Fishbait scanned the targets through binoculars and recorded a pock mark dead center in the head of Buck’s steel silhouette. Chase’s bullet stuck slightly to the left-center in the head.
“Give this one to Chase for speed,” he announced. “But, Buck, you hit dead center. Chase took out an eyeball. We’re at four-four. Tied for the series.”
“Okay,” Buckley drawled with another grin. “Ghetto, reset.”
“We’re going again?”
“Oh, I’m sorry. You got some place to be? How ’bout you, Fish? You got somewhere to go?”
Fishbait shook his head. “Nope.”
“Why’s that?” Buckley asked slyly.
“’Cause I’m all in and down with the team.”
Chase looked at them. “You two practice that?”
Fishbait laughed. “Don’t have to.”
“Fish here,” Buckley teased, “he prays five times a day. Allahu Akbar. The whole bit. But that doesn’t matter to any of us—”
“Debatable,” Caulder bantered.
“—because Fish is here for all the right reasons. But the only thing worse than being a Muslim raghead …” He paused a beat for comical effect. “… is maybe a Harvard bitch. You know that about Ghetto, Caulder?”
“It’s a lot to overcome, that’s sure,” Caulder agreed as the ribbing ran back and forth at Chase’s expense.
Buck remained mock-serious. “Harvard, navy SEAL, man of color—a trifecta. Punch your ticket here for a couple of years, Ghetto, then sell out and run for Congress. That’s the plan, right?”
“You saying you’d vote for me, Buck?”
“I will,” Caulder chimed in helpfully. “If politics still mattered.”
“Hell, no, I wouldn’t vote for you,” Buck decided. “My old southern granddaddy would be turning over in his grave. What I’m asking, Ghetto, is are you all in with us, or aren’t you?”
Chase caught Caulder’s eye before he headed back to the starting line to end the bullshit. He flashed his big grin. “Hell, yes, I’m in,” he affirmed.
Buckley laughed and waved a hand at the dummies and the tires. “We’ll see,” he said.
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Virginia Beach
Ricky Ortiz had made a deal with his wife: “Once we get Rip—” After that, he would leave the SEALs and accept the security management position at GSS where he would earn enough pay to take care of his family without Jackie’s having to keep her old job at the pharmaceutical company. A normal job, as she argued, would allow him to come home evenings like normal men, read the evening paper while wifey made dinner, go to school functions with the kiddies, sleep every night with his wife, and resume his rightful place as jefe of a family that seemed to be falling apart while he was off chasing bad guys around the globe.
Except Jackie was growing impatient for all that change to come about. If Ricky wouldn’t be home to head the family as she thought he should, then she would take charge, go back to work full-time, pay off the mortgage and Anabel’s dance class, and become head of the family until he went with GSS and they began a new and better life. The woman was inflexible when she made up her mind on something. She no longer referred to Ricky as mi rey—my king.
While Caulder and Fishbait oversaw Monster Mash on the beach for Buckley and Chase, Ortiz dragged himself home in a slump. He expected no one would be home. Anabel was probably at dance class and Ricky Jr. playing second base with Little League. Jackie likely had a sales meeting or something; lately it was she more often than he who was away working.
It surprised him when he opened the front door at home and heard voices coming from the dining room. He stepped inside and looked down the hall and saw Jackie at the table across from a handsome young man in a dark suit and a red power tie. She looked great in business attire and a stylish blue scarf around her neck, with her dark hair brushed to a long luster. Their heads were almost touching over a thick binder open on the table between them.
Ortiz wasn’t sure what he was seeing. He hesitated to interrupt until he was sure.
“It’s not like when you were a sales rep, Jackie,” the stranger was saying. “It’s all KAM now—”
“And that is …?”
“Key Account Management. A single formulary is worth more than dozens of individual doctors writing scripts.”
“It may take me a while to get up to speed.”
Ortiz didn’t like the way the guy smiled at Jackie. Like it wasn’t just business with him.
