* * *

I thought of the CO as I did my laps in the indoor pool. Swimming helps me to relax and clear my head when it gets too hot, or when something keeps rattling around in there.

It wasn’t long before I felt the stress begin to leave me and my limbs became more relaxed and pliant as the tension eased.

Only in the water do I feel this at peace. An old woman once told me that it was because of my ‘gift’. Apparently those things are all connected to the elements or some shit.

I could do without this ‘gift’ as she called it, though it has helped me out a time or two in the past. And then there’re the times when it’s a right pain in the ass; like now.

From the time I was a very young kid, before my dad tried to beat it out of me, I had a very strong sixth sense. Apparently it’s something that ran in the male line of my family. Some Celtic shit that had been passed down since the days of the druids or some fuck.

Fuck if I know, I grew up on the streets of Chicago where shit didn’t lean to the supernatural but more survival of the fittest. I wish I would have told my boys that I hung with back then about this shit. My ass would never have made it out of the south side.

I always knew I was different, and somehow knew this difference wasn’t something to be shared. It could be because of my dad’s reaction the first time I mentioned ‘seeing’ something that wasn’t there.

He’d freaked the fuck out and I can’t remember if the beatings for that particular infraction started then or some time later. Whatever!

It didn’t matter what the asshole did, that shit just kept on coming. Sometimes I would just know things, things that no seven year old should know or have any knowledge of.

That’s the earliest recollection I have of this shit, when I was about seven and trying out for little league. I remember seeing this kid bleeding from the head and somehow knowing that it was going to happen that day.

Not understanding of course, I’d told my mom who was sympathetic and tried to reassure me. I remember it had led to a heated discussion between my parents and then dad had been pissed off and slammed out of the house only to return later, drunk.

That’s when he’d yelled at me and told me never to do that shit again. That’s when I first started to hate my ‘gift’. Not because he yelled, asshole was always yelling. But the look on his face I’ll never forget as long as I live.

As I grew older, I got so good at ignoring my ‘gift’, that after a while it seemed to have disappeared; but apparently the shit was just playing possum, because it came back full force in my teen years.

It was a source of great confusion back then. How could the thing that warned me not to follow Johnny Spinner back in eighth grade, the same Johnny Spinner who’d lost his life playing duck-duck goose on the train tracks that same day when I listened, be such a bad thing?

But that look on my dad’s face was never forgotten and being a kid who lived for his dad’s praise and approval there was no choice.

So, I spent a lot of time as a young boy frightened and confused, and as I grew older I’d try to hide that shit until I came to hate it. As far as I was concerned it was something to be ashamed of. I mean if my old man hated it so much there must be something wrong with it right.

For the majority of my life up until the time I met my brothers, it was some shit that I wasn’t too keen on sharing with the rest of the world’s population and had gone to great lengths to keep buried.

Of course after meeting Lo and the others who’d joined up a few years ahead of me, there was no way I was telling these tough as nails motherfuckers about my little hiccup.

If I’d hid that shit before it was damn near imperative that I annihilate it now. I could just see the six of them laughing their asses off or worst, telling the CO.

So all through training I’d kept that shit to myself even though for some perverse reason it seemed to choose that time to be even more of a pain in the ass.

I remember the first few weeks of training it was a constant companion and once I realized I couldn’t shake it so easily this time, I dealt with it. I guess if you’re going to put your ass on the line everyday it was a nice little side bennie every once in a while, but I worked hard at keeping it under wraps.

If it helped me to excel, well hey. But it took more than that to get me through that shit. All through training as I built my physical strength, my gift grew right along with it-it seemed and it was getting harder to contain.

Still I was feeling pretty good that after months with my brothers they hadn’t picked up on my ‘knowing’. And then I’d outted myself when we were going on a particularly sketchy raid. That shit had been riding my ass all day and I’d put it off as long as I could.

We’d recently been teamed up together after I’d kicked major ass in BUD training and it was only our third or fourth run. No way did I want these bad-asses knowing that I was a damn freak of nature.

We were in the Congo on a rescue mission to extract the son of a diplomat who’d got himself kidnapped. The family was more than willing to pay, but that’s not how this shit works. You start paying off these fucks it would never end.

