This first chapter from “Fear the Jump” – Book #3 of the Dreamscape Conspiracy Series, is a powerful beginning. Please enjoy!
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Chapter 1 – You Can Run…
The breeze blowing across Gunnery Sergeant Russell Carter’s face was dry and hot despite the sun tracking toward the western horizon. His eyelid, pressed against the rubber eyepiece on his scope, was wet with sweat, so he lifted away for only a second to swipe with the pad of his right forefinger. Wiping moisture away was his first intentional movement in nearly an hour. Force Recon Scout snipers were that way, disciplined to lie prone in the worst conditions for hours and blend into any environment, remaining unseen and laser-focused on their tasking.
His spotter, Peter “Set” Druthers, lay beside him and was equally as still and focused. Below them and over three hundred yards away, a six-man Marine Force Recon team slowly worked their way up the war-shattered street, anticipating the chaos they knew could come without warning. The Marines moved with precise leapfrog discipline, from the left, hugging the damaged and scarred buildings on either side of the narrow street.
Russell “Spike” Carter, the triggerman, was overwatch for this team. Set and Spike had worked together as a seasoned sniper team for over a year and a half, accumulating eighty-seven confirmed kills. Pete Set them up by calling the shot, and Russ Spiked them with one-shot-one-kill efficiency. They worked well together, so well that adding to their kill count did not matter, and to be honest, neither of them knew what that number was. Neither cared because caring would mean lingering over each kill long enough to record it as a memory neither wanted to remember. The life of a scout sniper came with a heavy burden if memories of every kill were allowed to become a sticky obsession.
Their job was not like facing the enemy in the streets and having a blazing shootout. Not even close. A sniper was an anonymous killer dealing out death sentences from hundreds of yards away, sending 7.62x51mm NATO rounds downrange into an enemy’s forehead. The resulting imagery of a spray of pink mist took some effort to unsee. Those were the images remembered only in private nightmares.
“Straight north from the intersection where our guys are headed, come up about thirty meters. There’s a woman in a black chador standing in the middle of the street. Looks hinky to me,” said Pete softly over their comms.
“Got her,” said Russ. “Define hinky and give me a range.”
“Why stand alone in the middle of the street, Spike? Hinky to me, dude. Mark 325 meters. Slight breeze left to right; give me one click left. Wait for the go!”
“Can you see what she’s holding?” whispered Russ, as he reached up to adjust two more clicks for elevation and a single click to adjust for the breeze.
“Negative,” answered Pete, “her arms are hidden in her chador, can’t see shit. Hold! Wait for the go!”
The team neared the intersection, and if this woman were a threat, she would be added to their kill count as number 88 without hesitation. Threats were treated as gender neutral. Dressing like a woman did not mean a woman was underneath that chador. Russ wanted verification that she was a threat. Not knowing was a decision point Russ never liked to ignore; an unconfirmed threat could turn into an uninformed kill. He pressed his eye harder into the rubber pad of his scope and blinked in a futile attempt to make his vision penetrate through the black folds of her chador. He scanned her face, and what he saw froze him to his soul.
“She’s a fucking child,” hissed Russ to no one, “a fucking …crying …little girl.”
“Jesus, no,” responded Pete, and then, not hesitating for a blink, “Stay on her, Spike. Be ready! Wait for the go! The team is coming into the intersection.”
Her hand gripped the detonator tighter next to her hip and slowly began to lift it. Active tears rolled and tracked through the dirt on her twelve-year-old face; her eyes glistened with the terror of knowing what would come next for her young life.
Pete saw what she was doing and instantly uttered the standard fire order, “Fire…fire…fire,” each word spaced less than a split-second apart!
On the third iteration of the fire command, Russ had already released his breath and pressed the trigger between heartbeats. His ears did not register the coughing sound of the suppressed shot, nor did his shoulder feel the kick of his M40A5 sniper rifle. The little girl disappeared instantly into a fireball from the explosive vest she had been wearing. Had his shot ended her before the vest exploded? Had he killed her, or was she already dead and vaporized a fraction of a second before his round arrived? What kind of worthless consolation did that offer?
Indeed, he had taken the shot to protect his team on the street below, but he had also become the owner of PTSD-stoked night terrors that would haunt him repeatedly. He knew what he saw, those dark brown eyes streaming with tears. Knowing that he had pressed the trigger a fraction of a second before or after her detonation mattered very little in the outcome. His brain swirled, fighting off the searing accusation that he had murdered a child, but there was nowhere he could run to escape the self-imposed indictment, no place to hide from the feeling of being unredeemable.
Blacking out in his dream often served as the off-ramp from that repeating nightmare, and he always jerked awake, breathing hard, and feeling tears on his face. In a semi-conscious state, he moaned softly and pressed his head back into his pillow, still half asleep. He tried to calm his breathing, just as the therapist at the VA had shown him. It took nearly 15 minutes before he calmed himself enough to regroup and slap another temporary Band-Aid over his PTSD. The therapist never showed him how to stop the dream or the tears, so the nightmare continued to come, and tears continued to drip from his eyes as he tried desperately to separate from the nightmare and fall back into a dreamless sleep.
Cara Williams, now Cara Williams-Carter, his wife of two weeks, awoke to his struggle and laid a cool hand gently on his chest. She knew what he had awakened from, knew where he had been, knew what he had seen, and knew what he was accusing himself of. This had to be the third episode in the two weeks they shared a bed as newly married husband and wife.
“Again?” she asked softly, stroking his chest. Russ did not answer, but Cara knew the story, knew his haunting. “I gotcha, Marine,” she whispered. “You can sleep now, babe; you’re okay.”
She glanced toward the nightstand and saw it was only 2:37 AM. Rolling back toward Russ, she laid her hand on him, stilling herself to listen to his breathing and felt the rise and fall of his powerful chest. It amazed her that a man standing 6’3” and nearly 250 pounds could be so wrecked by a single dream, so devastated, and reduced to tears.
The most challenging part for her was watching helplessly, only able to pick up the pieces when he awoke. Cara was a clinical psychologist running a dream research project at Central State University (CSU) in Carteret County, North Carolina. Picking up his pieces was not a solution, and after only three dream episodes in less than two weeks, Cara was more committed than ever to finding some way to help her Marine.
His hand found hers on his chest; whether half-awake or half-asleep, there was an unconscious recognition that his lover was there. Little things like touch became automatic after only two weeks of marriage and sharing a bed. She managed to drift away first, slipping into a dreamless sleep, knowing that his touch had been acknowledged.
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Fear the Jump – https://amzn.to/44GECEq
Video Trailer for Book #3 – https://bit.ly/4eIgsQr
Review – bit.ly/4eRwLLl
