Latakia

by J. F. Smith

  “So, I convinced myself that I’d do it. I’d become the Navy SEAL to honor Chris. And I did. We lived in Baltimore, and after graduating from the University of Baltimore, I went into BUD/S training. And I made it through. Out of three hundred that started in BUD/S training, five of us made it through and became SEALs. It didn’t seem to matter much to my dad, though. It wasn’t Chris that had made it in, so it just didn’t seem to matter.”

  “I think that the saddest day of my life was about a year after I had become a SEAL. I was visiting my mom and dad, right before she passed away, and I was trying everything I could to get my dad to acknowledge that I had done something special and that it meant something to him. My dad looked at me and said, ‘You’re not Chris, Travis, and you never will be. Stop trying to be Chris.’”

  Mope paused a moment, but his voice had not wavered while telling the story.

  “What hit me at that moment was that what my dad had said… he was right. I was fooling myself, Matt. I didn’t do it to honor Chris, as much as I had loved him and wanted to. I did it to try and be Chris in my dad’s eyes, and he wasn’t having any of it. Even now I find myself trying to believe that I did it for Chris. But, the truth is, I did it to try and replace him in my dad’s eyes. To get the approval and love than accidents don’t seem to ever get. Even just a little. All I want is a little.”

  Matt listened to the story and felt terrible. How could anybody lucky enough to have Mope, Travis, in their life not feel incredibly blessed? This was the person that Matt had come to admire more than probably anybody he had ever known. How could his own father be so… indifferent? How could he not see what he had in his son, the one that survived? How could he not appreciate everything that his son had accomplished?

  Mope said, “I got the nickname Mope because that’s what I tend to do a lot of, and now you know why.”

  Matt felt miserable for having asked Mope the question, but kind of glad he understood, too. But mostly he felt sad that Mope had grown up like that. He was unable to speak, which was probably good because words utterly failed him. He remembered Petey making a comment now about Mope’s dad being disappointed in him. A few tears started to leak out of Matt’s eyes. He was at a complete loss for words for what to say to Mope.

  “That’s why hearing you thank us the other night means a lot to me, personally, Matt. You have no idea what it means to me.”

  Matt finally pulled himself together enough to ask, “Do you still speak to your father?”

  “Oh, yeah. He’s all the family I’ve got now. But it’s hard to be around him, for me and for him, I think. For him, I’m just a reminder of what he lost. For me, he’s a reminder of what I never got growing up.”

  “Anyway,” said Mope, trying to cheer up some, “I focus instead on all of this, on the team, on being a SEAL.”

  Matt thought to himself how Mope found the bond he never had with his father instead in a team of men in whose hands he placed his life. Men whose lives in turn he carried in his. Matt pitied Mope’s father.

  Matt said quietly, “I’m sorry, Mope.”

  “Don’t be. Every so often, I get… reminded… that my dad isn’t everything. Kind of like getting your first sip of water after not having any for three days. It’s a huge relief to get it. But it also reminds you of how thirsty you are.”

  Their conversation couldn’t continue, though, as Petey’s voice interrupted, “Hey, losers! Get your asses up!”

  Mope stood up suddenly, a little off guard at being caught this way.

  Petey was carrying a rather large rifle of some kind and a large orange ball.

  Mope asked as Petey, Baya, and Desantos walked up to them, “What are you doing with the MP5, Colorado?”

  “It’s for Ladypants here. Nothing takes your mind off things like a little target practice with a submachine gun!”

  Matt’s face turned pale. “I’m not shooting that thing! Are you crazy? I’ll shoot a hole in the boat.”

  Petey said, “Ship. It’s a ship for the millionth time. And yes, you’re going to man up and shoot this motherfucker!”

  With Matt continuing to protest, they took him over to the edge of the stern of the ship, as close as Matt was willing to go. They threw the orange floating target out into the water, and demonstrated the use of the weapon for Matt. Baya fired off a few three-round bursts, hitting the orange target every single time, even with it bobbing around in the water. Mope took a turn as well and did almost as good as Baya, missing only one single time.

