Odyssey

by Michael Stephen Fuchs

  “Damn, man,” was all Kili said in response. He went silent, absorbing all this. Staring at the floor, seeming to work through the ramifications. When he came back to the room, he said, “You know, brother, it was hard. Ben and Izzie never stopped believing – that you’d come back. And, obviously…”

  “You couldn’t tell them any different.”

  “No. Never had the heart. Sure glad I didn’t, now.” He looked over at Sarah, then back to Homer again. “Wait – you drove here, all the way from fucking Lake Michigan?”

  “She did most of the driving,” Homer said.

  “That wasn’t what I meant,” Kili said. “Not the wheel time.”

  “Yeah,” Sarah said. “No offense, but most of this country is kind of a flaming dumpster at this point.”

  “None taken. More like a flaming outhouse. But, you know what, however dark the dawn…” He looked back to Homer. “You really found a vaccine, huh? And it actually works?”

  “Not yet,” Homer said.

  “When, then?”

  “Well, the scientist who designed it says he needs an early-stage sample of the virus to test against. Very early.”

  “Do not tell me fucking Patient Zero.”

  Homer smiled. “Hey, you said it, not me. But there’s already talk of an immediate follow-on mission.”

  “Do not say fucking Somalia.”

  Homer didn’t say it. “You got a better plan for saving the world?” When Kili gave him a mysterious look, Homer said, “Does the team have a plan? What have you been doing?”

  Kili breathed deeply, flaring those whisker-tickled nostrils. “Well, we haven’t exactly been sitting on our asses for two years.” He let a few beats of silence go by. No one jumped into it. “But the How do we cure the virus? question isn’t, you know, exactly in our wheelhouse.”

  “No,” Homer said. “But what would be is—”

  “Yeah. The How the hell do we kill all the dead? question.”

  “And?”

  “We’re not there yet. We’ve been looking at options. Anything that might kill a lot more in one go than, you know, just plinking brainstems.” He paused again. “Nukes got considered, of course – and quickly dismissed. We still kind of want to live in this country afterward. Then bioweapons. A few other things.”

  “What’s the frontrunner?”

  “At this point? Just let them rot, fall to pieces. Wait it out.”

  * * *

  If Homer was unimpressed with this plan for saving the world, he didn’t let it show on his face. And Sarah knew he virtually never judged. She looked over at Kili, searching his face. It wasn’t that she was unimpressed with his answer.

  She just didn’t believe it.

  “Who’s in charge here?” she asked.

  In response, Kili got back to his original routine of ignoring her questions. Sarah knew she was still a total interloper here, and was made to remember it once more. The difference was she at least had Homer sitting beside her now.

  “Not the worst question,” Homer said. “Where’s command?”

  “What do you mean?” Kili asked.

  “I mean the officers. I haven’t seen a single one.”

  Kili shrugged. “They FO’d.”

  “Seriously?” Homer asked.

  “You know how it is. They always rented their lockers here.”

  Sarah looked to Homer. “What does that mean?”

  “Officers tend to do short rotations in the teams, then move on to other billets. It’s the senior enlisted, the chiefs, who stay. Who are the backbone of the teams.”

  Kili’s expression remained unreadable. “Now they’re just renting them somewhere else, man.”

  Homer seemed to find this neither funny nor satisfactory.

  Kili straightened up. “Okay, look. The officers who weren’t killed in the Fall, and those who weren’t already deployed at the time – and almost none of those managed to fight their way back – the rest pretty much just went back to their families.”

  Homer squinted in response to this. “So now Odin’s not only CMC… he’s running the team.”

  “Yeah,” Kili said. “Him, and his Ulfhednar.”

  Sarah looked at Homer for another explanation.

  “No idea,” he said.

  Kili sighed, looking back to Homer. “Well, the good news is a lot of them were drawn from the Redmen. The bad news is they definitely took their tomahawks along with them.”

  Homer shook his head. “And the rest?”

  “Mainly from Black.”

  “Odin’s squadron.” Homer squinted. “What are they, Kili?”

