The Traiteur's Ring (43 page)

“Torn out,” Chris corrected.

Auger turned away, and Reed thought they would smell vomit in a moment to add to the delightful bouquet of the rotting corpse. Just that thought knocked him up a notch closer to losing his own dinner.

Fuckin’ animals. What the hell did this guy do wrong? He sure as hell pissed his buddies off.

“Some sort of ritualistic killing?” Lash asked. Reed saw he grimaced a little. Maybe Lash was mortal after all.

“I don’t know,” Chris said. “Fan out and search the immediate area.”

None of them needed to say what they looked for. Reed struggled with the thought that Ben may not be okay after all.

“Hey, boss,” Lash said from only a few yards away. “Guys, look at this.”

Reed turned and saw that Lash held something black that dangled from his gloved hand by what looked like a shoe lace. Reed flipped his NVGs up – there was unfortunately more than enough light now. As he approached Lash, his chest tightened.

“Earpiece from Ben’s radio,” he said. No one pointed out that he stated the obvious.

“Guys,” Auger said and now his voice really trembled.

The team hustled back to the corpse where Auger squatted down just a few yards away. He held his find up for all of them to see.

The sight of Ben’s brown T-shirt and cammie top would have frightened him enough. The fact that both appeared soaked with blood and that they were beside a mutilated corpse were more than Reed could bear and he turned away, his eyes filling with tears. 

“This is really fucking bad,” Lash said.

Chris called out to Reed.

“Get the lap top up and send a secure message,” he said.

Reed stood motionless, tears streaming down his cheeks.

“Reed,” Chris called and he turned to face the officer. Reed saw that Chris’s face registered the same terror, but his voice remained controlled. His teammate put a gloved hand on his shoulder and squeezed. “We don’t know what happened. We don’t know if he’s alive or dead or even if he has been captured. He could be hiding nearby for all we know.” Reed resisted the sudden, almost overwhelming need to holler out Ben’s name to the jungle. “We don’t even know if that’s his blood, dude. Get the laptop up and send it. Tell the Head Shed we found some gear and clothing we believe to belong to Viper Three. Don’t tell them yet about the corpse.”

“What if they tell us to make a hide and pick up the search at nightfall?” Reed asked. He knew they had to find Ben soon.

“Then tell them ‘Roger that’ and then we’ll keep fucking searching. Got it?”

Reed nodded and peeled off his backpack and quickly unloaded his computer and fanned out his little satellite dish. Maybe they could re-task the predator. Maybe they could see more in the light and, even if not, they could use the thermal imaging– if Ben was alive and hiding somewhere, maybe they would still find him. 

Chapter 43

Ben knew he slept – could still feel Jewel on his arm and hear her soft little breathing – as he sat cross legged and faced the Elder. He felt no anxiety, no fear. He breathed in deeply and smelled nothing but the sweet smell of his little girl.

“You must rest, Ben. I will answer the questions that keep your sleep light and then you must rest. The end is near, and you will need your strength.” The old man’s young eyes held his and sparkled with power and something else – love maybe.

“How many dark ones are there?”

“There are many, and they are everywhere,” the old man said. “But they are not your concern. The power you have is much greater than theirs, and they fear the power of the Rougarou. They can come and go and for the most part pose only a slight danger more than the bad men who serve as hosts.”

Ben nodded. The Al Qaeda terrorists were danger enough. He was one armed SEAL helped by a couple of unarmed men who might have time-warped here from two thousand years ago. He understood his power now better than ever, but he was one man against how many? And how many of those were helped by the dark ones who possessed them?

The Elder seemed to read – if not his thoughts, then surely his concerns.

“The dark ones will all be defeated when the One with the black blood is stopped. Defeat him, and the others are gone.”

Okay – sure – but what about the hosts? Would the terrorist hosts remain or die with their possessors? The Al Qaeda he had fought so far were pretty well armed.

“As are you. The power you have is much more powerful than the tools you bring with you. Rely on them, not your primitive weapons.”

