Chapter 2: The Catastrophe of Nagaron

Chapter two takes us to a whole new element of the story and introduces us to a new character, Warner. This takes place on Earth. But Warner has a role to play in the unfolding events of Aralon. I don't want to spoil any more. Read on.

The Annals of Ghalensa: The Power to Remake

Chapter 2: The Catastrophe of Nagaron

         Warner stared at the bizarre, jeweled dagger displayed in the case on his mantle. It was rich with memories. Many were not his own. If he touched it now, what memory would it give him, and whose memory might it be? So many memories, but no answers.

         The fire danced on half consumed logs, snapping, popping, beckoning. He was riveted, unblinking, on the blade. Tears filled his stinging eyes. A hint of walnut smoke hung in the air. Why had it come to him? Why had he kept it? The dagger had ruined his life. It took him from an exotic assignment as a Ranger, kicking ass, to being a history teacher in Iowa, unsatisfied, unfulfilled.

         Dubuque wasn’t so bad, he just needed more– challenges, adventure, exploration. He needed to live. He could take off and start all over. A tantalizing thought. But Dad needed him, and his kids at school. Their faces lit up when he made the pages of history live for them, dazzling them with the high adventures and wonders of the past. That was the fun part. The rest of the rigamarole of being a school teacher thrilled him as much as a bag of vacuum dust.

         Some would say he was a coward to run away. He disagreed. It took a lot of gumption to just leave everything that meant anything behind, and forge ahead, carving out a new life from scratch. He saw it as a courageous leap into a new future, and he could do it. He could pull it off. He would live better than his first life, which just went crazy from the moment he grabbed that damn dagger six years ago.

         Six years ago already. The Catastrophe of Nagaron. They had planned it to be a quick in-and-out strike. It didn't go that way. Twenty Rangers and two choppers in, six Rangers and one chopper out.

         Special Forces team, Bravo 23, would rappel into the Philippine insurgent’s complex at Nagaron from two Blackhawk helicopters. Each bird carried an eight man ground team, Lizard Force One and Lizard Force Two. Lizard One would storm the thatched two-story structure at the edge of the thick woods and infiltrate it while Lizard Two secured the structure’s perimeter. The mission, Capture Generalissimo Rannie Aguilar, head of the Malynine Insurrectionists.

         “Resistance at Nagaron will be minimal,” Captain Lane said. “The bulk of the rebels have moved into the deeper north jungle for training, leaving Aguilar with only a few guards, ten at the most.”

         “A few and ten are quite different,” Warner said to the murmuring approbation of several Rangers, “so which is it?”

         Captain Lane frowned. “A few is figurative, soldier, there will be about ten.”

         “Well, bullets aren’t figurative. You say a few, you say ten, you get me confused. We like to know what we’re dealing with.”

         This operation bothered him. He wasn’t normally a difficult soldier, but this one had him unsettled. Antsy. Something wasn’t right. Command was holding back. Why capture Aguilar? Wouldn’t a lethal attack accomplish more? Maybe they could wipe out the whole complex and stop the movement.

         Lane said they wanted to trade him for some twenty hostages, captured tourists being held for ransom. He’d never heard of such a thing. When did we start trading with terrorists?

         “If you’ll excuse me, Sergeant Zimmerman, I’d like to continue.”

         “I ain’t stoppin’ you,” he said, “just tell us like it is, our lives depend on it.”

         “You tell him Zim,” Stu winked.

         His buddies called him Zim. He liked that. Though he was popular, he often kept to himself. He didn’t go carousing as much as the rest of them. When they were off drinking and shooting pool, he’d be reading a book. His claim to fame was maul ball, their own special form of tackle soccer. He was the top scorer in the unit. With his strong arms and legs from his background as the high school district wrestling champ in Iowa, he was tough to bring down.

         Many called him audacious. That’s only because he was daring. Stu accused him of being insolent. He told Stu he never wanted to hear it again, and that was it. Only Stu could ever get away with a comment like that. Anyone else was liable to get tackled on the spot and roughed up a bit.

