The Ides of Matt 2016

by M. L. Buchman

  One last check…a hundred feet to go…he rolled out of the car and slammed into the ground hard. He spun and slid a dozen yards, almost missing his planned hide.

  He dove behind the low wall at the same moment the plunger detonators on the front of the car hit the main gate.

  A thousand pounds of fertilizer taken from agricultural sheds, diesel siphoned from one of the many disabled trucks at the airport, and most of their supply of C-4 exploded.

  A blinding sheet of white filled the sky like midday, brighter than a lightning strike, and reflected off the surrounding buildings. The shock wave came next and the low wall collapsed on him.

  Too wound up to know if he was hurt, Chris jumped to his feet just as BB crashed their car into two guards who’d somehow survived the initial blast.

  Conway drove by in a heavy truck. He slowed just enough for Chris to grab onto the back and be dragged into the bed by Maxwell and Jaffe.

  They plowed blindly through the fire that had once been the front gate and a Toyota Corolla. The truck dove into the explosion crater, but was big and powerful enough to bridge over and come out the other side. Conway skidded them to a stop in the forecourt.

  Chris went over the top of the cab and the other two guys jumped off the sides.

  Anyone who moved received a pair of bullets in the center of their chest and another in the face.

  Soon the yard was clear, but the gates had been stout enough that the building still stood intact, except for shattered windows. Gunfire began slashing down at them as BB dove through the flames and added their own guns to the fray.

  16

  Azadah tried to make sense of what had happened. One moment she was ladling bata rice with a spinach qorma for the guards, including the bastard who had struck her. The next moment she had once again been slammed to the ground.

  She lay there wondering who had struck her this time.

  No one moved toward her.

  Now Mahmood lay near her on the floor as did others.

  The air was thick with dust and the room looked as if a whirlwind had blown in the front doors and out the back. The electric lights were gone, but the fire still burned and lit the room, giving the dust a ruddy glow of eternal flames.

  Geti had been in the kitchen doorway and now lay far across the room in a position that said she would never rise again.

  And then Azadah knew.

  She sat up and her head spun no more than it had since Mahmood’s earlier blow.

  She had not been hit.

  Chris had come.

  He had seen her pleadings to the sky and he had come for her. Two C. was the soldier she held at a distance with his nickname, but now the man had come for her and earned his true name in her thoughts.

  As her hearing recovered, she heard the sounds of gunfire.

  So did Mahmood and the other guards. Groping for their weapons, they scrambled to their feet.

  No!

  She was convinced in that moment Mahmood would kill Chris and she would not let that happen. She swung her ladle and caught him on the side of the face.

  He yelped, then turned to face her. Surprise shifted to anger as he struck out at her. Having regained her feet, she was able to duck his first blow. Then she was aware of the iron pot still in her other hand.

  Swinging it with all of her might, she slammed it into the side of head.

  He staggered for a moment, dazed.

  This time she spun fully around until she needed both hands to hold the pot against its desire to fly away. It smashed into the side of his head, shattering his cheek and jaw.

  Still he stood.

  The ladle gone, the pot snatched from her hands by the force of impact, she grabbed for the long kitchen knife on the table.

  Then Mahmood twitched…and dropped to the floor like a sack of grain.

  Only as he fell did she see two holes had appeared in his chest.

  She spun to the face the back door.

  There, on the threshold, was an apparition. A brief flash of lightning silhouetted Chris kneeling in the doorway, his rifle spitting fire.

  His face lit green by the light of his night-vision goggles, Chris was shooting at the other guards in the room so quickly it might have been a single barrage, but it wasn’t. In slow motion she could see each time he pulled the trigger. Could hear the bullets whistle past her. One tugged at her dress. But it wasn’t a miss. Each shot was followed by the slap of bullet striking flesh behind her. Each grunt, the last gasp of a man already dead, but not yet fallen.

  She turned, safe in the midst of the cloud of death, and watched the men fall until there were only the two of them in the room.

  Chris rushed up to her.

  He didn’t take her in his arms.

  He didn’t kiss her madly as she had dreamed so many nights while sitting beside him under the stars.

  When she looked at his eyes illuminated by the green glow of his goggles, she saw a hard man there. Yet this man she knew as well. This was Deuce, the seasoned fighter. The one she had seen him shed slowly, after each operation, over the last three months as he turned back into Chris.

  “Take my belt. Hold hard. Do exactly what I do and don’t let go. I have a tag-a-long,” he spoke as if to someone else.

  Oh. Warning the others over the radio not to shoot the person at his back.

  Then he stepped by her as if he’d forgotten she was there.

  17

  Chris felt the reassuring tug on the back of his belt and then focused on what he had to do.

  There was a dancelike flow to room-clearing. Six Delta operators hitting a target so hard, so fast, that there was no time for others to react.

  The radio was no more than the occasional dance of positional calls. “B-1-3.” Someone from his team—it didn’t matter who—was about to enter through the third window of the first floor on the “B” side of the building—the second counting clockwise from the “A” front.

