The Stronger Chase

by Cap Daniels

  Finally, he said, “A pair of Cobra gunships rolled in and mopped up the ambush site, but they were too late to save your daddy’s boat crew. Archie limped the crippled Swift Boat down the Mekong River with one hand on the wheel and one hand stuck inside a twenty-one-year-old ensign who was bleeding to death on the deck. By the time your daddy ran the boat aground, he’d lost enough blood to drown a lap dog, and the ensign was minutes away from joining the rest of his crew at Saint Peter’s dinner table. A platoon of SEALs found the boat and humped your daddy and the ensign out to a Dust Off site where a Huey picked them up and dropped them at the field hospital where I was working as a chaplain. The SEALs stuck a pair of IVs in your daddy, as well as the ensign, but they never thought either of them would survive. The medic on the Dust Off bird stuck them twice more and must have pumped a gallon of fluid into each of them. Your daddy never took his hand out of that ensign’s shoulder until he passed out in the Huey.”

  Abruptly, he stopped talking as if the story was over. I glanced at Clark, and like me, it seemed he was on the edge of his seat, hanging on every word.

  “So, what happened then?” demanded Clark.

  “The ensign was a Catholic boy from New Orleans, but we didn’t have a priest, so they called me in to give him last rites. I was a Baptist back then. I had no idea how to give him or anyone else last rites. When I finally got around to seeing the Catholic ensign, your daddy had crawled out of his bed and was on his knees beside the ensign’s bed. He was praying his heart out for his skipper. I stood there at the foot of the bed, listening to your daddy pray, and it didn’t take me long to realize that I certainly couldn’t do any better than he was doing. So, I left them alone and went about, looking after the other lost souls in the makeshift hospital. I still don’t know how to give last rites.”

  As suddenly as before, he stopped talking. I snatched up my tumbler and filled my mouth with the scotch, trying to be as patient as possible.

  Again, it was Clark who kick-started Padre. “Did he live?”

  “What? Did who live?”

  “The ensign!” growled Clark.

  “Oh, yeah, sure. He lived. Otherwise you’d have never met his daughters, Hope and Faith.”

  Clark leapt from his seat. “Holy shit! Are you serious?”

  “Yes, I’m serious. I’m a man of God,” Padre said. “Why would I lie to you? And watch your language.”

  “Everybody lies, Padre.”

  I banged on the table with my palm, trying to get the old man to focus. “What happened to my father?”

  “Oh, he was fine. They patched him up and gave him a Silver Star and a Purple Heart. The ensign got shipped home, left the Catholic Church, and went to Baptist seminary. He’s been preaching the Gospel for twenty-five years now . . . and making beautiful daughters that you two heathens were trying to corrupt tonight.”

  I ignored the accusation. “What happened to my father after that?”

  He took another tiny sip of his scotch. “I don’t know for sure, son. I know there were some spooks snooping around trying to recruit good solid guys like your daddy who’d been shot up too bad to stay in the war, but who still had enough fingers and toes to go to work for the agency. I think that’s probably what happened to him. I think the CIA snatched him up and took him across the border to Laos.”

  “So, how did you know I was his son?”

  “Oh, that,” he said. “I was a spook, too. I had some language skills and a pretty good education, as well as a cross on my chest.”

  “A cross on your chest?”

  “Yeah, Christian chaplains wear crosses on the chest of their uniforms. That gets them in and out of places better than any skeleton key. Nobody questions when a chaplain shows up—they just step aside and let us in. That’s the perfect cover for a spook. Wouldn’t you say?”

  “What else do you know about my father?”

  “Not much,” he admitted. “I know he went to seminary with Hope and Faith’s daddy and kept working for the agency until. . . .”

  I bit my lip. “Until he was killed in Panama.”

  Padre nodded. “Yes, until then.”

  Silence followed, and we all withdrew into our cigars and scotch.

  I asked, “Did you know my mother?”