         “Okay,” Colonel Shelton intervened, “everyone simmer down and let the Captain do his job.”

         Special forces were allowed a lot of latitude to ask questions during mission briefs, but the Colonel steered this one back on track before it lost its way.

         The Colonel’s arrival amazed everyone. He showed up for a one day visit almost a year earlier, and that was it for the past two years. This time he came straight from Manila to personally oversee the mission. He had never come for any other mission, and had never so much as given a message of more than a few lines encouragement to his men. Why now?

         “Everyday at fourteen hundred hours,” Lane pointed with his stick at a map on an easel, “Aguilar retires to this structure here for a little beauty nap. There are two guards at the front of the structure on this side. Two more guards are inside the structure. There are no other ways in or out except for an escape tunnel under this floor that leads to this shack over here, two hundred yards away. There is one guard in this shack.”

         Umbarto, one of the pilots, shouted from the back of the room, “Where’s the other five?”

         “Just cool your jets, I’m getting there. First off, Lizard One will drop here, Lizard Two will drop here.” The drops were on opposite sides and triangulated to the main structure.

         “Lizard Two will immediately surround and secure the perimeter while Condor Two takes out the shack to eliminate the escape route.” He looked directly at Umbarto, “You’ll want to leave a crater there.”

         The men chuckled. Lane loosened his grip on his pointer and sighed.

         “Simultaneously, Lizard One will storm the structure, neutralize the exterior guards, and enter here at the front. Four men will secure the entryway and four will proceed down the immediate hall to the right, following it to the left directly into the master suite. Two guards will probably be here, and here, so watch as you turn the corner.”

         “And the other guards?” Umbarto asked.

         Lane didn’t miss a beat. “Condor One will neutralize the watch tower, located across the complex here, where another guard will be. The four other guards are off duty and will either be sleeping here in this one story hut, or hanging out here in this long shack which serves as their chow hall and rec area.”

         Dillon interjected in his Texas drawl, “How we gonna take them out?”

         “That’s a good question,” Lane nodded, “Force Two, you’ll need to be ready to defend the perimeter from attack. It is likely,” he pointed on the map, “that they will attack from this direction here, but they could come from anywhere, just be ready. Condor Two will attack the rec center and keep a watch for the roving guards. Once they are located, Force Two, you’ll get support fire from the birds.”

         Captain Lane went on to give them details on how to extract Aguilar and proceed back to the landing zone. He outlined ordnance to be used, expected weaponry of the enemy, and some tactical back-up plans. He also cautioned them to avoid the women and children in the “village” as he called it, an area of the complex where supporters, concubines, cooks, and other workers lived. No bad press.

         They dubbed Aguilar, “Bongo,” named the target structure, “Vega,” and gave code names to various other buildings. They also hashed out other details and clarified communications until Colonel Shelton was satisfied that his men were prepared.

         As they milled about, dismissed from the briefing, Warner nudged Stu, “It’s a hokey mission, dude.”

         “Aw, come on Zim, we done worse and came out smellin’ roses.”

         Zim gave a hearty laugh. “You mean smelling like roses. If we came out smelling roses, we’d be dead.” Stu always mixed his sayings with hilarious results.

         On the day of the strike, Warner led Lizard One with Stu at his right hand. They took the structure, eliminated the guards, and secured the entryway. Warner left four men there and took Stu, Dillon, and Wetherby on to the master suite. Lizard Two easily secured the perimeter of the structure while Condor One and Two began to take out their designated targets.

         “This is Lizard Two, we’re coming under heavy fire from the south, behind Vega, copy Condor Two?”

         “This is Condor Two, I’ll swing around to look,” Umbarto said.

         Warner could hear the action on his headset, which was wired in to their helmets. He took point as they rounded the corner toward Aguilar’s room, Stu was behind to his right, Dillon to the left, and Wetherby in the rear.

