by Paul Lally
“Back then, this place would be packed with people,” Tommy says.
“Time marches on, I guess.”
“So do slot machines and gaming tables. Nowadays, folks travel clear across the Gulf just for the chance to lose their shirts at poker and craps.”
“You sound like an old man.”
“That’s because I am.”
“Mom must have been over the moon.”
“How so?”
“Fast-talking Irishman sweeps Midwest Irish-Italian maiden off her feet and lands her barefoot in Cancún.”
Tommy grins. “I always did have a way with words.”
“Still do.”
Tommy ponders this in silence and sketches more infinity loops.
Jack says, “What’d you tell her when you were up here? Can you remember?”
His father takes a deep breath and closes his eyes. “I told her a lot.”
“Such as...”
“That I loved her, that I was honored to be her husband, that I wanted to be with her the rest of my life. Nobody else but mom. Just her.” He stops moving the stick and turns to Jack. “That taxi driver...what’s her name again?”
“Carmelita.”
“She’s right. She got her old man’s Toyota but lost his love.”
More stick drawing. Then he stops again. “Do me a favor and don’t start in about meeting mom when I die, okay? That’s not how I understand this thing we call life.”
“Wouldn’t dream of doing that.”
“Good.” Tommy shrugs. “Wanted to head you off at the pass, just in case.”
He flings the stick away. It spins off over the ridge and disappears.
“When I’m gone, I’m gone, got it?”
“Got it.”
“Good. See that ocean out there? All that water? That’s what it’s like when my time comes. What used to be Thomas Aloysius Riley becomes nothing more than a happy drop added to the chorus. No memory, no pain, nothing but nothing, except for...”
Jack waits him out. After a while, he nudges, “Except for...?”
“I felt it all.”
“Felt what?”
“Life. Every bit of it. Every up and down, every disappointment, every joy, every sorrow. I was a man, a dad, a husband, a friend. I was alive. I loved and was loved. That was my job. And I did it. Some of it wonderfully well, other stuff shitty, but in the end, I did it all. I lived. Remember that when...”
He turns and faces Jack. “When it happens, when I die, remember what I just said, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Promise?”
“You’re making me cry, Pop.”
He smiles. “Good. You need to cry.”
He rests his hand on his son’s shoulder. “You need to live, too. And love. Last time I checked, you can’t fuck a supercapacitor—unless you’re holding out on me. C’mon, can you? Huh, huh? Do they have a special hole you haven’t told me about?”
Jack laughs at the sudden swerve into silliness. “Not a chance.”
“That’s what I thought.”
They look into each other’s eyes. Not too long, mind you. It’s too charged a moment for both of them. But long enough for Tommy to say, “Don’t forget what I said.”
They turn and make their way back to the waiting taxi. The breaking waves the only sound as they “hissssssss” across the sand and scour the beach.
Tommy finally says in a conversational tone, “Whereabouts did you say Bianca ended up?”
“Anchorage.”
“Her hometown as a kid, right?”
“Yes, of all places.”
“A lot different than Ohio, I imagine.”
“Just as boring, trust me.”
“Which is why she ran away with you to New Hampshire, right?”
“Among other things, yes.”
“Well...if you ever happen to run into her again, tell her I said, howdy.”
“I will.”
“Promise?”
“Pop, I think that—"
“Kee-rist!” Tommy shouts.
Jack turns in alarm as his father fishes his iPhone from his hip pocket. “I put the damn thing on vibrate—scared the piss out of me—Riley here, can I help you?”
Jack watches as his father’s face shifts from being a loving parent to a determined defense attorney. “Say again that last part, major.”
“We’ve got the hostages but the Osprey’s out of commission. Engine trouble, something like that.”
CW shouts into his phone to be heard as the minibus filled with his Delta Force team and hostages careens down a narrow side-street.
