“If you’re done torturing yourself, we need to hurry up and get going. Their flight lands in about thirty minutes.”
Lonnie stretched her back as she stood, her distended belly bulging under a loose-fitting blue cotton shirt that flared out in pleats beneath her swollen breasts.
“It looks like a basketball in her shirt,” the young man behind the grill muttered in Spanish.
“It feels like a bowling ball,” Lonnie replied in the same language.
The girl stared, shook her head and repeated her previous statement. “I never want to get pregnant.”
Marcus's forest green F250 Crew Cab pickup truck sat in the sun-drenched parking lot, absorbing direct radiation. Reflected heat waves wiggled in the air above the hood. It had been an unusually hot summer so far — at least, from an Alaskan perspective. Temperatures had hovered near or above eighty degrees for two straight weeks, and it was only the sixteenth of June. Solstice, summer’s official start and the longest day of the year with nearly twenty hours of sunlight, was still five days away.
Marcus held his wife’s arm and carried her purse as they walked to the truck. Two decades in the Marine Corps and he still knew how to be tender. Lonnie loved it. She was a woman who could take care of herself and did not particularly go for the helpless maiden act some women put on. More than ten years as an Alaska State Trooper had made her confident in own abilities. But she never refused her husband when he wanted to play the gentleman, especially as her pregnancy progressed toward the final stages.
When he opened the passenger door, a wave of heat assaulted them as if he’d opened an oven.
"Hold on a second, baby," Marcus said. “Let some of the heat out before you get in."
Lonnie waited as Marcus crossed to the driver’s side and opened his door. A draft blew through the interior of the truck, and she smiled as the air brushed across her face. He jogged back around and helped her up as she grasped the handle above the seat inside and climbed into the cab. She stretched the seatbelt around her belly as Marcus returned to his side.
Lonnie watched him settle into his own seat. "You're kinda cute, you know," she said. "Wanna breed with me?”
“Uh,” he said, “looks like we’ve already done that.”
“Well. .” Her voice came in a flirtatious lilt. “I don’t have to worry about getting pregnant then, do I?”
He grinned and shook his head as he started the truck. They drove across Anchorage to Ted Stevens International Airport. Marcus found an open stall in the parking garage big enough for his truck and slipped into the space. They walked into the building and rode the escalator to the passenger receiving area. According to the bank of flat-panel monitors on the wall, flight 142 from Chicago had arrived five minutes earlier.
They waited at the point above the escalators where all the passengers from the major airlines exit. A crowd of tired-looking travelers appeared in the distance at the end of the long concourse on the other side of the TSA gate. Many walked with zombie-like expressions after the twelve-hour-plus flights that had carried them to Alaska. Marcus hadn't seen his friend in more than fifteen years and wasn't sure if he'd even be able to recognize him. He scanned the sea of people that moved past, but saw no one familiar. Then a face popped briefly into view and caught Marcus’s attention. The forty-something man was tall and handsome, with tanned skin and light brown hair peppered with enough strands of white to give him a professorial look, or that of a retired Special Forces operative. Steel-gray eyes peered from above a slightly crooked nose. His left cheek was scarred with the one identifier that confirmed his friend without a doubt — the L-shaped knot of puckered flesh put there when the man was captured and tortured by a Somali warlord in '93.
Mike Farris saw Marcus a moment later. He smiled and put his hand on the elbow of a stunning auburn-haired woman next to him. Mike said something to the woman, then they strode through the gate, the wheels of their carry-on bags clacking rhythmically over the seams of the tiled floor.
He and Marcus had spent a lot of time together while serving in the Marines, violent days in the early part of their special operations careers. The last time they had seen each other was the day after they had killed a former colleague who'd become a mercenary for hire in the Bosnian conflict. Shortly after that mission, Marine Reserve Captain Mike Farris returned to seminary in California where he was training to become a pastor, and Marcus continued twelve more years as a special operations warrior. Their mutual friend Paul Hogan, who had been Farris’s sergeant for several years, put them in contact shortly after Mike’s first wife and child were killed in a drive-by shooting outside his Ohio church. Now serving as the chaplain for the Ohio Valley FBI regional office and newly remarried, Farris was starting life over for the third time.
“Mike!”
“Mojo!” Mike called Marcus by the nickname he'd been given in the spec ops community, derived by simply using the initials of his full name, Marcus Orlando Johnson.
The two men embraced with a loud back-slapping man-hug.
“Dude,” Marcus said, “it’s been too long.”
“Way too long, bro,” said Mike. “And you must be Lonnie. “He reached out his hand in greeting.
“Pleasure to meet you, Mike,” she said, taking his hand. “Marcus has been talking non-stop about this reunion.” She turned toward the other woman. “I am guessing you're the lucky bride?”
“Ah, no,” Mike said with a dismissive gesture. “This is just some babe I picked up on the plane.”
“Mike!” She slapped him on the shoulder. “You’d better introduce me right. Or I'll just leave you out in the mountains.”
“Ow,” Mike rubbed his shoulder. “You slap as hard as you kick.”
“That’s what you get for marrying an FBI agent.”
“Marcus, Lonnie, meet the former Miss Hildegard Rottbruck, now known as Mrs. Hilde Farris.” He wrapped his arm around her waist. “Don’t worry — she only beats me like that in public. In private, she’s usually quite sweet.”
Hilde smiled and greeted them. “Nice to meet you both,” she said. “Mike and Paul talk about you all the time, Mr. Johnson.”
“Please, no need for formality. It’s a pleasure to meet you as well.” Marcus pointed with his thumb in the direction the crowd was moving. “We’d better get your luggage before they put it back on the plane.”
The four of them rode the escalator down to the baggage area. Lonnie stayed with Mike and Hilde as they collected their bags. Marcus went out to get the truck. A crowd milled around the luggage carousel, some less patiently than others. Standing out from the mix of gray-haired tourist groups, uniformed soldiers, and modestly dressed locals, a contingent of Texans, identified by their Longhorn logo jackets and brash accents, blocked half of the conveyor belt while everyone else's bags passed by. This in spite of the yellow marker line and signs that stated to stay back until your own bags were ready. One of the Alaskan men shouted with a commanding voice, ordering the whole group to step back. Several of the Texan women shot him an evil glare, but his voice was so strong and the irritated glare of the rest of the crowd so direct that the entire Texas party took two huge steps back.
“I can't stand rude people,” he muttered.
Mike turned to him. “You sound like a Navy Chief I once knew.”
“We all sound alike,” the man said. He glanced up at Mike, who stood several inches taller, then asked, “Where did you serve?”
“Force Recon," Mike replied.
“A freakin' jar head.”
“Yeah, you?”
“Special Boat Team, Senior Chief Petty Officer.”