Last Call

by Lloyd Behm II

  I looked her over. I am not exactly a large woman, but she definitely fell under ‘petite.’

  “No, no reason to change your size,” I said. “As long as you don’t mind what we call work clothes.”

  “As I’m now your retainer, I’m pleased to dress in whatever manner you see fit,” Tatsuo replied. “Sorry, that’s a standard response they teach all young dragons. I honestly don’t know why I said it.”

  “As Jesse would say, no worries,” I replied, reaching for a phone. When everyone was leaving, Jed and Other Dave were waiting with phones to replace the compromised ones. He had even brought one for Tatsuo, just in case. “Supply should have some things in your size. Well, they’re going to be what Jesse calls ‘one size fits no one,’ but they’ll be close enough for you until we can get your clothes.”

  “Yes, Foreman.”

  “You know, you don’t have to stay with me,” I said.

  “I do,” she replied, brushing the hair back from her damaged eye. It had healed somewhat—it was whole and looked to be cloudy with cataracts. “It’s another of those things that are ingrained in dragons—this one may actually be something we’re cursed with, rather than taught.”

  “How do you mean?” I asked, texting a quick message to supply for several sets of the dark blue battle dress we used in ‘small/short.’

  Tatsuo sighed. “How much do you know of dragon culture?”

  “Not much, honestly. Dragons were never a threat to my people, and in the years since I left them for Europe and then the Shadow Lands, your people were rare, to say the least.”

  “Rare,” she said, laughing and covering her mouth again. “Rare is a polite way of saying ‘hunted to near extinction because most of us were arrogant bastards.’”

  “If you say so.”

  “Sorry, Foreman…it’s a tough subject to discuss. I told you my grandfather came to the States, yes?”

  “You mentioned it, yes,” I replied.

  “Grandfather leaving was less his own choice and more fleeing to avoid Imperial wrath,” she said quietly. “How much do you know about Japanese politics in the 1860s?”

  “I know the Tokugawa Shogunate ended with the bloodless Meiji Restoration.”

  “Bloodless? Thousands died to secure the power of the Imperial Family against the former Shoguns,” she said. “My grandfather was ancient when Tokugawa Yoshinobu ‘put his prerogatives at the Emperor’s disposal’ by resigning. The problem being, Tokugawa had no intention of giving up power.”

  I rose and walked into the kitchenette, taking a bottle of beer and a pitcher of cold water from the small refrigerator. I handed her the beer and poured myself a glass of water. Tatsuo looked at the bottle and started laughing gently, this time without covering her mouth.

  “Grandfather would be proud,” she said, pointing to the Kirin on the bottle. “They even included his ox tail.”

  “May I ask you something?” I said as she opened the bottle and took a long sip.

  “You’re the holder of my parole, Foreman. There’s no question you cannot ask, as long as the forms are followed.”

  I smiled at her. “This is not a question about your former employer. That can wait until we have the ‘proper forms’ set up. Why do you cover your mouth sometimes when you laugh?”

  “That,” she said, setting the bottle down on the table. “I told you my mother wasn’t big on teaching me Japanese or a whole lot of things after I was old enough to remember them, right?”

  I nodded so she would continue the story.

  “Mom had learned how to be a ‘graceful, attractive lady’ from her mother. Grandmother was firmly enmeshed in Japanese culture, and taught mom by her standards, not the standards of the new land they lived in, and mother passed some of that along to me.”

  “That makes sense,” I replied.

  “Well, yes and no. I’ve tossed away most of that culture. It only comes out when I’m really stressed out and revert to what mother taught me.”

  “I have occasionally had that problem myself,” I admitted. “But you were speaking about your grandfather?”

  “Yes. I told you last night that the locals used to bring him fugu in exchange for protection? That occurred when he was young, probably a century or two out of the egg. By the time of the Meiji restoration, grandfather was ancient for one of his lineage.”

  “How ancient?”

