Into Darkness

by Richard Fox

  “No problem. I had a better angle on him than you did,” Ritter said.

  “Sir, what did you say right before you shot him? Baba-babaganoosh or something?” Nesbitt asked.

  “Baba alleh. It means ‘Look at me.’ I thought some Arabic would take his attention from the suicide belt long enough for me to shoot him,” Ritter said.

  The storm mashed the front door against the hinges as sand invaded the room through the gaps above and below the door. “Careful, sir. This is Ceti Alpha Five,” Thomas said as he took the stairs up two at a time.

  “Don’t eat all the chips, you virgin,” Nesbitt said as he started up the stairs. Ritter grabbed him by the forearm before he could get very far.

  “Good work finding that laptop,” Ritter said as he handed Nesbitt a slightly congealed bag of cherry sours. Nesbitt didn’t appear overly impressed with the reward. “And I’ll put you in for a medal when we get back,” Ritter added. Nesbitt nodded as he took the candy and went upstairs.

  Porter waited until they were beyond earshot before speaking. “We need to evac Thomas. It’s standard procedure to keep someone who took a hit like that under observation at a hospital for twenty-four hours. After a couple of Soldiers fell over dead from internal bleeding, Big Army got smart and—”

  “I know, Specialist Porter. All of us will leave as soon as the evac birds can return,” Ritter said. He watched Porter slump against the wall when he mentioned the helicopters. “Do you know why I pulled you away from your patient? From Captain Shelton?”

  Porter nodded; he didn’t bother to look at Ritter. “Yes, sir. I’m a medic, and I’m one deep out here. What would all these knuckle-dragging, eleven bang-bang infantrymen do without me? Buddy aide?” He sniffed the air. “Nesbitt can barely wipe his ass right. Think he can run an IV?”

  “Not really, which is why we need you here.”

  Porter pushed himself off the wall and sat up. “Nothing personal, sir, but I wish Captain Shelton was here.” Ritter chuckled at Porter’s admission. “I mean, you’re doing great, for an intel weenie.”

  “Thanks. You think he’ll be all right?”

  Porter thought for a moment. “Internal injuries—head injuries especially—are tricky. He could be on his feet at the aid station trying to get back here, or he might never wake up.” The medic slipped his helmet off and pulled a small photo from between the pads on the underside.

  Porter handed the photo to Ritter; an obviously drunk Porter in civilian clothes was with an equally drunk woman in her early twenties, who sat on his lap. She was scantily clad, much of her exposed skin covered by tattoos. “I’m supposed to be on my way home for leave. I know I’d be stuck at the big terminal on Victory, waiting for this storm to clear, but I’d be a step closer to seeing her again.”

  Ritter handed the picture back. “Been married long?”

  Porter smirked. “Add five to the number of days we’ve been deployed and—”

  A metal crash broke through the wailing storm. Ritter pulled his combat knife from his sheath and pushed himself to his feet.

  “The wind blew the front gate open, is all,” Porter said. He made no move from his seat on the stair.

  "Sir, there's been some debate among the men and maybe you can settle it. You and that hottie civilian...did you?"

  Ritter twisted his blade until the words "Cry Havoc" glinted in the feeble light. "I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you."

  "Come on, sir. You can--"

  The front door burst open, and two figures stumbled in from the darkness. A blast of sand stung Porter’s eyes. The figures were wrapped from head to toe in loose robes, their original color subsumed by impregnated sand. Porter caught a glimpse of an AK-47 slung over the lead man’s shoulder before Ritter blocked his view.

  Ritter struck out with a fencer’s lunge, stabbing his blade into the lead man’s heart. The blade stuck with a meaty thump, the force of the blow arresting the man’s forward momentum. Ritter grabbed the man by the back of his head with his free hand and shoved him toward Porter. The fall freed the body of Ritter’s knife as the man fell on top of Porter.

  The body pinned Porter’s hands against his chest as he lost hold of his picture. The flashlight was smothered between the corpse and Porter’s armor, plunging the room into sudden darkness. Porter felt blood gushing onto his hands, a sickening warmth spreading down his forearms. He struggled to call for help, but the man’s chest was over his face, stifling his voice.

