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Third story in the Anatomy of a Field Operation Series
I take slow deep breaths as I back the van out of the space, already beginning my calming preparations for what we must do tonight.
People, human beings, will most likely die before the night is over. My most heartfelt prayer, that it will not be one of the six men who occupy the van with me. I glance around and see that the others have begun their preparations as well.
Nathan sits in the seat beside me, his EMT duffle bag in his lap. His lips move silently as his fingers check over its contents. It’s his way of calming himself before the screaming and yelling and hunting and possibly dying begins. He checks everything in the bag and then begins again. Making sure and double sure that everything he could possibly need to save one of our lives or ease our pain is there within his reach. If he could, he would bring an entire emergency room with all of its equipment and a medic especially assigned to each one of us. But he can’t.
So, he settles for his bag full of goodies. Everything in it is especially chosen for its necessity in a life-threatening situation. The items carefully balanced for weight and arranged so that he can put his hands on anything he needs in a split second without even looking. It calms him to know he’s as ready as he can be for any emergency. Frees him to move into action with the rest of us without his mind being distracted by worries about what might happen to any of us tonight.
Buck and J.D. sit together, jostling elbows and chuckling over some joke.
“Buck, you’re full a crap,” says J.D. Buck laughs and snatching the boy’s knit cap off his head ruffles his hair wildly till it’s all standing on end.
“But admit it kid,” says Buck, “ya love me for it.” The boy is shaking his head wryly.
My eyes move on to the next form in the rear view mirror. Ezra sits quietly, a deck of cards in his hand. He flips them between his fingers. The ace of spades appears on top, is shuffled into the middle of the pack only to re-appear again. His body is loose and relaxed, his face expressionless. Only his hands move.
Beside him sit Chris and Vin, shoulder to shoulder, thigh to thigh, eyes straight forward. They’re completely silent and motionless, and yet somehow they exude an air of leashed power, perfect and deadly in its readiness at a second’s notice. I can’t see from where I sit in the driver’s seat but I know that their hands rest on their thighs. The hands adjacent to each other are pressed firmly back to back. Wrists and knuckles aligned, a last touch before they separate when we leave the safety of the van and move to our assigned staging positions.
The van is full of the air of confident determination and skilled readiness. These men of evil we hunt tonight won’t know what hit them. Their heads will still be spinning when they wake in jail cells tomorrow. The ones who survive, that is.
I pull into the darkened parking lot behind a row of warehouses and stop the engine. I look at each of my team members, my family, one more time. May God grant the night goes well, our mission goes smoothly and that we will be sitting in Inez’s Saloon a few hours from now, toasting our own success. With a nod at all of us, Chris ducks out the door J.D. has opened and we follow to finalize our preparations.
No crows tonight, God willing.
Continues in Part 4. Voices
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