“I want you to choose,” he told her.
She laughed.
“You know I’ll choose water.” Gina loved the ocean; he’d often joked that she was part fish, some kind of mermaid. “You really don’t care?” she asked after a moment or two. She’d found a pair of hair sticks and gripped them in her mouth as she started twisting her hair to keep it out of her face. It was a shame. Garrison liked watching her hair blowing in the wind.
“Are you going to be there?” he asked, grinning.
She took the sticks from her mouth and slid them into her hair.
“Obviously.”
“All I need to hear.” He’d all but expected to get side-eyed for something so corny. Instead her hand found his on the bench seat. He knew she’d missed him, worried over him because she’d been to more than one military funeral. He had no idea how he had ended up with her. What he had done to deserve her. Why she had chosen to speak to the broken-down marine she had seen in the bookshop’s cafe. She just hadn’t seemed the sort of person who would be interested in someone like him. He banished those thoughts from his mind as he turned his eyes back to the open road. Right now, he decided, this was as good as it got.
* * *
Garrison hadn’t even caught the name of the place. Some hideaway that looked as though it had been untouched since the eighteenth century. It was rustic, peaceful and not infested with tourists and the commercialization that accompanied them. Somehow Gina always seemed to find these kinds of places. He wondered how many towns like this were left in California. He ate orange slices from a local orchard as they walked through a bustling pier market. Stalls of fresh produce and freshly caught fruit on one side of them, the harbor and its fleet of fishing boats on the other. The vibrancy and colors of the market were in contrast to the dark sentinel mountains that surrounded the tiny coastal town on three sides. The orange slices tasted incredible, as though they’d been handed down to mortal man by the gods themselves. On the other hand, he’d been eating MREs for the last two weeks so a chilli dog would have tasted like ambrosia.
They had both showered and changed at the boutique hotel Gina had booked them into. Now in civvies, Garrison’s transformation from warrior back to husband was complete. Gina was wearing white again, this time a longer but nearly diaphanous summer dress.
As Gina was buying more fruit, tossing it into her bag, Garrison watched a couple of the local kids squirting each other with water guns. He couldn’t help but smile. He would like children of his own but neither of them had any illusions about just how dangerous his work was.
He took a bit of the orange slice, tucking the peel behind his lips in his best Don Corleone impression, hands up, curling his fingers into claws, play-acting the monster. He could hear Gina laughing as the grinning kids soaked him with the water guns. He mimed getting shot and then winced as pain lanced up his side from his most recent wound.
“Careful kids, he’s damaged goods,” Gina warned the children. It was good-natured but he heard something in her voice.
“I’m fine,” Garrison told her. “A couple of weeks with you and I’ll be good as new.”
He smiled at her but the aggravated, still-healing wound was throbbing. It seemed the older he got, the longer it took for each new hurt to heal.
“Come on, we need to get you to bed.” He could hear the concern in her voice.
“I was just thinking the same thing,” he told her, grinning.
She looked at him, trying to remain serious for a moment but failing in the face of his good humor, and her face cracked into a smile despite herself.
Times like this it all just felt too good to be true.
* * *
Sweat beaded Garrison’s skin in the gray light as he lay with Gina among the rumpled sheets. He was on the edge of sleep, having recovered his breath, the post-coital glow fading to warm contentment. In the soft flickering candlelight, he couldn’t think of a single place he’d rather be than lying by his wife’s side in the hotel room.
He felt Gina’s fingers running across his torso, tracing the map of his service to his country written in scar tissue on his flesh. He felt her eyes on the clean dressing on his shoulder, his side, felt her tense slightly.
“Do you think someday, just once, you could come back in the same shape you left?” she asked.
It didn’t quite spoil the moment. Garrison focused on the positive; this was just the concern of the woman he loved. It was understandable. He just didn’t have a good answer.
“You don’t like scars?” he asked, trying to make light of it, though he didn’t look at her.
“I don’t mind the scars. I just don’t like the stories they tell.”
