by Chuck Dixon
“You would have missed me anyway. I’m not in Bern anymore.”
“What are you saying? Why not? I just left you there yesterday. Is it the baby?”
“Stephen’s fine. It’s kind of a long story, and I can’t go into it now.”
“Is that him I hear?”
“Yes. We’re both safe. Samuel came and got us. Something came up.”
“Samuel? What was it, Carrie? What came up?”
She sighed.
“All right, I’ll come get you and Stephen.”
“No, Dwayne. We’re good here. We really are. Morris needs you there.”
“All right. I’ll come get you when this op is over. You can tell me all about it then.”
“Listen, Dwayne, when Lee gets back, you need to tell him something.”
“What?”
“Tell him, ‘the oracle at Joppa.’ He’ll know what it means.”
“That’s it? What’s it mean?”
“I wish I knew. I wish to God, I knew.”
“You sound tired, babe.”
“So do you. We should both get some sleep, right? Love you.”
And the connection was broken.
Dwayne Roenbach pocketed the sat phone. That was his infant son he heard in the background. He readily admitted he knew jack shit about babies, but he was damn sure three-day-olds couldn’t say “Mama.”
He had a lot of questions but could tell by the tone in Caroline’s voice that she didn’t want to hear any of them right now. It wasn’t irritation he heard at the edges of her answers. It was more like a despondency. She was probably only tired as she said. Both she and Stephen were safe. That was enough for now.
Dwayne thought about leaving the bridge area to look for Morris Tauber to update him on his sister. But he didn’t feel like a lot of questions either, especially ones he had no answers for.
It was two days later during a routine opening of the field that the text message came through.
PREPRED TO EXFIL—SND CRRNT
POS AND EST WINDOW
MEDEVAC NEEDED SRGRY
RESPND—RESPND—
SPRRW
A detailed star fix was attached, setting the time of transmission as 20 September 16 at 02:56:17:01.
SPARROW was their personal code for any kind of urgent request. It was from the Rangers’ days in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was taken from one of Chaz Raleigh’s frequent quotes from scriptures. “His eye is on the sparrow.”
To Chaz, it meant that whatever happened next was God’s will. The others took it up as a more poetic way of saying, “Fuck it.” It translated into their unit distress code.
Dwayne figured it was Lee sending the text. If Hammond thought they were in deep shit, then they were. He called down to Mo to come up and join him on the aft deck where there would be no distractions.
The scientist came out of the hold blinking like a mole in the sunlight. The resemblance was made even more accurate with the fuzzy ginger beard Tauber had grown either out of neglect or intent. Maybe he thought he looked piratical. The horn-rimmed glasses spoiled the effect. He looked more like a nearsighted haystack.
“I’ll get with Parviz and Quebat. See if I can get them to goose us to a forty-eight-hour opening,” Tauber said after Dwayne filled him in.
“Tap the brakes, Mo. Us going into panic mode doesn’t help them. Take your time and fine-tune the Tube to make the through field open as close to the window we give them as possible. And to hell with a medevac. They need a surgeon. Let’s take a week before the next opening and bring a doctor here.”
“You’re right. You’re right. But we still need to make a brief manifestation to send our return text. A minute or two at the most. The guys can get that up in twelve hours.”
“I’ll get the response together.”
“After that, the best we can do is create a field opening twenty-four hours or more relative from their last text even if we waited a year. I can dial it close but not that close, Dwayne. They’ll have some hang time on the water waiting.”
“The waiting on this end is a bitch too,” Dwayne said.
“Welcome to my world,” Morris said, turning to climb back down into his universe beneath the waterline.
Dwayne met with Geteye, the Ocean Raj’s first mate and acting skipper in Boats’ absence. They went up to the bridge where there was privacy. With the Raj at anchored in calm seas, there was no need for anything but a skeleton watch.
