What would you do if you could restart life all over again? Think of the wrongs you could right and the situations you could repair, and the opposite could happen too. This is brand new writing from my eighth novel I am working on called Re-Constitution. I hope you find this excerpt a really amazing read, and I know you will. take a look at what I am delving into now as I write something that is both mystical and intense. I know you're going to love this!Author Steven Clark Bradley
Chapter Three
Marine Corps Medical Facility
Bosrah, Iraq,
June 6, 2011, 6:56 p.m.
“Open your eyes, Colonel Hawk. Come on man.”
Special Operations End Detail
Bosrah, Iraq,
June 6, 2011, 6:57 p.m.
Marine Corp Colonel Nathan Hawk opened his eyes, but only for a second, because the light was so bright that flooded his vision. His eyelids refused to stay open, and he heard a voice from somewhere; it sounded so far away, and indeed it was, but it gave him hope nonetheless.
Marine Corps Medical Facility
Bosrah, Iraq,
June 6, 2011, 6:58 p.m.
“What’s his name?” A Marine Corps doctor shouted. Colonel Nathan Hawk, sir. He’s with special ops and was mopping up the perimeter for the pullout.
Special Operations End Detail
Bosrah, Iraq,
June 6, 2011, 6:58 p.m.
Nathan Hawk heard a voice and heard his name as though in the middle of a hard-pouring rain, muted and hazy.
Marine Corps Medical Facility
Bosrah, Iraq,
June 6, 2011, 6:59 p.m.
“Colonel Nathan Hawk, we’re running out of time here.” The doctor bent down and pulled Nathan Hawk’s eyelids open one at a time. “I don’t get it. We have no brain activity but his heart is still beating.”
Special Operations End Detail
Bosrah, Iraq,
June 6, 2011, 6:58 p.m.
Nathan Hawk heard the doctor’s words and even understood them, though, the meanings were unclear and seemed to hit his ears in a swirling motion like he was traveling through time or racing through a swirling tunnel.
Marine Corps Medical Facility
Bosrah, Iraq,
June 6, 2011, 7:00 p.m.
The doctor opened Hawk’s other eye and shined the light into it. There was no dilation, movement or activity. “Did I miss that class or something? The guy is dead but his heart says no. he’s dead, but his heart is still alive.” The military doctor looked up and saw his team starring at him. “Sounded crazy, huh?”
He grabbed the chart from his nurse’s hand and started flipping through the pages. “No brainwaves, no movement; eye color is normal; skin is warm, breathing is steady; brain is dead. This has to be a malfunction. Recalibrate the equipment and run it all again.” He read Colonel Nathan Hawk’s short bio. Special Operations End Detail; decorated for Valor, three purple hearts… “It’s your real heart that puzzles me Colonel” The doctor said out loud.
“Excuse me, sir? We just ran the check on the monitors and the computers and they are working fine.” The nurse told him.
The doctor looked away from the chart and he saw everyone in their surgical gowns and masks looking blankly and gawking dumbfounded at him. “Run it all again. I already told you that once!” He said with a not quite angry tone.
“Sir, we already did that and…”
The doctor pulled his mask down and smiled gently and took a deep breath. “Look, this is not an order, OK. It is more of a request. I know you ran it all and I know you did it right. It is just our duty as medical practitioners to this highly decorated man, a fellow Marine; we owe him that much. Let’s calm down here and just do it again. This guy is dead, but his heart says he’s alive.”
The doctor looked around the room and scanned their reactions. “I can’t pay my medical school bills because I am stuck here in Iraq. I spend close to a quarter of a million dollars for books and training that told me that what we see right before our highly trained eyes is impossible. Anyone have an answer for me why or how this can be?” No one responded and looked frozen in space. “Well, I haven’t got one for you either! So, let’s try to find one. If the machinery is haywire, we’ve got it figured out,” he placed his stethoscope to Colonel Hawk’s chest. “I know my ears work, and they are tell me boom, boom, boom, and that means he’s alive. That part’s easy; about the brain thing, well, if this equipment is functioning, everyone better take a writing class, cause there’s a book in your future.”
