True Believer

by Carr, Jack

  “Rich, this is my buddy Freddy Strain. We go back a long way.”

  “How’s it, Freddy?” Reece could sense the reservation in Hastings’s voice.

  “Pleasure to meet you, Mr. Hastings. I know your nephew. He’s a good man.”

  “Rich, don’t hold it against Freddy that I have to go. He’s just the messenger.”

  “Mr. Hastings, is that a Westley Richards droplock?” Freddy motioned toward Rich’s rifle nearby.

  Reece grinned.

  “You know your guns, Freddy. Please call me Rich.”

  Hastings walked toward the rifle and broke open the action, slipping the panatela-sized cartridges into his hip pocket. He offered the gun to Freddy, who set down his drink and wiped his hands on his pants to ensure that they were dry. He took the rifle as if it were the queen’s scepter, eyes wide.

  To the casual observer, the rifle looked a lot like a double-barrel shotgun; it was, in fact, a massive rifle with juxtaposed bores larger than a half inch in diameter. Often referred to as an “elephant gun,” its 750-grain bullets would stop a charging Tyrannosaurus. This particular model was crafted by one of the gun trade’s most prestigious makers in Birmingham, England, during what is widely regarded as the golden age of gunmaking. A new one would run the buyer about as much as a Range Rover, and even one with this many miles on it would fetch a workingman’s annual salary at auction.

  “Five Seventy-Seven, wow. Westley hasn’t made a hundred of these,” Freddy said as much to himself as those around him.

  “That one is number twenty-five,” Hastings proclaimed with pride.

  “That would make it between the wars, would it not?”

  “Indeed it would, lad. This rifle belonged to my father and his father before him.”

  Even Hastings couldn’t help but smile now. He looked on as his new guest slowly turned the gun to admire the exquisite rose and scroll engraving, the swirling grays, blues, and purples of the faded case-colored frame, and the rich marbling of the reddish walnut stock. Though the gun was close to one hundred years old and had been carried for countless miles in the bush, it was in surprisingly good condition. Every ding in the stock, every tiny scratch in the metal told a story. The most prominent sign of wear on the gun came near the twin muzzles of the thick barrels, where the deep blued finish was worn silver like the pale skin under a man’s wristwatch. Rich had carried the rifle over his shoulder with his right hand gripping the barrels in the “African style.” Over the decades, the sweat and friction from Hastings’s hand had worn completely through the finish.

  “Why is it called a ‘droplock’?” Reece asked, baiting Freddy into showing his encyclopedic knowledge of firearms.

  “May I?” Freddy looked at Hastings with hesitation.

  “Please do.”

  Strain snapped the barrels shut, turned over the rifle, and removed the checkered walnut forend. He lifted a hinged plate on the bottom side of the rifle’s action and removed a jeweled metal part.

  “This is one of the locks.” Freddy held the Victorian-looking steel object in his palm. “These guns were designed to be used in places like this where there were no gunsmiths to be found for hundreds of miles and where sending the rifle back to England meant weeks of sea travel. The best of them came with a spare set of locks that the hunter could carry in his gear and replace in the field if something broke. As you can see, these locks drop right out of the bottom of the action, hence ‘the droplock,’ ” Freddy concluded, winning Rich over with his knowledge and enthusiasm for the classic rifle.

  Throughout dinner, Rich captivated Strain with war stories from the Rhodesia days. Reece couldn’t recall an instance when Freddy had stayed quiet for so long. As they finished the feast of Cape buffalo filet and fresh vegetables, Rich took a more serious tone.

