Tears of Abraham

CHAPTER SEVEN Incoming

ALBERTA, CANADA

Henry crawled out of the snow shelter he’d spent the night in. Dawn was gray and frozen. He and Carlos had dug burrows into a drift in the dead of the night because the snow would help to conceal their heat signatures from drones, satellites, and anything else with bad intentions that might be hunting them. They hoped the attackers would decide their mission was complete.

Carlos was already up and looking around. “I was really hoping some of our guys might cut our trail and show up. Some of them might have made it.”

“Maybe we should go back?” Henry already knew the answer, but felt compelled to put the question out there. He needed confirmation.

“No. You know the drill. They’ll do what we did. Evade the enemy. If there were wounded back there, the guys sent to kill us got to them already.”

Henry tore into an MRE and ate a cold burrito. He’d lost friends before, but never so many. He was still numb. He needed a plan. He needed explanations. He had neither, just a sense of desolation.

He pulled out a snapshot of Taylor and Suzanne he kept with him in one of his chest pockets, right next to field dressings, tape, and painkillers. The photograph, unposed and natural, was one he’d taken a year ago of a perfect moment. Suzanne and Taylor playing in the pool, laughing in the sun. He stared at it for a time in silence. It was like a door to yesterday, a tiny portal with warmth and light and hope filtering between worlds, and more than anything, he yearned to slip through and become a part of that other world, to go back in time and place. He gazed at the picture with longing, like if he stared long enough, the door would open and he could step through.

“You okay?” Carlos said.

“Good to go.”

“Let’s get moving, brother. We’ve got a lot of hard miles to cover.”

“Copy that.” Henry put his rucksack over his shoulders with a leaden feeling in his legs. They moved out into the wilderness, trudging south.

The woods were lonely and silent, as if the snow sucked the sound from the world and hid it beneath a blanket of white. The branches on the trees were naked of leaves and coated with an armor of snow and ice, and the pine and spruce stands were heavy laden, branches weeping to the powder. There was an air of quiet expectation, as if the mountain held its breath, waiting to exhale.

They took a brief stop at around noon. Henry sat on an exposed boulder and gobbled down an energy bar.

“So who were those troopers?” Henry said. “And who dropped the bombs?”

“Yeah. My wheels are turning,” Carlos said. He had his big hands wrapped around the mouthpiece of his CamelBak drinking tube to thaw some ice buildup there.

“I think the first guys, the ones on the ground, probably were air force commandos out of Malmstrom. Now, why they got dispatched, I have no idea. I think maybe the colonel stirred up a hornet’s nest with his inquiries.”

“And the bombs? The UAVs?”

“You got me, Henry. Somebody wanted to be damn sure the Wolves were dead. Dropped ordnance on their own guys. In Canada, no less.”

“One of the things that’s got me concerned,” Henry said, “is that they know who we are, whoever they are. If they figure out we made it, they may keep coming.”

“I’ve got no family,” Carlos said, his voice flat. “I’ll get you home, Henry. I swear.”

“I appreciate that, my friend. Maybe we’re just paranoid.” But he knew otherwise. Would they go after my family to get to me? If they think I know something I shouldn’t, then, yes.

“Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you. Let’s move out. We ought to run into a road before too long. If we’re lucky we’ll find an empty cabin. Maybe grab a car. Change into civvies.”

They walked for another four or five hours, saying little. Henry was awed by the stark beauty of the winter Rocky Mountains. They slipped past frozen waterfalls, terraced and glittering like crystal. Henry’s feet were blocks of ice and his hands felt clumsy. His face burned with the subzero temperatures and the lashing wind. He thought about the Keys and sunshine and warm water; he walked in a kind of trance, physically alert, but mentally absent as his mind took him to friendlier times.

Henry marveled at the way seemingly inconsequential decisions changed lives. He’d seen it in combat, and he’d experienced it in relationships. One guy breaks right and falls, another guy goes left and makes it.

