The Fourteenth Protocol

Chapter 8

8

Cal Williams didn’t qualify for a pilot slot on a fighter; instead he qualified for a role that suited him much better. He could use his technical skills to run radar-jamming equipment and protect other American pilots. And he got to be in the front of everything. Every mini-war that flared up, his unit would be deployed. Since there aren’t many radar jammers, Cal would get frequent deployment orders, and he and his crew would saddle up and fly out to the soon-to-be warzone. They’d fly for up to eighteen hours, refueling in midair to get to the carrier that might be stationed in the Persian Gulf or off the Gulf of Tonkin. From that point on, he had a great job. The best part was that it was rare for anyone to shoot at you in one of these things. Most of the time, the enemy had no idea you were there because Cal would so badly screw up their radar screens; the enemy wouldn’t know where to tell his pilots to go.

Cal realized early that his son was paying the price for his success. A son growing up with an absentee father doesn’t get off easy. Through different deployments, Cal would return to Dobbins Air Force Base to a local high school band playing a welcome-home greeting. But as he would get off the transport plane and jog across the tarmac towards his wife and child, little Cade would stop. Just stop dead in his tracks and not come any closer to his father.

There he would be, nine years old, then ten, then twelve. And with each homecoming, it got a little worse. Cade was mad at his father, no question. Mad at him for not being there. Over the next couple of days, Cade would come around, but Cal noticed harsh temper tantrums from Cade during those early years. Like he was lashing back at a father he didn’t understand.

Cal would respond by over-responding. He would immerse himself into activities with Cade, trying to rebuild the damaged relationship. Cade was a good kid, but he needed something, and that something was his dad. The pattern repeated itself with each deployment. There was Bosnia in 1994, Somalia in 1995, Haiti, also in ’95, back to Bosnia in ’96, Sierra Leone in 1997 . . . the list went on. Many of these deployments were talked about infrequently on the news. Some of them weren’t talked about at all. A lot of the time it involved flying cover for evacuations of American citizens from places that no one really ever heard of. And to make matters worse, Cal often couldn’t talk about where he had been or why he had to be gone. He’d do his best to make it up to Cade, but Cade would have none of it.

Now that Cal was retired from the service, he had done a pretty good job of reconnecting with Cade. But he carried a guilt complex with him. It was like boarding a commercial flight and having an extra carry-on bag that wouldn’t quite fit into the overhead compartment. But, unfortunately, this was not a bag he could check.

Cal picked up his cellphone and, even though he was driving, flipped it open and hit *2 to speed-dial Cade. Holding the phone to his ear, he thought about how Cade always razzed him about still having a flip phone, especially since he came out of such a high-tech background. After the second ring, Cal knew he wasn’t going to get Cade to answer. Cade never let his phone ring more than once before answering if he wasn’t busy. After the fourth ring, Cal hung up. Things were still uncomfortable between father and son.

Cal continued up Cobb Parkway, turned left on Roswell Street, and headed towards Cool Beans, a favorite local coffee shop where grunge was the norm.

He may have been way older than the kids in here, but that’s what made it what it was. It was a place he could relax. Before any doctor’s appointment, like the one he had today, he would come here, take a cup of coffee onto the back patio, and read his paper or just people watch. Cool Beans had a coffee roaster machine that sat just inside the shop. The aroma of freshly roasted coffee only added to the smooth bitterness that was unique to the bean. Cal sat under the shade trees, leaned back in his chair, and closed his eyes. As the door swung open and closed, the aroma wafted out onto the patio. It was intoxicating. Just take that in. Man, kids today don’t pay enough attention to the little pleasures, he thought. His mortality had been on his mind a lot lately. Hell, I never paid enough attention. Just to sit back, relax, close your eyes, and take it all in. The sounds, the smells. In his mind’s eye, he drifted. This particular aroma took him back to a godsend of a place in Kandahar they nicknamed “the Starbucks of Afghanistan.” Being in such an unfamiliar place was always unsettling. So whether in Kandahar or Kabul, Cal would go down to a local coffee joint, assuming they had one, and in a country where nothing looked, tasted, or smelled like home, he’d get to sip something familiar. The coffee was great. In Kabul, there was this little place called Chaila. Just walking in felt like you were stepping off the surface of the moon and into a café like the one his dad had taken him to in the 1950s. The place had a brick oven, and the pizza that came out of it had Uncle Sam written all over it.

Cal hung out at the coffee shop for a little while, wanting to stay longer, but that damn doctor’s appointment was calling his name. He glanced at a young couple leaning across their table and kissing. They looked to be in their young twenties—a nose ring here, a tattoo there; they melded into the atmosphere of the place well. “I don’t think I knew a single girl with a tattoo when I was that age,” he mumbled to himself, taking the last sip. He pulled out a set of old aviator sunglasses from his top pocket and slipped them onto his nose, then walked off the patio, down the couple of steps, and out to the car.

This next part was not something he wanted to face. Out loud he said, “They flung you off the deck of a carrier in the middle of a typhoon, and you’re scared to go hear the news from some stupid doctor?” The small lump in his throat turned a little bigger.