NO SAFE PLACE

by Steven M. Roth

  Anthony walked across the street to the bushes and retrieved two rocks he’d previously hidden there. He put on cotton gloves he’d brought with him, and wiped each rock to remove his fingerprints. Then he returned to the edge of the lawn in front of Kenny’s house.

  He looked up and down the street to make sure he still was alone. Satisfied, he pitched a rock through the dining room plate glass window at Kenny’s house. As the glass shattered, he fast-balled the second rock through the living room plate glass window. Then he sprinted back across the street to hide behind the bushes so he could watch the chaos he’d set in motion.

  A light flashed on behind a second floor window. Anthony saw Kenny’s father leaning against the window sill and looking out. Then lights went on in the living room and dining room. Someone yanked the inner front door open, but it stopped abruptly two inches into its arc. Someone again pulled the door, but it wouldn’t budge any further.

  Keep it up, Anthony thought, you’re only tightening the knot.

  The person slammed the inner front door closed. Anthony assumed the same exercise would occur at the back door.

  He walked home, satisfied.

  For now.

  Fifteen days later Anthony completed the next step in his youthful vengeance scenario. This time, although he could not be present to observe Kenny’s reaction, he savored the image his recently conceived retribution conjured up for him.

  Anthony locked his books in his school hallway locker, only three lockers away from Kenny’s, and went to his home room.

  Soon after, Kenny hurried from his English class to his locker to drop off his books and grab his gym bag. He routinely did this on Tuesdays when he had 2:00 p.m. Phys Ed.

  Kenny put his books under his left arm, supporting them against his hip with pressure from his forearm and elbow, and mindlessly turned the knob of the combination lock securing the locker’s door. He slid the latch up, releasing and opening the metal door.

  He pushed his books onto the crowded top shelf just above his eye level. Then he reached down and grabbed the handles of his gym bag.

  He yanked the bag from the locker and glanced inside as he used his foot to push the locker door closed.

  That was when Kenny screamed.

  He dropped the bag and screamed again, louder this time.

  He pointed at the bag lying on its side on the floor as he back-peddled away. His mouth, now silent, was fully opened in a mimed shriek.

  The students who gathered around Kenny laughed at first, then quieted down as teachers showed up, coming from nearby classrooms.

  One teacher, the shop instructor, walked over to the bag to see why Kenny pointed at it. He knelt down and turned the bag over so it now was sitting with its top facing up and open.

  The shop teacher retched a dry heave and jumped away.

  “Jesus,” he said. “Fuck’s going on—”

  He spun toward Kenny and barreled through the small crowd of curious students, quick-stepping over to him.

  “You better have a good explanation for this, Mister,” he said to Kenny. “You’re in serious trouble.”

  The shop teacher turned back toward the gym bag just in time to see the school’s nurse poking it with the pointed toe of her shoe. She bent over and picked up the bag, cradling it with one arm as she reached into its dark interior.

  She suddenly dropped the bag and abruptly plugged the knuckles of one hand into her mouth. Then she turned and hurried away, almost running down the hall.

  The dropped bag hit the floor with a thud and rolled over, spilling its contents — the gutted, bloody carcass of a large, gray water rat.

  CHAPTER 13

  Fort Lauderdale

  March 5

  Trace was determined not to let his earlier conversations with Pete spoil their lunch.

  During his time as a SEAL, Trace had learned to compartmentalize everything. When he left the SEALs, he carried this trait with him.

  Time to compartmentalize, he thought, to put aside for now my talks with Pete about hacking.

  Trace tipped back his chair, put his feet on the middle iron rail of the fence separating the restaurant from the Intracoastal Waterway, and pulled down the beak of his ball cap, blocking the sun from his eyes. He bit into his crab cake sandwich and washed it down with a mouthful of Bell’s ale.

  “This is the life,” he said, holding his bottle up to Pete in a mock toast.

  “It’s great, Dad. I could get used to this.”

  They sat side-by-side facing the Intracoastal, watching yachts motor by not more than twenty feet away from them.

  “Do you miss the SEALs?” Pete asked. “I mean, when you’re around water like this?”

  Where did that come from? This is something I do not want to talk about, Trace thought.

  “I always miss the SEALs,” Trace answered. “Being a SEAL was a way of life, a mindset, not just a military job you learned to do. You don’t let it go easily, if ever.” He paused, looked curiously at Pete, then said, “If you’re lucky, the friendships you make, the principles you learn, and the trust you place in others, in your team, stay with you all your life.”

  “I’m curious about something,” Pete said. He sat up straight and turned toward his father.

  “I once heard Nanna and mom talking when they didn’t know I was nearby. Nanna said you quit the SEALs because you let one of your buddies die after a chopper crash. Was that true?”

  Trace paused. He wasn’t happy this had come up. He’d hoped Pete would never learn about this, or, at least not learn about it until after he’d served in the military himself so he would have some perspective on what had happened.

  “I didn’t let him die. I couldn’t save him,” Trace said. “There’s a difference.” He paused to organize his thoughts. We can talk about it another time.”

