by Paul Lally
An equally powerful but opposite memory is the back injury he sustained a year later during a hostage extraction mission in Beirut that sent him into emergency surgery. While Navy doctors managed to repair his damaged body and he was able to remain on active duty (with restrictions), the Navy revised his SEAL status downward to “non-combatant.”
For years, it was a bittersweet memory. But with some memories, if we’re lucky, time fades the bad until all that’s left is the good. Today, JJ wears his gold “Budweiser” badge with deep pride above all his impressive “fruit salad” service ribbons on his dark blue uniform.
Like two planets in the same solar system but with different periods of rotation, these two men have stayed in touch over the years that have passed since they first served together. Some of those years they’d be on the phone every couple of months, then a couple years would pass and not a word. If you’re lucky you have a friend or two like this—far away but still in your heart. And if you do, odds are you’re polar opposites, and that’s the attraction.
Two more tugboats nuzzle up to the battleship’s hull, a towering wall of steel streaked with rust and faded paint. As they come up to speed, one of them twirls around like a ballerina, moves down along the port side, and resumes shoving, but doing so while moving sideways.
Tommy says, “How the heck does he do that?”
“Voith-schneider drive.”
“In English, please.”
JJ spends the next minute or so explaining with his hands how the multi-bladed, rotary propulsion system acts both as propeller and rudder to give “...stepless thrust variations, not to mention....”
Tommy’s eyes glaze over about halfway through the lecture.
JJ shifts gears. “What’s Jack been up to? Been a while since we talked about him.”
“Been a while since you and I talked, period.”
“So, clue me in on your rich and famous bear in the woods.”
“He’s busy shitting another gold brick, and as usual I’m getting out of the way.”
“What’s it this time?”
“What do you know about SCA. Sudden Cardiac Arrest?”
“Only that I hope it never happens to you or me.”
“Ditto. And if your heart stopped beating right now, you’d most likely be dead. Unless you had access to what Jack just licensed to Johnson & Johnson for a zillion dollars.”
Tommy explains the basic principles behind an external defibrillator that an ordinary person can use in an emergency situation—complete with audio prompts that walk you through the lifesaving steps. Lithium battery-powered and capacitor-driven, it can bring you back from the dead with one mighty THUMP.
JJ says, “That kid of yours never stops.”
“Never.”
“Any sign of a girlfriend?”
“They come and they go.”
“What’s Eileen think?”
“She wants grandchildren... as bad as we wanted the Rock.”
“And we got her.” JJ pats the stanchion. “I wish you luck in the grandchild department. And remind Jack he’s got my phone number.”
A long, low bleat from the lead tug as it takes up the slack on a twelve-inch polypropylene hawser threaded through the Rock’s bullnose. Two deckhands double-check the tension on the line, then radio to the tug to start the tow.
Because of its astonishing size, a naval battleship takes its time to do everything. But the lead tugboat’s 2000 horsepower engine exerts an irresistible bollard-pull that converts resisting force into reluctant motion. The shoreline begins sliding to the left as the Rock slowly noses out into a pre-dredged channel in the Delaware River.
An older man makes his way aft to where Tommy and JJ are standing. His gait’s a little stuttery but determined. As he arrives, he gives a casual salute.
“Gunner’s Mate Second Class Stanley Albertini requests permission to speak to Vice Admiral Lewis, SIR.”
“Permission granted you ornery old son-of-a-bitch.”
A grin splits his wrinkled, time-worn face. “I’ll be damned, JJ, we’re underway!”
“We are indeed,” the admiral says. “Thanks to folks like you.”
“Our foundation saved her from the breakers that’s for damn sure. But whew, she needs major help... ”
Stanley casts a critical eye on the battleship’s towering superstructure. No mistaking the fact that trapped at anchor for the past nineteen years has taken its toll. Rust streaks, shuttered portholes, missing equipment, and most notably, the condition of the forward main battery turrets. Once an impressive sight for all the world to see a mighty machine of war, now her ponderous 16-inch barrels droop as if too weary to rise to the occasion from their deathbed.
