Jais

by Jason Kasper

  I let the rifle hang on its sling and fixed my hair as best I could with shooting gloves caked in dirt, then pulled out my earpieces and walked to the road.

  Karma was standing beside the massive truck, looking at me and holding a cigarette.

  Her eyes widened as I approached. “Jesus, what happened to you?”

  I grabbed her waist with one hand and her cheek with the other, pinned her against the door of the truck, and kissed her.

  Pulling my head back, I said, “God, you smell amazing. And I’m in an incredible amount of pain.”

  She put the cigarette in my lips. “You need this more than I do.”

  “What a lady,” I said, opening the driver’s side door for her.

  “What a gentleman,” she replied, getting behind the wheel. I let myself into the passenger seat as she started the truck and accelerated forward.

  “Did you see anyone on the way in?” I asked.

  “No. But it scared the shit out of me to hear gunshots instead of the mortars once the countdown was up.”

  “Yeah. I wasn’t ecstatic about that, either. Is Matz going to kill me at the link-up?”

  “Probably. You’re lucky you jumped out of that plane when you did.”

  I took a drag, exhaling smoke through the open window. “You sure this isn’t a non-smoking vehicle?”

  “We’re blowing up the truck in a few minutes. I won’t tell Ian if you won’t.”

  We arrived at the intersection and saw Ian’s black SUV facing an adjoining road. Karma stopped the truck and reversed at an angle to block the route, leaving our ambush team’s path as the only open road.

  I transmitted, “Red, this is White. You want me to pop now or wait?”

  “White, Red,” Ian responded. “Go ahead and pop it, then consolidate. The guys are on time.”

  I grabbed a hiking pack from the floor behind me and unrolled the dual initiation system from the front pocket. Giving each initiator a quarter turn and a pull, I watched a puff of smoke rise from the length of time fuse. Dropping it, I started a fifteen-minute timer on my watch.

  “Red, White. Burning, fifteen minutes.”

  “Copy.”

  Karma locked the pickup doors and we walked to the idling SUV, then slid into the air conditioning and closed the doors behind us.

  “You guys okay?” Ian turned around from the driver’s seat. He saw my face and said, “Jesus, David.”

  “I know. I’m about to eat all the painkillers in the fucking world. Anything over the radio yet?” I adjusted the M4 between my legs and looked over my shoulder to our rear. Ian turned back around and scanned the mirrors.

  “Boss transmitted they were ambush complete and moving to their getaway car. They should be there in the next minute. At the mortar site, the security force reported three dead in your explosion, and after hearing you come over their net I’m guessing you rolled up a fourth.”

  I hesitated. “Yeah, there was a fourth kill. Where did that patrol come from? I didn’t see them until—”

  Ian held up his hand to silence me as a radio in the front seat crackled to life.

  “I have visual on the element.” There was a pause, followed by, “I’ve got all three of them. No injuries. We’re moving toward your position now, ETA three minutes.”

  Ian picked up the radio. “Copy. Happy hunting, guys?”

  There was a short pause, and Ophie’s voice came over the frequency.

  “The initial detonation flipped the lead vehicle twenty feet in the air. We were lighting up shrapnel. No survivors. It was fucking sick.”

  Boss said, “Two minutes out from your position. Tell Suicide that—hang on a second.” We waited without speaking until he transmitted again.

  “Midnight. Midnight. Midnight.” Boss sounded calm, as if he were joking. Then, panicked, he screamed, “MIDNIGHT MIDNIGHT MIDN—”

  Ian floored the gas and the wheels gained traction, the SUV fishtailing slightly on its way to full speed. Karma’s wide eyes met mine, and a moment later her features vanished in an explosion of deep crimson as the first gunshots rang out.

  My face was sprayed with her thick, scalding blood. I choked and gagged against the sickening stench as more bullets blasted holes through the rear windshield, sending tiny shards of glass whipping through the cab.

