RUN

MEMO REPRO S-7/102467



Two decades later, John again met death, and again it somehow passed him by, if not actually missing him completely. John was twenty-eight. Full of life and apple pie, fresh out of Special Forces training. He still had no memory of his father’s death, and still was not sure if the fact of his forgetting was a blessing or a curse. Two decades later, and John tracked across the pre-dawn fields of Iraq, between a dry canal and Highway Seven, and still had no idea what had happened the day his father died. His mind wandered, from past to future, and John wondered if he would ever go home, if he would do all the things he had heard about growing up. School, regular job.

Marriage.

That was the one thought of the future that preoccupied him more than any other. He felt a pulling inside him, a pulsing throb that seemed to hunger for family. That in itself seemed strange to him, for he had no experience with women. Girlfriends were nonexistent. Contact with the opposite sex had been and continued to be minimal at best.

He liked girls, it was true, but had never found one who excited him. Not that way. He dated in high school, having as exciting a social life as was possible in a graduating class of fourteen, but never went beyond kissing. His mother was proud of that fact, said he had Jesus in him and Jesus would protect him in his virtue and virginity. But the reason wasn’t Jesus. John didn’t know what it was, exactly, only that in the few times when more than kissing seemed possible or even likely, something held him back.

He was waiting for something. Waiting for someone, some siren in the distance. He didn’t know who she was, only that he hadn’t met her yet.

And he wasn’t likely to do so now, either, hunched over as he was with his pack weighing heavy against his back. It weighed over a hundred pounds, but was actually one of the lightest in the unit. The packs strapped to the others’ backs ranged from one hundred to one hundred seventy five pounds, containing between them everything the six man group would need to stay alive in Iraq for up to a week.

John’s back burned, and courses of sweat cut trenches through the dirt and light camouflage paint that coated his face. A bead of perspiration dropped into his eye, stinging as the salt burned his cornea, but John did not move his hands from his weapon. He walked in dangerous territory, and did not savor the idea of dying because he was too busy wiping his eyes to return fire should he be fired upon.

His M-16 rested against his forearm, cocked and ready. He had never had to use a gun on live foe before but if it came to the choice of him or the enemy...well, John was a virgin, but he had no pretensions to sainthood.

Like most of the others in his unit, he was a veteran in training terms, but this was his first time on an active mission. He was determined to do well; to justify his mother's faith in him and the tremendous amount of money that had gone into training him.

Vogel, the CO, stopped abruptly. He was short, with a brutish visage that concealed an alert mind and a whip-quick wit. He held a fist in the air, looking at the global positioning unit he held in his hand. The tiny link was invaluable in this operation, giving them their position within yards and allowing them to coordinate their travel time to conform to the mission’s needs. Without it, a man could easily become lost in the miles of endless desert where little distinguished one spot from another. People could die in this place.

Cowles uncurled his strong, short fingers. We’re here, the gesture said.

Wordlessly, John and the others unlimbered their bags, and their backs cracked and popped in a mix of relief and umbrage at being so ill-used. The big green wart was what servicemen called the rucksacks, and the name was apt. Most Special Forces servicemen retired with bad knees from the heavy loads. That is, if they were lucky enough to retire, instead of being buried out in some dank jungle or godforsaken desert like this one.

The shoulder strap of his bag caught on something underneath his shirt, hitching almost imperceptibly on the scar that lay beneath John's clothing. It was a tightly knotted burl of tissue, the only tie John had to that day long ago when his father died and was forgotten as though he had never lived. John noticed the scar, as he always did, but as always thrust the thoughts it brought with it far away from himself. There was no time for memory today, even when memory was only a blank wall that stared at you from the past and revealed nothing.

John unpacked a collapsible aluminum shovel and began digging. The predawn light had brightened slightly, slight casts of pink now visible through the gray of dusk. He figured they had about two hours before the first people came down the road that writhed a serpentine path not one hundred yards from them. The unit had to be gone by then, disappeared.

The squad was in Iraq as eyes on the ground, recon troops in charge of calling in information about who was traveling the roads. They had to be close enough to see everything clearly. Close enough to tell one tank from another if such moved down the road. CentCom wanted detail, and John’s unit had to get it. But staying so close was dangerous, as it meant you could also be seen by anyone who passed by. So John and the rest of the unit were digging a hole in the dirt where they would remain, peeping out to gather intel, hoping that the hole they dug would not end as their grave.

