Chapter 8 #4
“Fuck,” Abe muttered. If they drove off, what in the hell was he supposed to do?
Shoot the driver? Shoot out the tires and force the truck to a stop?
If he did that, they’d be opening themselves up to retaliation.
He didn’t have enough men or ammunition to hold up under a full-scale assault.
Not for long at any rate! What if the Rangers failed to show as headquarters said they would?
What if the Rangers had been ordered by headquarters to pull back?
“You got a clear shot to take out the driver?” Ghost asked, reading Abe’s mind.
“If I have to, yeah,” he replied.
He didn’t have to. As the words left his mouth, the first gun shot rang out, followed by angry shouts as the truck driver—who’d been climbing into the driver’s seat—fell to the ground, having taken a shot to the head.
The street was suddenly crawling with Rangers, deadly and precise, a true weapon of mass destruction.
The guy who manned the Dushka didn’t have time to take aim at the Rangers before he too was gunned down.
“Think they got the warning,” Ghost said with a smirk.
“Then it’s time to head out,” Aberlour replied.
They turned simultaneously towards the stairs and raced down the steps to the 1st floor, where large holes from a mortar shell attack left most of that level in plain view of the street.
Aberlour caught sight of the Rangers surrounding the rat’s nest, gunning down every man in sight until the only one left standing was the blindfolded man.
“Let’s go!” Aberlour yelled, puzzled by the fact his team was all crowded around the back door. Why hadn’t they moved out by now?
“Rangers came crawling through here. Didn’t want to interfere with their mission,” Marcus responded, knowing exactly what Aberlour was thinking.
Fair enough. If they’d come across the Rangers on their way out, they could have been mistaken for the enemy and that would have been a total shit show.
“We should be clear to go now, so let’s move,” Abe said, shooting one look back at the ongoing war zone. The Rangers had a few men on their knees, and were pulling the blindfold off the man—
“Baba!” Ali yelled, catching sight of the man who had just had his blindfold removed. She slipped through Oli’s grasp like smoke, bolting towards him and weaving her way through the team of Rangers.
Her sister took off after her.
Oliver leaped into action to try to stop them. Aberlour just managed to catch him as he headed out the door, wrapping both arms around Oli’s waist and pulling him back into the house.
“Let me go!” Oliver demanded.
But it was too late.
The girls came out running like bullets from a rifle—heading straight for the Rangers, who immediately assumed they were being used as human bombs, as girls are twice as likely to be used than boys are.
Both were gunned down in the blink of an eye. Their small bodies pierced and torn by multiple rounds before crumpling to the ground like paper airplanes.
Team Specter all yelled in unison. All of Abe’s men—except for Oli. His scream got lost in the effort of pulling himself from Aberlour.
“Fuck!” Abe growled, as he grabbed for Oliver again and then shoved him towards JD, who caught Oli like a rebound ball.
“Get out!” he yelled at his men. They had to move before the Rangers launched a search to locate more enemy insurgents and raided the whole fucking house.
As one, with heavy hearts, they moved out into the thick brush and towards the desert. Fleeing like burglars in the night—hands empty but their consciences weighed down with guilt.
“How is he?” Aberlour asked Marcus, as he caught the man walking out of their assigned quarters.
They’d been transported back to a Navy ship for a few days of debriefing while sailing back towards to the US.
Aberlour had been pulled to attend meetings, leaving his men behind to unpack and clean their gear.
As they’d gotten off the helo, Oliver had been withdrawn.
Pissed off and angry—it was hard for Aberlour to know exactly who the target was.
“Moping,” Marcus said. By the way he was refusing to meet Abe’s gaze, he was also taking it hard. “What did you tell the commanding officers?”
There had been no discussion of the children on their trip back to the ship. Abe had simply ordered all of them to just keep their mouths shut for now and that he’d deal the brass.
Abe sighed.
“The truth,” he shrugged. “They weren’t—pleased we kept them in the dark, but they agreed we handled it well. I think they were just relieved with the outcome,” he admitted, and it was one step too far for Marcus whose jaw locked with tension.
“I just mean—” Abe backtracked hastily.
“I know what you mean,” Marcus said, tone clipped.
But Abe doubted that very much. He gently placed his hand on Marcus’ shoulder.
