On Call: An Original Short Story

by Michael Palmer

  They descended through the low cloud covering like missiles, emerging out of nothingness beneath a starless predawn sky. Their landings, each completed with a puma’s grace, would have made their instructors back at Quantico proud. Perfection. Mantis demanded nothing less. In silence, the three exchanged their polypropylene undergarments, vital to protect against frostbite at high altitudes, for white cotton robes and the traditional head coverings of Taliban fighters. Then they zippered shut their fifty-pound combat packs.

  Wearing their dusty garments, the men anticipated they would not immediately rouse any suspicion. Each of the three had a tanning-booth tan supplemented by professionally applied makeup, as well as a closely trimmed moustache and a fully grown beard. Moving stealthily, the trio blended in with their surroundings—a mountainous, rocky region in southern Afghanistan, barren as a moonscape.

  “Any injuries?”

  “No, Sergeant,” the two men replied in unison.

  “Miller, how many klicks to the target?”

  Miller checked his handheld GPS.

  “Five kilometers south, southwest of the target, Sergeant.”

  “Gibson, ditch the gear.”

  Gibson knew not to look long for a suitable location in which to hide their parachutes and other equipment. By the time any Afghani stumbled upon the array of high-tech military paraphernalia hidden behind a jagged boulder, it hopefully would be too late.

  They walked in single file, moving silently across the rock-strewn terrain, with Miller and his GPS taking the lead. Behind them, dawn rose in streaks of brilliant pinks, yellows, and blues—giant fingers extending skyward, beckoning the new day. If anyone had checked the men’s pulses at that moment, none would be above fifty.

  Miller found the road, a rutted stretch of dirt that would carry them to the outskirts of Khewa, a town of twenty thousand that would look the same today as it did a century and a half ago. Young women wearing chadors stopped farming the fields of wheat, rice, and vegetables lining the roadside to give the trio a cursory glance before quickly resuming their duties. The Marines’ disguises were good enough that none of the women bothered with a closer inspection. They had estimated that unless their luck was extremely bad, they could survive twelve hours or so before they were identified by soldiers or one of the villagers.

  Way more than enough time.

  The men of Mantis Company reached the crumbling clay brick walls of Khewa’s borders without incident. The town was defined by its absences—no cars, no electricity, no running water. Evidence of twenty years of war was seen everywhere. Craters left by bombs and land mines made what limited roads there were treacherous to pass even on foot. Bombed-out buildings and homes were in greater number than habitable ones.

  The smells of the market guided the men toward their destination. They wandered about casually through shabby stalls built of boards, sheets, and mud and bunched together on each side of a single-lane dirt road. The central market was already bustling despite the newness of the day. In some stalls, slabs of fly-covered meat dangled like macabre wind chimes, while bloodstained butchers called out the day’s prices in Pashto. Persian music blasted from cheap radios as the Marines continued their stroll past stalls selling fruit, breads, and rudimentary household supplies.

  Two hours had brought a sweltering midmorning before they caught the attention of a town elder.

  “Don’t look now,” Gibson said, his voice hushed, “but it looks like we’ve been noticed.”

  The Afghani, with a white beard descending to his chest, carrying a Kalishnikov assault rifle, approached the men the way he might a poisonous snake.

  The three Marines turned their backs to the man and moved well away from the women and children in the crowded market. To the extent they could control it, this operation was going to be soldiers only. When they finally stopped, the Afghani took two cautious steps toward them…then a third. His dark eyes narrowed. Then he began to shout and point frantically.

  His shrill voice rose above the market’s din, catching the attention of more men dressed in dirty grey or white robes, each, it seemed, carrying a weapon different in make and age from the others. The commotion rapidly crescendoed, with more Afghani men, some armed, some not, racing up from all directions to surround the intruders. They were screaming, shouting in Pashto, and pointing long, dirt-encrusted fingernails at the three men, now trapped inside the rapidly expanding circle.

