Fade (2005)

Fad
e Kyle Mill s *

Synopsis:

A secret wing of US Homeland Security is recruiting agents to wor k undercover in the Middle East, and the director wants hi s second-in-command, Matt Egan, to bring aboard an old friend.

Salam Al Fayed - "Fade' is perfect. An ex-Navy Seal, he is the son o f immigrants and speaks Arabic like a native. But Fade's retired.

Embittered and alone, he's not too fond of anyone in the government.

Least of all his ex-best friend, Matt Egan.

Against Egan's wishes, the director tries to persuade Fade to join th e team. But Fade, angry and hopeless, is prepared to fight back at an y cost. The chase is on: will Matt be able to find hi s friend-turned-fugitive before Fade can take the ultimate revenge?

Kyle Mills's new thriller is a powerful, take-no-prisoners read from a writer at the height of his talen t PROinGUF

The few people visible in the street seemed to have no purpose othe r than to kick up dust that then hung in the air like smoke. They had n o bags of groceries, no hangers draped with recently cleaned clothing, n o impulsively purchased toys for their kids. They weren't exchangin g gossip with friends or gazing into the village's nonexistent window s for interesting diversions. The overall impression was of rat s temporarily flushed into the open and anxious to return to a dark , cramped space where the illusion of safety could conjure.

Salam al Fayed skirted along a broken rock wall, stopping before h e reached a section that had been scattered by a mortar shell to squa t down in the shade. The sun in that part of the world was strangel y malignant. Unable to provide warmth in the thin, dry air, it jus t burned and sapped the strength of everything beneath it. Al Faye d pulled a goatskin water bladder from beneath his robes and watched th e people in the street adjust their trajectory to give him as wide a berth as possible. They would see him as just another of the countles s dangerous men who roamed the region promoting instability, starvation , and senseless violence. In a way, they were right.

He stared malevolently at anyone who didn't actively look away, dar k eyes partially obscured by a tattered headdress. His Arabic wa s excellent, but it would instantly identify him as a foreigner if h e were forced to open his mouth. Whether anyone would correctly plac e the accent as being from New York was hard to say. Best not to fin d out.

The water tasted of animal musk and mud, stinging his cracked lips an d setting him to calculating exactly what he'd be willing to pay for som e cherry-flavored SPF 30 Chapstick. And a shower. And a drink with ic e in it. He managed to stop a thin smile from spreading far enough t o start his lips bleeding again. At twenty-six, he was already gettin g downright delicate.

A rare combination of perfect weather, overly pessimistic intelligence , and sterling luck had allowed him to add four more corpses to th e thousands already littering the countryside two hours ahead o f schedule. Unfortunately, the Middle East was a bit short on Starbuck s a situation the U
. S
. was no doubt eager to remedy so he couldn't g o wash off the blood in a tidy little bathroom and then linger over a toffee nut latte. That left him nothing to do but squat there silentl y threatening the locals and picking goat hairs from his teeth.
j oin the navy, the recruiting poster had said, see the world. He'
d thought they meant Hawaii.

A long semiretirement on a quiet island was starting to look better an d better. Despite this operation going off perfectly, he'd fel t something strange the minute his feet had hit the sand. Predictably , it was quickly lost in the unwavering focus his profession demanded , but now he had a few minutes to examine it. Doubt. The truth was , this mission had the unmistakable feel of one too many. His luck ha d peaked and was now in the process of running out.

Or maybe that quiet sense of dread was just nature's way of gentl y hinting that he was moving into a stage of his life in which h e wouldn't be quite as fast or strong as he once was. Perhaps it was a million-year-old survival reflex, speaking to him in a language hi s modern mind could understand. Or maybe it was simpler than that. Mayb e it was just the hopelessness and futility of it all.

