Odyssey

by Michael Stephen Fuchs

  It was a little bit like the land of Lotus Eaters in here.

  He remembered Sarah bringing up The Odyssey on their journey here. He’d read it himself once, long ago, and remembered that Zeus had swept Odysseus’s fleet along with nine days of nonstop storms, until on the tenth day they washed up on the island of the Lotus Eaters. And when some of the men ate of the fruit, they lost all thoughts of returning home, wanting only to stay and… have more hot showers, Homer guessed.

  But then the water cut out on him.

  And he remembered the world really had ended. And his journey, never mind his job, was nothing like over. And, whatever else had happened to this command in his absence, team guys were unlikely in the extreme to just lie around in a drug-induced stupor. As Kili had told him, they’d been busy.

  The question was: doing what?

  Toweling off, he thought he remembered that, after the Lotus Eaters, Odysseus’s next trial was in the Land of the Cyclops. And it was there he got trapped inside the cave of the one-eyed giant, who rolled a huge stone in front of the door, preventing him from leaving. And then the Cyclops started killing and eating his men for lunch.

  Two at a time.

  * * *

  “You know, you don’t have to knock,” Sarah whispered, opening the door for him. “You do live here.”

  “You might have been doing lady stuff,” Homer said as he entered. He smiled when he saw the kids still asleep in bed, which was also the cause of Sarah’s whispering.

  “Everything okay?” she asked quietly. “Out there?”

  “Fine.” He didn’t elaborate.

  Sarah squinted at his wet hair. “Did you shower?”

  “I did. You should get one, too.”

  Sarah touched his arm and pulled him to the opposite side of the suite, away from the sleeping area. She leaned in close to speak, but stole a look back over at the children.

  “The kids okay?” Homer asked.

  She nodded. “They’re fine. Only… your son said something to me while you were gone.”

  Homer just nodded and listened.

  “He said the pirate – by which he meant Odin – used to come around a lot. Usually at night.”

  “So?”

  Sarah took a breath, wanting to tread carefully. “So Kili said Odin never set foot in the family area.”

  Homer looked to her like he was trying to master himself again, to maintain his famous patience and humor. “I appreciate your inquiries on behalf of family welfare, Constable Cameron. But this isn’t a public housing estate in Toronto.”

  Sarah sighed. “But don’t you think that’s odd?”

  “I think it’s a little weak.”

  Sarah steeled herself before going on. “Ben also said… Odin was visiting with their mom. How is that possible? If she died getting them here? At the beginning?”

  Homer looked searchingly at Sarah, who could read the thoughts crossing his face. Whatever else, she thought, he wouldn’t have made a world-champion poker player. At first, his expression said he was trying to figure out how annoyed to be by this. Then, how worried. Sarah was aware she was getting into business that wasn’t her own. Nonetheless, finally, Homer’s better-angel expression won out. He took a deep breath, and said, “Kili also said she lasted a while. The kids were very young. They could be confused.”

  Finally, Homer’s look said to just let it go.

  She let it go.

  * * *

  A few minutes later, as the kids were stirring awake, the door knocked again. When Homer stole a look at Sarah on his way to answer it, she had an exaggerated look of surprise – like she couldn’t imagine who else but him knocked. When he pulled open the door, Kili stood behind it. He wore slightly different clothes from the night before, and looked bright-eyed.

  “Odin wants you read in,” he said.

  “Okay,” Homer said. “To what?”

  Kili looked over his shoulder at Sarah. “To what we’re doing.”

  “What changed?”

  Kili didn’t answer. But Homer could read his look. Whatever had changed, it happened last night.

  Homer turned and went to his vest, propped up in the corner. As he dug out a pen, along with his wheel book – a small, top-bound, indestructible notepad – he said to Sarah, “You remember the way to the canteen? Can you do me a favor and take Ben and Isabel to breakfast?”

  “No problem.”

  Homer kissed the kids.

  And he followed Kili out the door.