  “How do you like the show so far, Miller?” the sergeant asked, barely moving his lips.

  “Just what you told us, Sarge,” Miller said, without a waver in his voice.

  “Provided they go and get Mr. Big.”

  He moistened his lips with his tongue.

  The Taliban fighters were ten deep now, a hundred and fifty of them at least, many with weapons leveled—PK machine guns, ancient Lee-Enfields, plus a variety of handguns. They were pushing and shoving to get a closer look at the men who had so brazenly strolled into the center of their city.

  “Just keep your hands raised,” the sergeant said to both his men, “and keep scanning the crowd for Al-Basheer. If our intelligence is correct, none of them will make a move until he gets here.”

  The closest men in the milling circle were a smothering five or six feet away.

  Miller spotted Al-Basheer first. His orange beard and bulbous nose were distinct giveaways.

  “That’s him, Sergeant,” Miller said, as the crowd parted to admit their leader, one of the most powerful and influential fighters in the region.

  Al-Basheer strode through the ranks. The sergeant smiled and nodded, and immediately the three Marines formed a tight triangle, facing outward with their shoulders touching. The sudden movement caused some of those surrounding them to step back.

  But not Al-Basheer.

  “Whatever it takes,” the sergeant said.

  “Whatever it takes,” Miller and Gibson echoed.

  In a singular motion, the three men threw off their robes.

  The crowd began screaming

  Strapped to each intruder’s chest were bricks of explosive, three on the right side and three on the left, with wires connected to a battery hinged to their waists.

  “Whatever it takes,” the sergeant said again.

  The push of a button, a faint click, and in an instant, every man within the warrior circle was vaporized within a white hot ball of carefully concentrated light.

  Chapter 1

  Dr. Louis Francis Welcome could do a lot of things well, but doing nothing was not one of them. His desk at the Washington, D.C. Physician Wellness Office, one of four cubicle work areas jammed inside 850 square feet, had never been so uncluttered. On a typical midafternoon, the voicemail light on Lou’s Nortel telephone would be blinking red—a harbinger that one or more of his doctor clients needed advice and support in their recovery from mental illness, behavioral problems, or drug and alcohol abuse. At the moment, that light was dark, as it had been for much of the past several days.

  Lou got paid to manage cases and monitor the progress of his assigned physicians, with the expressed goals of guiding them into recovery and eventually getting surrendered licenses reinstated. The holiday season inevitably brought an influx of new docs, often ordered to the PWO by the D.C. Board of Medicine.

  But not recently.

  He strongly suspected the lack of clients did not indicate a dwindling need for PWO services. On the contrary, as with the general population, the stress accompanying the last six weeks of the year unmasked plenty of physicians in trouble for a variety of reasons. So why in the hell, he mused, absently constructing a chain from the contents of his inlaid mother-of-pearl paper clip box, was he not getting any new cases?

  There was, he knew, only one logical explanation for the paucity of referrals—Dr. Walter Filstrup, the director of the program.

  Rhythmically compressing a rubber relaxation ball imprinted with Pfizer Pharmaceuticals, Lou sauntered over to the reception desk, where Babs Peterbee seemed to be quite
busy.

  “Hi, there, Dr. Welcome,” she said, her round, matronly face radiating a typical mix of caring and concern. “I didn’t see you come in.”

  “Ninja doctor,” Lou said, striking a pose. “Any calls?”

  “A man who said he wanted to talk to you about the head of his department drinking too much. I referred him to Dr. Filstrup’s voice mail.”

  “Did you get his name?”

  Peterbee forced a smile.

  “Not my job.”

  The woman’s favorite phrase.

  Lou said the words in unison with her.

  The woman definitely knew how to make it through her day unscathed.

  Not my job.

  “B.P., is Walter in?” Lou asked. “His door’s been closed since I got here.”

  “He’s having a telephone meeting right now,” Peterbee said, cocking her head to the right, toward the only door in the suite except for the one to the small conference room across from her. The door was also the only one with a name placard, this one bronze and elegantly embossed with Filstrup’s name and degree.