No time to explain to Tommy in detail what later examination reveals: the O-ring seals at the intercoupled gearbox junction of the Special Forces tilt-rotor Osprey inexplicably failed after a mere 350.4 hours of flight time, instead of the 15,000 engine-hours guaranteed by the subcontractor, the Goodyear Rubber Company.
Net result: when the pilot advanced the throttles of the tiltrotor’s twin turboshaft engines to depart for the Delta Force’s extrication zone, they reached their proper, screaming-loud takeoff RPM as expected.
But then a red light began flashing on the instrument panel, accompanied by a warning horn as the seals failed and a tidal wave of hydraulic fluid flooded the gritty Mexican desert, causing immediate engine shutdown and mission abort.
Net result: CW and his guys are left high and dry in Cancún in a shot-up bus on its last legs.
Back in the ancient days, when the Greeks put on their dramas, when all seemed lost to the protagonists in Act Four, when there was no way in a thousand years they could survive... lo and behold, a toga-wearing stagehand up in the fly-gallery would turn a crank attached to a windlass and by doing so, lower a platform upon which stood the appropriate god fully prepared to save the day in the nick of time.
Deus ex Machina (God from the Machine) they called it back then.
No handy-dandy Deus here in Cancún, however, and the only machina capable of doing so just bled to death at an “undisclosed location” in the desert. Nobody around to help save the day for a minibus riddled with bullets but miraculously nobody hurt inside.
Booger man and his team did their job, all right. But the bad guys’ bullets did a job on the Mercedes’s engine. Minus all its coolant thanks to bullet-ripped radiator coils, the temperature needle is pegged on H and it’s already stuttering and sputtering as Major Williston speaks to Tommy Riley.
“How can we help?” Tommy says.
“Our bus is gonna’ be shot to shit any minute.”
“What about your backup bus?”
“Never showed—we’re gonna’ need to hitch a ride instead.”
“Where to?”
“Home.”
“Where’s that?”
“Your ship for starters.”
“I can do better than that,” Carmelita Honoria Torres says. “Watch this.”
Her fingers fly over her beat-up flip phone. Seconds later a torrent of Mayan words fills the interior of her wildly painted, fringe-trimmed Toyota taxi, erupting like pistol shots. “Beet ts'o'ok. Wa k'a'abet a pool!”
Tommy and Jack are busy doing the same thing, but with their much-fancier smartphones, and in English.
“Who’s with you right now?” Tommy says to someone on the phone.
Jack says to someone else, “Find them and tell them to get the hell out front. Be waiting for a whole bunch of taxis coming their way.”
“Two to a taxi. Tops.” Tommy says.
“Pagamos triple tarifa,” Carmalita says, her phone tucked against her shoulder to keep from dropping it. She keeps on talking while starting the taxi, slamming it into gear and racing away from the scenic overlook, leaving a rooster-tail of sand flying into the air.
“Ya'ab a k'a'abéet ti' teen!”
“Tell him to put his shirt back on!” Tommy says to someone else. “We’re going to plan B.”
Jack says to his person, “I don’t care if Norman’s had too much to drink. C
an he walk?... Good...he was with that tall marine with a moustache...Newton—wait, no, Nuell, Gunnery Sergeant Nuell. That’s his pretend son.”
“In a word, clusterfuck,” Tommy says. “Don’t know much more than that, but if we don’t get them back to the ship, the bad guys are going to win for sure.”
Jack says, “Fifteen minutes, not much more.... okay.... good.... update me in five.”
He ends the call and leans forward to speak to Carmelita. “Any luck?”
“Nothing but luck, boss-man. Ten cabs, two of them vans. We got you covered top to bottom.”
“Fabulous.”
“Just doing my job—one thing more; how you fixed for money?”
Jack laughs. “I’m the Bank of America.”
“I told them triple-fare. That okay?”
“Quadruple if you pull this off.”
Even though the road twists and turns along the coastline with no guard rail to stop a car from sailing into space, Carmelita turns around in her seat long enough to say, “Tell me something...you the good guys or the bad guys?”