Special Operations End Detail
Bosrah, Iraq,
June 6, 2011, 7:01p.m.
Colonel Hawk’s eyes sprung open. He stared straight upward and felt his radio vibrating and squawking with a voice screaming at him to wake up. He wondered if it were God or a guardian angel trying to rouse him. Hawk saw trees, thick, green trees that were shrouded in rich glimmering light sneaking through as the wind moved their branches. Had he died and gone out of that dreadful place he had remembered being in moments earlier? Then it all came back to him.
Hawk tied to think his way through the maze of bewilderment his mind was racing through. There were several voices barking out orders in Arabic, and he knew they were and who they were looking for; him. He turned off his radio that was leading the enemy right to him. Colonel Nathan Hawk tried to get his bearings and to play it all back in his mind.
Marine Corps Medical Facility
Bosrah, Iraq,
June 6, 2011, 7:03 p.m.
The doctor looked at his medical assistant. “Get Wells in here.”
“Wells, sir?” The assistant looked confused and puzzled.
“Yeah, you know that egghead that was sent here to do some research; you know the Einstein wired-looking guy with a cup of coffee in his hand all the timed.”
“That’s … he’s a scientist?”
“So I am told. He’s supposed to have an IQ of 182. So, send him in here. I have something maybe he can’t even figure out either. All I know is this warrior on this table is both alive and dead, but as long as his heart is beating without assistance, we’re staying with him.”
A group of men and women in long white medical gowns looked down at Colonel Nathan Hawk’s lifeless body while technicians recalibrated the medical equipment. The doctor bent down looked in at Hawk about six inches away from the wounded warrior’s face. “Normally, you outrank me, but this is an order. Colonel Nathan Hawk; open your eyes!” he shouted.
Special Operations End Detail
Bosrah, Iraq,
June 6, 2011, 7:04 p.m.
Colonel Hawk felt someone’s hot breath splashing across his face. Then, the shouting voice made his mind wake up and remember. Running! I was running and firing … and my men … they were screaming. Yes, I remember! They were screaming and … and falling … then it hit and I hit the ground and...
Marine Corps Medical Facility
Bosrah, Iraq,
June 6, 2011, 7:05 p.m.
Suddenly, the emergency room door flew open and a man ran into the room with no medical clothing on and rushed over to the lifeless anomaly lying on the bed. Dr. Samuel Wells looked down at what he thought was a dead body. “Oh, I’ve seen a few of these kinds before, but I can never get used to them.”
The doctor was hopeful and he and his medical staff got really quiet and moved in close to the Sam Wells. You’ve seen this situation before, really?” The doctor said with interest and hope for an answer. “Oh, yes,” Dr. Wells said. “But, dead bodies always give me the heeby-jeebies!” Everyone’s expressions changed. Egghead, indeed. The Military doctor thought. “Sir…”
“Wells.” Sam said as he walked around the room somewhat frantically looking at all the equipment and the tools on the tray and picking one up and observing it closely and setting it down to take another one. “It’s Dr. Sam Wells, doctor of environmental engineering.” He picked up another one and looked at it so closely he almost seemed to sniff it as a dog would. He sat it back down. “Graduate of Columbia School of Environmental Sciences, Masters from Princeton; good school Princeton.” He walked to the end of the bed and took the chart in his hand and looked down at it. He’s a bright one! Thought to himself. “Doctorate from MIT, K.E.Y.M.O.U.S.E.!!!” He started chanting and laughed as he looked up at every one looking at him as though he was an alien from another world. But Sam kept on chuckling. “But, you can call me Sam.” He said politely and saw the red line flowing upward and downward on the EKG monitor. “Oh, this man is alive?”
