammer.

  The relentless blows left him winded, but he had enough juice left to pull out his piece and make a nice hole in the other guy’s chest.

  In a blinding move Blackwell didn’t seen coming, the thug yanked his arm around and locked it so the gun was pointing to the ground.

  Krav Maga! He’s a pro.

  Blackwell responded swiftly and in kind.

  He released his grip on the gun, flipped his body in the air to free himself using the man’s body as his lever. Before the attacker could do any meaningful damage with the gun, Blackwell kicked it out of his grip, wrapped his thighs around his neck, and started to squeeze the light of life out of him.

  Blackwell’s advantage was short-lived.

  A hard crack on the back of his head dulled his senses fast.

  He released his grip on his attacker and spiraled out of consciousness, barely catching a glimpse of the second man who had whacked him hard on the head from behind.

  He came around in the back of a stationary van, gagged and tied. Voices from the front seats must have been his attackers but he couldn’t turn to see. One of them was on the phone firing rapid instructions in what Blackwell recognized as Egyptian Arabic.

  Barely conscious now.

  The knock on his skull had left him less than lucid. The pounding in his heart started again, his lacerated head hurting inside and out and spinning out of control.

  Another blackout was seconds away, he felt.

  Two muffled bullets came in quick succession.

  Glass shattered in the air.

  Was he hallucinating or was it really happening?

  The voice of the man on the phone had stopped abruptly after the bullets.

  His laboring lungs were running out of oxygen fast.

  The light flowing through the windshield had turned ruby, like a pomegranate, but Blackwell was sinking fast.

  Blood.

  Someone had shot his captors, but that didn’t make any sense.

  He was crashing, he knew it.

  This is it.

  Footsteps thumped around the van, then sun gushed in as the back door was slid open.

  He counted time in his own heartbeats.

  All things came in threes.

  Any minute now whoever had shot the first two bullets would fire a third in his own head and put him out of his misery.

  Death fast approaching was more frustrating than terrifying. Why now? After everything he’d put Milo and Calista through only to have them forgive him. To mean something to someone again in this world. He couldn’t desert them again, even if his tied hands and gagged mouth had left him bereft of the option to beg for his life.

  No, he would think it, with all his might. If it didn’t work, he prayed hard the bullet would come straight to his head. The fastest and least painful way to die.

  Instant.

  Just like being unplugged.

  His heart rumbled above his thoughts.

  But nothing happened.

  The muffled bullet never came.

  He struggled to tilt his head to get a glimpse of who had opened the door, but the Egyptians had immobilized him with rope.

  Then he saw it, a shadow of a towering figure cast inside the van.

  A gun was drawn.

  A shot was fired.

  The plug was pulled.

  But still no instant death. No pain either. Just silence.

  Is this how it’s supposed to be? Peaceful, merciful and dignified. The body’s last show of kindness to the consciousness.

  Ouch! Fuck, that hurt! A slashing pain in his thigh.

  Who the hell shoots someone in the thigh?

  Moron, just blow my brains out, for the love of God!

  Then he started falling, a terrifying descent like someone had pushed him off a building.

  Maybe now he would see the faces of those he loved. Or that damned white light everybody talks about.

  Nothing. His mind still devoid of images. The only thing riveting in his heart was the force of gravity as he continued his free-fall.

  Any second now he would hit rock bottom and fade to black.

  But out of nowhere, his downward spiral stopped abruptly, and he found himself floating above an apparition cast in white lights. Something he had seen before. Albert Voss knocked unconscious by Sam Morgan in the Exertify supplies room. With a tranquilizer gun.

  The way she looked at him, held his hands and smiled reminded him of his mother.

  He had no idea where he was but the smell of disinfectant and the dryness of the air gave the first clue.

  He tried to speak but no words came out. Instead, he thought the question.

  What happened to me?

  Even in his mind, his voice was weak and drowned out by rhythmic electronic beeps.

  “You were mugged and beaten up in the alley behind the Falcon Theater, baby.” She had read his mind and answered in a sweet Caribbean accent.

  He tested her Jedi mind-trick again and asked another question in his thoughts.

  Where am I?

  Blackwell heard his faint, slurred voice. No mind trick, after all. He had been speaking all along, but his brain was so battered he couldn’t tell the difference between uttering words and thinking them.

  “Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center in Burbank. You’re okay now, sunshine.”

  “What—happened...”

  “Nothin’s broken, nothin’s punctured. A mild concussion. Your head’s like a tough coconut, it protected that brain o’ yours. You won’t die, not today.”

  His mind was closing in on the delay between his thoughts and his voice.

  “A Good Samaritan called 911. Your guardian angel, I suppose.”

  “Who?”

  “I just started my shift. Wasn’t there when you came in.”

  “Who saw him?”

  “That’s not important now. The Lord had his eyes on you. Just thank him when you can.”

  “How long have I been here?”

  She touched his hand.

  “Twenty-four hours under monitoring. Do you remember anything at all?”

