Three days. It had been three days since Brock had volunteered to assist the local military force. It was supposed to be a routine patrol and armed escort of a small convoy, delivering basic agricultural supplies and food staples, to a small number of remote villages.
It was only supposed to have been a one-day, out and back assignment. A dawn to dusk support mission. For Brock, it was the opportunity of a much-needed break away from the confining spaces of the American forces base. A base where Brock, and the rest of Bravo, had spent the past four weeks. An unusually monotonous four weeks, broken up only by the occasional assignment.
Brock didn't consider himself an adrenaline junkie, or the type of operator who craved the intensity of high priority, high threat level assignments.
It's not that Brock had any sort of fear. He was actually fearless. For reasons that were personal to him and, perhaps, that Trent only knew about or suspected. Brock was fearless because there was nothing to fear. His worst fear had already come true. Years ago.
It was always there, that personal ache in his chest. The moment in his past when his life had changed in an instant. A split second marker between happiness and whatever this was that came next. He didn't know it then. He couldn't have. He was only 14 at the time. But, it was moment that would put him on the path to the US Navy and the Seals. Even now, after all the horrors of war he'd seen, it was still the worst moment of his life. It defined him. And he never talked about it to anyone. He'd let something slip to Trent once though, in a melancholy moment fueled by bourbon. But all Trent knew was that Brock once had an older brother that he idolized. Trent didn't know the rest.
Brock had no issue with putting his life on the line every day. He didn't fear death. He just didn't physically crave the action the way some operators, like Sonny, and more recently, Clay, did. When he was a rookie, Brock privately questioned that about himself. But he knew, and quickly came to accept, that not all Seals are created equal. There isn't an assembly line churning out standard form Tier One operators with identical personalities and matching backstories. Instead, each operator brought something unique to their respective teams and to the job. Brock was so quietly self-assured and confident in himself that any such doubts he may have had were short-lived. He was okay being himself in this job.
This had been an unusual deployment. And Brock's agitation stemmed from spending so much time on a small base, without the normal number of assignments and missions. It resulted in a lot of togetherness.
Brock loved his Bravo family, but his brothers were driving him crazy. It was what brothers did. But, for someone who craved solitude more than most, Brock felt the walls closing in, with no respite. He's had just about enough togetherness of late.
Jason was in bad mood, which was saying something. But this seemed to be worse than his usual grumpiness. Brock suspected it had something to do with lingering physical complaints, a recognition that he was closer to the end of his career as a Tier One operator than the beginning, difficulty adjusting to an empty nest at home, and delayed grief with never having fully dealt with Alana's death.
The quiet ones are the most perceptive. They spend so much time observing others that they can't help it. Brock was 100% accurate in his assessment of Jason's current mood, even if Jason didn't understand it himself or was refusing to accept it. But Brock kept his thoughts to himself. As he usually did. It wasn't his place and he knew better than to approach Jason about it now. Brock figured Ray would probably know what to do and when. So instead, Brock did his best to avoid Jason while on base. It wasn't that hard.
Jason loved the gym, lifting weights and improvised Crossfit sessions. Brock, on the other hand, was a runner. Actually, he was a swimmer first. But the team's current location made it impossible to slip away for an hour or two of open water swimming or endurance lane swim. So he ran laps around the 3.5 mile perimeter of the base.
He ran at night. He ran in the morning. He didn't bother timing himself. That wasn't the point. But then Clay started to join him, and it became a competition. At 3.5 miles, Clay had the edge. At 7 miles, it was Brock. And it wasn't close.
Brock had grown-up embracing the physical pain of endurance sports. His first memories were of swimming in the family's backyard pool. He joined a competitive program when he was 7 years old. From then on, Brock was constantly pushing himself, testing the limits of his lungs, legs, arms and back muscles. He had been exceptionally good at it from a young age. And from the ages of 14 to 22, he hid inside that physical pain. His natural, gifted athletic talent merged with an emotional, raw, grief stricken pain. It was all-consuming. It was the only way he could cope at the time. When you're so exhausted by the physical exertion that you can't breath, there's also no breath to scream or cry.
Clay's need for competition had taken away Brock's attempt at finding some solitude. Normally, he enjoyed running hills or going for longer runs with Clay. But something had been off with Clay the past few months. After Swanny's funeral, Stella and Clay seemed to find their way back to each other. Clay tended to find an even keel with Stella. However, something had changed and Brock wondered if they had broken up. It was certainly obvious that Clay was increasingly spending more and more time, in more and more bars, with Jason.
