GIJoe: A fragment
The hotel room was dark. The lines were open but somehow the sunlight rarely touched any space that was occupied by the tenant. He was as dark as he was silent, and sunlight fled from his presence in a manner that was peculiar, to say the least.
He always booked his rooms in advance, through a letter, or, in the recent years, over the internet. The credit cards were as valid as any forged cards could be. At least, they always paid for what they bought. It wasn’t that he was evil. That was the peculiar thing about him. No, not that, in fact quite the opposite. It was just that he was so…dark. How could someone so dark exude such an air of goodness? The wide brimmed hat reminded one of some mystic wizard, pulled low over his ears so far you could have hardly seen his features. Then there was the full beard covering most of his face, the whiskers somehow distorted as if the skin underneath had been twisted and pulled out of shape. The sunglasses, large, dark, covering almost all of the face except the nose, which was obviously some cosmological imitation. Scarves and full jackets, even in summer, black leather gloves. You couldn’t even make out the color of his skin. Besides, he came and went so quickly, so silently, you hardly had time to catch a glance of him. His movements were foreign, exotic, not quite cat-like. Faster than that. Somehow. It was all too hard to tell and the maitre des of the hotels he frequented, New York, Tokyo, Paris, Amsterdam, LA—well, they had stopped trying many years ago.
Anyway, he never caused any trouble. Never even made a noise at all. You never heard him coming or going. No neighbor ever complained. And he never spoke, ever. Whoever he was, he made it his business not to let you know. And he was good at his business.
Up in the room the man stood in front of the mirror. With his glasses off, the hat lying neatly on the dresser, scarf and coat hung in the closet, he was always reminded. The scars never healed. Once he had tried. She had wanted it. But she was gone, now. And the doctors had botched it, the scars were still as grotesque as they had ever been, more so after science had had its way with them. Only the nose had come out somewhat normal, enough to allow for the cosmetics. The heavy beard covered the rest. For a moment he remembered how it used to be, how it was back when he wore no beard, but rather a mask, and called himself—or rather was called—by a name. It didn’t matter. He needed no name. He would never have a voice to put to a name at any rate. So it didn’t matter what you called him. All of that was gone.
But he remembered.
He’d heard some ex-GI had gotten hold of the story, made a children’s comic out of it, a fantasy. The idea almost made him smile. Of course the whole business had been squashed by the administration. You couldn’t have people knowing that the terrorist masterminds were home-grown. It was out-right un-American. And anyway, they were all gone now. Oh, a few had survived. Clutch, Duke, Breaker, Zap. But the ones that mattered to him. Stalker. Gung-Ho. And her. Mostly her. She was gone. To lose the others was natural. Warriors are born and die. But she wasn’t supposed to die. She was supposed to…
He turned away. It didn’t matter. It did, but he couldn’t let it. He’d chased it for long enough, until it had threatened to overtake him. A warrior cannot lose his own peace. The battle cannot be allowed to enter your own mind, lest, losing your own emptiness, you become the enemy. He sat silently in the last drops of sunlight, chasing it all away, and shut his eyes. Soon the emptiness was so severe it sucked in all of the remaining light from the room. And in his mind there was nothing more than the blade. The flashing blade, steel on steel, and the space in between. The warrior’s secret retreat. The space in between.
Long ago that space had been filled. Found and filled with terrorists, villains of a high order. The snake who spits poison and kills. But that was long ago and vanishing on the horizon more and more each passing day. The one who had pulled the strings, the hand behind the hand, the king cobra himself was no more, vanquished like a storm cloud before an offshore breeze. Of course, new enemies had arisen, this time from distant shores. But they had not called him. If they had needed him they could find him. Hawk, Duke, Flint…Flint could have found him. He had left a trail. And if they couldn’t follow the trail he wasn’t interested anyway.
Of course, they had found him many years ago, back after the war, back when the snake had first arisen, back when he left no trail. But that time he had been found by Stalker, and Stalker was the best. Stalker was gone. Besides her, that was his greatest pain.
Besides her? The thought pricked him. No. There was, of course, the other pain as well. The old wound. Closed, reopened, enflamed and then branded on his soul like a hot iron. Tommy. That pain was the oldest, and the most tender. Sword-brother Tommy. Traitor. Or had Tommy merely been doing what his kind do? What is the truth when sword-brothers cross swords? And Tommy could find him if he wanted to. It wouldn’t be hard for Tommy. Perhaps that was what he wanted, perhaps that was why he waited. Perhaps that was why he staid in the same hotels, year after year. Silent. In meditation. Tommy would come. If no others came, Tommy would come.
There was a knock on the door. In an instant, in the space of a thought, he was there, looking through the device he had planted years before in the wall, just to the side of the door, an angle that gave him a view to the outside hallway. A man with a silent gun. A single shot fired through the peep hole. So it began. Why must it always start with such amateurish maneuvers?
The man tried the knob and the door swung open, he stepped quickly into the darkness, and made one last shot into the wall as a blade sliced his throat.
The bearded one sheathed the blade and quickly left the room. As he went he pulled on a hood, a large shadowy hood that covered his features. There was no time for other arrangements. This was the first move. Tommy had actually come.
He leapt out of the hallway window three stories to the alleyway, then up the fire escape next door onto the roof. A shadow past to his right. He turned quickly, a sharp snap of his wrist letting loose the deadly twelve-pointed star into the shadows, the space in between. He did not need to stop to see if it had hit its mark. The fall of the body behind him was proof enough.
Three more figures behind him. The wind in his face. He dropped two pellets as he ran. Mustard gas. The sound of drowning men as he leapt the feet between buildings—merely the space in between.
