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  “No,” I keened. I pulled her body to me and rocked her slowly back and forth.

  A friend. A confidant. A protector. An empty shell.

  I cried and spoke of my bereavement in the ancient languages.

  When I had no more tears to cry I laid her down gently. Then I riffled through her pockets with my blistered hands, until I found the fifty bucks.

  I would need it later for Beenie.

  Gift of the Bouda

  I sat in an uncomfortable plastic chair looking across an industrial steel desk at my new doctor. The black plastic nameplate read; Mark Capon, MD, FAPA, FACP, and below that Staff Psychiatrist, Veteran’s Affairs Administration Hospital.

  Before this impromptu appointment we had never met. His thin neck held up a too-round head. The thick titanium-rimmed lenses and beak of a nose accentuated his bird-like appearance.

  “Good afternoon, Captain Rogers.”

  I hated to be addressed by my old rank. That had been an entire lifetime ago.

  He seemed to be waiting for a response.

  An old clock on the bookshelf audibly ticked the seconds away.

  “May I call you…” He looked down at his notes. “John?”

  I nodded. He could call me Bucky the Wonder-horse for all I cared, as long as I got my meds. I had been denied my prescriptions when I tried to fill them at the VA pharmacy and was told I needed to see this joker first.

  “Well, John, I am Doctor Capon, and I have been assigned to your case.” He affected a serious expression and said carefully, I am not sure if you’ve heard, but Doctor Roman passed away.”

  He looked at me for a response.

  “Doctor Roman died in a car accident last month.” He said it slowly as if to press the point home.

  Everyone dies. Having only met my previously appointed Staff Psychiatrist once before, his loss made no impact.

  “Well, I’ve been reviewing all of Doctor Roman’s case files.” He glanced down at my folder. “You have a diagnosis of chronic Post Traumatic Stress Disorder with attending Obsessive Compulsive manifestations.”

  The clock ticked a few more seconds. He looked at me expectantly.

  “I’m just here to refill my prescription. The pharmacy was closed yesterday and today I’m out.”

  “Yes, well I thought it would be a good idea if we met first, before I authorized release.”

  The low angle of the sun cast long shadows across the small office.

  “Will this take long? I’d like to be home before it gets dark.”

  “No, it shouldn’t be too long. I just need to go over some things with you before I feel comfortable with the current treatment modality.” He smiled primly.

  I nodded and he looked back down.

  The small room contained new VA-issued furniture and boxes of medical texts on the floor. He hadn’t been there long. The Medical diploma on the wall behind him was just four years old, so this was probably his first real job. He even smelled new.

  “Alright, so Doctor Roman had pursued a primarily pharmacological approach. I have you here on Fluvoxamine at three-hundred milligrams with recommendations that you attend a VA-sponsored PTSD support group.”

  He looked up at me but I didn’t respond.

  “First, that dosage is extremely high, and second I can’t seem to find any evidence of your attendance at a support group meeting, John.” He leaned back in his chair expectantly, fidgeting with a gold Cross pen.

  “Is that a question?”

  He smiled slightly and said, “Not really. Should I be more direct?” He paused. “You’ve been treated her for almost seven years and not once have you participated in any sort of therapy. Why is that, John?”

  I shrugged. A gusting wind keened against the window, warning of a change in the weather.

  “I’ve found that in treating PTSD, especially presenting with anxiety disorders that exposure and response prevention therapy, combined with the appropriate medications is the most efficacious treatment. We teach ERP in several of our support groups.”

  “Great,” I said, trying not to show too much enthusiasm. “Listen, I’m not good with psychobabble.”

  “In my residency at Cambridge hospital I actually co-authored a paper on anxiety disorders. It was a literature survey of various treatments for PTSD, following a cohort from Desert Storm,” he said authoritatively.

  “Your mother must be proud.” I suppose my tone lacked sincerity.

  For a full three ticks of the clock he looked at me expressionlessly before looking back down at my file.

  “From the answers on your Yale-Brown, I question if the diagnosis was appropriate, John.”

