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  Matt wasn’t sure what to think of this answer. He would have expected a Catholic person to pretty much demonize him like so many Christians seem so bent on doing.

  Desantos sat forward in the seat a little and regarded Matt carefully. “To be honest, I haven’t been around that many people that were openly gay, so it hasn’t come up that much. If it makes you feel any better, I think it’s good you’re willing to help on this mission. A lot of people wouldn’t, especially after what happened to you already.”

  He added, “And frankly, I don’t know what Mope did to convince you. None of us expected you to sign up for this. Not even close. But Mope seems to have a knack for bringing out the best in people. I guess that’s why he’s an obvious person to be one of the leaders in Team 8 and leader of this fire team when we’re put together.”

  Matt nodded. He laughed and said, “Yeah, Mope was really good at appealing to whatever latent principles I had laying around being unused. I guess there’s no sense in letting them go completely to waste.”

  “So, this is kind of an awkward question,” asked Matt, “but are you really willing to help make sure I’m okay on a mission like this? I mean, a lot of people with strong religious convictions wouldn’t be too happy about having someone gay around that they have to look out for in this situation.”

  “I said it’s not my place to sit in judgment of you, Matt,” said Desantos, “and I meant it. As much as other Christians feel like it’s their place to do that, I don’t. And I don’t think it’s theirs, either.”

  “You heard our creed today,” he continued, “and Wickland has made it clear to us that our top priority is to ensure your safety. After that, if we can grab some of these guys, then we grab them. When I repeat that creed, I mean it without reservation every single time. All of us do. So in answer to the question that you may not even realize you’re asking – I will ensure your safety on this mission, or die trying. I would do the same for Baya and Colorado, and I don’t really think they’re all that right with God, either. But that doesn’t mean I can be less than one hundred percent committed to my mission and my team. I mean that, Matt.”

  Matt felt better hearing this, but still couldn’t quite get a handle on Desantos’ attitude. Maybe he just wasn’t used to someone that seemed to have a strong religious faith, but did what he did for a living. Someone that could see people going to hell, and yet be willing to lay down his life for those people. Actually, when he thought about it like that, it didn’t seem totally incompatible with the Christian faith; it actually seemed kind of central to it. It just made so many other Christians seem to be the ones that didn’t quite get it. At any rate, he did feel reassured that Desantos didn’t seem to resent Matt, and he felt reassured that he would still be there to help Matt if it came to that.

  Matt asked, “I wonder why it is that you and Baya, given your backgrounds, can trust each other so completely, be willing to die for each other, and yet so many Muslims and Christians seem to only be able to assume the worst about each other.”

  Desantos looked thoughtful as he considered Matt and what he had said. “I don’t know, Matt. I wish I did. I’m glad you see it. God knows Baya and I have talked about it a lot.”

  Baya had walked into the ready room as Desantos was speaking, and sat down in the chair across from them. He said, “What’s crazy is that it doesn’t have to be like this. Christians and Muslims and even Jews have lived side by side in the past with no problem. It seems like a lot of religion, on all sides, has shifted from being about a person’s own relationship with their God to more about blaming and vilifying others. And what we get is the world we see today. Living together isn’t that hard and yet the human race seems to suck at it. I’m glad Tony here has a more open mind than most. I’d hate to have to get all jihad on him.” He grinned when he said the last sentence and Desantos flipped him a good-natured bird with his middle finger.

  Desantos said, “Listen to that BS coming out of his mouth! Mostly, it’s us against Petey, anyway. Me, Baya, and Mope all have to band together a lot just to keep Petey on some kind of a leash. Yesterday afternoon when you two blew up at each other in the passage, I thought we were going to wind up having to pull Petey off of you. And you really don’t want Petey going after you in an enclosed space. It’s a good way to get killed.”

  Everyone seemed to think Petey was so dangerous and Matt wondered if they were serious or just joking around. He had a hard time thinking of Petey that way now. But that scene after lunch also felt like a long time ago to Matt at this point.

