By Jason Brooks
Carlson threw a mini-bottle of whiskey across the room, while Wheaton punched a hole in the room’s sheetrock. Solomon merely scratched his chin and nodded.
“Well, if that’s what he wants, that’s what we do,” Solomon said, nonplussed.
Lucas sat at the table, marveling at the strange personnel group that was Solomon’s team, struggling to figure out each member. He had been sure that Solomon would be the one to go off in anger; he’d figured the two soldiers would be used to the government changing military plans.
“Son of bitch!” Carlson yelled again. Another whiskey bottled exploded against the bathroom mirror. “Don’t those stupid politicians know that operations like this require precise timing? Do they just not care?”
“Maybe they’ve gotten some new intelligence, something that made the change necessary,” Lucas offered.
Wheaton snorted. “There’s always some new intelligence, Lucas. Always some last minute change of heart, or new revelation; politicians thrive on intel, not to better the mission, but to make sure they can strike while it’s beneficial for them.”
Lucas held his right side; it was really throbbing from sitting so long this morning. “Then ignore the order. Do it on your own time frame.”
The two soldiers stared at him. Solomon did too.
“Violating an order, even a stupid, senseless one, is unacceptable. It corrodes discipline amongst the team,” Carlson said. Wheaton nodded agreement.
“So it’s better to follow a dumb order and be loyal than to ignore it and be successful?” Lucas shook his head. “Boy, I always thought beaurocracy was stupid, but this takes the cake.”
Carlson walked to Lucas. “Following orders is the only way to survive in the field.”
“Yeah, thinking for yourself is highly overrated,” Lucas retorted.
Carlson grabbed Lucas by the shirt collar and pulled him out of the chair. Lucas screamed in pain and his vision blurred. He could feel the room spin.
Solomon stepped in. “Enough. Put him down Carlson.”
Carlson didn’t budge.
“I said put him down, soldier, and that’s an order.”
Carlson’s face twisted into a malicious grin. “Maybe what he was saying about following orders is right after all. Maybe I should just go ahead and do what I want.”
Solomon stood silent. Wheaton stifled a laugh. Lucas moaned in agony.
Carlson carried the reporter back to his bed and laid him down. Lucas sighed with relief as Carlson leaned down into his face.
“See, Lucas? Following orders is better for everyone. Especially you.”
Solomon came over and pushed Carlson out of the way. “Go get the van ready, Carlson, and take Wheaton with you. We don’t have time to beat the hell out of civilians today.”
“At least not the ones on our team,” Carlson laughed. He waved at Wheaton. “Come one, time for us grunts to do the grunt work.”
Once the door closed, Solomon said, “Lucas, you’ll learn to just keep your mouth shut. It’s easier that way.”
Lucas nodded.
Solomon handed Lucas a com-link. “Here. This morning, Carlson had disabled yours without my knowledge. Keep this on you at all times.”
Lucas put the com-link in his ear. “Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it.” Solomon stood to leave.
“Solomon?” Lucas called. “Who’s the mole?”
Solomon sat back down. “What do you mean, who’s the mole?”
“I mean, the President has to be monitoring this team in some other way besides my blog. So who’s the contact person?”
Solomon smiled. “I am.”
“Should’ve known.”
“Yeah, you should’ve.” Solomon smiled. “What made you realize that there had to be someone else?”
“Oh, just the way the President was typing his messages to me earlier this morning. The absurdity of the President relying solely on a newspaper reporter kind of struck me, and I realized that there had to be someone else.”
“Interesting.”
Lucas smiled. “Not really.”
Solomon leaned closer to Lucas. “I file a report every three hours, whether we’ve done anything or not. I knew that we would be moving the timetable up, but didn’t say anything.”
“Why not?” Lucas asked.
“Because the President received reliable information that Wheaton might not be as loyal as she seems.”
The revelation startled Lucas. “What kind of information?”
“Oh, you know how things are with the Internet. You make a video, it’s bound to get into the wrong hands eventually.”
“So there’s a video suggesting she’s not reliable?”
“Yeah. It’s of her being baptized by members of a small Christian cell.”
Lucas’ stomach sank. “She’s a Christian?”
