No Pit So Deep: The Cody Musket Story (17 page)

“Been awhile since I spent much time with a girl. Guess I’m outta practice.”

He retrieved a wet towel from the kitchen, soothed her injuries, and began applying the balm to the inflamed area.

“Oh, Cody.” Her eyes were so heavy she couldn’t hold them open.

“This is gettin’ to be a habit.” He grinned.

“And this is for my security, of course, right?” She yawned. “You’re gonna put me to sleep.”

“That’s okay. It’s late.”

“But I wanna hear the rest of the story about Dawg and Silver first.”

“Well, Dawg read me his suicide note. It was nothin’ more than a list of failures — stuff he figured he’d never achieve cuz he wasn’t smart enough. First item on the list was to marry a woman as great as his mom. He thought he had found her, but she had just dumped him.”

Brandi’s eyes were shut. Should he go on? Was she still listening?

He dropped his volume. “I reminded him that he was gifted, smart, but several former high school teachers had told him he was dumb and would never amount to a thing if he couldn’t play basketball. The only dumb thing he did was to believe ‘em.”

She opened her eyes. “What did
you
tell him?”

“I asked him what his mother would say. He said his mom would tell him he could be as smart as he wanted to be. So I suggested we keep his list, but change it from a suicide note to a list of goals to accomplish.”

“How did he respond?”

“I wasn’t very good at praying in those days, but I prayed a short prayer for him over the phone."

“Long-distance prayer?”

“Right. Next semester, he was back in school and he met Silver. After she came his way, the rest of the goals on the list were a piece o’ cake.”

“What an answer to prayer. Cody, if you —”

“The next year, I met Hanna Kyle. We were sophomores. We fell in love, and I asked her to marry me. But one night, a month before the wedding, she went to sleep in her dorm room and never woke up — some sort of congenital heart thing.”

Brandi lowered the footrest and leaned toward him on the arm of the chair.

“I had no parents by then. After I lost Hanna, I didn’t have anybody. I hit a low. I planned to drop out o’ school. I shut myself off and wouldn’t let anyone in the dorm room. But Dawg removed…” He paused, chuckled and took a long breath.

“Cody? What did Dawg remove?”

“Dawg removed the hinges from my door and carried me outside. I didn’t have the heart to resist. When he got me to his car, Silver was waiting. I hardly knew her then, but she talked to me like an older sister, scolding and loving me at the same time.”

"Oh, Cody.
Sweet.
Hand me that box of tissue."

He handed her the box. “They lived off campus. Invited me to move in with ‘em. With Silver pushing us both, Dawg became an Academic All-American, and I graduated early and became a US Marine.”

Brandi blotted her eyes. “I’ve seen Silver’s face on some magazine covers.”

“Silver is a scrapper, a fighter, grew up in th
e
projects of West Dallas, lost a brother to a gunfight. She earned a basketball scholarship to Baylor, went to grad school, became a financial genius
.
She’s turned Dawg’s capital investments into hundreds of millions.”

“I didn’t know about Hanna. She must have been amazing.”

Cody picked Brandi up, cradled her, and carried her back toward the sofa, his forearms so gentle she scarcely felt them. Eyes closed, she was a princess carried on a cloud.

He eased her onto the sofa and knelt beside her, placed a pillow at one end of the couch and motioned for her to lay her head down. She melted into the perfect cushion, soft and light, luxuriously deep.

Cody placed his hand on her forehead and said a prayer. In ten seconds, she was motionless again. He walked to the entry and further dimmed the lights.

As he tiptoed toward the door to the adjacent room, Brandi’s shallow voice called, “Good night, man of steel.”

When he turned around and their eyes met, she rolled onto her side and faced him. A sudden adrenaline rush had her pulse racing. After a momentary pause, Cody nodded, backed away, and left the room. She breathed a deep sigh of relief — and disappointment.

She lay on her back again, closed her eyes, and scolded herself.
Don’t complain. He’s exactly what you prayed for.

Then she stood up and stepped over to the closet. Exhausted, she changed into her blue ”I Love The Son” pullover shirt and dropped the rest of her clothes into the closet floor. Two bloodshot eyes stared back at her in the mirror.