  He paused expectantly again and seemed disappointed when I didn’t respond.

  “Listen John, I am going to need your help here if we are going to be able to provide you an effective treatment.”

  I could so easily snap that thin neck. But that would wrong, I supposed.

  “We’re on the same team here, John.”

  Hardly. Most of my team was buried in Arlington National Cemetery. I sighed and then squeez

  “Great. Let’s talk about the images that you seem to focus on, and the behaviors which you feel compelled to perform, shall we?” He waved his little pen like a baton.

  I nodded. A faint smell of metal hinted at his enthusiastic perspiration.

  “So, would you say you engage in activities you feel compelled to perform, that occupy you for say, up to an hour a day?” he asked.

  “No.”

  He wrote that down.

  “Well, that’s good. How about the obsessions? Do you feel that you spend a significant amount of time dealing with unwanted or unpleasant ideations?” He twisted the body of the pen to drive the point in and then back out.

  “Yes. Images, mostly,” I said. There, I could be forthcoming.

  He wrote that down too.

  “That’s good, John,” Capon encouraged.

  “The meds help me keep the lid on.”

  He nodded at my progress.

  “And how would you best characterize these images?”

  “I try to avoid thinking about them. As I said, the medication keeps the lid on.”

  “It’s okay; we’re going to work through this.” I didn’t respond, so he continued, “What do you feel will happen if you give in to these obsessive thoughts?”

  Again, I didn’t respond. The clock ticked. It ticked again. I heard squeaks on the tile as someone walked down the hall beyond the office door. Probably going home for the day, it was after five.

  Finally I said, “I may become unpleasant and hurt someone, badly.”

  He didn’t have an answer for that. The frail little man could see from my records that I was capable. But my records didn’t reveal everything.

  “I see you were in Somalia?”

  I nodded.

  “Operation Restore Hope?” he asked.

  “Continue Hope.” He looked at me blankly. While I was undergoing my trial by fire he was probably still having his lunch money taken away by the big kids.

  “Continue Hope, then. That was where this all started?”

  I nodded.

  “Why don’t you tell me about it?” He folded his hands expectantly.

  Through the window I could see the branches of a leafless elm whip with the gusts of wind. The clock ticks almost echoed in the austere little room.

  “Well, in a nutshell, I was deployed to Somalia, injured, fixed and left with some problems,” I said. “Medically discharged with one-hundred percent disability. PTSD with OCD. Don’t you have it all there in the file?”

  “I’d really appreciate your cooperation, John.”

  Left hand to his right mandible, right hand to his temple and twist. His long thin neck would break at the fissure between the first and second cervical vertebrae like a piece of dry wood. It would be so easy. I tried to think of something else.

  “It’s a long story.”

  “I have time.” He smiled that p
rim little smile again and fidgeted with his pen. His fingers were long and slim. He probably played piano well.

  “Listen John, I don’t want to just go through the motions here. I really would like to get to the bottom of your troubles and see if we can’t make some progress?”

  “Cure me?”

  “I have helped others with your condition.”

  “I doubt you’ve ever helped anyone with my condition.”

  “Well, how will I understand exactly your condition if you don’t share with me?” he countered.

  “My current treatment modality seems to work. Wouldn’t it just be easier to let me have my pills?”

  “No. If you don’t cooperate I am afraid that I will not be able to authorize any medications,” he said.

  “Holding them hostage?”

  He shrugged assent. Though it would make me feel better, snapping him in half wouldn’t get my prescriptions filled any quicker.

  “Okay then. I was team leader with the Thirteenth Special Forces, Operational Detachment Echo. We deployed to Somalia to help keep the militias from interfering with international aid:” It came easier than I had thought it would.

  “I saw Black-Hawk Down,” Capon offered.

  “Perhaps then you should explain to me what it was like?” I let the clock tick away a few seconds.

  He seemed to get the point.

  “That was Task Force Ranger’s story, mine is a little different. In August of ninety-three my Special Forces team and I executed a number of small operations outside of Moge with the intent of eliminating the flow of arms into the city.”

