by Bob Mayer
“Propane tank blew,” Riley said.
The Gunny surveyed the damage, the gun pintles, their gear, and nodded. “Sure.” Then he spat. “Whatever.”
“He’s a Ranger,” Riley said. “Take care of him.”
“We take care of our own.”
And then Kono pulled them away, back onto the open water.
* * * * *
Erin was sitting in the rear of the Fina with Sarah, doing a better job of comforting her than Chase had been able. Kono was driving, a muscle on the side of his chiseled black face jumping, whether from worry about Gator or just coming down from the near-death experience.
Riley was in one of the jump seats, slumped back, exhausted.
“Kono, you need to keep the cooler full,” Riley said as they headed toward the Intracoastal and home.
“Combat mission,” Kono said.
“Especially for a combat mission,” Riley noted.
“What the fuck happened?” Chase said, although pieces were starting to slide into place in his brain.
“Your buddy Cardena, most likely,” Riley said. “Took out everyone’s problem.”
“I told him there was a kid involved, damn it,” Chase said.
“Guys like Cardena see the bigger picture,” Riley said. “A kid in this bigger picture didn’t matter to him. Of course, it might have been someone else, maybe even Farrelli, but I doubt old ‘Can of Tomatoes’ has a drone armed with Hellfires flying over the coast of the US. Maybe even another enemy of Karralkov’s. Doesn’t matter,” Riley concluded. “It’s over.”
“I’ll kill him,” Chase vowed.
“You’ll never find him,” Riley said. “Start thinking with your brain, Horace. This was fucked from the start. In a way, we’re lucky the slate got wiped clean. The odds Karralkov was going to hand over Cole were slim at best, and the way Walter was coming in didn’t bode well. It was a clusterfuck. I’m sorry about Cole, real sorry, but we did the best we could. Let’s hope Gator makes it through surgery.”
Erin came forward, leaving Sarah sitting, knees pulled to her chest on the after deck.
“She’s in bad shape,” Erin reported. “We might have to take her to the hospital.”
“Shock?” Riley asked.
“Yes,” Erin said. “Extreme shock.” She shook her head. “We were so close. Cole was all she had. She wrapped her world around him.”
They passed around the northeast corner of Hilton Head, keeping a wide berth due to sandbars in the area.
Everyone was silent for a while as the Fina planed along, the wide, flat beach of the island far off to their right, a handful of tourists wandering about, off-season, having no clue what had just happened a dozen miles out to sea.
Chase slumped down in the other jump seat. He felt empty, all the energy that had been driving him for forty-eight hours gone. “Maybe Cole wasn’t on the ship,” he speculated. “Maybe Karralkov was keeping him in a separate place, and was going to give us the location.”
No one replied to this forlorn hope.
“Oh, my God!” Erin cried out and jumped to her feet.
Sarah was standing on the port rear of the Fina, a needle in one hand, the tip hovering over her arm. She jabbed the needle into her arm and pushed the plunger. As she did so, she tumbled over the side.
Kono had the Fina slowing and turning in an instant. Chase kicked off his shoes and ran forward. Riley joined him and they searched the water for her.
“There!” Chase cried out, spotting her body in the water about forty meters away. Kono brought them to Sarah as skillfully as he’d done every maneuver, stopping just three meters short.
Chase was diving over before the Fina came to a complete halt, Riley right behind him. Chase felt the water hit him with a slight chill as he sliced through it. He swam to Sarah and secured her, his arms under hers. He began kicking, heading back to the boat as Riley came alongside, and rendered as much assistance as he could. They got her to the side where Kono waited with a rope, already looped on the end.
Kono tossed it, and Riley got it on the first try. He slid it over Sarah’s head, then made sure it was secure. He gave a thumbs-up to Kono and the Gullah pulled Sarah up, out of the water.
Riley and Chase climbed onboard, water pouring off them. Erin was already leaning over Sarah, checking her. Chase hovered over the two women, feeling hopeless.
