The Traiteur's Ring

by Jeffrey Wilson

  The Chief Petty Officer stared at his lap top screen which appeared dark to Ben from his angle. The man had ear buds in his ears, despite the rule against it, and bopped up and down to what Ben knew would be old school country music. Ben looked past him into the real work center through the open double doors beyond him, where a dozen large plasma screen TVs tracked tons of data points and satellite feeds. A few officers manned posts, but mostly the other room was quiet. Ben placed both hands on the Intelligence Lead Chief Petty Officer’s shoulders and felt him jump beneath his grip. The man looked up at him and smiled over round glasses.

  “Hey, bro,” the Chief said as he pulled the ear buds from his ears and shoved them in a pocket. “What’s happenin’?”

  “You’re the man who’s supposed to know,” Ben looked again into the Operations room to see if anyone was listening.

  “Yeah, I guess,” Chief Bateman said. “What do you need to know?”

  Ben sat down in the folding metal chair beside the Chief.

  “What’s up with the missing survivors?” he asked pointedly.

  “Whoa, shit,” Bateman said and rolled his eyes upwards. “That’s gonna be the theme of the day at the brief.” The Chief rocked his chair back on two legs. “How do five, primitive, scantily dressed natives—

  God, I hate that word

  –disappear from a Joint SpecWar base in the middle of the day without anyone seeing shit?”

  The Chief stared at him as if he thought Ben might give him an answer, and he felt his right leg begin to tap up and down on his heel, dissipating the uncomfortable energy.

  “I don’t know,” he said finally.

  But I think I’m supposed to.

  “Yeah, well, you and everyone,” Bateman said. “I don’t guess you’ll be surprised to find it’s got the Head Shed bound up in a shit storm. Especially them Ranger boys, what as they’s supposed to be providing security and all.”

  Ben forced a laugh. In other circumstances it might even feel funny. “I bet,” he said. “Are we searching for them?”

  “Keepin’ an eye out for them, but not really searching. Guess they figure if they don’t want our help then that’s their business, you know? They don’t know nothing, probably have no fucking clue even where they are, much less us, so no real security leak.”

  “I guess,” Ben looked down at his feet. He tried to get his arms around the idea that his little girl was gone for good. He would never see her again.

  You will, and you must. The Living Jungle—

  Ben squeezed his eyes shut which seemed to force the haunting force from his head in mid-sentence. He was done with the Living Jungle bullshit. He felt bad for the shit they had brought on the village, but Goddammit, enough was enough. He refused to let his guilt spin up his Cajun imagination anymore. He spun the ring on his right middle finger but couldn’t quite bring himself to pull it off.

  “You okay?” Bateman asked, and Ben looked up.

  “Yeah,” and thought he might be. “See you at the brief.”

  “Sure thing, man,” the Chief popped his ear buds back in.

  “Enough,” Ben mumbled as he headed for the door. He didn’t relish telling Christy, which he decided he should do right away so she wouldn’t have time to get herself more excited or worried or whatever emotions she might be having. In the end this might be better. As noble as it might be to reach out to this little girl he felt pulled to, her presence in their life might actually serve as a constant reminder of the horror at the village and his guilt at having been part of bringing it about.

  “We’ll start our own family,” he announced to himself as he headed for the barracks and a quick stop at the bank of phones. “It is definitely time.”

  Chapter 8

  Reed watched his best friend and fellow Frogman check his gear and load extra magazines into the ammo pouches hanging from his vest. Ben looked like the SEAL he knew and with much relief, Reed saw the cloud that had worried him seemed gone. When they had been tasked at the ops brief to go on this mission, he had watched Ben carefully for his reaction. Ben had voiced what they all felt when he had muttered, “Fuckin’-A.”

  Now, he watched the familiar ritual as Ben wrapped green riggers tape around the tops of his boots to prevent them from catching on anything while they worked. His blood type (A-POS) and NKDA (for no known drug allergies) was written in block letters on the tape, just in case any medical provider needed to know and missed the same lettering on the sleeves of his brown T-shirt.