  Padre answered, “Yeah, I knew Jean. She was studying languages at Duke while your daddy was at Southeastern. That’s where they met. He was on the G.I. Bill, and she was on a scholarship. The story I heard was she returned a book to him he’d accidentally left in the library at Duke. It had his name and address printed in big bold letters inside the front cover. Her version of the story was he dropped the book in her bag when she wasn’t looking. His version was she snatched it from his stack when he wasn’t looking. Either way, they were inseparable after that day. I guess that would’ve been seventy-one or seventy-two. I can’t remember for sure.”

  I tried to picture my father at my age, going to school, and romancing my mother. I’d give every penny I had in every bank in the Cayman Islands to spend one more afternoon with him, fishing, or playing catch, or just talking.

  What would he think of what I’ve become? Would he be disappointed, proud, ashamed?

  Yanking me from my introspection, Padre said, “But that’s not why I’m here. I’m here to talk about the girl.”

  “What girl?” I asked impatiently. “My sister?”

  “No, not your sister. I’m here to talk about Ekaterina Norikova. I’m here to talk about Anya.”

  This time, instead of my heart trying to jump out of my chest, it stopped. Hearing someone else say her name, someone who had no reason to know her name, sent chills down my spine. I couldn’t blink, and I watched the ashes from my cigar fall into my lap.

  “What about Anya?” I demanded.

  “You think she’s dead,” said Padre.

  “Yes, I think she’s dead. I saw her get shot in the back with a nine-millimeter and fall ten feet onto a marble floor in Miami.”

  Padre took another drink of scotch. “Have you ever heard of Michael Pennant?”

  “Yes,” I said suspiciously. “I met him in the Caymans. He’s the deputy director of operations for the CIA. What does he have to do with any of this?”

  “Pennant is a snake,” he said with unmitigated contempt in his voice.

  “What do you know about Anya?” I was trying not to raise my voice, but my reservoir of patience was dry.

  “I know she’s not as dead as you think she is.”

  My head was spinning, and flashbacks from the house in Miami Beach where Anya had been shot, and the hospital where I saw her body in the morgue, came pouring through my mind.

  “No more games. Tell me everything you know about Anya, or I’m going to—”

  “Or you’re going to do what, Chase? Kill an unarmed old man on your boat? Is that what you’re going to do?”

  I snatched the cigar from his mouth and crushed it in my palm before throwing it into his lap and drawing my pistol. Before the muzzle had cleared the leather holster, Clark’s left foot landed behind my right knee, doubling my leg and sending me crashing to the deck. On my way to the ground, Clark plucked the pistol from my hand and plunged his right hand into my left shoulder, pinning me to the deck, unarmed and helpless.

  Padre rose from the settee. “Get some rest. You’re too wound up to continue this tonight. I’ll come back tomorrow morning and tell you everything I know, as well as everything I suspect. I’m sorry I upset you, Chase. I knew this would be a tough conversation, but I never meant for it to get to this point. Thank you for not letting him kill me, Master Sergeant Johnson. Your father told me you’d be the more rational of the two in this situation.”

  With that, he left the boat and disappeared down the dock as I yanked my way free from Clark’s grip.

  “Relax, Chase. You’re letting your emotions dictate your actions, and you know there’s no quicker way to get yourself dead. I need you to take a breath and think. You heard him say he’d talked to my da
d. That’s how he knew who and where we are.” Clark helped me to my feet and handed back my pistol.

  I holstered the weapon and tried to calm down. He was right. I had to find a way to get my emotions under control. I sat on the overstuffed cushions and practiced the breathing exercises I’d been taught at The Ranch, but every time I closed my eyes, I saw Anya’s face, her smile, her long blonde hair, and her hypnotic blue-gray eyes. I wanted to touch her again. I wanted to hear her voice and watch her sleep. I had loved her. I would always love her in spite of the pain she caused, in spite of the lies she told, in spite of being the opposite of everything I believed about her. I wanted her back. I wanted another day with her, and another night. I’d never stop believing I could’ve shown her how freedom felt, and how much she could’ve enjoyed being alive, being an American, being mine.

  13

  What Did You See?

  There had to be a way to get over Anya. Every memory of her caused me nothing but heartache, and worse than that, each one put me at risk.

