by Nova
Max looked over at me, shook his head. “Remember what I told you that day about the Fairfax City police, you know, outside?” It took me a few seconds, and then I realized he meant the hidden monitoring.
“Yeah, I got it.”
We headed up the road, literally climbing. After a couple of switchbacks, the engine started to strain a bit, then we saw the left turn. The second house number was less than three hundred yards down, and Max turned the truck up the sharply inclined driveway. I could see other houses dotted here and there on the hill; I wouldn’t call it a mountain. Some A-frames, some one-level houses with big decks—it looked like a vacation home development. All were painted some variation of brown. They blended into the landscape rather nicely, I thought.
The house we pulled up to had a two-door attached garage. There were two men in T-shirts and fatigue pants waiting on the lawn. A Hispanic female was standing with them, dressed the same way, but she still managed to look like she was not a part of them. Her T-shirt was much nicer. She was also the only person happy to see us.
“Hi, guys!” she hollered at Max. “I need you to back it up, but leave me about six feet of space between that garage door and the gate. Got it?”
Max gave her a “thumbs up” and maneuvered the truck into place, set the emergency brake, and we jumped down to say hello. After a brief exchange of names that I quickly forgot—well, I remembered hers, it was Martina—we walked back to unlock the truck so they could start unloading.
That’s when I noticed the thin wire strip that had been threaded through the same opening as the lock: It had been soldered at one end. Martina broke it with ease. “I see you didn’t have any problems.”
Max answered her: “No, it was an easy run.” He put his key into the lock, and she swung the doors open. I peered in, curious to see what we had been hauling. All I saw was furniture. No, this couldn’t be everything. The weirdness level had been far too high for us to have been hired just to move furniture.
She told the guys who were standing behind her patiently and silently, “Move the furniture out onto the lawn.” She turned to Max. “Once the furniture is out, I need you to back the truck up so it is flush with the garage door, okay?”
He nodded. “Sure.”
She must have seen the puzzled look on my face, so she glanced up at the sky. “Theater for anyone up there watching.”
“Oh, okay.” Pieces started falling into place: The gate that didn’t look like a gate, the guard dressed like a park ranger rather than a combat trooper, the houses, the entire vacation home feel to everything—whatever was going on here was being camouflaged. Not bad, I thought.
A couple of sofas and a chest were on the lawn in a matter of minutes, and Max was backing the truck up. I stood next to Martina, trying not to ogle her T-shirted assets while she made a cell phone call, apparently not successfully. I looked up in time to catch the eyes of one of the movers, who was also checking her out. Just a fast trace of a smile, and then he was pulling on one end of a large wooden box that looked like a coffin.
Martina snapped the phone shut. “Someone will be here in a few minutes to pick you up. The colonel has extended an invitation to dinner to you both. Plus, you’re welcome to spend the night and take the truck back tomorrow. Now please excuse me. I need to start inventorying what you delivered.”
Leaving behind the glow from her radiant smile, she disappeared into the house. We both waited until she was out of sight. I was the first: “Now that was nice.”
Max laughed, “Yes, they were. I saw how overcome she was by your charm. She probably had to go change. Your laser vision probably scorched her T-shirt.”
We stood there and talked about nothing while we waited to be picked up. It wasn’t long. In less than five minutes a golf cart pulled up in front of us.
“You Max and Gardener?”
“Yep.”
“All right, hop in.”
We climbed in and took off. The cart was not fast, but we were headed toward the bottom of the hill, just on the other side. It also looked good to any surveillance satellites flying overhead: no Humvees, just golf carts. Our driver wasn’t talkative, nor was Max. I was fine with that; I just looked around. While I did, I realized what an idiot I had been. I had just ridden in here with Max. Did I do any research? No. I could have found out where we were going and pulled it up on Google, looked at a map and a satellite view of the area. I hadn’t realized how far I had sunk into not caring.
We passed a couple of joggers who gave us a nod as they passed. One of them was running with a full pack on his back, and he was not looking good, either. I thought he was in his twenties at first. Only when he passed us did I realize he was probably double that. Our driver called out to him as he went past, “Suck it up, Jimbo, you got it!” Jimbo barely got a nod off as he went past.
I suddenly remembered why I had decided that the military was not a good idea for me. As we came around one corner I saw the complex. It didn’t look like a complex in the military sense, but that was undoubtedly what it was. There was a ski lift, a lodge or clubhouse, a restaurant, and a couple of buildings for supporting the lift. Farther down was a metal building the size of a Boeing 777 aircraft hangar with a corral attached. From the windsock and a few smaller hangars, it looked as if they were flying light planes in and out of here. All in all, a pretty nice place.
We were dropped at the restaurant and lodge building. I wondered if they had a gift shop. Maybe I could pick up some T-shirts for Night and the ninja twins—something in camo with a catchy logo like “Camp Death” with a skiing skeleton below it would be cool. I was standing there, working on T-shirt designs, when a guy came out the door roaring:
“Max!”
“Goddamn! Murphy!”
They went to pounding and gripping each other—it was a regular love fest. I felt like telling them to get a room, damn. When they got finished groping each other, Max beckoned me over.
