Whatever Gods May Be Part 4

That would make it real, right? To see Alby all burned up and know for certain that Alby could no longer exist. What does burning flesh look like, smell like?

"I'm told it happened very, very quickly. Your mother didn't suffer."

* 38 *

One more time, Jamie sat on the scorched gra.s.s that stank of gasoline, staring at Provincetown in the distance from the bluff several miles away, attempting to feel something. Anything. One more time, the day was clear, bright, crisply suggesting autumn, and Provincetown s.h.i.+mmered, a smiling little town at the end of the world defying the rising sea. If it had been any other place, maybe the whole thing wouldn't have been so hard to believe. But here? Here on the very spot Alby made such a big deal of showing her, that favorite spot on the bluff?

Jamie remembered, a memory within a memory, how they had stood there, just the two of them, while Alby pointed to Provincetown in the distance. "Hey, look. It's Avalon," Alby had said to her in a tone so uncharacteristically wistful that later she looked it up. Avalon-mythic Isle of Apples, Isle of the Blessed, realm of the fay.

"No," Jamie growled at the empty motel room, on her feet now but keeping well away from the mirror so she couldn't see her own face. "Alby doesn't exist."

What does burning flesh look like, smell like?

Responding not so much to a decision as to an inarticulable, felt command, Jamie packed her stuff and checked out of the motel. Civilian-anonymous in faded jeans and her hand-me-down leather aviator jacket, she boarded a night train for Providence. Shortly after dawn, she settled in at the back of a bus bound for Cape Cod. By midmorning, she was walking.

From the dilapidated Hyannis Transport Center, Jamie walked a mile and a half to the even more bedraggled seasonal cottage where she and her mother had lived for years. Built a century ago for summer tourists on a budget but long since too c.r.a.ppy even for them, the leaky, uninsulated place had been "a good deal" because Alby could barter unspecified services to pay the rent.

Shoulders hunched against the bite of the winter wind, Jamie stood in the driveway and examined the cottage's raggedy cedar s.h.i.+ngles, the familiar rip in its screen door, searching for- What? Nothing had changed in the seventy weeks since she and Alby had lived there. Except it's empty now. n.o.body lives here now. Alby doesn't exist.

"Even the weariest river winds somewhere safe to sea," she said after a while. Alby's words, from some poem, always recited with a sigh. Jamie couldn't recall the rest of the verse, much less the whole * 39 *

poem. She snorted a small laugh, shook her head; her forgetting seemed appropriate. Alby's epitaph would always be no more than a fragment.

And yet, for the first time in her life, Jamie could follow the thin, tenuous thread all the way to who her mother might have been, wanted to be. Safe. You wanted to be safe. Just like me.

Able to smile back at the image in her mind's eye of her mother's soft, amiable face, now Jamie sighed. It helped to know-or believe anyway-that Alby didn't do a runner. f.u.c.ked up as Alby was by the pharma, Alby tried, always tried, right to the end, to find Safe. Alby's trying hovered, a diminutive, winking point of light.

After turning back toward the Transport Center, Jamie stopped a block later and changed direction. She had one more bit of unfinished business in Hyannis. Won't take long. Fifteen minutes later, she stood on the step of a run-down ranch house. With a tug, she pulled the storm door handle free from its feeble lock, positioned the door behind her, and rang the bell.

Before the door opened more than a few inches, Jamie struck, punching Bob Baines hard in his solar plexus. Just once in just the right place so he doubled up, straining fruitlessly for breath.

She kicked the door wide and grabbed a fistful of his sweats.h.i.+rt right below his neck to keep him from sinking further. It would have been so easy. So easy to reach down and apply a guillotine choke with a nice, firm jolt. To crunch his larynx so he'll never breathe again...

On his knees, he looked up at her, cringing eyes rimmed in fear, body bent in pain, his fleshy hands clutching his fat gut.

"Remember me, you a.s.shole f.u.c.k?" Jamie pulled him up another few inches and bent forward, lowering her head so they were nose to nose. A small whimper dribbled out of his mouth and he managed a nod.