  Chris called “B-1-3 inside” and the two of them entered from opposite directions safe from each other’s field of fire. In five seconds there were no unfriendlies left standing in the room.

  Together they moved back along the B-wall, dropping two more guards, until they had cleared the other rooms up to “A.”

  “Two in five seconds, A and C,” Some part of him registered a BB voice. They’d found a way to scale the building and were hitting the second floor front and back.

  He and Conway surged for the front stairs. Maxwell and Jaffe were prone at opposite corners of the yard offering sniper coverage as well as targeting anyone who tried to run from the building.

  18

  Azadah felt as if she was being sucked along by a whirlwind.

  Not once did Chris run. Instead he crouched slightly and flowed down the hall, gliding up the stairs as fast as rising smoke. By her hand wrapped hard around his belt, she could feel the perfect steadiness of his torso despite how fast his legs were moving.

  In the front of the house, a raging fire shone in through the windows. Then they would plunge into an interior room and she’d be blind in the darkness except for the bright flashes from Chris’ or another’s weapons.

  This must be how a child feels in the womb. Safe, unaware. Following in the wake of the mother/protector’s every move.

  It was as if she and Chris had become one. He would pause, step, turn, fire, move. She would pause, step, turn, watch another fall, move.

  A room with too many to fight. They ducked back out of sight as bullets streamed forth and struck the wall opposite the doorway.

  Chris slid something from his waist and tossed it into the room.

  A blinding stream of light shone out, illuminating the bullet-ridden wall in stark relief, and then a shuddering bang of sound so loud that her ears ached in the hallway outside the room.

  Now
she knew what to do and was already rising as Chris flowed forward once more, clearing the room rapidly, each with three spits from his quiet gun.

  A sudden stillness descended around them.

  There was no more gunfire.

  No flashes of light in the night. Now only the fire lit the rooms.

  Azadah looked about. They were in a bedroom that had once been luxurious. A shattered mirror clung to a gold-painted frame big enough for two people to see themselves in. A bed of dark wood had three bodies lying upon it, their blood slowly masking the fine needlework of the spread.

  Close beside her, the door of an armoire, struck with two bullets, slowly swinging open.

  Out of it, the muzzle of a gun emerging.

  Too late for Chris to turn.

  Too late to pull him aside by the hand wrapped so firmly about his belt that she could hope it would never come free.

  In her other hand…the kitchen knife.

  With a swing, she sliced the blade upward in the slot.

  Impact.

  A cry.

  The gun dropping.

  And Chris’ handgun firing inches from her face.

  Not two shots, not three.

  He emptied the entire magazine into the cabinet.

  19

  Chris holstered his sidearm and nudged the door open with the muzzle of his rifle.

  A man slumped out of the cabinet and onto the floor.

  “Syed,” Azadah breathed close by his shoulder. Of course, she must have seen the files he and his men had been studying.

  “A bit of overkill, Deuce,” Conway observed as he joined them and looked down at the body.

  At least a dozen shots had hit him.

  Face, chest, neck.

  There was also a nasty gash on his arm, the single slice with which Azadah had saved his life.

  “We clear?”

  “Roger that.”

  Chris looked at his watch. He wanted to comfort Azadah. Make sure she was unhurt. He wanted to tell her things that a man only ever told one woman.

  But there wasn’t time.

  “Five minutes. Gather intel, then we’re gone.”

  “Roger that.”

  As Chris moved about the house, he was aware of the slight pressure against the small of his back. The connection through which he and Azadah had moved in such perfect harmony.

  They took wallets and shot photographs. They smashed laptops and wrenched out hard drives to shove into pockets. Cell phones and USBs were gathered, but there was too much. Conway stuffed rolls of maps into a blood-stained pillowcase. Baxter and Burton slammed paper files into knapsacks.

  The five minutes seemed to slide by in seconds.

  Inside the front door he called over the radio, “Four—” the pressure at his waist, “Five coming out.”

  “Roger,” Jaffe’s promise that he wouldn’t shoot them as they exited the building.

  “Hoof it!” They raced across the forecourt, picked up the two outside men, and the seven of them dodged through the remnants of fire at the front gate. Circling the building, they sprinted across the field and headed for the open desert.

  “Drone pilot, we’re clear. Repeat ground team is clear. You may fire at will.”

  If Azadah was flagging, she didn’t indicate it. She remained his shadow across the fields as if they were one united body.

  There was a high shriek from above and a streak of light across the desert sky.

  20

  It was as bright as a lightning bolt heaved from the heavens, but straight as an arrow.

  Azadah could not see the ground at her feet and could only rely on her contact with Chris to lead her to safety.

  She turned her head enough to watch the lightning bolt as it struck down behind them. A ball of fire erupted back toward the heavens. Only the wall that encircled the compound kept her from being blinded.

  Hellfire.

  That is what the Americans had sent down on Syed’s grave.

  A Hellfire missile.

  It was what he’d deserved.

