Between Friends

by Kitt, Sandra

  “Saturday is fine. Do you want me to bring anything?”

  “Nothing, hon. You just come on out and keep me company.”

  “I’ll be there early. Maybe we’ll go out for lunch or something.”

  “We’ll see. Oh, Dallas …” Lillian sighed, her voice starting to quaver. “I’m so glad you can come. See you on Saturday.”

  Lillian hung up, but Dallas held onto the receiver for a moment longer, even after the dial tone began to buzz again. She wondered if a parent losing a child was anything like a child losing a parent. Lillian had memories, and things belonging to her son that she could keep, that she could touch from time to time if she wished to. When they were ready Vin and Lillian could reminisce about their son. But what was a child left with when she had not lived enough years to accumulate any memories?

  Dallas absently hung up the receiver. She had a flash of standing in a steamy rain with other people, around a hole in the ground. On the other side was a very large brown box that looked like it was going to be put into the hole. Someone held her hand and an umbrella over her head. But it wasn’t her mother. Dallas didn’t know where her mother was. When she’d asked, from the vacuum that children occupy where they’re too young to know what’s going on and aren’t being told very much, the only response she’d gotten had been “She’s gone away” or “Sshhhh …” Both answers had only left her confused and frightened.

  Her mother had never returned.

  Worse still, Dallas recalled being sent away somewhere by herself. On a train. Someone had hugged her and given her a doll. Someone had cried and kissed her cheek. A piece of paper had been pinned to her coat with her name and an address written on it. She hadn’t said a word the whole time she was on the train, until at the other end someone had met her, hugged her again as she’d gotten off. Dallas frowned as she relived the sequence of events. Whatever had happened to that doll?

  There had been no things for her to go through later. Nothing to pick and choose from that would bring back the face of someone with dark hair and gray eyes. Whose skin was pale and whom she knew to be her mother. There was only what was left in her memory. Almost all of it now faded and dim.

  Dallas envied Lillian Marco in a way she could never explain.

  Burke appeared again in the bedroom doorway. Steam curled from the rim of two cups he held. One gave off the strong aroma of hazelnut coffee. He silently passed the second cup with herbal peppermint tea to Dallas. She hesitated but finally took it.

  He sat down next to her on the bed, but far enough away to not be a threat. They said nothing as they drank the hot morning liquids. This was the no-man’s-land, the time-out to regroup and either continue their differences, or get over it. A Mexican standoff.

  Dallas looked sideways at Burke and fought to meet him halfway. “Thank you for the tea.”

  He nodded. “How are you this morning?” he asked smoothly, drinking the coffee and keeping his attention focused on her.

  “The same as I was last night,” Dallas quietly responded.

  “Even after last night?”

  “Especially because of last night.”

  Dallas put her mug down and stood up. She felt cornered sitting between him and the headboard, naked and vulnerable. She was relieved to see him putting his clothing on. He was all out of excuses and persuasion. She was out of patience and forgiveness. Last night with Burke had not reassured her but had only served to point out to Dallas that perhaps there wasn’t enough between them worth agonizing over.

  Alex couldn’t see a thing.

  He had down vision on the full-face mask, but he still couldn’t see more than ten or twelve feet. Alex thought he should be used to it by now. The impure water evolved into something murky and sinister. Bits and pieces of bottom silt and algae, rotting debris of God knew what, and filth flowing around him.

  Alex breathed easily, nonetheless, because he knew better than to fight the apparatus. He had been trained for much worse than this. He didn’t have a redundant air supply, but counted on not needing it. Of course, things could go wrong. And the unknown was still a scary thing.

  The air bubbles released from the open circuit respirator rising to the surface above him were reassuring, as were all the functioning components of his gear. He had fifteen minutes of air left but knew he should start to ascend in half that time. He checked his oxygen mix for the third time since he’d been down, and checked the buoyancy compensator, which was lightweight and not really meant for tech diving. But he’d put himself at a slight disadvantage on purpose. It was impossible to challenge his ability to handle the unexpected if he knew that everything was perfect and as it should be.

