by C. L. Jones
Pops with an angry arched eyebrow came back a little sharper with, “You talking to me?”
Shaking his head back and forth and supporting a smart ass smirky smile Baldy walked to within two feet then leaned his upper body in towards Pops and with a stinky breath said, “Ain’t it a bitch that it’s a beautiful morning and you have to go to church?”
Pops moved slightly around him and walked on towards the chapel. When he’d cleared Baldy he answered with, “It’s a hell of a lot better than a lot of places I’ve been.”
Baldy caught up and walked alongside him for a few feet and then asked a question that Pops didn’t expect from anyone who’d been sent to a place with a lot of other agents. Still trying to keep his voice down the bald guy leaned over towards Pops and asked, “So what do you think it’s all about? Why are we all here?”
There were two reasons why Baldy would ask a question like this. Either it was an agent asking for some obscure reason and not expecting a real answer or the question was being asked by an inexperienced new guy. Pops decided not to respond in any manner. The conversation ended as they reached the chapel. Both entered as if they had never spoken.
Baldy went left and Pops went right as they approached the pew area. They both found seats and sat and waited. Pops scanned the room. It was a strange environment with no one talking, no unnecessary moving around and absolutely no one except him was looking at anyone else. It looked like a funeral. After about twenty to thirty minutes people started coming in the side door near the speaking platform in lock step and holding their heads up. They swaggered past the waiting audience and started taking what looked to be prearranged seats on the platform, looking and acting like arrogant Nazis. After the newcomers had taken their seats, one of them who appeared to be a lot younger than the rest stood up. Hell, he looked younger than everyone in the audience. As Pops watched, it appeared that this young man was doing his best to perform his duties but Pops could see that under the surface the young man was very unhappy. Pops had only observed him for a few seconds but he knew that this was a young man who wasn’t an agent and someone who didn’t want to be there no matter how hard he tried to act otherwise.
The young speaker stood silently at the podium for a few seconds, standing behind the microphone and adjusting it several times while looking at the blank faces in front of him. Once he had the microphone precisely where he wanted it he assumed a military stance of parade rest and started his talk with, “Gentlemen, I am the corporal. You will call me corporal. On the platform is the cadre of the camp and they will be your trainers for the next two weeks. These are the people you will never question. The training you will receive will be on a pass-fail basis. For most of you it will be more of a reconditioning than anything.” With a quick look back at the men sitting behind him he continued on, “The organization has a very specific mission coming up and they need a team, so at the end of the course there will be a competition to select the winning team for this mission.”
Most of the men seated in pews looked around at each other and back at the podium. Pops was not watching the cadre as the others were, he was watching the men surrounding him in the pews. As he scanned the bewildered audience Pops noticed that Baldy was watching him and not the others. He just gave a nod of his head to this old warrior then went back to watching the slightly bewildered audience, acting as if Baldy’s eye contact was nothing. About ten or twenty seconds passed when one of the other men on the platform took the microphone and introduced himself, “Gentlemen I’m the captain. You can feel free to call me captain or captain sir. On a day-to-day basis you will report to the sergeant and me. This training will prepare you for the biggest mission of your life. Up until now it’s all been fun and games.”
Did Pops just hear this guy right? What the hell could this fool be talking about, this business about fun and games? In what nightmare life could this guy have come from? Pops could not wait to hear the rest of the bullshit that the captain had to say.
The captain cleared his throat loudly and then went on, “Gentlemen as you all know this is not a request and you don’t have any say in this matter or in this training. This is not some Tiny Tim summer camp and your mommy didn’t send you here and she sure as hell ain’t coming to pick you up. I’m here under orders, the same as you. Hear me and hear me good. I will complete my mission. My mission is you and to find the winning team. Remember you only have two choices, win or lose.” Then he leaned forward and in a booming microphone echoing voice that bounced off the back walls he barked out, “Did you hear that? You only have two choices, win or lose.” He paused, looked around and then repeated it with a little more intensity, “You only have two choices, win or lose.”
The captain continued looking over the audience, still maintaining his Nazi-like demeanor, when his voice got a little calmer, “Gentlemen, this is not boot camp, this is reconditioning. We all know that we get soft and don’t keep up on our military skills when we have been away for any amount of time. When we are agents out in the field we have to blend in and that makes us soft. Good restaurants, beautiful women and the night life that goes with it is not our friend.” The captain then went on another rant talking about all the hoo-ha crap that everyone who has spent time in the military had heard for years. Some guys like the captain still believed it.
Pops tuned out the regular bull shit that he’d been subjected to for years when all of the sudden his ears perked up. The captain announced that “Every man on the winning team would get one hundred thousand dollars cash. One hundred thousand dollars in good old American green backs. The one hundred thousand dollars would be in addition to the normal amount of pay for their mission.” Pops tried not to let what he was feeling inside come to the outside as he held in a big idiot smile. He sat back in his pew while a million things started running through his mind. These thoughts included wondering who he would have to kill, what the hell else would have to be done to get a bonus like this, what would happen to the team who lost, how would they pick the teams, and what kind of training would he have to go through? These things continued to ramble aimlessly through his head.