"Good." She drawled the word into a threat and rammed her knee into his t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es, letting go of his sweats.h.i.+rt at the same time.

Jamie watched him collapse and decided, Yes. It's enough. She pivoted and walked away, satisfied to leave Bob Baines lumped in his doorway.

* 40 *

Chapter Four.

this is just traininG Great. We're screwed now."

n.o.body in the stuffy double field hooch responded, a signal for the private squatting beside Jamie to shut up. But he didn't.

"We should be dispersed, not all bunched up like sitting f.u.c.king ducks!

Why'd they make Fontana squad leader anyway? He's clueless."

"Keep it down, Arnoldt!" Jamie hissed at him. Why, oh f.u.c.king why is this guy still in my life? "It's just training. We're supposed to be screwed. But maybe we can screw with them some, too, y'know?" The rules of engagement generally had plenty of wiggle room.

Private First Cla.s.s Gwynmorgan learned that well in boot camp, and she figured the c.o.c.k, as the grunts called this exercise, was no exception.

She didn't look up from the modified E19 she had disa.s.sembled and cleaned by flashlight. Her movements were careful and deliberate, but she was in a hurry. According to scuttleb.u.t.t, the longest any squad had ever avoided capture was three days. Most squads got caught during the first day. Or the first night.

"Screw with them?" Arnoldt asked. "Let's hear it."

"Really?" Surprised, Jamie glanced up from the weapon.

Mistake.

There's that smirk on his ugly puss again. Jamie thought about the dark-eyed blonde on the bus to Parris Island. How the h.e.l.l can it happen twice like that? Twice she'd almost hooked up with that woman and twice it turned into a near miss. All she ended up with was a chance to learn the woman's name: Martina Rhys. If we were in the same squad, odds are we'd end up in the same hooch. But no, oh no, I'm in a hooch with frigging Arnoldt. And now he's gonna give me s.h.i.+t again.

* 41 *

Arnoldt snorted disdain, the nostrils of his broad, crooked nose flaring. "Oh, I get it," he said. "You'll screw your way out of it."

"Yep." With a snide grin, Jamie interrupted her work on the weapon, pulled a floppy funnel-like object from a cargo pocket, and twirled it so the rubbery tube at one end came within a centimeter of Arnoldt's crinkling nose. It was her FUD-female urinary device- issued by the Corps so females could pee without having to pull their pants down. "And I bet my six inches are way harder than yours."

"Oh, woman, that's definitely oversharing," said Moss, an outrageously handsome African American who was the third party in the crowded tent. Large and levelheaded, he seemed willing to once again keep the peace between Jamie and the lumbering Arnoldt, who now glared silently.

"Where the h.e.l.l is Karpinsky, anyway?" Jamie asked Moss.

The four of them made up the second squad's first fire team, which Karpinsky led.

"He agrees with Arnoldt. Said he was gonna go talk to Fontana-"

"We should have somebody of our own out there on watch," Jamie declared. As the only other private first cla.s.s on the team, she was technically in charge whenever Karpinsky was absent. It was bulls.h.i.+t, of course, but she had to get out of that tent.

"Fontana's already posted a watch," said Moss.

"Oh yeah, that makes me feel real safe," said Arnoldt.

"I'll take the first four hours," Jamie said, her weapon rea.s.sembled and ready to fire paint-blanks.

She fingered the integrated multiwave surveillance binoculars around her neck-"IMS nocs" that combined through-wall radar and thermal imaging-then fished in her right chest pocket for the handheld detector while she reviewed every word every instructor had said about the devices.

Used properly, they could pick up a human form on the darkest night, sometimes even through concrete walls. Used properly with a little luck, maybe the squad could stretch the rules of engagement and defy the odds. At least it was worth a try. And at least the possibility, although dim unto ridiculous, helped keep Jamie's fear at bay.

Confidence my a.s.s.

