Diamondhead

by Diamondhead (UK) (retail) (epub)

  Anne turned around in disbelief, and for the first time in days, a smile lit up her tear-stained face. “He’s going?” she said. “He’s really going?”

  “You’re both going,” said Mack. “Everything’s arranged, paid for in advance. Call them and get the dates, and I’ll fix the tickets. And get their bank details; the money’s being wired from France.”

  Anne Bedford stood there in shock, trying to pretend this was not just a dream. Finally, she said, “It’s Harry, isn’t it? I know it’s Harry.”

  Mack replied, “There’s just one condition to this. You must never again ask me how I raised the money. And you must never mention to anyone that the money was raised. Say nothing. Because it’s no one’s concern except ours.”

  Anne came toward him slowly and wrapped her arms around his neck. “Did I ever tell you, Mack Bedford, that you’re the most wonderful person I ever met?”

  “Coupla times, I think. You also mentioned that you hated me.”

  “Well, I don’t, and I spent the entire night wishing I’d never said it.”

  “Amazing what a million bucks will do, right?” he chuckled.

  Despite everything Anne laughed, slapped him playfully on the arm, and went to find the brochures.

  “It’s after eight o’clock in the evening in Switzerland,” called Mack. “They might not answer.”

  “Yes, they will. It says in the brochure their phone is 24/7 – anyone can call anytime, and there will be staff to take care of you.”

  “At a million bucks a pop, I guess they can afford a few extra staff,” muttered Mack as he prepared coffee in the kitchen.

  “What did you say?”

  “Who me? Nothing. I’m just trying to work the coffeepot.”

  Mack could hear Anne on the phone. He took the coffee and mugs out onto the porch, and waited quietly, his mind full of details about his forthcoming mission. His first concern was fitness. He had done little hard exercise for a week, and for a Navy SEAL that was a long time. He needed a program that he would draw up this afternoon.

  Then Anne appeared, her face lit up with joy. “He’s going,” she said. “They’ll take him. They even had his diagnosis from Dr. Ryan on computer. We’re leaving on Tuesday. The clinic will send a car to meet us at Geneva Airport. The lady I was talking to said if she ever had any disease with similarities to leukemia, and she could have any surgeon in all the world, she’d have Carl Spitzbergen. And that’s who Tommy’s having. I’m just so happy, Mack. And thank God.”

  Privately, Mack was not absolutely certain God would have been thrilled about the way the money was being raised, but he replied softly, “Thank God is right. Will you be okay going to the hospital without me, or do you want me to come?”

  “No, you stay here. I can do the journey blindfolded. Here’s the bank details you wanted. I’d better drink this and go, but it won’t be too bad. Dr. Ryan said Tommy would be much better and can come home with me. They can’t do everything, but they can stop nausea.” Thus, Anne went her way, and Mack went his, walking back to the shipyard and handing the Swiss bank address and numbers to Harry, who promised to have the money wired “this day.”

  The next part took some serious willpower. Mack walked back to the house and pulled on his combat boots and canvas shorts. Maine did not have long, sandy beaches like Coronado, and he settled for the coastal road, setting off at a slow jogging pace and then hardening his stride. He came through the first mile easily, but this past week of soft living immediately started to take its toll. There was a dull pain in his upper thighs, and his breath was shorter. He knew the signs. He was coming up light – no longer at the level of fitness expected of a SEAL commander, who had also served a couple of terms as a BUDs instructor. Mack could feel it, a deadening in his stride, and he solved it the way he solved everything, pushing harder, driving through the pain, pounding across the ground, making every stride count, making every stride the toughest he ever ran.

  Coming to the little bay that washes up to the granite cove on his right, the ground began to rise, and as it did so, Mack hit the gas pedal, accelerating, driving forward with strength he had to find. He was pushing, punishing, pumping, going for the hilltop with every ounce of power and determination he had. And that was a lot. Even in his present state of fitness, he would still have finished out clear of any BUDs Class fighting its way along the Coronado beach. But that was not the level he wanted. Mack wanted Superman, mountain lion, sinews like blue twisted steel. He wanted the level of supreme conditioning that made him unlike other men, the way he had always been: Honor Man, right? The best. Ever since he was selected by his peers, in his own BUDs Class, the first year he became a SEAL.

