The Life and Death of a Dream

I am the storyteller. Or am I?

The Life and Death of a Dream

Benjamin Trayne

A young man with severe homicidal potential crouched in dew-dampened greenery, gripping a knife. So far his criminal career had been just muggings, but that was set to change at any moment. Footsteps approached.

It was a sunny morning in Teaneck. An elderly man minced along a little-used trail in an urban park, minding his steps. Aging was a bitch.

No one had ever told him that getting older was gonna hurt. This man had extra reason for that, many injuries that were supposed to have healed. They had, of course, but for some reason he was often reminded of where each of them had been. Also, no one had told him to avoid this trail, because it was known to be dangerous. Not that it would have mattered. Roy would have been there anyway.

Not everyone who serves in Special Forces adjusts, because you don’t, really. Adjust. Not ever. The truly elite fighters own it, while it owns them in return. Roy was one of those, one of the first of the best, and he never stepped back from it, because he couldn’t. For him, who and what he was constituted an absolute metaphysical aura about him, even now, in his later years. If auras indeed have colors, Roy’s was distinctively blood-red.

Roy heard a rustle in the bushes behind him and instinctively whirled, to find himself facing an angry young man with an open switchblade.

Ohh, capital. Let’s do this.

Roy’s fighting stance and smirking, confident gaze was instantly too much for his would-be attacker. To anyone used to seeing fear, capitulation or sometimes, some bit of resistance, this man was obviously off-limits, if not off the charts. The younger for the first time in his life felt a deep chill sweep through his entire body. Time to choose. He quickly backed away, dropping the knife as he raised his hands in a show of abject, if not comical, remorse.

“Not me, man. Sorry.”

Then he turned and ran.

Shit.

Roy wouldn’t think about it again, as he kicked the knife into the brush. He hadn’t sensed danger because to him, there hadn’t been any. The young man had smartly saved his own life, because Roy would have taken it. At least one mugger would now be looking for a new line of work. Didn’t matter anyway, Roy hadn’t brought his wallet with him.

Superman that he may have been, Roy wasn’t perfect. There was a ticker inside of him that’d had about enough, and that old heart was about to assert its growing inadequacy. A few more steps, maybe a dozen, and Roy knew it. Searing pain flashed through his deep chest, then gripped it, mightily.

So this was it.

He didn’t fear death, had never feared it, nor did he in any way respect it. Let’s just get this fuckin’ over with. Roy stopped, knelt, then collapsed.

**************

Sunlight, through a tiny window. An ICU cubicle within a New Jersey general hospital. Air conditioning rushed. A very young, very clean-shaven doctor questioned a blonde middle-aged nurse as he scanned a medical chart.

Doctor Yuri didn’t have a hair on his head. He’d always wanted to be, well, someone else. Someone like Roy. Of course, he wasn’t. But then again, no one alive really was. Not alive.

“Where did they find him?”

“In the park. A cop found him.”

“Do we know who he is?”

“Nope. No ID. But look at this.” The nurse pulled up a sleeve of Roy’s hospital gown, exposing a tattoo of a screaming, descending eagle with talons out, and a combat knife, on a still-powerful shoulder. His bicep bulged. On his weaker side.

“My God! Special Forces. I’ve always idolized these men!” He stopped and looked at the chart again.

“Doesn’t look good for him though. Other than his heart, this guy is in really great shape! I’d say he’s maybe seventy-five, anyway.”

Exploring further, he added, “Look. Bullet wounds, bad place! Man! Well, he’s out of it, that’s good. Hey keep me apprised. Anything changes, good or bad, get a-hold of me.”

The nurse nodded and the doctor pushed the curtain aside. The two exited, leaving Roy alone.

Roy had been sedated, but with little effect. He’d come-to in an ambulance and had felt some disappointment about that. He wasn’t “out of it” now, either. He had been assessing his situation. It’s what you do.

Oxygen mask, IV bottle and tube, a damned needle and an oxy-sensor on a finger. The heartbeat on the monitor looked fairly regular. It was fast, though. Slowww that muthah down.