         “Holy shit,” it was Umbarto, “the damn jungle’s swarming with them.”

         “Swarming with what?” Major Shelton demanded from back at Command Ops.

         “Rebels, must be fifty to a hundred, one armored vehicle. The forward elements are at the tree line on the ridge above Vega to the south.”

         “Can you give us cover, Condor Two, it’s heatin’ up down here.”

         “Condor Two, taking small fire, I’m buggin’ out, I’ll come back around.”

         Umbarto must have flown into the mouth of the dragon. Warner could hear the pings and whizzes on his headset.

         “Cover!” Warner screamed, dropping to the floor. He fired his first shots at a target crouching behind a corner in front of Aguilar’s room. It was different from the map. The hall came to a “T” and the room was off to the left, not straight ahead, giving the guards plenty of cover.

         “There’s only one,” Dillon said over his headset. The radio had become a morass of confusion with a stream of panicky voices barking reports and making demands, not to mention Shelton asking what the hell was going on.

         A grenade flew overhead, thrown too hard, and landed behind them in the hall, just beyond Wetherby. The Rangers instinctively dropped and covered even as the hall shook with the explosion. Warner began a barrage of fire as he reached for a grenade of his own. Stu and Dillon brought their weapons to bear so Warner could throw it.

         It did the job. The Rangers dashed around the wall, weapons ready. Warner fired a three-round burst into the sagging guard who was trying to raise his rifle.

         “Zim, Weatherby’s down,” Stu said above the headset cacophony. Warner spun to see him back in the hall, his prone body in a pool of blood.

         “Who’s down?” Shelton barked, “Report Lizard Two.”

         Stu and Dillon were already checking Wetherby while Warner stood guard.

         “This is Lizard One, we’re in Vega, Wetherby is down– ”

         “He’s dead,” Stu cut in, “fragged in the neck. Got his artery. Let’s get Bongo and get out of here.”

         “Condor One is going down,” the pilot’s voice was matter-of-fact. “Something hit us, I’m spinning out. Repeat, Condor One is going down.”

         The airwaves went silent for a few seconds. Then Wood, the Lizard Two leader, called, “Condor Two can you strafe up front, we need cover.”

         Warner took a low spot. Stu and Dillon flanked him as he kicked the door open. Stu shot past on the right and Warner rolled in. Aguilar stood center room with his hands up high.

         “We got the bastard,” Warner shouted. Stu yanked his flex-cuffs from his belt and leapt on him.

         “What bastard?” Shelton yelled back.

         Warner took a deep breath. “Bongo, we got Bongo.”

         As Stu finished cuffing the man, a hidden gunman popped up from behind the other side of the bed. With an explosive burst of rounds he shattered Stu’s face into a spray of red. Fine splatters of blood hit Warner’s face. Stu crumpled like a dropped puppet. Aguilar ducked for cover.

         Warner’s brain stopped. Blackness closed in, swelling, as the room became narrow and dim. His knees wobbled. He fell backward. The chill tickle of a burst of rounds just missed his face. Dillon returned fire. Another hidden gunman fired at them from out of a closet just ahead.

         There was no time to think, only act and react. Warner pulled himself back from the clutches of vertigo. He grabbed Aguilar by the collar and yanked him back to his feet to use his back as a shield. As he spun toward the closet gunman, he came face-to-face with the cuffed man and realized it wasn’t Aguilar after all. It was a stand-in. They’d been tricked.

         Another burst of fire came from the closet. The cuffed man’s nostrils flared. A voiceless scream fell mute as his eyes glossed to a blank and sightless stare. Blood dripped from the corner of his gaping mouth. In spite of wearing a flak vest, Warner strained to hold his heavy shield in place as he unloaded toward the closet. The wall ripped, the door jamb splintered, and a lifeless form slumped forward.

