Final Crossing: A Novel of Suspense (12 page)

No answer.

The rifle barrel floated in the doorway in front of Jonas. Inside, the boy laughed, and then taunted Jonas in heavily accented English.

“American.
Here
, American.”

Another door opened, directly across from the boy. Another rifle barrel emerged. More laughing.

“Come
death
, American.”

Jonas felt the situation growing out of control. He had no idea how many armed Somalis were inside this building, and he started to realize that running in here without support was a mistake.

Fuck the sniper, he thought. Get Sonman and get out. Stupid place to die.

A flash before him.

The boy took a shot without exposing anything but his arms. The shot was wildly inaccurate, driving deep into the concrete ceiling far from Jonas, but there would be more. Jonas had no choice. He aimed at the exposed flesh and fired a single round.

The boy screamed as the bullet tore through his forearm.

His weapon crashed onto the hallway floor.

The baby kept crying upstairs. “Sonman!” Jonas shouted.

No answer.

Jonas remained in position. The screaming boy-soldier howled from within his room.

“Asad! Asad!”

The voice came from the other room off the hallway. From the holder of the second rifle.

“Asad!”

Jonas assumed Asad was the wounded boy’s name. Asad kept screaming.

The baby upstairs kept crying.

Jonas saw what would happen next. It was too predictable, and it was a fucking shame.

Asad’s friend would go to help Asad. But by running across the hallway, he would expose himself to the American, which was a great risk. His only hope to help his friend was to kill the American and then comfort Asad.

Jonas waited for it. It would happen. He wished it wouldn’t. He wanted to walk away, but that wasn’t protocol.

The boy jumped into the hallway. He was about the same age as Asad. Just a kid. Just a fucking kid. With an assault rifle pointed directly at Jonas.

The boy let out a howl of rage, his brilliant white teeth shining against his coal black skin.

Jonas fired once.

The bullet hit the boy in his shirtless chest. He collapsed in a lifeless heap before firing a shot. Instant death.

Asad screamed louder.

“Nadif! Nadif!”

The baby no longer cried upstairs.

Nadif was motionless. Blood pooled on the concrete beneath him.

“Fuck,” Jonas muttered. It was his first kill in-country. It was his first kill
ever
. And it was a boy. “
Fuck.
”

Go, he told himself. Place could be swarming with belligerents in a matter of seconds. Get the hell out of here.

First get Sonman.

Jonas grabbed his radio.

“Two-five this is two-six. Over.”

“Two-six I read you. Over.”

“In pursuit of sniper and receiving resistance. I’m anticipating more soon, so I’m going to find Sonman and fall back until support arrives. ETA? Over.”

“Roger that, two-six. Fall back as necessary. Support is on foot about seven blocks west of your position but are encountering their own resistance. ETA within fifteen. Am requesting bird support and will let you know. Over.”

Asad’s screams were now whimpers. Jonas saw his twitching arm reach into the hallway.

“Roger, two-five. I also have a wounded boy here on the second level of this building. If possible, medical support requested.”
That’s not going to happen
, he thought to himself. “Over.”

“Copy, two-six. Out.”

Jonas clipped the radio back to his shoulder. Hot dust sparkled and danced in the hallway, illuminated by stray beams of light from cracks in the walls. He turned and headed up the stairs behind him, knowing violence could come from any direction. He kept his gun trained in the direction he walked: forward and up.

It was library-quiet now; even Asad ceased his suffering wails. Probably succumbed to shock, Jonas thought.

He climbed the stairs quickly but not carelessly. The stairs gave way into another empty hallway, the top floor of the small building. Like the floor below, the hall extended for about fifty feet, with two doors on each side of the corridor. Enough for four small apartments, which in the Mog was a concrete room with no kitchen or running water.

Jonas crouched and leaned against the corridor wall. He had no idea what room, if any, Sonman was in. He also didn’t know who else might be waiting in the rooms for him. Waiting to kill.

“Sonman!”

The shout ricocheted off the concrete walls. Silence. Jonas shimmied along the wall until he reached the first door on the left. The sniper would have shot from one of the two rooms on this side of the corridor, he knew. He also knew the unpainted, brittle wood door would give little resistance against his Army boots.

He kicked in the door and readied his rifle.

The room was empty save a balled up blanket sitting in the middle of the dirty floor. Closed wooden shutters adorned the far wall of the room. No shell casings on the ground. If the sniper had been in this room, he’d bothered to clean up before leaving. Possible.

He considered yelling Sonman’s name again, but decided against it. The first shout was loud enough for the soldier to have heard. Sonman was either no longer in the building or was incapacitated. Giving away his own position wouldn’t do Jonas any good, so he remained quiet as he crept to the next door.

The second door on the left was similar to the first. There was one difference with this room, however: Jonas heard something inside. The sound was neither loud nor constant, but someone was definitely inside. It sounded like...like an animal. Growling.

Jonas squeezed his eyes shut for a second, steadying his nerves. He then took a deep breath and counted to three in his head.

He kicked in the door, which splintered as it flew open. Jonas immediately crouched and aimed his rifle, but he couldn’t understand what his targets were supposed to be.

In fact, his brain couldn’t process what he was seeing at all. “
Sonman...
”

Jonas breathed the name, but he didn’t hear himself. He didn’t hear anything. There was too much already in his head, overwhelming his senses. He felt his brain wanting to shut down, to reverse the last few seconds and replay it with a new ending. But the human machine is a wondrous thing, and Jonas’s was particularly fine-tuned. Despite what he was seeing, Jonas was able to take command of himself and function with the training drilled so deeply in him.

“Sonman! Drop your weapon!” Jonas pointed his rifle directly at Sonman’s helmetless skull. Willfully aiming a loaded weapon at a fellow soldier was something that you never, ever did, unless the situation was so out of control that the safety of other members of the unit or innocents was in immediate jeopardy.

