From under the door a bright band of light pierced the darkness. With the bat raised in one hand, he slowly reached out to open the door with the other, but his hand never made it to the doorknob. The door flew outward and smacked Jason square in the face—sending him sprawling to the ground—flat on his back. In a quick blur someone streaked past, off and running. “Damn!” His cheek throbbed.
Jason knew the smartest thing to do would be to just let him go. But with the kind of year he’d just had, nobody was sneaking onto his property, knocking him flat on his ass, and then dashing off freely into the night. Frustrated, Jason kicked out at the metal door—a loud clang reverberated into the night. He collected his wits and got back to his feet. Spinning around he tried to determine which direction to go. Then he heard distant running, heading away—going deeper into the scrapyard. Jason ran off in that general direction. He quickly closed the gap.
“Stop!” he yelled, to no effect. Each side of the pathway was a blur of rusted metal—but now only five car lengths separated them. Squinting down the dimly-lit path, Jason noticed that whoever the guy was, his head barely reached above the level of a car hood.
He was wearing a blue LA Dodger’s baseball cap and he moved surprisingly quick for a little guy. He looked to be tiring though. “I can do this all night,” Jason hollered after him. The little trespasser darted from one side of the pathway to the other, his small head turning this way and that—looking for an escape route between the mountains of wheel rims, tall columns of tires, and three- and four-stacked-high car chassis. Good luck, dude, Jason thought to himself. This yard is packed tight. If nothing else, Old Gus had been organized—everything, every piece of scrap metal had its own specific allotted slice of real estate. No wasted space.
Jason could see the little guy was just about spent. His short arms flailed spastically up and down. Truth was, Jason was loosing steam himself. They were quickly approaching the far end of the property and Jason was almost within reach. Jason made one more extended stride and, arms outstretched, dove for the little man.
Mid-air, his ankle bracelet started to vibrate, and then a “beep-beep-beep” sound followed. What the hell is that?” Jason’s fingertips had only grazed the man’s shoes before he ran off into the night. Jason’s bare legs hit the ground first, then his elbows, then his hands.
Sprawled on the cement, he looked down and saw the LED on his ankle monitor was flashing red, letting him know he was past the specified GPS limits of his confinement. The police had made it perfectly clear: “That device goes active—you’re going to jail. Don’t fuck with us on this, you understand?” Jason quickly got to his feet and ran back towards the house. Damn! Nervously he looked towards San Bernardino in the distance, and the soft glow from the city’s lights in the sky. Jason wondered if a cruiser had already been dispatched. And there go any hopes of seeing Mollie again. Crap!
Halfway back to the house, the LED stopped flashing red and turned to green. Jason bent over, hands on his knees, and let out a long breath. He just might have caught a break. He turned and looked back down the pathway one more time. The short hoodlum was definitely gone—well good riddance. Jason hobbled back toward the house, following the trail of his own bloody footprints.
He made a quick detour to the shed to see what had attracted the odd visitor. The door was still wide open. Insects frantically darted around a 60-watt light fixture, its long cord swaying from the ceiling. Like walking into a time warp. Jason wondered when the last time was that he’d been in here? Five years, ten? He had spent much of his childhood in this shed, watching his grandfather tinker with old carburetors, starter solenoids, alternators, water pumps... but now the workbench held a different kind of machinery. Futuristic things Jason had never seen before. Things machined to tolerances far exceeding anything required by the auto industry. There were three separate cylindrically- shaped metallic components, each lying side by side atop the bench. Some kind of fiber-optic cable connected them together. All three components had a similar glowing blue light, pulsating behind a curved glass panel.
He bent over the bench, his face mere inches from the devices, his brow raised. He noticed several other toaster-sized pieces of equipment, similar to oscilloscopes, but much more advanced. These were lined up on the back of the bench, connected to the other glowing devices. He felt a slight vibration through the bench top. He shook his head and stood back. Probably best to leave everything as is. Jason found an old padlock and its key buried in one of the workbench drawers. He turned out the light and locked up the shed. Until he knew what those things were, he didn’t want anyone going near the place.