         Dillon let loose another burst of rounds at the gunman behind the bed, the real Aguilar, who returned fire and caught him across the front of his legs at the knees. Dillon thumped to the floor. Warner dropped his lifeless shield, spun, and fired into Aguilar’s side. The man jerked unnaturally as his weapon sprang from his hands. A crimson streak appeared across his left biceps.

         Warner pointed his rifle, finger on trigger, and stopped. The mission. Capture Aguilar. He dropped his rifle near Dillon and leapt on Aguilar to wrestle him to the floor. Aguilar proved to be quite nimble for a man over fifty.

         Warner strained to pin him, but Aguilar’s gnarly steel-like arms held him at bay. Locked in stalemate, Aguilar snapped his forehead into the bridge of Warner’s nose. A bright flash accompanied the pain that shot through his eyes and head as his helmet flew off. Aguilar seized the offensive. Warner twisted and ducked to avoid a choke-hold, landing on his back, pinned against the side of the bed.

         Out of nowhere Aguilar thrust a gleaming blade toward his chest. Warner snagged his wrist and held the dagger at bay. Aguilar pressed closer, then released a flurry of short, choppy punches, unable to extend his injured arm. Warner lost hold of the wrist. Aguilar came slashing back with the dagger.

         Warner missed his wrist, but deflected his arm. The blade sliced across the side of Warner’s upper cheek bone and temple, narrowly missing his right eye. The tip of the dagger caught the inside upper curl of his ear and pierced it through.

         He howled in urgent rage. His own blood sprayed on his arm and the back of his hand as he pushed Aguilar away. The old man came slashing back again. Warner took the gash on his forearm to block the blade. More pain, more blood. This wasn’t going well.

         Warner’s eyes dimmed as dizziness crept in. He fought against the onslaught of fading consciousness. He couldn’t succumb. This man killed Stu, his best friend. This man needed to die. He pushed away the vertigo. Did he have enough strength to do this?

         He swung his arm at the dimming visage of Aguilar. His fist missed completely, but his elbow caught the squirrel in the throat with a solid thud. It sucked the force out of Aguilar’s thrust and Warner snagged his wrist again. He locked on. This time, he wouldn’t let go. He was focused now. This was for Stu. Aguilar must die.

         With a deep growl, he lunged into a balance twist-over, a wrestling move he developed using the force of his foe’s reaction to flop him onto his own back. He executed it sloppily, but it still drove Aguilar’s wounded left arm into the floor. Aguilar grimaced and struggled to right himself, but Warner pushed harder, still holding fast the right wrist, watching that cursed blade. He squeezed and wrenched with all his depleted might, twisting the wrist more and more, bending it back in ways it was not meant to bend, pushing until he couldn’t push any more. Let the damn blade go. One more jerk and the dagger finally fell.

         Warner’s strength abandoned him. How could this old man keep on going? Aguilar pulled away, groping for the blade. Warner held his shaky grip on Aguilar’s arm and managed to flick the dagger away with the side of his boot.

         They sprawled together on the floor. Warner kept driving with his weight, twisting the man’s arm up behind his back. Aguilar refused to quit. He squirmed and twisted to pull free as if the pain meant nothing, still moving toward his blade. Warner stayed with him. They pushed and pulled at each other. Aguilar turned to make one last reach for the dagger, but Warner lunged onto his back and flattened him into the floor a foot from the beckoning blade.

         With his knee in his back, one arm around his throat, and his other arm forcing Aguilar’s wrist up into the back of his neck, Warner held fast for a few heaving breaths of foul, sweaty air. Stu’s absent face watched from the floor at the end of the bed.

         Blood rushed into Warner’s head. With renewed vigor he drove his knee deeper into Aguilar’s back. Aguilar flailed wildly, but Warner was transfixed now. He grabbed a handful of the man’s still thick hair and wrung his neck back.

         “Don’t kill him, Zim.” Was that Stu?

         “He killed you, Stu.” Warner swiped the blade from the floor. “He killed you.”

