The Clock is Ticking

 “Get it while you here boy. Cause all that hype don’t feel the same next year boy.” “C’mon Marshall, is that all you got? Do you wanna’ look strong? Do you want your pecs to be extruding out of you shirt? C’mon! C’mon! Lift that higher, you wuss!” 
“Shuttup Ben!” I lifted the bench press bar. 
“Woah there, someone’s a little aggressive.” 
Ben chuckled to himself, laughing at the amusement he got out of annoying me. I lifted the bar again, this time even higher than I had done before—pushing myself, almost over exerting myself, really just to prove Ben wrong. I hated people doubting me.
“How do you like me now BEN? Just wait, after I am done with this, my muscles are going to be bulging.”
“Like Dwayne the Rock Johnson bulging?”
“Oh yeahhh, like their gonna rip-all-my-shirts bulging. Women won’t have any other choice but to stare. Not even you will be able to resist a compliment.”
“Yeah, lemme know when that happens, the Atlanta Falcons are more likely to win a Super Bowl, than for you to become strong.” 
“Hey don’t insult me or my team!”
I lifted the bar again, but this time I had no business trying to lift it. My arms quivered and my body told me no, but I resisted, and tried so desperately to lift it one last time. But my body simply wasn’t ready and my arms collapsed along with the bar. It was headed for straight for my neck and was going to crush it like a car compactor does to cars in a junkyard. But luckily I had a spotter, and Ben caught it right before it made contact—avoiding all sorts of damage that would have happened if he wasn’t there.
“Jeeeez man, you’re gonna get yourself seriously hurt. You better watch out.”
“I know, I guess I just got too caught in things sometimes. Once I start I can’t stop.”
“You’re telling me. But you know, no big deal, I just saved your life and all. You can thank me later. But seriously you are so weak! Who drops a bench press bar? I’ll tell you only weak people. C’mon turn off the music and let’s get some protein into you.”
Not even the seriousness of the matter could prevent me from laughing at what he said. Maybe it was because even though something so terrifying just happened, he still had the nerve to poke fun at me. But I didn’t mind, he was just messing with me, in fact we did that to each other all the time.

Ben Harris had been my best friend since high school. We bonded over the silliest things. We became friends over an argument about whose turn it was to put a thumbtack on the teacher’s chair. Since then, our friendship has evolved into almost a brotherhood. We know everything about each other and we motivate ourselves to be great. He ended up going into the police force while I immediately became an FBI agent. After a year in the force, he decided it wasn’t for him and transferred over to the FBI. He loves the FBI, and it only adds to our enjoyment that we are once again working together—but this time not as class clowns. It was a mere coincidence—one that I was very happy about—that we both ended up working in New York City. In just my second year as an agent, I brought down Carlos Antonio Hernández, a famous drug lord and Ben was the first one to go out and celebrate with me. It is now my fourth year on the job and I have worked my way up to a pretty good position. Ben is just a little behind, but I’m sure he’ll catch up in no time.
That night, the New England Patriots were up against the Green Bay Packers, so Ben decided to come over and watch the game with me. It was an awesome night, but more importantly, it was a protein packed dinner. We had a protein shake before dinner, then ate roasted chicken and tuna—without any sauce—and then finished dinner off with another protein shake. 
It was a fascinating game, filled with excitement. Tom Brady threw for 385 yards and 3 touchdowns, but it was Aaron Rodgers who prevailed with a game winning 55 yard touchdown pass with only 26 seconds left. I had such a wonderful night—a night which was a nice break from the constant strain of working for the FBI. By the time Ben went home, it was a little past midnight. I sat down on my sofa to turn off the TV. 
Beep, beep, beep. “Hmm, uhhh, man oh man, what the…, why am I on my sofa?” Confused and a little bit dazed, I just sat there upright, trying to think. I finally realized that I was so tired and worn down from not just last night, but from the entire week, that I must have fallen asleep as soon as I sat down on a cushioned surface.
Beep, beep, beep. Hearing that sound a second time was even more annoying. I reached over and smashed the off button. I got up, my feet trudging through the carpet as I walked as if were mud on a rainy day, my eyes crusted over with that repulsive morning mucus—I barely made it to the shower without falling asleep. No one should have to get up before the sun has risen, yet almost every adult does. I walked into my bathroom, cranked the hot water lever and waited until the room was filled with steam. After about five minutes, the room began to feel like a sauna. My tightly wound up muscles and every other tension I had immediately began to melt away. I stepped into the shower. The hot water splashed and beat on my skin and washed any pain away. A week with the FBI is no easy task. I stayed in the shower for about twenty minutes—letting the water completely douse me over and over until I had officially started pruning. When I stepped out of the shower, I felt like a man who was no longer living in the past—whose day just went from grey to being filled with color.
I slipped on my slacks, white shirt, and skinny black tie, clipped my badge on, ate a breakfast of eggs, cereal, and a protein shake and went to work.

“Is that David Marshall? You still drinking protein every day?”
“Of course Clare! Morning, lunch, and dinner. It really helps. Can you buzz me in?”