“What was in the shot?” Riley asked.
“Ketamine,” Erin said. “I’ve got no vitals!” She immediately began performing CPR.
The three men stood by, helpless, all their weapons and training and experience useless now.
After five minutes, Erin slowed and stopped.
Chase knelt on the other side of Sarah. “I’ll pick up.”
Erin shook her head, tears flowing. “No use. She’s gone. Her lungs won’t work again. The ketamine did it, not the water. She’s dead.”
Chapter Fourteen
Gator sported a bandage around his neck, which he’d already tried to take off twice since Kono had picked him up at the Parris Island dock. But Kono was having none of it, waving his machete and ordering his friend to, for once, listen to some advice. One night was all Gator could take in the hospital before sneaking out.
This was on top of the problem that some of the hospital staff at Parris Island were beginning to ask questions about their new patient, noting that while Gator had dogtags, they couldn’t find him in the Tricare system. This was one case where discretion, and disappearing, were the smarter part of valor.
They made the rest of the journey in silence, negotiating the waters of the lowlands until they arrived at Gullah Island. Gator disarmed all the warning devices and they docked. They walked into the woods, directly to the newest headstone. This time it was Kono who held back as the big Ranger stood in front of the marker. Slowly, he knelt, head bowed. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the expended casing for a .50 caliber round, one of the two high-explosive rounds he’d fired into the bunker.
“I made payback, babe. They won’t take no one else. No one like you.”
And then he hung his head, trying to cover up the sounds of crying.
Kono walked up behind his friend and put his arm over Gator’s massive shoulder. “It all right, fr’un. Her roots, your baby roots, they now part of the Earth. Part of it all. It okay to grieve.” He repeated it, as much for himself as for his sister and her unborn baby. “It okay to grieve.”
* * * * *
Riley stood on Bloody Point. The golf cart was parked behind him. He had a six-pack in the sand, three already empty, the fourth in his hand. He knelt down and stuck the beer in the sand, making sure it was secure.
The day after was always a time for reckoning, for tallying the costs and determining what had been achieved, if anything. In the Army, it had meant debriefings and after action reports. Here, everyone had just gone their own way yesterday, their shoulders slumped in defeat.
Riley dug a hole in the same sand where blood had flowed centuries ago, earning the spot its name. When he got down to where seawater was seeping back into it, he reached into his pocket and pulled out Mikey’s dogtags.
Riley dropped them into the hole and scooped the sand back in.
Riley stood up and saluted, before leaning over and picking the beer back up. “Not much of a funeral for a Marine, Mikey, and I have no idea if you were a good soldier or not. But it’s a beach, and many Marines have died on a beach.” Riley then poured his beer on top of the disturbed sand. “Semper Fi, Mikey.”
But he was really saying good-bye to many soldiers he’d known over the years.
* * * * *
Chase sat on the end of his dock, feet dangling in the water. The last twenty-four hours had been a blur, especially after the violent forty-eight that had preceded it.
Upon docking, Erin had had a friend from the coroner’s office waiting for Sarah’s body. Chase had said goodbye, as best one can to a corpse, but it made him realize how many corpses he’d had to
say farewell to. In the field, in combat. At airstrips around the world as the dead were brought back home.
But this one was different.
And, being Chase, that line of thinking had him ruminating on the dead he’d never had a chance to say goodbye to. On the dock next to him was the old picture of his father and the letter from his mother. And in the water in front of him, his mother’s ashes still held their place.
And next to those two pieces of his past was all he had of his present. Chelsea whined, her huge chest swathed in bandages. He’d picked up Chelsea earlier that morning, at the same time he said goodbye to Erin. She had been planning on leaving Hilton Head anyway, off to the desert of the Southwest—where, exactly, she wasn’t sure yet, but it was time for change. Especially now. She’d told him that some distant relation of Sarah was claiming the body, and Chase figured forty-eight hours wasn’t enough time to know someone to have a claim on their remains.
