The Traiteur's Ring (37 page)

“Which one?” Reed asked from the driver’s seat in front of him.

“The big one,” Lash said as he crowded nearly on top of Ben to make room for Auger beside him in the back seat of the tiny Japanese truck. “I want that stir fry bar.”

“Small one has a better salad bar,” Auger griped.

“Sweet Jesus, you guys got soft quick,” Chris chided from the front seat beside Reed. “Next you’ll be expecting back rubs.”

“You offering?” Lash asked as he packed a dip in his lip and tossed the can to Ben.

“You wish,” Chris chuckled.

“I vote stir fry bar,” Reed said. “And, I’m in the driver’s seat,” he added, settling the debate. He put the truck in gear and headed for the gate to their small compound tucked in the corner of the airfield. Together with their Army counterparts and the aviators that toted them around in their specially equipped helicopters, they lived apart from the rest of the base behind the twelve-foot fence and double rows of concertina wire – a base within a base. Ben hopped out to unlock the combination lock on the gate and then hopped back in once the truck had pulled through and he had secured the gate behind them.

Reed drove along the edge of the long runway, their beat up little truck pulling a tail of dust behind it, and skidded through the gravel to make the sharp turn which would take them down the hill and into the main area. In unison, Ben and his fellow SEALs grabbed on to the frame of the truck to keep from toppling over, but none said a word – they had all ridden with Reed before, and the bruises were just part of letting him behind the wheel.

Ben stifled a yawn and rubbed his face as they settled back level, bumping out of the dirt onto the narrow road. His restless nights (well, days) seemed greatly magnified by the busy tempo of their current operations.  His muscles ached with a fatigue that felt almost like the flu. He wondered if being tired made the images seem more real, his exhaustion-numbed brain becoming even more delusional, or if it was just being back in this shitty country that made everything so vivid.

“Trouble sleeping?”

He looked over at Chris who twisted around in the front seat to evaluate his teammate.

“Yeah,” Ben said holding his gaze but trying to look less tired than he felt. “Still getting the rhythm.” It often took a few days to get into a groove at the start of a new deployment. Of course, they had been here longer than a couple of days.

Chris pursed his lips but nodded and said nothing more.

To make matters worse, the dreams held no useful information. He had assumed the voices would become incarnate in his sleep and somehow fill in the gaps of just what the hell he should be doing. Perhaps the fact that he drifted in and out of sleep prevented that, he couldn’t be sure, but unlike the long walks with the Village Elder or his Gammy he had experienced before, he instead woke from fragmented dreams that told him nothing. He dreamed often of Jewel and, in fact, felt her presence even when awake, but of course that was easily explained by his emotional tie to her and the heavy rucksack full of guilt he carried with him everywhere. Still, if not for the pull he felt towards little Jewel and the undying sense he would somehow see her again, he would have felt much more certain he had made a terrible mistake.  Along the way managing to fuck his teammates – all of whom should be at home right now, enjoying their families or drinking beer and chasing skirt at the beach.

And, you should be at home with your beautiful bride, you dumbass
.

Reed skidded the truck to a stop in the gravel-filled parking lot beside the flat aluminum building that clearly did not fit in with the rest of the cement block base. NATO troops loved their chow, and this had clearly been added when the troops had arrived. The rest of the parking lot held mostly Humvees and green trucks with a variety of insignia, but the blue NATO flag predominated. Only a few other scattered vehicles were beat up, unmarked civilian looking trucks like their own.

“Let’s eat,” Reed said as he cut the motor. He winked at Ben in the rear view mirror and then hopped out.

They all walked together down the cement path, showed their military IDs to the local militia in their green uniforms and silver dome helmets, and entered the busy chow hall. The long tables were mostly empty, and the few diners sat clustered in small groups. They spotted another group of Special Operators – mostly Army and two of their fellow SEALs – and returned the customary nods. Ben followed Reed and Lash to the stir fry bar where dark-skinned foreigners (Ben guessed Pakistani) tossed together ingredients handed to them in little cups which “customers” filled from the buffet line. Reed rubbed his hands together.