When he'd first started operating in the Middle East four long year s ago now he'd been full of idealism. While his methods weren't exactl y the most enlightened humanity had at its disposal, he'd thought he wa s making a difference. He could remember actually letting the word s "make the world a better place" drool from his mouth, though he'd neve r admit it now.

The truth, it turned out, was a bit darker than his youthful fantasy.

He was now fairly certain that he killed men for the sole purpose o f making a bunch of master's degree wielding men in Washington feel lik e they were doing something. Or worse, to allow them to wrap their soft , pale bodies in the lie that they were the courageous warriors thei r inflated egos told them they were.

Al Fayed was no longer naive enough to believe that America was an y safer because of the four men he'd left blackening beneath the powerfu l North African sun. They would have already been replaced. And one da y their sons would rise up with revenge and hatred in their hearts t o lead the fight against the country that had taken their fathers awa y from them.

It was clear to him now that the problems that plagued the world, an d that were so glaring in this part of it, were ingrained to the poin t that there was really no solution only pointless attempts to delay th e inevitable. At the dawn of the twenty-first century, people were n o different than they had been thousands of years ago, when humanity ha d been a twitchy and mean-spirited species barely enlightened enough t o be trusted with swords and spears. How did anyone fool themselves int o thinking that stability could be maintained in a time when individual s had the power to, in minutes, destroy what it took centuries t o build?

Al Fayed took another sip of water and looked around him at the broke n buildings lined up in front of him. Despite being built of hardene d mud and stone, they had a strange aura of impermanence. Desperatel y inadequate bulwarks against the chaos that swirled around them. Whethe r they'd succumb to America's brilliant new bombs, a sudden flair o f factional fighting, or just to decay and despair, was hard to predict.

The only thing that was certain was that one day they would succumb.

The more time he spent in the Middle East, the more certain he becam e that the region was irreparably broken. How could these people lear n to anchor themselves in a modern world never dreamed of by the ancien t prophet they believed so deeply in? It was a psychological and mora l conflict that left the people here both desiring and shunning th e things progress could bring them.

In fairness, many Westerners really did want to help. They saw thei r culture as measurably superior wealthier, less violent, healthier. The y thought that if they could just persuade these barbarians to sto p fighting and relax a little they, too, could be watching Sex and th e City reruns on a big-screen TV and taking their kids to soccer practic e in a brand-new sport utility vehicle. But it wasn't that simple.

Empathy, it turned out, was the only weapon worth wielding here and th e only one the Americans simply didn't have the know-how to build. I f you couldn't understand your enemy if you couldn't get into their head s you would never defeat them. Sending clueless general after clueles s general to try to control situations and people they couldn't even tal k to was absurd. Trying to solve Arab problems with American solution s had a long and illustrious history of failure that no one seemed to pa y any attention to. And so the machine, no matter how broken, groun d on.

Al Fayed leaned his head against the cool wall behind him and stared u p at the uniform blue of the sky. For a man whose education had ende d with a whimper in the twelfth grade, he was becoming quite th e political philosopher. Not exactly a useful skill for someone with hi s vocation.

He tried to just let his mind go blank and when that failed he tried t o tell himself a joke. Under the circumstances, though, he couldn't com e up with one funny enough to do the job. Better to just move on an d ponder a cushy job in security consulting. Magnum, PI. seemed to mak e out like a bandit.

He pushed himself to his feet and started up the dirt road again bu t then ducked behind a burned-out half-track when he heard a high-pitche d scream shake the air. He put a hand on the machine gun beneath hi s robe and looked back out into the suddenly empty street.

A few seconds later it came again, lasting long enough for him t o identify its source as a young girl and to hypothesize that she was i n an alley that started about fifty feet from where he was standing.

His planned route would take him right by that alley and he looke d around him again, trying to find an alternate path to the other side o f the village. What he didn't need was to get involved in some pett y street violence and blow what had been, to this point, a dream mission.

He'd been in the country for three days, killed four men, and covere d sixty miles on foot without so much as a broken nail a situation h e wasn't looking to change.

