Secret Maneuvers

by Jessie Lane

  The fact that I hadn’t heard from Bobby in almost two months didn’t help my nerves, either. I might not have felt so lost if my best friend, Teagan, hadn’t left for the Marine Corps just weeks before Bobby had left for the Army. With her and Bobby both gone, though, my life felt like a ship tossing at sea with no land in sight.

  The worst had to have been spending my eighteenth birthday alone. My father had tied one on the night before—no surprise there—and then passed out at one of his women’s houses, forgetting all about it. Not that I expected him to care anyways. So I should probably consider his absence a blessing. However, it didn’t stop the little girl in me from feeling dejected. I’d received a five minute phone call from Teagan, which brightened my day, but not a word from Bobby. That had hurt the most. The rest of the evening after Teagan’s phone call was spent bent over the toilet. It was far from the birthday of my dreams.

  Looking in the rear view mirror, I tried my best to fluff my blond hair around my face. As long as the wind didn’t blow it around too much, then the unruly waves should cover most of the purpled bruise that was left behind on the back of my jaw. I couldn’t take his crap anymore. If he so much as tried to lay a hand on me again, I was going to end up being arrested for homicide. Or, at least, attempted homicide. It was time to get out while I still could before I ended up like my mother. Beaten to death. Technically, Momma had died from a heart attack, but that heart attack had been caused by too much stress from her husband pummeling her bloody, on top of an already weak heart. I didn’t think I had my mother’s weak heart and I will be damned if I let that bastard beat me to death anyways.

  Mrs. Baker walked out onto the porch holding something in her hand. A somber expression on her face. Scrubbing my hands over my face, I forced myself out of the car until I stood at the bottom of the porch steps in front of her.

  “Hi, Mrs. Baker, how are you?”

  “Fine, Belle. I’m glad you stopped by; you’ve got a letter from Bobby here. Why don’t you sit down on the swing to read it, honey.” Holding out her hand to me, I saw the envelope extended in my direction. Walking up the steps, I took the small envelope from her and stared at it. A sense of dread eased up my spine from a combination of her careful tone and what felt like an envelope that was way too thin. Something didn’t feel right. Wouldn’t Bobby have written me a nice long letter to let me know how much he loved and missed me? I expected lots of pages from him so that he could tell me about everything he had done and seen so far. Not this little envelope that only looked big enough for a few sentences. I could write a book about how much I loved and missed him, surely he wrote me more than one page? Sitting down on the swing, my hands started to shake a little as I opened the envelope and pulled the short, one page letter out.

  Dear Belle,

  Sorry it has taken me so long to write you back. Life has been kind of hectic since I reached my new base for my Advanced Individual Training. Some days it feels like my world has been flipped upside down and it’s caused me to do a lot of thinking. I’ve seen some cool things that would blow your mind. Met some interesting people, too. Guys my age and older guys who have left their families behind so they can start a military career. All these new experiences and people have given me a lot to think about. Listening to their backgrounds and stories make me realize how sheltered our life has been up until now. I’ll be honest, Belle, I’m not sure I’m ready for forever for us. I’m not sure that we should run off and get married right now. We’re so young. There are so many things we’ve yet to see and do in life. You’ve never set foot outside of Sylvania, and I don’t want us to do anything now that we may regret down the road. Maybe we should take things slower. Take some time apart to make sure that this is what we actually want in life before we make such a big jump. I love you, Belle. I’ll always love you. You were the first girl who touched my heart. Who made me feel emotions outside of the ones I feel for my family. I’m sorry if this is coming out of left field for you and I hope you understand.

  Love Always,

  Bobby

  The words blurred together as small, wet spots started to appear on the page. In a matter of just five minutes, my world had officially fallen apart. The paper trembled in my hands as my mind worked overtime and I began the process of turning my heart to solid steel in my chest; cutting off my emotions. A trick that had been in daily use every day of my life before Bobby Baker had ever stepped foot in it. I couldn’t break down here in front of Mrs. Baker. No one got to see Annabelle Smith cry. Nobody. No matter how much it hurt. It wouldn’t be the first time someone had tried to break me, but it would damn well be the last.

  I should have listened to my instincts that had blared big, honking alarms the moment Bobby Baker had sat at my table in the high school cafeteria and said hello. Nobody as good and pure as Ace would ever want to settle for a girl who lived off of clearance cans of tuna fish and dressed in thrift store clothes. It was stupid to think anyone, other than Teagan, who had placed herself in front of my father’s fists to protect me, was okay to let close to my heart. She’d bought that loyalty from me with bruises and blood. Looking back now, I realized Bobby hadn’t bought my loyalty with his love. He’d bought my body with false promises and kisses. Hadn’t I lived a valuable lesson watching my mother take beatings from the man she loved?

  Love was a joke.

  A fairytale that mother’s told their daughters while tucking them into bed at night just before the man they swore was their Prince Charming knocked the living shit out of them because supper was cold. It was a scam that conned stupid people into letting their guard down so that some jerk could dig their way inside the deepest part of them, place a ticking bomb next to their soul, and then blow it to smithereens. I would never be stupid enough to let my emotional walls down again. Quickly wiping the lone tear from my face that had escaped despite my efforts, I stood and faced Mrs. Baker. A slight movement in the corner of my eye caught my attention. Looking over, I saw Mr. Baker was standing behind the screen door with his head hung almost to his chest, studying his boots in the uncomfortable silence.

