Xander King BoxSet

by Bradley Wright

  James shouted over the roaring engine, “This is going to be way too loud! We will give ourselves away if we pull up in this thing!”

  Sam nudged James over to the next seat and lifted up the cushion, revealing storage. She reached down inside and pulled up the scuba gear. James dropped his head as he shook it in dismay. Xander saw this from the back of the boat and a singe of fury burned through him.

  He’d had enough.

  “Shut down the engine!” Xander yelled to Kyle.

  Kyle looked up, not understanding what he wanted. Not waiting to say it again, Xander sprang to his feet and pulled the throttle down to the off position, lurching the boat forward and sending James to the deck of the boat. Xander turned off the key and angrily furied toward James, a crazed look in his eye.

  “Xander! Xander, no!” Sam shouted from the right side of the boat. It was too late. Xander reached down for James, pulled him to his feet by his vest, and then pushed forward, pinning him against the rail of the front of the boat like he was the weight of a small child. With his eyes wild and veins bulging in his neck, he put his nose to James’s nose. It was dead quiet.

  “If you say one more word, I am going to throw your ass off this boat!”

  Even Sean jerked at the volume of Xander’s shout. James wanted to protest, but he dared not. He may not have known Xander personally, but he had certainly heard enough stories to understand that this wasn’t a man he wanted to mess with. No one moved a muscle. The lapping of water against the idle boat was the only sound in the night. The only light came from the interior rope lights that wrapped around the inside rail of the boat, giving off a soft yellow glow. Just enough so that James couldn’t possibly mistake how serious Xander was. He had had enough of the negativity. He stood over James now, huffing with madness, hoping that James would have something to say.

  He did not.

  “Xander,” Sam said softly, trying not to exacerbate the situation.

  “X-man.” Sean tapped on Xander’s arm. “X-man, don’t let this weasel strain your focus. We may not need his gun to finish this thing, but we do need a hundred and ten percent of you.”

  He tapped on Xander’s arm again. Xander let go of James’s vest, shoving him into the white pleather seat. James sat up and adjusted his vest, embarrassed.

  “Let me tell you how this is going to go. You are going to sit your ass in that seat and not say another word. Not one word. When we get to the compound and we anchor down to scuba in, your ass is going to stay right here on this boat and—”

  “Stay on the—” James started, but immediately stopped as Xander lunged forward. Sean stepped in and backhanded James across the mouth.

  “You just don’t know when to shut your damn mouth, do ya, boy?”

  James looked as if he would jump at Sean but knew this was a war he couldn’t win. Sean sat back down in his seat.

  “Can we please get moving?” Sam said. “We are desperately close to having to call this off due to falling so far behind.”

  Xander wanted to finish James off, but knew she was right. He nodded to Kyle, who then fired the engine back up and pushed the throttle all the way to the max. The bullet patch in the gas tank seemed to be holding . . . for now.

  28

  The Time Xander Popped His Cherry

  The hum of the boat’s motor surrounded the four of them as they skipped along the mostly calm ocean water toward Khatib’s compound. Kyle shut off the rope lighting along the boat’s rail, and the only light for miles on end was the cast of the moon. Xander took a seat at the front of the boat, and the warm ocean air blew through his hair as he stared out into the darkness. The moonlight projected a mesmerizing shimmer across the water that helped him fall into a trance deep inside his own mind. He was visualizing now. Thinking through to the perfect end at the compound. He had already memorized the blueprint, and visions of moving methodically through the three-level mansion moved across his mind like a silent film. The danger of the moment sent a shiver through his body. Xander only really worried about the people he brought with him and their safety. He wasn’t afraid for himself, never had been. Well, except for his very first mission with the Navy SEALs. He recalled the moment in his barracks when his commanding officer had sent for him.

  “King.” Petty Officer Carlson had opened Xander’s door. “Lieutenant Commander Anderson wants to see you in the mission room.”

  Xander remembered the goose pimples that covered his body when he heard the words mission room. You didn’t get called into the mission room unless, well, you were going on a mission.

  “Time to pop that cherry, X-man!” Sean had said behind him in the barracks, slapping him on the shoulder.