“I think I eat better here than at home,” he started to fill two cups with meat and vegetables.

“None of your calories here come from beer,” Lash pointed out.

“That might be it,” Reed chuckled and handed his cups to the cook who tossed it onto a griddle, sprayed it with oil and some sort of sauce from squeeze bottles, and began to mix in brown rice.

A few minutes later, they slid their trays in beside Chris and Auger with their burgers and fries.

“Healthy,” Lash said. “I thought you wanted a salad.”

“Probably no more fat than that oily crap you’re eating,” Auger countered. He took a huge bite of greasy burger. “And, the salad bar sucks at this one, I told you that.”

The two bickered on, but their voices faded into the background as Ben lost the battle to keep his mind from wandering.

“So whaddya hear, boss?” Auger asked. “We out again?”

That brought Ben back.

“Well,” Reed said “I hope we got something better tonight.” He lost some rice down his chin as he talked around a huge bite. “We sure ain’t done much to redeem ourselves so far.” Ben felt his friend’s eyes on him. “Not that I mind bein’ here,” he mumbled.

“Gonna all change tonight,” Chris said. “Sounds like we got a real deal in the works.”

“No more corporals?” Lash asked, referring to the mostly low-level shit heads they had encountered so far.

“We’ll hear more at the brief,” Chris said. “But I think we got some guys from the list lined up tonight.”

Ben felt his pulse quicken, not with fear but with excitement. It was high time they did something that mattered. The list referred to intel’s list of “management level” Al Qaeda in the area they deemed worthy targets. The last few weeks the task force had mostly missed listed targets. He knew every crow they brought back added a piece to the intel puzzle and brought them closer to a high-value operative. Even if this didn’t fulfill his sense of prophecy and calling, taking out some big time bad guys would make him feel a hell of a lot better about dragging his team out here.

Be careful, Rougarou. The dark ones are closer than you think.

Ben looked up at the voice in his head. He felt no real surprise or anxiety at the sight of the Attakapa seated at the end of a long and otherwise empty table just across from where his team ate. The Indian sat bolt upright, his arms stiffly at his sides, hands clasped together in his lap. Their eyes locked a moment.

The time is close. We can guide you, but the rest is up to you. Use the dark ones to find the one with the black blood. Remember what you have been told.

The image shimmered a moment and then evaporated. Ben realized that didn’t surprise him either. He had either accepted it as real and had seen it enough to no longer be amazed or he really had lost his mind, which he clearly couldn’t fix. Either way – fuck it.

And, just what the hell had he been told? That he would have to figure this shit all out on his own? Very fucking helpful. He had learned a lot from his time with Gammy about where he had come from and maybe who he was. He had sure learned a lot about who the hell she was. He wished he could fill in the missing pieces of that night. He now knew that it was no deer he had watched her slaughter, and he thought maybe he understood a little about what had happened – but not much more than that. He still felt there was more. He remembered a fire, and he remembered walking out of the woods that had been his home – alone and crying. Where had Gammy been? What had caused the fire?

Ben shook his head. He had been told nothing that would help him. He had learned about the Eater of the Dead and why he did what he did. He learned the term
Rougarou
, which he already knew, and had been filled with more questions than anything.

He dug into his steaming plate of food. Maybe the nightmare would become real tonight. He had seen what Gammy could do and that was sure as hell real enough so why not this? He definitely would be fighting Al Qaeda tonight, dark ones or no dark ones. He had the sense that either way he would need his strength.

Chapter 35

Ben moved quietly through the rapidly thinning brush of the jungle. Ahead he could see the whitish glow through his NVG’s that meant Viper Team approached the camp higher authority had targeted. From the brief, he knew there would be a single building at the far edge of the compound, but they would encounter numerous fighters stationed in the clearing around it – protectors for the handful of upper-level terrorist leaders inside.

The dense jungle prevented a decent uplink of real time data from the predator that flew high and quiet overhead, but the break in the jungle canopy over the area had allowed a few glimpses and had confirmed “ten to thirty” enemy combatants. Not a very useful estimate, but they at least knew someone was home.