  “Well, unless one decides to cease living or has an encounter with a knight errant, dragon kind are a long-lived folk. Even as a half-dragon, I can count on living at least an eon or longer. Grandfather was a member of the court of the First Emperor of Japan, Jimmu.”

  I looked at her, waiting on the answer she wasn’t giving.

  “Jimmu was Emperor 2,600 years ago, give or take,” she said finally. “Mom was born to Grandfather’s sixth mate, who’d fled Japan with him in 1870 or so.”

  “If your Grandfather was so connected to the court, why did he flee?”

  “To hear him tell it, it was the fault of the rustics from Satsuma and Choshu—they supported the emperor and imperial family against the ‘rightful’ rulers of the Tokugawa Shogunate,” Tatsuo said, taking a seat on the couch and tucking her legs under her. “Grandfather was a supporter of the way things were, not the way they were going to be. After the Boshin War, he gathered what remained of his vast fortune and fled across the Pacific to California. He and grandmother took up residence in Northern California in a fishing town. Grandmother missed the homeland, and when mother came along in 1919, she raised her daughter with an eye on returning to Japan to find her mate.”

  “I take it that didn’t happen?”

  “Mom was twenty-two when Grandmother’s beloved Imperial Forces bombed Pearl Harbor—old enough to be an adult by human standards, but still considered a toddler by dragon ones.”

  “Bombed Pearl Harbor?” I asked.

  “Yeah, you know, starting the American involvement in World War Two? Surely you know about that,” she said.

  “Tatsuo, I wasn’t kidding when I told your lawyer I was one hundred and forty-seven years old. That doesn’t mean I spent most of those years here,” I answered.

  “How could you not know about one of the pivotal events of the twentieth century, Foreman?”

  “I spent most of the twentieth century elsewhere, obviously,” I replied.

  “Wait…so you weren’t kidding about having gone plane-walking?”

  “No. I spent the majority of the last century avoiding the minions of Abzu in the Shadow Lands,” I replied. “My husband and the majority of our team, the humans anyway, rescued me from there.”

  “And that’s where your husband killed the Mother of Dragons?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “That explains, at least, why you don’t know much about World War II,” she said, shaking her head.

  “I have been trying to catch up, but do you know how much human history occurred while I was elsewhere?”

  “True,” she replied. “Anyway, Imperial Japan attacked the American bases at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, sinking a bunch of old battleships and killing a bunch of folks. Grandfather had gone on one of his sabbaticals about two years earlier—shortly before mom and grandmother had to register as ‘resident aliens’ under the Smith Act.”

  “So your grandfather wasn’t in America when the war broke out?”

  “No. Grandmother felt he’d returned to Japan to test the waters for bringing his family back under the protection of the Imperial Family, and, well the war broke out, stopping that.”

  “I can see that,” I said. “If I may ask?”

  “Please, Foreman, I have few secrets.”

  “You told Sola Stellus you were raised in the San Fernando Valley in the 1980s; that would indicate you are young, even for a dragon.”

  “I was born in 1970,” Tatsuo said. “Mom waited until she found the right human for a mate.”

  “I take it she never told your father how old she was?”

  “D
ad was twenty-two when they met in college. Mom can still look like she’s in her teens if she wants, so…”

  “Modern life with its focus on youth.” I laughed.

  “If they only knew what walks amongst them, looking young,” Tatsuo agreed.

  * * *

  I was dreaming of Jesse—he sat on a porch under a cloudy sky, talking to a dark-haired boy—when someone knocked on the door.

  I rolled out of bed, kicked off the covers, and drew the pistol Jesse gave me last April out from under the pillow.

  “Foreman?” Tatsuo called from the bedroom door. “The elf from last night awaits your pleasure. As I was unsure of your protocols, he waits on the porch.”

  “Let Sola in,” I replied, tucking the pistol back under the pillow.

  “Certainly, Foreman. However, would you like a moment to get dressed before the elf enters? Or do you and your husband receive callers in the nude?”