  * * *

  Homer felt like making small talk during their walk, catching up on each other’s lives, so much of which they’d missed out on. But something in Kili’s manner said this wasn’t a social visit. So they walked in silence, a bit of tension seeming to creep in, until they finally stopped outside one of the small briefing rooms.

  By the door, Kili turned to face him.

  “There’s one thing,” he said. “I need to know if you still have your Q clearance.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know what I mean. From your North Korea mission. We know they granted you DoE Q clearance for that one. What we need to know is if you’ve still got it.”

  Homer frowned. He didn’t drill down on the issue of who exactly Kili meant by we. Instead, he just said, “I seriously doubt anyone in the Pentagon lived long enough to revoke it.”

  “You might be surprised.”

  Homer raised his eyebrows, but Kili was already opening the door, letting them both in. Inside was… no one. Just a small table with four chairs around it and a whiteboard on the wall. Homer took a seat, his friend taking the one opposite.

  Before Kili could start, though, Homer said, “Listen, whatever the op is, I’m sorry – but I’m not going to be able to help with it. I’m not going to be here. I have to get back.”

  Kili stared back at him. “The mission’s tonight.”

  That brought Homer up short – in more than one way, and in a total of three words. He addressed the second and less important issue first. “A night mission?”

  Back in the days of the world, every mission was a night mission. But being able to see in the dark was zero advantage against the dead. So in the ZA night missions were the rare exception. That’s how it had been with USOC in Britain. And, this being a tactical reality, Homer could be pretty sure it was the same here.

  “We’ve got our reasons,” Kili said.

  Homer just nodded, letting that one go. Because there was still the other thing. “And your mission is also today. Literally hours after I happen to arrive.”

  Kili nodded, then exhaled. He obviously couldn’t deny the timing was a hell of a coincidence. Homer’s read was that Kili had been keeping a great deal close to his vest. But now he was going to have to be more forthcoming. “We just got sideswiped by a herd. A big one.”

  “Yeah,” Homer said. “I heard.”

  Back with Alpha, during and after Chicago, and also out on Lake Michigan, their radio contact with the Kennedy had been spotty at best. But later, at Sarah’s cabin, there’d been a powerful enough transmitter to make commo. And Commander Drake told them about the ten-million-Zulu storm rolling in on the carrier. What the survivors in Newport News said had also borne this out.

  Kili went on. “We were getting ready to get seriously clobbered. Thought that might actually be it for the Annex. There was some talk about trying to bug out. But at the last second, it just kind of stopped – right to the south of us. Damned close.”

  “Right at the carrier,” Homer said.

  “Yeah.”

  “But the herd didn’t take down the boat.” Other than that angel-in-the-blind transmission from Ali back on the road, Homer hadn’t had a scrap of intel from either Alpha or anyone on board the JFK. But if they had steamed away… they had survived.

  “No, it didn’t,” Kili said. “By some damned miracle, she weathered the storm. We saw the whole thing on Kill TV.”

  Despite everything, Homer laughed at that. Kill TV had
been their old expression for live ops on drone video, displayed in a TOC or JOC. They could watch lethal air strikes, gunship clean-up operations, even precision safehouse take-downs, with the vivid blow-by-blow killing all live and close up. But his laughter died fast when Kili went on.

  “Man, you ever seen a nuclear supercarrier fight a ten-million-Zulu herd? It was a just a hell of a goddamned thing.”

  “It didn’t occur to you to help?”

  “Fuck, no,” said Kili, shaking his head. “Rather get in the middle of a junkyard dog fight. The flat-top had CWIS autocannons hosing down thousands of dead splashing out into the shallows… fighter-bomber sorties dropping fuck-shit-up all over the coast… ballistic missile strikes from her support destroyer…”

  “The Michael Murphy.”

  “None other. And the Murph sure as hell led the fight that day. Anyway, in the end it turned into I shit you not a set-piece smash-mouth infantry street fight, right on the goddamned flight deck.”