  I wiped my eyes and blinked, seeing a blur of green through the window as our vehicle sped away. Ian was yelling something I could hear but was unable to understand. I looked at Karma, and acid rose in my throat. Her body was slumped forward unnaturally and was performing an animated jerking movement with each bump in the road. Her head was half gone, exposing a gruesome display within her shattered skull.

  I picked up a fleshy, gray piece of brain matter from my lap and studied it in my fingers.

  I coughed once, tried to clear my throat, and then threw up onto my rifle.

  SILENCE

  Nihil obstat

  -Nothing stands in the way

  CHAPTER 19

  September 6, 2008

  Puerto Oscura, Dominican Republic

  The room was white, a glowing absence of color betrayed by the approach of a single figure. Slim and lithe, she emerged from the brightness and materialized before me, perfect. Light hair grazed her shoulders, and her clear eyes locked with mine as she stepped forward, pensive, hands clasped behind the small of her back, presenting her delicate body to me. Small, hesitant steps, her frame almost shuddering with desire, stopping so close I could feel her warm exhale breathing life into me. A single hand took mine and pulled it toward her; my fingers grazed the vibrant skin below her navel for a fleeting moment as her other hand pressed a cool, dense object into my palm. She looked at me—hopeful, smiling.

  I gazed down at the narrow space between us and saw a gleaming silver revolver in my hand. Her eyes rose to mine, pleading. Compliant, I placed the end of the barrel gently against my sternum. The corner of her lips curled into a curious smile as I pulled the trigger and the massive force tore through my chest, swirling life within my center before launching it backwards onto the immaculate floor. My world spun violently until the surface below me came to an abrupt stop at eye level.

  I heard myself taking ragged, involuntary gasps as instinct struggled for survival. But as a warm wetness spread outside my body so too did a cold emptiness grow within—

  My eyes opened slowly and adjusted to the ceiling fan churning in the darkness above me. I closed them again and released a long breath, not caring to recount what had led me there that night or any other.

  I lay motionless for long minutes, thoughtless and empty and seeing nothing at all.

  Rolling to my side, I fumbled a cigarette from the half-empty pack on the nightstand and put it between my lips. Grabbing a lighter next to the .454 revolver, I knocked over an empty glass in the process. It rolled off the nightstand and bounced onto the carpet.

  The dream had become recurring, always ending whatever sleep I managed after drinking my mind into submission. When I didn’t sleep, I didn’t dream.

  Otherwise, Karma came to me.

  The gun was always there; sometimes I put the barrel in my mouth, sometimes against my chest. Sometimes the dream ended with her standing above me, watching blankly, and sometimes I didn’t get that far before waking up. But the dream always came. Sleep always ended in that glowing room.

  Opening a glass door and emerging onto the third-floor balcony under a night sky, I felt a cooler than usual burst of wind accompanied by residual water pattering in droplets from the edge of the roof. Another one of the area’s usual quick and tempestuous rainstorms had just rolled through, leaving a ghost of moisture in the air. Walking to the waist-high rail at the end of the balcony, I cracked the lighter to life and held the flame to the tip of my cigarette, then inhaled the first breath of smoke.

  Above me, the moon presented a dull glow that brightened and dimmed as a sheet of clouds drifted slowly beneath it out to the sea. My eyes fell to the pool below me and then to the e
dge of the yard, which ended in a fifteen-foot wall topped with rolls of concertina wire. Tall palm trees rose blackly on the other side, their leaves rustling in the wind. From the darkness, I could hear the lonely chant of the ocean’s edge as quiet waves crashed to shore and rolled back out again.

  My neighborhood was a gated, walled subdivision with its own security force. Each new resident and vehicle was registered before being allowed to come and go freely. A contracted company performed landscaping and pool services after their vehicles were searched and escorted to their destination. Groceries, catered meals, uncut cocaine, top-shelf liquor, and call girls could be ordered by phone and delivered to the main gate at any time of the day or night. Even the whores were subjected to metal detector searches and had to sign in and out at the guard center. The security force conducted patrols outside the fence with dogs, continuously monitoring an extensive network of security cameras situated around the interior and exterior of the compound.