It appeared they weren’t going to be making light of it. He looked at Gina, her eyes dark pools in the dim light. She was beautiful regardless of their recent exertions, perhaps more so because of them.
“I always come home.” He willed her to see the promise of his words in his eyes. The window was open a crack, he could hear the gentle lapping of the water against the harbor walls. A cool sea breeze stirred the gauzy curtain that hung over the bed.
“I’m just saying... at some point...” she started. Garrison could see where this was going, hear just how carefully she was trying to frame it. “Your body can’t do this forever.”
She was right. He knew she was right. An operator had a shelf life, physiologically and mentally. Everything had a breaking point. Despite his love of the life even Garrison had begun to feel the operational tempo was too much, and if it continued at this level it would eventually take its toll in body bags with flags draped across them. It was almost as if there was some unifying force behind the bad guys they’d been taking down, some kind of grand plan that they were racing to keep up with. The Mombasa operation had been sloppy. There hadn’t been enough time to plan properly, too reactive, not enough intel. It was nobody’s fault, just the cards they’d been dealt, but as a result he’d gotten shot, again.
He knew it preyed on Gina’s mind, it always had. It was exacerbated because he couldn’t talk to her about it. Gina had had no illusions about what she was getting into when they’d married, so it must have really been getting to his wife for her to bring it up now. It was just that right here, right now, it was pretty much the last thing Garrison wanted to talk about.
“What do you know about what my body can do? And for how long?” he asked propping himself up on an elbow, grinning, the wooden frame of the antique bed creaking under him.
Gina laughed despite herself. She would know that they would have the hard conversation eventually. He didn’t run from things like that and he didn’t think it was going to be that hard because he agreed with her. It was just a matter of exit strategy; what a guy like him would do outside of the Raiders Regiment, let alone the Corps, so that he didn’t go crazy in the civilian world. But that was a conversation for later.
“Maybe I just need a little... re-education.”
Wrapping his muscular arms around her, he pulled her back down into the bed.
CHAPTER 3
The morning sun crept into the hotel room. Garrison woke with a start. He’d been somewhere else in his dream, somewhere much worse. He rolled over. Gina was gone. A moment of irrational panic, of displaced operational paranoia, and he was sitting up, scanning the room, until he found the note under the ashtray on the bedside table. Scrawled on the back of a receipt were the words: Went to get us breakfast, back soon.
He sat on the bed, feeling both relieved and foolish. This wasn’t Iraq, Afghanistan, or any of the other troubled places he’d plied his trade. He was still on edge. It was still part of the operational comedown bleeding through from that other Ray Garrison supposedly secure in his box until he was needed. It took him back to their almost conversation of the previous night. Garrison knew he only had so many more operations in him.
* * *
Shaving, Garrison decided, was one of the pillars of civilized existence. After a shower, a
fter a comfortable bed, being able to take your time with a good razor was the best sign that you were back in the world. Garrison was amusing himself with his musings on personal grooming when he heard the noise from the other room. Just a click. So quiet he wasn’t sure he’d even heard it.
“Gina...?” he called but there was something furtive about the noise, something not Gina about it, even if she had been trying to be quiet, trying not to wake him.
His eyes flicked to the left and he reached for the shaving mirror, angling it so he could look through the steam to the open bathroom door and out into the hotel room.
Movement. A volley of suppressed weapon fire but it sounded wrong. Not bullets. Tranquilizer darts smashed the mirror, fragmenting Garrison’s reflection, but he’d already moved. The first gunman peered into the steamy room, weapon at the ready, but the reflection in the mirror had confused him and Garrison just wasn’t where the gunman had expected him to be. It was the other Ray Garrison who came out of the steam and grabbed the gunman and pulled him into the bathroom. It was the Ray Garrison who was supposed to stay in his box when he was home.