He landed silent, like the night, and smelled the cold steel a whisper before it arrived. Leaping, he sliced downward at his opponent while he was in the air, a shadow too late. The Storm was at the threshold, and snakes eyes were watching from the rooftops of the city.
Still, he had not time, no time to pause, not time to give fully to the moment. If Tommy had come-- and he had-- the snake that spits must also have arisen. One did not move without the other. There was no time to waste. If the snake had returned, so would the others, and they would need him.
A shadow moved and a blade struck. But only the jacket remained. The figure was gone before it had hit the ground.
The snake’s eyes watched from the shadow as a man in white cursed, sheathed his blade, and retreated over the rooftop. A snake’s eyes. How was it that he was the eyes, if they were the snake?
Across town he waited, again. Only this time it wasn’t for Tommy. He wasn’t sure who to expect. Hawk had retired after the last battle. Duke, maybe, but Duke was old. So were the rest. Except maybe Flint.
He shaved. The last water washed away the smaller bits, the long hair lay in the garbage. The scars, the mangled face, the remains of something that had once been normal.
A knock on the door. He put on the mask and looked through the hall view. They had come, but he couldn’t have guessed who. Her.
She felt like a queen in his arms
It had been many years. Many years too long. Many years accepting the possibility, the great possibility, that she was gone, and wasn’t coming back.
He had been wrecked by worry, doubt, frustration. Those were the enemies of the warrior. He had spent years working on those feelings, the feelings a man has after losing every last person that had ever been important to him. Why should she be any different? It was almost too much. After two years of searching for her, his disappearance would have been complete if not for the knowledge that he might be needed. Self-knowledge is as necessary for a warrior as is knowledge of the enemy, and he was painfully aware that he was, despite the scars, one of the best. Losing her had made him doubt that…that night, the night of the attack, the night of the end. Stalker, dead. Roadblock crippled. So many other casualties…more than he wanted to remember. But she had disappeared. They never found a body, never found a trace. He had spent two years tracking every lead until it became too much.
But all the doubts melted away in an instant. He felt them rush out of him, like water leaving a shattered jar. He touched her face, her hair, her skin. Somehow still young, preserved. What had happened to keep her so well preserved?
She clung to him. She held him as if she would never let him go. She sobbed and broke into painful joyful, weeping. It was minutes, many minutes, which seemed like a lifetime, before she let him go.
They sat down on the bed.
“Where?” he signed, using the secret code only the two of them shared.
“In the earth,” she signed back.
“The earth?”
“Yes, literally.”
“What? How?”
“When they attacked they captured me. I tried to escape. Destro took me. He…” she stopped, anger flashed across her face. “He buried me alive.”
He looked at her, the reality of it sinking in. He saw in a flash, like in a movie, a coffin, wooden, maybe metal, dark, her inside, cold, dead---almost.
“What did you do?”
“I couldn’t get out. He had designed it especially for me. It was metal and they welded it together. I was naked, they had even shaven my hair. I lay in that box. What could I do?”
She paused, realizing once again how impossible it was to see anything behind that damn mask of his.
“Do you still practice the death meditation?” she asked. “The Inner Anvil?”
“Yes, often.”
“Well, I used it. I slowed down my breathing, my heartbeat, forgot how difficult it had been to learn it from you and entered completely into it. I gave myself to it completely, forever for all I knew. I…” she stopped, some strange look on her face, something neither distant nor near, not of this world, not truly of the next. He recognized it. He had seen it in the Hard Master. The Hard Master had called it “Naga’s Kiss”. He knew the feeling as well. He had felt it on Venom’s Brain-Wave Scanner. It was the feeling of living death.
“Well,” she continued after a breath, “I stayed there. I went deeper. A doorway opened and I stepped through it. There was nothing but light. It felt like a second passed, just a brief second, and then just as suddenly, as if I had blinked my eyes, I woke up and somebody was cutting the box open. I could barely breath. Somebody lifted the lid and I heard voices. Somebody cried out in surprise, and another one threw a jacket around me, hands pulled me out. They were construction workers! They had dug me up while building a condo, and 14 years had passed!”
She paused and he looked at her. Her hair was short…very short, like it had only been recently shaved. Her musculature was strong, very strong. And she hadn’t aged a bit…in fact, she looked young.
She continued. “I mean one minute there was nothing but darkness and death and the next there was nothing but light. My hair hadn’t grown. My skin hadn’t aged. I hadn’t even lost weight. I had no trouble walking, no trouble talking. All of the normal activities. I was absolutely capable of every activity I had known before I went in that box. In fact, in many ways I was even sharper, clearer even. All of my strengths had heightened to a pinnacle, also my reflexes. When I returned to the government they couldn’t believe my story. They called Hawk in to test me. DNA evidence confirmed my identity. I showed no signs of aging. They kept me three months testing me. Everything you can think of. Strength, agility, martial capabilities, linguistic skills, memory, critical analysis. Finally Hawk told them to back off, and he let me go. But before he did he told me something, and he asked me to find you. That was all I could think about the entire three months anyway. Hawk told me you’d disappeared. And he told me about the fight. And he also told me something else. They’re back.”
“I know.”
“How?”
He looked at her. Did she need to ask such questions?
“Sorry. Dumb question. I mean, I don’t understand it. How could they be back? Everyone was killed or captured. Even Destro’s estates and assets were confiscated. Cobra Commander is dead. Blood, Firefly. Only that snake Zartan and that vixen Baroness. But there’s evidence. They want us to come in. Hawk’s assembling a crew.”