  Then they made Matt take his turn. They showed Matt how to hold the gun, how to aim it, and explained how to fire the three round bursts. Matt tried it a few times, but he didn’t even get close to the orange target. Petey came up close behind Matt, putting his arms around him, and helped him hold and aim the weapon so that on the next few rounds, he managed to hit the target, even if it was just one time.

  Petey said, “See there, sparkles? You can do it after all! Even with me pushing up against your back door and distracting you!”

  Matt turned around and said, “Sparkles? Ok, Colorado, I’ve had it. Can you please come up with one name for me and stick with it?” As soon as he said it, he regretted it.

  The grin that Petey got was positively evil. “Cornhole it is!”

  Matt groaned, “Fuck! I can’t believe I set myself up for that!”

  After they finished their target practice, and were walking back in, Petey hung back and trailed behind the rest of the team with Matt.

  He asked, “Cornhole, you want to go make some calls today, before we suit up for this thing?”

  Matt decided he would just have to resign himself to being called “Cornhole”. He said, “Nah, not much point in calling them until I know for sure when I get to go home.”

  They walked along a few more seconds when Petey asked, “So this Brian dude, you really love him?”

  “Yeah,” replied Matt casually.

  “Really?”

  Matt took a second before he replied, “Yeah, I do.”

  “You hesitated there. When was the last time he did something nice for you? Took you to dinner or made breakfast for you… something queer.”

  Matt replied, “The night before I left to come to Syria.”

  Petey nodded, “Good. That’s better.”

  “But, I guess, actually… I wound up paying that night,” said Matt, remembering what happened that night and correcting himself.

  “Did he at least let you take a ride on his pink pony before you left?”

  Matt flushed red in the face from the double embarrassment of having a Navy SEAL wearing a submachine gun around his chest asking these kinds of blunt questions about his sex life, and from the knowledge that he had never managed to get Brian to be the top.

  “The answer is obviously no,” said Petey.

  Petey tried a different approach and asked a more sincere question. “When was the last time this shithead made you feel like you were walking on air?”

  The questions started to make Matt feel very uncomfortable. He said, “Mmmm…” but never managed to answer the question.

  “Ok, so when, exactly, was the last time he said he loved you?”

  Matt thought back, and realized he honestly couldn’t remember. Brian definitely had, but it was back far enough that Matt had trouble remembering the specific time. But so what if it wasn’t every single day? It just reaffirmed for Matt that his promise to himself to be a better boyfriend to Brian was the right thing.

  Petey said, “You know what, Cornhole? Ahhhh, never mind…” Petey forgot about giving his assessment to Matt as they turned into the ready room. Randall was there waiting with some civilian clothes for Eric Stillman to wear to Café Lucien in Latakia that night, along with Matt’s laptop and Eric’s laptop.

  Randall explained, “We’ve wiped everything off of Eric’s laptop that might be sensitive, so don’t worry about losing it if it comes to that. Your laptop is fine, too, by the way. We didn’t find anything on it. And bef
ore you ask, we didn’t add anything of our own on there, either.”

  Randall asked, “Ok, Matt, you ready to suit up in a little bit?”

