Hasty Resolution Read online

  Hasty Resolution

  a novel

  Sam Taylor Mullens

  Copyright © 2013 Sam Taylor Mullens

  All Rights Reserved

  Cover photo by FS Custom Book Cover Design

  Interior Design by BZ Hercules

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronical or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system without the written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to real people, historical events or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events, locals, persons living or deceased, is entirely coincidental.

  At least 20 percent — one out of every five — of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have post-traumatic stress and/or depression. That’s nearly 300,000 veterans, according to recent studies conducted by the Department of Veterans Affairs and the RAND Center for Military Health Policy Research.

  Can you see the horrors these eyes have seen

  Or the death, destruction and pain a soul must bear

  And the hurt a mind must endure time after time

  Can you see the carnage these hands have borne

  Or the places this body has been

  And the things it has been forced to do

  Can you fathom the lives taken into its wake

  Or experience the smell of bloodshed

  And the repulsions that force themselves into my memory

  Can you perceive the torment I suffer for the things I have done

  Or the face of mutilated children that haunt me

  And the sounds of innocent souls leaving before my eyes

  When you see the things that no one should ever see

  And endure what would make most fall to pieces

  You will know my torment and my burdened soul

  I am a soldier trudging headlong with nightmare encumbrances

  With the noises of war trapped in the dust of my deeds

  I ask only for solitude in the face of torment

  ~Anonymous

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1: Liz

  Chapter 2: Jake

  Chapter 3: Mike

  Chapter 4: Jake

  Chapter 5: Liz

  Chapter 6: Liz

  Chapter 7: Jake

  Chapter 8: Liz

  Chapter 9: Jake

  Chapter 10: Liz

  Chapter 11: Jake

  Chapter 12: Liz

  Chapter 13: Jake

  Chapter 14: Jake

  Chapter 15: Liz

  Chapter 16: Liz

  Chapter 17: Liz

  Chapter 18: Liz

  Chapter 19: Jake

  Chapter 20: Liz

  Chapter 21: Jake

  Chapter 22: Liz

  Chapter 23: Jake

  Chapter 24: Liz

  Chapter 25: Liz

  Chapter 26: Liz

  Chapter 27: Liz

  Chapter 28: Liz

  Chapter 29: Jake

  Chapter 30: Liz

  Chapter 31: Liz

  Chapter 32: Mike

  Chapter 33: Liz

  Chapter 34: Liz

  Chapter 35: Liz

  Chapter 36: Jake

  Chapter 37: Liz

  Chapter 38: Jake

  Chapter 39: Liz

  Chapter 40: Jake

  Chapter 41: Liz

  Chapter 42: Jake

  Chapter 43: Liz

  Chapter 44: Jake

  Chapter 45: Liz

  Chapter 46: Jake

  Chapter 47: Liz

  Chapter 48: Mike

  Chapter 49: Jake

  Chapter 50: Liz

  Chapter 51: Liz

  Chapter 52: Mike

  Chapter 53: Jake

  Chapter 54: Jake

  Chapter 55: Liz

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  Desert wind kicks dust ruthlessly into my eyes as I lead a convoy group. I watch one of my men take the last drag from his cigarette before checking the tires of a Humvee. The other men stop at a firing pit to squeeze off a few rounds before they make sure the .50-cal guns on the truck are set right. My M16 is already in check; it always is. We are too vulnerable, like sitting ducks, to be out on patrol in the Middle East without our weapons working properly.

  Our convoy approaches a small town where local women are washing clothes in a muddy creek. This is a typical scene, nothing unusual, but then at a bend in the creek there is one woman who is not gowned in black. Her face is not covered as the rest are, with a burqa. Her long, blonde hair twists in the dry, desert breeze. I break away from the convoy. My need to speak with her takes precedence over my men.

  Crouching down, I ask her, "What are you doing here?”

  She remains silent. Her ocean blue eyes shift upward to meet mine. Her face lights the dismal air as she smiles. Her creamy skin looks delicate and soft. I want to touch her skin because it does not belong in this type of arid desert.

  "Henderson! Who are you talking to?" a man yells from one of the trucks.

  I roar over my shoulder, “Give me a minute!”

  I turn back to the creek. I do not see her. She has vanished. All I see are Afghan women, who are trying to keep their children away from the creek and are attending to their daily chores. Their black-veiled faces and baskets litter the creek’s bank. I study the area. There is clearly no sign of anyone who is out of place.

  I rejoin the convoy as we make our way to the middle of the small town, where buildings are tattered and torn. Two elderly men sit in front of a sandal shop, smoking cigarettes. As I walk further beyond their bench, there is a blonde female squatting down, tying the shoelaces of her running shoes, the one I saw at the creek earlier. She stands as I near. She smiles, laughs sweetly, and runs down the dusty road we are traveling. Her laugh is like music to my ears. Where is she going?

  Our convoy rolls through the rest of the town and veers to the north past a foul-smelling chicken farm. We cannot pass the stench fast enough. The desert dust starts billowing from a sandstorm. I cover my nose and my mouth with my bandana so I do not inhale and choke on dust. Sand cakes the convoy trucks and paints them a light shade of tan from the sand. We drive off-road for an hour before we arrive at a police checkpoint.