It was for the best.
The best that could be built out of such failure.
“Easy, girl,” Chase said, reaching over and running his hands through Chelsea’s long hair.
Then he picked up his phone.
It was answered on the second ring.
“Horace. I’ve been waiting to hear from you.”
“I’m coming for you, Cardena.”
“Now what did I do?” Cardena sounded genuinely mystified. “Seems like you ought to be grateful I took care of your Russian problem like you asked me to.”
“Not like I asked you to,” Chase said. “There was a kid on that boat. The kid we were trying to get back.”
“Horace. Tsk. Tsk. You never could see the bigger picture.”
“That kid’s mother killed herself yesterday, right after you pulled your stunt.”
“A shame,” Cardena said, without a shred of remorse in his voice.
Chase gripped the phone tight. “I’m coming for you, Cardena. I’m going to make you pay for this.”
“Oh, Horace. You’ll never, ever find me. And if you did, it wouldn’t be pretty.”
And the phone went dead.
Chapter Fifteen
Chase threw a tennis ball to Chelsea, out on the road in front of his house. There wasn’t much traffic on the dead-end street, and the big dog took delight in chasing down the bouncing green ball. It was a ritual they participated in every morning. Chase was finding that he had to build rituals in this new life, to fill the time and to try to fill the yawning hole inside of him.
It had been two months since that eventful weekend. Cardena had been right. He was a shadow hidden in darkness. Chase’s calls to anyone and everyone had led nowhere, even to some threats that he never call again asking about that particular person. Cardena’s number was never answered again, the times late at night, buzzed from some beer, that Chase called it. He left the threats that pulsed in his heart on the voicemail, wondering if Cardena laughed when he listened to them.
He wasn’t sure that Cardena had ever laughed in his life.
Dave Riley had been no help, considering the matter closed and done, and retreating to Dafuskie.
Gator and Kono had gone back to their lives, shadows among the low country, smuggling their loads to those who paid them.
Erin was long gone.
All he had was the dog.
It was more than he usually had.
As Chase prepared to throw again, the cling-cling of a bicycle bell rang out behind him. He turned. A man, woman, and child were rolling down the road on beach bikes, rentals that the tourists picked up for the week. It was Sunday, and the new tide of northerners were rolling in for their week in the sun.
Chase called out to Chelsea to get her out of the way. He started to wave at the tourists, then froze.
“Stop!” he yelled, startling the three.
They stumbled to a halt, the woman almost falling off her bike.
“Cole?” Chase asked, stepping up to the kid. “Cole Briggs?”
The kid looked to the man.
“What’s your problem?” the man asked.
“You’re Cole Briggs,” Chase said, reaching out for the kid.
“Hey!” the man got off his bike, letting it fall to the ground. “Keep your hands away from my son.”
Chase pulled his hand back.
“What is wrong with you?” the man demanded, stepping between Chase and the boy.
Chase blinked, tried to sort his brain. “Were you here two months ago?” he asked the boy.
“We were here,” the man said. “We come down every couple of months.”
“Do you know Sarah Briggs?” he asked.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” the man said.
Chase shook his head, trying to get past the man. “Son, I saw you out here on your bike two months ago. A woman was jogging. An attractive woman. Short, blonde hair. Do you remember?”
The kid nodded nervously. “Sure. We’d just met and were talking. I don’t remember about what. I didn’t know her name.”
“Listen, mister,” the man said. “This is my son. If you have a problem, you take it up with me.”
Chase took a step back, bumping into Chelsea. “I’ve got a problem, but it’s not with your son. I’m sorry. I’m very sorry.”
He walked away, heading back to his house, Chelsea right behind him.
