Ben jumped back at the sound of the name he shared with the Attakapa, and he gasped when the terrorist’s eyes sprung open. He stared into the glowing red coals. The fire seemed to shine an orange light into the dirt beside the dying man’s head. Ben felt himself stumble backwards from his kneeling position in surprise and fright.
“Dude, what’s the matter?”
Reed’s voice blended with the voice in his head, now unopposed by the dark one, and he realized the terrorist had both hands tucked beneath his body.
Praise be to God. Praise be to God. Praise be…
“Reed – get back,” he screamed at his friend. He knew the terrorist would explode any moment and take them both with him.
Ben reached out his right hand, and the ring glowed a fiery red as his fingers erupted in blue light which spread to his elbow. The sparkling fireflies appeared in a cloud around him, and his vision became hazy and mixed with orange – like he looked through a glass full of glowing red liquid. He vaguely heard the terrorist scream out in pain and terror as Ben felt heat spread out from his chest and down his arm until it seemed to burst out of his fingers. His eyes registered a cartoon-colored image of the Al Qaeda fighter’s head exploding. Then he felt a real heat – a heat from outside his body – like he had lit a grill with his face to close to the coals. He fell backwards on his ass, and for a moment the world went dark.
Ben scrambled to his feet and pulled his rifle up to firing position, his eyes blinking rapidly to clear the burning pain and the tears that ran down his cheeks and blurred his vision. He felt a hand on his arm and heard Reed’s voice. It quivered with something not quite fear but not far from it.
“Dude, I’m pretty sure he’s dead.”
Ben blinked again, and his eyes finally focused.
He looked over the rifle sight at the charred rubbish that had been a man only moments ago. Several little wisps of blue flame still danced off the back of the charred black corpse with little spinning cyclones of greenish smoke rising above each. The corpse ended at the shoulders and pool of grayish liquid boiled for a moment in dirt and then evaporated in a cloud of steam with a soft hissssss. The blue flames winked out and left only a headless, charred body which still smoked into the wet air. The smell that filled Ben’s mouth and nose caused his stomach to heave, and he lowered his rifle. He looked up, and Reed stared into his eyes, his own face still full of fear. Ben caught a few short words from Reed’s confused mind and realized the fear was directed at him, not the dead terrorist.
“What the fuck was that?” Reed asked, his voice a low and conspiratorial whisper.
“I…Uh,” Ben could think of nothing else and dropped his gaze to the ground – Reed’s look more than he could bear.
“Three – Viper Lead–Everything ok?” Chris’s voice sounded tense but professional.
“Sector secure,” Ben managed in a tight-throated voice.
“Roger,” Chris said.
“Two secure.”
“Four secure.”
Reed’s voice followed a short pause, and he heard it in the air a moment before in came into his ear from his headset – a strained voice that still quivered slightly.
“Five.”
“Viper Team secure.” Chris announced.
Ben felt Reed’s eyes on him but didn’t look over. Instead, he tried to get his head back out of his own ass and focus on the mission before they all got killed.
“Phantom team – Go, Go, Go,” another voice said in his headset and seconds later he heard the breacher charges fire as the assault team blew the doors and windows to the house. Ben focused on scanning his sector, but his mind saw nothing but the smoking, headless corpse. He swallowed hard and shook his head to clear the image. Moments later he heard a smattering of small arms fire as Phantom took down the house and secured the Al Qaeda leaders inside.
The eating of the dead denies the dark ones a vessel to return to our world. It destroys the dark one and traps him in the other world.
Ben stole a glance at the corpse. The black, leathery arms ended at the wrists leaving nothing but twigs of black bone where the hands had been.
Fuck that.
There sure as hell would be no eating of the dead here today. Not a fucking chance. He would leave that little trick to the Attakapa.
A soft breeze swept over him and gratefully pushed the smell of the corpse in the other direction. He looked over at Reed who also scanned the clearing, his face now more controlled. Ben thought about probing his friend’s mind, but decided against it. He knew basically what he would find. He considered planting a thought there – something that might give some comfort – like a possible explanation for what Reed had seen.
Like what?
He squeezed his eyes shut for a second, and the thought passed between them.
Suicide bomber gone bad. The blast blew his head off, and he burst into flames instead of killing us somehow. Damnedest thing.
Ben listened to the shouts from the house as the bad guys were secured and a moment later heard his headset crackle again.
“Phantom secure – Five crows and two KIA – ready for exfil.”
“Viper secure with three crows.”
He listened to the voices in his headset, grateful they weren’t in his head, and waited for the order to pull back to the clearing they had marked as the landing zone for extraction. He definitely needed to get the hell out of here.
* * *
Reed did his best to keep up his scan of the clearing, but he found his eyes pulled repeatedly to Ben and his bizarre vision of blue light and lasers shooting out from his best friend’s fingers, boiling the terrorists head until it exploded and he burst into flames. But that was crazy, right?
Suicide bomber gone bad. The blast blew his head off, and he burst into flames instead of killing us somehow. Damnedest thing.