  He reached the brow and glanced right to see the glistening Kennebec bay on this calm July day. For a split second he considered stopping just to see the seascape of his youth spread before him, the waters where he had learned to sail, to fish, and to swim. But he cast the thoughts from his mind and faced the downhill run with suitable grit. Again he accelerated, running fast, covering the ground at almost top speed, trying to keep the jarring at bay, trying to keep his balance, knowing the faster he traveled downhill the easier it was. He reached the bottom without falling and slowed slightly along the flat ground at the head of the bay.

  He had covered two miles and had still not achieved his second wind. He was breathing hard, feeling tired, and not at all relaxed in the run, as he knew he should be. But he pushed on until he reached the end of the bay, and there he hit the rising ground, a steep hill that he and every one of his boyhood buddies had hated on their bikes, hated it every time they had to pedal up it. Dead Man’s Hill, it was called, because sometime, a couple of hundred years ago, a ship had wrecked right here in the bay after grounding on the granite ridges. Somehow, while they were attempting to get off, a powder keg had blown and killed most of the crew. The bodies were brought on shore, and the local carpenters had constructed coffins on the hillside, ready to transport the deceased to the local cemetery.

  Mack faced up to Dead Man’s Hill with misgivings. He had traveled fast and was still blowing hard, but as he began to climb, he growled, “HIT IT, MACK! LET’S GO!” He surged forward, arms pumping, combat boots hitting the blacktop. Up ahead he could see a cyclist, wearing Olympic spandex shorts but struggling. And in Mack’s mind this was Osama Bin Laden trying to get away. And this put a fury into his stride. He was charging up the hill, running each stride as if it were his last, catching the cyclist, driving on, making every yard the hardest yard he ever ran.

  The cyclist, who was not even a member of al-Qaeda, was a young local schoolteacher, and he stared in astonishment as Mack Bedford came pounding past him. It crossed his mind that whoever the hell this was, he’d probably committed some kind of crime. Ordinary joggers do not normally run with that kind of desperation. He watched Mack storming up to the brow of the hill, and was still pedaling disconsolately when the former SEAL commander vanished, hurtling down the other side, heading for the three-mile mark, checking his watch, trying to make up for the lost week of easy living.

  Somewhere on the far side, Mack found his second wind, and the running grew slightly less painful. He settled down and made the four-mile mark in twenty-six minutes. Not bad. He turned around immediately, without stopping, and set off for home, sweating hard, but pleased he was done with that first lap.

  About a half mile down the road he met the cyclist and raised his right hand in salute to a fellow athlete. But the rider was more exhausted than Mack, and did not return the greeting in case he fell off. It did occur to him, however, that whomever this lunatic might be, he was almost certainly returning to the scene of a crime.

  Mack kept going, running steadily, but still making the yards count, stretching out, testing his body, building his lung strength, the way he’d taught so many young tigers out there on the sands of Coronado. There was no other way to do it, except to keep striving, keep forcing himself onward, taking the pain, knowing that there will co
me a day when it would all come together, when you ask truly searching questions of your body and get the right answers – “Make it count, Mack, all the way. Make it count.”

  He already had a plan for the last quarter mile, and such was his iron-clad determination that he was already dreading it. Of course, a normal person would have decided that was an exercise too far, and jogged home cheerfully. That, however, was not the Bedford way. Mack swung into the home stretch with a slightly uphill climb before him, and let it rip. He stepped it up into a lung-bursting, uncontrolled sprint, the fastest he had traveled during the whole eight miles. He pounded up the road, driving himself to the point of blackout, swerving into the front yard and collapsing on the ground, gasping for breath. Anne thought he was dead. Well, she would have, had she not seen him do it so many times before.

  Tommy, however, had not, and he came bolting out of the house yelling, “Mom! Mom! Dad’s dead! I think the Deadheads got him!”

  At which point Mack jumped right back up and grabbed Tommy, lifting him high and shouting, “They never got me! I killed the goddamned Deadheads!”

