The Traiteur's Ring (42 page)

*   *   *

Christy sat on the edge of their bed in her robe and tapped her foot nervously against the night stand. She looked again at the clock – another minute to go. She kept her hand wrapped tightly around the white plastic she held. She refused to look at it until the time had completely elapsed. She had all the uncertainty in her life she could stand right at the moment.

She let her mind drift to Ben. Where was he now? Was he safe? She felt her eyes fill with tears, and the glowing numbers of her alarm clock went blurry. She blinked them clear and left the tears in place that spilled over onto her cheeks. She couldn’t free up a hand and risk a peek at the pregnancy test she clutched – not until the time was up.

The message she had received felt so real – sounded so real seemed more accurate. His voice had sounded so clear and true in her mind. Could Ben really send thoughts to her from eight thousand miles away? She suspected he could and felt no surprise that she believed that. Ben had changed a lot of firmly held beliefs and skepticism for her since they had met.

Her sports watch beeped, and she looked over at the clock in time to watch the numbers change. She had added a full minute to the time the box told her it took for the test to work – just to be sure. Still she couldn’t quite bring herself to look. She closed her eyes and then opened her hands, which had turned white from her tight grip on the plastic test kit. She started a slow count to thirty.

She had convinced herself somehow the test was a formality – that she knew with such certainty that even a negative test would not shake her belief. Since the moment she had dipped the strip into a plastic cup of her own pee, however, that feeling had evaporated completely. She now felt the little test kit held great power over her and her future. It felt suddenly that the answer she got from the eight ball-like prophet in her hands contained information as real for her as the mouth of God.

Christy opened her eyes slowly and for a moment could not focus on the tiny window of truth. She realized she must have squeezed her eyes shut with incredible strength because little black dots filled her vision as her eyeballs gasped at the release of pressure. When they did focus they relayed the information they collected for her impassively. For a moment she had to search her mind to remember what the two parallel lines meant – but then a smile spread across her face so wide it almost hurt her cheeks. She didn’t care. She gasped, covered her mouth, and stared again at the window. She felt a little laugh escape her.

She had a sudden terrifying thought that maybe she had read the directions wrong. She set the revealing plastic stick gently on the nightstand as if it was a fragile, ancient relic and then sprinted on bare feet into the bathroom. She dumped the contents of the wastebasket onto the floor, her hands too shaky to reach inside. She smacked away the scattered balls of tissue paper, most streaked with black mascara, and snatched the E.P.T. instructions from the middle of the mess. She scanned them quickly, tearing them nearly in half as she flipped them over to look at the results section.

Christy let out a little scream, jumped up and down like a game show contestant, and then ran back to the bedroom. She picked up the test and stared at the window again. Then, she collapsed backward on the bed, hugging the pee-stained symbol to her chest as she laughed and cried again.

She wondered if Ben’s power worked both ways. She hoped it did. She squeezed her eyes shut tightly again and sent a message out to her husband with all the concentration she could muster.

I love you, Ben. I love you so much, baby. I miss you, and I love you, and I am SOOOO happy right now. Please, tell me you love me. Please tell me you’re okay.

She kept her eyes closed and listened in her head. She listened with all of the “hearing” she thought her mind could muster. She listened and listened, but she heard nothing except her own racing thoughts. She tried to will Ben into answering – but she heard nothing.

Christy rolled onto her back and slowly opened her eyes again. She suddenly felt so very alone. She laid one hand across her belly and with the other held the test to her chest. She lay there a long time, crying alone in their bed.   

*   *   *

Ben felt no surprise at all when the brush thinned out, and he broke into the clearing he knew must be there. It looked exactly as in his dreams and just like his dreams he saw Jewel immediately – arms stretched out and toddling towards him from an old woman who bent over awkwardly and kept hands on either side of her in case she toppled over.

“Gah, Deh, eh!” she squealed at him. Her face beamed with delight when Ben knelt down and opened his arms to receive her.

