(Wrath-01)-Wrath & Righteousness (2012)

by Chris Stewart

  Al-Anbari: All of the people in the area have started to move. I put our sister in the crowd and thrust my AK-47 in her hand. I see other mothers push their children into rioting crowd. I didn’t think that the people in this area were so heroic. And she was only nine!

  Kamal: Whatever God wants! Blessed be the Almighty!

  Al-Anbari: She just tried to come back, but I shut the door. I told her I would kill her if she dishonored our name.

  Kamal: Oh God! God is great!

  Al-Anbari: It is done. She was killed by our brothers, our own Iraqi police. But we will avenge her. We still have others we can put in the fight.

  Kamal: Do what it takes, al-Anbari. You strengthen my pride.

  Brighton thought of the captured exchange and wondered how he should answer his wife’s question about “How things were at work?”

  Truth was, they were losing. They knew, all of the agents and officers he worked with, that they couldn’t stop it. It was coming some day. So yes, he was tired. He was worn to the bone. He was weary physically, mentally and emotionally. Even his spirit was worn thin, like a sheet that had been laid on for too many years. There were too many battles. Too many enemies. He had to protect the country; he had to protect the president! It was his responsibility to advise him on what he had to do. But there weren’t any answers! At least not enough! Their enemies were like rats climbing over the wall. They were shooting them one by one, shooting as quickly as they could, but there were so many! The rats kept spilling over. Which meant he was failing. But what more could he do?

  He glanced at Sara sadly, then forced a smile. Like he did everyday, he pretended everything was all right. “Got to go,” he said as he kissed her hand. “Want to talk to the boys before I leave.”

  “See you tonight then,” she said to him. “Are you going to be late?”

  “Hopefully not, maybe even early. I’ll let you know.”

  He bent down to kiss her forehead and left the bedroom.

  *******

  Brighton walked down the winding staircase and into the kitchen where he found his two sons, Luke and Ammon, sitting at the table dressed in baggy shorts and oversized T-shirts. Overflowing bowls of cold cereal sat before them and he noticed the spilled Lucky Charms on the floor. “Morning guys,” he said as he walked to the refrigerator and poured himself a glass of orange juice. He glanced at the bowls of cereal. “You could cook some eggs. Or there’s frozen waffles in the freezer.”

  Ammon looked up as he spooned in another mouthful of sugar and bleached wheat. “That’s OK, dad. We’re in kind of a hurry, you know.”

  “You are going down to the river?”

  “Yeah. Carderock.”

  Brighton poured himself a small bowl of rolled oats, added some milk and placed the bowl in the microwave. “Carderock? Is that at Great Falls in McLean?” he asked as he punched the buttons on the microwave.

  “Yeah. It’s a good rock. Plenty of handholds, but if you don’t climb it just right you can find yourself hanging under some pretty awesome outcroppings.”

  Brighton knew his sons could climb like flies. He was pretty good himself, but he couldn’t even come close to keeping up with them. But sometimes they made him nervous. It was one thing to be aggressive, another to be stupid, and sometimes the line was a fine one, and blurred. “How high is the rock?” he asked.

  Ammon shot a quick look to his brother, who paused eating long enough to hunch his shoulders.

  “I don’t know, Dad,” Ammon answered, “maybe fifty feet or so. It’s not the highest climb in the area, but because of the angle and outcroppings, it’s one of the hardest.”

  Brighton pressed his lips as he pictured Luke and Ammon hanging from their fingers, their hands gripping the tiny ledges that extended from the rock, their feet and legs swinging through the emptiness as they pulled themselves up and over the sandstone outcroppings by only their arms.

  He opened the window blinds that looked out on their back yard. “You don’t have any classes this morning?”

  Luke poured himself another bowl of cereal. “Ammon’s got labs this afternoon. I’ve got calculus at ten. That’s why we’re in a hurry. We want to get in a couple hours climbing before I have to get to class.”

  Brighton watched his sons slopping in their cereal as he sipped his juice. Something was up. He knew his sons too well. “Why are you climbing on a Tuesday? Why not wait until the weekend when you won’t be in such a hurry.”