  Tommy thought this was approximately the most important thing that had ever happened. But Mack would not lower him, and Tommy kept laughing and demanding to know where the bodies of the Deadheads were. Mack told him they were all under the bed. And so it went on, just a little boy and his dad, the one acceptable face of a diabolical international scheme.

  They played baseball for a while after that, and then while Anne put Tommy away for his late-afternoon rest, Mack went to the garage and took out a four-foot length of metal pipe, like a short piece of scaffold. He took it to an apple tree out in the backyard and jammed it horizontally between two branches about two feet above his head.

  This was a killer SEAL exercise, the pull-ups, where a trainee grasps the pipe and hauls himself up, chin high, holds, and slowly releases and lowers. A normal untrained person probably could manage to do it twice, a young sportsman perhaps nine times, and a fit member of the Special Forces possibly fifteen. Mack Bedford could do thirty-two, though today he may have dropped back to twenty-nine. This is a discipline you need to assault every day, preferably twice.

  He tackled the exercise slowly, moving through the first ten with long, steady pulls, each time his chin clearing the pipe. The next twelve were hard but not that hard. Number twenty-six was absolute murder, the pain stabbing through his biceps, his lower back throbbing. Grimly, he hauled himself up again, the pain now ripping through his shoulders. But he made it. And then he made it again, almost crying out with the agony, but still keeping his feet off the ground, and going for his target twenty-ninth. But this was a heave too far. The strength in his forearms and fingers was sapped, and he slipped back onto the grass, never having seen over the bar for the final time. “FUCK!” he roared.

  “Sorry?” called Anne from the back doorway. “I didn’t quite catch that?”

  Mack looked up. “This sucks,” he gasped.

  “Yes, I thought that was what you said. I wasn’t sure.”

  She came over and brought him a large glass of water, having watched him torturing himself on the pipe. “I can’t quite see why you need to prepare yourself for another combat mission,” she said. “You’re home now, and you’re not going back.”

  “Fitness is just a bad habit,” he grinned. “I’ve had it for a long time, and it’s hard to kick.”

  “I know. But there’s fitness and fitness. One of them has to do with general well-being and health. The other kind is what people do before trying to throttle a polar bear with their bare hands.”

  “That’s my kind,” said Mack. “You haven’t seen any polar bears locally, have you?”

  Anne laughed at him, as she always did. Well, nearly always. She gazed at him with admiration. He really was the most incredible specimen of a man. Thirty-three years old, tall, without one ounce of extra weight, broad shoulders, and a manner that could charm the stony heart of a highway state trooper. Anne did, however, suspect there were certain Middle Eastern terrorists who might not wholly go along with that view.

  “I’m making a fish pie for dinner, with the other half of the bass and some scallops I picked up at Hank’s.”

  “Plenty of cheese in the sauce,” said Mack. “With hot French bread and a baked potato. That’s my girl.”

  “Anything else?”

  “One nice cold beer, and I’ll go to bed happy. If you’ll have me.”

  “Yes, please,” she said sassily, heading back to the house with a spring in her step Mack had not noticed since before his last tour of duty in Iraq.

  He chugged his pint glass of water and stared at the bar, which in his mind had defeated him. Temporarily. “You bastard,” he told it. “I’ll get you tomorrow.”

  He pulled out his super-cell phone and checked in with Harry, just to make sure the money was in place.

  “All done, Mack,” he said. “Money’s gone. One million smackers to the clinic. No bullshit.”

  “You’re a goddamned hero, Harry,” he replied. “They’re leaving Tuesday night.”

  “Yup. I already checked. Boston to Geneva. American Airlines, 9:30 pm I’ll have business-class return tickets here tomorrow morning. Want to come and pick them up? We can have a chat.”

  “I’ll be there 1100 hours, six bells. We’ll have coffee on the Forenoon Watch.” He heard Harry Remson chortling away as he put down the phone.