Camp dug beside John. A rangy kid from Nebraska, Camp was the only one in the unit who looked more like a poster boy for The Great American Way than did John. The illusion shattered, however, every time Camp opened his mouth.

"I need some," said Camp.

John dug in silence, eyes darting back and forth along the side of the road. Intelligence reported the road was secure, but he knew that the only intelligence a good soldier relied on completely was what his eyes, ears, nose, and skin told him himself.

"Yeah. I need some," reiterated Camp.

John nodded in the hopes Camp would shut up.

He didn’t stop digging, though, but kept moving. Sweat trickled over his eyes. He wanted to wipe his forehead but didn’t. Part of the training. Keep your hands busy with the job and ready to grab a gun. Don’t so much as think about anything else. You gotta pee, you get three guys to cover you before you put a hand on your zipper. Words to live by.

"If I don’t get some soon, I’ll die." Camp was becoming irritating as his half-veiled euphemisms continued to make their way to John's ears. A listening stranger would think that Camp was talking about the last time he’d been laid. Passing brass would nod to themselves and pretend they’d never been horny soldiers. They’d smile at the Good American Kid who believed in God and apple pie and getting laid.

John knew different. Camp wasn’t horny, he was psychotic. Or at least he was pretending to be, acting constantly like he wanted to kill someone. The screening to get into SpecOps was rigorous, designed to keep out cowboys and wannabe superheroes, so John was pretty sure Camp was just putting on a show.

But not so sure he would turn his back on the guy.

"Yeah, gotta get me some. Feel the power."

"Shut up," hissed John. His eyes kept moving between Vogel, the other team members, and the roadside.

"If I don’t get me some, I’m gonna –"

"If you don’t shut up, I’m gonna kill you myself." The sentence burst suddenly out of John and he knew instantly that it was the wrong thing to say if he was trying to quiet Camp down.

"Yeah, that’s it, you gonna give me some? You want to be my friend?" Camp had one hand on the knife he always wore: the one marked Mr. Happy in bold letters across the hilt. He unsnapped the sheath, caressing the finger-worn hilt with fondness. Camp slept with that knife. Even when he was picking up a hooker in the little bars the unit visited, even when the woman gazed at him with half-bored eyes, holding up her fingers to indicate how much, even when he chose one and took her, even then the knife stayed with him. That more than anything caused John to wonder if Camp wasn't faking it. If, somehow, he had managed to convince SpecOps that having a certified lunatic in the unit could be useful.

"Camp!" Vogel’s voice was a tight whisper that nonetheless carried across the dry air like the sound of a cracking bone. Camp’s hand dropped from the knife. He looked at Vogel.

"Camp, you talk another talk and I’m gonna eat your heart out through your ass. Hear?"

"Sorry, Cap. Just edgy."

That was the end of it.

The pit appeared quickly, deep enough for the men to hide in, and they each unlimbered the aluminum rods they would use to hold up the roof. The roof of the pit had to be undistinguishable from the surrounding earth, invisible. They had practiced the whole maneuver for weeks, getting non-SpecOps servicemen to look for their hideouts. The only way they were ever found was if one of the troops got lucky and walked across it.

Still, this wasn’t base camp. This was behind enemy lines, and though CentCom Intelligence reported that it was winter and the road shouldn’t be in use, none of the unit wanted to trust that information with their lives.

The roof went up, and the hole disappeared.

Vogel looked at it, carefully scrutinizing the area for any signs that the earth was anything other than hard-pack and sand. He glanced around the tight circle of men around him.

"What are the rules?" he whispered.

The five men whispered back, "Always know where you are. Always be cool."

"And if you don’t know where you are?"

"At least try to look cool," said the men, grinning at each other. It was a ritual, Vogel’s way of telling the rest of the Green Berets in his unit that the job was acceptable.

They all slipped through the small opening in the roof, closing it up soundlessly behind them, and it was as though the desert had swallowed them alive.

