The Traiteur's Ring (40 page)

He listened to his music and forced his thoughts back to the mission as it had been briefed. He still had a job to do no matter where the rest of the night led him on his crusade. Viper Team – his friends who were more like family – needed him to be at his iced best. He would do his job the only way he knew how, the way he had trained and executed since his days in SEAL training. Ben reviewed the operational plan in his head as they hurtled through the darkness in the Blackhawk. The half-hour sped by like mere minutes, and then another voice broke into his music, this time cutting off one of his favorite Credence tunes.

“Five minutes,” Chris’s voice announced.

He flipped his NVGs down and checked over his gear in the green-grey world they opened up for him. He checked his rifle last, confirmed (again) that a round was chambered, and then tugged his gloves to make sure they were tight.

“One minute.”

A few moments later, he lay prone in the brush and scanned his sector quietly through his NVGs as the thumping sound of the helicopters faded into the distance. At the sound of Chris’s one-word command, he rose silently, rifle up and ready, and began the forty-five minute trek to the target. He knew from the brief the fighters that waited at this camp would not be the children they had fought the night before. They had been told to expect a smaller but heavily armed and seasoned fighting force.

They anticipated a second perimeter farther out from the camp and scouts patrolling the area. Fortunately, they had the support of a predator drone orbiting high above, this one equipped with infrared heat signaling. They would have real time data on anyone alive in the jungle around them. They may not know who they were, but they would see them. They would assume anyone moving about at two o’clock in the morning in the middle of the jungle and in proximity to an Al Qaeda command post were bad guys.

Their first contact came from the Task Force commander in the form of relayed information from the life-saving predator.

“Viper Two – Viper Three – two targets fifteen meters left and moving towards you.” The calm voice in his headset dropped Ben down into the brush.

He scanned through the bushes to his left, the green-grey world in his NVGs so far devoid of motion.

“Viper Two – target just past you and is moving away – Viper Three – target now only a few meters and heading right towards you.”

He crouched lower into the dense vegetation just as the man came into view. The Al Qaeda terrorist moved slowly and deliberately toward him, and his head seemed to move side-to-side. He had one hand on the grip of his rifle, and the other held something to his face. Ben recognized the hand-held night vision system and sunk lower. The terrorist also had a radio. Ben closed his eyes a moment and reached out with his mind, but he heard nothing that made him think the man thought American soldiers might be hidden in the jungle. He seemed to want only to return to camp and get something to eat.

The man turned suddenly and looked behind him at the same moment Ben heard the quiet sound that he knew meant Lash had taken out his partner. Ben took advantage of the man’s distraction.

He leapt to his feet and sprinted forward, drawing his SOG knife from its scabbard on his vest as he did. The man heard him, but way too late, and Ben threw an arm around his neck as the terrorist turned toward him. He shifted all his weight to the right, pulling the man off his feet by his head just as he plunged his combat knife into the soft spot at the base of his skull. He instantly went limp in his arms, and Ben lowered him gently to the floor of the jungle.

“Viper Three, clear,” he whispered into his microphone. He knelt beside the body and scanned the dark jungle around him but saw nothing else that concerned him.

“Viper Two, clear,” Lash’s voice told him in his earpiece.

Ben looked down at the lifeless body beside him. The Terrorist stared blankly at nothing.

Can’t breathe– can’t move– can’t breathe!

Ben shut off the voice in his head quickly, not wanting to hear the last terrified thoughts of the man who died slowly beside him as his brain screamed for more oxygen – the message never reaching his body through the now severed spinal cord. Ben saw the lifeless eyes held no orange light, and he heard only the single frightened voice in his head – no dark one here.

He waited another few seconds and then continued his quiet movement towards the objective. The Operators monitoring the predator feed from the operations center warned them of nothing else, and in a few more minutes he again lay prone at the edge of an Al Qaeda camp.

Unlike the night before, this camp had no real clearing, just a slight thinning of the jungle, so the dozen or so terrorists that sat beside two open fires in front of three large tents would have plenty of cover during the attack. He also grimly noted they had a fifty caliber machine gun in a trench dug beside the corrugated tin shack where the true objective would no doubt be found. The weapon was not manned, but he had an inkling any attack would immediately drive several trained gunners to the efficient weapon. That would have to be the first order of business.