Chapter 2
Jason awoke feeling a bit more optimistic—actually more optimistic than he’d felt in two years. Mollie would be spending much of the summer with him here at Casa Scrapyard. That was something her mother, Nan, wasn’t thrilled about—not with his recent problem with the Navy, but she’d recently acquiesced. The truth was, Jason was excited to see Nan again too. It had been a long time. Things hadn’t ended well between them the last time they talked. He got up and scurried into the bathroom and assessed his looks in the mirror. After brushing his teeth, he tried to do something about his mop of bed-hair. Even after several attempts to wet it down, it just popped up again.
In the beginning they’d been happy. One of those rare whirlwind, love-at-first-sight stories you hear about but never fully believe is really possible. But it had been, at least for Jason.
It started with a simple blind date. Their physical attraction to each other was undeniable, but there was something else as well. They fit together—never wanting to be apart. Jason was finishing up at the Naval Academy and Nan had begun pre-law at George Washington University. Within several months they decided to move in together, and six months later, they were married. As far as Jason was concerned, their time together had been the happiest of his life. After close, stateside-duty assignments for their first years, his naval career as a sea-faring officer began in earnest. Extended tours, sometimes lasting for months on end, started to chip away at their marriage—a relationship still too new to endure the hardships posed by long absences and distance.
Even with Nan’s busy school schedule, she was lonely. Jason’s rare and fleeting shore leaves were never long enough to fully restore what was lost. Six years into the marriage, and Mollie just starting kindergarten, Nan filed for divorce. She had been the love of his life. Now, looking at himself in the mirror Jason wondered why he hadn’t tried harder to hold on to her.
His phone’s ringing pulled Jason away from his thoughts. He answered on the second ring. “Hello?”
“We’re at the gate, can you open this damn thing?” Nan barked, impatiently.
“Hi—oh, yeah sure, give me just one sec.” He reached for his jeans and slipped on his shoes, “ouch, shit!”
The double-gates at the front of the house provided access to the entire property. It was kept locked. Primarily to keep kids and visitors, like the one Jason had the previous night, from getting into the scrapyard. Nan’s minivan was idling at the gate. Jason could see by her expression she didn’t want to be here.
Mollie was smiling and grabbing for her sweatshirt and backpack. At eight, she looked the same as Jason last remembered—a goofy fun-loving kid. Over the past few months Jason had made it a point to call Mollie several times a week. He now hoped their relationship would be as good in person as it had become on the phone.
Jason unlocked the gate and swung it open. Nan drove through to park by the side of the house. Mollie was out and running before the van came to a stop. He hadn’t seen her in months and somewhere along the line she’d gotten braces. Her smile was still as radiant and contagious as ever. She jumped into his arms and squeezed. Mollie’s feet twirled around as Jason hugged her tight. Several bobby pins held down her hair.
“So happy to see you, Dad,” her muffled voice buried in his shoulder.
“Me too, goofball, I’m EXTREMELY happy you’re here!
”
Mollie glanced back at her mother and whispered: “Mom’s driving me absolutely crazy. Honestly, I’m not exaggerating… I couldn’t have lasted a minute more in that house…”
Nan had gotten out of the van and was standing by the fence, looking around at nothing in particular. Jason could tell she felt awkward. They hadn’t seen each other in nearly a year. If possible, Nan was even more stunning then he remembered, standing there wearing her favorite well-worn snug-fitting jeans—the ones she usually saved for weekends. Her chestnut hair was longer and tied in a loose ponytail. At thirty-six, she could easily pass for twenty-something. Jason caught himself staring. They made eye contact. “Hey, why don’t you come in for a while?” Jason offered, trying not to sound too desperate.
Nan looked away, as if deciding. “I don’t know, maybe I should just—”
Jason cut her off. “Oh, come on, a quick cup of coffee—”
After what seemed an eternity, she tentatively replied, “Um…okay, sure, why not?”
