Bright light radiated through his eyelids, diffusing to a soft orange glow as it filtered down to his retinas. A breeze floated over him, tinged with sea salt and a mildly sweet scent he could not identify. Images of gauzy white curtains fluttering in a spring breeze came to his mind. Vaguely familiar sounds filled the air. Groggy, he lay still, leaving his eyes closed, trying get his bearings. He was obviously still alive. His arms, shoulders, and back felt like the bones had been replaced by rusty iron bars strung together with worn-out rubber bands. A constant ringing sang in his ears, a never-ending, unpleasantly singular note that was extremely irritating and sounded as though it were outside of his head. A door creaked open followed by a shuffle of feet on a tile floor.
“Oops, it seems you’ve knocked your monitor leads off,” said a young woman’s voice in English. “Let’s get those back on your arm here.”
Karl felt someone take hold of his left forearm and press something sticky onto it. He tried to open his eyes, but they seemed heavy, eyelids swollen and thick.
The voice continued, “Well, are you coming around yet? Hmm. Doesn’t look like it. But I think soon. You know, she really is a lucky lady to have such a cute guy like you. I hope you pull through for her sake. Get some rest and...”
The words lost their clarity, drifted away on the sweet breeze, then went totally out again for some unknowable length of time. He found himself sitting in a cave. A dark cave in a mountain. Somewhere in a deep mountain. It was warm, and comfortable, but very dark. So dark he couldn’t see the floor or the walls. He wasn’t even sure if there was a floor or walls. He could not feel anything under him. He wondered what he was sitting on and thought that it was an odd place. In spite of the strangeness of it and the deep darkness, he was not afraid. He was perfectly calm.
“Karl, you can get up now. Don’t you think you’ve slept enough, my friend?”
He heard Liam’s deep brogue, a comforting baritone voice. The giant Irishman was smiling at him and pointing to a door that seemed to hang in the middle of the air. Karl could see no wall into which it was set, but knew it was solid nonetheless.
“Grandmother sends her regards, but says you aren’t required here yet. Wake up and get back out there. You’ve got more to do. I will see you later, I am sure, but not for a while. You’ve got to take care of that young woman. She is hoping for you to wake up soon. She needs you.”
Karl stared in puzzled silence. He could not think of anything to say.
“By the way, tell that fuzzy Persian that he had better mind his way a bit. They like the jokes here, but he best not waste his second chance. You’d better be waking up now. Semper Fidelis, my friend. Semper Fidelis.”
Liam turned his massive body and strode gracefully out of Karl’s sight, into the deep darkness of the warm cave. With smooth finesse, the massively muscled Royal Marine Major, an MI6 Commando, walked like a ballet dancer, a giant, perfectly graceful ballet dancer.
The darkness of the cave faded, slowly replaced by the light of the sun that danced warmly on Karl’s face. He tried to open his eyes, and this time, though still feeling puffy and sore, they parted successfully. The light was too bright, and he waited for his eyes to adjust. A bird sang a happy lilting tune outside the window. Beyond the bird, he heard many voices in random chatter. The noise of the conversations sounded like it was in motion. It was like a crowd of people milling around, moving in various directions, every mouth speaking in distant, barely discernible words.
His eyes slowly started to translate the light and images around him into something understandable. Nearby someone sniffed. Then a male voice spoke in French.
“Is he waking up?”
A woman responded, “I think so. He seems to be responding this time.”
Something soft stroked his left cheek. He opened his eyes wider and shapes slowly came into focus. A familiar face floated above him. The most beautiful face he had ever seen. Esther smiled radiantly. The blood and filth was gone from her smooth tanned skin. Her right arm hung in a sling, and a thick bundle of dressings and bandages wound around her shoulder. Several light bruises marked her cheek and her brow, but the radiance of her face, the glow of her eyes, overpowered the damage.
“Bon matin, monsieur.” Her mouth softly parted with a smile that revealed clean white teeth. Her eyes sparkled in the sunlight as she looked tenderly down into his face.
“Are you alive,” he started, “or am I in heaven? I just saw Liam.”