“Viper Lead – Two – you see the fifty?” Lash must clearly be in place and had seen the gun nest, as well.

“Rog– Two, that’s your target.”

“Two.”

“Three in position,” Ben whispered into his mike.

“Four.”

“Five.”

Only a few moments of silence passed that as usual felt like an eternity. Finally, Chris’s voice came over the headset.

“Four and One are the breachers now – Two on the Fifty – Three and Five secure the camp. Smoke and bang on my mark.”

Ben pulled out a smoke grenade and a concussion grenade and waited.

“Viper Team, go.”

He tossed both of his grenades into the center of camp just as others lobbed in from what would appear as all directions to the bad guys. Unlike the children from the camp the night before, these fighters reacted instantly. They quickly scrambled to their feet and raised their weapons as they moved in all directions away from the grenades which rolled around on the jungle floor. Two men sprinted towards the machine gun as they all hollered at each other. Ben heard the spit of Lash’s rifle and watched the two collapse to the ground before they had made it two paces. Ben sighted in on his own targets from the fighters who scattered like rats and began to fire.

Moments later all but two of the dozen or so of the enemy lay dead, the tents had been torn down to clear them of additional fighters, and Viper Team moved toward the tin shack beside which Lash sat at the fifty and gave a grin and mock salute. The two wounded terrorists crumpled through the door to the building and slammed it behind them. Chris and Reed were already there as it closed.  Reed pressed a shaped charge around the door knob then plunged wires into the charge and flattened himself against the wall.

“Fire in the hole,” he hollered, and the door disappeared in a flash of white light and smoke. Immediately, he and Chris entered the shack, and Auger followed a split second later. Two cracks of M-4 fire were followed by Chris’s voice yelling commands in English. Then, he heard Reed’s voice.

“Squirters out the back – three of them!”

Ben sprinted around the corner and saw three figures in grey robes and high-top tennis shoes tear off into the jungle. He fired his M-4 on instinct, and the tail-end Charlie in the group pitched forward face-first onto the ground. Ben was on him in a second, a knee between the man’s shoulder blades as he scanned the jungle through his rifle sight.

“Two are still on the move,” he hollered. “I got one.”

“Hold,” Chris commanded from inside the shack. “We have both of the primary objectives.” Apparently the big fish had been captured.

The Rougarou is here. We must warn the master.

Ben grabbed the terrorist by the hair and pulled his head up off the ground. The eyes opened and looked terrified, but they clearly were not the eyes of a dark one. Ben probed the man’s mind and found only a single voice, full of disjointed fear and pain – but alone. He had not been the source of the new voice who knew him as the protector and hunter he had become.

He stood up, shifted from a knee to a foot keeping them man pinned to the ground, and scanned more intently the ten or so yards of jungle he could see. He had to get the two squirters – at least one of them was a dark one and could help him find his own primary objective. He wanted only to do what fate had decided he must do and get the hell home. He felt his heart pound at the thought of losing the trail of the escaped terrorists. A hand fell on his shoulder.

“Nice work,” Lash said as he looked at the bad guy under Ben’s boot.

“You got him?” Ben asked.

“Sure,” Lash said but looked confused.

Ben sprinted off into the jungle. As he moved swiftly through the brush he searched through his NVGs, but also sent out the blue light of his mind. If he could hear their thoughts again he could track them. He slung his rifle across his chest so he could move more quickly and use both hands to clear the brush ahead of him. He wouldn’t need it now.

He had other weapons at his disposal.

Chris’s voice in his headset demanded that he come back – that they had completed their mission. Ben pulled the earpiece out of his ear, and let it bounce against his kit as he moved swiftly, tracking his prey.

Chapter 38

“What the hell do you mean he’s gone?”

The boss sounded highly pissed as he led two Al Qaeda leaders out of the shack, their hands bound behind them. Reed followed with his own prisoner.

