She jumped up and raided the refrigerator for something to cook, setting out a carton of eggs, some sausages, and a pack of tortillas. Ortiz noticed she was dressed out in a dark green professional-looking pants suit with a white blouse and heels. Her dark hair was down and brushed to a luster. She looked beautiful.
“How did it go?” she asked him, making conversation when it appeared he wouldn’t.
“We got the target we wanted. Waiting to see what he says.”
She turned on a burner and fished out a skillet from the drawer below. Coffee in the electric pot was still fresh from this morning. She flipped the ON switch to reheat it.
“And the new guy?” she inquired, still making conversation. “What’s his name?”
“Chase. He’s getting there.”
“He’s lucky to have you. We should have him for dinner sometime, like Rip did for you.”
Ricky finally got around to asking why she came home all dressed up once she gave up trying to divert him. “Where were you?”
She hesitated. She looked at him and turned back to the stove. “I was working, Ricky.”
“Did you fill in somewhere?” he probed. “Like a temp or something?”
She took another moment at the range before she turned to face him. “Mi amor, listen. The drug company I used to work for? Before Anabel? They had a sales opening … If I work part-time nights and weekends, it might be enough.”
What she was telling him was that her man didn’t earn enough to take care of his family. What kind of man did that make him?
“Nights and weekends,” he repeated numbly “But—the kids? They need you here.”
What he also meant was that he needed her at home, wanted her here. Ricky Jr. buzzed in from school in time to overhear the last exchange between his parents. He grabbed a chocolate chip cookie from the pantry
“I’m eleven, Dad,” he said between munches. “I can take care of myself.”
“Besides,” Jackie said to his dad, resuming their conversation, “if we need help with the kids, we can ask my mom.”
Ricky made a face. “Your mom? Here? Kill me first. Look, guapa linda. That contracting job with GSS? Once we get Rip, I’ll take it. Everything will work out.”
“Ricky, you’re in dreamland,” Jackie scolded. “We need the deposit for Anabel now. If we want this for her—then this is how it’s going to be.”
On that note, she returned to banging at the stove. Ricky wasn’t willing to let it go.
“You have any idea what your daughter was doing while you were gone?” he asked accusingly, rhetorically, since he was about to tell her. “She was with a boy. In her room. With the door locked.”
“Let’s talk about this later,” she said, nonplussed. She plucked the cookie from R.J.’s hand. “Go brush your teeth.”
“No!” Ortiz flared at her. “We’ll talk about it—!”
He started to his feet in order to engage properly. His knee buckled and he collapsed in pain. Jackie’s demeanor changed instantly from the combative Spanish esposa to the concerned caregiver. She rushed to his side.
“What is it, baby? Is it your knee? Let me see it.”
She carefully rolled Ricky’s trouser leg up to above his knee. R.J. bent over her shoulder to watch.
“Whoa!” the boy exclaimed when he saw his dad’s reddened and swollen knee.
“Can you bend it?” Jackie asked.
“Not really.”
“And it feels hot, feverish,” she noticed.
He grinned deprecatingly and waved a hand at the thawed bag of English peas that had fallen from his trousers onto the floor. “Ran out of frozen peas.”
Jackie straightened, concerned. She called out, “Anabel!”
Anabel, still angry with her dad, had come straight home from school and holed up in her bedroom. “What?”
“Get the key to the van. Your dad needs to go to the hospital.”
Anabel rushed to the kitchen. She took a look at her father’s injuries, but refused to look directly at him.
“What happened?” she asked, melting.
“Nothing,” Ortiz said. “Nothing’s happened. Jackie, you’re overreacting—”
“Can I drive?” Anabel asked eagerly.
“I’m driving,” Jackie said. She tugged Ricky to his feet against his resistance. “R.J., you stay here.”
“No way. I’m coming too.”
This had become a family affair. The house was going bedlam. Jackie and the children escorted the reluctant patient to the front door, pushing and pulling him and chattering with excitement.
“Guys—” Ortiz protested.
“The ER at Sandhill—” Jackie decided.
