“Then what?” V asked.
“That’s the tricky part,” I admitted. “We’re not exactly certain who all might be showing up.”
“Fuck that,” V observed. “There won’t be any coverage inside, no backup outside,” she nodded toward Amber. For all his talents Fred couldn’t shoot worth a damn. We were one-deep on some critical elements in a situation we couldn’t completely control.
“Yeah, I don’t like it, either,” I assured her.
“It’s sketchy,” Q agreed, “be nice to have some more time.”
“That’s one thing we don’t have,” I reminded everyone. “Deek, get us a location. You and Fred prep it and set up the phone. You,” I turned to Amber, “will be our special delivery girl.”
“Not the first time,” she reminded me.
“You should be flattered,” V said seriously. “Nobody ever worked in on an op their second day on the job with no training.”
“That’s true,” I said heavily, “but we’re shorthanded on this one. So we’re going to have to shorten your training cycle a bit. Deek will talk you through it. Q and I will be on the roof next door watching.”
“I’ll be in your ear,” Deek grinned.
Amber just rolled her eyes. “I’m sure that will be the most memorable three minutes of my life.”
“Ouch!” Q laughed. The briefest of smiles flicked across V’s lips.
“The timing is going to be tight,” I said turning serious. “There’s a lot of moving parts and, by the way, there’s a city full of federal agents and local cops that could blunder in and fuck this up at any moment.”
“I’ll tell the motor pool we need clean cars all around,” Deek mentioned. The motor pool was a way we could consolidate all our company cars in one organization, which was handy when you needed to switch cars a lot.
“Good idea,” I agreed. “If this goes to shit we leave the money and vaporize.”
“How long?” Amber asked, suddenly curious.
“Oh, probably forever,” Q added. He always started talking more when he drank.
“You mean just vanish? Poof?” she asked.
“We’d be costing a cartel $65 million,” I reminded her. “Probably not the best time to start a career in media.”
We spent the rest of the night going over the details. We had a crappy plan but it was the best we could put together on short notice. It would have been nice to have another week but you take what you can get.
Gradually the team excused themselves and drifted off to one of several bedrooms aboard the Lilly, most were tiny but comfortable and the gentle rock of the Intracoastal would give everyone a well-deserved and much needed solid night of sleep before the proverbial shit hit the fan. Amber and I found ourselves alone.
“I’m still too wound up from work,” she said heavily, “entertain me.”
“Song and dance?”
“Mmm, that would be interesting. I’d settle for you telling me how you got the name Fat Man.”
The room instantly felt smaller, I tensed up.
“What’s the matter?” she asked, feeling the change more than seeing it.
“It’s a bad memory.”
“What happened to you?” She reached over to take my hand.
So I told her the story. “I was a green Army doctor on the front lines in the first Gulf War trying to stabilize a civilian patient for transport in a small village south of Samawah where the civilized world ended and the desert began. We got hit by an IED on the way out and captured by a rebel militia. They stuffed me in a rat hole prison cell that was too small to stand up. After a few weeks of sweltering heat that person, that shadow of me, was at the hairy fringe of sanity. I kept a tenuous grip on reality by keeping meticulous mental records of voices, phrases, sounds and movements. Food was scarce for everyone, especially prisoners.”
“That sounds horrible!”
“Between the hunger and heat I held on by mentally cataloging everything I could hear or sense. I convinced one of my captors that sometimes fed me and frequently checked on me to teach me a few simple phrases in Aramaic. I memorized vocabulary, practiced those few simple phrases until I sounded like a native. I built elaborate memory palaces and mentally walked them for hours on end.”
“I would have gone crazy,” she admitted.
“I did, kinda. One day, I woke up and everything had changed. I didn’t need the memory palace anymore; I just knew what was going to happen. I knew one of my younger captors, a teenager named Kadin, which ironically means ‘friend’, was going to bring me a small plate of food and he was going to forget about the heavy knife he carried strapped to his leg.”
“That day, when he opened the door, I pretended to be passed out. When he reached down to roll me over, thinking I might have died, I slipped that knife out of his boot and in one smooth motion jammed it under his chin and into his brain stem. I backed out of the cell, closed the door and walked down the narrow hallway to the door at the end where Kahin would bang twice and the ugliest, smelliest fucker in desert, ironically named Jamal, which means “handsome”, would open the door. Jamal was usually alone and I knew today was no different. Imagine his surprise when he opened that heavy, rusted steel door that day. He tried to call out, but it’s hard to yell with a cut throat. If Kahin had one skill it was sharpening a knife.”
“How did you escape and get back to an American base?” Amber asked, now engrossed in the story.
“I escaped from the cell, but I didn’t run,” I explained. “That’s what they would be expecting. Instead I switched clothes with Jamal, the ones that weren’t bloody, and started checking out the rest of the house, which was more of a garage. They were all at morning prayers and I knew exactly when they’d be back. I had Jamal’s Kalashnikov and found a couple grenades and some diesel. I loaded up my pockets and set the place on fire.”
“Then what?”
