“And how about the weapons regimen?” Norton asked Delaney. “My ship is set up as a two-man tandem. Is yours?”
Delaney replied, “Absolutely…”
“But the way I’m set up, it looks like I’m flying the pig and shooting the guns.”
Delaney took a huge gulp of beer.
“Same here,” he said. “I’m doing the driving and the shooting and the gunner is doing diddly.”
“Weird…”
“Very weird…”
They finished their first beer in silence.
“You won’t believe how fast they have my ship going,” Delaney said finally. “That thing flies so freaking fast, it almost makes sense they have a fighter jock at the wheel. I guess that’s why we’re here.”
“Yeah, well, I get scared when something starts to make sense around here,” Norton said.
Delaney coaxed the last few drops of beer from his can. Norton wiped his sweaty forehead once more.
The slightly cooling breeze blew off the water again. The beer was having its first effects on Norton. For a moment it actually seemed like they were just two guys, enjoying a hot afternoon, drinking beer, and fishing off the end of a huge boat.
If only… he mused.
Delaney reached into his cooler, took out two more beers, and handed one to Norton.
“Did you know Mutt and Jeff arrived yesterday?” he asked Norton.
“No kidding?”
“I heard they’ve been crybabying to Smitz ever since,” Delaney said.
“They really don’t want to be heroes, do they?”
“Can’t blame them, I guess,” Delaney answered. “I mean look where it got us.”
Norton bit his lip again. That was another thing troubling him. His decision to turn the CIA on to Gillis and Ricco had been preying on his mind.
At the time, it seemed like the right thing to do. The Spooks said this mission needed good air-to-air refueling guys, and when Norton was asked for the best, he gave them Gillis and Ricco.
But had he done the right thing? Or had he just been grandstanding? Caught up a little too much in the cloak-and-dagger excitement of those first few days. How could he justify involving the two tanker pilots in a mission he knew nothing about? What witches’ brew had he gotten them into? With its reputation for screwing things up, could he really trust the CIA? Or any Spook, for that matter? Had he just been swept up in it because he wanted to be a hero? Because he wanted to do something more exciting than fly the Cobra at air shows?
He didn’t know. And that was the problem. Gillis and Ricco weren’t regular military; they were National Guard guys. Weekend warriors. They probably had wives and kids and homes, things he and Delaney did not. What if Gillis and Ricco got killed on this mission? What if by Norton’s recommendation he’d brought Gillis and Ricco into something that would end up causing their wives to be widows and their kids to be fatherless?
He took another long sip of beer. Delaney was blabbing away about the weather or something, but Norton could not hear him. His ears were ringing too much. And his shoulders were suddenly feeling very heavy.
These disturbing thoughts were eventually knocked away by a sharp jab to his rib cage, courtesy of Delaney. The pilot was indicating that Norton should look at something off to their left. Norton did, and immediately saw what Delaney had spotted.
It was a group of Marines, about twenty of them, or one quarter of the complement known to be on the island. They were crawling through a grove of palm trees about fifty feet away from the yacht. The Marines were dressed in heavy combat gear and carrying enormous weapons. They were almost invisible.
Norton had seen the Marines training several times since arriving on the island, in those first hours before his marathon sessions in the Can had commenced in earnest. Each time, the Marines were in the process of surrounding and attacking Motel Six, which was the name given to the island’s first motel-like structure. (The second motel-like structure, the one where many billets were located, had been named “Motel Hell.”) Now it appeared the Marines were preparing to attack the structure once again.
Norton and Delaney watched with bemused interest as this first group of Marines got into position. Then they became aware of a second group of Marines inching their way up towards Motel Six from the opposite side of the runway. And a third group was in the process of scaling the structure’s rear wall. Then, someone blew a whistle, a flash grenade went off, and the Marine assault was on. In seconds jarheads were swarming all over the structure, kicking in doors, going through windows, dropping down through holes in the roof. Norton and Delaney could hear shouting, heavy footsteps, the sizzle and pop of more flash grenades going off.
“Hey, man, this is better than the movies!” Delaney declared with a noisy slurp of his beer. “I just wish they would attack something else for a change. This particular act is getting boring.”
The Marines apparently did mock assaults on Motel Six as many times a day as Norton and Delaney found themselves stuck inside the Tin Can. In other words, endlessly.
“Let’s see,” Delaney said. “We can call this mystery number two hundred and seventy-three. What the hell are these guys practicing for?”
Norton just shrugged. “Again, it’s probably something we don’t want to know.”
The mock assault was over in a matter of minutes. Then the Marines started filing out again. Some of them passed right by the boat dock where Norton and Delaney sat, now drinking their third set of beers. Their blackened faces stared in at them. They looked exhausted, hot, sweaty—and most of all, thirsty.
Delaney raised his beer in a mock toast to the Marines.
“Semper fi, guys!” he called out to them. “Keep up the good work!”
The Marines growled at them, but kept moving.
“Can I tell you something, partner?” Norton said to Delaney.
“Sure…”
Norton watched the Marines disappear back into the palm groves.
“Something tells me we should be real nice to those guys,” he said.
Before Delaney could reply, they heard someone walking down the gangplank towards their boat. Delaney quickly went to hide the beer. Not that he was afraid drinking on duty was against regulations. He simply didn’t have enough to share with a third party. But this person had no interest in drinking. It was a guy named Raoul. He was one of several CIA flunkies on the island.
“I’ve been looking all over for you two,” he said, out of breath but with relief.
“Why? Where’s the fire?” Delaney asked him.
“The fire is in the Big Room,” Raoul told them in cracked English. “The time has come—that’s why Smitz wanted me to track you down.”
“Time has come for what?” Delaney asked him, now chugging his beer in full view.
“For the briefing,” Raoul said. “The big one. The one to explain whatever the hell we are all doing here.”
“The ‘mother of all briefings,’” Norton said, “It’s finally time.”
“Yeah, cool,” Delaney said draining his beer. “And we get to go drunk.”
Chapter 9
The Big Room was another name for the main dining area inside the restaurant on Seven Ghosts Key.
It was an odd place inside an odd place. Back when the restaurant was built, prior to the Bay of Pigs invasion, someone thought it would be clever to paint folksy native murals on the walls as one more piece in the mosaic of the island’s cover story.
The result was a collection of very dated and crude paintings. A huge marlin jumping at the end of a fishing line. A crimson tropical sunset. A garish voodoo ceremony. Children playing in the surf. The murals gave the place a certain campy look, but were also weird and unsettling. One was particularly eerie. It showed three jumbo black women carrying pots on their heads on their way to market. The way the mural had been painted, they seemed to be laughing at anyone who came through the front door.