Finding a table on the small veranda that fronted the demountable, Gallen sat with a pen and pad and started calling.
Of the people who were out of the Corps, there were guys doing night security at Sea World in Florida, guys riding shotgun in armoured trucks, and guys wandering the floors of casinos in Las Vegas, ready to show drunks to the door when the booze and losing streaks became too much.
Wendell Favor had taken over his father’s sports store in east Texas, Tigger Lawrenson had pursued a lifelong dream and was playing AAA-league baseball for a team in Omaha, and Len Mantrill — the biggest, meanest street fighter Gallen ever saw — was going door to door for Jesus somewhere in the suburbs of Seattle.
Everyone wanted to catch up with Captain Gallen, but no one wanted to join a bodyguard detail at short notice.
Some of Gallen’s calls went straight to voicemail; Gallen guessed they were part of the flood of US Marines being immediately reabsorbed into Iraq and Afghanistan under the military contractors.
The afternoon turned into early evening and Gallen re-entered the demountable as the chill descended. On the floor in front of him, McCann stacked and counted while Winter ticked the items on Chase Lang’s manifest.
‘How we going, boss?’ asked McCann, counting out the magazines for the Heckler & Koch assault rifles.
‘Striking out,’ said Gallen, moving out of the small living area to the kitchen. There was a stash of basic provisions on the counter: bread, coffee, milk and cereal. Opening the refrigerator, he found a six-pack of Sprite and handed them out.
‘Can we work a crew of three?’ Winter lit a smoke.
‘Not ideal,’ said Gallen. ‘As you told me: two teams of two, rotating. That’s how to get it done.’
‘You sure Bren’s out?’ said McCann, slugging at the soda.
‘What he told me.’
‘He won’t return your call?’
‘Trying since the AM. You wanna try?’
McCann reached out his hand for the cell, and then thought again. ‘Might use my phone, see if he picks up.’
He dialled and reclined back on a stack of fatigues. ‘Brenny Dale, my man,’ he said, thumb raised at Gallen as he sat upright. “Sup, dawg?’
Gallen watched as McCann’s bonhomie succeeded only so far, right up until he told his old unit-buddy that he was in Calgary with Gerry Gallen, and what’s this about not being able to make it?
McCann took the cell from his ear and looked at it. ‘Hung up. Bren Dale hung up on me.’
Gallen sighed. ‘What’d he say?’
‘Said, tell the boys I’s sorry. Not my call.’
Gallen’s ears pricked up. ‘He said that?’
‘Just like that. Not my call,’ said McCann. ‘Think his daddy put down the foot?’
‘Don’t know,’ said Gallen.
‘What about his daddy?’ asked Winter.
‘Seen the TV ads, car salesman calling hisself the King of Chev?’ said McCann. ‘Seen that scary-ass fucker pointing at the screen, telling you to come down, see the King?’
‘Yeah,’ said Winter, smiling. ‘That Bren’s dad?’
‘Fuck yeah,’ said McCann. ‘Come back from Vietnam, makes a fortune selling cars and says ain’t no son of his ever gonna fight in no shit overseas, for no fucker.’
‘So Bren?’
‘So Brenny turn around, joins the Marines when he’s supposed to be on a football scholarship to college, and the next thing you know he in the shit in Mindanao, getting chased by Filipino bad-asses through the jungle.’
‘Donny’s thinking that Bren’s dad has told him, Don’t think you can inherit this empire if you go back to that shit,’ said Gallen.
‘Yeah, but—’ said McCann, then waved it away. ‘Who else we got, boss?’
Draining his Sprite, Gallen moved back to the veranda, shrugging into his jacket as the temperature plummeted.
Looking at the phone, he toyed with an idea. In Indonesia it was about eight or nine in the morning, but it wasn’t the time that worried him. The number on his phone was for Pete Morton, a former Marines Recon captain who’d leapt to DIA while Gallen was posted in Zamboanga City, Mindanao. Morton had remained in South-East Asia, in an indistinct capacity, although Gallen had heard that he now arranged off-the-books solutions for US intelligence, using local assets and deniable payments. It was the side of the military Gallen hadn’t wanted to be associated with while he was commissioned, and even now — though he was privateering himself — he baulked at calling the man.
Gallen waited for the call to connect. It purred for five seconds and clicked into what sounded like a different system.
Just when he was about to give up, someone answered.
‘Yep,’ said the man’s voice.
‘Morton? Pete, that you?’ said Gallen. ‘It’s Gerry Gallen, from Recon.’
‘Hey, Gerry. How’s life in Calgary?’
‘I—’
He couldn’t finish because of Morton’s laughter. ‘Enjoying the lions and tigers, are you, Gerry?’
‘Shit, Pete,’ said Gallen, not in the mood. ‘You got one of them boxes?’
‘Sure. It says Mountain Bell, roaming, Calgary Zoo.’
Gallen waited for the giggling to subside. ‘Okay, Pete, you got me. I’m feeding the monkeys. I need a favour.’
‘Try me, sport.’
‘You know any military guys, preferably special forces, want to work a corporate bodyguard detail? Starts tomorrow morning, North America. I’m the boss.’
‘What’s the money?’
‘Two grand a week, full health, death and disability.’
‘Nice work, if you’d called a year ago,’ said Morton. ‘Now they’re all going back to Iraq and the Ghan. Every time a bomb destroys a souk, the contractors are upping the money, and you know what soldiers are like.’
Gallen knew what soldiers were like: as soon as the bivvie chatter laid off on women, it went straight to money and how to make it so fast that the cold and the bullets wouldn’t matter.
‘Okay, just thought I’d touch base.’
‘Hey, good to talk, Gerry. Heard you kicked on to captain?’
‘The only punishment they could think of.’
‘Hah!’ said Morton. ‘I’ve got your number. I’ll call if I think of anyone, okay?’
They found a bar with a good menu in East Village and Gallen bought a round of Buds off the tap.
‘Break a leg,’ said Winter, raising his glass.
McCann raised his too. ‘Mud in your eye.’
They all touched glasses and Gallen relaxed slightly, glad the gig had now been launched without jinxing it with a call to good luck, or any of the other sentiments that troopers could live without.
Gallen still had no answers for Aaron, but for now McCann and Winter were getting along and that mattered more to him than having the full crew. The barbecue ribs arrived with more beers and they unwound with the band playing 1980s covers.
As they walked from their cab to the guard house of the Oasis compound a couple of hours later, Gallen’s phone rang. The screen said Pete Morton.
‘Pete,’ said Gallen.
‘Hey, Gerry. The penny dropped, buddy. You’re not wiping the ass of a certain oil billionaire who likes getting hammered, getting in fights?’
‘That’s no comment, Pete.’
‘I met the Brits who came before you, Gerry,’ said Morton, a slight taunt.
Gallen stopped and waved the others on. ‘Oh yeah?’
‘Yeah. A Para named Piers, did a lot in western Iraq.’
‘Nice for him,’ said Gallen, fumbling for a smoke.
‘I guess you’re not interested.’
Gallen tried to play it cool, but he was hooked. ‘Anything I should know?’
‘Like, why they were fired?’
Gallen looked at the orange glow of Calgary on a still and cold night. ‘Fired?’