  “Nothing.” He was lucid enough now to lie.

  The nurse was right, he probably wasn’t going to die, but it sure as hell felt like he had.

  After she left the room, he lost all sense of time and kept slipping in and out of sleep.

  When he opened his eyes again, a thirty-something Latina doctor with dark-rimmed glasses was standing over him.

  She checked his head and eyes and then told him once again how lucky he’d been.

  Really?

  Lucky?

  “Did you check my blood?” he said as she was about to continue her rounds in the ward.

  She cocked her head to the side and smiled for the first time.

  “Toxicology reports showed no signs of alcohol or narcotics in your blood. Some new synthetic drugs are designed to morph into your system or exit quickly. Did you take anything I should know about? You can tell me, it stays between us.”

  He shook his head.

  Whoever had tranquilized him must have done just that, used something exotic that wouldn’t show up in his blood.

  When the doctor left, a Burbank police officer came in to question him.

  Even in his diminished state of mind, Blackwell thought hard about what to te
ll the cops.

  Concussion came to the rescue. Short-term amnesia meant he didn’t remember much. The last thing he needed was an overzealous cop poking in his past and disturbing the FBI hornet’s nest he’d been tiptoeing around.

  The FBI had wiped his record clean as part of his resignation agreement. Blackwell told the officer what he knew they’d find when they ran his driver’s license. Alexander Blackwell was a historian turned tour guide, with a permanent residence in Easton, Maryland.

  Forty-eight hours later, Blackwell was discharged.

  In a hoarse voice, he gave the taxi driver the address of his sister Alice’s empty house in Calabasas. He always crashed at her place when he was in town, even when she and her family were away.

  As the taxi hummed on the motorway, Blackwell fired up his phone, which he had pumped with juice using a charger borrowed from the nurses’ station.

  A buzz of backlogged emails and text messages trickled in fast.

  He skimmed for anything from Melanie and the kids, but he’d only been under for a few days and they hadn’t started to worry yet.

  Amidst all the benign messages, one stuck out.

  A number he didn’t recognize.

  Icy chills tingled down his spine and his head was incandescent. The thrill of winning pulsating through his body, even just a humble, insignificant slice of the game.

  Four words from the man who saved his life.

  A message from Sam Morgan.

  Stop looking for me.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Monday, September 24, 2012—7:58 a.m.

  Sydney, Australia

  Morning crispness caressed his face, despite another hot day forecast for Sydney. Sam sat at the back of the empty ferry departing from wharf number four at the main terminal of Circular Quay. The boat would take him to the affluent lower north shore suburbs facing the water.

  The only other passenger sat next to him, a sphinx-like man closing in on eighty, give or take. His shriveled hands leaned on a battered cane, revealing a ring on his finger. It identified him as an officer of the ANZAC Battalion who must have fought under the combined forces of Australia and New Zealand during the Vietnam War.

  Their eyes met briefly and Sam nodded in respect.

  “Thank you.”

  The old man gazed with a bewildered face.

  “Sorry, mate?” His voice low and gruff.

  Sam pointed at the ring, hoping it would sufficiently explain his random expression of gratitude.

  The man gazed out to the bay with nostalgic eyes and a wistful sigh. It must have been a long time since anyone had remembered or acknowledged his selfless valor in defending his country.

  Taking his cue from this former warrior, Sam turned to absorb the majestic white sails of the Sydney Opera House, the city’s most iconic building standing vigil over the harbor for the last forty years.

  It reminded Sam of his own war.

  He had first laid eyes on it thirteen years ago, with his wife Angela by his side.

  On that same trip to Australia, Angela surprised him with a positive pregnancy test left on his nightstand in their lodge at the idyllic Lord Howe Island. They were going to have a girl.

  He touched the long scar from his shoulder down to his elbow, and for the first time in many years felt nothing. A new calm had sprouted within his soul after he’d won the most ferocious battle of the war he’d been waging. He’d picked the scar the day his wife and children perished in Sharm El Sheikh, seven years ago.

  At the police roadblock, Sam had realized the second explosion that rocked the city was at the Spring Roy resort where he’d left Angela and the kids. He bribed the Egyptian cops to allow him and his driver to return there in a desperate hope his family had survived.

  At the resort, a ferocious fire was raging with vengeance. Overstretched by the first wave of bombs to hit the old town, the emergency first response at the resort was nothing short of pathetic—a clunky old police truck that spewed from its belly a handful of inept central-security conscripts. They stood gaping at the awesome devastation like a Chuck Norris flick at their local cinema. He tried to converse with a senior-looking officer and understood the gist of the chilling message. Not just one bomb, but a series of simultaneous explosions went off around the resort with one single intent. To leave no margin of survival.

  Sam refused to accept this foregone conclusion and circled around to access the pool area from the boardwalk. Guests from the surrounding resorts had congregated on the beach for safety, with the more foolhardy of them standing an earshot from the Spring Roy to get a better view of the horrific obliteration lighting up the sky. He asked around if there had been any survivors who had made it out, but all heads shook no. Not one.

