Chapter 4

“John!” she said in a surprised gasp.

I was too stunned to say anything for several heartbeats. I was just staring at her and her swollen abdomen.

“You’re...” was all I could get out.

“Pregnant. You should probably come in,” she said, moving out of the doorway.

I walked in, staring at her the whole time as she closed the door. She stepped around me and walked into the adjacent living room, while I slowly trailed behind.

Finally, my wits started to come back, “You ... you don’t seem as surprised to see me alive as I thought you would.”

She sighed and said, “No. I got the letter you sent here for my parents, telling them you were alive and looking for me.”

“I included a number at Walter Reed, for them to pass to you so you ... Why didn’t you call?”

“I don’t know. At first I was so stunned that Joel ... my ... we were worried I might go into early labor. It took days for me to calm down, and after I did, I couldn’t figure out how to explain this,” she said, gesturing at her stomach.

I didn’t know what to say. I was upset. There was no doubt about that. Thoughts of her were what had got me through those years; and, here she was, pregnant and most likely married to another man. But I couldn’t hate her, either. I was dead. That’s what everyone believed, and she couldn’t put her life on hold forever.

“You’re right, I guess, it’s just ... I have thought about you a lot. I played our reunion through, so many times in my head.”

We just sat and avoided eye contact for more than a minute. This was so awkward it was painful. There was nothing she could say that would make me not feel pain, and nothing I could say that wouldn’t just be an attempt to make her feel guilty. There really isn’t forgiveness in this situation, since no one did anything wrong, and yet acceptance seemed impossible.

“How long,” I finally said.

“What?” She asked, my question not being the one she was expecting I guess.

“How long have you been married,” I asked, pointing at her wedding band.

“A year and a half. We met at a military family support group. His wife was a pilot who died in a training accident and you, well...” she broke off.

“When did you move in with your parents?”

“Just after I finished grad school, about a year after you went missing. There were too many memories in North Carolina to stay. I needed a fresh start, so I moved in here. Then my Dad retired. He bought a small piece of land in Georgia, leaving me this house.”

I had just been making small talk, but it didn’t seem to be helping the situation any. Mostly I was trying to distract myself from the massive heartbreak I was feeling. It was honestly worse than any of the pain Qasim and his men had inflicted on me.

“That first year,” she said and then stopped.

We continued to sit in silence for several moments, until she continued, “That first year was really hard. I almost flunked out of the graduate program. I fell apart. But, I had to move on. I had to put our chapter of my life behind me.”

I couldn’t really take it anymore. I felt anger welling up inside me but I had nowhere to go. Claire hadn’t done anything to deserve my anger. The guys who did were half way across the globe.

It wasn’t like I could ask her to leave her husband and come back to me. She was ready to have a baby any minute. I wasn’t going to break up this family, just so I could have the life I thought I should have. No, it was better to just walk away and wish her a happy life. I was sure that one day I would even mean it.

“I should go,” I said, standing up.

She followed suit and walked me silently to the door.

“I’m sorry,” she said silently as I opened the door to walk through it.

I gave her a short nod, and walked out of the house, putting Claire and the rest of the life I’d once had, into the ground for good.

There wasn’t a cab or even a city bus, so I had to walk for a ways. That was ok with me, because I needed to think. For years, my whole focus had been on getting back to Claire. Once I escaped, that focus became an obsession. It was all I had thought about. I was like a boat whose moorings had been cut. I was adrift and floating aimlessly. Now I needed to figure out what I was going to do.

I didn’t really have any skills that didn’t involve a gun, and a rigid chain of command. I did have that Bachelor of Criminology degree I’d earned from NC State correspondence school, before the ambush. I had always planned on getting a job in law enforcement, somewhere; but that had always been dependent on where Claire ended up. I no longer had her as a compass to set me on a path. My parents had died when I was in my twenties. I had no siblings, and no real friends that weren’t in the service. Those that were out, already preferred their privacy, and didn’t need me moving in and becoming their neighbor.

North Carolina was out. I didn’t want to be one of those guys who couldn’t cut ties with the military, always trying to get back to what made sense. In a way, if you are in long enough, you become institutionalized, every bit as much as a prisoner might. Plus, as Claire had said, that place had too many memories of the guy I used to be. The guy that died out in the Afghan mountains.

I walked for about four hours. First I went through her neighborhood. Then, following the signs, I went down the side of the freeway, headed towards downtown Miami. I still wasn’t sure what I was going to do, but I knew whatever it was I would first need to find a bar, and then a bus. I figured I could pick a city and head there. Just start fresh. But first I needed a beer.

It had been a hot afternoon, and I wasn’t overburdened by my single duffel bag, I was feeling it by the time I hit Miami proper. It was early evening, and I picked the first bar I saw that didn’t seem too upscale. I didn’t feel like dealing with a bunch of yuppies. I was looking for the kind of place that had regulars, and where people went to drink and maybe watch a crappy TV in the corner.

