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“Everything OK today, honey?” She pushed the towel into the laundry bag and handed Ridge his usual receipt.
“Yeah. Kinda.”
“Well, hang in there. We all love ya.” Sandy was a certified sweetheart, and had made it plain on more than one occasion that she’d be happy to ease Ridge’s frustrations as only a woman could, but the retired SEAL had treated her with the same firm respect as any of the other girls who threw themselves, or their underwear, at him.
“Thanks. Hey, would you just let them know I didn’t sleep well, or something? I was... Well, I was kind of a dick in there.”
“Sure thing.” Sandy smiled reassuringly and watched him leave, appreciating silently, as she did every time, his incredibly muscular ass. She even loved the way he stormed out when he was pissed.
Ridge’s gym friends were among those who understood the challenges both of recovering from injury and of becomingtrulyfit. Some had served, and all supported the mission Ridge had suffered to complete. The night news of Bin Laden’s death came through from Pakistan had been one of unbridled celebration. Ridge had been away, and rumors persisted that he’d been on the famous raid, but he was quick to scotch these when he returned.
Ridge sat in his car with the engine off and took long, deep breaths.She’s mad at me, he thought to himself, amazed yet again by the incomprehensible mind of a woman.Her scum brother hits her, then shows up begging, then complains about everything, and she’s mad at me? He replayed their strained, whispered discussions while Hank was in the bathroom, and the agonizing, night-time conference behind his closed bedroom door. A door she had closed resolutely behind her, leaving him to be alone.
Ridge drove the few miles south to Karole City, where he had a long-standing lunch meeting which, he knew, would hardly make his day easier. About three times a year, he made time to meet Carl, younger brother of Captain Nick Vines, whose brave service had ended so senselessly on that moonlit night two years before. The first meeting had been dreadful, an agonizingly drawn-out dwelling on the sheerwasteof it all, after which both had found tears welling up. Ridge was embarrassed to lose control of his emotions, but realized afterward that it had been the very first time he had let himself cry over the loss of his Captain and friend.
Carl, he knew, had been drinking a lot, and it had been Ridge’s gentle insistence that he attend meetings that had pulled him back from self-destruction. A death in combat, even of a beloved brother, was reason for the deepest sadness, but such sacrifice was meaningful; perhaps it had brought peace to others or saved the lives of good men.
Nick’s death had brought no such consolation; an expensive piece of hardware had screwed up, and conjured the horrific cloud of flame and heat and pressure which had so nearly killed Ridge, too. Was it merely luck, Ridge asked himself a thousand times, which had spared him? Why had the pressure wave merely ruined his lungs and blown him across the hillside, when it had killed his Captain? The veteran’s group had promised that these were impossible questions, worth only setting aside. But they would never leave Ridge alone, he knew, and seeing Carl brought them up in the most painful way.
The young man was doing better, Ridge saw at once; Carl had opted for a neat button-down shirt and, surprisingly, un-ripped jeans. His formerly unkempt dreadlocks were clean and neat, and the straggly beard had gone. He had even started much-needed car repair. “Got myself a new girl, too,” he smiled when Ridge congratulated him. “Thinking of settling down in San Antonio, once I find a job there.”
In the end, they talked mostly about Carl’s projects, his work on his car, his part-time job at the local radio station, and his volunteering with the VA. Ridge described his recent fights, but didn’t feel like mentioning Raven; this was a chance to inhabit a different part of his life for a while, and to remember a friend whose luck, for whatever reason, had been eclipsed by his own.
“I wanted to give this to you,” Carl said, as they sipped coffees after lunch. “It was mixed in with Nick’s things, you know, and... well. I thought of you straight away.”
In the small, red box was Nick’s SEAL insignia: a brilliant, golden eagle grasping an anchor, a trident and a flintlock pistol, symbolizing the Navy, the SEAL team itself, and their role on the land, where Nick had given everything. It had been repaired, Carl told him, and it gleamed with polish.
Ridge shook Carl’s hand, thanked him, and watched him leave, taking time to mourn his friend who had fought — and died — right there beside him. Twenty feet away, at most. Nick had been fearless in combat, Ridge remembered proudly, an expert at his work, and a brother to his men. He deserved so much more than to be killed by a goddamnedcomputer glitch.In fact, Ridge thought angrily, he deserved to be sitting right here, remembering his friend Ridge Dawson;that’swhat he deserved.
The waitress, on her way to bring their change, stopped, thought twice, and left the young man to his sudden tears.
Outside Corpus Christi, TX
Wednesday afternoon
“Thanks for coming,Barry. I can always rely on you to be right on time.” The shaved-headed teenager hopped nervously into Corbett’s unmarked car, carrying their usual sandwich lunch. “Reuben?”
“That’s what you said, ain’t it?” he said curtly. These meetings were both inconvenient and dangerous for Barry — an alias with which Corbett had set him up — and the faster and smoother they went, the happier Corbett’s 19-year-old informant would be.
“You’re a gifted young man, Barry. I’m happy we were able to continue to connect like this.” Corbett drove them along some back roads, past derelict cars and a few broken-down trailers, to a spot by the river they had used a handful of times in the last six months. Without Corbett’s intercession, they both knew Barry would be just another poor, imprisoned black kid, facing acenturyof jail time on narcotics charges. As it was, he was a free man, albeit one for whom regular meetings with the DEA had become a requirement.
“I got what you wanted,” he said. “Those dickheads at the port, they ain’t the ones to talk to.” This was a theme for Barry, his insistence that it was, in fact, onlyhewho could provide the best intelligence; the other lowlifes couldn’t be trusted to tie their shoes, he would say. It was part of his shtick, an act designed to convince Detective Lindstrom that his allegiance had truly changed. And, given the high quality of his information, at least of late, Corbett was ready to believe that it had.
“So tell me, young Padawan.”
“What ya callin’ me?” Barry asked.
“You seenStar Wars?” Corbett asked, taking a big bite of his Reuben.
“Yeah, yeah I get it. Very funny. You wanna hear about this boat or not?”
Finally.Corbett had suspected for months that this gang was moving their product to the big northern cities by sea. Three times since joining the DEA, Corbett had watched couriers walk blindly into raids at truck stops; eventually the gangs had stopped risking the highways. Flying was out, certainly after 9/11, and the railways had had their share of raids, and one very inconvenient breakdown; it had proven easiest to discretely sail up the coast and unload somewhere quiet. He gave Barry his full attention.
“It all comes in the same way, right, at Corpus. Nothing changed.” Corbett was nodding. There was no need to take notes, as Barry was unwittingly speaking directly into a microphone hidden in the upholstery. “It ain’t in Corpus for like an hour or two, they transfer it all across, like the Navy, man, they real slick.”
“To another boat?”
“Yeah, man, I’m telling ya. It’s like this rich playboy’s boat, I dunno where they got it. Looks like somebody used to have some good times on there, man. Got a stripper pole and everythin’.” Barry chuckled at his own mind’s lewd imagery. “They send it across on cables and on a little dinghy they got, man, zip-zip-zip, and then this fine-ass boat just takes off, you know, right after. They got this shitdown, I’m tellin’ ya.”
