Fade to Black - Proof

by Jeffrey Wilson

  They were exhausted. All of them. They were also scared, but Jack suspected that his fear was somehow different. His men, his friends, were frightened by the unknown. Meanwhile, he was terrified by his certainty of what would happen if his plan to change their fate failed. It was down to the wire now. They were waiting here for First Squad, and once they joined up, Jack’s script called for them to split in two and go down opposite sides of the block in which they now sat squarely in the middle. He had no idea what awaited First Squad, but he knew goddamn well what would happen to Casey and his young team of Marines. Unless he succeeded, they would be cut to ribbons, he and some of his boys would die, and Jack would never again see his wife and daughter. He knew that there would be no goodbye if he failed. Jack closed his eyes and breathed deeply of the scent of Pam’s perfume, mingled with the sweet baby smell of Claire, a smell every parent knew and loved. He knew it wasn’t memory. A part of him was still lying in their bed, arms wrapped around his girls, waiting to see what would happen. And if he failed? Would he just simply evaporate from that family embrace as if he had never been there at all? Jack shuddered and opened his eyes. Focus on the plan.

  Take the offensive, he reminded himself for the thousandth time in the last few hours. Pick the windows you remember, fire as a team to drive the bad guys down to the floor and then haul ass across the street to the corner that he hoped would be safe. His doorway home, he prayed to God. A part of him felt that there should somehow be a much more intricate plan, a more dramatic change to the events that haunted him, but the other part of his mind, and maybe his heart, reassured him that all he really needed was a tiny little change that could domino to a totally different outcome.

  Just like McIver’s eye.

  Jack looked around him at the young men that he felt he loved from somewhere. He was energized by the strong sense that he was supposed to be here—that he was somehow called to make this change. It wasn’t just his life he would be saving, after all. The feeling was as real as anything else (and much more real than so fucking much) and he was empowered by the sense of purpose it brought. Jack looked over at Simmons, squatted down, back against the wall. His eyes weren’t closed. They were open and wide with uncertainty and fear. Jack patted him paternally on the knee.

  “Hang in there, bud,” he said, holding the young boy’s gaze and smiling. We’re going to be fine, he hoped his smile said. Simmons shifted uncomfortably and looked down, wanting so much to look like a man and not a boy.

  “Hoorah, Sar’n,” he said, but his voice cracked. He cleared his throat harshly in annoyance or embarrassment, or more likely a little of both. He turned and held his platoon sergeant’s gaze again. “Good to go,” he reassured Casey.

  And Jack believed him.

  A flurry of activity brought Jack’s eyes up and his hand from his young Marine’s knee. First Squad.

  “Yo, man,” said the wiry and short man in the lead. Chad O’Brian. A good friend, Jack remembered from somewhere. A little guy with an Irish name, an Italian face, and a very Chicago accent. “S’ happenin’?”

  “Glorious day in the Corps,” Jack answered from the script, an old and familiar joke. O’Brian laughed through his nose.

  “Fuckin’-a-right,” Chad answered, dropping down beside Jack. He spit a puddle of thick brown Skoal-spit on the ground between them, and then looked up at the boys in a group around them. “Fitz, Connelly…perimeter,” he said, and two of his men fanned out in the street. They dropped to one knee and pulled up their rifles, scanning the darkening and quiet street. Chad grabbed Jack’s canteen and took a deep swig of the piss-warm water.

  “Bag any rags?” he asked without looking at Jack.

  “Five to nothing, good guys are up,” Jack answered, referring to the five dead insurgents from the roof. O’Brian smiled.

  “Strong work, dude,” he said. “We’re dry…or I think anyway. Returned some fire from the rooftops, but nothing confirmed.”

  Jack nodded. Then he waited. Chad had another line yet.

  “Wanna clear this block together?” he asked.

  “Sure,” Jack read back from his playbook. “How’s about you guys come around the far corner and we’ll take this one. Meet you in the middle?”