“Sorry to let you down, buddy, this ain’t heaven. It ain’t Kansas either. For that matter, it ain’t New York, Dayton, or freaking Phoenix either. And, with a big hallelujah and a mighty praise God, I do declare it certainly ain’t Iran! Of course, it probably doesn’t matter where it is to you, since you seem intent on sleeping through the next century.”
That Midwestern voice was familiar. Karl stiffly turned his head towards its source and stared in confused shock. Kharzai stood a few feet away, grinning wildly with a childlike glimmer of mischief in his eyes.
“I saw you die, again. How are you here?” Karl asked.
“Funny thing about that. I guess I am kind of catlike in regards to the whole nine lives thing. When Liam got hit, I reached over and grabbed the detonator from him. I clicked the switch and all seven of those planes went up at the same time. It was a huge explosion and I certainly didn’t expect to make it.”
He dramatized with wide arm gestures and exaggerated facial expressions. “The wind storm picked up and blasted us with a huge hurricane force gust at the same time. It blew like mad at the precise moment the flames shot out of those planes as they exploded. The next thing I know, I am waking up, half-buried in sand, with a bunch of crispy critters that vaguely resembled the Army of the Republic of Iran spread out all over the place. Liam’s body wasn’t burned either. Seems the wind carried the fireball forward and right into all those guys who were trying to make my day go badly. I got a few nasty little owies, but nothing a bit of Neosporin and a few beers won’t fix.”
“What about Liam,” asked Karl.
“Sorry to say, my best buddy is dead. He was gone before the explosion. That modern-day Goliath must have taken forty rounds to the chest before he went down. He just kept getting up and taking more of those fools with him.” Kharzai’s smile faded, his eyes dimming in a faint glimmer of painful remorse. “I hated to lose him. He sure took a lot of them with him, though. If those soldiers had any sense, they would’ve left him alive; he did less harm all the years of his life when he was walking around than he did in those last few minutes. I will say it was the best way for a Marine like Liam to go. It was the way he wanted to go.
“Too bad for his wife and kids. They’ll miss him, I am sure. At least MI6 has a pretty good package for the families of their fallen warriors, so at least she won’t have to worry about making ends meet for a while.”
Karl tried to get comfortable in the bed. He grunted and winced in pain as he reached back to adjust the pillow behind his head. Esther helped him get it in a better position with her one good arm. He smiled at her then continued questioning Kharzai.
“So how did you get here?”
Kharzai motioned with the first and middle fingers of one hand, pointing down and alternately flicking them back and forth, then replied with a matter of fact tone, “I walked. It wasn’t too far, and I needed the exercise. Actually, I only walked part of the way, then I got tired and ‘borrowed’ a truck and drove to the border, which is where I happened upon the guys who found you.”
“How long have I been out?”
“Four days and six hours,” came a crisp reply from across the room.
Karl turned his head to the source of the voice, the sinews of his neck resisting like he was bending steel bars. From a corner stepped a Marine officer in a short-sleeved bravo uniform of khaki shirt and green wool trousers. Two silver stars flashed brightly from each side of his collar as the sunlight struck them. The tall, physically fit man looked as though he was probably about Karl’s age, maybe a couple years older.
The general crossed the room to stand beside Karl’s bed. He put a hand on his shoulder and said, “Mr. Alexander, it seems your little adventure happened just in time. I’m Major General Kevin Arlington, USMC. The Marines who picked you up in the desert were an advance recon unit, probing a trail for the invasion force.”
He waved his hand, motioning to Karl’s companions. “Esther and Kharzai told us what happened. Had you not stopped that nuclear kamikaze, who knows what may have resulted. He was headed straight for the port city of Gwadar. Although we had scrambled fighters, we had no idea what that plane was carrying. For all we knew, he was a defector running from the coming fight. On account of the lack of specific information related to what was on that plane, the politicians refused us permission to cross into Iran and shoot him down ourselves.”
The general paused, fixing his firm gaze into Karl’s eyes. “We found the remains of that aircraft and discovered that the warhead he had was pretty large. Large enough that he only had to be within a mile or so of the city for it to destroy a lot of human beings. If that jet had come just a little closer to the city, tens of thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands of people, soldiers and civilians alike, would have died. You saved a whole bunch of folks out there...again.”