  He looked to see if this satisfied Pete. When Pete said nothing more, Trace said, “Anyway, to go back to your earlier question, sometimes I do miss the SEALs, the camaraderie, the teamwork, and especially the risk, but that was then. This is now. Life moves on.”

  “So you’re not sorry you’re not a SEAL anymore?” Pete said. He wouldn’t let go of the bone.

  “I like my life now just fine,” Trace said. “Being a SEAL is a young man’s game. Even if I had stayed in, it couldn’t have been for more than a few additional years, then I would have been an ex-SEAL any way you look at it.”

  “Is that when you married mom?”

  “Almost. Not quite then. As I said before, after the SEALs, I transferred to the regular Navy and talked them into sending me back to school for one year to get a master’s degree. Then, afterward, I met and married your mom.”

  “How come I didn’t know before today your master’s degree was in IT?”

  “It never came up. It’s not a secret. As I said, I used it in the Navy. Now I use it in my technology-based law practice.”

  “It’s ironic, isn’t it, Dad, given what we talked about in the car?”

  “It’s not ironic at all, Pete. It’s as I said. The Navy trained me to hack into networks operated by our country’s enemies. So when I told you I know what you’re up to, I do know. I’m just out-of-date on current tools to use, is all.”

  Pete shook his head. “Guess then I don’t have a chance with this issue, do I?”

  “Not if I can help it,” Trace said, as he reached over and messed Pete’s hair.

  CHAPTER 14

  Fort Lauderdale

  March 5

  Janet Fuller leaned her head against the top cushion of the rocking chair and pressed her weight back until the rocker reached the apex of its arc. Then she relaxed her pressure and allowed gravity to pull her smoothly forward. She placed one hand on her growing belly, just below her waist, anticipating the occasional light kick from her developing baby.

  She stretched out her left leg, lifted it slightly, and looked at her calf.

  Those scabs are ugly, she thought. I need to be more careful when I shave my
legs.

  She put that negative thought out of her mind and thought instead about the baby growing inside her. She patted her stomach and glowed at the touch.

  She rocked herself for another twenty minutes, smoothly and slowly, as she hummed a lullaby, her palm flat on her stomach, monitoring the activity within, when suddenly her smile slipped away from her.

  Janet blinked back tears and frowned.

  Something strange, something menacing was happening to her. The feeling was subtle, but unmistakable. She could sense its foreboding.

  The first describable symptom she noticed was a tingling in her tongue. It felt as if her tongue was waking up, like an arm or leg sometimes did, and was now regaining blood flow after having fallen asleep.

  Soon this strange sensation ended, only to be replaced by her lips becoming numb. Janet touched her lips with her finger, then intentionally bit her lower lip. She could not feel her fingers against her lip as she touched it. She did not feel pain as she bit down and drew blood.

  She pushed herself up and out of the rocking chair, crossed the bedroom floor, and waddled over to the mirror hanging on the wall above the dresser. She opened her mouth to look at her tongue. It seemed to be a little off-color, a shade of pale blue, but she wasn’t sure. Her lips seemed to be thicker, too, puffier than normal. A little swollen, she thought.

  “Well,” she said aloud to the empty room, “pregnancy does strange things to your body. Everybody knows that.”

  She turned to go to the kitchen to retrieve her cell phone from the battery charger. She would call her doctor to report her odd symptoms. She’d go see him today if he would permit her to do so.

  As she took her first steps toward the kitchen, she realized her neck and throat had closed, had become tight and constricted, almost numb. She tried to swallow saliva to lubricate and open her throat, but she could not swallow at all.

  She breathed rapidly now through her nose, taking quick, shallow allotments of air in her panic. Her heart pounded. Her throat continued to close and tighten.

  She tried to hurry to the kitchen to retrieve her cell phone, but her legs had become wooden and would not obey her, although her frightened consciousness told her appendages to run. She became dizzy, lost her balance, and dropped to her knees, slamming them onto the hardwood floor. She cried out in pain as she rolled over onto her side. She fought back the urge to vomit.

  Janet laboriously pulled herself up onto her knees, keeping both palms flat on the floor, her arms extended and stiff. She rushed short breaths through her mouth as if she had just finished sprinting a 440-meter race, but without the relief that quickly comes afterward to the conditioned runner.

  The floor beneath Janet became slippery from tears and sweat.

  She tried to stand again, but she was unable to rise up because, as she suddenly realized, she not only was unable to breathe normally, she now was dizzy, off-balance, unusually fatigued, and generally helpless.

  She began to sob.

  Janet stiffened arms suddenly gave way and she collapsed back to the floor, breaking her fall, first with her chin, then with her chest. She sprawled out on her stomach, lying still, eyes wide open, her arms and legs splayed akimbo.

  Her brain was fully functional so she was aware of her situation even as her body refused her attempts to command it. She wallowed helplessly on the floor and stared at the back of her right hand, just inches from her face. A thick, yellow-green substance oozed from the moist scab on her hand, leaking from the abrasion caused when her neighbor’s cat had scratched her the week before.

  The last thing Janet ever saw was the oozing lesion on the back of her hand.