“Yes, Doctor…” Sam stuck a finger in the air and waved it to the left and the right. “Oh yes,” The Marine Corps doctor said with a small smile across his face as all the staff giggled obviously thinking Dr. Wells was crazy. “Oh yes, um, Sam, he is alive, but he’s dead too.” The doctor looked over at the monitor technicians. They all gave him thumbs up. “You see, his heart is beating, his blood is flowing, he has good respiration, but he’s brain dead.”
Sam Wells’ eyes lit up and he looked lucidly at the doctor. “I … I drink a lot of coffee, possibly more than I should, seeing I am a bit nervous anyway.” Everyone laughed. Sam did too. “My expertise is in bio and environmental sciences, and I know very little about medicine really; maybe the words ‘very little’ are not accurate and ‘know nothing’ would be a better choice of words, though I do know a little.” Everyone in the room began shuffling around. Sam Wells was obviously making them nervous as well with his nervous jabbering as he kept talking and scratching his head and holding his empty hand out as though he had a cup of coffee in it. “So, not to say I am not interested at all in your field, it is really an amazing science too … but, isn’t that impossible?” Sam heard everyone in the room exhale. Nathan Hawk’s body had no movement at all.
Special Operations End Detail
Bosrah, Iraq,
June 6, 2011, 7:06 p.m.
Nathan Hawk closed his eyes tightly and rolled to his right and off the path his group had been patrolling. The memory of the attack on his group flashed through his mind like a burst of lightning. The past three minutes raced through his mind so fast that Hawk grabbed the sides of his head. The sound of the exploding mortars that had hit his patrol only minutes before and had thrown him and his men to the ground replayed through his mind and he felt it all over again through his body. He saw it all so clearly that it hurt; the recon mission, explosions and pieces of unidentified flying stuff hurling through the air and tearing his men apart.
Iraq had been pacified, or so it had been declared by the President, the Pentagon and his direct commanders on the ground. It had made a good pretext for the Britons to leave, having done a great job in their own right. There were still those stubborn pockets of hoodlums out there though still refusing to lay it all down.
Hawk and his men had done the same recon duty for weeks and it had become good exercise and a way to chat as he and his five men walked the same paths with their guns drooped over their shoulders without their voices muffled in the least. It hardly seemed the type of mission for special operations military types to be doing. The dangerous part of their mission in Iraq was over, or so they had been told and so it seemed.
This war was over, right? Hawk asked himself silently as he lay on his stomach with his rifle pointed straight out in front of him. We were simply bringing up the rear and keeping it all in place. He thought.
The Brits were long gone, Bin Laden was dead and Al-Qeida was broken or at least mollified and gone off to lick their wounds and blowup some meaningless targets just to let the world know they were still alive. Now for Hawk, the daily routine had amounted to nothing much more than walking the beat of some shopping mall and looking for children who had lost their mom or dad. Now they had suddenly graduated to combat status and he recalled the massive sound of RPG’s and tracers of fire being fired overhead.
Marine Corps Medical Facility
Bosrah, Iraq,
June 6, 2011, 7:06 p.m.
Sam Wells felt strange to once in his life be totally speechless. Everyone in the room watched him and was a little bit afraid that the normally agitated nervous and eccentric man was acting lucid. He looked up at the doctor and seemed to have an idea. The doctor looked at Sam with a hopeful look on his face.
“I am sorry.” Sam said. “I know I have some special gifts from God, but I am still just a human. Could I look at his uniform he was wearing?”
One of the nurses brought Colonel Nathan Hawk’s military field suit he came into the medical center in and that was cut off of him. Sam started rummaging through every single pocket he could find. He found nothing but a bunch of leaves that we stuffed into his left side front pants pocket. At first, Sam thought they had simply gotten stuck in there when the mortars had exploded, but then he wondered why there were so many. Sam looked around at the medical staff that was all checking Hawk’s vitals. Sam took out the leaves and stuck them into his pocket and held one in his hand.
Environmental Science was his expertise and he had never seen anything like that green almost translucent piece of foliage in his hand. As he held it up to the light it glistened in the light and he knew it was something different.