Solomon shrugged. “Who knows? Apparently the video is several years old, and not all so-called conversions are genuine. She’s since gone on to be a damn fine soldier.”
Solomon stood again. “But as we learned with 9/11 and the Fort Hood shootings, just because something is history doesn’t mean it won’t impact the present.”
“Like last night,” Lucas said.
“Yeah. Obviously there are some raw emotions with her, and emotions get people killed. I’ve ordered Carlson to shoot her without hesitation if she gets out of line in any way.”
Lucas frowned. “Define out of line.”
“He’ll know it when he sees it,” Solomon said. “If he sees it.”
“And what happens if he ‘sees’ something that isn’t there?”
Solomon frowned. “Then I’ll kill him.”
Lucas’ side flared in pain and he rolled over with a groan. Solomon walked over to the table and drug it to Lucas’ bedside.
“Since you obviously can’t get out of bed to do your job, let’s make it easier on you.”
Lucas nodded. “Thanks.”
“Not a problem. I’m going to load up. Make sure you’re live-blogging as soon as you see the van pull away. The President will want to know what’s going on.”
Solomon walked to the door and opened it.
“And Lucas? Keep your gun ready. You just never know.”
Lucas looked at the service pistol on the nightstand. When he looked up, Solomon was gone.
Lucas powered up all of his gear and waited. The com-link kept him wired into the conversation, augmenting the video feed.
“Let’s move out,” he heard Solomon say.
Lucas watched as the van moved slowly away from the hotel, turning in a wide, lazy arc onto the highway. Lucas’ fingers began dancing across the keyboard.
They’re off. Team is loaded, prepped and en route.
The team was silent for the most part. Carlson drove, with Solomon riding shotgun. Wheaton and Aristotle were in the back, watching the video feed of the house. Lucas could see that there were several people slowly filing into the one-story home; many of them were younger, and several were clearly children. Lucas typed as much into the blog entry. He hit send.
An instant message popped up. Good. Better to get ‘em while they’re young and dumb.
“Jesus,” muttered Lucas.
“What’s that, Lucas?” Solomon asked.
“Uh, nothing. Just a dumb comment.”
“Well, unless you see something really important we need to know about, how about keeping the channel clear?”
“Understood.”
Lucas pulled the transmitter away from his mouth. The van passed the target house and eased through the four-way stop. Then, Carlson made a quick left onto a side street, approaching the home from the back. Lucas could see Wheaton and Solomon getting their assault rifles ready. Lucas’ fingers were cramping from the constant typing.
“We’re in position,” Solomon said.
Another instant message popped up for Lucas. They can go at any time.
Lucas pulled his transmitter up. “You’re clear to go.”
“Understood,” Solomon replied.
The four-feed screen went insane with motion; Lucas’ head rolled just trying to keep up. Each feed shook as the team ran towards the house, the bushes and trees becoming violent blurs. Finally, Solomon’s feed steadied as he paused at the home’s front door.
“One, two, THREE!” he yelled.
The door splintered beneath his boot and Lucas watched in horror as Solomon burst into the room, fired three shots into what appeared to be a small child, possibly no more than five, and stepped over the dead body on his way to the kitchen.
Lucas pushed back from the screen to help his eyes settle. Instead of trying to concentrate on each feed, he looked at the monitor as a whole, and the plan became clear: Solomon was flushing the small group of people towards a back door.
Lucas’ eyes darted to the feed for Carlson and Wheaton; the pictures were roughly the same: the rear exit of the house, flanked by dead boxwood bushes. The gunsights of their rifles were just in frame. Lucas marveled at the footage, a real-live honest-to-God first person shooter game was playing itself out before his eyes.
When the back door burst open and the first person stepped through, Lucas’ eyes swam with tears as Wheaton and Carlson simply opened fire. The ceaseless flow of bullets into the doorway resulted in spurts of blood and flesh, the launching of bone fragments into the air, the piling of bodies at the door until small children were being help up and hoisted over the corpses.
“Please don’t shoot my baby!” once woman cried, tossing her three year old son over the body pile and into the yard. The child screeched for its mother, reaching back for the pile before finally standing and waddling back towards the door.
The sharp report of a single gunshot corresponded with the child’s body flying sideways onto the porch, landing in a motionless heap. From inside, the mother’s voice filled the house, until another gunshot, this one from inside, quickly silenced the scream.
