The Traiteur's Ring (44 page)

I sure as shit wouldn’t be here if I didn’t.

He couldn’t quite take the leap of faith needed to set out without his rifle and handgun, however. He also had a couple of grenades. If that was just a security blanket, then so be it. Ben chambered a round in his rifle and turned to his two warriors.

“Alright, guys, let’s hit it. This op has a green light.”

The two smiled at him and looked at each other. He knew they had no clue what he said.

We will go now. We must find the powerful One with the black blood. Do you know where the ruins are?

Both looked at him quizzically. Ben thought them another message where he tried to describe the ruins he had seen in his head, the ancient structure that seemed to be swallowed by the jungle. The warrior on his left, the one he knew from before – from the massacre and the base – suddenly nodded.

I know where the ancient place is. It is a sacred place of those long ago from a time before the dark ones. I can lead us there.

“Great,” Ben said. Then he gestured ahead towards the edge of their small encampment. “You have point.”

Lead on. We should move swiftly but must be quiet. Surprise will be a great friend to us. I expect many bad people to be waiting for us.

Ben looked again at the two nearly naked men and felt a wave of doubt and fear. He felt a tug at his sleeve and looked down.

Jewel reached up at him with both arms in the universal “pick me up” signal. He smiled and scooped her up. As he did, he thought about his unborn son and wife back in Virginia.

He knew there was no turning back. He had to finish this and find his way home. He kissed Jewel’s cheek, and she grabbed at his ear.

“I’ll be right back,” he said and prayed a moment that he told the truth.

Then, he followed the two barefoot villagers westward into the jungle.

*   *   *

Reed stayed low and quiet, listening to the thump-thump of the lone Blackhawk helicopter fade rapidly as it headed to a staging area he hoped was fairly close. He had a feeling when they were ready to leave they might be in a bit of a hurry. God, how he hated the daylight. Without the cover of night he felt a hell of a lot more like a target than a hunter. After a few minutes of silence – during which he diligently scanned his sector and saw nothing – he heard Chris’s voice in his headset.

“Ghost – Viper – are you clear?”

A moment went by during which he assumed Ghost team checked in on their own frequency, and then he heard “Ghost secure – where ya at, Viper?”

Reed and his teammates rose slowly and then watched as the five members of Ghost team seemed to materialize out of nowhere and stood hip-deep in the jungle grass.

God, I love being a SEAL.

His brief revelry disappeared when he realized how many times he had heard Ben whisper that to him over the years. He tightened his jaw. They would find him – he had become sure of that for some reason. And not dead, either – Ben was alive. His brain told him he just felt the power of hope and denial that he may have lost his best friend, but there was something very real in the feeling that Ben was okay.

And nearby
.

It was just the kind of thing he would have ridiculed Ben mercilessly for, but the sense Ben was nearby felt tremendously powerful – and very real. Maybe there was something to that Cajun bullshit. He didn’t know, but he knew as sure as he stood there that Ben was okay.

The nine of them huddled up like a football team and came together with a quick battle plan. They couldn’t possibly tell from the thermal imaging just who clustered together a kilometer away. It could be a dozen Al Qaeda fighters or just a small camp of hunters or villagers like they had met on their last deployment.

“We can’t just kick in the door and come in all balls to the wall is the point,” Chris said. The leader of Ghost – Curt Malloy, Reed remembered from somewhere – nodded. “We’ll set up a perimeter and then take a quiet look. Even if Ben is there, they may just be helping him for all we know. We need to be careful, and I don’t want to hurt any good guys. No collateral damage, okay?”

Both teams nodded agreement, but Reed suspected the thought of not hurting innocents might be a little more personal to Viper Team. Wasn’t that guilt what got them into this fucking mess?

They briefed a plan that would put Lash and a sniper from Ghost – a Senior Chief whose name Reed didn’t know – into high positions where they could pick off anything they didn’t like and watch the team’s back. They would then surround the camp, see what the hell was there, and improvise based on what they found.

Pretty loose plan, but flexibility was the key to their world.