John took first watch, looking through a mini-periscope focused on the road. There was no traffic, and so his mind wandered a bit, thinking how odd it was that a small group of men with enough schooling to run a country and enough armaments to blow one up were crouching in a hole near a deserted road.

What few people realized was that "special forces" wasn’t just a euphemism for a bunch of killers. Special forces meant a highly trained thinking machine. Right now Vogel was getting out a small pad and paper, ready to jot down notes on anyone or anything that traveled the road: direction, appearance, any cargo, passengers. Any and all. The information would be radioed back to Intelligence, where it would meet thousands of other bits of information, all waiting to be sorted and sensed.

They didn’t have long to wait before the first travelers came along. It was a small band of Bedouins, their cloaks wrapped around them loosely, looking like dark phantoms moving heavily through the early morning light.

"Bedouins," murmured John.

"How many?" asked Vogel.

"Six."

"Armed?"

"Cloaked, so could be, but nothing apparent."

Vogel radioed the information in on the SATCOM radio they carried.

"They’re nuts," said John to himself. It had to be over a hundred degrees out there, yet the heavily-wrapped men showed no sign of noticing the dry, dusty heat.

"All roads lead to madness," intoned Camp. It was a favorite saying of his, and Camp delivered the statement in the somber tone that told everyone he thought he was being deep and inscrutable. John thought about telling him it would have been better if he’d said "All roads lead to nutness," but thought better of it. For once.

He squinted into the periscope, looking closely at something disturbing. "They’re driving sheep," he said, and looked at Vogel in time to see the CO whiten slightly. Shepherds usually stuck to well-traveled roads. CentCom had said the road would be deserted, and the only traffic would be military companies.

CentCom was wrong. Within an hour, throngs of people coursed along the roadway, a living river of men, women, and children that showed no sign of drying up as the desert sun rose higher in the sky. John ceased describing each and every one - it would have been impossible - and just watched for military vehicles. There were none.

Still, the men in the hole twitched nervously. With that many people, some were bound to wander off the road. And if one came close enough, then no amount of training in the world could guarantee their hiding spot or their survival.

Ten minutes later, it happened. Two little girls followed a small brown sheep that wandered off from their family’s tiny herd. The animal was bleating piteously, as though it worried that it might be dinner at the end of this particular trip, and suddenly bolted off the road, heading right at the squad's hiding place. The little girls did not wait to be told what to do, but ran after the sheep, calling after it as the rest of the group laughed and continued walking, trusting the children to bring the sheep back. John pulled back the periscope, waiting for them to corral the animal and go, praying that they wouldn’t walk over the top of the dugout.

Tiny footsteps fell on the ground nearby, then one of the little girl’s feet fell heavily against the roof. Thunk. It made a hollow sound, and the footsteps stopped.

Camp cursed under his breath.

The footsteps hurried away, and John waited for five minutes, then pushed up the periscope.

He stared straight into the face of one of the little girls, who was obviously staring at the tiny scope.

"Dammit," he whispered. "We’re found."

"Who?" asked Vogel.

"Little girl."

As one, the other four men grabbed their weapons. Three of them had children, but they were willing to kill the little girl if necessary. John hoped it wouldn’t be, and didn’t know what he would do if so ordered. He knew that some in the unit were detached to the point of machines: the mission was all that mattered to them. John, however, was there because he believed that he was helping to save lives, in the long run. He believed in what he was doing, and that was what allowed him to sleep at night. But he did not know if he could face himself after killing a child, no matter how necessary the act might be to save the lives of his comrades in the unit.

Vogel shook his head, relieving John. He knew why the CO had made his decision for the unit to take no action against the girl. They could kill her, but her friend was gone. If one of the girls didn’t come back, they would certainly be discovered. But if both were allowed to return...then the little girls would either tell or they wouldn’t. All the men could do now was wait. Intel was sketchy about how the people in the area would react to the presence of Americans in their midst. They were just as likely to invite them to dinner as shoot them, so the unit had to be prepared for either.

John watched the child at last grow bored of holding her position and walk away. He exhaled as he saw her walk off, catch up to the group, and continue without comment until the group had gone beyond the range of John's scope. The rest of the unit could sense John's relief, and they too relaxed, settling into positions of less discomfort (actual comfort was impossible in this situation) and waiting for their turn to watch.

