The Traiteur's Ring (7 page)

“What the hell can I fuckin’ do?” He sobbed as softly as possible, not wanting to be heard by his teammates on the other side of the thin poncho liners than hung like shrouds around him. “What can I do?”

You will know. You are a Seer.

Ben forced the old man’s voice violently from his head and lay back down, his breath slowing but still shuddered by sobs. He cried like that for a while, thoughts of the massacre and of his little girl in his head. He cried until he fell back into a restless sleep.

*   *   *

Ben woke to the stirrings of his teammates and stretched his sore back. The images from the night had faded slowly as he had slept, and it felt now like what it most certainly was – a stress-related nightmare.

Stress and guilt.

Ben swung himself up out of the rack and rolled his head to stretch out the tight knots in his neck. He looked down at his right hand and saw the ring had turned a crimson red. It no longer looked polished and shiny, but rough and, well – angry, maybe. He twirled it with his other hand and felt warm tingling in his fingertips.

“Headin’ to chow. Ya wanna go?”

Ben looked up at Lash who was already dressed in tan cargo pants and a black T-shirt. His face was freshly shaved, and he looked rested.

“Sure,” Ben answered with a yawn.

“You look like shit, bro,” Lash said. “You need to shower first? Your feet are fuckin’ gross.”

Ben looked down, and his eyebrows arched in surprise at the sight of his bare feet, black with dirt to above his ankles. He also saw scratches and bug bites all over both calves.

“What up, dude? You go out hikin’ last night?”

Ben looked at him not sure what to say. “Went to the head and didn’t wear my boots,” he said.

“What, did ya hike to Djibouti for your leak?” Lash laughed at him. Then, he shook his head. “Clean up, and we’ll wait for you. Out front in ten?”

“Sure,” Ben replied.

What the hell? From the scratches and dirt he could only guess he had been sleep walking. That crazy dream must have had him up wandering around in camp.

Lucky I didn’t get shot by a sentry.

He looked again at his ring and saw it had turned a nice midnight blue and regained its shiny, polished appearance.

Ben double-timed to the head and took a short shower, just enough to hose the dirt off, and pulled on his own cargo pants and a “Hot Tuna’s Bar and Grill” T-shirt. He dashed to the front of their broken down hangar-turned-barracks where a half dozen SEALs waited for him, including Reed who he was glad to see.

“Hey, bro,” Reed said and clapped him on the back. “Feel better?” he said in a hushed, conspiratorial whisper.

“Yeah, thanks,” Ben answered uncomfortably. “Just needed a good night’s sleep, I think.” He held back a wry chuckle at how untrue that seemed.

Ben found it easier than he expected to keep the memories of last night’s dream-journey out of his mind, especially when surrounded by his teammates. By halfway through his breakfast (real eggs!) he felt like himself. He remembered he was no stranger to burying bad thoughts and dreams after all, though he had gotten a little out of practice after the last few, very happy years. He suspected he owed that mostly to Christy. He felt a sudden and out-of-character desire (more like a need, actually) to call her. He decided he would call after checking on the little girl.

“Well, he’s like a witch doctor or somethin’. Right, Ben?” Auger slapped him on the shoulder and brought him into the banter of his fellow SEALs.

“Whaddya mean?” he asked.

“That Voodoo shit you put in my wound. What the hell was that stuff? Your grandma teach you that?”

Voodoo shit? What the….Oh right! The paste the old man made.

“Worked did it?”

“Worked?” Auger laughed. “Are you fuckin’ kiddin’ me? That stuff is crazy! The damn wound is healed up. Hell, my ass doesn’t even hurt anymore.”

Ben felt his head swim a little. Voices buzzed in the back of his head, but far away like in another room. He couldn’t make them out. He forced a grin onto his face.

“I can make your ass hurt again,” L.J. from Bravo platoon said.

“Dude, I’m not fuckin’ kidding. My ass has ached from that shrapnel they left in me in Iraq and, no bullshit, it feels normal now. What was that stuff, Ben?”

Ben felt all eyes turn to him and again an uncustomary anxiety grabbed at him.

“Old family recipe,” he said as casually as he could. “Just didn’t want to hear the whining anymore.”

The group laughed and like sharks with blood in the water turned their attention to razzing Auger for being a whiner. Ben didn’t feel surprised that the paste had helped, just surprised he didn’t feel surprised.