  Alex let his body tilt forward into the current, the cold water molding the black rubber protective suit against his skin. He needed an extra effort kicking with his fins to move forward, and he was careful of his footing, hoping not to discover any sharp metal edges, sheared and dangerous, that could cut into his suit, his air line. Alex didn’t try to actually go against the tidal current as much as try to use it and his body to maneuver.

  He got into position to check on the test sites. They weren’t supposed to be too close together. None were supposed to be easy to find, but he’d planted a few in deceptive areas to test the thoroughness of the NYPD Scuba Unit search and recovery team.

  To his left, about fifteen feet away, Alex could make out the dim, broadly dispersed beam from Ross’s underwater light. He could detect some of the slow black motions as together they finished the course that had been plotted for training of the eight men from the unit. It was a given that he and Ross were never to get more than fifteen feet apart, but Alex knew he could no longer make even the simplest dive without remembering how even thirty seconds apart could mean someone’s life. And did.

  Alex turned his focus back to his own position. He double-checked his landmarks to keep the area tight and controlled. Their task was pretty specific and not meant to be difficult. But still … things sometimes went wrong.

  For a brief second Alex was back on the Kuwaiti border, part of the team to seize the island of Qaruh occupied by the Iraqis during the Gulf War. His SEAL team never assumed success, but they had yet to fail at any mission directed to them. Until the one with the surprise ship attack. He’d fielded the signal from the second two-man team that they were to retreat back to base. He’d turned to relay the message to Crosby, his dive partner, and couldn’t see him. This was not supposed to happen. It didn’t help that the LAR V, a closed-circuit rebreather, was designed not to release the bubbles that would have pinpointed Crosby’s position. But worse was just the fact that they had gotten separated at all. Crosby was in trouble.

  The other two teams also realized something was wrong. And against the drone and vibration of a fast-approaching craft, they’d tried to locate their SEAL member. The most immediate concern was whether Crosby had dropped below the ten-meter limit of their equipment. Alex knew it was bad enough that he had lost sight of his partner, but he also realized it only took a heartbeat for the moment to become tragic. That’s exactly how long it had taken.

  Crosby’s safety line was spotted first, leading Alex and the other team to the spot where the depth suddenly dropped off into a black hole. The end was still attached to Crosby’s weight belt around his waist. His limp body was below them, swaying gently in the underwater current. His regulator had been displaced. There had been no time for any other reaction except to claim the body and get them all out of harm’s way.

  For Alex the flashback always failed before he got to the part about his buddy being carried to the surface as dead weight. He still wondered where his shock and pain had gone to. All he could ever recall, could still feel, was the guilt.

  He was breathing too deeply.

  Immediately Alex slowed his down and gained control. He concentrated on something else, counted the time between each breath through his regulator. He needed to hear that sound to reassure himself that he was okay.

  Al
ex could recite whole passages from the official investigation summary. It was as if he were hoping that he’d missed something in an earlier reading, and would miraculously discover anything that would absolve him. The report had concluded that the LAR V rebreather, a closed-circuit unit that doesn’t release telltale bubbles, had functioned as intended; that Crosby may have gone below the depth limit for a sufficient period of time to suffer oxygen toxicity, a build-up of too much oxygen in the body, which affects blood and body tissues. But it might have been induced anyway by a combination of the cold water and the strenuous activity the SEAL team was engaged in at the time. A number of symptoms but probably the most likely, a grand mal seizure, would have caused him to release the mouthpiece. He would have drowned, never realizing what was happening to him.

  Sometimes Alex was close to believing that it was an accident and wasn’t his fault. Maybe. But he could have done something. If not prevented it, then at least help Crosby to keep his breather in place until he could be taken to safety. They were the best special forces team ever trained. For Alex it had been like losing Crosby to “friendly fire.” And he had held the gun.