“I’m sure it does Marsh, I’m sure it does. Yeah give me a sec.”
Eeeeeep. I was finally looking forward to a week of peacefulness. We had just finished an ongoing drug investigation that was about to seep out of the border. It took us four months to crack their code, but we finally figured it out. While all of this was taking place, we had to deal with sending one of our agents as a mole to bust one of the largest mob groups in Manhattan. Halloween was on the horizon and then Thanksgiving, so I was looking forward to some downtown. It was that time of the year where baseball, basketball, and football all collide—with each sport happening all at once. Any sports fan’s dream. Every year I wait for this moment like it’s the last time it’ll every happen. “A runner on third, two outs, ohh and Freddie Freeman hits the game winning hit. Atlanta fans are going wild, the curse has been broken! The curse has been…”
“Dovd you g th chance to so whe the dug deler was that we bted last week? Davd? David?”
“Huh? What? Sorry I missed that.”
“Man pay more attention.”
“My bad, sometimes I get in these daydreams about the Braves.”
“Stop day dreaming, you know my Red Sox are going to win it all and besides the Braves never win, there from Atlanta. Anyway I wanted to know if you got the chance to see who the drug dealer was that we busted last week?”
“Yeah of course Ron, I don’t day dream when we are actually investing. Can you believe it was a college student? And he was at MIT!”
“It’s a shame when people that are smart let it go to waste. He’ll have fun in jail.”
We both got a good laugh out of that one. Ron Evans and I became friends during our rookie year as agents. Since then, we have remained friends and are extremely close. I was a groomsman at his wedding and we often spend nights watching sports games together, going out to movies, or even eating dinner with his family.
I could tell today was going to be a calm day at work. I finished up a little early and headed over to the gym to meet up with Ben, who had finished a couple hours before me. I worked out every muscle until it was sore, said my goodbyes and went home just in time for the 10:30 matchup between the Clippers and Hawks. I was hopeful that we would be able to start our season off strong. “Let’s go Hawks!” And the tipoff is won by Jordan. Chris Paul passes the ball to Reddick, whose wide open, and he nails a three! “Are you kidding? What a way to start of the season.” Horford goes up for the dunk and is blocked by Blake Griffin. Boy Mike is he a freak of nature or what. “That was a foul! C’mon!” I yelled at my T.V. Oh what a pass by Paul, LOP CITY! At this point I was crying. What a move by Crawford, making the Atlanta D look like middle schoolers out… I turned off my TV and angrily went to bed.
 I woke up the next morning with about ten text messages and four missed calls—all from my colleagues at work. I figured I had gone to bed early, no big deal, I probably missed something funny or they’re making fun of me for the Hawks game. I grabbed my phone and read all the messages. About each and every one read the same thing—except from Ben, who actually texted me just to tease me about the Hawks.
Each message read the same thing: “Petco Park has been bombed.”
I immediately got in my car—didn’t think about breakfast or even a protein shake—I just grabbed two apples, making it the first breakfast in a while that I had not had a protein shake, and drove to work. 
“Yo Marsh, you know what happened!” “Yo what’s the report?” “What’s happening?” “Who are the suspects? Do we have any? Any surveillance?” 
The office was buzzing left and right. Papers were flying, telephones ringing, keyboards clacking. People were asking me all sorts of questions and honestly I had no clue what to say. I had no idea what had happened. I had no report, no suspects, and I didn’t even know about it until thirty minutes ago! I set down stumped, twirled my chair, and just waited.
Four hours later and we still had nothing, except we found out that only 45 civilians and 2 ball boys died.
“How is that only 47 fans died?”
“Well Jerry, San Francisco was lucky that’s how. The bomb only detonated at the end of the game when the Giants were losing 9-0, so most of the fans had already left. I guess whoever planted the bomb was hoping for a closer game.” 
“Yes we are. David look, it’s already 3 o’clock; we clearly haven’t found much, no fingerprints, no signatures on the bomb, no relevant pieces of bomb shrapnel. I suggest you go home, get some rest, and let things simmer for a while. Wait until the investigation team gets a chance to go out there.”
“Are you sure? I’m sure I can still find something.”
“Well by the looks of your half eaten pencils and scrambled papers, you’ve got nothing. Now just go home.”
“Fine, you are the boss.”
I had so many different things swirling through my mind and sitting in traffic wasn’t helping me forgot about it either. So I decided to turn on the radio to listen to some day baseball games. I tuned onto the Pirates vs. Reds game and figured a tie ballgame heading into the 6th could really help get this crime thing off my mind. Andrew McCutchen coming to the plate, he’s an MVP candidate and batted 317 this season and 84 RBIs. And the first pitch, oh and the ball is smashed to deep left, McCutchen is going to be safe with a double. I tuned out. I couldn’t help but to think about the crime case. After a while I snapped back to reality. Marlon Byrd whacks the ball to deep center and it’s gone a homerun, the Pirates now lead 5-2. Here comes the pitcher, AJ Burnett, who had a great pitching season. And the first pitch, a ball. Good eye by the pitcher. You don’t want to be giving up any balls to pitchers. And with the second pitch. CRRR-BOOOOOOM!!
