by Matthew Rief
“I saved our platoon!” he fired back. “We would all be dead now if I hadn’t done anything. Each and every one of us.”
I shook my head. “You and your conspiracy theory.”
He stepped closer, moving to within arm’s length, and pointed a finger in my face.
“You ignorant piece of—”
Years of pent-up anger surged forth from within me in an instant. My right hand instinctively squeezed into a fist, and in one quick motion, I lunged towards Kyle and hurled my knuckles into the side of his jaw. His head snapped sideways, and he grunted as bone met bone in a forceful and painful collision.
He stepped back, catching himself against the transom, and quickly regained his balance. His face had transformed into a combination of rage and focus. In the blink of an eye, he retaliated. Pressing his heels hard into the deck, he sprang at me like an NFL linebacker coming in for a blitz. I brought my arms up and tried to slide out of the way, but he was too fast. He slammed his shoulder into my chest, knocking the air from my lungs, and body-slammed me onto the sunbed.
He stayed on top of me, and with reckless abandon, he threw punch after punch at my chest. I managed to block a few of them, but the ones that landed sent burning pain radiating through my body.
“Do you have any idea what they did to me?” he said, his words coming out sporadically in between blows. “To my family?”
After redirecting a punch with my forearm, I wrapped my left arm around his neck and lurched his body to the side. I tried to get him in a choke hold, but he was strong, even stronger than I remembered him. We tussled back and forth on the sunbed, exchanging blows for what felt like an eternity.
Suddenly, we heard the ear-rattling sound of a whistle as someone ran down the dock towards the Baia. We shoved away from each other and I lay on my back, my head propped against the edge of the starboard windscreen. We glared at each other and both breathed audibly. The sounds from the whistle grew louder, and when I glanced over at the dock, I saw Gus running frantically towards where the stern was tied up. Gus Henderson owned the marina, a gift passed down from his parents, and he spent most nights on a little bed in the marina office. He was short, pale, and overweight, but he laid down the law in the marina like John Wayne.
I couldn’t help but smile as I watched him run towards us wearing only a pair of boxers and a white tee shirt, blowing into his whistle like an angry traffic officer.
“Break it up!” he yelled. “The sheriff will be here any minute.”
He finally ceased the painful whistling when he reached the dock beside us. Looking over the stern, his eyes grew wide when he looked at us.
“Logan!” he said. “What the hell’s going on over here? Are you alright?”
He eyed Kyle skeptically.
I nodded. “We’re fine.” I rose up and propped myself on my elbows. “Really, Gus? A whistle?”
He shrugged. “Hey, it’s all I had on me.”
There was a brief silence as Gus scanned back and forth between me and Kyle, who was leaning against the dinette.
“Oh, Gus, this is James,” I said, not wanting to reveal his real name. “He’s a… he’s an old friend of mine who’s visiting. We were just having a disagreement.”
Kyle nodded slightly. His face had softened, and we were both relaxing, out of fight mode. Gus just looked at both of us, clearly confused.
“Well, for the sake of my other tenants, can you guys bury the hatchet? You’re waking people up.”
He motioned toward a few nearby boaters who’d switched on their deck lights and stepped out of their cabins to see what all of the fuss was about.
“Sure thing, Gus,” I said. “And sorry for the commotion. Can you call the sheriff and let him know he doesn’t have to come down? Tell him it was my fault and that our next breakfast is on me.”
Gus nodded, but he still looked skeptical of my old friend. He eyed him with a combination of confusion and distrust.
“It’s alright, really,” I assured him. I glanced over at Kyle, then added, “We won’t fight anymore, at least not here.”
He shrugged. “Logan, if this is how you greet old friends, don’t bother stopping by to see me if you ever move away and visit.” I laughed and he added, “I’m gonna go call the sheriff. You guys have a good night, and try to use your words.”
He turned and walked barefoot down the dock, whistle in hand as he told a few nearby boaters that everything was fine. I sighed and looked over at Kyle, who was looking out at the ocean. I’d calmed down from my initial emotions of seeing him again for the first time. I remembered reading that Thomas Jefferson believed that when you were mad, you should count to ten before speaking, and when you were really mad, you should count to a hundred. Maybe one day I’d learn.
When we made eye contact, I said, “You want some coffee?”
He nodded. “Sure.”
SIX
Kyle stepped down into the salon behind me and sat on the white cushioned couch on the port side. I went to work across from him, filling the back of the coffeemaker with water, then setting the filter in place and adding scoops of Colombian medium roast on top of it. As the machine went to work, I sat down on the other side of the couch and angled my body to face him.
“This is one hell of a boat,” he said, his eyes scanning every inch of the interior.
“Thanks,” I said. “It’s a Baia Flash. I bought it when I moved down here a year ago.”
Kyle smirked. “You’ve come a long way from Seaman Dodge and twelve hundred bucks a month.”
I nodded, and the salon went quiet for a moment. Part of me still hadn’t realized what was really happening. The magnitude of the situation was too much to take in all at once. Though once my friend, the man sitting beside me was practically a complete stranger. There was also the unsettling fact that he was a criminal, a man whose face had been plastered all over the news for years, a man who would be on the FBI’s most wanted list if they knew he was still alive.