  Petey warned, “Dicklips isn’t out of the woods yet.” He walked in and sat down in one of the other chairs in the ready room. He gave Matt a silent, acidic stare through narrow eyes and his chin jutted out. “You think you can go a round against me, faggot? You wanna try?”

  Matt knew better than to back down. Not against Petey. Without hesitating and without warning, he pretended to suddenly lunge out of his chair and at Petey, which took all of them off guard. Petey actually flinched before he realized Matt was standing there and laughing at him. Baya and Desantos both started laughing, enjoying the rare sight of Petey being caught off-guard like that.

  Even Petey grinned and shook his head. He jumped up and chased Matt around some of the chairs shouting, “You’ve got some stainless steel balls to try that kind of bullshit around me, you little ass-biter!!” It took barely a second for Petey to catch Matt and put him in a headlock and to get his legs around Matt’s, totally immobilizing him. For a moment, Matt got worried, but then Petey just wound up giving him an Indian rub on his head, which made Matt laugh that much harder.

  When Petey let go, Matt said through his laughter, “Ouch, asshole! That actually hurt!”

  Petey raised his voice a few octaves and mocked Matt, “Ow! Stop It! You’re making my tampon get all wadded up!”

  Matt said, “Eat my ass, Colorado. If you guys are done for the night, get over here, and we’ll take this fight up onto the flatscreen and see who the wadded up tampon is!”

  Petey came over and sat down next to Matt so they could play the video games.

  Matt said, “Yeah, that’s what I thought. Petey wants his spanking. Baya… you’re up next, so don’t go anywhere!”

  Chapter 17 – The Accidents

  Matt sat in the staging area on the hangar deck with the SEALs, going over some of the remaining details that applied to him. The hangar deck was much quieter than usual that afternoon as there weren’t any planned flights for the next five hours or so and the flight deck above them was inactive. Talking through things, the team constantly re-assured Matt that this would go off without a hitch, and that was only if anything happened at all. If the person Randall had fed information to at the embassy wasn’t the leak, or if the targets smelled any kind of a trap, then nothing would happen. Still, the anxiety level in Matt increased the closer they got to the time for everything to be put into motion.

  In a few hours, he’d get on a boat, a CRRC as they called it, but which was nothing more than a small rubber boat as far as Matt was concerned, and they’d go to a pre-arranged meeting place off the coast of Latakia. Randall had worked with the British consulate in Latakia to have them charter a small boat for the day and take a few consulate employees out for an afternoon of fishing. Matt would transfer to their boat and when they got back to Latakia, he would simply be one of the consulate employees that had been out for the afternoon. He would stay with them and be a welcome guest of the British consulate until time for him to go to the café later that evening.

  Matt dreaded the boat ride. Why did it have to be such a small boat? Surrounded by water? He wasn’t sure if he’d be able to handle even the first simple step in this whole plan.

  He did everything he could to distract himself from the idea of the little boat. He thought about softball. He thought about Bret and Jim. Then he thought about Brian, which made him think of the last phone call he had made to him, the day before, that had turned very frustrating. Ins
tead, he tried to focus on his promise to himself, the promise he had made just a few days before, to be a better boyfriend and to appreciate Brian more. Despite their quarrel on the phone call, he couldn’t wait to get home to Brian, warm and familiar and safe. His mind drifted back to the moment Mope and Baya had busted into the room where he had been kept and how terrifying they were, probably more so than the men that were going to wind up killing him. This triggered a memory in Matt, something he had wondered about but hadn’t asked yet.

  “Hey, how do you guys talk to one another without talking?”

  Mope looked over at Matt and asked, “Huh?”

  “When you guys broke into the room to get me out, I remember thinking that you were talking to each other, but I never heard you say anything.”

  Mope nodded in understanding, “Oh, yeah. The AARDVAARCs. That’s what you’re asking about.”

  “AARDVAARCs?” asked Matt.