After thirty-seven uninterrupted days of fiercely physical infantry * 42 *

training and two days of survival-evasion-resistance-escape cla.s.sroom work, everyone in Scout/Sniper Cla.s.s 2801 now had to put it on the line during the Combat Opponent Confidence Exercise, bra.s.sword for the c.o.c.k.

The stated goal of the c.o.c.k was to evade a mock enemy force- actually instructors and students of the Marine Reconnaissance Field Interrogation Training Course-bent on capturing and interrogating members of Cla.s.s 2801. Although the cla.s.s's instructors offered up stories about those who had successfully evaded "the Pirates"-so called due to the red winking skull-and-crossbones insignia on their black bandanna armbands-no one believed any of it. After all, how do you train interrogators if the people they're supposed to interrogate get away? And how better to identify those unable to wrestle with that potential bad bear in a snipe's job-capture by an enemy- before the Corps invested in any scout/sniper training?

So no one proceeded to those final fifty-seven days of scout/sniper training without being "inoculated" against the techniques of enemy interrogation by means of the c.o.c.k, which was more than legendary.

The deeply dreaded c.o.c.k was infamous. As were the Pirates, led by a maniacal gunnery sergeant whose name no one could ever quite be sure of.

For Scout/Sniper Cla.s.s 2801, the c.o.c.k had begun with its members forming into three squads that marched out together at midnight into the vast woods on Camp Lejeune's 200,000 humid, sodden acres. Thirty hours, two twenty-klick full-pack humps, one five-klick paddle in rubber dinghies across a windy Stone Bay, a trio of stress-fire simulations, and four hours of sleep later, they were sufficiently beat.

Then a single briefing and they split up. Three squads, three missions to "capture" a piece of "enemy equipment"-a sixty-pound black box-at three different locations and bring the boxes back across Stone Bay to Cla.s.s 2801's barracks. All of them knew where each squad was heading. All of them had intel the Pirates wanted, intel the Pirates would try d.a.m.n hard to get.

And once they split up, they became fair game for capture.

Jamie's squad had moved unhindered for another long day toward their black box situated atop an abandoned water tower. They had traveled slowly to prevent detection by Pirate IMS gear. Sixteen kilometers, maybe eighteen, too much of it on their bellies under hot, * 43 *

heavy countersurveillance-material ponchos. Forty-six hours into the c.o.c.k simulation and they were on their a.s.ses. At least eight days, maybe as much as ten days to go.

Beneath a hazy sliver-moon, a thin fog hugged the ground. Of course, the fog obscured the warmth of Pirate breath, reducing the likelihood that anyone in the squad would detect them until it was too late.

Jamie felt somewhat consoled, however. The fog also hid her squad-as long as everyone stayed alert and careful. She checked the setting on her IMS detector again. Yep, all tuned up.

With their detectors tuned to an agreed setting, they could move around outside the tents within a ten-meter perimeter without triggering alerts on each other's devices. Jamie smeared another layer of cloaking cream on her face and hands before pulling her poncho over her head.

As she edged toward the tent opening, Arnoldt tugged on her sleeve. "You really got an idea about how to screw with them?"

"Yeah, I do. I think we should try to fight them off."

"Christ!"

"Why not? Once they're paint-blanked, rule is they can't be part of further capture attempts, right? So if they make their move with referees around and we zap 'em, we got solid odds to pick up the black box and get back to barracks with it . " Arnoldt slumped like a man facing execution.

"Got a better idea?"

Arnoldt frowned at his feet.

"Hey, man, take it easy." Jamie nudged him. "This is just training."

"What the f.u.c.k," sighed Moss. "I'm not gonna get any sleep anyway. I'll relieve you at zero-two-hundred." Jamie nodded at Moss, then jabbed Arnoldt's arm. "Douse that G.o.dd.a.m.n moonbeam." When Arnoldt turned off his flashlight, she slipped out of the tent, careful to manipulate the tent flaps so anyone scanning the area wouldn't be able to detect the people and gear inside.

Ten minutes later, she had snugged into the rotting trunk of a large dead oak at the edge of the perimeter around the squad's three tents.