This guy certainly knew how to grow a beard, Dwayne thought. It was thick as carpeting from his eyes to the base of his neck, complemented by a bushy untamed afro atop his head. The only revealing feature on the man was his eyes. They were deep brown with scarred lids. The man had seen his share of fights in his time. There was a keen intelligence there and an easy grace to his movements that someone ignorant would mistake for idleness. Dwayne knew a professional soldier when he saw one. Geteye was the perfect complement to his blustering and garrulous captain.
They talked about the risks and advantages of pulling the Raj closer to shore to shorten the row time for the team when they made for the field opening.
“I follow the news on the wireless, Baas,” Geteye said, eyes on the charts spread on the scarred metal table between them.
“Yeah?” Dwayne knew to wait for the man to get to his point.
“The Gaza is burning up, Baas. Closer we get to the coast, the more Israeli patrol boats we see.”
“You think we’ll get boarded?”
“I know we get boarded, Baas. I know we get shitload questions and we don’ have shitload answers.”
“How much do you know about what goes on below deck, Geteye?”
The man smiled. A rare show of tobacco-stained teeth.
“I know enough, Baas. I know we don’ wan’ no boarding party. More than that, I am just another dumb kaffir earning my pay.” He lifted the bottle of Egyptian beer he’d been using to weigh down a corner of the chart and took a long pull.
“We’ll maintain our current position then.” Dwayne returned his smile. “I don’t want my team adrift in shipping lanes where they can run into trouble.”
“Whenever the hell that is, Baas.”
Dwayne searched the other man’s gaze for a sign of what he meant by that. The eyes betrayed nothing, but that told the Ranger what Geteye wanted him to know, he was nobody’s dumb kaffir.
There was no more to discuss. They finished their beers and returned to their stations.
A week later, the motor powered inflatable puttered from the icy mist and into the modified hold deep below the Ocean Raj’s main deck.
The team was suffering from exposure to salt and sun. They had remained at the prearranged coordinates for nearly three days, taking turns paddling against the current to remain within the projected field area. All were exhausted, and Boats was aflame with fever. Chaz and Lee carried him from the Tube chamber. Bat stepped from the raft holding the banner of the Twenty-third in her fists. The Rangers, carrying the SEAL, followed Dwayne into a fully equipped surgery, where a doctor and surgical nurse hired in Cyprus waited.
Both the doc and nurse had been paid cash in euros, with the promise of more, to be brought here by seaplane in the dead of night. They assumed it was something to do with the drug trade. Terrorists would not pay an advance. Six hundred thousand in untaxed euros would buy their confidence.
After checking vitals to make certain Boats could stand going under the knife, they cleaned and prepped the wound site. They began work on the surgery to remove the arrow shaft from the SEAL’s leg. They shooed the Rangers from the room, promising to give them word in an hour or more.
“You’re minus one,” Dwayne said. He sat on a bench speaking to Chaz and Lee while they showered. Their gear lay in a filthy heap on the shower cabin deck.
“He stayed behind, covered for us,” Lee said from under the steaming needle spray.
“We couldn’t wait. Boats was in a bad way.” Chaz was seated on the floor of his stall letting t
he hot stream pound him, an open bottle of Jack in his fist. He was taking long swallows.
“I know the situation. I just wish you’d told me in your text,” Dwayne said.
“Why?” Lee said, reaching around the stall wall for the bottle of Tennessee whiskey.
“Joppa? Yeah I know Joppa,” Bat Jaffe said, toweling off her hair in her private cabin.
“How well?” Dwayne asked.
“I’ve been there,” she said. “It’s the namesake for my family. It’s called ‘Jaffa’ now. Why?”
“Because we’re catching about two days sleep and we’re going back,” Lee said.
49
What the Blind Woman Saw
It was a shrine to Ceres, the goddess of fertility.
The construction was recent and Roman and contrasted with its surroundings with its fluted columns of purple-veined marble and gleaming roof of polished copper. It sat in the shade of young trees at the center of an open square surrounded by sagging dwellings taken over as doma for Roman citizens living in Judea.