         “The mission,” Dillon said. It wasn’t Stu at all. “Remember the mission.” Dillon crawled forward on his elbows, his useless blood-soaked legs dragging behind. “Don’t do it, Zim.”

         Warner held the dagger high, his eyes blurred with tears. A jolt of memories shot through his head. The old man enjoyed giving pain, enjoyed killing. He knew Aguilar as he knew himself. The memories of torture were sharp. They were his own now, yet he had never done such things. Aguilar did. Aguilar had killed for pleasure. He was a vile, wretched man. He had to die.

         “The mission, Zim.”

         In a smooth, arched motion, Warner drove the blade deep into Aguilar’s throat, then a second time, and a third. Aguilar’s flailing stopped and his gurgling ended in one last bubbly exhale.

         It was war. Die or be killed. What else was he supposed to do? The blade was meant for his own neck. He killed in self-defense. It was his duty. Why the remorse?

         The mission. I was supposed to capture him. What did I do? I could have stopped myself. Why didn’t I stop?

         A resounding blast shook Vega. Warner slumped back on his haunches and turned to look at Dillon. Dillon appeared to be a cartoon, kind of drawn on the floor in outline. The whole room was in outline. What happened to his vision?

         He closed his eyes, sank back against the bed, and rested his head. More memories came– the complex, the insurrection, the escape hatch, the tunnels, the weapons cache. Puzzled, he opened his palm and brought the dagger up to his face.

         The memories ceased. His vision cleared. He eyed the menacing, notched, ten-inch stiletto blade. Set in its hilt, a remarkable rounded blue gem pulsed, glowing. He ran his fingers over it and felt its cool, glasslike smoothness. Where had such a gem come from? He had never seen anything like it.

         “Zim, get with it, come on man, help me out.”

         Stu was gone. Wetherby was gone. And God knew who else was gone. The steady, loud cracks of the firefight, interspersed with sporadic explosions, were no less intense than when the action had started. Only now did he again notice them. They were getting closer.

         “Come on, dude, I’m bleeding.”

         Warner sprang to his feet and landed with a hard thud. Pain shot through his legs and body. He grabbed a cloth from off the back of a chair, wrapped the dagger, and shoved it into his thigh pocket as he crossed toward Dillon.

         The door burst open.

         My rifle. Dillon swung his rifle toward the intruders. They were friendlies.

         “What the hell went on in here?” Sergeant Wood asked as he rushed to Dillon’s aid. Three others burst through the door. Warner grabbed his rifle and helmet.

         Dillon’s knees were shattered. At least one round had hit each one. An unlikely event in the worst scenario, yet there it was. Flak vests don’t cover knees. Dillon seemed stoic against the pain. Warner donned his helmet. The cacophony of the radio returned.

         Others helped Dillon as Wood conferred with Warner.

         “We’re surrounded, Vega’s surrounded. Must be at least thirty of them left, but we got their armored trak. Your men at the front door are dead, all four. We got ‘em in the hall now.”

         “Damn it.” Warner’s gut knotted and his heart left his body in a hot air balloon.

         “You and Dillon are all that’s left of Lizard One. Me and these three are all of Lizard Two. Condor One is down, but Condor Two is covering the front door. The stairway’s been destroyed, and the tunnel, so unless there’s another way in, we bought some time. Of course, the only way out is up right now.”

         “Umbarto,” Warner called into his mike, “This is Lizard One, can you maneuver over the south rooftop of Vega and drop a line?”

         “Roger that, good to hear you, Zim– ”

         “Where the hell you been, soldier,” Shelton cut in, “do you have Bongo?”

         “No Bongo, Bongo’s dead, gotta get out of here, we’ve been overrun.”

         Warner ignored whatever Shelton yelled next. “This way,” he said to Wood pointing toward the closet. They pulled the dead gunman away while two others helped Dillon and the third watched the door.

         “Umbarto, we’ll be coming out on the southeast side, how’s it look?”