“The brass are full of shit—we both know that. What happened—” he broke off, shaking his head, refusing to acknowledge the image that burned behind his eyelids when he closed his eyes. He swallowed against the grief stuck in his throat.
Marcus deflated slightly. He nodded and sighed as he met Abe’s gaze, understanding shining in his dark eyes.
“I’ll give you a few minutes,” Marcus said with a faint smile as he nodded towards the stateroom he’d just left.
Abe smiled gratefully in return.
Abe found Oliver on the floor with his shirt off, doing sit-ups, most likely attempting to burn off the anger that had been simmering since they’d left the village.
Aberlour remained silent as he moved around him, sitting down on his own bunk bed and watching his best friend blow off steam, content to just watch.
Oliver eventually gave up and just laid there, staring up at the ceiling as he panted with exhaustion.
Aberlour considered various ways of broaching the subject, unable to predict how Oli would react to his overtures. Would he shut him out? Pretend to be fine? In the end, Oli took the choice out of his hands.
“I can’t unhear it,” Oliver confessed, sounding just as broken as Aberlour had expected him to be.
“The gunfire?” he guessed.
“Her screaming for her father,” Oliver corrected. He turned his head to look at Abe, and there were tears pooling in his baby blues.
“I was too fucking slow—” he said, voice tight and low. “If I’d just—”
But Aberlour wouldn’t let him go down that road.
“She’d have gone to him either way—we were strangers to them.
Kind strangers who fed her and her sister.
She’d have chosen her father at every turn,” he argued.
There was no way to rid themselves of the guilt completely.
Aberlour knew that much at least but shouldering it as a team wasn’t the same as carrying it all.
“If we’d gotten out when the gunfire started like you’d told us—”
“Then one of us would be dead. The Rangers had to change their approach to the rat’s nest when we called in about the technical with the Dushka.
They weren’t supposed to come from behind our hideout.
If you and the others had headed out the door as I had ordered you to, we’d have all been gunned down. ”
Just like Ali and Mia, went unsaid.
Oliver bit down on the inside of his cheek. There was nothing Aberlour could say—nothing at all that would ease this burden that weighed down Darling’s shoulders. That was the sad reality of the situation.
Aberlour sighed, hating the helplessness he could feel settling around his own shoulders.
He lowered himself to the floor slowly, making his way to Oliver on all fours before lying down beside him.
He reached for Oliver’s hand, and intertwined their fingers, squeezing it reassuringly before rubbing soothing circles at the base of his thumb.
His hands were rough—callused and dry, still—as Oliver sighed besides him.
“There was this thing my mother used to say,” Aberlour began, his voice a low rumble. “We do what we can, we do what we must, and the rest is up to God.”
Oliver turned his head to look at him, but Aberlour focused on the blank ceiling above. “We couldn’t have done anything more for them, Oli—we did our best, we did what we had to do—”
“You saying God failed them?” Oliver asked, ending his question on a broken sob.
“I’m saying it wasn’t up to us,” Abe replied with a defeated sigh.
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” Oliver asked.
Aberlour finally turned to look at him. That beautiful blue gaze was familiar, seeking something Aberlour wasn’t sure he possessed or would be able to provide. Still, he didn’t look away.
“No. I’m saying—shoulder the grief for as long as you can. Keep their memory alive if you need to—but don’t carry the guilt. Not when it isn’t yours in the first place.”
Oliver sighed again. He looked at Aberlour, carefully considering his advice, then he relaxed and nodded. He turned to his side, and gently cupped the side of Abe’s face. He brushed his thumb against the bottom of his jaw.
“How’d I get so lucky?” Oliver asked.
“Lucky?” Abe scoffed.
“I’d be a fucking mess without you,” he confessed softly.
“I’ll remind you of that the next time you think my plans are batshit crazy,” Aberlour chuckled, feeling innately uncomfortable with the open vulnerability.
The lights were too harsh, the room too open.
These were moments they shared in dimly lit rooms, buried in each other—they shouldn’t happen here.
“Good. Never let me forget how badly we need each other,” he said with a nod.
“Like you could ever get rid of me,” Abe chuckled.
Oliver responded with heated kisses—kissed him until they both forgot about ghosts and grief for a little while.