just seemed to play out in my head before it was happening…” Jack shrugged, then smiled. “Maybe got a little of Dad’s Marine DNA. Hell, who knows, maybe I’ve just watched
“Somehow I don’t think so,” Brian replied. “Well, whatever it is, I wouldn’t mind having you on my six.”
“I’ll second that.”
They raised their cans of Diet Coke and clunked them together.
“About that, guys…” Jack said tentatively. “You remember that thing last year… in Italy?”
Brian and Dominic exchanged glances. “We remember,” Dom said. “Hell of a deal, that.”
“Yeah, well, I was thinking I wouldn’t mind doing some more of it-not that exactly, maybe, but something like it.”
Brian said, “Jesus, cuz, are you talking about unplugging from your keyboard and living in the real world? I can see the devil lacing up his ice skates as we speak.”
“Very funny. No, I like what I do, I know it makes a difference, but that stuff is so intangible. What you guys do-what we did in Italy-that’s the real deal. Hands on, you know? You can see the results with your own eyes.”
“Now that you’ve brought it up,” Dominic said, “I’ve always meant to ask you: Did any of that bother you afterward-not that it should have, necessarily, but let’s face it: You were kind of dumped ass-backward into a shitty situation-if you’ll pardon the pun.”
Jack considered this. “What do you want me to say? That it bothered me? Well, it didn’t. Not really. Sure, I was nervous, and there was a quarter-second just before it happened where I thought,
“Shit, no.” Brian looked around to make sure they were alone, then leaned in close, forearms on the table. “There’s no should about it, Jack. You either do or you don’t. You don’t, and that’s okay. The asshole deserved it. First time I popped a guy, Jack, he had me dead to rights. It was kill or be killed. I put him down, and I knew it was the right thing. Still had a few night-mares, though. Right or wrong, whether he deserves it or not, killing a man ain’t a pleasant thing. Anybody who thinks it is is a little touched in the head. All that gung-ho stuff ain’t really about killing; it’s about doing the job you’ve trained your ass off to be good at, taking care of the guys to your left and right, and coming out the other side with all your fingers and toes.”
“Besides, Jack,” Dominic added, “that guy in Italy, he wouldn’t have just up and quit one day. He would’ve cost a lot of people their lives before somebody sent him on his way. For me, that’s the deal-breaker. A bad guy deserving what he gets is all well and good, but what we’re doing-what this whole thing is about-isn’t revenge, at least not for its own sake. Playing it that way is sort of like shutting the barn door after horses get out. Me, I’d much rather stop the guy who’s planning on opening the barn door in the first place.”
Brian stared hard at his twin brother for a couple of beats and then shook his head and grinned. “I’ll be damned. Mom always said you were the philosopher of the family. I just never believed her till now.”
“Yeah, yeah…” Dominic muttered. “Not so much philosophy as math. Kill one, save hundreds or thousands. If we were talking about decent, law-abiding folks, that’d be a harder equation, but they’re not.”
“I agree with him, Jack,” said Brian. “We’ve got a chance to do some real good here. But if you’re thinking about doing this kind of stuff because you think revenge is the answer, or that it’s all James Bond shit-”
“That’s not what-”
“Good, because it ain’t, not even close. It’s ugly shit, period. And revenge is a piss-poor motivator. It makes you sloppy, and sloppy is dead.”
“I know.”
“So what’re you going to do about it?”
“Talk to Gerry, I guess, and see what he says.”
“You better have one hell of a pitch,” Dominic said. “Hell, as it stands Gerry took a risk hiring you in the first place. Your dad would have a fit-”
“Let me worry about my dad, Dom.”
“Fine, but if you think Gerry’s just going to hand you a gun and say, ‘Go forth and make the world safe for democracy,’ you got another think coming. If you were to buy the farm, he’d be the one making the call.”
“I know.”
“Good.”
“So,” Jack said, “if I talk to him, you guys’ll back me up?”
“For what it’s worth, sure,” Brian replied. “But this isn’t a democracy, Jack. Assuming he doesn’t shoot down the idea on the spot, he’ll probably run it by Sam.” Sam Granger was The Campus’s Chief of Operations. “I doubt he’s going to ask us.”
Jack nodded. “Probably right. Well, like you said, I’d better make my pitch a damn good one, then.”
14
AUTUMN WAS HERE. You could tell from the wind and the ice pack, which had begun pulling away from the coast to reveal the black water of the Arctic Ocean. It could not be colder without turning to ice, and there was plenty of that still in sight, just to remind one that summer up here was fleeting at best. Mother Nature remained as grim and heartless as ever, even under a sky of crystal blue and a few cotton-ball white clouds.
This place was not unlike his first Navy posting to Polyyarniy twelve years before, just as the Soviet Navy was starting to shut down. Oh, sure, they had a few ships left, most of them tied at the working ports of the Kola Fjord, manned by men who stayed in the Navy because they either had to or had nothing to go home to. There were a few ships with crews composed almost entirely of officers who actually got paid a few times a year. Vitaliy had been among the last men drafted into the former Soviet Navy and, to his astonishment, found himself liking the work.
After the mindless basic training he’d been made a junior
His charter for the week was waiting for him down the coast at a small fishing village. Two days ago he’d preloaded their equipment-a GAZ truck with all-wheel drive, new tires, and a fresh paint job, equipped with a heavy-duty A-frame, taking delivery from an anonymous driver who, like him, had probably been paid in euros. As any good captain did, Vitaliy had inspected the cargo and had been surprised to find the truck stripped of all identification codes, right down to the one on the engine block. While such a task wasn’t particularly complicated, and neither did it require a mechanic, something told Vitaliy that his charters hadn’t done the work themselves. So they’d come here, bought a GAZ in good condition, paid someone handsomely to strip it, then hired a private charter. Plenty of money to spread around and overly concerned with anonymity. What did that mean?
But there was no point in being too curious. Smart cats knew the danger of curiosity, and he liked to think he was smart enough. The euros would also take care of his memory, something in which his party seemed supremely confident; the leader of the group, clearly of Mediterranean descent, had told Vitaliy to call him Fred. It wasn’t so much an artifice as it was a moniker of convenience, almost a private joke between them, and Fred’s smirk during their initial meeting had confirmed it.
He watched his charter party come aboard and wave at him, and with that done, he signaled to Vanya, his engineer/deckhand, who cast off the lines. Vitaliy started the diesel engines and pulled away from the dock.
Soon enough he was in the fairway and headed out to sea. The black water didn’t exactly beckon, but it was where he and the boat belonged, and it felt good to be heading back out. All he needed to make the morning perfect was a tranquilizer, and that Vitaliy handled with an American Marlboro Lights 100 cigarette. And then the