“Listen,” the slickster said, “sometimes it still comes down to charm. Like just last week I told a group of formulary stakeholders a joke—”
“Really?” Jackie seemed to be enjoying this a little too much.
“Okay, okay, here it is,” Red Tie said. “You know how to hide a hundred dollar bill from a surgeon?” He paused for effect before springing the punch line. “You put it in the patient’s chart.”
The guy laughed a bit too loudly at his own joke. Jackie joined in. Ricky had seen enough. He barged down the hall to the dining room while trying to appear unconcerned, like a normal husband would when arriving home from a normal job.
“Hey, baby.”
Jackie jumped up and kissed him before introducing Mr. Jokester. She actually seemed happy to have him home.
“Ricky, this is Patrick. He was catching me up on some key points for the sales conference. You know, the one I had to miss—I was sick?”
That was Ricky’s cue. She hadn’t been ill at all. That happened to be the day he returned from mission to Nigeria with his injured knee and the family insisted on driving him to the emergency room.
Ricky extended a perfunctory greeting. “Nice to meet you.”
“Good to meet you, sir.”
Ortiz frowned. Sir? That made him feel like his own grandpa. “Call me Ricky.”
Patrick stood up to shake hands. He had a weak grip and a soft hand. “Sure thing, Ricky.”
Ortiz headed for the kitchen. “I’m gonna grab something to drink. Want anything, Patrick?”
“No, sir. I’m good.”
Ortiz flinched. There it was again—sir. There wasn’t that much of an age gap between them. It sounded to Ricky like the brown nosing little pendejo was trying to ingratiate himself with the woman’s husband. He shook out a pain pill from the kitchen cabinet and chased it with a juice box, the only drink available in the fridge. His knee bothered him again. Rather, it bothered him still.
In the dining room, Jackie and Patrick returned attention to the sales binder.
“So …” Patrick resumed. “Let’s assume you’re part of my KAM team. I’d task you with a whole matrix of real-time market data—”
The guy had an irritating, nasal quality to his voice. Ortiz leaned a shoulder against the kitchen doorjamb and sipped on juice while he tried not to appear the jealous husband. The unpleasant expression on his face gave him away. Jackie noticed and stood up.
“Patrick, excuse me for a second.”
She whisked past Ricky and into the kitchen, expecting him to join her there. He did.
“You okay?” she asked in a hushed whisper.
“Why are you so made up?” he asked, attempting to sound casual.
“Ricky, I need to look professional.”
“For him?”
“This is business,” she explained on the verge of losing patience. “It’s a new world. I have to catch up.”
Patrick shifted about uncomfortably in his chair as he pretended not to be interested in the exchange he observed between husband and wife through the open kitchen doorway. Although he was unable to hear what was said, the tension between them was so evident that even their neighbors must have felt it.
Jackie with her back to the table glared at her husband. “Ricky, behave. Please?”
She returned to the table wearing a forced smile. Patrick stood up and glanced nervously from Jackie to Ricky and back again.
“I should go,” he opted.
“No, no. Stay.
Right, Ricky?”
“Sure. Stay for lunch,” Ricky invited with underlying sarcasm. “I’ll grill some T-bone. How do you like yours?”
Jackie drilled him with a reproving look.
“Uh,” Patrick stammered. “I’ve got some accounting research to do.” He gathered up his binder. “Jackie, see you tomorrow.” Then he quickly added for Ricky’s benefit, “At the office. Okay?”
“I’ll be there early.”
She turned on Ricky the moment the front door closed behind Patrick. “What am I going to do with you, Ricky?” she cried in exasperation.
Chapter Sixty
Virginia Beach
Bear Graves kept his and Lena’s appointment with Doctor Aarush Banerjee, the purpose of which was to receive the doctor’s diagnosis of potential fertility issues that prevented their having another child.
“I have what?” he howled.
Doctor Banerjee explained, “Varicoceles is a swelling of the veins in the scrotum. The result is an elevation in the temperature of the testes.”
Graves cast a helpless look at Lena, perched next to him in the doctor’s office. “You’re saying my balls are too hot? That’s what you’re saying?”
