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Rifle rounds zinged close over our heads like angry bees as we both crouched tight against the sand dune. Harry started to raise his head to peek over the edge of the dune and I grabbed him. "No! Keep your head down!" I hollered, wheezing and out of breath. I looked at my handheld locator device and continued, "We only have a few feet left to go. Let's get to it, we don't have much time."
The sweat dripped off my forehead onto the face of the locator as I checked it again. The secret dugout was emitting a high frequency beam that the locator was picking up. It indicated the hideout to be about twenty feet in the opposite direction of the advancing Iraqi troops.
"I gotta see where they are," he blurted between heavy breaths.
He slowly raised his forehead, then his eyes over the edge of the sand dune. It wasn't a split second later when I heard the zip of a high-powered rifle round rip through the air followed by a huge splat, like the sound of someone hitting a ripe watermelon with a baseball bat. The back of Harry's head exploded and pieces of his skull, gray matter, and hair flew through the air as his body stiffened up and he fell straight backwards.
"Damn it to hell, Harry!" I screamed, but I knew he couldn't hear me anymore. I stared at the neat, round rifle hole in the center of his forehead as the bright red blood ran from a large gaping hole in the back of his head turning the sand a sickening reddish hue.
I crouched tighter against the dune as I looked into his lifeless eyes staring straight into the hot desert sun. I sat frozen in space and time for a moment, in shock and disbelief that my best friend had just been killed. I gulped and strained to keep the vomit down that was pushing at the back of my throat.
I quickly came to my senses and realized I'd better get a grip and get my head together, quick. My espionage training kicked in and I went into an automatic survival mode. I knew I had only seconds to crawl to the hidden dugout buried in the sand and cover my tracks before the troops were on top of me. I wasn't going to look over the edge of the dune to see how close they were. I didn't want to end up like Harry.
We had done a year of extra training in the California desert for situations just like this and I was about to find out whether it was going to work or not. I slid away from the sand dune and took up a prone position. I raised myself onto my finger tips and toes and made my way backwards towards the plastic box buried in the desert floor, at the same time covering up my imprints exactly as I had been trained to. As I inched toward the box, making sure not even my shirt touched the ground, I thought, this is taking too long, but I can't chance leaving any sign of a trail. I had to draw every ounce of energy I had, which wasn't much after being locked up in that Iraqi prison for two years.
I watched the locator beam to make sure I was going in the right direction. The dugout would be impossible to find without this special electronic tool. It seemed like an eternity before I finally reached it and pushed away the sand to expose the top. I pulled it open and positioned the lid so that when I closed it, it would again be impossible to detect. I lowered myself halfway into the opening and took one last look at Harry's lifeless body lying stretched out in the hot desert sand. I lowered myself further into the box, and was about to close the lid over me, when an Iraqi army Officer appeared on top of the sand dune and pointed a high-powered sniper rifle at my head. He peered through the scope at a spot right between my eyes, his eyeball huge through the lens as he started to apply pressure on the trigger. He must be the one who got Harry, I thought. I made a move to grab my 9mm pistol stuffed in my belt and as I took hold of it he hollered in broken English, "Don't my friend. I won't miss from this distance."
I watched as his finger tightened even further on the trigger and braced myself for the muzzle flash and the impact of the round to slam into my skull.
The thought shot through my mind, Screw this. If I'm going to die, I'm going out fighting. I tightened my grip on the pistol and was about to jerk it out of my belt and start blasting away when, to my surprise, the soldier lowered the rifle and said, "You better hurry and close the lid my friend. The others will be here any second."
He then pointed it away from me and we stared at each other for a few tense moments. I wasn't sure what was going on, but I didn't have time to debate it. I closed the lid and pressed the air lever to blow the sand up in such a way as to cover the creases the lid left in the sand.
I sat in one corner of the tiny five by five cubicle in complete darkness with my pistol in my hand at the ready, expecting the top to be ripped off at any moment and a hail of automatic weapon's fire to rain down on me. I pointed my gun up and prepared to pull the trigger as fast as I could to get as many of them as possible before being torn apart myself.
The seconds ticked by as the sweat poured from my brow. I slowed my breathing and tried to regulate my heartbeat, but the confined space was suffocating. I wanted to switch on my flashlight to check the time, but I dared not, fearing the light might be detected. This cubicle was sound proof and light proof, but I'd better be careful.
