Scott Andrews - School's Out Forever

“Yeah, out of a big generator, a dining chair, some wires and a lot of gold.”

“Shit.”

“Your dad is going to be executed tomorrow. Blythe has decided he won’t break, so he gave him the choice.”

“Shot,” I said immediately.

“Um, yeah. How did you know?”

“Dunno, just seems like the one he’d choose.”

“But we have a plan to rescue him and it depends on him changing his mind and sitting in the chair. Unfortunately our inside man can’t get a message to him and tell him to change his mind.”

“So your plan is, what, I get captured and tell Dad to change his mind?”

“Perhaps. But I think it will not be so easy. Blythe will try and use you to get your father to break. So you may have to improvise.”

“Okay. No, wait, hang on. Your plan is that I get captured and then give Blythe an excuse to kill me — but not there and then, later, at his leisure — and I choose the chair?”

“Yes.” He saw the look on my face. “I know.”

“That is a fucking useless plan.”

“I know, I know.”

“And who is your inside man?”

“Oh, that’s the best bit…”

AS THE LEVER slammed home, the arc lights dimmed and flickered.

My back went rigid, I gritted my teeth as my eyes bulged out of my head. The veins in my temples strained to bursting point and the muscles in my neck stood out like ropes. I shook uncontrollably in the grip of the current.

Then I turned my head to General Blythe, smiled, winked, and said “gotcha!”

The lights went out and darkness fell, but not for long.

The chain of high explosives that ringed the walls of the compound exploded one by one, like a string of enormous firecrackers, lighting the room with a blinding orange strobe.

I saw the man who’d turned on the generator run into the room, pistol raised. In his early twenties, dark skinned, of medium height and build, he was nothing to look at. Just another shaven haired grunt made anonymous by the shapeless uniform and regimented body language. But his face was a terrible mixture of fury and pain.

He picked off the guards one by one, calm and efficient, his gunshots timed exactly with the explosions, so it took the guards — those not already dead — a few moments to realise what was happening. And a few moments was all it took.

When the explosions finally ended, he and Blythe were the only men standing in the room, cast into sharp relief by the flickering fires that now raged outside.

“Put down the gun, son,” said the general.

“I’m not your son,” said the man with the gun.

“Yes, David, you are and you will do as I say.”

“Screw you, Dad.”

“AND WHO THE fuck are you?” I asked the guard with the book.

“David Blythe,” he said. “I’m the one…”

“I know who you are. I thought you couldn’t get a message to my dad, so what are you doing here guarding him?”

“He’s been moved. My dad’s taking one last pop at him.”

“Where?”

“It wouldn’t do any good. Too many of them. You’d just get yourself killed.”

“I thought that was the whole idea,” I said drily.

“How the heck did you get down here?”

“Scratch two of your dad’s goons.”

“Holy… well, at least that should have sealed the deal. If you let me take you in, I reckon Dad’ll give you the choice.”

“Why should I trust you?”

“Tariq trusts me.”

“I’m still not entirely sure I trust Tariq.”

“Look, I’ve spent three days setting this up, at great risk,” he told me. “Sooner or later someone’s going to notice that I’ve been rewiring things. We get one shot at this. And Dad’s been talking about new orders, hinting that we’re moving out soon. If we wait too long, he may be too busy to waste time with games; he might just shoot you both in the head. We have to do this now.”

“I do not like this plan.”

“Complain about it if you survive. Now give me the gun. Thank you.”

THE CRISP CHATTER of automatic weapons fire drifted across the darkened compound as Tariq and the others fought their way in. All they had to do was create a diversion for a few minutes and allow Dad, David and myself time to escape.

“Sar’nt Keegan, untie him,” yelled David.

Dad was already working at the straps that bound me, but it was slow going with only one useable hand.

“What is going on, son?” Blythe sounded calm and reasonable, even indulgent, as if this was all just some little misunderstanding that could be sorted out with milk, cookies and a moral homily from Papa.

“You’re not my father. Not any more.”

“I assure you, I am.”

“My dad’s a soldier, not a butcher. The man who raised me doesn’t massacre civilians, impale people for fun, strap kids into electric chairs. My father was a man of honour and principle, proud to serve his country. You’re just a madman.”

My head and chest were free.

“David, I’m just following orders,” said the general. “Same as I’ve ever done.”

“Bullcrap. What orders? Who the heck is there left to give you orders? And even if there were, these orders are illegal.”

The general shook his head. “That’s not my judgement to make.” Was that regret I could detect in his voice?

“You told me once that a soldier’s greatest duty is to protect the people from their rulers,” shouted his son. “Refusing to obey an illegal order is a soldier’s highest duty. That’s what you told me. Remember that, Dad?”

My right hand came free and I started loosening the strap on my left.

“I surely do,” said the general. “But the world has changed, son. New laws, new rules.”

“I don’t accept that.”

“That would make you a fool, and I didn’t raise a fool.”

With both hands free I got to work on my feet.

“Weapons,” I said, and Dad nodded, moving away to salvage guns and knives from the corpses of the guards.

There was a huge explosion somewhere nearby. The room shook and my eyes were dazzled by a flash of pure white light. When my vision returned, the general had gone.

“Shit, where’d he go?” I yelled.

David just stood there, gun still raised, dazed by the enormity of his betrayal.

“He just vanished,” shouted the young man, surprised. But I’d seen how fast his father could move. I was amazed he’d chosen to run rather than fight.

We urgently needed to be anywhere else.

As the last strap came free I leapt out of that awful chair. I held out my hands for a gun, but Dad dropped the weapons to the floor and grabbed me, holding me in a tight, choking embrace and kissing my head.

He muttered over and over: “Thank God, thank God.”

I squirmed free, embarrassed and annoyed by his show of emotion; we didn’t have time for this. I held his good hand in both of mine.

“We have to go,” I said.

“So you’re giving the orders now, huh?” he said, shaking his head in wonder.

I wanted to say “Can we bond later, yeah? When there’s less chance of sudden, bloody death? That okay with you?” But I decided to go with the more laconic “Looks that way.”

I bent down and picked up an M16, cocking it as I stood. I handed a sidearm to Dad.

“You still able…”

“Oh yes.”

“Then let’s get the fuck out of here.”

At that moment Tariq came haring through the door, bullets churning the ground behind him, and yelled: “RUN!”

He ran right through us and kept going, so we turned and followed him, scattering the chunks of plaster that had been knocked free from the ceiling and walls by the earth shattering explosions. At the rear of the entrance hall was a sweeping marble staircase and Tariq made to climb it. David shouted at him not to, and he took the lead, dodging right and taking us to ornate double doors behind the stairs. These led into a kind of sitting room, empty except for one painting of Saddam on to which someone had felt-tipped a noose, and a large cock and balls squirting into the dead dictator’s face.