The Fates (Book II)

9.4 - The Blur of War

He reached for the remote and changed the channel, hoping that a soundtrack of something other than battle cries and gunshots, before falling asleep, might help to clear his mind of wartime thoughts. As he ought to have expected, it did not.

A.D. 2012

"So this is the enemy's most lethal weapon?" Westin Ambrose — as ever, hungover — asked his commander, squinting at the strange picture presented to him and his team before they embarked on their mission. "Some sort of... monster from a storybook or something?"

Chief never found Wes's antics amusing. "This is the sketch produced from a description given by the sole surviving veteran from the previous operation," he stated, referring to the former Navy SEAL — now a recovering patient who had lost one arm and half a leg — who lived to tell the tale of the last failed attempt to rescue Simon and the other prisoners of war kept in the most treacherous stretch of enemy territory. "And she ain't no weapon, boys. She is the enemy."

Ryder, Eldor, Grant, and even Wes listened with intent interest as their commander went on to explain. As all of them already knew, the first rescue mission had been derailed when most of the team was killed in what seemed to have been a sudden explosion. The last words recorded on the team leader's radio transmission, spoken as he approached the area of imprisonment, just seconds before the explosion, had been: "injured civ — small girl — gonna get her to safety."

Initially, the U.S. forces had made nothing of this. Just an unfortunate but insignificant coincidence, that good soldiers had died while trying to rescue an injured civilian. But after the second operation failed for very similar reasons, and after the sole survivor from that mission woke from his coma and shared some vital information, the U.S. had realized its grave mistake.

"We're goddamned lucky fυckers that this guy survived, I tell you. Lucky motherfυckers," Chief proclaimed. "Because of him, we know that this 'small girl' is in fact a full-grown woman who singlehandedly blew the brains out of umpteen SEALs on two consecutive missions. He told us all about how, after crying out for help, she hurled grenades out at our men as they approached. Bitch is just petite; this guy got close enough to see. That's why she looked like a kid from far away."

"But what the fυck's up with her face?" Wes butted in without grace, waving his hand at the mess of grotesquely deformed features depicted in the sketch. Scaly skin, eyes bulging, stray strands of hair a scraggly mess as if patches of her scalp had been burnt off of her head.

The commander shrugged. "Beats me — I guess that's part of her supposed injury, but honestly, who gives a shıt. Maybe she's born with it."

"Maybe it's Maybelline," Wes trilled in singsong tones below his breath. The whispered jingle earned him a sharp elbow jab from the paragon of virtue seated next to him.

"Some cultures are known to perform mutilation, especially on women," Eldor in all his noble seriousness put in. "Perhaps in certain cases, that brutal practice extends to severe facial disfigurement."

"By God's balls, Eldor, you're a damn good soldier and the whole fυcking world knows it, but sometimes you gotta spare us all your high-horse crap and stuff it up your ass," Chief chided. "Like I said — who gives a shıt."

Ryder flexed his jaw and bit his tongue. For one, he did. He felt for the poor girl; no matter how deadly her actions might be, one who suffered from such deformities deserved some sympathy. Even if it wasn't relevant for the purposes of this mission, shıt was to be given.

"The point is that you boys won't be walking blind into a goddamn booby trap," the commander declared. "As far as we know, the enemy's got no clue that one of our men survived to tell us all this bitch's tricks, so we've got the advantage this time. You've got the advantage. Don't fυck this shıt up, or else — well, then you'll all be dead, so what the hell!"

And so the boys went in determined not to fυck it up. When the day of the mission arrived and they all dove headfirst into the heart of danger, the entire operation was a mad blur, like a bloody sequence from a war movie simultaneously set to pause and fast forward — each second lasted for forever, and yet in the blink of an eye, it was all over.

Some things in the blur of war were forgotten before they even happened, because they had to be, at least for soldiers who still clung to their humanity. Some things would never be forgotten, not until they clawed away at every last trace of a soldier's godforsaken sanity.

Saving Simon was the sort of harrowing tragedy that fell into both categories. The sorry shadow of a man, scarcely a ghost, found by his brothers in the blur of all the bloodshed, carried away to safety as he sobbed and shrieked, lungs hoarse from shouting one thing over and over again — three syllables with no apparent meaning: 'Madusha'.

Killing the disfigured woman was the sort of thing that was supposed to fit firmly in the first category: a thing to be forgotten. Even if shıt was to be given, giving a shıt in the moment would get in the way of the mission. After catching sight of the decoy and hearing her cries, the SEALs had held their fire till the moment they had seen her hand raised, certain that it contained a grenade. Ryder was the one whose gunshot had first struck her. The one who had killed her.

In doing so, he had saved many lives — his own, most of his team's, some of the prisoners'. But he learned later on that her name was Madusha, and that he would never forget how much her life had mattered... once he learned the truth about her...

A.D. 2015

"Honey? Honey, are you okay?"

Ryder woke in a cold sweat, to a pair of eyes too similar to the pale gaze of the brother he had lost, on that same goddamned day... he tried to blink that memory away — losing Grant was the stuff of other nightmares. Even if some nightmares never stopped, they struck the hardest when he slept, so even at this hour in the dead of night, Ryder was glad to be awake.

Lacey clasped his hand and leant in close to comfort him. "We don't have to stay."

He wasn't sure, right now, whether he wanted to or not; somehow, in spite of everything, his heart urged him to stay in Greece, even when every fiber of his mind pushed him away.

So instead of deciding, for now he just reassured his wife with the lie that he was okay. Hoping in vain that maybe he would be, someday.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Any thoughts, feels, about the flashback? :/   (of course, more of this backstory will be revealed later on!)

Guesses as to whether or not the Campions will stick around? ;)

Next scene, we'll head back to B.C. with Cloe and Chrysaor, on their way to rejoin Rider...

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