Silence.
“You okay, old buddy?”
“Hey Mitch!”
Decker blew out a sigh of relief and led the rest of the crew into the small house. He followed the sound of a loud TV set to a back room where they discovered a tall, thin man dressed in a Hawaiian shirt and loud Bermuda shorts.
“Lena, meet Cade Thurman. Cade, meet Lena.”
Thurman struggled out of his Ezee Life recliner and wiped a greasy hand on his stained shorts. “Great to meet you Lena.”
Selena eyed the hand for a second, swallowed hard and took it in hers, shaking it. “Yes, the pleasure is all… mine. I’m sure.”
He grinned. “You like fried shrimp?”
“Um, what?”
Decker chuckled. “Do you like fried shrimp?”
“I never…”
“She’s crazy about it, Cade,” Decker said.
Cade reached around behind the chair and produced a bucket of cold, fried shrimp. Giving the posh English professor a genuine, disarming smile, he said, “What’s mine is mine!” Then he belched loudly.
Wafting the stench of stale lager from her face with a slim, pale hand, Selena turned to Decker. “Mitch, are you sure Mr Thurman is the right man for the job?”
“You wanted the best, right?” Cade said.
Selena fixed him in the eye. “Why, of course.”
Cade’s grin grew wider. “Well… he couldn’t make it, so you got me instead!”
Riley and Charlie laughed. Felipe Acosta looked more nervous than amused.
“Ah, another funny one,” Diana said. “Great news.”
“C’mon guys!” Cade said, indicating the chairs. “Take a load off.”
They sat and cracked open some beers. “So,” Selena said, wincing at the cheap, sharp lager. “Mitch says you two are old army buddies.”
Thurman stared at Decker, horrified.
Decker said, “She does it on purpose. She knows we were both marines. Ignore.”
Selena sipped more lager and winced again. “Can’t blame a gal for trying. Goodness, this beer is different.”
Cade laughed. “Yeah, I was in the Marines with Mitch. We left around the same time and when he bought his plane and started up Avalon Cargo, I pursued other avenues.”
“He means he stole a car and served time in Miami in jail,” Decker said.
Thurman gasped. “That is a total lie.”
“Was it?”
“Surely. It was a pickup truck.”
Diana gasped. “You stole a pickup truck?”
He shrugged. “In my defense, it was mine.”
“It was your ex’s,” Decker said.
“Ah, but I thought it was mine at the time.”
Selena looked at him oddly. “You thought it was yours?”
“Yeah. I thought it was in my name, but it was in my then wife’s name. We’d already separated at that time. I went over and picked it up and she called the cops on me. They picked me up on the interstate and she pressed charges, as cool as ice.”
“What a babe!” Riley said.
Charlie gave a sympathetic smile. “How kind of her.”
“Yeah,” Cade said with a fading smile. “She was always a very kind lady.” The smile returned and he clapped his hands together. “Anyway, what can I do for you, old buddy? You said you were in some trouble.”
“More than a little,” Decker said.
“In that case, let’s go outside and fire up the barbecue. Three day-old fried shrimp only goes so far, you know what I’m saying?”
*
They explained their situation over a dinner of grilled steaks and fresh vegetables, and Cade even supplied some half-decent bottles of red and white wine. After dinner, Selena sipped some white wine and watched the Straits of Florida sparkle in the bright Cuban moonlight. After the brutal fighting back in the jungle it felt good to ease back into a soft chair and enjoy a cold drink. By the looks on the faces of the rest of the crew, she wasn't the only one who felt this way. Decker was lying back on a reclining chair, snoozing with his hat over his face, Charlie and Diana were playing cards and Riley, Atticus and Acosta were making headway into two glasses of iced Cuban rum.
Hot sea air blew over their balcony and reminded Selena of long-forgotten summer vacations with her parents. A happy childhood, with everything in the right place. A safe house with a loving mother and good food and lots of books. A father who brought spontaneous adventure into her lift with a mischievous smile.
What a life she had led. Mohenjo-Daro. Angkor Wat. Petra. Chichén Itzá. Knossos. All these amazing archaeological sites and many others all before she was ten. A love of the ancient past ran through her veins in the same blood that ran through her father’s veins. Any other life she found impossible to imagine. She closed her eyes and blew out a deep breath, praying her father was all right.
To her left, Diana had grown tired of beating Charlie at poker and threw her hand down. “I’m out, Charlie. For the night.”
“Just as I was starting to win!” he said.
She gave him a withering look. “We’ve played over twenty hands and you only won the third one.”
“And now my luck is changing. I feel it in the air.”
“Then you play against the air. I’m tired.”
As he mumbled to himself and picked up the cards, she hid her smile and took a sip of her wine. It was a Cuban vintage Cade had picked up someplace and tasted good. It reminded her a little of the alentajo her parents used to drink with meals at the weekend. She felt a wave of homesickness when she thought about home. Her parents had almost died at the hands of Rakesh Madan during the Shambhala mission, and all because of her involvement in it. For that, she would always feel a terrible guilt.
She raised her glass and made a silent toast to her family’s health back in Porto and then took a long sip. Another breeze of hot night air blew across the balcony and rippled