Ricky refused to go any further. He lodged himself in the doorway. “Whoa! Stop! Stop! Listen to me. I can go to the base clinic tomorrow. They’ll give me a cortisone shot. It’s all I need, okay? Now, can we all just … just go back inside and spend a little time together? As a family?”
Anabel and R.J. paused to wait on their mother’s reaction. She put her foot down. “Ricky! Go get in the car.”
“Shotgun!” R.J. shouted and dashed for the driveway. Jackie and Anabel followed, not looking back.
Ortiz felt as foolish as a balking mule in the middle of a barn door. Jefe? Damned right he was the boss—when Jackie told him he could be. Madre mia! He gave in and limped after the rest of the family.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Dubai
Wait, Emir Hatim al-Muttaqi had instructed Michael Nasry. He would get his chance to revenge the death of his brother, but first came the next phase. The American SEAL could wait until after that.
Bitter men like Michael Nasry existed and thrived on visceral hatred. For them, radical Islam served as a tool by which to vent their malevolence upon the world. Islamic terrorism demanded little of a practitioner other than that he kill and destroy and be willing to die for Allah. The Quran provided all the instructions a soldier of Allah required.
Killing unbelievers is a small matter to me.
Fight everyone in the way of Allah and kill those who disbelieve Allah.
I will cast horror onto those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads.
I have been made victorious with terror.
And if a soldier gave his life in the service of Allah, didn’t the Quran also promise that on that day he would be in Paradise?
Tension mounted in the adjoining hotel suites Nasry, Akmal Barayev, and their entourage of six young men and women recruiters occupied in Dubai as they waited expectantly for the next phase of the mission to commence. Everything had turned quiet as the clock ticked down. There was little talking. Computer keys stopped clacking. A couple of the techs paced restlessly. The two young women sat on a bed clasping hands. Barayev and the elder recruiter, an Arab of about thirty, stood at the skyscraper’s window and gazed off in the direction of the waterfront and the magnificent futuristic edifice known as Madinet Jumeirah, center of the Dubai International Film Festival, which was currently under way. Thousands of cinema-goers, actors, directors, producers, writers, and industry experts were gathering to celebrate the world’s best films.
Among the waiting group, only Michael seemed preoccupied with anything other than the festival. Today, it wasn’t the old-school video game and its colorful cartoon character with his big ax and his even bigger head that commanded Michael’s attention. He left his avatar frozen on the wall-mounted computer screen. He even ignored the hotel TV in the corner as an Arab moderator presented live feed from the film festival … Last year DIFF was included in Condé Nast Traveler magazine’s list of the world’s top fifteen film festivals …
Soon, very soon now, the moderator would be permanently hushed.
Michael’s obsession focused on his laptop and a saved clip from a previous news flash. The image on the screen showed a sharp-faced man in an American navy uniform, his chest decorated with medals and ribbons. A voice-over in English narrated: Richard Taggart has been identifie
d as a highly decorated former member of SEAL Team Six, the elite American special operations team. Taggart had done more than seven combat tours before he left the military last year, and is reported to have been working as a private contractor when he and a larger group were abducted in Southern Nigeria. No one has claimed responsibility for the attack, although government sources are speculating the involvement of Boko Haram. Mr. Taggart’s condition and whereabouts are currently unknown …
Michael stopped the recording, rewound the clip, and played it again while he sat on his bed with his fully packed bag next to him ready to go. Playing the clip over and over had built up a burning rage deep in his core.
From across the room at the windows looking out, the Chechen Barayev turned to Michael and lifted a questioning brow. Michael checked his watch and nodded. He switched his laptop to a local news outlet and dialed a number on his cell.
“Everybody in place?” he asked. He nodded approval at the response. “Make it happen.”
Moments later, the two girls sitting on the bed in the adjoining suite screamed involuntarily and the computer geeks and recruiters at the windows gasped as a tremendous explosion consumed the distant DIFF tower. What sounded like a clap of thunder, only much louder, rattled and broke windows all over the city. The Arab moderator on the hotel TV reporting live from the scene shrieked in horror just before the screen went blank. The station immediately cut away and back to the newsroom. Michael muted the volume with his remote and dialed a number on his cell.