That certainly got my attention. The stadium is in chaos! Half the outfield is on fire, the stadium is crumbling, fans are nonresponsive, the ground is beginning to crack. Tim are you alright? Tim? Tim? Oh gosh, oh no, nooo, n—
“What the. Are you kidding me?” I immediately called our offices. No answer. So I called the direct FBI agent line. Still no answer. Finally, I called my boss.
“I’m coming in. I’m still in my car. I am turning around”
“No you’re not.”
Jerry and I went after it for a while. Our conversation consisted of him telling me I can’t come in and with me angrily asking him why not. Jerry really got on my nerves sometimes. He had no right telling me I couldn’t come back to the office, I was obligated to come back and work on my case. He had told me that “I needed to rest and not worry about the case”. But I knew the real reason why he didn’t want me to come back in. It was because Jerry was a control freak and going back on his word would crush his stuck-up pride. Our conversation ended when Jerry hung up on me.
 “I CANNOT BELIEVE HE JUST HUNG UP ON ME.” I was so mad at him, but I also respected the fact that he was my boss and probably knew best, so I went home, watched the news, drank and ate protein, watched the news some more—boiling over what had happened—ate dinner and went to bed.
The office was ten times worse than it was yesterday. It was somehow even more chaotic, even crazier than before.
“What do we got Ben?”
“18,000 dead, 20 of them players. 2000 injured.”
“What. Almost half of the people at that stadium died?”
“Yeah man, it was game four of the playoffs, Great American Ball Park holds roughly 42,000 people, the stadium was tightly packed. I’m not so surprised with the amount of causalities. Honestly, I’m kinda shocked that it wasn’t more.”
“Any surveillance? Any fingerprints?”
“We’ll the cameras were either cut off or destroyed. And no fingerprints. Whoever this is isn’t such a big fan of fingerprints. The only bit of sound we’ve got is from Aaron Boone crying over Tim Kurkjian’s death.
“Right well I actually heard that on the radio.”
“But wait, I wasn’t finished. Luckily, I was recording the baseball game because I knew I’d be missing it.”
Ben and some of the detectives analyzed the recorded tapes of everything. At first they found nothing, but after a while they eventually came to the realization that if the person who set the bomb off was at the game, then they must have been far enough where he or she couldn’t have been affected by the bomb at all. So we looked at which section or which group of people weren’t harmed by the bomb. They discovered that whoever was in a suite was not touched by the bomb. They narrowed it down and found a guy that seemed to be messing with his phone just before the bomb went off, only to quickly exit the game shortly after. “The bomb goes off five minutes later, he’s already left the stadium, the police don’t even think twice about him in the commotion and whallah, he’s escaped,” explained Ben.
“Name?”
“Sebastian Raoul. Been in jail twice already. Once for attempted a mail bomb. And secondly for trying to bomb a fundraising event the president was at. He’s a notorious terrorist and very dangerous. Unfortunately that’s all that we have on him. His records are relatively unknown. We also don’t really have any proof.” 
“No proof? We have plenty of proof. Everything lines up perfectly. Saying we have no proof is like saying Peyton Manning and Tom Brady aren’t some of the best quarterbacks ever because they have no proof to backup that fact up.”
“Yeah but we’re dealing with real life—not sports.”
I took a look at his image on the computer. He was a rather tall man with bony cheeks and wavy blond hair. He had sort of tan skin, blue eyes, clean shaven, and these weird dimples even when he was expressionless. For the rest of the day at the office, we listened to any radio coverage we had from the game, watched the same recorded footage over and over again, and looked into who exactly was Sebastian Raoul. We had no other records on him other than what Ben had already told me. We didn’t know where he lived or where he came from. We tried to let the situation calm down for the next few days, working privately, so desperately trying to hide this all from the press—especially because it would make the FBI look terrible since we really had no legitimate leads.
Brrring, brring, brrring
“Hello?”
“Yo David, you are coming to the game right?”
“Uhh yeah, of course! You’re my cousin man, I wouldn’t miss a game like this.”
“Sweet, it’s supposed to be like a ‘future showcase game’ by the way, so there’s gonna be a ton of people there. But isn’t it a little late to be leaving?”
“Nah, it’s all good. I just bought a brand new car—an Audi A4—so I actually don’t mind sitting in traffic for an hour. Dare I say I’m also excited to.” 
“Haha wow that’s pretty awesome. That’s some good FBI salary huh?”
“Yeah I’ve been sorta overworking myself.”
“Sounds like it. Alright, I gotta go, see ya soon.”
The car ride to the game was awesome. The car didn’t just look great but felt great too. The seats had a smooth leathery feel and soft mesh padding in the middle of them. The touch screen technology was sweet and best of all, it had a “new car smell”—that smell that no one can really understand what’s so special about it, yet almost everyone loves it. The car could even parallel park itself!