“What you got there Dr. … Sam?” The doctor asked him. Sam was startled and almost stuck it into his pocket with the other ones, but pretended it was of no interest to him. “Oh this? Just a leaf. Seen one seen’em all!”
The doctor turned around to look at the EKG monitor which was exactly as it had been since hawk had been hooked up to it. “Well Sam, we’ve got us a real…” Sam was gone and the door to the emergency ward was just latching shut when the Doctor looked at it. “That’s one hell of a strange guy!”
Special Operations End Detail
Bosrah, Iraq,
June 6, 2011, 7:09 p.m.
Nathan Hawk extended out his right arm and his head blindly and all his eyes could see was the bodies of his men who were not moving. As Hawk’ senses returned, he turned his head to the right, he saw the marine he had been chatting with when all hell had broken out. He was obviously dead.
Hawk felt his own chest and reached behind him and felt his back. He found three holes in his vest. He pulled his hand up to his eyes and saw no blood. He had simply been knocked out by the impact of some large shells that had not penetrated the Kevlar inside the vest. He turned his comrade’s body over and his face was gone. He had taken a couple of the large rounds right to the face and was killed on impact, Thank God he didn’t survive in that condition. thought Hawk.
Hawk heard a voice again, but it was in Arabic this time. He jumped up to his knees and looked around quickly.
Hawk heard a voice again, but it was in Arabic this time. He jumped up to his knees and looked around quickly.
“Yallah …Yallah.” Hawk heard the voices in Arabic calling out and trying hard to quickly find where he and his dead men were located. He pulled out a bottle of pills that he had already determined to take before falling into enemy hands and having his head slowly sliced off like a sacrificial lamb. Then, they were there, in the breaches, so close he could hear the leaves rustling. There’d be no way to run, not with their guns, and he had already cheated death once today.
Dr. Sam Wells’ laboratory
Marine Corps Medical Facility
Bosrah, Iraq,
June 6, 2011, 7:12 p.m.
Dr. Sam Wells quickly went into his makeshift laboratory that he had set up in a tent just outside the medical facility. He walked in and strapped the entrance shut tight. The whole time he had walked from the facility, he had had the leaf held up right in front of his eyes and cause two people to almost be knocked tot eh ground. He had not even noticed. His mind was totally focused on the little green plant that shimmered in the light as he held it up. It was almost translucent and it made his hands feel strange, like something coursing through his skin and kind of itch on the inside. Poison Ivi? He wondered, but he knew it wasn’t that at all. His leg itched terribly behind the pocket he had stuffed the other leaves into. He left them there anyway.
Special Operations End Detail
Bosrah, Iraq,
June 6, 2011, 7:14 p.m.
Hawk’s mind raced and he debated whether to swallow the pills and die quickly or to just pretend to be so. Before he could make up his mind, he saw the silhouette of one of the long-haired-bearded men break through the foliage. Fate had made the decision for him. He saw the boots and heard orders be shouted back and forth at each other. He poured out the contents of the bottle and pulled his automatic rifle under him and held his finger on the trigger.
Hawk lay flat on his back and extended his right hand with his palm open, revealing the deadly tablets. He quickly turned his head and saw only one of his men still moving. He saw a set of boots appear out of the brush and approach them in the opening where they had been attacked. Hawk closed his eyes and waited.
The terrorist insurgent walked slowly and radioed something back to his group. Hawk understood nothing except the proverbial, “Allah Wakbar” at the end. He lay completely still. The Marine Corps training had kicked in, which amounted to being patient to live to kill another day. The Al-Qeida terrorist turned and headed in Hawk’s direction. He knew it even with his eyes closed by virtue of the loud approaching steps that the terrorist’s overkill attitude had never learned to quash.