  It would hide the team’s actions, for they were the silent warriors. Now it would be just another drone strike with another set of confirmed kills—confirmed by those who had already pulled the triggers before vanishing into the night.

  When the rolling thunder washed over her, she looked from the fire to the men who ran near her. They had done as Chris had promised; they had returned and cut the head off the snake. Yes, it would be born anew, but it would not happen soon or well after such a blow.

  Chris came to a halt and so did she. She was gasping for air, but had never felt so alive in her life.

  The others gathered around and they were all watching the sky.

  After the brightness of the explosion she could see nothing. Then a brief lightning flash from the dwindling storm revealed a great plane descending out of the night sky.

  Chris reached back and took her hand as he turned to face her. It was stiff with being clenched so long about his belt, upon her scarf when she slept, on the last shreds of her very existence. He massaged it back to life. He slid up his night-vision gear and she could just make out his face in the light of the dying fire now a kilometer behind them across the dry grass.

  “Azadah,” her name was a whisper on his breath. “This plane will not land again in Afghanistan.”

  She felt a sudden chill. He couldn’t be saying goodbye. Not here. Not after all they had been through together.

  “If you step on this plane…” but he stopped.

  A whisper of hope was caught in the desert wind and fluttered aloft for a moment, but faded away as he remained silent.

  “Please,” he started again. “Please come with me.”

  And born once more here in the cool air of the Afghan night, she faced him.

  “I would show you my house…” Chris again fell silent.

  And after being so long silent, her voice unlocked as if it had never been frozen. And the question that slid out was of her heart’s making, not her mind’s. “Tell me, Chris…”

  And he waited for the words to fill the tiny space between them as the giant plane touched down in the desert and rolled toward them.

  “Tell me that together we will make it a home and then I will go with you.”

  He brushed his hand so gently along her injured cheek that she felt no pain. “There is no greater gift you could give me,” and he smiled at her.

  And she knew he spoke truth, for that was the man he was.

  The others were already up the ramp, but she halted one step from the clean steel slope. She thought of all the past and all the pain. Somehow it had lead to this incredible moment.

  Azadah looked one last time at a night sky of emerging stars she would forever own as she stepped off a desert she would never see again.

  Her home was in the heart of a man. This man. The one she would always walk beside no matter where the path lay.

  For there was no greater gift than this man who had come to her from the sky.

  If you enjoyed this story, you might also like:

  Lost Love Found in Eagle Cove

  The entire Eagle Cove series was started on a whim.

  My Angelo’s Hearth contemporary romance series (aka Where Dreams) was based in Seattle’s Pike Place Market. After fleeing the East Coast the day I got out of college (not quite an overdramatization), I landed in Seattle. For over twenty years it was my home, especially the heart of downtown. Most of my jobs were within walking distance of the Market, sometimes close enough to eat lunch there every day. As I loved the area, it seemed a natural place to set a series.

  Now I live on the Oregon Coast, perhaps my favorite place in the world. There’s a wildness to it. Even now as I write this, a February storm is lashing the windows with driving rain and sixty mile-an
-hour gusts. Yesterday was brilliantly sunny. Who knows what the Pacific Ocean will send ashore tomorrow (I can tell you that the weathermen certainly don’t).

  As I was looking for a place to set a new contemporary series, my wife said, “Well, you do love the Oregon Coast.” (Thankfully so does she.)

  Eagle Cove is my merry coastal town for four love stories within four novels, starting with Return to Eagle Cove.

  This short story was an attempt to connect two of the rather curious celebrations that happen along the coast. There are many, but the Redhead Roundup and an international kite festival are two of the quirkier ones.

  1

  Cynthia didn’t make it down to Eagle Cove’s beach very often anymore. It might have even been years. But it spread out before her from her deck perched on the high bluff overlooking the Oregon Coast so she didn’t miss much that happened below. She could watch the long waves of the Pacific roll in from far away, stutter on the offshore reef and then break relentlessly on the beach. The drumroll of the waves onto the sand was the backdrop to her life that she missed when traveling even a mile inshore.

  The cliff face gave her a true, on-the-edge vista, but behind her the house and the deck would outlast her. Unless of course the big Cascadia quake struck and the whole bluff fell into the ocean, in which case she and the old house would go together. At ninety-four, such possibilities didn’t worry her. Though she hoped her granddaughter wouldn’t be home if it did happen.

  At the moment, Skylar was tucked away in her bedroom nose to the grindstone, or at least to her computer. She was either trying to get a jump on college with her summer courses, or doing that social media thing with all of the boys who were ever hopeful about pretty redheaded girls. Cynthia made use of the opportunity to take her cane instead of the walker that Skylar always insisted on. She hated that damn thing. No matter how her great-granddaughter saw her, she wasn’t old…only her body was.

  She even had the wherewithal to take the fleece blanket off the back of the couch on the way to the deck. She’d have preferred to take the cable-knit cream-colored afghan that she’d made years ago out of thick Scottish wool. But to move that she’d have needed both Skylar’s and the walker’s assistance. The light fleece was all she could manage herself anymore.