In this bizarro world, Clay was adapting some of Sonny's more outlandish, larger than life, life of the party behaviours. Sonny, on the other hand, was taking on some of Jason's extreme moodiness. Mostly only the bad moods. It seemed whatever woman had managed to tame the wild man a few months earlier was no longer in the picture. Sonny's anger and devastation at that turn of events, made him impossible to be around. When he wasn't growling thinly veiled insults or passive aggressive barbs at Ray, strangely the focus of his ire, Sonny was arguing with everyone about everything.
While Brock was sympathetic, his sympathy for Sonny's broken heart had a limit to it. That limit had been stretched to its near breaking point. That was another reason that Brock had jumped at the opportunity to leave the base for a few hours, volunteering to assist the local military force. Perhaps doing some good and ensuring that the needed agricultural materials and extra food supplies made it to the remote villages, was what he needed, along with a brief few hours away from his Bravo brothers, to recharge and get things right with himself for the remaining few weeks of the deployment.
There had been no reason at the time to think it was anything more than a simple patrol and security escort of a modest amount of aid assistance. While the country had an issue with small, unorganized militia groups raiding foreign aid resources and threatening western and NGO workers, they were not known to be active in the area.
It was only supposed to be a few hours. From dawn to dusk, and back at base in time for dinner. Brock and Cerberus had left the base with the small group of local forces on a Sunday morning. It was now Wednesday, still a few hours before sunrise. In the darkness, it was mostly quiet. Only occasional crackling embers, the remnants of the explosion that had mostly destroyed the village, remained, along with the low moans of the few survivors and the god-awful smell of death.
With Cerberus mercifully uninjured and alert by his side, Brock allowed himself a few moments to drift back to the moment when he volunteered for this assignment. Bravo had been meeting with Blackburn, Davis and Mandy in the command centre when Eric raised the assignment. He had barely gotten the words out that he was looking for a volunteer, when Brock jumped in and announced that he would do it. He had said it with such forceful conviction, that it was settled then and there. Trent turned to look at his best friend, raised his eyebrow with a questioning expression. In response, Brock simply shrugged his shoulders.
Trent didn't question Brock's quickness to volunteer, rather it was the urgency in which it was expressed. Trent knew Brock better than anyone else in Bravo. Yet, Trent still sometimes felt that he didn't know Brock at all. That he only knew what Brock wanted him to know. Or that he only knew what Brock could comfortably share. And the rest, the things Brock kept to himself, were such painful wounds that he buried them down deep inside. In a place he wouldn't let himself visit.
Trent recalled a discussion he had with the Green Team instructor during Brock's selection. The instructor had questioned at that time if perhaps there wasn't a trauma somewhere in Brock's past that was driving him. A trauma involving the loss of someone he couldn't save. Having worked closely with Brock now for several years, and having become close friends, Trent was pretty certain the Green Team instructor was right. Trent was even more certain that whatever happened in Brock's past that it involved his brother. The idolized older brother that Brock had only mentioned once in the entire time they had known each other.
At the moment in the command centre, as the rest of Bravo was heading off to find ways to kill the time on base, Brock remained for a briefing with Blackburn and the head of the local military force about the assignment. He gave a little wave to Trent and smiled, a genuine smile of relief. Trent knew then that Brock was getting what he needed, some time away from the all the cramped togetherness. That Brock had spent four weeks with his Bravo brothers and all that time spent together as brothers had stirred up something in Brock. The void of a missing brother. A blood brother.
Now in the darkness in the early morning hours of Wednesday before dawn, a sensory memory was starting to take hold in Brock's mind. The crackling embers, the low moans of the few survivors and the smell of death. He remembered these things. The throbbing pain in both legs, the blistering burns on his forearm and the dull ache in his head made it impossible for him to stamp down on that memory. That night from his past, the worse moment of his life, was coming alive in his mind now. He was terrified.
Author's Note: I've taken some of my fictional account of Brock's backstory in my story, From Green Team to Bravo, and incorporated it here. I anticipate about 2 more chapters to complete this story. The rest of Bravo will make an appearance and the mysterious backstory I'm setting out will be revealed.