The house looked empty. It was nearly 11:30. A snowmobile sat parked beside the house, but there was no other vehicle. While he didn’t have a phone, she was sure he had a car. She got out of the warm police cruiser and walked to the door of the cabin.
Lonnie rapped loudly on the door with her gloved knuckles, but there was no response. She took out her Maglite and repeated the knock with its metal handle. After several seconds, there was still no movement in the house. In the center of the door was a small corkboard with half a dozen thumbtacks stuck randomly in it, Marcus’s low-tech version of an answering machine. She pulled a notepad and a felt-tip Sharpie pen from her pocket and scrawled a brief note.
Mr. Johnson,
Please contact AST as soon as possible.
Re: suspects you encountered @ store 12/17
She didn’t sign it. Instead, she wrote the AST direct phone number on the bottom of the note, then tacked it to the corkboard and left.
Chapter 6
Flashback
Thursday, May 7th, 1998
Stonehouse Barracks
43 Commando
Her Majesty’s Royal Marine Corps
Plymouth Naval Base, England
“All right, you lot! On your feet!” bellowed Colour Sergeant Reggie Smoot in a thick Scots accent as he entered the NCO’s lounge room of the Royal Marines Stonehouse Barracks at Plymouth Naval Base. The sergeants and corporals of 43 Commando rose from their various leisurely activities as the Colour Sergeant continued. “This is Gunnery Sergeant Marcus Johnson, United States Marine Corps, 2nd Force Recon. He’s going to be with you all for the next twelve months on an exchange duty. He is a real Sea Daddy, with a dozen years in. He did a complete pass out of the Commando Course back in ’89. He earned a right to the Globe & Buster, so don’t give him no shite or you’ll get a beasting you won’t forget. Understood?”
“Yes sir!” came the stout reply from the twenty-some men in the room.
“Oh!” he added as an afterthought, “and don’t try to confuse him with none of that Eastender gash! He is also a linguist with about thousand languages in his noggin, and he just got back from Bosnia, serving alongside a bunch of hooligans from 3 SAS. You won’t get nothin’ by him!” He paused melodramatically, raised his eyebrows, and shouted, “Understood again?”
“Yes sir!” came the second stout reply, this time with a few grins.
“Good! Now get your arses over here and be sociable!”
The first man to approach Gunnery Sergeant Johnson was a tall, athletically trim man of about thirty, with sergeant’s stripes on his epaulets. He reached out his hand and spoke in a comfortable public-school accent. “Well, your experience with the SAS should certainly reduce the language barrier for us all. Last Yank we had in our midst spent the whole time scratching his head and saying ‘What the hell?’ every time we asked him a question. I’m Sergeant Barclay. You can call me Bill.”
“Great to meet you, Bill,” Marcus replied with a friendly smile. The others all streamed toward him with mostly warm and friendly handshakes and welcomes.
After brief introductions, CSGT Smoot called out, “All right, you lot! It’s closing time for duty! First round is on the new guy!”
Everyone smiled largely and clapped Marcus on the shoulders as they filed out the door into the hallway.
“Uh, was this something I was supposed to know about?” Johnson asked the colour sergeant.
“I dunno if you should’ve, but you do now. Tradition, you know!” He nudged the gunny in the ribs and said, “Best way to get to know these blokes is to take them to a pub and get pissed with them. In the morning at PT, everyone will have groggy, yet fond, memories of how great a mate you are, and all will be well.”
“I see,” Marcus answered. “The problem is, I haven’t had a chance to get any cash yet.”
“Not a problem there, mate!” The large Scot smiled. “The lovely Miss Alison at the Red Dog will more than willingly let you start a tab. Don’t worry—it won’t put you too far behind. Just a single round of ale is all you’re expected to cover. If they really want to get minged, they’ll have to pay for their own hangover.”
The Red Dog Public House, two blocks west of the main gate of the Plymouth Royal Navy Base, was a regular hangout for Royal Marines both current and former. Anyone was welcome, even civilians—as long, that is, as they said nothing derogatory or defaming about the Royal Marines and could tolerate the loud, crude humor of a hundred or more commandos whose spirits soared on beer and whisky.
A single round of drinks for the boys meant that Marcus bought the promised one pint of ale for everyone in the company who showed up that night—which, as it turned out, was all of the one hundred and twenty men of Mike Company, 43 Commando. At a cost of two British pounds a pint, $3.35 American, the tab grew considerable quite fast.
Near midnight, the company filed out, except for Johnson, Sergeant Barclay, and Colour Sergeant Smoot. The three of them sat at a table in the back of the pub and chatted over the vast commonalities they shared. Barclay, a single man who enlisted in the RMC the same year Marcus had in the USMC, had been in Norway at the same time as Marcus in the late eighties, and although they had never met