“I started killing people.”
“Who? The fighters?”
“Everybody. Anyone who crossed my path.”
“What?” How?”
“It wasn’t that hard,” I admitted. “Killing a particular person is hard but killing randomly is actually pretty easy. Nothing is as hard to figure out as random killing.”
“How long did you do that?” she asked, now incredulous.
“A few days.”
“Days?”
“Yeah. They started patrols and posting guards in different parts of town. I’d take out one of the guards and stand there in his place. Their huts were like a fortress but there was always a chimney for a fire. So I’d pour some gas or diesel down the chimney and light it off.”
“How could they not spot you?”
“Because I looked like them, dressed like them and sounded like them. Sometimes I’d set fire to a house and then show up with the crowd to help put it out.”
“How many people did you kill?”
“I lost track after the second day. The big score was poisoning the city well.”
Amber struggled with what I was saying; she was certain I was putting her on but some part of her even more worried that I wasn’t.
“Why did you stop? What happened?”
“It was weird.”
“Oh, that part was weird.”
“There was this old guy walking down an alley one morning, I was just going to step out and knife him and he turned to me and said, ‘God says it’s time to stop.’”
“Just like that?”
“Yup.”
“And you stopped.”
“I did. The next day an American patrol came to get me.”
“How’d they know you were there?”
“There rumors from people who fled the village and the intel people started watching by satellite and drones.”
“They knew what you were doing?”
“Almost certainly. By the time they got there the village had been abandoned. Anyone I hadn’t killed left.”
Amber struggled to process it all. “You kill
ed a whole village, by yourself?”
“No, not at all. After a while they started thinking the same thing you are, that one person couldn’t be responsible. They started pointing fingers at one another. Try to think back on that time, it was chaos. The government was gone, our troops couldn’t cover the whole country. Anyone with a grudge was free to pursue some payback. Maybe some guy insulted someone’s goat or their wife years ago. A mysterious killer in their midst was all the cover some of them needed to act out on revenge. Pretty soon they were slaughtering one another and I could just hang back and watch. Honestly, it surprised the hell out of me.”
“And they just left? Walked away from their homes?”
“I spiked the well, remember? They didn’t have any water. The occupation didn’t stretch that far and there were no supplies getting through. They had to leave.”
“What happened when the Americans finally showed up?”
“I was just sitting in the middle of an empty town when they drove up. This young Sergeant climbed out of a Humvee and asked if I was who they thought I was. That was also the last time anyone used my real name. When I got back I vowed never to go hungry again. Because of my near religious devotion to eating, my first code name was--”
“The Fat Man,” she put together. “So how come none of that never made the news?” she asked skeptically.
“Two reasons: The brass didn’t believe the story, either and we were supposed to be liberators. The story of an American doctor slaughtering civilians would not have been convenient.”
“I imagine not,” she agreed.
“They sent in the engineers to bulldoze the village and cap the well. Like it never existed.”
I gave her the next ten years in a nutshell. “The Army brass didn’t believe, or didn’t want to believe, there were other people in government who did. A few of them felt like we should have done to the entire country of Iraq what I did to that village. People who had previously been on the fringe of society were now pulling the strings of government. They thought I was like them because I looked like them and did what they didn’t have the balls to do themselves. That changed when Clinton took over and restored some sanity. I was regulated to a series of postings in South America, mainly drug operations.”
“That’s where you learned Spanish,” she said.
“Correct,” I said, starting to get sleepy and tired of talking. “That probably would have been the whole story had 9/11 not happened. I was on the verge of leaving government service when the planes struck the buildings in New York and derailed my retirement plans.”
“It’s all so hard to believe,” she marveled.
I didn’t tell her that I left out some of the more unbelievable exploits. No one believes me when I tell them truth.
“That’s where you and Q met, in South America!” she said suddenly.
I really did admire the way Amber’s mind worked. She had intuition and put things together, skills that would have served her well as a hooker.
“That’s right.”
“I’ll bet that’s another story,” she said, starting to sound a little tired herself.
“That it is.”
I started in on the story but a couple minutes into I looked over and Amber had drifted off to sleep, the beer finally catching up to her long day. I covered her up with a blanket and headed off to bed.
7
I WOKE UP with Amber wedged against the wall next me. She was using my arm as pillow, and it was now asleep. It would have been nice to enjoy that moment, gauging by the amount of light leaking in around the curtain we had plenty of time, but my arm hurt and I had to pee. I gave it a minute hoping she’d move but, when patience failed I pulled my arm free as gently as the situation allowed.
“You didn’t wake me up,” she said sleepily, punctuating the rebuke by reaching across to hit me. “Don’t do that.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I said heavily.
“It’s not funny,” she said with a sleepy heaviness of her own, “I woke up alone out there.”
“Sorry,” I mumbled, “you were sound asleep.” But I was talking to myself. Amber rolled over to claim the pillow and middle of the bed and promptly went back to sleep in the way medical and military people can do.
I made my way down the passageway to the head and met Q on the way back to the room.