The relief was short-lived, however, as an hour later the little girl returned, leading a group of young men. They were not sheepherders, but were instead an armed group, clutching weaponry of various levels of sophistication and power. John spied them when they were still several hundred yards from the Green Berets’ lair, but could tell in an instant that they were heading directly to the hide spot. The little girl halted and pointed at his scope, then stood her ground as the men continued without her.

He reported it to Vogel, who murmured, "We might be in trouble," Vogel said. Then the CO folded up the antenna and ordered everyone out.

The Green Berets exited the pit quickly, their pulses speeding up. Though they had popped the roof and exited in a matter of seconds, to John it seemed much longer, and he felt naked and exposed under the desert sun, which beat down on him with hate.

Vogel waited until the young men - they looked like Bedouins, but a bit harder and tougher than most - were about two hundred feet away, then shouted, "Salaam."

They kept moving forward as the little girl stepped back even farther away. That was a bad sign, as it demonstrated her expectation that this would not be a happy meeting. Then she turned and ran, and even at that distance John could clearly see the fear in her gaze. His heart sank.

Vogel - the only one who spoke Arabic - barked a few quick words. John knew he was ordering the men to stop, to stand down or risk being fired upon.

They didn’t.

"Oh, hell," said Vogel. He moved his machine gun into ready position, aimed at the young men. People on the road were starting to take note of what was going on.

"Pull the plug," said Vogel to John.

John nodded. He leapt into the pit and yanked a cord that was wired to a small explosive. It would burn all their supplies to slag, including classified maps and hardware they had brought. It would also leave them with only their hand weapons, some ammo, and the LST-5 radio they had brought for communications with base camp. Such a move was intended as a last-ditch effort to obscure their mission from prying eyes.

Camp was already on the LST-5, telling base they needed an emergency exfiltration.

Vogel started stepping backward, backed up by the other Berets, moving toward the canal. Calmly, though. The young men - about twenty in number - were unlimbering guns and looking less friendly by the moment. John was worried, for he feared they would soon attack, and did not relish the idea of killing them, though he knew he would do so if need be.

A rumble caught everyone’s attention as an Iraqi military transport pulled up, dumping Iraqi servicemen onto the road. They held outdated weaponry, some of them carrying breach-loaders that looked like WWII issue, but a gun was a gun and an antique bullet would kill a man just as dead as a new Teflon-coated one if it found its mark. Besides, their sheer numbers said they would beat the Americans in a fight.

Vogel reached the lip of the canal. John and the other Berets were already there, waiting for the next move to be decided.

One of the young men shot at them. As one, the Berets dropped into the dry canal, reacting with a fluidity that came from training, skill, and desperation. Sand and small rocks bit at their hands as they scrabbled over the lip of the canal, and all were bloodied when they reached the bottom of the short drop-off and began running east. Their response had been planned in advance, but though it was the result of previous deliberation, that did not change the fact that their flight was a run for their lives.

Camp was still on the LST-5, screaming their need for an exfil as they ran, snaking through the maze of waterways that led east. Bullets pinged off the canal’s lip, then around them as the first enemy soldiers dropped down into the ditch and began firing.

John spun around, dropping into firing position. He had an automatic weapon, and in the movies the soldiers always used such guns like huge scythes, fanning a spray of bullets across the area in front of them. This was real, though, and he knew that every shot had to count. One bullet, one fatality.

He focused on one man, and his vision seemed to telescope, bringing the man running at him into impossibly sharp focus. It was a Bedouin, pointing a revolver and screaming as he pulled the trigger jerkily. Bullet fire ricocheted around John, though he could not say whether it was that man's bullets or someone else's that were finding their way to him.

John pulled the trigger. His gun fired with a single short snap and the round took his attacker in the mouth. The man’s eyes widened hideously and his head snapped back, bouncing off the rocky wall nearby and leaving a dark smear on the dirt.

John flinched. He didn’t want to kill people, that wasn’t what he was in this for. He wanted to keep people from getting killed.

Too late for that now.

He moved his muzzle a fraction of an inch and squeezed off two more rounds. Two more men dropped and did not rise again.