Filling the little plastic cup the last time he was in was embarrassing enough. But this? If it got back to the team, Caulder especially would never let up on him. He could hear it now: So you got hot balls, huh?
Lena suppressed a smile and clapped a hand on Bear’s knee to calm him. “Doctor, could you please explain what the problem is?” she requested.
Doctor Banerjee tapped his teeth with the eraser end of a pencil while he regarded Graves and considered the best way to explain further. A big macho guy like this, a SEAL no less, seldom accepted gracefully anything he considered to be an attack on or a disparagement of his manhood.
“Of course,” the doctor said. “Sperm, you see, Joseph, are quite sensitive. Heat causes low motility. In layman’s terms, your sperm are weak.”
Speechless, Graves stared at the little man. What Caulder could do with that! Weak, sensitive sperm?
“They can’t swim strongly, or at all,” the doctor continued. “They die before they get to the egg.”
This was not going well.
“Just so we understand,” Lena interjected. “How did we get pregnant before?”
“The chance of a single sperm reaching the egg is not eliminated, but it is significantly reduced. You could get pregnant again, but it is unlikely.”
“What can we do? Short of IVF?”
Doctor Banerjee addressed Bear directly. “Well, Joseph, you can take steps to keep your testes cool—avoid wearing tight underwear, don’t do any heavy exercise, and stay out of extreme heat conditions.”
Lena and Graves exchanged a knowing look. “Like that’s going to happen,” he scoffed.
Of course, the doctor had no idea what Graves’s job entailed—jumping out of airplanes, diving the ocean, missions in deserts and tropical forests and high altitudes. So now he had wussy sperm that couldn’t take it.
“There is a surgical option—” Doctor Banerjee offered.
“No,” Bear responded immediately. A man had to set limits. However, to the reproach on Lena’s face, he added, “Too expensive.”
“I believe your insurance covers it,” the doctor said. “It’s an outpatient procedure, relatively minor. I can refer you to an urologist who specializes in such matters.”
Graves was still having none of it. In strained silence, he and Lena walked to his truck in the parking lot while Lena carefully considered her next words. He opened the door for her.
“This isn’t necessarily bad news,” she decided.
“They want to cut on my balls!” he exclaimed, outraged. “How is that good news?”
“We know what the problem is now. We can treat it,” she reasoned.
“Huh!” he snorted. “My sperm are weak? They die before they can get off the ready point? I’m a SEAL and my sperm can’t even swim. What a joke.”
He lifted his hands and eyes in mock supplication to Heaven. “God? You laughing up there?”
“Joseph, this is not a good time to have fragile male ego syndrome. It’s not about you and God. It’s just a simple medical issue.”
She was a tall woman and stepped up easily into the high GMC pickup seat while he held the door for her. It was Graves’s turn to measure what he was going to say. He closed the door for her and took his time walking around the end of the pickup to think about it. He slid into the driver’s seat and, with both hands gripping the wheel, gazed ahead out the windshield. They had wanted another child, even before … even before Sarah. After all this time, he could barely make himself think or say her name.
He sighed. “Lena. Maybe it wasn’t meant to be.”
Lena’s blonde head snapped toward him. Her surprise turned to volcanic anger boiling deep inside the wound left by Sarah’s death. Her eyes drilled into him, through him.
“Quitting,” she said, each word ground out through the grit of her determination, “is not an option.”
Chapter Sixty-One
SEAL Command, Virginia Beach
Support guys loaded down with Monster Mash gear made their way off the beach. Buckley and Chase were exhausted after most of the day racing up and down the sand carrying dummies, throwing truck tires around, and shooting at iron silhouette men. Low dark clouds out over the Atlantic signaled the approach of possible rain showers. A cool breeze felt good on the sweat the two SEALs had worked up while Caulder and Fishbait kicked back and took it easy scoring the races.
