by Bob Mayer
“Your legacy,” Riley said. “And remember, you can always change it. Your father gave his life for that.”
“Hold on,” Sarah said. “There’s something we need to do first.”
They followed her down the dock. She assembled the group in that crazy room with the tree poking down through the roof (which she kind of liked).
“Wait a second.” She left and went into the small room, across the garage where they’d given her a bed. She came back with a large Gucci bag.
She opened it, showing them ten million dollars, wrapped tightly in bundles of hundreds. Old Mrs. Jenrette kept her word, Sarah had to give her that. Another surprise, wrapped in many.
“This is ours,” Sarah told them. “I’m only going to say this once. Each of you has access to this bag. We all earned it. You all have needs. Wants. Whatever. I know it might overwhelm you right now. But take some. For something you want right now.”
No one moved for several moments, but then Gator came forward, stuck his hand in and pulled out a single bundle.
“How much is that?” he asked, holding it up.
“Ten thousand,” Sarah told him.
“Cool,” Gator said. “There’s this really neat long rifle I’d like to get.”
And that was it. He walked away, apparently more than satisfied with such a small percentage of the amount, Sarah couldn’t even understand it right now.
Kono followed his friend. “I need two. I’m sorry. But I need to have the engines on Fina replaced.” So he pulled out two bundles. All of twenty thousand dollars out of ten million.
Sarah looked at Dillon. “Thanks for wanting the truth. I think you’re good at it. Perhaps a future in that?”
“Law school is expensive,” Dillon said.
“Oh, geez,” Sarah said. “It’s ten million dollars. How much is law school going to cost?”
“The first year will be around thirty thousand,” Dillon said, almost apologetically.
Sarah pointed at the bag and Dillon took his first year’s tuition.
“Make it through that year and come back for more,” Sarah said, not quite believing she was doing this. She’d envisioned Paris.
But what good was Paris alone?
Westland shook her head. “I’m good.” But she nudged Riley. “Dinghy?”
Riley flushed. “I only told you that because . . .” he faltered to silence.
“A boat would be nice,” Sarah said. “So you could come over and check on things.”
“I don’t think I have to do that,” Riley said. “But there’s this used Boston Whaler . . .”
And he took three bundles.
“Doc?” Sarah asked.
“Take care of our house,” was all Doc had to say.
Sarah looked at the last man. “Harry?”
He shook his head. “Take care of our house. That’s all I ask.”
Sarah looked around the room, keeping tight control, the control that she’d been trained, tortured into. “All right. Well. I’ll be here. Any time.”
And with that, farewells were said. Harry and Doc Cleary carried Horace Chase’s remains to their sailboat and cast off.
Dillon walked to his car to head back to Charleston.
And Kate Westland climbed into Riley’s Zodiac to journey with him back to Daufuskie Island.
They left behind Sarah Briggs, standing alone on the dock. But not for long as Chelsea came walking slowly down the long wooden pier and sat down next to her.
Without thinking, Sarah reached down and ran her hand through the dog’s mane.
Her last view of Doc Cleary’s boat was Harry Brannigan standing on the aft, slowly spreading his father’s ashes into the water.
* * *
Mrs. Jenrette was impressed that an arm of the government could work so efficiently. There was no sign of a gun battle at Bloody Point. She’d been assured by the woman with the black streak in her hair that this would be as if it had never happened. When Mrs. Jenrette had asked about how Senator Gregory would react to the death of his son, the woman had told her that she need not be concerned.
Something in the confident way the woman said it wiped away any doubts Mrs. Jenrette had. It would be handled as efficiently as this had been.
For now, there was just the quiet lap of the waves on the sandy beach. A heron flew by, unconcerned with the three humans standing on the beach. Fifty meters off shore a dolphin breached the surface, dorsal fin cutting through the water, then it was gone.
“Tide is changing,” Tear said, eyeing the water line and the currents.
Mrs. Jenrette had her hand on Thomas’ arm, needing his strength to stand.
“It is,” Mrs. Jenrette said. “Bloody Point has lived up to its name, once more.”
“It will be different from here on out,” Thomas said.
Mrs. Jenrette held a leather satchel in her other hand. She held it out to Tear.
The old Gullah took it.
“The land goes back to your people, the Gullah,” Mrs. Jenrette said. “There will be no causeway built. No development.”
“Not just my people,” Tear said. “We will welcome those who were here before us. Any Native American will be welcome.”
“I fear not many survived in this part of the country,” Mrs. Jenrette said. “But that is all up to you now. The island is yours. I trust you will care for it.”
