Title: Dark Alley - Chapter 10
Disclaimer: This is intended as a fan fiction, on characters owned by their original creators and I am not making a profit out of it.
The only light was from a paraffin heater in the center of the room. As it flickered, shadows flew around while Jonas draw the circle over the dirt on the floor, meaning the non-written unit code ruled and said the ritual phrase for his teammates assembled around to hear.
"No dagger in my hand, but an olive branch. Mack?"
"Agreed. Bob?"
"Agreed. What about you, Carlito? Are you in the circle with the rest of us?"
"I am." Grey was certainly relieved at hearing that the assembly was not disciplinary or the formulae would have been said the other way around.
"We are on the wild now. On our own. Our law. It's the here and now that counts. It's us. And it stays with us. Full circle."
"OK, we are all in now. The code is in force. Hit it." Mack addressed Carlito.
"I never broke the code." Grey's back showed an asymmetric tension as he spoke.
"Never doubted you would honor the code whatever the circumstances. None of us." Jonas intervened to clear the air. But it didn't prevent Grey falling back into the world that was his in the dark, the one that started in Baz-el Had, when all he could see was pitch black, but for the three tiny holes of the hollow tubes his teammates had planted between the surface and the inner cocoon that they created below the bushy ground surface with a black body bag and some plexiglas lames in order to bury Grey close to the target, totally invisible to any scrutiny from or around the target compound, but just a mere hundreds of feet away.
"After leaving you behind in Baz-el-Had, we had been looking for Gojka for three solid days before giving up. Then we made our first attempt for a first comm with Dog Patch. Ryan was mad at us. Barking like crazy. He'd got DOD and Israelis yelling at him: none of them had seen our big ball of fire on sat pics from Baz. The other two teams were on the run. The eye in the sky from DC confirmed the mission was a flaw. Not even a shot to Kim-el-Hazad in any of the three locations." The big compound room was full of harshness and pain and bitterness all more apparent by the silence that met Jonas' account.
"It was a shock. And we hadn't found Gojka either. I scrambled the sat comm and then cut it." God, Jonas felt tired just then. Because Gojka had been one of the three snipers who'd put everything the three unit teams deployed needed to know. Also someone that had guaranteed many of Alpha's missions success with its accurate and to the point intell. But Gojka had suddenly stopped transmitting. Ryan had used Gojka's personal tracking chip to locate him by sat in the middle of the dessert, moving steadily to the core of hell itself, his death sentence signed, and there had been no way in earth to get in touch with him to re-route him to safety. No regulatory way, that is. But Jonas found their own: three of them would triangulate Gojka and get him back with them; Grey had agreed to take care of the rest and exfil without any cover when the time came.
"During the next comm, Ryan was no bullshit. He said that there had probably been a leak on information during the mission and asked for radio silence during the exfil. Cut us down. We couldn't even tell him then we left you behind. MIA. No questions asked. We had to haul ass fast and hard. Ryan had his hands busy and was just dealing with facts. He let us wander free. We did one last wild try at finding Gojka when we heard an European tourist had been spotted at a certain shepherd's village. When we arrived at Syria and could have safe communications with Dog Patch, you had showed already at Landstuhl. So we just had to back up your story."
"And what a story, by the way." Mack looked at Grey. There was no expression in Grey's face.
"Why didn't you set the charges out, Carlito?" Bob offered.
"I didn't because the target had left and was useless. Everything pointed to this being a transit camp rather than permanent barracks. Top dogs were not there. They left before dark on the first day. And I'd located Gojka... Fireworks could wait." He sounded as if his throat were closing.
[I was no longer retelling the story on the reports, I was going to relive it again.]
"He had been shot and dumped in a deep garbage pit outside the compound. When I could check on him he was bad. Real bad. I jabbed Gojka with an auto-jet of morphine to help him through. But it was too much for his heart, I guess."
"No. No, man. "
[You can't tell me to my face that I am a liar, Bob? But you, Jonas and Mack know I am lying. Like all the white lies you tell your wives to ease the pain when we get back home. And you don't want to hear the truth about this one.]
"We sterilized you before leaving you there."
[Oh. That is an easy one. And I can answer it with the whole truth. Stark clean and no wrinkles.]
"I kept the auto-jet in me in case I got cramped and risked to compromise my position. 24 to 73 hours death still. I would have passed it on to you if our positions had been reversed."
"I have another question," Mack sparked up after being silent all through. "Why didn't you blow up the target before leaving, even if it was empty? Everybody happy..."
[Children. There were children. Playing. Making lots of noise. Having fun. Laughing. For God's sake! I had been hearing them for hours. Before and after I heard how Gojka had been dragged, crying out in agony, to be dumped inside that garbage pit and shot. And I'd been racking my brains for hours. There is always many possible solutions to a problem. Always. Find one! Yet, death was final. I had never taken any pleasure in sacrificing a life, not even the first time. But certainly I was not to sever the ties of a young life when it still had choices to make, when innocence was still in force.]
"Because if he did," Bob quickly stepped in, "we would never have had green light to go around that spot again. Now we can go with a clear B/L to finish the job and take Gojka back home with us."
"We take the initiative and we force them to react. All of them. Very clever." Jonas broke the circle drawn on the floor with a swift round move of his foot. No more talk was needed.
