Paxton's Peace

by Bailey West

  “You will find some instructions there. Do it ASAP.”

  The call disconnected.

  I rushed to the Veteran’s center to use their computer. They had private rooms we could use, unlike the regular computer labs where you sat directly next to someone. I found an empty room, closed the door and navigated to the designated website. The Team always used this site to get information about our missions. I thought my account would have been deactivated by now. I navigated to the only message in the system. It read:

  Voice message…30 seconds to insert earphones…message will not repeat…

  I grabbed a pair of earphones that were on the desk and plugged them into the portal. I immediately heard: Huddle…2354 Delancey street…asap…be aware of your surroundings…Message deleted.

  I navigated out of the system. The computer prompted me to restart it, effectively deleting any trace of me being there. I left the Vet center and went straight to my car, paying close attention to my surroundings. I drove around the area of my college for a while making sure no one was following me before I navigated my way to the lower east side of Manhattan. I had no idea what was going on, but I knew never to question directions from the team even if I wasn’t a part of it anymore.

  I parked my car in a garage several blocks away and made my way to the address on foot. The building looked like it had been abandoned for some time. As soon as I approached the door, it opened. I walked in and saw the entire A-Team standing in front of me.

  “DT,” everyone still called me by my given nickname as we embraced.

  “DT, we intercepted some chatter. Somehow the identities of the team may have been compromised. We cannot be positive, but we think it’s coming from that cartel that we busted up several years ago in El Salvador,” Ace explained.

  “What makes you think that our identities have been compromised?”

  “We distinctly heard our code names in the transmission. They don’t know our government names, but it appears that they are working on it. Apparently, there was a camera hidden in the house that we missed. They heard us calling each other by name. We have reason to believe you are the first target. One of the last transmissions came from New York.”

  “New York?”

  “Yes. Manhattan to be exact,” Ace finished.

  Gaige held his hand open. There was a small, brown device resting in his palm.

  “Take this. It’s a much smaller version of the earpieces we used in the field. Keep this in your ear at all times.”

  I took the small earpiece from his palm.

  “Give me your cell phone,” Gaige held out his hand.

  I reached into my pocket and retrieved my cell phone. I handed it to him. He took it and walked back over to his workstation.

  “Give me all the details, Ace. I need to know what we are dealing with. My family still doesn’t know what I really did in the military. I would love to keep them out of this.”

  “As do we, but you know how this can go sometimes, the family is looked at as the easiest way to get to you. As much as we want to keep them out of it, it’s not going to happen.”

  “Details, Ace,” I paced as the team filled me in. I had murder on my mind. There was no way someone was going to come into my city and harm my family.

  “After you left, the leader of the group that we arrested was tried and convicted. One of the guards that was responsible for his transportation to and from the lockdown facility told his supervisor that the inmate started talking about finding the team that brought down his cell. Of course, that didn’t raise any eyebrows until one day he mentioned a hidden camera at the compound that would have been impossible to find. The cleanup team that came in after us didn’t report anything about finding a well-hidden camera. We thought that maybe he was blowing hot air until we intercepted a call between two people on our watch list. That’s when we heard about the hidden camera again. Apparently, the video feed to the camera was disrupted, but the microphone picked up everything. That’s how they got our names. Again, we don’t care about names because none of our code names resemble our real names. The thing that really concerns us is that they talked about being on their way to New York and possibly finding DT. Apparently, that damn accent gave you away.”

  “Really?”

  “No,” he chuckled. “Just trying to lighten the mood. We’re not sure how they came up with New York. There may be a mole in the organization. General Bowman is working that angle.”

  “The Colonel finally got promoted, huh?”

  “Yeah, he did. I think the powers that be thought that giving him more rank and visibility would slow him down but it didn’t do anything except speed him up with more power,” Ace chuckled. “He will let us know what he finds. Right now, the only people we can trust are each other. We will protect this family,” he pointed to everyone in the room, “and your family, like we always have, got it?”

  “I got it.”

  “We would do the same thing if it were any of us. If we would have heard Ace, then we would have been in Saint Louis,” Hawk added.

  “Man, my family hasn’t been the same since my mother died. My pops married a woman that I swear is plotting his downfall. My brothers and I left home as soon as we could. I joined the military, the other two left and went to college. I don’t call home unless I have to. I just spoke to my Pops the other day, and he told me my little sister left home without telling them where she was going.”

  “Like ran away?” Angus asked. “How old is she?”

  “She’s eighteen. She just graduated from high school. I’m sure my pop’s wife has everything to do with why my little sister left.”

  “Do you know where she is?” Angus questioned.

  “Yeah, it wasn’t hard to track her down. She’s here in New York attending school. I’m going to give her some space. My brothers and I will figure out how we want to handle it when I get back home.”

  “I’m here if you need me to keep an eye on her,” I responded.

  “I will hit you up if that’s necessary. Right now, I think she’s cool.”

  Gaige handed me my cell phone.