  How can something so destructive still dominate my psyche? Why can’t I let her go?

  I’d let my emotions deliver me into the hands of people who would’ve killed me if I hadn’t escaped. I’d allowed my anger to elevate to a level where I’d threatened and even drawn my pistol on an old, unarmed man, who by all appearances was on my boat solely for the purpose of helping me. I was out of control and something had to be done.

  I was broken. Not only was I a threat to myself, but I was putting people I cared about in harm’s way, and causing those people to put themselves in positions they should’ve never had to endure. I’d dragged Kirsten into a kidnapping on the street in St. Augustine. I’d forced Clark to physically restrain me on the deck of my own boat. I’d allowed my love for a character who never really existed to tear into every corner of my life.

  There were no answers that night—only more questions. I closed my eyes, begging my mind to sleep, but I saw Anya’s face and I heard the sickening sound of her body colliding with the marble floor of the house in Miami Beach where she’d been shot in the back. I was haunted by the memory of an actress playing a role, and I was helpless to exorcise those demons.

  I prayed, I meditated, I cursed, and I finally poured a glass of scotch and four sleeping pills down my throat, begging for merciful sleep and temporary relief from my own weakness.

  Finally, chemical sleep absorbed me and held me in its dreamless grasp for eight silent, lifeless hours.

  “Chase, get up. Padre’s here. Chase, wake up!”

  After he’d grabbed my foot and shaken me awake, Clark’s voice penetrated the pit in which I lay.

  “What! What is it?”

  “Get up, man. Padre’s here. You’ve got to pull yourself together.”

  I stretched and tried to gather the strength to open both eyes at once, but it wasn’t happening. My head pounded as if I’d been beaten, and my stomach felt like it was trying to turn itself inside out. I forced myself to my feet and swallowed as many aspirin as I could cram down my throat. Coffee was my potential savior, but not even that could lift me from my funk. It was a bad morning.

  Stumbling onto the aft deck, I found Clark and Padre sitting at the table, talking quietly. Padre met eyes with me then shifted his gaze to the ground. I joined them at the table. I didn’t know what to say.

  Padre placed his wrinkled, aged hand on my forearm. “Chase, I’m sorry for the way I behaved yesterday. I should’ve been more sensitive. I’m here to tell you everything I know and answer every question you have.”

  I closed my eyes, trying to bury the embarrassment I felt for having treated the old man the way I had.

  “Padre, I’m sorry. I was—”

  He stopped me. “No, Chase, you were upset and you had every right to be. I don’t know the details, but I know you’ve been through a hell that none of us can imagine.”

  I swallowed a mouthful of coffee and tried to wipe the sleep from my eyes.

  “Good morning, Chase!” came a much too cheerful voice from the dock. “I brought you a copy of my screenplay. You said you wanted to read it.”

  Clark and Padre stared in confusion at the woman standing on the dock, holding a ream of paper in her outstretched hand.

  “That’s Penny,” I said. “She’s written a screenplay. It’s a long story. Everything about Penny is a long story.”

  Clark hopped from the starboard hull to the dock and took the screenplay from Penny. “Chase had a few too many last night, and he’s struggling a little this morning. I’ll give it to him.”

  “Okay, cool,” she said. “Tell him I hope he feels better and to come by later if he wants.”

  “I’m sure he’d love that. I’ll tell him you invited him over. I think I heard him say he really liked you last night. You’re Penny, right?”

  She giggled and headed off toward the marina office.

  Clark dropped the screenplay in front of me.

  “Why, Clark? Why do you set me up for stuff like that?”

  “Because we all need a hobby, and making you squirm is mine.”

  I propped my face in my hands and my elbows on the table.

  Padre said, “You’re looking rough, kid. Are you sure you’re up for this?”

  I needed to hear what he had to say. “I’m okay,” I mumbled.

  He cleared his throat and started talking. “I’ve told you all I know about your father. The intelligence community is pretty small, so everybody knows everybody sooner or later, but you guys aren’t exactly insiders.”

