Chapter Four: Ryder
In my humble, well-travelled opinion, Mosul, Iraq is the motherfucking armpit of the Middle East, kind of like Bogota is the armpit of South America and Detroit is the armpit of the North. Actually, Detroit and New York City run neck and neck on the shithole scale, but they were both heaven on earth compared to fucking Mosul. I mean, Jesus Christ, I could not think of a place I hated more, and I’d been to places you wouldn’t even send your worst enemy to. Most of Iraq sucked ass, but Mosul was a shithole of the highest magnitude, even worse than Kandahar and Lebanon and Kabul and Bagdad; and that was saying something because all those places were premier shitholes, too.
Everything about Mosul sucked. The heat. The food. The water. The people. Everything. It was a hundred and five in the fucking shade and the entire place stunk like shit. Everywhere you turned there was some raghead motherfucker staring you down, like he was trying to kill you with his eyes. I usually just stared right back, knowing that one on one, there weren’t too many men that could beat me in a fist or knife fight, or kill me before I could kill them if the guns came out. We both knew that if no one was watching, we wouldn’t hesitate to put a bullet in each other’s brains. But somebody was always watching, just waiting for some asshole American like me to fuck up and do something the world considered unjust so the video of my transgressions could be plastered all over the fucking internet. So, I usually kept my head down and my mouth shut when I wasn’t working, though sometimes it was excruciatingly hard to do.
Thankfully, it was a quick ride from my hotel to the base where Major Dickerson was waiting. Corporal Yates sat behind the wheel with his hands at ten and two and his eyes locked straight ahead and didn’t say a word as we made our way through the crowded streets. He was sweating like a pig at a Texas barbecue. He looked like he would shit his pants if anyone asked him for the time of day.
I powered up the satellite phone and scrolled through the calls I’d missed. There were three calls from Dickerson’s office all within the last hour (that would have been Yates trying to reach me because Dickerson never called himself), and two from Quinn Blackstone back in DC where BSS was headquartered.
Quinn was building his company off the sweat of dozens of his old pals like me. In just three years, BSS had made him a wealthy man, with multimillion dollar contracts with governments and corporations all over the world. When Quinn started the company, he offered to cut me in as a partner, but I didn’t want to leave the SEALs. If I had, I’d be sipping coffee at that moment in my air-conditioned office in DC rather than sweating my ass off in motherfucking Mosul. And maybe my wife wouldn’t be divorcing me now. Or maybe she would. Who the fuck knows.
“Why didn’t you leave a message?” I asked, holding out the phone and giving Yates a sideways look.
Yates shrugged without taking his eyes off the road. “Major Dickerson said not to leave a message, sir. He said to just go and find you.”
“When the master calls, the dogs come running,” I said, rolling my eyes.
“Excuse me, sir?”
“Nothing.” I pressed the button to bring up the list of voicemails, expecting to find a couple from Quinn. There were no messages, which I didn’t find too odd since Quinn hated voicemail. If you didn’t answer the phone right away, he’d just hang up and go on about his day, then you had to track him down.
I glanced at my watch. It was 2:05 in the afternoon Mosul time, which translated to 7:05 A.M. in DC. I checked the time stamp on the calls from Quinn. He’d last tried to call an hour ago, around 6:15 A.M. his time. That was early even for him. I pressed the call return button to give Quinn a call back. I huffed as the call went straight to voicemail. I swiped a hand over my sweaty face and waited for the beep.
“Hey, Quinn, it’s me. Just saw that you called. Give me a shout back when you get a minute. I’m on my way to meet your buddy, Dickerson.”
Yates stopped at the guard gate long enough for them to glance at our IDs and wave us through. Security was getting pretty laid back because there hadn’t been a major act of terrorism in a while. A few years ago, we would have been held at gunpoint while the Jeep was checked by bomb-sniffing dogs and the undercarriage checked by mirrors on long poles. Now, if you had on a uniform and they vaguely recognized your face, it was just a wave and go. It would be this way until the next asshole got horny for his heavenly virgins and drove a car bomb into the gate or strolled up wearing a vest laden with explosives.
It used to worry me, but now I was like, fuck it, I had another month and then I was out of there and had no intention of every coming back. Quinn had picked up a big corporate client in Dubai. That’s where I would be heading next, since I had no reason to stay in Arlington anymore.
I’d sign the divorce papers, spend a few days with my son, and climb back on a plane. Dubai was still a Middle East shithole with one of the largest slums on the planet, but the hotel where I’d be staying had air conditioning and there was American fast food on every corner. And no raghead motherfuckers giving me the evil eye.