* * *
Jason made a pot of coffee and they sat on the porch. Mollie was off investigating the house, deciding which bedroom she wanted to make her own for the weekend.
“So, how have you been, Nan?” Jason asked, filling her cup.
“Thing’s are good.” Avoiding his eyes at first, she then looked directly at him. “Jason, I have to be honest… this just feels weird, you know, talking like this after all this time. Like we’re old buddies or something.”
“Would that be so bad? Being friends?”
“What would be the point?” Nan spat back. Then, seeming to regret her outburst, she continued in a more controlled voice. “Why now? It’s been years; don’t you think it’s best to just let things be?”
Nan sat back and smiled sympathetically. “I’m sorry. This must be a difficult time for you.” She furrowed her brow and went on: “But Christ, Jason, you’re so damn impulsive! What the hell were you thinking, shooting those unarmed guys?”
Jason looked at Nan and saw her frustration with him. There was nothing she could say he hadn’t already said to himself a thousand times.
It was over a year ago. Jason, a lieutenant commander on the U.S. gunship Tripoli, was on patrol off the coast of Somalia. He had just been informed that the Canadian super tanker, Christina, had been boarded by pirates. Recently, and all too frequently, Somalian pirates were brazenly attacking these big ships, demanding large ransom amounts from governments and corporations alike. In return, they promised a safe return of ship and crew. Fortunately, this time, Jason’s gunship was close by—less than a mile from the seized tanker.
It was a moonless, stormy night when four navy SEAL Zodiac rubberized crafts swept up to the besieged ship. The noise of their small but powerful outboard motors was barely audible above the sea’s surging waves. Jason and fifteen others on his team had trained this same type of maneuver hundreds of times.
Their Zodiacs were soon positioned mid-ship and aft on both sides of the tanker. At Jason’s comms signal, the team silently climbed up long collapsible ladders and was on board in less than two minutes. The Christina was completely dark. Dressed in black assault gear, each SEAL carried a standard issue Sig Sauer P226 side arm, as well as an HK MP5N submachine gun, and was equipped with night-vision goggles. For assaults such as this, they would have access to a duffle bag filled with explosive breaching charges, bolt cutters, and a sledgehammer. The four SEAL teams moved forward with their weapons raised and ready. It became immediately apparent that this was not a typical pirate ransom situation. This had been a raid. A dead body lay sprawled on the deck before Jason. Eerily seen through green-hued optics, the crewmember’s throat had been sliced from ear to ear. Blood pooled in a symmetrical circle around his head. Jason went on-comms to his team. “Stay dark and quiet everybody; team Zebra, I want you clearing the bridge—let’s see if anyone is still in charge here.”
Three more bodies, similarly killed, were found in the same proximity by his team. Right inside the forward bulkhead hatch, a woman crewmember had been bound. Trousers pulled down, she had obviously been raped prior to having her throat cut as well. Outside the hatch, Jason watched Billy, a mountain of a man and one of the toughest SEALs in the unit, walk over to the railing, throw up over the side, and then continue on to secure the ship. Jason heard noises and yelling coming from below deck. Laughing. Not English.
Jason, using hand signals, gestured for two of the assault team members to follow him down the stairs, and the other two teams to clear the top deck. The laughing became more pronounced as Jason and his team descended the stairs. A metallic clanging sound echoed off a bulkhead in the distance, followed by more laughter. More clanging, more laughter. Light poured out from an open hatchway just ahead, partially illuminating the dark hallway.
Jason signaled for his team to halt—he slung his assault rifle around to his back and used a small telescopic mirror to carefully peer inside and around the corner. He moved the mirror around, ensuring that he hadn’t missed anything. He took in the scene in mere seconds. It looked to be the ship's mess. The tanker’s captain was bound and secured to the far bulkhead; his legs and arms spread wide apart. Five Somalian pirates sat together at a large table on the far side of the room. Most of them were shirtless, their dark skins contrasted with the white florescent lights above. Machetes caked with dried blood lay strewn about the tabletop.