  “Is this a real meeting, or a Filstrup meeting?”

  Peterbee strained to smile.

  “How’s your daughter?” she asked.

  “Emily’s doing great, thank you,” Lou said shifting his six-foot frame from one foot to the other and switching the Pfizer ball to his left hand. “She’s closing in on fourteen going on thirty, and is far more skilled than even our esteemed boss at skirting issues she doesn’t want to deal with. So I’ll ask again, is Walter really busy?”

  This time Peterbee glanced down at her phone bank and shook her head, as though she was no longer betraying whatever promise she had made to Filstrup.

  “Looks like he’s off now.”

  “When the employee of the year awards come up, B.P., I’m nominating you. Such loyalty.”

  “You mean poverty.”

  “That, too. His overall mood?”

  “I would say, maybe, Cat-2.”

  The small staff at the PWO measured the volatile director’s demeanor on the Saffir-Simpson scale used by meteorologists to rate the power of hurricanes.

  “Cat-2 isn’t so bad,” Lou said, mostly to himself. “Blustery but not life threatening.”

  “It won’t stay that way if you go barging in there, Dr. Welcome,” Peterbee admonished.

  Lou blew her a kiss.

  “Never fear,” he said. “I’ve got a Kevlar life preserver on under my shirt.”

  Lou knocked once on Filstrup’s door and opened it. The director’s office, filled with neatly arranged medical textbooks and bound psychiatric journals, was even less cluttered than Lou’s cubicle, a reflection not of the man’s thin calendar, but of his overriding need for order. Fit and trim, wearing his invariable dark blue suit, wrinkle-free white dress shirt, and solid-colored tie—this day some shade of gray—Filstrup shot to his feet, his face reddening by the nanosecond.

  “Leave immediately, Welcome, then knock and wait.”

  “And you’ll beckon me in?”

  “No, I’ll tell you I’m expecting an important call, and you should come back in an hour.”

  Lou pulled back the Aeron chair opposite Filstrup and sat. On the desk to his right was an orderly pile of dictations to review, alongside a stack of client charts. No one could accuse the man of not running a sphincter-tight ship.

  “I haven’t seen you for most of the week, boss, so I thought I’d stop by and find out how business was.”

  “Snideness was never one of your most endearing qualities, Welcome, although I’ll have to admit that it’s not one of your worst, either.”

  “Who’s monitoring all these cases?” Lou asked, gesturing towards the stacks. “Certainly not me.”

  Filstrup looked down, favoring Lou with an unobstructed view of his bald spot, and theatrically signed a form that Lou suspected might be the equivalent in importance of a follow-up survey from the Census Bureau.

  “The Board of Trustees keeps renewing your contract,” Filstrup said, “but they don’t say how I’m supposed to use you.”

  “How about some work?” Lou asked, his tone not quite pleading but close.

  “I’m chomping at the bit.”

  “You have cases to monitor,” Filstrup said.

  “What I have is a handful of doctors who are in terrific, solid recovery,” Lou said. “I’m here to be helpful. I like doing this job, and I’ve never gone this long without getting a new case to monitor. What gives, Walter?”

  “What gives is we have a new hire who’s working full-time, and I’ve got to get him up to speed on what we do around here and the way that we’re supposed do it. You know yourself that the best way to indoctrinate somebody new is to get them huffing and puffing in the field.”

  “Huffing and puffing,” Lou said. “I like the image. Colorful. Asthmatic even.”

  “Wiseass,” Filstrup grumbled.

  “So I’m being punished because I’m not full-time, even though I’ve done more than my share of huffing and puffing?”

  Lou had been part-time with the PWO for five years. Five years before that, he was one of their clients, being monitored for amphetamine and alcohol dependence—the former used to cope with a killer moonlighting schedule, and the latter to come down from the speed. It was Lou’s belief that having battled his own addiction benefited the docs assigned to him. Filstrup, who was hired by the board well after Lou, would not concur.

