Bart’s wife, Mary, lay on the cooler with a towel over her head. Suzanne thought Mary was making whimpering sounds, but she could not be sure. She wished Bart would sit beside the woman and offer some reassurance, put his arm around her. But Bart probably wouldn’t do that because he despised his wife. Everyone knew it, including Mary. So she lay on the cooler with a yellow towel over her face, confronting her fears alone. Suzanne felt sorry for her, but she couldn’t step away from the wheel, and at that point, she had little in her to give, no words of consolation or hope.
Mary and Bart were one of those couples who made no sense. Ten years ago, they had been solid and well matched, but they both changed dramatically. Bart separated from the Rangers with a shrapnel wound in his knee. He and Mary moved down to the Keys to begin a charter business. Mary wanted more than anything to be a mother, but after several painful pregnancies and miscarriages, something vital in her soul had died. She’d given up on living, and put on a tremendous amount of weight. She stayed in bed most of the time, watching reality TV and popping painkillers with the blinds drawn.
Bart, who had been Henry’s best friend and Ranger Buddy going through Ranger School at Fort Benning, went from being a happy-go-lucky young man to becoming a prematurely old young man who carried a seething bitterness in his soul. Bart and Henry were still close friends, but the relationship was strained. Suzanne sympathized with Bart. He’d tried to be a good husband, tried to get Mary help, but he’d fought a losing battle.
Bart’s fierce loyalty and sense of duty prevented him from seeking a divorce, which Suzanne admired without fully understanding. Bart spent his days on the water and his nights at the bar, and the couple existed in parallel. Separate, lonely, passing one another in the halls, eating the occasional meal together in quiet loathing and brittle silence.
Suzanne sensed that Bart was a bit in love with her, a fact she did her best to ignore. She didn’t think he would ever act upon it now, but she’d caught him gazing thoughtfully at her, felt his eyes on her back, seen a kind of longing in his eyes, a sad, wistful expression bereft of real hope. She found Bart to be attractive, but there was no part of her that reciprocated his feelings. She’d made a mistake once, many years ago. He was a friend, and that’s all he could ever be.
Suzanne and Mary were no longer close, although Suzanne did her best to pretend they were still great friends. Mary seemed to have an impenetrable cloud about her, a sucking thing that left Suzanne exhausted after spending an afternoon in her presence. Suzanne was ashamed to admit that she despised Mary sometimes for her weakness. There had been times, particularly when Taylor was a newborn, that Suzanne saw naked envy on Mary’s face, almost hatred. Suzanne never forgot that.
“Bart! Do something about this idiot behind us,” Suzanne shouted.
Bart turned from his perch on the bow, nodded and walked to the stern, gestured with both hands.
“Hey, asshole! Back off!”
The hairy guy flipped Bart off, then pulled out a nickel-plated revolver, something big, a .44 maybe, and waved it around.
“You gonna to shoot me for telling you to back off?” Bart yelled. “Really?” The girls on the bow of the cigarette boat sat up on their elbows, smiling. Bart stood with his hands on his hips.
“Screw you!” said the fur-back from behind the cockpit of the cigarette boat. He pushed the throttle and his boat growled and surged forward to within a couple feet of the Mistress.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Suzanne mumbled.
Bart shook his head and joined her behind the wheel, took a seat on one of the captain’s stools. “I can shoot him if you want,” he said, chuckling.
“No, let me,” Suzanne said. It felt good to laugh. “But I want to use my speargun.”
“Well, if he rams my boat, I wouldn’t rule it out,” Bart said.
Bart tried the radio again, and this time he was able to raise one of his buddies on land, old Bobby Ray, a retired captain and part-time bartender at one of the dives Bart lived in. Bobby agreed to swing by Suzanne’s home to stay with Taylor and Ginnie, the nanny, for as long as it took. Suzanne was relieved.
When Bobby Ray called back an hour later to let her know Taylor was safe and sound, she felt even better. Key West was not burning, Bobby reported, and there were no thugs looting and pillaging, at least not yet. In fact, he said, there was a carnival atmosphere throughout the small town. Civil war parties had sprung up all over, and the bars and restaurants were packed with locals and tourists alike. Duval Street was one giant festival. Gotta love Conchs. But how long will that last? When the water runs out and the power is off and there is no more gasoline, how are people going to get along then? When the freezers are full of rotting meat and bellies full of empty, what then?
CHAPTER FIVE
God Help Us
ALBERTA, CANADA
Soldiers in white winter-warfare fatigues descended into the valley. Henry and the rest of his unit remained silent and concealed, weapons ready while the soldiers below picked over the wreckage of the cabin and the smoking helicopters. The small arms fire ceased; apparently some of the men below had itchy trigger fingers.
Henry had no idea where Colonel Bragg was, whether he’d even made it out of the bunker, and he could make out only two positions where his teammates lay beneath snow and branches. Henry hoped the troops below would decide the airstrikes had done the job, leave without further bloodshed. He remained prone in the thick snow, motionless, alert, and cold.
Moments later he heard the faint sound of an unmanned drone. The drone, like a distant mosquito buzzing high in the air, would find the Wolves, no matter how well hidden. Thermal imaging would light the Wolves up, their bodies bright in the screens of the drone pilot who might be three thousand miles away sitting in an office beside a steaming cup ofcoffee. The operator would communicate with the men on the ground, and that would be that.
The .50-caliber opened up, red tracer rounds tearing into the clustered soldiers below. All along the ridges, the Wolves attacked, firing into the men in the kill zone. A second or two later, the first Hellfire missile slammed into the ridge, destroying the .50, then another smashed into the rear entrance to the bunker.
Henry controlled his breathing, firing slowly and deliberately. The soldiers below dove for cover and began to return fire from behind smoldering wreckage and trees.
Behind Henry, Carlos was firing continuously, swearing, shouting. Clouds of snow erupted near Henry’s head as rounds fired from across the valley sought his flesh. Henry wiggled backwards. The sound of battle was angry and close, thousands of rounds zipping through the winter air, a wind of metal.
Someone laid down a barrage of M203 fire, grenades launched from under the barrel of one of the M4 carbines favored by some of the Wolves. The grenades were small, rounded canisters with a kill radius of five meters, and sprayed hot shrapnel in all directions, wounding out to twenty or thirty meters. Smoke hung in the valley.
Even from a distance of more than two hundred meters, Henry could see blood staining the snow below, shockingly red against the white. There was no time to ponder the significance, but Henry felt it in his guts, nevertheless. The sense that what was happening was a great sin. Tragic, avoidable, and in the end, evil.
A part of him yearned to stand up and wave his arms, shouting “Go home! We’re all Americans!” But the metal tearing through the air made this idea ludicrous.
Henry switched magazines, his third. “Reloading!”