  Again they both paused. Ammon shot a knowing look to his brother, then ducked his head.

  Although only older by minutes, Ammon had always been more responsible and it made his father nervous to see the guilty look in his eyes. It was Ammon’s nature to take things a little more slow, and if he was nervous, then his dad got nervous too. Luke, on other hand, was a full speed ahead, let’s-give-it-a-go kind of guy. If he left a wreck behind him . . . no, when he left a wreck behind him—he would apologize for the trouble, then speed off to the next crash.

  When neither son answered his question, Brighton asked it again. “What’s up guys, how come you’re climbing today?”

  Ammon took another spoonful of cereal. “Nothing special, Dad,” he answered. “A couple guys we met last week want to come with us. They’re a couple big-shot climbers from California, at least they think that they are. They were bragging about all the rocks they had climbed out West. We told them there were some pretty good climbs around here, but they didn’t believe us.”

  Brighton sipped again as he filled in the blanks. Luke liked to talk. Talked a little too much. So he had met some new friends from California where there were lots of natural climbing walls and had talked himself into a situation where he not only had to prove there were good rocks to climb along the Potomac River in northern Virginia, but that he was the master of them all. Now it was time to make good. And Ammon was going along to keep his brother from killing himself.

  How many times had he seen this before? Still, he had to smile. “You’re going to class though, right?” he asked as he sat down.

  “We’ll make it, Dad.”

  “You know how much tuition cost me?”

  “Ah . . . yeah Dad, it seems like you might have mentioned that before. And you’re only paying half.”

  “Still, I’m getting my money’s worth, right? You’re not just screwing around? Sometimes you go to class? Sometimes you actually learn something, right?”

  Quiet for a moment. “We’re learning lots, Dad,” Ammon finally said.

  Luke looked up suddenly, “Oh, yeah, that reminds me Dad, my history professor wants to know if you will come in and speak to our class. He’s a flaming idiot, I tell you. Revisionist history, through and through. It was his idea to have you come as a guest lecturer, but I was thinking maybe you could set him straight . . . .”

  “Have him contact my office. He’ll have to schedule through them.”

  “It would really help me, Dad, if you could come. I’m afraid I might have . . . ah, I don’t know, made him a little bit defensive, maybe. Sometimes I argue too much.”

  “Can’t imagine that, Luke.”

  Luke lifted his bowl and drained the milk, leaving a white mustache on his upper lip. Ammon looked at him and laughed and Luke wiped it with the back of his hand. “Dad, don’t worry about us missing class,” he said. “We both have partial scholarships—saves you boatloads of money, no, really, it’s OK, no need to say thanks—but we’re kind of thinking we might head out west to school after our freshman year anyway. Maybe UCLA.”

  “No way,” Luke shot out. “California beaches suck. What’s the point? Me and the real men are heading to Texas A&M.”

  “Whatever,” Ammon answered before turning back to Brighton. “What I’m saying, Dad, is that we’re both probably going to switch schools next year. So we’re trying to keep things cool, you know, enjoy things our first year and all.”

  Brighton nodded slowly, a sense of sadness passing over him. His sons were as comfortable in one plac
e as another, but they didn’t call anywhere home. They were happy and adaptable, they could make friends in weeks when others took years, and they wouldn’t have had it any other way, but they had no roots to speak of, there was no doubt.

  It was one of the prices his family paid for his military career.

  The general finished his orange juice and straightened his uniform. “Hey guys,” he said. “If you’re going to go climbing, I don’t think that sugar crap is going to be good enough. Hang on a minute and I’ll make you some eggs.” He pulled out a large skillet and placed it on the stove.

  “No time, Dad,” Luke answered quickly. “And you’ve got to get to work, too.”

  “It will take me three minutes. Put some bread in the toaster. You’ll be glad you did.”

  Luke hesitated, then walked to the toaster and dropped in four slices of bread. Brighton pulled out an egg cartoon and scrambled six eggs, dumped in some bacon bits as the skillet grew warm, then poured the eggs and stirred them while watching his sons.