Solomon’s camera showed him standing over the few remaining survivors.
“Where’s the pastor?” he demanded. “Where is Anshu Parminder?”
Lucas no longer typed. He was transfixed by the spectacle of blood and death and cruelty being streamed into his eyes. He heard another gunshot, then Carlson’s voice.
“Had one trying to sneak away. He’s down.”
Aristotle’s frame shook as the judge made his way into the house. Solomon turned to look at him, and Lucas saw what the other’s did: a tall man, dressed in black, sweeping into the house to render a verdict of death. The Grim Reaper writ large on this perverted game.
“According to Congressional Act 12576, the Federal Hate Crimes Statute, all persons engaged in unlawful and detrimental conduct as defined by the Congress of these United States, will be hereby sentenced to immediate death. As this house has been known and proven to be a terrorist cell, it is my duty as a Tribunal member of Congress to order such sentence to be carried out here.”
Solomon turned back to the rear door of the house, where Wheaton and Carlson were climbing over the pile of bodies and assuming a firing squad position near him. Each one took a stance in front of one of the terrorists, placed their rifle barrel to the person’s head, and pulled the trigger for a one-shot kill.
Lucas turned his head, but heard all 18 of the shots. Solomon came on the line.
“Lucas, you there?”
“Yes,” he mumbled. His stomach was weak and his heart raced; the sheer brutality of the raid was exceeded only by its swiftness.
“Are you watching the monitors?” Solomon asked.
“No,” Lucas answered.
“Well, sit up, wipe the slobber off your chin and be a big boy. I need you to confirm our kills.”
Lucas sat up, despite his head’s violent protest. The throbbing and spinning accentuated the nausea in his stomach and Lucas feared he would pass out.
“We’re going to walk around the house,” Solomon continued, “and you need to note how many bodies we count out. If you see we’re missing one, or see that something seems off, you just say so.”
Lucas threw up on the floor.
“Lucas?”
“Here.”
“Suck it up and start taking notes. Here we go.”
Lucas kept his eyes trained on the four video feeds, assiduously cross-referencing each camera angle to make certain the count was accurate. His stomach, knotted and acidic, growled with each close up of a dead body, but Lucas detached himself after the third or fourth one; even the children were easy once the count reached into the thirties.
“That makes 37 bodies all told,” Solomon said.
“Confirmed,” said Carlson.
“Confirmed,” echoed Wheaton.
Lucas sat silently. Then: “Confirmed.”
Solomon walked over to Wheaton. Lucas watched as their faces each loomed large in the other’s camera lens.
“Lucas, we’ll be on our way back in less than an hour. Is that enough time for you to submit your blog report?”
“Yes,” Lucas answered.
“Okay then. The video feed automatically downloads and stores in a zipped folder on the monitoring laptop. If you need to replay anything, just select which camera feed you want and pull it up.”
Lucas leaned over and threw up again.
“And Lucas?”
“Yes,” he whispered.
“Call the front desk and have them come clean up your puke. I don’t want to even smell that crap when we get back. Solomon out.”
The four video feeds went black and the com-link went back to call mode, where only by directly dialing a team member could Lucas hear or talk with anybody. And that was fine with him. Staring at the blank monitor, seeing the nightmare image of that three year old child in his mind’s eye again and again, Lucas knew he couldn’t do what was being asked of him.
But the blog laptop sat open, the screen blinking with another message from Thepotus:
I want details, Lucas, down to the last splash of blood.
And below that, a second message.
Now.
Lucas stared at the keyboard, his heart sinking in agony and revulsion. But knowing that the fate that just befell those “terrorists” could easily be his, he put his conscience to the side and began to type.
Dear Thepotus…
The Coen Brothers have been entertaining audiences with their off-beat filmmaking techniques for many years now. In “A Serious Man,” their artistry shines bright as they lead you through a miserable string of luck in the life of Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg). It is easy to get lost in their style while they present these events that are undeniably captivating. Knowing that they are Oscar-winning directors and screenwriters lends a sense of confidence that they know what they are doing. But when the dust settles and the film cuts to black, I couldn’t help but sigh, “Huh?” with a great deal of dissatisfaction.