  The blonde-haired woman appears next to the checkpoint station. She pulls the elastic from her hair to shake out the dust collected from the sandstorm. She brushes the sand off her legs and her arms to reveal her creamy skin. I am standing next to her, so she holds onto my arm for balance. She removes her pink running shoe and empties the sand from it.

  Someone hollers a smartass comment from a truck. "Henderson! What are you looking at? No one is at this checkpoint. We must not have gotten the memo!”

  My attention is pulled from the woman once again. I look back to see if she needs help with her other shoe, only to find she has disappeared again. Where did she go? I scout all around the outside and inside of the abandoned white checkpoint station before I grudgingly rejoin the convoy. No one at the checkpoint is a red flag, but I ignore its oddity because all I care about is a pair of blue eyes.

  I lead the way around the T-barrier and the convoy follows my lead. Suddenly, there is a blast from a car bomb. I can taste it and I can smell it. It’s something so bitter, I can no longer tolerate it when it happens. I do not care about the men riding in the trucks. I do not check to see if they are all right after the blast. I am only concerned with the blonde woman, who must have run past the exploding vehicle.

  I begin to s
can the area to look for the woman in the black plume mixed with desert sand. I am on foot, not in the truck. Therefore, I am the one to pull the driver and passenger to safety after the blast. I am hesitant and on guard as I stay vigilant for any sign of blonde hair.

  Fragments of jagged metal and fireballs fly, hitting one of the trucks.

  One of the trucks was hit from the blast.

  A man howls triumphantly from the truck, "We're all right!"

  I talk the rattled men down off their vehicles to the safety of the ground. The driver of the truck is sitting, unmovable in his seat. His hands shake violently, so much that he cannot remove the cap to his water bottle. The water is warm, since nothing stays cold in the Humvees. I open the plastic bottle for the driver, since he is eyeing it with a look of desperation. When he looks out the window, he cannot speak. He just looks right through me.

  "Snap out of it!” I shout.

  “Get your weapon and go pull security!" I bark furiously.

  This is war and shit happens. I carry on being solid as a rock; everyone has to in this God forsaken place. I have no time to be compassionate toward someone who is not physically injured.

  A quick reaction force from the base is coming up the road. The Bradley Fighting Vehicles gear their defense positions and take over security from the convoy. The back ramps drop to the ground to unload a dozen men. I go out with the dismounts to check the surrounding buildings for the Improvised Explosive Device trigger man.

  As we enter a tattered building, our quad breaks apart. We climb the stairs to inspect the levels. Two men turn right. One man follows left with me to the top floor. Three doors down, I discover the blonde-haired woman standing in an empty sunlit room drinking from a water bottle. Condensation drips from it. I can breathe, knowing she is safe and enduring no injuries.

  I lower my weapon and casually ask, "What are you doing here?”

  She tilts her head, smiles, and extends the rest of her cold water. She blinks innocently.

  "There might be a trigger man hiding somewhere in this building. He’ll be armed. He will shoot you,” I tell her. Her smile naturally lightens the bedraggled room.

  “It’s not safe for you to be in this building." I gesture for her to take my hand. "Follow me, ma’am. I will help get you out safely.”

  Abruptly, a soldier pokes me on the shoulder. I quickly look back.

  "Sir. Henderson, sir. Sorry, sir. There is no one in this room. We need to continue."

  I turn back to the room. The woman is gone from my sight, again. I am agitated that soldiers keep distracting me from the blue-eyed lady.

  When we exit the building, the Explosive Ordinance Disposal Team is putting away their robot and taking off their bomb suits while a ten-ton wrecker backs into position to hook up the bomb truck. EOD men walk over to inspect the vehicle. One snaps photos for records.

  A larger, much stronger explosion hits and my beating heart stops, not knowing where the blonde woman went. The shaking ground under my feet almost knocks me over. My legs shake. My knees buckle. I am confused temporarily as I regain my balance.

  One of the men yells in horror into the mic mounted in the Humvee, "Two killed in action! Two KIA! The EOD personnel stepped on the secondary IED!”

  Before the soldier completely finishes his sentence, one of the EOD men crawls on his hands and knees under a black cloud of dust from the T-barrier cursing with rage. Did the woman go back there? Was she hit too? I run to the epicenter of the blast where the smoke settles. I must find her. I search the premises thoroughly, but only recover the second EOD guy from the T-barrier. I cannot explain the chaos going through my mind. My desperation to find the woman takes precedence over anyone or anything. She is all I care about.

  Two men, who everyone thought were blown to pieces, are now alive, but barely moving. At least they are not missing limbs. I hear men crying in relief while I fall apart inside because I cannot pinpoint the exact location of the blonde-haired, blue-eyed lady.

  "They are both alive!" a man cries over the net at the top his lungs.

  "Two wounded in action! We need to get a medic in here to assist these men!" the soldier yells.

  I want to tell the man holding the mic, “And a lady! A blue-eyed lady female civilian; she must be hurt, too, but I cannot locate her anywhere.” I postpone telling anyone until I can identify her exact whereabouts.