I arrived at the game just in time for tip-off. My cousin was the point guard for the Mad Ants. I found my seat and sat down to watch the game. I can feel the intensity of the players. I was close of enough that I could hear every grunt and every moan. My cousin took the first shot of the game. Mikey for threeee! He nails it. Stolen by Mikey and oh what a ferocious dunk by him. I was astonished, he was having amazing game. Going into halftime, he was 7-11 with 19 points. I was so excited, I had to tell Ben. I shot him a quick text, “at Maddison Square watching my cousin play amazing!”
Welcome to the start of the second half, no spectator is allowed on the court at any time throughout the game. If you see any suspicious activity, please don’t hesitate to report. Enjoy the rest of the game.
My cousin had a wonderful third quarter. During an intermission I got up to get one of those delicious, but yet way overpriced, jumbo pretzels. On my way up I bumped into a guy.
“Oh sorry, didn’t see you there. Wait, have I seen you before?”
“No I don’t think you have. Have a nice day.”
It bothered me deeply though, but I knew I had seen him before, I just couldn’t quite put my finger on it. I let it go and went up to get my pretzel. The line was long as usual, so it gave me to time to look around and reflect. It always astonishes me how ugly the tunnels throughout the stadium are. The floors and walls are gray blabs of nothing. It’s amazing to go from such a colorful court with it’s surroundings that are so bright to this jail-like, concession-filled, money-absorbing structure that is the tunnel. Despite this all, it wasn’t an unpleasant place to be. I watched fans scurry throughout, not wanting to miss a minute of action, trying to refuel with overpriced fluids and heart attack on a plate snacks and meals. There was an underlying hum from every sound in the stadium that had made its way to this one point, and was now flowing throughout the tunnel. It was almost like if you listened closely enough, you could hear every sound in the stadium. 
The air was filled with a delightful scent of cinnamon churros, hot dogs, clouds of salt from the crushed peanut shells, wings, and pizza. I must admit, these tunnels began to grow on me and by the time it was my turn to get a pretzel, I’d come to love these disgusting gray tunnels. As I took my first bite of the salty, buttery, oily, fresh-out-the-oven pretzel, it finally dawned on me who that was that I bumped into and why he was in such a hurry. Oh my goodness was I stupid or what! That man was Sebastian Raoul—the man we have been chasing and following for who knows how long and that was my chance. “I need to call the FBI, NYPD, and the bomb squad! I need to alert stadium security…” 
KRRRBOOOCH!

“Tzzz. Ehhh. Ahhhhh. Help me! Somebody helppp me! Eahhh.” I could barely make out the voices of people in the background.
Alert Alert CODE RED. CODE RED. Errr errr errr, beep beep beep.
Oh man. Oww. My heart was beating fast. I blinked hard. My eyes wouldn’t reopen. 
Woooh-up. “Ooo”. I felt like my soul had just re-entered my body. I must have passed out again. I woke up drenched in sweat, but not from hard work or overexertion, but from immense pain. It was at this point I realized that my forehead was gashed and I had a piece of rubble sticking into my left bicep. My body was a darkish blue from the rubble. Most of the place was in ruins. The court was covered in debris. My once beautiful jail-like tunnel was left in ruins. Metal rods and wire were sticking out and major parts of the floor were missing. I tried to move. Nothing. Nothing would respond, mainly due to shock. I couldn’t believe what had just happened. In fact, I refused to believe. All of the lights were shattered—it was so dark in here except for those few flickering emergency lights. The air was smoky. I couldn’t even recognize the place and oh my gosh—the blood! Blood was everywhere, left and right, painted on the wall as if by design. I tried to move, still nothing. I looked around. There was a feeling of death in the air. Of course I had a no way of telling how many people had been and are currently being evacuated to safety since I blacked out from something, most likely excess fragments, stones, or pain. But if one thing was for sure, there were plenty of limbs, heads, dead bodies, and rubble and lying around.
I finally started to get some feeling back in my body. I tried to stand. All the blood rushed to my head and I immediately fainted. I tried again—grabbing any structure to keep my wobbly body and dizzy brain up. I knew the entire FBI was going to be here soon, but it wasn’t soon enough, I had to do some investigating. 
I walked around cautiously, still a little woozy, but I was fine. I may not have had any of my equipment with me, but I could still look around. The damage was intense and by the looks of the amount of shrapnel there was, this bomb had to have been loaded with C-4. But the amount—I glanced to my left, only to see a body with head and legs that had been blown off with the bones sticking out of the skin—could only be obtained by Military officials. This immediately told me that we were not just dealing with your average terrorist, because C-4 is no small man’s business. Either Raoul used to work in the army, which isn’t too likely because then we would have more records on him. This led me to believe that one of his workers is an ex-military official. Regardless, this almost guarantees that Raoul and his minions are much more talented than we originally thought. As I was sifting through the rubble, another thing caught my eye. Beneath it all, was a piece from the bomb that somehow had gotten trapped underneath it. 