Of course, that was what had happened. It made the most sense. An explosive device the terrorist had strapped to him had somehow malfunctioned, and he had killed himself instead of them. He shuddered at the flood of memories that engulfed him. Memories of the nightmares he’d had in a haze of morphine and shock after his injury. Images of Ben, his eyes swirling clouds of milky white as blue light and sparkling pin points had surrounded them both. In his dream, fire or lasers or something had come out of Ben’s fingers, as well, hadn’t they? And that fucking ring – it had pulsed with orange light just like today.
Well that’s the explanation, dick head. You’re having some weird post-traumatic stress thing. This is your first time back in combat, for shit’s sake, and it brought back them weird ass dreams. That has to be it, right?
He looked over at Ben who scanned his sector, M-4 at the ready – the perfect SEAL. Shit, he should be on a Goddamn poster. Sniper, medic, SEAL – maybe a Cajun witch doctor of sorts – but he sure as hell didn’t just melt some dude’s head and set him on fire with lasers from his fingertips.
His eyes caught the ring on the middle finger of his right hand which supported his rifle by the rear grip. The ring – that damn creepy ring– glowed a soft bluish-green. God, how he hated that friggin’ ring.
Ben’s face remained set in stone as he cleared their sector.
“Phantom is clear to the exfil LZ,” a voice said in his headset and pulled him back to the job at hand. Across the clearing Auger led three teen-aged boys, all flex-cuffed together by the wrists, towards them. He urged the boys forward with his rifle.
“What in the holy fuck happened here?”
Reed looked up and saw Chris who stared wide eyed at the still smoking, headless corpse. His eyes then caught Ben’s, but his face gave away nothing. His friend clenched his jaw and shrugged his shoulder.
Suicide bomber.
The voice was Ben’s but his mouth never moved, and Reed just shook his head.
“Shit if I know, boss,” he said. “Suicide bomber gone bad, I think. Crappy job of riggin’ his shit, maybe. Blew off his own head and set his ass on fire, but Ben and me didn’
t get a scratch.” His mind replayed the explosion of steam and the pool of boiling grey water when the terrorist’s head had evaporated more than exploded.
“Never seen nothin’ like it, bro,” Ben said. “Guess Reed’s right, but holy shit, man.”
Reed looked at his friend who shook his head and looked away. Chris looked at both of them, then down at the steaming body and back at them again.
“Well, shit if I ever saw anything like that, man,” he said. “Assholes are gettin’ dumber and dumber.”
Chris moved off toward Auger who strained his neck to see past the officer.
“What in the hell happened there?” he asked.
Reed moved away from the corner of the house and toward his two teammates, suddenly unable to stand being near the corpse. He also realized he wanted a little distance between him and Ben, but immediately felt like an asshole for the thought. In any case, Ben held his position at the corner. Lash approached them from the far side of the house as Phantom’s six-member team marched five hooded men in long grey robes out of the house their hands secured behind their backs with flex cuffs.
“Everyone okay?” Chris asked the group.
“Hooyah,” they answered in unison.
The SEAL at the end of Phantom team’s train of bad guys looked past Ben and pursed his lips.
“Who’s the crispy critter?” he asked.
Reed felt his chest tighten and for a moment felt a little dizzy. He brushed past Phantom team and their conga line of senior Al Qaeda assholes and then past Chris and Auger. He just needed a minute.
So this is what PTSD feels like. I feel like a damn teen-aged girl goin’ all weak kneed at sight of a road kill. Christ Almighty.
“You okay, Reed?” Chris called after him.
He waved his hand over his shoulder and then gave a thumbs up.
The last thing he needed was the team worryin’ about him.
* * *
Ben took the rear behind the column formed by Viper Team and the three teen-age terrorists he had captured. He hoped the restraint he had displayed with the group of bad guys had shown Chris he had the fire discipline he had been counseled about on their big hit of the last tour. He realized that op, their last before heading state-side and his wedding, felt like years and years ago. It couldn’t really have been more than six or seven weeks he realized. He shook his head.
Father.
The voice sent a chill of both fear and excitement through his chest, and he looked over to his right. Jewel sat cross-legged on the floor of the jungle between the out-stretched legs of the Elder. She smiled, and he smiled back. Just as he raised a hand to wave, the image shimmered, turned silver, and disappeared. He squeezed his eyes shut, and when he opened them he saw he had fallen a few paces behind the group. Ben scanned the jungle around him for Al Qaeda and ghosts and then continued on, catching up in a few long strides.
“Hear somethin’?” Lash asked.
Ben just shook his head.
As he looked up he saw the Attakapa, statue still and balanced precariously on a huge gnarled tree branch several feet above the team as they passed beneath him.
The dark one you battled was not consumed. Little matter. Soon they will lead you to the one with the black blood.
Ben refused to let his eyes glance upward as he passed beneath the Indian, but his peripheral vision registered the silver shimmer as the dark-skinned legs evaporated into space.
Leave me alone. I’m working here for God’s sake.
Ben concentrated his gaze on the back of the teen-aged terrorist’s head at the rear of the line and kept his eyes away from the jungle around them. Not the best way to clear their route of other dangers, but he just couldn’t take it anymore. He heard the rumble of approaching helicopters, a low deep rattle of the huge Chinooks instead of their favored sports car-like Blackhawks. They would need the extra space for the eight bad guys that accompanied them out.