  “Is that when you were injured?” Capon asked.

  “Yes, on my team’s last mission.” I could see the thick seams between the tiles as I stared at the floor between my feet.

  “Why don’t you tell me about it, John?”

  I sighed. And then told him. The telling wasn’t the same as the seeing. And I saw it all again, vivid and real and tried my best to convey the depth my experiences in mere words.

  #

  I saw the Somali guide, Ahmed Ghedi, and the five members of my team couched low in the dry, brush-choked streambed. We crept up beside the compound of the clan leader named Samantar Afrah. The Walled compound had an open central courtyard, with a large, whitewashed, cinder-block building in the front, flanked by a cluster of smaller mud-brick and tin sheds- all covered in the ubiquitous ochre dust of East Africa.

  During the intelligence summary that morning, Afrah had been described as an arms broker. He was a businessman with a large cache of weapons that he rented out to the various clan chiefs. They would in turn employ them against his other customers. Business was good.

  Getting the intelligence was easy. The locals didn’t like him. He extorted bullied, and stole. He didn’t have his own territory, but picked at the fringes of the stronger clans. We thought that was how he earned his nickname, Waarabe, which means hyena in the local language, because of his tactics. I found out later that there was a different reason.

  The shambles stood a few dozen meters from the road that led from Moge. We watched unseen as Afrah’s mercenaries loaded trucks and prepared to leave. Attack helicopters would destroy them later on the road. Afrah should remain behind with a smaller contingent that we would neutralize. Simple snatch and grab.

  Ahmed, fidgeting as the black flies sucked at the corners of his mouth, looked furtively up and down the loose line of mismatched soldiers. Desert cammo bottoms, tan aviator vests jammed with ammo and gear were stretched over black Kevlar vests. Black Pro-tec hockey helmets and matching knee pads, earpieces and voice activated flex mikes. No two soldiers were armed the same.

  My CAR-15 carbine had a silencer that looked like a soda can. A new .45 caliber Heckler and Koch M23 was in my shoulder holster. A Randall Bowie knife and a few grenades completed my personal armamentarium for healing the enemy’s ailments.

  On the other side of our guide knelt my team ops NCO, ‘Granddad’. He carried an old 7.62 mm M14 rifle he had named Chekov, with a 9mm Beretta pistol at his hip. I always thought it funny he carried the big-bore antique for its stopping power and then kept a plicker like the 9mm.

  “Ahmed, we’ll go in after the vehicles leave,” I said.

  The short dry grass trembled in the faint breeze.

  Ahmed didn’t look reassured. “Waarabe is of the Bouda,” the thin young man said earnestly. He clutched his Maadi, an Egyptian-made AK-style rifle to his chest like it was a stuffed animal.

  “Tribe?” I asked. Bouda didn’t mean anything to me then. It would later, but then it was just another name. Isaaq, Hawiye, Habr Godr. Men with more similarities than differences that each found an excuse to kill one another.

  “No, reer Bouda. Gelid of the Waarabe to Afrah,” he said. He was trying hard to make a point, but I didn’t get it. “When no longer the sun shines, he will be great danger.”

  I was looking forward to the sun no longer shining. We all had our night-vision-devices, NODs. Special Forces owned the night.

  “Rogue-six, Bear, over,” CW2 Bear Barron’s voice said I in my ear. The team executive officer had the other half of my twelve-man team in an over-watch position across the road.

  “Bear, this is Rogue-six, go ahead.” I whispered back. I slowly wiped a trickle of sweat from the side of my nose.

  “John, gates opened; looks like they’re saddling up, over.” From the compound I heard a cacophony of diesel engines turn over and then catch.

  “Roger Bear.” No one moved.

  Then the convoy rumbled over the bridge that crossed our wadi. Old soviet trucks and mismatched equipment. The mercenaries chattered excitedly with their feet hanging over the vehicles sides like they were going to a picnic.

  “I mark zero. We go in zero plus five mikes,” I whispered. All of the highly choreographed events were timed in minutes, mikes, from the zero mark I made.