What the hell was I thinking having him there?
But despite the past, I didn’t feel like I was in danger around him, even when we’d been wringing each other’s necks.
The boiling water finished flowing down through the coffee, and I poured us both a mugful. Setting Kyle’s on the table in front of him, I held mine by the handle and sat back down.
“Thanks,” he said.
I took a sip and leaned forward. I had so many questions, I didn’t know where to start.
“So are you gonna tell me what happened?” I asked. “Where you’ve been all these years?”
He shook his head. “What do you mean? I’ve been hiding, and it made it easier that everyone thought I was dead.”
“And now you’ve decided to come here. Why? If the wrong person recognizes you, you’ll be thrown in prison for life.”
“I know what I’m doing,” he said. “And you’re right about that. I wonder, why haven’t you called me in yet? Still got my back, Logan?” He said the last words with a sarcastic tone.
“For now, though I think I’ll be beating myself up for it later like I did before.”
“Like before?”
“Yeah. I stood up for you during all of the debriefs and depositions. They say those things are confidential, but we all know that’s shit. I knew my career would never be the same after that. It’s one of the biggest reasons I never reenlisted again.”
“You didn’t have my back in Colombia,” he fired back.
“You disobeyed a direct order,” I said, raising my voice. “And Manny died because of it.”
“We’d all be dead if I hadn’t,” he said, rising to his feet.
I gritted my teeth as the image of Estrada’s face appeared in my mind.
“You should leave,” I said in a stern voice. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“No, I shouldn’t, but I have to.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I didn’t do it, Logan!” He stepped towards me and stared
fiercely into my eyes. “They tried to pin the whole thing on me. It was a ruse, the whole mission. It was an under-the-table, greedy deal, and you, me, and our entire platoon would have died had I not disobeyed that order.”
I shook my head. “Back to this, huh?” I took another sip of coffee, trying to calm myself a little. “What about that guy in the alley? Why were you beating the crap out of him?”
“Those guys came after us,” he said. “They found us, Logan. If they’d just tried to kill me, I wouldn’t have cared. I’d have dealt with them and moved on. But those assholes came after my wife and daughters as well.”
I was taken aback that someone would try and harm his family. I’d known his wife and had met his daughters a few times when they were babies.
“Are they alright?”
“They’re safe. But that’s the main reason I’m here. You can only hide from your troubles for so long. Sooner or later the past catches up with you. And I know if I don’t deal with these pests, I’ll be running and fighting for the rest of my life.”
“Who are they? How did they find you?”
He paused a moment. “I don’t know for sure how they found me, but I know they work for Carson. No doubt they’re Darkwater.”
My eyes narrowed at the mention of her name. Carson Richmond was one of the wealthiest women in America. She owned a handful of casinos and resorts and spent much of her time with the nation’s elite in business and politics. She was controversial, and numerous allegations had been made against her over the years, though none of them had ever made it to court. She was also the founder of Darkwater, a high-end private security firm that catered to the world’s most elite citizens.
“She’s behind everything, Logan. She’s the reason we were in Colombia. She tried to kill all of us for her own gain.”
I went silent for a moment, thinking over his words.
“So what do you plan to do, Kyle?”
He took in a deep breath and let it out. “I’m gonna bring her down. I’m gonna bring it all down, and I’m gonna bring the truth to light. She and her band of dirty traitors will pay for what they’ve done.”
I finished my coffee and tried to let the words resonate for a few seconds before responding.
“How exactly do you plan to do that?” I asked, genuinely interested.
“I’m gonna find the plane,” he declared.
I leaned back into the cushion, caught off guard by the seemingly random response.
“Find the plane?”
“It had intel aboard that I could use to prove that it was all a fabricated lie. If I can find it, bring it up and bring it to light, I can take these people down.”
My mind was moving in all directions, but there was one key aspect of recent events that I couldn’t wrap my head around. If Kyle was who the media and the government had made him out to be, then why were there people trying to kill him? Why not simply report him to authorities and bring him into custody?
I couldn’t find an answer to that question, and it cast a cloud of doubt over my mind. I brought myself back to the moment, to the day the plane went down.
“They scoured the ocean for years looking for that hunk of metal,” I said. “No sign of it was ever found. Nobody knows where it is.”
“Nobody but me,” he said. “But as much as it kills me to say it, I need your help. That’s why I’m here.”
“Why do you need my help?”
“Because you have a boat, and from what I’ve read about you in the past year, you have access to decent dive and salvage equipment. Because you can handle yourself in case we encounter more Darkwater. Because you didn’t shoot me. And because you haven’t reported me to the police.”
“And if I don’t help?” I said without a moment’s pause.
He glanced up at the overhead, rubbed his bare chin, and said, “Then I guess I’ll just have to steal a boat, won’t I?” He let out a deep breath and added, “Look, if you want to keep your hands clean, I get it. How about you just let me take this and you can report it once I’m a hundred miles away? I’m sure you’ve got her insured. Regardless, I’m going for the plane, and I’m gonna bring up its contents whether you help me or not.”
