Chapter Forty-One
Ana opened her eyes to activity occurring around her.
She must have dozed off without realizing it, and all the guys were moving about, clearly getting ready for something.
The sun looked high in the sky and she figured it must be nearly time for the meeting.
Digging in her bag she pulled out a water bottle and took a sip to wet her dry mouth as Nate walked past her.
She put her hand out and lightly touched his arm, which caused him to stop and look at her.
His eyes seemed soft again and she wondered if he was no longer angry with her.
“Hey,” she said. “Is it noon?” It was a dumb question, and she knew it, considering that she was wearing a watch.
If she was being honest with herself, she just wanted to talk to him.
Ana was beginning to feel bad for being so harsh on the boat, particularly as the reality of their situation set in, on their own in the middle of Yemen.
“Almost,” Nate replied. “Our smugglers should be arriving momentarily.” His eyes studied her face. “Are you alright?” he asked her again, genuine concern in his voice.
She smiled. “Yeah, I just…”
“Hold that thought.” He held up a finger and peered off into the distance. She followed his gaze and saw a dust trail kicking up on the horizon, coming from the desert to the north and not from the road. “I think our friends are here.”
“Alright,” Shane said. “Let’s do this.”
“Okay,” Nate began to address the group. “I’ll go down with Shane and we’ll do the handover. Wally, you cover us from here, and Tim, stay with Ana. If it all goes to shit, head east to the border and turn yourselves over to the Omani border guards.”
“Why do I get babysitting duty?” Tim asked, slightly annoyed.
“Because you pulled watch all morning. Wally is fresh. Besides,” Nate added, “if anyone will be able to get Ana to safety if things go wrong, it’s you.”
Tim shrugged. “Guess that’s what I get for being dependable,” he said, reluctantly handing the rifle over to Wally.
“Here,” Shane said, handing Nate the pistol.
“You’ll need this.” Nate took the weapon, pulled out the eight-round single-stack magazine and reinserted it, and then pulled the slide back, checking for a round in the chamber.
When he was satisfied, he ensured the safety was on and placed it in the front of his waistband. He looked up at Ana and winked.
“Be right back.”
With that, he and Shane made their way down the rock face to the meeting below.
Wally crawled forward on his stomach and placed the butt of the rifle against his shoulder.
Ana wondered if he would be able to accurately hit anything from here and decided that he probably would.
She had watched them shoot several moving targets on the pirate boat without issue and this looked even closer.
Thinking about the pirates brought back several feelings she hadn’t quite worked through yet.
She was shocked at how cold and detached Nate could be after taking the lives of others, mostly because he had been so gentle and caring with her.
She never would have imagined he could be so callous when it came to killing.
It reminded her of the men she had seen all her life, the Islamic fundamentalists who killed without mercy.
It barely seemed to faze them as they beat and killed men and women alike.
It scared her as a child, and it scared her now.
“You doing alright, sister?” Tim asked as he slowly lowered himself down next to her.
“I’m okay,” she lied, brushing her hair behind her ears.
“You know, Nate’s not a bad guy.” She said nothing, only nodded, so Tim continued. “What you saw back on the boat is a defense mechanism.”
“What do you mean?” She looked up at the red-bearded man, unsure of what he was referring to.
“Men have been killing each other for thousands of years. Only those sick in the head enjoy it or feel nothing at all. The rest of us simply find ways to deal with it. So, we wrap it up in bonding, camaraderie, shows of bravado. It’s nothing new.
” Tim pulled out a Marlboro and lit it before continuing.
“Hell, armies all over the world have done it throughout time. American soldiers shaved their hair into Mohawks before the D-Day invasion of Europe. The Vikings would whip themselves into a frenzy before battle. Even the Romans, disciplined as they were, had war cries to rally the men and strengthen resolve.”
“You know a lot about history,” Ana noted, realizing for the first time that while Tim often played a simpleton, he was anything but.
“Military history,” Tim corrected, motioning at her with his cigarette. “It’s kind of a hobby.”
“The point is,” he continued, “what you’ve got to understand is that we’re not celebrating taking lives, we’re celebrating winning.
The game is violence. When you win the game, you celebrate.
Otherwise, you dwell on the death and the violence and…
let’s just say it’s not healthy. It can lead to some very dark places. ”
“Then why do it at all?” she asked, confused.
“Who knows?” Tim said. “Why do anything? Why do you study rocks and shit? Why did Nate drag us out here to this boiling hellhole in search of a lost city? It’s a calling.