  Porter rocked his body from one side to the other and quickly gained enough momentum to shove the corpse off him. The room was silent but for the howling wind. Where were Ritter and the other insurgent? Porter ran his bloodied hands across the steps, searching for his flashlight.

  Something shifted in the darkness to Porter’s left; then there was the sound of feet sliding over sand and the concrete floor. A wraith flew toward the sound, and a cry of pain came from the darkness. Grunts and quick yells in Arabic marked the scene of a struggle. Porter’s hand found his flashlight tucked against the corpse. He pulled it from the body as a high-pitched squeal came from the struggle. He thumbed the light to turn it back on.

  Ritter was atop a prone insurgent. Ritter’s blade was held back from the insurgent’s neck by one of the man’s hands. The man’s other hand was in Ritter’s face. Ritter’s teeth clamped onto the meaty part of the man’s hand, blood dribbling where Ritter’s bite had pierced the skin.

  “La! La, fadlik!” the insurgent cried.

  Porter watched in horror as Ritter brought his free hand into the air and plunged his thumb into the insurgent’s eye. The insurgent screamed in panic and horror as Ritter gouged the eye from its socket. The insurgent flailed at Ritter’s violating hand, which gave Ritter the opening he needed. The insurgent’s screams turned into a sickening gurgle as Ritter’s blade cut into his throat. Blood shot into the air from the severed carotid artery. Once the blade slipped through the insurgent’s neck, Ritter raised the knife into the air and then struck downward. The blade passed through the insurgent’s remaining eye; the orbit behind the eye cracked as the blade punctured the man’s brain.

  The insurgent bucked and convulsed, then settled into stillness moments later. Ritter withdrew the blade slowly, then wiped the clear goo from inside the insurgent’s eye onto the dead man’s clothes.

  Porter managed to gasp; the horror of what he’d just witnessed robbed him of speech. Ritter’s head snapped toward Porter, blood coating his chin and lips like a goatee. Ritter sprang to his feet, the dripping blade held loose in his hand. Ritter growled with each exhalation as he looked Porter over like he was his next meal.

  “Sir?” Porter squeaked.

  Ritter shook his head from left to right quickly as if struggling to wake from a nap. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve and stared at the blood on his hands and knife. “Turn that white light off,” he said. “There may be more out there.”

  Porter clicked the flashlight off and grabbed a glow stick tucked into the web of his armor. He snapped the light in half and shook it to activate the chemical reaction that gave off a green light.

  “Hey! Hey, we need some help down here!” Porter yelled up the stairs. The battle had lasted no more than two minutes, but the ruckus should have gotten the attention of the rest of the Soldiers upstairs.

  Porter used the glow stick to search the ground. He found the picture of him and his wife swirling in a puddle of blood near the body on the stairs. The picture was inundated with blood; if it didn’t fall apart the moment he touched it, it would carry the red tinge of death forever. Out of nowhere, Porter smelled bleach. Something deep inside his mind snapped, and he wept.

  Carlos and Shannon watched Mike and the Saudi financier through a one-way mirror. Mike wasn’t actively interrogating the Saudi but merely nodding along with the detainee’s rant and taking a few notes. The speakers in the observation room were off, but he could hear some of the detainee’s words as they reverberated through the glass; it was like wa
tching a TV show on one volume tick above mute.

  “What are we waiting for?” Carlos asked. “We have enhanced interrogation authorization for this scumbag. This is a waste of time.”

  Shannon had her arms folded across her chest. She reached up and tugged at her bottom lip, her eyes still on the Saudi. “We’re waiting for Ritter. He’ll conduct the interrogation when he gets back.”

  “Why Eric? Why the wait? Everything this guy has is perishable. As soon as the Saudi banks open, his buddies in Riyadh will empty the accounts, and we’ll have nothing. If he knows where the missing Soldiers are, Mukhtar will move them—”

  “The missing Soldiers are no longer the primary focus of this mission,” Shannon said with a heavy sigh.

  Carlos’s fists balled in anger. “Who the hell made that call?”

