Righteous hell, p.20
Righteous Hell, page 20
62 |
USS Dwight D. Eisenhower Red Sea
Dawson stepped into the infirmary aboard the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, half his team lying in beds. But everyone was alive, none of their injuries permanent. A couple of broken bones, everything else, just bumps and bruises.
The doctor was at Red’s bedside and Dawson joined them. “So, Doc, are they all just faking it?”
The doctor grunted and jerked his thumb at Casey. “He definitely is. The rest of them, not so much.”
Casey flipped the man the bird. “I hurt.”
Dawson grinned. “The colonel’s asking for an update. What am I telling him?”
“Everything’s minor. Everyone will be back on duty in two to four weeks. You guys got lucky. It could have been a lot worse.”
Red agreed. “Damned lucky. If we had been any closer, we’d be toast.”
Dawson smiled at his friend. “I’ll let the colonel know you guys are all going to live.”
The doctor pointed at Dawson’s chest. “That goes for you, too. Two to four weeks. You’ve got one cracked rib and a couple of bruised ones. Light duty only.”
Dawson grinned. “Can I get that in writing? The colonel will believe you, but I doubt my wife will. Her honey do jar is getting pretty full.”
The doctor laughed then jerked a thumb at the door. “Get the hell out of my infirmary.”
Dawson patted Red on the shoulder. “I’ll come check on you guys later, but right now, I know where I’m not wanted.”
Red gave him a weak thumbs-up and Dawson left then leaned against the bulkhead, breathing a sigh of relief. Everyone was alive. Everyone would recover. Fifteen hostages had been rescued, and no one on the other teams had sustained any injuries. This incident was over. This op had been successful.
But hundreds of families the world over were only now finding out that their loved ones weren’t one of the lucky fifteen and were instead dead, butchered, their final moments filled with horror, filled with the terror too many in what was supposed to be the civilized world tacitly or enthusiastically supported, all because of their hatred of one religion and their blind support of another that had won the PR war.
But a message had been delivered. The Chinese had hammered Houthi positions all across Yemen, leveling them with no concern as to civilian casualties. All were fair game, as far as they were concerned. And with China delivering the punishment, the White House had provided them with the intel Spock had collected, confirming the Iranians had financed the operation. It was all the Chinese needed to hit Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps positions throughout Iran.
It wasn’t justice, but sometimes vengeance had to do.
He pushed off the wall and headed back to the rec room where the rest of the team rested. He couldn’t wait to get home and hold his wife in his arms, and pray to God she never went through anything like what those poor women had endured.
63 |
Williams Residence Miami, Florida
Jenny rang the doorbell then glanced back at her father sitting in the car, his smile of encouragement all that was keeping her from bolting. But this was something she had to do. It was the right thing to do.
The soldiers had evacuated her and the others from what turned out to be Yemen and onto ships in the Red Sea. They were transported to an aircraft carrier, then by plane to Germany, where they were sent home to their various countries.
She had talked to her father several times before he met her at the airport. It had taken weeks for her to recover physically, at least enough to make this trip. She was still in pain, but the emotional scars were far deeper. She was slowly getting over her shame as she realized it wasn’t her fault. She had done nothing wrong, and there was nothing she could have done to prevent what had happened to her. But so many had died. What had she done to deserve to live? It was a question that still haunted her, and she was sure would for the rest of her days.
But she had been given a gift. Whether that was a gift from God or just luck of the draw, it didn’t matter. She would embrace her new reality. She would become the lawyer her father always wanted, but not at his firm. She wanted to be a prosecutor, someone who punished men that committed crimes like those who had victimized her. She wanted to make the world a better place, a more just place, where evil was put behind bars.
And to her relief, her father supported the idea.
The door opened and a woman, clearly distraught, eyed her inquisitively. “May I help you?”
“Mrs. Williams?”
“Yes.”
“My name is Jenny Larsen. I was a friend of Darnell’s and was with him when he died.”
A man approached from behind and put his arm around Darnell’s mother. “You were with our boy when he died?”
“Yes, sir. And I just thought you should know that he died a hero, trying to save me.”
THE END
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This was a difficult one to write. I think we can all agree that rape is one of the most horrific of crimes, and rape as a weapon of war is indefensible. Writing characters with vile thoughts is hard enough, but writing victims is far tougher.
Since rape is such a sensitive subject, I tried to avoid specifics, but sometimes as a writer, to truly convey the horror, and to not shy away from what is happening in our world today, it becomes necessary to, at a minimum, imply certain things. Our imaginations can fill in the blanks.
What is happening in our world today, on many fronts, is discouraging and disgusting. We have wars where there shouldn’t be wars, terrorist violence where there needn’t be, and saber-rattling when dialog should be the order of the day.
We need to get our act together as a species, or we do deserve an Extinction Level Event as expressed by a character in this book.
And it all starts at home. We need to stop thinking in such black and white terms. Are the social media CEOs of the world to be the ones who change the way we think about things? To mold our children’s brains into something twisted, to mold our own into thinking there are only ever two choices? When we think in a binary fashion, there is no possibility for compromise, for understanding, for respect. The world is shades of gray, not like/dislike, thumbs-up/thumbs-down, Republican/Democrat, red/blue, Black/White. We’re more than that, and we need to push back against the social media giants destroying our way of thinking, and by extension, our way of life.
We’re better than what they would have us be.
Food for thought.
As usual, there are people to thank. My dad for all the research, Ian Kennedy for some Spec Ops equipment info and explosives info, Fred Newton for some nautical info, and, as always, my family and friends for their continued support, my late mother who will always be an angel on my shoulder as I write, and my fantastic proofreading team!
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any person or persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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J. Robert Kennedy, Righteous Hell
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