  Sean had already popped his cherry. He had been frustrated that it was just a simple recon mission. Looking back, his frustration had probably just been a front. Xander thought maybe it was a way to seem macho about wanting blood when, in fact, Sean really didn’t. Xander hoped he was walking into a simple recon for his first mission, but it couldn’t have been further from it. He threw on his sand-colored V-neck T-shirt and started down the hallway of the USS Abraham Lincoln toward the mission room. His boots clacked against the floor and echoed through the empty hallway. In a way, he felt like a death-row inmate walking toward his demise in an awaiting electric chair. And he hadn’t even been offered a last meal. Pizza. It would have been Post Corner Pizza. A small family-owned Greek restaurant on the beach in Clearwater, Florida. His parents used to take him and his sister there as kids.

  Thoughts of pizza promptly took a hike the moment he walked through the door to the mission room. It was the first time he had seen it. It looked a lot like a mini classroom. There were three long horizontal tables with six chairs each, all facing a one-hundred-inch projection screen on the front wall. It was a lot like Mr. Epling’s science class in middle school. Minus the rows of framed dead butterflies entombed and preserved on display all along the walls. Also missing of course was what Mr. Epling affectionately called the black forest, a special section of the classroom that was quartered off as a place where unruly kids were exiled from the population. Xander was very fond of it because he spent the last half of the semester there, alone. Xander had always been a jokester, but before his parents died, he wore it much more outwardly on his sleeve. He had served as the entertainment for his classmates, whether the moment during class called for it or not. Hence his time in the black forest.

  The lieutenant stood at a podium just to the left of the big screen, and Xander took his seat along with six other SEAL veterans. He was the rookie on the mission. He knew this was going to come with some inevitable hazing, but it was comforting that he was with men who knew what they were doing. He also knew this meant his wish for a simple recon was going to go ungranted.

  The lieutenant cleared his throat and adjusted his sand camo ball cap, his voice deep, his face solemn.

  “Good evening, men. A reporter was abducted early this morning by a group of militants just outside of Baghdad. This information is yet to be leaked to the rest of the media, and she will be back in our company before it ever is.”

  A map flashed up on the big screen, and the lieutenant walked over to it to explain. “The seven of you will be dropped here, just outside of this compound. Our latest intel is that there could be as many as fourteen men inside this compound. You will move in and extract Miss Evelyn Waterston using any means necessary. They will be armed, and they will be happy to put a hole in your head. I suggest you take this action against them before they take it against you. There is no time for any further info. As we gather more it will be pushed to you on the chopper. Men, let’s do what SEALs do. As always, there will be no congratulations or thank-yous from the American people, because this never happens. See you all back here with this pretty lady in a few hours.” A picture of Evelyn Waterston flashed on the screen. A couple of wolf whistles sounded from the back of the room. She was gorgeous, but the only way Xander could picture her at the moment was teary e
yed and hog-tied in the corner of some dark and scary room. The lieutenant terminated the meeting, and the men walked down the hall to the equipment room to suit up. They were leaving immediately.

  “You ready for this, rich-boy rookie?” Ron Parsons asked with a punch to Xander’s arm. “Don’t you go freezing up on me when we get in that place. But don’t worry, if you do I’ll save your bitch ass,” he said as he high-fived Ricky Johnson.

  Ricky just laughed and scoffed. “I’ll be saving that pretty li’l princess. Then I just might marry the bitch.”

  “Marry her?” Ron exclaimed.

  “Okay, maybe I’ll just start by stuffing her turkey. Gobble gobble, rich boy!” Ricky slapped Xander on the ass.

  Using air quotes, Ron said to Xander, “You might be the ‘best recruit’ Lieutenant Anderson has ever seen, but this shit ain’t the practice field. We’ll see if he thinks so highly of you once he sees you in a real combat situation.”

  Ron laughed as he slipped on his tactical gear. Xander just ignored him. He had been dealing with these types of conversations for the last couple of months now. The rest of the SEALs weren’t too happy that Xander had broken nearly every record in SEAL training history. As much as they needed the best of the best, none of them liked it that it wasn’t them getting what they considered to be undue acclaim. You don’t prove yourself as a SEAL until you hit the field. Xander knew this, so he just kept his mouth shut and continued gearing up.