  “The brain trust at Langley has low confidence that we can effect a successful rescue or even a recovery of their remains, given the amount of time that’s passed since their capture. The Program directors want Ritter back in the fold. They want him back in Caliban permanently.”

  Carlos thought over the new marching orders. “I don’t get it. The kid’s good, but his skills aren’t unique or irreplaceable.”

  “It is useless to question the Program directors—you know that,” she said.

  Carlos agreed but kept his mouth shut. Shannon was the only one with access to the directors, and for all his years in the Caliban Program, they’d never explained the rationale for any of their directives.

  “How is Ritter interrogating this guy going to bring him back?”

  Shannon’s lips twitched with a smile. “Oh, I have a few ideas.”

  “I think I got something,” Kilo said as he looked through his scope. “On the road, eight hundred meters.”

  Ritter looked through Morales’s binoculars—the spotter was away on an unenviable task—and saw a black mass on the road. A faux fog of microscopic sand particles kept him from making out any further details.

  The sandstorm had finally abated half an hour ago, ending ten hours of total darkness and isolation. After the intrusion of the two insurgents, the rest of the night had passed without incident. Channing, the radio man, had worked nonstop to regain contact with brigade headquarters, to no avail. The trail edge of the storm was probably still over headquarters, blocking communications.

  “What do you see?” Ritter asked.

  “Uh...it looks like a donkey cart with a couple of people on it,” Kilo said.

  “Keep an eye on them,” Ritter said. The cart must have started out from the al-Qaida-controlled village to their south. Everyone there knew where the Americans were holed up; there was no way that cart was approaching them in ignorance or by accident.

  Ritter crossed to the other side of the room and looked out the window. Kovalenko and a security element had dragged the bodies of the two insurgents behind the home. Shortly after their deaths, the bodies had defecated and stunk up the first floor. Young had wanted to drag the bodies into the storm, but Kovalenko and Ritter had shot down that idea. No need to have Soldiers stumbling around in the storm and risk leading more insurgents to their base with a light beacon. Ritter had the bodies dragged into the courtyard and waited for the storm to break to move them farther away.

  Morales and Kovalenko carried one of the bodies by the wrists and ankles, then unceremoniously tossed it into a shallow irrigation ditch. A Soldier stood next to the ersatz grave with a shovel they had found in the courtyard. Ritter opened the window. “Lieutenant! Get everyone back inside. We might have company.”

  Kovalenko gave Ritter an exaggerated nod.

  Ritter turned away from the window, but his gaze caught on the distant building, where they’d found the Syrian woman and her family. Black smoke lingered in the air around it as it smoldered from the explosion the night before. While he would never know the truth, Ritter guessed some of the insurgents in from the wrecked technical vehicles had waited for cover from Kilo’s sniper rifle, then tried to make it back to friendly territory. They’d gotten disoriented in the storm, then found their way to the now destroyed home.

  How had they set off the suicide belt? Ritter wondered. He was sure they’d find a few more bodies in the house if they had the time to search it again. The two survivors had left the burning home and found their way to a new sanctuary, and their journey had ended on the tip of Ritter’s Applegate-Fairbairn combat knife. Ritter shook his head; he almost had sympathy for their ordeal. Almost.

  “Sir, you’re the intelligence guy. What the hell does this mean?” Kilo said. Ritter picked up the binoculars and tried to find the donkey cart. “Some guy is leading the cart, and it looks like there’s a woman in a burka on the cart…and a couple of blue barrels behind her.”

  Ritter found the cart and confirmed what Kilo had seen. The woman, sitting slightly hunched over, was holding something in her arms. The something squirmed, and Ritter saw a little, olive-skinned arm reach up to the woman’s face.

  “She’s holding a baby,” Ritter said.

  “The guy leading the cart? He’s got a fucked-up face, like he’s retarded or something.” Kilo shifted against his firing position. Ritter wasn’t sure whether it was from discomfort or nervousness. Ritter focused on the cart driver, whose face bore the common signs of Down syndrome.

  Kovalenko and Morales stormed up the stairs. “What you got, sir?” the lieutenant asked.

  Ritter got him up to speed as he handed the binoculars back to the spotter.

  “What do you think is in the barrels?” Kovalenko asked.