They broke into a clearing as the first helicopter touched down briefly, and the Special Operators moved swiftly in through the already lowered back ramp. Seconds later the twin rotors beat the air back into submission, the helicopter was airborne again, and the next helicopter already flared for its own landing.
In less than forty five seconds three helicopters cleared all of the teams out of the jungle, and Ben sat on the hard metal floor across from the terrorists whose hands had been secured to the metal D-rings usually meant to secure cargo pallets in the massive helo. He sighed and leaned back. His helmet tipped forward over his eyes as it impacted the wall of the aircraft. Ben left it where it ended up, obscuring his vision, and sighed again. He felt complete exhaustion – his mind, as well as his body. He knew he wouldn’t sleep today though, and the thought nearly made him cry. He knew he should think about all that had happened – all that he had seen and heard – and search for clues that might end this insane crusade.
I can’t. Not right now. Not yet.
He snapped off his NVGs, and the green light disappeared leaving him in total darkness. Ben closed his eyes and felt tears trickle down his cheeks.
I miss you, Christy. I love you so much, baby, and I miss you. I promise I’ll be home very soon.
Chapter 36
Christy yawned, squeezed her eyes shut, and then opened them wide. The last thing she needed was to get in a wreck on the way home from work, but good Lord was she tired. She had awoken as she always did these days, after only an hour or so of sleep, and tossed and turned as she thought about her husband. She knew it was a mistake to do the time difference math in her head, and now she awoke at about the time she assumed Ben would be waist deep in the shit of his job. She would then spend the rest of the night mostly awake, worried the phone would ring and instead of Ben it would be another voice – a sad voice of a friend with horrible news about her husband.
As she turned off of Shore Drive and onto Pleasure House Road toward the ocean and their Chicks Beach town house, she laid a hand across her belly and gently rubbed it. She needed to be careful and get better rest. It wasn’t just about her anymore. She smiled a tense smile at that thought. It would be so much easier to be excited when Ben got home, and she knew he would stay safe.
It was still a little too early for an E.P.T., but she had convinced herself it was really just a formality at this point. She no longer had any doubt at all that their child grew inside of her. It wasn’t just the PMS-like symptoms or the tender breasts either. She was certain she could feel the baby within her. She turned into their driveway and stifled another big yawn. Then, she sighed. It had become so hard to go into their home and be alone. She felt she had so much she needed to share with her husband.
I miss you, Christy. I love you so much, baby, and I miss you. I promise I’ll be home very soon.
The words were so clear and so real she actually looked over into the passenger seat. But, of course, Ben did not, in fact, sit there with a loving smile on his face. She saw him in her mind’s eye anyway.
“I love you, too, baby, and I miss you more than anything,” she said, in case the words in her head really were from her husband. Fantasy or not, she did feel much better having heard them and thought maybe tonight she would really sleep.
He sounded fine, he loves me, and misses me.
Christy gathered up her detail case and her take-out Chic-fil-A sandwich and headed inside.
Chapter 37
Sleep did come, but the initial welcome relief proved short-lived. He had collapsed into his rack in the small three-man cubicle he shared with Reed and Auger, his weapons and kit on the floor beside him. His dirty cammies and boots were still on. It felt he had slept for either a few minutes or a few days when the soft voice stirred him awake – well, not really awake he supposed, but wherever he went on these little journeys. The tiny voice filled him with warmth rather than fear.
I have missed you, father.
Ben opened his eyes and found himself curled in a ball on the soft moss floor of a clearing somewhere in the jun
gle. The smell of the cooking pots made him realize how hungry he was. His eyes focused on the little bare feet in front of him, and he followed them to the tiny hands folded neatly in her lap.
Jewel sat like the young toddler she was – legs in front of her crooked at the knees and bent slightly forward at the waist to keep from tipping over backwards. Only the gently folded hands gave her the illusion of age – that and the voice in his head from a baby too young to talk yet, especially in English.
Grandfather said you would come and find me. He said you would keep us safe. And, now you are here.
When her lips finally moved, they simply smiled and said “Deh, Deh Da Eh,” which apparently meant something funny in toddler speak because she squealed a little giggle and then reached for his nose.
Ben sat up and crossed his legs Indian-style and reached for her. Jewel climbed eagerly into his lap and snuggled against his neck, and he felt his eyes moisten. Until he felt her and smelled her, he hadn’t really known how much he missed her – and loved her, he decided.
“I love you, baby girl,” he said and hugged her as she tugged at the chain that held his dog tags around his neck beneath his dirty brown T-shirt. “I’m going to bring you home, Jewel.”
But I am home father. I’m where I belong, and now you are with us.
He breathed in the sweet little girl scent of her, and tears spilled onto his cheeks. He wanted the dream to be real and knew on some level that it was – at least in some weird way he hadn’t really figured out yet. If he did nothing else in Africa, he wanted to find his little girl. He wanted to make her safe and bring her home to Christy – and to the rest of their family that grew inside her.
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