Part 2
Chapter 12: Four-eyes
Rome, Italy, late December, 2014
Harold backed up, backed away from the stairs. He looked quickly around him for a place to conceal himself. Dusty old tables, chairs, a short wooden bar with a few bar stools pulled up – these were all he could see in the room. He backed his way to the bar, facing the stairs as he walked – but his footsteps left marks in the dust. No use hiding. His footsteps would lead them right to him.
Harold faced the stairs, and straightened his spine, taking in a last quick breath – they were coming.
Their guns appeared first, short-barreled, black metal guns. In a flash, less than a second, Harold recognized rifles, with scopes and long clips full of bullets. Guns were not his forte. He couldn't tell one from another. Didn't matter – there were three coming at him.
He could hear his heartbeat - loud and pounding in his head. And a sudden pressure, like swelling in his chest and neck.
Then a whispered voice.
"Confirm...Four-eyes," the lead one whispered, leaning his mouth down to a box near his shoulder. They fanned out in the room, guns pointing past Harold now, into the corners. He could barely pull his eyes away from the black metal barrels. Men in light-colored camouflage, and high-topped desert boots and helmets with dark glasses - these men looked like the ones Mr. Reese had recruited, the ones left behind to look after Grace.
Harold exhaled. Perhaps this could end well, after all.
As he started to address them, the lead soldier raised a hand in the air, cautioning Harold to stay silent. He stood there, watching them fan out, searching – behind the bar, behind heavy drapes hanging at the windows. Dust from the floor and the drapes swirled up around them, dancing in the currents, sparkling in the streamers of sunlight slanting in. So quiet here, just the soft sound of boots on the floor.
Then Harold noticed they'd surrounded a door he hadn't seen – a cupboard at the back of the room. They looked back over their shoulders, past Harold, to the stairs.
A fourth man appeared, moving directly to Harold, motioning toward the stairs with two gloved fingers. He covered their advance with his rifle, swinging his gaze side-to-side, Harold limping after. He could see the soldier looking back toward his leg. Harold waved him off. No need to throw an arm over his shoulder, like a human crutch. Harold could make it on his own.
They descended the stairs, avoiding the creaking from that one loose tread. The soldier watched him negotiate the steps. Behind them, the others had pulled open the cupboard door - no one inside. They could hear footsteps as the men finished their search and then the sound of them heading back toward the stairs behind them.
At the bottom, the soldier swung around the banister, guiding Harold to the back of the cantina. Away from the street side, away from the building where Grace and the children lived. Harold took a quick glance as he rounded the banister, but Grace and the children were gone, safely inside.
When Harold turned again, he could see another soldier up ahead dressed in camo like the others, standing at the rear door with his rifle. He was looking out at the narrow alleyway in back. The soldiers motioned for Harold to stop, just short of the door. The soldier near the door leaned out, then back in for a moment, then forward again, checking both ways, then stepped out onto the cobblestones. A black van sat idling just outside, and the soldier slid the van door open on its track. He turned back to motion to Harold.
Footsteps from the three soldiers upstairs were just rounding the banister at the bottom. Harold was readying himself for the few quick steps to the van.
And that's when the first shot rang out. The soldier at the door flinched even before the sound came, and Harold heard a snap. Blood sprayed from the soldier's right arm. And Harold heard him cry out, hunched forward with his arm pulled in against him. More shots – and then people were running up behind him as the other men closed in around him.
The soldier at the door lifted his weapon, awkwardly, to return fire at the back door. Blood dripped from the wound on his arm. The others pushed Harold back behind a heavy carved column, then they ducked down, and turned away to cover every direction in a circle around him.
More shots, and the first soldier was saying something into the box on his shoulder. Outside, moments later, they could hear engine noise approaching, and then a stream of shots fired down the alleyway. The sound was deafening, a firefight in the alleyway. Harold covered his ears with his hands. His heart was pounding from the noise. And then just when Harold thought his heart would burst, the shooting stopped. Silence suddenly.
He saw the men nodding to one another, craning to listen.