  Sam took a seat beside Xander at the front of the boat. When she touched his arm, breaking his deep daydream trance, Xander jumped.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt. I just wanted to let you know we are about ten minutes out now.”

  “Okay, thanks Sam, I’m ready,” he replied, semi-shouting over the hum of the boat. Sam gave his arm a squeeze and went back to her seat. Xander went back to his memory.

  The SH-60 Seahawk hovered over their drop point just outside of the militant compound. His first mission had begun. Xander remembered how his heart raced as he tried to tap into his training that helped him control his emotions. It wasn’t working, yet. The Seahawk lowered to about thirty feet from the ground, and Ron dropped two massive ropes out of the opening on the side of the chopper. Xander walked over to the opening and looked out into the darkness. Ron motioned downward to Xander, who bent over and took the large rope into his hands. He steadied himself at the door’s edge, half of his boot in and half hanging out in thin air. He took one last heart-pounding breath and pushed out as he dropped down and shimmied to the ground. He remembered the thump of his feet against the solid dirt road and the pure terror that ran through him as he looked up and watched Ron make his way down. He had never felt so lonely. Even when he got back to his house in Lexington after his parents’ funeral, it still wasn’t as lonely as seeing that Seahawk lift toward the sky and slip off in the distance. There the seven of them stood, smack-dab in the middle of enemy territory. It was pitch-black, and Xander followed at the back of the pack as they made their way through a back alley surrounded by chain-link fence. The sand-covered concrete below him was cracked and uneven, and on several occasions he came an inch from rolling his ankle. That would have been a real pill. As they made their way to what Xander could now make out as a three-story concrete building, he must have looked back over his shoulder a hundred times along the way. It was pointless, because he wouldn’t have been able to see anything if something was there. He wasn’t sure what he expected to see anyway. A militant Iraqi with a switchblade? Maybe one with a gun? A man with a flaming skull sitting atop his body?

  Get your shit together, King.

  They came to a stop just outside the building. Xander felt fear rising up through his bones, and he took two long, deep breaths to slow its persistent advances. As the fear relentlessly crept back up, with John Winters standing just in front of him awaiting instructions, John’s head exploded and blood splattered all over Xander’s face. Ron dove on top of Xander, and the rest of the men, six now, took cover behind an old abandoned military truck parked just to the left. Xander wanted to scream, but the wind had been taken from his lungs when Ron fell on top of him.

  “Pull it together, rich boy,” Ron whispered on top of him. “If you don’t, you’ll end up just like Winters.”

  Winters. He meant the now faceless Winters whose body lay in a headless heap of particle brains and spewing blood just feet from Xander. Ron stood up and pulled Xander to his feet behind the truck. A metallic acid filled Xander’s jowls, and he was sure he was going to projectile vomit all over the crouched team of SEALs beside him.

  “X! Pull it together, goddamn it!” Ricky whisper-shouted. “Pull your rifle and find that towel head! Shoot him between the eyes, and you and Derek meet back up with us. We are going in from the back, X!”

  His head was spinning; Xander took a hard swallow, fighting back the acidic bile that continued to ooze up into his mouth. He took one more deep breath and thought of the man in the ski mask. The man who had put bullets inside his dad just a few short years ago. Suddenly, the metallic taste in Xander’s mouth was gone and focus came like the correct answer to a test question. He spun his rifle from his shoulder into his hands, looked Ricky Johnson in the eye, and nodded. Ricky took Ron, Todd, and Jack with him and headed around to the back of the compound through a hole in the fence that Ron had just cut.

  Derek pulled his gun. “Okay, rookie, time to see if that record-breaking shooting translates out here. Don’t let me down.”

  Just as the words left Derek’s mouth, another bullet shattered the front windshield of the old work truck and passed right by Derek’s head. “Shit, X! Find him!”