“Is that why you’re here?”
“They released me three weeks ago. It took me that long to follow your trail. Yes, Hawk wants you to join. We need you. He’s given me another week. They asked me to bring you back. But that’s beside the point. You know nothing would have stopped me from coming.”
She reached up and touched his cheek, slowly moved down to his hood, grasped the edge base of the neck and pulled it up over his head. He didn’t stop her. She pulled it off and let it drop to the ground, looking at his face, that beautiful face, ever glowing for her. The face he had lost saving her. It was the most beautiful sight in the world to her. Tears flowed freely from his eyes, and from hers. She stroked his cheek, her fingers traced the outline of his scars, the tissue that could not be returned to normal. And in a moment she kissed him, without hesitation, with no fear, in complete love and trust.
Afterward he held her.
“I tried to find you,” he signed. “I searched for two years, without end. Soon after you disappeared Destro was killed in an auto accident. I didn’t get the chance to question him. Finally it was too much. It was becoming obsessive.”
“I’m so sorry,” she signed. “I’m so sorry…”
They held each other in bed, and finally fell asleep. One breath, one heartbeat, one activity of sleeping. They dreamed of the past. The old visions of the old history. Soon a new history would be formed, but on that night they dreamed of the past.
CHAPTER 2
The man leaned against the railing overlooking the tarmac, his body poised with an anticipation only soldiers returning from war carry. His US Army dress greens had been meticulously pressed and his ribbon bar stood down at a comfortable two ranks, although the high prestige of his awards spoke of the greater number of ribbons that he had chosen not to wear. The tab on his arm as well as the Green Beret he wore spoke legions about the man and his experiences, and, along with the silver jump wings shining over his heart, were the signs of a courage that he never needed to boast of.
There were as well a number of other soldiers, also in dress greens, greeting and being greeted by family members. There were also the unavoidable hosts of anti-war demonstrators that were stretched throughout the terminal—by no means friendly. None of these by-standers seemed to notice the warrior, isolated, patiently waiting for those who were meant to receive him. Slowly the crowd dispersed, the last stragglers who had remained ungreeted picked themselves off of their stools in the bar at the far side of the terminal and dispersed to cabs or hotel rooms or other bars out in the city. Still the man waited.
One last group of anti-war protesters was the last to leave. Draft dodgers, college kids. Hippies. Seeing the man alone, one of the protesters, in long hair with a brown leather headband, decided that there must be strength in numbers and called out to him.
"Happy to be home, baby-killer?"
The Green Beret turned around slowly and stood looking silently into the man’s eyes. It seemed like his gaze pierced the other's soul. The soldier didn't say anything, and he didn't need to. He was anything but a baby-killer, but he was definitely a warrior, and the man stared wide-eyed at him, suspended in a strange mixture of shock, awe, and sudden respect, until one of his companions grabbed him by the sleeve and dragged him away.
The soldier was left by himself in the terminal. As an old janitor began to collect trash from the seats and floor and toss them into a plastic bag, the soldier's thoughts wandered back to visions and memories of the months and years that had gone before.
There had originally been 12 of them. The one they simply called "Stalker" was the 1st Sergeant. He wore a mustache over his dark skin, eyes alive with caution. He held up his fist. The team had originally been 12, but they had split themselves into two teams. Stalker's squad was humping it through the waist high waters of what looked like a cesspool. The enemy, camped in the middle between themselves and their co-conspirators, had neglected to post any watch over this area. Who would have thought anybody would decide to attack from the fesces infested waters of a stagnant rice field?
Tommy, the half Japanese half American translator that had been traveling with them as communication sergeant was in the rear. Stalker held up his fist and the squad halted. Suddenly Stalker's hand motioned quickly for them to get down. They submerged to their noses in the brown water, their sense of smell long ago numbed to bearing the burden of the stench.
A VC was pissing in the water just ahead. Stalker turned silently and pointed to the man behind him, the one they just called “Silent”. Silent could see Stalker's finger motioning him up into the bush to take the VC out. One less enemy to deal with in a situation that was just about to get hot.
The SFO crept silently out of the water and under the thick bush on the shore. He was no older than Tommy, just a kid, really, but already 2 years and 3 tours in Nam had made a man out of him. He was upon the enemy before he even had a chance to close his pants, his knife slit the man's throat and he drug him into the bush before the oxygen even had time to gurgle out of the wound.
The soldier resumed his position behind Stalker and they continued to the far side of the lake, about 1000 yards. Stalker was sure the shoreline would be booby trapped, and was searching for the best possible location to come ashore. Finally he spotted it. It was a thick growth of the kind of bushes that have razor slits on their thick stalks. The blades were just an inconvenience on the smaller plants, but on the large ones they could be a formidable threat. Stalker had heard of a man who had slit the artery in his thigh on one and had bled to death. And this particular group of bush was full of 5 footers, plenty large enough to deter any normal foe, but also any normal VC booby trapper.
Stalker gambled that they were dealing with normal VC. Besides, soon they would be getting close enough to the enemy's camp to expect look outs, and this bush was probably not one of the places that would be closely watched.
Stalker's first A-team, five years prior, had developed a tactic for crawling through this particular bush, a tactic he had made a point of teaching to his new recruits. The razors grew skyward from the stalk, and if you pushed the bush gently up and away from your body as you moved through them, they would part for you without resistance and offer no threat of laceration. This was tricky if you were in a crawl, which was exactly what the team planned to do, but in the months preceding this operation all 12 members of the team had learned the skill.