My gut was that this wasn’t really going to be able to help. But to my astonishment, his bomb had something very interesting on it—a signature. Often people who create bombs like to put some sort of signature on it and Raoul did just that. There was a “SR. We will rule.” engraved on the sole piece of shrapnel I had found. I couldn’t believe my luck. But it wasn’t the signature itself I was so jovial about, rather it was the fact that we could scan this piece for finger prints, because somehow had to have put that on there—either Raoul did or his workers, and those prints could help lead us to them.
Digging through the remains took every last bit of energy out of my already frail body. “If I found this already, imagine how much more I could still find.” It was a thought that constantly raced through my head, over and over again. So with that in mind, I hastily got up and maybe a bit too fast, because my blood shot through my body, rushing to my head faster than ever. I was seeing triple! Yet despite my conditions, I knew what I still wanted to accomplish. I started heading to the court—which was astonishingly unharmed by the bomb itself. “Alright, so first I’m going to look for any remaining pieces of the bomb.” My head started thumping again. I knew I was more than a little injured. “The more pieces I find, the quicker I can expose him. But w-wait wh-what happened ttto my cousin?”—

Hushed voices circled the room. I wasn’t quite sure where I was, but I knew I wasn’t in the stadium any more. I couldn’t quite make out who was in the room, only blurry outlines of people. My head was still ringing and the light burned my eyes. I pretended to still be asleep, because I didn’t want my colleagues to know that I was this affected by the injury. It would take a huge hit to my reputation, because I’m generally known as having a strong mental and physical fortitude. Eventually when the stinging light in my eyes tuned down from bright neon white to a more beach-sand yellow and I could open my eyes, I sat up and asked, “What happened?” Ben and Ron were there. I figured they would be since they are my best friends. My boss was also there, he looked sort of aggravated at me.
“You fainted from loss of blood and…” “You have a concussion not to mention…” “What were you doing out there? Sometimes you make me wonder.” “Do you have any?” “Are you ok?” “Hello, David, David?”
So many voices were circling over my head and I still couldn’t quite make out whose voice belonged to whose. It was like a ringing, echoing, beeeeee sound. Eventually my head seemed to turn the right away around only for me to be confronted by my ill-tempered boss who wasn’t too happy with my decision to do my own investigation.  
“You still haven’t answered me David. What were you doing?”
“I was trying to find some clues which would help us find Raoul.”
“Yeah well you weren’t following protocol.”
“You know what? I don’t feel like dealing with this from you. Bottom line, I helped all of us. Because of me, we now have chance to figure out who Raoul is working with. More importantly how’s my cousin doing? He was at that game.”
Ben and Ron both chimed, “We are very happy to report that he is doing just fine. He wasn’t even harmed besides a few cuts and bruises here and there. But on the negative side, 8000 died.”
“Alright gentlemen, I’ll see you all bright and early tomorrow—except for you David, you have two days to rest. Listen, you are fortunate your injuries weren’t any worse. Ben and Ron, you both take the day off, but be in the office tomorrow,” ordered our boss.

I arrived at the office the next morning with probably the best news I had heard since the beginning of these terrorist attacks. I was met by a high five from Ben.
“Yo man, guess what? Because of what you found yesterday, we were able to find two sets of different fingerprints that give us high reason to believe that it belongs to Raoul’s right hand man and some mad chemist who also happens to be a genius that is responsible for designing of all Raoul’s bombs and experiments.”
“Ahah! Yes, that’s what I’m talking. All of that blood I lost was not for nothing!” 
Words could not describe how badly I wanted to shove this news into my bosses face. I could just picture the look on his face when I told him the news, which in turn made me smile. It turns out Raoul’s right hand man was Jonathan Baxter—an ex-military sergeant that for some unidentified reason went AWAL (absent without leave). Apparently he somehow still has access to military weapons through his old ID. This would explain how Raoul could possibly have so much C-4. Baxter was one of the best military men that they had seen in a long time but for some reason decided to run away from the military. He was very strong, almost like a little brick wall, and was covered in tattoos. The other man was Franz Alexius, a man from Russia who was a tiny frail man, despite being in his early twenties. He went to Yale and graduated at the top of his class. His first year out of college he was hired as a chemist and somewhere along the line Raoul found him or he found Raoul, and they’ve been partners ever since. 
“David, we used the finger prints from the bomb to locate Franz’s house and from there we were able to find out where Raoul’s modern day version of his Breaking Bad lab is located. SWAT’s moving in on them tomorrow. We can’t afford to lose any more time.”
“Alright Ron that’s what I like to hear.” We exchanged our classic handshake—one that we came up with two years ago to indicate that we have achieved something great. The handshake always gives us a laugh—with the classic double high five, then the fist-pump, then the elbow shake, then the foot tap, and finally capping it off with a behind the back handshake only after we’ve spit on our hands. Even in the worst of times it still makes me smile. “By the way, you have no idea how much fun it is going to D-league games.”
“Haha shuttup man. We all know they’re awful. I’d rather go watch a high school game.”
“Hey man, don’t hate.”