He eased around the half-track and jogged twenty feet along the silen t road, his eyes sweeping shadowy corners and rooftops as he turned lef t into a narrow pathway between two buildings. The third scream , combined with the fact that the passageway he found himself in was a little tight and blind to be strategic, stopped him. He was certai n now that it was coming from a young girl. An odd acoustic trick mad e her voice clearly audible, pleading for help before suddenly goin g silent again.

Al Fayed looked behind him, cursing quietly in Arabic and trying t o decide what to do. Continue down this cramped deathtrap or back towar d something that had the clear potential to badly disrupt his plan o f afternoon surfing and umbrella drinks.

He stood there for a few more seconds before turning around and runnin g back onto the main street. As he approached the alleyway, he coul d hear voices of two men, sounding strangely distant as they bounced of f the stone walls around them. Subtly repositioning his gun barrel t o aim right, he continued to approach the alley.

The black scarf that should have covered the girl's face had bee n partially torn off, making it possible to estimate her age at aroun d sixteen or seventeen. She was on her back in the thick dust, kickin g and punching violently at the two men trying to hold her. One had a knee on her chest, making it more of a challenge for his compatriot t o tear off the robe that covered her from neck to toe. The entir e operation was a bit disorganized, but overwhelming force was on th e men's side. With the aid of a knife, one of them exposed the girl'
s street clothes: a dirty T-shirt and the remnants of a gray wool skirt.

By the time al Fayed realized that he was stopped in the middle of th e street staring at them, the man on top had removed his knee from th e girl's chest and was using it to pry her legs apart.

She managed to free a hand and was about to claw out at one of he r attackers, but lost her focus when she spotted al Fayed standing in th e mouth of the alley. She began pleading, fighting to maintain ey e contact with the only hope she had.

Try as he might, a good joke still eluded him.

One of the men looked back and shouted at him to leave. When al Faye d remained frozen, the man just laughed and went back to the squirmin g child beneath him.

There was no reason to get involved in this. It was the reality o f this particular girl's universe. Her parents were probably dea d victims of the violence that had swallowed this area long ago leavin g her to fend for herself. It was a precarious position that demanded a bit more caution than she had apparently shown.

Al Fayed had never been able to take religion all that seriously. Th e truth that he couldn't seem to let go of was that a person's God wa s nothing more than a function of their address. If you were born i n North Carolina, you were absolutely certain that the Baptists were th e only people on a first-name basis with God. In Afghanistan, you woul d sacrifice your life without a thought to defend Mohammed's vision.

Thailand? Buddha was your man. There was just too much random chanc e involved for him to see any real mysticism in it.

Evolution, though .. . Now there was a philosophy that he could ge t behind. From what he'd been unfortunate enough to see, the fi t survived and the meek weren't going to inherit shit. This girl ha d been stupid to let herself get pulled into that dirty little alley. Th e men he'd killed the day before hadn't been smart or strong enough t o effectively defend themselves. And on a larger scale, North Americ a thrived while much of the Middle East didn't. Life had a simple an d oddly comforting symmetry once you exorcised all the mysteriou s deities.

The man temporarily gave up on the girl's skirt and was now holding he r wrists above her head. With control reasserted, he looked up at a l Fayed again. "What are you doing there?" he yelled in Arabic. "Go!"

It was good advice. This girl had no future. It wasn't anybody'
s fault and it wasn't worth crying or agonizing over. She was just bor n in the wrong place at the wrong time. Whether her life ended today o r tomorrow or next week didn't matter. Not to him. Not to anyone.

"Go!" the man shouted again, offering the girl's wrists to hi s companion and standing. "Get out of here, now!"

The girl was getting tired and her pleas were coming between gasps a s she continued to try to escape. Three more minutes and she wouldn'
t even be able to offer token resistance to whatever these men wanted t o do to her. Which was probably a lot.