  For the first time in combat, Xander raised the scope of his M24 rifle to his eye. At first all he found was darkness. He continued to scan in the direction of the bullets when he noticed a spark fly from a balcony across the street as another bullet hit the exterior of the truck. Without hesitation, and as if he had done it a thousand times, Xander took a deep breath and pulled the trigger, sending a bullet straight though the scope of the gun that was firing on them, bursting through the back of the gunman’s head. Through the scope Xander could faintly make out the silhouette of a body standing, then dropping out of sight.

  “Holy shit, I guess it does translate! Nice shot, rookie!” Derek whisper-shouted from the ground with the pump of a fist.

  Before Xander could process his first time taking a life, gunshots rang out from inside the compound. Derek jumped up, motioning for Xander to follow. Xander swung the rifle back over his shoulder and pulled his nine-millimeter pistol from its holster as he and Derek made their way toward the back entrance of the compound. They rounded the corner of a concrete wall and came upon a square-shaped cinder block house with the large wooden door. There was only silence now. Derek tested the door, and it was locked. Gunfire started again, and Derek kicked in the door immediately so the noise of the lock busting would be covered by the shots coming from inside. Lights came on and poured out the door onto the front stoop. Before Xander could turn the corner of the door to follow Derek inside, the unmistakable boom of a twelve-gauge shotgun rang out and Derek’s body came flying back out the door like someone had yanked him by a rope. Xander felt his body move seemingly on its own; he changed levels by dropping and sliding on his knees, then fired inside the compound, dropping the Iraqi man holding the shotgun. It was like an out-of-body experience, moving without thought, running purely on reactive instinct. As the man with the shotgun landed in a thud to the floor, Xander rolled forward to his knees into what was the opening of the kitchen, capping two men with guns as they stood ready for his entrance. However, they hadn’t been ready at all. And they paid for it with their lives.

  The gunfire ceased again, but Xander heard footsteps crossing the floor above him. He moved through the kitchen and made his way to a hallway. It was clear that the rest of the team had gone upstairs. He moved past a couple more dead militants, one of them with a hole where one of his eyes used to be.
With his pistol stretched in front of him, Xander found himself at the bottom of the stairway. He could hear more shots coming from upstairs, and his mind told him to go toward them to help. However, something in his gut was pulling him toward the closed door to his right.

  You always have to follow orders, but when you are in the heat of battle, it’s your gut you really have to pay attention to. He heard the voice of his trainer, Marx, in his head. He turned away from the stairs and reached for the brass knob on the white door. He gave it a jiggle, but it was locked. He had taken one step back toward the stairs, but a nagging feeling pulled at him from his stomach. He imagined himself kicking the door in and shooting two men on the stairs who were waiting to greet him. Xander turned back toward the door, put his boot to it, and sent the door flying off its hinges. Sure enough, it was as if he had seen into the future. He squeezed the trigger twice, dropping the two dark-bearded, towel-headed militants who were indeed waiting on the other side.

  It was almost as if Xander had been born with some sort of sixth sense. And that sixth sense was also telling him that Evelyn wasn’t far from him now. The stairway below him made a hard right about six steps down. Xander pulled a flash grenade from his belt line, pulled the pin, and banked it off the left wall, and it bounced down the unseen stairs into the room below. Xander repositioned his pistol out in front of him, walked down the six stairs, and just before he turned right to go down the last six into the basement, he heard a pop and a blinding light flashed through the room. He heard at least two groans come from men waiting for him below. Without stopping, he turned the corner and walked right down the last six steps, shooting two men who were covering their eyes on the left wall, then two more who were shading their eyes from the flash at the mouth of a hallway on his right. He continued walking through the damp and half-lit basement, stepping over the dead men and through the smoke of the flash as he entered the hallway. Twenty-five feet in front of him was another closed door, and he walked toward it. However, he made a mistake. He felt a burning sensation on his back and realized he had made the rookie mistake of not checking if the hallway extended to the other side of the room underneath the stairs. Upon this realization, Xander dropped to his back like a sack of potatoes, and without rolling over he shot his gun upside down and behind him, dropping the man with the machine gun before he could exploit Xander’s mistake even further. As Xander paused to consider his error, he heard a scream come from behind the door at the end of the hallway. It was a woman.