  The last man checked his watch, raised a thumb and the signal was passed up the chain, until it got to Granddad, who modified it to a middle-finger. He stood to a low crouch with two others and peeled out of the line.

  Razor alerted the aviators on a handheld High Freq radio. He and Justin stayed with me. Razor was a seasoned professional, but Justin was new and assigned to my team straight from the Q course. I wanted to keep an eye on him.

  “Rogue-six, Bear again, over.”

  “Go-ahead, Bear again,” I said.

  “Be advised, our Sammy here is saying he’s pretty sure these guys are hopped on khat.”

  Khat was a weed these people chewed like folks back home would chew tobacco. Except that it was an amphetamine and made them skittish, until they crashed. A bunch of high teenagers with automatic weapons, it was just like everywhere else on the continent.

  “Roger, we go in three,” I said. I leaned in close to Ahmed and reminded him again of the plan.

  As I turned to go, he grabbed my camouflage-paint smeared forearm, pointed to the tired sun and repeated his warnings about Afrah. “He is of great danger.”

  I nodded and left him there.

  The six-foot-high wall around the compound was made of rough mud bricks and rusted tin siding. It was the same sort of construction found in most third world shanty towns.

  I grabbed the edge of the sun-warmed bricks and pulled myself up high enough to look over. Three men in the open, a half-dozen skinny chickens and a new, white, Toyota Land Cruiser, which was Afrah’s ride. The place smelled sour, overlaid with pungent diesel fumes.

  I slid back down and hand-signaled the scene. I could just see Granddad and his boys at the far end of the wall, half hidden in the shadows left by the setting sun.

  We silently slid low over the wall and crept between rusted oil drums and refuse. Three shots made a muffled flash and crack. Three simultaneous thumps into the chests dropped the exposed mercenaries.

  A slight breeze mixed the first whiff of cordite with the diesel fumes.

  “Bear, Rogue-six. Inside, three down,” I sai
d into the mike.

  A skinny young Somali, casually carrying an AK, rounded the corner of a shed. He saw me and stopped short. Razor dropped him and flashed me a smile; white teeth contrasting with his cammo-smeared face.

  We closed the distance to through the detritus of the yard, and found two young Somalis by the vehicle. They stood with no thought of where their weapons were pointed. The sound of the brass casing bouncing off the gravel made as much noise as the shots. More cordite to add to the diesel fumes. The chickens clucked anxiously as they scattered.

  We crept to the large central building and saw Granddad’s team doing the same. I gave him a thumbs-up, he gave me the bird.

  In operations of this nature speed is your best ally. Shock them, gain and maintain the initiative and keep the momentum. So far everything had gone exactly as planned.

  We posted at our pre-assigned windows and tossed in the flash-bang grenades. Two, three, four, Boom! The grenades created a concussive wave. The force and light would incapacitate those inside. Razor kicked in the side door. He an I went through, weapons at the ready. Justin stayed outside, protecting the rear.

  We entered into a large, dimly-lit room. Sammies staggered to the walls but none looked like the stocky Afrah. Granddad and Valentine came in through the other door, seconds behind. We made eye contact as one of the Somali’s raised a weapon.

  The Sammie started to fire before he aimed, the rounds bouncing off the concrete floor. He continued to raise the rifle toward me, spitting out a dozen 5.54 mm rounds at 900 meters per second. I snapped off two rounds, one to the solar plexus, the second ripped into his throat, and blunted his enthusiasm.

  The other Sammies started to recover. There was a brief instant in which they tried to decide if they should fight. I screamed in Somali for them to drop their weapons. They were hired kids and there was no need for them to die. That seemed to tip the balance and weapons dropped as hands were raised.

  “Justin, inside!:” He heard and obeyed. “Cuff them and then provide security.”

  We went through the house like ghosts. We popped a few more hostiles before we found Afrah in a back room. He was a heavily muscled, middle-aged East African and looked just like the photo from the briefing. The photo didn’t prepare me for the pungent body odor though. He was unarmed and unimpressed when apprehended, watching as the sunset through the west-facing window.