Silent as snakes the six men moved up, one at a time, into the bush. Stalker led the way, testing the ground in front of him for tripwires or other signs of detonation devices, just as a safety precaution, but he was confidant enough that they were clear and he led them swiftly up to the edge of the camp.
Stalker raised his fist and gave the sign for the men to scatter, each taking up their offensive positions. This was a drill they had learned by heart in training, and ran at least once a week in the field for practice. Each man scoped the trees for lookouts as he moved along the ground. Stalker raised his binoculars to his eyes and viewed the enemy camp. Three large huts spoke of the enemy force that awaited them. Two smaller huts told him where he would most likely find his prey. A VC top brass was visiting the area, and intel had reported that this was base camp. Stalker's team had volunteered for the mission of extraditing a two star general alive and in one piece back to headquarters.
Stalker calculated on at least 300 enemy. The two squads were going to infiltrate the camp, setting explosives around the two large troop bunkers, and attack early in the morning, taking out the brigade and capturing the quarry. He checked his watch. 2030. Squad two should be setting up, across the opposite side, and they would meet in the middle, grab the General, and hightail it out of the camp to a rendevouz 10 klicks out. There was nothing to do but wait.
The teams would begin set up at 0100. That gave Stalker nothing to do but sit tight for another 4 and a half hours, observe the activities of the camp, and give his troops time to position themselves comfortably around the periphery.
Time is slow when you have to wait, particularly if you are deep in enemy country, but Stalker and his team had patience and to spare. After verifying the security of his area, he dug in and began to re-inspect his explosives and charges. That took about a half hour. Once completed, he started reviewing his multiplication tables. 4 hours later he was up well into the 300’s, and it was pitch black. The soldiers had returned along the main road which wound through the jungle and was heavily guarded. This was one of the more secure positions the enemy had established in the delta. Or at least, that was what Stalker wanted them to think.
At 0100 he crept out of his position and started the long crawl into camp. He knew that at that same moment 11 other men where going through the same movements. The enemy had posted guards, but most of the rest were asleep. A large fire burned in the middle of camp, and Stalker crept up to the wire fence that surrounded the camp, to the spot he had pre-chosen, and, cutting the wire close to the ground, slid through the mesh and inside the periphery.
He placed his explosives and charges at the base of the closest of the large barracks. The timer was set for 15 minutes. Slowly he crawled to an outcropping just to the rear, where shadows lurked. Suddenly he heard footsteps, and, hugging the ground, saw a VC patrolman making his rounds. The man walked not 5 feet from him. Stalker thought about taking him out but decided his absence might raise suspicion, so he let the man pass and silently marked him for a future death.
He crept back to the wire mesh and lay silently against it. 10 more minutes. That would give all of his team time enough to plant their charges, take covering position, and be ready for the assault after the first explosive detonated. They had set a perimeter around the two smaller huts which were to remain untouched, and this was going to be the focus of their attack.
5 more minutes. 3. 2. Suddenly the first charge went off. It blew the underside of the far bunker out and sent men screaming away from the flames. A second later the second charge exploded, then the third, fourth and so on. Stalker rushed out, making a wide birth of the bunker where his charge had been laid, and had just cleared that area when his and 2 other charges exploded under the feet of the VC troops who were rushing to grab weapons and equipment. Stalker saw 6 shadows converging on the middle of the camp, and gunfire from the peripheries informed him that the six other members were giving covering fire for them, and he shot dead two VC who came rushing away from the blazing fires toward him.
He hit the middle huts just as two of his team members also converged on it. Three from the second squad were heading into the second hut. Stalker kicked in the door of the first hut as a hale of bullets burrowed into the heavy wooden door. Whoever was in there wasn't a very good shot, he thought, and he hit the ground as he plunged over the threshold, withholding fire until he could assess who it was that was inside. A young guard didn’t give him the chance to make an educated guess, firing at him from the other side of an overturned desk. Over the gunfire Stalker heard the heavy breathing of another man, and he knew that this must be his quarry. The kid was no match for a seasoned veteran of Stalker’s caliber, even in the open with no protection, and the general yielded with a murmur and a curse as Stalker grabbed him by the hair and hauled him out the door.
The first man on scene was Ramon, or Romeo, his radioman, and Stalker had him call in the signal for extract. They grabbed the general and headed out into the open area of the compound, where body parts lay scattered across the field and smoke and the smell of charred wood from the explosives filled his nostrils. He reached into his pack and pulled out the long extraction cord, secured it around the general's body and hit the deployment device that inflated the balloon and sent it skyward where the C130 could spot it. Then he saw it, zooming out of the night's sky like a giant vulture, and he stepped back out of the way of the startled and shaking general, watching as the C130 snagged the line with a special hooking device and the general shot skyward.
"Let's get out of here before this place gets hot!" he shouted to Romeo, and the two of them ran to the north perimeter that had been pre-designated as the evacuation point just as two large trucks of reinforcements could be seen coming down the road. Stalker watched as the first truck hit the explosives that had been planted by team b, then turned to the hole in the fence without waiting to evaluate the damage. Whether the enemy was coming in or not, the point was to get the freak out of dodge.
Stalker and Romeo met up with the other 10 A-team members, who were holding a secure line at the edge of the bush, and the LT nodded to Stalker. All was well. The 12 men turned to move out to the chopper rendezvous, some five klicks north. Romeo radioed that they would be at site in 15 minutes, and the men dropped all excess gear in the stream as they crossed over and headed at a quick pace toward the clearing.