Roy’s ethnic heritage was mostly Finnish. His given name was Olavi, but the name Roy avoided confusion, so he used it. Unfortunately just about everyone had been afraid of Roy, because he had an uncommon reason for not particularly giving a shit. On returning from a particularly grueling mission, he’d found his family suddenly gone, lost from the world forever. The circumstances don’t bear relating, but Roy would never forget, nor would mercy be any part of his performance as a warrior. Because of the hardened, vicious fighter he became as a result, he survived, absolutely everything. Somehow. He’d schooled incoming special forces recruits and they feared him too, with but a few exceptions. Those few men became very much like him.

But none of that really mattered, anymore. Roy had made peace with all of it, or so he believed. He barely subsisted on his pension and had never once had visited a hospital, VA or otherwise, in his retirement. Until now. Politicians had made a football of VA benefits, booting it about, but they never really did anything about it. The medals he kept in a chest at home made no difference.

Roy knew that if he didn’t leave, they’d be transferring him to a VA hospital, and he didn’t want that. Surely he’d recover soon. The pain was gone and he only felt a bit weak. Needed to close his eyes, for awhile. This place was safe.

It was a warm day in the middle of July, in a New Jersey general hospital. Afternoon sun streamed through the window, and the air conditioning droned. Roy drifted off to sleep.

******************

Roy was standing in the shower, and he was just thirty years old again. Lukewarm water ran in rivulets over his sun-bronzed chest. He soaped up and began washing his hair. The remodeled, white-sided two-story on a residential street in Teaneck was his home when he wasn't active, although that wasn't often. Right now he was off-duty and had a few days to be with his wife and their two children. The kids had been growing so fast that every time Roy had come home, he'd had to re-adjust to how they looked. Roy rinsed out his thick brown hair and turned off the water.

Just as he did, he heard the all-too-familiar hiss, roar and thud of an anti-tank rocket. Whatever the reason for the sounds, he knew what he'd heard. Roy instinctively dropped into the bottom of the porcelain and steel tub and covered his head and upper body with his hands and arms, just as a powerful, thundering blast ripped through the house below him.

“What the fuck!” Roy jumped out of the tub unharmed, and reached through a choking cloud of dust and smoke for his clothing. He dressed quickly as the floor began to cant sideways, first on ten degrees, then on twenty. It then began to rend and break apart as flames shot up through the center of the house. The door frame splintered and collapsed, and Roy dove and rolled to get past it, leaping to a front window sill that no longer had a floor beneath it. Debris still floated in mid-air as he pulled himself into the window and clambered over the sill, just in time to see a black van tearing around the corner to his right. It was making a left turn. It had government plates.

There was no time to try to figure it out. Maybe his team had done something that had pissed off the wrong people, maybe a mission they had completed was too secret to leave witnesses, who knew. The only thing Roy knew was that his entire family had been inside, the kids were downstairs watching television and his wife had been preparing lunch in the kitchen. A blast like that made it unnecessary to check to see if anyone was alive. Roy knew better. The only option available was to catch the bastards, and kill them. Kill them. Now.

Roy lengthened himself out from the second story window sill with his body against the siding and dropped to the ground. The roof was caving into the center of the house, the flames bursting through it like the pyre it had become. He ran, but it was not away. Anything but that. He was after the van.

He knew that the next street the van would come to was one-way. The van would be turning right at the next stop sign, and would slow down to mix with traffic. Roy sprinted through the yards of the homes between himself and where the van would be. He felt adrenaline powering up his legs as he vaulted the hedges, and he plowed right through a high board fence. In full stride, he jumped clear over a bank and the stone wall that held it up, about a fifteen-foot drop.

Roy had the speed of a wide receiver and strength greater than that of a lineman, but also the agility of a big cat. He made a light three-point landing on the toes of two feet and the fingertips of an open hand. He actually had gotten ahead of the van, as he spotted it coming up the street. They had failed to kill the man they were after, and that mistake would cost them their own lives. Roy heard the sound of distant sirens as he crouched between two parked cars. From his position between the vehicles he quickly looked backward at the heavy black billow of smoke that had been his home, now two blocks behind him.