Ben chuckled at the irony of the thin old man, clothed in animal skins, smiling at him with brown teeth, and sitting cross-legged in the dirt in the jungle calling him primitive. He had found a trust in the power he had gained – or maybe just finally mastered – but he would be taking his rifle into this fight nonetheless.

“The victory will be great as the powerful One with the black blood possesses a man who is very evil in his own right,” the Elder continued. If he sensed Ben’s rebuff of his assessment of his weapons, he at least politely ignored it. “The One with the black blood is incarnate with the leader of the men your people fight.”

“What do I need to defeat him?” Ben asked. He thought of the powerful voice he had sensed – the vibration in his head had felt like his skull might explode.

“You will know,” the Elder said.

Ben realized he was pretty friggin’ sick of that answer. He knew there was no point in asking for more and sat silently for a moment.

“And then?” he asked. “When this is over, I need to come back for Jewel. I need to bring her home.” He realized this had always been a part of the mission for him.

He looked up and realized he now sat alone.

She is already home. You know this. She is a part of the living jungle. She cannot be a part of your other world, Ben. You know this. Just as you know she will forever be a part of your heart.

Ben realized he had known this all along. He lay down then, already asleep.

Ben thought for a moment about Christy. He thought of her alone at home and of their child inside her. He wondered if she knew about their son yet. She had suspected before he had even left. He wondered if she knew for certain yet.

Ben sent a quick heart message out to his wife and then forced his mind back to the task at hand. He needed to finish his mission to have any hope of getting home to her – of ever meeting his son. Even if he had to make the ultimate sacrifice to complete this mission, he had to succeed. He had to make sure his family would be safe and his child could grow up free from the horror he thought would come with the demon he had seen in his mind.

He closed his eyes (he knew they were already closed, of course) and felt himself lying flat in the comfortable nest, his arms around Jewel. He let his mind drift from thoughts of demons and dark ones and into a warm blanket of hope for his family.

*   *   *

They had not been told to stand down – a surprise that Reed still couldn’t quite believe – but they were directed to sweep only their immediate area again and then wait for more intel from a predator pass. Reed now sat hunched over his laptop and looked at the information they had gained from that pass. With a few clicks of the mouse pad he actually looked for himself at the real time thermal imaging data from the unmanned aircraft that circled above them even now.

“So, nothing in our area?” Chris asked as he leaned over Reed and looked at the lap top screen. They had all hoped they would see the yellow-red man shaped glow of Ben hidden nearby in a fallen tree or ditch he had converted into a hide.

“No,” Reed said in response to the rhetorical question. “But he has to be there, right?” He pointed at the cluster of thermal images less than two kilometers from their position as he tapped his finger on the mouse pad to make the image widen and pan out. “There are no other human-looking hits for over twenty kilometers. He can’t have gone that far – not even close.”

He left the thought that Ben might be dead unspoken. But even if so, his killers couldn’t have traveled that distance either. Whether they found Ben the answers to their questions could only be found in the cluster of thermal images one-point-eight kilometers northwest of them. He turned and looked at the boss and raised his eyebrows. Chris nodded.

“We’ll wait a minute to see if they give us orders, but then we head off towards that group,” he said. “We can keep radio com if they need us after that.”

Reed liked that answer. They all knew that time would run out quickly – if they had any left at all. A text box blinked on in the middle of his screen, obstructing the predator feed. Reed smiled.

“Chris,” he called after the officer who had started to walk away towards the other two remaining members of Viper Team. “You’ll like this,” he said.

Chris leaned over and read over Reed’s shoulder. Then, he slapped him on the shoulder.

“Fuckin’ A,” he said. “Tell them we’ll be there and pack up.” Chris turned and walked briskly over to Lash and Auger.  “Movin’ out, guys,” he said.

Reed typed a short reply and verified the landing zone, or LZ, and rally points. Then, he quickly packed up his gear and flung his pack onto his back. He re-slung his rifle and joined the team and together they moved out towards the northwest.

