by C. G. Cooper
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Cal understood what Valko was doing and burst from the room just as the grappling brothers moved. His legs felt like cement blocks as time slowed. He saw Daniel flipping the thick dining room table over.
Cal dove at the stunned president, tackling him to the ground. They landed behind the overturned table, just as the Valko brothers crashed through the huge glass window on the opposite side of the large room and fell down the three stories to the cobblestone courtyard below.
The seconds sludged by, no sound, no explosion, and then there was only darkness.
Chapter 37
The White House
Washington, D.C.
10:12am, August 20th
President Zimmer stared out the Oval Office window, willing the words to come. He’d already crumpled three pieces of his personal stationary. Nothing seemed to be enough.
Letters of condolence weren’t the easiest thing to write, but usually the words came. Today they wouldn’t. He didn’t know what to say.
The ringing from his intercom startled him.
“Yes?”
“Mr. President, your 10:30 is here. You wanted me to tell you if they got here early,” said the president’s secretary, a hint of annoyance in her tone. The swarthy old gatekeeper liked precise timekeeping. When anything, even an early appearance, popped up, she let everyone know her displeasure.
“Send them in, please.”
Zimmer stood from his work and walked toward the door as his guests stepped in.
Cal Stokes had his right arm in a sling and a stitched gash over his left eye. Daniel Briggs walked in behind his boss, looking no worse for wear.
“Look at what the cat dragged in,” said Zimmer, hoping he’d read Cal’s mood correctly. He couldn’t tell what the Marine was thinking, a rare event for the warrior who usually wore his emotions like campaign buttons.
Thankfully, Cal grinned.
“You must be talking about me because once again Ol’ Snake Eyes escaped the clutches of doom unscathed.”
Zimmer chuckled and shook his friends’ hands. He was happy to see them, but was concerned about why Cal had requested the meeting. There’d been something in his tone when he called after the thing in Bulgaria that the president couldn’t read.
Once they were all settled on the couches, the president asked, “What did you want to see me about?”
“The Bulgarian president is giving Stojan Valko some kind of national medal, posthumously. I think we should do the same.”
“Okay. I don’t see why that should be a problem.”
Zimmer waited for Cal to continue.
“I need to ask you a question,” said Cal evenly.
“Shoot.”
“All that stuff you said on television, everything they’re saying on the news about The Zimmer Doctrine. I need to know that you meant it.”
Zimmer resisted the urge to argue. As a first-term congressman, he would have. He’d always been one to blow up when his feathers got ruffled. The tantrum of a petulant child.
But things were different now. Too many lessons to count. Humbled. Broken down and built back up. He was a politician who’d been given a second chance, who’d seen the truth behind the murk of politics. And no one had helped more than the man sitting in front of him, the man who was now questioning his resolve.
“You know I meant it, Cal.”
“I know you did at the time, in the moment. But what happens in a year, in three years, when you’re trying to get re-elected and scumbags are trying to make you look like a war-monger?”
It was a fair question. The sands of the political arena shifted as readily as a feather in the wind. Unguided. Aimless. Lost.
“All I can say is that I’m in for the long haul. You and your team did the hard part, the stuff I could never do. For that I am eternally thankful. But this is my turf, my fight. If they want to come at me, I’ll come back swinging. You taught me that. Fight for what you believe in, right?”
Cal stared at the president, a look of amusement in his eyes.
“I guess you can teach a spoiled democrat new tricks,” said Cal.
The president shrugged. “As long as I’m surrounded by jarheads like you.”
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Camp Cavalier
Charlottesville, Virginia
5:58pm
They’d come without being asked. They saw it as their duty. A tribute to a fallen comrade.
There was only silence as the blood red sun sunk into the horizon. They stood in a half-circle, facing the sunset, saying their last goodbyes.
Daniel Briggs stood to Cal’s left and MSgt Trent and Gaucho to his right. The foreigners filled in the rest; the Brits led by one-eyed Kreyling, the Australians by the youthful Fox, the Japanese by the skilled Kokubu, and the Italians by the gregarious Moretti. They’d met as strangers, but now gathered as family.
The Bulgarians were home burying their comrade, their president presiding over a national memorial the next day.
Cal had learned long ago that warriors have perhaps the keenest sense of the word family. To those who fight, not knowing whether death lies waiting around the next bend, family is the only tangible thing they know. Many embrace their own version of God or say they do it for king and country, but when it all comes to a head, they believe in the man standing next to them. Family.
So while their relationships were still young, their lives were forever bound. No man would hesitate to come to the aid of the other. They were family now, a fact that made Cal prouder than the victories they’d reaped in battle.
After all, for men such as these, war was just a game, a deadly game with high stakes, but a game nonetheless. But family… now that was something to fight for, something to live for, something to cherish.
Epilogue
Charlottesville, Virginia
12:29pm, August 21st
Cal and Diane walked along the pathways of the University of Virginia as if in a trance. Neither one knew where they were going, too consumed were they with each other.
Cal’s dislocated shoulder was healing and his eye wasn’t as swollen as before. Diane had been concerned, had asked how he’d been hurt. Cal lied, telling her that he’d been in a car accident. He knew by the look in her eyes that she saw right through him. She knew he was lying. But he couldn’t tell her. He barely knew her. And besides, what he did for a living was completely off limits as far as a topic of conversation.
He had to keep up the illusion that he was a normal guy, someone who punched the clock and pulled in a regular paycheck. Cal told himself she would never understand.
For her part, Diane didn’t press. She seemed genuinely happy they were together. To Cal it felt like things were complete. He’d not only found his calling, but he might’ve found the missing piece, the woman who might help mend his broken heart. Her skin pressed against his as they walked hand-in-hand down the brick-paved pathways of Mr. Jefferson’s university.
By the time they got back to Diane’s apartment, they were ready for dinner. They’d walked for hours. Sometimes they talked, but mostly they just enjoyed each other’s company. Cal liked that he felt as comfortable with her in silence as he did in discussing the latest Washington Redskins news. There was a connection there he couldn’t explain.
While Diane took a shower, Cal clicked on the television and channel surfed until he found some mildly amusing reality TV show. He couldn’t take the news, never had, but something about reality TV always seemed to pull him in.
Just as Cal chuckled when some orthopedic surgeon chewed out her porn-loving husband, his phone rang. There was no number and he was tempted to let it go to voicemail. The shower was still running, so he shrugged and answered the phone.
“Hello?”
There was no voice, just a crackling sound in the background.
“Hello?” Cal asked again.
“Cal,” came the whispered voice.
“Who is this?” Cal asked, sitting up straighter.
&nbs
p; “It’s Andy.”
“Hey, man, where are you?” The last thing Cal had heard was that his friend, Marine Corps Major Andrews, was in the Middle East.
“I don’t have much time. They know I’m here and—”
More crackling in the background. Suddenly Cal realized what it was. Gunfire.
“Andy, what—”
“Listen. Get a hold of Rich Isnard. He’ll know—”
There was shouting in Arabic and more gunfire. Then the line went dead.
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