Garrison squeezed the throat of the first gunman in a death grip. When the second gunman rushed into the bathroom Garrison threw himself back, dragging the first gunman with him, and slamming into the second. Battering him into the tiled wall of the bathroom, pinning him there. Garrison relished the fear in the first gunman’s eyes, the realization that he’d walked into the wrong room, a room with a feral animal in it, even as the life was being squeezed out of him. Garrison’s own face was a mask of pitiless fury at this violation. Both of the gunmen were firing wild, tranq darts going everywhere but into Garrison’s flesh. He threw an elbow back and heard a grunt of pain. Pushed the first gunman back by his throat, hopefully hard enough to damage his windpipe, and then he was grabbing the darts and stabbing them into his two attackers before they could recover. He did this until the first gunman fell over. The second he flung to the floor, smashing the toilet on the way down.
He wanted to kill them, needed to kill them as a tactical requirement, he didn’t want to leave them behind him. Looking down on them he knew so many ways to do so. One thought battered its way through the focused, disciplined rage, however: Gina!
He started running.
* * *
Ray Garrison Two sprinted through the corridor leading to the hotel’s reception area. He slammed into a tall bearded man, knocking him to the floor. A quick assessment of the man on the floor classified him as unthreatening and he spent another precious few moments checking his surroundings. No Gina. Thinking of his wife as a tactical priority did nothing to lessen Garrison’s desperation, his need to find her.
His steps faltered. His legs felt strange. The ocean beyond the hotel’s glass doors went blurry. His legs felt like rubber now but he knew he had to keep going, had to find Gina. Then they went from under him and he was on his knees.
“Mate, you alright?” An accent, Brit—no, Australian.
Garrison slumped backward and found himself staring at the ceiling, unable to move. He was filled with panic and impotent rage as he just couldn’t force his body to do what he needed it to, what it should be able to do. Someone was leaning over him. It was the tall man he’d knocked over whose garish shirt and hat just screamed tourist. He was twirling something between his fingers. Garrison’s thoughts weren’t working as fast as they should and it took a moment for him to work out what the item was. An auto injector. His realization of the object’s purpose was accompanied by a cold thrill of panic, and then the world went away.
CHAPTER 4
Music. Something old. Seventies or maybe eighties, not quite his taste but he definitely knew the track. He wracked his brain trying to remember the song.
“Psycho Killer,” by Talking Heads. He was absurdly pleased that he’d recognized the track before the singing had started. “Qu’est-ce,” but something was very wrong. “Que c’est.” He couldn’t move his hands. “Fa-fa-fa.” There was something on his face, material of some kind, a hood. “Fa-fa-fa.” The air smelled of blood, of meat, and wherever he was it was very cold. “Fa-fa-fa better...” The fight in the bathroom. The Australian tourist. He’d been drugged!
Gina!
The hood was torn off and Garrison was blinded by a bright white light.
“There he is. Wakey wakey.”
The Australian! Garrison recognized the voice. He was pretty sure he was going to need a very compelling reason not to kill this guy. Other than being tied to a chair?
He blinked away the spots of bright light in his vision, pulling focus. It looked and more than a little bit smelled like they were in some kind of slaughterhouse. Details were difficult, however, as someone had a painfully bright light shining straight in his face.
Garrison tested his restraints, not surprised to find that they were secure. The bright light was clever. It meant he couldn’t see his surroundings clearly, but the longer he sat there, the more he could make out as his eyes adjusted. Through the glare he could just about see the joints of beef hanging all around them. So far he had only seen one guy, the Australian. That was good news. He was sure that given enough time he could also get out of his restraints. If he could break free he was pretty sure he could snap the Australian in two, and then he’d have a gun. As he tried to work through possible ways out of this situation his thoughts kept on drifting to Gina. Ray Garrison One was interfering with Ray Garrison Two’s business and he needed to focus on what was important. Living. Only if he were alive would he be able to make sure that Gina was okay.