  The intel had been great, provided from the crows they had taken off the target only a day and a half ago and confirmed with satellite imagery. The hit tonight would be on a cluster of concrete buildings at the edge of a small town an hour’s flight from their forward operating base. The target was the half dozen Al Qaeda shit-heads that the Head Shed and higher authority believed represented the true command element for the rag tag groups of terrorists that infected this area like a disease.

  “The head of the Serpent,” the task force commander had announced with obvious pleasure. He had looked at the five of them and added, “and the likely command authority for the slaughter at the village.”

  After that, Reed didn’t think the whole remaining task force could have kept the five of them from this op.

  The op was huge, at least for a special operations mission, and involved the Ranger Battalion providing perimeter security and control of the surrounding town while two groups of SEALs and one group of Green Berets hit the three target structures.

  “Capture or kill,” the commander had announced. “But bear in mind, please, that these guys can probably provide some real intel data to other operations throughout this part of this shitty continent.”

  The rest of the brief had filled in the exact details and timing of the mission, including exfil plans and evacuation plans for casualties. Reed had slapped Ben on the back and enjoyed the big goofy grin he got in return.

  High value target, an overwhelming elite force, good intel and support, and – why the hell not – a little bit of payback.

  This was why they had become SEALs.

  Ben squeezed the back of his neck as Reed secured his own gear and slung his short, M-4 Rifle over his shoulder. He chambered a round into his 9 millimeter SigSauer pistol and slipped it into the holster on his right leg as Ben began to check over his gear from behind.

  “Shit-hot op for us, huh?” Ben asked him. The voice was calm and cool, and he thought he heard a smile in the tone.

  “Yep,” he answered. “Nothing wrong with a little payback, I say.”

  “Yeah,” Ben said. His voice sounded chilling to Reed, but for reasons he more than understood. They had all been affected by the village, but Ben clearly more than the rest of them. When the intel guys had mentioned the survivors’ disappearance at the late afternoon brief, Reed had watched his friend with true concern. The total lack of expression told him that Ben already knew about the disappearance, which explained why he failed to show up to claim the dinner he had brought back for him from the chow hall.

  Reed’s own reaction to the news was vastly different. He worried for the survivors, of course. But what he felt more than the loss was relief and guilt for feeling that way. Reed truly believed his best friend needed to put the events at the village behind him, and that didn’t seem possible with his bond to the little girl, especially while she was in camp with them.

  Reed selected a few grenades, both lethal and concussion, and slipped them into his kit and thought there was more to his relief than just concern for Ben. He turned to check over his buddies gear and thought about how much those people freaked him out. He felt terrible for what had happened, but from the moment they had first entered the village, he’d had a weird and creepy feeling about the villagers. He would never say it out loud, of course, but he knew he was a little afraid of them. It was the way he felt afraid of anything occult or supernatural. He was a blue-steel, fearless Navy SEAL, but he didn’t go to horror movies about the Dev
il or any of that shit. He had been terrified by that sort of thing since childhood, and even heavily ritualistic church stuff just gave him a chill.

  “Let’s grab a Gatorade and have a dip,” Ben said after he slapped him on the back to signal his gear looked good to him.

  “Sure,” Reed said and followed his friend out of the cage that held their combat gear. He absently patted the front of his kit to triple check that he placed extra magazines there for both his rifle and pistol. He had a feeling he would need them tonight, a thought that filled him with anticipation more than fear.

  Reed wondered just how he had come to love his best friend so much when such a big part of Ben’s personality seemed to be the very things that creeped him out about the villagers and the occult in general. Ben had told him only a few sketchy details of his past – how he grew up in some fucking swamp with a grandmother who was supposed to have some special, Voodoo healing powers or something. Reed absolutely hated that shit, and from anyone else it would have guaranteed he could not hang out with them. He somehow was able to look past it (by ignoring it and not thinking about it at all for the most part) in Ben. The teams were filled with his “brothers,” but Ben felt like real blood.

