He sees stars for a moment as he lies pinned on the sand, a heavy weight sprawled across his body. He quickly clears his head and assesses the situation in a heartbeat.
The man hoists Sean off the sand and attempts to wrangle his hands behind his back, as if to handcuff him, but Sean's reaction is too quick for that. He painfully twists one of the man's arms out away from them, and with as much force as he can muster, slams his elbow backward, connecting squarely with the soldier's jaw. The blow does not break the man's jaw, but it unquestionably inflicts some damage. The man actually appears more stunned than hurt, for perhaps he thinks this fleeing man is simply an ordinary civilian, running scared and feeling helpless.
Sean surprises him again by pulling the man's head close and turning him around so that Sean is directly behind him. He thrusts one arm across the soldier's throat and the other across the top of his head and he begins to twist.
There is so much raw emotion coursing through Sean that he can no longer control himself. He wants answers and he wants them now!
“Where are they?” Sean whispers menacingly in the man's ear. “What happened to them?”
The man emits a strangled cry. Fearing he will alert the others, Sean makes one final twist, snapping the man's neck.
The man falls limp to the ground. Sean quickly drags the lifeless body towards the edge of the path where the woods begin. He covers the man as best he can with the available branches and leaves around him, and then scurries up into the hills. He hastily scans the surrounding area for signs this episode has been witnessed, but Sean does not see anyone in the vicinity.
Someone up there still likes me, he thinks.
Sean moves like a soldier again, like the men on the beach only minutes before. He is absolutely furious at himself and the man he killed. He did not want to hurt him, but he felt he had limited options under the circumstances. It was a matter of survival, of soldierly instincts suddenly awakened. His emotions burst forth as if a dam had broke, allowing all the rage and hatred to pour out. His fury is a result of the confusion engulfing him. What he has witnessed here tonight is not intended for his eyes. Indeed, he does not know if what he has seen is intended for anyone's eyes.
Sean knows he must escape from here and find someone he trusts. He cannot go to his parents’ house in Chicago or to any other relatives. It would risk placing them in mortal danger. He knows two men he can trust with his life in a situation like this and—
KABOOM!
Another explosion from the beach rips through the night air, causing him to jump. A moment later, he hears a sound from the road below that snakes around the small town. He struggles through the dense woods and underbrush, trying to make as little noise as possible, and arrives at the edge of a hill, where he looks down upon the road.
Sean spots three large, dark trucks rumbling down the street towards the beach. Each of them possesses a green canopy behind the cab of the truck, masking their cargo. Neither Sean nor anyone else could imagine the horrific contents the trucks are carrying, let alone their true purpose. To the majority of people, they would think it the most grotesque, twisted, utterly contemptible thing they have ever heard. To a small minority, it is simply business as usual.
Sean turns and begins to make his way, like a ghost, through the darkness.
* * *
When he was informed of what occurred on the beach, he wept in agony.
They had not been warned! Something must have happened.
The tears of sadness that ran down his cheeks, however, no sooner turned to tears of joy when he was told the man – without his family – escaped from the beach and fled into the surrounding woods, like a mouse ducking the predatory cat. A slight feeling of hope blossomed within him and he quietly applauded.
FOUR
Colonel Malcolm Fizer is a tidy man, a man that does not care for loose ends, like Jonathan Kaley. Unlike Sergeant Kaley, Colonel Fizer knows when to obey orders – always. There are no ifs, ands, buts, gray areas or room for interpretation in the military. There is only the strict chain-of-command. This is a chain that can never be broken or circumvented, a chain that is the backbone on which the brass in the military relies upon and has complete and utter trust in. It is a foundation so solidly built upon for hundreds of years that no one man is above it. Not a four-star general or an infantryman, and certainly not Sergeant Kaley.
Colonel Fizer likes Jonathan Kaley because he is a dedicated soldier and believes in the righteousness of the United States military. On the other hand, Kaley is also unafraid to speak his mind to his superior officers or second-guess their judgment. It has certainly put him in hot water on more than one occasion, which explains his current assignment at Evans.
Kaley was in the Army intelligence business for years, first as an analyst and then, after receiving reconnaissance and combat training and being schooled in stealth warfare, as an operative in the field. He earned high marks from his superiors in all areas of these missions: planning and organization, execution, objectives attained. There was only one aspect that seemed to rankle the top brass more than anything about Kaley: his constant questioning of orders. Regardless of what the orders dictated, Kaley always seemed to believe there was a better way of doing it. Namely, his way. Despite the fact that he was often right, this still did not justify Kaley's actions in the eyes of his superiors.
Although the brass viewed Kaley's hesitancy in carrying out certain orders to be bordering on insubordination, they put up with him because he was one of the best and he always seemed to achieve his mission objectives. Nevertheless, his superiors did not take too kindly to Kaley's brashness, and their tolerance of him was rapidly coming to an end. By that time, they were simply looking for an excuse to kick his ass to the curb.
Then, they found their opportunity. Kaley and several of his colleagues were conducting training exercises with a Special Forces squad based out of Georgia, a group that made Kaley and his team look like a bunch of librarians. The Special Forces squad was showing Kaley and his men new stealth techniques, as well as the latest in military gadgets and hardware.
On the third day of these training maneuvers, the Special Forces squad brought Kaley and his team to a small island off the coast for what they believed to be a P.O.W. rescue operation exercise. Instead, Kaley's team arrived to find a group of enemy combatants, real enemy combatants, who had been in the custody of the military since shortly after 9/11.
The patriotic fervor that gripped the nation after that fateful day had a different effect on the men in this Special Forces squad. Their patriotic zeal had turned jingoistic, which happened to a number of Americans during this time, although they may be reluctant to admit it. Every man with dark, Middle Eastern features and every woman who wears a hijab is instantly an enemy, real or imagined. The men in this squad saw only red when it came to these people, and they were determined to extract confessions, terror plots, or more names from them, whether the prisoners knew anything or not.
By the time Kaley's team arrived, it appeared that many of the enemy combatants had already been worked over. What was worse, however, was that the Special Forces squad seemed to take a truly perverse pleasure in these “interrogations.” This was not a good cop, bad cop routine - this was strictly bad cop. After one of the soldiers broke a prisoner's nose, another soldier tried to break it back the way it was, to no avail. Questions were asked sparingly, as an afterthought to the actual beatings, as if they needed an excuse to use the prisoners as human piñatas. No matter what the answers, it seemed inevitable that they would be greeted with a violent response.
Then, the Special Forces’ men started berating Kaley's team for their hesitancy, their shock and awe at the brutal beatings, and even questioned his team's patriotism. They called Kaley and his men candyasses and pussies, and lectured them that this is the way the world works now: everyone is a terrorist until proven otherwise. And to find each and every terrorist, you have to beat it out of them.
Finally, Kaley