Ready now, here comes the van. He realized with satisfaction that the light was changing. The van would have to stop, as long as the car in from of it didn't run the red. It didn't. The black panel-side van was stopping just one car length to the right of him, on the right half of two lanes. As it slowed, Roy was already in motion. It happened very quickly.

Confirm target. Roy noted the white U.S. Government plate on the rear and the color, make and model, and sprinted alongside it on the right. Two men were sitting in the front seats, and both were wearing dark glasses. They looked at him with shock as he tried the door handle on the passenger side. Locked! But there was the launcher, between them on the floor! One snake-strike move, a powerful palm heel and the window was gone, Roy was grabbing a throat, and one average-sized man was being dragged through it. The driver was a much bigger man, and looked like a good match for all of Roy's strength. This one was already dead, Roy saw to that. Before the man hit the pavement his neck had been snapped, and it was over. The body bounced and quivered on the street. Roy would get his answers from the other one.

The van lunged forward and bumped the car in front of it. The driver laid on the horn and the light changed, all at once. Looking confused, the male driver of the car began to open his door to get out. Frustrated and freaked, the driver of the van yanked the steering wheel to his left and hit the car in the left lane. The pickup in front of that car moved, and out scraped the van, careening into the intersection, with Roy hanging onto its window frame.

He could have hung on for miles if the van had just been careening down the highway, and the driver probably realized it. He was trying his best to wipe his enemy off of the side of the van against a parked vehicle. Roy knew it would happen if he stayed there. He left go, skating on all fours and making a semicircle as he slowed, transferring his weight back to his feet.

In fully superhuman fashion, Roy began to run before he got stopped, but it was back the other way. Through the intersection he went to get the weapon from the body. No knife. Of course, there was no fuckin’ knife. Roy drew a service .45 from its holster and quickly checked as he'd done a thousand times before. Chamber, clip, safety. All good. He stuck it into his belt.

A woman on the sidewalk screamed and cowered.

Noting that the van had entered an alley a block and a half further down the street, he looked for a badge or other ID on the body. There was none. That was no surprise, considering.

Roy wasn't even breathing hard. Conditioning, sharpshooting and training at a wilderness camp had filled his each and every day in service to his country, when not on leave or on mission. Had to keep moving.

To this point he had been confident of achieving his objective. Now, as midday traffic picked up and the target had wheels while he was on foot, Roy saw his objective could be in jeopardy. He needed a vehicle, and quickly. Hot-wiring was not an option, it would take too long.

Roy had just lost his entire family. Pain and anger burned in his brain. Nothing he could do to anyone else could even come close to what had just been done to his wife and his children. There would be time for tears later. It would have to be later. Fight the anger, it reduces effectiveness.

He stepped in front of a slow-moving Buick, and the car stopped. Without a word, Roy opened the door and extracted the driver, a middle-aged man with a suit and tie. He got in and drove the car into the alley, leaving the driver confused and dumbstruck but unhurt, standing in the street.

From experience, Roy knew that a driver being chased, especially a panicked one, would seek to drive an elusive serpentine route, turning this way, then that. He made the first left turn off of the alley and then the next right. Then left again into traffic, and full on at high speed, because where he now found himself, he could do it. The van driver had made those exact turns, as Roy had hoped. The black vehicle appeared several blocks ahead, moving slower again in the busy traffic.

Roy kept his head and tried to close the gap without making it too obvious, but the driver of the van had been trained, too. He spotted the Buick gaining ground, cutting in and out of traffic before it got within a half a block.

The chase was on.

Now the pursuit had become potentially deadly to more than the participants. The vehicle Roy was driving was expendable, but he didn't want to endanger innocent civilians in the process. The van driver ran red lights, and at one point he smashed an old lady's shopping cart. Her groceries went flying and she fell backward onto the curb. Roy began to consider that there might be other ways to find out what was going on. But then he realized, it was a near-certainty that others of his unit had also either been attacked, or they would be. He began to take chances anyway.