  “I installed some encrypted software so our communications won’t be traced. This should be our only means of communication outside of the earpiece.”

  “Cool, got it.”

  I left our meeting with a ton of weight on my shoulders. It was never my intention to bring danger to my family’s front door. It really was the last thing we needed right now. Michaela was not doing well. She’d made the decision to stop the chemo and radiation. None of us agreed with her decision, but we all understood, except for Blue. Watching her decline was slowly killing us all, but Blue seemed to be going down with her.

  I used my key to enter Michaela and Blue’s house. I could hear Blue playing his acoustic guitar in Michaela’s room. I waited until he stopped playing before I entered her room.

  Her eyes were closed but slowly opened when I entered the room.

  “Pax,” she said hoarsely.

  “Hi Sis,” I smiled. “What up, Bro?” I squeezed Blue’s shoulder.

  “Pax.”

  He looked like he hadn’t slept in days and his short locs were now hanging around his ears.

  “Why don’t you go and get something to eat, Rome. I will keep Sis company.”

  “I’m good. I don’t need to go anywhere.”

  “Roman,” Michaela softly said. “Please go outside and get some sunshine or something. You’re depressing me, and I’m the one that’s sick!”

  She gave a small half smile.

  “Why do you keep trying to get rid of me?”

  “I’m not trying to get rid of you. I just want you to take a break.”

  Roman looked at her and then at me.

  “Okay, but I will be back.”

  He kissed her on the forehead and walked out of the room.

  “Sit down, Paxton. Get comfortable. I need to talk to you.”

  I sat down in the seat that Roman had just vacated
.

  “I’m dying Paxton. You know that, right? You are the only one I can be totally honest with.”

  I nodded my head trying to contain the tears that were threatening to fall.

  “Roman is not doing well. He thinks that there is something that he can do to make this go away, but it’s not going anywhere. Soon, I won’t be here, and I need to know that you will make sure Roman moves on. He has to find another wife. She will give him the long-lasting love that he deserves. I was the beginning, but I’m not the end for Roman. He will find her, and he will know when he has. Please nourish that relationship. Don’t let him give up on her because he’s trying to hold on to me, okay?”

  I leaned back in my chair and looked down at the ground, “Okay, Kay. I will.”

  “Look at me, Pax. Promise.”

  I looked up and met her eyes. They didn’t have the brightness they used to have prior to the cancer. The twinkle had diminished, but it wasn’t completely gone.

  “I promise.”

  “Good, now on to you. You have so much unresolved guilt about what happened to Giselle. That was not your fault. The only thing that would have happened differently if you were there is that you probably would have been shot too. You have to release yourself from that burden. It’s too heavy to carry with you to your destiny. You will never make it. You will get tired and give up, but you can’t give up, so you have to release it.”

  I’d never discussed the guilt that I carried after leaving my parent’s house that night. I often felt like if I had stayed, I would have been able to talk Nigel down. Maybe I would have been able to get Giselle to leave the apartment.

  “Pax, you have prayed the prayer over and over asking for forgiveness for trespasses as you forgive others of their trespasses. Now, you have to forgive yourself for whatever you thought you did wrong. Let the past stay in the past. You have to be better for yourself and for Roman. He’s going to need you.”

  Michaela was Roman’s wife, but our relationship felt like she was my blood sibling. I was not looking forward to living in a world where she no longer existed.

  “I don’t know how to let go of the past. I think about it a lot.”

  “You have to refuse to let your mind go there. You have to combat thoughts with words. You have to change your thought process audibly. When those negative thoughts pop into your head, you have to combat them with words of affirmation. Second Corinthians says to bring your thoughts into captivity. That means you can teach your thoughts to obey. You speak your deliverance into the atmosphere then the atmosphere will adjust to your words. Death and life are in the power of your tongue. Let me show you. Your mind says, ‘You can’t do it.’ Then you say out loud, ‘I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength.’ Your mind says, ‘I will never succeed.’ Then you say out loud, ‘I am the head and not the tail. I am above only and never beneath.’”

  “That’s a lot easier said than done but I understand, Kay. I will work on it.”

  “Good. Now play me something so I can rest.”

  She knew that I didn’t do anything with music anymore. Nigel had taught me to play several instruments, and I gravitated to the guitar, but I never played anymore. I knew that I couldn’t say no, so I picked up the acoustic guitar resting next to me. I played something soft until she closed her eyes.

  I put down the guitar and kissed her forehead.

  Paxton

  Ezekiel and I convinced Roman to leave his house for a couple hours. He had taken on the role of caregiver for Kay and rarely, if ever, left the house. The family stepped up and kept the kitchen stocked and house clean so that he could tend to Kay, but he needed a break. Since some of Kay’s friends were visiting with her, we used the opportunity to get Roman out of the house. We were taking him to the hair salon to get his twists freshened up and his beard trimmed. He looked like a cave man.