  “I won’t pretend that I don’t know who you two blokes will be working for, but let me explain my reservations. When our prime minister agreed to end the Bush War and turn the country over to majority rule, a man named Abel Muzorewa was elected prime minister and led the interim government. He was a good man, a bishop of all things. The war didn’t stop, though, because the bloody communists didn’t control Parliament. Those pulling the strings in Washington and London felt that the new government was too cozy with the European settlers, so they sent in the CIA to disrupt things. We caught them red-handed, meddling in our constitutional process, and we rounded up the entire ring. In exchange for their agents’ return, the U.S. government agreed to drop their sanctions and recognize the interim government. Like fools, we took the deal and Carter and his people stabbed us in the back, pretending it never happened. Now, I don’t blame the CIA men. They were following orders. They were tools, though, pawns of a government that would break any agreement to get what they wanted. The CIA actually had the gall to try to recruit me to bury weapons caches and mark coordinates for possible runways, DZs and LZs, ah, but that’s a story for another day. Don’t forget what I told you, boys. You are good blokes. Be wary of politicians meddling in the affairs of other nations, ordering young men like you to their deaths in exchange for reelection.”

  After an uncomfortable pause, Louie made a toast to Reece, which broke the tension and effectively ended the dinner. It was time to say good-bye to the camp staff—the trackers, the cooks, the skinners, the maids—the people whom Reece had grown to know like family over the past four months. They stood single file in the main lodge, with hats in hand as a sign of respect. One by one, they approached Reece and either hugged him or shook his hand. Reece had a gift for each of them: a headlamp, a knife, a pair of boots that looked as though they might fit. He gave away virtually all his possessions. These seemingly ordinary items were treated as treasures by the staff. Finally, the procession thinned out, leaving only Gona and Solomon. Gona, a man of few words, said nothing lest the tears that filled his eyes spill down his cheeks.

  “Sara mushe, Gona,” said Reece.

  Gona merely nodded in response, gripping Reece’s hand tightly before half-hugging him and turning quickly away.

  Solomon stood alone in his olive coveralls, looking none the worse for wear despite having been recently on the brink of death.

  “You saved my life, Mr. James. I cannot thank you . . .”

  “You’ve been a great friend, Solomon. That’s thanks enough. Take care of yourself, and take care of Gona, too. I’ll come back one day.”

  That brought a wide smile to Solomon’s face. He pulled an object from his pocket that looked like black wire wrapped in a small circle and handed it to Reece, who recognized it as a traditional elephant-hair bracelet, woven from the thick hair of the tail with four rectangular knots spaced equally around the circumference.

  “This is from the cow, Mr. James, where I was shot. I hope that she brings you luck.”

  Now it was Reece’s turn to choke up, knowing that Solomon had walked miles to the site of his own near-death shooting to recover the slain animal’s tail and weave it into a bracelet for the man who saved his life.

  Reece spent one final night in his open hooch, listening to the sounds of the hippos and elephants in the river below, a lion roaring somewhere to the west. He slept little, his thoughts racing to process the news that he wasn’t dying after all. Are they really going to pardon me? Pardon my friends? Is this a trap? How could Mo be working for ISIS?

  His last thought as he finally drifted off to sleep was of an explosives-laden drone settling onto the roof of an SUV in Baghdad.

  • • •

  At dawn, a Pilatus landed on the strip where Reece had first arrived many weeks ago. Reece caught a look at the pilot through the Plexiglas window, secretly hoping to see his friend Liz Riley. Unless she’d grown a beard, it wasn’t her. The two passengers disembarked: a junior case officer from the Tanzanian embassy and an interpreter to drive Strain’s Defender 110 back to Dar es Salaam. Strain shook Rich Hastings’s hand and climbed aboard the idling aircraft, leaving Reece and Hastings to say their good-byes. />
  “I can’t thank you enough for all that you’ve done for me, Rich.”

  “You would have done the same for me, James. Family looks after one another.”

  “Here, take this, you never know when you may need it.” Hastings handed Reece a small sheath knife, its handle made from smooth ebony.

  Reece pulled the blade from the leather scabbard and saw a stylized osprey engraved on the side, perched on a rocker that read Pamwe Chete, the motto of the famed Selous Scouts, meaning all together.

  “I can’t accept this, Rich.”

  “My fight is over, James. Yours has just begun. Take it and be well.”