The high-speed chase began to pay off, and Roy was gaining on the van. Finally with both vehicles moving at more than twice the speed limit, there were but two cars between the van and Roy's Buick. But a traffic light changed and only the van went through, leaving Roy stuck behind the two other vehicles.

Roy cut the wheel sharply, knocked over a parking meter to get onto the sidewalk and then wheeled the Buick through the intersection, horn blaring. But by the time he got back onto the street, the van was out of sight. This time Roy didn't know where it had turned. As he had done before, he took the first right just over the next rise, then the next left, then the following right. The black van was nowhere to be seen. It would only be in one place, and it could be anywhere.

Angrier now, Roy considered what the van driver might do. The most logical thing, Roy reasoned, would be to try to put as much distance between them as possible in the shortest time. They had been on Route 4, which leads to the Palisades Interstate Parkway. Roy decided to take a chance, so he backtracked to Route 4 and headed for the on-ramp.

Once on the highway, Roy put the pedal to the floor. After a couple of minutes, he had flashed past several cars but he saw no sign of the van ahead. “How stupid could I be,” he thought. When it really mattered, the van driver had done the smarter, but less-obvious thing, and had doubled back. Roy had lost him. He slowed to about the speed limit.

Roy hadn't really been paying attention to anything but the road before him, but now he realized that occasionally he could catch a glimpse of the much smaller Henry Hudson Drive, far below the Parkway to his right. In the interest of covering all of the territory he could, he watched for places the van might have pulled off from the limited-access Parkway, but also kept an eye on Hudson Drive, whenever it came into view.

In fact Roy had been headed in the right direction, and he was also correct that the driver of the van had done the less obvious thing, and had doubled back. But the alternative side road he had taken had turned him around and sent him along a route that ran parallel to the Parkway. And, as fate would have it, there sat the black van, parked on a pull-off along the Hudson, near the base of the Palisades cliffs. Roy wheeled the Buick off the highway, pulled up along the guardrail, backed up several car-lengths and got out.

He wished he had a pair of binoculars, a rifle scope, anything that could help him to see more. A black van was clearly visible, but he couldn't quite be sure of the color of the plate on the back of it. There did appear to be a man standing outside of it, leaning with his hands as if pushing on the side of the van. This was almost too good to be true. Maybe it wasn't his man, but he had to know.

Unfortunately there was a vertical drop between Roy and Hudson Drive. It looked like it might be three hundred feet down, with trees spiking up near the base of the cliff. There was no time to get there by way of the highway.

Finding ways to utilize on-site resources had been part of Roy's training, but this would take a rope, and he didn't have one. He mentally sorted through all of the possible places a rope might be found. His eyes bored holes in the surrounding territory, a thinking technique he had used to find things he needed while on missions. He needed to find a utility truck. He looked all around, 360 degrees, none were in sight. He didn't have all day. Roy walked over the the edge of the cliff, about thirty feet from the car, and looked all along the cliff. He considered free-climbing, but dismissed that. It wasn't his best option, even crossing the median and going back was a better one. He decided he'd better get a move-on, and do just that. He jumped into the Buick, looked once and then tore up grass on his way across the median. But he had no sooner gotten back onto the highway when he spotted a New Jersey Bell truck, dead ahead. Its cherry-picker was elevating and it was just off the berm, less than five hundred feet away.

Wheeling in behind the truck, he stopped and got out. Inside the back of the truck were two long coils of flexible half-inch rope. There were also miscellaneous tools there, and Roy selected a knife, shoving it into his belt on his right side, opposite the .45. Then he put one coil of rope over each shoulder, tossed them into the car. He’d go back to the location from which he'd seen the van. “Hey!” The man overhead in the cherry picker shouted down. “Whattaya doin'?” Roy didn't bother to answer.

When parked again, he left the keys in the car because he wouldn't be coming back. Roy's primary objective now was to get down over the cliff and to stay alive doing it. That had to happen before anything more could.

