Rick Mofina - Six Seconds

Maggie denied it. But he was convinced. He just knew.

But did he really know?

Now, as he looked at the serrated peaks, he asked himself if he could’ve been wrong about Maggie and Ullman; asked himself if he was the problem, if he was all messed up because of the attack.

Pop-pop!

Jake’s heart leaped, jolting him in his seat. A passing group of motorcycles backfired.

Pop-pop!

Like gunfire.

Pop-pop!

His head hurt, like it was being squeezed in a vise.

Pull over. Pull over.

Pop-pop!

The sounds sliced through the air and his skull. He geared down, got to the shoulder. Dust billowed, engulf ing him.

He shut his eyes.

Pop-pop!

Jake crushed his head in his hands to keep it from coming apart as dust swirled, choking him. It was futile…

…he was being dragged back…

Please. Just stop. Please…

…dragged back to Iraq…

The frontier beyond Tal Afar, Iraq. Near the Syrian border

This is not good…

His rig is slow-rolling through a busy market. They’d been cut off five miles back from the larger convoy and the main armored escort.

His radio crackles.

“Get your Kevlar on!”

Jake has a bad feeling about this. They are in a twenty-truck convoy hauling supplies to support a secret mission at the border. But they got cut off and now there are just six vehicles. A Humvee in lead, a Humvee in back. Jake’s Mercedes is the last rig. A guy from Spain, one from Amsterdam, and Mitchell, Jake’s pal from Texas whose wife just had a baby, are driving the other rigs.

Jake hates being cut off.

Being cut off is like being plucked from the herd. They are going too slow. Too damn slow. This is a hot insurgent zone.

A kill zone.

He just wants to get to the damn camp without getting shot. Without getting rocks hurled at his windshield. Just get to the camp. Shower. Eat. Sleep. Count one more day closer to home. Closer to Maggie and Logan.

Now they are crawling.

Damn. Please do not be a checkpoint. Please do not tell me this is an Iraqi police checkpoint. Please.

Insurgents wear fake police uniforms.

“Okay, we gotta stop,” the radio bleats. “It’s a checkpoint.”

Jake curses. All the saliva in his mouth evaporates.

The diesel rigs idle in the broiling sun.

Eyes locked open, heart thumping, mouth dry, do-or die, trickles of cold sweat down his back, listening to the chatter on the air, scanning the stalls, the beggars pushing carts, the old men hunching over the open fires heating teapots, kids chasing a dog, hitting it with a stick. Stay alert, stay alive, delivering democracy to your door.

Maggie and Logan smile at him from the photo taped to his dash.

Get me through another day. Get me home, is all I pray.

Come on. This is taking way too long.

Scanning the old men, the kids, the dog, the burnedout cars, the idling trucks growl as beggars pass by pushing carts.

Radio chatter. A blur in his periphery.

Pop-pop!

Gunfire. A muzzle flash in the market and Hayes in the lead Humvee is frantic over the radio to the crew in the rear.

“T-Bone! Heads up! Behind you!”

Wham! The Hummer behind Jake is ablaze! A beggar’s cart tips.

“Ambush! Ambush!”

Hayes opens fire with his M2 lighting up the target behind Jake. People are scrambling, screaming.

Jake is trapped.

The air splits. The beggars fire an RPG!

Thump! The ground shakes. The rig in front explodes, burning fragments rain on Jake’s rig. A large chunk thuds on his hood.

A head.

Mouth agape, Mitchell stares wide-eyed at Jake.

Oh, Christ!

Mitch!

Oh, Jesus!

To his right, smoke puffs from the burned-out car. A grenade rips at the lead Humvee. Vibrations. Shadows in Jake’s mirrors; out of nowhere several men are splashing water on his rig. No. The smell. It’s gasoline!

They’re going to kill him.

The convoy is returning fire. The guys from the lead Humvee are on the road burning. A soldier shooting is on fire, shrieking.

“Grease the mothers!”

Ghost figures swarm all sides of Jake, climbing onto his rig.

They’re all over him.

Pop-pop!

The American soldier’s trying to pick them off. Rounds whiz-clang off his truck.

Jake reaches for his sidearm. The mob is pulling at his doors. Coming through his windows, smashing the windshield.

He’s going to die.

Someone slams the sidearm from his grip. He claws for his knife, grabbing it in time to slice across an attacker’s throat-his blood spraying. Jake meets his eyes, meets his hate, smells his breath.

Mitchell’s head watches from his hood.

Jake’s door rips open.

They have his arm, someone has his ankle. Jesus. He glimpses a smoke cloud, a grenade sizzling toward his cab.

No. No. No.

The searing inferno concussion ejects Jake, propel ling him skyward, arching clear as the ground rises, slam-pounding his breath from his chest.

In the brilliant sun the last thing he sees is Maggie smiling on the beach and Logan running to him with open arms.

Cold Butte, Montana

After Samara finished the breakfast dishes, she made tea and turned on her laptop.

Jake was on the road. Logan had left for school.

She had two hours alone before she had to leave for the clinic.

Using an array of IDs and passwords, she clicked along a complex network of Web sites to check a number of Internet accounts.

The e-mail she was expecting had not arrived yet.

Samara clicked to her hidden folder to visit the joy in her life: her husband, her son, her mother and father. She smiled at their faces in the photos as her heart filled with love. For each day brought all of them closer to eternal happiness.

As it had been destined.

Samara shut off her computer and gazed at the boundless Montana sky. Soon the world would know the pure, unassailable truth of her action. Soon her name would be spoken by every human being on earth.

Samara Anne Ingram.

Her father, John Ingram, was a British archeology student who had been completing his Ph. D. on a dig near Mosul when he’d met Amina, a nursing student working at the site. They fell in love and Amina returned to London with him.

After they’d finished their studies, John and Amina were married in London, where Samara was born. Her parents settled in the city’s East End, where her father taught at a small college and her mother worked in a hospital.

Samara’s life with her parents was a happy one.

Until she lost them.

She thought of them every day, recalling her mother’s sweet smile and the way she filled their house with the aroma of samoon or khubz, delicious breads Samara loved to eat with jam and honey.

Her father would sit in his study for hours, smoking his pipe, pondering artifacts of Assyrian ivory, or frag ments of ancient pottery. Often, they’d all go to a local teahouse to talk about art, history or Samara’s goal to become a nurse like her mother.

She wanted to help people.

Samara dedicated herself to studying and was ac cepted into university, where she met and fell in love with Muhammad, a medical student from Iraq. He was the intelligent, handsome son of a doctor in Baghdad. Muhammad got along well with Samara’s father and, of course, charmed her mother, who loved to cook for him.

After Muhammad received his degree in medicine and Samara graduated into nursing, they were married in a small ceremony in London. Then they moved to Baghdad, for Muhammad believed with all his heart that their purpose in life was to alleviate suffering.

“Together we will help a great many people who need it, Samara.”

But he’d cautioned her. Life would not be easy in Iraq. They would have to grapple with the devastation of the Gulf War and the sanctions.