Authors: Kelly Abell
Chapter 8
The concrete floor was hard and cold against his face. He struggled to move but found he couldn’t. His arms were behind his back, he was curled up in a tight ball, a very uncomfortable position for a six foot five man. He took a minute to assess his situation. His shoulders ached, his hands were numb, and he couldn’t feel his feet. He wriggled his fingers and tried to move his wrists to restore some blood flow but found his hands were tightly bound with heavy cord or rope. He tried to do the same with his feet and found them tied as well.
Where was he? He lifted his head and the pain exploded behind his eyes so he dropped it back down onto the floor. Nausea rolled around his gut working its way up to his throat. He fought it, hard. He would not lay here in a pool of his own vomit. God, how did he get here? Why was he tied up? He tried to think but, his mind was blind with the hurting.
Then he heard the blood-curdling scream. His head involuntary jerked up, again sending another searing pain across his skull. What the hell? Who was that? What was happening to her? Whatever it was did not sound good at all. The sound wasn’t far from where he currently lay. More slowly this time, he turned his head and tried to look around. Blinking a few times, he cleared his blurred vision. God, his head hurt.
Slowly his eyes came into focus. The room was dark except for a single light bulb swinging overhead, casting eerie shadows, and distorting everything around him. His back was against a crudely built stonewall; he could feel the sharp ends of the masonry stones poking his back, shoulders and hips. He rolled slightly and stretched his long legs. From his vantage point on the floor, he could see a small woman bound to a chair. A very tall man leaned over her, shouting directly into her face. She was sobbing and her head was swinging from side to side. Whatever the man wanted, she wasn’t giving it to him. He held something in his hand, but from his vantage point, Jack couldn’t tell exactly what it was. It appeared to be an electrical probe. He stared at the man looming over the woman. There was something familiar about him.
Jack saw the man move in, and another scream, louder this time, ripped from the woman’s throat. The man touched her with the probe again and her body arched rigidly, and then slumped in the chair. Jack fought against his bindings, trying desperately to free himself. He could not be witness to this, lie here, and do nothing. His struggle drew the man’s attention.
“
Hello, Jack. Nice to see you awake. Sorry about the ropes, but you were just determined to get in the way, and I couldn’t let that happen. I’m sure your head hurts a bit. Sorry about that too, but your face got in the way of my gun butt. You’re not an easy man to drop, Jacko. It took a couple of times but you finally went down like a rock. You probably have a concussion so I wouldn’t move around too much if I were you.”
Jack opened his mouth to speak but no words would come out. His mouth was dry and his tongue felt like sandpaper. The man’s face was hidden in shadow, but he knew that voice. His memory would not work. He couldn’t get his foggy brain to move beyond the pain. The man rose and left the sobbing woman. Jack watched the approaching combat boots and struggled harder to free himself. It was hopeless.
“
It’s no use Jack. You’re not going anywhere. You’re trussed up like a Christmas turkey.” The man laughed menacingly.
The boots were within an inch of Jacks nose and he looked up. His eyes followed the length of the man’s body, which seemed to go on forever, until he met his face. It was covered by a black ski mask. He couldn’t see his captor’s face, but he didn’t need to. He knew that voice, if he could only remember. The frustration of it caused him to fight his bindings again. He writhed on the floor like a salted slug.
“
You should have left well enough alone, Jack.”
He saw the boot move and tried to get out of the way. Another white-hot pain exploded across his face as the heel of the boot fractured his nose. Everything went black.
Jack’s eyes popped open and he found himself in a darkened room, breathing rapidly. A sickening yellow glow from a street lamp outside filled the room. He moved his arm and found it free of its bindings. He moved his legs and a sharp pain brought him more fully awake. He shook his head to clear his confusion. A moment ago it was his head hurting, now his head was okay but his leg hurt like a son of a bitch. What the hell?
Realization dawned slowly. The dreams. They were starting again. He hadn’t had them for months and now they were back. He raised himself up on his elbows and looked around the room. He saw the dingy walls, the small kitchenette, the table with its one chair, and realized he was in D.C. in his safe house. He dropped back down on the mattress and sighed. He felt slightly better knowing where he was and that what he just experienced was only a dream. He just couldn’t figure out what these dreams meant. The painkiller he had taken for his leg had not completely worn off and he was growing sleepy again. He gave in to the quiet blackness.
Jack was standing in a long hallway filled with swirling fog. He was no longer bound but standing on his legs. His head still hurt and he reached up and felt a lump the size of a golf ball at his right temple. He winced as his fingers explored the injury. He’d been hit, that was it. Someone wearing a ski mask had said he had a concussion. He was also having a difficult time breathing through his nose. Shit, that hurt too. It was broken. He felt like a train had hit him.
Where was he now? It looked like a hospital corridor. Was he in the hospital? His head sure felt like he should be. His fingers continued to gingerly explore the base of his skull and he found another huge knot. He felt something warm and sticky. Blood. He was bleeding. Damn.
“
Jack.” It was no more than a mere whisper.
Jack’s head snapped up. Had he just heard someone call his name?
“
Jack?” It was slightly louder this time and floating toward him from the end of the hallway.
He shivered at the sound of the woman’s ghostly voice. He squinted in the direction of the fog, but could see no one.
“
Come here, Jack.”
He moved slowly in the direction of the voice. His legs felt like lead as he started down the corridor, as if he were pushing against some unseen force. That was okay with him. He really didn’t want to go anywhere near that creepy voice; although he was compelled to keep moving. It was like passing a bad car accident and knowing he shouldn’t look, but he just can’t help it.