And after a long pause, one more single shot made Harold jump. Then nothing.
The soldier at the door held his hand up to his ear, as though pressing something closer to the side of his head; and then he turned toward the others and signaled with his hand. They waited for him to lean out, check left and right again. And then engine noise came closer outside, and he waved to the others driving up behind the black van. The soldiers surrounded Harold and walked him out to the van, helping him inside, then climbed in behind him. A driver Harold hadn't seen before gunned the motor, rolling forward, with the second van bringing up the rear.
Inside, Harold watched the wounded man rolling up his sleeve, and one of the others pressing on the wound with a scarf he'd pulled from his neck. Another soldier dragged a battered metal first aid kit over on the floor. The wounded man had leaned back, steadying himself against the wall of the van. His face was grimacing in pain now, and he was shivering, square white teeth showing in the near-darkness inside.
Harold turned to the driver. "This man needs medical attention. Take us to the nearest hospital," he said, and the driver looked behind him in the rear view mirror.
"No, Sir, we take care of our own here." Harold looked around him at the faces of these men. So calm, so focused. Like they did this every day. He could see them going about the task at hand, inspecting the bloody wound on their fellow soldier's forearm; layering heavy pads down on two sides, wrapping white gauze around the arm in layer after overlapping layer. Harold heard one of them say something about a through-and-through and he guessed that the snapping sound he'd heard at the door back there was the bullet passing right through the soldier's arm. He could smell the faint smell of blood, and it made him remember that same smell, for far too many times already - with his own Team. His eyes softened.
"Thank you," he said quietly after a moment. "Thank you for what you are doing here to protect – our people," he said. Harold looked around at their faces. They were staring at him, like they didn't know what to say to that, and then one of them broke the silence, the uncomfortable silence, and got up to move to Harold's side.
"Saw you limping back there, Sir. Are you wounded?" He placed his hand on Harold's bad leg.
Harold shook his head, no.
"An old injury. Nothing to do," he said softly, and he saw the others nod and turn back to their buddy. One of them was putting a makeshift sling over the wounded man's head, and lifting the injured arm into the end.
Harold could hear the sound of the van behind them as it changed directions, and he craned to see where it was headed.
"They're doubling back now, to keep an eye on things back there, and clean up the site," the soldier was saying at Harold's side. He stood up to get a better view, but had to bend forward inside the low space. At the back, he knelt down to keep watch out the small windows at the rear. Everyone was quiet now, and the driver moved them through the empty streets.
Harold looked over again at the wounded man. He could see the bloody bullet-hole in his sleeve, where it was pushed up out of the way at his elbow. He saw the streaks of blood where it had run down his arm and hand, just visible at the edge of the sling. The soldier was leaning back against the wall, eyes closed and his head bobbing side to side with the motion of the van on the cobblestone street. They had given him something for pain, and now he wasn't grimacing any more, even when the van jostled his arm.
Harold could hear the sound of the tires on the road, and the sound of the engine, throaty, like the kind of engine in a much bigger truck. He bet that this van was something special, modified, not like a van off the showroom floor.
Mr. Reese had chosen well with these men. They were soldiers he had served with, in Afghanistan, years before. He'd called them and recruited them for this new mission - in the mean streets of Rome, where the refugees huddled, and where Grace had gone to work teaching art to their children.
Harold thought about the faces, the children's eyes. That hollow, empty look in their young eyes, from the memories of barrel bombs, and gunfire, starvation and suffering while they'd waited to get out. And these were the lucky ones. The ones who'd made it here, floating for days on overcrowded boats, floating toward safety. So many were lost at sea, though. Drowned, washed up on the beaches like fish in foul water. How long could this go on? How many would have to die to make the world take notice?
This little thing that he had done, the gifts for the children – nowhere near enough. If he repeated it a hundred times, a thousand times, still not enough. So many were here. And elsewhere. Trapped. Held in limbo; neither here, nor there where they were headed.
No wonder the hollow, empty eyes. They were trapped. And for a little while today, Harold had known exactly how they felt.