  You can pick your friends, but I guess you’re stuck with your relatives.

  He sucked down the lemony Gatorade and then pulled a can of Kodiak snuff from his cargo pocket. Ben poked him and held out his hand. Reed tossed it to his friend who packed a huge pinch between his front teeth and lip, tossed it back, and squatted in the dirt, leaning back against the crumbling old building.

  “Thanks, bro,” he said.

  “Yeah,” Reed answered. He tried to think of something smart-ass to say, but came up with nothing. He put in his own dip and enjoyed the initial burn of the tobacco on the inside of his lip. Ben bent forward and spilled a big puddle of brown spit into the dirt between them.

  They dipped in silence for a few minutes, Ben’s eyes cloudy and far away. Reed forced his mind to the task at hand, and he reviewed the infil and exfil procedures for the coming mission, hoping that’s where Ben’s mind was, as well.

  “Hope the core leadership is in the house to the southwest,” Reed said, visualizing in his mind the house that their team would be hitting. “Love to get them guys in my sights and watch them cry like babies when we take them off the X.”

  Ben looked at him, and the eyes sent a chill up Reed’s spine. A fire flickered somewhere behind the cold gaze.

  “The men who are responsible for killing my people can never be dead enough,” Ben said, his face stoic. The look made Reed swallow hard, and he felt himself fill up with a whole new set of worries.

  “Of course,” he said and watched his friend carefully, “if we can take them off target and get them to the interrogators we could really get some shit hot gouge from them.” His friend’s face didn’t change much, except for the tick of an almost evil grin in the corner of his mouth.

  “Of course,” Ben said and then rose up from his squatted position.

  Reed opened his mouth to say something, but realized he had no idea what and snapped his mouth closed again. He rose up next to his friend. But before he could think of what to say, the door beside them opened, and Auger, Chris, and Lash came out.

  “Hey, guys,” Chris said as he swung his night vision goggles down, checked them, and swung them back up on top of his helmet. “We’re third chalk. Let’s get the roll call and load up in the bird.”

  “Hooyah,” Ben said and turned from Reed and led the group towards the picnic table fifty yards away on which Jackson from Charlie platoon stood, a growing group of special operators around him waiting for the roll call.

  Reed decided he would stay right beside his friend tonight.

  He needed to protect him from things more internal than external he suspected.

  Chapter 9

  Ben leaned back against the side of the doorway in which he sat, the wind whipping his legs as they dangled out of the Blackhawk helicopter. He watched through his night vision goggles as the dark jungle whipped past beneath them. Now and again the glow from a campfire or the soft lights from a small cluster of buildings would light up white in the otherwise green and grey world he watched through the NVGs.

  Bored with the monotonous scene a few hundred feet below them, Ben scanned around at his teammates who all sat relaxed but pensive in the helo. Reed looked back at him through his own goggles, like two mini-telescopes poking out of his face from beneath his green helmet, and gave him a thumbs up. Ben tried to grin and waved back, flipped his NVGs up onto the top of his helmet, and enjoyed the total darkness of the blacked-out helicopter. He could hear the other helos flying nearby, but without the night vision could not see a single glow to mark their position.

  Ben leaned his helmeted head back against the doorway and fumbled in the front pouch of his kit, high on his chest. He felt blindly inside with his shooting finger, the glove cut away, and found the iPod he kept there. The IT guy for the task force, a Navy second class, had wired the earphone jack from his iPod directly into his headset a month ago, and he found he felt much more relaxed on the infils with a little music. He pushed the play button, and his right ear filled instantly with the sounds of Eric Clapton singing about the loss of his little boy. Ben hoped there were truly no tears in Heaven. He had found enough here, both in the nightmares of his youth, as well as the last few days in this shitty country.

  The little girl’s face filled his mind’s eye in the blackness. Her face smiled at him as her imaginary fingers pulled at his nose and she cooed, “Gah deh, eh,” at him. Ben felt tightness in his chest at the picture and wondered where she was and, more importantly, how she was. He dreaded his next call to Christy almost as much as he needed it. Ben gripped his M-4 tightly.