  “Thank you for giving me the letter, Mrs. Baker. I’ll just be on my way home now.”

  Side stepping her outreached hand I rushed to the truck and sped from the Bakers’ home, kicking up dirt in my screeching tires’ wake. I willed myself to keep it together long enough until I could go somewhere by myself to be alone. Somewhere, where I could fall apart before figuring out what the hell I was going to do next. It felt like the world had finally turned its back on me. With my shitty luck in life, I should have expected this sooner or later. Who would want to settle down with the town’s trailer trash? Certainly not a respectable boy like Bobby Baker.

  I was well and truly on my own. Nowhere to go, no one to care, and more questions than answers about what was going to happen next. As the view in front of me became one blurry piece of landscape that no longer seemed to make any sense, I pulled the truck over on the side of the country road and parked. Dropping my head to the steering wheel, my body imploded with pain as I felt my heart shatter in my chest. What in the hell was I going to do now?

  Chapter One

  Fifteen years later…

  Bobby

  “Hey, Baker!” Riley Sullivan, fellow member of the EX Ops team bellowed from the end of the hall in front of me. “You’re late for the meeting! Get your ass in here before the Commander has a hissy fit and abandons you to some tropical shit-hole as punishment.”

  I turned on my cat-who-ate-the-canary grin and continued my lazy saunter down the hall towards the room. Abandoned to a jungle? Been there, done that. Got the stinking t-shirt to prove it, too. By stinking t-shirt, I meant the shirt I’d had to take off in the middle of the jungle and throw away because a monkey had thrown rotten fruit at me. Only the guys swore the brown stuff flung at me was not rotten fruit. The second that mission was over, I’d taken a shower so hot it could have boiled my ass alive if I’d stayed in there too long. However, if Jaxon, my
stick-up-the-ass Commander, wanted to send me on a jungle vacation, I sure as shit wasn’t going to complain. All I had to do was make sure to pack my weapons, ammunition, bug spray and plenty of fresh shirts. A machete might come in handy, too. I’d be happy to prove that I could take anything Jaxon threw my way, monkey shit and all. It was better than sitting in my house, staring at blank walls.

  Stepping through the door, I peered around the room at the unit before making my way to the back of the room to take the last available seat at the table. It was your standard conference room, equipped with dull, white walls and cheap, commercial grade, gray carpet. No windows were allowed so that whatever sensitive data being passed around in the room could be kept protected by those few select souls who were privileged enough to receive it. The room was lit by bright, halogen bulbs from the ceiling; lights that reminded me too much of the ceiling fixtures I’d had to stare at while I’d been laid up in a hospital bed years ago, immobile, with a bullet in my knee.

  The only decorations were a giant, dry-erase board that was centered on the front wall, and oversized, framed quotes from heroes like Patton, “No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor, dumb bastard die for his country.”

  My personal favorite, Eisenhower’s quote, hung several feet down from Patton’s, “What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight—it’s the size of the fight in the dog.”

  On the opposite wall hung Patrick Henry, “The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave...”

  The fourth frame stated, “In war there is no substitute for victory,” from MacArthur.

  These were the extent of Commander Jaxon’s attempts to keep his unit motivated. I thought that was crazy because we had the ultimate form of motivation whenever we were on a mission. You either stay focused or you got dead. See? Motivation. Anytime we were out doing what we were paid to do, we were on our own.

  Those framed quotes existed in the real world a whole hell of a lot more than the EX Ops team did. Off the record, we were supervised by the Director of the CIA in conjunction with the Department Of Defense, and the men in this unit were mainly comprised of ex-military. We had one exception on the team because he’d been recruited from the CIA.

  Most of my teammates had been actively recruited while they were still in service for whatever branch they worked for; Navy, Army, Marine Corps, and even one from the Air Force. Apparently, paperwork was nothing to those who ran EX Ops behind the scenes. Still in your four year contract with the Army? Not a problem. Suddenly you’re miraculously and honorably discharged. Already submitted your paperwork to re-up for another six years in the Marine Corps? No biggie. Wouldn’t you know there was a paperwork mix-up? You actually decided to go civilian instead of staying in the military. Lookie there, no more obligations to hold you back from joining us now.

  I’d just been medically discharged due to a bullet to the knee when I was approached. Apparently, the Army thinks you can’t be a fully functioning, bad ass Ranger if your knee cap is replaced with a few metal bits. Which makes them entirely cracked in my opinion. It’s not like I was the tin man and they had to keep me loaded up with body oil.

  So after a year of physical therapy, energized by nothing more than my dogged determination to still be all that I could be—despite what the Army thought—I was out of my soldier’s career. Walking around in civilian life with nothing fun to do and too much time to think about shit I didn’t need to think about. Like her. Next thing I know I’m approached by a couple of guys that make spies working for the CIA look like jackass amateurs. With one question, they had my full attention, “Would you like to serve your country in ways you’ve never dreamed were possible?”