  Mope started digging around in a duffel bag. “Yeah. It stands for Acoustic Relay Something Something. Uh, Baya, what does that stand for again? I can never really remember it.”

  “Antipodal Attenuation Relay Device for Voice Analysis And Realtime Communication,” said Baya. He tilted his head and then snarked, “You know, I should get an extra hundred bucks every time I remember that for you.”

  Mope waved at Baya impatiently, “Yeah, yeah. Starting next paycheck. I swear.”

  Mope looked back over to Matt and added, “It’s a specialized comm system we use. It can take barely audible whispers and amplify them so they sound like a regular voice. We’re all tied in to each other while on the mission. We can have conversations that sound like our normal speaking voices while never actually talking in anything more than the slightest whisper.”

  Mope found what he was looking for and showed Matt. There was a small pack attached to a wire than ran up to an earpiece, which in turn had a tiny microphone boom hanging down from it. The microphone boom, though, was bent into an odd hook at the mouth end. Mope showed him by hooking the mic boom inside his mouth, then putting the earpiece on.

  “The mic actually goes inside your mouth, like this,” he explained. He handed another one to Matt and said, “Here, you can try it. Put it on like I did. I’m assuming you don’t mind getting Desantos’ nasty slobber in your mouth.”

  Matt was curious and said, “Sacrifices, you know,” before putting it on.

  Desantos scowled at them and said, “Hey, I’m right here, guys. You’re not whispering yet, assholes! And now I’m going to need to bleach that thing before I use it. I notice you’re not at all sympathetic about that, Mope.”

  Mope turned on his AARDVAARC unit and Matt’s and then said in a normal voice, “You should be able to hear me at a normal volume in your ear, right?”

  Matt nodded.

  Next, Mope whispered in a voice that normally even he wouldn’t be able to hear, “And you can still hear me and it sounds just like I’m speaking in a normal voice, right?”

  Matt’s eyes got huge and he said, “Holy shit!” Then he said more softly, “Sorry, didn’t mean to yell like that.”

  Mope whispered, “Doesn’t matter, the system amplifies or attenuates so that what comes out in the earpiece is always perfectly audible. It takes into account ambient noise levels as well, so gunfire, explosions, whatever, won’t drown out the voices. These things came along about the same time I joined the SEALs, and man, do they help.”

  Matt and Mope tried it a few times and Matt was very impressed with the technology. It made perfect sense now how he would see them make hand gestures like they were talking, but never hear anything. And with the fact that they wore the black masks over the bottom half of their faces, he couldn’t see their mouths moving.

  He handed the AARDVAARC back to Mope and said, “I’ve never heard of anything like this!”

  Mope said, “Yeah, classified stuff. This will be yet one more of those things you won’t ever be able to talk about.”

  Mope put the two AARDVAARCs up and said, “Ok, Matt, I need to take you with me to go get the clothes Randall pulled together for you to wear tonight. The BDU you have on now clearly won’t work.”

  They headed off, but when they got out of the hangar deck, Mope took a path that didn’t lead towards where Randall was usually set up.

  “Where’re we going?” Matt asked.

  “I wanted a chance to talk to you a minute first.”

  Mope led Matt up, back out onto the flight deck. Since there was no planned flight ops, personnel were allowed out on it, and there was even some people running laps around the deck. It was another brilliantly sunny day, and getting a little warm in the afternoon, but Matt still liked getting out in the open again.

  Rather than going to the railing they had spoke at the day before, they found a spot at the base of the island and sat down looking out across the massive flight deck.

  Mope studied Matt gravely and asked, “You ok, Matt? Seriously. I don’t want a pat answer.”

  Matt said, “Yeah. I’m ok. I mean, I’m nervous, but I’ll be ok. I just need to focus on how little I really need to do.”

  “I guarantee you, Matt, we’ll be there. There’s no way we’re going to leave you dangling there alone.”