Suddenly, he was in front of two metal double doors, but he couldn’t explain how he had gotten there when his movement was so slow. Jack recognized these doors. The morgue. He had been here before, but why?.
“
Jack?” A soft voice beckoned him from beyond the double doors. She had an accent. What was it? Iraqi? Armenian?
“
Come here. I need you, Jack. Hurry, please.” She begged.
Jack pushed on the doors, a feeling of dread twisting its way through the pit of his stomach. There, on a gurney in the middle of the stark white room, was a body. It was covered with a white sheet and by the rising and falling contours, Jack could tell it was a female. Jack approached slowly. He was no stranger to a morgue, but this time he was truly frightened.
“
Jack, is that you?”
Jack froze. The voice was coming from under the sheet. He stopped at the edge of the gurney. You’re losing it Jack, he thought to himself. Dead bodies don’t talk. Summoning his remaining courage, he lifted the corner of the stiff sheet revealing the dead white face of a young Iraqi woman. He recognized her instantly. She was the woman from the room. The one the man was torturing.
He looked down at the small woman, so gray from death. Her once plump lips were drawn tight and blue. Her eyes were sunken and blue veins webbed their way across her closed eyelids. Burn marks covered her face, breasts and arms.
As Jack leaned closer, her eyes flew open, revealing solid black orbs. He stumbled away from the table in horror. Slowly, she turned her head in his direction, snapping the bones in her neck that were stiff with death. Her soulless eyes stared straight through him.
She opened her mouth and spoke in a cracked raspy voice. “You let them kill me, Jack. You let them kill me!” Her voice grew louder until the little body was shrieking, “YOU LET THEM KILL ME, JACK!”
“
NO!” Jack sat bolt upright in bed. Pain shot through his leg as the stitches pulled tight with the movement. He immediately fell back against the pillow. His head was damp and the sheets beneath him were soaked with his sweat. He’d fallen asleep again and picked up where the other dream had left off. This part had been very different though. A colossal nightmare is what this was. Full blown and scary as hell itself. Jack lay very still and struggled to get his breathing under control. He hadn’t had that dream in months, not since he’d left for Colombia. Why had he dreamed of her now? What triggered the nightmare? Jack couldn’t answer that. He never could.
The dreams first started when he returned from deployment in Iraq. He was spending two weeks recovering from a nasty concussion that he couldn’t explain. The other members of his SEAL team told him there was an explosion in the palace they infiltrated, but that never seemed quite right to Jack. The dream gave him good reason to think something different happened, something someone wanted to stay hidden. Jack remembered they told him he was caught in the brunt of the blast. He was lucky to be alive. That part he believed, but the story of the blast didn’t ring true to Jack. In spite of his doubts, he didn’t question them. They were his TEAM, his buddies. He trusted them with his life and they trusted theirs to him. Who was he to question what had happened?
Each time he had the dream it seemed more intense and frightening. Some times the woman would actually rise up off the gurney and point a bony finger accusingly at him, but she had never spoken before. That was what creeped him out right now. She had actually spoken to him this time. She said he had let them kill her. What the hell was she talking about? He tried to recall the time before the explosion but it just wouldn’t come back. All he could remember was being staked out in one of Saddam Hussein’s old palaces looking for evidence and then he woke up in the hospital.
Jack lay there a moment and thought about his old SEAL team. There were four of them. It was a small team by SEAL standards, but they were a true force to be reckoned with. They called themselves the Fantastic 4, after the Marvel Comic Book heroes. Jack smiled as he thought of the ridiculous names they had adopted. Kent Larson, the man he just killed in Colombia, was their commander and together they went through some very intense missions. They even adopted all the nicknames. Kent was Mr. Fantastic, the brains of the operation; Jack was The Invisible Man, a slight variation in gender to the original; Warren was the Flame, he liked to blow things up; and Hutch was The Thing, a large black man that had enough muscles to look like he was made of rocks.
Their assignment was to covertly gather evidence of weapons of mass destruction and find Saddam Hussein’s main base of operations. They had gotten so close, Jack remembered. A tip had come in that the palace where the explosion had taken place was the center of it all. It was on the outskirts of Baghdad and was tough as hell to get into. That was why the Fantastic 4 was called in. There was not a fortress made that these four men couldn’t penetrate.
Guilt surged through Jack as he sat up on the dingy mattress. He had killed the commander that he fought beside and worked for during the past 10 years of his life. He had served under Kent Larson as a SEAL and then several years later, been recruited by him in the CIA. Jack just couldn’t believe he was dead, and what was worse is he’d pulled the trigger.
Jack replayed the horrible scene in Colombia and again convinced himself it was self-defense. Larson had drawn his weapon. It was kill or be killed. Why? What was Larson doing there in the first place? This thought plagued Jack as he struggled off the mattress and made his way toward the bathroom.
As Jack reflected on this, he realized that things began to get weird once he had discovered The Emperor file. The coincidence was too strong to ignore. He discovered the file, began to decode it, and then Larson shows up out of nowhere and blows his cover. The other weird thing was the mention of Warren Walters. He too, was on the SEAL team. Now he was the Vice-President elect and stood the most to gain from the assassination of Michael Hardy. Was Warren, The Emperor?
Jack turned on the shower and stepped under the tepid spray. So much for the hot shower he was hoping for. He made a mental note to mention it to the property owner, and then he chuckled to himself. What was he thinking? He wouldn’t be here long enough to mention anything to anyone. He had another day at most before someone caught up with him.