  Reece reached into his bag and brought out his Winkler-Sayoc tomahawk, handing it to the man he now saw as family.

  “Thank you. Thank you for showing me how to live again.”

  Before the older man could protest, Reece turned and boarded the plane.

  As they lifted off, he saw Hastings standing beside his white Land Cruiser, watching yet another son depart Old Africa.

  PART TWO

  TRANSFORMATIONS

  CHAPTER 33

  South of XXXXXXXXXXX

  July

  THE FLIGHT TO XXXXXXX was uneventful. A bird from a covered air program run by the Agency delivered them to XXXXXXXX. Reece remained quiet most of the trip, reflecting on his last few months in the bush and processing the news that Freddy had brought him from halfway around the world. I am going to live. That meant he had to live with the pain, the pain of losing his wife, daughter, and unborn son. He also had to make peace with the fact that he was going to work for the same government that had tried to destroy him. He was being given a second chance—just one last mission and he was free. Free to do what? That was a question he needed some time to work out. Reece had been prepared for death for so long, ready to join his wife and daughter, had he forgotten how to live?

  “Nice truck,” Reece commented, gesturing toward the beige Toyota Hilux waiting on the tarmac.

  “I know. These things are great. Too bad you can’t get them in the States. You don’t still have that old Land Cruiser, do you?”

  “Ha! Well, I did until a few months ago. Had I known I wasn’t dying, I might have stashed her away for a rainy day.” Reece smiled, climbing into the passenger seat as Freddy put the truck in gear and began to weave his way toward the exit.

  Reece had first met Freddy Strain when they were both enlisted SEALs just prior to 9/11. Fred had enlisted a year after Reece. He had a reputation as a smart guy and a capable operator. They were in the same sniper school class and were assigned as shooting partners, which meant they were more or less married for the duration of the school.

  “What are we listening to? Is this Waylon Jennings?” Reece asked as a pseudo-psychedelic country rock melody floated into the air.

  “This is Sturgill Simpson, man. Great sound. Reminds me of the country my dad would play back in the seventies.”

  Freddy had grown up in Stuart, Florida, which is just south of Fort Pierce, where the original Navy frogmen were trained during World War II. When Freddy should have been studying, he was fishing and diving off the nearby Atlantic coast or swatting mosquitoes while working on old cars in his family’s garage. He came from a blue-collar family in a very white-collar town and had a bit of a chip on his shoulder when it came to others’ expectations of him. He was an avid reader and scored highly on all the aptitude tests, but he just couldn’t make himself care about high school. Other than a few history courses that piqued his interest, the only A’s on his report cards came from the multiple shop classes that he took each semester.

  On Veterans Day of his senior year, his dad took him to the annual muster at the UDT/SEAL Museum in Fort Pierce; the site of the old training grounds. Freddy watched in awe as active-duty SEALs performed live demonstrations of raids and ambushes complete with blank-firing machine guns and demolitions, scaled the sides of the museum building without ropes, and parachuted onto the museum grounds from aircraft circling high above. The following Monday, he was in the recruiting office signing delayed enlistment papers.

  Freddy was living proof that not all stereotypes are true. In the Hollywood version, the sniper is always a quiet loner who lives for the solitude of the stalk. Freddy Strain was the opposite; he basically never stopped talking unless silence was absolutely necessary. Even then, Reece was sure he was thinking about what to say next. Freddy made up for not studying in high school by reading about subjects that interested him. He could talk about anything: arcane historical information, Keynesian economics, Nietzschean philosophy, his family, or the ignition timing of a 1956 Ford, but he especially loved to talk about guns. While Reece believed guns were tools of the trade and that armorers and gunsmiths existed for a reason, Freddy was obsessed with every single moving part. He constantly debated the best weapon, best optic, best bullet, and made modifications to nearly every piece of equipment he carried. His teammates used to joke that, if anyone ever broke into Freddy’s house, they’d get away before he decided which gun to use on them. His biggest concern was always having the perfect setup for any contingency. When the operators at his most recent command went for beers after work, Freddy would be in the armory tweaking his weapons.