  Matt nodded, exhaled deeply, and looked off in the distance. He chuckled once, weakly and said, “I know. I can count on you guys more than I can count on myself.”

  Mope’s baritone voice replied, quiet, but authoritative, “You’re more capable than you give yourself credit for.”

  Matt nodded and certainly hoped that was the case.

  Mope asked, “The boat part bothers you, doesn’t it?”

  Matt nodded again.

  “What happened? Why are you so afraid of the water, Matt?”

  “I was eight and me and my mom and dad had gone out west for a trip, to see the Grand Canyon and all that. Another family that was friends with my parents went, too, with their four kids, all about my age. I didn’t get along with them very much, though, and they didn’t really like me. Well, one afternoon, we all went out on a rented boat in Lake Powell. My parents and their friends had been drinking some, and they weren’t wasted, but they weren’t totally together, either. At some point, I was leaning over the side of the boat, and fell out. I hit my head as I fell out, but I fortunately had a life jacket on. I didn’t pass out, but I was woozy for a minute or two. When I looked around, they were just gone and I was in the middle of a huge lake. I was there for four hours before they realized I was missing and found me again. Turns out the other kids realized I was gone, but they didn’t say anything because they didn’t like me. I didn’t know how to swim, and for four hours my imagination went wild with all kinds of terrible things swimming around under me, waiting to eat me. That and, since the sun started to go down, I imagined being out there at night, which freaked me out even more. So after that, I’ve never liked boats or the water very much. My parents couldn’t even get me into so much as a bathtub for weeks afterwards. I went to see a kiddie shrink for months and months for the abandonment issues I had as a result.”

  “Your parents didn’t go for help?” asked Mope.

  “No, they said they didn’t want to go any further away from where I got lost than they already were. I think part of it, too, though was that they were afraid to ask for help since they had been drinking a little.”

  Mope said, genuinely sympathetic, “I’m sorry that happened. It’s hard for me to understand what it would be like to be so afraid of the water. I’ve always loved being in the water. I’m probably more comfortable in the water than I am out of it. You sure you’ll be ok on the CRRC?”

  “As long as you guys are there.”

  Mope nodded.

  “Mope, can I ask you a question?”

  “Shoot.”

  “Yesterday, when we were talking, you mentioned that you joined the SEALs for the wrong reasons. Do you mind telling me why you said that?” The statement had run through Matt’s mind several times, an
d he wasn’t sure if he was prying by asking about it.

  Mope sat, his dark eyes locked on the horizon of the Mediterranean Sea.

  Matt felt like he had asked about something he shouldn’t have. “Never mind, Mope. I’m not trying…”

  Mope said, “No. I want to tell you, Matt. I don’t talk about it much except with people I trust, but you’re one of those people now.”

  “I had a brother, three years older than me,” began Mope. “Christopher Tyler Thomason. Actually, Christopher Tyler Thomason, Jr. And he was the son my father, Dr. Christopher Tyler Thomason, Sr. always wanted. I was, on the other hand, an accident. I spent my entire life dealing with a father that doted on my older brother, and always seemed to regard me as a distraction. At best, in his eyes, I was just a sad imitation of my brother, Chris.”

  Mope scratch at his ear. “No matter what I did, no matter how hard I tried, no matter what I accomplished, I wasn’t Chris. At Christmas, birthdays, sports, school, college, nothing ever seemed to carry any weight with my father. And I was a glutton for the indifference; I spent my entire life doing everything I possibly could to get even a tiny amount of the approval that my older brother got so easily.”

  “The proudest day of my father’s life was when Chris announced he was going to go to BUD/S training and become a Navy SEAL. And he could have. He had it in him. But in the physical exam he went through prior to BUD/S, they found out he had leukemia. Aggressive leukemia that had been asymptomatic prior to that. Chris, God bless him, was a fighter and fought hard, but only lasted a year in the end. Losing Chris devastated the family, Matt. My mom became an alcoholic after that. All my dad had left was me, the disappointment of the family.”