The Adored (56 page)

Sadly, Tray Johnson did not return from Afghanistan. Admiral Johnson mounted several search and rescue attempts both through the Navy and privately with men in his former command. Captain Tray Johnson’s unit’s attempt to extract a friendly Afghan tribal leader being held by Taliban led to the unit’s destruction. Several bodies from the unit were recovered. Captain Johnson is listed as missing in action. Admiral Johnson travelled to Coamo one month after Tray went missing to tell Silvana DeLuna. The night the Admiral left, Silvana wept quietly on the stoop of her home, holding her daughter Mare between her legs. Silvana held a piece of paper and reread the last letter she had received from Tray.

Ten months later Trout Solar was on its way to becoming a world leader in producing solar panels from their large complex that was being built in the Arizona. The state of Arizona and its Public Service Commission approved all plans presented by Winston Trout and Sebastian Ball to build their plants and solar farms in the Sonoran dessert. The solar farm they are to build next to the manufacturing facility will produce 20 percent of Arizona’s electric energy within five years. Two additional large scale solar farms are planned for Nevada and California. Based on the scale of the Trout’s solar farm and planned farms, the US Government has committed that if Trout is successful in generating large scale energy it will begin looking at dismantling three dams upstream on the Colorado River.

Five months into the Arizona dessert venture, faced with insurrection at the hands of Arthur and Winston Trout, Sebastian Ball Jr. spun Trout Solar off from Ball Enterprises in an IPO that netted him close to four hundred million dollars. The Trout’s wealth grew by eight hundred million dollars from the transaction.

Leonard Crane was sentenced to three years in prison for his part in the insider trading scheme in Rocket Solar. It was the lightest sentence of the six originally arrested. Rocket Solar now trades on the Pink Sheets at twenty-seven cents.

Mark Wheelwright is clean and sober and providing child care for his grandson Edward since Valerie and Eddie work together at the Brunswick Fund.

Chapter Epilogue: The Warrior

The two judges split, therefore in the case of a tie, the referee became the third and deciding judge. He said “red” and Tray had lost. It was his first match in his first tournament. He didn’t know what to think, but he was only eight, so what should he think. He had been sparring in Kempo Karate for seven months and made his way up through several belts. But he did have an expectation of winning. It had been bred into him for some time, not by anyone, rather, by competition. Four years of soccer, two years of flag football, playing both ways as linebacker and running back, two years of basketball as a point guard, and beginning his second year of baseball as a second baseman had conditioned the boy for competition. And he was eight years old.

The tournament with four participating towns was double elimination so there would be a second chance. Tray won his second match quickly on three straight points. First to three wins. His third and fourth matches got tougher and so did Tray. Kempo Karate being a mixture of Japanese and Chinese karate, boxing and kicking, in the third match Tray scored a decisive kick to the mid-section of the larger opponent. The fourth match was a nail biter; tied two to two Tray scored his third point with a punch to the head of his opponent.

With the equipment the boys wore—helmet, gloves, shin guards, cups, and mouth pieces—the Kempo Karate students are pretty well protected. In Tray’s fifth and sixth matches, all that equipment still did not provide enough protection.

In the fifth after both boys bowed to each other and their teachers, they clashed with no points awarded. This happened two more times, and Tray was being tested. Both boys earned two points each. Tray’s opponent then poked a thumb in his eye. The referee stepped in—Tray was alright, no points. Tray launched a quick kick once action resumed and scored the winning point. In the sixth match, Tray was down a point, and his opponent caught him in the face with a punch so hard it knocked his mouthpiece out. The mouthpiece was reinserted and action began again. His opponent attacked; Tray spun away then quickly attacked leaping into the air like a Ninja. A quick punch to the opponent’s head made it two to one, Tray still trailing. Tray attacked with a kick next. Two to two. Tied and confident Tray again took to the air, leaping over his opponents kick and knocking him in the head for a victory.