  Homer had no response to this. He couldn’t imagine it.

  “But here’s the punchline. A handful of batshit-crazy motherfuckers actually low-altitude jumped right into the middle of it.” Kili eyed Homer. “Sound like anyone you know?”

  “Yeah,” Homer said. “It kind of does, actually.”

  And Homer’s smile came back, much bigger than before.

  Alpha. They’re alive.

  * * *

  Finally, Kili straightened up, and he went on.

  “But I’m digressing, badly. The point is, with the flat-top gone, the whole herd just FO’d – reversed course, clearing out of the whole area again. Which now makes it possible for us to run this mission. More importantly, seeing our number so close to coming up makes it imperative that we do the mission. We’ve been planning and rehearsing it for a long time. And now we can’t wait any longer. It’s got to be now. Tonight.”

  Homer shook his head again. “I understand. But that still doesn’t change anything for me. I’m here for my family. And I’ve still got my team on the carrier, and my own mission with them.”

  “This is your team,” Kili said.

  That pulled Homer up short. But he steeled himself. “You said to give you until morning. It’s morning.”

  “These are your brothers,” Kili said. “And this is a high-risk op. Without you, men could die. There’s a chance the whole team could go down.”

  This hit Homer where he lived, and he hesitated long before answering. But he steeled himself once again, and thought of his family. “The team has done just fine for two and a half years without me, after I left. Not to mention the twenty before I got here. And, again, I’m sorry. Even if the mission’s tonight. I have no plans to still be here tonight.”

  Kili shook his head, his look still sympathetic, but also growing hard. “I’m sorry, too, brother. But Odin says you will be.”

  That really brought Homer up short.

  He considered carefully before responding to this. He remembered there had very definitely been a chain of command here, and he had definitely been in it. He just wasn’t sure that it still existed – or, if it did, that he was still part of it. For the last two years, he had operated under USOC, the Unified Special Operations Command, out of Britain – and for the six months before that on attachment with its predecessor, UKSF, the United Kingdom Special Forces. But, certainly by some reckoning, he was still on the roster at Naval Special Warfare. Odin sure might see it that way.

  Especially if he needed Homer.

  The rules were suddenly profoundly unclear. And Homer knew that when rules got fuzzy, power tended to decide the issue. He thought about how deep inside the Annex he was. And how it was all Odin’s fiefdom now.

  And how his children were deep inside it as well.

  He looked across the table at his old friend. “Kili. Listen—”

  “The mission’s tonight,” Kili said. “And after we complete it…”

  Homer checked his watch. “After that, I get a boat.”

  “No. You get a plane.” Homer just absorbed this, squinting in thought. “A small one, probably a Cessna One-Seventy-Two.”

  Homer shook his head. “Where?”

  “Out at Chesapeake Regional.”

  Homer knew a lot of team guys used to have private planes hangared there. SEALs tended to take up adrenaline-soaked leisure activities in their free time, like piloting small planes.

  Kili leaned forward over the table. “And it’ll be a hell of a lot faster than any boat we’ve got moored. You can definitely catch your carrier that way. So you’ve got more time now.”

  Homer exhaled. “Okay. What’s the mission?”

  * * *

  He walked back from the briefing alone.

  But, unlike the night before, this time the public areas of the building were nothing like empty. Men came and went, as did the odd woman, some with children in tow. Doors opened and shut. Mainly, Homer’s old family, his brother SEALs, started to interact with him. In one way, or another.

  As he traversed the corridors, he struggled with the strange sense of unfamiliarity. He knew this place better than he knew the rooms of his own home. God knows he’d spent more time here. And he knew, or used to know, the men who walked these halls better than he knew his own family, and for the same reason. He’d spent more time with them.

  And in much more intense situations.

  They had all fought together in the crucible of combat – hell, SEAL training was itself a crucible – and thus were deeply and permanently bonded. For life. Two and a half years was a long time for Homer to have been gone. But, then again, it wasn’t much longer than a normal squadron training and deployment cycle – eighteen months of training and workup, then six months in theatre, before it began all over again. And it shouldn’t have been long enough to change things. Not really, not this much.