  Behind him the crowd erupted in screams of disbelief as Sam penetrated his way into the inferno.

  The path from the beach to the main building was a desolate war zone, the wooden chaise lounges blown away to splinters floating in the still-lit pool. Droplets of fire catapulted from inside, shattering the glass tables at the nearby Reef Grill. Ahead of him the treacherous obstacle course was caught under the fetor of burning flesh and charring bones from which there was no escape.

  The officer hadn’t lied about the absoluteness of the destruction. Any hope Sam had to locate and rescue his family was crushed by the hell unfolding before him.

  A secondary explosion from the gas cookers of the bistro erupted, shooting a large scrap of serrated metal into Sam’s left shoulder and arm, and forcing him to dive in the pool for his life. He felt nothing at first except the weight of the foreign object that had now become one with his body. Then a dull, silent pain set in as the water around him turned red. He fluttered like an animal ensnared in a wicked trap as his own fate hung in the balance.

  Struggling to get out of the pool with his gaping wound and metal appendage, death was omnipresent and its appetite to extinguish life voracious. Paddling sideways like a pathetic half-slaughtered chicken, the idea of staying alive when the only people worth living for had just been murdered didn’t seem like a sane proposition.

  The fire from the resort was consuming everything and closing in on him, but he didn’t even have to wait to burn alive. All he had to do was surrender and death would take care of its own business. A big part of him was already sliced open, and at the rate he was bleeding he wouldn’t remain conscious for long. Once he was out, water would gush through his lungs instead of air, cutting the supply of oxygen to his brain and ending it all.

  In that moment when he had resigned himself to the idea of dying as the best course of action, his natural impulse to survive was disarmed and faded to the background. In its place, other primal instincts took advantage of this vacuum and emerged to the foreground. He saw visions of Angela and the children as projectiles flying from all directions like missiles lodged in their innocent bodies. Perhaps the structure had caved in and crushed them to death. Even if they had survived the first wave of the explosion’s impact, the ensuing fire would burn them alive or suffocate them. Something snapped inside him and withering away became more cowardly than noble. A rage sprouted within his heart to bring those monsters behind this mayhem to justice.

  Sam struggled to hoist himself up with his good arm, then crawled out of the swimming pool on all fours. Hemorrhaging fast, his head was heavy and his body frozen inside. His only chance to make it out was to head back to the beach. Every muscle of will power he had ever exercised was primed and pushing him to stay conscious just until he made it to the shore. Help would be at hand, and keeping him alive would be someone else’s wet blanket to handle.

  With legs as heavy as boulders, his shoulder and arm clamped, every step he took forward squeezed life out of him. His scope of vision was skewed like he was staring at an endless tunnel with no end or beginning, and blurred by the smoke and his diminished senses. His sense of balance was his firs
t clue he was no longer walking on a flat surface. The sinking, low-traction feel of sand beneath his feet. And the voices of the crowd reacting to the long zombie stomping out of hell. His tree-stump legs now devoid of any sensation or muscle tone turned to liquid as he came crashing down in the most spectacular fashion.

  As the ferry approached Mosman Bay, the chill in the air had evaporated. Bullying its way through a speckle of dispersing clouds, the sun shot down giant glass beams filled with white light. Rows of boats of all sizes shimmered in the bay like precious pearls. As far as the eye could see, breathtaking houses sculpted into the rocks overlooking an enchanting cove.

  On the dot at eight fifteen, the ferry docked as scheduled. A young woman with pumpkin-colored freckles smiled at Sam and the war veteran as she latched the ferry with a thick rope. Sam gave his fellow passenger a hand out. When they had cleared the entrance, the morning commuters shuffled onto the boat in an orderly manner.

  Outside the ferry terminal, a public bus that would get him to his destination in under ten minutes pulled up. He considered hopping on it, then glanced at his watch. He had forty minutes before his meeting and decided to walk through Mosman, a mesmerizing suburb by the shore holding a trove of his most cherished memories.

  The stretch up Avenue Road was a little inclined, but he didn’t mind the minor physical challenge. When he emerged into the busier part of the street, the ground leveled out. He strolled by one stunning house after the other, his heart glowing in the memory of how their pursuit of the city’s best beaches had first brought them to this part of Sydney. They’d started the day early at Cobbler’s Beach, then wandered on foot, aiming to reach yet another secluded bay, only to be seduced by the delights of this hidden suburban gem.

  Heart-warming aromas of fish and chips from the corner fishmonger. Endless rows of curbside cafés flaunting a sophisticated coffee culture introduced and perfected by successive waves of southern European immigrants. Content, wholesome people floating around, beaming with sunshine.

  Falling in love with Mosman came fast and effortless. Years later, he and Angela half-jokingly dreamed about moving there one day. Not just because of the neighborhood’s picture-perfect, tree-lined streets and secret tucked-away beaches, but also for its evolved sense of community. This magical slice of Sydney had captivated their future dreams.