Page 18 of Something About Silver

That seemed to do more for her ego than anything else he could’ve said.

“I smell bacon, ladies. Anyone want to cook me some breakfast?” he asked, scanning the three faces.

“Sure!” The shorter of the three, a little blonde girl in braids, got up, hiked her pajama bottoms, and dashed to the kitchen.

Harper lay back on the pillow, closing his eyes. He heard Sasha and her other friend get up and join their friend in the kitchen. The happy banter and light music coming from the kitchen was soothing. He fell asleep again, thinking Hamish was a very, very lucky man.

He was exhausted. He’d had four hours sleep, which wasn’t too bad, considering.

It didn’t take them long before they brought in a paper plate and, more importantly, a fresh hot mug of coffee with heavy cream and two strips of well-done bacon.

He was in heaven.

He righted himself, keeping the blanket covering his red, white, and blue boxers, the ones with the American flags and eagles printed all over it. With the paper plate on his knees, he began to dig in. It was scrumptious.

“You guys are too kind. This is awesome. I’m going to love you guys forever for this. You can cook for me anytime!”

Harper heard the pounding footsteps of Hamish coming down the stairs. He rattled all the windows in the house with his heavy gallop. His friend was over six foot four and nearly fifty pounds heavier than Harper. He had played rugby for many years, even going to college on a rugby scholarship. In the end, he blew out a knee and had to give up his school money. He signed on with the Navy on a conditional acceptance that he’d be medically discharged if the repair the Navy doctors did didn’t bring him to at least eighty percent. They even allowed him to try out for the Teams after he’d done a few years and proved himself. He was one of the strongest members of SEAL Team 5.

“I can see the girls are taking good care of you. Sasha, honey, would you get me some coffee? I want to talk to Uncle Harper alone if you guys don’t mind. Why don’t you run along upstairs and get ready for the game. I think your mom is going to take you.”

Hamish’s coffee was brought to him, and the three girls disappeared upstairs.

Hamish took a big swig of his coffee and sat on an ottoman a few feet away from Harper. He checked his surroundings, satisfied that none of his family was nearby.

“So how did it go? I’m dying to know. Kyle told me you went to D.C..”

“That ghost. I left him a message. I’m glad he got it. Yeah, I’m supposed to meet with him today, and I wanted to talk to you as well.”

“I’m all ears. What’s this about?”

“It’s about an opportunity that came up, that was offered to me. And I don’t know if you’ve ever thought about doing something else, but they’re putting together a group of guys, and they want to operate it like a SEAL team. They want to have special operators from several groups to blend in all the skill sets. There are some Delta Force guys, group guys, paratroopers, rescue swimmers, two CIA operatives, and a few State Department special agents on the list. There are even a couple of women linguists and a female sniper from Team 8.”

“Holy shit. What for?”

“They want older warriors with experience, guys who might be looking to retire, to give them support and create a specialized team they’re calling Silver Team. They want to insert these people in small groups in areas not in the traditional way. It would be snatch and grab. They’re after terrorists, disruptors who serve up mayhem, anarchists, and communists. The label isn’t important. They want to catch these guys before they assemble their teams and get too powerful. Hit them when they’re just getting started. They want to get the guys who turn some of our Universities into riot centers, threaten authority, destroy families, and try to tear down the fabric of society. The ones who train and teach bomb-making techniques to kids. Stuff like that.”

“Scumbags, in other words.”

Harper laughed. “That pretty much sums it up. They want to catch them before their money comes in. Sometimes, these kids come from wealthy families who never taught them values or gave them respect. They just like to hurt people, destroy neighborhoods. They are professional rabble-rousers in training, probably communist, Marxist, and they don’t care about this country or anyone else’s either. They maim and kill for fun. We’ve seen them, right?”

“Sure we have. So we’d be garbage collectors then.”

“You could say that. But with one difference. We’re to capture these guys, especially those who work with the young people, the university students, or the disenfranchised sons and daughters of public officials. Through kidnapping and blackmail, they try to strong-arm their way into society, bleeding out Marxist policies using terror and intimidation. They’re looking for a team that will go in and extract these people and shut it down before it really gets a chance to start.”

“And they asked you to be a part of this?”

“Hamish, I met with the president himself. Just like John Kennedy with the SEALs, this Silver Team is his baby.”

“So you’d be working with the president?”

“No, hardly. It will have someone on the Joint Chiefs or one of the secretaries running it, probably Secretary of the Navy. They gave me a list of names, Hamish. Recommendations for people they thought might fit in.”

Hamish took a huge gulp of his coffee and waited.

“Your name was number two on the list, Old Man.”

Hamish stood up and walked to the window, overlooking his backyard and pool. Their youngest son was floating on a plastic donut, wearing goggles, diving for plastic rings and tossing them, then heading down to the bottom to retrieve them.

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