  It was time to go up. In the final minutes Alex used his light to signal Ross. His heart lurched and he knew that, once again, he’d pushed it far enough. It was going to be hard to make it to the surface. Not in the physical sense. He wasn’t that deep and this was easy. But in the psychic sense. He hadn’t for one moment gotten rid of the nightmares. He’d only learned how to control them and fight back.

  Alex gritted his teeth so tightly on the mouthpiece to stay focused that his jaw started to ache and cramp. He sculled in place, waiting for Ross to catch up to him. Then he began to rise and head for the light above him, pacing his partner. He broke the surface and there was a sudden rush of city sounds: lapping of water, engines and motors on the river, aircraft, traffic, birds, horns, and sirens. Ross was helped aboard the waiting converted crew boat. Alex reached the entry platform from the craft, and got a hold. With a free hand he pulled off his mask and breather. He took off the fins and tossed them onto the deck. A pair of hands braced the side of the boat just above his head.

  “You okay?” Ross asked, water dripping from his face.

  “Yeah,” Alex responded and then hoisted himself aboard. He said no more, not wanting to sound breathless. It was poor form. Only neophytes felt that way surfacing.

  But he’d just made it. His heart had began to thud and his adrenaline was pumping hard, ready to flood his system. He took deep breaths.

  “How much time?” he asked, releasing the buckles on the weight jacket, removing the protective booties.

  “We got little more than an hour before the scuba team arrives. I think everything’s ready for the demo,” Ross said, beginning to remove his equipment.

  “Good,” Alex muttered.

  He pulled the hooded rubber headpiece off, and his hair, matted and wet, spiked up and out in all directions. It looked like silver in the sunlight, a startling contrast to the black outfit he wore.

  “You’re doing good, buddy,” Ross said casually, slapping Alex on the shoulder as he passed him. “I’ll take the group down. You can do the talk through and answer questions.”

  “No. I want to go down again,” Alex said firmly. He stood up, gathering the hood and boots, the buoyancy compensator, and headed for the hole below.

  The boat rocked with the current, but he held his balance free-hand, finally grabbing a hold of the door frame before stepping through and out of sight.

  “Come on, man. You’re pushing too hard …”

  “I’m going back down,” Alex shouted up.

  Ross Manning, two years Alex’s senior and at least two more inches in height, and stockier, stopped what he was doing to wobble his way to the door and stare down.

  “What for? You’re not the one being tested. You’re up to a full hour on your dives. It took you two months to get there. What’s the deal today?”

  “I want to,” Alex informed him.

  “Let this go until next time, Alex,” Ross suggested.

  “Where’s the other tank?” came back the response.

  “Alex, lighten up. Give yourself a break. Some guys never would have bothered at this point. You’ve been off the team for six fucking years already …”

  Alex came back up. He was stripping almost down to his skin, wrapped in a thermal blanket and sipping from a mug. The breeze off the water quickly dried his hair. He gestured with the cup, ignoring the wisdom of his friend.

  “… I want you to tell the unit about some of the new search techniques. I got one or two surprises for them. I want to see how they respond.” Alex turned away from the silent exasperation in Ross’s expression and then quickly turned back again. “Another thing. I want to set a time limit. Let’s pretend this is critical. We’ll tell them when they get here.”

  Ross Manning frowned and shook his head. “You’re making it too hard, man. It could take a while to find all the tracks down there. This isn’t war. This is only a demonstration.”

  Alex drank from the cup, staring out to the harbor. “Here they come,” he said, indicating the slowly approaching boat.

  The air temperature was barely fifty degrees. The water was closer to freezing. But as Alex stood, the blanket falling from his bare shoulders, he didn’t notice.

  “I want to go down again.”

  After a moment Ross nodded, giving in. “Goddamn, fucking …” he muttered under his breath. Not cursing Alex, but the something else that made Alex want to do this. “Okay. Okay. We’ll do it your way. Just remember where the limit is, Alex. I don’t want to fish your ass outta there.” He pointed to the choppy waters.

