Chapter 26 #4
“We’ll get them back, Abe,” Oli repeated, but it sounded strange and unfamiliar over the line. Aberlour wasn’t sure why it sounded so odd, so out of place, so alien. Oli’s voice should have been familiar, his orders reassuring and genuine.
Why did it sound so odd?
Then he heard it.
“We’ll get them all back.” Fuck, it was a lie. Oliver was lying. A goddamned bold-faced lie.
He’d never heard Oliver lie before.
Aberlour didn’t remember the walk back to his extraction point. He didn’t remember getting on the chopper or being flown back to camp. All of it was background noise. He was a man of singular purpose, his mind obsessed with finding a way back to save his men.
As soon as he’d landed, he’d bulldozed his way into the Major General’s office, finding the man confident and resolute in his stance, as if expecting Aberlour’s visit.
Oliver was right behind him. The entire time.
Together, they’d imposed on anyone with ears.
Yelling, arguing, slandering, cursing, doing everything and anything they could do to get their men back.
It was the longest 24 hours of Aberlour and Oliver’s lives. Labouring for four lives that meant more to them than their own. Hearts stuck in their throats, pounding incessantly with a single purpose—survival.
He’d begged, then he’d threatened, and then he’d waited.
Well, they’d waited, sitting on the linoleum floors in a dimly lit hall, still in their BDUs. They couldn’t recall when they’d last eaten. They waited, barely breathing, for a miracle they could feel slipping away with every second.
And then high command made their decision.
“We can’t negotiate.” That was the final answer he’d gotten from Major General Baron and his commanding officers.
Team Specter had been deployed against the orders of the UN.
The US was in direct violation of what had been agreed upon.
It had been a black op, and there was nothing they could do about it except pray that any US soldiers now stuck in enemy territory found a way out.
No, the United States of America could not admit to the black op mission, and so, those men would die, not as Marines, but as unclaimed individuals.
There would be no bodies to retrieve. The details of their deaths would never be released.
The official story was already in the works: the four men would die as a result of an explosion.
Something banal that happened to soldiers overseas all the time.
“A terrible loss,” one of the men had said, shaking his head, rows and rows of medals pinned to his uniform clanging like mocking hyenas in the otherwise silent conference room.
Oli had sat down heavily, as if collapsing under the weight of the world.
Abe had refused to hear it. He’d spun on his heels, not even bothering to mockingly salute, and walked out.
Then, he’d gone rogue.
At 4:00 a.m. Eastern Pacific Time, Captain Shawn O’Reilly had picked up Aberlour’s call. The man who he hadn’t spoken to in over four years answered on the second ring.
“O’Reilly,” he answered, his voice gravelly with sleep.
In an undeniably serious breach of national security, Aberlour told Shawn everything.
Absolutely everything. From start to finish, he’d ran through the whole shit show, and Shawn had listened, humming now and then, but never interrupting.
Finally, at the conclusion, he said, “I’ll see what I can do. ”
And he had. Fucking Captain Shawn O’Reilly—now actually Major Shawn O’Reilly—had cut through more red tape for Abe than he’d thought possible.
The SEAL was only too happy to show the USMC up by implementing a rescue mission.
No one liked playing the hero more than SEALs did, O’Reilly had said, as he explained the plan to Aberlour.
He’d gotten the go-ahead for a poorly financed, half-assed rescue mission.
Half of a regular SEAL team, a small command post, and about 12 hours of prep time.
And Abe had believed it—if only for a few hours.
He'd even managed to get an hour of shut eye in there somewhere.
But alas, it had been too little too late, and in the end all of Abe’s begging and fighting hadn’t made a lick of difference.
They’d lost so much time cutting through the bullshit and getting a plan in place—that they’d run out of time.
Before Shawn’s rescue mission could even leave the tarmac, the live feed had gone up…
They couldn’t even trace it—yet another form of proof that there was a leak in their system.
A giant fucking one like an open wound pumping blood into a chest cavity.
The entire branch was drowning in it. They’d been outdone twice now.
While Major General Baron kept denying it, no one believed his delusional bullshit.
As if to insult him personally, the enemy contacted them directly through an untraceable link. Not a message. No. Nothing so mild.
Instead, they were treated to a live feed.
