by Bob Mayer
He stepped off the wood walkway onto the struggling grass lawn that sloped up about six feet to the back of the house. Almost all of Hilton Head Island is a flood zone; a strong enough hurricane hitting at the right time with a tidal surge would pretty much wipe the island off the map. Which brought something else to mind: who was paying the insurance on the house? Backing up from that: was there insurance on the house? Being military, either living in on-base quarters or being deployed, Chase had never owned a home before. While the deed was in his name, he realized not much else was.
While old, the house had charm, if one considered a tree smashed down through the living room roof charm. Chase did, which gives one insight into his character. The tree was still alive, its roots still in the earth outside and he’d patched around it, incorporating it into the house. There were three bedrooms: a master with its own bath on the north end and two guest rooms on the south sharing a bathroom. The tree living room was in the center with a large wood-burning fireplace built into the wall fronted by a brick hearth. Chase figured if the storm-damaged tree began to die, it would provide a ready source of wood for the fireplace.
He had vague childhood memories of a Christmas spent here with his mother and Doc Cleary. Old Doc. He’d been Old Doc when Chase was a kid; a distinguished white-haired man, tall and thin, with rimless glasses that always slid down his nose. Chase had spent that one Christmas and several summers here, including that last fateful summer before he went off to West Point and Beast Barracks. The summer he met Erin Brannigan.
He passed by the concrete pool, another thing he hadn’t gotten around to, the surface covered with algae and about four feet below being full; at least there wasn’t a gator nesting in it. Chelsea ran up to his side, accompanying him as he went in the back sliding glass doors.
Chase went to the battered footlocker in the living room that held a lot of his gear. He dialed in the combination then opened it. A letter lay on top and he took it out and carefully unfolded it. It was stained with blood, Chase’s, since he’d received the letter in Afghanistan just prior to being wounded and medevacked to a hospital in Germany.
My Dearest Horace.
We are both at war, but I fear I am losing mine. The cancer has spread too quickly.
Fate has dealt you a final card from the father you never knew and the man I hardly knew. Don’t be like your father. Don’t be too brave. Come back from the war.
I know we haven’t spoken in a long time. I know you don’t want to hear this. I blame myself for that. But maybe someday you’ll think better about me. I hope you will.
Sometimes there are broken people. Like me. Like you. I was trying to do the right thing for you. Now I know I did wrong by giving you your father’s legacy. The Medal of Honor and the Academy appointment that came with it, and all afterward. But maybe it isn’t too late.
Even broken people should get another chance.
Be a good man.
With my dying love,
Your Mother.
PS: In my will, there’s a house. An old house. But it’s a good house in a good place. It will be yours. It’s the house we spent the summers in on Hilton Head in the Low Country. It’s from an old friend. He’s a good man. You won’t understand now, and will think the wrong thing because you tend to think the wrong thing first. It’s all I can give you now.
He looked at it a little differently now. What had she meant by ‘all afterward’? And that ‘it isn’t too late’? What had she known? He had to agree she was on target with him thinking the wrong thing; he had plenty of evidence of that.
Chase folded the letter, put it back in the footlocker. He saw the other letter. The one he rarely read. The one from his father to him. IF.
IF. Chase knew he’d failed the test. And he wasn’t certain he could ever make it up.
And below the letter was the Medal of Honor. Still in its case. Sealed. His mother, Lilly had never opened it.
Of course his father had chosen Kipling.
The strange thing was, Chase intimately understood one thing in that poem: the Unforgiving Minute. That was the essence of combat. His father had known and now he did too.
There was no forgiveness from that minute.
He put the letter in the locker and closed it. He sat down on top of it with a heavy heart. Chelsea pressed her head against his thigh. He took out his cell phone and dialed a number he knew by heart now. He was surprised when it was answered on the second ring.
“Horace, Horace, Horace. Heard you were down in the Caribbean recently and not for a vacation.”
