a need inside him, maybe a pride in doing what he did and what he considered to be his only talent and calling. She knew. But they did not speak of it. It seemed as though both of them were more comfortable in the guise that he was a simple businessman off to work on unusual but routine projects. Her response that morning was the same as it had always been: come back safe.
“This here is Fred Rae. He’ll be your captain today,” Squires started with that singsong delivery every flight attendant has memorized. “Please stow all your carry-on luggage in the bins above or in the space provided under your seat. As we will have a full flight today…”
The chopper pilot took Harmon’s hand but was looking past his shoulder at Squires with a quizzical look.
“Don’t mind him,” Harmon said. “He loves the smell of napalm in the morning.”
An accepting smile crossed the guy’s face. He shook his head slightly and turned to continue his preflight check. Harmon and Squires huddled.
“OK, sarge,” Squires started, always pulling out the military speak when he was moving on an operation. “We got any objective here or you going to continue to keep that to yourself until we get dropped in on this mystery zone?”
Harmon, looked at this partner. Always a hard guy to keep anything from.
“Dropped in?” he said.
“I saw the fast rope bags already loaded in the air frame.”
“Yeah? Well, all we have is a quick turnaround. Crandall’s orders are to fly out to these coordinates in the near Everglades, some kind of a research facility, zip down to the station because there’s no place to land the chopper. Then we check out any damage the storm might have done, make sure it can be powered up by the remote, take some pictures, and then call back the chopper to lift us out. Few hours, tops.”
Squires let the info roll around in his head, maybe comparing it with earlier assignments, maybe with the memories in his head of ops in his vast military background. He pursed his lips. Nodded his head.
“I fucking smell something, chief,” he finally said. “And it ain’t kosher.”
Harmon looked away. His partner was already suspicious and he hadn’t even mentioned the C-4.
“You don’t even know what kosher means, Squires,” Harmon finally replied, picking up his bag and hefting it into the helicopter.
“Means illegal.”
“Like we haven’t done that before?”
Squires fixed a nonjudgmental gaze on him.
“Not this close to home.”
On the pilot’s signal both men climbed up into the cockpit, Squires riding shotgun in the rear seat, and they clamped radio headsets over their ears as the whine of the single engine slowly increased and the blades began spinning to action. There were no other active aircraft on the field that Squires could see. When they started to rise in the gray sky they swung immediately to the west, the rising sun at their backs and below the most obvious destruction of the now finished storm was in the dumped airplanes and scattered trash of trees and the patchy scabs of rooftops where orange barrel tiles had been stripped away. A hangar near the end of the runway was caved in, as if it had been chopped at the middle of its roof peak by the edge of a giant hand.
“Mr. Rae,” Harmon said into the mouthpiece, his voice sounding with an electronic crackle, “can we travel at a higher altitude, please. I really don’t need to see this all again.”
TWENTY-FIVE
I had willed myself to stay awake, aided by the buzz of mosquitoes and the self-appointed task of keeping them from landing for a blood feast on Sherry’s skin. On the other side of the room it was Marcus whose turn it was to sit watch. He was in the wooden, straight-back chair, the iPod wires flowing out of his ears and the shotgun lying across his thighs. On occasion he would start bobbing his head to a tune I couldn’t hear and close his eyes but I had to hand it to both boys: whether it was fear of what Buck might do if he found them asleep or if they were simply used to a late-night existence, neither of them nodded out. Whenever the sound of animal movement, or of a scraping across the floor by me or their napping crewmates, both sentries’ reactions were swift and fully alert. So much for sneaking out the blade strapped on my ankle and easing over to cut someone’s throat