ABOARD THE VAGABOND
“I HAVE TO LEAVE.”
“You’re not ready.”
“A message came in from Washington an hour ago. Jim Hall of the CIA. I’ve been ordered to report to Bagram.”
“I repeat. You’re not ready for operational status.” Sir Jeff slid his reading glasses down his nose and peered over the steel rims. “Not in Afghanistan or anywhere else.”
Kyle drank some coffee. “Running and stamina are the only things that are below par for me right now. I’ve been exercising for hours every day for weeks but still don’t quite have my wind back. Can’t do a real five-mile run on a tub like this.”
“This tub, as you call it, is a one-hundred-million-dollar yacht. Show some respect. And I know you use the treadmill in the gym.”
“Not the same.”
“I agree.” He smacked the arms of his wheelchair in mock frustration. “I’ll be glad to get rid of this damned thing and at least do a mile. Even so, the treadmill is no substitute for a military course.”
“No heavy pack, no curves, no rocks underfoot, no obstacles. I jog along, listening to music.”
“You’re not ready, Kyle. Tell them that.”
“I’m ready enough. Get on shore, work out some kinks, get my endurance back up. I’ll be ready to kick ass.”
Sir Jeff smiled. “Who are you lying to, Kyle-me or yourself? Our friend Jim Hall is putting together a package, and you think there will be time to do some conditioning? No, the CIA, particularly Jim, does not work that way. He will expect everyone, including you, to arrive ready to roll. He will throw you right into the cauldron. My guess is that it will be in Pakistan.”
Swanson pushed back the chair and walked to the rectangular window, rubbing a hand along the wainscoting of polished African mahogany. “Ahhh. I’m bored, Jeff.”
“I know that. I’m bored, too, but I’m in this wheelchair, you see? Reality is involved, Kyle. Boredom sometimes must be endured. Then there’s the quality of your shooting to consider.”
“I’ve been banging skeet on the boat and running bullets through Excalibur at floating targets.”
Sir Jeff laughed derisively. “Neither of those is the same as real shooting under battlefield conditions. Another reason that you’re not ready. So there is your wind to consider, and also your shooting eye. Tell me truthfully, lad, could you take out a terrorist at four hundred meters today? Five hundred?”
“Yeah. Sure I could. I could have taken down those pirates on that speedboat, except you wanted to play with them instead.”
“That was more important. It was a field test of a new weapons system that you helped design and, I shall remind you, will bring you a lot of money in your declining years.”
“Still, I could have picked them all off. Sniping ain’t exactly rocket science.”
“Actually, it is. Maybe even more difficult, because space rockets are not living beings and do not shoot back.” Cornwell rolled his chair forward and peered at Swanson with eagle eyes. “You obviously are not sure you’re ready at all, and that uncertainty is hardly the correct frame of mind for some world-class combat shooting. By the way, Hall did not ask my opinion, or I would have advised him to find someone else and let you finish your rehabilitation in peace.”
“Oh, bullshit, Jeff. How many missions did you refuse just because you had a couple of bumps or bruises? Hell, I know that story of how you had a broken arm and lied and bullied your way aboard a plane for a jump.”
“Don’t change the subject. That was just a training exercise. Kyle, it is not proper for you to take on a special ops mission just to salve your ego. Not just for a lark. Muck it up and there could be hell to pay.”
“I can do this, Jeff.”
“Now you’re just whining.” Sir Jeff stopped talking and unfolded a newspaper with great ceremony, snapping the pages open. “I have said my piece. I shall not allow some common American Marine to turn me into a grumpy old man. Will you still be aboard for breakfast tomorrow?”
Swanson did not look away from the window, just shook his head negatively and continued to watch the passing small, frothy waves. In the fading sun the water was like gold. “The Ike is in the area and will send a helo to pick me up about oh nine hundred. From there I take a plane to Bagram.”
“Very well, then. I think that I shall wheel off to bed now. Sleep well tonight, son. It has been my experience that you might need the rest. I shall see you tomorrow morning.”
KYLE SWANSON WALKED AFT along the central corridor of the huge yacht, then up the circular staircase to the main deck, and back again to the broad rear deck. He dropped into a chair and propped his feet up on the lower railing. The Vagabond was driving hard to the southwest, churning a good wake that pointed toward the dimming horizon. The place he was sitting was sheltered from the wind. He popped open a small green bottle of cold Perrier water and drank half of it in two long gulps. “Well, fuck me,” he muttered.
After the quick, intense fighting in Saudi Arabia, everyone involved was determined to force U.S. Marine Corps Gunnery Sergeant Kyle Swanson to take a long, long break. He needed to recover from some wounds, but also to recover from the mental stress of having had so much work fall on him.
