The Traiteur's Ring (8 page)

The man stood up with surprising grace and fluidity, and in a blink he stood toe-to-toe with Ben who shifted uncomfortably despite the man’s disarming smile. The man pulled Ben’s right hand free from beneath the little girl, and he had to shift her weight into his left arm to keep from dropping her. Then, the man bent over at the waist and pulled Ben’s hand to his face. The bare-chested villager stared for a moment at the ring on Ben’s middle finger which sparkled back at him with a bright golden shine that nearly glowed. Then, he pressed his lips to the ring.

Ben stepped back in surprise when the man suddenly stood bolt upright, his face turned up to the ceiling.

“Ganada day not tai!” he shouted, and the three women popped to their feet, suddenly chattering and smiling, surrounded Ben, and each pulled at his arms and shirt. He held the girl close, not sure what else to do.

“Wow,” the surgeon said from behind him. “They seem to like you, huh?’

“Yeah,” Ben said. He felt a little dizzy, and his right hand tingled with pins and needles, but not at all like when your hand falls asleep from lying on it funny. More like little bolts of electricity shooting up from where he had perhaps inadvertently put his middle finger in a wall socket. He felt claustrophobic as the four adult villagers chattered,  laughed, and pawed at his arms and body. He stepped backwards towards the door but the four moved with him. For a moment he felt a little like he couldn’t take a breath.

“Stop,” he hollered out louder than he intended.

In unison, the villagers dropped to their knees, the old woman with a muted grunt. Their eyes dropped to the floor, their arms again outstretched and palms up. The large man made a grunting sound, and they again began a soft and melodic chant.

“Jesus,” Ben breathed and stepped around the women behind him to get away and closer to the door. He looked down at the ring, which as he watched shifted from the gold of a moment ago to a deep purple. As it did, the little electric shocks disappeared. He tightened his grip on the little girl. His eyes glued to the strange chanting people in front of him, he stepped with a heel onto the Colonel’s foot and nearly stumbled. “Shit,…sorry.”

“No problem,” the surgeon replied, his voice hollow. “Did you do something miraculous at that village?”

“No,” Ben answered as images of the little girl’s injuries and healing, the old man’s voice in his head, and the horrible pictures of the rape and torture of the village flashed on the screen of his mind. “I barely did anything, and what we did do was too damn late for most of them.”

You are a Seer; you will know what to do.

But he didn’t. He had no clue what he could do other than get these survivors, the end of their people, somewhere safe. What would happen to them then, he had no idea.

Ben looked into the big, dark eyes of the beautiful little girl he held, and she smiled at him and leaned into him. What would happen to her? With a lot of luck she could maybe have a long life working food service at a camp in Djibouti. Nice fucking life that would be, huh?

He kissed her gently on the cheek and, then, touched one of the women gently on the shoulder. She looked up at him with a face full of awe, her mouth open.

“Please,” he said and leaned down to hand the child to her. The woman took the girl and smiled at him with a nod. Ben wiped tears from his cheek. “I’m so sorry,” he said, but knew she didn’t understand.

With great effort he turned to the doctor, who watched him with unmasked concern.

“You sure you’re, okay?” he asked

“Yeah,” Ben answered. “Let’s get out of here.”

He felt the silent stares on him as he pushed through the door, but didn’t turn around, even when the cough-like grunt announced the chanting should continue. 

Chapter 7

The heat and humidity made Ben wish they had run before breakfast, but he stretched his stride out anyway and enjoyed the feel of his body cowboying up to his demands. The grueling pace melted away much of his stress and anxiety. As he ran, with Reed puffing along beside him, he went over the encounter with the survivors in his head. He realized that, as usual, he had over reacted to the unusual behavior. His own strange past, full of its myth of magic and mystery, often made him side his view towards the occult when things were even a little out of the mainstream. Not exactly superstitious, he knew himself well enough to admit that, given a choice, he usually leaned towards the supernatural explanation. Only later would his left brain succumb to the logic of the right and show him the often obvious, and boring, scientific explanation.

As they started up a gentle dirt slope back toward their barracks, Ben picked up the pace and fell in beside Auger who pounded the ground into submission with his large legs, smiling a pain-free smile.

