Gateway What Lies BeyondChapter 23
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The sound of something snapping close by brought me back to consciousness. It took a few moments for me to regain my senses and figure out what was going on. The first thing I noticed was that it was starting to lighten. I had apparently been out cold the rest of the night in the ravine where I still lay.
Then the pain returned. I was lying on top of my injured left arm and both it and my left shoulder were screaming in pain. I was about to shift to take the pressure off my wounded limb when more sounds grabbed my attention. First another snapping sound, which I was pretty sure was a twig or piece of wood being broken, followed by voices.
"I don't think we will find him," the first voice said.
"Shut up and keep looking. If we do not find him, Qasim will have my head. I will make sure he gets yours along with it!"
I was looking from an almost upside down position, and saw legs followed by bodies stepping over the ravine just meters in front of me. They weren't really paying that much attention, and I couldn't imagine how they did not see me, but they walked on by.
The one in the middle I recognized. It was Moe. There was no way I was going to be able to get them before they got me. I might be able to shoot one of them, but firing an assault rifle with one hand would be difficult in the best of conditions. No, the smart play was to let them get some distance, and try to scoot past them.
I wasn't sure where I was, or where I was headed; but what I did know, was that I needed to get the hell away from that village. They would find me, eventually, if I didn't high tail it. I lay there for a long ten minutes, giving them some time to get some distance. Then I pried myself out of the ravine. Standing, I found my right ankle was also pretty screwed up, and I was having trouble putting weight on it. I pulled the rifle up and switched the selector to 'safe'. Holding the barrel, I used the weapon as best I could, as a makeshift cane. It wasn't much good as a weapon, anyway, as I had lost the bag of ammo while I was twirling down the hill.
I veered to the right as I walked, to put some distance between me and the trio in case they doubled back at some point. Thankfully, I never saw them again. After walking about twenty minutes another ravine showed up, heading perpendicular to the first. I stopped and listened for a few moments, to make sure those guys weren't headed in this direction and in my immediate vicinity. Hearing nothing, I continued down the new ravine.
As I walked, I worked on the problem. I had no food and no water, and I wasn't sure when I would find any. I could wander around, but I had no idea where I was. I could be in Pakistan, for all I knew. The area still looked like what I saw in Afghanistan, but it was a good bet that the area along the border looked the same, whether it was Pakistan, or Afghanistan.
Still, if I was in Afghanistan, there was a chance I might stumble across some friendlies. There were a lot of people living here who didn't like the Taliban, or groups like Al Qaeda. Empty villages like the one I'd been kept in weren't unknown, and the people who were forced out would resent it.
No, my only real hope was finding a village and asking for help. They would either turn me back over to the insurgents ... in which case I would be killed ... or they would help me. But if I kept wandering around this mountain range, I was a dead man anyway.
Without water, I could have made it three or four days, max, in my best condition. In thin clothing, injured, and in a weakened state; the odds were good that exposure would get me before dehydration set in.
So, I walked. As I walked, my vision blurred and then returned, over and over. Odds were good that I had managed a concussion at some point, also.
I walked for the better part of the day, and rested that night. As I leaned against a rock, I was mildly concerned that if I fell asleep I wouldn't wake up again. At least, that's what they used to always say about people with concussions: don't let them fall asleep. That is actually what I was thinking as I drifted off.
It was mid-morning when I came back awake. The pain in my arm was getting worse, and my throat was so very dry. Even my eyes were feeling dry. I pushed myself vertical, and started walking again. My pace was much slower, now. It felt as though it was all I could do to get one foot in front of the other.
I was about to collapse ... when I saw it. A small black funnel of smoke was snaking into the sky. That meant fire, and fire probably meant people.
I made my way around the base of the hill I had been negotiating, and went towards the smoke. After what seemed like an eternity, I came to a small goat path. It looked to be leading towards the finger of smoke, so I followed it, heading up the hill. The rifle wasn't doing me much good on the incline, and I was having more and more trouble holding up my weight.
I dropped the weapon, and used my still functioning right hand and arm to pull on the trees and bushes around the path, slowly pushing my body for every last bit of energy to get up the hill. Finally, I broke out into a flat area that entered a small village. There were women and children moving about, many of whom started yelling as I came into sight.