Dickerson’s office was in the command center located at the middle of the base, a three-story gray concrete building with no sign or windows in the front and a couple of guards standing at the front door smoking like they were on break. Yates stopped at the curb and nodded at the building without shutting off the engine.
“Major Dickerson is in his office, sir,” he said. “You know the way.”
“I do,” I said, taking a deep breath and blowing it out slowly. I gave him a hard look that made his Adam’s apple bob. “You sure you can’t give me a head’s up as to why Dickerson needs me on my day off? If the shit’s about to hit the fan, I’d like to know it.”
“No idea, sir,” he said with a defeated shrug. “They don’t tell me shit. I just drive.”
“And you do a fine job, Corporal Yates,” I said with a serious nod. He gave me a blank look for a moment, then forced a smile that quickly faded.
“Yes, sir, thank you, sir.”
His fingers tightened around the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white and he licked sweat off his top lip. Poor bastard. He didn’t have a clue what he’d gotten himself into. Or more likely, what he’d let some slick recruiter talk him into. So many of these young guys came into the service thinking it was gonna be like some fucking video game where they could just hit RESET after a bullet tore off the top of their head. Yates reminded me of a frightened mouse who’d been dropped smack dab into the middle of a pack of wolves. I hoped he could get his ass back home to Iowa or wherever the fuck he was from without getting it shot off by a sniper or blown to shit by an IED. He was what I called a “One Tour Charlie”, meaning that one tour in a shithole like Iraq would be enough for him. He’d forget his delusions of being a soldier and go home to attend community college and get a nice safe job working on diesel engines or something.
I slid sideways out of the Jeep and adjusted the Kevlar vest and made sure my ID was visible, hanging by a lanyard from around my neck. I turned the ID so my photo and name showed through the lamination. I nodded as I passed the smoking guards and went up the steps and through the front door.
There was a small lobby and front desk with two more guards sitting behind it. One of them was reading an old copy of Sports Illustrated with Tom Brady on the cover and didn’t bother looking up when I came through the door. The other one, an older sergeant named Bean, was eating a sandwich of some kind. He had mustard on his chin. Without getting up, he grunted for me to sign the visitor’s log, then waved me on like I was a fly interrupting his dinner.
Gratefully, there were gusts of cold air blowing from the overhead vents that ran the length of the hallway that led to Dickerson’s office. At least the military seemed to understand the importance of keeping the officers cool even as the rest of us baked like pot pies in a desert oven. I wiped the sweat from my forehead on the back of my hand as I went up the stairs to the second floor, then wiped the sweat on my pants.
I found Dickerson standing behind his desk, staring out the narrow window that looked out over the back of the compound, gazing at a day that was so hot and dusty the world looked like it was engulfed in yellow powder.
“Sir, you wanted to see me?” I asked, tapping the open doorframe with my knuckles.
Dickerson turned with a deep frown on his face. He nodded and blinked at me, as if I’d just woken him from a long sleep. After a moment, he shook his head and gestured to the metal chair sitting in front of his desk. He walked around me to close the door, then moved to sit behind his desk.
Dickerson was a hard-nosed old soldier who rarely smiled, or perhaps it was that he never had a reason to. This morning was no exception. In his late fifties, he sported the same crewcut he’d probably gotten the day he started boot camp forty years before. His skin was the color of tanned leather and looked to be about as tough. Even in the heat of the Iraqi summer, his desert camo was creased and perfect, the bars on his shoulders and collar polished to a high sheen and the sampling of ribbons he wore on his chest were perfectly aligned. He grunted as he lowered himself in the chair and rested his thick forearms on the desk. He laced his fingers together and cleared his throat.
Staring at his hands, he took a deep breath and said, “Captain Ryder—I mean, Ben— I got a call from Quinn Blackstone a little while I ago. Apparently, he’s tried calling you on your sat-phone, but couldn’t get through.”
I had the sat-phone clipped to my belt. I didn’t dare tell him it had been turned off by one of his soldiers so we would not be interrupted while we were fucking each other’s brains out.
“Yes, sir, I missed his call,” I said with a frown. “I tried calling him back, but got voicemail.”
“Yes, well, he asked me to find you and give you the news…”
I frowned at him. I’d never seen Dickerson uncomfortable before, not even when he was chewing the ass of some Iraqi general or listening to bullets whiz by our Humvee. Little alarm bells started going off in my head. Something was up back home because Dickerson had never called me Ben and normally barked at me when he spoke. I had served under him when I was a SEAL in Afghanistan. He considered me a hot head, a pain in the ass cowboy, I think he called me. I thought he was an egotistical asshole who put his career before the safety of his men. We were probably both a little right and a little wrong. Still, I knew he hated my guts as much as I hated his, but he was looking at me with soft eyes, the way you’d look at someone before delivering bad news.
