Galvanized, now oblivious to fatigue and cold, Ben roiled his way back to the gently davening corpse. Swallowing a gag at the thought of contact with the sodden dead, Ben grabbed the field jacket’s lapel. He read the faded name stenciled on the strip of cloth sewn above the right chest pocket. Not the right name.
Ben knew this man. Felt it, but he had no proof. Frustrated, he clawed the wallet from the jacket’s inner pocket. As his flashlight batteries weakened, the small writing on the driver license faded in and out. He shook the flashlight hard. The beam brightened for a moment. The name on the license was wrong, too; and it was different from the name on the jacket. Tom Chase. An alias, maybe? Ben was collecting more questions than answers. Far more questions than oysters.
It was the license photograph that caught Ben’s breath. Bubbles stopped rising from his regulator as his neck muscles cinched down like a noose. He angled his failing dive light on the picture to be sure. The entire world swam before his eyes. He closed the wallet, pulled the Mae West down, fully revealing the cadaver’s face. One dead eye was being consumed by the bay’s marine marauders. Now it was just a dark half-lidded socket. The other eye, the right one, gazed out at him bright and implacable. Ben thought he saw the telltale scar running brow to cheek across that eye.
So much time had passed. Too many questions and truths would now have to go unspoken forever. This was not how things were supposed to end. Ulysses, the warrior, had almost made it home after so long away. All at once Ben felt the cold again. His body ached with sadness, and he heard the death rattle of hope in his heart. From a soul-deep anguish, all that sifted into Ben’s frozen mind was a boy’s greeting from long ago. “Afternoon, Pap.”
CHAPTER 2
Maynard Chalk had her number cold, and hated her with a febrile passion. With superhuman effort he suppressed the urge to cut her throat right there on the plane. Folks behind the scenes, including her aides and a handful of journalists, knew Senator Lily Morgan, (R) Wisconsin, was anything but the sweet grandmother she appeared to be. Her white hair yanked back into a wispy bun, her matronly curves, and pink Mrs. Claus cheeks belied a ruthless nature equaled by very few outside cage-fighting circles. The Senator’s small coterie of likeminded sociopaths included Chalk, who was lolling in the wide leather seat beside her. He soothed himself. He had to be back in Washington as quickly as possible. Might as well hitch a free ride on the Senator’s private Bombardier Challenger 605.
Chalk was Senator Morgan’s factotum, but only for a little while longer. The real price of the flight was letting her roast his personal chestnuts on an open fire. She was pissed about something, and this was another of her annoying, secret meetings with Chalk. To be endured. A genuine time-suck. According to their discreet protocol, he had boarded her jet in Milwaukee long before she arrived at the field, lest the press glimpse them together. On the other end of the flight to D.C., Chalk would have to wait on the darkened chilly plane until the Senator’s limo and any reporters had been gone from the airport a full hour. What happened between take-off and landing was usually sheer hell for Chalk. Senator Morgan called them pep talks.
The distinguished lady from Wisconsin hissed, “Word’s getting around you’ve lost your edge. That something’s wrong on this operation. Is everything going my way? Spit it out. I want a sit-rep. Isn’t that what you whacked-out Vietnam grumps call it?”
Chalk would never see fifty again, and right now he was feeling every one of his years times ten. He had helped the Senator get into local, then national office lo these many years ago by queering critical precinct returns. Black Ops were his main business, after all. Thanks to Chalk, the Senator now held enough key committee seats to work cloakroom Iran/Contra type deals every day of the week. In return for his help, she cut him in. Gigs like this were Chalk’s meat and potatoes since his soul-curdling tours in Southeast Asia as an operative with Air America.
Among many other global clients, he had provided ironclad deniability to seven United States Presidents. He quietly handled all the treasonous patch-jobs that kept any modern ship of state afloat. Next to Chalk’s outfit, the mercenary soldiers of Winedark Inc. were inept pansies.
Chalk unclenched his jaw, jerry-built a smile, and slapped it on the front of his head. “I think you mean grunts. And everything to do with this gig is on time, on target and on message. Who the hell’s saying there’s a problem?”
Lily Morgan looked at Chalk hard with her bright, twinkling eyes. Then she reached into her quilted knitting bag. Chalk suppressed the urge to lean away. He half expected her to draw a gun or a viper from the satchel. Instead, she removed a gaily-decorated cookie tin, opened it, and offered him a chocolate chip. “I know how much you like these.”
Fit and robust as he was, Chalk patted his small tummy roll and waved off the treats. “Thanks, I’m good. Trying to work off the ol’ flabdomen.” He suspected there was a dash of cyanide in the recipe until Lily ate one herself. “Now who the hell is telling you damnable and salacious lies about my operation?”
Chewing, she poked a cookie at him, scattering crumbs. “Never you mind who said what, Maynard. This job has to be perfect. It’s a matter of national security, and profoundly affects the health of our economy well beyond the current administration—”
“Blah-blah-blah.” Chalk rolled his eyes. “Save it for your next pancake prayer breakfast. But lay off the Mrs. Butterworth, eh? For God’s sake, your ass is already due for its own zip code.”
Lily lowered her voice. “Listen up, fuckstick. If this job goes south, I am in deep trouble. Which means your life won’t be worth a tinker’s damn. Both interested parties must be very happy when you’re done brokering the deal. Everybody has to receive exactly what they’re paying for, and no skimming. Get me?”
“Sure, I got you like the clap. Can’t this damn bird go any faster? I have actual business to take care of.”
Chalk was so sick of this old bag. Jibes aside, she really was getting too big for her bloomers. Her biggest mistake was forgetting he could read her like a comic book. She was getting greedy, starting to resent handing over his rightful cut when it was due. Knowing her, she might have placed a mole inside his shell company, Right Way Moving and Storage, with instructions to make this operation his last.
Though this mission was troubled, Senator Morgan’s eagerness to rub it in was the only tell he needed to prove, at least to himself, she was responsible for the problem. There was no way Grandma Lily could know there was a breakdown unless she had personally tossed a monkey wrench into the works. He would watch his back more carefully. Chalk did not give a damn about charges of paranoia directed against him. He already knew he suffered from it. He had the diagnosis and the prescriptions to prove it. In no small part, paranoia kept him alive. Sometimes it wasn’t all in his mind, either. While they were farting around up here in the wild blue yonder, matters on the ground really were going to hell. He could barely sit still.
Chalk’s trusted delivery man, Tom Chase, had recently disappeared with some very important cargo. Chalk had received no word from Chase in the last twenty-two hours. Reporting in every six hours was Right Way’s prescribed check-in interval during a mission. If the mule in question did not contact Chalk tonight at six sharp, just four hours and twelve minutes off, things would get heated. They would get damn heated indeed.