  Mack flexed his arms and decided he had recovered. He walked to the side door of the garage and stepped inside, walking across to a small storage area to the left of the Buick. And there he found the packing crate he had shipped to Maine from Coronado. He’d meant to unpack it last week, and there were items in there that he wanted to move to the house – books, memorabilia, and of course his uniforms, which would hang in his bedroom closet until he died. There were also a few items he did not wish Anne to know about – not for the moment, anyway. This was SEAL stuff, things that spelled out a thousand words to him but were meaningless to anyone who had not done what he had done.

  He hauled out the books and uniforms, walked back and placed them on the hood of the Buick. Then he delved into the box and pulled out his SEAL underwater goggles, top-of-the-line scuba diver’s gear that had once been bright red but was now colored the dullest gunmetal gray, with not a glint of light reflecting off them. Every SEAL had a mask like that.

  Then he pulled out his state-of-the-art wet suit, a truly superb piece of modern underwater equipment, light but incredibly warm, with layers of a plastic/sponge compound insulating the wearer. It was jet black in color with a fitted hood, tight across the back of the neck, forehead, and chin. At the top of each leg were four black metal “popper” studs, and to them were attached Mack’s special SEAL flippers, too big for ordinary mortals. On the instep of each one was painted his BUDs Class number, 242, precious numbers that signified the sun and the moon and the earth to Mack.

  BUDs 242. Seven little marks, the marks that reminded him of a grim black-top square in Coronado where a legendary SEAL admiral had pinned on his chest his golden Trident, which would forever confirm that out of 168 starters, he, Mack Bedford, was one of the 11 chosen to step forward into America’s most elite fighting force. Only then was he able to have the class number painted on his flippers. BUDs. The Basic Underwater Demolition course, where they test the mettle of would-be SEALs. It was ten years ago now, but he remembered it as if it were yesterday. He just stood there in the garage, cradling his wet suit, the one he had worn when he led them through the depths of the Persian Gulf to capture Saddam’s offshore oil rig.

  He glanced again at the numbers, and the memories shed a mantle of sadness over the former commander. They were memories of the best of times, when he had tackled every obstacle they threw at him and then punched that BUDs indoctrination right on the nose. He’d run that beach until he’d darn near passed out, he’d swum the laps, on the surface and under it. They’d tied him up, ankles and wrists, and shoved him in
the twelve-foot deep end of the pool. They’d made him row the rubber boats until he thought he’d die. He’d dragged those boats, run with the goddamned things on his head. He’d hauled those boats up rocks, he’d hauled tree trunks and he’d sure as hell hauled ass. They’d yelled at him, insulted him, called him a weakling, driven him to the limit of his endurance. Once they’d kept him in the freezing Pacific for a couple of minutes too long, and then had to ship him to the hospital when he passed out from hypothermia. And had he quit? Nossir. He told the ambulance drivers to take him right back to the beach, where he dived right back into the water.

  BUDs 242. Those numbers told him everything he needed to know about himself. And when they made him one of the youngest lieutenant commanders in the history of the SEALs, he felt for the first time in his life that he had achieved a worthwhile ambition. Because that promotion was bigger than BUDs. Ten other guys had made that and stood alongside him when the Tridents were handed out.

  Lt. Cdr. Mack Bedford. That was priceless, a singular honor, just for him… and then they took it all away. At least they took as much away as they could. But they could never take away the words that were written on his heart:

  “My country expects me to be stronger than my enemy, both physically and mentally… If I am knocked down, I will get up, every time. I am never out of the fight. I am here to fight for those who cannot fight for themselves.

  “I am a United States Navy SEAL.”

  Carefully, he reached down in the packing crate and retrieved another of his most cherished possessions, his “attack board,” the kind they issue to SEAL commanders launching underwater assaults on the enemy. The board was light, made of strong polystyrene, around eighteen inches square, weightless in the water. Into its flat surface were set three instruments: a clock, a compass, and a global positioning system. The board is held out in front, with both hands, as the SEAL leader kicks through the water with those massive flippers. It saves him having to stop to check either the time, the direction, or the team’s position. All of it stands right in front of him, softly illuminated but betraying no glare to enemy searchers or sentries on the surface. Mack had located the Iraqi oil rig using this personal attack board.