  “I don’t know that it would make a difference with Sola, honestly,” I said, pulling on a faded “Al Taqaddum” T-shirt of Jesse’s and a pair of shorts. I pulled my hair back into a ponytail. “Am I presentable enough for your sensibilities?”

  “Yes, Foreman,” Tatsuo replied, her eyes twinkling with mirth. “I shall admit the elf.”

  Sola was dressed formally—for him—in a white, double-breasted suit accented with a red ascot. His shirt collar looked wide enough to serve as wings.

  “May I offer you refreshment?” Tatsuo asked, bowing the elf to where I sat at the table in the kitchenette, waiting on the coffee she’d insisted on starting before allowing Sola entrance.

  “If the coffee is finished, I would like a cup.” He sat across the table from me, setting a battered grey-green storage folder on the table. “I apologize for waking you.”

  He gave a little seated half bow.

  “Jesse would have probably shot you,” I said, taking the cup of coffee Tatsuo offered me.

  She set another in front of Sola. I do not know if her choice of cups had been deliberate or random, but she put the dancing elves cup Fred had given Jesse after we’d returned from Piccadilly in his hand.

  When you added hot liquid to the cup, the elves, deep in the forest, danced with glee. From the way the figures were moving, the coffee she had poured for Sola was just short of boiling. Not that he noticed as he added cream and sugar to his cup mechanically.

  I waited for him to speak. Tatsuo bustled about the kitchenette, clucking her tongue at the shortfalls in my supply situation. Jesse and I ate at home rarely, so there was little food to be found in the cabinets.

  Finally, she dropped a plate covered in artistically arranged sugar wafers between Sola and I before coming to rest behind my left shoulder.

  He cleared his throat and sipped the coffee.

  “Sola,” I said when he lowered his cup, “I know Jesse buys much better coffee than you can find in the cafeteria, but why are you here?”

  “Yes, sorry, I was organizing my thoughts,” the elf said. “Although you’re right, your coffee is much better than I’m used to.”

  “You could start from the beginning,” Tatsuo supplied.

  “Yes, that. I sent my research on the Akkadian spell on Mr. Garrett to some colleagues in Europe. They want to see my evidence.”

  “This is a good thing, yes?” I asked.

  He made a very human gesture, rocking a hand side to side.

  “As you know, I’m not good with people,” he finally said, fingers drumming on the tabletop. “I don’t have time for the simplified niceties of life in an informal elfish court like the local one here.”

  “I’m not seeing the problem,” I said, reaching for the coffeepot to refill my cup.

  Tatsuo beat me to it, pouring gracefully and replacing the pot in the center of the table.

  “These are my notes on European elfish court protocol. Cathe started updating them when I sent the request for aid to them. There are so many ways we can insult them!”

  Tatsuo squeaked a small laugh. I could see she had covered her mouth with her hands again.

  “Would you like to add to the discussion?” I asked, gesturing to a chair.

  “If the Foreman insists,” Tatsuo said, sinking into the chair and pouring herself a cup of coffee. “Elf…”

  “Please, call me Sola, tubular one.”

  “You may call me Tatsuo,” she replied. “Dragons have a bitchin set of protocols for things like this. The way I see it, these Eurotrash elves are coming to your territory, right?”

  “I wouldn’t call them Eurotrash, but I can see your point about territoriality,” Sola replied.

  “The protocol for dragons is, the dragon entering someone’s territory has to follow local standards. A dragon doesn’t change his protocols just because the visitor is older, or from a ‘more esteemed’ blood line, or any of that stuff,” she said. “Become a trendsetter.”

  “That…that makes sense,” Sola said with a nervous chuckle. “I can see it now. When their entourage arrives at the airport, the only one there to greet them will be a team of drivers, holding a sign with the leader of the group’s name on it!”

  “That might be going a bit too far,” I said. “Aren’t there company protocols for handling very important beings?”

  “I never thought of that,” Sola admitted. “Those protocols should work just fine. Diindiisi, Tatsuo, thank you very much for your time this morning.”