Like being at home. Powerful Ashe. Powerful Voodoo shit.

And, maybe a new power? He spun the ring on his finger absently and realized it felt very warm. He looked down and saw it had turned a faint burnt orange color.

The power is in you, Ben. Your Grandma knew, and I think you always knew also.

Ben pushed the old man’s voice away and turned to Auger.

“We still need to see the surgeon after breakfast, okay?” Ben said. “You need antibiotics, and we need an X-ray to see what fragments might still be in there.”

“Saw the surgeon yesterday when we got back, and he said it looked like just a little cut – not even deep enough for stitches he said.” Auger looked at him as if he expected him to say something, but Ben had no idea what to say. “He put me on antibiotics already,” Auger finished.

Ben nodded.

A little cut?

Ben had stuck his finger deep into Auger’s leg when he had treated him at the village. He would never stitch a bullet wound because of the infection risk. But Auger had a bleeding hole in his leg and certainly had a bullet in there somewhere – no exit wound. What the fuck?

“Let’s look at it again later in the box anyway,” Ben said, referring to the little closet they used as a clinic in their barracks. The guys had come to call it the doc-in-the-box. “We’ll clean it up again to be sure, okay?’

“Sure,” Auger said, but kind of shook his head a little. “After PT, okay? We can go for a run and, then, look at it.”

Auger hadn’t volunteered for a run since his injury in Iraq, and Ben knew it was because his hip hurt much worse than he would admit.

“Great,” he said. He decided he would use their archaic little X-ray machine to take a picture and look for the bullet anyway. “I gotta stop by the clinic first and, then, we can run.”

“I’m in,” Lash said. “Haven’t had a nice run since we went down range.”

“I’ll go,” Reed said.

“Don’t be ridiculous, dude,” Lash said with a twinkle in his eye. “You can’t go fast enough or far enough to keep up with real Frogmen,” he said with a wink at Ben.

“Fuck you,” Reed said with a laugh. “I mean, you may be right, but fuck you.”

A few minutes later, Ben headed off in the direction of the camp clinic where he could talk to the surgeon and check on his little girl. She had been asleep when he saw her last night, curled up on a stack of blankets at the top of a cot. He had stroked her face and left, not wanting to wake her and not knowing what he really had to offer her anyway. Now, he hoped she would be awake, and he felt confused at his excitement to see her.

She’s a link to things I don’t understand, but that feel so familiar.

Ben wondered if that familiarity was because of his strange past or because of the strong ties he felt to the villagers. That tie, he suspected, was just a manifestation of the burning guilt his whole team shared in an unspoken way. Whatever – he decided he would do what he could (though he had no idea what that would be) to make sure the survivors, and especially the little girl, were all taken care of.

The medical spaces filled a hanger that was in much better condition than the one converted into a barracks for the Navy SEALs and Army Special Forces Operators. Roughly square, they had actually brought in Sea Bees to build hard walls to separate the mini-recovery area from a small operating room and an even smaller X-ray room. The recovery area held twelve cots arranged in two rows and above each the Sea Bees had constructed crossbeams to support monitors, IV poles, needed supplies, and equipment. At the end of the rows were four sets of two saw horses where stretchers could rest for the initial management of bad trauma patients. So far, they had not had to use any of that advanced surgical capability on this deployment, thank God.

What struck Ben, however, was that all of the cots were empty.

Where are my people?

“Hey,” he hollered out to the young Army medic across the large open room. His voice sounded harsher than he intended, but he continued on without pause anyway. “Where the hell are our villagers? Where’s the little girl?”

The medic looked up, confused at first. Then, his voice seemed to register understanding.

“Oh,” he said. “You mean the natives?”

Natives?

He wasn’t sure why that irritated him so bad, but the word pissed him off for sure.

“They’re not —‘natives’ – they’re human beings, dickhead. They’re also the only survivors of a whole village of peaceful people slaughtered by a bunch of AQ assholes, and they watched everyone they knew and loved hacked to death, raped, and mutilated. Now where the fuck are they?”

Ben realized his voice had reached a feverous pitch he had never intended and felt his face flush. The young medic seemed unsure what to do, and for a minute Ben thought he might bolt for the door. Then, he took a long, shaky breath and held out an arm as Ben approached.