“The film festival is no longer festive,” he reported.
The voice of Emir al-Muttaqi replied through Michael’s headset. “An object lesson that we never again pollute ourselves with this Western garbage. Allahu Akbar!”
“Allahu Akbar!” Michael dutifully echoed.
In a window on his laptop, the Dubai Film Festival Twitter feed went crazy with Tweets about the attack. Michael closed the laptop and calmly stood up.
“I’m going to get the SEAL,” he informed al-Muttaqi through his headphone.
“Not without approval,” the Emir shot back, sounding as though he might be losing patience. “He is a distraction from your main mission.”
“This is Boko Haram we’re talking about. They’re going to wrap this guy in Goodyears and torch him. With all respect, he’s important for our cause.”
“Respect is real when given without hope for respect.”
Michael glanced at his packed luggage.
“Meet me in Qatar in two days,” al-Muttaqi ordered and hung up.
Emotionless, cold, Michael removed his headset, tucked his laptop under one arm, and hefted his bag. Only then did he bother to glance out the windows. A thick column of black smoke rose from down near the waterfront.
Chapter Thirty-Six
SEAL Command, Virginia Beach
Buddha Ortiz drove down Regulus Avenue past the Dam Neck Annex and parked in the late afternoon sunlight in front of the former “chicken coops” that served as “shop” for SEAL Team Six. Before getting out of his Ford Fusion, he made sure the loose slacks he wore concealed the brace placed on his knee at the hospital emergency room.
He walked inside the Command, trying not to limp as he passed the cages and entered the team room where the entire squadron had gathered to initiate Robert Chase as a full member of SEAL Six in good standing after his first “real world” mission. Other SEALs either wearing civvies or in full training kit ad-libbed greetings, most of them humorous or obscene. Chase’s face broke into his great beaming smile when he saw Ortiz. He looked ridiculous wearing a white wolf’s head cap that contrasted smartly with his dark face.
Everybody was having a hell of a good time quaffing beer, pounding Chase on the back, goosing each other, pulling pranks … The usual team house stuff. Graves’s six-two lean-and-mean frame actually looked relaxed for a change as he lifted his mug in toast to his team’s rookie.
“—so here it is,” he was saying. “No hesitation, no doubts …”
That was as far as he got before he spotted Ortiz. Then, in obvious reference to Buddha’s pending departure, he concluded pointedly with, “Never forget what matters most.”
Ortiz took a deep breath. Damn it, Bear. Wife, kids, a little house in the suburbs, two-car garage … Real family. That had to matter most.
Bear brandished a White Squadron patch displaying the unit’s mascot, a white wolf, and awarded it to Chase.
“This is your family now,” he said, with another look cast with meaning at Ortiz.
Damn it, Bear. Let it go.
Men laughing and chatting in high spirits made their way to the bar for refills. Ortiz joined Caulder, who leaned with his back against the bar watching what was going on. The team’s Bohemian might have been something the cat dragged in. Unshaved, he must have slept in his jeans and T-shirt since they all returned from Africa. He had obviously been imbibing vigorously. He bellied up across the bar to retrieve Buddha’s mug, hanging on the wall next to Rip’s.
“Fill ’er up,” Caulder requested of the guy who had been shanghaied as bartender for tonight’s roast and hazing. “And,” he then said to Buddha, presenting him the full cup, “hail to your replacement, Robert ‘Ghetto’ Chase.”
Both lifted their mugs in sardonic salute to Chase, joined by much of the rest of the crowd. Chase now had his formal nickname—Ghetto.
“The wheel of time is turning,” Caulder went on, sounding less profound than merely down in his cups. “The young rising up to devour the old. The snake eating its tail. Oedipus killing his father and fu—”
Buddha cut him off. “We get it, okay?”