Sonman, crouched on the floor, twisted his head toward Jonas and exposed his teeth in a snarl. Maybe it was a smile. It was hard to tell with all the blood covering his mouth.

And there was something—

In Sonman’s mouth. He was biting it, and his crimson lips parted up and around it, exposing his pink teeth.

“Jesus Christ, Sonman...
what did you do?
”

Jonas took a step forward. A man and woman lay in the northeast corner of the room, their awkward positioning and pools of blood beneath their heads enough clue to convince Jonas they were dead.

Jonas trained his weapon tighter on his target, but then was momentarily distracted by something on the floor just a few feet to his right. He stared at it for a split second and knew the image would haunt him the rest of his life.

A baby, or what was left of it, was on its stomach, its naked skin seeming to melt into the concrete floor. In the single second Jonas had spent looking at it, half of the time was consumed by the thought that it couldn’t be a
real
child. It was a toy, wasn’t it? A doll of the most horrifying kind, the kind that rose from the depths of sweat-filled and drugladen night terrors. In the last half of that second, Jonas told himself it was real, because it was bleeding, and dolls don’t do that. Bleeding from the stump of a tiny black neck that had once and for too short a time held a head to it. A flick of his eyes was all Jonas needed to find the head, just a few feet away, its eyes still open and mouth pursed in an eternal suckle. Jonas didn’t know if it was a little boy or little girl, and he didn’t want to know.

Sweat poured down his face and he felt bile rise in his throat as he looked back at Sonman. The man was growling.

Time slowed. Jonas’s peripheral vision disappeared, but what he could see directly in front of him he did with almost supernatural ability. He could see the gleam of the sunlight in the individual droplets of sweat peppering Sonman’s face. Jonas could barely get out a whisper.

“Sonman...fuck...what did you do?”

Sonman spit at Jonas, and out from his mouth flew a small black chunk, which slapped against the floor near Jonas’s feet.

Jonas looked down. An ear.

A girl—no older than five, Jonas guessed—was pinned beneath Sonman, and from all visual evidence the soldier had just bitten her ear off. She didn’t move. Jonas didn’t see any other obvious wound on her, though the blood pouring from the hole on the side of her head made that kind of assessment almost impossible.

Her eyes weren’t just open. They screamed, stretched to the point of bursting.
Why is this happening to me?
her look said.

“It’s what I’m supposed to do,” Sonman sputtered, his words stifling what almost sounded like a laugh. “The sign... outside. It was a message.”

Jonas’s hands felt numb from the surge in adrenaline. He struggled to steady his rifle. “Disengage, soldier. That’s a direct order.”

But Sonman was too far gone, Jonas knew. The soldier had detached, like an old frayed shoelace pulled just a bit too hard. He had heard such stories, of course. It was all part of warfare. Guys go crazy all the time, and their craziness takes all sorts of shapes and sizes. But he had never heard of anything like this. And this...it was just sniper fire. Certainly enough to stoke large flames of fear and adrenaline, but
insanity
? As Sonman breathed heavily through wet, bloody lips, Jonas tensed his finger on the trigger of his weapon.

“
Now, soldier.
”

“Not done yet.” Sonman slowly reached for the large knife on the floor, the one that already had blood on it. Baby blood.

“Don’t you grab that knife, soldier.” Jonas realized he wasn’t calling Sonman by his name. He was already disengaging from the relationship, because he knew that, in the next few seconds, he was going to shoot him.

The girl wasn’t dead, but she wasn’t moving. Paralyzed from fear, Jonas thought. He could see her chest moving up and down in short, tight bursts as she breathed like a rabbit caught in the jaws of a coyote.

Sonman’s wet fingers squeezed the handle of the blade. “Disengage, Private!”

Sonman paused, his eyes wide.

There was a moment, a fraction, an opportunity. Jonas could save him. Goddamn it, he could save him.

Jonas could barely hear his own voice. “Don’t do it. Jesus Christ, don’t do it. We can stop this now.” He tried to steady the frenzied rhythm of his heart. “Let me take you back. It doesn’t have to happen like this.”

And for a moment, Jonas thought it would happen. Sonman’s eyes widened even further, as if something Jonas said resonated. But the moment didn’t last. The detached mind serves only itself and doesn’t bother with things like reason. It only had one direction and one speed, and logic wouldn’t veer it off its course. Sonman pushed himself a few inches off the floor. Not to get up, but to give him more power to bring the tip of the Army-issue fighting blade into the chest of the little girl.

That’s when Jonas fired.

He felt no shame or fear from doing so. He didn’t want to kill his fellow soldier, and in fact aimed his rifle so he likely wouldn’t, but if Private Rudy Sonman did happen to perish in this room, Jonas was okay with that.

Sonman’s body pitched sharply to the right as the rifle round slammed into his left shoulder. The flesh was unprotected and the bullet would do damage, Jonas knew. But it wouldn’t kill him.

Jonas ran over and kicked the knife out of Sonman’s hand. From his position, Jonas could now see from the window and down into the street. He saw the two dead Pakistani soldiers, the blood from their wounds seeming to cradle them as if they were merely sleeping on top of large rose petals. One block away a company of U.S. soldiers was advancing. The situation would be fully under control in a matter of moments.

Jonas turned his head to Sonman, who was face down on the floor, his right hand squeezing his left shoulder. Low, guttural moans came from beneath him. Jonas then knelt by the girl. Her wide eyes moved to meet his, but that was the only indication she wasn’t catatonic.

“You’ll be okay.” He knew she didn’t understand, but he hoped his tone would comfort her. He turned her head and saw the gaping hole where the ear should have been. He squinted in disgust and then spoke into his radio.