The Dhofar Redemption: Chapter IV

After a hiatus for editing, the Dhofar Redemption is back with Chapter Four. You can get caught up with the story so far here, there, over here, and read a quick primer on the history of the Dhofar War here. I had forgotten about a lot of the stuff I wrote, most of the early storyline dates back to 2018, so I have been editing to update the writing a bit while also doing some research into the conflict to give my historical fiction a bit more authenticity.

Do you want to help support getting this story finished and out for publication? Buying stuff in the shop helps a ton, but so does reviewing my other books on Amazon, Goodreads, and Barnes & Noble. If you’ve read Frozen Reaction and/or Retrograde Absolution, I would sincerely appreciate it if you left a review! Reviews only cost your time, and help authors reach a wider audience. If you do leave a review, and you send me a screenshot of it posted, I will send you a lil something as a token of my appreciation!

Harrigan spent the whole day at work trying to mentally prepare for the operation ahead. He was trying not to let the excitement building up inside of him show, but he knew that Nicole noticed. Curtis caught her staring at him throughout the workday as he went through the motions of keeping the bar up and running.

“Curtis, are you okay?” Nicole asked him as they were finishing closing the bar down, “You’ve seemed really out of it today.” They stood opposite one another across a bar table with upturned chairs, a washrag stuffed into her apron pocket and another slung over his shoulder. Even though he had been expecting her to confront him, when the moment came, it still gave Harrigan pause. Nicole’s question almost sucked the excitement that had been building all day right out of him.

For a moment, Harrigan thought he should tell her the truth. Looking into her concerned, brown eyes he knew that he was about to break her heart. He had planned out what to say to her, anticipated where the conversation would go, but now that the moment was here, he couldn’t even remember his own plan. Harrigan knew he shouldn’t tell her the truth, that telling her the truth might even put her at risk, but it burned him to think that he would be gone and may never come back, and Nicole would never even know.

After a moment that felt like it stretched through eternity, Harrigan answered in a measured tone, “Nikki, I have to go away for a while,” he said softly.

Nicole’s eyes widened in surprise, “Where are you going?”

“I can’t say,” Harrigan looked down and shook his head, grimacing.

She regarded Harrigan warily for a moment before continuing softly, “Is it because of those men yesterday?”

The two of them stood there among the upturned chairs in an empty, dusty bar. Harrigan found that he was having a hard time meeting her gaze. He kept casting his glances around the room, setting his eyes upon her for a moment before they shot off in another direction. He didn’t know what to say to her, though he desperately wanted to tell her the truth.

He could see it welling up behind her eyes, the frustration, fury, and fear that he was never going to come back. She would not let her emotions burst forth, but stood there, daring him to say something, anything that would help her understand.

“Nikki…” Harrigan started to explain but his voice just trailed off and he held his head up to meet her gaze.

“Don’t,” she said firmly, her voice just over a whisper. Nikki took a step closer to him, and Harrigan grew worried she would slap him. “Don’t lie to me.”

Curtis scratched at the back of his forearm nervously, the deafening silence interrupted only by the buzzing neon lights hanging in the front windows. His mind raced as he searched for something, anything he thought Nikki should know.

“Those men yesterday,” Harrigan said, “they are offering me a chance to expunge the bad-conduct discharge…” his voice trailed off as he looked at Nikki, wishing she would fill in the blanks herself.

“As long as you do something for them?” Nikki asked, her gaze piercing Harrigan above her sternly crossed arms.

“Yes.” He responded, glancing down at the floor again.

“Something dangerous.” The tears started welling up in her eyes again.

“I don’t know for sure,” Harrigan tried holding her gaze again, “but I think so.”

Nikki stepped forward to Curtis slowly, closing the distance in agonizing footsteps. She kept her eyes on him, even though he kept looking away, until she was so close that Curtis could no longer avert his eyes anymore.

She grabbed his arm. Firmly, but gently.

“Don’t go.”

Harrigan let out a long, slow exhale.

“I have to. I want to.”

Nikki dropped her hand from his arm, no longer holding back the tears welling up in her eyes. They streamed down her caramel cheeks, leaving telltale trails on her skin. “When will you be back?”

“I don’t know.” Harrigan said, his voice still soft as he watched the tears start to drip off Nikki’s chin. He reached out to her, but she shook him off.

“Why?” She asked, “Why do you want to go?”

Harrigan thought for a moment, seeing Nikki cry this way almost made him not want to go, but the thirst for combat had welled up inside him again, and he knew he could not push it back down again.

“I’m good at it,” he responded, “and I want to get my record clean again.”

“Fine.” Nikki said, stalking away and picking up her coat. She threw her coat on, and turned to him, “Don’t expect me to wait for you while you’re gone.”

With that, she threw open the door, and strode out into the frigid Michigan night.

As promised, there was a small package sitting at his front door when Harrigan arrived home that night. He unwrapped the box from its butcher paper wrapping and dumped the contents out on the kitchen table. He sorted through it quickly, there wasn’t much in the box. An envelope, two passports, a pocket-sized Arabic to English dictionary, and a wad of cash spread neatly across his table.

