by Eddie Jones
“What about me?” she called.
“It’s a big ocean. Jump in.”
She bent down and tossed him a rope. “As long as you’re already in the water, why don’t you swim to that shoal and walk us in?”
He waded onto the shoal and began pulling the boat towards him.
Anna stood braced against the back stay, her hand on the tiller to keep the boat from bumping bottom and running aground.
Sonny sloshed through the shallows, angling toward a narrow cut through the bar.
“Better watch for stingrays,” she called.
Sonny slowed, staring at the cloud of sand swirling around his feet.
“And sea urchins.”
Head down, he slogged forward.
“And it’s really not a good idea to be in the water when there’s lightning,” she added, as a low growl reached his ears. “If you want me to stop talking, just say so.”
No, he did not want her to stop talking. Not ever. The sound of her was like the lyrics of a familiar song flooding his mind with a rush of fond memories. The years had added fullness to her face, richness to her cheeks. There was the slightest hint of gray in the curls around her ears. But her voice and cadence still had the same pitch and familiarity that had allowed him to listen for hours as they’d talked on the phone. No, he didn’t want her to stop, not for a very long time.
He reached the end of the shoal and pointed to a mouse-hole break in the forest of palms. “Will the mast clear those trees?”
“Does it matter? We can’t stay out here.”
The rumble of thunder became more constant. Like a veil being slowly pulled across the sky, pregnant clouds muddied the sun.
He swam back to the boat and together they paddled up the cut, all the while watching as rain crept closer. Once inside the archway of trees the hollow sound of the oars striking the water ricocheted off the shoreline, echoing back toward them. Palm fronds scraped against the side stays, causing the mast to shudder as it recoiled. With the end of his paddle, Sonny pushed the limbs, scudding them into a blue lagoon. Jungle birds ka-kawed, tree frogs belched. As Sonny thrust his paddle into the water a final time, the keel ground against sand.
“This place is eerie,” said Anna.
“I think it’s romantic.”
“You would.”
Sonny tossed the oar onto the cockpit floor, hopped onto the roof of the cabin, and reclined as he stared upwards at the mast.
“Don’t get too comfy,” said Anna. “We still have to find Boggs and the ship.”
“That’s your job. I’m on vacation. Have you tried to reach them on the radio?”
“No answer. But I’m pretty sure they’re here. When we were diving I heard what sounded like a ship motoring through the area. I say we head to the other side of the island and check. The chart shows a small harbor on the west end.”
“Can’t we just relax for a few moments?” Crossing his arms across his chest, he exhaled deeply, allowing his muscles to loosen. The brightness of the sun faded behind his closed eyelids. He smelled rain.
“So, tell me about your wife. What’s she like?”
“Let’s not talk about her.”
“You want to rest. That’s fine, but I pick the topic.”
“She had olive skin, oval eyes, and a petite figure,” he said flatly, “just as advertised.”
“I know you didn’t find your wife on a dating website. They didn’t even have the Internet back then.”
“How can you be sure? Did you check on that, too?”
“Come on, I’m curious. How’d you two meet?”
He slid off the roof and dropped onto the cockpit seat, using her thigh as a pillow. For just the briefest of moments, he studied her face, searching her eyes. “I was at a sushi bar in Sulsan Ri. That’s a small village near the Kunsan air base. My tour was winding down, but I didn’t have any real commitments. No job lined up, no place to go back to, really. I was thinking after I got out I might buy a trailer at the beach and sell shrimp out of the back of a pick-up.
“She was looking for an American soldier who would take her away from the rice paddies of South Korea. I was looking for someone who’d wash my laundry and keep house. Love was low on the list for both of us. Base Chaplain married us the week before I was to ship home.”
“And the kids? Boys or girls?”
“I thought you read my file?”
“Only long enough to get your address.”
“Two boys.”
“Why didn’t you bring them on the trip? Or would that have been too awkward? You hooking up with your old girlfriend while their mom was back home washing your socks.”
“Long story.”
“We have a long walk.”
The thunder grew more constant. The rattling of palm fronds in the tree tops announced the rain. He heard the sporadic smacking of drops striking the water on the sailboat’s deck and in the lagoon.
“What’s it like to be a dad? I always thought you’d be great with kids, seeing as how you are one.”
“Honestly? It’s terrifying. You always wonder if you did it right, set a good example. Plus, with boys, I never knew when they were about to kill themselves or someone else. Boys are harder to raise when they’re young, I think. They’re always into climbing and breaking and blowing up things. At least mine were.”
“Were?”
He wedged open an eye. “You really didn’t read my file, did you?”
“I told you. I only skimmed it for the address. I saw that you were married and I lost interest.”
The boat shifted as the breeze nudged against it, and he smelled the faint scent of sunscreen on her skin. He fought to keep his voice from cracking. “My wife and boys are dead.”
She inhaled sharply. “When? How?”
“Last spring. Memorial Day weekend. She was in the right-hand lane of a divided highway. We were coming back from the beach. I was following in the pickup, pulling the motorboat. Our minivan couldn’t haul all our toys and the boys, so we’d driven two vehicles. The boat had been her birthday present to me. Normally I didn’t let her drive alone on long trips, but she said she’d be fine. We’d worked it out so that I’d call her cell every few minutes to make sure she was OK.