  “Reece, you missed some of the latest SEAL drama while you were away.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Remember that fucker Martell?”

  “Oh yeah. What an asshole! Elitist snob, if I remember correctly.”

  “Yep. Total hypocrite. Turns out that as commanding officer of the training center, just as we are about to welcome our first BUD/S class with females, he gets caught sending pictures of his crank to female subordinate sailors in his chain of command. Turns out he was a total perv the whole time he’s playing the ‘holier than thou’ role as CO. Unbelievable. Some reporter got wind of it and started asking questions, but the Navy used the ‘ongoing investigation’ garbage to conceal it while Martell quickly and quietly retired.”

  “The ol’ dick pic. Always a hit with the ladies. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.”

  “Agreed. Wonder how having women come through the program is going to change things? I mean, you want your daughter to have all the opportunities that men have and feel like they can do anything they . . .” Freddy’s voice trailed off. “I’m sorry, Reece. I didn’t mean ‘your daughter.’ I just meant in general. Sorry, buddy.”

  “That’s okay,” Reece responded, attempting to hide the hurt in his eyes. “I’ll never get over losing them. Now that I’m not dying, I guess I just keep moving forward. I thought I was done, buddy. My grave was already dug. Not sure if that makes it easier or harder to live with what I did.”

  “Well, you certainly improved on the old ‘before embarking on a journey of revenge, dig two graves, one for yourself’ proverb,” Freddy said smiling, trying to lighten the mood. “I think you did a bit more digging than the original author had in mind.”

  “They had it coming.”

  “Don’t we all?” Freddy asked, suddenly serious again.

  Seeing the conversation as an opening into his friend’s well-being, Freddy ventured, “Think you can move on without Lauren?”

  Reece paused, unsure not only of how to respond to his old sniper school buddy but also of how he actually felt.

  “I don’t know, brother. Seems almost sacrilegious to even talk about it. Lauren and Lucy were my life. I felt this devotion to country that kept me in the Teams. It’s funny, had the war not happened I probably would have gotten out long ago, and Lauren and Lucy would still be alive.”

  “You’re out now.”

  “Yeah, I keep forgetting. Seems like I’m back on the USG leash,” Reece said, using the abbreviation for United States government.

  “True. Almost like the old days.” Freddy grinned.

  “You want to tell me where we’re going?”

  “Not much longer now. I’ve only been here once before. It’s a former black site where we used to b
ring suspected terrorists when we wanted another country to do our dirty work for us. Part of the extraordinary rendition program started after 9/11.”

  “I remember,” Reece affirmed. “Fairly effective from what I can recall, that is until the media and the enemy figured it out.”

  “Exactly. Just finding out we had black sites was a big PR win for them. Kind of like the very existence of Guantanamo. I’m not sure how we measure the ROI, but the law of diminishing returns would indicate that at some point the enemy got more out of those from a recruitment and world sentiment standpoint than the value of the actual intel we got from using them.”

  “Such a tough call, and another reason we have civilian control of the military,” said Reece.

  “Yeah, on a certain level it almost condoned certain behaviors that we ended up having a lot of trouble with at my former command and in the military in general: desecrating bodies, tactical interrogations that went too far.” Freddy paused. “It was interesting, though, Reece. Everyone who came from working with you always was a bit more thoughtful about it. They said you talked about the importance of maintaining the moral high ground to differentiate us from our enemies. I don’t think they got that from many others.”

  Reece shook his head. “I threw that right out the window when they killed my family.”

  “No, you didn’t, Reece. Never think that. You just went to war. Plain and simple. They killed Lauren and Lucy. They killed your entire troop. Tried to kill you. You held them accountable. Just because you broke a few laws doesn’t mean you lost the moral high ground. You always held that territory.”

  “Thanks, Freddy,” Reece said, looking out at the desolate yet beautiful desert scenery.