“Take it easy, sir,” he said, though as Ben was an enlisted SEAL, the “sir” was completely inappropriate. “I didn’t mean nothing, okay? Anyway, I’m not sure where they went. Doc Gilliam said he was getting them some place more comfortable is all. Just hold on a minute, and I’ll find out where they went, okay”

With that, he nearly sprinted out the door at the end of the recovery area, and Ben felt bad that he had over reacted. A few minutes later, the Army surgeon came in the same door, although the medic remained conspicuously absent.

“Whaddya say, man,” the surgeon said and stretched out a hand. Ben shook it. “You hangin’ in there?”

“Sure,” Ben said, now really embarrassed. “Just looking for our survivors, sir.”

“Of course,” the surgeon said. “I wanted them somewhere more comfortable and private,” he said. “Come with me.”

Ben followed the digital cammie-clad doctor out the back door. Behind the hangar was a wooden squaw hut constructed by the Sea Bees. On the thin wooden door someone had wood-burned a medical caduceus with a lightning bolt and a sword through it and a Green Beret on top – the symbol of Special Forces Medical. Next to it were burned the names of the three Army officers who used the building as their quarters and office. Ben realized the Colonel and his two partners (an anesthesiologist and an ER doc) had given up their quarters to the survivors from the village.

“Where are you guys, stayin’, sir?” Ben asked.

“We tossed some cots into the OR for now,” the Colonel said. “No big deal. We’re hoping not to use that room anyway, right?”

“Right,” Ben agreed. He felt touched the three men had given up their little bit of comfort in the shithole they all lived in for the survivors. “That was pretty right on, sir.”

The surgeon waved a dismissive hand and seemed embarrassed. “No biggie.”

The surgeon tapped lightly on the door and, then, cracked it open a little. “Hello?” he hollered in. “You guys got a visitor.” He looked back at Ben and shrugged. “They don’t speak English,” he said, stating the blatantly obvious.

Ben nodded and walked in.

It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the dim light. In the center of the room, the survivors had arranged blankets and sheets pulled from the nearby beds and they sat together cross legged in the nest-like pile.  Ben’s little girl sat between the outstretched legs of the young woman who he remembered had lost her own child before he had been able to kill her rapist.

Too little, too late.

The little girl reached up at him.

“Gah, deh, eh,” she said and looked for all the world like she thought her babble meant something. To Ben it sounded no different than any baby chatter he had ever heard, a thought that made him feel a little more normal.

“Hey there, sweetie.” His voice conveyed the choked up smile that also spread across his face. His eyes felt suddenly wet, and he felt very little like the steely-eyed killer he was paid to be.

“DAH!” the girl announced and grabbed the middle of his face. She cooed, and Ben laughed.

“You have fans,” the Colonel said. His voice sounded surprised.

“Yeah, well she and I bonded at the village and on the way in. I guess I became the mama duck for this little duckling.” He nuzzled her neck with his nose.

“I don’t mean her,” the surgeon said.

“Huh?”  Ben turned to look at the doctor to figure out what the hell he was talking about and, then, followed the Army officer’s gaze.

The adult villagers had all shifted to their knees, the old woman clearly with some difficulty. Their arms were all outstretched and raised, their palms up towards the ceiling. Their heads were bowed forward, but four sets of dark eyes stared at him, wide-eyed, from under wrinkled brows.

“What the hell?” Ben whispered.

The large, middle-aged man made a noise that sounded like a word wrapped in a cough. The eight eyes closed tightly, and together they began a melodic chant. Ben stood and stared at them for a moment, the little girl in his arms clinging to his neck.

“They do this every time you come in here?” Ben asked the surgeon without looking back. He felt unable to pull his eyes away from the four villagers on the floor.

“We haven’t disturbed them all that much,” the Colonel said. “But they have always been quiet and, I don’t know – stoic, maybe.” He stepped forward next to Ben. “I’ve never seen them do this before.”

“Da, da, Bad eh,” the little girl said and grabbed Ben’s ear hard enough to hurt a little. He barely felt it as he watched the strange scene in front of him. The man and three women continued to chant in unison, eyes closed and arms up and out. Then, the man’s head snapped up, and his eyes popped open. Ben felt himself startle a little. The man smiled at him and dropped his arms as the women continued their chant. Ben tried to smile back.