We both had a good laugh at that. Jerry came over later in the day to also inform me that we are going to take down Raoul tomorrow. “Raoul was not very smart about hiding the location of his chemical lab. Maybe he thought he was untouchable or maybe he just made a mistake. Well, regardless, good job, I shouldn’t have doubted you. We attack tomorrow,” my boss explained. After that point, I headed out of the office to the gym to workout with Ben. We both had a fantastic workout all while we mentally prepared for our showdown tomorrow. Yet despite this showdown looming over heads, Ben was still his usual chirpy self. It was astonishing to watch him. He was truly a mystery. He would say things like, “Do you think Raoul is fat? They are all probably nerds. Man you need to work out harder. You are just as a weak as you were a couple of weeks ago. Looks like protein isn’t the answer for you.” All the jokes he made actually helped take my mind off tomorrow. It was nice to be around someone like him. 
After my workout I went home and didn’t even turn on the news channel. In fact, I actually watched the movie The Departed—a Leonardo Dicaprio and Matt Damon movie about mobs, the FBI, and their moles. In the movie, Matt Damon was a mole in the FBI—secretly working for a mob—who causes the main character, Dicaprio, (also an FBI agent) to be killed. It was a great movie but I didn’t really like it how the main character died at the end because of the mole going behind his back. It was upsetting, disappointing, and I would have liked to see him survive. Those types of movies just upset me too much. After I finished the movie, I cranked up the shower—letting the warmth of the water seep into my body—then hopped into my bed, which felt like cold sheets of ice, moving my legs rapidly to try warm me up, and once I was nice and toasty, slowly drifted to sleep.

I woke up the next morning earlier than I usually did. I couldn’t sleep. It wasn’t that I was nervous; it was just that I wanted to get up—I didn’t feel like sleeping on a day like this. Everything that’s happened these past few months was running through my head like a ticker does for Wall Street.  “47 dead, 18,000 dead, 8000 dead, hundreds upon thousands of people injured. Sebastian Raoul, a notorious terrorist and also very dangerous. Jonathan Baxter, an ex-military sergeant, has access to military weapons. Franz Alexius went to Yale, a fantastic chemist, works with Raoul.” It was all I could think about. “That play was re-donculous. Talk about athletic ability.” I had forgotten to turn off my TV before I went to bed—something which I never do. This was a nice indictor and reminder that I must not be overcome by the events today.
We didn’t meet at the office today. We met more at a black site in which our location was unknown. There was no way anyone could have even begun to guess where we were, so much to the point that Ben had actually gotten lost on the way here. We all made great fun of him for that. Almost the entire FBI agency was there—my boss Jerry, Ron, and Ben. The S.W.A.T team was also there. I checked my guns, cleaned them, loaded them, and then with the click of a plastic clasp from my bullet proof vest, I was ready to go. The moment before a police raid wasn’t as exciting as I thought it would be. It was actually quite boring. There was just silence, no jokes being made by Ben, no superfluous orders by Jerry, only the hushed voices of S.W.A.T members going over some logistics and the occasional clicks and taps of guns, keyboards, and combat boots.
After about an hour or so, we packed up our things and headed to the S.W.A.T van. ¬We sat down on the benches in the back of the van. I must admit, it was a pretty intimidating sight. I knew I was strong, but boy did the S.W.A.T members make me look weak, not to mention each of them had a Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun resting comfortably on their shoulder and a shotgun harnessed around their back. All I had was a measly Glock 22 pistol. Individually I felt weak, but looking at the S.W.A.T team around me, I felt strong. But it also made me realize how truly powerful Raoul must be. It was a long ride to the unidentified site. I listened to the van roll over the ground and the gears of the engine churn when the car accelerated. It made a hushed, scratchy woosh sound. It was a peaceful sound—reminding me of leaves rustling in the fall, tractors going over crops, and hay rustling in a barn, all resembling life on a farm. Every now and then the van would go over a bump, sending us up slowly and down rapidly. It was all very relaxing. After about twenty minutes of silence, our boss chimed in.
“Guys I can’t promise everyone will come back alive, but just know that you are doing the right thing.”
“Oh Jerry cut the cliché nonsense. We don’t need no pep talk. We are doing this because we signed up for this. No one’s making us do it.” Ron was right, and after that point, not another word was said.
With the last shift of gears and the final screech of tires we had finally arrived at Raoul’s so called black site. “Alright men, let’s go.” Bump-click, patter, pch. Our boots sunk into the moist dirt. The ground was covered with broken branches and leaves that had fallen off from the surrounding trees. The air was crisp, the trees were bare, and the sky was cloudy and gray. The building was made out of maroon bricks that had aged terribly overtime, and by now there was not a single brick that hadn’t started crumbling. It had an orangish-brown rusty aluminum roof, resembling an undersized warehouse.
We smashed open the doors. “Freeze, nobody move. Everybody put your hands up!” Raoul, Baxter, and Alexius were all there, but there was also some unexpected company. They had about six people carrying AK-47s walking around the perimeter as a line of defense. Each man had at least half of their arms covered with tattoos. “Keel zem all!” bellowed Alexius. “If you don’t kill every single one of them, then I will kill you instead!” roared Baxter to the workers. Pp-ti, pp-ti, pp-ti, pp-ti—they immediately opened fire, leaving one S.W.A.T member with his brains all over the wall and the other spewing with blood. Our team immediately retaliated. Our team of thirty-some-odd members easily took down their six goons, wasting only thirteen bullets; roughly two bullets per person.