Chapter 44

Christy had fallen into a restless sleep. She didn’t know if the nausea and malaise she felt were related to her pregnancy, her worry about her husband, or both. Either way, the decision to call in sick had not been a tough one – she felt pretty certain that if she hit the road to make sales calls she would be kneeling beside her car in her business suit, barfing on the shoulder of the road in less than an hour. She had not called in sick a single time in four and half years, and her call to her district manager had been met with real concern.

“You sure you’re okay?” Steve had asked. “Is Ben okay?”

“Everything is fine,” she had reassured him. “Just got the damn flu or something.”

She lay now on their bed – on top of the covers instead of under them as she couldn’t quite stand to be really in the bed without him right now. She had covered herself with a worn blanket from the linen closet and left her robe on. Every time she woke from her fitful sleep – it felt like every few minutes, but she refused to keep looking at the clock – her mind went first to Ben and then to the positive test she had placed in her drawer.

She had decided she would wrap the test kit as a gift (as gross as that kind of sounded – she had peed on it for goodness sake) and give it to Ben when he got home. She felt stupid for being so wracked with worry just because she had tried to squeeze a thought out to her husband across eight thousand miles of space and he had not answered. She might have come to believe in these sorts of things when it came to Ben, but did her faith in it carry enough weight to literally worry herself sick? Even if her beliefs were true, she had no idea if she could send little thought notes to him just because she thought she could receive them.

She tossed over on her other side and tried to get comfortable and then let out a little, “whoa,” at the wave of nausea that came after. This had to be the pregnancy. She gripped the covers until the churning feeling subsided.

Lord, please tell me I don’t have nine months of this.

She rode out the nausea with her stomach contents where they belonged, and not on the rug beside the bed, and let out a soft sigh. Christy sat up slowly and waited for another wave to hit her, but it never came. Relieved, she headed towards the stairs. She had read somewhere that crackers and flat ginger ale could help with pregnancy upheaval. She knew they didn’t have ginger ale in the house, but surely she could dig up some crackers – stale or not. Maybe she would make some warm tea. She was half way down the steps when his voice came to her.

I love you, Christy. I love you, and I’m okay. Soon, I’ll come home to you, I promise – home to you and our son.

Like before, the voice sounded so clear and so real she felt Ben stood right behind her and even turned a little to look over her shoulder. Then, the tears came, and she slid down onto the steps, pulling her robe around her legs. She sobbed with both worry and happiness.

Ben was okay. Not only that but he knew – he knew about their baby. About their son? She touched her belly, and for some reason that felt right. She decided she believed – she believed she heard her husband’s voice, and she believed he might be right about the sex of their baby. She started to laugh – or at least mix in some laughter with her tears. Then, another wave of nausea swept over her.

I love you, too, Ben. Come home to me, baby. Come home soon.

She pulled herself to her feet, stood still a moment until the wave passed, and then headed downstairs on her quest for soothing sustenance.

Ben was okay. He was okay, he knew about the baby, and they were going to have a little boy. All the sickness in the world couldn’t steal away her joy of that moment.

Chapter 45

Ben thought of the Elder as he checked the additional magazines for his rifle. He had stripped his gear to almost nothing, and his vest felt strangely light as he pulled it back on. He left his radio, his night vision goggles, and various other electronic equipment in a pile with his spare gloves, extra batteries, signaling mechanism and a variety of lights. No damn wonder he felt so light.

He slipped his additional magazines into pouches on his vest, checked that similar magazines for the pistol on his hip were in place, and then picked up his rifle and slipped his arm through the harness. He tossed his helmet into the refuse pile and turned, looking at the two villagers who waited patiently.

The contrast struck him first as worrisome, then as funny, and he found it hard to stifle a laugh. The two warriors were basically naked except for skins that covered them from waist to knees and the grey cloth tied around their arms. Each held long, thick staffs – like oversized walking sticks – and nothing else. Ben thought maybe he was laughing not at them but at himself. He had been told – and wanted to believe – that all he needed was inside him – that he was the Rougarou. He believed that.