Just under ten meters southwest of the hooch, halfway between * 44 *

the two sentries, Jamie watched from behind her poncho's face screen, pleased that the returning Karpinsky kept stealth well enough to be undetectable on her IMS nocs. This boosted her spirits. So did knowing that Karpinsky would let her stay outside all night if she wanted.

She wanted. Better out here where there's fresh air to breathe, even it means staying in this G.o.dd.a.m.n chainmail poncho.

She a.s.sumed the Pirates would use recon techniques to get right on top of them. Careful, patient stealth. Skills she didn't have yet. Bet they come tonight, probably from the south, maybe the higher terrain to the southwest. Right over the same ground we covered today.

v "Hey, man, ace timing," Jamie whispered when Moss joined her shortly before 0200 hours. "I've been getting anomalies on my detector for about the last ten minutes. Real short blips, progressively closer.

Then it reads False Positive. I don't like it."

"Direction?" he asked.

"South-southwest." She pointed to her right. "Exactly where you'd expect if they decided to come up behind us."

"Hmm." Moss didn't disguise his skepticism. "I figured them coming right at dawn from that scrub to the east. You know, with the sunrise behind them, the glare in our eyes."

"Diddle your detector." Jamie scanned from south to southwest through her binoculars. "Flip it into the really high frequencies, then back down to thermal, and hold it there for maybe three, four seconds.

Now roll higher again, swing it low pretty quick, then back up fast." He tried it repeatedly for about a minute. "f.u.c.k!" he rasped in a high-pitched whisper. "It's popping, then flicking to FP like you said, but right before that it's showing activity between thirty and sixty meters!"

"That's the closest yet. Jeezus, I see zip in the nocs. Nothing. I'll probably get whacked for this in the morning, but I'm gonna ping the hooches. Keep tweaking that thing, okay?"

Jamie pushed a b.u.t.ton on her detector, and from behind them came the scratchy, edgy sounds of the squad scrambling. Seconds later, Moss whispered tensely, "This says they're right on top of-"

* 45 *

Before he finished his sentence, they heard the quick, quiet steps of at least ten people moving fast. The closest came within a meter of them, swooping right over their position toward the tents.

Jamie rose from under her poncho and paint-blanked a black form no more than three meters away. Moss, she knew, was doing the same, and a couple of guys in the squad lit up, too. To the northwest of the tents, Jamie glimpsed the dim yellow swath of a referee's vest. Yes!

With a referee watching, the rules remained in play.

She fired again at a red winking skull and crossbones visible in a flashlight beam thras.h.i.+ng through the dark. That's two anyway. Two for sure.

For one more nanosecond, she thought they might be able to fight off the Pirates. Then the vicious, fiery jolt of a knockout stungun on her neck threw her against the decayed tree trunk. She held on to consciousness long enough to understand: Captured.

When her awareness returned- How long? -she was face down, her hands tightly zip-strapped behind her back. She couldn't get her body to stop its violent involuntary jerking. Everything hurt.

"...And these two," a voice above her scolded, "took out four more." Someone kicked her hard enough to lift her torso off the ground, extracting an aggrieved grunt as the air exited her lungs. "That makes six. Six that were counted, G.o.ddammit! n.o.body's ever f.u.c.king done that before!"

At his feet, Jamie grinned into the dirt.

The entire squad was transported together-hooded, hogtied, hollered at, and heaved roughly into the back of a single truck, then driven around for what seemed like hours. Since there was no point in trying to disorient them-everyone knew where the mock POW field camp was-she realized the Pirates did it to make them more uncomfortable, wear them out. Wear them down.

Finally, the truck stopped. One by one, they were pulled out and tossed into a sandpit where someone released their feet and forced them to their knees, hands still bound, heads still hooded. They were all lined up, Jamie sensed from the sounds, and she listened keenly for what would come next, trying to stay calm. This is just training. But she could remember nothing of what the cla.s.sroom instructors told them about how to resist...nothing...

* 46 *

"Okay, that one and that one," said the same irritated voice she'd heard before. Could this be him, the infamous gunnery sergeant?