Disclaimer: I don't own SEAL Team. Written with thanks to the poetry of
"'There's the river low an' fallin', but it ain't no use o' callin' 'cross the ford o' Kabul river in the dark.'"
"We are a long way from Kabul, my friend."
"Less than five miles from here there was a ford, Sonny," Clay said.
"The Brits drowned fifty troopers and a dozen of their horses when they strayed out of the shallows into fast, deep water."
"How do you know that?" Clay asked, chancing a fast look towards Vanessa Ryan.
The CST didn't move as she asked: "How do you?"
"His girlfriend's a lit major," Sonny said.
"She wants to teach."
"She has good taste."
"Thanks…I think," Clay said.
They lapsed into silence again.
"The Brits had been moving a lot of people through the ford. It got dark, and they hadn't marked it with crossing stakes to avoid offending local sensibilities," Ryan said. "As it got dark, they drifted, and instead of the cavalry walking through two and a half feet of snow-melt, they were dumping horses weighed down by packs, saddles, and sodden cavalry troopers in fifteen feet of water doing 10 miles per."
"Let me guess," Sonny said. "History major."
"My job is to keep you from offending the locals and get you crossing stakes," Ryan said. "It was used as a pointed example of what happens when we fail."
"Don't use crossing stakes much anymore, and you may not know but we don't drown easy."
Ryan didn't say anything for a time. "Might be I can make your job a little easier, a little safer," she said at length. "Maybe, maybe not. Not, or at least not enough, for my last team.
"You want to stomp around the country and piss people off, that's on you. But in a couple months when you rotate home, I get a new team and whatever trouble you make, they have to live with. For their sakes if nothing else, let me do my fucking job."
"Your team, huh?" Sonny asked.
"My team," Ryan said firmly.
Clay and Sonny traded looks, but the latter, for once, didn't push.
"When do you rotate back?" Clay asked.
"Six months. Maybe."
"Maybe?"
"Command doesn't let just any CST hang with the Tier One guys," Ryan said. "I have the right language groups, a good skill set, a great relationship with the locals, and excellent PT and weapon scores."
"If you're so good, why not apply to join the real elite when you get back? They do that now."
"There are more people in DEVGRU than there are CST at my level. Never mind operators in other Tier One units," Ryan said. "Hard for me to get into a group that's more select."
"Burn," Clay said.
"I walked right into that one," Sonny muttered.
"Point is," Ryan said, "There aren't enough of us. I'll probably be asked to stick around."
"Will you?" Clay asked.
"If whoever set up Ramon and the rest of Echo is still alive and free. Yes."
"And if not?"
Ryan was silent for a time. "There's another poem they used in training. 'Mandalay.' Did your school teacher-to-be mention it to you?"
"No."
"Poetry club is over," Sonny said abruptly. "TOC, this is Bravo Three. We've got movement at the residence."
"So Van mentioned a poem—"
"Van?"
"Vanessa Ryan," Clay said, running a hand through his hair. "She's our CST."
"You get crime scene techs assigned to you?" Stella asked skeptically.
"Heh. I'll have to remember that. No," Clay shook his head. "Cultural Support. It, well, makes things easier with the locals to have a woman do pat-downs on other women. And sometimes women will tell things to other women that—"
"They won't tell guys?" Stella asked. "Really? So she what, takes them aside and tells you that they've got to powder their noses?"
"Um…pretty much?" Clay asked. "I mean, I don't think I've heard her put it quite that way but…"
Stella laughed. "Wow. Okay…wow."
"Actually, you know that poem you showed me. 'Ford of Kabul River?'"
"Sure."
"Well, she said it was used as a training example. That the Brits didn't put in crossing stakes because they didn't want to piss of the locals. Way she tells it, her job is to keep us from upsetting them and get the stakes."
Stella's teasing grin faded as he talked. "Well," she said. "I can't exactly complain about that." She shook her head. "Seriously, Clay. What's on your mind?"
"She mentioned another poem. 'Mandalay.'"
"I'll send you a copy," she said. "It, well…really it's about acculturation, though it wasn't called or recognized as such when the poem was written. It's about a former soldier living in London who is disconnected from his culture and thinks about how great it was in Mandalay. Only the place he's dreaming of doesn't really exist outside his mind because he's taken his memories of the things he's seen and run them all together into some place that is…better.
"Look. There's some other stuff of his that you'll probably appreciate. Should I send it as an electronic format, or dead tree?"