Charles Henderson - Terminal Impact

Yasir nodded. “Absolutely right! I am glad you see it this way. He will not starve. When Abu Omar returns, he will saw off the American’s head,” the Arab said, and drew his thumb across his throat, smiling at the girls.

“Killing is wrong,” Giti said, setting Yasir’s plate on a small side table that had two chairs with it, used by the guards posted at night. “Come, sit and eat.”

He checked the ring of keys on his belt, gave the big door a good look, checked the lock, then went across the hallway and sat at the table. Sabeen stood behind him and put both slabs of steak on his plate, next to his ample helping of stewed vegetables.

“You get the most,” Giti said, taking the pitcher of tea, about to pour it. “You are the hunter who brought home the meat.”

Yasir smiled, looking at the wonderful plate filled with hot, fragrant food. “Yes, I did. The men should be grateful.”

“They are eating and enjoying the wild goat steaks upstairs right now,” Giti said. “Do you hear them laughing and talking with Amira and Miriam?”

“Yes, I did well, didn’t I,” Yasir said, and held his cup for Giti to fill with tea.

Just then there was a crash upstairs, as if the dining table had collapsed. Dishes shattered on the floor as the four guards fell from their chairs and began to yell and wail. Amira and Miriam screamed.

One man lunged for the rifles by the door, but rolled in a ball on the floor in the doorway and cried as he gagged and vomited. Another in the kitchen thrashed violently on the floor, suffering convulsions.

Miriam ran for their guns and grabbed two of them. Amira was right behind her, taking the other two. The girls ran outside and dropped the rifles in the yard. Then they came back inside, terrified, not knowing what they could do for the men or if they should do anything.

The reaction from the eyedrops struck slowly at first, the men feeling a bit of discomfort. They kept eating the good meal. Then suddenly the full force of the poison hit them. All four guards threw up everything they had eaten and gasped for air. Their body temperatures plummeted, along with their blood pressure. Their bronchial tubes constricted nearly closed. One man quickly lapsed into a coma, and another’s system crashed so suddenly hard that he died.

“What?” Yasir said, and stood from his chair.

As he rose to his feet, Sabeen took a full baseball swing with the big, cast-iron skillet and whacked the old Arab across the back of the head. Bong! The force sent Yasir over the table, which collapsed into broken pieces.

He rolled on his back and quivered on the stone floor.

“You killed him!” Giti screamed.

“Oh, no! Yasir!” Sabeen cried, and knelt by him. Then she smiled up at Giti. “He still breathes!”

“Praise God,” Giti said. “I should go upstairs to see what has happened!”

“No!” Sabeen cried out. She grabbed the keys off Yasir’s belt and held them up for her sister slave. “Set the American free! I did this so we can escape! Hurry!”

Jack had heard the commotion and got on his milk stool as the door swung open. Giti rushed to him and fumbled with Yasir’s keys, looking for the one that opened the padlock that held the chains wrapped tight on Jack’s wrists and ankles.

“That one,” Jack said, pointing at a small brass key.

When Giti had the lock opened, Jack removed the chains from his ankles and wrists.

“What the hell took you?” he asked Giti.

“I could not think of anything to distract the guards or get Yasir’s keys,” she answered.

“So you were just going to let me die?” Jack said.

“Everything seemed so impossible!” Giti cried, and she collapsed, overwhelmed by terror and panic.

Jack picked her up and gave the girl a strong hug. “Faith makes all things possible. You’re a Christian, right? This is what Christians believe. Right?”

She nodded, and pointed at Sabeen, who still knelt by Yasir. “Our sister Sabeen came up with the idea, and did everything. I had no clue, except to do as she said.”

“What was the idea?” Jack asked, now in the hall, getting Yasir’s AK rifle and examining Yasir’s key ring He looked for a set that fit a truck and found them.

“Eyedrops!” Sabeen said, and laughed.

“Eyedrops?” Jack responded, bewildered.

“At school in Damascus,” she said, “a girl told me of putting two drops of Visine in a person’s drink as a joke. It makes them have diarrhea. Uncontrollable diarrhea.”

“And that works?” Jack said, slipping up the stairs, the rifle loaded and ready for action.

Giti followed him. “It created the disruption.”

At the top of the stairs, Jack listened. Men gurgled and moaned and gasped for air.

Amira and Miriam stepped in front of the doorway, and Jack nearly pulled the trigger.

“Don’t do that!” he said, and walked into the kitchen where two men lay on the floor, their faces in vomit and their skin ash gray.

“Did you poison them?” Amira cried.

“They tried for their weapons but could not stand up,” Miriam said. “We took the guns outside.”

Jack aimed the AK at one gasping man and shot.

“Why did you shoot him?” Giti screamed. “He was in pain.”

“He’d get over it and kill us,” Jack said, giving the other guy a push with his bare foot. “This one’s dead.”

“Eyedrops did this?” Giti asked, amazed. “Sabeen! It has poisoned these men!”

Sabeen ran up the stairs and looked.

Another gunman lay dead in the entrance to the living room. The fourth lay on the floor, snoring and moaning. His body had cooled to a dangerously low temperature, and his blood pressure had fallen so low that he had lost consciousness.

“The girl at school said two drops in a drink would make a person have diarrhea. That is all!” Sabeen cried. “So I put in the entire bottle. These were five men! I wanted to be sure it gave them the full effect! I am sorry!”

Sabeen took the empty Visine flask from her apron, threw it at Jack, and he caught it.

“Don’t be sorry,” Jack said, holding the bottle and reading the label. “Active ingredient, Tetrahydrozoline HCI zero point zero five percent, redness reliever. Inactive ingredients, benzalkonium chloride, boric acid, edetate disodium, purified water, sodium borate, sodium chloride.

“I recognize boric acid and sodium chloride, but I have no idea what the rest of this shit does. Obviously, it had a serious effect on these poor bastards.”

Then Jack read the warning. “Keep out of reach of children. Serious injury can occur if swallowed, particularly in children. If swallowed, get medical help or contact a poison control center right away.”

He looked around at the carnage. “I’ll have to keep this in mind.”

“What about that poor man in the living room?” Giti said. “What about Yasir downstairs?”

“You want to stay here and take care of them? Be my guest. I’m leaving,” Jack said, looking around the house. Seeing the door that led to Abu Omar’s private bedroom and office, he headed that way.

In the corner, Omar had a large mahogany wardrobe closet. When Jack opened the double doors, he laughed.

“That lying son of a bitch!” Jack yelled, and took hold of his backpack, Advanced Operator vest, still stuffed with full ammo magazines, and helmet. There in the corner leaned both the M40A3 Marine sniper rifle and the EDM-Vigilance semiautomatic.

He slipped on the AO vest and pulled open the Velcro-closed pockets inside the liner.

“They didn’t check this very well,” Jack said, fishing out his command radio with the bullet fragment in it. Then he got out his GPS position locator, also ruined with a bullet fragment. Last, he reached deep, and smiled. “Still in here, too.” And he pulled out his intercom radio.