She grinned at her reflection and whispered. “Yes, Cody, I will marry you.” Brandi cocked her head. “Uh, of course, I’ll marry you, man of steel.” Next, she turned up the volume. “Just say the word, Babe, and I’m yours.” She placed her hands on her hips and rotated them. “Well, it’s about time, Cody Musket. Marry me when? Tonight?”

“What did you say?” Cody had reappeared.

Brandi jumped. She clutched her heart to keep it inside her chest, then scooted over to the refrigerator and opened the door.

“Oh! Cody, you scared me. I, uh, was just getting some water.” She pulled a cold bottle from the fridge and shut the door.

“Didn’t mean to walk in on you. Thought I heard my name.”

Her face, pale when he had set her on the couch earlier, now blushed like a favored rose.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ve seen you in that pullover before.”

He left again and closed the door. She scurried back to the mirror, pressed the back of her hand to her mouth, and watched herself giggle until she hiccupped.

After drowning her hiccups with the contents of the bottle, she gathered up the extra pillows in the room, threw them onto the king bed, and burrowed into them.

In the other room, Cody collapsed into the middle of his bed.

Brandi’s tenderness and the prayer he had prayed over her stayed with him. His sleep was sound. This time, the nightmares stayed away.

On Wednesday morning, it was checkout day for coaches, players and fans. In two days, the baseball regular season would continue.

A security team escorted Cody and Brandi to breakfast at a second-floor coffee shop. Tanner and Julia met them there and took Knoxi with them, as planned, when breakfast was finished.

After they returned to their suite, Brandi went to change in the bathroom but stayed for thirty minutes. Cody decided to lie down on the couch and shut his eyes.

When Brandi finally returned wearing cutoffs and a Pirates game jersey, she was tight and nervy.

Cody sat up. “What’s wrong?” Butterflies whiffled inside his gut.

Brandi sat down next to him. “I just got off the phone with Vic at the
Gazette.
Dupree’s wrists had been tied.”

“So it
was
murder,” Cody said. “But I guess we already knew that.”

“He also said the Houston mayor is trying to make trouble for you.”

“Trouble? What kind?”

“He texted me a
USA Today
headline
that quotes Mayor Leonard Beeker saying that he questions your medals and says you aren’t coming clean. Do you know him?”

“I’ve met him,” he muttered. “He’s a Nam vet, seventy something, a popular ol’ guy, but he always looks at me sideways.”

“Do people take him seriously?”

He walked to the sink and ran the water to splash his face. “I dunno where Beeker gets his information, but I’m not ready for anything to come out in the press. I just want it to go away.”

“So now what?”

“We get your stuff out of your apartment in Pittsburgh tonight like we planned and then fly to Houston tomorrow. Derek’s arrangin’ a charter.”

“Is it too dangerous to go to Pittsburgh? I mean if Dupree was —”

“I don’t know if Pittsburgh is more dangerous than anywhere else. How large is the trafficking syndicate? Does the location make any difference?” He snatched a towel, dried his hands and face. “All that evidence you’ve collected. Just need to get in and out quick —
hit-n-run.”

“Why don’t we alert police or the Sheriff? They could provide protection again.”

“I got a better idea. Derek can leak a story that we’re headed to Houston tonight. What if there’s a mole in Pittsburgh? Can’t take a chance. No one but your parents should know we’re coming.”

“Now you sound like Sly.”

Cody tossed the paper towel into the trash and then stood motionless, staring at the floor. Brandi stiffened her back.

“I’ve never been so scared,” she said. “I’m used to being in control. Right now, everything is spinning apart.”

He took two steps toward her and stopped. "Before I say anything else, you should know that I didn’t bring you here just for your security. There were…there were other reasons.”

Brandi managed a chuckle. “
Ha!
Did you honestly think I didn’t know that?” She wanted to pursue the subject, but other things were pressing.

They sat in quiet reflection for a few moments, and then Brandi broke the silence.

"Cody, what could Beeker say that would be damaging? Why would he want to hurt you?"

