The first round he had a jack for a hole card, and came up with an eight. He stayed. The dealer knew he had eighteen or nineteen. The dealer showed seventeen. Two players blew over the twenty-one limit, and two stayed. The dealer checked the cards, then drew a card. He had to hit seventeen. He pulled out a three of diamonds.
“Pay twenty-one, who has twenty-one?” he asked in a singsong voice that Mahanani tried not to let irritate him. He paid one player and dealt the cards again. It was only a ten-dollar chip. He had deliberately bought only tens to help him conserve.
The second round he won, and was even. Then he lost four times in a row. After a half hour of playing, he was down a hundred dollars. He should quit and leave. Have a good dinner down in San Diego and take in that action movie he’d heard a lot about.
He kept playing. Logic, damnit, he told himself. You don’t hit seventeen when the house shows a max of sixteen. Stupid. He drew a five and broke. Get with it.
An hour later he was cleaned out. He saw Harley talk to the dealer and give him a green slip of paper. The dealer pushed the paper across the table toward Mahanani. He knew what it was. A credit slip. He looked at the amount. A thousand dollars. That would put him into the casino for six thousand. How much was the Buick worth? Nine thousand tops. Nowhere near the fifteen he paid for it. He looked at the green slip. The dealer closed the game and he wasn’t in it. Harley came up and touched his shoulder.
“Yeah, some bad luck. Three hundred ain’t no stake for this table. With a thou you can drop a few hundred and come back.”
“Can’t do it, Harley. I’m in too deep now. You know what I make a month? I can’t afford to sell the Buick. Got to have wheels.”
“You get healthy tonight and get your pink back. Give it a try. Hell, it’s only money.”
Mahanani stared at the green slip with his name on it and the printed figure of a thousand dollars. This was getting serious. He told himself he could stop anytime he wanted to. Now he wasn’t so sure. The green slip or his Buick. What would he do without wheels?
Hell, why not? His luck had to change. Logic. He had to think his way into each round. Logic. Yeah, he could do that. He took the pen beside the slip, signed it, and pushed it over to the dealer, who counted out a thousand dollars for him mostly in hundreds. Mahanani pushed the hundred-dollar chips back and asked for tens.
He took his first two cards. A seven in the hole and a jack showing. Good bluffing count, only these dealers never bluffed. Dealer showed sixteen. He watched two players break, saw the next one hold with a nine showing. Probably a nineteen. He looked at the dealer, who had to hit sixteen. The last two cards played out were under five. Bad odds. He put his two ten-dollar chips on top of his cards and waved the dealer off.
The next woman stayed with an eight showing. The dealer checked the hands still alive, then dealt himself a card. A damn four. It would have been his damn four if he’d taken it. The dealer closed out with twenty. He paid one player.
One of those damned nights.
By eleven-thirty that night, Mahanani was down to his last four ten-dollar chips. He shrugged and played all four. He came up with twenty on the deal and stayed. The dealer hit seventeen and pulled a five to break. The house paid.
Mahanani felt a lucky streak coming. Should he let the eighty dollars ride? Hell, no. He grabbed the eight chips, went to the cashier, exchanged them for money, and got out of the casino before he saw Harley.
Six thousand fucking dollars in the red to the Indians. He could stop anytime he wanted to. Sure he could. He sat behind the wheel of the Buick that he owned less than half of, and swore for ten minutes. Then he backed out slowly and took the freeway downhill to his apartment in Coronado. He had to work tomorrow. He was a SEAL. He frowned. No, they just came back from the Caribbean. He was on a four-day leave. What the hell was he going to do for four days? Surf. He’d hit Wind and Sea Beach and surf his balls off.
He wouldn’t gamble anymore. Never again. He laughed. Sure, never again until tomorrow night, because he was off duty and they didn’t have a night maneuver or training. He was a shitty gambler, didn’t have the knack for it. But he knew he couldn’t quit. Not until they refused to let him in the door without a wad of cash. Where would he get a stash of cash? In two or three days his Buick would be gone. The casino’s dollar-a-year lease price would be jumped to four hundred a month and he’d have to bow out. Then how in hell did he get to the casino? How did he get to work? How did he get anywhere?
He parked at his apartment and went up the steps two at a time the way he always did. How was he going to do anything after he lost the Buick? Fuck it. He’d think of something. Fuck it.
Murdock had called a Saturday training session for Alpha Squad. He was there when the SEALs arrived at 0730 looking sleepy and ready to eat nails.
“Good morning to you too, SEALs. Yesterday was our easy day. Today we go up to the mountain and learn again how to fire our weapons. We’ll do fire and move and cover. Then do it again and again until we can do it in our sleep. I won’t lose a man on our next little party because some fucking SEAL in my squad doesn’t know how to fire, cover, and move.”
He looked around, but not even Jaybird had a comment.
“Bring some cash with you because we’ll stop up in Pine Valley for some chow on our way home. No MREs. We load the truck in twenty minutes. I want every man to carry three times normal ammo. We won’t be taking the usual 20mm rounds, but plenty of 5.56. I’ll take some twenties in case we need them. Any questions?”
He looked around. Nobody said a word. Yeah, he decided. It was going to be one of those days.
Timothy Sadler, senior chief petty officer and top EM in the platoon, came into the office a few minutes later when Murdock assembled his gear.
“Do we supply our own driver?” the chief asked.
“Howard gets that assignment. The truck should be out front in less than five. You ready?”
Murdock rode in the cab with Howard. There wasn’t much conversation. Murdock felt grumpy. No reason. He was almost thirty-three years old, unmarried, and still playing kid games with lethal weapons and roaming the world getting shot at by all sorts of unhappy campers. He’d been promoted to lieutenant commander, the fourth step up the officers’ ladder, and could have a career shot at making captain some day before he retired. Of course he couldn’t do that in the SEALs. Too few spots, too many candidates. So he was back to playing with lethal toys hoping he didn’t get too many of his men killed.
His father kept trying to get him to resign and run for Congress. A real opportunity there, and then when the next opening came, he could go for Senator from the Great State of Virginia. Yeah, just what would make him, happy kissing babies and lying to everyone he met so he could get elected.
Then last night Ardith Jane Manchester had called. They’d talked for almost an hour and she’d said she was considering a job in the San Diego area. She was almost certain that she would be leaving Washington, D.C., and government service. So, with Ardith in town all the time, it would mean a better apartment and then the pressure to get married. He had enough troubles already.
It was a three-hour truck ride in the updated version of the trusty old six-by-six basic military truck. They turned off Interstate 8 somewhere the other side of Boulder Oaks, just outside the boundary of the Cleveland National Forest, where they had a loose arrangement with the landowner that they could use his mountains for target practice as long as they closed any gates they came to and policed up their brass and any trash. They always did.
They drove five miles on a dirt track to the left of the highway into sharp-rising hills and mountains. Howard had done this route before, and he came to a stop at a windblown live oak tree that had managed to stay alive through the last four droughts.