  “Explosives. That’s what I would send in their place,” Ritter said.

  “Sir,” Kilo said, his voice almost pleading, “let me give them a warning shot. I know that’s not SOP, but maybe they’re just lost or something.”

  Kovalenko shook his head and drew in a breath to deny the request, but Ritter’s hand on his shoulder stopped him.

  “Hold on, Lieutenant. Tell everyone to hold their fire,” Ritter said. Warning shots had a tendency to spark more accurate fire from less-informed Soldiers. There was always one guy who didn’t get the word.

  Kovalenko didn’t move for a moment, as if to protest, but left without a word.

  A minute later Ritter gave permission for the warning shot. Kilo’s round snapped over the approaching cart. The disabled man leading the cart waved his hands over his head, then tried to turn the cart around. Bursts of machine gun fire came from the al-Qaeda village. Errant bullets kicked up puffs of dirt near the cart. The man turned the cart back toward Ritter’s building.

  “OK, they’re definitely coming right for us,” Morales said.

  “Sir, what’re they thinking?” Kilo asked.

  “They think we won’t fire on a woman holding a baby or a disabled guy, and those explosives will get right to the gate and blow us all to hell,” Ritter said.

  “We don’t know that they’re explosives,” Kilo said.

  “Kilo, I want you to—”

  “No, sir! If I hit the guy, the bullet will go straight through him and hit the baby. Any round I shoot will probably hit the barrels too and set the whole thing off.” Kilo rolled onto his side, his brown eyes wide with fear. “They don’t want to do this. They’re all noncombatants. Innocents!”

  “Plus, if he hits the guy, the woman can lead the burro right to us,” Morales added.

  “I know, Sergeant Kilo. That’s why I want you to shoot the donkey,” Ritter said with force.

  “The donkey?” Kilo asked.

  “You stop the donkey—you stop the cart. That’ll give them a chance to get away,” Ritter said.

  Kilo nodded slightly as he absorbed Ritter’s explanation, then settled back behind his rifle. “Yeah, I can make that shot,” he said.

  “Hurry. The chance of al-Qaeda setting them off gets higher with every step they make,” Ritter warned.

  Kilo adjusted his scope. “Windage?”

  “Steady.” Morales waited as the cart rumbled through a
rough patch on the dirt road. “Send it!”

  Kilo exhaled until his lungs were empty, timed out a pause between his slowing heartbeats, and squeezed the trigger. The crack of the bullet destroyed the morning. It took less than a second for the round to close the distance.

  “Miss! Shot went left,” Morales said. The near miss did nothing to dissuade the approaching cart.

  Kilo blew out a quick breath and refocused. He fired again.

  Morales watched as the donkey fell forward, tipping the cart onto its side. The woman and the child spilled into the dirt. The woman cradled the child under her body as the barrels thudded to the ground next to her. She struggled to her feet and ran back toward the al-Qaeda stronghold, her child clutched to her breast.

  Kilo pulled his head from the scope to get a better look at the unfolding scene.

  “Good shot, Kilo.” Ritter said.

  Kilo returned to his scope. The donkey’s rear legs thrashed in the dirt. The kicks slowed before ending with a final shiver. The disabled man was bent over the dying animal, his arms wrapped around its neck. The man’s mouth was open in a wail as he shook the donkey, trying to bring it back to his feet. Kilo told himself he couldn’t hear the man’s cries at that distance. But he heard the cries of a simpleton who’d lost his only friend in the world. The cry of a child who had discovered a pet lying dead in the road.

  During his time in Iraq, Kilo had killed at least ten men. He had never given the lives he took a second thought, but there was grief for the beast he’d just killed and the pain he’d inflicted on the man who might never understand why his donkey had to die.

  Kilo, his face contorting to keep back tears, looked up at Ritter. The intelligence officer knelt next to Kilo and placed a hand on his shoulder.

  “I know,” Ritter said.

  “Sir! We’ve got through to an Army unit in Ramadi. They’re sending a Chinook to get us the hell out of here,” Channing said as he stuck his head into the room. A single Chinook could carry every Soldier in the building. Finally, some good news.