Free Deployed by Mel Odom

light hanging from the second floor of the old house she’d grown up in.
    She was home, and that felt better than it had in a long time.
    Travis came running toward her, and she scooped him up in her arms. He hugged her tight. “I thought you were never coming home.”
    “Me too.”
    Then he looked at her seriously. “Did you break your truck?”
    “A little bit.”
    “Can you fix it?”
    “I can.”
    “I’ll help.”
    “All right.” Bekah bumped heads with him. In that minute, she didn’t feel all the disappointment and setbacks of the day. She was home and she had her son, and there wasn’t much else she needed. Then she saw the official-looking letter in her granny’s hand.
    “This came for you today.” Her granny looked at the letter with displeasure. “I was going to hold it till after supper, but I didn’t figure it would be any more welcome then.” She held the letter out. “And I figured you’d want to know now.”
    Bekah took the letter with a mixture of emotions. She didn’t think the Marine Corps could be writing her about the felony charges. That had only been two days ago. They couldn’t find out that fast, could they? And they’d wait until the trial was over before taking any kind of disciplinary action, wouldn’t they?
    Of all the military branches, the Marines were strictest about legal infractions and personal backgrounds. Almost anyone could get into the Army, but tattoos—even non-gang-related ones—could keep an applicant out of the Corps. Bekah didn’t know how they would react to the felony charges she had pending.
    She shifted Travis to her hip to free up both hands so she could open the letter. When she had it open, she had to turnslightly to catch the light from the lamp on the house. The letter was simple and direct.
    “I’ve been reactivated. My orders are to report to Twentynine Palms in California by the end of next week.”
    Travis looked up at her with mournful eyes. “You’re going away, Momma?”
    It broke Bekah’s heart to have to tell him, but part of her was thinking about the battle pay and how that money would help straighten out everything at home. “Yeah, baby, I have to go away.”
    Travis held her tightly, and she carried him into the house.

8
    RAGEH DAUD CREPT through the jungle, surprised by how much at home he felt. All the years that he’d been away melted, and he became the creature that he had been back then almost as easily as drawing breath. He slid effortlessly through the trees and brush even in the darkness, despite the bruises and pains that still plagued him from the beating he’d received. The AK-47 he carried in his arms felt natural, and it was like he’d found a piece of himself that he had been missing these past ten years.
    When he was a child, Daud had lived in ruins outside Mogadishu with his father and the bad men his father had led. His father had never tried to hide his nature or the nature of the men from Daud. They were thieves and killers, men who took what they needed from those who had it.
    His father, before he had died from sickness, had been on the cutting edge of the pirates who now worked the Gulf ofAden and the Indian Ocean. Before his death, his father had even started capturing some of the ships out in the harbor. The work—and all of the men with his father considered the piracy to be work—had kept them alive. And the pay was important to the survival of their families.
    In fact, for a time Daud’s father had served with the local coast guard. That was where many of the pirates learned the skills they now used to take the cargo ships. When the jobs they needed went away, they turned to the business that had supported the country hundreds of years ago when their ancestors had plied the seas. Piracy was a very old trade in Somalia.
    So was raiding, and that was what Daud and his group were here to do tonight. Returning to the old ways, giving in to the violence that he knew so well, felt right and good. He