  “That’s not it at all,” Filstrup said. “You’re working almost full-time in the Eisenhower Memorial emergency room, and twenty hours a week here.”

  “Can you spell alimony? Listen, Walter, I enjoy both my jobs and I need the income, so I put in a little extra time. Have there been complaints?”

  “Since you got moved from the hospital annex back to the big ER, you’ve seemed stressed.”

  “Only by my reduced case load. There should be enough work for both Oliver and me.”

  “I told you,” Filstrup said. “Oliver needs to get up to speed.”

  “This wouldn’t have anything to do with him being a psychiatrist like yourself? Would it?”

  “Of course not,” Filstrup replied, dismissing the statement with a wave.

  Lou knew better. He and Filstrup had been at odds since day one, in large measure over their disagreement as to whether addiction was an illness or a moral issue.

  “Does Oliver think every monitoring client should go through extensive psychotherapy?”

  “It doesn’t always have to be extensive,” Filstrup said.

  Don’t drink, go to meetings, and ask a higher power for help.

  Lou knew that the terse, three-pronged instruction manual was all that the majority of addicts and alcoholics involved with AA ever needed. Psychotherapy had its place with some of them, but protracted, expensive treatment was often over the top.

  He could sense their exchange was getting out of hand, and kept quiet by reminding himself, as he did from time to time for nearly every one of his docs, that whether the stone hit the vase, or the vase hit the stone, it was going to be bad for the vase.

  Filstrup removed his glasses and cleaned the lenses with a cloth from his desk drawer. Lou thought the gray tie would have done just as well.

  “Just because you were once a drug addict,” Filstrup went on, “doesn’t give your opinions greater authority here.”

  “I can’t believe we’re going at it like this because I came in here to ask for more work.”

  The phone rang before Filstrup could retort. He flashed an annoyed look and pushed the intercom button.

  “I thought I told you to hold all my calls, Mrs. Peterbee,” Filstrup said.

  I thought you were expecting one, Lou mused.

  “I’m sorry, Dr. Filstrup,” the receptionist said. “Actually, this is for Dr. Welcome. I have the caller on hold.”

  Lou gave Filstrup a bewildered look and shrugged.

  “Who is it, Mrs. P?” Lou asked.

&nb
sp; “Our client, Dr. Gary McHugh,” Peterbee said. “He said it’s urgent.”

  Filstrup reflexively straightened up.

  “McHugh, the society doc?” he said. “Put him through.” Filstrup allowed the call to click over, then said in an cheery voice, “Gary, it’s Walter Filstrup. How are you doing?”

  The director’s conciliatory tone churned Lou’s stomach, but it was not an unexpected reaction given who was on the other line. Gary McHugh tended to the D.C. carriage trade and probably numbered among his patients a significant portion of all three branches of the government. He was renowned for his acumen, loyalty, and discretion, as well as for making house calls. What he was not known for, at least within the confines of the D.C. Physician Wellness Office, was for being one of Lou Welcome’s closest friends since their undergraduate days together at Georgetown.

  Several years before, McHugh had lost his driver’s license for operating under the influence and refusing to take a field sobriety test. The Board of Medicine’s knee-jerk policy was to refer such physician offenders to the PWO, and in the absence of another associate director, Lou was placed in charge of his case.

  Although McHugh adhered to the letter of his monitoring contract, he regarded the whole business as something of a joke. Lou could not help but enjoy the man’s spirit, intelligence, and panache, even though he never had much trust in the strength of McHugh’s recovery—too much ego and way too few AA meetings. Still, McHugh, a sportsman and pilot with his own pressurized Cessna, had always been irrepressible, and Lou looked forward to their required monthly progress meetings, as well as any other chance they had to get together.

  “Am I on speakerphone?” McHugh barked.

  “I was just finishing a meeting with Lou Welcome,” Filstrup said, as if the appointment had been on his calendar for weeks.