Learning to Stand

by Claudia Hall Christian

  “You should play with Patrick,” John said. “He’s unbelievable. He makes Alex look like...”

  “Forty years his junior,” Raz said. “Can you imagine what she’s going to be like when she’s his age?”

  “Nothing would make me happier than to play cards with Alexandra when she’s seventy,” John said.

  “Ahhhh,” James said. “Johnny fancies the wife.”

  “He hopes Alex lives that long,” Cian said.

  The men fell silent at the thought.

  “Cards?” Raz asked.

  “Two,” James said.

  The front door smashed open. Two men, carrying machine guns, rushed into the carriage house. Acting surprised, James and John jumped to their feet. In the noise, Raz cocked the handgun hidden in his right arm sling.

  “Get down!” The men screamed. “Get the fuck down!”

  “Really, that’s not necessary.” John accentuated his London accent. “I have cash. Do you require the cards as well?”

  He extended his wallet in the men’s direction. White Boy and Cian crept up behind them. One man turned to engage White Boy.

  Cian smashed the Hurley in the back of the other man. Moving at the same time, John and James punched the man’s face. The man dropped unconscious to the ground.

  “Hold him still,” Cian yelled to White Boy.

  White Boy grabbed the attacker’s arms and Cian bashed the man with his Hurley. One last punch from White Boy and the second man was down.

  White Boy and Cian dragged the men into the sitting area’s walk-in closet. White Boy closed and locked the door. White Boy plopped down next to John on the couch.

  “Whose cards are these?” White Boy asked.

  “Move over,” Cian said. White Boy made room for John and Cian on the couch.

  “Mine,” John said. He took another hand of cards from Raz.

  “These cards are mine now,” White Boy said.

  “Your hand’s bleeding.” James pointed to John’s hand.

  “Bloody hell!” John looked at his bleeding right knuckle. “I’m a God damn surgeon. My hands are my life. I’ll lose everything if I injure my hands. Fuck. I know people who won’t even ride bicycles for fear of injuring their hands.”

  “You probably caught his tooth,” Raz said. He pointed to his incisor.

  “There’s no residency for punching people.” John grumbled.

  “Surgeons are such pussies,” White Boy said under his breath.

  “Watch it! That pussy is my brother,” Cian and James said at the same time. They laughed.

  “Two in the back,” Vince yelled. “One upstairs.”

  “Oh crap,” Larry yelled.

  They heard wrestling upstairs when two men burst through the back of the carriage house. The men rushed past Matthew and Vince and into the sitting area.

  “Get the fuck down,” the man screamed.

  “We’re making weather here,” James said.

  “I don’t give a fuck what you’re doing. Get down.”

  “It means we’re hard at work,” John said.

  “I was about to call,” James said. “Call.”

  “Get the fuck down.” The second man pushed the muzzle of a machine gun in James’s face.

  Making an exasperated gesture, James grabbed the muzzle of the machine gun and flipped the man over the couch. White Boy turned in his seat to punch the man to the ground. The man rose to sitting to fight with White Boy.

  The other man rushed forward and was tripped by Cian. As he was falling, Raz rose up slightly then punched him in the face. Even with a left handed punch, the man was out. He fell into John’s lap. John lifted his cards over the man’s head.

  “No blood.” Raz showed John his left hand.

  “You’ve had a bit more practice than I have.” John nodded.

  “Talent,” Raz said. “I prefer to think of it as talent.”

  “You would, wouldn’t you?” John replied.

  “I could use some help here,” White Boy said.

  Cian tossed his Hurley to Vince. Vince bashed White Boy’s challenger over the head.

  “Thanks.”

  White Boy turned around to sit on the couch again. He wiped the blood from his cards with his T-shirt.

  “Full house,” John said.

  Matthew looked over the couch to John’s cards.

  “Four of a kind,” James said. “Aces.”

  “Read them and weep,” White Boy said. He unveiled a straight flush. “I always wanted to say that.”

  “They were my cards,” John said.

  “Yeah, but you won’t tell Alex will you? I’ve never won at cards.”