         “Looks good, low fire that side, you’ve got some goons throwing ropes up front, though.”

         “We have one med evac and six corpses,” Wood added.

         The closet smelled of rank sweat. The clothes hadn’t been washed in some time. Warner reached up and yanked the bar and clothes out of the way to uncover a crude lever in the wall. The lever opened a drop-down hatch from the ceiling. The hinged hatch unfolded into a short ladder which hung three feet off the floor. Up he went, weapon ready, into a small compartment under the thatched roof. It was no more than six by six, walled off from the rest of the attic. He pushed the handle on the underside of the thatching. Daylight flooded in.

         “Is that you Lizard One.”

         “That’s me, Condor, get as close as you can.”

         Wood helped Dillon and the others up as Warner went out on the roof. Condor Two’s line and a basket hung just three feet distant as the bird rhythmically chopped away some forty feet up. The door gunner protected the southern approach. Some fire was coming from the front. The rebels seemed to be catching on to the escape plan. They had no way of knowing whether their general was alive and captured or not. They held back.

         Warner propped himself over the peak of the roof to return fire to the north and cover as the others loaded Dillon into a basket. He was hoisted first, then the corpses, Stu, Wetherby, and the other four. There was no way to recover the rest from the swarming jungle below. They hated to leave them.

         Wood dropped next to Warner on the roof peak to help return fire. Condor Two dropped a rope ladder for the rest. Wood's men went up.

         “How’d you know about that roof hatch?” Wood asked.

         Warner fired a burst of rounds toward a thicket below. How did he know? It was a memory. He’d opened it before. He knew it was there. Like he had known it all along. Like he lived here. The dagger showed him.

         “I saw a diagram,” he said.

         It wasn’t a lie. He didn’t say what type of diagram. If Wood assumed it was a piece of paper instead of his thoughts, so be it.

         Wood nodded. “I’ll see you up top.” He followed his men up. Warner waited, fired and grabbed the rungs as Wood made the chopper. Several goons burst into the room below and began to shoot the place up.

         “Get out of here,” Warner yelled in his headset, “they’re in the room.”

         The chopper lifted out and off it went, Warner dangling below. He watched the treacherous scene fade into stretches of jungle green. The wind felt good.

         Stu had come out smelling roses. Warner cried.

         The Catastrophe of Nagaron. Hushed by command, classified top secret, and filed away in the dark recesses of bureaucracy. It never happened.

         Shelton charged Warner with abandoning the mission in an act of bloodlust. Upon questioning, Dillon had reluctantly told the review board exactly what he saw in Aguilar’s room. It wasn’t his fault. He just told what he saw. It was enough, though. Warner’s discharge went through quickly, and they sent him home to Dubuque, Iowa.

         Six years later and nothing. Life bored him. The dagger had taken it all, and yet he had taken the dagger. He needed that dagger. He had to find out why it gave him memories. One of the logs in the fireplace snapped and whistled, mocking.

         A woman screamed. She was a Filipino. The dagger had cut her. Aguilar smiled, looking into her terrified eyes. Warner jerked his hand open and the dagger dove point first into a log near the hearth. The blue stone pulsed. The vivid mental image dissolved, but the memory remained, now one of his own.

         Oh my God, he thought, when did I pull it from its case? How long have I held it?

         He stepped back and sat on the easy chair behind him. A stream of sweat tickled its way over the thin scar on his upper right cheek, and down his face. It hung precariously on the edge of his chin. He fingered the notch in the curl of his right ear and thought that maybe running away wasn’t such a bad idea after all. But where could he go to remake himself?

         The pulsing blue stone caught his attention. He wouldn’t give up the blade. It owed him. Besides, how many daggers gave memories? There was something more to this blade. He would discover its secret. He would find out how it worked and why, and then he would leave Dubuque.

         He smiled as he reached down to grasp it’s hilt and pull it from the log. He paused. What memory would it give him this time?

 Next  "Chapter 3: Two of a Kind"