The terrorist insurgent walked slowly and radioed something back to his group. Hawk understood nothing except the proverbial, “Allah Wakbar” at the end. He lay completely still. The Marine Corps training had kicked in, which amounted to being patient to live to kill another day. The Al-Qeida terrorist turned and headed in Hawk’s direction. He knew it even with his eyes closed by virtue of the loud approaching steps that the terrorist’s overkill attitude had never learned to quash.
Hawk tensed inwardly and gripped his gun solidly under his back. Hawk knew that the timing was everything and it had to be just right. He was fairly sure that only one of his men was still alive from his group. He also knew that marine to his left was regaining consciousness, because loud grunts and groans were emanating from him. Hawk’ task was not to get the hell out of there, but to take his comrade with him even if he had to carry him out.
The terrorist came close to Hawk’ rigidly still body.
Dr. Sam Wells’ laboratory
Marine Corps Medical Facility
Bosrah, Iraq,
June 6, 2011, 7:17 p.m.
Sam tore off a tiny piece of the leaf and placed on a slide and slid it under his microscope. He placed his quivering eye to the instrument and focused it. “What the hell is that?” Sam shouted and ran to the tent door and fell straight backward as collided with the barred exit he had strapped shut. He quickly untied the tent door.
Special Operations End Detail
Bosrah, Iraq,
June 6, 2011, 7:17 p.m.
Hawk started counting with 10 as his moment to act. When the terrorist came next to Hawk, he looked down and started to bend down to check out Hawk’ vitals. Just as he bent all the way down and when Hawk was ready to make his move, the marine to Hawk’ left groaned loudly. The terrorist stood upright quickly and hurried over to the groaning Marine. The enemy combatant saw the American flaying on the ground and took his automatic and pointed it at the still breathing Marine. As the enemy Islamic soldier of terror placed his finger on the trigger, Hawk rolled suddenly to his left, lifted his automatic and fired four shells into the terrorist. He fell with a thud to the ground.
Shouts reverberated through the trees in the rich underbrush of the area of Southern Iraq, the most fertile area of the country; very close to where the forbidden garden sprawled outward at the intersection of the Euphrates and Tigress rivers. Suddenly, like the sound of horses’ hooves, Hawk could hear what seemed to be hundreds of enemy combatants coming his way. Then, he heard the shots from their weapons firing as they evident ran in his direction firing at will as they approached. Hawk stood up, or at least tried to. His legs didn’t want to cooperate at first, but he managed to lift himself up to a world the twirled in circles for a moment or two.
The shots he had taken to his vest had knocked him out and had left him dizzy and out of focus, but he got his bearings soon enough. He looked at the other four men who were on the ground. Three of them were dead, he was sure, or hoped, because he’d not have time to check them out. He knew that one was alive and ran over to him. He turned him over and looked at him and slapped him lightly across the face as the pounded earth around him grew nearer and nearer.
Marine Corps Medical Facility
Bosrah, Iraq,
June 6, 2011, 7:17 p.m.
“You got a what?” The voice at the other end into the phone that the Marine Corps had held to his ear. The doctor pulled it away from his ear and the whole medical staff heard the sound of the base commander’s voice. “Yes sir, that is right. He has no brain patterns at all, but a good pulse and strong heart rhythm. It goes against everything I have …” The doctor heard the emergency room doors fly open and four Military police rushed in pushing a stretcher over to the body of Colonel Nathan Hawk. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Doctor, I’ll have four men over to you in a moment.”
“Well, you are efficient, sir, but this man is my patient.” the Marine doctor said almost out of protocol.
“Not anymore! He’s property of the US Military, at least for now.”
The four huge Marines each grabbed a corner of the sheet Colonel Hawk’s body was laying on and picked him up and put him on the stretcher and wheeled him out along with the monitors he was attached to.
Sam Wells ran into the facility hallway and saw a patient being wheeled down the hallway.
Special Operations End Detail
Bosrah, Iraq,
June 6, 2011, 7:21 p.m.
“Baker, are you with me, Baker?”
Private Baker only grunted and that was proof enough for Hawk. Hawk hoisted him up forcefully and threw Baker over his shoulder.