  “Sounds right,” his friend from Pendleton answered. Chad was single and lived in the barracks, but Jack had a vivid memory flash of him and his girlfriend Kim laughing and drinking beer in their living room back home. Kim loved Claire to death, and Chad was always worried about how much she loved playing Mom to her with Pam. “We’ll clear the street from the corners and then work into the middle. You guys take the far side and we’ll clear our side of the block.”

  “Roger that,” Jack answered on cue. He felt his throat tighten and his heart pounded in his chest. This was it.

  Time to go home.

  Jack closed his eyes tightly and for a moment he was in bed, arms around his girls. God, please don’t let it be just a fantasy.

  Jack pushed himself up on weak and exhausted legs. The sun was down below the low‐rise brown buildings to his right and the sky was turning orange. The déjà vu was intense and nauseating. He slapped Chad on the back of the helmet and watched as he and his men hustled down the block to the far corner. He gathered his friends around him to set the plan. In his tortured mind he found himself wondering how it would work. If he reached the far side of the street intact, would he just disappear in a cyclone of sand and wake up in bed with his girls, the nightmare forever over? Would he just be Casey again and have to finish his tour and then come home to them? And what if he failed—if he was cut down by an insurgent bullet?

  He jerked his head violently, clearing his mind of the thought. He would simply not let that happen.

  Jack and his friends huddled up like a high‐school football team, planning the last, game‐ending play.

  “I want to get to the far side of the street first,” he began. “We’ll lay down some suppressive fire across the street and then cross, one at a time, with the rest of the team sustaining covering fire.”

  Bennet frowned and held Jack’s eyes.

  “What the hell, Sar’n?” he asked. “I thought we were supposed to maintain fire discipline. You want us to fire blindly into the buildings across the road? At what?”

  Jack paused. He expected this question, but was still unsure of his answer.

  “Look, guys,” he said solemnly. “I can’t explain it, but I have a really bad feeling about this. I think we’re going to draw heavy fire from the far side of the street.” He looked at the tired and now worried faces around him in his school circle. “Actually, I know we are,” he finished. His proclamation was met with an awkward silence. The young Marines exchanged confused glances and then looked back at their platoon sergeant. Simmons shrugged. Jack wiped the dirty brown sweat from his face.

  “Look, we’ll form up at the corner, I’ll fire first and then, well…” he paused. “Just engage whatever you see, OK?”

  “Sure, Casey,” Bennet said a little uncomfortably. “Whatever you think.”

  The others were quiet, but nodded their heads. Second Squad checked their weapons and ammo and moved together as a group to the corner. Jack led his team the short distance around the block and stopped at the next corner. Inches away was the kill zone set up by the bad guys hiding across the street. To his right was a low wall, the remains of a building long since gone. Jack shuddered at the images that flooded his mind at the sight—Kindrich with half his head blown off, the rest of them piling over that wall for cover, the RPG disintegrating and burying Bennet’s bleeding body in rubble, his head striking the far corner of the shitty little wall as a bullet knocked him backwards, leaving a smoking hole in his flak vest…Jack squeezed his eyes shut for a moment to press the pictures out of his head and then peered around the corner, scanning desperately for movement in the doorways and windows on the far side of the street and along the low rooftops.

  Nothing.

  He closed his eyes again and
this time he searched for images of muzzle flashes from his nightmare at the wall and tried to pick the locations from this slightly different perspective. There was a large hole in the wall of the center building, a blown out and glassless window. In his mind’s eye he saw double muzzle flashes from there, twin AK-47s firing rounds at him as he had moved out from the corner of the wall in his nightmare. That was where the shots that had pounded him in the chest, knocking him from his feet and into the dirt, had come from. He was sure of it. He saw only darkness in the fading orange glow of dusk. No movement at all…but they were there. He knew his executioners, at least some of them, were huddled there. He squeezed his eyes shut tightly, forced away the sweat and tears that burned his vision. Then he checked the safety off on his rifle and raised it to his shoulder. He flicked the safety past single shot to three-shot burst and aimed into the darkness of the hole in the building.

  I love you, Pam.

  I know, baby… Her voice was music in his mind.

  He squeezed.