Tray now had five wins and one loss. He was in the semifinals. With only two opponents left, Tray was facing his third straight match without a break. He was literally taking on all the surviving combatants.

Battle toughened from the five straight wins, a growing black eye, a cut lip, and tactical strategies forming, Tray got his sixth win in relatively easy fashion with three quick scoring jabs to the head.

Now, as the judge explained to the other eighteen competitors and their parents, third and fourth place trophies had been decided. What outcomes remained were for first and second place. Tray’s opponent, who beat him in his first match, only needed to beat Tray and he would be champion. Tray, however, to win first place would need to beat his opponent, who was undefeated at seven and zero, twice since it was double elimination.

Tray after his first loss, sat on the sidelines watching the other boys spar, particularly the style of the combatants. Who favored thrusts with kicks; who preferred punches. Tray’s parents were happy for him, but this was Tray’s sixth straight match without a break.

Tray came out cautiously, and when his opponent attacked kicking, Tray leaped over his leg and landed a hard blow to the head. Point Tray. They battled to a draw on two more charges, then the opponent landed a kick. One to one. After several clashes it was tied two to two. On the fifth point as they clashed, Tray was knocked down—no point awarded. As Tray got up, his opponent charged him. Tray spun away, and as they faced each other, Tray looked fresh, fresher than his opponent, fresher than an eight-year-old had a right to be after eight matches in less than two hours.

Tray struck, leaping to right of his surprised opponent and hit a glancing blow to the front of the head. Third point and win for Tray. The other boy had reeled backward from the blow and fell to the mat. Tray advanced and helped him back to his feet.

Championship match. Both combatants now seven and one. Winner gets a large three-foot-tall trophy proclaiming them Kempo Karate champion of the Fairfield County.

The picture of Tray holding that large trophy attested to the quick finish to his ninth match, which Tray won, three points to one. The pictures show the fifty-three inch, fifty-five pound warrior with a cut lip, swelling and bruised eye holding the thirty-six inch, twenty-pound trophy with his black gloves and black head gear still on. He is a barefoot Ninja in black pants and shirt. He doesn’t smile, not yet, as opponents and other members of his dojo congratulate him. He is in a battle state. Those six straight matches without a break keep him at a heightened state of readiness. Slowly though, the boy lets go, the gear comes off, the warrior smiles.

****************

The Blackhawk went down. The warrior was down. The mission was to extricate a local tribal leader from a Taliban camp he was being held in along the Pakistan border. Tray Johnson was leading a team of four Navy Seals, six Marines, and four Afghan Army non-coms. The mission came together quickly after the local leader, who had been a friend to US Forces, was taken prisoner by Taliban insurgents. Mohammed Monsour had aided a downed American flier in the past, hiding him from Taliban searching his village.

As the chopper approached the coordinates of the location Monsour was said to be held, the Blackhawk was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade. The grenade didn’t do much damage as it exploded after bouncing off the reinforced under carriage. What happened next though proved fatal to the mission. The copter pilot, a Navy Chief Warrant Officer, pulled the chopper up, like he had the reins of a horse. That maneuver, meant to begin a sharp left turn away from the source of ground fire, pulled it directly into the path of a shoulder fired missile.

The missile exploded to the rear of the side door killing half the soldiers on contact. The chopper began a dizzying death spiral and crashed nose first about four miles away from the enemy.

Tray Johnson was wounded in his left forearm, a gaping gash that let blood flow freely. Johnson quickly applied a tourniquet with his belt while trying to find his way out of the black smoke of the coffin that held his men. The chopper lay at a forty-five-degree angle with the nose buried in the gravel of the flat plain just beneath a six-thousand-foot mountain. The tail of the craft stuck up at that sick angle with its vertical rotor still spinning wildly. As Tray moved toward where he believed there was an exit, he groped from soldier to soldier in the dark, searching for a sign of life in his men who were still strapped in, in death. There were no pulses, no noises. As the black hawk burned he yelled, “Guys, can you hear me. Anyone.” The only noise was from the inferno that was engulfing the helicopter. With his right shoulder Johnson slid the right side door open. Flames were moving quickly up the length of the whirlybird.