He scooped her up and breathed her in. He felt his eyes fill with tears again and hugged her tight. For a split second it scared him that this felt so exactly like his unreal world – might that mean he was dreaming now? The feeling evaporated immediately. He knew the difference with certainty. He was a Traiteur for God’s sake – a Rougarou.

Ben shifted Jewel to one hip as a tall and muscular man came forward from the small throng of villagers that had surrounded him – perhaps a dozen people, mostly women and young children he noted with some concern. There were perhaps three men who could be thought of as warriors – the other one seemed far too old. The man, whom he now recognized from before – he had been among the survivors – bowed his head and placed both his hands open palmed on Ben’s chest.

That won’t do. Where I am from men great each other like this – especially warrior brothers.

Ben shifted his hip to support Jewel and extended his free arm, hand spread. The man looked up and smiled and then stretched out his own arm and grasped Ben’s at the elbow, the grasp identical to the Attakapa, Ben noted. The man smiled and spoke. His words sounded like gibberish to Ben, but he heard them again in his head where they were quite clear.

We serve the Rougarou that serves the Living Jungle and our people.

The man signaled behind him, and two women brought clay jars which they set at his feet. Then they scurried backwards, their eyes never leaving the ground. Ben spoke again to his new partner.

Tell them I come to them in service and not in power. They act like they’ve met royalty, but I’m family. This is not how you treat family. They are my sisters, not my children.

The man smiled broadly at Ben and nodded. He clearly liked him. Ben hoped he would fight with him the way his brothers in the teams fought. The man spoke quickly to the people around them, telling them what Ben had said. The words were greeted with sighs of relief and giggles from the women who now smiled broadly and nodded eagerly, their eyes bright and holding his.

Ben reached down and picked up one of the jars which held a pale green liquid, the color of green tea he thought. Jewel tugged at the jar as he tipped it to his lips. The liquid tasted sweeter than he expected, and only after he took his first deep swallow did he realize how thirsty he had become. He chugged down the entire jar and then reached for the other. The small crowd reacted with chattering excitement – clearly glad this first family gathering seemed to be going well.

The jars empty, Ben followed the crowd, which tugged at his arms and vest. He kept Jewel in his arms, but away from his rifle which he had shifted over to hang on the other side. They led him to one of two low, thatched roofed huts. Ben had to stoop down to enter the tent-like building. Inside he saw a bed of sorts – more like a nest almost – made of soft leaves and surrounded by grey cloth. He chuckled a moment at the sudden thought of how much it looked like a dog bed. Beside it was a flat dish full of steaming brown meat mixed with green and brown plants that looked more like roots than vegetables. Ben turned around and saw that only the man he had spoken with had followed him and Jewel inside.

Thank you. I’ll eat the food, but then we need to go. We have to find the bad guys – the dark ones – and we need to go quickly
.

Ben realized his haste was motivated as much by a desire to get back to Viper Team – to let them know he was okay – as by the very real urgency to find and destroy the evil he felt growing stronger by the minute.

You will rest a short time first, Ben. You will gain strength from the food and a brief nap. Then, your two warriors will lead you where you must go.

He knew immediately the voice belonged not to his new friend, but to his mentor – the Elder who had so far not led him wrong. He nodded and wondered if the man beside him heard the Elder, too.

The man nodded with a big smile and then left the hut, pulling a leathery looking cloth over the entrance. Ben sat on the soft ground and Jewel clambered into his lap, one hand still clinging to his shoulder. He pulled the platter of food toward them and began to scarf down the sweet-tasting meal with slightly bitter roots or whatever the hell they were. After every few bites he broke a small piece of the savory meat away from the large chunks and fed it to Jewel, who smiled and opened her mouth in the, “yes, please,” way babies must do anywhere in the world. Then, she would gum the soft food and smile at him.

The food disappeared quickly as Ben found his surprising hunger rivaled his enormous thirst. He felt content and full, slopping up the last bit on a finger and splitting it between himself and Jewel. Ben stripped off his backpack and body armor vest. He put his rifle on the far side of the little nest-like bed and left his pistol in place in its holster on his right thigh. Then, he curled up on the surprisingly soft bed and put an arm across Jewel as she burrowed in beside him. He fell asleep almost immediately, vaguely aware of her soft, deepening breath on his arm.  