  Three rounds burped out of his rifle, one of them a red tracer, and he watched as the tracer clearly marked his shot, the rounds disappearing into the dark hole in the building. Jack squeezed a second burst and this time he pulled a little wide, his round tearing chunks of brown wall away in cloud of dust. Then he stared down the sights of his rifle, waiting for movement. For a brief moment he started to think maybe he had been wrong, and then he heard a shrill voice hollering in Arabic and—

  Jack and his friends saw the flashes a split second before they heard the twin cracks of the rifles, bluish-white light exploding from the darkness of the room in which the Hadjis were hidden. Jack dropped his head down and pulled it back slightly, but the shots were wild. One hit the dirt ten yards in front of him in the street, the other he never saw. He heard the flurry of movement as his men raised their weapons, drawing in on the building with the hole in it.

  “Suppressive fire!” Jack hollered as he sent another three‐round burst into the building. It was followed immediately by a high‐pitched scream from the dark recesses of the hole in the wall, which was drowned out almost immediately by the ear‐shattering bursts from the M16s all around him. “McIver, Ballard, Simmons…one at a time when I tell you.” He heard the men moving out sideways from the wall. “Straight to the far corner.” He let his gaze stray over to the low wall where he had died once already. “And stay away from that fucking wall to your right,” he added as an afterthought. Jack knew he had already changed things, maybe even enough, but his eyes scanned the rooftops and windows. He knew from the nightmare that there were a shitload more bad guys out there. Anything could happen yet. There was another wild shot from the dark room and then nothing. Jack fired at it again anyway then hollered over his shoulder “Go…go…covering fire!”

  One part of Jack’s mind became vaguely aware that the horribly intense and disorienting déjà vu was gone.

  The times they are a changin’.

  From the corner of his eye Jack saw McIver, tall and lanky and looking awkward hunched over as he was, start his sprint to the corner. His weapon was up and aimed, jerking back and forth as he scanned for targets, legs pounding in the sand and kicking up a little trail of dust. Like Wile E. Coyote in the cartoon, Jack thought for some reason. The thought made him chuckle.

  McIver was halfway across the street when Jack sensed movement farther down the street and above them. He raised his rifle and scanned the rooftops through the sight like he had trained over and over at home in California… There!

  Jack squeezed the trigger as the heavily bearded man came into view over his sight. The man raised an AK-47 to his shoulder, and Jack thought he hollered something, but the words were cut off as three red puffs popped up off his chest nearly simultaneously as Jack’s bullets found their mark. The insurgent’s arms flew up and his rifle flipped through the air. His face turned upwards as he fell behind the low wall along the edge of the roof and then disappeared from view. Jack continued his scan, looking for other targets. He heard more shots from his men, but didn’t bother to search for the targets they had engaged. His own scan focused on the search for the assholes that would try and kill him and his friends, while his peripheral vision followed McIver’s progress. It was only a few seconds, but it felt like forever.

  McIver skidded around the corner on the far side of the street and pressed himself against the wall for a moment, his body sagging in obvious relief. It only lasted a moment. Then he shouldered his rifle again and peered around the corner from his side of the street, scanning for his own targets to cover the next sprinter. Without looking over at them he waved an arm at them.

  Come on!

  Jack slapped Ballard on the back of the helmet and then he immediately returned back to his scan of the doorways and rooftops. Ballard weaved across the street much like McIver had. He stopped once to aim up at something he saw on a roof and fired his rifle, and then he sprinted again. He arrived at the far corner behind McIver, grinned, and flashed Jack a thumbs-up.

  Holy shit! This was going to work! Jack realized suddenly that his heart pounded now more out of excitement than fear.

  Almost home!

  Less than a minute or two and it would be over. He was going to save his friends and Casey Stillman. And soon he would wake up in his bed, his arms around his girls! He was really going to fucking make it!

  Jack forced his mind to stay in the game and continued his scan.

  “Move your ass, Simmons!” he shouted, then fired at movement he thought he saw from a doorway, but never saw his round hit anything. He continued his scan. Jack knew that this one was crucial. McIver and Ballard hadn’t died the first time either, so he hadn’t really proven much yet. He watched Simmons start his sprint from the corner of his eye.