 I’ll admit; that was a terrible mistake from our team—we were so concerned with taking down Raoul that we  completely overlooked the fact that they would have defense, albeit not that many, but we still lost two lives. “Raoul, Baxter, Alexius, I am only gonna say this once, put your hands behind your head,” screamed my boss. Oddly enough, they complied. No resistance, no extra words, they just agreed on doing it. It was very strange; you would think three terrorists with everything to lose would not give up so easily. The tables in the warehouse were covered with wires, C-4, timers, and dynamite. I checked the materials to make sure they had the same signature as the one I had found at the warehouse. Sure enough, each bomb had the very same “SR. We will rule.” signature on it. Some things never change with terrorists. 
We walked over to the three of them, who were still standing in the exact same place, and handcuffed them. We individually took each one outside, carefully watching our surroundings. “You’ve got nah-ting on us,” exclaimed Raoul as he walked outside. He had a little bit of a Russian accent. Hearing that voice again immediately flashed me back to when I met Raoul at the basketball game. “Yep the accents match up perfectly. Wow I am stupid,” I thought to myself.
Our entire team stood outside the warehouse going over some final procedures before leaving. I was glad this was over, mainly because I didn’t want any more innocent people dying, and it was clearly evident by the materials on the table, we had come just in time. Everyone seemed to be conversing with someone next to them, except for Ben, who was on his phone, so I went over to him. “That’s what I’m talking about Ben!” Ben looked up, a little startled.
“Yeah dude, let’s go out to eat afterwards to celebrate. Drinks on me.”
We exchanged a celebratory bro hug. The S.W.A.T team was together congregating, Raoul, Baxter, and Alexius were cuffed up, surrounded by a few FBI agents, and Ron and Jerry were talking. So I went over to Ron and Jerry and congratulated them both. I discussed with them what we should do next, what they think the sentence will be, and how long it will be. Jerry had to leave to fill out a report and then send it off to his boss—the executive of the FBI. So he left me in charge. Shortly after, Ron and I talked about life for the first time in a while. It was nice to finally have a heart to heart conversation. I asked him how his kid was doing and if his wife was managing when Ron was not home. “Everything’s going fine but my wife can’t wait for me to finally come home for extended amounts of time. I’m looking forward to it,” replied Ron.
The sun was beginning to set. The sky had gone from gray to more of a dull yellowish pink. It was shiny brightly, signifying the end to a wonderful day. After staring at the sky for a while, I looked over at Ron. He seemed satisfied and happy, but I wasn’t. I couldn’t help but think that all of this was too easy. I just didn’t have a good feeling about it. They should have resisted, put up a fight, done something—but they didn’t. It almost like they wanted us to capture them. At this moment, a thought so horrifying, I couldn’t bear to think of it, came flying into my mind. 
“Ben, guys, it’s a trap, they wanted this to happen!” As I was saying this, I could hear this whirling, swishing sound in the background. I turned to look what it was and there I saw it. Everything seemed to slow down and almost freeze. I watched it all happen. I watched the missile soar through the air, ever so elegantly, like a hawk with its wings spread out flapping through the sky, I watched the missile getting closer and closer, I watched the missile fly by me, I watched the missile smash right in the middle of our entire S.W.A.T team, creating an explosion. I watched their bodies, almost as if one by one, explode into smithereens. I watched smoke rise to heaven along with the brave S.W.A.T member’s souls. “Ambush!” 
Pp-ti, pp-ti, pp-ti, pp-ti. They opened fire. Our team dropped like flies. The bullets instantly pierced our team, going through their bodies as if they were hot butter. “Ron don’t let them escape!” He grabbed them and went behind a van to take cover. “This will all be over soon,” remarked Raoul as he savagely smirked. I turned around and fired at three of the ambushers. They fell down in a heap. The site was awful to look at; blood was everywhere. “Ben you take left, I got right.” I went over and hid behind a car. I could hear the soft droned noises of the bullets smashing into the car. 
I quickly scanned the field. There were about eight of them. Ben I figured would get at least three. So I had to kill about five more or so. I pulled a grenade out of a dead FBI agent’s utility belt and I threw it as hard I could. It hit the ground and exploded, killing two of their men. I looked over the van, bullets were still flying rapidly. By now all of the vehicles glass windows had been shattered. I knew I had to move swiftly. I poked my gun through the broken windows and rapidly fired four shots. Missed them all. I tried again, this time firing until I had hit at least one person. I nailed two of them right in the chest. There was one left. I took my off jacket and threw it. He immediately started shooting at, turning my jacket into individual connected pieces of cloth. This gave me enough time to get up and shoot him right between the eyes, causing blood to stain the granite rocks behind him. “Clear!”
“Clear!” 