Thee hundred feet below, another professional stood. He and his partner had been following orders. They were hit men, and were never given particulars. The targets were seldom dangerous men, but this one had obviously been the exception. Surveillance had confirmed the target was inside the house, how in the world had he escaped death? And his partner and friend was dead, instead. A completely failed mission. What could he do now?

He walked around the van a couple of times, he smoked a cigarette, then he smoked another. He thought about how he would explain what had happened. Getting ready to leave and to continue up the narrow road he had been following, he took a last look around.

The figure of Roy moving hand-over-hand on the rocky side of the cliff stopped him cold. He walked back to the van and reached for a pair of binoculars. There at the top of the cliff was the light-blue Buick that had been chasing him. Here was a break! Whoever this man really was, he would surely be stopped by a bullet. His partner was gone, but the mission could be salvaged. He looked around for a good hiding place.

High up on the side of the cliff, Roy was descending as quickly as possible. He didn't have what he needed to rappel, so he was climbing down, one coil of rope still over his shoulder. No time to lay it all out and to attempt to measure it. In the worst case, he would have to climb back up.

As Roy approached the bottom of the line, he stopped, wrapped his feet into the line, reached down and pulled up the end of the rope, and tied the second rope to it. Then he dropped the coils one at a time to see if it would reach.

It did not. Each of the ropes had been a hundred feet long, and although Roy had estimated high, there would still be fifty or more feet that was all air. Roy looked over the boulder-strewn landscape below. A drop was out of the question. However, there were trees. He decided to get closer before giving up. He had come this far. Mission-critical means you do whatever it takes.

Roy reached the bottom of his line, and the rope was stretched tightly. The base of the cliff was undercut, and there would be no getting to it to free-climb the rest of the way. Worse, the difference between the rope and the earth was more like seventy feet.

He didn't hesitate long. After all that effort, he had to continue. He'd been in impossible situations before, and something had always come up. He began pulling and releasing, pulling and releasing, getting the rope to swing. Near the top of the cliff, the rope chafed the rock wall, snagging and coming free, so that the swing was not the same each time. Roy looked up. It was now or never. He checked his weapons and took a hard look at the nearest tree. When the arc of the swinging rope was approaching its maximum, he released, stretching out his arms.

The top of the tree was too weak for a 220-pound falling man, and it snapped as soon as Roy got a grip on it. He grabbed at branches and missed one, then another, but managed to get a grip on a third with his left hand. Despite his strength, the force of his weight coming to a full stop was too much. Pain seared through his shoulder and down to his fingertips. The hand went numb and was useless. Roy desperately grabbed at a branch with his right hand, and secured it.

Branches had scratched his face, neck and back, but his legs were working fine, and he'd fought through pain many times before. “Not so bad,” he thought to himself. Now to get to the ground.

The tree was a tall, straight native hemlock with dense branching. More than once, Roy had to shift his weight onto his chest across several of them to support himself, while he grabbed a lower branch with his good arm. He had stopped his fall about fifteen feet from the top, he had forty-five feet to descend. As he approached the bottom, he saw that the tree had grown up where there were no boulders and he dropped the last ten feet to the softer ground.

Roy had carefully surveyed the scene from the top of the cliff before beginning his descent. With his back to the rock wall, the van would be found at about fifteen degrees to the left and about two hundred feet away. Instead of heading straight for it, he made straight for the road, so that he had a chance to come in behind it.

Ignoring the pain in his arm and shoulder, he walked softly and quietly, stopping behind objects in his path and looking ahead without exposing his entire head or body. Then he would move again. Gradually the pain in his shoulder began to subside, and he could move his fingers.

Soon he could see the paved road through the brush. There was a narrow ditch along the edge of the road, and just as he expected, there to his left was the van. It had not moved, but there was also no sign of the driver, or anyone else. It did have government plates.

Spooks trusted no one, and you could never trust a spook.