  Ammon sat at the table, reading the sports page while grumbling about his Wizards who had started 1 and 10 (bottom of the division again!), while Luke grabbed his calculus textbook and started cramming his way through some problems that, no doubt, should have been done the day before. How Luke managed to keep his grades up, Brighton would never know. So far as he could tell, he and his youngest son took very different approaches to life. While he believed that preparation was 90% of the battle, Luke seemed to think that true inspiration came only under great stress, and self-induced stress was the most inspiring kind.

  Although they were twins, his sons were different as any two brothers could be. Both were freshmen at George Washington University, but Ammon was tall, a little more than 6’2”, with broad shoulders and long legs while Luke was shorter and stockier, with thick arms and thick legs. Ammon had his mother’s blond hair and fine eyes while Luke had his father’s dark hair and Roman nose. Ammon was smooth as Georgia cream; he could talk himself out of any situation, manipulate any teacher, make any friend. He always knew what to say (even if it wasn’t always exactly the truth). Luke, on the other hand, was extremely straightforward; there was no pretense to him. He didn’t sugarcoat the situation, just the opposite in fact, he sometimes made things worse just to liven things up. With Luke, what you saw was what you got and if someone didn’t like that, that was OK with him.

  Ammon had been named after one of Brighton’s great-grandfathers, a gambler who had discovered his purpose in life soon after finding a young Alabama blonde and bringing her out to the Wild West. After going straight, Grandpa Ammon had gone on to become one of the most feared lawmen in West Texas, a sheriff who was known for getting his man dead or alive. It apparently mattered not a whole lot to him. Luke was named after the missionary who had baptized his great-grandfather, bringing him religion after a hard life of imposing the law.

  Watching Luke and Ammon, Brighton knew he had probably mixed up their names. Luke was the gunslinger, the fearless lawman with the “get ‘em or kill ‘em” attitude. Ammon, on the other hand, was the mediator, the smooth-talking ladies man. But he was proud of them both, and loved them as only a father could love his sons. If they had any faults, and both of them did, he often found the same faults in himself, and knew that was where most of their weakness came from.

  Brighton looked down to see the eggs were cooked and he spooned them onto two plates, buttered the toast and set the plates on the table. The two sons dug in, stabbing at the eggs as if they hadn’t eaten in days, their stomachs apparently forgetting the multiple bowls of cold cereal they had just wolfed down. Ammon scooped his eggs onto a piece of toast, took a large bite then turned to Brighton. “Sam called last night,” he said.

  Brighton perked instantly. “You’re kidding!”

  “Yeah. He’s in Germany this week.”

  “He’s out of Afghanistan?”

  “For a while anyway. He has two weeks in Europe for R&R.”

  Brighton stared as he thought. Sam, his adopted son, the lost sheep of his fold, the young man he loved as much as he loved his natural sons, was off on his own now, having joined the Army right out of high school. No college, no hesitation, just a jump into life. But ever since joining the Army, his relationship with his adopted family had become distant and it seemed they heard less and less from him now. “Did he say anything?” Brighton prodded.

  “Not really. He was in kind of a hurry.”

  “How is he?” Brighton asked eagerly.

  “Seemed OK. I told him you were on your way to Saudi Arabia this week. He wanted to know if you were stopping in Germany to refuel. If you are, he wants to hook up.”

  Brighton frowned. Much as he’d love to, it’d be very difficult to make it work. “How’s his unit in Afghanistan?” he asked, eager to hear Sam’s report. He kept a very close eye on the status reports from the Special Forces units operating in Afghanistan, but word from the theater was hard to come by, especially from the Ranger units who were working with the CIA.

  Luke smiled. “He was glad to get a hot shower and sleep in a bed, but you could tell he was really satisfied. He said he’s making a difference. It sounds really cool!”

  Brighton eyed his son. “It’s not as cool as you think, trust me, Luke. Sleeping in tents. Every meal an MRE—cold soup and spaghetti out of plastic bags. Sharing a latrine with fifty other filthy men. It’s muddy, cold and extremely hard work. Don’t even think of enlisting! You’ve got to be an officer! So do what I say, Luke, enroll in an ROTC program. And for heaven’s sakes, don’t be a grunt. Why would you join the Army when you could learn to fly jets! You talk about cool, but what could be cooler than that?”

