Lurk

Chapter Fourteen

“Get him back safe, lads...” Crawley slurred, barely managing to keep the radio steady in his hands.

The rescue rover rumbled on through the busy streets of Tehran, masked by the darkness of a cold night. Echo were taking over now, tracking down the kidnapped soldier and attempting to recover him from the enemy. As for John Crawley, he would be on his way back to Great Britain by tomorrow. He didn’t feel them, but the medics insisted that serious damage had been sustained in the blast.

“We will, sir, don’t worry. But it doesn’t appear to be an attack made by freedom fighters – the evidence suggests an unknown hostile.”

“Roger that.” Crawley dropped the radio out of his singed, bloody fingers. “Okay lads, no games; let’s just get to the barracks before I die from blood loss.”

His pulse began to slow, his skin began to pale, and the world drifted out of place. Whatever happened to the lost soldier was now in the hands of the universe. Keep breathing, Mason. Just keep breathing, and everything will work out for the best.

“Oh shit!”

The rover jolted off course, scratching the road barrier as it juddered to a halt. The passengers rocked forward, hit by an unhealthy dosage of whiplash. Crawley had been unbuckled, and fell unconscious as his head hit the back of the driver’s seat.

But with that last strand of consciousness, he heard the groaning... the deep, chilling groans coming from the distance. There was nothing he could do to escape; his mind was already falling into complete delirium.

God save us all.

“For a drugged Brit you sure don’t talk much.”

Their voices echoed and bounced off the concrete walls, reflected directly into the ears of the pain-stricken hostage. Mason winced with every word – his perpetrated eardrums would not see the end to this agony. That snide-fuelled medic told me to wear earplugs... Damn him. Actually, why stop there? Damn everyone else who’s ever existed, and damn their children. It wouldn’t take a psychiatrist to give him an accurate diagnosis: he was depressed.

It was then that Wayne came to realize the truth in what his captor had just said, with one key word answering it all: drugged. What could these terrorists have pumped him with?

“Shove your drugs up your Arabic arses.”

The comeback wasn’t one he was particularly proud of, but it didn’t seem like a time or place to be well mannered. He was still blind, but the strain his neck told him that he was facing the ground. Did it make the slightest of difference? Perhaps not, but if he was going to die, he wanted to be comfortable.

“It doesn’t have to be like this... Like all men, The Master is open to agreements.”

 Wayne was sharper to respond this time, more confident in the sound of his own croaky voice.  “Yeah, but no one that I know is enough of an arrogant twat to go by a name like that...”

“Fair enough, I guess.”

Wayne shivered: was that a chuckle he heard? At first it was repulsive, and he wondered how such a cold killer could make a humane response. He’d not been in many situations like this, but in his brief experience with the military, he’d picked up the overall idea that the enemy were in no way human. They were monsters, lead to their graves by brainwashed minds.

But just as the repulsion sparked, so did something else... a plan. If his interrogator, whom appeared not to be leading this operation, could be won over, then an escape might just be possible. But how do you relate to a terrorist? Wayne ragged his brains in furious search, trying to find the sector of his mind which allowed him to speak like a normal human being. The self-venture was short, as he suddenly found his voice.

“You speak good English for a racist Iranian,” he smiled, shoulders clicking in reminder of his lengthy stay. “What did you say your name was, sir?”

Oh god, did I just say “sir”? He’s gonna see straight through that, dickhead. But by some spark of a miracle, it worked.

“I go by Omar around here, really. You need to be straight-to-the-point in this line of work, and having to phonetically spell out ‘Omar Faruk Bashir’ every time I speak to a foreigner gets tiring.”

Wayne forced himself not to mutter anything which might give him away – he was beaming with victory underneath the bruised shell of his body, and needed to channel it out of his mind in some way or another.

There was a whole list of things that a soldier was meant to recite during a crisis such as a hostage situation, but that had been one of the many things that passed Wayne’s naive attention during basic training. It hadn’t seemed likely that he’d ever be kidnapped; never mind in the second year of his service.

“You got any kids, Omar – a wife, maybe?”

He could hear the sound of a penny dropping. Screw the list, this lad’s crumbling. It hadn’t taken long, but the weak point of this presumably rifle-bearing terrorist had been unveiled. There was no reply, so Mason decided to act on his own initiative.

What do you do when you’ve got a gun to your head, and no options? You lie.

He swallowed some saliva before starting his railroad of deception. “I’ve got three kids, myself. Twin girls and a little lad called Joey. They’re such nice kids, you know? Most innocent blighters I’ve ever known.” Lies, lies, lies. You devious bastard! Has he bought it so far? You’d better keep it going. “In fact, I used to have four. But that was before...”

Whatever had triggered it, Omar was now in Mason’s palm.

“What do you mean? Did something happen to one of them?”

He didn’t want to tempt fate, but Wayne could see no other way forward. Sucking air through his teeth, he delivered the knockout blow. “It wasn’t my fault, or nothing. One day, when I was coming back from the pub, I saw the ambulance parked outside our bungalow. And my wife... she was sat on the doorstep, crying. The walls of the house were burned to shit, the windows smashed, and just about everything we owned was just a pile of ash.”

“So it was some local hooligans? Petrol bombs, that sort thing?”

“No.” An actual tear spouted from the liar’s left eye, but was not caused by this terrible miscarriage of truth. He was crying at the loss of his integrity, and for having unintentionally malicious harm on his family.

Sure, he’d told Omar of a fantasy family, but it didn’t hide the fact that the honourable Pvt. Wayne Mason had sabotaged his role as the father... and for what? He would never be able to look at his son in the eyes again, knowing that there was the slightest chance in the world that little Harvey could have been endangered on that day.

You never give details of family, not unless you have none. That was one of the main lessons and you fucking forgot it! Just let the bastard Omar put that gun in your face and pull the damn trigger. Wayne Mason, you don’t deserve your name - never mind your family.

Instead of continuing his trail of lies, Wayne sat in uncomfortable silence. The tears dried up as Omar’s voice returned, having been forgotten amidst the mess of memories.

“Okay, Mason – I’m going to help you. But you’d better not try any funny business, or we’ll both be dead within minutes.”

“Isn’t he watching?”

“I don’t think there are any cameras – that’s why he gave me an earpiece. It’s switched off though, so we should be okay for now.”

Wayne tensed his heart muscles. How can you be that naive? He’d been resigned to death, but since he had nothing to lose, Mason decided to grasp the opportunity to escape. Allowing the cuffs around his wrists to be unlocked, the guilt-ridden father-of-one prepared for a glorious and brutal escape.

“I can’t say sorry enough for the blindfold – it’s best if you don’t know what it’s covered in.”

Wayne forced a sarcastic smile. Brilliant.