The obvious leader, a tall and emaciated-looking man, stood forward, closer to the bound captain, and held a woman crewmember around her neck. He held a knife up to her eye. Three of the captain’s crew had been blindfolded. They each held a three-foot long piece of pipe. Watching the events as they progressed, Jason felt bile rise in the back of his throat. In a sick and twisted form of ‘pin the tail on the donkey’ the blindfolded crewmembers could only save the woman’s life by taking shots at the captain.
From the looks of things, the captain had been hit numerous times. Blood seeped from an open gash on his forehead. His right ear was completely gone—an oozing dark red circle in its place. Terrified, the woman screamed—which produced another wave of laughter from the pirates. In Jason’s ear-comm the other two SEAL teams were reporting in. A total of seventeen more casualties had been found, four of whom were rape victims. More laughter erupted from within the mess hall.
Jason instinctually took action. In fact, not reaching for his sidearm was never a question. With no thought, no hesitation, he pulled his Sig Sauer P226 from his holster, leveled it, and squeezed the trigger. The pirate leader, the one holding the woman, was dead before he hit the ground—a small bullet hole in the center of his forehead. The woman jumped back and screamed again. But Jason didn’t stop there. He quickly followed up by squeezing the trigger five more times—also dead center shots to the forehead for each of the remaining pirates. They fell in near unison to the mess deck. Later, there would be conflicting reports from his SEAL team. Something about the other pirates reaching for their weapons, but Jason doubted that that was true.
As events happened, the story was leaked to the press and immediately sensationalized to mega-proportions. International media and other news organizations had a field day. Before Jason knew it, he had been elevated to quasi-hero status: Lieutenant Commander Jason Reynolds inflicts sweet revenge on merciless pirates. But then it was up to a special U.S. Navy Tribunal to decide his fate. Would Jason face charges for second-degree murder and spend years of his life locked up somewhere in a brig, or would he be found innocent due to mitigating circumstances? Still at the tribunal stage, set up by the Judge Advocate General's Corps, a non-judicial preceding which comes before any kind of court martial. He’d been fortunate…not being required to wait out the decision process in a cell. He wasn’t sure if this was due to his favorable past service record or, more likely, his father being the famed Admiral Perry Reynolds.
Now, looking over at Nan’s delicate profile, Jason wondered if she too thought of him as a cold-blooded murderer. Mollie laughed at so
mething in the house. When she burst outside, she wore her deceased uncle’s catcher’s outfit from high school. Brian, shorter, stockier than Jason, was perfect behind home base. The hat was a little big for her and the catcher’s mask flopped around on her face. She tossed a baseball up in the air a few times—then back and forth into an oversized mitt. Giggling, she crouched down and outstretched the mitt in front of her chest, “You ready to play, Dad? Come on… let’s play ball, sports fans!”
Nan just shook her head. “Was that yours?” she asked, now smiling at Mollie’s antics.
“No, Brian was the baseball player in the family—I was the football jock,” he replied, picking Mollie up and twirling her around, her laugh contagious. Jason set her down, and she dizzily scampered back into the house, the sounds of laughter following her.
“Actually, I’m surprised that stuffs still around,” Jason said, sitting back down across from Nan.
“For goodness sakes, haven’t you explored the house since you’ve been back?”
“Not really, too many ghosts around here. What with Dad taking off, Brian never coming home and now Gus gone… I’m fine just hanging around the kitchen and family room.”
“Oh, don’t be such a pussy,” she said, with a rye smile. “Anyway, how do you know old Admiral Perry hasn’t returned? Maybe he’s sprawled out in a bathtub back in there somewhere?”
“Well, I’ve wandered around enough to know he’s not here. To be honest, it’s kinda creepy here; everything looks the same as it did fifteen years ago, when I went off to Annapolis. Brian’s room hasn’t been changed since he went into the service.”
Nan’s attention was interrupted by something out in the scrapyard. With a furrowed brow she pointed. “You have someone working here, in the yard?” she inquired.
Scrapyard Ship Page 2