Mark Aitken
Arctic Floor
CHAPTER 1
Gallen switched to whisky when the band started its second set. The drink burned down behind the beer, warming him against the cold seeping through the concrete floor. From his corner of the ballroom he watched soldiers trying to boogie around Tyler Richards, who was moving his wheelchair to a version of ‘Start Me Up’.
‘Still say he gotta get hisself a better lawyer,’ said Bren Dale, pushing himself back with a big cowboy boot on the edge of the table. ‘Shit, Washington always sends a rejection first up. Daddy knew that from back in the Nam.’
Looking around at the streamers and balloons, Gallen shrugged. Brendan Dale had been a first-rate sergeant when they served together in Afghanistan but the booze made him repeat himself. What no one at this shindig wanted to say was that former specialist first-class Tyler Richards had finished his tour and was on leave when he polished off two quarts of rye and drove his ‘68 Impala off a bridge out of Torrington, near the Nebraska state line.
‘He’d be happy for the benefits and the pension,’ said Gallen, sipping the whisky and nodding at Richards. ‘Wasn’t like he was in line for a disability, ‘less you count that bridge on eighty-five as an enemy position.’
‘Shit, cap’n,’ said Dale, feet thumping on concrete as he sat upright. ‘The man got a new wife and a little baby. He weren’t discharged, still with the Corps.’
‘So was Nyles,’ said Gallen, throwing back the drink and standing. ‘And most of his leg’s still in Marjah.’
‘Still, it’s no use being such a hard-ass to Richards. Not now.’
‘I wrote to the appeals board,’ said Gallen, irritated that his field image had followed him into civvie life. ‘But there wasn’t much to say.’
‘What about that he served his country? That he went the extra yard for his crew? That he saved our asses on that highway ambush in oh-seven? That worth saying?’
‘I wrote that, Bren,’ said Gallen, trying to avoid Dale’s eyes. Bren Dale was strictly loyal to Gallen in front of the men but, like most sergeants in the Marines, he reserved the right to speak his mind in private.
‘You write that we all drunks now, after that shit?’ Dale threw a thumb over his shoulder. ‘That it takes a quart just to get through the day?’
‘No,’ said Gallen, moving away. ‘I didn’t write that.’
Feeling Dale’s eyes on his back as he crossed the dark dance floor, Gallen saw the woman bunched around a table. Flabby middle-aged Mae Richards, telling the story of her son to anyone who would listen, and Phoebe Richards, holding a baby across her lap, staring at her husband who was now trying to make his wheelchair wiggle to ‘Band on the Run’.
‘Early start tomorrow.’ Gallen leaned over Phoebe. ‘I’m cuttin’ out.’
The woman didn’t take her eyes off the dance floor, just nodded at the seat beside her.
Gallen pulled an envelope from the inside pocket of his windbreaker and handed it over, wondering if the IRS staked out events like this. The envelope disappeared without a thank you.
‘You spoken with him lately, Captain Gallen?’ said the woman, a skinny redneck girl with a piercing in her lip and an Aries glyph tattooed on her neck.
‘Please, call me Gerry.’
‘Well, have you?’ She turned to him. ‘Gerry?’
‘Seen him a couple times at Elkhorn,’ said Gallen, meaning the rehab hospital in Casper. ‘Not lately though.’
Phoebe sucked on her cigarette too hard. Gallen looked at his watch—11.06 pm. He wanted to time his exit before Richards’ mom started in on him. For many people in rural America, a former captain in the US Marines was as close to Washington DC’s officialdom as they’d ever get, and Gallen could sense a sermon in Mae Richards.
‘Well,’ he said, rising to go.
‘I want you to talk to him, Gerry.’
‘He looks happy to me,’ said Gallen.
‘Oh, really,’ she said. ‘So why’d he try killing hisself?’
The cold came up through Gallen’s boots as he crossed the tarmac of the East Side Motel, a salesmen’s stopover on the outskirts of Red Butte, south of Casper.
Walking past his truck he was reminded of tomorrow morning’s drive north, where he was picking up two horses and taking them back to the ranch to condition them for a season of showjumping. His father hated jumpers but no one paid quite like the showjumping crowd.
Marijuana smoke drifted in the stillness as Gallen hit the stairs to his room on the upper deck. In the cast of the motel neon he could see a man partying with a woman in the back of a red Cutlass; it was former corporal Donny McCann, a man the rest of Gallen’s Force Recon team once relied on in the hills and mountain passes of northern Afghanistan. In their typical vehicle patrols — two Humvees, eight men — McCann operated a,50-cal turret gun on the second Humvee, the vehicle that was usually targeted by sniper fire and rocket attacks. Under the incoming, McCann would lay down enough fire to allow Gallen’s men to take cover and counter the attack. He was a hound with the ladies but totally stand-up in a fight.
Easing into his room, Gallen went to the bathroom and washed his face with cold water. He wasn’t drunk but his hands were shaking slightly. Wiping off with the towel, he looked himself in the eye: a full freaking six months out of the Corps and these people still called him Captain, still sought his leadership. The fundraiser for Tyler Richards followed the one he’d attended in February down in Mobile for Joe Nyles; Joe had the full disability and compensation package because of his combat injuries but his wife said there was only one way the two kids could get to college and that was to bank twenty grand in a fund and let it mature. Gallen had driven down, stayed in a motel slightly better than the East Side, and got hammered with his old crew before passing the wife his envelope and wandering out of their lives. Military service was like that — it gave you a family you knew better than the one you grew up with. And once you knew what a scared, cold man said in his sleep, you knew him too well to ever turn your back.
Wandering back into the living area, Gallen turned off the bedside lamp and edged to the side of the window. Finding a chink where the curtain didn’t quite meet the window frame, he positioned himself and looked down on the car park.
The red Cutlass emitted wafts of smoke from the slightly cracked front passenger window. Gallen couldn’t see the cars directly beneath his room — they were blocked by the balcony — but he could see the car that had caught his attention on the far side of the parking lot. It wasn’t just that it faced Gallen’s room while the rest of the line were nose-in. It was also the make and modeclass="underline" a dark Crown Vic with car-pool tyres and a lack of detail. Gallen didn’t like it.
Grabbing a set of binoculars from his overnight bag Gallen let the auto focus clarify the interior of the vehicle. It wasn’t the best picture because the glasses wanted to focus on the curtains, but he could see two men sitting in the front of the car; no cigarettes, no movement. Nondescript white guys, perhaps middle-aged, looking straight at him.
Gallen focused on the Colorado plate and made a note of the numbers.
Were they really looking at him? Reaching sideways as he kept his binoculars on the car, he turned the handle on the door and pulled it open slightly. Before the door was more than four inches ajar, the passenger in the Crown Vic slapped the driver’s chest and the driver’s posture changed.
Pulling a pack of Marlboros from his pocket, Gallen threw the field-glasses on the bed and stepped onto the balcony. Lighting the smoke, he avoided looking straight at the car. If the surveillance was innocent, someone could step out of the car, call out Hey, Gerry or Excuse me, are you Gerry Gallen?