“Who—” he started and the Australian was in his face, all but a shadow with the light behind him, dancing, mouthing the “fa-fa-fa” words of the song. He looked ridiculous as he danced around in the long puffer-coat he wore over T-shirt and shorts, and he was rocking the socks and sandals look. There was nothing ridiculous about the .45 he had stuffed through his belt, however.
“Never gets old. Now. You were saying?”
Garrison was left with the very strong impression that this guy loved both his work and Talking Heads. Garrison had never had a strong feeling about New Wave music before, but he was really starting to dislike this particular track.
“Who are you?”
“I’m the guy who ruined your vacation,” the Aussie told him, smiling. Yeah, he was definitely enjoying himself. He also wasn’t wrong. “Name’s Martin Axe.”
Garrison tensed. That wasn’t good. He shouldn’t have shared a name, even a pseudonym. There was no need. Unless...
“That’s one for you. Now, one for me. Who tipped you off to the hostage in Mombasa?”
Shit! Garrison went cold. This wasn’t random. It was targeted. Axe was, or worked for, a major player. It was connected to whatever the Russians had been up to in Mombasa. He just prayed that Gina was clear of it as he lolled his head back against the chair he was tied to. He knew that pain was on its way. He had done counter-interrogation training. It was just about every marine’s nightmare, particularly special operators. He had never expected to have to use what he had learned in California, however. He knew everyone broke in the end. It was a matter of self-preservation. Barring somehow managing to get free he would hold out as long as possible, then tell them whatever faintly plausible-sounding bullshit he could concoct, then they would kill him and he would never see Gina again.
Stop thinking about your wife, Ray Garrison Two told him, let me out of the box. Except it wasn’t that easy, because this time Gina was somewhere within the theatre of operations.
“Right. I suspected you might clam up. Which is why I brought some additional motivation...” Axe told him, and then turned and nodded.
Garrison twisted his head. He knew what was going to happen before they wheeled her in. It hadn’t stopped him from praying that it wasn’t so. Any resolve to hold out dissolved as two of Axe’s flunkies dragged in a chair with a bound and gagged Gina in it. The terror, the desperation in her eyes felt like a knife through G
arrison’s chest.
“Wait. Listen, I don’t know,” Garrison was pleading now. “That’s not my job. I go where they point me.”
Axe looked unconvinced. There was a horrible inevitability in the way this whole thing was playing out. Garrison twisted his head to look at Gina; he wanted to tell her that it would all be okay but knew the truth would be written all over his face and his wife could read him like a book. The panic he felt overwhelmed even the red-hot spike of hatred he felt toward Axe, toward someone who would dare to hurt his wife. He had never felt this helpless before.
“Once more then: Who tipped you off?” Axe asked. He sounded almost disappointed with Garrison’s truculence as he pulled Gina’s gag away from her mouth. She opened her mouth to say something but suddenly she was focused on the pneumatic bolt pistol, the kind that was used to slaughter cattle, that Axe was holding. She was too frightened to speak.
Axe turned to Garrison and squeezed the trigger of the bolt pistol. A six-inch stainless steel bolt shot out of it. When he pushed the gun against Gina’s temple, Garrison understood what true desperation really was.
“Can she handle all six inches?” Axe asked, looking down at her, clearly excited at the prospect. Garrison pulled at his restraints, the zip-ties tearing into his skin, drawing blood. He needed Axe to take his hungry psychotic eyes off his wife, to focus on him instead.
“Look at me... Look at me!” His voice thick with emotion. Axe turned to look at him. “If I knew, I’d tell you. Ask me anything else, anything. But this I can’t tell you. Because I don’t know!” Looking straight into Axe’s eyes, trying to find something human there, trying to convey the truth of his words, somehow.
“I believe you,” Axe finally told him, lowering the bolt pistol.
Garrison couldn’t recall ever feeling more relieved in his life. Tears were streaming down Gina’s face.
“Ray... Ray...” she was trying to tell him something through the tears, the terror.
“It’s gonna be okay, baby... I promise,” he told her, praying it wasn’t a lie.
Bloodshot--The Official Movie Novelization Page 2