"Harry," I whispered. "I wonder if they reached his body yet?" They must have. I hated the thought of what they might be doing to him right now.
Oh shit, I forgot to turn off the homing beam that guided me here. I quickly flicked on my flashlight shining it on the locator. I fingered it, clicked off the beam and sat back wondering if they had gotten a fix on me. I'm slipping, I thought, I never would have forgotten to do that in the past. But then again, it's not everyday my best friend gets killed. I can't believe he's sent here to help me escape from that hellhole Iraqi prison, and winds up dead. And why did that Officer let me get away? He had me in his sights, his finger squeezing the trigger. The rule in that prison is that if you try to escape, you are shot dead on sight, no questions asked. Yet, he let me go.
I didn't trust him and expected the lid to be torn open any second and the bullets to start flying. I held my Berreta higher in the air, keeping it pointed at the trap door. I was determined not to surrender. No matter what, I wasn't going back. I drew my knees tight up against my chest counting the minutes as they dragged passed and nothing happened. More time passed, dead silence.
Maybe he really did let me go so that I could escape. If so, I'd have to wait until nightfall and make my way to the next fox hole closer to Kuwait. It was still early morning and I'd have to stay here at least twelve hours for the sun to set, so I had to prepare my mind.
I set my pistol down and clicked on the flashlight. These foxholes had emergency food rations for situations just like this. I found one and opened it. It was fat laced mush, but after two years of near starvation, anything was welcome. I slowly and methodically shoveled the c-rations into my mouth. The last thing I wanted to do was eat, but I knew I'd have to build up my strength in order to make it across the desert to freedom.
As I ate my mind started to race. It suddenly hit me that here I was in my early forties stuck in a hole in the ground in the middle of Iraq with my friend dead. What a joke. When I arrived here two years ago I was in excellent physical and mental condition and now I'm sitting here barely alive and what did I have to show for my life? I have no place to call home. This damn job had moved me around too much to ever get a chance to settle down. I had no family, no one waiting for me back in the states, except maybe Lisa. That's if she'd have anything to do with me. And could I really blame her? Everytime we tired to get a relationship going I was shipped out on another job. How many times I'd wished I could have told her the truth, that I was a secret agent. But it might not have made a difference anyway. I hated lying to her, telling her I was an overseas salesman. This career certainly screwed up any chance we had of ever making it.
"Be a spy," they said. "See the world and make your country a better and safer place to live."
"Yeah, right," I muttered.
"Live the life of intrigue and adventure."
"Fuck that," I said between bites of cardboard food. I coughed up a mouthful as it started to gag me. My stomach wasn't used to this Government Issue stuff. I set the can aside and thought back to my last assignment. I barely made it out of Columbia alive and I swore that if I got out of there, it was going to be my last mission. Hell, on this mission I'd no sooner arrived here and I'm captured. How did that happen? My cover was perfect. Where did I screw up? Or did I? It almost seemed as though someone had blown my cover. Each new job seemed to be a little more treacherous than the last. Or maybe I was just getting older and slower, a dangerous combination for this occupation. So, how the hell did I let the director talk me into this one? Deputy Director Quinn, I reminisced, head of a special CIA liaison detachment working out of the Pentagon directly under the president. How fortunate I thought I was to be assigned to that special unit. HA! That man sure had a way of getting things done his way. I guess that's why he was named to head up that elite unit. If I didn't know better, I'd swear he held more power than the head of the CIA.
Before Harry got killed he told me they needed me for a special assignment, which was the only reason they busted me out. Otherwise they would have left me to rot, those bastards. And I'm the fool that keeps going on these missions. Well, no more, I'm finished. I'm quitting the service for sure this time.
I turned off the flashlight and decided I'd better try and get some rest. I had a long way to travel to get to Kuwait; at least two days. "Just how the hell did all of this start anyway?" I asked myself. With that thought in mind, I settled back to wait for nightfall as I put my mind in a transcendental state. I let the pitch black darkness of the cubicle swallow me up as I'd done in prison everyday for the past two years. I'd give anything to be able to turn back the hands of time, I thought as I let my mind drift back twenty some years to the late sixties in my senior year in that small mid-west college town.
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