  Alex nodded, but he wasn’t listening. “How much did you say one of those boxes down there weighed?”

  “I don’t know. ’Bout one twenty-five or so.”

  “We should have made it heavier.”

  Ross kept his patience. “Alex, you don’t need it any heavier. There’s no one keeping a score on this. It doesn’t matter.”

  “It matters to me. I want to make it about one eighty …”

  “No way, man. I won’t agree to that. What the hell do you think you’re going to do?”

  Alex tossed the rest of the contents of his mug over the side and turned back to the cabin below. “I want it carried up this time.”

  “You’re crazy.”

  “Probably,” Alex conceded.

  “Alex …” Ross began, ready to argue and yet knowing he didn’t have any argument that Alex was going to accept. This was one time when knowing someone really well was a disadvantage. You understood exactly why they did what they did. “Alex, that’s a hell of a lot of dead weight.”

  Alex’s head appeared briefly through the doorway. He was already half suited up again. The police crew cut its engines and glided into a parallel position. Alex waved to the team. “No different than a dead man,” he responded flatly.

  Ross stared at him for a moment and had no response. He seriously doubted that if he’d found himself in similar circumstances he’d do any differently. He wouldn’t want to be stopped, either.

  They were not trained to give up.

  Ross stood with his hands on his hips, swaying with the momentum of the rocking. He had firm footing, too, even though he’d given up long ago maintaining optimum weight and conditioning. He no longer cared. He had done his job and done it well, and was proud he’d been there. And he hadn’t forgotten that it wasn’t about being perfect and infallible. It was about being persistent. Ross relaxed and began to grin. He shook his head as if to say, What am I going to do with you?

  “Hoo yah …” he murmured.

  Alex nodded. “Hoo yah,” he returned.

  He finished dressing as Ross shouted over the noise to the men getting ready on the other boat. “Okay, ladies … anybody here afraid to open their eyes underwater?” he teased dryly.

  “Valerie, I want you to meet a friend of mine. This is Ross Manning. R
oss, Valerie Holland.”

  “Hi,” she murmured with the right amount of feminine reserve.

  “It’s a pleasure,” Ross responded with a big smile and an appreciative sparkle in his eyes.

  Valerie was friendly and gracious, smiling at Ross in a way that acknowledged him as a friend of Alex’s. Ross Manning was a big man, good-looking in a rugged way. This was a man who spent time outdoors. Very physical. And Valerie noticed that his movements were easy and graceful. His presence had the peculiar affect of making her feel uncharacteristically vulnerable. The way he was smiling at her made her uncomfortable.

  Valerie turned to Alex. “You didn’t tell me you were bringing a chaperone. Or that we were double dating,” Valerie tried to joke.

  “You’re not,” Ross reassured her. “I’m on my way up to the north shore. I wanted to see who Alex has been spending his time with. Besides, you don’t need a chaperone. Alex can take care of himself.”

  “So can I,” Valerie parried sweetly.

  “I’m ready … hi, Alex …”

  Megan ran down the hallway toward them, stopping by Alex to hug him briefly. She was dressed in the full but parentally approved regalia of a preteen. Earrings but no lipstick. Blue nail polish on her stubby tips instead of the currently fashionable glue-on plastic extensions.

  “My daughter, Megan Marie,” Valerie said to Ross.

  He held out his hand, giving the same smiling attention to her. “Hey, Megan.” He raised his brows at Alex. “You’re going to be escorting two good-looking women, buddy.”

  “I’m not going,” Megan said, blushing at the compliment. “I’m going to my girlfriend’s house for dinner.”

  “Why can’t she come with us?” Alex asked Valerie.

  She stared blankly at him, then shrugged. “Well, I thought … when you said let’s go out together …”

  “I meant all of us. Megan, too,” Alex corrected easily.

  “Really?” Megan asked, delighted by the idea.

  “Unless you don’t want to come along,” Alex said.

  Megan glanced covertly at her mother, uncertain. “Well …”