The Traiteur's Ring (3 page)

Reed slept curled in a fetal position at Ben’s feet and Auger flipped through a paperback book a few yards away, then looked up into the jungle canopy and cursed the darkness which rapidly engulfed them. He shoved the book back into the cargo pocket of his cammies, tipped his hat forward over his eyes, and crossed his arms across his chest. In moments his breathing slowed and deepened. With Chris and Lash patrolling quietly around their hide on watch, Ben sat basically alone. He adjusted the earpiece from his headset so he wouldn’t miss any calls from the guys on watch, and then settled back himself. He knew he couldn’t possibly sleep, but perhaps if he could get his mind to stop flying between the past and his bizarre feelings from the village, he could at least get a little rest before they hit the camp.

Ben closed his eyes and instead of fighting the memories chasing him, he just let them float around his mind. He drifted to happier thoughts of his grandmother and his early life in the boonies of Louisiana. They were mostly happy times, and, except for the few troubling memories he had convinced himself were merely bad dreams, his thoughts of Gammy were all good. He loved her very much and believed he chose his specialty training as a combat medic almost as a tribute to her memory.

She would be happy to know I’m now a Traiteur of sorts myself.

And more at times.

Ben didn’t remember falling asleep but he woke up to a gentle nudge and Reed’s hushed whisper.

“Gotta head out, bro.”

He felt on the ground beside him for his helmet and put it on his head, then reached without fumbling to the point on his kit where he knew his NVG’s would be. He snapped them into place on his helmet, swung the binocular-like eyepieces to his eyes, and turned the device on. Instantly the thick, ink-like blackness came alive with trees and his fellow Frogmen, all in eerie green and grey.

Ben got to his feet and re-slung his rifle into a combat position across his chest. He pulled the slide back half an inch and checked to see a chambered round, shoved the MRE remnants into a cargo pocket, and followed Reed to where Chris, Auger, and Lash waited. His footsteps were loud and metallic, magnified by the volume enhancement of his head set. He heard Chris’s voice in both his head set and his other ear.

“Set?”

The four other SEALs nodded, and they moved out into the jungle in single file, Chris in the lead and Auger in trail. It took only moments before the distracting feelings disappeared, and he settled into the familiar mindset of a combat operation. His mind ran through scenarios of the encounter to come. He checked off his plans for each of them, all the time scanning the grey-green jungle around them through his NVGs as they moved nearly silently towards their objective.

They made it to the rally point in just over half an hour. Chris used hand signals to move the other four SEALs out toward their positions as they had briefed at the rest area. They would remain silent until Lash called back with his survey and Chris gave the go. Then they would hit the camp under the cover of confusion provided by concussion grenades from four corners.

Ben turned left after Auger and moved low and silent along the periphery of the camp. He couldn’t see the Al Qaeda fighters yet, but he could hear them as he circled around behind Auger. When he had paced off to the halfway point he stopped and watched Auger continue around his arc. He glanced at his watch from beneath the NVGs, covering the face with his hand to prevent any light from escaping. He waited for a minute and thirty seconds then belly crawled slowly towards the edge of the camp.

What he saw confused him at first and, then, frightened him.

The camp looked virtually empty. Only two fighters remained, their faces aglow in the unmasked fire burning under a pot in the center of the clearing. They were boys and likely not much in the way of fighters. But it hardly mattered. The body nailed to the tree near where they sat remained motionless, and Ben doubted he was alive. He didn’t recognize the short, thin boy from the village, but he knew from the grey cloth around his waist and the matching arm band at his bicep where he had come from.

Both the boy’s legs bent impossibly forward at the knees and below the knees they had turned swollen and black. The eyelids were propped open with sticks over motionless eyes and blood, black in the green-grey world of the NVGs, had poured over the chin and chest where the boys tongue had been cut out.

Ben closed his eyes tightly. Then, he tried hard to focus.

He squeezed the button on the cord running from the radio in the front of his vest to his headset. He whispered into the mike at his lips.

“Lead – Three. Hold. Hold.”

There was a pause, and he pictured Chris furrowing his brow and trying to figure out what the hell the problem could be.

“Viper team, hold.” Another pause. “Go, three.”