“Gardner, this is Murphy. Me and him did two deployments together. Damn, dude, when did you make it back?”
“Oh, about eight months ago. I was going to give you a call. You know—shit kept getting in the way.”
“Well, this is Gardner. He’s my partner,” he slapped me on the shoulder, “and a damn good one. We’re doing a bit of law enforcement in Virginia.”
He stuck out his hand; we shook. He went for the grip of death, but I just blanked out the pain. I saw a bit of uncertainty in his eyes when he let go. He may have been real good at dishing out pain, but I had gone to the University of Receiving Pain as a kid—me and pain went way back.
“Come on in. Let’s get some chow and I can brief you about what’s happening.”
It wasn’t a restaurant, it was a mess hall: stainless steel trays with indentations for food. The food itself was steam-table, buffet, and not bad. Murphy apologized for the selection. The food we saw heating was just kept to feed strays like us. The next meal, dinner, was usually very good. I didn’t care. It wasn’t like I ate all that good anyways. I don’t know if Murphy even realized that he and everyone else here was eating better than 70 percent of America these days. I pulled a tray and so did Max. It had been a while since breakfast, plus, it was a free meal. Murphy apologized for not joining us, saying he had eaten earlier.
We sat down at an empty table. I concentrated on eating while Murphy told us what our day was going to be like. “Well, the official plan was feed you, take you to your rooms, and then go hang at the range. Then it is dinner, with you two getting to go up to the big house and eat with the colonel. Damn, Max, you must have impressed the hell out somebody important somewhere. Then, come back here and we go hit the club. What do you think?”
Max shrugged. “Sounds good to me.”
“What about you, Gardener?”
“I think if you show me my room, I’ll hang out there until dinner.”
I didn’t miss the quick narrowing of Murphy’s eyes. You had to be looking at him at exactly the right second; it
was gone that fast. “Sure, no problem.” He laughed. “You are only about a hundred yards from it.”
Max and I had rooms next door to each other in the lodge. Max asked, “How can y’all afford something like this? I mean this is a nice base you got here.”
Murphy’s reply did not come as a surprise to me. “Foreclosure. I don’t know how much the colonel paid exactly, but I heard it was pennies on the dollar.” I opened my door and I threw my bag on the bed, stretched out next to it and took a nap.
I heard the knock at the door. It startled me—for a second I thought I was back in my room. Max’s voice cut through the door: “Fifteen minutes until dinner . . . be out front.”
I heard his door shut and the sound of the plumbing running. I got up, ran a comb through my hair and a toothbrush over my teeth, and I was ready for show time. I went outside and stood around. Men and women were straggling in to eat, some of them with children in tow. The children were well dressed and better behaved; very few were in any kind of uniform, yet it was easy to picture them in one. These were soldiers, and looking at them, my guess was they were good ones.
Max startled me. “You missed good times at the range.”
“Really? They have any rocket launchers here?”
“Nothing visible. They do have some nice toys. They have a full range inside that hanger with the horse pens attached to it. ”
“Well, no rocket launchers equals no me.”
“Your absence was noted—real men like to go to the range.”
I laughed. “Right, I thought it was ‘Real men like to carve pumpkins.’”
He was still processing that when our cart arrived—the same driver but a little bigger cart.
“What happened to the other cart?” I asked. I was picturing a rear-end collision with a cow or maybe a lowspeed chase gone bad.
“Need more power to get up that hill than what I was driving.”
That made sense to me. Twilight was starting to cast its net of darkness as we rode up the hill. People were out jogging. I had a feeling that you would find someone out jogging here any time of day or night. The lights at the end of the driveways began to turn on. I always liked catching a light going on at night or off in the morning—there was something magical about it. I used to believe that for every one I saw change, a wish would be granted to me.
My wish was that I not do anything really stupid tonight. This little slice of military heaven was beginning to grate on me. I knew when we approached the crest of the hill we were almost there. No way would the colonel not have his house at the top. I was right. We pulled into a circular driveway. It was well lit with soft lighting from both the ground and the gas lamps that were evenly spaced along the driveway. The house was stone and timber, an A-frame with wings. The front door was a double door. It looked old, weathered, and solid. Given the build date I estimated for this development, the door was an import.
In front of the door stood a fully outfitted male in his early twenties. By fully outfitted, I mean he looked like one of those army guys you saw in the news. The night-vision monocle, the vest, extra magazines, maybe even a PowerBar tucked away in there somewhere. I guess you never knew where those evil Muslim terrorists might pop up. It was kind of hard to imagine the Taliban blending in with the locals, though.
We thanked our driver and headed up the flagstone walk to the door. The guard snapped to attention, not that a lot of snapping was needed, and saluted. Max gave him a casual salute and told him who we were and why we were there. I watched as he murmured into his mike. He wasn’t done talking before the door was opening and another male in fatigues appeared.
“Right this way, gentlemen.” We followed him into the great hall where our host, two men, and Martina, the inventory checker of earlier that day, stood or sat casually around a gas fireplace. Each had a glass in hand except for Martina—hers was set to one side, on a coaster, I noticed.