  * * * * *

  Chapter 13 – Jesse

  Through the door was, to quote Sherman, a hell. My specific hell, to be precise—the tunnels under Saddam Hussein’s “Iraqi Primate Research Facility.” I was back in MARPAT Desert- and Coyote-colored gear as well, with the feeling that someone was trying to slip me the Green Weenie.

  “Ninja Pigeon! Move your ass!” Gunny Thomas shouted.

  Fifteen of us volunteered to follow Gunny down into this place and see if we could find the SEAL team that had gone in to gather intel and destroy the WMD site Saddam had buried under his showy primate research center.

  According to the briefing we’d received, Saddam and his sociopathic kids had killed all the apes they’d imported for research purposes. Personally, I’d have been glad to let the place rot, sinking slowly into the desert, but orders were orders. Our orders were to support the operators of the SEAL team—they would penetrate the site, grab all the intel, and then blow the site into low earth orbit, while we kept Hajji and his friends from paying a visit and corn-cobbing the SEALs.

  That was the plan, anyway. But like they say, no plan ever survives contact with the enemy.

  * * *

  The ride out was boring. We left the back gate at TQ and drove out into the desert night, everyone hoping for contact. It was the cold and wet season, however, and Hajji hated the weather more than he hated us, so most of his fun was limited to things he could do and scurry back to the warmth of his home before the sun went down. It seemed like we’d spent more time waiting on the nightly KBR convoy to Fallujah to clear the gate than we did driving in the desert.

  I was riding with Gunny because he was still riding my ass; during a contraband inspection, the dogs had found my bottle of “mouthwash” that was vodka and green food coloring.

  “Salazar, what the hell were you thinking?” Gunny asked when we were in position. “One more NJP and they’re going to bust you again.”

  I was up in the turret, watching owls take small furry creatures via the magic of night vision. I turned his question over in my mind a couple of times before answering.

  “Hell, Gunny, I’m bored. You want me to end up like those stupid bastards over in supply that were worshipping a can of corn?”

  “What the hell are you talking about, Salazar?”

  “You remember that civilian they hustled off base a couple of weeks ago because she was turning tricks in the supply area?”

  “Yeah, I remember.”

  “So I got this buddy who’s a forklift operator over in Motor-T. They put him to work with some
crazy civilian, checking the cans where she was turning tricks over in Class II. The civilian was doing all the groundwork—he’d open the cans, see what was inside, and decide whether or not they needed to move shit around.”

  “I’m tracking,”

  “So they found a couple of cans with cots in them, set up like a no-tell motel.”

  “You know, I don’t even want to know who’d think fucking in a hot, dusty conex box was a good thing,” Gunny said, sucking down about half a bottle of water. “Especially with some little skank who didn’t realize she’d make more money long term and work less by just doing what Uncle Sugar was paying her to do.”

  “Some people work hard at being stupid, Gunny.”

  “You might want to ponder that,” Gunny said. I could hear the smile in his voice. “So your buddy in Motor-T?”

  “Yeah, my buddy in Motor-T,” I replied. “They open the next box, and it’s full of toilet paper. Forty-eight feet of toilet paper.”

  “We could use some of that back at base,” Gunny said.

  “Nah, it’s that Skillcraft John Wayne toilet paper, Gunny. Won’t take shit off of anybody. Besides, he said a bunch of the boxes looked like they had sand in them.”

  “Might as well just use a handful of sand to wipe your ass, then,” Gunny said.

  “Probably take off less skin,” I admitted. “Anyway, they take a break, drink some water, that kind of shit, because the next can’s got about three foot of moon dust in front of the door.”

  “Let me guess, the civilian made your buddy clear the door?”

  “That’s the weird part, Gunny. Benjamin said the civilian took the shovel from him and told him to go sit in the lift. Took him about ten minutes to dig out the doors.”

  “That is weird,” Gunny said.

  Something out in the distance howled. It wasn’t a hyena—those bastards make a chuckling noise; it wasn’t a jackal, either. It sounded like monkeys in a bad movie.

  “Guess they didn’t kill all the monkeys,” I said.