  Simmons ran with less self‐control, his scan over the sight of his rifle a little more halfhearted. Jack knew the boy was scared. He pushed the distracting empathy out of his mind and concentrated on clearing the doorways and windows with his scan. He heard a scream of pain from down the street, piercing even over the rifles firing right beside his head. Nice shooting, someone, he thought. Bennet probably.

  “Up high!” It was Kindrich’s voice and it sounded panicked. “RPG! Go, Simmons, GO!”

  Jack scanned along the roof edge, his own heart now pounding.

  God, no! Please, no!

  His scan stopped on a figure, draped in a dark robe, pulling the launcher for the rocket‐propelled grenade up to his shoulder. Jack squeezed.

  Dust kicked up from the lip of the roof and the man stumbled, his hip pulled awkwardly to the right as if he was trying to perfect a ridiculous dance step, then there was a blinding flash of white flame as the RPG fired.

  Corporal Rich Simmons, United States Marine Corps, was just over halfway across the street when Jack’s eyes were torn from the wounded Hadji and over to the boy’s terrified run for cover. His rifle was no longer at his shoulder. Instead he tore across the street in a full sprint, arms pumping, rifle clutched but useless in his right hand. As Jack watched, the world slowed to half speed. In horror he saw the rocket‐propelled grenade hit the ground a mere five yards from the terrified young Marine.

  The street disappeared in a blinding flash and the force of the explosion knocked the three remaining Marines backwards on their asses. Jack scrambled back up to his knees and searched through the smoke and billowing cloud of sand and dust for Simmons.

  “Rich!” Jack’s voice was a terrified and uncontrolled scream. “Goddamnit! RICH, CAN YOU HEAR ME!” Jack had a sinking feeling, not just for the young boy he felt so bonded to and somehow so responsible for, but also for himself. If Simmons was dead he had changed nothing. Hoag was going to be right. He couldn’t change shit, and he was going to die here in this shithole street, in this shithole country, seven thousand miles away from his girls. “SIMMONS!”

  A weak voice billowed out from the cloud of dust and drifted through the ringing in his ears. “S…S…Sar’n?”

/>   It was him! He was alive! Maybe there was a chance, yet.

  “We’re coming for you, Rich,” Bennet hollered. Jack grabbed at his sleeve, but Bennet shook it off and started full speed through the cloud of dust and smoke.

  “Bennet—wait, goddamnit!” But the Marine ignored him and tore across the battle‐torn street, looking for his friend.

  “I’m coming, Rich!” he hollered as he ran, marking himself as a target with the sound, Jack thought grimly. Next to go—different order, but same fucking ending to the nightmare. Would Casey be last, but just as dead? Jack raised his weapon to his shoulder and scanned through the smoke at the rooftops, the worst threat to his men. He saw movement through the hazy smoke and fired again. Any change could domino into a different outcome, he thought. No one was dead yet, his hopeful mind told him. Kindrich was still right beside him and he was supposed to die first, right?

  “Sar’n?” Kindrich’s voice was tight and high pitched. “Should we—”

  Kindrich’s words were cut off, and Jack would never know what his friend thought they should do. He never heard the crack of the shot that killed him, but he heard the high‐pitched squeal of the round as it cut through the air beside his head. Jack turned just in time to see a high‐velocity round enter his friend’s head just above his right eye. It exploded out the back of his head, carrying into the street. Kindrich’s helmet flipped off what was left of his head. Jack watched in horrified fascination as it spun in slow motion through the air; Kindrich fell backwards, weapon still at his shoulder and face twisted in surprise.

  Just like before. Just exactly like before except along this corner instead of along that shitty little wall.

  Kindrich’s corpse, with its surprised face and helmetless half head, hit the ground beside him hard, raising its own cloud of dust. The arms and M16A collapsed beside the empty body. The head hit the dirt with a nauseating crunch and dark blood shot out in all directions around it in the dirt, forming a grotesque halo around the blank face. Jack turned away. No need to check. Even without the memory of his death from before Jack knew Kindrich was dead. Hard to keep tickin’ without the ol’ melon, he thought without appropriate emotion. Hard to get too worked up.