He and Bart were twenty-two years old and on leave for two weeks with a pocketful of combat pay. They’d started out in Daytona with a rented red convertible Mustang that just begged to be driven. After the first night, they got a wild hair and decided to drive down to the Keys. They’d stopped at Holiday Isle. Bart had just completed rehab on his knee, and Henry was about to be deployed again. But they had two weeks to be young and dumb.

Holiday Isle was an oceanside resort in Islamorada, and spring break was in full swing. College kids from all over the country flocked to the Keys to get hammered and laid in the sunshine. Bart was driving when they pulled into the gravel parking area across the street from the sprawling hotels and bars. They both had their shirts off, sunglasses on, and were highly alert for contact with the opposite sex.

Bart was driving through the parking lot with a sense of urgency. A bikini-clad pair of girls stepped out from behind a van, directly in front of the fast-moving Mustang. Bart slammed on the brakes and the car slid on the loose gravel.

The girls squealed and tried to leap out of the way, but not before the Mustang knocked the brunette down. “Assholes!” screamed the blonde. “You could have killed us! Mary, are you okay?”

Henry and Bart jumped out of the car and ran around to the front of the vehicle. Henry was appalled and terrified they’d really hurt the girl on the ground.

“Oh, man,” Bart said. “I’m so sorry. My bad.” Bart knelt down next to Mary, who was bleeding a little from one of her knees, a scratch.

“He just learned how to drive,” Henry said, deadpan. “But we’ll make it up to you. Drinks all day on me.”

“Fuck off,” said the blonde who would end up marrying Henry.

“Well, if you put it that way,” Henry said with a broad grin. The blonde cut her eyes at him, shaking her head, still pissed.

Bart helped Mary to her feet, and she smiled at him. “Well,” Mary said, still gazing at Bart. “You gotta admit they’re cute.”

They danced and drank frozen daiquiris and rum runners and lounged in the sun for a week. The night before the girls were scheduled to return to college at the University of Florida, Henry made a pitch to Suzanne.

“Look,” he said, “what really matters in life?” They were sitting alone on a rock looking out at the moonlit ocean. In the distance, a band played old eighties rock, and there were hoots and howls and the sound of fevered mating rituals. But Henry was serious. He reached out and held Suzanne’s hand.

“Ten years from now, when you look back on next week, what will you recall? What will matter then? Will you remember the test you took or the paper you wrote? Will you care about the boring-ass lecture you sat through on Shakespeare’s sexuality?”

“I like the Bard. He wasn’t gay, by the way.”

“Well there you go. You don’t need to go to that class. What I’m saying is, you should take an extended break. Give it another week, and we’ll make memories that will last a lifetime.” He leaned in and kissed the softest part of her neck. “And one of my favorite lines in literature is ‘Barkis is willing.’ I’m not saying all that, but I’m willing for seven more days. No promises, no regrets. One hell of a week.”

“You’re sweet, Henry. That’s not going to happen. And Dickens is overrated.”

“I want you to really think about it. Justify it. If you go back to school this week instead of the following week, what’s that going to change? How does that make a difference in your life? Whereas if you stay down here for another week, you can look back later on and explain to your kids you lived life to the fullest. You took every moment and—”

“Do you really believe this shit? You seriously should leave the army and become a car salesman.”

“… and sucked the marrow from life,” he continued, as if she had not spoken. “You didn’t leave anything to wonder about later on. No promises, no regrets, but let’s make this week something.”

“And why would I do that?” she said. And he knew he had her.

“Because I’ve got great abs, can quote Hamlet, and because we’re going to rent the suite for a whole week. Take out a boat every day. We’ll fish, dive, eat like royalty, live like kings.”

“That’ll cost a fortune. That suite is probably close to a grand a night.”

“Well, you know what? I don’t care, because I want to make this week something special. I might die in a month. A year. You know where I’m going…”

“You’re laying it on a little thick, soldier boy. And what about Mary? What if she wants to go back?”

“I trust Bart to handle that,” Henry said.

And that week made all the difference.

“You boys are slow and deaf,” Henry heard over his shoulder. He jumped, spinning, even as recognition penetrated his reverie. Sergeant Major Martinez strode through the snow, smoke coming from his mouth in the arctic air, bloodstains on his chest and arms.