The captain continued talking, giving a sales pitch to a group of men who were now highly curious, “The people on the winning team will not have to do any more missions after this but will be invited to come back from time to time to train the next group. This is a new phase of the organization where we update and train on a regular basis.” After saying this, the captain began repeating himself and Pops tuned out again. Somewhere along the line Pops heard the captain introduce the others that were seated on the platform but by now Pops was only thinking about Mary, their lives, a safe home for them and naturally the money.
Pops’ musings about retirement were not unusual but the money made him think again. Firstly, there was one hundred thousand dollars to think about. One hundred thousand dollars would be a nice chunk of change to collect for what was up to now a seemingly unreachable life of retirement. It just hadn’t worked as planned. Secondly, Pops knew that he would never get a dime out of them by trying to leave. Thirdly, in this line of work no one was ever sure that there would be a tomorrow. Fourthly, if he stayed on for the full term there was still no assurance that the organization would even let him go at retirement age. Mandatory retirement was normally fifty-five for field agents but after all these years Pops knew that having some old guy in a nursing home spinning tails about his glory days was highly unlikely. Finally, he had become one of the best problem solvers in the field. In any field when you’re the best it’s either too damn hard for you to quit or they just won’t let you do it. A few of the old agents that Pops had known over the years that had managed to retire had become reclusive, slipping away to a place where no one knew them and they lived out their days satisfied with the fact that they had served their country.
The frustrating thing was that the government wasted money on crap that no one needed or propped up people that should have been allowed to fail when instead they
should have spent money and resources supporting their old agents. Most of these guys had given the best years of their lives to their country.
One hundred thousand dollars! He thought back to all the times he’d had to drag his family around the country, putting the kids in one school then pulling them out and off to someplace new. It was slam bang here you are kids, make the best of it. With nearly every move he’d felt sorry for his kids who were always the new kids in school. He felt the worst for his daughter because she had a harder time leaving her old friends than his son who’d had automatic sports buddies wherever he went. Pops thought of the times Mary just picked up and moved without a word, working hard to make every new place a home for the family. Then she would have to leave and start all over again. She always acted as if it was normal and everybody did it. Pops knew that his family had never had any life of their own because of the events in his life.
An old friend had once told Pops something that had always been true even if Pops never wanted to admit it. This friend seemed to instinctively know what Pops was doing even though they had never spoken of it. Now sitting in a church pew Pops could see in his mind that day with his friend as if it had just happened yesterday. They’d been sitting on his friend’s mother’s front porch talking about the military and combat when out of nowhere his friend stopped talking and turned to Pop fixing him with his northern Italian blue eyes and that thousand-meter stare. He said, “Hey bro, don’t worry about it. Just remember you are what you are, and you are what they made you. It’s not a thing, it’s nothing.” His friend had never fully recovered from his tour of duty as a U.S. Marine when he’d been shot several times in one combat action. In his friend’s mind the war lived on. Pops had never forgotten those words: “you are what you are, and you are what they made you.” And often when he considered those words he wondered, “What did they make? What am I?”
The only thing he knew was that he’d made his family’s life rough and he hadn’t had one moment of total serenity since he’d become an agent. As for doing the job, he’d become relatively numb to it years ago. As far as the rest of his siblings, he never spent much time around them either. How can you be around people who still think of you as that little skinny boy who use to play soldier in the park?
Now sitting in this pew and hearing ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS, getting louder and louder in his mind, Pops knew that his new mission was to win and win at any cost. The end result of the mission didn’t matter as long as he took that money home to Mary. He wanted nothing more than to walk through the door and hold out a bag of money and tell her, “Hi honey, I’m home and I have something for you and by the way, I am retiring.”
He silently considered these thoughts showing no outward emotion as he sat in the audience and waited for the next speaker. It was one of the people who’d been sitting on the platform behind the podium. A quick study of his face and unflinching body language told Pops that he hadn’t seen this guy around the compound prior to him walking through the side door and taking his place on the stage. This individual was strong, well built, and super clean cut. He walked to the microphone and abruptly and as rudely as anyone could be, he took the microphone away from the captain. Without any bullshit and without any formal name or rank introduction he started to speak in a manner just short of a yell. His straight forward no nonsense approach made everyone sit up and take notice.