“Dry site. Rally site fast,” Ben whispered.

“Rog,” came Chris’s voice. The others confirmed in his earpiece.

“Two.”

“Four.”

“Five.”

Ben pulled silently back until he felt himself a safe distance into the brush and, then, moved quickly but quietly back to the rally point. Auger overtook him on the way but said nothing.

Moments later the five SEALs huddled together and spoke in hushed whispers which were metallic but clear in their headsets.

“They’re gone, boss,” Ben said. “All but two kids. It looks like they tortured some young boy from the village to death, and now they’re gone.”

“Fuck,” Chris said and wiped his face. “You sure, Ben?”

“Yeah, man,” Ben answered without hesitation. “I never seen anyone else out here dressed like them villagers.”

“Shit,” Lash said quietly.

“They went to hit the village,” Reed said, a real pain in his voice. “They’re gonna slaughter those people.”

“We don’t know that,” Auger said, his deep voice tight and strained.

“Yeah, we do,” Chris said. “We gotta get the fuck back there.”

“It’ll be light by the time we get there,” Lash said calmly.

“I don’t give a shit,” Chris said. “I don’t want us to have killed those poor people. We gotta head back there now.”  He pressed a thumb into his right temple and, then, looked around at his team. “Is everyone okay with that?”

“Fuck yeah,” Lash said. The others nodded.

“Okay,” Chris said. “Fast, but quiet. Lash on point then two-by-two, okay?”

The SEALs all nodded, and Lash moved out at a quick pace. Chris and Auger pushed out to the left with Reed and Ben to the right. Ben kept ten yards or so between him and his best friend and moved swiftly through the thick brush a few yards in from the road. He listened for Lash and tried to keep himself back, his mind racing and urging him to move faster than was safe.

He knew what they were headed for.

We won’t make it.

I will see you at the end time, Ben.

He moved towards the old man’s voice which echoed in his mind.

Chapter 3

They moved through the jungle much more quickly than on the way to the target, the noise of their passage loud in Ben’s headset, but still nearly imperceptible without them, he knew.

Nearly.

In different circumstances, it would not have been quiet enough. But desperation had settled into the mission now, and they could only hope the enemy was as ragged and undisciplined as they looked.

The jungle suddenly began to lighten, and Ben saw the trees begin to emerge in his peripheral vision without his NVGs. Just shadows now, but in a few minutes the light would grow. They would have no choice but to slow down. He could see the movement of branches and broad, bushy leaves through his NVGs that marked where Reed moved through the brush to his left.

The crack of a rifle shattered the quiet of the jungle, and like in an old movie, it was followed by the “caw-caw” of birds nearby. Instinctively, Ben dropped low and remained motionless. His eyes scanned to and fro. Then, his headset crackled, and he heard Chris’s strained and whispered voice.

“Two – Lead – Position?”

“Half click past the turn from the road and five mikes from target.”

“Viper team – lead. That’s the rally, then. Fall in on Lash.”

“Three,” Ben choked into his microphone with a gravelly whisper.

“Four.”

“Five.”

He heard the calm voices of his friends and felt a momentary sense of inadequacy. His heart didn’t pound in his chest because he was afraid for himself, though. His mind’s eye saw quite clearly the chaos and horror the Al Qaeda fighters would be wreaking on the peaceful village.

And, we did that to them.

He swallowed the bile taste rising in his throat at the thought. He stood up and, only half crouched, began to move double time through the brush along the road, his ears listening for Reed’s position a few yards off his left side. He could hear the static-filled heavy breathing from his friend in his headset. Ben glanced down at the GPS on his wrist – only another hundred yards to the turn then a half a kilometer into the jungle to Lash.

Twelve minutes. Plus five more to the village.

Way too fucking long.

“Hurry,” Lash’s voice said in his earpiece. “I hear screams.” A bolt of lightning went through Ben, and he pushed the thoughts from his past out of his head. He moved left and joined up with Reed who swung his NVGs up and looked at him with eyes grey in the jungle morning’s soft light. Ben just nodded, and they turned left together. After a glance at the GPS, they moved quickly towards Lash. Ben didn’t know if Reed’s dark expression was because of the undisciplined noise their haste created and the danger associated with it or from the feelings he shared about what was assuredly happening in the village. Both, he decided.

