“Any idea when?”
“Soon.”
It had been “any day now” for nearly two weeks.
“Be careful, Patrick with that phone call. And if anyone asks, I didn’t request it, okay?”
“Got it.”
He trusted Kyle to reveal the source of the information if it was necessary and he also agreed not to discuss it with the others until the time was right.
Throughout the year and a half since he’d left Tottenham, he’d called Adolphis at least once a month. The young Nigerian keeper was having a great year and had found that rhythm with the team that brought with it magic and success. Patrick explained to Stephanie that people called it The Beautiful Game, which had originated with the fans in Brazil decades ago. When everyone did what they were supposed to, it looked like a graceful, choreographed dance. The team would scatter, like specs of oil in water, and then they’d come together to ram through their opponent’s defenders to get to the box. He explained that if it was done right, the pattern resembled one pulsing organism working in harmony, anticipating passes and plucking things from the air like a multi-tentacled beast.
He found a quiet spot in the backyard and dialed the Nigerian keeper.
“Paddy! Does this mean you made it?”
“I did indeed. I’ll send pictures of my uniform.”
“Oh yes, we want to see all the equipment. You’ve done well.”
“Say, what’s the name of that village you’re from, Adi?” Patrick asked.
“Tengo. In the north. But I don’t think it exists. Why? Are you going there?”
Patrick didn’t want to lie to him, but he was not allowed to reveal where they were to be traveling. “We’re doing some studies of militant groups, and I thought I’d just see if there was any activity I could reference for you. We’re half a world away.”
It wasn’t a lie, because they were still in California. While Adolphis was describing the area, the mountains he used to run in, the lake he slept next to as a little boy, reading his treasured books, Patrick located the village on a map, and discovered it was right in the middle of a large red zone, meaning it was covered and fully saturated with militant groups of all kinds.
“You coming over here for a visit soon? The team wants to see you. They want to know if you’ve been to the White House yet.” His laugh consisted of breathing in, instead of blowing air out, which gave it a strange animal sound that could be rather scary. More like a croak.
“Funny. No, we don’t visit the President. He has his own people. We swim in the ocean and sun on the beach, that sort of stuff.”
“And you would be pullin’ my leg, too, Paddy.” Adolphis couldn’t make a soft D sound, so pronounced his name like it was spelled Paw-Dee.
“Well you know how they say, if I told you, I’d have to kill you.”
“Excepting that you have to catch me first, Paw-Dee. You forget, I can outrun a giraffe! I’m faster than the wind itself.”
“Now look who’s pulling my leg. Are you sure they aren’t using you as a forward?”
“Dos guys are great with the ball, but they’ve been shit with the overkicks. Coach says he buyin’ everybody glasses with their bonus money if dey don’t start getting them in the box. I can score better than they can.”
“Well, there you have it. You’re going to get good fast if you’re having to do all the defending. If they can’t shoot—”
“I know, I know, if they can’t shoot, they can’t fuck,” Adolphis blurted out.
Patrick laughed that Adi had remembered the story about General Patton serving in North Africa, who used to tell people he didn’t mind women, even professionals, to travel with his troops. ‘If they can’t fuck, they can’t fight’ was one expression that had endeared him to his men. Patrick adjusted it slightly to use in the context of playing soccer, and his coach and the team loved it. So, if players were missing, it meant things at home were bad.
“No dos guys, they fuck okay. Bunch of strange guys from some little country near Russia. Little guys, you know?”
“Geez, I thought they’d take the money from my contract and get some decent players,” said Patrick.
“Oh, they’re good players. Run their little legs off, but they make me laugh. Coach says they drink too much. That’s alright, I guess. But they have these little legs. So fast, but you can’t see their feet they go so fast. They fall all the time.”
“They’re supposed to do that. Drawing fouls.”
“They stumble over themselves. Not pretty, Paw-Dee.”
“Maybe they just need a chance to learn.”
“I know what it’s like to come to a foreign country. I thought everyone spoke English, and at least I knew that. But these guys don’t. And they’re getting so confused with the side of the street, you know? One guy nearly got hit by a bus, Paw-Dee. He was looking the wrong way.”
Patrick didn’t know at first what he’d been talking about and then realized they were getting confused driving on the left-hand side of the road.
He reminded Patrick that the group leader had the lion tattoo on his cheek. “You find dat guy, you be my spear, Paw-Dee.”
“Well, that’s not likely, but I’ll take it with me wherever I go, and I’m taking your father’s bible with me too.”
“Good luck. It will bring you safety.”
“Well, it already got me through the training without injuring myself. So, Adolphis, you take good care of yourself, and those keeper gloves I gave you.”
“I only use those for game days. Thank you.”
He told the Nigerian keeper that Stephanie was well. Her profession as a teacher, even a teacher of little ones, gave her high marks in his book. They said good-bye and promised to talk in a month or so.
The squad was ordered to report to the Team building at four in the morning and to bring their gear. Patrick took time to say good-bye to Stephanie, who was having difficulty showing her courage.