They must have been followed. Stalker couldn't have explained it otherwise, but just as they reached the rendezvous all hell broke loose. The VC had set up a perimeter of fire and just as the team emerged from the bush they opened up on them. Stalker fell to the ground and began to return fire just as the three big hueys descended from the clouds and a thick darkness of early morning descended over the jungle.
"Get some suppressing fire on that treeline," Stalker called out to his team, and the big guns of the hueys began to strafe the jungle with 50 caliber rounds large enough to eat yards out of the bush. The team started for the chopper landings as they touched down, Stalker made it to the second and turned back to look for the safety of his team.
It was then that he saw it. The one they called “Silent” was coming in at a fast pace, just about 50 yards from the chopper, when he was dropped by enemy fire. Romeo, Collins, the Lt, and Billy made it to the chopper just as Silent was falling, and turned just in time to see him drop.
“Dammit!” Stalker growled and took a step forward to recover the fallen man as mortars started to drop like cannon balls all around them. Suddenly, without a second's hesitation, Stalker saw Billy drop his pack and run straight into the mortar field for his fallen comrade. Except Billy didn't run like a normal man would. He didn’t weave, he didn’t duck, he didn’t have that half leaning over holding your head run like you see so many heroes have. The only way Stalker could describe it was that Billy ran as if he could actually see the bullets coming at him, as if he was actually dodging the mortars. Within seconds he had traversed the ground to his friend’s side, grabbed him and threw him on his shoulder, and then ran back, all the time dodging these bullets like he was playing a game. He jumped in the chopper, the last of the team, and Stalker leaped in behind him yelling to the pilot, "GO! GO! GO!". They flew out and off over the thick jungle below.
Stalker looked from the canopy over to Billy, who was holding the Silent One in his arms and ripping off his clothes. He had been hit pretty badly in the shoulder by an AK round, but even worse was the mortar that had scathed him up and down his left side. He looked like nothing but a mess of ground beef. He was still awake, but, silent as ever, did not cry out. The side of his face had been equally scarred, and particularly bad were his eyes. Billy had just applied gauze to the eyes and wrapped them in bandage, all the time talking to his friend in a calm, reassuring voice in Vietnamese.
The choppers flew into the forward post and dropped the load, medics were there to meet them. The Silent One was the only injury, and Stalker and the Lt. were met with a huge grin by Lt. Colonel Flagg, who was officer in charge of the SOG unit. The next day the Silent One was medivaced to Saigon, and Stalker gave Billy permission to accompany his friend. Before the team could get back into action the 1971 drawbacks occured, and the Silent One was sent home, along with the other units, and stood at the railings of the airport waiting on his family.
Lt. Colonel Flagg had already gone home when he received the call. The family of one his soldiers, mother, father, and twin sister, had been killed by a drunk driver on the way to the airport. There was nobody else to go and pick up the soldier. That was his only family. Colonel Flagg called Stalker, as well as his XO, Major Hawk, and the three men dressed quickly and then climbed in a military vehicle for the short drive to the airport. There they found him waiting, remembering, hoping, dark glasses over his scarred eyes, aware before he saw them that something had happened. They told him the news. Stalker thought he saw him blink behind the dark sunglasses, then he reached over and picked up his bags, and walked away from the three men without a word.
"Where's he going?" Colonel Flagg asked.
"Not sure," Stalker replied. He called out but the soldier never turned around. They followed him to a ticket booth, then to the airport terminal. Destination, Tokyo, Japan. That was the last the Stalker saw of his weapons sergeant, until the day 11 years later that he drove with Grunt, his driver and special operations sergeant, up to a cabin in the Rocky Mountains. But the day was fresh in his mind, and he wondered what would become of a man who had lost everything he had ever loved in one moment’s time.
The dance. The dance of the dream. The dream dance. To minds fused as one, even after so many years of separation, the agony of thinking, feeling, that it was gone, at least for now, on this earth. And now the dance.
He led: a vision of the past.
She followed: that day, in the helicopter.
Who am I? Is this who I am? Where is my face, the face that was, the face that should be. The face that can never be? Is it only this story, this story of one day, one place, one time, or is there more? Are the wounds forever? Is the pain part of the mystery? How can what has been lost be part of what is? Is everything a wound, a scar, an open cut of the soul? Perhaps it is the soul that cuts, after all, and that is the paradox and the dilemma and the beauty. Is it because the soul must cut, must slice into the spirit, must leave its mark…is that why this sword is so significant to my hand, feels so right in my hand? Is that why I have no conscience about killing my enemy?
Who am I? Just a black face, a mask, and underneath, scar tissue—the evidence of an identity. Only. Only the evidence of an identity. But not an identity. My self is void. I am the darkness of the daytime, I am the emptiness of the full cup, I am that essence which is most difficult to find, most difficult to discover, the opposite of each positive thing. I am the luck of the unlucky, the perfect unity, the perfect duality. A pair of ones, a dark double on the face of the dice. The unwanted, the undesired, the cursed and the avoided. This is all that is left. All that remains. All that there is to fill the spaces where an answer might have been, once. But that was before. Before my own fate caught up with me. Before the luck of the damned became my lot. Or wasn’t it always my lot?
He missed the days of old, thinking back on them now. There had a been a time, at the beginning, when the operation was more of the same: military routine, uniforms, rank and file. It had been special, no doubt, but there it was. After Sierra Gordo, however, it all changed, and that was the truly special time that he remembered well. Each member was his own person, each brought a special talent and personality to the team, each provided a special service. Looking down the ranks you would hardly know you were looking at a military force. Gung-Ho, Quick-Kick, Eagle, Barbeque, Ripcord, the indomitable Sergeant Slaughter, Snowjob, Flint. These had been special men, special warriors, a breed apart. And he wondered what would rise to take its place, what breed would come to meet the new challenge.
