Breach of Protocol

A NIGHTMARE WITH NO END

6

A NIGHTMARE WITH NO END

Melide, Spain

Jana pressed the phone to her ear. “Cade? Cade?” She leaned toward Gilda, who was still trying to catch her breath from the downhill run. “He must have put the phone down. Cade!” she again yelled, squinting into the brilliant Spanish sunlight.

The town of Melide had roots that could be traced to the tenth century. The main road was barely wide enough to fit a Smart Car. On one side sat an albergue, a type of hostel or hotel, and the other, a post office.

“Is this thing still connected?” Jana said. “Cade, what’s happening?”

“Jana,” Gilda said as she let her backpack flop to the ground. “Calm down. I’m sure he’s working on it.” She slumped to the cobblestone sidewalk to rest. Gilda’s command of the English language was superb, yet her accent decried just a touch of Bavarian. “Stay calm. Do you have a good cell signal?”

“Yes, two bars. I can hear something in the background, but he’s not answering me.”

“It’s not going to do you any good to lose your cool right now. You’re doing everything you can.” Gilda leaned against the post-office building, which shaded her face from the piercing sunlight. “God, I’m exhausted. You know we trekked twenty kilometers today?” Jana wasn’t listening, but Gilda, never one to allow silence to fester for too long, continued. She let her eyes close and said, “He’ll be back on the phone in a second, and you’ll see. Your other friend, Latent? Is that his name? He’ll be just fine.”

“Gilda, you have no idea who we’re dealing with. Waseem Jarrah is number one on Interpol’s most wanted list. He is responsible for the nuclear bombing in America, and for a string of other terrorist attacks on the United States.”

“Yeah?” Gilda said, exhaling. “You people sure do have a lot of enemies.”

“Oh, and the Germans don’t? Cade,” she said again into the phone, “come on, pick up the phone.”

A light breeze blew dust through the center of the tiny hamlet. A storekeeper across the way swept dirt onto the sidewalk.

“I’m telling you,” Gilda said as she leaned her head back, “relax. He’ll be right there.”

“This is maddening!”

But Gilda shook her head and rested her eyes, her face again draped in afternoon sun.

Cade finally returned to the phone.

“Jana?”

“Cade! What’s happening? Did you get Latent on the phone? Is he all right?”

For several seconds, all she could hear was Cade’s breathing.

“Cade? Are you there? What’s wrong?” Jana’s eyes darted from one side of the street to the other. “Director Latent’s all right, isn’t he? Cade?”

Another gust of light wind funneled between the storefront buildings.

“He’s gone, Jana. He’s been assassinated. In broad daylight. It’s all over CNN. It just happened.”

Jana slumped beside Gilda. “No. No, it can’t be.”

“They don’t even know where the shot came from. He was definitely the target though.”

Jana covered her mouth and she began to shake.

“We’ve got to get you out of there,” Cade said. “Uncle Bill is on the horn right now with the Spanish intelligence service, the Centro Nacional de Inteligencia. Just stay put, they’ll get to you.”

“Cade, are you sure about Latent? I mean, are you sure it’s him? What if it’s someone who just looks like him, you know? He can’t be dead.”

“Jana, it’s him. There’s no mistake. He was coming out of the convention center, surrounded by news crews when it happened. The footage is all over the airwaves. Listen to me. You need to get inside somewhere. I don’t like the idea of Jarrah calling your cellphone. You are in danger and I want you out of sight.”

“He must know I’m on a hike, but I can’t imagine he actually knows where I am,” Jana said, wiping a newly formed tear. He doesn’t know where I am, right? she thought. “I mean, think about it. It would be just his style. Call me and make me paranoid that he’s watching me. His call to me was just a diversion. I think he likes to know his victims are squirming.”

“Just get indoors. Do it for me, okay?”

“Cade,” she sounded like a mom scolding a child, “I’m not in danger.” She leaned against Gilda. “Besides, I’m not alone. I’ve got a friend. She’ll look out for me.”

Just then something slammed into Jana’s right temple and everything in her vision went black. Her body flopped onto the street. The last thing she heard was the sound of Gilda screaming.

Across the phone line, Cade heard the muffled sounds, followed by a woman screaming, then the Middle Eastern voice of a man that spoke just one word. To Cade, the word sounded like “owe-woo,” which, although he did not know, was an Urdu word meaning, ‘come.’

Cade yelled into the phone, “Jana? Jana?” His cries were answered only by a muffled gurgling sound reminiscent of a person choking on their own blood.

“Jana!”

With the calmness of a dog waking from an afternoon of slumber, the man standing over Jana smiled, put away his weapon, and walked back into the hillsides.

Several minutes later, Jana began to regain consciousness. Her head throbbed. As she pushed herself upright, she startled as her hand landed in something wet.

“Oh, my head. Gilda? What happened? Why is everything wet? Did you spill your water bottle again?” she said.

But as she glanced at her palm, she found it covered in thick, dark blood.

“Gilda!”

Gilda’s motionless, half-opened eyes glared back. She was dead; a single wound to the torso.

“Gilda, no!”

An hour had passed by the time the Guardia Civil arrived in the tiny hamlet of Melide. The murderer was nowhere to be seen. Two hikers who came into town off the Camino Trail later reported they had seen a man hike past them, headed in the opposite direction. They thought this odd, considering the majority of the Camino Trail’s hikers walk toward the town of Santiago de Compostela, terminus of the trail, and not away from it.

As Jana listened to the hikers, she made eye contact with nothing. They described him as being of Middle Eastern descent, having narrow shoulders, and carrying a long, flat pack on his back. But when they described his hair as wavy and black, with a thick shock of white up one side, Jana looked up, and a cold shiver flashed across her body.

It was him. It was Waseem Jarrah.

Jana turned and stared down the narrow street, but her mind wandered into a spinning swirl and the edges of her eyesight became glassy. She saw flashes of Waseem Jarrah’s face. But when another face appeared, a face she had seen in a thousand nightmares, her vision washed into whiteness and her hand began to tremble. A horrifying flashback from the events that had occurred two years prior played out in front of her as if she were living them again. It was all crystal clear. Waseem Jarrah’s disciple, terrorist Shakey Kunde, pointed the Glock at her and Jana stared in abject terror as white flashes erupted from the muzzle. Kunde laughed a monstrous laugh and she felt the puncturing impacts of bullets slamming into her chest.

The next thing Jana saw was the shocking blue sky above the Spanish countryside as she fell back and her head slammed into the cobblestone street.

When she awakened a few hours later in a rural hospital, Jana knew she had suffered another post traumatic stress episode. The PTSD had resurfaced, and she had no control over it.

Her nightmare with Waseem Jarrah had begun again.