  Get your friggin’ head in the game, bro.

  He needed to be a professional – now more than ever. This was a big op, and these guys were not a bunch of teenagers led by a small group of washed-up tribal militia. These guys were top-of-the-food-chain and would have real security. His team had learned a few times in Iraq that the religious zealots protecting the serpent’s head would fight to the death and had no problem dying if it meant they could take a few of the Great Satan Infidels with them. He had seen Mujahedeen surround themselves with suicide bombers who wore explosive vests twenty four hours a day. He really needed to get iced and try to focus.

  Ben ran through the timeline and plan for the breach of their building again. He felt his mind drift back to the villagers and sighed.

  I just wish I knew they were alright. I need to know my little girl is safe.

  Send them a heart message if you must.

  Ben felt struck, not by the sound of the elder’s voice in his head (he almost expected it), but by the fact that he knew exactly what that meant. He closed his eyes and reached his mind out. For a moment, he felt a little like he floated up in the air inside the helicopter, and he could almost feel his words as they swirled around him and drifted out the door. Ben opened his eyes and for a moment saw a cloud of tiny bluish fireflies bouncing beside him, just outside the door of the helicopter. Then the lights, his heart message he knew, spread out and away from them and dove down towards the jungle below.

  I am here, Jewel. I am here, and I am thinking of you. I want for you to be safe.

  He had no idea when he had decided her name was Jewel, but it fit perfectly – his little Jewel from the jungle. He felt the band around his heart again. Another feeling filled his head like hot water and spread out over his body. He didn’t hear it – he actually felt it inside of him.

  I’m home, father. I am safe in our home until you come for me.

  Ben gasped at the sensation of the words as they rattled around inside his head and chest. He had no time to absorb it, however.

  “Five minutes,” the voice in his headset cut out Clapton’s instrumental blues, and Ben leaned out the doorway. In the distance, he thought he might see a small glow but he couldn’t b
e sure. He snapped his NVG’s back into place, but saw nothing new. Around him he could feel the stir as his teammates checked their gear and weapons one last time. Ben felt around his own kit for grenades and magazines and checked his pistol in proper place on his right thigh. Then, he pulled his rifle from its combat position on his chest to a point just below his right armpit. Last, he slipped a finger into the small pouch with his iPod and clicked it off. He was ready.

  The plan called for an offset fly-by by half the force to mask the hover of the two breacher team helos as they fast roped into the jungle a kilometer from the target. Those helos would similarly cover the insertion of the rangers just at the perimeter on the side of the village farthest from the three target buildings. Helicopter activity might be concerning but was common enough to hopefully not be alarming to the targets. Ben watched the grey-green images of his fellow SEALs as they got into position for the insertion. Chris would be the rope master and sat now with his feet against a large green bag which contained the thick, coiled rope for his side of the helicopter while Jackson from Charlie platoon sat in the same position on the other side.

  “Two minutes.”

  Ben flexed and relaxed the muscles in his upper body and then pulled a second pair of leather gloves over his combat gloves to protect his hands as he slid down the large rope. He would be second out behind Reed and then Lash, Auger, and finally Chris would follow. Five other SEALs from Charlie would simultaneously fast rope down from the other side of the bird. The entire insertion would take only a few seconds.

  “One minute.”

  Ben reached across himself and unhooked his safety lanyard from the metal cleat beside the door. He folded the lanyard one-handed and tucked it into a belt loop on his pants and then shifted his body towards Reed who already stood half way up on one knee in the doorway.

  The helicopter nosed up sharply and then settled into a hover as Chris kicked hard and sent the rope bag out the door. Reed grabbed the rope with both hands and slipped out the door into the darkness. At the same time Ben grabbed the rope in a two-handed grip close to his chest, counted one-one thousand, and followed Reed out with Auger’s shoulder already against his back.