Two men and a woman walked from a narrow lane and across the square through the midday heat. They led a pack mule behind them. The residents were either secluded in the shade of their homes or down in the markets enjoying the cooling breeze from the sea. No one noticed the trio seeking the oracle.
Lee Hammond was reminded once again that these structures had been new at one time. Like most people, he had only the image of colorless ruins in his mind when picturing places in the past. The buildings facing the square were painted in colors that reminded him of South Florida. Pink and yellow and blue in various hues tinted the fronts of the multi-story apartments. The shrine was a riot of colors that would have been at home in a Tijuana souvenir store. The eaves were decorated with outsized sheaves of wheat, bunches of grapes, and tree limbs weighed down with fruit. These reliefs were all painted in every color of the spectrum in gleaming enamels.
As they approached, they could see the life-sized statue of Ceres standing on a plinth within. She stood with an armload of ripe grain stalks and a hand out in a gesture of benefaction. Her expression was open and vapid and genially smiling. The statue was painted in garish colors with the face grotesquely made up with heavy eye shadow, rouged cheeks, and bright red lips. The goddess looked like she was ready for a night of hooking at a truck stop. She even had one breast exposed as a come-on. Let a thousand years strip away the enamel and artfully distress her, and she’d be a revered work of art. To Lee’s eyes, she’d look tacky standing in a corner of a Bennigan’s.
The granite dais at the feet of the statue was littered with the stems of long-dead flowers and baskets filled with black clumps of shriveled and rotten fruit. Rats skittered from the baskets at the sound of boots on the tiles. Ceres’ devotees had been lax in their worship.
“Is this still here back in The Now?” Lee said.
“This will be a neighborhood in Tel Aviv. None of this is here then,” Bat said. “But I think we’re near a Pizza Hut I used to go to.”
“I could go for a meat lovers’,” Chaz said, picking up a hammered copper bowl. A couple of tarnished coins rattled around the bottom.
“It won’t get here for two thousand years, so it’ll be free,” Bat said.
The scrape of sandal leather made them turn to see a woman draped in a black cloak shuffling from the dark behind the statue. She was bent, with clawed hands. A strip of faded blue cloth was tied over her eyes.
“I’m guessing this is the Oracle,” Lee said.
“What do I ask her?” Bat inquired.
“Don’t ask her shit.” The voice came from the blazing sunshine outside the shrine.
“She’s not even blind, and the arthritis is a fake,” Jimmy Smalls said as they exited. He was dressed in a cotton kaftan and sandals. His jet hair reached his shoulders. One eye was covered with a strip of white cloth tied about his head. He smiled openly, holding his arms out for a hug from Chaz that lifted him off the ground.
“Ribs, you dumb bastard,” Jimbo winced and Chaz set him down.
“Sorry, bro.”
“How the hell did you find me?” Jimbo said.
“You know, I’m still not clear on that,” Lee said, pumping Jimbo’s hand in his.
“Bruce, it’s okay, brother,” Jimbo said, looking past them. He gestured to someone.
Byrus stepped from the alcove of a domus on the opposite side of the square. He wore a clean singlet, belted with his sword girdle.
“He still hanging with you?” Chaz said.
“I wouldn’t have made it without him. He hauled my ass away from some deep shit. I don’t remember all of it. I was getting used to the idea of staying here.”
“Your eye?” Bat said.
“Gone. I took a bad hit. Bruce had to cut it free. I remember that part. Wish I didn’t,” Jimbo said, giving an exaggerated grimace.
“We’ll get you back now. Have a doctor look at it,” Lee said.
“We have a boat, a period-accurate skiff tied up down at the harbor,” Bat said.
“You have anything you need to take with you?” Lee said.
“Nope. All my gear that I brought back, I dumped in the sea to rust. We’re ready to go.” Jimbo shrugged.
Lee and Chaz shared a glance. Bat laughed.
“Bruce goes with us. He goes, or I stay.” Jimbo’s voice was flat. His eyes locked on Lee’s.
Lee said nothing. He looked at the dusty street and ran a hand over his jaw.