  Luke didn’t answer. They had had this conversation before. Flying? Yeah, he thought it would be OK. But it seemed the Air Force took their best pilots and jerked them out of the cockpit and into staff positions long before they were ready. And besides, there was something else, something greater, a feeling that the real men fought their wars in the blood and mud, not from some sterile cockpit at forty thousand feet. But he had never told his dad that. And he never would.

  Brighton moved to the hallway and returned with his flight cap and briefcase. “When is Sam taking his R&R?” he asked.

  Ammon and Luke were gathering their climbing gear. Ammon hesitated, then shook his head. “He didn’t say. But he said he could meet you at Ramstein if you layover there.”

  “Did he talk to your mother?”

  “Only for a minute,” Ammon answered. “She was on her way to meet you at the embassy reception. And he was in a hurry, too; he said he wanted to call his old man. He hasn’t seen him in a couple years and apparently the old bag isn’t feeling too well.”

  Brighton shook his head. “Don’t call him that,” he said.

  Ammon hesitated. “He doesn’t deserve any better. After what he did to Samuel, he deserves a lot worse.”

  “Doesn’t matter!” Brighton answered, his voice growing sharp. “It doesn’t help Sam when you call his father that.”

  “You should hear what he calls him!” Ammon replied.

  Brighton looked stern and Ammon shut up. This wasn’t an argument he was going to win. And his father was right. It’s just that he hated Sam’s natural father so. All the things he had said, all the things he had done, how could Sam want to talk to him, let alone still call him dad!

  The three were silent, then Luke headed for the door. “Come on, Ammon,” he shouted. “We should have left fifteen minutes ago.”

  Ammon stopped at the built-in locker in the back hallway of the old Victorian house and pulled out a pair of gum-soled climbing shoes. “See you tonight, Dad,” he called as they walked out the door.

  THIRTEEN

  Rassa was silent during the evening meal. Azadeh cleared the table, washed the dishes, then sat down beside him as he smoked by the fire. A biting wind blew down off the mountain to claw at the clay shingles that lined their low roof. Azadeh could feel the cold draft as
she passed by the window to sit beside her father.

  Rassa turned to her, looked away, then turned to her again. “Let’s go for a walk,” he offered in a low voice.

  Azadeh stared at him, her eyes bright with anticipation. It wasn’t like her father to offer such a thing. More, it was cold and blowing. A hard storm was coming and the weather on the mountain could be violent and unpredictable. Still, he stood and pulled his coat on. “Come with me,” he said. “We’ll go to the market and walk around for awhile.”

  Azadeh’s heart flipped. The market? At night? She had already completed their shopping. They had milk and eggs, cooking oil, and honey. They did not have to go shopping for another couple days. In her mind, she pictured the market, its shops crowded with people, merchants displaying their wares to the wealthy that had come up from the valley. She thought of the multicolored lanterns that would be hanging to light the night.

  Going to the market at night when they didn’t need supplies? It could only mean one thing! He had not forgotten her birthday. He was going to buy her a present! Her heart leapt with joy!

  Azadeh quickly draped a dark shawl over her shoulders and flipped the hood over her long hair, pulling it forward to protect her eyes as she followed her father out the front door. He waited for her and she ran to catch up as he turned toward the town square. She glanced down the dark streets toward the lights in the distance. They burned with an intensity she had not seen before.

  Of course he had remembered! He would not forget. But the fact that he always remembered her birthday didn’t mean there was always a celebration. In a culture that never ran short on reasons to celebrate—birthdays, weddings, Mondays, anniversaries, leap years, government holidays, untold religious celebrations, it seemed they celebrated anything—there had been precious few presents or parties in Azadeh’s life. “No money,” her father would explain in a pained voice. It hurt him and she knew that, but the truth was there was rarely so much as an extra rial to spare. Although he was one of the ex-royal family, Rassa was nearly penniless, an anonymous and struggling farmer who had to scratch out a living just like everyone else. And it had been a brutal year. The cotton had nearly wilted in the fields from the lack of spring rain and then several flash floods had washed away some of the best cows in their herd.