Broken
Standing in the living room of Sarah's mother's house had to be one of the most uncomfortable moments of my life. I could tell the woman lived alone, and I could also tell that she'd been devastated by the news of her daughter's death.
I stood next to a fireplace, looking at pictures on the mantle. A wedding photo, the woman standing next to a rakishly handsome young man in an Army uniform. Sarah's late father. Another one, of a young girl on the beach. She couldn't have even been six years old, but I could tell it was Sarah. I felt a tightness in my chest.
A moment later, the woman returned with a cup of coffee on a saucer.
"Would you like some coffee?" she asked me.
"What? Oh...no thank you, ma'am."
"Elaine."
"I'm sorry?"
"My name is Elaine."
"Michael."
"Okay, Michael," she said, sitting down, "how did you know my daughter?" I looked away, struggling to find the right words.
"We...we were lovers, ma'am. Elaine. I mean, she was my...you know, girlfriend."
"I...see..." she said. She pulled a small bottle from between the couch cushions and splashed some of it into her coffee.
"Can you tell me what you know about your daughter's death?" Elaine looked visibly pained, and hesistated.
"She was working in a print shop in Seattle. She told me she had a chance to go to Qatar to teach there at an American school. She said she was really excited about it, but I don't think she really wanted to go. Several months later, I got a letter in the mail saying she was killed in a car accident. All they sent me was a letter. A damned letter. No one...no one even came to the house. Just a letter." Tears began to roll down her cheeks. "I'm sorry," she said, sniffling, and wiping her eyes.
"Have you ever heard of a group of guys called Dead Six?" I asked, not looking at her.
"What?" she said, wiping her eyes again. "I don't think so." I sighed. I doubted she'd believe me, but I was going to tell her the truth.
"Elaine, your daughter...Sarah...Sarah didn't work for a print shop. She was a black market document counterfeiter, and one of the best in the trade. She got involved in this in Los Angeles after she ran away from home."
"What? Now you listen to me..." Elaine was getting visibly agitated. How in the hell do you tell a grieving mother that her daughter was a criminal? I raised my hand.
"Please...please let me finish. I know you don't believe me, but I'm telling you the truth. Just let me say what I have to say. Then I'll leave, and I won't ever bother you again. Please." Elaine was silent.
"Sarah was apprehended by an FBI task force in February of 2004. In lieu of sending her to prison, they opted to send her to Qatar under the auspices of a black operation called Project Heartbreaker. Under this program, people from various backgrounds, many of them criminal, were sent to the Middle East, and were hurridely trained in tradecraft, sabotage, and assassination. Their...our mission was to hit the terrorists in their own backyard. We did, and we really hurt them."
"You're insane," she said, looking at me increduously. I took a photograph out of my pocket and handed it to Elaine. It was the one we'd had taken at the City Centre Mall. "All this proves is that you were over there with her."
"Ma'am, was Sarah sending you money while she was over there?"
"Yes, but I don't see..."
"She was sending you about four thousand dollars a month, wasn't she?"
"How did you...?"
"We were being paid four times that much a month. She wanted to send you more, but I told her that doing so would be too suspicious. Even so, don't you think it's weird that a teacher would have that much money to send?" Elain remained silent, and stared at the picture in her hands.
"Elaine," I said, softening my voice, "If you want me to leave, I'll leave. But I came here to tell you how Sarah died." She looked up at me.
"I knew there was something wrong," she said, "something wrong about all of it. She wasn't killed in a car accident, was she?"
"No ma'am," I said, so quietly that it was almost a whisper. I unconsciously touched the shrapnel scar above my right eye. "We were...betrayed." I sat down and told Elaine the story of the Qatari assault on our compound. I told her about Gordon Willis and his betrayal, and how my actions were likely what set him off in the first place. I told her about Sarah's final moments, how I said that I'd cover her, and how she was cut apart by Qatari gunfire. By the time I was finished, Elaine had her face buried in her hands and was quietly weeping.
"Here," I said, reaching into my pocket. I pulled out the chipped emerald necklace that I'd carried everywhere with me since that night. I laid it on the coffee table in front of Elaine.
"What's that?" she asked, wiping her eyes.