  John shook his head. Their heads turned to look at the ceiling as scuffling continued upstairs.

  “You guys all right?” Matthew yelled up the stairs.

  “Ha ha!” Helene laughed and hooted. “Got him!”

  “Raz?” James asked.

  “Flush,” Raz said.

  They passed the cards to James and he began shuffling.

  “Hey, I was going to ask you, James Bond,” White Boy said. “How does the ‘license to kill’ thing work? Is it like a hunting license with a bag limit? Or more like a driver’s license? Do you actually get a laminated ‘license to kill’ card like our IDs?”

  James raised a single eyebrow to White Boy’s flood of questions. The entire line of questioning was based in Ian Fleming’s imaginary James Bond.

  “I assure you, I live in accordance to Her Majesty’s laws,” James sniffed.

  Cian and John raised their eyebrows at James.

  “What’s a bag limit?” James asked.

  The men laughed.

  “Would you mind…?” John pointed to the man in his lap.

  “Sorry,” White Boy said. “I forgot.”

  White Boy dragged the man from John’s lap to the closet. Vince followed White Boy with the other unconscious man.

  “How are you feeling?” Vince asked Matthew.

  “All right,” Matthew said. “I need to sit down.”

  Cian and James moved over to give Matthew a tight spot on the couch.

  “You will never ever believe what happened!” Larry trotted down the steps followed by Helene. “Helene knocked this guy out with her feet! They came through the upstairs window. We pushed one guy back out the window. He landed on the ground. BLAM! He hit his head.

  “Then the other guy? I was fighting him. Man, he was really big and so strong. Helene grabbed the door jam and whapped the guy with her feet. John, what happened to your hand?”

  “I’m told I caught someone’s tooth,” John said.

  “It’s bleeding,” Larry said. “You should clean it or it will...”

  The front and back door burst open. The man at the front door cocked his machine gun and pulled the trigger. Raz shot him dead with the handgun in his arm sling. Everyone ducked to avoid the spray of machine gunfire as the man fell to the ground.

  The man at the back door turned and ran.

  “Get him,” Matthew said.

  “Me?” Larry asked. “Why me?”

  Helene ran after the man at the back door. Surprised, Larry stood for a moment.

  “Get your girl!” Cian, James and John said.

  Larry raced out the back. He tackled the man in a snow drift on the lawn.

  “Who’s that?” Colin appeared from the house.

  “Bad guy,” Larry said. The man wrestled out of Larry’s grip.

  Before the man could stand, Colin caught him in the chest with a solid back kick. The man skid backwards to Helene’s feet. Helene stomped on the man’s face breaking his nose. The man screamed with pain. Larry jumped on the man to hold him down. Colin put his foot over the man’s windpipe until the man passed out.

  “Let me guess,” Colin said.

  They turned to see a Black Hawk helicopter fly overhead.

  “While I was waiting for the doctor to appear for a baby check up, bored out of my fucking mind I might add, you guys were havin
g fun,” Colin said. “God damn it! I always miss the fun stuff.”

  Alex ran through the back gate to the carriage house. One at a time, the men followed Alex to the carriage house. With her handgun out, Alex took a breath for courage at the back door. She whispered a prayer that everyone was alive. Creeping through the carriage house, she entered the sitting area. Troy and Trece followed Alex until they stood in the sitting area watching James, Cian, John, Raz, Matthew and White Boy finished another hand of poker.

  “Hello, love,” John said. “Fold.”

  He stood from the couch to kiss Alex.

  “What did you do to your hand?” she asked.

  “My hand? Huh,” he said. “I hadn’t noticed.”

  “Cut yourself shaving did you?” Trece asked.

  “Shaving?”

  “Yeah. You cut yourself shaving your hairy palms.”

  The men snickered.

  “My what?” John asked. “What is he talking about?”

  “I’ll explain later,” Alex said.

  “I won a hand!” Everyone looked at White Boy. “Can you believe…?”

  Joseph and Denver SWAT exploded through the front door. Ten armed SWAT team officers streamed through the front door of the carriage house. The men stared at the SWAT team.

