Free Shadow Catcher by James R. Hannibal

horn blared. Haugen finally looked up and saw the oncoming car. He doubled Quinn’s correction, cranking the wheel farther to the right. The truck careened back across the right lane and hit the low guardrail at more than seventy miles per hour. It cartwheeled over the barrier and into a drainage ditch, bouncing off the rear bumper before crashing into the muddy water upside down.
    Blinding pain shot through Quinn’s face and chest as he fought to push the air bag away. Water poured into the cab. “You okay, Guns?” he asked, searching for his friend through the flashes of white and red obscuring his vision, but Haugen was not in his seat. Quinn felt like his head might explode. He was upside down, his face filling with blood. The water lapping at his forehead continued to rise. He had to get out. He had to find Haugen.
    It took several painful seconds for Quinn to unhook his seat belt and free his legs from underneath the crumpled dashboard. He tried the door, but he couldn’t move it. Then he saw that the front windshield had torn away on Haugen’s side. He struggled through, holding his breath to squeeze beneath the submerged gap between the hood of the truck and the bottom of the ditch.
    Finally out of the truck, Quinn stood up and tried to run forward, but he stumbled, slashing his face on a torn piece of fender as he fell back down into the water. He came back up with a guttural cry of frustration. Where was Haugen? Then he saw him, a few feet ahead of the truck, floating facedown in the muddy water. He tried to take another step and fell again. His equilibrium was shot. Haugen split into two men before his eyes and then merged back into one. The headlights on the road seemed to head right for him before jerking away at the last second.
    â€œGuns!” he yelled. Haugen did not move. With extreme effort, Quinn trudged forward until he reached his friend. He rolled him over. Haugen was pale. His eyes were open but unfocused. Quinn dragged him to the edge of the ditch and pulled him up onto the grassy bank below the curb. “Guns, wake up!” he shouted again.
    He laid his cheek close to his friend’s mouth to feel for breath and watch for his chest to rise, but before he could finish the assessment, he had to wrench his face away to vomit into the water behind him. With that out of the way, he turned back to Haugen, certain that he wasn’t breathing. He checked for a pulse. It was there, but it was weak. He tried to pull himself up to his knees to begin rescue breathing. More headlights flew past. The road and the bank swirled around him. He faltered, sliding down into the water he had just puked in.
    Quinn tried to crawl back up to Haugen, but his limbs would not move. A siren sounded in the distance. He laid his head down on the bank, still submerged from the waist down in his own swirling vomit. The image of his unmoving friend began to fade. He passed out.

CHAPTER 12
    â€œT wo years, Airman Quinn,” said Captain Petrovsky, glaring at the young operative.
    Quinn stood rigidly at attention in Petrovsky’s office at Hurlburt Field, Florida. The late-afternoon sun shone through half-open blinds, casting broad stripes across the lone maroon beret sitting on the captain’s desk. The lump on the right side of Petrovsky’s head had gone down significantly, leaving an ugly bruise and several small cuts from the fragments of the paint bullet. Quinn’s hand quivered as he subdued the instinct to touch the cut on his own face. It itched. Fifteen stitches for a three-inch gash down his right cheek; that was definitely going to leave a scar.
    â€œAnd now Haugen is dead.”
    That phrase snapped Quinn’s attention back to Petrovsky, who stepped around the desk and handed him a single page of paper. “This is the record of your Article Fifteen Nonjudicial Punishment and the statement of your offenses,” he said. “The JAG came in early this morning to