Ben had no trouble focusing on his job for the moment, the dreams and voices completely pushed aside, and his mind now that of a career professional soldier. He glanced over at Chris who indicated with hand signals he wanted them to fan out a bit so  he moved left and then dropped to his belly. Ben shimmied the last few yards to the edge of the brush and looked at the target. The clearing was full of light from lanterns and two camp fires, as well as harsh white beams from corners of the house powered no doubt by the large generator he heard grumbling and rattling from that side of the camp. Ben flipped up his no longer needed NVGs.

He saw perhaps twenty fighters, mostly young and all of them relaxed and casual. Only about half of them even had their weapons, and those that did either slung them over their backs or dangled them from their hands as they smoked and laughed. Clearly they did not expect any trouble.

Not even remotely a professional or disciplined fighting force – again.

He looked for vests. Many times the senior leadership would surround themselves at important meetings (such as the one intel told them went on now inside the little mud hut) with suicide bombers. They would run at attackers and then detonate themselves, taking as many as possible with them as they headed off to paradise and their flock of virgins. From the look of this group, most of them would see their first naked woman in paradise – many looked less than sixteen years old. Gratefully, he saw no vests.

“Viper Team – set,” Chris’s whispered voice said in his earpiece.

He listened as the three other team leaders checked in from their positions in the circle they had formed around the camp.

“Hold Chevy two-one,” a much clearer voice commanded from many miles away back at the operations center. “Two minutes. On my call.”

The JSOTF commander must be getting some new info or else watched something that bothered him from the predator feed. Whatever gave them the eternally long two minute hold made Ben curse under his breath. Nothing felt worse than a hold once you were in position. He shifted his weight back and forth and tapped a finger on the side of his M-4. He did his best four-count tactical breathing and felt his heart rate slow.

As his body relaxed, he probed out, into the camp, with the blue light of his mind – gently searching for thoughts that would help him in the assault and more importantly for signs of the dark ones. At first the voices came in a confusing burst of mixed thoughts, but he slowly filtered them out – like fine tuning an old radio. The voices were predominately in a foreign tongue, but he found he could understand them in his head anyway. After only a moment it was as if he heard them in English. But they held no real clues. The men in the camp thought mostly about food, about women, and about when they would get the chance to kill the infidels. One voice stood out for a moment as important but before he could tune it in the commander’s words in his headset broke his concentration.

“Chevy two-one – go on my mark,” the voice said, and Ben tightened his muscles for the leap to his feet – a sprinter in the blocks. He pulled a concussion grenade free and pulled out the pin, then raised his rifle to the ready position. “GO, GO, GO!”

Ben lobbed the concussion grenade gently into a group of four bad guys that stood in his little sector of the battlefield. Only two had weapons – AK-47s which their elbows rested on like walking sticks – and all smoked and laughed. When the grenade rolled into the middle of them they simply stared at it in shock as if they could not possibly believe what they saw.

Ben entered the clearing at a brisk jog, weapon up and aimed at the group. The non-lethal concussion grenade went off and drove three of the four to the ground, hands over their ears. The fourth dropped his cigarette and tried to pull his rifle to his shoulder, but he faced the wrong way and Ben dropped him with a single shot to the temple. The other three screamed in terror, their voices high-pitched frightened children.

I don’t want to die today.

Please don’t kill me, please don’t kill me.

Why am I not at home with my mother and sisters?

The voices in his head sounded like English in his mind, and he advanced quickly on the group of teenagers as their older friend dropped dead in the middle of the fray.

If you stay still and put your hands up in the air, I won’t be forced to kill you.

He sent the thought out as he placed a boot between the shoulder blades of the nearest terrorist, and all three shot their hands into the air. Other concussion grenades exploded nearby. But he stayed focused on his task though his eyes swept his immediate perimeter while he kicked rifles away from the now crying boys. Then, he knelt beside them and quickly flex-cuffed them together, their hands behind their backs.