by C. L. Jones
Leaning his weapon by the side of his chair and resting the end of the barrel on the table, he caught a look out of the corner of his eye at the other table. It was the three men from the shower house, the ones who had hidden the little black bags with the surprise material. Pops noticed that they didn’t speak as they ate; probably worried that Pops might overhear them. The reflection in the window by Pops’ corner table was good enough for Pops to watch them. The man who seemed to be taking the lead the last couple times was passing a note pad back to one of the other men. All three kept looking and checking Pops to see if he was watching them. Each man silently acknowledged agreement of the note before it was passed to the next person. Pops sat and ate, inconspicuously watching their reflection through his eyebrows so he wouldn’t have to lift his head and be obvious. He hoped that it would appear that he wasn’t paying any attention. All the while he watched trying to pick up on any indication of what the three were planning.
Pops slowed down his eating to a comfortable rhythm, timing it so the three men were finished well before him. This wasn’t hard seeing how they had started before him. The three finished and got up to leave. As they turned away from their table one of the men reached down and picked up the note book and carried it with him to the front of the mess hall. As the guy walked out the door he pitched the notebook into the trash can. Pops smiled thinking how these three dumbasses had been so secretive but then they just tossed whatever was on that pad into the trash. Was it a setup?
Pops sat at his corner table and continued to look out the window while he ate the rest of his meal. He could see the trash can reflected in the window even better than he’d been able to see the three men. The three men walked past the window where Pops was eating and continued to walk away. Pops watched them until they were out of sight.
He had a couple more cups of coffee, finally finished and picked up his tray and walked to the trashcan. Using his table knife he scraped the debris into the can looking down into the can to see if he could spot the note pad trying not to dump any garbage on it. Bingo, there it was right on top of the garbage. Unfortunately the can was only about ten percent full so the top of the garbage wasn’t at the top or even near the top of the can.
The only problem was first to make sure he was not being watched and second to get to the bottom of the can without being observed. In his favor was the fact that there had only been a few people in the mess hall this morning.
Pops continued to scrape his tray and accidently dropped his table knife into the garbage. Acting disgusted he reached into the can and picked up the notebook and his table knife in one hand. He palmed the book as much as possible and grabbed the table knife with his thumb and index finger. He quickly exchanged the notebook to the other hand that was carrying the tray placing it under the tray and out of the sight of others. He walked to the side of the mess hall where you recycle the dirty trays and silverware. As he approached the tray cleaning area he reached under his tray and took the notebook and put it under his shirt in the waistband of his pants. After he dropped his tray and silverware he strolled out the door as if nothing had been different than any other meal time.
Pops walked to his hooch still carrying his towel, shower bag, and weapon. He knew the others would be headed to the mess hall before long. He entered his building and walked over to his bed and acted as if he was looking into his duffel bag for something. He then walked to the back door, stuck his head out and looked around. Clearing his throat he spat past the hooch porch and looked from side to side again.
Going inside he headed back to the duffel bag and set his handheld mirror on the bed at just the right position so he could see the front door but still have his back to the door. He took the notebook from the bag and read the secretive scribbling inside. The writing was a little hard to read but not hard to understand. The three men had been talking about extra ammo they had, where it was hidden and the easiest way to retrieve it. Pops figured if this was not a trap then it could work for him or against him depending on how he used the information. He placed the book back in the waistband of his pants and moved towards the front door. Pops was very suspicious of the chain of events that allowed him to find out about the supposed ammo stash. There was a notebook dropped in the trash can in the mess hall at just the right time, it just happened to have the location of a stash of ammo, Pops just happened to manage to get it without anyone seeing him and then in the privacy of his hooch he had been able to read it. Yes it could very well be a trap.
Pops stepped out on the porch and saw some of the guys moving in the direction of the mess hall. So with his shower things still in hand he headed to the shower house. Upon entering the outer area of the shower house he found plenty of guys still in there. He started to undress when one of the guys just finishing turned to him and said, “Best put a move on, they’re going to have a meeting in the mess hall during morning chow.”
Pops acted normal but he knew he needed to get showered and shaved and then up to the mess hall so he could continue to act like he was just one of the guys who was unaware of the dishonesty of the cadre. Moving like a bat out of hell with his ass on fire, he finished in record time, dropped his things back at his hooch, and headed for the mess hall.
Pops did not want to stand out to anyone who knew he had been there earlier so as he entered the mess hall he walked to the coffee urn and got a cup. Then he walked back to his favorite table. This time he sat with his back to the windows and faced the dining area so that he could see the rest of the room and the people. He needed to look like any other dumbass waiting for whatever load of bull that they were putting out.
