CHAPTER EIGHT
Semper Fi
NORTHERN MONTANA
Henry Wilkins was willing to give his life for his country, but at the moment, his country seemed intent on killing him. This did not sit well in the jagged corners of his soul, humping through the Canadian Rockies with drones hunting him. His ideas of God, country, and honor had been defined long before he became an Army Ranger. His father had been the architect. Now, the pillars, walls, and supports that should have been true were askew. His entire belief system was under attack, the very things he knew to be true not because he had been told to but because he believed. There are bad guys and good guys, and there will be a fight. It is inevitable. Whether it’s a playground, a city, a country, or the globe.
There will be conflict between good and evil, the bully and the bullied.
“Stand up for yourself,” his father had said when Henry walked home with a bloody nose again. ’His old man, Tim Wilkins, peered down at Henry. A tall, rangy man with a straight back, pale blue eyes, and a face worn out by life, Tim Wilkins was not prone to overt displays of affection or sympathy. But he was the center of Henry’s universe.
In Henry’s eyes then, his father was granite, solid rock, unbreakable, unchangeable, and strong in the way of a proud mountain. The lens of hope and faith filtered out the cracks and fissures, the broken blood vessels on Papa’s windburned face, and the hurting eyes of a man eroded, but not yet completely worn smooth. Blasted by hard years, bad luck, and the love for the wrong woman, Papa remained undefeated then.
“Be a man. You’re gonna have to learn this some point or other. It’s tough and it ain’t fair, and nobody said it was. And if they said that, they lied to you. Now I could go up to the schoolhouse, and I could argue with them about how my boy is getting his ass kicked. But what does that teach you, son? What do you learn from that? A better lesson is life. Life will knock you down if you let it, so you’d better damn sure figure out how to punch life right in the mouth. You don’t—”
“But I got suspended!”
“Well, did you hit the other guy?”
“Well, yeah. That’s why I got kicked out of school.”
“Good.”
“But he gave me a bloody nose, and the teacher believed the other kid. Not me. But the asshole hit me first.”
“All right. Look here. And don’t say that word, Henry. You know better than that.”
“But Dad—”
“Don’t ‘but Dad’ me. You got into a fight. Your nose is bleeding and I’m not gonna wipe it for you. I’m sorry, son. You’re learning, see. You get punched, and then you hit back.”
“I did. That’s what I’m saying. It’s not fair. I—”
“I know it, son. Get used to that. Life won’t be fair. You outta know it by now, but you probably don’t, because it takes a bit for it to sink in. The thing is, you don’t just sit and take it when it ain’t fair. You figure out what you have to do to make it less unfair. Sometimes that means you shut up for a minute. But you’re thinking about what happens later on, and even though it looks like you’re taking it, you’re really biding your time. You’re thinking about the next time you catch that son of a bitch alone without his friends. And other times, you have to just stand up and punch somebody in the nose. What happens, happens. You might get beat, but that’s all right because you’ll know something. You’ll learn a thing about yourself.”
“What’s that?”
“You’ll learn you can take more than you think you can. You learn self-respect. You learn you can take a punch. And later on, when you look in the mirror, you might remember that when you need to.”
“But I’m going to miss a whole week of school.”
“That’s all right. You learned more with this thing than you would have in a classroom. Sometimes you gotta stand and fight. Sometimes when you do, you get punished even when you’re right. That’s how the world works. You put your faith in the good Lord and you back it up with your actions. With your deeds and fists if you have to. Now let’s have some ice cream.”
That was one of the proudest and happiest days of Henry Wilkins’ life. He sat with his father and had an ice cream cone. The kitchen was abandoned, unused to laughter and conversation, and the house was still and the ice cream ran down his arm and spilled onto the floor and no one cared. His father had tousled Henry’s hair with a gruff, loving kind of pride. Henry felt that pride growing inside himself, and he felt it from the old man. Henry felt like he’d passed a test, even though he’d actually been kicked out of school. Henry Wilkins was becoming a Wolf, although neither he nor his father knew it.
Now, thirty-three years old and half frozen, Henry knew he could take a lot. He could embrace the suck when he had to. He could bide his time. With his family threatened by bullies, he felt the strong urge to punch someone in the throat. And not only were his wife and child under threat, America was being bullied as a whole. He did not feel like biding his time. For the moment, though, all he could do was try to survive. Embrace the suck.
Late in the afternoon, the Wolves came across a logging road. They followed the road, piled with heavy snow, until it came out on a paved, plowed, and salted road. It was dark by the time they hit the blacktop road, but Henry, Carlos, and Martinez were unaffected by this because of the night vision contacts they wore. It felt like they’d humped more than a hundred miles. Henry hoped they’d at least made it back to the States.
The crust of ice and snow on the road crunched beneath his boots. They were leaving the mountains, traveling east and south. No cars passed them that night, and they stopped for a few minutes only twice. There was a sense of urgency in all of the men.
They had decided to stick together until they got down to Texas, where Martinez’s family lived. They hoped to be able to upload the stick drive to the net from there, using one of the servers at the University of Houston to spread whatever information Colonel Bragg had accumulated far and wide. From Houston, Henry and Carlos would travel together to Florida.
Shortly after sunrise, a logging truck stopped. The driver, a scruffy looking guy who reeked of cigarettes and coffee, offered the Wolves a lift. He didn’t seem inclined to talk, and if he had questions about the soldiers walking through the wilderness kitted up in full battle rattle, he kept his questions to himself. He turned up his radio and played old country music. Henry crawled into the back of the cab, a coffin-sized space where the trucker apparently slept, and was out in seconds.
The sun was already going down when Henry woke to the hiss of air brakes and the blare of a truck horn.
“Okay, boys,” the driver said. “There’s a motel and a diner up ahead. You can take a couple of my coats if you want. You’re still going to stick out, but it’s better than nothing. If you want, I can see if I can raise another driver who’s headed further south. Might be able to find you a lift.”
“That’d be great, brother,” Martinez said from the front seat.
“All right, then,” said the trucker. He picked up the CB radio and put out a call.
“Anybody north of Great Falls got your ears on?” There was static.
“Bubba Red, here. Holler.”
“Bubba, go to the Harley,” said the driver. He looked over at Martinez. “Bubba’s good people.”
“That you Mountain Man? Come back.”
“Roger, Bubba. Got a couple of Road Rats headed south. Come back.”
“Can do, good neighbor. Got me some suds and mud.”