The Traiteur's Ring (38 page)

If any one of you moves at all my teammates will kill all of you.

He tuned out the sobbing thoughts and turned to his right, rifle up again, and moved deeper into the clearing.

“Viper Three…Three crows southwest corner.”

“Viper Lead, Roger that—break – Viper Two, on your left,” Chris’s voice sounded even and professional as always, and the crack of Lash’s rifle followed the warning.

The low building appeared through the smoke about seventy yards ahead. Viper Team would clear their sectors and then form a perimeter around the building as the breachers from their sister team of SEALs went in and took down the real targets. They would keep the perimeter and take any squirters that tried to escape.

Two men, older and clearly more seasoned, moved across his field of fire from right to left with weapons up. He squeezed off four rounds that dropped them both and sent them sprawling face-first in his path – dead before they hit the ground. Ben leapt across them like a hurdler and scanned right for stragglers from that direction and saw one just as a pink puff of blood erupted from the back of his head. He dropped straight down into the ground. Lash gave him a head nod from behind the dead terrorist as if they had just run into each other at the mall and then moved off right for his own assigned corner of the house.

Ben saw three Al Qaeda at the front of the crumbling structure with weapons drawn, clearly more hardened and professional than the mob of children strewn out in the clearing. They fired into the smoke at the rapidly moving force of American infidels.  As he drew down on one Ben watched as they both dropped to the ground in lifeless heaps as Viper Team converged. Ben adjusted fire left and fired at the remaining terrorist who screamed his last breath, his rifle dropping beneath him.

Don’t move asshole, or I’ll drill a hole in the back of your head.

He sent the thought directly into the mind of the enemy fighter as he moved in on him. Motion to his left made him tick his eyes briefly in that direction where his mind registered Reed converging on the fallen Al Qaeda fighter with him.

“I got him, bro,” Reed said and placed a foot on the back of the man’s neck, his rifle trained at the back of his head.

Ben moved in, but he knew something was wrong. He wanted to get the man flex-cuffed quickly and clear him of weapons. He knew he wasn’t dead from the thoughts that flooded him.

The Great Satan must never win. We must protect the plan at all costs. Allah will reward us richly in paradise.

Ben slung his rifle on his chest and pulled a flex-cuff from his kit as he knelt down. The man’s face looked pale, and a second voice suddenly joined the first one in his head. The two flooded his mind in unison, making it impossible to make sense of either, though he felt certain both voices somehow came from the man beneath him.

My the mission one is chosen clear by my the God light is great here, and he my must family not will be allowed to  proud find to the I Dark succeed Heart lose Kill or the I our  nothing time in will the be service lost of for God another and thousand it years is Kill an the honor ROUGAROU to KILL die THE  in ROUGAROU his KILL service THE I ROUGAROU will kill the infidels and my reward in paradise will be great they will all suffer the wrath of our one great God.

Ben jumped back at the sound of the name he shared with the Attakapa, and he gasped when the terrorist’s eyes sprung open. He stared into the glowing red coals. The fire seemed to shine an orange light into the dirt beside the dying man’s head. Ben felt himself stumble backwards from his kneeling position in surprise and fright.

“Dude, what’s the matter?”

Reed’s voice blended with the voice in his head, now unopposed by the dark one, and he realized the terrorist had both hands tucked beneath his body.

Praise be to God. Praise be to God. Praise be…

“Reed – get back,” he screamed at his friend. He knew the terrorist would explode any moment and take them both with him.

Ben reached out his right hand, and the ring glowed a fiery red as his fingers erupted in blue light which spread to his elbow. The sparkling fireflies appeared in a cloud around him, and his vision became hazy and mixed with orange – like he looked through a glass full of glowing red liquid. He vaguely heard the terrorist scream out in pain and terror as Ben felt heat spread out from his chest and down his arm until it seemed to burst out of his fingers. His eyes registered a cartoon-colored image of the Al Qaeda fighter’s head exploding. Then he felt a real heat – a heat from outside his body – like he had lit a grill with his face to close to the coals. He fell backwards on his ass, and for a moment the world went dark.