  Matt felt his knees start to get a little weak at the thought, but nodded anyway.

  ~~~~~

  The CRRC bounced in the water as it sped to the meeting point, but Matt kept his eyes tightly closed and gripped the handle on the rubber boat tightly with one hand and his life preserver with the other one. God, how he hated being surrounded by this much water.

  Petey and Desantos were in the boat with him, along with a pilot, and Petey was talking casually to Desantos, like they were just spending a Sunday afternoon drinking beer out on a lake. They weren’t wearing their AARDVAARCs, so they had to shout over the sound of the boat motor.

  Desantos said, “I thought you didn’t like that chick.”

  Petey replied, “No, you’re thinking of the one that had the long brown hair. Now she was carrying around some sushi-grade pussy in her shorts, but she was a bitch. That girl shit fudgesicles she was so frigid. No, I’m talking about the other one with the brown hair, not as long and a little curlier, from three weeks ago.”

  Desantos asked, “Yeah, ok, what was her name? Jane?”

  “Jamie,” replied Petey.

  “Yeah, Jamie, I remember now.”

  Petey said, “Yeah, that other girl was a disaster, but Jamie’s hot! And, Christ, is she tight! You could stick a blue and a yellow crayon up her twat and pull a green one out, man!” Petey started laughing at the thought.

  Normally, Matt would have loved to give Petey a hard time about all this, but at the moment he was holding on for dear life with his eyes tightly shut and trying desperately to not think about being out in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea with no land in sight.

  The CRRC slowed suddenly and Matt opened his eyes. He could see a charter fishing boat about a quarter of a mile away.

  Desantos took a look all around with binoculars and Petey asked, “We all clear?”

  Desantos confirmed, “Yeah, we’re good.”

  They pulled up to the fishing boat and Desantos confirmed that it was indeed the people from the British consulate helping out with the mission.

  Before Matt transferred over to the fishing boat, Desantos put his arm on his shoulder and said, “It’s gonna be fine, Matt. You’re gonna do just fine. Baya’s gonna have you covered the whole time.”

  And then Petey put his hand behind Matt’s neck and whispered in his ear, “I swear to you personally, Cornhole, I won’t let anything happen to you, ok? Anybody comes near you, and they’re gonna pay, I promise.” Petey locked his pale blue eyes onto Matt’s until Matt nodded his understanding. It dawned on Matt just how much Petey had come to mean to him in only a few days. Mope had been right. If it weren’t for hearing this from Petey and Desantos, he didn’t think he’d be able to go through with it. Every little bit of reassurance helped.

  They helped Matt step over onto to fishing boat, and without waiting, the pilot of the CRRC took off at top speed back in the direction of the Iwo Jima.

  Matt watched nervously as they sped off towards the horizon. There was no turning back now.

  Chapter 18 – Café Lucien

  Café Lucien sat in an older part of Latakia, an area less visited by tourists. Still, the fact that it had a reputation for good French food with a Mediterranean influence meant that it wasn’t completely unheard of for Westerners to be seen there. For the purposes of the mission, the SEALs felt they could access it and set up a trap there with stealth and confidence. It would be appealing to the targets because it would provide them with a good opportunity to grab Eric Stillman. And in that sleepier part of town, at 11pm on a Friday evening, there would be very little activity on the streets to interfere or disrupt the plans.

  The people at the British consulate in Latakia had been extremely gracious hosts while he stayed with them that evening until it was time for Matt to go to the café, but they had also peppered him with questions about exactly what he was up to. Matt had to repeatedly refuse to answer their questions, per Randall’s instructions. Randall had also made sure Matt knew to go to the café thirty minutes earlier than the time he had leaked back in the US Embassy in Damascus just to ensure no one tried to grab him on the way to café. Getting there early forced the targets to wait until he was leaving, when the SEALs would be fully in place and prepared.

  Matt had chosen a table outside on the spacious patio area and took his time ordering food and eating. Normally, he would have very much enjoyed a place like Café Lucien on such a beautiful, clear evening, but his stomach was in knots over the whole situation and so the night, the location, and the food made virtually no impression on him at all. His pulse was racing as he sat at the table, and he had to force himself to eat food he didn’t want, and make it look comfortable and leisurely at the same time. He consoled himself with the idea that, somewhere around there, Baya had a sniper rifle trained on him. Even just two days before this, he wouldn’t have trusted any of these guys any farther than he could throw them. But now, it was a genuine comfort to know they were there. So much had changed in such a short span of days.