They arrived at Lash’s crouched position beside a large, gnarled tree just as Chris and Auger emerged to their right. Ben noticed Auger still favored his left leg a little and for a moment thought about the thick paste wrapped in a jungle leaf in his cargo pocket. Then, he pictured the old man, young eyes in an ancient face, and knew he would likely be dead by the time they got to the village. The five SEALs crouched together and caught their collective breath. Chris spoke, and they leaned in a like a football team, the quarterback calling out the last play of the game.

“Simplicity, okay?” Chris somehow looked them all in the eye at the same time.  “Lash, up the middle and hold a position outside the ville. Snipe anything that’s a threat to us or the villagers, and take any squirters that come your way. Reed and Ben, up the left and halfway around the arc. Auger and me, up the right. Four corners and, then, we hit together on my call, ‘kay?”

“Rog,” Ben said.

“Yep,” Auger said.

“Capture? Kill?” Reed asked flatly.

Chris rubbed his eyes briefly.

“If we can take one or two crows for intel that’s icing on the cake, but this mission is now about saving those villagers. You smoke anything threatening those people, understood?”

“You bet,” Reed said.

Lash picked up his long sniper rifle and slung his M-4 by his side. Then, he moved off quickly and quietly through the thick brush. Chris and Auger did the same, but angled to the right. Ben looked at Reed.

“Ready?” he asked.

Reed flashed the broad grin Ben loved the most about him.

“Fuck, yeah,” he said. “Easy day.”

They moved off together through the thick jungle.

*   *   *

There were only rare gunshots. They would be unnecessary against the peaceful and primitive village, he guessed. The screams, however, cut into him like a sharp, hot knife and ran up his neck, exploding like white light in the back of his head. The screams were from women and children, he thought.  He crawled into position at the very edge of the clearing and peered through the brush. Nothing in his past life or his life as a Navy SEAL prepared him for the horror that greeted him.

Twenty yards away, a younger fighter, his dirty pants around his knees, raped a woman who lay impassively spread-eagled atop a pile of dead bodies. A dark pool of blood spread slowly out from beneath them as the boy grunted on top of her. Beside her in the dirt, the woman stretched out a hand which held the arm of the dead and bloody toddler beside her.

Farther away, two fighters had lined four men up on their knees, their back to their captors. One at a time, the Al Qaeda fighters screamed something at the men in a strange tongue, waited a moment for a reply, and, then, brought a large, rusty machete down onto the center of their heads, splitting them open like melons with an explosion of blood and gray matter that seemed to delight the younger fighters watching from the sides. Moments later, the four villagers were dead and the man with the machete let out a sickening and animal like squeal of laughter. He was soaked in blood from his face to his tennis shoe-clad feet.

Ben pulled his M-4 into position and settled the floating red dot through his sight on the back of the rapist’s head. He flicked off the safety with his right thumb and began to squeeze tension onto the trigger.

Wait – wait for Chris’s call or you might get us all killed.

He squeezed his eyes tight and felt the burn of salty sweat. Then, he refocused through his gun-sight. The boy rose off the half-naked and moaning woman, pulled up his pants with one hand, and reached with the other for a long-handled knife. Ben felt the tension in his trigger increase.

Come on, Chris. Come on, Goddammit.

Ben was about to fire anyway when his earpiece crackled out with Chris’ voice.

“Viper team – Go! Go!”

Ben squeezed the trigger in cadence to the second “Go” from his leader and friend, and the rapist’s head exploded in a puff of pink, his lifeless body crumpling straight down into a heap on the ground. The half-naked woman looked up in surprise and, then, simply shut her eyes slowly, her hand still in that of her dead child.

Ben felt himself sob.

He reached for a concussion grenade, a non-lethal distraction which would spread confusion and panic but, hopefully, not seriously injure any of the innocents, and he pulled the pin and tossed it deep into the village just as he heard two other explosions from his comrades. His grenade went off with a bang. He heard the pop of a smoke grenade, and eerie orange smoke filled the village.