Constant Fear

CHAPTER 46

Solomon wore his terror like a gruesome mask. His mouth hung open wide, lips twisted and curled, eyes bulged from strain as he pushed futilely to get through the compact opening. Stuck in that hole, Solomon’s cheeks billowed and collapsed from the effort. He kept up a steady stream of grunts, groans, and cries for help. How much time did he have before the cartel men showed up and started shooting? Fifteen seconds? Thirty? A minute. Not much more, that was for certain.

Jake focused again on those approaching footsteps, and something clicked. He could distinguish two distinct sets. Two people were coming for them. Jake flashed on his count again. Three of the cartel were still alive, assuming Andy’s information had been correct, which meant one of them had taken the wrong route, while the other two had come to investigate Solomon’s racket.

Jake ran toward those footsteps. Solomon watched him go. As soon as Jake vanished, the boy’s panic escalated. It sounded to Jake as if Solomon was screaming in his ear.

Jake backtracked a good distance and dropped to his knees to fire his AK-47 blindly down the corridor. Without night vision, it was pitch black. He sent round after round screaming into the darkness, firing in three-shot sequences to conserve ammunition. Flashes of gunfire briefly lit him like a strobe light. In the interludes, Jake listened for footsteps. What he heard was Solomon’s desperate pleas.

“Come back! Come back! Help me get out!”

Shots rang out at Jake from the darkness, sharp against his exposed eardrums. The bullets struck concrete. Jake was thankful again that this particular section of tunnel angled in such a way that kept him out of any direct lines of fire. It was a temporary sanctuary from the bullets, at best. In no time, the men would reach a point where the angles played in their favor. As long as Jake kept shooting, he could hold them at bay until Solomon freed himself.

That was his big strategy anyway.

Part two of his plan wasn’t much better. Once Solomon was free, Jake would keep shooting long enough for the boy to get away. Then it would be two against one, and Jake understood his odds.

But there was a problem with this plan, which Jake reasoned as soon as his thoughts had time to gel. One former pitching coach nicknamed this interlude “the gathering,” which accurately described the process Jake used to pull himself together during a game. The gathering helped him focus and visualize the task at hand. In all instances, it heightened his mental acuity; and in this situation, it helped Jake see the obvious fault of his thinking.

He would run out of ammo long before Solomon got free.

The only way to dislodge Solomon, Jake believed, was to pull him from behind. Maybe Andy had gotten to Haggar by now. Maybe help was on its way. Maybe. But Jake’s ammunition would be gone long before that theory proved out.

For the time being, Jake couldn’t shoot them and they couldn’t shoot him. As long as they heard gunfire, they wouldn’t advance. Once he stopped shooting, they would come, guns blazing, for sure. And eventually they’d hit him or Solomon. One of them, or both, would die.

Jake settled on his best option: take out the two men at the exact same time. But how? Charge them? That seemed reckless at best. Wait for them to come to him? In these close quarters, a stray bullet had a good chance of becoming lethal.

And then it came to Jake, a plan formed during another miniature gathering episode. Jake knew how and where to set up an ambush, but it required Solomon to become invisible. For his plan to work, Jake would have to lure the cartel into this section of tunnel. That was the easy part. All he had to do was stop shooting.

The problem was Solomon. If the cartel men heard the boy, they’d shoot, even if they couldn’t see their target. Jake needed it completely silent for his ambush to work.

Walking backward, taking hurried steps, Jake returned to Solomon. As he went, Jake fired at regular intervals-ineffective, he knew, but he hoped it would be enough to stave off an assault. He had to get in position. Had to get ready.

At the hole, Jake bent down and gave Solomon his headlamp-the power of light. He brushed aside the boy’s tears and set a comforting hand on Solomon’s flushed cheek. With his free hand, Jake fired off a couple more rounds from the rifle.

“Listen, buddy, listen. I need you to go silent now.”

Solomon was having none of it. He was in the midst of a full-on panic attack.

“Can you get quiet?” Jake asked again. “We’ve got to be silent. Right now. Starting now. I know you’re scared, but you’ve got to do this.”

Jake had talked long enough. The men might already have advanced their position. He set off another burst of gunfire, and that made Solomon jump, but it didn’t get him free from that blasted hole. Jake pulled the trigger once more, but the magazine was empty. He changed it. And that was the last one.

“I’m so scared!” Solomon hollered.

Jake gazed down into the void. Somewhere in that darkness, two men waited for their opportunity to strike.

Calm the boy. Calm him.

“Fear is in the mind,” Jake said. He spoke slowly so Solomon could hear his words clearly, and he got close to reveal his serious expression. “Just get those negative thoughts out of there.”

Jake shot off a few more rounds.

“I can’t do it. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t calm down.”