  “I think that’s the idea,” said Clark. “We can get away with stuff you agency guys never could.”

  “That’s right,” Padre said. “The problem is that people in power, people like Michael Pennant, don’t quite know what to do with you guys. You’re wild cards for people like him, and those kinds of people don’t like people and situations they can’t control.”

  “That’s not really our problem,” I said.

  “Actually, it is your problem. That’s precisely why I think your Anya isn’t really as dead as you think she is.” He paused, stared at my cup of coffee, and then glanced toward the galley.

  “I’ll be right back,” said Clark, standing to fetch the old man a cup.

  While he was gone, Padre said, “If you want to have this conversation alone, I’ll find an errand to send Clark on.”

  “No, he’s the only thing keeping me sane right now. I need him in the loop.”

  Clark returned with Padre’s coffee, and the old man thanked him with a nod.

  He took a small sip and seemed to savor the taste before swallowing. “Everything I’m about to tell you is at least secondhand information. Some of it is probably even further away from the horse’s mouth.”

  “I understand,” I said, starting to feel almost human again.

  “I’ve been out of the official channels for a long time, but I still have feelers out in a lot of directions, and I hear a lot of rumors. What I’m hearing is that your Russian defector got spirited away right out the back of that VA hospital in Miami as soon as they’d gotten her stabilized.”

  He took another timid sip of his coffee and surveyed the dock. I assumed it was to make sure no one was close enough to hear what he was telling us.

  In my mind, I replayed every detail of my time in the VA hospital, starting with the moment Dominic told me Anya hadn’t survived. Some of it was a little fuzzy because I’d lost my temper and made an absolute ass of myself, but I vividly remembered my visit to the morgue.

  “I saw her body,” I said.

  Padre took a long, deep breath. “Think about it, Chase. Try to recall what you saw in the morgue.”

  “I know it was. . . .”

  He placed his hand on my arm again. “Slow down and think about it. Try to remember every detail and walk me through it.”

  I replayed the scene in my mind. I smelled the antiseptic odor of the morgue. I saw the crisp yellow tag tied to her big toe protruding from the
white sheet draped over her body.

  “There’s no question it was Anya’s body. I saw her foot.”

  “Her foot?” Padre said in disbelief. “How could you possibly know it was her foot?”

  “The name on the toe tag was Ana Fulton and she only had four toes.”

  Padre inhaled deeply. “Close your eyes and think about that moment, Chase. Tell me everything you saw. There had to be more than a toe tag and a foot.”

  Why is he doing this to me? I don’t need to relive that moment.

  “Tell me what you saw, Chase. Tell me every detail.”

  “I saw her foot, damn it! It was her foot. Her four-toed foot and her name on the tag—the name she’d been issued when she’d defected. It was her, okay?”

  “No, Chase. There has to be more.”

  I closed my eyes and saw the white sheet draped across her body. I knew her body as well as I knew my own—every curve, every muscle, every scar. I saw the form of her beautiful shape beneath that sheet—the curve of her hips as they became her trim waist, her firm, toned stomach as it became her breasts. The sheet over her breasts . . . it had risen and fallen almost imperceptibly. What was supposed to have been a corpse beneath that sheet had taken a breath. My field of vision constricted into a pulse-pounding tunnel of realization, and I heard my blood barreling through my veins. I couldn’t breathe, and my favorite coffee cup crumbled in my hand. Hot coffee poured into my lap, but I couldn’t move.

  How the hell could I have missed that?

  A pair of strong hands grasped my shoulders, and I looked up to see Clark holding me upright. Disbelief consumed his face.

  He asked before I could. “Who?”

  That was the word I’d been trying to form in my throat.

  Who took her from the VA hospital?

  “I don’t know,” said Padre, “but my bet would be Pennant.”

  Michael Pennant, the deputy director of operations for the CIA. The man who’d looked me in the eye and shook my hand. The man who’d smoked my cigar and drank my scotch with Dr. Richter and me in Georgetown. The man who wanted me to be his private one-man army, and the man who’d handed me Suslik’s file and wished me well on my journey to do his unspoken bidding.