Thankfully, dive bars are still a thing, and I had found one of them. It was small, dark and smelled of stale beer. The group was a mixture of younger guys just grabbing a drink from the place around the corner; and older guys, who had spent the better part of the day trying to fit themselves into a bottle.

I dropped my duffel at my feet, and ordered a beer.

Sure enough, there was a crappy TV mounted up in the corner above the bar. Some basketball game was playing, not that I really paid attention to sports.

I was just staring dumbly at the TV when something splashed against my left cheek. Looking off to my left, two bar stools down, was a sad sack of a man. He was dressed shirt that was wrinkled to hell, and a tie half undone that somehow was also wrinkly. He was fishing a beer bottle cap out of his drink, while two guys down from him laughed.

Their type I had seen before. They wore rock band t-shirts, one had shoulder length curly hair and a dirty ass beard. The other was balding, fat, and was also sporting a dirty beard. Both men had on blue jeans, and ratty leather vests. They looked like what posers would think a biker should look like.

I had known a lot of guys in the service who had ridden with a bike club when they were not deployed. Those guys didn’t go out of their way to try and look mean, they just were.

Normally, I am a ‘live and let live’ kind of guy, and prefer just minding my own business unless things get serious. While it sucked, these guys were picking on the poor shmuck next to me, though he didn’t seem to be in any immediate danger.

Unfortunately for these guys, I was not feeling particularly normal. I needed an outlet for the torrent of anger I could feel seething away inside, and these two seemed like the perfect target.

“Lay off,” I said, slipping off my bar-stool and coming to stand next to their target.

“What? Is this your boyfriend?” the non-bald member of the duo said to the schmuck.

“No, but maybe I’m on the hunt for one. How about I make you my girlfriend?” I said.

Homophobia runs deep in guys like this. I may have been angry, but I was still in total control. I wanted them to instigate things, just in case this escalated to the point where the police were called. Playing on their innate prejudices seemed like the way to get them to step things up.

The people around us could clearly tell where this was headed. You could hear chairs scraping as people in the nearby vicinity started backing away. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the bartender back up and his hand dipping below the bar. Dollars to donuts he had a gun or club of some kind under there.

“You think you’re funny, Shorty?” the bigger guy said, standing up and trying to look menacing.

I wasn’t a particularly tall man, coming in at 5’10”. Nor was I particularly bulky. Even before my three years of captivity, I had never been one of the guys who always worked out to stay ripped. When I first escaped, the best word to describe me would have been gaunt, but after months of physical therapy and medical care I had settled into just being lean.

“I do, actually. I’d be happy to tell you and your date some more jokes, outside.”

“You mother...” the bald guy said, but his buddy laid a hand on his shoulder. Clearly he was the thinker of the duo.

“Yeah, let’s step outside so we can show you how much we like your jokes.”

They turned and started to walk out. I pulled out my wallet and laid some money on the bar. The bartender gave me a half smile and a nod. He realized what I had done, and seemed pleased no one would be busting the place up and I wouldn’t be running out on my tab.

“Thank you,” the schmuck said as I started walking away.

I noticed he hadn’t even bothered to get off his seat, and clearly wanted no part of what was going to happen outside.

“Whatever,” I said, deciding I didn’t like him any more than I did his tormentors.

I followed the two guys headed out the door, picking up my pace to close on them. They were both a little drunk, and weren’t really paying attention to their surroundings. The taller of the pair was in front with his bald friend taking up the rear.

There were a lot of guys in Special Forces, and a lot more in groups like the SEALS and Delta, that excelled in hand to hand combat, and learned to be pretty effective. That was never my thing. I had always relied on being a straight up brawler. Honestly, I can’t remember a time when any one I had known, had resorted to hand to hand combat. From my experience, that was purely in training or exhibitions. I’m certain that it happened, it was just not anything I had seen firsthand. I had always figured, why deal with it when I had a gun?

I had known a few guys in the Spetsnaz, the Russian Special Forces, that we had done some joint operations with, that practiced regularly with throwing hatchets. They even carried them on deployment. It always struck me as bizarre in the extreme, but I had assumed it was a cultural thing.

The one thing I had learned was the effectiveness of swift, violent action. If things become physical, there are no rules. The best defense being a good offense and all that. So I applied it to this situation. They seemed liked posers, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t be dangerous. I needed to drop the two on one odds, fast.

As soon as the door closed behind me I rushed them. The bald guy started to turn and as I was putting all my force into an upper cut. It wasn’t a pretty move, but it was effective and he dropped like a bag of cement. I moved quickly over his body to engage his friend.

The guy was deceptively fast. As soon as I stepped up to him I caught a right hook to the side of the face. It stunned me for a second but I was well and truly pissed and shook it off. I charged forward, spearing him in the gut. He grabbed onto me and brought his fist down on my back while I started landing blows with my right fist in his kidney.

The thing about the kidneys, is that they are pretty vulnerable. There is no fancy rib cage protecting them, and not really a lot of muscle between them and the rest of the world. This guy was a little pudgy which actually worked in his favor, giving him a little padding to lessen the blow.