“Steph, don’t think about it. Just go on with whatever else you regularly do. I’ll be home before you know it.” He tucked her head to his chest and rubbed the back of her head, feeling the hot tears soaking through his shirt.
At last she looked up at him. “I’ll be okay. I think the first one is the worst, or that’s what Lizzie told me. We’re going to spend a lot of time together and boost each other.”
“Good idea, sweetheart. Lizzie’s strong. You can help her out with the kids too.”
“Will you be able to contact me during—” She welled up and placed her hand over her mouth.
“Hey, you have to remember, I’m with the baddest motherfuckers on the planet. I’m a newbie, and they aren’t going to let me do dumb stuff. There will be lots of eyes on me this first time, just in case I run into something new or forget something I was taught. I have total confidence in these guys.”
She reluctantly nodded and allowed him to slip away. Before he walked out the door, he stopped and rubbed his belly and then pointed to her. “We’ll talk about getting you fat when I get back. Deal?”
“Deal,” she said with a thumb’s up. She ran to him one more time, clutching his shirt tight, and then nearly pushed him out the door.
The briefing was interesting but brutal. Pictures of decapitated women and children piled up along the road or in shallow ditches were flashed on the screen. Kyle let the State Department liaison go over the locations of several bands of warring factions.
“Problem for us is that they’ve got a weak government. They can’t protect all the people, so we have these warlords springing up that take the place of what the government can’t do. And then you have the religious zealots who want to make this into a Holy state governed by their laws. They’re not interested in ruling the people. It’s submit or die.”
Kyle added one point. “You’re sitting there asking yourself how come the people don’t rise up. They have no means. They aren’t armed with anything but farming implements. The men can’t protect their women or children. So th
ey are recruited to go off with these gangs. The crops aren’t tended to or get overrun. They have no way out.”
Coop raised his hand. “Can I ask a question?”
The liaison nodded at him.
“Can you tell me why we’re there?”
“That’s on a need to know basis,” barked Lt. Commander Ashcroft, who had been standing in the shadows.
“We also got Ebola happening. That’s why everyone got shots last week,” said Kyle.
The liaison pointed out that the death toll this year alone had exceeded thirty thousand. The room was filled with whistles and grumbling.
Someone said from the back row, “So why don’t we let the Ebola just wipe them all out? It would be a hell of a lot cheaper.”
Patrick knew that wouldn’t be well received, but every man there was thinking the same. It would take a lot of cases of the disease before the death toll would scratch the surface of what the armed conflict had caused.
Lt. Commander Ashcroft answered him tightly with the facts. “Because, son, we don’t want them weaponizing the disease. They’d send infected people all over the continent, perhaps into Europe or the States, just to start wholesale panic. We don’t want to give them that chance.”
“And we don’t let innocent people die,” added Kyle.
The liaison flashed a picture on the big screen. The dark-skinned man had a chubby face, well-trimmed beard, and a dark green tam atop his head that was part of his green and tan uniform. Behind his dark glasses, Patrick bet his eyes would have revealed a well-trained killer. It was hard to miss the tattoo of a lion on his left cheek.
“Johnathan Fortune, although we don’t think it’s his real name. This is the most dangerous guy in the country. He runs rogue to all the clerics and indiscriminately kills people of all religious faiths. He’s nearly single-handedly wiped out the entire Christian population in the north. He was serving prison time before the new regime took over in 2000. He’s been a busy boy. We think he’ll either unite or wipe out the other warlords within the next couple of years.
“The government is weak, and we’re trying to shore that up, but there’s only so much we can do. Our aid packages have been intercepted. These guys have even learned how to hack into the State’s banking system and have stolen millions from the government. We don’t want to send troops, if we can help it. We need you to bring this guy to justice.”
The room hung silent. Did this mean he was to be kidnapped, brought to the States, or killed?
The liaison waited a sufficient length of time before he explained. “First, we want his papers and want to know where he’s getting his help from. We have ideas, but we need to know. And second, we need for the people to see that even Johnathan Fucking Fortune can be brought to justice. We’re planning a public trial in Nigeria, or at least that’s the plan.”
As Patrick climbed aboard the wide-gut transport plane for Norfolk, strapped in, and stowed his bags at his feet so they didn’t interfere with the next man’s, he was still seeing those visions of the villagers massacred. They’d showed him films of torture and killings before. But the pictures of the small children—kids like Adolphis, just wanting to play soccer and have a decent life—brutally murdered before they even had a chance got to him.
Inside his jacket pocket, he fingered the tiny wad of tin foil he’d used to cover the page fragments he’d been given. He did hope that they’d keep him safe. He wanted to come back to Adolphis someday and tell him that he’d been one of the spears who got this cretin and that the bastard wouldn’t be murdering any more of his country’s youngsters.
Chapter 20
A new school year was upon the Coronado Shores Charter School, where Stephanie was beginning her second year of teaching. Several of the older students had been in preschool for more than two years prior and had already begun to read and write. So she began a project to send letters and drawings to the SEAL Team 3 liaison office, through Christy Lansdown.