Our host instantly detached himself from the group and moved forward to greet us. I have to admit that I was impressed upon meeting him. I also experienced a distinct sense of disquiet. He was the first man I had ever met who had “command presence.” He also had a great tan and good teeth. For a guy his age he appeared to be in good shape—probably a jogger, I thought. He moved toward us, gliding over the polished hardwood floor; his hand was outstretched and he was grinning.
I don’t hate many people—especially on sight—it takes too much energy, but I instantly hated this guy. I was careful, of course, to conceal any feeling other than my joy that such a superior human being would be so delighted to see Max and me.
He finished shaking Max’s hand, all the while telling us how delighted he was that we could attend his small dinner party. I was reaching out, about to grasp his hand, when we made eye contact for real. People later described his blue eyes as penetrating—I thought they were bat-house crazy. He was ringing another alarm: I knew this guy. I mean, I had not met him before, but I knew his type all too well. What was worse was, he knew that I knew. Neither one of us acknowledged what had just happened in a way that was visible. We stood there gripping and grinning, and then he turned away and was making introductions. The other guests never really registered with me; they were nonentities. Martina was not. At this point I switched to reserved wariness and slipped on what I called my stone face. What was happening here—and ever since we arrived—was not and never had been about me. My guess was, if us delivering the truck hadn’t worked, then Murphy would have called with an invite. This was all about Max. They knew something, or wanted something, that he had.
CHAPTER TWENTY
TOASTS
I won’t bore you, or myself, with the idle chitchat that passed among us. It was current events, and those events are now history. What loomed so large then is now, at best, a footnote to what came later. I am sure that a history of our times will be written someday. I am just not sure from whose perspective it will be written. Eventually, there will be a Gibbon to write the Decline and Fall, but it won’t be Europe or America that produces the author.
The fragmentation of information sources was accelerating. Print had failed as a business model—at least for daily news—and digital broadcast news was homogeneous for the most part. The only difference in the networks was what shade of the official color you wanted. Online news was the least regulated and most interesting. The only problem was the amount of noise one had to sift through to find a reliable source. I was still reading Calculated Risk then—this was before the “Information Consolidation Act” shut him down.
I watched Martina from afar. The reason it was from afar was that she had locked in on Max, attaching herself to him within minutes of our arrival. She wasn’t wearing a bra, and those headlights definitely lit up when she saw him. I could have excused myself, gone in search of the men’s room, and never come back, and it’s highly unlikely that my prolonged absence would have been noticed until the end of the evening.
Somehow, in a way that I could not discern, the colonel was alerted that dinner was ready. “Dinner is served,” he announced to us, and we all followed him into the dining room. I expected armed retainers to be lined up along the wall, but I was disappointed. It was just us and a fat, elderly white woman. She stood in a doorway, the one that led to the kitchen, I assumed, and beamed at us. When the colonel nodded to her she disappeared.
Max pulled Martina’s chair out and seated her. “Oh, what a gentleman,” she cooed as he did. Everyone smiled approvingly. I wondered if they would still smile if I projectile-vomited up dinner when we were done. I was beginning to feel like I had stumbled onto the set of a particularly twisted Bachelorette episode.
Max was seated at the colonel’s right with Martina. I was on the left between his chief of staff and his logistics officer. Oh, well, at least I could watch the headlights go on and off. The colonel led us in the saying of grace, and then he stood up and proposed a toast:
“Gentlemen and lady,”—here he did a slight bow to Martina—“a to
ast: to Sgt. Max Whelan, USMC, the first Marine Medal of Honor winner since the Vietnam war.”
Okay, even I understood what that meant and how it was earned. He had been awarded the medal and he was still alive, plus he had all his body parts. Damn—and I never had a clue. What an asshole . . .
We all stood and drank our toast to Max. I don’t do alcohol so I was toasting with a glass of ice tea. Max had been pretty happy up to that point, but now—I was surprised to see—that was gone. A stillness settled over him, a sadness even. As we all sat down, he stood up and announced: “A toast!” We stood again. “To fallen comrades!” he said, and then he emptied his glass on the nice Persian rug that was underneath the table. I didn’t hesitate—I dumped at least half a glass of ice tea including the ice cubes on the rug.
As I did it, I watched the colonel. There was a quick tightening around the eyes, and then he followed suit—so did his peckerwood flunkies, who had held off until they saw what the big man’s reaction was going to be. This was going to be a really sticky floor in twenty minutes or so, which made me very happy.
The colonel sat down, beamed at all of us, and said, “Let’s dig in.” It was pretty good: steak, potatoes, a salad, rolls, lima beans. The chief of staff let us know that this was the same meal that was being served in the mess hall.
“The colonel always eats what his troops eat and insists that we do, too.”
Logistics guy chimed in with, “Yes, thank God we are not in the field anymore.” Everyone thought this was funny as hell. He then asked me the question I knew was coming. I was just surprised it had not been asked sooner. “So, Gardener, what branch did you serve in?” The prick. I could tell, just looking at him, that he knew the answer. Time to jerk me around, probably payback for the ice tea puddle that had formed under his chair.
“Why, I was in the GLA.” I said this like I expected him to know what I was talking about; my tone implied that if he didn’t, then he was a fool.