“Are you hit?” Carlos asked.

“No. Not my blood. I cut your trail this morning.”

“Anybody else?” Henry said.

“Just me. All my boys. Gone. The colonel, too. Never made it out of the bunker.”

“How do you know for sure?”

“Against my better judgment, I hung around. Got a few more of the bastards that hit us. They were SF. No insignias, no dog tags. One of the men I killed was a guy I went through SERE school with. He was a good fucking soldier.”

“What the hell?” Carlos said.

“Colonel Bragg gave me this.” Martinez reached into a pocket and held up a black square the size of a match, a case for a micro-drive. “He didn’t have time to tell me much. But he said if anything happened to him to get this out on the net worldwide. I’m guessing it’s the proof he claimed he didn’t have. Proof we’ve been usurped by something, someone, some whatever the fuck they are. The guy behind the guy, the puppet master all the gringos in tinfoil hats have been yammering about. He’s real, that guy. And he’s evil.”

“And on our ass,” Carlos said.

“Yeah, that too,” Martinez replied. “But we’ve got one thing going for us.”

“What’s that?” Henry said.

“The guy thinks we’re all dead.”

KEY WEST, FLORIDA

Suzanne was up with the sun. She padded across tiled floors, brewed a cup of coffee in the kitchen, and sat down at her desk. Her office was in the master bedroom, and afforded her a nice view of the pool and foliage and the waterway behind her home. She looked at her computer with a bit of disdain. Why bother?

She was under a deadline to complete a novel she had procrastinated on. She forced herself to write every morning, but she had not made much headway on her latest book, a romance novel set in Renaissance Florence. It was hard to come up with flowery prose and erotic double entendre when divorce was looming in the real world. And now, my publisher might not even exist.

The house was silent and the sunlight had a kind of promise in it, a special light that happens in the Keys in December when the rest of the country is shrouded in snow. She looked out at the blue pool and the dark water and boats up on davits. The people who owned the house on the other side of the canal were only there a few weeks a year, and this was one of them. She had met them a couple of times over the last two years, and she and Henry had attended one of their parties, a catered event with tuxedoes and evening gowns and strings of pearls. Henry had been miserable, and they’d left after only an hour. Suzanne smiled with the memory.

A string quartet played The Four Seasons by Vivaldi and the balmy night shimmered with class and diamonds. The guests moved with measured grace and held their champagne flutes just so and smiled and lied and talked about yachts and skiing and how bad the help was. An ice sculpture of a mermaid was the centerpiece by the pool.

“You know,” Henry had whispered, “I’ve got PTSD. I might not get convicted if I killed these people.”

“Shut up,” she’d said, giggling. “They’re awful, I’ll give you that.”

“So let’s get outta here.” He’d kissed her neck the way he did when he really wanted to convince her, in the way he knew she couldn’t refuse.

“Okay. Another half hour. Then I’m all yours.”

“All right then.”

A couple was approaching, locked on. There was nowhere to hide.

“Incoming,” Henry said. “I say number four.”

“Three,” she’d said. “Usual bet?”

“Done.”

Then, “Hello, I’m Suzanne, it’s so nice to meet you…”

Yes, I wrote that. No, it wasn’t a movie. Yes, my husband is in the army. No he doesn’t have any exciting blood and guts stories for you.

A couple of hours later, lying in the bed with a satisfied sheen of sweat covering both of them, he caressed her back with feather fingers.

“You’re purring again,” he’d said.

“You know you love me.”

“Yeah. And you know that I know that you know it.”

“I guess that worked out well for both of us.”

“No arguments there,” Henry said in that husky voice he had when he was half-asleep and content. The old Henry, the one she’d fallen in love with so hard. Not the one who’d been showing up lately.

She’d rolled over then and touched his cheek. “How do they do it? Why?”

“I have no idea.” He’d done some interesting things, then.

An hour later, she’d said, “Seriously, why? How can one man decide to marry four different women? I mean, wouldn’t you at some point decide that enough is enough?”

“Well… you did see her, right. I get that.”

“Pigs.”