He had to reach the boy. But he couldn’t rush him, couldn’t force it. Reach him. Connect with him. Jake went to the one subject he knew best besides prepping.

“You play any sports?” Jake asked in a soothing voice. “Baseball? Football? Anything like that?”

Jake fired off a couple more shots. He was down to maybe twenty bullets. With one hand, Jake undid his battle belt and let it fall to the ground.

“Bowling,” Solomon whimpered.

“Bowling,” Jake repeated as he worked quickly to get his chest rig removed. “Fine. Fine. That’s a good one. Bowling. I like that. Okay, okay, so do you scream at the bowling alley?” Jake fired some more bullets at nothing.

“‘Scream’? No,” Solomon said.

“Do you get all nervous when you bowl?”

The chest rig came off and fell to the ground, near to the battle belt.

“Never,” Solomon said.

It was working. Solomon needed the distraction. His breathing was already less ragged, his panic less pervasive.

“Never,” Jake repeated, sounding pleased. “Well, then, imagine we’re just bowling right now. I know it doesn’t seem like it, but think of this corridor here as nothing but an alley. Get yourself into a quiet space. Concentrate on it. See it in your mind. The pins. The lane. The feel of the ball. The smells. The noise. Everything. Think about every detail until it’s like you’re there. You understand?”

“No,” Solomon said in a panicky voice.

“Right, of course you don’t. Of course not. You see, nervousness, that’s just your worry all pent up with no place to go. That’s where the anxiety comes from. You’ve got to have a release valve for that, get it?” Jake’s voice came out breathless from a combination of dread and exertion.

He took three more shots. Jake was down to the last ten bullets in his rifle. Solomon had that many bullets left to get calm and quiet. Jake removed his shirt and revealed the Kevlar he wore underneath.

“You’re feeling anxious, right?” Jake asked.

“Uh-huh.”

“Well, your anxiety is making that fear happen. Like a little fear factory working overtime inside you. And that fear, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy,” Jake said. “Do you know what I mean by that?”

Jake’s last baseball coach had said something similar to him a week or so before the car crash that ended his career. Lance had said something similar as well, right before Jake agreed to take the job at Pepperell Academy.

“You can’t live your life like a scared little animal,” Lance had said. “You’ve got a son to raise. Man up, Jake, and take the damn job.”

Jake had done what Lance asked of him: he “manned up” and took the job. Jake had spent a lifetime trying to overcome his fear, and poor Solomon would have to do it in just a matter of minutes.

“Do you understand what a ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’ is?” Jake asked. He worked to loosen straps on his Kevlar.

“I think so,” Solomon replied in a shaky voice. “If I think it, I make it happen.”

“That’s right,” Jake said, energized. “What you think, you make happen. So this is a challenge, buddy. Nothing more. A really awful challenge that you got to face, and you can’t give in to the pressure.” Jake fired off two more shots. Eight bullets remained. “You might be stuck in that hole, but you’re still in control. You understand? You have the power. We don’t want them to know they’re close to you. If they do, they’ll shoot. And they’ll hit you.”

As if to illustrate the point, Jake fired his weapon. Flashes spit out the barrel of the gun. The echo of each gunshot rattled off the walls loud enough to sting the eardrums. Rat-tat-tat.

Jake was down to his last five bullets.

“Think about what you want to have happen, not what might happen. What do you want to have happen, Solomon?” Jake fired off another shot and the Kevlar came free from his body.

“I want to get out,” Solomon said, his voice shaky and on the verge of tears.

“What else? When those men come, what else do you want to have happen? Remember, you make it happen.”

“I want you to knock ’em down like pins,” Solomon said.

“Yeah. I want to do that, too. But what I need is for you to stay quiet as can be,” Jake said as he fired off two more shots.

Two bullets left.

“Are you a fighter?” Jake asked.

“They called me a pig,” Solomon said, sobbing. Jake could hear him sniffling. The tears were flowing again. “They pretended to cut me like I was a pig.”

Jake propped his Kevlar vest in front of Solomon, positioning it in such a way as to completely cover the boy’s face and head. He took the headlamp from Solomon’s hand. It wouldn’t do him any good now.

“This Kevlar is like a shield,” Jake said as he slipped his shirt back on. “It’ll hide you from them and protect you if a bullet comes. You can hold on to it with your hands if you like, but don’t let it fall down. Keep it in front of your head and face at all times. Understand?”

“Okay,” Solomon said.

“Are you a fighter?” Jake asked again in a voice that commanded attention and respect.

“I’m a fighter,” Solomon said. His voice came out softened behind the bullet-resistant fabric, but that wasn’t why his words lacked conviction. “I am a fighter,” he repeated.

That time, Jake believed him.

Jake cut the light from the headlamp, casting them both into an impenetrable darkness.

“I thought so,” Jake said. He fired a bullet from the rifle.

His last one.