Out on the floor under the hanging parachute canopy, Buckley handed a foot-tall decanter of beer to Graves for the initiation ceremony. Foam splashed over the container’s rim and onto the deck. Bear thrust it at Chase. Chase took a step back.
“I don’t drink, Senior Chief.”
“Red flag!” Buckley shouted to the accompaniment of an overwhelming roar of laughter and catcalls. A teetotaler SEAL? No such animal existed.
“Think of it as your first Communion,” Caulder counseled as a throng of laughing, jeering men surrounded Chase to lend their encouragement.
Pressured by the hazing, the New Guy screwed up his courage and, with plenty of sound effects, guzzled the beer. Much of it spilt over his lips and down the front of his button-down Ivy League shirt. Men cheered him to go all the way. He emptied the container, but by the shocked look on his face he was about to chuck it up again. He burped manfully and stood tall rather than seem to be the team puss. The other guys didn’t help his constitution by slapping him repeatedly on the back like he had really accomplished something. All this was their rough version of a welcome.
Ortiz leaned over and lowered his voice to take a good-natured poke at his protégé. “You go moto and try to blow a hole in a steel ship again with us in it,” he said, “I take that patch away from you myself.”
Chase ducked his head. Okay, he had made an error of judgment. It wouldn’t happen again.
“He’s not done yet,” Senior Chief Graves announced, raising his hands for attention.
From behind the bar, to great fanfare, he produced a life-size blow-up doll. It was naked and male and obviously aroused in spite of being beat-up and patched from previous encounters and a hard life.
“Come on, guys,” Chase pleaded, embarrassed and blushing another shade darker. Nobody told him about all this when he graduated from Harvard and enlisted in the navy to become a SEAL.
“This,” Graves solemnly proclaimed, “is a symbol of the brothers that you are now sworn to protect. Guard it with your life.”
He pressed the doll into Chase’s arms while the newbie recoiled from it.
“Hey, Ghetto,” Buckley hooted. “Ghetto, if it needs some air, you know where to blow, don’t you?”
“You can show him, Buck,” Caulder said. “You had it last. And this—”
He displayed a huge black dildo to the hilarity of t
he assemblage.
“And this,” he resumed, “is the weapon you will use to defend us. Keep it oiled and ready.”
With that, he ceremoniously “knighted” Chase by forcing him to kneel while he tapped him on each shoulder with the phony phallus.
“You must carry this with you at all times,” Graves instructed.
Chase looked mortified. “You’re serious?”
“Hell, yes, he is,” Buckley confirmed, having experienced it himself not so long ago.
Uncertain but pleased at the honor of being formally accepted by the teams, Chase stood surrounded by his brothers and looked more ridiculous than ever wearing the wolf’s head, hugging the obscene blow-up doll under one arm, and clasping the dildo in his free hand.
That concluded the ceremony. Graves stuck out his hand to the newest-ordained official member of his team. “Don’t suck,” he advised.
“Not planning on it, Senior Chief.”
Caulder grinned and embraced Chase. “Welcome to White Squadron, kid. Just don’t be afraid to live by your own rules.”
Why was it that half the time you never knew what the hell Caulder was saying?
Members of White Squadron engulfed Chase—Ghetto from now on—to extend their own rowdy welcome. Buddha Ortiz stood off by himself, moody and quietly nursing his beer. Caulder joined Bear Graves at the bar.
“Wasn’t so long ago you and I were where Ghetto is,” he reminisced. “Total noobs.”
Bear nodded, sobering. “Rip yarded us in.”
“Remember his speech, Bear?”
“I know you don’t. Too busy running your mouth.”
“Sure I do. You just gave it. Word for word. Including his ‘Don’t suck.’” He chuckled at the look Graves gave him. “Hey, don’t look so surprised. I remember everything that man said. Shit, he was a Viking, Bear. He was who I wanted to be.”
This was as near as Caulder had ever come to accepting at least part of the blame over what went down with Taggart.
“Don’t talk about him like he’s dead, Caulder.”
Caulder brushed it off. He was remembering when he was the FNG. It was Rip who … He didn’t want to think about it now. He tipped his head toward Chase.
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