Ben scrambled to his feet and pulled his rifle up to firing position, his eyes blinking rapidly to clear the burning pain and the tears that ran down his cheeks and blurred his vision. He felt a hand on his arm and heard Reed’s voice. It quivered with something not quite fear but not far from it.

“Dude, I’m pretty sure he’s dead.”

Ben blinked again, and his eyes finally focused.

He looked over the rifle sight at the charred rubbish that had been a man only moments ago. Several little wisps of blue flame still danced off the back of the charred black corpse with little spinning cyclones of greenish smoke rising above each. The corpse ended at the shoulders and pool of grayish liquid boiled for a moment in dirt and then evaporated in a cloud of steam with a soft hissssss. The blue flames winked out and left only a headless, charred body which still smoked into the wet air. The smell that filled Ben’s mouth and nose caused his stomach to heave, and he lowered his rifle. He looked up, and Reed stared into his eyes, his own face still full of fear. Ben caught a few short words from Reed’s confused mind and realized the fear was directed at him, not the dead terrorist.

“What the fuck was that?” Reed asked, his voice a low and conspiratorial whisper.

“I…Uh,” Ben could think of nothing else and dropped his gaze to the ground – Reed’s look more than he could bear.

“Three – Viper Lead–Everything ok?” Chris’s voice sounded tense but professional.

“Sector secure,” Ben managed in a tight-throated voice.

“Roger,” Chris said.

“Two secure.”

“Four secure.”

Reed’s voice followed a short pause, and he heard it in the air a moment before in came into his ear from his headset – a strained voice that still quivered slightly.

“Five.”

“Viper Team secure.” Chris announced.

Ben felt Reed’s eyes on him but didn’t look over. Instead, he tried to get his head back out of his own ass and focus on the mission before they all got killed.

“Phantom team – Go, Go, Go,” another voice said in his headset and seconds later he heard the breacher charges fire as the assault team blew the doors and windows to the house. Ben focused on scanning his sector, but his mind saw nothing but the smoking, headless corpse. He swallowed hard and shook his head to clear the image. Moments later he heard a smattering of small arms fire as Phantom took down the house and secured the Al Qaeda leaders inside.

The eating of the dead denies the dark ones a vessel to return to our world. It destroys the dark one and traps him in the other world.

Ben stole a glance at the corpse. The black, leathery arms ended at the wrists leaving nothing but twigs of black bone where the hands had been.

Fuck that.

There sure as hell would be no eating of the dead here today. Not a fucking chance. He would leave that little trick to the Attakapa.

A soft breeze swept over him and gratefully pushed the smell of the corpse in the other direction. He looked over at Reed who also scanned the clearing, his face now more controlled. Ben thought about probing his friend’s mind, but decided against it. He knew basically what he would find. He considered planting a thought there – something that might give some comfort – like a possible explanation for what Reed had seen.

Like what?

He squeezed his eyes shut for a second, and the thought passed between them.

Suicide bomber gone bad. The blast blew his head off, and he burst into flames instead of killing us somehow. Damnedest thing.

Ben listened to the shouts from the house as the bad guys were secured and a moment later heard his headset crackle again.

“Phantom secure – Five crows and two KIA – ready for exfil.”

“Viper secure with three crows.”

He listened to the voices in his headset, grateful they weren’t in his head, and waited for the order to pull back to the clearing they had marked as the landing zone for extraction. He definitely needed to get the hell out of here.

*   *   *

Reed did his best to keep up his scan of the clearing, but he found his eyes pulled repeatedly to Ben and his bizarre vision of blue light and lasers shooting out from his best friend’s fingers, boiling the terrorists head until it exploded and he burst into flames. But that was crazy, right?

Suicide bomber gone bad. The blast blew his head off, and he burst into flames instead of killing us somehow. Damnedest thing.

Of course, that was what had happened. It made the most sense. An explosive device the terrorist had strapped to him had somehow malfunctioned, and he had killed himself instead of them. He shuddered at the flood of memories that engulfed him. Memories of the nightmares he’d had in a haze of morphine and shock after his injury. Images of Ben, his eyes swirling clouds of milky white as blue light and sparkling pin points had surrounded them both. In his dream, fire or lasers or something had come out of Ben’s fingers, as well, hadn’t they? And that fucking ring – it had pulsed with orange light just like today.