  Kili shrugged. “Ulfhednar is from Old Norse, it means ‘wolf’s head wearer’. They were Norse warriors, shock troops – beyond berserkers, more feared. Said to be inhabited by the spirits of wolves. They also say King Harold couldn’t have unified Norway without them. Sometimes described in the Norse sagas as being special warriors of the god Odin himself.”

  “No,” Homer said. “I mean the ones here. Who are they?”

  Sarah jumped in. “They were the guys with the Game of Thrones-looking pelts around their shoulders, right? Up in the gallery, flanking the big man with the eye patch.”

  Kili eyed her, but didn’t answer. His silence said she had nailed it. Homer eyed her as well. Sarah figured, at least without NVGs, her vision was better than his. Anyway, he’d been pretty distracted, understandably, when they first arrived.

  Kili looked back to Homer. “They’ve sort of become his Praetorian guard. Tribe within a tribe. Within another one.” The volume of his voice lowered, maybe consciously, maybe not. “He’s turned the Black Squadron team room into, I don’t know, some kind of throne room. Runs things from out of there. And only the Ulfhednar are allowed in.”

  “How’d Odin get to be CMC in the first place?”

  “Definitely above my pay grade, man.”

  Homer shook his head. “So who gets to be in his club?”

  “His mafia, you mean,” Sarah said. Looks from both Homer and Kili told her she might want to shut the fuck up.

  Kili hesitated again, before answering. “Whoever’s most loyal to Odin. And proves it. They’ve got their own initiation ceremony, where he admits new guys, drapes them with a dead wolf.”

  “How many?” Homer asked.

  “Maybe a quarter of the team now.”

  “A quarter of what? How many are left?”

  “About half. One-fifty-four at last count. Trident holders.”

  “That’s all?”

  Kili shrugged. “That’s everyone who was with the on-call or training-cycle squadrons, and also made it back to the Annex. Or, I don’t know, who chose to come back, I guess. Also a handful who fought their way back from overseas. And, you know, everyone who also lived this long.”

  Sarah steeled herself to speak again. “If one of you survived the Fall, plus made it back to this fortress, I wouldn’t expect him to go down afterward.”

  Again, Kili ignored her – but couldn’t ignore Homer’s look.

  Kili shrugged. “Like I said. We’ve been doing stuff.”

  * * *

  “What are your plans, brother?”

  Homer wasn’t sure if Kili was just trying to change the subject, but he also didn’t care that much. It was a welcome change. And a subject he definitely wanted to get onto.

  “To get back,” he said. “With Ben and Isabel.”

  Kili’s eyes went wide. “Back to Britain?”

  “Eventually. But, right now – back to the Kennedy.”

  “Huh.” Kili sat back. “I told you – she’s gone. We got a heading and speed, but lost sight of her a few hours ago.”

  Homer sat forward. “Then we’ve really got to go. And we’re going to need a boat – a fast one. Mark Five, ideally – or do you still have a Stiletto docked?”

  Kili put his hand up. “Hey, brother, you know everything I own is yours. For the taking. Without asking. But those boats aren’t my property. They’re the t
eam’s.”

  “You mean Odin’s.”

  “Didn’t say that.” He exhaled. “Look, we’ll work something out, figure out how to make it happen. But you’re going to have to bear with me on this one.”

  “Clock’s ticking,” Homer said.

  “I know. But you’re right, we can’t operationalize anything without Odin’s sign-off. And there’s a mission in the last stages of prep, right now. A big one.”

  “What kind of mission?”

  “One that needs the Stiletto.” Kili stopped there. The implication was clear: he couldn’t say more. He stood up. “Just give me until morning, okay? Honestly, your timing sucks. I’ve got a mission brief in a few minutes. Another one.”

  Homer stood up as well. “If I can’t leave for the carrier now, then I at least need to radio them.”

  Kili sagged, and he shook his head sadly again. “Sorry, man. We also seriously limit radio traffic, especially long-range stuff.”