The call went up across the village. The language they were speaking wasn't Arabic or Urdu. I recognized it as Pashto. It was a language I didn't know, but I had heard it, before. Pashto meant I was still in Afghanistan.
A middle aged man with a long beard came out to see what the noise was about, and hurried over when he saw me. He got to me just as my legs gave out, and he caught me.
"Help me," in English, was all I managed to get out through my dry, cracked lips.
Then he blurred out of focus, and I was out.
I have no idea how long I had been unconscious when I came to, but I found myself lying on a flat, hard surface that was bumping along. Each movement caused me to wince in pain from my battered body.
The man from earlier came into my view, his face leaned down into my line of vision. He said something in Pashto and smiled, patting me gently on my good shoulder.
I had no idea what was happening, or where they were taking me. I was in a wagon of some type, staring up at the sky. I couldn't really sit up and look around, as the pain was too great. From time to time someone poured water into my mouth from what seemed like a drinking bladder. Once I remember some type of cooked rice being pushed past my lips. I'm not even sure I was registering it consciously, but I managed to eat it all the same.
I kept slipping in and out, sometimes in a half awake state, and sometimes asleep. It was hard to tell since I was already cold and everything hurt; but I felt like a fever was setting in, and the area around the wound in my left shoulder was starting to hurt worse.
After an unknown amount of time, I heard more commotion. There was a lot of yelling that I couldn't make out, and the man talking next to me was saying something. It seemed weird but I couldn't even register his words. Everything was muted. It was just sounds.
I was starting to slip out when first a gun and then a body came over the side of the wagon, and into my view. The first thing I noticed was the weapon wasn't a Kalashnikov. The second thing I noticed was the digi-pattern design of a United States battle dress uniform.
"Help," was all I could get out, and then I was out again.
6 Months Later
I never did find out what happened to the Afghan man who helped me, but he clearly saved my life! I was in and out for most of it, but he had taken me to a small combat outpost. From there I was air lifted to Bagram for just enough medical help to get me stabilized. Then it was on to Germany.
There were a host of surgeries. I had badly damaged my elbow and shoulder in the escape, and I had also managed to crack my skull. They said there was nothing they could do about the scars on my body however.
I was conscious when I got to Ramstein Air Force Base. When the nurses pulled open the gown I was wearing, the first nurse swore, and looked slightly ill, while the second nurse looked too shocked to say anything.
I knew my wounds and scars were bad, but apparently they were worse than I had realized. Not the injuries from the escape, but the damage done over the years by my captors. I had noticed them, of course, but had never really examined them. I had always spent my free time dreaming of home, and of Claire. Not that I had expected to see either, ever again.
But, once I had time to examine them, it was shocking. Cuts and burns, laid on cuts and burns. My chest, sides and back were road maps of pain. I didn't realize it, but one of my captors had at some point carved the word 'infidel' into the back of my left shoulder blade. The word was partially disguised by the bullet that had ripped through that same shoulder, but you could still tell something had been carved into my skin.
There was nothing the doctors could really do about that. They said it had happened so slowly, and over so long a time, that the scar tissue was pretty well built up. Any kind of plastic surgery would have had to be so extensive as to be almost as disturbing as the injuries themselves.
So, I got to keep them as a morbid kind of souvenir. My face had generally been left alone. Qasim had given orders that nothing was to be done to me that would affect my ability to work, so they had left my face mostly alone. I did have a nasty scar on one cheek from a particularly savage beating, but that was about it.
After my first surgery, I was declared stable enough to be sent back to the States, where they would do the full reconstruction on my elbow, and repair all the bones that had been broken during my captivity. Without any medical attention at all, some of the bones had healed wrongly, and either limited my mobility or caused me regular pain. I had been wheeled out of the hospital at Ramstein and sent to Walter Reed, the main Army hospital in the US.
At some point between Germany and the US I had picked up a nickname. Military Joe's love handing out nicknames, and they had started calling me Lazarus. I took it in good fun. I didn't really get the full effect of the name until a young JAG Lieutenant came into my hospital room, after my third surgery at Walter Reed.
"What? I went AWOL and I'm now up for a courts martial?" I asked in what I thought was a joking manner, but I only received a frown from the Lieutenant.
Jerri
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