“Sorry dude, but no time for fear nor gentleness right now.” Hawk said in a panic-stricken voice just as a bullet whizzed past his head followed by screaming and even faster movement from the terrorists’ feet. He lifted Baker over his shoulder and stood up to run.
Hawk had to evaluate his perilous situation, but he had no time. He took off running deeper into the brush and foliage that was growing thicker with each over-weighted step. It was almost like watching some movie he had seen before making a decision to join the Marines. He had seen the Hollywood heroics, but now, here he was running for his and Baker’s lives and had no idea where to go and nowhere to hide effectively. This was a movie without a screenplay.
Improvise, dude. This is what all the training was for! He thought.
He could see the forest, or whatever it was, thickening up ahead. In front of him, he saw a deep, rich green spread out as far as he could see to the left and to the right like no vegetative growth he had ever seen. It was a great place to hide, but would be an impossible place to find his way out of. He kept running toward it simply because the danger behind him was so much greater than that which loomed in front of him.
Soon his mind seemed to have caught his second wind and his feet and mind simply took over. He felt the air rushing past his face and he knew he had reached a threshold of either collapsing right there or running faster than he had ever done in his whole life. Shots rang out behind him with screaming voices in Arabic that Hawk could not understand in words but fully comprehended the full weight of their danger they posed for him and Baker.
Marine Corps Medical Facility
Bosrah, Iraq,
June 6, 2011, 7:24 p.m.
Sam Wells barreled into the emergency room. He looked at the bed and knew who the patient was he had seen being wheeled down the hallway. “Where’s the colonel?” Sam asked already knowing the answer.
“He’s state property now, and we’ll never know what this crazy thing was all about.” The doctor lamented. Sam knew, but he didn’t breathe a word of it. “Can I ask you, where was his body found?”
The doctor took the chart and angrily and with great frustration quickly flipped through the pages. “He was found just inside the forbidden zone.”
“Inside the what? You mean where the Iraqis think the garden of God was supposed to have been? You no Adam, eve, apples, oranges I don’t know was it a pineapple?”
“Yeah, that’s right.” The doctor asked with surprise. “Is there anything you don’t know?”
“That’s where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers converge, and that has to be where the garden was…you know the Garden of Eden. It has to be the place, if you believe the bible, and I do.”
“You are a strange one, Dr. Sam Wells, a religious Einstein?”
“Einstein believed in God, perhaps. Oh an yes, Doctor. There is one thing I have never learned. I’ve never learned how to give up.” Sam said with real amazement in his voice.
The phone rang. “Have you seen that loony-toon who’s been around here for the past week; what’s his name?” “Wells, sir, Sam Wells.” The doctor said and looked right at Sam. “Yes sir,” he said looking at the now empty bed where his miracle patient had been lying. “He’s right here.” He said as he heard the door slam shut. “Sir, he’s headed to his laboratory and I think he’s not going to be there for long.” The commander slammed the phone down.
Special Operations End Detail
Bosrah, Iraq,
June 6, 2011, 7:26 p.m.
Baker suddenly roused and looked back at the scenery that grew smaller as Hawk ran forward.
“Where the hell…”
“Just shut up, Bakeman. I’m getting us out of here. Don’t move or I’ll break stride. You still got that pistol?” Hawk asked with fleeting breath.
“Yea, here under my vest.”
“Get it out and if you see one of the Allah suckers, send him to paradise.”
“Yes sir.” Baker affirmed as he pulled out the gun and pointed out into the air whizzing past him.
Marine Corps Medical Facility
Bosrah, Iraq,
June 6, 2011, 7:36 p.m.
Sam ran as quickly as his genus legs would carry him to his temporary lab. He almost jumped inside the tent and fell to the floor. He jumped up and gathered his papers and his few belonging and threw them all into a paper back and made sure to get his coffee cup which he accidently slammed against the desk and shattered it. He actually stopped and looked at it in sadness. “Oh, hurts the heart! That was my favorite cup!” he said out loud. And ran out of the lab.