“Pardon my French, gentlemen,” Stanley says, “But she looks like shit.”
“Time and paint will change that,” JJ says.
“Plus tons of money,” Tommy adds.
The 84-year-old Stanley thumps his narrow chest. “And volunteers like me.”
“For that, let us give thanks,” Tommy says, “But who’s going to mind your store if you’re down at the ship all the time?”
“Portsmouth folks’ll understand. The Rock’s their ship as much as it’s ours.”
“I hope so.”
“I know so. They got us this far. And thanks to that kind gentleman over there....” He sweeps his hand out like a symphony conductor to indicate a figure standing at the port rail. “Thanks to Walt Phillips, the Rock’s got herself a home at last.”
The man in question, Walter Phillips, could be a doppelgänger for Count Dracula. Tall, gaunt, narrow face, sunken cheeks, deep set eyes...he’s enough to scare the pants off any kid who comes trick-or-treating.
But when Walt (everybody calls him that) smiles, it’s like a flashbulb going off; wrinkles disappear, eyes light up, and brilliant white teeth gleam in a smile so genuine that you think you’re in a dream come true. And you are to Walt. Some folks see the worst in the world. Walt is blinded by the best.
He’s third-generation owner of Phillips Metals, a recycling company spread out across New Hampshire and half of Massachusetts, including a prime stretch of frontage property along the Piscataqua River, just north of downtown Portsmouth.
Depending on the time of year, massive piles of rusting scrap metal rise up like Mt. Everest before being loaded onto ships bound for points east, from Athens to Istanbul. Other times of the year, especially in August, “salt ships” arrive from faraway Chile to offload equally high mountains of road salt next to the junk pile for NHDOT’s plow trucks to do battle with New Hampshire’s snowy winters.
Without Walt’s granting dockage rights for the Rock to tie up on his south pier, BuShips would have vetoed the museum proposal in a heartbeat. But Walt smiled as he did just that.
For the lofty sum of one whole dollar per annum (paid in cash to Phillips Metals, Inc.), the historic city of Portsmouth gains a museum battleship while the city of Brownsville’s acetylene torches do not.
As if sensing Stanley and the men are talking about him, Walt turns around and looks at them. For a split second it’s the opening scene for “Dracula’s Revenge.” Then that amazing smile of his lights up the gloomy overcast sky as he gives his version of a salute and the three men salute back.
Walt cups his hands and hollers, “Anchors aweigh!”
Leona Vicario Farm
Yucatan, Mexico
Same time
A s the Rock sails away to her new home in Portsmouth, over a thousand miles away, as the crow flies, in Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, Miguel Lopez-Vargas rides shotgun in a brand-new, snow-white Toyota pickup truck as it speeds along a dusty farm road.
The thirty-one-year-old stares out the window at endless rows of ripe watermelons laying in the fields. Dots of color bob up and down among them.
Hats.
Field workers wearing wide-brimmed hats to shade them from the hammering sun as they slash the tubby fruit from the vine and heft it into farm wagons trailing b
ehind.
“Another good harvest,” Vargas says—more to himself than the driver who stares straight ahead while he chews on the ends of his straggly moustache.
“How’s that moustache taste?” Vargas says.
A grunt.
“Did you know I picked as a boy? Tomatoes and strawberries, mostly.”
The driver shakes his head.
Vargas resumes his observation of the watermelon fields. As he does so, he rubs the flat black metal of the Heckler & Koch MP7 automatic rifle resting in his lap. He doubts he’ll need it, thanks to his “hit team” following in an unmarked van directly behind.
That said, if there’s anything he’s learned since deserting Mexico’s National Defense Army two years ago and forming his own paramilitary “enforcement” team for the local drug cartel, it’s that nothing is EVER as it seems.
“The circle is complete,’ Vargas says. Then repeats it in a louder voice, until the driver turns to him.
“What is complete?”