I glanced at him with wide eyes, and he nodded confidently. For a moment, I stared at him, knowing that if I made the decision to help him, there would be no going back. If he was the criminal liar the rest of the world thought he was, I’d be slated as an accomplice and spend years behind bars. Hell, even if he was telling the truth, that fate would still be probable. But if he was telling the truth, if the whole mission was a conspiracy and we brought it to light, I’d be doing a service to my nation, to my old friend, and to his family.
Suddenly, I heard a voice call my name from out on the dock. I rose to my feet, and walked out into the fresh evening air. Gus had returned and he was standing on the dock alongside Atticus. The curious lab enjoyed hanging out around the marina sometimes, especially in the office. I knew it was mainly because Gus liked to slip him snacks like peanut butter and raisins all the time.
“I think he misses you,” Gus said.
Before the words had left his lips, Atticus was already bounding onto the Baia and jumping to me. I leaned over, petting and greeting him as he licked the side of my face.
“You sure everything’s alright?” he asked, looking over my shoulder towards the salon door.
“Yeah. Thanks again for handling the sheriff and for watching Atticus.”
He waved a hand, told me not to mention it, then said goodnight as he headed back down the dock. Once Atticus relaxed a little, I took in a deep breath and looked out over the dark ocean, trying to make sense of everything that had happened. After a minute, Kyle walked out and stood beside me. I was surprised at how quickly Atticus took to him. Instead of being weary of strangers like he usually was, he simply stared at Kyle then greeted him happily. Kyle petted him for a few seconds then reached a hand out in front of me.
“Here,” he said, holding a small folded piece of paper out to me. “An old friend of mine once gave me this.”
When I grabbed the paper and unfolded it, I realized that it was a picture of Kyle and me on his wedding day. I was his best man, and in the picture, we both smiled as we posed in our nice black suits and sunglasses with the hills of Southern California behind us. On the back, “brothers in arms” was written in blue ink along with the date, July 1997.
He moved toward the stern of the Baia and prepared to step from the swim platform onto the dock.
“Hey,” I said, causing him to stop and turn around. “Why don’t you come back inside? We have a lot more to talk about. You can stay in the guest cabin if you want.”
I wasn’t sure I could trust him or if he was still the man I’d once known, but I didn’t know if his place was close by or if he even had a place to stay. I could at least give him a bed to sleep on and listen to what else he had to say.
We talked for another hour before the caffeine wore off and we decided to call it a night. He told me about where he’d been all these years and how he’d managed to stay off the grid by changing his and his family’s names. It amazed me how he’d been able to stay in hiding so long, but he’d always been smart and resourceful.
Before I shut the door of the main cabin, I turned back to Kyle and asked what the chances were that the guys who’d tried to kill him earlier would sneak onto my boat.
“Fifty-fifty,” he said nonchalantly.
Since it was already almost 0200 and it was just the two of us, we decided not to station alternating watches. Needless to say, I had my top-of-the-line security system fully operational, including the transom sensors and the outer hull metal detectors, which I only used on rare occasions. If anyone came aboard or dove under my boat in the middle of the night, I’d know about it.
With my Sig on the nightstand beside me, I switched off the lights and crashed beneath the covers. After spending years sleeping in jungles and government-issued cots under stressful situati
ons, I had no trouble falling asleep and passed out almost instantly.
SEVEN
Motobli, Liberia
The night air trembled as a distant rumble signaled the arrival of a train. Two young men sitting on metal folding chairs playing poker beside the tracks quickly rounded up their cards and jumped to their feet. They each had a classic AK-47 slung over their shoulder, and they watched as the train hissed and screeched to a stop just a few feet away from them.
It was a calm, humid night, and the lack of wind, combined with the proximity of swamp and dense jungle, meant that the mosquitoes were making their unwanted existence known. Thick clouds covered most of the sky, keeping even the distant glow of the moon from adding any light to the dark surroundings.
The large sliding door of one of the old freight cars screeched open, and a metal ramp was put in place. The car was painted dark green and had big white faded letters that said Wake Corporation across the middle. Casually and without fear, a tall slender white man wearing a long leather jacket appeared from the shadows of the open car and walked down the metal ramp. He had a Don Lino cigar in his right hand and took a few drags as he walked straight towards the two soldiers.
They met the tall guy at the edge of the ramp. They stood still for a moment, facing each other without saying a word.
Finally, one of the soldiers looked behind the tall guy at the train and said, “Have you brought the full shipment?”
The tall guy paused for a moment, took another drag of his cigar, then exhaled.
“Money first,” he replied in a thick Russian accent.
The two soldiers looked at each other, then one of them grabbed a folded-up piece of paper from his pocket and handed it to the Russian. He remained stoic and unaffected as he grabbed the paper, unfolded it, and quickly read it over.
“It is from our general,” one of the soldiers said. “He demands that you take a lower payment for the weapons. Your prices are far too high.”