He came and sat with her on the sofa. “I didn’t want to tell you, but it’s time.” He pulled in another deep breath. “What you’re gonna hear isn’t the account written by generals and historians.” He leaned forward, hands on knees, staring at the carpet in front of him.

Brandi’s thumping heart made her bruised neck throb.

“I told you the story before, but I left some things out. When the seven Taliban showed up at the crash, they had five young boys with ‘em.”

She caught her breath. Cody stood up and moved to the window and gazed at a passing cloud. “They singled out one little kid. They made him —” He turned around to face her and threw his hands into the air but did not finish his sentence.

“Made him do what, Cody? What did they make him do?”

“They made him shoot Harry.”

Brandi didn’t make a sound as Cody told her of the decision to leave the other four boys tied up. “We planned to go back and get them in a few hours.”

He turned back toward the window and gazed at the rooftops across the street. “Those kids begged me to take them along.” He shook his head.
“If only I had.”

He looked straight down at the street twenty floors below and placed both hands on the windowsill. “For four years, I’ve —”

He dropped his shoulders and shook with emotion but recovered quickly. Brandi walked up behind him, wrapped her arms as far as she could reach around his broad shoulders, and pressed her cheek against the back of his neck.

“Cody, if you want to stop, it’s okay.”

Primitive curiosity made her want to know what happened to the four children, but now, touching him with her arms and face, she could feel the tremors that ran through him beneath the surface. He brushed her aside and returned to the couch. She followed.

“The helo never came. We never went back for the kids.”

“I was taken to a village near a ravine. They locked me in a truck trailer, a torture chamber — hooks, electric batteries, wires everywhere. Bloodstains and the smell of vomit, urine and feces made me wanna puke. I was left there for what seemed like forever. No water. No food.”

Brandi had the crawly feeling again, like during his nightmare. She must hold herself together.

“I heard children crying. It seemed far away, but hard to tell because my only connection to the outside was a small vent on each side of the trailer. Some abducted kids are treated relatively well. I had no way of knowing their condition at that time, but later —”

“Later what? What did you find out about their condition?”

He shut his eyes. “I saw no sign of the POWs. The bloodstains were at least a week old. The helicopter survivors had not been in the trailer.”

Why had he evaded her question about the condition of the kids? Brandi walked to the refrigerator to retrieve two bottles of cold water and compose herself. Three swallows, then she sat back down.

Cody just placed his bottle on the coffee table and continued. “Intel had told us that people in this region were more brutal than most because they were secularists and hardliners. They don’t torture people just for information. They do it for hate and cold-blooded pleasure.”

No matter how well Brandi had prepared herself, it could never have been enough. Something evil and foreboding had invaded their room but she was too old to hide under the bed. She sat on her hands and braced for the worst.

“Finally, this big Taliban officer came in with three subordinates. One carried a small cup of water for me but no food. I learned later that this guy in charge was a wanted terrorist.

“They tried to make me tell ‘em where the SEAL team was hiding, but I didn’t know.  I lost track of time, didn’t think they’d ever stop.” He shuddered. “I woulda made up any story to get ‘em to stop. I told ‘em the SEALs had left the area, but they knew it wasn’t true.”

He reached for the water bottle and downed half the contents. Brandi kept silent.

“Finally, I could hear activity outside the trailer. I assumed it was morning again. Then I heard these indescribable screams. I didn’t know if it was even real at first. Sounded like some small animal, but then I realized — Men’s voices chanting, shouting, the smell of gasoline and flesh burning. It took a maximum effort to keep my sanity. You can’t imagine. Sometimes I still hear it.”

He put his hands over his ears, flinched his eyelids shut, and rocked back and forth.

Brandi’s eyes burned and she became lightheaded. The rocking scared her.

“Cody, I think —”

“They made sure I heard every sound.” He stopped rocking and leaned forward. “Right after that, the soldiers — totaling about three-hundred — decided to move on. They hooked the trailer to a tractor. That’s when they threw me on the street.

“At first, the townspeople moved back and became quiet — so quiet I could hear a gasping sound. I looked up and saw the smoking body of a child hanging about six feet off the ground.”

Brandi lost all the air in her lungs. “
Oh, Lord Jesus. No. No. No.”
  She battled the urge to run into the bathroom and cry her eyes out.