“I owe him my life, Hammond.”
“Look what followed me home, huh?” Lee said without looking up. “Does he know where he’s going?”
“He’s going with us. That’s all that matters.”
“Well, fuck it. So, we have a plus one going back,” Lee said, grinning.
“The Taubers are gonna want to kill us,” Chaz said.
“Never leave a man behind,” Bat said.
Jimbo pulled a leather pouch from his belt and walked into the shrine to dump the contents into the offerings bowl. The old woman dropped to her knees and pulled off her blindfold to run her hands through the jumble of gold and silver coins.
Together, they walked from the square toward the harbor and the boat waiting to take them to another place and time. Byrus trotted behind.
“Hey, so what was the outcome?” Jimbo asked.
“The decorations are up in the malls, and they just ran Charlie Brown’s Christmas on TV,” Chaz said.
“Fucking A,” Jimbo said.
50
New Sheriff in Town
Valerius Gratus was a broken man. The stranger, the white-haired foreign man who was the cause of all his troubles, never returned. The cursed man had been an imposter, his every word a lie. He had neither the authority of the legate nor the imprimatur of the imperial house.
His actions were not even sanctioned by the family Herod. And the damnable man did not return to Caesarea with more of the lovely morphea to help Gratus endure his own downfall.
The prefect of Judea was left without the warm embrace of the soporific that made his life tolerable. He was left to suffer the ordeal of seizures and chills that left him with a weakened heart and clenching bowels and, by far the worst of all, an unrequited longing for the welcome delirium of numbness the mystery draught offered him. He was abandoned now to the gnawing hunger for that which he could never have. Drink offered no solace. Lotus leaves were a poor substitute, offering only nausea and a burdensome ennui. Gratus was a vessel adrift, with no hope of ever reaching shore.
The worst of his terrible deprivation was over. The tide of agonizing want had receded to a constant ache leaving him a lesser man. His teeth were gone, except for a few blackened molars. He ran fevers. Sleep was restless and fleeting. His skin felt as though it belonged to another and was an ill fit. His flesh hung from his bones. His stomach roiled at the thought of food. Only honeyed fruit was tolerable, and even that tasted of vinegar to his ravaged tongue. The other pleasures of the flesh held no appeal to h
im. His cock shriveled to a flaccid member useful only for urination, which had itself become an increasing painful ordeal.
He had traded years off his life for a few days and nights of delightful delirium. It was a trade he would gladly make again were the elixir offered to him one more time. In truth, he would strangle without hesitation his most beloved for a moment’s sweet release. That is, if the prefect had a most beloved other than his own miserable self.
The requirements of his office were left to others to perform. His lictor handled all administrative duties and correspondence. Gratus became detached from all that was expected of him except symbolic appearances at ceremonies and affairs of state. Even at these rare official obligations, his participation was only to be seen and, if the mood struck him, to wave to others. Mostly he retired to his villa, where he entertained few guests and lacked the motivation to do much beyond moving from his couch to a hot bath and back again, all with the assistance of servants who were little more than substitutes for his own wasting vigor.
He opened his eyes at the urging of an irritating voice. It was his lictor speaking his name in an endless refrain to awaken him. The scribbler dared not lay hands upon the prefect to rouse him. Gratus enjoyed that much of what remained of his dignity. What was the man’s name again? Did it matter?
Lifting his head from the cushion took his entire force of will. Rising to a sitting position spent what remained of his store of strength. The room was filled with long shadows. It was late in the day or early in the morning. A zephyr touched the sweat on his bare neck, causing him to shiver at the icy touch. Waxing or waning, the sunlight through the shades failed to warm him.
The lictor, the chubby, oily excrescence, was still speaking his name, only more urgently.
“What is it, you foul issue of a donkey’s cunt?” Gratus meant to growl, but it came out a pitiable squeak.
“A visitor, lord prefect,” the roly-poly bastard stammered. “He comes with a guard escort under the banner of the Senate.”