“You told me where to go,” Chase pointed out.
“True,” Cardena said. “But you left her alive.”
“You got the money.”
“I could have taken the money,” Cardena said, “without you going down there.”
“Why did you give her up to me?” Chase asked.
“Duh. Are you listening? To kill her.”
“You knew I wouldn’t.”
“I was counting on Riley,” Cardena said.
“You don’t know him that well.”
“Apparently you’re a bad influence. The old Dave Riley was stone cold. He’s gone soft.”
“He’s older and wiser.”
“Horace, you’re always one conversation behind,” Cardena said. Chase had first met him at Denver International Airport while on the trail of a drug smuggling ring. He’d been told that Cardena was DEA. That wasn’t true. In the end, Chase had learned he’d been played by Cardena to accomplish a mission with multiple goals, one of which was to cause the death of a CIA agent. Who Cardena worked for, Chase had no clue. And he’d never met the man face-to-face since that one time at DIA.
“Why do you care about Sarah Briggs?” Chase asked. “I thought your concern was Karralkov, and he’s no longer among the living, thanks to you.”
“The world is very large,” Cardena said, “yet it’s also a lot smaller than most people realize. But you didn’t call me to discuss philosophy.”
“I was thinking about one of our conversations,” Chase said. “You asked me why I was going after a boy who—“
“Didn’t exist,” Cardena said.
“Who wasn’t my own,” Chase finished. “Turns out, it appears I do have a son. Just found that out from my trip to the Caribbean.”
Chase waited, hoping Cardena would fill the silence with something, anything.
Finally the other man spoke. “Horace, why are you such a shit magnet? I mean, seriously. I thought getting you out of Boulder would induce you into quiet retirement. But you went from the frying pan into the fucking bonfire.”
“You’d miss talking to me,” Chase said.
“Not really. And now it looks like you’ve stepped into another pile of shit.”
“What do you mean?” Chase asked.
“You think killing Karralkov solves everything in that neck of the woods?” Cardena asked. “It just gets the Russians out of things; for the time being.”
“What’s going on?”
“Sarah Briggs isn’t who you thought she was,” Cardena said.
“I know that.”
“No, Horace, you don’t. You think she’s some hustler who ripped off a bunch of money using an offshore on-line betting web site. What, do you think she just started there? Came out of nowhere? We all have histories.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You’ll figure it out, Horace. Or maybe you won’t.”
Chase decided to stop tap dancing around. “I’m trying to find my son. I think you know something.”
“I know a lot of things,” Cardena said. “But keeping track of your spawn isn’t one of them. You really should have killed Briggs. She’s a loose end that’s going to come back to haunt you some day. Sooner than you expect. Just like this son is a loose end that’s been out there for almost two decades. Really Chase, your house is not in order.”
Chase glanced at the tree crashed down through his living room and wondere
d if Cardena knew about that and was speaking both literally and figuratively.
“What do you know about your son?” Cardena asked.
“Nothing.”
“Might I suggest you keep it that way?”
“Why?”
“You wouldn’t follow my advice anyway.” Once more his question went in a different direction. “Is Dave Riley still assisting you?”
“He is.”
“Interesting,” Cardena said.
“Why?”
“Nothing.”
Another throwaway that meant something, Chase knew.
“Unfortunately for you,” Cardena continued, “I do not have a dog in this hunt. I believe that’s a popular saying in your current part of the world. But I’d watch your back. This is bigger than just your boy.”
The phone went dead. Chase stared at it, wondering at the vague threats Cardena had floated out there. He saw no reason why Sarah Briggs would come after him. Yes, she might want revenge, but she was the type of person who valued money over revenge.
Which made him wonder if money was still involved somehow. Briggs hadn’t checked on Erin and his son out of boredom. She had a stake in things. But what was that stake?