  Roman volunteered to drive probably so that he could leave when he was ready. I didn’t care as long as he was out of the house for a while. I sat in the passenger seat, and Ezekiel was in the back seat. We rode enjoying light conversation. I’m sure Kay was in the front of all our minds but it felt a little like old times, before the military and before Kay became sick.

  “Pax, what was that girl’s name that you dated with the tangled eye?” Ezekiel asked.

  “What in the hell are you talking about? I never dated a girl with a tangled eye.”

  “Oh yes, you did! Blue, remember? We chuckled every time she came around because we didn’t know which eye to look at when we spoke to her?”

  “Yeah, I do remember her! Her name was something that started with a T, Tangie, Telisa, I can’t remember, but I knew it started with a T because Zeke started calling her Tangled instead of her real name.”

  They both chuckled. I was racking my brain trying to figure out who they were talking about. I dated so many girls in high school.

  “We told you that she had a wandering eye, but you acted like you never saw it. She had a sister that was a year younger than her…” Zeke was feeding me details to jog my memory.

  “Oh, wait. You are talking about Tarnequa Ellis! Yeah, her eye did confuse me sometimes, but her body was nonstop!”

  “That’s true,” both of my brothers agreed.

  “I ran into her a couple years back. She got that eye fixed, and she is still bad as hell.”

  “Straight?” Zeke leaned forward.

  “Yeah, I almost asked her what was good until her husband and daughter came around the corner.”

  “Awe, man! She’s married?” Roman laughed.

  “It was a sad day,” I hung my head.

  We all laughed.

  “I remember I ran into this chick that I used to kick it with…”

  As Ezekiel started telling his story, a white van caught my attention through the side view mirror. To everyone else, it looked like a regular van, but the grill of the van caught my attention. It reminded me of the vans the Team used for our missions.

  “Are you all close?” I covered my mouth and turned my head when I spoke, hoping my brothers wouldn’t notice. I told the team that we were going to get Blue out of the house, they agreed to shadow us.

  “We are a couple cars behind you.” I heard Harlem say through my earpiece.

  “Cargo van, to my right.”

  “She was so loose, I promise I almost fell all the way in…” I heard Ezekiel still telling his story. Neither one of my brothers were aware that anything was going on, but my heart was beating out of my chest. If there really is something about to pop off, I have to protect both my brothers. I have a small gun hidden in my back, but I don’t know if that will be enough firepower to protect them from whatever is coming.

  “We are right behind them, DT. If they try anything, we will…”

  I saw the passenger window of the van roll down, and the tip of a gunpoint out as they were approaching our car.

  “Situation! Situation, get down,” I yelled. I managed to throw myself over Blue while grabbing Ezekiel’s neck and forcing him down into the back seat. “Don’t move until I tell you to move.” I pulled my gun from my back ready to die protecting my family. I rolled over and saw my team swarm on the van. They managed to take down the driver and move the van onto a side street before my brothers knew what happened.

  “We are clear,” I heard Angus say into my earpiece before I allowed either brother to move.

  “I’m sorry, Rome, Zeke.” I moved so they could sit up.

  Roman grabbed my neck and touched his forehead to mine.

  “It’s alright, brother. We got you. You’re going to be alright. Do you hear me?”

  He was referring to my diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder. I went with it because I never wanted to tell them what I’d brought to their doorstep.

  “Hawk and Angus will still shadow you, DT. The rest of us are going to go and have a little chat with our new friends.”

  “Cool,” I said out loud. Essentially responding to both Roman and A
ce.

  I walked into the warehouse after spending several hours with my brothers. Ezekiel and I had convinced Roman to get his hair done and have lunch with us. I’m glad we did it but the entire time I was with them, I was anxious to get finished so that I could meet the team to find out what they had learned. I walked into the far corner of the room and found two men tied to chairs. One man was unconscious on a table, and another one was hanging from the exposed beam by his wrists.

  Ace and Harlem had all of their tools they used for interrogation set up on another table. I could only name the knives, but there were a lot of other metal tools that were speckled with blood.

  “These are the men that tried to hurt my family and me?” I questioned as I examined each man carefully.

  “Well, these two were in the van. We found these two holed up in a condo after their friend,” Gaige nodded to the one unconscious on the table, “told us where we could find them.”

  I could feel the darkness slowly creeping in. It’s how I describe the feeling I get when I am so angry that it’s impossible to control myself. The first time I experienced it, someone pushed Roman down and made him scrape his elbow. We were still in elementary school. I punched that kid so hard in the stomach that he threw up his lunch. I am very protective of what’s mine. Mess with me, okay. It takes a lot to get me upset, but when you hurt my family, I can go from zero to a thousand in one point two seconds.

  “My family was their target?”

  Angus nodded her head.

  I turned around and grabbed one of the men tied to the chair around his neck and lifted him and the chair off the ground. He started squirming and moving his neck trying to free himself from my grip.

  I spoke while I looked up at the man’s pale skin starting to turn a shade of blue, “You thought you could come into my city and harm my family? You thought you were big and bad enough to take me on?”