“He took off after the squirters,” Lash said as he pulled plastic cuffs onto the terrorist he knelt over.

“Didn’t you guys hear me order a hold? We got what we came for,” he said and gestured to the two prisoners who both stared at their feet. Lash shrugged.

“Maybe he didn’t hear you,” Reed offered.

Chris shot him a look that kept him from saying anything else.

“Goddammit,” he mumbled then reached up to key his mike. “Viper Three – this is lead. Return to the camp. We got ‘em, Three. Return to camp.”

There was a long, awkward pause while Viper Team looked off and waited for Ben to check in that he understood and would be there in a minute. The pause stretched out longer, and Reed cursed in his mind.

“Three, this is Viper Lead – how do you read?”

Another long pause, and then Chris repeated his call. The officer rubbed his temple with a gloved hand.

“Did you hear any weapons fire?” Chris asked.

Lash shook his head.

Reed felt a tight band around his chest. Where the hell was Ben? Had he been hurt or – oh, Jesus no – killed? Maybe his radio was dicked up. That made the most sense. Ben would never ignore the radio calls, and he couldn’t be dead, right? Reed ran through all of the ways you could kill a man without firing a weapon. Still, he found it hard to imagine these shit heads could kill a fully armed SEAL, especially Ben, without shooting him.

He peered into the greenish-grey jungle through his NVGs. Any second Ben would come into view, likely leading two prisoners and with a shit-eating grin on his face. But he saw no movement at all.

Reed listened as Chris called again over the radio, but again got no response. Then, the officer looked over his team.

“Alright,” he said. “Reed and Auger stay with these assholes.” He turned to Lash. “Lash, come with me – we’ll do a quick search.”

“Hey, I need to go help you find him,” Reed said and grabbed at Chris’s sleeve.

“No,” the officer said. “Stay with Auger and guard these guys. We’ll be back with Ben in a minute.”

The Team all nodded, and Auger herded the terrorists into a little circle and forced them to their knees all facing its center. Lash and Chris headed off into the jungle on divergent paths in the general direction Ben had headed.

Reed kept his rifle trained on the circle jerk of bad guys, but he couldn’t help but scan the edge of the camp. Where in the hell was Ben?

“He’s alright, don’t you think?” he said to no one in particular. Only Auger was there to hear, and he shrugged and said nothing. But his tight-jawed face said enough. Reed shook his head. “He’s alright,” he announced as if saying it would make it true.

He had to be alright. Reed didn’t think he could even go on being a SEAL if he lost Ben. He had lost friends before, but this was different. Ben was his family – him and Christy. The thought of Christy at home at the beach made Reed wince.

“He’s alright,” he announced again and continued to scan the jungle, knowing his best friend would emerge at any moment.

Chapter 39

Ben knew in a few more minutes a claim of radio problems would fail to keep his ass out of wicked serious trouble. Even with his earpiece bouncing on his chest he could hear Chris’s desperate calls to him. At this point, they would assume he was injured or killed – or God forbid captured – and the thought of the fear and worry he caused his team tore at him.

Nothing I can do about it this second.

He knew in his heart the best thing he could do for everyone was to track these fuckers down and find out where their leader hid from the Rougarou. That was the mission he came here for, and he now believed completing it not only would be his ticket home and back to real life, but might really save the world as he knew it. Like most SEALs, Ben had never thought of himself as a hero and even now thought only that he really had no other option. An image of the giant demon-like creature flashed in his mind. He could never let the power and destruction he thought such a creature would have unleash itself on his world or his family.

It’s for Christy as much as anything – Christy and Jewel and our unborn son.

The voices he heard now were those of the Al Qaeda terrorists and no longer the dark ones who lived inside at least one, if not both, of them. The voices provided no clues as to where they were going other than a picture he flashed on briefly of the remains of what looked like an ancient ruin of a building which the jungle seemed to have nearly swallowed up. The voices, however, seemed to work almost as a beacon – the clarity improved when he felt like he moved in the right direction. The volume got louder when he felt like he got closer. All of that could be total bullshit imagination, of course, but he had nothing else to go on.