THE CALL:
A short story introducing Col. James Innarerty Bacque Ph.d

By DW Anderson

Dr. Thomas Delacroix walked out of the tunnel as the head referee of the Super Bowl and felt the sound hit him like weather.

Seattle. New England. Ninety thousand people on their feet and millions more leaning forward at home. The cameras found him instantly. They always did. Authority mattered, and tonight his voice would become law.

Doc adjusted his cap and stepped onto the field, posture calm, face unreadable. He had trained his body for this moment over decades. Law school at night. Officiating on weekends. Twenty five years of judgment delivered without emotion.

Inside, his mind was somewhere else.

Pop Pop.

Two days earlier, he had been standing barefoot in his kitchen in the dark, holding a phone and calling the first and only person he trusted.

Colonel James Interrarity Bacque.

Bacque had answered immediately.

They had grown up together in New Orleans, Catholic school boys, neutral ground football, crawfish boils where everyone watched everyone else’s children. Now Bacque was a colonel in the United States Army, an agent of the Treasury, and a man with a doctorate in economics who understood money the way surgeons understood arteries.

“They have Elena,” Doc had said.

Elena was his granddaughter. Twenty three years old. Brilliant. Idealistic. Interning in rural Colombia studying agricultural microfinance, convinced honest money could heal broken systems. Four days of silence. Then a video.

Concrete walls.
A swinging bulb.
Elena on the floor, wrists bound, trying not to cry.

The men in the video did not shout. They explained. They were not a street cartel. They were a gaming syndicate. Offshore platforms. Layered wagers. Billions riding on outcomes disguised as probability.

They wanted a call.

Not a fix anyone could prove. A judgment call. A moment hidden inside interpretation. They told Doc which team to favor and when the moment would come.

“If I refuse,” Doc had said, “they kill her.”

“Yes,” Bacque had replied.

“If I make the call they want,” Doc said, “I betray the game.”

Bacque voice had stayed level.

“Doc, you make the call. I will get her back alive.”

Now, under the lights in Arizona, the game moved toward that moment.

The fourth quarter tightened. The score narrowed. The stadium inhaled as one. Doc saw the play unfold in front of him. A receiver crossing. A defender closing. Hands on fabric. A violation small enough to debate forever.

This was it.

Doc’s hand slid toward his pocket, fingers brushing the yellow flag. He knew which team they wanted protected. He knew what they expected him to do.

Time slowed.

In Colombia, a door exploded inward. Light flooded a concrete room. Bacque moved through it with precision, ending the threat before it could speak again. A soldier cut Elena restraints. She collapsed forward, free.

On the field, Doc arm moved.

The flag left his hand.

Before it touched the ground, his ear filled with a voice he recognized instantly.

“All clear,” Bacque said.

The words hit him like air after drowning.

The flag landed. The whistle blew. The call went against the team he had been instructed to favor.

Half the stadium erupted in rage. Half in joy. Cameras closed in on Doc face, hunting for doubt, guilt, explanation.

They found none.

His voice was steady as he announced the call. Calm. Professional. Final.

Later, beneath the stadium, his phone vibrated once.

She is safe.

Doc leaned against the concrete wall and let the noise fade above him. The Super Bowl would be argued for decades.

But a young woman was alive.

And somewhere between a flag still settling in grass and a door broken open half a world away, a promise had been kept.