The activity took her mind off what was going on in Africa. Every time the news came on with special alerts, she jumped, hoping it wasn’t something to do with his mission. She didn’t know where in Africa he was, so anything that had news of the continent raised her worries.
She had been showing pictures of some of the men on Patrick’s squad, but was careful not to pass them around. And last, she showed a picture of Patrick in the box, in full extension, his green keeper jersey hiked up to his waistband. He appeared to be nearly five feet in the air. His large gloved hands were out front, with a few inches separation.
He’d told her stories about that day, and how that game had saved their chance for the playoffs, which they later lost. But for one whole week, the team had basked in the glow of perhaps doing what it hadn’t ever done—win their league.
And Patrick had saved the day. Just like he saved her heart, being there where he needed to be. Defending a net was part skill and part luck, he’d told her. He guessed where the ball was going to go by the way the fielder kicked the ball, whether he turned his ankle or toe-kicked it. And some of the better players were adept at looking like they’d kick with one foot and then at the last minute would change, after he’d gotten committed to one direction. She’d seen some recordings of him where he literally looked like a cat adjusting his leap mid-stream.
The Beautiful Game.
It was that. Graceful, gritty, with drama and excitement, defenders blocking, forwards trying to maneuver around anyone to get one nice pass in, perfectly placed to a foot or head, to assist in a goal. But the keeper could take it all away with his body that might nearly span the width of the box, with agility and quick reaction to a ball coming at him forty miles an hour, or more.
The kids were making comments and asking questions.
“So do the SEALs have a soccer team?”
She laughed. “I have no idea. I’ve never asked him. But I don’t think so, because I haven’t been washing any grass stains recently.”
“What does he like to do the best?”
That was an easy one. “He likes to jump out of airplanes. He likes to watch the little cars and houses down below get bigger and bigger as he falls through the air. And you know what he told me?”
The class wanted to know.
“He said it doesn’t feel like falling. It feels like you’re balancing on a huge blast of air coming up from the earth to hold you suspended. Isn’t that neat?”
The wonderful thing about this age group was that it didn’t take much to impress them. Boys and girls alike could relate to adventure and saving the day, and many of their fathers and mothers also served in the military, so her audience was an easy one.
She kissed her phone and prayed for a picture or a message from him every night before she went to bed. There was so much she wanted to do when he came back. She found herself making mental lists of those when she couldn’t sleep.
Just go on with your everyday life was easier to say than do. But the other wives never left her alone. From the first night Patrick was gone, someone from the squad had called her each day, and everyone offered to help her cook or shop or have coffee.
Jake Harmon dropped by several times to make a happy call. Sometimes he brought her a plant for the little garden she was starting in the back. Other days, he brought her favorite coffee. Sometimes he’d just appear on the beach behind her when she went to meditate.
One day, he sat beside her.
“Hi, Jake.”
“You hear anything from Patrick?”
“Not yet. How about Tyson?”
“Nope.”
She could tell something was on his mind. “Are you worried?’
“I know they know what they’re doing. He’s smart, like Patrick. Like Ryan.”
She stiffened when she heard his name. It had been a few weeks since she’d thought about him, and she made a mental note to call the Rosens and check in.
“What was he really like over there?”
“Ryan? He was fearless.” Jake
followed it up with a sneer as the sun caught his eyes at the wrong angle.
“You’re a bad liar, Jake,” she said back to him.
“No, it’s truth, man. Funny thing is, if we’re scared, we don’t tell each other. We make a joke.” He shook his head and started to laugh.
“What? I want to know.”
“I can’t, man. I really can’t. I have a sick sense of humor. You have to sometimes.”
“Is this about Ryan, some family secret I should not know?”
“Nah. I’m not telling.”
She directed her gaze back out to sea. “So beautiful here. When you come home, do you enjoy it, or are you guarding yourself for the next round?”
“I enjoy the good times. I learn who to hang around and who to avoid. It’s a closed circle because no one else understands us. On missions, it’s different. We work with lots of people from all over. You don’t know them or their background. So you just focus on the job. You spend all your time trying to dovetail into whatever it is that’s the goal.”
“So who do you hang around?”
“Well, I kinda like you, but you’re married. Ryan was my buddy. I was recovering from a busted ankle on this last rotation of his. I wish I’d been there. Maybe I could have saved him.”
“You miss him?”
“I sure do. WhooYa Special Operator Ryan!” he shouted to the clouds above them.
“You’re still not going to tell me that story?”
“What story?”
“The one you couldn’t tell me.”
He put his arm around her and then pulled it away just as fast. “You gotta promise you won’t tell his parents, right?”
“Sure.”
“Or Patrick?”
“Not sure I can promise that. He is my husband, after all.”
He took in a deep breath. “Well, here goes. We were in this little village, and there was this six or seven-year-old kid who kept hanging around us. He had a pet goat he was trying to save from his parent’s dinner table. So everywhere the boy went, the goat followed. Like Mary Had A Little Lamb.”
SEAL's Rescue Page 24