After about twenty minutes the captain entered through the side door and walked to the front center position in the mess hall and started to speak, “Gentlemen I think we have a problem here.” Everyone in the mess hall stopped eating or whatever else they were doing and turned towards the captain who now had their full attention. With a scowling look over the room, the captain went on with what he was saying, “I think too many weak and stupid people were entered into this course. I’m having a hard time believing some of you ever served a day in the field.” Then he turned and looked at the rest of the cadre standing behind him, they smiled back at him like the bunch of brown nosers they were. After getting an enforced Capone-style agreement from his minions the captain went on speaking, “We don’t care how many of you make it through this course and how many of you fall out. We don’t care how many of you get lost out there in the woods or how many of you fall into some ravine that has no bottom. At the end of these exercises we only need five of you. Five out of twenty-one, that’s all. Drop out, get lost or just drop dead, I don’t care. Five is all we need.” He stopped and looked at the blank faced people filling the mess hall and repeated a part of his last statement, “Yes the best five. If it’s the best five and there is only the one grand prize how does that work?”
As the captain looked down into the audience, Pops glanced back and forth between the captain and the men. It appeared to Pops that the captain did not want anyone else to notice as he made a little head gesture. Pops switched his attention in the direction the captain was looking and eyes quickly fell on Indy. As the captain continued to talk, Pops watched for Indy’s next move but Indy just stood watching the captain with a glazy-eyed blank look.
While Pops watched he reconsidered his plan to play the foolish bumbling office type. This was going to be a war and only the best, the strongest and just plain meanest were going to win. The Captain had just given the go ahead to anyone who could figure it out. Pops rocked back in his chair thinking that if he played his cards right, he could use Indy. During the team workout he‘d carefully observed and studied the team members in detail and was sure that when the time came he could count on Roadside, Cowboy and Rocky to be team players. Outside of that he wasn’t too sure of anything or anybody else.
Pops had always been a loner, operating for the organization by himself. Now he had to rethink how to
operate in the framework of a team. Setting aside Cowboy, Rocky and Roadside, there were another four people on the red team who could be considered in Pops’ team framework. The four were Indy, Tracker, Surfer and Flame. They would have to be watched.
Pops considered how best to sort out the allegiances of the members of the red team. With each passing moment he came up with a plan and each segment of it was a little better than the one before. He debated with himself about approaching in secret the people he’d picked out. He could take a chance and lay everything out to them, or almost everything, thinking, “Yea, Yea that’ll work”. However the longer he deliberated, the more his so called great idea faded away. He’d been successful throughout his career when he’d worked alone except for a handler and some computer techs. Further, he and most field agents were like pro baseball players in the way they had certain personal superstitions. When the baseball pros had a streak of success they didn’t change anything in their routine that they thought might jinx their success. Likewise Pops was worried that changing from his lone-wolf approach in midstream could be tempting the fates and could bring a string of bad luck. Pops held to the old saying repeated often in his military background that if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. He thought that he’d been doing okay so far, so he’d just stay the course and keep it that way.
So far three people had already been taken out of the competition. Pops thought that more would be dropping before everything was done. The captain’s voice came through his thinking like it was cutting through an opaque layer of morning fog. He was spewing some crap about one man injured and two dead and if the men in the compound thought this was going to be a problem, they were wrong. The injured and dead were all taken far away to a city where no one would connect them to this place. Furthermore, the people who worked for the organization could lie effectively. Keeping secrets like the compound location and injuries and fatalities of the men were paramount to their survival. Nobody out there in the rest of the world would ever know about a place like this. It was like the compound was a million miles away from civilization, so far out in the boonies away from any place that anybody had heard of.
Pops could imagine a couple of typical scenarios for unloading agents who were killed at the compound. For example they could be taken to a big city and dropped on an empty lot in a part of the city where violence was common. Under the right conditions someone would find the bodies the next morning or even a month later. Others could be hauled out to sea on a privately owned fishing boat, packed in a little ice with cement-filled overshoes, and when it was the right time they would be dropped overboard without a care. If the bodies later washed ashore then unlucky local law enforcement would have to deal with the mystery. And then for a chosen few others who were training compound victims, if they had no family connections or close ties they would find a shallow grave out in the middle of no man’s land where most likely they would not be found in this lifetime.
The captain finished his speech and told the blue and red team captains, “Take charge of your teams and get ready for hell-on-earth week. Dismissed.”
Pops could see Indy immediately get up and head out the door on his way to a clearing where he waited for the rest of the red team. It was obvious that Indy was still in his make-believe self-imposed captainship. Pops walked to the clearing and stood there without saying anything to anyone. The team gathered around and like any good group of soldiers they started doing morning exercises. Without a word between them, one of soldiers started counting aloud as they successfully completed a set of military standard almost perfect push-ups. It was odd the way the team members ignored Indy, warmed up for a run and then like they had been programmed went out on the daily run. All the time Pops was doing pushups and running he was working on a plan.
The team had been running for a long time when Pops realized that they’d gone well past the regular turnaround spot. He figured they had passed the five-mile mark long ago and it was about time to head back, “Hey Indy,” someone yelled. Then man by man, each one on their own turned and started back.
Upon arriving back at the compound, each one of the red team guys cooled down for a while and walked to their hooch without saying a word to anyone. Pops headed back to his hooch and took off his uniform shirt and boots and stretched out on the bed. Seeing how it was near the end of the first week of training Pops was certain that tomorrow the leadership would be watching the two teams, watching and evaluating each of them. And like so many other times when leadership was watching a performance, doing too little could get you a ticket out of here and doing too much could put a target dead centered on your back.