It was our first extraction but we’d done drills until I could run them in my sleep, and we’d been in tougher situations together a time or two by then. I was just hitting my stride and beginning to feel like I belonged, that I was part of something worthwhile.

We were getting Intel from one of the locals that the CO had been assured was on the level, but something just didn’t feel right in my gut. As we moved through the night deep into the jungle, that feeling persisted until I could no longer ignore it and I caved in and got Lo’s attention.

I’ll never forget his face when I told him we were walking into a trap. He’d studied me like he could see into my head. Then without question he’d alerted the others.

Long story short, the local ended up with a broken neck and we went in and got the kid using my ‘gift’ as guidance. When we got back Lo had confronted me in front of the others.

I was embarrassed as fuck, but they seemed more impressed than repulsed when he finally dragged the shit out of me. Of course he convinced me we had to tell the CO.

I was nervous as fuck, still a young man of about twenty back then and had finally felt like I belonged somewhere. I’d heard the others talking over time and knew that most of us came from fucked up beginnings, some worse than mine.

I was terrified that the CO would use this as grounds to kick me out, but things had gone in a whole other direction.

Instead he’d called us all into a meeting and after grilling my ass like a suspected terrorist skell he’d praised me for my abilities. At first I’d thought he was making fun of me, but the reactions of the others had soon set me straight. They’d actually thanked me for saving their lives.

Apparently the CO had learned too late that the local guide had been compromised and there was no way to pull us back. He’d been mounting a second team to go in after us.

That was the night they became my brothers in heart. It was from that moment on that the seven of us just clicked into place for me. That was a lifetime ago now and we’d come very far and had faced some serious shit together over the years that had only made us closer, stronger.

As time went by we became more than just a team. I don’t remember us ever being apart even when we came back stateside after that. Lo had decided to take our training a step farther and since we were a motley crew of semi orphans, we all just seemed to fall into brotherhood.

Before that I was more of a loner; still have a bit of the lone wolf in me. The navy hadn’t knocked the stubborn out of me and I’d say for sure if not for my brothers, my ass wouldn’t have made it out of the sling a time or two. But since we ‘semi retired’ I’ve calmed the fuck down like ninety percent.

Lo has a lot to do with that. He knows each of us almost as well as we know ourselves. That’s why he’s so good at being our leader in the field and why we still trust him to call the plays now that we’re home.

Before the CO left us this place, we’d hole up in some beach town somewhere or a cabin in the mountains when we didn’t feel like dealing with people in our downtime.

We’d always planned to stay together when we got out, and the CO who always seemed to know everything, and had played a bigger part in our lives than just that of a commanding officer, had made that possible.

I pulled myself up out of the pool and dried off as I pushed the weirdness of the night from my mind and thought of my family. Though we were all roughly the same age give or take a year or two, we’d all fell into certain roles as easily as if we’d been born to it.

Logan was a born leader and protector. Connor’s his wingman and the rest of us just found our place and took up position with Lo at the helm.

We’ve had very few losses over the years, and through them, because of our bond, I’d grown into someone I could be proud of.

Since dad was an asshole of the highest order and mom had been long gone by the time I signed up, it was my brothers with whom I’d shared my greatest achievements.

The kid who’d been aloof and withdrawn, who trusted no one but himself, had learned to trust, not just the men I fought and bled with, but the man who’d led us.

It was easy for me to take a step back and let Lo do his thing because I knew when it was needed he had no problem letting the rest of us take that position. We all played on each other’s strengths.

He’d given Cord the reins this last go around which thank fuck we’d all survived. That boy is just a little bit touched if you know what I mean and there were times in the last couple weeks when things were touch and go.

Thank fuck he has his woman to keep his ass on his toes now and the rest of us can catch a break. We’d dodged a few bullets there and were facing yet more bullfuckery in the not too distant future, but the rules of our game had changed a hell of a lot.

We were all keeping it on low keel for the sake of the women, but had it been just us, we would’ve fucked shit up already, consequences be damned.

That usually involved leaving bodies scattered to fuck and back. But now with everyone becoming family oriented and shit, we’re having to find new ways and means.

Plus, this shit was on domestic soil, something we’ve never had to deal with before, not like this. We were treading new waters with this one.