Falling(59)
Theo caught his breath as he scanned the lot, spotting the van at a distance. But what were Carrie and the suspect doing? As she stood up, the man motioned toward a pile of what looked like discarded construction barricades. She moved toward it.
Theo rounded the corner and ducked out of sight behind a truck.
* * *
Walking over to the pile, Carrie attempted to undo the button on her jeans but her bound hands made it impossible. Her shaking fingers failed to twist just right at the awkward angle. She turned back to Sam.
“Sorry, a little help?” she asked meekly.
Looking at her wet pants and the button above them, he seemed both agitated and embarrassed as he walked over to help. As he placed his hands near her waist, she looked away.
He fumbled with the button as well; it was stubborn and his hands were full. Placing the detonator in his pocket, he grabbed the little metal button and popped it through the opening just as Carrie’s knee drove hard into his crotch. His eyes bulged and a grunt shot out of his mouth, his body doubling over in pain. Carrie lunged forward and grabbed the detonator from his pocket. Jumping back, she scrambled out of his reach.
They stared at each other, eyes wide, breathing heavily. Carrie’s bound hands sandwiched the detonator between her palms, her fingers wrapping around the device like Sam’s had around her throat. The look on his face told her that despite all his planning and scheming, despite all his redundancies and backup plans, this was not something he’d anticipated.
Once she pushed the button the children would be safe. The plane could land. She would be granting Bill absolution. This was how it had to be. This was the only way.
“What happened to Ahmad?” she asked.
His eyebrows lifted a little before sinking into a look of painful defeat. As though the act of letting someone in was more difficult than kidnapping her family, than crashing a plane.
“I got to LA in September of 2019,” Sam said in a dark, bitter tone. “It was heaven. The sun, the ocean. Everything so fucking clean. I was doing it. We were doing it together. Finally. All of it. Life was just… outstanding.
“A month later your president ordered a troop withdrawal from northern Syria. Our little pocket of Kurdistan. Which gave Turkey the green light to attack. They came after our people within days.” He shook his head with a dark laugh. “Betrayed, again. Abandoned, again. And after we had sacrificed so much, fighting alongside you, destroying ISIS for you—we lost eleven thousand YPG fighters defeating ISIS for you. Eleven. Thousand. And you do that. You betray us like that.
“When Ben and I saw our town on the news it took three days before we were able to make contact with anyone on the ground. Do you know how many in our families died?”
She didn’t respond.
“All of them, Carrie. Every single one. We were sent pictures so we could identify the bodies. The last image I have of my mother is her bloated, rotting corpse. Blisters on her lips. Burns across her skin. Ahmad. My baby brother. Laid across her. Foam around his mouth. Yellow pus from the chemicals. My brother’s last act was trying to protect our mother.”
His eyes had filled with tears and now they narrowed in on her. She tightened her grip on the detonator.
“Were you aware of the troop drawdown?” he asked. “And the attacks that came as a result?”
She felt the shame blossom across her cheeks. She shook her head.
Sam nodded a few times, crossing his arms. “Well, I’m sure you were busy. Probably had a deadline with work. Scott’s baseball practice. I bet friends were coming over for dinner. Or maybe you saw it on the news but just couldn’t be bothered to care. It was just some poor country. Some poor people. Attacks like that just happen there. That’s just how it is.”
His voice began to rise.
“I know it’s how you reacted because I saw it happen. I was here. So was Ben. We were safe. We were in a country where attacks like that don’t happen. And all around us we watched you get your green smoothies and go to the gym. We watched you take selfies and go on vacation. I watched a grown woman sob hysterically, I mean, rolling around in the grass hysterical, when she saw a dog get hit by a car. And all I could imagine was the look on her face when she clicked past the news of my village’s annihilation. Bored. Distracted. I mean, the privilege.”
He snarled against the word, and Carrie flinched against the truth. The detonator hung between them.
“Ahmad. My baby brother. He was the reason I never resented losing all those years. He was what I was most proud of in my life. And he was taken from me, taken from me because this country sees him, sees our people, as nothing. Expendable. Just poor people they can do whatever they want with.”
A wave rolled in. And another.
“Sam,” Carrie said in a voice that was grounded but full of tenderness, “I get why you’re doing this, but it doesn’t justify what you’re doing.”
He didn’t have a response. He just blinked at her.
“You have every right to be angry, Sam. I would be too. But your guilt can’t—”
“My guilt?” he screamed. “My guilt? What about your guilt? You and your ignorance and inaction. This country and the way you think—”
“But Sam! You were here with us!”
Carrie saw her mistake immediately. Every moment in which he’d blamed himself for leaving them, for not being able to protect them because he too had abandoned them, for living a life of ease while they suffered. It all played across his face, the sucker punch of survivor guilt breaking him open right in front of her.