Chapter Sixteen
Chase hit the beach. And hit it again and again, as the Caribbean surf pounded him into the sand. He rolled with the water, twisting over onto his back as he reached down and removed his fins, one at a time. He looped the ankle straps over his right wrist. Then he turned back onto his stomach and rode the waves up the beach, until he was able to crawl to the edge of the surf line. He loosened the sling holding the silenced MP-5 submachine gun tight against his chest, and held the pistol grip in his left hand as he scanned the area.
He gave his initial entry report over the radio to the rest of his team. “On the beach. Moving in.”
The exterior lights from the house on the rocky point above competed with the full moon, giving Chase plenty of light to maneuver by and to be spotted in. There was a wooden staircase zig-zagging down the rocky cliff to his right.
That was too easy and too obvious.
He gathered himself in a crouch, and then dashed across the strip of beach to the base of the cliff. He hid the fins among the rocks, and put on the running shoes he’d brought in the small waterproof backpack. He let the MP-5 dangle on its sling.
Chase climbed, choosing his hand- and footholds carefully, aware of the irony of splattering on the rocks after all that had happened this past couple of months. It took twenty minutes to reach the top. He edged himself up.
He glanced over his shoulder. He could barely make out the dark shadow of the blacked-out Fina, holding offshore where Kono, Riley and Chelsea waited.
His earpiece crackled and he heard Gator’s voice. “In position in overwatch. I have a clear line of fire. Motherfucker!”
Chase turned his head forward so that he could see the mansion and what Gator was overwatching, and understand the expletive.
The mansion was spectacular. There were at least four different levels of pools, one cascading into the other, the muted roar of the water echoing and meeting the sound of the surf behind and below.
And reclined in a chaise near the lowest pool was Sarah. She was topless, her body lean and taut. The combined reflection of the security lights and the moon made her skin glisten. Her hair was just as short, but styled differently. And it was as black as the night sky, not blonde. Chase felt no allure or enticement. He watched as she took a sip from a long-stemmed glass, and he thought of all those who had died.
He looked past her and scanned the rear of the house.
There was no one else in sight, which he didn’t find surprising.
Chase stood, weapon at the ready, and strode forward. He walked around the edge of the pool toward Sarah. She must have sensed him coming, because she turned her head a
s she took another sip of whatever was in the glass, but otherwise did not react.
“Look what Poseidon deposited on my beach,” she said, taking in his wetsuit. “Why not take that off and get comfortable?”
“I don’t think I could be comfortable around you,” Chase said.
“Too bad.” She put the champagne flute down. “It would make the evening complete.”
Chase wasn’t pointing the submachine gun at her, but he still had his finger alongside the trigger. She looked at the gun and sighed. “Have you come to kill me?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s your problem, Horace. For a man of such violent capabilities, you just can’t make your mind up regarding your own course of action. It’s a limitation.”
“I’ll live with it,” Chase said.
“Will I?”
“That remains to be seen.” He stared at her eyes and now that he knew, he could see it. “You’re crazy.”
Sarah laughed. “Oh, come on, Horace. I’ve been to shrinks. I scared them. ‘Borderline’ was the nicest diagnosis they could come up with. Some were much harsher. Psychopath, perhaps? But I do feel things, Horace. Most importantly, though, unlike you, I have self-awareness. I know what I am capable of, and where I have flaws. You, poor dear—” She just sighed and cocked her head. “How did you find out?” she asked, showing only mild curiosity.
“Cole. I saw him a week ago on the street. With his parents. On vacation.”
Sarah laughed. “I figured you’d wise up sooner or later. Luckily for me, it was later. But I meant, how did you find out where I was?”
“The man who ordered the Predator strike on the Shashka. He’s deep-black. It wasn’t hard for him to track the money.”
“Ah.” Sarah nodded, but a slight flicker of concern crossed her face.
“The Russians,” Chase said.
“Which ones?”
“The two who you said tried to kidnap you. Who threatened Erin. Who were getting tortured. They didn’t work for Karralkov, did they?”