Chase made a couple more quick calls, confirming that the house’s utilities were still in Doc Cleary’s name and payments were automatically processed out of an account from a local bank. The bank wouldn’t tell him how much was in the account, but the woman Chase talked to confirmed that it was an active account, with deposits being made, as well as the bills being paid. But she would tell him nothing further, citing privacy laws.
Finally he called Kono.
The Gullah answered on the fifth ring. “Speak.”
Chase could hear the Fina’s engines in the background. “I need to speak to Tear.”
“What for?”
“I need to find out about Doc Cleary.” And my mother.
There was a silence, then Kono replied. “We be there in forty-five minutes. Take you to him.”
* * *
Dillon hesitated in the sally port before entering the Quadrangle, the heart of the Institute. Surrounded on four sides by battlements topping the square barracks, the Quadrangle was the formation area for the Corps. A concrete square, a hundred and fifty yards to a side. Barracks loomed up on all sides, six stories high. All the walls were covered in grey stone. Hanging on inner walls were battle flags, all those in which Institute Grads had participated, from the Civil War forward.
There were a lot of them, practically the entire history of America’s wars.
Painted onto the concrete area were squares, black and white, a checkerboard, which the Corps ostensibly used for lining up the sixteen companies and also for conducting close-order drill. Unofficially, the Quadrangle’s squares were useful in hazing with upperclass cadets treating the checkerboard as such, moving rats around on it at their whim.
Dillon lifted his hand in front of his eyes and stared at it. There was no tremor, no sign of weakness. but still he was hesitant to proceed. Crossing through any of the sally ports, stone arched tunnels from the outside world into the Quadrangle through the walls made up of barracks, was reserved for cadets. No civilians were allowed in. Even as a graduate, Dillon felt an invisible barrier blocking his way.
It was mid-class, which meant cadets were either in assigned classes in the various academic buildings, in the library, or in their rooms if they had a free period. Dillon had Wing’s schedule and he knew Wing wasn’t in class. He’d checked the library and the rat wasn’t there either. That left one place.
Dillon stepped through and marched at an angle across the Quadrangle.
“Hold!” a voice rang out.
A Topper, a senior cadet by the insignia on his sleeve, came walking toward Dillon as if he owned the Quadrangle, the concrete, ‘and the earth underneath all the way down to hell’, a common saying among the cadets.
“No civilians in the area!” the Topper yelled as he got close.
Dillon held up his hand, showing his ring. That stopped the Topper in his tracks. “Sorry, sir. But, well . . .”
“No problem,” Dillon said. “I’ve got to see someone and I have permission from the Superintendent.”
The Topper reverted to rat behavior, snapping to attention, jaw tucked in tight. “Yes, sir.”
Dillon moved on but he realized his hands were tightened into fists; he almost laughed. Multiple combat deployments and he still reacted to a screaming Topper like a rat. And that made sense he thought as he entered a stairwell. He’d been a rat in this maze, broken, trained, conditioned. Time had softened the conditioning as long as he was away from the lab. But back in the heart of the maze, it was all coming back.
He didn’t notice that behind him, the Topper had taken off running.
Dillon bounded up the stairs two at a time.
He shoved open a fire door, vaguely remembering hanging from the top of it during one hazing routine, his fingers raw and bleeding. He strode down the corridor, almost wishing to get confronted now, his blood up.
Dillon kicked open the door and Second Year Cadet Wing leapt to his feet, the shoes he’d been shining falling to the floor.
There was no roommate replacing Brannigan, even after all this time. Wing was an undesirable and the other cadets kept him isolated. Dillon looked around. The room was in inspection condition, everything in its place. There were still textbooks on Brannigan’s bookshelf.
“Sir?” Wing was confused by the man in civilian clothes standing in his doorway.
Dillon suspected he could go up and choke Wing and he’d still keep his brace.
“Tell me about Jenrette and Brannigan,” Dillon ordered.
Wing blinked. He was rail-thin and Dillon could see a tremor in one of his cheeks. The kid was close to a breakdown even though he was no longer a rat.