  Homer sighed. “To keep the living from finding you.”

  “Yep. Which would mean the dead finding us.”

  “And let me guess. Odin has to authorize that, too.”

  “I gotta go,” Kili said. “Look. You’re home now. It’s late. Get some sleep. We’ll tackle it fresh in the morning.”

  Homer shook his head. But Kili was already turning toward the door. Homer’s next words stopped him.

  “How did Ellie die?”

  Kili stopped, but didn’t turn around.

  “I need to know.”

  Finally Kili turned and faced them. “She was already scratched when she came in. It happened when she was getting the kids here, with it all coming down.” He looked at the floor, his face deep in shadow. “It was just a tiny scratch, we thought she might be okay… she lasted a while.”

  “But in the end?” Homer said. “It was you?”

  Kili just nodded, without looking up.

  Then he turned and walked away.

  Loyalty

  “I’m sorry,” Sarah said as soon as they were alone. “Again.”

  “I know,” Homer said, sitting stilly beside her on the couch.

  “No. Really.”

  Homer laughed, shook his head, and looked over at her. “I know – really. And it’s really okay. It was just like Ellie. To spend her life getting our kids to safety. I’m proud of her.” He looked off into the dim corners of the complex of rooms.

  “What is it?” Sarah was worried about him.

  “I just never imagined it would be me mourning her. We were always ready for this, both of us. Just the other way around.”

  Sarah put her hand on his arm. “Hey, at least you didn’t get your spouse killed, along with your son. Also, presumably you actually loved her…”

  And just like that gratitude turned to awkwardness.

  “You did what you had to,” Homer said. “They were already gone. And you did the best you could.” He stood up. “Come on.”

  “Bed time?” she asked, rising and yawning.

  “No,” he said. “First we refit, and re-arm. Then sleep.” He moved to the door and held it open for her. “Maybe.”

  * * *

  It was a long walk from the team room to the armory, taking them through much of the sprawling main building, and then out of it again. Along the way, as with Homer’s walk back from the family area, they didn’t see anyone moving around – with the exception, once again, of two more of the fur-clad Ulfhednar. Homer spotted them from a distance, watching them. And, as before, he didn’t think their presence was coincidental.

  With this walk, they also had more time to talk, alone. Homer figured it would be a chance to brief Sarah, to answer any other questions she had. But it quickly turned to her weighing in, with her own opinions.

  “I like Kili,” she said, her tone measured.

  “I know,” Homer said. “He’s one of the good ones.”

  “Did you two go through BUD/S together?”

  Homer paused a second before answering. “Yes. Though we didn’t start together. He was rolled back from a prior class.”

  “What for?”

  “Most rollbacks are for medical reasons. Someone who was performing well, but got too injured to go on, given a chance to heal up and then join a later class. There were occasional performance rollbacks – if someone failed to make a run time, or failed pool comp, or a diving physics exam. They’d be made to start again with a new class. But that was the exception.”

  Homer didn’t volunteer which was the case with Kili. And Sarah didn’t ask. “Did you two go through Hell Week together?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s got to be a hell of a bond. And, as I said, I like him. But… I’ve got a bad feeling about some of the others.”

  Homer shrugged, once again trying to master himself and be kind to her, with mixed success. “You’ve been here an hour.”

  “Cop sense,” Sarah said. “Like I said – it only takes a few seconds to know when people are up to no good.”

  “Like back on the road.”

  “Yeah. Like that. And it feels the same with these wolf-head guys – and their pirate king.”

  “How can you have a bad feeling about Odin? You’ve never even met him.”

  “No. But I did see him. And it sounds like you know him.”

  Homer didn’t answer right away, but just paused to badge an external door and hold it open for her. The two stepped out of the building onto another paved path surrounded by foliage, but on the back side of the building this time. He led them out, into the darkness, and down the path.

  “Yes, I do know Odin,” Homer said. “But then so does everyone. Reputation is everything in the teams.”

  “And what’s his?”