Jonas and Mack left for the far corner where Jonas hit the electric kettle button, while Bob signed Carlito to sit down on the cot.
"You don't look good. You hurting?"
"Where it shows and where it don't show."
[I knew Ryan had the intel and I understood why it should have been me to press the hell express button. No kids. No wife. No religion. No moral barriers... I was perfect. As perfect as the drone that they couldn't sent. And Jonas just made it even more perfect taking any potentially dissident voices away before daylight. I even doubted Ryan ever fed him any sat intel on Gojka.]
"We have something else to take care of. You talked in the hospital, Charlie. "
"Ferris visited me for his report. I didn't tell him anything useful. No worries."
"After that interview... He was back."
[And when things could go all wrong, they always could go for the worse. Ferris and his 'kind offer' to leave off midazolam from his med chart has come straight back to me with a vengeance.]
"Bob, I don't remember him coming back."
"He did. You were sleeping. He recorded you. He admits in his report that he recorded you while sleeping."
"I don't even snore when I sleep. You know it."
"You don't while you are on a mission. You use your training well. But maybe you felt safe and too comfy in "our" restricted wing in "our" hospital."
"And why Ferris would do that?"
"Checking your cover story."
"To make sure that what, I held my cover?"
"Why didn't you call us first thing at your arrival? We would have sat by your bed and make sure you didn't show anything you didn't want to show. Ferris is brass. He wants to be in the mix, but not in the sand with us, high scale."
"I needed some time to deal with things my way. Needed to rest. I knew none of you would be happy with the outcome of Baz-el-Had as per the sat images Ryan had for sure. Just wanted to sleep and give my mind some rest to clear the mess I had been dealing with."
"Wanna hear the audio file?"
"You did?"
"I had to. Jonas and Mack would not."
"And... should I?"
"No."
"Instead of fearing the unknown it's better not to know."
"Not such a bad saying."
"What did I---"
"Nothing you should worry about. Ferris asked you some targeted questions that he never gets you to answer. It's just fair you know that there is this file." Sighing deeply, Grey looked wearily to Bob.
Bob knew that this loss of control would eat away at Charlie, but there was nothing he could do about it but tell him the truth. "Hey... Trust me. Clearly you were having a nightmare. You were yelling at kids, something about playing ball. Some heavy breathing here and there. You—You mention your mom. That kind of stuff. Just dwelling on the past I guess." Jonas and Mack reappeared with some bowls, the kettle and 4 packets of instant noodles.
Grey lowering his eyes to the floor got to Mack, who had remained silent most of the time. "Why do wolves howl? Why their howling is so searing and so sad?"
"Meaning?"
"If you howl it's because you are a wolf. So what? You know how it goes: today is fire, tomorrow is charcoal." Mack said to him, throwing a friendly punch to his arm.
"You sure you got rid of that file?" Jonas asked Bob.
"It's a digital file. I got rid of Sgt. Irvine's computer copy for Ryan. Didn't have access to Ferris' original. Can't tell you more. The audio file was on Ferris emailed report to support his recommendation not to send you in any mission soon. He doesn't back up Landstuhl's shrink theory that you could have been interrogated under torture. And you haven't been officially diagnosed by Ferris with PTSD, Charlie, but he states in this unofficial part to Ryan that he suspected you were using drugs to lessen its effects. You being a medic doesn't play on your side."
"I'm trapped. If I don't agree with PTSD Ferris will keep me on the fridge until I admit I've a problem. If I agree, I'm admitting there's a problem and I won't get out of it then." Grey kept his eyes down, concentrating on a minute crack in one of crate's wood.
"Does Ryan plan to press disciplinary actions?" Mack intervened again.
"We are wasting time here". Jonas nipped that turn of the conversation. "Ryan is special ops too. He knows better than pretend to smell like roses. He is not so naïve either. He won't buy PTSD from Ferris and he won't dig further on. Blue Ridge Op is a go in a few weeks. He can't afford to lose one of his best teams. And we are one for sure. Anything happens to any of us, it happens to all of us" Jonas gave them all a big grin, granting Bob and Mack's agreement. Jonas nudged Grey's side softly. "Then, one day a new permanent cadre will be installed over Ferris, and very soon all the dead wood will be cleared away."
[Except in my head. One half was telling me everything was okay. Convincing myself that I'd said the right things in the right way at the right time. No way would Ferris chance his job being exposed even if he made ends meet in the future. So no court martial. That was for sure. The other was telling me that maybe he really didn't care what I was saying and he really thought he was trying to make me feel better by running through what had happened. Which even in a pretty-pretty world was unbelievable. And ours was not that world.]
Grey looked down again, concentrating on the uneven pattern of the compound cement ground. The hot bowl of ramen between his hands.
"Are you listening? This is where we make our stand." Nodding slowly, Grey left the bowl on the floor and rubbed his sore eyes. But didn't raise his head.
[Yeah, I am listening. Death freezes the dead, not the living. Gojka is not anymore. But Ferris, Ryan, myself are alive to kick each other butts. Ryan still could use a scapegoat for the team's failure. And I won't let any of you of your families to pay for me. Yeah, I am listening. And I am so damn tired. But I really don't want to close my eyes again.]