“We will,” Tear said. “And our children and our children’s children. You have done a good thing.”
Mrs. Jenrette shook her head. “I never expected it to happen like this. But evil exists. It is good that there are men and women still willing to stand up and fight it.”
Thomas spoke up. “This will be a place of peace from now on.”
“I am tired, Thomas,” Mrs. Jenrette said. “Very tired. Could you help me sit down for a second?”
Thomas gently helped the old woman to a sitting position on the sand. She stretched her withered legs out in front of her. “I remember the beach,” she whispered. “Greer and I used to . . .” but her voice drifted off to silence. Her head slumped down.
Before she could fall backward, both Tear and Thomas had their arms around her. Together they lifted her up.
* * *
Hannah had listened to Cardena’s after action report on the entire Gregory mess. The old man, the Senator, had been undone by his own son. Almost sad.
But not quite.
Now she was alone, as she normally was. The thick file that had accumulated on Preston Gregory was on a corner of the desk where her assistant would collect it at the end of the day. To be put in a drawer with all the other closed files.
But there was still the thin file of Sarah Briggs, front and center, on her desk.
Most curious.
Hannah opened the bottom right drawer on her desk. There were three other files in there. Hannah picked up Sarah Briggs file and added it to the three.
* * *
On the northern end of Daufuskie Island, Dave Riley sat in a beach chair, a cooler to one side and to the other, Kate Westland in her own chair. He pulled out two cold ones, unscrewed the tops, and handed one to her.
“Nice place,” Kate said.
“It is.”
“Might be a good place to retire to,” Westland said.
“I thought you didn’t get to retire.”
“Well,” Kate said. “How about semi-retire?”
Riley glanced over at her. “Is that an offer, a question or a statement?”
“A question.”
“Hell, yeah,” Riley said. He held out his bottle and Kate Westland clinked her’s against his.
* * *
And outside what used to be Horace Chase’s house, Sarah Briggs, who no longer even remembered the name she’d been born with, was hitting the heavy bag hanging down from the walkway out to the dock. Turn kicks. Side kicks. Fist strikes. Sweat poured down her body.
But after a few minutes, she began to slow down and the force of her blows lessened.
> Until she dropped to her knees in the sand.
And then she realized she was crying. Tears flowing down her cheeks.
She hadn’t cried in twelve years.
The End
To learn how Chase and Riley ended up involved with Sarah Briggs, and Chase learns he is a father for the first time, there is The Green Berets: Chasing the Lost.
To read about the mission Dave Riley and Kate Westland were on together, it’s in The Green Berets: Eyes of the Hammer, which is the very first Dave Riley book. He’s younger and faster, but not necessarily smarter.
To read about the Cellar, it begins with Bodyguard of Lies, which tells Hannah’s story when she’s picked by Nero; when her file was in that lower right drawer.
For more about Doctor Golden and her theories on profiling and how she works with Hannah, there is Lost Girls.
To read about Horace Chase and his time as Federal Liaison to the Boulder Police where he ends up investigating the apparent rape/murder of a housewife and a secret CIA operation, there is The Green Berets: Chasing the Ghost.
EYES OF THE HAMMER
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DRAGON SIM-13
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CUT OUT
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SYNBAT
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ETERNITY BASE
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Z: THE FINAL COUNTDOWN
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CHASING THE GHOST
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CHASING THE LOST
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CHASING THE SON
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More Books by Bob Mayer
THE CELLAR SERIES
Praise for Lost Girls: “ . . .delivers top-notch action and adventure, creating a full cast of lethal operatives armed with all the latest weaponry. Excellent writing and well-drawn, appealing characters help make this another taut, crackling read.” Publishers Weekly
Short Excerpt
CHAPTER ONE
The old man sat alone in the darkness contemplating failure on a scale that historians would write about it for centuries, and the subsequent inevitable need for change. He was one of the most powerful people in the world, but only a few knew of his existence. His position had been born out of failure over sixty years previously, as smoke still smoldered above the mangled ships and dead bodies in Pearl Harbor. For over six decades, he had given his life to his country. His most valuable asset was dispassion, so he could view his own recent failures objectively, although recent was a subjective term. He realized now it had all begun over ten years ago.
His office lacked any charm or comfort. There was a scarcity about the room that was unnerving. The cheap desk and two chairs made it look more like an interview room in an improvised police station than the office of a man so powerful his name brought fear throughout the government he served in Washington. The top of the desk was almost clear. Just a secure phone and a stack of folders.