Jim Hall had provided no details about the new package, other than that he looked forward to working with Kyle again. It had to be something unique and special. Knowing Jim, that hint that they would be working together meant they would probably have to kill somebody, sometime, somewhere, in secret. It had to be in Pakistan, Swanson figured. The CIA had made a direct request for him by name, but Kyle knew that he could either accept or pass. He was assigned to Task Force Trident, a covert operations force that operated on a Presidential Finding from the White House. Although hidden inside the Marine Corps, he was occasionally loaned out to other agencies when the task was approved by the Oval Office. Hall would not have even sent the message if he did not have that authorization, or thought Kyle was not up to it. Of all people, he knew that Kyle Swanson lived for these jobs. It was a chance to get back into the game, if Kyle wanted to do so. He did.
For the first time in two weeks, Kyle suddenly wanted a cold beer. He looked at the green bottle; the bubble water tasted pretty good. A small price to pay for staying in shape. Swanson had realized during this recovery period that he had been leaning for a while against the shaky wall of becoming an alcoholic. Then he found that he was also relying on narcotics to ease his pain and help him rest, too easily reaching for the pill bottles for relief. By the sheer force of his willpower, he had entered a rehab program of his own design and turned off those switches in his brain. He had not had a beer or even a glass of wine for three months. Alcohol also packed on the weight. He missed cold beer the most, but his body was thanking him for kicking the habit. No booze. No smoking. No pills except the required antibiotics. Hard exercise. Excellent diet. He figured that for such sacrifice, a healthier body had better be worth the effort.
His blue-gray eyes swept the darkening sea. One thing that had vanished with the lust for alcohol and the easy-life narcotics was the surprise visits of his old nemesis, a creaky skeletal ghost that he had come to know as the Boatman. Always paddling to the surface in his nightmares, coming to cackle and offer grim predictions about looming and unavoidable catastrophes, the Boatman tried to plant doubts in his mind and remind him that at heart, Kyle Swanson was a cold killer who steadily supplied fresh souls to hell. Being drunk and high usually opened the mental door for the Boatman to drop by. Being clean and sober again, Kyle had not seen the son of a bitch for a long time and did not miss him at all. Good riddance. Still, he had been reduced to drinking bottled water from France.
He closed his eyes and stretched his neck as the freshening breeze from the coming storm whipped around him. The hazy sunlight finally blinked out while crooked bolts of lightning cracked the sky and thunder bowled over the water. The first raindrops came dancing across the deck, and still Kyle sat alone, balancing the bottle on his knee and watching and listening and pondering Jeff’s question. Am I really ready? Will I jeopardize this mission and the lives of others before it all even starts? Can I pull the trigger on a tango at four hundred or use a silenced pistol or even the Gerber knife up close and personal? Am I ready?
“I am disappointed that you entertain doubts.” A shaky voice seemed to rise up to him from the water, where a small craft rode at rest, unmoving in the troubled sea. “I have allowed you enough time off. Get back to work.” A little snicker of a giggle trailed on the wind. A tall figure was at a stern oar, the winds not touching the bloodstained black rags that drooped from the skeletal bones. The Boatman was back, his personal omen of deaths yet to come.
“I was hoping never to see you again,” Kyle replied into the night storm. “Shit. I’m not even asleep and I can see you out there.”
“Look at you! Living a good life on a fancy yacht, and goodness me, developing nonlethal weapons! How can such a thing help me fill my boat?”
“What? You think I work for you? Boatman, you are a raggedy-ass creation of my own mind, sailing around in my brain. You are nothing.”
The sardonic, hateful laugh came again. “Wrong. I am everything. I am your today, and I am your tomorrow, the sum of all of your parts. You know when they place the gold coins on your eyes at death, you will be all mine, sitting in this little boat with me ferrying you to the unknown. And that is the one thing, the one place, that you fear: the unknown.”
“Go away. You’re boring.”
The Boatman leaned on his oar, and the little boat shifted position, nose into the waves now, taking the motion of the water. “You will notice that the boat is currently empty of souls. You should have filled it with the corpses of those pirates, and you know it. Excalibur was calling for you to shoot, and you let them live.”
Swanson was on his feet, at the railing, staring out at something no one else could have seen. “That was the mission. We accomplished what we intended to do. Everything does not have to end in a bloodbath.”
The single crackle of laughter was lost in a boom of thunder that vibrated the big yacht but sounded like a derisive shout from the heavens. “Yes, it does. For you, it must end in blood, and it will not stop until you take your seat in my boat. Enough.” There was a flash of face, nothing but white bone and a grinning jaw of sharklike sawteeth. “I just stopped by to welcome you back to our private world. Go hunting now. Bring me fresh souls.”
Kyle loosed a primal shout of anger from his gut, grabbed the green bottle, and threw it as far as he could. It splashed into the water far short of the disappearing boat, which blinked out in the big waves as the noise of the storm swallowed the final burst of laughter. He did not care if he was being environmentally unfriendly and perhaps bonking a whale on the head. Fuckin’ Boatman. Kyle would do the job with Jim Hall, and that was that. He still had questions, yes, but there was only one way to find the answers.