  As for the community’s inhabitants, there were more rumors than certainties. Mostly these rumors centered on the dollar amount of bounties that various individuals had on their lives rather than on any details about their past. I was told that a handful of such communities existed in this country alone, and many more in surrounding nations. Drug lords, snitches, hit men, and anyone with an abundance of money and enemies gather in these places. They are the elephant graveyards of crime, where retired outlaws come to ride out what time they have left.

  How I got there was a story in itself. I was delivered, as promised, to the smugglers. Ian forcibly removed me from the truck with the help of another man who was waiting at our transfer point, and I stumbled forward as they half-dragged me to another vehicle. The shock was overwhelming. My head was spinning, my equilibrium gone. Covered in Karma’s blood and brain matter, I was out of my mind. It was in this state that I was eventually locked into what I will call a means of transportation for the trip south. Inside, there was room and supplies for five.

  I alone occupied it.

  Suffice it to say that there are very complex smuggling networks established and maintained to import select commodities—including but not limited to narcotics—into the United States. The delivery vehicles for such imports are not necessarily sent back to their source empty. Any number of reliable smugglers would—and gladly do—accept a profit for the return trip. It was a long, mind-numbing process, and one that I spent in darkness and disbelief. I had not one coherent reflection from the journey south until I emerged at the destination—only scattered thoughts, flashing images of Karma’s death, waves of stomach sickness and fear.

  When I entered the house for the first time, I saw the dining room table arranged with five glasses and an unopened bottle of Woodford Reserve. Stepping forward, I saw a lopsided green sticker pasted on the face of the bottle. CLOSING TIME WINE & SPIRITS: $62.99.

  And I began to drink.

  * * *

  It took days for Ian to contact me.

  When he did, I strode over to the phone and snatched it by the second ring. “Who was it?”

  He spoke quietly, his voice even. “You know who it was.”

  “What about the security force?”

  “I had people monitoring their frequencies. When you took their radio, they switched to an alternate net but kept talking. They had nothing to do with the other vehicle getting hit. Or us. We beat the security forces, David. Just not the Handler.”

  “How could he know where we’d be?”

  “He didn’t have to: he knew the target. His men waited outside the security rings for us to finish the work, then hit us on our way out. The only reason you and I survived was because something tipped off Boss and he made the call. That’s it.”

  “Where is Karma?”

  “We buried her that night.”

  I fumbled for the chair beside me and collapsed into it. “Where?”

  “In the woods.”

  “And the others?”

  “Their bodies weren’t recovered. We don’t know where they are.”

  “How do we kill him?”

  “I’m taking care of it.”

  “Not without me. If there’s a team going in, I’m going to be part of it.”

  “There is. It’s too late.”

  Tightening my grip on the phone, I leaned forward and said, “Bullshit. It will take them weeks to prepare.”

  “No, David, it would take months, and that’s how long they’ve been working on it. I found something in that Sprinter van that I didn’t tell Boss about.”

  “What the fuck does that mean?”

  “It means before they died, the Five Heads had financed a team that was in the final stages of an attempt to assassinate the Handler. They agreed to negotiations to buy time until the opportunity to kill him arose.”

  “And you took over that team’s contract after the Five Heads got killed.”

  “Before the sun set.”

  “So now it’s a matter of time.”

  “Yes, David. That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”

  “Okay.” I sighed, looking over at the .454 maintaining its lonely vigil on the nightstand. “Ian, I need to know when it’s done.”

  * * *

  Taking a final drag off the cigarette, I bitterly tossed it off the balcony to join its fallen comrades on the lawn, then returned to the house. I walked to the nightstand and retrieved the revolver, then made my way to the master bathroom and turned on the light.

  I stared at the face in the mirror.

