This was nothing less than a combination apprenticeship and business course. Archie had the proper background in military hardware, but he had to learn the current prices, sources, and outlets for everything from platoon-size orders of T-72 tanks to the going rate for a single rocket-propelled grenade. All these transactions were extremely complicated. Most of the time the acquisition of the merchandise involved desperately crooked military officers from the old Soviet bloc. They were underpaid and resentful, driven to perform paperwork miracles in which they hid away whole inventories of the most destructive weaponry in the world. They drove hard bargains, and it took just the right combination of toughness and diplomacy to make a profit in these cloak-and-dagger dealings.
Archie Sikes turned out to be an enthusiastic student, and within a short time he was well into his studies, learning fast, and anxious to get out and make some money. The international arms industry now had another member in their ranks, more than willing to turn a profit off the blood and cruelty of others.
.
USS DALY
PERSIAN GULF
21 SEPTEMBER
THE Brigands were back into their shipboard routine with one exception. The ship's skipper, Captain Jackson Fletcher, issued specific orders that the BVBL--Brigand Volleyball League--was to be dissolved and that under no circumstances would the SEALs participate in that or any other type of athletic competition aboard the vessel. This message was delivered rather forcefully to Lieutenant William Brannigan, with a stern warning that disobedience would lead to his OER looking like a criminal rap sheet in the civilian world.
Thus the Brigands returned to a more conventional training schedule, which included a vigorous PT program featuring innumerable laps around the deck; classroom--"skull sessions" in which Ensign Orlando Taylor taught and reviewed small-unit tactics; weapons and equipment maintenance under the stern supervision of Lieutenant JG Jim Cruiser; and other housekeeping details necessary to keep them in a state of readiness for the next operation.
It wasn't long before SCPO Buford Dawkins was worried about his guys. The predictable routine was beginning to sap their morale and enthusiasm, and he realized that if something invigorating wasn't done, they'd begin to lose that fighting edge that had to be kept honed at all times. Then he had a great idea. The ACV Battlecraft, which they had used in their seaborne operations against the al-Mimkhalif terrorist group, was berthed in the docking well of the Daly. He made some inquiries within the naval administration aboard, and the captain made the craft available for their use in training. Better to have them whipping around on the ocean than trying to kill each other in the vicinity of a volleyball net.
The next day the detachment took the Battlecraft out to sharpen their boat-handling skills and also to employ it as a platform for SCUBA diving. From that point on, many hot afternoons were spent deploying and recovering CRRCs under the blazing Arabian sun, as old skills were brought back up to a high degree of professionalism.
Jim Cruiser wrote to his wife, Veronica, back in San Diego about once again being aboard the Battlecraft. She had served in the Navy as an electronic weapons officer, and designed the armament system for the ACV. Veronica had even gone on combat operations with the detachment and was an honorary member of Brannigan's Brigands.
It was during this time that the romance between her and Cruiser blossomed, ending in marriage before she left the Navy to work in a local electronics manufacturing firm.
Even though the SEALs enjoyed the recreative aspects of these latest activities, a collective restlessness began to emerge among the group. No matter what was going on, there would always be anxious glances toward the horizon in the direction of the USS Combs. That was where Commander Tom Carey and Lieutenant Ernest Berringer would appear from someday, sitting in a Seahawk chopper with another WARNO in their briefcases.
Then it would be isolation, briefback, and an insertion back into hell.
.
MANCHESTER, ENGLAND
SEPTEMBER 1430 HOURS
CHARLIE Sikes had gotten the sack.
This was the reason he sat in front of his telly, dully watching a BBC sports broadcast in the middle of the afternoon. Because of his son's desertion from the Army in Iraq, the union representing the workers at the warehouse where he had been employed was disinclined to contest his firing. Now he was watched by the police, unemployed, and unlikely to find another job. There was every possibility that he would be on the dole for the rest of his life.
His wife, Nancy, sat across the room on the sofa, also gazing at the screen without really noting what was on. Both parents were bitterly disappointed in Archie's conduct and what it had brought on the household.
"He bluddy thinks only of himself, and he's always been that way," Charlie suddenly said aloud.
"You're right, love," Nancy said. "He's all but destroyed us. It was horrible what he done, and I'm his mum and I'll say that to anybody."
"If I had anything worth anything, I'd damn well disown the rotter," Charlie said bitterly. "He's chucked out o' me life, Nancy. There's no room in me heart for him no more. He's come to being no more than a criminal and a disgrace."
"I feel the same," Nancy said. "Who woulda thought--"
The sound of the doorbell broke over the scene.
"Oh, bluddy shit!" Charlie said. "It's the coppers again."
"I'll tell 'em you ain't home, love," Nancy said, getting up.
"It won't do no good," Charlie said as she walked from the room.
When the woman answered the door, it wasn't a policeman. Instead it was a messenger boy from the telegraph office. "Wire for Mr. and or Mrs. Charles Sikes," he announced. He thrust a pad at her. "Sign for it here, if you please, madam."
Nancy signed and took the envelope back to the living room, handing the envelope to Charlie. He opened it with a great deal of hesitation and slowly pulled the message out of the envelope. After a disheartened sigh, he began to read. Five seconds later, he was on his feet, shouting, "Blimey! Blimey! Blimey!"
"Oh, Gawd!" Nancy wailed. "Wot is it, Charlie?"
"It's a bluddy money wire, that's what it is!" Charlie exclaimed. "For fifteen thousand bleeding quid!"
"Who's it from then?"
"It's from Archie, and he says there's more on the way!" Charlie yelled. He sat down and handed the wire over to Nancy. "It's from Hong Kong."
She trembled as she looked at it, then smiled sweetly. "Oh, that Archie!"
"Y'know, something?" Charlie said, smiling and reaching for his pipe. "I always knew that lad would amount to something big."
EPILOGUE
NORTHEASTERN AFGHANISTAN
THE PRANISTAY STEPPES
30 SEPTEMBER 1400 HOURS
TWELVE-YEAR-OLD Reshteen stood on the rooftop with his wool serapelike pukhoor hanging loosely over his shoulders. It was still a couple of months before the onset of winter, yet a rare preliminary coolness was in the air. After the heat of summer, it was a refreshing change. The steppes were much warmer and fifteen hundred meters lower than the Kangal Mountains, to the east across the Tajikistan border. Up in that frigid high country, hundreds of glaciers had been carving through the depthless rockbeds for aeons. These deep slabs of ice, some more than five kilometers wide, eased across the mountaintops in a steady progression that was so slow the human eye could not perceive the movement.
Reshteen, like all boys his age, took his turn on lookout duty, and that's what he was doing on top of old Mohambar's house, which was the tallest in the village. This was a vital necessity in the living routine of those particular Pashtuns. Fierce bandits roved unchecked through the area, and raids happened once or twice a year. Mostly, however, the attacks by the murdering robbers occurred when people, alone or in small groups, were traveling across the steppes to other settlements.