Some of us are bred to be warriors. My dad served in the army, and my grandfather was a Marine during the Korean War.
Hell, the McBrides have been doing war since war began. ”
Ana said nothing, she simply stared ahead, pondering his words.
“It’s in my blood,” Tim went on. “But for guys like Nate, it’s a calling. Something compels them. For him, it’s always been about helping people. Standing up for those who can’t stand up for themselves. Do you know what the motto of the Special Forces is?”
Ana shook her head. She had never had a reason to look into it.
“De Oppresso Liber. It’s Latin for—”
“To free the oppressed,” Ana finished the sentence. Tim looked at her in surprise, and she shrugged. “I took Latin during my undergrad.”
“Well alright then,” Tim said. “So you understand the sentiment. We do bad things to bad people before they get the chance to do worse things to good people. And that’s why someone like Nate comes into this job.
Not to kill, but to help people. And that’s it.
It’s not any more complicated than that. ”
Ana didn’t know what to say. Tim had taken something so complex that she couldn’t wrap her head around it and translated it into a very simple concept.
She remembered what Nate had told her on the boat about the obligation he felt to serve simply because he’d had the ability to, and she suddenly felt very sheepish.
She had essentially accused Nate of being a heartless murderer, when in fact the opposite was true.
He had a big heart, and he had spent a decade putting his own life on the line to fight for people who had no one else to champion them.
She smiled. That was the man she thought she had gotten to know over the last week. A good man.
“Don’t you ever get tired of it?” she asked Tim.
“Oh, of course,” he said. “You like doing it, the same way an Olympic gymnast likes to compete in the games. You train your whole life for something, and you’re one of the best in the world at it.
So you enjoy doing what you’re good at. Only, instead of gymnastics, our game is war.
But you can only do it for so long. Eventually the pressure catches up to you. ”
“Is that what happened to you?” she asked gingerly.
“I don’t know,” he said, shrugging it off.
“Maybe… I lost a lot of friends in these same sands. Same with the other guys. But it wasn’t for a purpose.
They never really wanted us to win this one.
And for guys like Nate, there were people to help, but he couldn’t do anything for them.
To lose so many friends over something like that… it was crushing. For all of us.”
Ana felt her eyes misting and she looked away, blinking rapidly to make the moisture dissipate. She wished Nate had told her this. It changed everything. But she knew why he hadn’t. It wasn’t in his character.
“Thank you, Tim,” she said, leaning over and kissing him on the cheek. He winked at her.
“Keep that up, sister, and I’ll tell you whatever you want.” She laughed.
Looking down, she could see that three pickup trucks had pulled up and watched several armed men pile out.
Shane was talking to them with Nate nearby.
She noticed Nate’s hand was hanging around his belt line and she prayed he wouldn’t need to draw the pistol she knew was stashed there.
Her prayers were answered when the Arab men shook hands with the two Americans and then all crammed into one truck and drove off, leaving two loaded vehicles behind.
When they disappeared, Nate waved the rest of them down.
Ana got to her feet and moved toward the rock face.
She climbed down between Tim and Wally, both men being overly cautious to ensure she didn’t fall.
Her talk with Tim had been extremely enlightening and had given her a different view not only of Nate, but of all of them.
She was beginning to notice little things she had missed before, like how they went out of their way to keep her from slipping down the rock face, or how they had given her extra room in the cramped fish truck.
Or how they fed her water to keep her hydrated.
There was no doubt these were very rough men, but they were also gentlemen.
“Well, we’ve got two Toyota Hiluxes, enough fuel to travel maybe seven hundred and fifty miles, and food and water to match. And the best part…” Shane walked over to the back of one truck and held a rifle in the air.
“Holy shit,” Tim yelled. “Is that a fucking Mosin-Nagant?”
“It is,” Shane said. “Deadliest sniper rifle in history, used by Simo Hayha, a Finnish soldier in WWII who had over five hundred kills using a variant of it. And we’ve got four of them.”
“It’s not top of the line, and we don’t have any glass,” he continued, “but it should give us some standoff. We’ve also got some ancient AKs and enough ammo to start a small war.”
“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” Nate said. “We’ve still got half a day left, so let’s load up and try to make up some ground. It’s a hundred miles to the border, and I’d like to be in Saudi by nightfall.”
Ana walked up to Nate, stood on her toes, and gave him a quick peck on the lips. He looked down at her confused, then smiled.
“What was that for?”
“I’ll tell you later,” she said, returning the smile.