“That we are. But those tits were real. I can sort of understand.”

“Ugh.”

“I’m just sayin’.”

“Well, so are these…”

The sun was coming up, with that golden, sweet light filtering into the room. Henry turned on his side to face her and there was a sadness on his face she did not expect.

“Tell me,” he’d said, his voice soft. “Do you plan to trade me in on a new model?”

“Never.”

“Money seems to breed restlessness and stupidity. You’re rich now.”

“Give me a break.”

“How is that not true?”

“We’re rich, yeah. I guess we are. We should swing from the chandeliers. You’re a little beat up, but I happen to like the model. You’re a classic. You’ve got character.”

“You’re too good at it.”

“What do you mean?”

“The game. The dance. The wealthy charade. You’re like a fish in the water. You blend in without trying to blend in because you’re in your element. You’re not faking it.”

“Bullshit. You know that’s bullshit. There is no element. It’s called life. I sold a book. Be glad. Don’t try to—”

“Suzanne, you love the attention. You crave it because you never got it from your mother or your father because they never gave a damn about you and now you have this urge to fit in. You’re changing. Maybe you don’t see it, but I do.”

“Don’t you talk about my parents. Just because your momma was a worthless piece of white trash and your daddy was poor doesn’t give you the right. Money is just a tool. It doesn’t make you evil. It sure as hell doesn’t make me evil. And it seems like that’s what you think lately. Are you that insecure? You’re supposed to be a Ranger!”

He’d bolted from the bed then. Banging drawers and pulling on clothes. “Yeah,” he’d said. “You grew up with money. Good for you. Your old man is an asshole, and your mother was worse, and those are your own words. We’re done here.”

“Come back and fight like a man, damn it! Don’t run away!”

But he’d gone out the door and hadn’t come home until late that night and she couldn’t figure out what had gone wrong, what had poisoned the morning.

The memory of a good evening gone bad soured as Suzanne sat in the same room with the same kind of golden light and she put her head in her hands over a computer she hadn’t flipped open and a book she’d never finish.

“Momma!” Taylor said at the doorway, rubbing her eyes and wrapped in a fuzzy blanket. “I’m hungry. Can you make me some oatmeal?”

“Yes, honey,” Suzanne said. “Give Momma a minute, okay?”

“O-kay.” Taylor’s voice was a singsong of morning exuberance. “I had a dream about a big wolf last night. But he was a good wolf. A big black wolf. And he was helping people. He was nice.”

“Go watch some Sesame Street, Love. I’ll get you some breakfast in a minute.”

“O-kay,” Taylor sang. “Kisses first.” She ran up and put her arms around Suzanne’s neck and kissed her on the cheek.

Suzanne watched her daughter run away, cloaked in her softie-soft, little feet pattering on the floor and blonde curls bouncing.

Suzanne had not cried in fifteen years, not since her cat Missy had died when she was in high school. “Buck up and get your ass off your shoulders,” her father would say to her when she was young and in need of a good cry. Just a little kid.

“Tears are unattractive, dear,” her mother would admonish. “They make you look weak.”

The tears came now, anguished and angry, a deep chested howl born of pent-up emotions and regrets and the recognition of the kind of mistakes that shatter lives. She punched the desk with her fist, not caring about the pain. She cried for her past, for the little girl that had been told to buck up. She pounded that desk because she had screwed up her life. She had not been paying attention to the things that mattered. A perpetually happy four-year-old cloaked in a softie-soft blanket. The husky voice and earnest love of her man. The light over the water on a warm December morning imbued with promise. Those things mattered. She yearned for a life of purpose, yet seemed bent upon unraveling everything important.

It was over quickly. A brief outburst, a volcano of the soul, an immediate relief of pressure. She wiped her face.

She felt renewed clarity and purpose. The storm windows needed to be pulled down. She had to talk to her father, on the off chance that he was in town and that he could get them on base and that he gave a damn. Hit the stores now. Food, fishing gear, antibiotics, water.

She needed to contact Henry somehow, and tell him she had made a promise she intended to keep. She had regrets. She wanted to make it right.