“You the man, Ben,” he grinned. “My leg feels great – even my hip.”

Ben smiled back and pulled a pace ahead of him, just a stride behind Lash, who he decided he would sprint past at the very end.

In this case, the obvious explanation for the behavior of the survivors required very little logic or smarts. He and his team had come into their primitive village where terrible men did horrible things to them and in only a few minutes, using tools that would mystify them, had completely destroyed their tormentors. Ben had saved a little girl and one of the women personally.

No real mystery how these simple folks might show awe and deference to us. They would have responded the same had Chris or Lash or any of us come in.

And, what about the man kissing the ring?

Respect for their lost elder and spiritual leader, that’s all. No mystery there.

Ben lengthened his stride and closed on Lash as they started the last quarter mile to the finish.

“Comin’ up on your six, Lash,” Auger called out.

Lash glanced over his shoulder and grinned. Then, he broke into a full sprint.

“Nuh-uh, doc,” he hollered as he pulled ahead.

Ben kicked in his own sprint and held the distance but couldn’t close it. Lash was an animal.

A moment later they walked in circles together and waited for their teammates to join them one by one, Reed pulling up last.

“One day,” Ben grinned at Lash.

“Maybe,” Lash said. “If I lose a leg or something.”

Ben laughed.

He felt so much better. The run had cleared his head and set things right around him again. He looked at the ring on his hand which held a calm orange tint. Ben pulled the mouthpiece from his camel back to his lips and took a long draw of warm water. He swallowed some and, then, swished and spit the rest into the dirt.

Ben and the other four SEALs walked slowly around the tin hangar and stretched out their muscles as they cooled down. Auger slapped Ben on the back.

“Way to go, Ben,” he said.

“I didn’t catch him,” Ben said looking ruefully at Lash.

“Who gives a shit about that?” Auger said. “I’m talking about my leg, bro. You need to keep some of that smelly ass paste available all the time, okay?”

“Sure,” Ben said. He noticed Auger showed not even the slightest hint of a limp. “Wanna head to the box to look at that thing again?”

“Let’s do it after I hit some weights, okay?” Auger asked.

“Nah,” Ben said. “Let’s do it now, dude. It’ll need to be cleaned up from your run and, anyway, I want to call home before it gets too much later.”

Ben knew it would be nearly midnight at home already, but even though he had a brief call only a couple of hours ago, he desperately wanted to hear Christy’s voice.

“Alright,” Auger said with a six-year-old pout in his voice. He followed Ben into the barracks.

“The box” was a room the size of a very small walk-in closet where Ben kept his medical gear and a short treatment table where he would hook up electrical stimulation and heating units to treat his fellow SEALs for the aches and pains that came with their hard life. He also had a small, compact X-ray unit that sent images to a lap top computer. The entire X-Ray unit sat just outside the box in the main room of the barracks, completely unshielded by lead. OSHA would have them all locked up, but as far as he knew they didn’t make site visits to bum-fuck Africa for safety violations. And, anyway he had only snapped a few pictures since they had been here, and the unit was a good ten feet from the nearest bunk.

Auger hopped effortlessly up onto the treatment table, and Ben turned sideways to be able to fit between the table and the wall.

“Let’s see,” he said and began to unwind the gauze dressing that covered the bullet hole above Auger’s left knee.

“No problem,” Auger said.

As he peeled away the last layer of gauze, Ben’s eyes widened. Above Auger’s knee – where he remembered the ragged bullet hole from yesterday – he saw only a small pink discoloration, soft and almost imperceptible. No cut, no hole – nothing. Ben pressed his fingers over the spot.

“Feel that?” he asked.

“Sure,” Auger said. “But it doesn’t hurt or anything,” he said and turned his leg slightly so he could see. “Hey,” he said. “Where’s the cut?”

Ben shook his head and pursed his lips. “No cut,” he said absently. He had seen lots of strange things during his fifteen years with Gammy in the Louisiana bayou, but certainly nothing stranger than this.

“Jesus, Ben,” Auger said. “You need to patent that paste shit and sell it, dude. We could retire to an island somewhere, open a dive shop, and live a life of style.” Auger leaned back on the table.