Walking into the briefing room brought all of that full force to his eye in a second. There was Duke, preparing himself at the computer monitor. Gung-ho, who had disappeared into the backlands of South America after the final battle. And a loud pop announced the presence of Grunt, older, perhaps, but still the same 10 year old grin and forever the incessant bubble-gum, which had saved their lives on more than one occasion. But most significantly, and if Snake-eyes had been any less highly trained to meet the completely unexpected, there sat Stalker, in a full dress uniform.
The group turned to greet them. Stalker rose, slowly, obviously pained, and walked over to them.
“Snake-eyes,” he said. The two embraced. “I apologize for the deception,” Stalker’s eyes softened in sympathy with the pain his comrade and friend, now for nearly 40 years, must have felt over the last 12, thinking he was dead. “I had a special duty that demanded that I be assumed dead.”
Snake-Eyes stared at him, and silent as always, turned to the table and sat down. The initial joy of reunion was quickly quelled by Duke, who took his position at the head of the table.
“Soldiers,” he said, “I hate to break up this homecoming, but as we all know each other and there will be enough time in the days ahead to get reacquainted, I would like to get started. I have a staff meeting with the brass in an hour. So let’s get down to business.”
The group quieted and turned their attention to Duke. An image of a battle field flashed on the screen overhead. It was a mountainous terrain, and a number of dead soldiers littered the ground, some in turbans, some in US Army fatigues, others apparently European. The image was not unfamiliar.
“This is an image of a recent battle in Afghanistan. The media has reported on this battle, however, we are here to clear up the facts. I do not need to remind any of you of the need for OPSEC.”
“This is the battle of Khaimar Pass, in which 40 United Alliance soldiers were killed: 17 Americans and 23 French. The enemy, these turboned troops, numbered in the hundreds. The media has reported that this was a Taliban attack, and we want to have it be thought that. However, the facts are very different, and far more unsettling. In actuality, the enemy dead carried with them a specific insignia marking them as anything other than Taliban.”
The image changed to a picture of a shirt button. It was a regular button, of no special make, however, etched into the button was an engraving. Duke moved to the next image, a close up of the etching, and there, unmistakably, was the old insignia, the old sign, the cobra head.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, COBRA has returned.”
A murmur moved across the table, as if the news were somehow new to those present, even if each was all-to-aware of the reason for their reactivation. There was only ever one purpose for GIJoe: to combat the secret and clandestine operation of a home-grown terrorist organization bent on the collapse of the world’s infrastructure. Coalition of Organized, Bloody, and Radical Anarchy had once held a great influence over a number of radical anti-establishment factions, including the IRA, the Basque Liberation Organization, the Red Brigades, the Japanese Cults of Aum Shinrikyo, and numerous other revolutionary groups had, at one time, been masterminded by the American-led revolutionaries of COBRA. It’s ultimate mission had always been the same: to cause the utter and complete collapse of global culture and to issue in an era of prehistoric tribal anarchy. The earth would be vastly depopulated, humans would return to a primitive lifestyle of hunters and gatherers, and an elite few would reign with technological advancement that would make them utter Gods in the mythology of the new humanity. The idea was that a select few would maintain technological mastery of the earth while the majority struggled in subsistence living. The elite, traveling in airplanes, with the aid of computers, would continue to achieve scientific exploration and domination.
COBRA had always envisioned this as the completion of the prophetic return of the Gods. Those who fought for them would have the right to participate in the ruling hierarchy, completely separate from the masses. Those who resisted would be crushed, until no one remained who even remembered a time when freedom and egalitarianism were the objectives of scientific discovery.
COBRA had always maintained that this transformation was inevitable, and were selective in their recruitment policies. They relied on a mythology within their lower ranks that claimed that the COBRA hierarchy was the return of the Gods, and that the evil doctrines of Christian, Jewish, Buddhist and other religious factions which were empowered by the world infrastructure was the enemy which was to be resisted in order to renew the rightful rulers of the world and initiate the utopian era of peace.
An image of a man’s figure flashed on the screen overhead. The image appeared to be distorted, manipulated, somehow out of focus. The figure was clear enough: a man’s body in an expensive business suit, driving in a jeep through the mountains of Afghanistan. The man’s face, however, was distorted, out-of-focus, shrouded by a sort of static field as if the satellite digitalization had been unable to cipher those particular pixels.
“This image is not distorted,” Duke announced, reading the thoughts of those in the room. “This is an actual image of what we believe to be the leader of the new COBRA. His face is not distorted by the photo. On the contrary, our intelligence reports are unequivocal: his face is distorted by some kind of an electric frequency that completely conceals his features and his voice. We think it is some kind of a collar that he wears which creates this sort of a mask.”
“The new Cobra Commander,” Gung-Ho growled. “I’ll be danged…”
“Any idea of the face behind the mask?” Scarlet asked.
“We have narrowed down the list of likely candidates, and come up with three suspects. This leads us directly to our missions. We are going to be moving out.”
“What is the goddammed point?” Rock-n-Roll growled. “I mean, we’ve been fighting these dodo-heads for 20 years now, and the way things stand right now I’m beginning to wonder if they may not be right. I mean, what they’re saying is true. Look at this mess we’re in. Invasions, torture, prison scandals. Everything this country stood for is getting washed down the drain and Americans aren’t even stopping it. Hell, they’re supporting it. Oil dependency, goddamned radical extreme morality. I mean, what the hell? What’re we busting ass for just so a bunch of yokos can take office with scare tactics, and just prove what these guys are saying? What are we, bullies? Colonialists?”