  Homer took a deep breath, smelling the clean night air, considering his answer. “He was regarded as having a war cloud following him. Everywhere he went, he got into some huge battle. A lot of gunfights. And a lot of hats left lying on the ground.”

  “How did he lose that eye?”

  Homer laughed, not actually sure how amused he was. “A knife fight. Going toe-to-toe with an ISIS fighter.”

  “Didn’t think that kind of thing happened.”

  “It generally doesn’t, and for good reason. At the end of a knife fight, everyone goes to the hospital, including the winner. This one definitely shouldn’t have happened. But Odin just wanted himself a knife kill. Because another team guy had gotten one.”

  “So it generally doesn’t happen – but not never.”

  “The first one was justified. Unusual circumstances. But in Odin’s case there was no excuse. It was a raid on an ISIS safe house, in Kurdistan, and he busted in on a guy with a machete. So he dropped his rifle, drew his knife, and just went for it.”

  “And he got stabbed in the eye for his trouble.”

  “No,” Homer said. “Stupider than that. And more reckless. He stabbed the insurgent through the heart – but something splashed up on him as he did so. It turned out to be battery acid from a detonator. The insurgent was wearing a suicide vest.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Yeah. A lot of people could have died as a result. He got off cheap, just losing the eye.”

  Sarah shook her head. “Now he’s… Command Master Chief?”

  Homer stopped, turning to face her. The two of them had reached a large outbuilding – smaller than the main one, but not all that small, either. “Yes. And CMC at Six is like… King of Navy.” He sighed. “And that was back when we still had officers theoretically in command.”

  “And now,” Sarah said, “he’s the pirate king.”

  Homer just turned around again, and badged them in.

  * * *

  Inside, long strings of track-lighting blinked on, and a cavernous space opened up before them. In it was a bigger and better stocked armory than Sarah had ever imagined existed.

  Beside the entrance was an open box filled with canvas tote bags. Homer grabbed one, then led the two of them down a long
aisle. Following, Sarah said, “It’s not just Odin’s reputation in the teams, is it? You two have some history, don’t you.”

  Homer didn’t answer, instead just running his finger down a shelf. Finally he stopped them in front of what looked like about a million boxes of 5.56x45mm NATO rifle rounds. He started pulling them off the shelf and stacking them in the bag.

  Sarah stood and watched. “On the drive, the incidents you mentioned. Scalp-taking. Indiscriminate killing.”

  Homer stopped what he was doing and looked over at her, his eyes shining in the dim light. Sarah had basically been fishing. But she knew she had nailed this one, too. “You reported him, didn’t you? Up your chain of command.”

  “What else could I do?” Homer said. “He, and a few of the others, were starting to make a habit of it. And people were dying – first the borderline guilty. Then the arguably innocent. Some kind of line had to be drawn.”

  He put two more boxes in the bag, then moved on, stopping at a section of pistol ammo. As he grabbed a couple of boxes of 9mm, and one of .40S&W, Sarah said, “You and Odin weren’t in the same squadron.”

  “No. But we all knew. By the end, he was bragging about it.”

  “What happened? What came of you reporting him?”

  Homer finished shopping, and turned to look at her. “Nothing.”

  “What? How come?”

  Homer shrugged. “He was an outstanding operator. He completed his missions. He killed bad guys. And, as a result, he kept a lot of Coalition personnel alive.”

  “So it’s us or them, huh?”

  Homer didn’t respond to this, but just put the straps of the bag, now sagging with weight, over his shoulder, and turned back toward the door. But Sarah put her hand on his bicep.

  “Hey,” she said. “Did he know? That you ratted him out?”

  Homer took a deep breath. “I don’t know. Not for sure.”

  “But…”

  “It’s a small community. Things get back to people. Come on.”

  * * *

  The walk through the main building passed in silence, broken by a stop in a room covered every inch with wall chargers. Homer grabbed fresh batteries for his radio, NVGs, and PEQ-15.

  When Sarah finally broke the silence, it was with something lighter. “Hey, what was that gang sign Kili threw up for you?”