Harrigan first inspected the passports. One was an American passport; it even had his real name and picture in it. The second was British, and although it had his picture in it, British Curtis Harrigan was listed as Bradley Coving. Setting the passport aside, Curtis picked up the wad of cash, thumbing through it.

The wad was all one hundred-dollar bills, and the band around the bills proclaimed there to be $10,000. In the middle was a note:

Consider this your signing bonus – R.K

Harrigan grunted, setting the money next to the passports, and pushing the dictionary next to them after a quick inspection to ensure it was, in fact, just a regular book and contained no surprises.

Finally, Harrigan turned his attention to the envelope. Opening the envelope, Harrigan pulled out three pieces of paper, and a series of tickets. One piece of paper was a list of instructions, typed on both sides of the paper. The second was a handwritten itinerary, and the third piece of paper was a contract, written in English on the first page, and Arabic on the back page.

He started to read through the instructions. There were over fifty numbered items, although most of the instruction was simply a list of items to bring with him. The fiftieth instruction read “Destroy Itinerary, await pickup at your apartment at 0630 tomorrow morning.”

Checking his watch, Harrigan saw he had just over six hours to finish everything. Flipping the paper back over, he started with step one: “Pack: One rucksack.” Bringing the instructions with him, Harrigan left his sparsely decorated kitchen and walked to his bedroom to start packing.

“Where the devil have you been all day?” Birmingham asked Kelly as the CIA Operative slid into his chair across from him in the hotel bar. “We were supposed to get lunch after I dropped Captain al-Ibrahim off at the airport.”

“Work stuff, mostly,” Kelly stated as he waved the nearest waitress over. “A Budweiser, please,” the spy said to the waitress with a smile. “Making sure Harrigan was squared away, and dreaming about how I was going to spend that hundred bucks you bet me.”

“I am not paying you,” Birmingham snorted at Kelly from across the table, “your boy didn’t sign on until this morning.”

“So?” Ryan Kelly grinned over his bottle of Budweiser, “He still signed on. Why does it matter?”

“It matters for our bet!” Birmingham snapped. He was a famously poor loser, especially when it came to any sort of gambling, and he got the feeling that Kelly was antagonizing him for the sake of his own amusement. The retired British Major slammed down the last of his bourbon, and spat, “So I won’t pay you.”

“Whatever, man,” Ryan Kelly waved a dismissive hand, “Did you see Nas off?”

“I did,” Birmingham said as he signaled to the bar waitress that he required a refill of bourbon. “Harrigan and I will catch up with him for the last leg.”

“And you meet with Harrigan in Mexico.” Kelly stated.

“Yes,” Birmingham said as the waitress set a new glass full of brown liquid and cleared the empty glasses and bottles off the table. “It is the longest leg, so I think I will start the young leftenant’s education during the voyage.”

“Good.” Kelly said tipping his nearly empty bottle towards his British companion, “and I will see you when I see you.”

“Damn agency man,” Birmingham snorted before he took a pull from his glass, “of course you will.”

Kelly downed the last of his beer, set the bottle down, and threw a twenty-dollar bill on the table.

“Take care of our boy, Major,” as he stood up to leave, “I owe him one.”

Birmingham tipped a small salute, and Kelly shrugged into his coat, leaving the older man to finish his bourbon.

Harrigan finished packing almost four hours early. His instructions didn’t specify much to pack, all that he was bringing with him had been packed into just two bags. The rest of the preparation instructions had been for preparing his apartment for his absence, and due to his sparse living arrangement, there wasn’t all that much to do.

Standing in his kitchen with his meager belongings packed in his old, green rucksack and duffle bag leaning against the front wall, Harrigan felt the anticipation rising in his gut.

Nikki.

The thought came unbidden, roaring to the forefront of his consciousness while he stood there silently. He hadn’t thought of her the whole time he was packing, and when her name thrust itself to the forefront of his thoughts, the anticipation of future combat was smashed down, and a new, unpleasant feeling arose in his gut.

Not knowing what else to do, Harrigan pulled a pad of paper and an envelope out of a kitchen drawer. Using a pen that she had once loaned him, he sat down and started to write. All he wanted to do was explain himself, to tell her the truth.

His pen flowed smoothly over the paper, spilling out his life story. Things he had never told her, about his family, the war, and his discharge from the Marine Corps all dumped out on the page with blocky, clipped letters. Writing on both sides of two pieces of paper, he finished trying to explain why he took this assignment, then folded the sheets together neatly before sealing them in the envelope.

Harrigan checked his watch after sealing the letter. There were only forty-five minutes left until he was supposed to be picked up. He pushed himself away from the table and stripped his clothes off to shower. He had enough time to get freshened up and take care of the envelope before the driver arrived. Exactly three quarters of an hour later, with fresh clothes and his luggage slung over his shoulder, a black Chevrolet rolled to a stop in front of his apartment. Throwing his luggage into the back seat with him, Harrigan slid in and watched through a frost-tinted window as his silent driver drove past Major’s Bar and Grill where a single envelope and a returned pen rested in the pocket of Nikki’s apron.