Their captors filmed every second, uploading in real time so Aberlour could watch in agony as the black canvas bags were taken off the heads of each member of Team Specter to reveal mangled but familiar faces.
They’d been beaten. Again and again, judging by the state of their faces.
Marcus’ left eye was so swollen it had disappeared completely. They looked—Aberlour could hardly look.
There were shouts all around. Intel professionals trying to rat out their positions, trying to trick them and catch them. It didn’t matter. Aberlour had faced them down. He’d been where they were. He’d just—
It was horrible. A sight too terrible for words.
Everyone had warned him to get out. He didn’t need to see this, they’d said.
Neither did Oliver, but they’d ignored their warnings.
If his men were going to die, then Aberlour would watch.
He’d watch and keep the image burning behind his eyelids, fuelling a guilt that would eat him alive.
It was what he deserved for failing them.
They were lined up, then pushed to their knees. None of them fought back. For a pathetic moment, Aberlour thought they might have planned something. A surprise attack—a brilliant plan to rescue themselves since everyone else had given up.
There was no such plan.
There was just silence, and time ticking by.
Then there was just an indiscernible figure, with a machete, making his way down the line, one man at a time. Marcus saved for last. The expression of defeat creasing his face deeper and deeper as the heads of his brothers rolled one after the other.
One by one.
Sabine’s voice, gentle and kind as she’d danced with Abe on her wedding day, “Thank you for bringing him back to me, time and again,” ran on a loop in Aberlour’s mind as he watched. No longer praise but judgement. He’d failed them. All of them and all of their wives.
Like dominoes, their heads fell to the dirty floor.
There was no plan, no escape, just headless corpses, rolling heads, and the feeling of utter helplessness that froze Aberlour in place.
Oliver ran out of the room, and the sound of his retching was a fitting soundtrack to the horror show etching itself onto Abe’s corneas.
Carlos’ eyes were still open, but the smile he always wore had long been washed away by pain and misery. Abe could see the fear in his eyes, even as grainy and terrible as the video quality was.
There were words. Curses, mutters, sobs, and a few screams of rage.
Aberlour wanted to echo them, but nothing came out of him.
There was nothing left of him. He was empty.
Hollow. He’d never be happy again. He could feel it.
Could swear it. Abe’s head was still attached, but he was dead, for all intents and purposes.
“I’m sorry, son.” There was a hand on his shoulder. Aberlour looked down at it, confused for a moment. He’d lost track of where he was, what was happening, the image on the screen haunted him.
Sorry. Their Major General was sorry.
“I had that shot,” Aberlour said, looking directly into the eyes of the man responsible for his friends being killed by the insurgents. Those beady little eyes. The eyes of a bug. He never should have listened to a single word out of his mouth.
“You don’t know that—this isn’t on you,” Baron said, shaking his head.
“No,” Abe agreed, his tongue sharp, his mind reeling. “It’s on you,” he spat out, hoping the words would never leave the man’s mind.
“Aberlour!” somebody said warningly.
“I had that shot. I never miss. I told you that, but you didn’t fucking listen, and now all of ‘em are dead, and that’s on you, sir,” he said without hesitation.
“Remember your place,” Major General Baron warned, the empathy he’d feigned suddenly vanishing.
“Fuck right off!” Abe barked, turning on his heels and storming out of the room without another word. There was a scuffle, like someone intended to stop him, but no one followed him out.
“I’ll never unsee that,” Oliver said, sounding out of breath and thousands of miles away. He was sitting in the hallway, knees drawn up to his chest, arms wrapped around them. He looked young. So damned young. Like the scared boy Aberlour had met on the bus to Parris Island.
Aberlour stumbled forward and slid down the wall until he sat next to Oliver, copying his position. He rested his head against his knees and listened to Oliver’s sobs as they filled the otherwise silent hallway.
Fuck.
FUCK!
Aberlour had never questioned his decision to become a Marine.
He questioned it now.
He questioned everything now.
Everything except one.
“I would have made that shot,” Aberlour said, to no one, for no reason, and not for the first time.
“Yeah,” Oliver replied, sounding defeated. “You would have—” the dead silence of the hallways spelling out what they couldn’t—that ifs and maybes were of no use to dead men.
It was too late for that now. Their friends were gone. Their friends were dead. There was nothing left of them but broken corpses that would never grace American soil again.