He thought he felt a hand on his shoulder, which caused the little hairs on his neck to stand at attention.
A key rattled in the door; then the door swung open. In the stark fluorescent light stood three men-an IDF officer in uniform, an American navy commander, and an American civilian in a beige suit.
“You okay, warrant?” the navy commander asked.
“Sir?”
Crocker blinked. Realizing he was standing naked, he covered his privates with his hands.
“You acted recklessly last night.”
“I wouldn’t characterize it that way, sir.”
The pale U.S. commander stepped forward, handed him a khaki uniform, and said, “We’re going to ask you to listen to the charges and sign a statement. After that you’ll be released.”
The civilian moved out of the stark light so his face became visible. “Sometime within the next six weeks you’ll have to return to face charges,” he said. “We don’t know exactly when that will be.”
Crocker nodded. “Understood.”
He showered, dressed, and stood at attention in a hot little room as the charges were read. Then he made a statement into a digital tape recorder in which he recounted the incident with the Israeli pilot and copilot moment by moment. He sensed Ritchie’s presence with him the whole time.
An hour later, he was escorted onto a military jet bound for Andrews Air Force Base just outside D.C. Another short flight, and nineteen hours after he’d departed from Tel Aviv, he walked into his house in Virginia Beach. Holly was sitting with her legs curled under her watching Late Night when he entered and set down his gear.
“Tom, you okay?” she asked as she hugged him.
“I’m back,” he answered, noticing the red around her eyes. “How about you?”
“I spent the last two hours on the phone with Monica.”
“Bad?” he asked, leaning over and kissing her.
“She just can’t accept it.”
“Neither can I,” Crocker said.
They sat on the sofa and held hands as he talked about the irony of Ritchie’s death-the apparent result of a simple mechanical problem, even though they had been operating in dangerous enemy territory. In a low voice, he confessed that he had ordered Cal and Ritchie to stay on the doomed helo.
“But you had good reasons for doing that, didn’t you, Tom?”
“They feel real stupid now.”
“Don’t blame yourself.”
He couldn’t help it, because part of him demanded an explanation. Which was why he needed two Ambiens and a couple of glasses of bourbon to fall asleep.
The next morning, feeling tired and numb, he put on his navy dress blues, which he had grown to hate, drove to a local funeral parlor, and entered with Holly by his side. He moved among mourners like a ghost. They were talking in hushed tones.
“Glad you could make it,” Mancini whispered as they took seats next to him and his wife, Teresa.
“Me, too.”
“I’m still pissed at those fucking Israelis.”
Crocker nodded. He looked at the SEALs and their wives sitting around them, all thinking that one day this could happen to them. It was something they lived with and that bound them together into a tight community. Death, injury, mental breakdown, and divorce were always present, even as they raised their kids and tried to plan for the future.
Friends and family took turns getting to their feet and walking to the front of the room, where a dark wooden coffin sat against a backdrop of thousands of white and red roses. To the right, resting on an easel, sat a large framed picture of Ritchie smiling in his navy dress uniform, looking full of mischief like he always did.
The whole scene felt sad and unreal, like a strange pantomime or a bad dream.
Crocker knew Ritchie wouldn’t approve. He hated ceremonies, particularly funerals. He’d always been a casual, fun-loving guy with an unquenchable appetite for action and danger who understood the risks he was taking.
His death’s coming two weeks before he was to be married seemed wrong.
Crocker shifted his weight on the cushioned seat and said to himself: If only I had let Cal and Ritchie fast-rope with us, all of this could have been avoided.
In his head, for the umpteenth time, he repeated the reasons he’d told them to stay on the helo. The packs Ritchie and Cal were carrying were too heavy. It was safer to land the helo first.
Safer. Yeah, right. The guilt and irony hit hard.
“How’s Cal?” he whispered to Mancini, trying to change the subject in his own head.
“He was moved out of the ICU in Tel Aviv last night.”
“Good,” Crocker said, nodding.
He spotted Monica across the aisle, looking like someone had kicked her repeatedly in the head. Her eyes were swollen and her mouth twisted into a painful grimace.
Holly leaned into him and whispered, “They’re going to close the casket now. We should pay our last respects.”
“Last respects?”
“Yes.”
That phrase didn’t make sense. First of all, Ritchie wasn’t there, either physically or spiritually. Secondly, Crocker had always respected him, and forever would. Thirdly, the bond between them transcended respect or even friendship, which was something most people couldn’t understand. They had picked up girls together, gotten drunk and into bar fights, hazed each other mercilessly on birthdays, fought, bled, cried, and laughed together. They had even spent two full days together in a little water-filled hole on a beach in Somalia.
Your experience of someone was your experience. There was no way to sum it up in a few words, explain it, or fit it into a pretty little Hallmark homily. It was what it was-the laughs, misunderstandings, highs, lows, annoyances, pleasures, and all.
Crocker felt Holly pulling him up. “Come with me,” she whispered.
They walked stiffly arm in arm to the front of the room. He saw people turn to them and nod solemnly-including Ritchie’s half brother, Mitch, his ex-girlfriend Tiffany, his mother.
When they passed Monica sitting on the aisle, Crocker leaned over to her and whispered, “Ritchie loved you very much.”
She squeezed his hand and whispered back, “Thank you.”
They knelt before the open coffin, and a strange chemical-masked-with-perfume smell oozed out, tickling Crocker’s nostrils and making him want to sneeze. Holly squeezed his forearm. The thing lying in the coffin looked like a ceramic doll dressed in a black suit.
Holly whispered, “They did a good job, didn’t they?”
Crocker almost said, “No, not at all!” But bit his tongue instead.
She was trying. They all were. And the discomfort they felt only seemed to make it worse.
He wanted badly to get out of there, take off the uncomfortable uniform, and go for a run in the woods. Maybe he’d stop at Stumpy Lake, where he and Ritchie sometimes went kayaking together. He’d sit and remember his friend, whom he now saw in his mind’s eye riding his Indian Chief, wearing sunglasses and with the sun highlighting his proud Cherokee cheekbones and the wind blowing his shiny black hair back.
If he sensed him there, amid the buttonbush and cordgrass, Crocker would tell him that he admired him and missed him, and that would never change.
Lisa Clark sat on a veranda overlooking a garden and pool feeling like she was trapped in a strange dream and didn’t know how to make it end. There wasn’t much to see-a high ocher-colored wall, semitropical flowers and foliage like hibiscus, orchids, and bougainvillea, an Olympic-sized pool with a dolphin statue spitting water into it at the far end, the yellow-and-white-striped awning she sat under, high cumulus clouds and a light-blue sky in the distance.
Everything seemed oddly still and ordinary, except for the young man with the automatic weapon who watched her and the other armed men in khaki who patrolled the grounds.
She stared at a salad of grilled tuna, tomatoes, and avocado, and the glass of iced tea, but didn’t want to eat or drink because she suspected her captors were drugging her.