Reed found it hard to concentrate on his sweep of the jungle as they moved quietly, but quickly, towards the cluster of glowing humans from the thermal imaging and cursed himself repeatedly for his inattention. His mind drifted continually to Ben and then to Christy, his new little sister back at home. He absolutely had to bring Ben back to her.  He knew that time was very much against them. If Ben was severely wounded, then he could be bleeding to death as they moved through the jungle towards the objective. If he wasn’t wounded then he must be either dead or captured – both very bad.

He may not be in this fucking village at all. He could be dead in the bushes back where we came from, and we just never saw him.

Reed’s training and operational experience both told him the chances of Ben being recovered alive were nearly non-existent, but his heart still insisted he could feel him out there somewhere and that he was okay – at least for now.

He took up his position at the ten o’clock point of the circle they had made around the village and watched through his binoculars as he waited for a call from Chris. What he saw filled him with a glimmer of hope. The small camp looked to be a miniature version of the village they had encountered on the last deployment – the start of it all, he realized. The villagers, mostly women and a few children and an old man, milled about casually and tended to the business of the day – stirring cook pots and caring for the little ones. Reed wiped away sweat that threatened to dribble into his eyes. The sun had brought with it heat and the muggy air felt stifling.

He saw no sign whatsoever of Ben.

“Ghost – Viper,” Chris said in his ear.

“Ghost,” came Master Chief Malloy’s short reply.

“Looks quiet. No obvious hostiles. I want to move in with four of us from four corners. Sniper cover and then four in reserve. Peaceful search. That okay with you?”

“Perfect,” came the SEAL team leader’s response.

That sounded right to Reed. He realized he desperately needed to go, but resisted the overwhelming urge to radio his request to the boss. He had violated communications operational security enough for one day when he called out Ben’s name over the air. Instead, he waited and bit his lip.

“Viper Five – Lead – you and me on my call. Slow and peaceful.”

“Five,” he acknowledged with relief.

I’m coming, Ben. Hang in there, buddy. If you’re here, I’ll find you.

“Ghost Three and Four – lead – you join them,” came Malloy’s voice.

“Three.”

“Four.”

On the go signal, Reed rose slowly and walked into the clearing. He kept both of his hands on his rifle grips, but pointed it at the ground rather than up at the ready as they normally would. He watched as his three fellow SEALs entered the camp from three other corners.

Yeah – we don’t look at all fucking scary. Just four peaceful tourists in full combat gear.

After only a moment, the first villager noticed them – a woman who held a toddler on her lap – and she called out to the others. With some relief, Reed saw that she smiled and then waved at him. He raised an awkward wave, and then re-gripped his M-4 rifle. The toddler struggled out of the woman’s lap and started a teetering run towards Chris, but the woman snatched her back up.

“Gah, Deh, Eh,” the girl said and for a moment he thought it might be the little girl from the village slaughter. He quickly dismissed the thought as ridiculous. Kids all looked the same to him anyway, he realized.

The villagers began to congregate together and moved slowly towards the center of the clearing which the SEALs converged on. Chris raised a hand in a sort of greeting and looked to be trying his best to smile. Then, he pointed at Reed and one of the Ghost team members, pointed to his own eyes with two fingers and then at the two low huts at the periphery of the clearing – an order for them to search the huts. Reed nodded and headed toward the first thatched shack. Chris keyed his mike.

“Eagles,” he said – a call to the snipers – “Two guys searching the huts. You got angles to cover them?”

“Viper Eagle,” Lash said in his ear, “I got ‘em.”

“Ghost Eagle has them, also,” the other sniper said.

That made him feel better, but Reed raised his rifle to the ready position as he approached the doorway. A dark cloth of animal skin flapped lightly over the entrance, and Reed used the muzzle of his rifle to pull it a few inches open and peered inside. He saw no movement in the low space and pulled the cover the rest of the way open with his left hand and advanced into the room, clearing the corners as he did.

Then his eyes fell on the little pile of gear beside a nest-like bed against the far wall. For a moment, he couldn’t find his voice and then he fumbled, unable to find the button to key his radio.