There were, naturally, no windows. Not three hundred feet underground, buried beneath the ‘crystal palace’ of the top secret National Security Agency at Fort Meade, Maryland. And not that he could have used windows. The few who knew of the organization sometimes wondered if this location was what had led to its name. While the CIA made headlines every week, the Cellar was only whispered about in the hallowed halls of the nation's capitol. It might have been located underneath the NSA building but it was an entity unto itself answerable only to its founding mandate.
The room was lit only by the dim red lights on the secure phone. They showed the scars on the old man’s face and the raw red, puckered skin where his eyes had once rested. There was track lighting, currently off, all three bulbs of which were over the old man’s head and angled toward the door. When on, they placed his face in a shadow and caused any guest to squint against the light. The few who had the misfortune to sit across from him didn’t know whether the lighting was placed in such a way to blind them as if he was, or to hide the severity of his old wounds.
He was not a man given much too sentimental reflection, but he knew his time was coming to an end, which made him think back to his beginning, as he knew all things were cyclical. He opened a right side desk drawer and pulled out a three dimensional representation of an old black and white photograph. He ran his fingers lightly over the raised images of three smiling young men dressed in World War II era uniforms—British, French and American. He was on the right. The other two were killed the day after the photo was taken.
He left the image on the desktop and reached for the files. The ones he wanted were the first two. He placed them on his lap. Paper files, the writing in Braille. He’d never trusted computers, even though there were ones now that could work completely on voice commands and read to him. Perhaps that was part of the problem. He was out of date. An anachronism.
They were labeled respectively Gant, Anthony and Masterson. He ran his fingers over the names punched on the tabs. He was patient. He had waited decades for plans born out of seeds he had sown to come to fruition. Quite a few similar plans had failed, so there was no reason to believe this one would succeed. But this plan was now in motion, initiated by an event he had had nothing to do with, the way the best plans in the covert world always started to allow deniability.
Despite his gifts of dispassion and patience, he felt a stirring in his chest. It puzzled him for a few moments before he realized he was experiencing hope. He squashed the feeling and picked up the phone to set another piece of the puzzle in motion.
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THE SHADOW WARRIOR SERIES
“A pulsing technothriller. A nailbiter in the best tradition of adventure fiction.” Publishers Weekly.
“Mayer has crafted a military thriller in the tradition of John Grisham’s The Firm.” Kirkus
THE GATE
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THE LINE
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OMEGA MISSILE
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OMEGA SANCTION
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SECTION EIGHT
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THE ATLANTIS SERIES
A 6 book Science Fiction Series
“Spell-binding! Will keep you on the edge of your seat. Call it techno-thriller, call it science fiction, call it just terrific story-telling.” Terry Brooks, #1 NY Times Bestselling author of the Shannara series and Star Wars Phantom Menace
ATLANTIS
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BERMUDA TRIANGLE
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ATLANTIS GATE
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DEVIL’S SEA
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ASSAULT ON ATLANTIS
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BATTLE FOR ATLANTIS
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THE AREA 51 SERIES
A 9 book Science Fiction Series
When nine atmospheric crafts of unknown origin were discovered in the Antarctic in the late 1940s, the U.S. government established Area 51 to study the abandoned technology. Dr. Hans Von Seeckt, who is the only original member of the secret research committee, has observed the marvelous craft in flight and witnessed a fantastic array of bizarre, unexplained phenomena. But Dr. Van Seeckt fears that the technology of the mothership is beyond our scope and an explosive threat to the entire planet. He must race against time to unlock the secret of the ship--and to the origins of mankind itself.
THE NIGHTSTALKERS SERIES
Bob Mayer’s Nightstalkers grabs you by the rocket launcher and doesn’t let go. Fast-m
oving military SF action—just the way I like it. Highly recommended. -B.V. Larson
The Latest book in the Nightstalkers series:
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ANATOMY OF CATASTROPHE
Shorts taken from Bob Mayer’s bestselling series: Shit Doesn’t Just Happen Volumes I and II: The Gift of Failure are below. They have been released as single events and are also compiled in the book both volumes.
About Bob Mayer
Bob Mayer is a NY Times Bestselling author, graduate of West Point, former Green Beret (including commanding an A-Team) and the feeder of two Yellow Labs, most famously Cool Gus. He’s had over 60 books published including the #1 series Area 51, Atlantis and The Green Berets. Born in the Bronx, having traveled the world (usually not tourist spots), he now lives peacefully with his wife, and said labs, at Write on the River, TN.
Copyright
Cool Gus Publishing
http://coolgus.com
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