He stood silently for a moment and looked at Karl intensely.
Karl looked at his eyes and had a brief recollection of something in the past.
“Have we met before?” he asked the general.
“Myanmar, 1985. I was a scout sniper, a mere captain in rank at the time, temporarily attached to Project Delta for a mission against the Soviets that turned into a whole lot more. My code name on that mission was Vulture Two. And as I recall, there was a rather youthfully exuberant Harrier pilot dubbed Eagle One who frustrated the plans of a young Arab sheik by the name of bin Laden and barely escaped being eaten by a tiger one fine afternoon in October.”
Karl’s eyes widened in amazement. “Wow. To think we both survived that, so that you could save my life a second time.”
“Pretty crazy, isn’t it? And here we are, same thing all over. Just a different place, but at least this time, someone else got to do all the walking.” He pointed his thumb at Kharzai, who stood on the opposite side of the bed, still grinning.
“Man, this is like old home day.” Kharzai wiped his eyes exaggeratedly and raised his arms in a melodramatic flourish. “I just love listening to old farts like you two reminisce about the way the world was back when I was just playing GI Joe in grade school. I think I’m going to cry.”
The two older men chuckled at the comedic gestures.
A voice called out through a speaker mounted flush in the panels of the ceiling: “Paging General Arlington, General Arlington, urgent sitcon 4. Please come to the CCO. General Arlington, urgent sitcon 4. Please come to the CCO.”
“Well, it looks like I’ve got to get back to the war.” He reached out his hand to shake Karl’s. “Once again, good job, Marine. Outstanding work.”
“Thank you, sir,” Karl humbly replied.
The general walked to the door, reached out his arm, and pulled it halfway open, then turned back to Karl.
“You exemplify the saying, ‘Once a Marine, always a Marine.’ I am proud to serve in a corps that has built men like you. Oh, and uh, by the way, you still owe me a beer.”
Karl smiled up at him. “Fosters, if I recall. I am sure we can work that out now.”
The general stepped out of the room and into the wide hallway of the hospital. His highly polished military dress shoes echoed with a light click as he headed down the corridor back to computer screens and map-covered tables where he controlled the lives and destinies of thousands of young warriors who sat at the edge of a precipice, about to be plunged once again into the cauldron of war.
Kharzai turned and said, “Well, old buddy. I am afraid that I have got to be going on down the road too. You know how it is. I have to meet with some of my super spooky spy bosses and see where and when I can get back into the game.” He put a hand on Karl’s shoulder, his faced shifting to a calm, serious demeanor. He spoke softly, without a hint of his expected sarcasm, “You did good. I’m really proud to have met you and to have worked with you.” He paused, then added, “Oh, and uh, about what we said in the cave that first day...”
Karl looked up at him. “Yeah?”
“Most likely, we probably would not have killed you, if you had decided not to come along with us.” He grinned. Taking a few steps towards the door, he stopped and turned back to Karl. “Well, Gilles might have, but Liam and I would have protested fiercely afterwards ... probably.”
“Thanks,” Karl replied sarcastically.
Kharzai winked at Esther and then walked out of the room, whistling the holiday tune “Holly Jolly Christmas” as he stepped into the hall, breaking into a little dance as a pretty young female officer walked by him. She jumped in surprise then giggled at the antics of the flirtatious fuzzy Persian.
The door slowly pulled itself closed and clicked into place. Esther stepped nearer the bed to stand close to Karl. She stood there silently, smiling, tenderly gazing into his face. He stared back up at her, lost in the beauty of her eyes, unable to find a word to say.
Softly, she said, “You could have left me. Why didn’t you? Why did you risk your life to save me? No one but my father and brother have ever done that.”
He reached his hand out and took hers, wrapping his long, thick fingers around her delicate thin hand. “I don’t know why. I don’t know how to explain it. I just know that I had to save you. I couldn’t leave you there. I had to see you again, alive.”
She looked into his eyes, letting the words float on the air.
He inhaled as deeply as his bruised ribs allowed and put his hand on hers. “Have you ever heard of a place called Fiji?”