The room was dead silent. Finally Scarlet spoke.
“Snake-Eyes wants me to translate.”
“WE are not supporting an office, or any officer of the people. We are defending a system. It might not be the best, but it’s the best we’ve got, and thought it’s not perfect, it’s good. Damn good. The system. First of all.
“But more than that. We are doing this for love, for the right to love, for the need to love. Listen to yourself. Is that the voice of love? Is it the voice of selflessness? These people have a point, but they are not motivated by that point. Instead the point is a tool for their hatred. If it were motivated by love they wouldn’t hurt people, innocent people. Love isn’t interested in breaking laws, it’s interested in finding ways to make the law better, to complete the law, not to destroy it. The only way to complete the law is through love, never through hatred. If you stopped remembering that then you don’t need to be here, because this is about service: serving a just, legitimate, and good system. You’re right, we can’t serve out of fear, but we can’t serve out of hatred either. Only love animates service. You do this out of love, or you don’t do it at all. You decide.”
Rock-n-Roll looked at Snake-Eyes, silent, impenetrable under the black hood. And he looked across the room at all of the faces. His old teammates, his companions, his family.
“I’ll do it for you guys,” he said slowly. “If it’s for love, I’m in, because I love you guys.”
“That’s good enough,” Snake-Eyes signed.
“Ok, one more thing,” Duke said quickly, accepting the conversation without need for further comment. He took from his pocket a piece of flat metal and tossed it across the desk to Snake-Eyes.
“This was found at a computer-development firm by one of the corporate security force members. Actually, you know him. Zap. He’s been in the private sector since our dissolution. A break in last week resulted in the death of one of his employees. This was buried in the man’s chest.”
Snake-Eyes picked it up, a throwing star, 12 points, and turning it over, saw the emblem. The sign. The mark of the T. Clan.
“Is it him?” Duke asked.
Snake-Eyes looked at it, turned it over, weighed it in his hand.
“Imbalanced,” he signed. “It’s the sign, undoubtedly. But it’s not his balance.” He laid it in front of him, thinking back to the night of the attack, suddenly struck by what it was that he felt that night: imbalanced. Not all of it, but enough to sense.
“It’s not Stormshadow,” he signed. He didn’t mention his true thoughts, his true suspicion. It was the imposter.
(sideline to t. clan.)
“OK, each team will meet it’s contact group on the ground. They are Delta Force members, three per team. OPSEC is in force, however, people. Delta is not clear for all matters dealing with COBRA. They have been instructed to deflect any information they receive back to members of our group. They are not, I repeat, are not, authorized to have access to intel concerning who or what. That being said, let me assure you that these are top-level gunfighters. Breaker, who will coordinate coms between the groups from Arlington, has selected each man himself. He’s been in training and administration of Delta since we disbanded in `92. I’ll turn the floor over to Breaker for details.”
Duke took his seat and Breaker stood before the group, his strong jaw moving a mile to nothing with the big wad of hubba-bubba in his mouth. Same old Breaker.
“Ok, troops, listen up,” he banged out between chews. “These are your contact members. As Duke said, I trained these guys myself. They are good, damn good, but Washington has made it clear that they have no need—once again—no need to know the nature of the operation. Any foot work, ground pounding, breaching, even fire-fighting, is fine. That’s why they’re there. Let them take the point if you want. But analysis, interrogations, decisions…these guys are not in the area. Understood? OK, here are the dossiers.”
Breaker passed around a folder to each team.
Stalker was old, long since retired, but 9-11 had called many of the old schoolers out of retirement and Stalker was eager to get back into uniform. He had been working with the FBI during his time since retirement, training special groups in anti-terrorism, and Lt. Colonel Flagg, now a brigadier General, had personally called him and asked if he would be able to help put together a new unit whose unique mission was to treat a homegrown terrorism network that had been uncovered in the wake of 9-11 investigations. Ties to Northern Europe and even Afghanistan made this an international issue, but the government had evidence that this was an American terror network with ties to a number of serious incidents involving right wing radicals, neo-nazis, arms dealing in Northern Ireland and a sundry other bad-business initiatives. Stalker jumped at the chance.
The FBI had kept him busy and physically fit, and though he was 60 he looked at least 15 years younger. His first connection through General Flagg was with a CIA operative, codename Scarlet, who was to be his direct laison and counterpart in the world of spooks. Together they poured through countless profiles of Special Forces warriors, Delta Force, SEAL Team Six operatives, a number of DEA agents who had been undercover for some time. They were informed that this was a top secret hush-hush group, where to perform their duties as a military unit undercover as civilian operatives.
Grunt was the first man Stalker chose. A real go getter, a clean nosed kid who had excelled as a US Army Ranger had Delta Force operative. Grunt would be Stalker's direct assistant.
General Flagg set up base of operations in an abandoned bunker underneath the motor pool of the US Army Chaplain's School in Ft. Wadsworth.
They gathered in the second level conference room. Stalker, Hawk, Scarlet, Grunt, General Flagg. General Flag opened up the conversation.
“Ok, this is what we’ve got.” An image flashed onto the screen. It was of a man whose face was distorted by some sort of static, his features completely muffled.