  At the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, two infantry soldiers go in for the wounded. I hear the swooshing propellers of the medevac chopper arriving in the far distance. The soldiers grab the wounded men by the handles on the back of their bulletproof vests and drag them out of the danger zone to the Bradley.

  My friend, Doug, a doctor, begins to assist the wounded. He positions the men on stretchers as the chopper approaches. The Bradley deploys green smoke to mark the landing area in the dirt. The chopper sets down; the wounded men are loaded swiftly into the bird.

  I yank Doug by the shoulder. "Hey, man, there's one more. I cannot find her. She was at the police checkpoint and then in that tattered building over here." I point to the window she was standing near; the place I last saw her.

  "She must have run back to the T-barrier. I looked everywhere, but I couldn’t find her. Can you hold the chopper while I look for her? She's out there somewhere. I just have to find her. There’s no more time to waste. Every second counts!”

  I am stricken with panic as I furiously scan the area.

  "Jake, I'm going to have the bird take off, and then I will help you.” Doug averts his eyes to the helicopter.

  “We have to get these wounded men taken care of first. Okay?" Doug yells over the whirring sound of the propellers. He signals the chopper to leave.

  The helicopter is nothing but a speck in the sky when dust settles at our feet.

  I wince into Doug's ear, "What if she's hurt and I can't help her?”

  “If we find her then I’ll call the chopper back.”

  Doug pulls me away from the action of security. "Was she blonde, like the one you saw in the reeds?" Doug asks. I nod.

  "The same blue eyes that you saw in the middle of the night?” I nod again and Doug’s face contorts into a frown as I recall her beauty.

  "She smiled at you, didn't she Jake?" Doug asks piecing my words together. “Is this a little girl?”

  “No! A lady! She keeps running with pink shoes. She has long, blonde hair and she’s not Afghan. Her skin is all creamy,” I tell him, agitated.

  "Yeah, I'll help you buddy, but you are not going to like it."

  Doug slaps me on my back and looks at me with sorrowful eyes.

  Chapter 1: Liz

  “I have to fight this!” I say to myself as I lie in bed, snuggling my soft, warm pillow.

  The glow of the summer sun creeps over the edge of the eastern mountains. My alarm beeps. I click off the annoying sound before it wakes my husband. I have to fight this feeling of being so tired in the morning. It’s as if I never went to bed in the first place.

  My eyes open and close ever so slowly. I force them to stay focused on the rooftops of the suburban houses outside my second-story bedroom window. I've memorized the angles of my neighbors’ homes stacked against the mountainside with mature trees separating each one over the past decade. I wake to this every day. I have watched the trees grow from small seedlings into thriving trees that even a hurricane cannot uproot. I love watching their branches sway in the breeze. I pull my warm comforter under my chin and continue to lie in my comfortable bed.

  If I close my eyes completely, they will not reopen for another two hours. The opportunity to go for a walk on a perfect summer morning will escape me once again as I have allowed it to happen repeatedly over the past two years out of complete exhaustion.

  I used to spring out of bed every day, never questioning my desire or ability to run at least three miles every morning. Now, I am lucky to have at least one good day where I do not feel nauseated, have a piercing headache, or get dizzy once I finally drag myself out
of bed. I assumed I was over-exerting myself as I vomited along my running path. I didn't want to embarrass myself among fellow morning runners and walkers as I expelled bubbly, watery acid from my tummy.

  The guilt of not taking advantage of a perfect summer morning runs through my veins. I lie in bed without a headache and no feelings of nausea. My doctor’s words, “You have gained a ridiculous amount of weight in the last two years.” resonate through my mind. I miss my good health, my vibrancy.

  I open the bedroom window, feeling the fresh summer air sneak its way inside, replacing the stale air of my bedroom. This is an ideal morning to go for a walk. Yet, I close the white plantation shutters and climb back into my bed completely unmotivated to move beyond my sheets.

  My husband lies still in our king-sized bed. It feels as if he is on the other side of a football field. He has the comforter and the sheets kicked off. Linens scrunch up at the bottom of the bed. My husband is always hot, while I am always cold, only thawing for a few weeks in August. I want to cuddle next to the warmth of his body instead of going outside for a walk. I want to see if he’ll respond to my touch, even though he has not for over a year now.

  As I creep toward him, his backside naturally expels the smell of rotten eggs. It forces me to retreat to my side of the bed. He is dead asleep, so I cannot fault him for not holding in his natural gases. I stare at the ceiling with the stench lingering over me. Our bed suddenly doesn't seem enticing anymore. That factor finally pulls me to my feet.

  I no longer have any excuses to linger in bed. I walk to my side of our bedroom closet, pull my oversized pajama shirt over my head, and toss it in the laundry hamper. I choose a pair of spandex cropped pants and an azure blue cotton T-shirt off my closet shelf. I yank a gray, lightweight hoodie from a hanger and zip it with the intention of wrapping the sleeves around my waist once I get a little sweaty. I sit on the closed toilet seat in the master bath to tie my pink running shoes.