The other Berets were firing as well. Then the first wave of attackers ended, the enemy forces drawing back to recover from the Berets' sudden and effective counter-attack, and the unit turned and ran again.

The exfil spot was two miles away, which was not far when running around a base track, but could take an eternity when running through a slim canyon, pursued by an enemy hungry for your death.

It was a devastating run, broken every couple hundred yards as the unit turned to fire on the following soldiers. John was surprised that the enemy didn’t run ahead and drop into the canal ahead of the unit. But the unit might have been moving too fast for that tactic, fear and adrenaline lending wings to their feet and allowing them to stay ahead of their shrieking pursuers.

When they reached the exfil spot, their ammunition was more than half gone. A helicopter would have to come get them, and do it soon, if it wanted to pick up something other than corpses.

"What?" screamed Camp. He was still on the LST-5. He looked at Vogel, eyes wide and empty as those of a dead man. His next words told John why. "They said they can’t come in until nightfall. Too risky."

The other men’s eyes instantly acquired that same dull look. Nightfall was ten hours away and none of them would ever see it.

Vogel’s lower lip puckered, a queer look that made the CO seem less afraid than irritated. "Well, that stinks," said the look, "I was supposed to see a movie tonight." No fear, no desperation, just a severe professionalism was at work in the CO that made even the impossible fight seem not only possible, but ridiculously probable.

"All right, kiddies," he barked. "Let’s keep it pro. One bullet, one body. Just remember to keep one bullet in reserve."

None of them asked what for. Green Berets were worth more to enemy troops than their weight in plastique, carrying with them classified information about a plethora of different activities.

They wouldn’t fall into enemy hands.

Not alive.

The next hour passed as a hell of death and fire. The Green Berets’ exfil spot was a part of the canal that was a bit more rounded than the rest, providing a distinct landmark for the exfil chopper that would never come. John and his unit each took a position around the perimeter of the ring, pointing their weapons over the lip of the canal, picking off Iraqi soldiers and Bedouins one at a time.

None of the men in the unit fell, but John knew they would have to. Sooner or later, they were dead. The only questions were when and how.

He was down to twenty rounds in his gun. Two of the others had stopped firing, obeying Vogel’s order to keep one bullet in reserve. They had already made peace and waited quietly for the silence of the end.

John fired again, and again, and soon had but four bullets left.

Three.

Another shot, and he was down to two, and the enemy kept coming, an unending torrent of men, willing to die for a chance to kill.

John drew a bead on what would be his last target before himself, but did not pull the trigger. A dull thudding noise rolled through the air in deep, thrumming waves. It was subliminal at first, felt more than heard: a presence that grew heavier in the hot, dry air until the sound could be made out and identified.

John knew they weren’t out of it yet, but he joined the others in cheering as two choppers crested a low bank, heading toward them. The exfiltration unit had come.

The Pave Low, as intricate a piece of machinery as ever invented, hove into view first, its fiberglass rudders spinning almost silently. It was the eyes, the brain of their salvation, a great swollen giant packed full of computers and information systems. It paused in its forward movement, allowing the MH-60 Black Hawk that followed it to move forward. The Black Hawk was the gunship, the muscle behind the mind, and seemed to fly more heavily than the Pave Low, weighted down as it was with guns and weaponry, heavily laden with death.

The Iraqi soldiers who still surrounded the Berets’ position screamed in anger and turned their guns on the two choppers. The Black Hawk’s response came from its side-mounted Vulcan Cannon, which could fire six thousand rounds a minute. The gun spat what appeared to be liquid flame, dropping twenty of the enemy in an instant. The rest dove for cover as the Black Hawk descended a few feet. It touched down with the Pave Low scant yards from the Berets, and they quickly scrambled toward the choppers, half of them heading for each.

John got in the Pave Low. There wasn’t much room in the redesigned Jolly Green Giant ‘copter, so he pressed himself against the computer banks that allowed the vessel to land within inches of a predetermined spot and within seconds of a target time. There was no room for weaponry, for the chopper’s function was not to destroy, but to find and, in this case, to deliver.

Besides, it didn’t need firepower with the Black Hawk escorting.