“We’d just passed the rest area. She was a few cars ahead. I was boxed in behind an RV pulling a compact car and a semi crowding my bumper. When the RV braked I whipped around him. She was off the road, the left tires of the minivan on the rumble strips, right side already in the grass. The van veered down the embankment and bottomed out when it hit the ditch, flipping and spewing luggage and engine fluids and skim boards into the air. Kept rolling up the other side, clawing huge chunks of dirt as it tumbled into the woods. A big pine stopped them. Split the van in half. They told me later I was the first one to reach them, but I don’t remember anything except the way her face was pressed against the shards of the driver’s window.”
“Sonny, I’m so sorry.”
“Police report said she had a seizure. Probably because her sugar level dropped. She’d skipped breakfast that morning. We’d been hurrying to make check-out. She’d insisted on cleaning the cottage, of course, even though the realty company handles that.
“Doctor said she never knew what happened; that she probably lost consciousness before the van left the road. But my boys knew. The oldest, Benjamin Grey, died on the way to the hospital. Caleb lived on tubes and machines for almost a week.” He forced a smile. “But, at least I didn’t lose the boat, so there’s that.”
“Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”
“Would it have mattered?”
“Maybe…I’m…not sure.”
“What’s funny, if you can call getting cancer funny, is that I might’ve never even known I had a tumor in my thigh if I hadn’t been in the garden section picking out plants for their graves.”
“Is that why you didn’t come to the reunion? Because of what happened to your family?”
“What reunion
?”
“The one you missed.”
“Never heard about it.”
“We sent out mailings, made phone calls. Had our own website. Posted it on all the social media sites.”
“I live in a campground. There’s no Internet out there. I’m guessing some mail didn’t get forwarded to my P.O. box.”
“A campground?”
“A long story that involves a sub-prime loan, emergency room bills from the accident, and a boat that cost more than my truck.”
She swept the bangs from his face in a thoughtful way. “You did love her, right? It’s not like you’ve spent your whole life missing me.”
He sighed deeply. “What do you want to hear? That she made my heart skip when she walked in the room? That I lay awake at night thinking about her? That I remember the exact perfume she wore when we met? We were married; that doesn’t mean we were in love. We had two wonderful boys and some fun times. But I could never give her what she deserved, or wanted. You stole my heart, Anna. She got the rest.”
“Sonny, I…don’t know what to say.”
“What’s to say? Life happens. Now, if it’s OK with you, I think I’ll take that hike across the island—alone.”
30
Anna sat on the long bench cushion in the main salon feeling a sense of relief. He was gone. Good. If he wanted to trek across the island alone in a torrential downpour, she wasn’t going to stop him. But he’d been wrong about her. She did care—had cared all these years. A part of her had wanted to pull him close, to rest her face against his chest and hear the strong beating of his heart and feel the touch of his hands.
When he’d caressed her neck and his fingers slid down her arms, she’d felt the old stirrings, the flush of heat in her cheeks. And she’d hated herself for knowing he could still move her in that way.
Through a port window, she saw him wade ashore, pause at the tree line and disappear. She stood and stepped into the forward cabin. His scent lingered in the small space above the sheets of the vee berth. A wrinkled tee shirt lay on the floor at her feet next to his duffle bag.
She’d made the right decision. She could love him, and would for the rest of her life. But they could never be what they once were. The risk was too great.
Fat drops of rain hit the deck above her head. She dogged the hatch tight and hurried to drop the boards in place, sealing herself inside.
There was a compactness to the sailboat that made her feel safe. A sense of comfort and security. Seconds later, rain drummed the deck.
She reached into her purse and pulled out her sat phone, powered it up. No calls. No response at all from her boss about the messages she’d left. Punching in the number she tried her boss again, got his mail box, and hung up without leaving a message.
For several seconds she stared at Boggs’s cell wondering if she should use it to call for help. But he would know. Know too, she’d lied to him. The guilt began to gnaw at her. The whole lifestyle of deception was one reason she’d shunned other promotions within the department. As a data analyst, she only cared about the facts. Not once had she been asked to shade the truth or lie. Until now. And look what it had gotten her.
She exchanged her sat phone for the yellow legal pad, and building a nest on the couch, she began to write.
Dear Sonny. You wanted a reason, an explanation of why it won’t work between us. Here’s one.
I love you too much.
Always have. But love isn’t enough, not for someone like me who’s flown too close to the flames and been burned too often. I need security, someone who can protect me.
She struggled with the exact wording, the tip of her pen hovering over the pad. She prayed for the right words. Outside, the rain raked across the boat, trickling under the lip of the hatch and down the back of the boards. She still felt safe in her cocoon. Empty, but safe.
I wonder how long he’ll walk before he gives up and comes back.
Probably on his way back now. Tapping the top of the legal pad, she hurried to finish.
When she was done, she ripped the pages from the journal and tucked them inside his duffle bag. She found a towel to mop up the water on the companionway steps.
And then she heard the buzzing of an outboard motor. She peeked out and saw a tender from the cruise ship swing into the lagoon.