  As much as he was tempted to study the buildings, alleys, and rooftops around the café to see if he could see them, Randall and Mope both had told him very strictly to not do this. Any kind of tipoff like that could put himself and the team in extreme danger. So he fought the strong urge to search for them. He did glance over at the corner where he would need to walk to when he left. It was the corner with some kind of shop and large glass windows displaying brightly colored fabrics inside. At 11pm, he would pay, walk to that corner, turn down the quiet side street that led down the side of the shop and see what happened.

  Matt picked some more at the Cornish hen dish he had ordered and sipped at the polo drink that he had come to like so much, even though it all tasted bad tonight.

  It had only been a week now since he had been kidnapped, but Matt felt like it was a lifetime ago. He wasn’t quite sure if it was due to his mind actively working to block off the traumatic memory, or if it was due to the emotionally charged days that followed. In a blink of an eye, it felt like Matt had gone from being afraid of the team that rescued him, to thinking they were bigoted jerks, to deeply respecting them. And now caring about them. Mope always referred to his team as his brothers, and Matt got it now. It wasn’t just some superficial label applied to teamwork. After spending two days with them and hearing what they did for him, and how they regarded each other, Matt himself felt that bond as deeply as he had felt anything before. Matt had been an only child, but if he could have had a blood brother, he couldn’t imagine being any more deeply tied to him than he was to these men.

  Mope was right about something else, too. It had nothing to do with being gay or straight. Trust and faith were what mattered and those were very elemental things. And honor, too – following through on the commitment no matter what the personal cost was. What Matt felt as a result of all this was a courage he had never experienced before. He trusted these men with his life, and it was that trust that gave him the courage to calmly sit in that chair rather than run away in a wild, goose-eyed panic. It was like he might have known the meaning of the word before, but never really understood it until now. He had Mope to thank for this – the man that had made him understand these things and given him the chance to experience this bond. Mope had done more than save his life; he had changed him.

  Matt roused himself from his reverie about these things and picked at his food some more. He opened up Eric’s laptop to check the time and browse around on it to pass some more time while trying to finish his food. The clock on the laptop said it was a few minutes after 10pm. Matt could feel the seconds ticking by and he started to get nervous again.

  To take his mind off of it, he reminded himself that he’d be going home, probably even tomorrow, no matter what happened tonight. Well, he thought, as long as the worst case scenario didn’t happen. That thought d
idn’t help his nerves at all, so he tried to put it out of his mind.

  He focused instead on getting home and being with Brian, seeing Bret and Jim again, getting back into softball practice, getting caught back up at work. He thought about all the things that, well, felt like they were now a part of someone else’s life. He thought about the odd, uncomfortable fight that he and Brian had at dinner the night before he left for Syria. He thought about the ways he could be better. If there was good that came out of the abduction, it was that it reinforced for Matt the things that were important in life and it put that much more force and conviction behind his promise to be a better partner for Brian. He would move past the petty suspicions that caused him to doubt his partner and everything would be better.

  But, try as he might to focus on home and Brian, his mind kept taking him back to Mope. He had never met anyone like him, and he had a deep suspicion he’d never meet another. It seemed like there was nothing that Mope couldn’t do. The images of the blood and bodies from the apartment where he had been held came to mind, and for someone that could exhibit such violent force when called to, Mope had shown Matt more about basic human values and convictions than anyone. How could Mope’s father not see the rare gift he had in his son? How could he be so indifferent to the son that had done so much, all for just a little recognition and acceptance? Matt wondered if Mope’s father knew he was gay or not; maybe that was part of the problem. Mope had not said one way or the other, though. In so many ways, it broke Matt’s heart to see someone so deserving left to thirst for these things. Mope deserved so much more than he got.

  Matt looked again at the clock on the laptop. It was a little past 10:30pm at this point. The waiter came over and Matt ordered a coffee to finish out the evening before he would need to leave. His hands were clammy feeling and he was nervously bouncing his leg under the table and he had to force himself to stop doing that.