As he ran out into the hallway, he heard the pounding steps of several military police racing to his area. Sam quickly ran to his car and tried to drive as normally as he could, but he never looked normal at any time. “Ha-ha, sometimes being obtuse is a blessing. He scruffed up his hair and just played himself.
Special Operations End Detail
Bosrah, Iraq,
June 6, 2011, 7:43 p.m.
Hawk heard a shot and felt Baker’s body go limp and heavy. He knew that his comrade was gone. Hawk thought he should carry him away, but his probably dead body was now heavier than ever with buoyancy at all. He wondered if he should lay him down on the ground and see if he were possibly alive, but that would only spell two kills for the terrorists. He was torn, but his own death, as selfish as it seemed, was far weightier at the moment than trying to save an already dead man.
Instead of stopping respectfully and lowering Baker’s body to the ground, he raised his right arm and without slowing down, he catapulted Baker’s body off his shoulder and it hit the ground hard and loudly. Hawk didn’t let it slow him down. He ran faster than ever now. He felt the same way he always had as a child when he’d hold three bats and swing them before taking his turn at the plate. The loss of Baker’s body from his shoulders made his legs feel all the more light as the terrorists followed suit. His stride broke into the quickest his sprinting legs had ever moved.
Marine Corps Medical Facility
Bosrah, Iraq,
June 6, 2011, 7:52 p.m.
Sam pulled up to the gate and showed him his badge. The guard looked at him and looked inside the car and then scanned the badge. It cleared and he raised the barrier and same put the car into drive and tried to pull out of the base as normally as he could.
The phone inside the gate station rang and Sam immediately heard the guard scream out an order at him. “Halt! Halt!” Sam looked back and saw the guard in the rearview mirror behind his car with his pistol drawn. Sam ducked down just as a bullet crashed through his rear window and out the front one. “Oh Jesus, help me!” Sam prayed. “I need a cup of coffee!” he sat back up and saw a truck heading right for his and shoved the wheel to the right and narrowly missed it as the horn’s screeching blast flew past him with the a marine’s extended middle finger greeting him. “Asshole!” the driver shouted. Sam headed to a local bus station to take a bus to the Turkish border.
Special Operations End Detail
Bosrah, Iraq,
June 6, 2011, 8:03 p.m.
Nathan Hawk had been told that fear and that innate pulse for preservation of life and limbs were his best friends in just such a situation. He looked ahead of him and he saw the thick glimmering foliage right in front of him. He just needed to get ahead of his pursuers and to run into the thick area and then break to the left or right and lay low so he could pick them all off either one by one or all at the same time. It sounded feasible. In reality, it was his only option. Five more feet and shots rang out. They couldn’t be more than thirty feet behind him. Then he heard their feet pounding the earth. Three more feet and he increased speed and then just as he was about to dart into the thick green area ahead, his body slammed into some kind of invisible wall like a huge pane of pristine glass that made his momentum come to a crushing and painful screeching halt.
When Hawk hit the barrier that was completely invisible, his body crashed and then was propelled backward about five feet. On his back, he looked up and saw nothing there, but he strangely felt no pain and simply stood up and ran to his right. He saw about twenty terrorists running toward the imperceptible obstruction and felt his lips move into a smile. He wanted to watch them crash into it, but he had to get out of sight. He gave all his attention to finding a place to hide, but he couldn’t move. He seemed to have crushed his back when he hit the invisible barrier, but he had no pain.
He pulled himself, sliding on his back around and watched the terrorist as they got only about ten feet from the barrier. They were running and the first five slammed into it with such a crushing speed that two of them were killed instantly from the sheer trauma of the impact. Hawk knew he had smashed into it with no less force, but he had awakened looking straight up into the sky. The others stopped and looked up and down, to the left and right and tried to feel what was there stopping them.