****
Tommy’s mind wrenched itself back to the ideas bouncing around the room. He’d been contemplating how to break the news to Anna that she would very likely have a new boss come Monday morning—one who might not be as understanding about her lapses in agency protocol and poor field performance.
“If that cruise ship is docked at…what’d you say the name of that island was? Cay Say What?”
“Cay Sal Amanda, Mr. President.”
“Yeah, that one. If it’s there, I say we storm the ship right now and grab Boggs before he can work a deal with the Cubans.”
“Not that easy, sir,” quipped the Chairman. “The Wicked Witch might be rigged with explosives.”
“So this could be Ruby Ridge all over again?”
“Possibly. Right now our first priority is to recover the asset.”
“By asset, you mean Boggs?”
“Cell phone, Mr. President. Assuming it’s still on his person. Martinez may already have it.”
Now Tommy wished he’d returned one of Anna’s calls. At least then he’d know if she’d been successful in placing the phone back in Boggs’s coat.
But the President had been clear. “No contact of any sort with your gal. The less you’re involved, the easier it’ll be to deny responsibility for anything that happens.”
“Any idea how much time we have?” asked the President.
“It’s a question of intelligence,” said the National Security Advisor. “And right now we don’t have any.”
The President punched a remote. On the teleconference monitor at the other end of the room, the CIA Director’s picture appeared on the screen.
“Chuck, how’s that house cleaning party going over there?”
“Almost done, sir. Just a few more boxes to pack up and files to copy. You know—for my hearings.”
“That’s my boy. Looking out for number one. Listen, as long as you’re still feeding at the trough of the taxpayers, you want to weigh in on this discussion?”
“Well, sir, if the cruise ship is docked at Cay Sal Amanda, she’s in Cuban waters and out of our jurisdiction. There was a dispute over the boundaries some years back and the UN ruled that scab of land was Cuba’s. So any attack on our part would be seen as an act of war. I recommend we stay put. Keep an eye on the missile silos and wait to see what that hurricane does. Reports say it’s rapidly intensifying. Could be we’ll catch a break and the Wicked Witch will sink on its own.”
“Hey, now there’s a happy thought.”
“You asked for my opinion.”
“So let me get this straight. You’re saying our strategy for preventing a nuclear attack on our native soil, and possibly years of living under Cuban, Chinese, and Russian rule is to pray that a hurricane sinks a cruise ship. Is that right?”
“It was just a thought. Can I go back to packing?”
“Please.” The President turned to the Secretary of State. “Andy, what are the international implications of hitting that ship in Cuban waters?”
“The French aren’t going to like it.”
“Anybody else going to be upset if we churn the Cuban waters?”
In the middle of the room, a speakerphone crackled. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs held up his hand, motioning for silence and whispered, “Might be Bravo team.”
A voice came over the phone. “Foxtrot tango whiskey, foxtrot tango whiskey. This is Tweedy Bird. Do you read me? Over.”
“Tweedy Bird this is Disco Duck, go ahead.”
“Sir, this is Lance Corporal Kelly with Strike Team Bravo.”
“What’s your status, son?”
“We’re in position, sir, and awaiting your ord
ers.”
“Any resistance?”
“None, sir. We’re on Cay Sal Amanda and have the ship in sight. Repeat, target is in sight.”
“Ask him about our agent,” said Tommy.
“Soldier, have you had any contact with our agent in the field?”
“That’s a negative. No sign of her. Just some jughead wandering around in the woods. Looks like he’s lost. Keeps bumping into trees. Of course, the wind has really picked up, and it’s raining like you wouldn’t believe.”
The Chairman of the Chiefs frowned. “Clarify your last transmission. Did you say that Special Agent Fortune remains missing?”
“That’s an affirmative.”
The room went quiet. All eyes turned towards Tommy, who was now picking a piece of Canadian bacon from his tie.
“Someone want to tell me why that’s a big deal?” asked the President.
“She’s a good friend of the senator,” offered the Secretary of Commerce. “They have this father-daughter thing going.”
“Which senator are we talking about? There’s only like a hundred of ‘em.”
“The Senator,” the CIA Director interrupted. He rested an elbow on a box and frowned into the camera. “The one who chairs the Armed Services Committee?”
“And the Foreign Relations Committee,” added the Secretary of State.
“He also sits on the Judiciary Committee, Veterans’ Affairs, Finance, Appropriations and Homeland Security,” said the Chairman of the Chiefs. “Mr. President, if something happens to Agent Fortune, I’m afraid you and I and everyone else in that room is going to be looking for a new country to run.”
“Oh that Senator,” said the President.
Tommy slumped in his chair, feeling suddenly ill.
“But she’s trained for this sort of work, right?”
Long pause.
“Not exactly, sir.” said the CIA Director. “This was a rogue mission launched without my consent.”
“You have to trust your subordinates, Chuck. I do. Then again, that’s why we’re in this mess.”
Tommy straightened in his chair and assumed a tone of authority. “I take full responsibility, Mr. President. I sent her down there based on a tip from a toilet tissue salesman. Whatever happens to Agent Fortune is my fault.”