“Why the hell would I take you with me?” Ben asked as he pressed his finger deep into the tissues behind Auger’s knee. “That doesn’t hurt?” he asked. He pressed even harder in the area where he thought the bullet fragment should have ended up.

“Nope,” Auger answered.

What the hell?

“Let’s just get an X-ray to make sure we didn’t leave something in there,” Ben said.

“Sure,” Auger said and hopped off the table.

Ben positioned his teammate against the wall outside the box and turned him slightly before positioning the X-ray plate at the level of his knee. He turned on the lap top which sat on a small desk made out of boxes, opened the radiology program, and plugged the cable from the X-ray plate into the USB port. After a moment the screen announced it was ready, and Ben aimed the X-ray cone at Auger’s knee and pressed a button while telling him to “stay still.” Then, he sat down in front of the lap top, vaguely aware of Auger leaning in over his shoulder. The image slowly constructed itself on the screen in sections.

“That my knee?” Auger asked.

“Yeah,” Ben said absently as he stared at the image. The bones looked pristine, but more importantly, there was no bullet fragment. In fact, he saw not even a hint of the little hazy “dust trail” of tiny fragments that always followed a bullet into the soft tissues. Nothing. Nada.

Ben pressed a thumb into his temple as he stared at the stone cold normal image on the screen. He knew damn well there had been a hole in Auger’s knee yesterday. Hell, he had pushed his own fingertip into it. After his deployment-heavy years in the teams he knew damn well what a bullet hole looked like and ricochet or not, Auger had one only twenty four hours ago. Even if he allowed himself to believe the magic witch-doctor paste could heal the wound, where the hell was the fragment that had torn into Auger’s leg? There had been no exit wound, so it had to be inside his leg.

Had to be, but wasn’t.

On a whim, Ben looked up at Auger. “Stand back at the wall again.”

“Everything okay?” Auger asked. Ben could tell he was concerned Ben had seen something wrong.

“Yeah, yeah, it looks perfect, man – right as rain.” He positioned Auger against the wall again and raised the plate to the level of his hip and stuck it back to the Velcro-covered wall he had created to support it. “Let’s just get a quick picture of your hip. I want to make sure that ashtray sized fragment didn’t move somewhere dangerous.”

He didn’t know if he would be able to tell if the giant, twisted piece of metal was somewhere dangerous. But that was a fragment he had seen before, and he just needed to see it was there.

But it wasn’t.

Ben stared in shock at the normal X-ray picture of Auger’s hip. The fragment the surgeons in Iraq had felt would be safer to leave in place in the SEAL’s body had completely vanished. Ben realized his throat felt dry because his mouth hung open.

“Everything okay, Ben?” Auger’s voice had the hint of worry again.

“Uh, yeah,” Ben said and forced a smile onto his face. “Yeah, it looks great.”

Auger walked over to him, and Ben clicked the program closed as casually as he could.

“What are you not telling me, bro? Do I have a problem? Am I gonna have to have an operation?”

Auger was a giant, fit Navy SEAL and tough as nails. But his voice had the quality of a kid who wanted to know if he would need a shot at the doctor’s office.

“Dude, nothing, I swear.” Ben said as he stood up and clapped Auger on the shoulders. “Your hip just looks way better than I expected, that’s all.”

“Yeah?” Auger asked, still suspicious.

“Yeah,” Ben said with a laugh. “I swear to God.” Auger seemed to relax. “You’re just an amazing healer, man. I’ve never seen nothing like it.”

“Well,” Auger said, his face that of the kid just told he was the smartest in the class. “I’ve always been kind of a quick healer.”

“You still are,” Ben replied, not sure what else to say.

“We done?”

“Yep, all done. You can stop the antibiotics. You’re all healed up.”

“Well, I told you I’m a fast healer,” Auger stood smiling, full of himself at this amazing fact. “You wanna go lift?”

“Nah, I wanna call Christy. I’ll catch up with you guys later for chow before the brief.”

“’Kay.” Auger headed out of the barracks.

Ben watched him walk away. No sign of the limp that had become so familiar since Al Anbar Province. Nothing.

What the fuck?

He turned and clicked on the icon for the X-ray program again and stared at the image, certain he had lost his mind.