“Los Tigres killed my family in a field like this. Tomatoes, though, not watermelons.”
“Why?”
“They thought my father betrayed them.”
A short pause. “Did he?”
Vargas laughs. “He was a simple peasant. My mother was mestizo. They had the wrong field, and the wrong man. ”
“How did you find out?”
“I was there, compadre. Nine years old. My sister, Maria was seven.”
He turns, “How did you—”
“—I was taking a shit in the porta-potty when they opened fire. My father, my mother... Maria, too. Very thorough, Los Tigres.” He lifts his MP7 and pretends to fire it in a fanning motion. “Like that. My family was gone.”
The driver slows and brakes to a stop by a handwritten sign stuck on a wooden stake: Fila 52A. “We won’t make the same mistake, señor. That bastard Perez deserves to die.”
“You are correct, Demetrio. By the way, do you know the meaning of your name? I looked it up.”
His driver pulls his moustache and shrugs. Miguel flicks off his weapon’s safety. “It means ‘loves the earth.’ Do you, my good friend? Love this beautiful land we live in?”
“Better above, than six feet below.”
Vargas laughs as he hops out of the truck and signals to the waiting van. Six men pile out, including the driver, fully armed, dressed in black, wearing ski-masks. The very picture of deadly menace. As it should be. It’s not bullets that strike fear into the heart; all they do is kill. If you want to strike terror first, then it’s all in your tactical “look.”
When it comes to that, members of Vargas’s “security force” haven’t missed a magazine clip or a webbing strap. They project just the right amount of intimidation, no more, and no less. Something Vargas mastered by spending three years in the military. That experience taught him two things: one, how to kill, two, how much he hated following orders except his own.
He hefts his weapon. “Time to weed the garden, amigos. ¿Están listos los hombres?”
The men clack and clatter their weapons to the ready position. Nods and smiles, although you can’t see their expressions behind the face masks.
“He wears a red hat. Sombrero roso, ¿entendre?”
Nods.
“Only him. No others. I will give the signal. Osito, are you ready?”
“Si, Jefe.” The chubby, round-faced squad member nicknamed “Teddy Bear” gives a vigorous thumbs-up.
“Sharp?”
He unsheathes his machete in one fluid motion, brandishes it back and forth, then plants a fat kiss on its blade. “Come un navaja.” He mimics shaving with it.
The others chuckle. (Oh, that Osito!)
“Vamo.”
Vargas leads the seven-man execution squad down a well-trodden row littered with the tangle of vines and upturned earth left over from just-harvested watermelons.
By now, the farm workers have moved another fifty yards further down the field. Spread out over four long rows, thirty men, women, and children bob up and down, knives flashing, sending the fruit on the first step of a journey that will end with piled-high pyramids of green-striped, succulent watermelons in the produce departments in supermarkets all across America.
A familiar sight to Vargas. The bent-over pickers, the silence of repetitious labor, the sweat stinging your eyes and always, the unmerciful sun. Except for one big difference: this time, he’s not a skinny, diarrhea-streaming nine-year-old crouched in a porta-potty, shaking with fear as the bad guys change his world forever.
This time he’s the bad guy.
Like a distant early warning system lighting up a radar screen, the farm workers sense the approaching menace, and began moving crossways into unpicked rows to put distance between them and the marching men in black. The closer Vargas’s men get, the less the pickers can be seen as they crouch down and hide among the low-lying vines.
Only one worker refuses to move. The man wearing a sombrero roso, a red hat. He waits like a field mouse frozen in place by the unwinking stare of an approaching cobra.
Vargas’s voice is bright and brisk. “Buenas tardes, Señor Perez.”
Silence.
His team spreads out in a semi-circle, weapons at the ready, as if gathering for a cheery bonfire with Perez as the prize marshmallow.
“You don’t seem surprised to see us,” Vargas adds.
Perez shakes his head.
“What made you think you could hide among los campesinos?