Johnson jumped down the eight feet and rolled on the ground, got to his feet and ran to the front of the helicopter. There he found the body of the pilot, somehow blown out of the middle of the chopper. The black hawk apparently hit at an angle as it crashed and blew out the left front side of the aircraft, splitting it in the front, ejecting the Warrant officer pilot through the window.

Johnson checked for a pulse and did not get one. Alone, he could hear the roar of the fire. Off in the distance he heard another roar. It was the sound of gunfire from Taliban combatants in Toyota pickups racing to see what they had plucked from the night sky.

The flames lit the area up, and Johnson moved to put the fire between the Taliban and him. He could move toward the small hills, off a quarter mile away, as long as the fire would keep the approaching trucks from seeing him.

“Lieutenant, help me,” a voice hollered from the Blackhawk. The fire burned so bright Johnson could not see who it was. He moved back beside the chopper and looked for a way in.

“Here, down here, LT,” the voice came from underneath the copter.

It was one of the Marine sergeants who was somehow outside the helicopter, wedged beneath the mangled left side.

Johnson needed to work quickly; there was no time. The fire inside and to the front of the chopper raged. He could hear the Toyotas as the men fired their weapons into the air.

“Damn,” Johnson said trying to budge the chopper, back pressed against it, feet, legs pushing downward; a man weighing less than two hundred pounds trying to move a machine weighing seven tons off a fallen comrade.

“Don’t leave me, Sir,” the Marine pleaded.

“I’m with you,” Johnson said, “But you better start praying for us. We’re in deep shit.”

Don Reynolds, the Marine, could feel himself losing consciousness and after watching Johnson trying several positions, looking for leverage, he asked Johnson, “It’s not working, is it?”

“Not so far.”

“Sir, you better save your own ass.”

“Yeah, you’re right. I should.” And as he said the word “Should” an explosion rocked the chopper, lifting it up from the diagonal and it rolled to its right and off of Sergeant Reynolds.

Johnson was knocked to the ground. Shocked but aware. And there in front of him Don Reynolds lay. Uncovered, freed from beneath the dead black bird.

With two broken legs and in agony he pulled himself along the ground away from the inferno and toward Johnson.

“You must pray pretty freaking hard,” Johnson said bringing a momentary smile to each of their burnt and blackened faces. Johnson noticed the condition of Reynolds mangled legs.

Above the roar of the flames both soldiers heard the trucks coming near, more shots fired into the night sky celebrating their kill.

“Lieutenant, go, you can’t help me,” Reynolds pleaded.

As Johnson hoisted Reynolds over his right shoulder he said, “I might need a bargaining chip with those assholes. You’re coming with me.” Reynolds laughed through the pain as Johnson wrapped an arm around his broken bones.

Through the pain, with strength, training, mission focus, and fear, Johnson stepped off into the Afghan night. In the dark, two hundred yards away, Johnson injected Reynolds with morphine as the two soldiers watched the Taliban, by the light of the burning Blackhawk, desecrate the body of the pilot who had been ejected.

***************

Chapter Epilogue II:

Two years had passed since Tray Johnson went missing in action in the Afghan night. Silvana DeLuna kept her laundry business. Mare had started school. It still rained slowly in the mountains of San Blas de Cuomo.

And when the rain stopped, the sun came back out. Silvana heard footsteps coming up the short flagstone walk. A customer. But which one. She played a game with herself, trying to identify the walk, the shuffle of a shoe, the spike of a woman’s heel. This was a new sound. A shuffle, shuffle, click. The third sound did not make sense.

Silvana looked up into the late day sun shining through the door. She remembered another time when the shadow of Tray blocked that door.