John looked out the side hatch as the Pave Low began to rise, seeing Vogel and Camp being helped into the already-ascending Black Hawk. The crewman who helped them in that other chopper glanced at John, and for a moment time froze.

The Bedouins, the Iraqis, the fight, all fled John’s mind as he saw a shock of gray running through an otherwise dark head of hair.

Skunk Man, he thought.

The memories he had suppressed hit him with the force of an anvil dropped from the Empire State Building, cracking the sidewalks of his mind. He staggered, almost falling from the chopper before one of the other Berets caught him. John’s mouth opened and shut, but no sound came out. Words floated back to him.

Daddy’s got a booger.

Skunk Man.

John stared at the man, who stared back, and for a moment John remembered what had happened. He remembered his father being killed. He remembered why he himself hadn’t died.

He remembered his father standing and walking after having his head blown off.

Then he blinked and the memories were gone again, fled behind whatever wall had protected his sanity for these years. John looked at the serviceman in the other chopper. At the stranger. At the Skunk Man. John did not remember anything after seeing the Skunk Man on his sidewalk on the morning his father died, but that memory was now as clear and clean as a pristine photograph in an album. John remembered the Skunk Man.

The man looked the same. Not close, but exactly the same. Twenty years hadn’t aged the man, nor had his expression changed. There was nothing to show that he had passed through twenty years and more. He might have stepped right out of John’s memory as a perfect reproduction of himself, and John wondered just what the hell was happening to him.

John would have dived right out of the chopper then, leaping for the other helicopter’s strut - a suicidal move - had not one of the Pave Low navigators clacked a carabiner to his belt, securing him to the deck. The navigator reached out to slide shut the side door.

"No!" screamed John.

He pushed the man aside, his total attention still focused on the man. On Skunk Man, who had been on his street when his father died. Who had been there and looked exactly the same.

Then the Black Hawk exploded.

John saw the white contrail of a hand-held rocket - probably black market Russian hardware - an instant before it hit. The small missile streaked through the open side hatch of the Black Hawk, and then there was a tiny snatch of fire, almost pitiful really, followed by a great gout of yellow and red flame. The incendiary tongue licked forth, singeing John’s hair, as the Black Hawk exploded from the inside out, the machine dying along with its crew in an instant. Blackened machinery and the charcoal corpses of the vehicle’s occupants fell the short distance to the ground, exploding outward in a wash of shrapnel that sent the Iraqis scurrying for cover.

"No!" John screamed again. He wasn’t sure if he screamed for the loss of the chopper and its firepower, his friends who had been in it, the men piloting the saving machine...

Or for the loss of the man.

Skunk Man.

The Pave Low pilot pulled back on the yoke, and the chopper jerked high into the sky as though yanked by a great hand. Bullet fire continued to snap below them, the sounds growing thinner as the chopper ascended, until finally they were gone, lost in the endless desert where half of John’s friends would remain forever, molded and joined to the helicopter that had come to save them.

The trip back to base camp was uneventful. The Pave Low kept below radar level, easily following the contours of the earth. The land rolled below them like a sandy sea dotted with bits of scrub that had somehow divined the secret of eking a life out of the death of the desert. John glanced at the pilot from time to time, noting how seamlessly the man moved with the machine, how melded they were, as if there was no chopper and no man, but only a weird hybrid of both. Then his eyes closed, and fear and terror fell away from him like a rush of water from a waterfall, leaving him dry and suddenly sleepy.

When the return trip ended, he asked the Pave Low pilot and a few others on base about the Black Hawk crew, trying to find out who the Skunk Man had been. But the two chopper crews didn’t know each other: both teams had been recruited from different units.

He asked the base officers about the Black Hawk crew. Classified, they said. Per military protocol, they reminded him, Black Ops operatives were not known to anyone outside their unit. They smiled and shook his hand and told him to forget about them; they had never officially existed, anyway.

John received an award. A bronze star. Vogel got a silver one, posthumously, as did the other fallen men. John almost expected them to give one to the Black Hawk. But no, not to a machine. Only to the dead and those who had seen death.

John had seen death twice now.

And both times came with the strange man. The man who was now gone, a corpse that would smolder forever under the hot sun of Iraq.

The Skunk Man.