Buck and Fishbait together led the way off while Chase followed with Caulder. Ghetto was by nature a rather private man, quiet in demeanor, and thoughtful at times to the point of melancholy. He was quieter than usual now as he and Caulder walked side by side up the beachfront dunes, which meant he had something preying on his mind. Caulder either overlooked his mood or chose not to acknowledge it.
“The look on Buck’s face,” Caulder said, amused by Chase’s having come from behind on the final competition to win the series. “He didn’t expect that. Priceless. Nice shooting, Ghetto.”
“Thanks.”
A hermit crab scooted backward across their path.
“Alex?”
Caulder stopped and looked at him. The kid sounded earnest.
“Alex, I want you to know. On that ship, the Damascus—I wouldn’t normally suggest an explosive breech under those conditions, but we had the HVT in custody and we were taking fire—”
Blowing a steel door in the below-deck confines of a ship could have taken out the entire team. Bear and Ortiz had already discussed the near mistake with Chase and were satisfied he had learned a valuable lesson and that the incident required no further action. Caulder had no inclination to go over it again. His response caught Ghetto unprepared.
“You surf?”
“I boogie board,” Chase said, puzzled.
“Don’t say that,” Caulder scolded. “Don’t ever say boogie board. I’m serious.”
“I can see that.”
But did he, really? A Harvard grad, and still half the time he couldn’t understand what planet Caulder came from.
“So … same concept. See where I am?” Caulder asked. He soared both hands flat and high above his head to impersonate surf boards.
“Where?” Chase wasn’t catching on.
“On the wave, dude. I’m riding the wave. Just floating. You right now?” One of his hands surfed low while the other remained high. He waggled the low hand. “This is you here in the soup, scraping the rocks. If you hang on to things, whether it’s the ship mission, your family, or Buck’s bullshit, they’re going to weigh you down, dude. You’re being aggressive. So, instead, own it and float on. Up here.”
His low hand caught the next wave and soared to new heights.
“Roger that,” Chase said, but still looked confused.
What had this guy just said—that he should merely go with the flow and
forget everything else? But to do that was against Chase’s nature. He analyzed things, pored over them, looked for logic and meaning. He supposed it had to do with his Harvard background.
Caulder slapped him on the back and grinned. Chase shook his head in bewilderment. They climbed over the dunes to the beach parking area where Graves waited with his GMC truck to haul the Monster Mash equipment back to the Cage Room. Fishbait, Buck, and the support guys were loading training dummies, targets, tables, sledgehammers, tires, weapons, and other gear onto the truck.
“How’d he do?” Bear asked Caulder, referring to Chase.
“He’s all in and down with it. So, Bear, you gonna be a dad or what?”
Graves gave him a look. “Jesus, isn’t anything private around here?”
Caulder merely grinned. His cell phone blared Charge! as Bear slid into his truck under the wheel. Caulder checked the screen, frowned, and answered the call. “Yep?”
He listened. A shocked look came over his face. “You what? I’ll be right there.”
Chapter Sixty-Two
Lagos, Nigeria
Perhaps the thing Michael Nasry most appreciated in working within the top tier of the international Jihad movement was the perks that came with it. He traveled in style, lived in luxury, as long as he kept producing spectaculars for his superiors like the Dubai Film Festival victory and the Tanzania American embassy bombing. The Movement had money. Cash poured into Jihadist coffers from ISIS oil in Iraq and from wealthy believers from around the world—and the Movement was still expanding. Wealthy princes in Saudi Arabia, European millionaires who recognized which way the winds of destiny were blowing, and the burgeoning population of Muslims and Muslim converts in the United States and their supporters raised cash by the millions, billions even, to funnel through the underground pipeline of Jihad.
Jihad’s most dangerous foe is the United States of America. But even the Great Satan grew weaker each year as Americans lost their will to continue the fight. Soon, the war would rage on US soil as more and more disaffected Americans such as Nasry saw the right way to Paradise. Praise be to Allah, the Mahdi would soon return to destroy the infidels and usher Allah to his rightful place on the throne. Michael felt privileged to be a part of paving the way for the Great Mahdi’s return.
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