“Iblis! Shetan!” One guard began to scream.
Another pounded the butt of his gun into the side of the man’s head.
“Shhh. Dur.” he whispered.
Hawk watched as the sounds that filled the forest grew deathly silent. He watched the area where the men stood. That thing, whatever it was seemed to change. It was not clear anymore and it seemed to form a spinning mass of molten colors that revolved and twirled until suddenly, in front of the terrorists stood a towering figure. His face shown like the sun at noon day and it had wings that were extended and shimmering that appeared to cover the whole area of the entrance way.
The terrorist insurgents looked up at him. He was beautiful and perfect to behold. It looked down at them and smiled and they bowed to him. When they looked back up into its face, the smile turned into a frown and then melted into a scowl and transformed into a face of anger and a visage of rage. The men rose to run away. The great strange entity reached behind him and pulled out a massive sword.
“You have been judged and found wanting.” it cried out.
It raised the great sword over its head and swung it from left to right. The blade connected with every fleeing neck and their heads fell to the ground followed next to their bodies which took another couple of steps before limply crumbling downward.
Hawk watched with eyes that would not blink. Live by the sword, die by the sword. He thought. Hawk looked into the great image’s eyes and the face of fierce anger melted back to a peaceful and harmless smile. It waved its hand and reached out and took hold of Hawk pulled him over to the entranceway. Colonel Nathan Hawk turned and looked at a massive expanse of rock and walls of stone. Then he heard it again, “Open your eyes, Colonel Hawk.”
The great beast pulled Hawk beyond the barrier into the lush green area. Hawk looked around and could not believe how beautiful it all was, but his legs were paralyzed from his waist down. He felt perfectly at peace until he again heard the voice. “Colonel Nation Hawk, open your eyes, sir.”
Bosrah Bus Station
Bosrah, Iraq,
June 6, 2011, 8:31p.m.
Sam had bought his ticket from one part of hell to another on the western border of Iraq. He had sat down and pulled out a bible he had brought with him. He opened it to the first book of the sacred text, the Book of Genesis Chapter three verses twenty-one to twenty-four. “The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.”
Sam held one of the leaves he had taken from Colonel Hawk’s pants pocket and held it up to the light. “The tree of life?” Sam said out loud and smiled broadly.
Special Operations End Detail
Bosrah, Iraq,
June 6, 2011, 8:43 p.m.
The great shimmering beast reached out to a beautiful large and shining tree that was just beyond the invisible barrier. It pulled several leaves from the tree and placed them in Hawk’s pocket. Then, it took one and gave it to Nathan Hawk and made a gesture for him to eat it. Hawk hesitated and then placed it in his mouth and swallowed it. He felt energy course through his body, then he felt want seemed to be a huge bolt of lightning jolt his body and made his chest arch upward.
Military Transport
10,000 feet over Bosrah, Iraq,
June 6, 2011, 8:47 p.m.
“Sir, it’s not working! His heart is stopping; we’re losing him; his heart is stopping.” “Then, jolt him again!”
The medical personnel recharged the defibrillator. “Clear!” and Colonel Nathan Hawk felt the electrical current again jolt his body upward.
Special Operations End Detail
Bosrah, Iraq,
June 6, 2011, 8:51 p.m.
The great beast reached down and touched hawks chest and smiled. “You have been judged and been blessed with grace.” It then pointed his arm out and a loud voice and a strange language it shouted Live!
Hawk inhaled suddenly and his whole being felt sheer pain throughout his entire body as his lungs inflated with life-giving air and his blood began to flow. He saw lights swirling and heard a loud roar filling wherever he was. As his eyes cleared and his ears tuned in, he saw five men and women staring down at him with medical masks over their faces and white medical gown on. He turned his head from side to side and realized the noise he thought was the war zone that had almost killed him was a military medical transport taking him somewhere far from Iraq. A doctor bent down and looked into Hawk’s face. Colonel Nathan Hawk, thank God you’ve finally opened your eyes.
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