“I thought—”
“—ah, yes, you thought. A very big mistake. Just like you ‘thought’ you could betray Señor Garcia’s sacred trust in you to broker his valuable shipment through gringo customs.”
“I only wanted—’
“—only wanted to take more than your share of your generous payment by diverting our product to the competition. Am I right in this assumption?”
Perez can’t find the words.
Vargas finds them for him. He glances over his shoulder and says, “I’m ready.”
Two of the guards shoulder their weapons and rummage through their packs. One pulls out a palm-sized HD video camera, the other a wireless microphone and rigs it on Vargas. Then he dons ear buds and snaps his fingers to test the audio feed.
Vargas says, “Kneel, Señor Perez, por favor. This won’t take long, I promise.”
“Please... let me...”
“KNEEL!”
A guard standing behind Perez grabs him by the shoulders and shoves him to the ground. Another man swiftly loops nylon rope around his upper arms and binds them tightly to his chest.
A deep sob escapes Perez’s lips. Nobody pays attention. What’s about to happen is as familiar to these paramilitaries as picking watermelons are to the peasants—who, by the way, stay gathered at a distance, huddled together like a herd of gazelles frozen in place waiting to see which way the lions will pounce before they bolt in the opposite direction.
Vargas can almost smell their fear. He turns, smiles broadly, and waves. “Mis amigos, les deseo un buen día.”
His friendly words don’t budge the herd. There is strength in numbers. Miguel shrugs and turns back to the job at hand.
Osito knows the part he’s about to play and has already worked his way around to the back of the kneeling Señor Perez. He slides the machete from its scabbard.
The camera operator says. “Camera’s ready, el Jefe,”
Vargas stands behind the cowering Perez and addresses the camera. “I am Miguel Lopez-Vargas. I speak to you on behalf of Señor Hector Ruiz regarding this man.”
He grabs Perez by his long, lanky hair and YANKS his head up to face the camera. A sob escapes his trembling lips. His desperate eyes those of prey about to be devoured.
“We warned you not to interfere with our consignment. But you chose to ignore us.” Vargas looks around at the open fields. Then back to the camera. “There is room for everyone in this beautiful land of ours. We can all do business. But we must honor
each other’s space. Señor Perez did not listen. You did not listen. Perhaps from now on you will because this is who we are.”
He bends Perez’s head forward until the back of his neck is exposed. As he does so, the man starts screaming. But only for one tortured second.
With practiced ease, Teddy Bear swings his machete between the C6 and C7 neck vertebrae, severing muscles, nerves, and arteries with one clean blow.
With a gentle shove of his combat boot, the executioner topples Perez’s body sideways, arterial blood still pumping at the neck stump from a heart that doesn’t know it’s dead yet.
Vargas holds the severed head in his right hand and brandishes it to the camera like a gaffed fish.
“Dinner is served!”
He carries it over to the watermelon-loaded wagon and tosses it on top of the bright green fruit.
Museum Ship USS New Hampshire (BB-70)
Portsmouth, New Hampshire
Present Day
T ommy Riley comes BOOMING into Stanley Albertini’s tiny Italian delicatessen and sucks all the oxygen out of the place as he shouts, “Son-of-a-bitch, we’re locked OUT!”
His friend’s working in a tiny kitchenette in the back, cooking up pasta fagiole for the lunch crowd. He doesn’t see Tommy as much as feels his voice blasting through the small pass-through.
Stanley keeps stirring the soup and shouts, “Locked out of what, lieutenant?”
“And I damn well am going to find out WHY.”
Thomas Aloysius Riley, Esquire. doesn’t stand on ceremony when it comes to injustice. The 72-year-old, ex-tackle from the University of Maryland “Terrapins” Big Ten Conference 1965 Championship Team barges his way into the back kitchen the same way he approached “the bench” to pro-bono defend indigenous, hopeless, screwed-up, down-and-out clients that couldn’t afford an attorney. Not only that, after he got his share of les Misérables off the hook, he made a point of helping them get back on their feet and on their way to a decent life.