  “Can you believe it?!” White Boy continued. “I won a hand. You can ask these guys. I had a straight flush!”

  Alex rubbed her mouth to keep from laughing.

  F

  CHAPTER FORTY-One

  Two and a half hours later

  Tuesday evening

  April 1 – 8:45 P.M. MDT

  Denver, CO

  “We’re almost there,” Joseph stuck his head in the carriage house small dining room. “Fifteen minutes.”

  “Thanks,” Alex said.

  Alex spent an hour with the Denver Police. When Joseph took over, she retreated to the small bedroom on the first floor of the carriage house to work with the Fey Special Forces Team journals. The men were busy cleaning up, repairing the doors, and installing state of the art security in the carriage house. Alex could devote her undivided attention to the Fey journals.

  Family members dropped the remaining journals by the house around dinner time. The journals had arrived from Buckley by secure transport an hour ago. Attempting to create order out of chaos, Alex sorted the journals into stacks. She ordered them chronologically leaving the most recent journal on top.

  There were five tall stacks of their communications officer Tommy’s journals. Tommy always had so much to say. As if she was patting Tommy’s back, her hands lovingly patted his journals. There were four or five journals in Dwight’s stack. As a weapons officer, his journals consisted of lists of weapons. Remembering Mrs. Harris’s assertion, Alex smiled. Dwight would never have written even one detail about his liaisons. Never.

  Nathan’s son had dropped off one journal. He said his father didn’t like to write things down. Also a communications officer, Nathan was the opposite of Tommy. She flipped through the pages and smiled. To Nathan, words were powerful and should be used sparingly. Paul’s engineering precision led to only a few concise journals. She held the tiny precise script close to her eyes.

  Jax’s journals were filled with the team’s health data. She had three stacks of his journals. Dean, their other medic, also had three stacks of journals. Doing a quick count, Alex realized they had an equal number of journals. She wondered if they kept the same information. Or…

  Who knows? She rubbed her heart where her loss lingered.

  Joseph had about as many journals as Tommy. His journals were clean and fastidious. Typical Joseph.

  She didn’t have any of Mike’s journals. After letting his kids pick one item, his wife threw all of his belongings away. The kids were tossed out about six months later. Mike’s oldest son, MJ, supported his brother and sister on his salary as a Special Forces medic. She remembered Mike having journals. But, like her funny, mercurial friend, they were lost forever.

  Scott and Jesse had about the same number of journals. Four stacks. She wondered what Scott the engineer, kept in his journals. Jesse’s were filled with drawings and comments about the churches they visited. Jesse loved old churches. Every trip, they visited at least one church. Alex fanned Jesse’s journals in front of her. She felt a familiar warmth and safety brought by her best-friend.

  Charlie’s journal sat on top of the desk next to her own last journal. Going from stack to stack, she pulled the last journals from each of the stacks. She set the journals out in a row on the table. She counted eleven journals. She set Charlene’s fake journals above the eleven true journals.

  Alex folded her arms across her chest. She was looking at the last words of the Fey Special Forces Team.

  “Yes,” she said to the knock at the door.

  The door opened to show a small round faced woman. If she wasn’t wearing in a full dress Marine uniform, Alex would have thought she was twelve years old. The woman’s eyes went wide with surprise and she popped to a salute.

  “Who are you?” Alex asked.

  “Private First Class Margaret Peaches reporting for duty, sir. I mean ma’am. I mean Fey. I mean...”

  “At ease Private,” Alex said. “Why are you here?”

  “I’m a translator, ma’am. I’m a member of the Navajo nation. My grandfather was a code talker in World War II, ma’am. The Peaches have always been Marines. We’re always ready to be of service,” Private Peaches spoke in a rush of anxious words. “I’m here to fulfill a request by Major Joseph Walter. High priority clearance ma’am. I flew to Denver from the sand.”

  “I’m sure you’re exhausted,” Alex said.

  “I’m here to serve, sir. If you show me where I can start, I’ll begin at once.”