  But, somehow, everything had changed.

  The special operations community, drawing even the widest circle around all service branches and units, was a small one. And DEVGRU, along with Delta, was the tightest clan within that community. There had never been more than 300 of them, and everyone knew everyone else – at a minimum by reputation, usually at least by sight.

  So it wasn’t that Homer didn’t recognize the faces of the men he passed now, or at least the majority of them. He’d left a little more than six months before the Fall, and timed such that there would have been two intakes of new recruits in that time, coming out of Green Team and drafted into the operational squadrons. So it was to be expected he’d see a fair few new guys walking the halls. As well, a number of the grizzled old senior and master chiefs, many well past their twenty, would have hung up their guns, retired from the Navy and gone home.

  And of course a lot of guys hadn’t made it back at all.

  But it wasn’t that there were so many new people added in, or familiar ones missing. It was that a lot of the ones he did know now seemed unfamiliar to him. The bizarre pelts hanging on the Ulfhednar didn’t help. But there also seemed to be more earrings, tattoos, long hair, and irregular garb. Maybe it was to be expected, in the ZA, post-everything. But, to Homer’s eye, it was like Dick Marcinko’s band of pirates had been reborn – as a band of post-Apocalyptic warlords.

  But also, underneath that, and much worse, he could feel a palpable sense of suspicion, or at least wariness. At first Homer thought it was just of him – that he was now suspect, or an unknown quantity. But then he realized it actually hung over the whole place, not just whatever corridor he was walking down, and it was aimed in every direction.

  His brothers now distrusted one another.

  And that was a very unfamiliar vibe. Actually, it was unheard of in the teams. It was the opposite of their whole ethos – hell, that was why they called themselves team guys. Everything they did was supposed to be about the team.

  Of course, some of the men Homer ran into were obviously glad to see him – exuberantly and uncomplicatedly so, clapping him on the back, asking a
fter him and his family, offering warm wishes. A lot of these were other Redmen, a couple of guys from his own troop. Of course, even in an in-group like DEVGRU, there were tighter in-groups. Ultimately, the squadron was the basic family unit. But Homer noted it wasn’t just his squadron-mates who seemed the same as he remembered them.

  It was also the ones he had always looked up to. Those who were never in any danger of writing tell-all memoirs, or falling into the lawlessness, the cowboy mentality, that had begun to subsume the team. Guys who had never been involved in raids where everyone ended up dead.

  These were a minority. A significant one. But still.

  The majority of people Homer passed, wolfskin-clad or not, just nodded or exchanged polite greetings when he walked by. Like they were glad to see him – but afraid to take the risk of saying so. Homer had definitely never know team guys to be afraid – of anything. But they were now.

  Six had changed.

  Maybe the end of the world changed everything.

  On one of the last stretches of hallway back, distrust seemed to turn to aggression. Two of the Ulfhednar were coming toward him from the opposite direction. Neither moved to get out of his way, which caught him by surprise, and he banged shoulders with one, a solid man. Homer immediately apologized. But the other guy didn’t even slow down, just growling over his shoulder:

  “Hey, where the hell have you been, anyway?”

  It wasn’t a question, like so many of his friends had asked, wanting to know where he had been, what he had been up to, and if he was okay. No, this was an accusation. That, when it all came down…

  Homer had abandoned his tribe.

  OPSEC

  “Crap, sorry,” Homer said.

  He found Sarah and the kids standing out in the hall, cooling their heels. He had inadvertently locked them out.

  “Dad!” Isabel scolded.

  “Inappropriate language,” Ben said.

  Homer squatted down. “You’re right. Sorry, guys. I’ll do better.”

  He opened the door and let them in.

  “Any chance of a second key card?” Sarah asked.

  Homer shut the door. “We’re not staying… long.”