Target Omega

CHAPTER NINE

For Miriam Camacho, life was good. In fact, she couldn’t imagine it much better. Primarily because Manny was home. And Manny made everything, and everyone, better.

They’d been married for eight years, right out of high school in the Bronx, where they’d been high school sweethearts, a fact that had befuddled many of the other boys in school. Most of them thought Miriam was out of Manny’s league. She was tall — nearly three inches taller than Manny — and gorgeous. Manny, on the other hand, was short and not much to look at. He had a big nose, huge ears, and riotously crooked teeth. But he had a big smile, a bigger heart, and an incessant, infectious laugh.

He was an indifferent student but he was a quick study and could do almost anything: install a transmission on a ’68 Checker Marathon, dunk a basketball, repair an oil-fired furnace, do a backflip, fix a laptop, play the drums, bake a pie, pull a quarter from your ear.

But his primary talent was making people laugh, which, by the sounds wafting up the basement stairs, he was doing this very moment. It was the tinkling squeals of their little girls, Lillie, age five, and Ana, age three, plus the booming guffaws of Manny’s giant teammate, Eli Calhoun, age somewhere north of thirty. Equal opportunity laughter, spanning generations.

While Miriam prepared baked beans, potato salad, and corn in the kitchen, Manny grilled steaks on the patio outside the sliding glass doors of the basement rec room. It was a ritual begun shortly after his completion of BUD/S. Whenever he returned from a training exercise or an operation, he’d bring a different member of the team over for beer and steaks. That ritual, plus Manny’s interminable pranking, made him the most popular member of the team.

He was on a new team now, a member for less than six months. Although Miriam didn’t detect much difference from Manny’s previous units, she sensed from his obvious pride that this team was unique. Upon learning of his qualification and selection, he’d acted as if he’d been named to a major league all-star team.

Eli was the second to last of Manny’s teammates to partake in the ritual. Miriam liked him. A Texan, he was as big as Manny was small. Boulders for shoulders, tree trunks for legs. He had an open, guileless face and addressed Miriam as “ma’am.” Judging by the sounds coming from the basement, he and Manny were getting along like long-separated brothers. Manny got along with all of his teammates that way.

Except for one. Manny’s team leader, the star of the all-stars. He spooked everyone. Manny promised — no, warned — Miriam that he’d bring the man over after the next op. Miriam was curious to meet him. It was one of the few times Miriam had ever seen even a trace of apprehension in her husband’s eyes.

Miriam heard a scramble of tiny feet coming up the stairs. As the basement door burst open, a peal of laughter emerged from the stairwell, followed by the beaming faces of Lillie and Ana, who breathlessly announced that Daddy and Uncle Eli needed more “brown juice” and pretzels. Fast. Right away. And while she was at it, they could probably use lots more of those chocolate cookies with sprinkles. For Daddy, of course. And Uncle Eli. He liked cookies. A lot.

Life was good. And joyous. And fun. And it was about to get even better. While Manny was away, her obstetrician had confirmed what Miriam suspected: She was pregnant again. About two and a half months along.

She hadn’t told Manny yet. After a protracted debriefing, he’d come home late in the night and they’d celebrated his return in their usual way, falling hard asleep afterward. A few hours later she heard the girls’ squeals upon discovering Daddy home and making breakfast in the kitchen. Pots and pans crashing, cups and dishes clattering, the smell of bacon and eggs swirling. Shortly thereafter Eli had arrived. Then more cooking and grilling and laughter.

She looked forward to telling Manny the news after Eli left. Manny wanted a boy this time, but either way he’d be ecstatic. Another crazy Camacho, all electricity and sparks and manic energy.

As Miriam busied herself getting more beer and snacks, the basement hysterics ebbed for a spell — Manny and Eli likely pausing to admire a three-run homer or an acrobatic double play on Manny’s ridiculous seventy-two-inch screen. Or maybe Eli was quietly listening to the preamble of one of Manny’s outrageous jokes. Regardless, soon there would be another eruption of laughter punctuated by hoots and howls and backslaps and foot stomps, the mere anticipation of which had Miriam giggling to herself.

She dispensed three cookies each to Lillie and Ana, tucked the six-pack under her left arm, grabbed the bag of pretzels with her right hand, and descended the stairs to the temporarily quiet basement. Upon reaching the fourth step from the bottom, the reason for the silence came into view. Light transmitted it instantly to her optic nerves, which relayed it to the deepest reaches of her brain, which refused to process it.

To her left, bright sunshine flooded through the sliding glass doors, a spiderweb of cracks radiating from two holes in the glass. To her right, Eli Calhoun lay faceup on the all-weather carpet Manny had put down just last month. Eli’s eyes were open but there was nothing inside. On Eli’s far side, sprawled across the tan leather lounge chair, was Manny, a single hole centered on the ridge between his eyebrows, just above the bridge of his nose. His eyes, too, were open. Behind him on the headrest was an explosion of hair, blood, bone fragments, and brain tissue.

A heartbeat later the cognitive regions of Miriam’s brain finally permitted the signal from her optic nerves to be processed. A heartbeat after that, her legs went numb and she began to wobble.

Her obstetrician would later determine that Miriam’s miscarriage was caused by the trauma of her falling down the remaining stairs to the basement floor. But Miriam would always believe it was due to the trauma of knowing that her life, a life that seemed to be reaching a crescendo, would never be good again.