“Sir, may I ask a question?”
One of the four responses allowed a cadet to a superior. Yes, sir; No, sir; No excuse, sir; Sir, may I ask a question?
“Yes.”
“Who are you, sir?”
“I’m the man who’s asking you about what happened that night in the Sinks when Cadet Jenrette died.”
“Sir, I made an official report as required by regulations,” Wing said.
His voice irritated Dillon and Dillon realized this was exactly the kind of person he’d helped terrorize when he was an upperclassman. But for some reason, Dillon also saw in Wing one of the privates in his Ranger platoon, a skinny little Korean, not even a citizen, who’d enlisted for the right to gain his citizenship. And the son-of-a-bitch had turned into hell on wheels once the bullets started flying.
He’d been killed in action, still not a citizen.
Dillon sighed. “Sit down, Wing. My name is Dillon. Class of ’08. I’m doing a follow-up at the request of the Superintendent. Just dotting the I’s, crossing the T’s, sort of thing.”
Wing blinked, confused. “Sir?”
“Just tell me in your own words what happened that night. Sit.”
Wing dropped in his chair as if shot. Dillon grabbed the chair from the empty desk on Brannigan’s side of the room. He noticed that there was a picture frame propped up; the one allowed a cadet on the desktop by regulations. A white-haired woman with a kind smile gazed at the camera.
And then Wing told his version, which was almost word-for-word the version in the official report. It was obviously well rehearsed. Dillon waited it out, watching Wing’s face, trying to determine if he were telling a story or a fact.
Twenty minutes later, when Wing was done, Dillon didn’t know. The account matched what the three ring-knockers had said in the High Cotton. Despite the time that had passed, the kid was still shell-shocked by his rat experience. Dillon was sure he could tell Wing to open the window here on the fifth floor and step out and the kid would do it.
“You’re absolutely sure of that account?” Dillon asked. “Brannigan just went nuts and attacked Jenrette?”
&
nbsp; “He was trying to help me, sir,” Wing said. “It was an unfortunate accident.”
“Then why did he run? Why didn’t he wait and tell his version?”
“He was scared, sir.”
“Of?”
Wing spread his hands, the first human sign since Dillon had entered. “Everyone and everything! And Jenrette. His family. They practically own Charleston. We all knew it. I was shocked when I saw him down there in the Sinks. They hazed him, hard sometimes, but we figured he was bullet proof.”
Dillon knew Wing was wrong. Sometimes the Corps went after the biggest names in the rat class. In a bizarre way, many upperclass knew it was the only window of opportunity in their lifetime to belittle and embarrass those powerful people. He also now knew that they were testing Jenrette for the Ring, a group Dillon had heard rumors of, but nothing more, while he was a cadet.
“Why are you doing this, Wing?” Dillon asked. He could see the question had confused the rat. “Why are you attending the Institute?”
“My father wishes it so,” Wing said. “He believes we must become part of our country.”
“The country is bigger than the Institute.”
Wing met Dillon’s eyes. “My father believes one must go through the fiercest fire in order to be accepted.”
Dillon noticed that Wing kept glancing toward the door. “What’s the matter?”
“Sir, I’ve got to get to—“
And then the door flew open and a half-dozen cadets dressed in grey, their heads covered with black hoods came rushing in. They had broom handles in their hands.
For a moment, an important moment, Dillon thought they were after Wing.
As the first stick came whistling toward his head, Dillon reacted as he’d been trained in the pits at Ranger School and brought his forearm up in a block. The stick broke on the bone. And then they were on him.
Another stick struck right behind his ear, a stinging blow, but Dillon lashed out with a side-kick, catching one of the cadets in the stomach, doubling him over. As more sticks bounced off his body, blow after blow, Dillon, arms up protecting his head, snap-kicked another cadet in the crotch. The cadet screamed and fell to the ground.