Roy had approached in silence, not cracking so much as a twig. He waited several more long minutes. Then he reached across his body for the pistol. It was gone! He had a pretty good idea of where he had lost it. But, this meant he had to get close. The bad arm would make it difficult, but not impossible.

Roy decided to approach the van. The last thing he wanted was for it to start up and drive away before he got to that driver. He cautiously stepped out onto the edge of the ditch.

Immediately he felt a bullet sear through his chest, and heard the report milliseconds later. Roy began to fall. As he dropped, another bullet struck him, and then another. Roy closed his eyes and believed he had been fatally shot. He had failed. He fought to remain conscious, just because. Just because. Let the son of a bitch get close. He moved the fingers of his left hand, just to be sure he could.

The agent-hit-man walked confidently over to the body. He had laced him, it looked like a sure hit. He just wanted to get a better look at the man who had caused him all this trouble, the man who had killed his partner. Then he would be on his way.

As he bent over to look at his victim's face, Roy's eyes flew open. His hand came up to grab the man's throat. Only the bigger man's strength and his heavily-muscled neck prevented his being strangled right there. He didn't have the presence of mind to go for his gun, which he had already returned to his holster. Roy reached up with his injured arm and grabbed the man's hair, then pulled the knife from his belt and stabbed his assailant repeatedly in the chest. He knew where to cut, and knew the wounds would be fatal. But because of the loss of his family, he would make sure the assailant-turned-victim knew what Roy thought of him. He slit the man's throat, ear to ear.

Then he collapsed backward, ready for death.

******************************

An orderly was passing by room seven in the ICU when he heard the heart monitor's alarm going off. He urgently shouted to the nurse, who had walked a little too far away from her station, to a point where she couldn't hear the alarm. Then he stepped into the little room, noted that there was no pulse on the monitor, and bent over to look at the man who had just passed away.

Suddenly Roy's eyes flew open, a crazed look in them. He gripped the orderly's throat. It was a grip like a vise. Grabbing the hair with his left hand, Roy thrust repeatedly with a closed fist against the orderly's chest. Terrified, the orderly pulled back, but he couldn't get away. Roy, with a triumphant look in his eyes, drew fingers sharply across the orderly's throat. Then he dropped his arms, and his eyes closed again. The orderly fell back against the wall, gagging and gasping for breath. The guy was supposed to be dead! There was no pulse!

Who was this guy?

The nurses rushed in with the crash cart, and prepared to try to re-start Roy's heart. The young doctor walked in right behind them, and said, “Let it go. You've waited too long. I just looked at the log on the machine, the heart stopped, like, six minutes ago. What were you doing, Kathryn, playing cards again?” The nurse, who had not been at her station, reddened in the face and hurried out of the room. The doctor looked down at Roy, motionless and expired. He checked for a pulse at the neck to be certain.

“I'm sorry, sir, this must have been inevitable. I was looking forward to talking with you. You must have led a hell of a life.” He gently pulled the sheet toward Roy's face, but stopped. He hated that part of his job most of all.

The doctor turned and walked out of the room, pulling the curtain closed behind him, instead.

But Roy was not unconscious. He was assessing his situation. His heart beat once. Then it beat again, and then again. Shortly it was beating strongly, at sixty beats per minute. Nurse Kathryn, who was weeping at her station, noticed the pulse on her monitor, and she gasped. The old man was alive!

Roy didn't open his eyes, although he was awake now. The whole thing had been just a dream, a fabrication, an adventure.

Or was it? The treetop snapping from his jump had been real, so had…

Confusion comes with any serious event. He’d recall after more rest. That much, he knew. At this point it wasn’t very important.

The day would come when the powerful old heart would finally fail. But it would not be today, nor soon, nor would it be in this place.

Roy considered that maybe he should try to get another job. Nobody else would be taking care of him, least of all the government. Maybe he could rescue a dog at the shelter, an older dog that also had no one. It seemed like a good idea.

It was a warm day in the middle of July in a New Jersey general hospital. The afternoon sun streamed through the window, and the air conditioning droned. Roy drifted off to sleep, once again.

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