  CHAPTER 15

  Fort Dix, NJ

  March 5 The present

  Brigadier General Anthony Vista placed his suitcase on the bed and filled it with underwear, T-shirts, socks, and various travel accessories. He packed everything he’d need with him for the long drive to his new posting in Fort Lauderdale. Everything else he had on station would be shipped to him.

  Anthony thought about the years he had spent as the mayor of Margate City, New Jersey, after he had retired from active military service. Those were good years, he thought, but too confining. Running a small resort city had been a challenge at first, until he figured out the existing system and then caused the various parts of government to work together. Having achieved that, now he was bored with being a small-town mayor. This assignment probably would be good for him, whatever it involved.

  That said, Anthony admitted to himself in a rare moment of candor that he had mixed feelings about being activated with his Army reserve unit, although he’d always known this was a possibility. These ambivalent feelings arose, he also admitted to himself, from his continued bitterness about the way the Army had mistreated him when he had tried to become a Green Beret. That, he thought, wasn’t a good time in my life.

  Back then, Anthony’s military career, in the heady days after community college ROTC, had moved along the right path leading to rapid promotion. He had been physically fit, highly intelligent, very motivated, a creditable leader, and was sufficiently full of himself to suit the Army’s image of its upper-command officers.

  After his promotion to lieutenant, Anthony applied to join the Army’s Special Forces. He’d met all the physical and intelligence requirements. Because he was a college graduate, Anthony automatically fulfilled the education requirements of the program. Beyond that, he spoke, read and wrote two Romance languages — French and Italian — and was studying both the Mandarin and Pinyin Romanization language systems of Chinese. He told the program’s administrative officer he was willing to learn Farsi and other Middle Eastern languages if doing so would aid the Special Forces. He assumed his offer would help assure his entry into the program.

  Anthony had relished the thought of becoming a member of the coveted Green Berets. Fortunately, his future as a member of this elite group looked certain and promising until, several weeks into the final Assessment and Selection Course at Camp Mackall, North Carolina, Anthony received an order to report to the commanding colonel’s office.

  This cannot be good news, he thought, but he couldn’t think of anything he’d done wrong.

  His stomach knotted as he knocked on the colonel’s door.

  “But, Sir, I don’t understand,” he said. “I have all the qualifications. I’m at the top of my class in every category. You know that.”

  “Not in every category, Lieutenant Vista. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. The decision’s final. I have no say about it. You don’t either.”

  Anthony’s eyes clouded with fury. He couldn’t believe they were doing this to him, washing him out, not after all his hard work, his excellent record.

  Somebody must have lied about me, he thought. That’s the only reason this is happening. It had to be someone who knew he wouldn’t make it into the top fifteen cutoff group unless my place above him in the class standings became available.

  “I know, Lieutenant,” the colonel said, “you have most of the qualifications required, but you also have some problems. Some serious ones.” He paused to assess Anthony’s state of mind.

  “Don’t take this personally, Lieutenant. It’s for the good of the Service and the Special Forces,” the colonel said, his obsequious tone masking his contempt for Anthony.

  “But, Sir—”

  The colonel cut him off, making it clear by the shake of his head he did not want to hear anything more from Anthony.

  “If you handle this right, do your job well, and don’t make waves, your career will stay on track. It’s up to you, Soldier.”

  “Sir, with the Colonel’s permission, I’ve dreamed my whole adult life of being a Green Beret. I don’t understand”

  The colonel turned away and stared out the window.

  Anthony continued. “Colonel, I know somebody in my class caused this. If you’ll just give me a chance to find out who, I’ll—”

  The colonel turned back, away from the window,
and faced Anthony. His frown sliced through the barrier now separating them.

  “Lieutenant Vista, you need to pay attention here. Listen up now.” He paused long enough to be sure he had control of the silence. “You need to let it go. Take my advice and either move on or take the hit to your career.”

  “But, Sir, I—”

  “Hear me out, Soldier. I’m trying to make this easier for you. You’re in a hole. Stop digging for Christ’s sake.”

  “Sir, I appreciate what you’re saying. Believe me, I do. But this wouldn’t just happen. Somebody in the program did this to me so they wouldn’t be cut in the last round. I think I know who—”

  “Enough.” The colonel raised his palm to Vista. “Don’t say another word. Do you understand me, Lieutenant? Not another word.”

  The colonel walked over to his desk and spoke into the intercom: “Sergeant, come in here.”

  Vista and the colonel silently watched one another until the sergeant entered the room and took his place as a witness. Then the colonel turned back to Anthony.

  “These are very delicate and difficult matters, Lieutenant Vista. Unfortunately, choices have to be made, even among well-qualified, good men, such as yourself,” he said, now making his voice soft in an effort to mask his contempt.

  “Your program evaluators concluded you don’t meet the requisite profile the Army requires of a Green Beret. Sorry to have to say this to you, Soldier, but that’s the way it is.”

  “With the Colonel’s permission to speak, Sir, I don’t understand how I don’t meet the profile.”

  “Lieutenant Vista, permission denied. End of discussion. Do you understand me? It’s over for you. We’re done here.”

  “But, Sir . . . .” Anthony stiffened. His lower back ached. “Please, Sir. I need to know.” He lowered his head. “Please.”