I couldn’t believe it, Ben and I had just taken down and an entire ambush. I was quite impressed and actually ecstatic. “Ron, you good?” No answer. “Ron?” Still no answer. Click, I cocked my gun and cautiously walked around the van. In the distance I could see Raoul running away. I wasn’t sure what could have happened. I looked down at the ground only to see Alexius with four bullet holes in his leg and two in his chest. As for Baxter, there was a knife right between his eyes. Clearly there had been a struggle. I didn’t want to look nor did I want to accept the outcome.
I slowly turned my head towards Ron. He was bleeding profusely from his neck and was sitting upright against a van. “Ron! No, no, no. Hey, hey you’re gonna be alright. Just tell me what happened.” He only looked at me and tried to tell me he was ok. Blood was flowing uncontrollably now. My eyes started to swell with tears. I tried to stop the bleeding. I put my hands there, my jacket, anything, but there was just too much. “Hang in there buddy, at the hospital, they’ll easily be able to stitch this up.” Someone had gashed his neck open. He tried to grab my hand, but missed, he was just too weak. Blood started to come out of his mouth. He then looked at me, for one last time, tried to say something, but his heart just wouldn’t let him. His eyes stopped moving, frozen in time, and just looked up towards the heavens, as if to say, I’m leaving now, ascending to heaven. My parents always used to tell me that when someone died, they were just taking an extended nap. For some reason, I tried convincing myself that this is what was happening. Ron was just taking a nap; he’ll wake up soon, right? But I knew that this wasn’t going to happen. I knew Ron wasn’t going to wake up from this. I don’t why, but I just couldn’t accept the fact that he had died. My sorrow immediately turned to rage and I got up, bloody and all, got in my car, and drove to find Raoul. 
I sped through the forest, avoiding trees. I wanted to drive right over him. I wanted to smash him with my car. Eventually I spotted him and got out of the car. He saw I was behind and just ran—he had no weapon on him. I shot him in the leg and he fell down in a heap of pain. I didn’t just plan on killing him, by now I wanted to torture him. “Ahhhhh, please don’t hurt me anymore. Ahh my leg.”
“You killed my friend.”
“No I didn’t I swear.”
There was no way I was going to believe him. He tried to get up, despite his blown leg. I took a rock and struck the wound on his leg. He cried out like a lone wolf and crashed immediately to the ground. “You will die today. The FBI gave me clearance to kill you, because you retaliated and I killed you because of self-defense.” I cocked my gun and pointed it straight at his head. “Do you know how much struggle you created, how much pain you made people endure. Why would you do such a thing?”
“Because, I wasn’t the one to do it. I just provided the material.”
“What that’s impossible!”
“You know the saying, ‘Keep you friends close, but your enemies closer?’ Well I think you needed to have kept your friends closer in this case.”
“Nonsense. You are just messing with me. I know it was you.”
“Looks may be deceiving.”
“I don’t care. Goodb—” 
Boom-pooch
“Uhh, ehhh, uooh.” I looked over at Raoul. He looked like a little kid had just splash painted him with blood. But he was still alive and well. I was a little confused but Raoul’s wide open, almost bulging out his face, astonished eyes staring straight at me told me everything. With unfathomable disbelief I looked down at my stomach. There was a gaping hole in it. Blood was rapidly circling around that hole, spreading throughout my already bloody clothes. I started not being able to breathe. 
I had been shot. 
Unsure how this could have happened, I turned around only to see Ben holding my Glock 22 I had given him. I collapsed to my knees. “How could you miss him that badly you idiot?” was my first thought.  But then it all hit me. It hit me like a sucker punch to the gut from Muhammad Ali. I understood now what Raoul had told me.
“What the?  Ben?? Wha-what is going on?” I thought this was a terrible nightmare that I was going to soon wake up from. “You’re working with Raoul?”
“No David, he’s working for me.”
“But.. But… You’re my bro. How could you do such a thing?”
“The force and FBI simply didn’t cut it for me. They were just diversions. Even Raoul was a diversion. It was me the whole time. I have been a terrorist since my days back in the NYPD. My father raised me as one and I have made him proud. This had to be done.”
“But what about Ron?” I could taste the blood in my mouth that had risen from my stomach.
“Ehh never really liked him too much.”
I could feel my grains of sand slipping away. My hourglass was about to run out. “That’s still not a reason! But I don’t get it, I trusted you, I cared for you.”
“Yeah well like Raoul said, ‘looks may be deceiving’.”
I could now feel my heart thumping for blood, searching all areas in which it could get those last drops of blood from. My heart was thirsty for blood, but I was an empty canteen. He lifted his gun and pointed it to my head. At that very moment, all of my memories came back to me in one glob of a picture. I remembered the time when I fell off the slide as a child, graduating from middle school, putting thumb tacks underneath a teacher’s chair, working out constantly, being hired by the FBI, celebrating good times with my family, even hanging out at bars with Ben. 
“I’m sorry.” I think I saw tears gloss over his eyes. He loaded the gun and pushed down on the trigger.
Bang—