“Deek and V headed out a while ago,” he informed.
“How are we doing for time?” Truthfully, I already had a good idea.
“We should get going in another hour or so,” he answered. “You going to wake Tinker Bell?” His nickname for Amber, which was as close to a term of endearment as you’d ever get out of Q.
“Yeah,” I said heavily, not looking forward to that, “we’re going to need her to make the drop after lunch.”
It was a nice morning so we agreed to meet on the upstairs deck.
Waking up Amber from a sound sleep was a reminder that she was not that far from being a teenager. She groaned at first, then her medical training suddenly kicked in and she sat up.
“Fuck,” she said, hanging her head. I told her where breakfast would be as she shuffled down the hall to the head, still mumbling “fuck, fuck, fuck” under her breath. The joy of youth.
It was a gorgeous Florida morning and the Lilly’s upper deck was the perfect place to enjoy it. I once again breathed grateful thanks for the caretaker who had slipped in early to set up coffee, rolls and a fruit platter. Two empty used cups and one dirty plate deposited in a small trash can announced that V and Deek had coffee together before slipping away.
“I’ll bet that was an interesting conversation,” Q said, noting my gaze.
“I’m sure it was,” I agreed. “Did you feel something change last night...between them?”
Q mulled that one over for a moment. “Maybe. You never can tell with her, though.”
That was truth and a character assessment all in one line. One never could tell with V. It was like being friends with a tiger. Just when you think you’re buddies and let your guard down the animal reasserts its primal self and rips your throat out. There were men, but not many and not very long. The women lasted longer but one day they disappeared as well. None of them ever came around and we never asked. It’s better not to ask questions if you might not like the answer.
“Did Deek check in?” I asked warily.
“A few minutes ago,” Q confirmed with a smile.
“That’s a relief.” Good news that we didn’t need to worry about dragging the waterway for the body.
“I like her…”
“But?”
“You know.”
“Right.” I did know, we all did. It was like having a crazy uncle. There was no need to rehash the history between family.
I poured myself some coffee that smelled delicious and parked myself within reach of the fruit tray. The sun hadn’t quite made an appearance yet but it would only be a few more minutes. The air was thick with humidity not completely broken by a gentle breeze off the ocean. A few puffy cumulus clouds announced the late summer lifting was starting early today and the forecast included the usual 30 percent chance of afternoon thundershowers. The air along the Florida coast smelled like a combination of saltwater and humidity with a slight whiff of rotting seaweed and mold. Today it smelled like life and in a few minutes the causeway bridge would be flowing tourists toward the beaches.
“So, what’s the order today?” Q asked.
I sighed, missing the days we had enough people to control the situation. “We’ll start with Mr. Silva,” I decided. “If he’s not on board then the rest of the plan is blown anyway. If we can turn him then we contact the wife.”
I checked the phone, we had five hours before the MP made it back. It would be tight but manageable.
“I wish we had another day,” Q said, reading my thoughts.
“And another dozen bodies,” I added.
Our workload wasn’t as steady as the old days and we were thinner on staff. We coul
d afford more people but adding staff carried risk and raised our management responsibilities. It was a fine line and, with our somewhat difficult application process, we were chronically short staffed.
“The good old days,” Q agreed.
“After this we should take some time off,” I pointed out, “maybe quite a while.”
“Works for me,” he agreed.
Amber padded up the steps on silent bare feet and all but materialized next to the table. She wore her hair pulled back, had washed her face and perched a pair of fat sunglasses on the top of her head.
“Sausage fest,” she concluded with one look at Q and I. She helped herself to coffee and folded herself cross-legged in the deck chair, contemplating the wisdom in the bottom of her coffee cup.
“And good morning to you, too,” Q greeted with a smile.
“Not a morning person,” Amber countered tersely. “What time are you going to need me today?”
“Around 2 this afternoon,” I informed her, “and then meet up with Fred after that.”
“I’m off clinicals at 11, so no problem,” she mulled. “You sure there’s nothing I need to do to get ready?”
“The less you prepare, the better you’ll do,” I suggested. “Just follow your instincts and we’ll be backing you up.”
The coffee was finally lightening the mood. “Okay, then, see you this afternoon.” She unfolded herself out of the chair, set the coffee cup on the table and gave me a coffee breath kiss on the cheek and made her way back downstairs.
I pinned Q the minute she was out of earshot. “Admit it, you like her.”
Q smiled. “She’s okay,” he agreed. “Kinda surly in the morning.”
“That she is,” I chuckled.
We drank our coffee in silence, enjoying the brightening day as the first boats made their way out toward the ocean for a day of fishing. A few minutes later the door clicked and Amber made her way up the dock. Still a girl in many ways, she definitely left the scene like a hooker, never looking back.
“You don’t pay them for sex,” I said out loud.
“You pay them to leave,” Q finished for me. “She is pretty low maintenance.”
The Rogue Horse Recovery: Book One of the Recovery and Marine Salvage Inc Series (Recovery and Marine Salvage, Inc.) Page 10