“This guy is the leader of a group of bad-guys who call themselvesCOBRA. They are an organization whose purpose is to end through force what they perceive as a world-wide oppression by Oil Magnates. This guy is the leader. He is calls himself “The Commander”. He wears some sort of a distortion collar that makes his facial features completely undiscernable. Nobody’s got a clear photo of him. He hangs out with this guy…” an image of a man in a silver
Zartan:
“This is one bad dude,” Zap said. “He’s got control of almost the entire Amsterdam underground scene. Illegal prostitution, illegal drugs, trading in human slaves, illegal immigration. He’s got it all. And there is nothing that goes down here that he is not involved with.”
“Allright, let’s take him down,” Stalker said.
Operation Python: the snake in Kabul sat at the table, his face clouded in a fog of digital friction (word).
“Trust me, Mr. Snake-Eyes, you will not be able to use you Inner Anvil this time. But you’ll have the pity of living out your short life, knowing that your true love is going to be a vegetable forever. You see, I had this all planned from the beginning. I bought the lot, I had it developed, I uncovered her for this very purpose. Actually, I expected to find remains…” the Snake stood in front of Scarlet, looking up at her. “I never expected to make such a pristine find. Very impressive, indeed.” The Snake turned away. “Of course, plans had to be changed after that, but what do I care? The living, the dead…it’s all the same to me. Nothing but pain, sir, nothing but pain.”
“Jesus H. Christ,” Rock-n-Roll groaned. “Why do the bad guys always find it necessary to tell the good guys the particulars of their schemes?”
“Why, for the story, Mr. Rhythm-n-Blues,” the Snake hissed. You could almost see him smiling under his hood.
“Dammit, it’s Rock-n-Roll!” yelled Rock-n-Roll.
“Yes, Yess, Whatever, Mr. Country and Western.” The Snake roared in laughter. “Yes, see it’s for the story. It’s all for the convenience of the storyteller.”
“There’s a storyteller?” Scarlet asked.
“Of course, dear Mrs. Scarborough, there is always a storyteller.”
“You have got to be kidding me,” Rock-n-Roll groaned.
“No, no, Mr. Classical-Baroque. I am not. In fact, however, it is part of a larger plan. But that is far beyond your sight capacity, I’m afraid.”
“Bullshit,” Scarlet snarled. “You’re planting something.”
“Well, aren’t we Ms. Perceptive.” The Snake walked over to her once again, looking up. “The question is, what? You see, a snake works like this. …”
“You’re a madman,” Scarlet snarled again.
“Tsk, tsk, Ms. Scarborough. You’re sound like something from a cartoon for kids. We’ll soon see how grown up you are.” The Snake turned to the door. “Prepare yourself. We start in an hour.”
“Ah, the mandala,” the Snake said. “Now we’re getting there. We’ll see the pattern before too long. Who is the protector?”
“It looks like Lao-Tze,” Mindbender replied.
“Troublesome, troublesome. Who is secondary?”
“It looks like Pol Pot”
“Khmer?”
“Affirmative.”
“Ok, go through that one.”
Mindbender pressed a control and an image flashed into the gate of Pol Pot. Scarlet’s body twitched, tremors passing through it as the image attacked her deep held psyche.
“Excellent,” the Snake cried. “We’ll have her wrecked in no time. What’s the configuration?”
“Straight pattern, no deviation.”
“Good. Then as soon as the portal opens send through the frontal assault. I want to see her fry.”
The pictures on the screen turned suddenly to Buddha, Buddha’s upon Buddha’s on every screen, all in silent meditation.
“Invade!” The Snake cried.
…Suddenly the pictures turned to a terrible figure, each screen full of the same, a death black King Cobra, it’s hood stretched out venomously.
Mindbender cried out.
“It’s….it’s….it’s a Naga…!” he cried, shrinking back in utter terror.
“Fool!” The Snake hissed. “It’s a snake! And I control all Snakes!”
“No….Mindbender screamed. “No…not this one…not this one!” He cried and ran from the room.
The Snake ran to the controls, firing volley after volley of unrelenting reality distortions, emotional death, everything at once.
“FOOL!” the Snake cried again, but the Naga only remained, as if in silent meditation, unmolested in contemplation of Ultimate Reality. Suddenly the Naga’s tongue flashed in and out, and a burst of venom shot from it onto the video screens. The entire screen started to melt, along with the control panel. At that moment a hole was blown in the side of the wall, and, with Stalker at the lead, the team members and Delta support, along with a number of Afghani warriors, burst into the room.
The snake ran from the room, and Snake-Eyes ran after him. But a figure jumped down from the shadows.
“How did you know not to take the matrix?” Rock-n-Roll asked.
“Well, at first I did take the matrix. But then I realized there is an added dimension to the matrix, a moral one. I realized that whereas the Snake was taking power in his transcendence of it, there is a greater power inside of it, right in the heart of it. The position of love.”
Some years in the future. The earth is bold, and beautiful. It is lush with life. Plants flower, animals linger long in the grass, and the birds fly through air as clear and golden as the dreams of the wise. War has ended, and man goes to kill man no more.
The Warrior is transformed. No longer trained to kill his enemy, his combat is of the spirit. In order to resolve conflict, two warriors met on a battlefield. smoked from the guns and fog from the red morning earth moved thickly all around them, a veil they could not easily penetrate. all was quiet, and many were the dead. suddenly they came upon one another, the first surprised the second but the second was even faster and drew his weapon before the first could shoot. they stood staring blankly at each other. suddenly, the second put down his weapon, slowly, holding up his hand to the other. than he reached it out in a gesture of friendship. War is the final communication, ultimate conversation of two cultures. When war comes down to the last two men on either side, it is those men who should talk, and make peace between nations. If one kills the other, communication has no other choice but take up the mantel of the vanquished and the vanquisher.
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