“He was one of the four we had left behind. Didn’t make any sense. Did they think he was a traitor? Nothing makes sense over there. His tiny face was beyond recognition, but I knew who he was because two of the older men standing there were holding those little scuffed boots and the pants and shirt he was wearing when I…when I had left him tied up.”

“
Ohhh, Cody.
I’m so, so sorry.”

He covered his contorted face and sobbed briefly, but no tears.

Brandi’s arms and shoulders ached from wanting to hold him, but she resisted. Her wrists burned. Now she knew why Cody never laughed. Finally, she knelt in front of him, placed her hands, wet from her crying, into his palms and prayed that the worst was over.

He gathered himself. “The mob started chanting again — prolly the only English words they knew — ‘Death to America. Death to Americans.’ They dragged me across the street. That’s when I saw the other children in a holding cell — about thirty of ‘em — mostly boys, a few girls.”

Brandi’s chest throbbed. She wanted him to stop but couldn’t say a word.

“Other children stood nearby, ‘bout ten of ‘em. They were clean, trying to look pious, dressed in turbans and robes. Adult ‘mentors’ stood with ‘em. The rest had been crammed into that cage. Some were naked, like…like cattle.” He tightened his lip. “I thought I knew the meaning of evil before, but…”

Brandi sensed a cold shift in the air — the stalking, circling presence of the monster he had told her about — the same deep sorrow and chilling stench as during his nightmare. Her runaway pulse pounded through her neck like a hammer. Her legs — burning, restless — sprung her to her feet and carried her to the window.

She held up both hands. “
Cody, stop!”
Her stomach wanted to erupt.

Cody wiped his face with his sleeve. He glanced at Brandi’s mournful face. If he finished the story, she would know everything he knew. He couldn’t let that happen. He had already told her too much.

Brandi gazed through the window toward Comerica Park, site of such exhilaration during the game the night before — children on the giant Ferris wheel, baseball-shaped gondolas, moms and dads on summer vacations with their kids. She imagined their laughter.

She looked toward the door. For a brief moment, she wanted to run, but couldn’t move. He had warned of things she would not want to know about him. Had he done something in those moments so horrible that it would change everything? Would the events of his past destroy his future?
Their future?

She was quiet and still for a moment, eyes closed. She listened. Even the refrigerator motor was now silent. In the quietness, it came to her. It was so simple, so profound. Ray’s ninth principle —
Never let who you were in the past define who you become in the future.

She would no longer let him attempt to hide his vulnerability by shutting her out. Nor would she afford him the illusion that cutting her off would protect her. His open wounds would never heal until someone bore them with him.

The stalking monster could not have her man. Not today.
Not ever.
Cody had called her
armed and dangerous
, and that’s exactly what she would be.

She left her flip-flops sitting on the windowsill, walked over to the red sink in the kitchenette and retrieved a clean, wet cloth. The red-and-gray wool Berber carpet felt good beneath her feet. She returned and sat on the coffee table again and wiped his sweaty brow and ruddy face with the cool towel.

“I’m all in, Babe. Would you tell me what happened to the rest of the children?”

His eyes were shut. When he tried to open them, he squinted as though he were looking into a blinding light.

“Cody? Did you hear? Can you tell me about the kids in the cage?”

Brandi was not prepared for what happened next. His eyes flew open wide — stricken, wild, like during his bad dream two nights before.

“God, don’t let me die this way! Help me save the kids! Send in the SEALs!”

“Cody. Cody! Can you hear me?”

He covered his ears again, his nightmare on full instant replay.

“
Cody? Answer me!”

But she could only listen and attempt to piece together the events as he relived them. She was in uncharted territory.
Is he hypnotic? In a trance?

Was he entering a long dark tunnel from which his mind might never return? She had heard of such things. She held on to him with all her strength as if to prevent him from being pulled away into that tunnel. It was all she could think to do.

Cody’s memory began to fill in the blanks.

The people in the street had started to run, driven by sudden gunfire. The SEAL team had arrived. They had already rescued the eight helicopter survivors. Now they had come for him.