“He’s here – I mean he’s been here. B…” he stopped himself before screwing up on the radio again. He took a slow quivering breath and started over. “Viper Lead – Five – you need to come here. Looks like Three has been here.”

“On my way,” Chris said in an excited voice. “Hold cover, Eagle.”

Reed squatted down and let his rifle fall onto his chest by its combat sling as he reached out a gloved hand and poked at the small pile of equipment. The radio looked completely undamaged, though the earpiece and microphone were missing.

Well no shit – we found them by the mutilated corpse.

That could explain why Ben hadn’t responded to the radio calls. But where the shit was he? The gear in the pile looked undamaged and unbloodied. He picked up the helmet and looked inside – no blood or damage. The electronics, his lights, batteries, radio, helmet, and gloves – but no weapons and no magazines. What a strange assortment of shit. He looked at the “B.M.” stenciled on the helmet liner, but he knew it was Ben’s gear before he saw it.

“Whataya got?” Chris called over his shoulder. “Shit – is that Ben’s stuff?”

“Yeah,” Reed answered.

“Where’s his kit?” Chris asked, and Reed wondered how the hell he thought he would know. “And, where the hell are his weapons and ammo?”

Reed looked up at the officer.

“Why would only this shit be here?” he asked.

Chris rubbed his face in standard Chris fashion.

“If he was captured, the shit heads would have taken his weapons,” he offered.

“But not his electronics?” Reed said, and knew immediately that he too asked obvious but un-answerable questions. “And why leave any of this shit here? These villagers are like the others – they ain’t Qaeda, and I don’t think they would help them.”

“No blood or sign of a struggle,” Chris pointed out.

“So, what the shit?” Reed asked.

Chris simply shook his head. Together they gathered up the gear and headed back to the center of the clearing. When they got there the villagers just smiled. Chris held up the helmet.

“What happened here?” he asked slowly and deliberately, like that would help. Reed wished like hell they had brought an interpreter, but even if they had he might not speak whatever the hell language these folks spoke. The villagers looked at each other and then back at them, but their faces registered nothing but confusion.

Chris sighed and turned to the Ghost team SEAL beside him.

“Any of you dudes know some magic way to communicate with these people?” The SEAL just shook his head. Chris keyed his mike. “Ghost leader – village is clear – bring it in. Eagles – hold position and watch our asses.”

“Ghost leader.”

“Viper Eagle.”

“Ghost Eagle.”

Chris turned back to the small group of villagers who watched him intently and continued to smile. Reed thought they sure as hell looked like they would love to help if they had any idea what the SEALs needed. Chris pointed vigorously at the helmet and then passed his hand across the village and shrugged, hands upward in a sort of “What the hell?” gesture.

The old man nodded his head and spoke some gibberish and then pointed off into the jungle in a roughly westward direction. The rest of the adults, all women, seemed suddenly to understand and joined the man, the whole group pointing west.

“No shit,” Reed said under his breath. “You think he’s a prisoner?”

“They seem awfully fucking cheerful for a group who just met with Al Qaeda terrorists who captured an American Soldier,” Chris said. “You remember what those assholes did to the last village? I don’t think these guys’d be smiling if Al Qaeda dragged a captive Ben through here.”

“Especially Ben,” said Auger, who had just joined the group.

“What’s up?” asked Malloy as he joined them, as well.

Chris quickly filled him in and then turned to Reed.

“Set up a sat call to the Head Shed and see if you can get some more thermal imaging data from the pred,” he directed.

Reed frowned. The jungle had heated up very quickly. He doubted that they could get much useful data now – at least not thermal data. He set up his gear quickly anyway and made contact with the operations center. After a few minutes he turned to the boss.

“They say they’ll re-task a predator, but the temp is gonna hurt us,” he said. “But they also said they tracked three people leaving the village westbound not too long ago. They tried to contact us, but couldn’t get you on the secure frequency.”

Chris cursed and checked his radio. Then, he shook his head.

“Tell them what we know and where we’re headed,” he said.

“Where are we headed?” the Ghost team leader asked. “We have no idea where those three went or who the hell they are. We sure as shit don’t know where they’re going, and it is awfully fucking light out here. Where are we gonna go?”