“The good guys,” Jack says.
“Like hell we are,” Tommy says. “We’re the great guys.”
Carmelita’s laughter rings out as she pounds the steering wheel, making her bracelets jangle like church bells.
Hector Garcia’s personal barber, Pablo, devotes his absolute attention to trimming the cartel boss’s salt-and-pepper Vandyke beard. Like the proverbial Three Wise Monkeys, he sees, hears, and speaks no evil whenever he makes these bi-weekly visits to the central compound of Garcia’s casa di invierno.
The drug lord resides in a bona-fide barber chair, installed in his personal workout room jammed with exercise gear: stationary bicycle, stair-stepper, treadmill, ankle weights—you name it—it’s here and well-used. And it’s the reason your friendly neighborhood drug lord’s got the rock-hard body of a trim and tough 40-year-old, when in fact he’s flirting with 60.
Being a wise monkey that hears no evil is slightly more complicated for Pablo the Barber today, because Garcia’s cursing at the top of his lungs at his first lieutenant, Iván Zambadas who stands before him.
“I will not tolerate betrayal!” Garcia says. “Find out who’s sleeping with the gringos and bring him to me.” He twists around in his chair. “Hand me your straight razor.”
The barber’s effort to keep his hand from shaking fails as he hands it over.
Garcia rubs his thumb across the finely honed carbon steel blade. “My father hated to kill our chickens. I loved it. He used a hatchet. I used one of these. And I will again before the day is out.”
“They can’t get far,” Iván says. “Cancún is a big city, and the word is already out.”
“Use every means, Iván. I am counting on you...so is Adriana.”
“Does she know?”
Garcia shakes his head. “Not yet—and not ever if you do your job right.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Bring me Miguel Lopez-Vargas...and the traitor.”
Outside the exercise room, Iván pauses to breathe deeply and think deeply. As much as he loves the excitement and satisfaction of “the hunt,” whether it’s clearing his weekend getaway ranch of ravenous coyotes or bagging a bighorn ram high in the Sonora mountains, success is measured by the death of the animal.
But this time around, he must take every precaution to make sure the exact opposite happens.
While Carmelita’s takes Cancún’s corners like she’s racing in Le Mans, ten other taxicabs—two of them mini-van-sized—converge on Señor Frog’s from all points on the compass.
Thanks to Tommy’s call to JJ, the admiral’s managed to round up the original team of fifteen Battleship boys who impersonated dads and uncles for the Delta Team.
To do so, was a lot like herding cats. Fortunately, JJ has years of experience dealing with passive-aggressive enlisted men and lazy superior officers.
While it’s true, you “can’t push a string,” you can get people to pull the string themselves—providing you aid and abet your “call to honor” with ample supplies of alcohol.
Jack’s open bar tab blessedly helps make that happen.
The last holdout, Harold, the boozy, bleary-eyed retired farmer from Minnesota, once a Machinist Mate Second Class on the USS New Jersey during Vietnam, stands before JJ, swaying just a bit.
The admiral raises his voice to be heard over the buzz of a standing-room-only crowd of tourists enjoying “happy hour” while ersatz Mexican accordion music blares over the bar’s loudspeakers.
“Gunny needs you more than ever, sailor. Can you heed the call?”
“Piece a’ cake, amr’l.”
“Remember what your son looks like?”
Harold ponders a moment. “I’m his dad, ain’t I? He looks jus’ like me.”
While JJ gently steers him to the front of the restaurant, he dials up the Rock using a special-issue smartphone that commander Goldstein handed him with the admonition, “It’ll do what regular phones do, but also connect you with anyone in the world, any time, any place.”
He taps a specific icon on the home screen. Autodial starts...nanoseconds later, the crisply efficient voice answers the phone. “Base Ops,” Sergeant Carter speaking, sir.”
“Can you patch me through to Captain Koga on this line?”
“Absolutely, sir.”