  “Private Peaches, we are about to have dinner and a little party,” Alex said. “If you’d like to look over these books, you may start. But I will encourage you to join us for dinner.”

  “Yes ma’am. I worked on your books last fall,” Private Peaches said. “I’m here to work, ma’am. I...”

  “Ok,” Alex said. “First, you need to call me sir.”

  “Oh. Oh. Oh. I’m sorry. I remember that from last fall, but... Oh crap!”

  Alex smiled.

  “Why don’t you start with these two books?” Alex asked. “We know they are fakes. We ran them through every test. We haven’t found anything – electronic, microbot, gadgets, even biological weapon. Just this nonsensical prose. Most of the families threw the books away. Maybe your fresh set of eyes can reveal their mysteries.”

  “Yes sir,” Private Peaches said. “I won’t let you down, sir.”

  “I’ll come to get you when I’m done,” Alex said.

  “For?”

  “Dinner.”

  “I’m here to work. My Sergeant told me I needed to work hard and not let you down. And I don’t intend to ever let you down, sir.”

  “Then come to dinner,” Alex said. “Do you need additional translators?”

  “No, sir,” Private Peaches said. “I can do this. I want to do this.”

  Alex smiled at the eager girl.

  “We’re ready,” Joseph said.

  “Major Walter, this is Private First Class Margaret Peaches,” Alex said.

  Joseph nodded his welcome.

  “She’s going to take a look at the fakes,” Alex said.

  “Great,” Joseph said. “We’ll return in thirty minutes. Join us for dinner.”

  “Sir, I intend to work hard for Lieutenant Colonel Hargreaves, sir.”

  “Then come to dinner,” Joseph said. “We’ll be back.”

  The Marine was sitting down at the table when Alex and Joseph left the room. Walking down the hall, Joseph took her hand. She turned to hug him.

  “So hard to move on,” he whispered.

  Pressing her face into his shoulder, she began to cry.

  “I miss them so much,” she said.

  “We don’t have to...”


  “It’s time,” she said. “The boys would want us to form a new team.”

  “Charlie would scream at us for waiting so long.”

  Alex shifted back to look at Joseph’s tear drenched face. Their eyes held.

  “New team, new era.” As if to dismiss them, she swatted at her tears. “We must be brave.”

  Joseph clasped her to him. They stood together for a moment. Pulling tissue from her pocket, Alex offered Joseph one then used another for her own tears.

  “You’re prepared.”

  “Girl Scout,” she laughed.

  “You were never a Girl Scout.”

  “Boy Scout?”

  Shaking his head, Joseph held his hand out to her. They walked hand in hand through the carriage house to the main rooming house. The men were waiting for them in the dining room. Joseph held the door for Alex. They hugged one last time for strength.

  Alex’s Sergeant waited for them in the kitchen. Joseph took the contracts from him. One last look at Alex, and Joseph entered the dining room. Alex stood in the doorway to watch.

  “In my hand are your contracts to join the new Fey Team.”

  FFFFFF

  Three hours later

  Wednesday early-morning

  April 2, 2009 – 12:15 A.M. MDT

  Denver, CO

  Alex wandered outside to let Maggie out. Signing the contracts led to a boisterous dinner which continued through the bars on Colfax. The rowdy team members arrived at the rooming house with a bevy of rowdy women. Trece and White Boy were entertaining five college girls in the newly purchased hot tub. Troy and a curvy brunette were doing some version of dirty dancing on the deck. Sharing a lounger, Sami and Raz cuddled under a fleece blanket near the chimenea.

  After Maggie finished her business, Alex picked her up and went inside. Vince and Emily were playing cards across the dining room table with Joseph and Nancy. Cian, Max, Private First Class Margaret Peaches, Eoin and his red haired girlfriend were laughing and arguing in the den. She checked on Larry and Helene, who were watching the children in the basement.

  Only Matthew and Erin had made an early night of it. Well, and Alex. After receiving solemn promises to keep the noise down, she gave Maggie to Max and retreated to her bedroom.