  Does a monkey like to fling shit?

  In other words, “Hell yes,” but I want to know a few things first. With a few well-placed questions like— “Who the hell are you?” and “What’s in it for me?” —next thing I know, I’m signing the dotted line to hand my life over to Uncle Sam in ways the Army never owned it.

  I’m not talking about Uncle Sam on the Army recruitment poster, either. No, I’m talking about my new boss, codename ‘Uncle Sam.’ No one knows what his real name is. I was informed during my orientation that all I needed to know was that Ex Ops was secretly owned by the United States government with directives handed down by the President, sometimes at the behest of the DOD, and issued to us through our CIA handler, ‘Uncle Sam’.

  Fingerprints? Who needs those? Let’s wipe the records of those suckers off the face of the earth so they’re not an issue for later. Fake IDs needed for undercover jobs? No problem. Weapons and ammunition? Step over to what we like to call Toys ‘R’ Us for grown men. Pick a weapon, any weapon. Watch out for that flame thrower, though. It goes a lot farther than you think it does.

  What are the catches? Well, now that you asked…we own you. As in, you don’t take a crap without our sanctioning it first. Might as well go ahead and accept that. You have an initial six year contract you have to fulfill, with the option to renew after it’s completed. No way out of it except going six feet underground, or wherever else your body may be dumped. Also, never, ever, talk about the team. We don’t care if you’re being tortured with bamboo under your fingernails or doing the dirty with your girl in the sack. Information about your Unit never leaves your mouth.

  On paper, you are a privately funded Special Operations Team hired out for hostage rescue, high target bodyguards, and security specialists. Yes, you will take the occasional side job to help keep up this public opinion. Off paper, you are the U.S. government’s go-to guy. In other words, if we can’t legally send someone in to do the job, we’ll send you instead. That way, if you screw up, there’s no blow-back on us.

  Uncle Sam decided they wanted a group of the best combined into a highly classified strike force for the most delicate situations the great U.S. of A. had to handle. Okay, so maybe we weren’t just the best. Some of us also might be considered broken—such as myself—problem children who didn’t follow orders well, or were flat out wild to the bone, but we all held skills other men failed to excel at. Not to mention, these were missions that were in places that Uncle Sam had no legal ground to send in military teams, like the Navy Seals or the Green Berets. So, lucky guys like me were approached and recruited to join EX Ops because we seemed like the most unlikely characters that the government would use. Then, Uncle Sam could send us off on missions we might not return from without losing sleep at night.

  Have I mentioned that I love my job, yet?

  For three years now, I’d been working with a group of eight men that made Rambo look like a jackass. I trusted each and every one of them implicitly to watch my back and work side by side with me on our missions. They weren’t just my brothers in bullets and blood, they were also men I was fortunate enough to call my friends. We were as close as a bunch of guys who blew shit up and rescued sniveling politicians on a regular basis could get. That didn’t stop me from snorting in disgust at the bright orange paper on the dry erase board that caught my eye as I parked my ass in a chair. Written on it in black marker, it read, ‘I love the smell of napalm in the morning!’ Shaking my head in disbelief, I looked over to the only idiot who would possibly tape that up there. The dumbass I grudgingly called my best friend anytime our asses were drunk at a bar and being rowdy. Declan Sullivan.

  “You reject. You’ve been having one of your military movie marathons again, haven’t you?” His cheesy smile was all the answer I needed. Shaking my head in disbelief I continued, “I knew I should have dragged your ass out of the house this weekend. Now you’re going to try and do impersonations again until someone threatens to disembowel you with their KA-BAR. Fuckin’ great.”

  A growl of annoyance cut through any further response I would have made. “Now that Ranger Boy has decided to grace us with his shining presence, we have a few minutes to go over some facts before our guests arrive to brief us on
the mission,” Commander Jaxon barked.

  “Gentlemen, Uncle Sam has become aware of a situation involving the ATF. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms has been conducting an investigation in regards to black market firearms and ammunition buys from all over Texas. These supplies are being sold and then smuggled to a drug cartel in Mexico. However, recently they have received some intel from contacts that the Cartel is now in the process of a deal that would involve a bulk buy and shipment of firearms from an undisclosed location here in the U.S.”

  “The President of Mexico has been in contact with our President and the Director of the CIA. He has asked for our assistance in stopping any more buys from occurring and any more shipments that may take place. Our mission is to assist the ATF agents assigned to this investigation so that they can uncover the source of the thefts and sales, as well as a possible raid of the buyers in Mexico.”

  A shrill beep cut through the silence of the room, and the eight men sitting around the table in their various forms of civilian clothes watched Commander Jaxon Wall, a former Navy Seal, answer his secure SAT phone. After a few tense seconds, he gave a gruff, “show them in,” before closing the phone to face his men again. The sounds of booted steps echoed closer to our conference room until the door was opened by the escort, allowing a man who looked to be in his late thirties into the room. He had short, brown hair with hazel eyes and sported a slim, well-built body encased by khaki’s and a black polo embroidered with the ATF logo on the chest.