“I’m afraid I have some bad news,” Dickerson said, his head slowly bobbing on his thick neck as he spoke. “It’s about your wife.”
I felt heat rising from my collar, as if my shirt had caught fire and was spreading to my hair. It engulfed my neck and my cheeks. Sweat oozed from my pores. My mouth was suddenly dry. I licked my lips.
“What about her?”
“She was in an automobile accident last night,” Dickerson said quickly, like he thought he had to get the words out before he ran out of air. “I’m afraid she didn’t make it, son. She’s dead.”
I blinked at him several times, my eyelids flicking like a slot machine. I shook my head to make sure I was hearing him right. “I’m sorry, sir, what did you just say?”
Dickerson took a deep breath and blew it out in one long gust that fluttered the papers that were stacked neatly on his desk. I could feel the hot air all the way on my side of the desk. It smelled like stale coffee and cigars.
“You wife was killed in a car accident last night, Ben,” he said. “I don’t have a lot of details other than it was late and it was raining and she lost control of her car and hit a tree.”
“A tree, sir…”
“Yes.”
“And she’s dead…”
“Yes, I’m afraid so…”
“What was she doing out late at night?” My voice suddenly sounded hollow and far away, like I was listening to myself through a pipe. “In the rain?”
“I don’t know, son. Quinn didn’t seem to have a lot of details. He said he’d call you when he had more. In the meantime, he’s reserved a first-class ticket for you at Mosul International. You can pick it up at the Turkish United desk.” He glanced at his watch. “The flight leaves in an hour. Yates can take you back to your hotel so you can pack, then ferry you to the airport. I’ll call the airline and make sure they hold the plane for you. It’s a long fucking flight, but you need to get home as quickly as possible.”
“My son,” I muttered, suddenly feeling sick to my stomach. My young son’s smiling face flashed through my mind. I felt a sense of panic wrap its tentacles around my heart. I felt it start to squeeze. “My son, Cody… Where is he? Is he okay?”
“It’s my understanding that your son is safe with your wife’s sister, Emily,” he said, holding out his hands, patting the air with his palms. “He was not in the car at the time of the crash. He was spending the night at your sister-in-law’s house. He is safe and sound.”
“Cody loves Emily’s twins,” I said absently.
“Well, yes, that’s good to know,” Dickerson said with a serious nod. “He’ll be fine till you get home.”
I put my hands on my knees and pushed myself out of the chair. A thousand thoughts and questions were running through my mind. At the forefront of it all was my son. Cody was just four-years old. A real mama’s boy. He had no choice to be anything but because I’d been gone most of his life. He knew who I was, but just barely. He wouldn’t understand that his mommy was dead and gone. He needed his daddy. And I needed him. My only priority at that moment was getting home to my son.
“I’m sure Quinn has someone in route to take my place,” I said, knowing that even in the worst of circumstances there was no detail that got past Quinn, especially when money was involved. “If they have questions they can call me in the states when I’m home.”
Dickerson grunted as he got out of the chair and came around the desk with his beefy hand out. “That’s fine. No worries there.” He held out his hand and I shook it. “You have my condolences, Captain Ryder. I know you’ve always considered me to be a pain in the ass, but you’ve always taken good care of me. I appreciate your service. You’re a damned good SEAL.”
“Thank you, sir. It’s good to know that I’ve taken care of someone.” I let go of his hand and walked out the door.
* * *
Once the plane was at cruising altitude and the pilot had turned off the seat belt button, I made my way to the first-class lavatory and locked the door. I stood at the tiny sink and splashed cold water on my face. When I looked at the man in the mirror, he gave me a disgusted look and said, “Your wife is dead, you fucking piece of shit. You happy now?”
The words echoed in my ears. The fact that I’d spent the night and most of the morning fucking another woman while my wife lay in a drawer at the morgue or in the basement of some funeral home in Arlington was not lost on me. Our relationship had long soured and was probably over for good, and I’d take my part of the blame for that, but I should have honored my vows until the divorce was final. I was sure Bethany did. That was just her way. Goddammit. I was a fucking SEAL. I lived and died by a strict code of conduct that revolved around discipline, ethics, and honor. Sadly, those things were left in the hallway outside my hotel room door while I was fucking Bonita Anderson inside.
A heavy blanket of shame and grief draped itself around my shoulders and squeezed until my lungs could no longer take in air.
I lowered myself onto the tiny toilet and put my head in my hands.
With the water running to help disguise the noise, I broke down and sobbed like a fucking baby.
The sad thing was, I really wasn’t sure who or what I was crying for.