After about an hour he heard Indy’s voice sounding like it was right outside his door even though he know it was coming from an open area. Pops got up and sat on the side of the bed, slipping his boots and shirt back on. He remained sitting on the bed trying to make out what was being said. After a few long minutes he got up and walked to the doorway and stayed just out of sight to look around the area. Poor old Indy was standing at the edge of the clearing and yelling for the red team to gather around him. Pops walked out to the porch and scanned the rest of the compound. One by one the red team members slowly appeared out of their hooches. Looking pissed off they started to gather around Indy.
Pops silently crept over to the group without being seen by Indy. When he got close he could hear Indy already talking to the others, “Gentlemen, we have received orders from the colonel, so go back to your hooch and put your PT clothes on and get back out here ASAP.”
Pops made a quick trip to his hooch and returned wearing his workout clothes looking like the poor dumb guy he’d been portraying. When he reached the spot, Cowboy and Surfer were already there. Surfer looked at Pops and Cowboy and asked, “What’s up?” Pops and Cowboy both shrugged their shoulders at each other as if to say I don’t know.
The three men stood silently and then Cowboy made an under the voice grunt and spoke in a slow deliberate country boy way, “I hope y’all don’t think I’m crazy but if we all stick together we can come out on top of this thing. If it’s every man for himself then we don’t really have a team and we are on our own and out to get each other. I think that’s what they really want.”
Pops and Surfer looked at each other then Surfer said, “How do we know we can trust each other?”
They continued looking at each other for a few long seconds. Then Pops looked at the ground and back up staring directly into both of the men’s eyes. He came out of his dumb-ass routine for a minute and said, “Okay that sounds fine, but if we form this bond then there is no backing out or betraying each other. We’re together to the end and anything we do we take to the grave. We walk out of this place together or we are bagged and tagged and carried out together.”
Cowboy scowled at his two newly acquired friends. Then in an aggressive voice said “And if anyone betrays one of us the other will collect full payment on the promise. You dig what I’m saying?”
All three continued looking at each other and then Pops held out his closed fist and looked at the others. Without a word, the other two reached out their fists. After touching all three of their fists together at the same time like in some of the old Viking stories, Pops said, “Okay, it’s a deal. We’re bonded and remember I’ll kill any man that breaks their bond. Your bond is your word, your word is your honor, and your honor is your life. If any one of us rats out on the others, then he knows that he has forfeited his honor.”
Knowing Indy would be there soon, Pops said to Cowboy and Surfer, “Guys, I’ve been watching everybody and I think this team was not put together like this by accident. I think this is an evenly matched bunch of guys with similar backgrounds. I think we were picked because of our different age brackets and different life styles.” Pops stopped talking and watched the two men, then went on, “I think we should ask Roadside and Rocky in.”
Then Surfer asked, “What about Indy?”
Cowboy and Pops looked at each other at th
e same time then back at Surfer and in a split second Pops responded in the firm style of an old sergeant, “Negative.” Again they all looked at each other and then they reached out and touched fists together in a silent agreement. Surfer whispered that Indy was coming so they stopped talking and acted like they were bitching about the compound and the organization.
Indy walked up to the three men standing there and said in a self-important grandiose style, “Listen up men, I don’t want to start until everyone is here.” Pops looked up and spotted Flame and Tracker coming from one direction and Rocky and Roadside coming from another.
As Pops watched the two sets of men coming towards them, he was even more confident in the possibility of Rocky and Roadside joining the new team. He didn’t have the same good feeling about Flame or Tracker based on the short time he’d watched them during the exercises. His sixth sense told him that they were the kind who would say that they were making a bond only to use it for their own purpose and then break that bond without a moment’s thought. There was no real explainable reason for this sense other than maybe a difference in their ages or maybe the fact that the two younger men had a difference in styles or maybe it was nothing more than generational uniqueness. On the other hand there was something recognizable about the other two; Roadside and Rocky were more like Pops. They kept to themselves and even ate alone in the mess hall.
Pops’ thought process was irritatingly and annoyingly interrupted by Indy’s big mouth once again, “Okay I guess we’re all here now.” As the two groups got close enough so they could hear him, Indy put his hands on his hips and rolled his eyes back in his head like some ten-year old kid that didn’t want to do what he was told. He then said, “Okay boys here’s the story,” stopping long enough to make eye contact with each of the team members. Going on he said, “Gentlemen, this is going to either be a fun afternoon or it’s going to be hell. I have been in a meeting for the last hour and I was given orders to run you all through an endurance course this afternoon. I don’t know what we can expect on this course. All I was told is that the two groups will not be on the same course, but both courses will intersect in some places. Flags that correspond with the team colors will mark out each course. So all we have to do is follow the red flags and defend the course in the event we meet the other team along the way. Both teams are suppose to stay on the marked path with no detours or straying away from the course. Everyone must stay on the path from start to finish and overcome whatever obstacles are on that course.” With another check of his team, he took a deep breath and continued, “All we’re going to have are our weapons, the survival knife you were issued and a rope.”