“Track down Mr. Albertini, too. Have him join the captain on my call.”
While JJ waits, he mingles among the growing crowd of men, smiling and patting them on the backs of their battleship-bedecked Hawaiian shirts.
“What’s the skinny, Admiral?”
“Change of plans. The guys are sailing home with us.”
“Everything okay?”
“Hell, no, or we wouldn’t be at general quarters.”
Phil from Waco, Texas, and a corpsman on the Rock during Vietnam tour cracks his knuckles and twangs, “I’d be more than obliged to kick me some drug-runner ass, if’n it comes to that.”
“I know you will,” JJ says. “But what they need right now is arm candy—meaning you and me and the other guys.”
Harold says, “M’favrit is Snickers. Love them damn things.”
The phone vibrates in JJ’s hand.
Seconds later, Captain Koga’s measured voice echoes from the speakerphone; “Koga here. Mr. Albertini is with me, too.”
Stanley’s gravelly voice, “Howzit going, JJ?”
“Bit of a screw-up, but I’m counting on you and the Rock to make things right.”
“We talking general quarters, here?”
“Battle stations in every respect—Captain Koga, do whatever must be done to have the ship ready for an immediate, high-speed departure the moment we arrive on board. Spring lines only, accommodation ladder deployed. Depending on how the situation develops, we may even need to board from the ferry while underway.”
“Can you state the nature of your haste?”
Even though Commander Goldstein assured him that his specialized phone was “absolutely immune” to being hacked, Admiral Lewis hesitates to put in words what’s needed in order to protect the Rock.
But he must.
“Plan A is in full abort. The Rock has now become Plan B—Stanley, ready the forty-millimeter gun tub. Make sure there’s plenty of clips. Depending on how these bastards respond, we may have to defend ourselves.”
“Aye, aye, sir—what about the big boy?”
“Get it ready too—just in case.”
“We got just ten rounds left.”
“Only need one.”
It’s like clown cars at the circus—in reverse—as the Battleship Boys pile into the Cancún taxis outside the restaurant two at a time and take off helter-skelter.
At least that’s how it seems.
But there’s method to Carmelita’s madness. To reduce suspicion, she’s been busy directing her fellow taxi drivers to take a wide variety of routes that converge on the rendezvous from different directions.<
br />
“Alejandro, use Tebecal as the cross street. The van’s at the corner of Calle Hotzuc and Xuencal. Silver Mercedes, can’t miss it.”
She redials in seconds. “Javier, take Timul, then a hard left off Tizmul then a straight shot from there to the bus on Xuencal. Silver van, shot up but good and stuck on the right side of the street.”
She listens for a moment, then says, “No worries. No gunshots reported—think about this instead: Señor Riley’s paying quadruple fare. I do not lie. Séebakí! Séebakí!”
Carmelita’s right on all counts; Jack’s picking up the tab and the Sprinter 75’s radiator has given up the ghost, the overheated engine officially DOA. As a result, Major Williston’s deployed two squads to take up a defense perimeter and protect the hostages.
Fortunately, so far, active response from the bad guys has been minimal to non-existent. That could change at any moment, of course, and most likely will when reinforcements arrive to replace Vargas’s bad guys, whose riddled bodies lead in straight line back to the bank where the shootout started.
Warfare’s like that; change can happen at any moment with utterly unpredictable results.
Why?
Good question.
Part of the answer is that human beings become equally unpredictable when performing outside their role of being shy mammals—which we all are, by the way—with the primary imperative of preserving and protecting our species, not popping off each other with 7.62 NATO slugs—which these guys have been doing on both sides of the battle for the past seventeen minutes, according to CW’s watch.
“Got me an ETA yet, sir?” he says to JJ, who’s talking to him on Commander Goldstein’s souped-up smartphone.
“Ten at the most, but traffic’s murder.”
“Poor choice of words.”
“Sorry, about that—expect taxis from all directions—keep them guessing.”