Age of Blood

40

Ten minutes later they leveled off.

Laws and Yank were recovering and organizing equipment.

YaYa was cleaning Hoover’s fur as best he could.

Holmes had produced a Thuraya satellite phone and was speaking animatedly to Billings.

Which left Walker, who took some time to check each of the SPG civilians, leaving Jen for last. For the most part they’d held up. As firefights went, it had been pretty one-sided. Still, as one of the techs mentioned, it was much louder than the first-person shooters he liked to play in his mother’s basement.

When Walker finally sat down beside Jen, he placed a hand on hers. She jumped, then gave him a quick look.

“Sorry,” she said. “I was just…”

“I know. Let’s talk through it,” he said. “Tell me what you saw.”

“I saw them come after us and I saw your bullets go into them.” She stared at him with a look halfway between awe and fear. He hoped she’d never look at him like that again. She licked her lips and lowered her eyes. “You’re very good at what you do.”

“And the man with the LAW? Did you see him too?”

She nodded. “He just… disappeared.”

“He was trying to do that to us, Jen.”

She looked at him sharply. “Don’t you think I know that?” She pulled her hand away and covered it with her own. Try as she might, she couldn’t stop it from shaking.

“What is it you thought we do, Jen?! We’re SEAL Team 666. We fuck up those things no one else is capable of fucking up.”

She stared at him in shock.

Looking around, he realized that everyone was looking at him now, too. Even Holmes.

He turned to her. “Jen, I’m sorry. Listen.…” She turned away from him. He put his hand on her shoulder, but she shrugged it off.

Laws came over and pointed to where he was sitting. “This seat taken?”

Hell yes, it was taken. Walker was sitting in it. But then he saw Laws raise his eyes and make a serious command face. Walker reluctantly stood and traded places, going over to help Yank with the equipment.

“Looks like you handled that pretty well,” Yank said after a few moments.

“Fuck you,” Walker said. He lowered his head and began the mechanical work of breaking down the SR-25 and cleaning its separate parts.

“Although maybe yelling at her and dropping F-bombs wasn’t the most sensitive choice,” Yank added.

Walker felt the heat rise in his face as he glared at Yank.

“Easy now,” Yank said, not even bothering to look in his direction. “There’s a lot of stress bouncing around this here Mexican airplane. No reason to let it affect you. Why don’t you recite some poetry or something.”

“Poetry?”

“Yeah. Poetry. Shit like, I think that I shall never see a poem as lovely as a tree. That sort of poetry. I’m told it calms you down.”

Walker couldn’t help laughing. “You were told that, were you?”

“Sure was.”

“And who told you that?”

Yank glanced at Walker before he answered. “Oprah.”

“As in the talk show woman?”

“The same.”

Walker laughed again. “You watch Oprah?”

“Don’t go hating on the big black successful woman. She got more money than Trump.”

“I’m not hating on her. I just thought it was funny, you watching Oprah.”

“Got shot in Afghanistan last trip. Had to remove my spleen. It was either that or watch Maury do DNA tests for people who shouldn’t even be having kids.”

“I didn’t know you were shot in the Stan. What happened?”

“Playing rodeo with the MARSOC boys in their motorcycle gang.”

“What?”

“SOCOM created a long-range reconnaissance unit with motorcycles as our primary delivery mechanism. We moved in and out fast and we could go where other vehicles couldn’t. This one group, AMC 120—stands for Afghanistan Motorcycle Club—was mostly Marine Special Forces with me as the token SEAL. We were doing village stabilization operations, trying to win hearts and minds, when this truck took off like a bat out of hell. Me and a jarhead followed it into an ambush. My buddy got his head crushed by a boulder. Can you believe it? They set an avalanche on us. Talk about fucking old-school. Anyway, they shot me and my bike up pretty good, but I managed to escape. My armor took all the damage except for the round that took my spleen.”

“Motorcycles and combat,” Walker said, shaking his head. “Where’d you learn to ride?”

“My adopted father used to take us out on the sand dunes and let us go crazy on little 250s. Riding is cool.”

“Even when there’s an avalanche coming down on you?”

“Maybe not then.”

Walker looked over at Jen for a moment before he spoke again. “I was always worried she’d find out about the blood and violence. I used to come home and she’d claim to know what I did, but she only knew what she saw on video or read in a report. Being there is so different.”

Yank grunted. “I’d never let my girlfriend go out on a mission. Well, if I had a girlfriend.”

“Like I had a choice.”

“You had a choice who your girlfriend was. There are plenty of girls outside the fence who are screaming to get into SEAL UDT shorts.”

“But they aren’t Jen.”

“But they aren’t Jen,” Yank repeated. “She got you good, brother.”

“Yeah. She got me real good.”

“So what about that poem. Do you know one?”

“I know a couple. There was this guy on the USS Tennessee who used to recite it at all hours. It made me want to find a girl just like the one in the poem.”

“What is it, There was a girl from Venus?”

Walker kicked Yank good-naturedly. “No. Nothing like that.”

“Okay, Mr. Poet Master, give.”

“Let me see if I can remember.” Walker put down the pistol he’d been cleaning and stared into space. Then, when he was ready, he said, “‘She walks in beauty, like the night, Of cloudless climes and starry skies, And all that’s best of dark and bright, Meet in her aspect and her eyes.’”

When he finished, Walker looked over at Yank, whose jaw hung open. His eyes shined wistfully. “Man, that was beautiful.” He reached out toward Walker.

Walker pushed him away. “Very funny.”

Yank laughed. “Seriously. Where’d that come from?”

“I wanted the woman from the poem and I found her.” He stared over at Jen with a longing he usually kept a tight hold on.

“Then you’d better figure out a way to get back over there. If your woman is all that, then she’s completely out of your league.”

“Oh, I knew that from the beginning. Completely.”

“You ever tell her about the poem?”

“No. Never.”

“Why not?”

Walker gave him a look that meant to convey Do you know how embarrassed I’d be?

Yank shook his head. “Fuck that. A poem like that is like a nuclear weapon or a silver bullet. You use it and that’s all you’ll need.”

“You think?”

“Am I black?”

“Wait? You’re black? With a name like Yankowski I never knew.”

Yank chuckled as he cranked up a middle finger. When he was done, he asked, “So who wrote that poem?”

“Lord Byron.”

Yank nodded. “Of course he did. The original lady-killer strikes again.”