Chapter 42

Higher authority had granted their request, of course – how could they not? Leaving no one behind was the very heart of their brotherhood in Special Operations, whether Navy SEALs, Army Rangers or Green Berets, Marine Recon – it was all the same. The helo had arrived within fifteen minutes, coming only from the staging area where they had waited to exfil the team anyway. The Air Force Para rescue specialists, Special Operators themselves, had taken custody of the Al Qaeda prisoners and told them another five-man team of SEALs would be there to help them very soon.

A Quick Reaction Force of Army Rangers stood back in reserve ready to infil immediately if needed. Reed knew they assumed the same thing as Viper Team – Ben had been captured. Alive or dead, a U.S. Navy SEAL operating in secret in Africa would be a terrific propaganda tool for Al Qaeda. Reed shuddered at the image of the American journalist beheaded for the world to see, the video posted on the Internet. Dear God, please don’t let that be Ben. It would be better if he had just been killed.

Reed forced the thoughts from his head. Ben was alive, and they would find him. Maybe he was wounded and hiding, just waiting for his teammates to rescue him. Why not? His radio damaged in a fight, maybe even now he waited for the cavalry to come over the hill. Reed decided he would cling to that for a while at least.

He continued his slow, sweeping trek through the jungle. He realized the world through his NVGs had lost some green and taken on more of a grey color. He stole a glance around his goggles. The jungle had grown lighter – he could make out some shadowy shapes – and in the distance, the sky seemed a light purple above the canopy of trees. He realized in a very short time the Special Operators biggest enemy would arrive – daylight. Would Chris let them continue the search when the sun came up or would they hide in little burrows and tree trunks until the comfortable cloak of night returned?

He’ll let us keep looking. Fuck the daylight. This is Ben we’re talking about.

“Lead – Viper Four– boss you gotta come see this.” Auger’s voice sounded tight and choked, and Reed knew they all thought the same thing. He couldn’t help the breach of radio discipline.

“Is it Ben?” he asked, his voice cracking.

“No,” Auger replied immediately. “It’s not – it’s not Three.”  Reed thought Auger had nearly repeated his gaffe and also used Ben’s name. “I think it’s a bad guy, but – you guys need to come up here.”

“Position, Four,” Chris said tersely.

“Thirty yards up at your two o’ clock. I’m in a shallow ravine.” Auger sounded like he had regained his composure.

“Viper Team, rally on Four,” Chris commanded.

Moments later, the team stood in a loose circle around Auger’s horrifying discovery. Reed had seen a lot of terrible things in war over the last few years, but nothing that prepared him for what he stared down at now, slack jawed and with trembling hands.

“That’s not Ben, right?” For a moment he imagined a little cluster of laughing shit heads with a camcorder, recording the mutilation of his best friend for later broadcast to the world. He knew immediately it was not, of course. The face was still mostly intact and had a thin beard with dark dirty hair.

“No,” Lash said, but his sigh of relief told Reed that he had the same initial, terrifying thought.

“Do you think an animal did this?” Auger asked. His voiced sounded tight, like maybe he struggled to keep his generous, big-base dinner where it belonged. “A tiger or something?”

“I don’t think there are tiger’s here, right?” Lash asked.

“I think there might be,” Reed said. “Tigers live in Africa, right?”

He felt pretty sure tigers lived here.

“It’s not an animal,” Chris said, and the team turned to look at him. “There are no slashes or tearing injuries like a mauling. His chest looks like it was opened with a saw, right down the middle. Notice anything missing?”

Reed looked with a heaving stomach at the open chest cavity where large flies now darted in and out for their turn at the feast, their wings vibrating the air. Lash knelt down beside the corpse

One tough motherfucker.

– and waved a hand to shoo the flies away.

“The heart was cut out,” he said.