Smart, Resourceful, Calm

Brock stayed awake and on guard for the rest of the night. He held a feverish and restless Clay against his chest, one hand holding his loaded weapon while the other stroked his baby brother's sand encrusted, sweat drenched head. The older kid knew it was in everyone's best interest to keep the younger boy calm through the long, dark night. Brock could feel that the infection fed fever was spiking. The last thing they needed was Clay waking up confused and caught in a nightmare.

For the time being, Clay was sleeping deeply with one hand buried in Cerb's thick fur while the other clutched his big brother's filthy shirt. And Brock and Cerb were working together to keep him that way. Both the dog handler and his canine partner stayed huddled together with Clay, allowing the kid to keep physical contact throughout the night.

While Clay slept, Brock kept himself alert by plotting their move to a more suitable shelter. He already knew the direction he planned to take them.

Unlike the younger boy attached to his chest, Brock was not a big talker. He was, however, an engaged listener. Bravo Five listened attentively to every thing his much older teammates told him. Brock listened when they were speaking to him directly, and he listened just as closely when they were engrossed in conversation with each other, paying little attention to the boys hanging on their every word.

Brock had paid close attention to Jason, especially during those first few months on Bravo when it was clear to just about everyone that Master Chief Hayes was taking the young SEAL in and treating him as his own. When Ray first brought the dog handler on the team, Brock had just turned twenty-two, a decade younger than the average tier one rookie. It was never lost on Jason that his newest recruit was a full year younger than Mikey, and three years behind his baby-girl Emma.

As soon as Jason opened the door, Brock latched onto his new boss with zero hesitation. With his own parents on the other side of the country, the boy almost immediately started to see and relate to his team leader as a father figure. And if Jason was his adopted dad, then it was obvious to an amused Sonny and Ray that Trent, who had just been dumped by his third and final wife, was quickly becoming Mr. Mom to their young rookie.

Brock remembered walking through the rocky hills of Damascus with Jason on his first mission to the Middle Eastern desert. It was on the other side of the country, but Brock had noticed and pointed out to Trent shortly after they arrived a week earlier that the long, deep ridge of steep, rocky hills reminded him of the cavern filled hills the boss had carefully walked him through a couple years back.

"Those hills look just like the ones we saw last time, Trent," Brock had said to Bravo's medic as they walked side by side patrolling the area a week earlier. "Remember? It was when I had just come on Bravo. The boss took me up and showed me where to find groundwater pooling under the rocks deep in the caverns."

"I remember," Trent smiled. "It was your first time in this area. And you were bird doggin' Jason just like the runt is doing now."

Brock chuckled. He looked up ahead and saw Clay following a step behind their Master Chief. The kid was walking fast to keep up with his boss and adopted dad, looking up at him and hanging on his every word as if he were all the Avengers rolled into one bad-ass Navy SEAL. Brock knew the feeling. He had been around a year longer than Clay, but he was still in awe of his team leader and foster dad.

Sitting in the dark with only Cerb to keep him company while the kid who was currently his responsibility slept, Brock replayed that earlier conversation with Trent. He loved and depended on the medic more than any of his brothers. Brock was confident that Trent would remember their conversation and know that he would be heading back to that area to wait.

Brock also knew that they would find the piece of Clay's bloody sock which would clue Trent in that he was traveling with an injured kid on his hands. It had been Brock's idea to leave a small piece of sock behind. He knew Jason would recognize the old stretched thin material as coming from the worn out socks their boss had told his kid to throw out more than once. The sock would lead their brothers to Clay's map.

A few months back, Josh, Alpha's bomb tech and along with Derrick and Metal, a longtime friend and brother of Bravo's senior operators, had taken Clay and his best friend Corey to his family's cabin to spend the weekend with his own three kids. Jason and Trent had been busy and distracted dealing with an Ash related fiasco and Brock who was sick with a bad stomach flu. Josh had offered to keep Clay busy for a few days.

Clay had become attached to Josh and his family over time. A big, burly, old school southern daddy from Tennessee, Alpha Four was one of the small circle of older men who the abused and abandoned boy had gradually come to trust and rely on as both an authority figure and caregiver. Away from work and operating, he had become Uncle Josh to both Clay and Brock's brother in law, Corey. Josh's son JJ was the third musketeer to Clay and Corey, and his two young daughters were friends as well.

That weekend at the cabin, the kids had amused themselves playing a game Clay had created, the object of which was to decipher and follow a map made of simple drawings to find a predetermined location. What made the game challenging was that the drawings could not be of things that would actually lead to the final destination.

Before his fever had spiked, when Clay was still lucid, he and Brock had talked about the caves where they hoped to hide out until Bravo located them. Brock came up with the idea of leaving a piece of the younger boy's old sock, and Clay explained the map challenge to his big brother.

"It's the same concept as a substitution code," Clay had told him. "But in order to follow the drawings, it's necessary to first figure out what each drawing represents. And then to find the final location, you need to move through your current surroundings following the directions that contain places or things. It's impossible to follow the map if you don't have knowledge of what and where the drawings represent."