  Devoid of purpose, drinking and waiting for the phone to ring, I had begun writing again. Putting the story of the team to words became my sole purpose, my only reason for living.

  The writing took over my life. I would sit at the computer all day as pages poured out of me, then look up and realize I hadn’t consumed anything in eight or nine hours besides vast quantities of caffeine, nicotine, and alcohol. I had never written anything other than scattered introspection and late-night ramblings, and suddenly I found myself buried a hundred pages deep in a single manuscript.

  Since I couldn’t tell the team’s story without detailing the path that led me to them, I had to dredge up past memories. I revisited old writings, wading through written memories of war, of Afghanistan and Iraq and a failed engagement, of darkness and drinking and jumping, of acting out the self-destructive fantasies of a living death wish in the twilight hours while the world slept.

  I read long-forgotten thoughts and composed new ones so ghastly in written form that the collection represented little more than a slow, spiraling descent into insanity. Once the writing was done, I stood, eviscerated, looking at a twelve-foot tapeworm that I almost wished had never been discovered.

  And then, just like that, it was over.

  When I began, I typed the story carefully, as if the transcript would vanish before it was completed. Eventually, I progressed to crashing through the pages, until one day I was suddenly rereading the work as if it belonged to someone else, as if I didn’t have the power to change it. The story no longer belonged to me. It was a cryptic tablet dug out of the earth, isolated, incomprehensible, repulsive— something to be left alone or passed to an outside party for analysis. I chose to leave it alone, and lay in bed that night with a feeling of closure, but not achievement.

  Since then, I had written nothing.

  I looked at the reflection of my face in the mirror. Lifting the revolver, I put the barrel in my mouth. My fingertip made sensual contact with the smooth, curved metal of the trigger. Just a slight touch, just a caress. Rounding second base in suicide contemplation.

  Eight pounds of pressure. My mind retrieved that particular piece of data unsolicited, its only conscious thought.

  Withdrawing the barrel, I opened the cylinder and dumped the six massive bullets into my palm, setting them one at a time onto the sink.

  I looked in the mirror for a long time—at the deep green, unflinching eyes; at my dark blond hair that was casually askew; at the s
tubble on my chin and cheeks that appeared premeditated rather than a product of my unwillingness to shave. Friends had told me I looked like a movie star or a model. I thought I looked sinister, that my eyes only appeared bright because of the dark circles that highlighted them.

  The stoic face stared back at me, unwilling to reveal its secrets. My mind’s singular thought: you’ll see. Keep writing, and you’ll see. I will tell you nothing; you will find out for yourself.

  I checked the cylinder to make sure all the chambers were empty, closed it, and put the gun back in my mouth.

  Made eye contact with the man in the mirror.

  Pulled the trigger.

  Click.

  An instant pang of adrenaline—the forbidden kind, the kind that arises when you illegally BASE jump from a high-rise apartment building in the middle of the night in a New York City borough where getting arrested meant a double felony. Good, clean fun, unless you get caught.

  You’re not supposed to be doing this.

  Guilty adrenaline, the forbidden kind.

  I removed the gun and rechecked the cylinder, then selected a single round from the sink. Sliding it into a chamber, I spun the cylinder and closed it. I returned the barrel to my mouth.

  I looked into the dancing green eyes in the mirror.

  Click.

  The adrenaline rush returned, stronger this time. I put my finger over the trigger again.

  The phone began to ring. I pulled the trigger.

  Click.

  I walked back into the master bedroom and answered the phone with my free hand.

  “Is he dead?”

  “The attempt was today. They failed.”

  “What do you mean, ‘they failed?’”

  “None of them made it out.”

  “So he’s still alive? I’ve got a solution for that, Ian, and it’s what I told you in the first place.”

  “It’s not that simple, David.”

  “Yes, it is. You’re the one with all the theories on this guy. Teach me what you know, and I’ll take care of him. Boss said the Handler could be killed, so I know it can be done.”