Well that’s the explanation, dick head. You’re having some weird post-traumatic stress thing. This is your first time back in combat, for shit’s sake, and it brought back them weird ass dreams. That has to be it, right?

He looked over at Ben who scanned his sector, M-4 at the ready – the perfect SEAL. Shit, he should be on a Goddamn poster. Sniper, medic, SEAL – maybe a Cajun witch doctor of sorts – but he sure as hell didn’t just melt some dude’s head and set him on fire with lasers from his fingertips.

His eyes caught the ring on the middle finger of his right hand which supported his rifle by the rear grip. The ring – that damn creepy ring– glowed a soft bluish-green. God, how he hated that friggin’ ring.

Ben’s face remained set in stone as he cleared their sector.

“Phantom is clear to the exfil LZ,” a voice said in his headset and pulled him back to the job at hand. Across the clearing Auger led three teen-aged boys, all flex-cuffed together by the wrists, towards them. He urged the boys forward with his rifle.

“What in the holy fuck happened here?”

Reed looked up and saw Chris who stared wide eyed at the still smoking, headless corpse. His eyes then caught Ben’s, but his face gave away nothing. His friend clenched his jaw and shrugged his shoulder.

Suicide bomber.

The voice was Ben’s but his mouth never moved, and Reed just shook his head.

“Shit if I know, boss,” he said. “Suicide bomber gone bad, I think. Crappy job of riggin’ his shit, maybe. Blew off his own head and set his ass on fire, but Ben and me didn’t get a scratch.” His mind replayed the explosion of steam and the pool of boiling grey water when the terrorist’s head had evaporated more than exploded.

“Never seen nothin’ like it, bro,” Ben said. “Guess Reed’s right, but holy shit, man.”

Reed looked at his friend who shook his head and looked away. Chris looked at both of them, then down at the steaming body and back at them again.

“Well, shit if I ever saw anything like that, man,” he said. “Assholes are gettin’ dumber and dumber.”

Chris moved off toward Auger who strained his neck to see past the officer.

“What in the hell happened there?” he asked.

Reed moved away from the corner of the house and toward his two teammates, suddenly unable to stand being near the corpse. He also realized he wanted a little distance between him and Ben, but immediately felt like an asshole for the thought. In any case, Ben held his position at the corner. Lash approached them from the far side of the house as Phantom’s six-member team marched five hooded men in long grey robes out of the house their hands secured behind their backs with flex cuffs.

“Everyone okay?” Chris asked the group.

“Hooyah,” they answered in unison.

The SEAL at the end of Phantom team’s train of bad guys looked past Ben and pursed his lips.

“Who’s the crispy critter?” he asked.

Reed felt his chest tighten and for a moment felt a little dizzy. He brushed past Phantom team and their conga line of senior Al Qaeda assholes and then past Chris and Auger. He just needed a minute.

So this is what PTSD feels like. I feel like a damn teen-aged girl goin’ all weak kneed at sight of a road kill. Christ Almighty.

“You okay, Reed?” Chris called after him.

He waved his hand over his shoulder and then gave a thumbs up.

The last thing he needed was the team worryin’ about him.

*   *   *

Ben took the rear behind the column formed by Viper Team and the three teen-age terrorists he had captured. He hoped the restraint he had displayed with the group of bad guys had shown Chris he had the fire discipline he had been counseled about on their big hit of the last tour. He realized that op, their last before heading state-side and his wedding, felt like years and years ago. It couldn’t really have been more than six or seven weeks he realized. He shook his head.

Father.

The voice sent a chill of both fear and excitement through his chest, and he looked over to his right. Jewel sat cross-legged on the floor of the jungle between the out-stretched legs of the Elder. She smiled, and he smiled back. Just as he raised a hand to wave, the image shimmered, turned silver, and disappeared. He squeezed his eyes shut, and when he opened them he saw he had fallen a few paces behind the group. Ben scanned the jungle around him for Al Qaeda and ghosts and then continued on, catching up in a few long strides.