"So," Brock said slowly. "If the drawings don't represent things here that Bravo will see, how exactly are they supposed to follow the map?" The dog handler looked confused, but knowing his little brother was super smart, Brock knew he must be missing something.

"They need to follow the map as if they were back home," Clay explained. "So let's say we make where we are now Sonny's apartment."

"Okay," Brock said. "We're at Sonny's apartment, and we want to go where?"

"We need to map out for ourselves how to get from here to the ridge of caves," Clay explained. "Obviously we can't leave that information behind for any bad guys who might come looking for us to find."

"Obviously," Brock nodded. Suddenly the lightbulb came on. "So, if it's a substitution code, we make the map for ourselves, plug in Sonny's place as where we are now."

"Yes," Clay nodded. "Then we mark things at home we would see that the guys would recognize along the route we mapped out, substituting home for here."

"When we start off moving toward the caves, we need to head east," Brock said, digging through his bag for a pencil. Clay produced his copy of Frankenstein that Trent had bought for him the previous Halloween. Ripping off the back cover, he handed it to Bravo Five who started mapping out the general route from memory, getting excited about this complicated plan.

Clay held the flashlight. He and Cerb looked on as their current boss drew a light line, which they would later erase, that started at their current location, aka Sonny's house, and moved east with a few twists and turns until it ended in the general vicinity of the caves Brock had chosen for their new home.

"Okay," Clay said, taking the pencil from his big brother and drawing a figure of a guy wearing a cowboy hat and boots and holding a Bud Light. He drew him standing next to a two story apartment building and added a letter 'S' above his head. "Sonny's House."

Brock laughed. "Clearly," he said, tousling the kid's warm head. "So heading east from Sonny's house, what would we pass that the grumpy old men would recognize?"

"Dunkin'", Clay said, confidently. "You know how they love their donuts and coffee." He penciled in a rectangular box, adding a freestanding sign that read 'Dunkin' next to the building along with four stick figures holding coffee and donuts with the numbers one through four written above their heads.

"That's subtle," Brock said, sarcastically.

"We need to be obvious," Clay said, chuckling. "It will mean zero to anyone else who finds it, but we need to make sure the old guys can read it. This isn't exactly their kind of game."

"That's an understatement," Brock said. "So what makes you think they have any chance to figure this out?"

"Josh will know what it is," Clay said confidently. "We do this all the time at his house to see if we can follow each other's clues. It started that weekend he took me and Corey with JJ and the girls up their grandpa's cabin. Remember? It was when you were home sick at Trent's place."

"Yeah," Brock said. "I was sick as a dog on Trent's couch. And you're thinking Jason will somehow get Alpha here?"

"What do you think?" Clay said, giving him the 'duh' look.

Brock laughed. "I think that if Alpha hasn't already landed," he said. "They're definitely close."

"Exactly," Clay said. "And I'm hoping Trent or Jason remembers me telling them about this game. Do you think they will?" The kid looked up at his brother hopefully.

"Runt," Brock said. "I think Jason and Trent listen to everything you tell them. Even when they don't seem to be listening - they're listening. Believe me."

"If you're right," Clay started. "Someone will remember I talked about doing this at Josh's house. They'll know to ask Josh how to read the map."

"Damn, Shorty," Brock said, proudly. "You better ditch the Navy and go work for the smart, sneaky guys down at the CIA."

"No way," Clay said, seriously. He made eye contact with Brock. "I never want to leave you guys. And I never want to be in the CIA."

Brock pulled the kid in close and kissed his head. "I'm just teasing, kiddo," he said. "You're never getting rid of us. Everyone knows that you're Bravo's Baby now. And that's for life."

Allowing for Clay being sick with an infection and the kid nursing a deep wound in his leg, Brock estimated it would take them approximately two hours to walk back to the ridge of caves they had patrolled near earlier in the week. Bravo Four was well aware from both his training and the hundreds of hours he had spent in the field learning from his older brothers that they needed to make the trek through the dangerous, enemy-filled desert while it was still dark.

Brock woke his younger brother and buried the piece of filthy, blood spattered sock so a small piece stuck out from the ground near where he hid their map behind some rocks in the wall of the small burrow. Sharing a half-bottle of their water between them and Cerb, the boys took small sips until Brock recapped the bottle telling Clay they needed to save the rest until they located a suitable water source. The younger boy nodded groggily, obeying his big brother.

Clay looked on silently and held still while the older boy removed his bandage, applied more antibiotic cream and redressed his wound. Brock dug out and forced the kid to swallow more Tylenol before they geared up, putting on their night vision goggles and stuffing the dirty bandages into Brock's bag.

Bravo's youngest carefully climbed out of their hole into the predawn darkness and began the arduous trek back through the desert toward the caves where they intended to hole-up and wait for their brothers to come for them.