"I bought that for Sarah, the same night that photo was taken. She..." I paused. I was determined not to break down again. "She was wearing it when she died. It has a chip in it...it's from one of the bullets."
"One of the bullets that killed her?" All I could do was nod, looking at the trinket on the table.
"I just don't know what to think," she said. "How is any of this possible?"
"I don't know how it all happened, but it did," I said, still looking at the emerald pendant. "Sarah's death is my fault. I told her I had her covered, and she trusted me, and now she's dead because I failed her. But Gordon Willis is the one that betrayed all of us to the Qatari government. The government disavowed any knowledge of the incident, and Project Heartbreaker was cancelled. We were all set up and left to die. I don't know how many of us got out. Only a handfull, I think, out of dozens. But we didn't go down without a fight. The assault cost the Qataris dozens of soldiers and at least one armored vehicle." I could actually feel pride in my voice. "But the whole thing was wrong. We shouldn't have been there in the first place...none of it should've happened."
"It's just so much to take in," Elaine said.
"Elaine," I said, looking her in the eye again. "I'm...I'm sorry. Your daughter's death is on my hands. I let her down the one time it really mattered, and...Christ. 'I'm sorry' really doesn't cut it, does it?"
"Why did you come here?" I was silent for a long moment.
"Sarah used to talk about you. You're her only family. I...I don't have any family. I lost my mother when I was seventeen. I didn't know if the government told you what happened, or if you even knew that she'd died. What they did to us wasn't right. They forced us to go over there, and we did our job. We did it so well we became inconvenient, and...well, they left us to die. They wanted us to die, so we wouldn't talk."
"So you were her boyfriend?"
"I guess...Elaine, I loved your daughter. She was the only woman I've ever loved, as a matter of fact. I'd never had a girlfriend before, and honestly I wondered what the hell she saw in me. But she..." I struggled for words. "She made me want to be better. She made the nightmares go away. She gave me a reason to keep going. And I failed her...I..." I stopped talking. Not knowing what else to say, I looked at the floor again.
"You know she told me about you," she said at last. "She said she'd met a young man named Michael, but...but the rest of it. Why didn't she say anything about it?"
"Because our emails were filtered and censored. Any attempt to tell anyone was really going on resulted in the email not being sent and the sender losing his email access. A lotta guys tried it. Some guys went to internet cafes in town and tried to do it that way. A couple of them were successful, I think, but most didn't bother. They were paying us so well that it kept most of us quiet, and they only let those of us they more or less trusted go out in town unsupervised. They told us that they were constantly scanning the 'net, and that any evidence of a leak would result in...consequences, that's how they put it, for all of us."
"You came all the way here just to tell me all of this?"
"Yes ma'am."
"She always said how nice you were. But...please understand, Michael, you said you could prove all of this. You haven't proven anything other than you were close to my daughter."
"I know, ma'am," I said, looking back down at the table. "But I will."
"What do you mean?"
"I have this," I said, pulling Big Boss' flash drive from my pocket. "This has everything on Project Heartbreaker on it."
"Well why haven't you shown it to anyone?"
"It's encrypted, and I don't know how to deal with that. But I'm going to find somebody who does, and I'm going to blow the lid off of the whole thing."
"So you can get recognition?"
"For Sarah," I replied. "She deserved better than that. She...we...we fought, we bled, we died. For them to just pretend that it never happened, that...it's not right." I felt a single tear rolling down my face. "It's not right, and everyone's gonna know the truth."
"I think you should go, Michael," Elaine said, sipping her coffee and not looking at me. Without looking up, I nodded, pocketed the flash drive, stood, and turned.
"For what it's worth," Elaine began, causing me to pause, "I believe you. I just...I just need to be alone right now." I nodded again.
"Thank you," I said. "Do you hate me?" Elaine didn't answer. That was answer enough.
"Michael...your picture..."
"I want you to have those. I don't know what's going to happen to me. It's better if you keep them."
"What do you mean?"
"Watch the news, ma'am," I said, still not facing her. "You'll know when it's done. You won't see me again." I was out the door before she could respond.
I gotta say though,I thought Gordon and co. would be waiting at the door...
