He didn't have to, for all who knew Jack Crow were thinking the same.
And as for Jack himself.
They are going to have to know this. They won't understand him otherwise. They might not understand him even then. Or me, for bringing him along.
But they're going to have to know.
And maybe if I tell them the good part first.
He smiled and turned to the others. "It was during the initial phase of my government career."
Cat frowned, said nothing. Annabelle spoke up. "You mean before you joined the army."
"Nope. Afterward."
"But you said the first part of..
"No," he corrected with a smile. "I said during the initial part of my government career."
"Which means?" asked Carl sounding as bored as he knew how.
"Which means I was under deep cover for the NSA on assignment to the CIA working as an agent for the DEA."
"What the hell is all this supposed to mean?" Carl wanted to know.
"Well, my job was to check out the Cuban connection into raw brown Mexican heroin, so I was along the Texas border trying to find out if all the rumors about a big-time purging of the hippie smugglers was true."
"Was it?" somebody asked.
"It was. They were wiping out all the amateurs to get ready for the big money they were monopolizing."
"So what did you do?" somebody else asked.
Jack shrugged, grinned. "Got in the way mostly. It was a dumb assignment and a dumb idea to send me along. I liked the NSA but they didn't trust me. I liked the CIA but they didn't even trust each other. I was scared of the DEA and they hated me but had to take me because of orders from upstairs.
"It was a mess."
He paused, looked around, and grinned easily. "But I did have an interesting couple of weeks."
And Cat thought, Here it comes. He glanced around at the others in the lounge and wondered how they were gonna take whatever it was that Jack was trying to sneak up on them.
And then he thought, He's trying to sneak it up on me, too. First time ever. Of course, there's a first time for everything, so...
So why am I so scared?
And once more Jack Crow began to speak.
Second Interlude: Felix
Raw brown heroin changed everything. Those little doper camps used to be so cute, like a piece of the Wild Frontier. They'd camp out in the weeds somewhere in their motor-homes and the Mexicans would spring up a village out of tarpaper shacks to be close to the loose change spilling off. And there was quite a bit of that to be had. Life was pretty good.
I remember they used to string Coleman lanterns on poles for streetlights.
Smacked me good right across the chops, my lip bleeding, then swings at me again and misses and the guy beside him starts yelling out, "Another one! Here's another one!" And then he jumps at me, too.
They were both too drunk to do any more damage but that yelling brought reinforcements amazingly fast. More Mexicans started spilling out of the darkness from all directions, all drunk and all angry and all coming at me.
I ran like hell.
The wrong way, of course, that being the kind of night it was. Toward the river, away from my truck. I was lost in about two seconds, stumbling through the brush with Spanish obscenities echoing from behind. I had no idea what was going on except the basics: I was in deep shit.
But I was old enough. Old enough means I was too smart to try to stop and moralize with a meat-eating mob. There really are people out there who, while you're trying to explain it's not your fault, will pound you into putty.
I found the river when I fell into it. Well, stepped into it. The Rio Grande isn't much but thirty feet across around those parts. So anyway, I step back and start shaking my boots dry and I hear this smartass voice pop through the night with "Hey, gringo! Where're ya goin'?"