Glaring at the audience he just started by saying, “I want you men to know that this is not going to be a run you boys into the ground session. Like captain told you, this will be a reconditioning and competition. You will see me around the compound so you need to understand my role here. I have the first and last say and that’s all there is to it. The captain will fill you in on how you will be split into two teams and there will be no requests of team changes submitted or approved. You are on the team that will be posted. If anyone makes any changes it will be me. I’ll make changes for the sake of making the best team possible and not for some crybaby, whiny-ass bullshit attitude.” Again he gave that same scrutinizing glare at the men sitting in the chapel. In a manner that no one could confuse for anything other than what he meant, he said, “My mission is the best team. I couldn’t care less about any of you. I will get the best team and you will do whatever you have to, to be on the final team. The old saying that failure is not an option has never been truer. You, your job, your family’s future and maybe even your life is on the line.” Then he turned, threw the microphone at the captain, left the platform and went out the side door leaving everyone sitting or standing there in a bit of a daze.
Pops could tell that the actions of the previous speaker had surprised the captain. It took him a few seconds to shake his head clear and then he returned to the speaker’s podium in what appeared to be a well-practiced attempt to regain a commanding stage presence. The captain was over compensating for his lack of knowledge of how to resume and Pops was sure that any experienced field agent or old military man was underwhelmed by all the military jargon the captain used as he started his spiel again. He stumbled around in the middle of mentally straightening himself away and then finished with, “Tomorrow at zero six forty five there will be a team roster posted on the bill board with the teams. Remember your team names and the team colors. Don’t write any of it down but commit it to memory. It’s like all the other missions you have been on, memorize the important stuff.”
It was a very quiet bunch of government warriors that walked back to their quarters. No one knew what team they were going to be on so they didn’t want to start making alliances with someone that might be on the other team. Some of the men were guardedly smiling at people they had started to buddy up with or people who were sharing a hooch.
As Pops walked back to his hooch he tried to stay invisible while at the same time checking out others as he had done during the first truck ride. Baldy walked up beside Pops and as he passed said in a low tone, “Good luck.”
Pops replied before he even knew what he was saying, “Luck is for the lazy.” Baldy kept walking past him down the path. Pops thought to himself that something was up with this guy. He also knew that there was going to be more to this game than anyone had spoken of yet. He knew winning was not going to be running up and grabbing a flag off some guy’s hip like on Sunday morning in a park flag football game. Pops understood this was going to be survival of the fittest and fearless and the losers would at best be getting all the shit assignments.
Back in his room Pops sat on his bed and watched his tall athletic roommate who tried very hard to look casual and act as if Pops wasn’t in the room. Pops watched as the man started to remove several small black soft-sided zippered containers from his duffel bag. This puzzled Pops since they all were given what he thought were the same black duffle bags which should have contained identical items that they’d been given on the plane. Hell, he thought, if I hadn’t had the snack bars in my pockets while deplaning, I probably wouldn’t have had anything to eat. He remembered how all the bags had been reexamined after deplaning.
Pops went about his business on his side of the hooch as if he didn’t see any of the man’s half-ass antics. With his well-trained field agent’s years of hard knocks education he kept his experienced eye on everything that this man was doing. His experience also made him aware that this could be a ringer, a plant or just a plain old spy for the cadre. It could be someone posing like he was from the outside. He just looked out of place because he was so much younger than most of the others. In any event Pops needed to keep an eye on him.
Pops was about to go to bed when he noticed his hooch mate putting on his flip-flops and picking up the towel hanging over the rail at the foot of his bed. Pops slipped into bed and closed his eyes so his roommate would think he was in the clear to proceed with whatever it was that he had planned. It turned out that the guy only picked up one of the small zippered containers and tucked it under his towel.
Before he dropped off, Pops thought it had been a long couple of
days.
CHAPTER FIVE:
BLONDE
He was feeling good the next morning as he started to slowly get up and get around. It must have been the fresh air because Pops couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept like that. After a good hot shower and a shave, he headed for the mess hall. On his way he planned to stop and see what information had been posted on the board and only then would he partake in one or two good refreshing morning cups of strong hot coffee.
Walking up to the bulletin board he saw the list was not difficult to find. It was a large list right in the middle of the board with all the assignments and to make it simpler for the less intelligent, it was the only thing on the board. Pops spotted his long used code name and noted his assignment was Team Alpha and his team color would be Red. All easy to remember, he would just turn them around and say Pops red alpha. He didn’t pay much attention to the rest of the assignments since he didn’t know anybody so it made no difference who was on his team. He thought to himself that he was going to win that money so if he was on a good team, fine, and if he wasn’t he would deal with it whatever way was needed at the time.
Pops was turning to walk away from the board when he noticed one of red team player’s code names had been blackened out so that it could not be read. He counted the players on both teams and found that without the eliminated man, his team would be shorthanded which could give the blue team an advantage. But then again maybe not as he remembered some of the numb nuts he had seen around the compound. As far as the list and the unbalanced teams, Pops would just keep it to himself. He knew that there were first team experienced players like himself and then there were some who’d always been the second string backup people for the ones out on the missions. Backups were people that no good field agent ever wanted to find while out in the middle of some shit mission only to look up to find Mr. Pissinhispants standing next to him. Making a mental note of his new assignment Pops went on to the mess hall and the overdue cups of coffee.