After the truck drove off, the group on the pier broke up. Anthony Pacino walked down the pier toward officers’ parking, Rachel Romanov by his side.
“It’s hard to believe Styxx and Kelly are gone,” she said. “And Easy Eisy, and Gangbanger.” She sniffed and pulled out a tissue and wiped her eyes and blew her nose.
“And the COB,” Pacino said. “And Gory Goreliki and K-Squared Kim from the Panther op. And Snowman Mercer, who first found the Panther. And we lost our new nub, Long Hull Cooper. Goddamned bad day at sea.”
Romanov sighed. “Let’s get back to the Snake Ranch and do something fun. Grill out some steaks, maybe. I want a happy memory to replace this one.”
“XO made this a long weekend for us all,” Pacino said. “We have no work duties until the funeral on Tuesday. We’ll have to roll out super early that day. Rush hour traffic out of Norfolk and on the way to D.C. will be murderous.”
“Let’s find a five-star hotel in D.C. and stay over Monday night,” Rachel said. She smiled at Pacino as he opened the Corvette’s door for her. “We’ll stay in bed and have scrumptious room service.”
“And some scrumptious other things?” Pacino smirked at her as he started the car, the supercharger’s high-pitched whine and the deep throbbing notes of the powerful engine making him feel better already.
“Maybe,” she said, jutting out her lower lip as if considering the idea, then shrugging. “Depends on my mood.”
“Oh, no problem. I can get you in the mood in two minutes,” Pacino said, grinning at her.
“You’re just lucky you’re with a hot-blooded girl, Pacino,” she said. “I’m always in the mood when you’re around. With the exception of this hour, today.”
“Yeah,” Pacino said solemnly. “And the entire time that you had amnesia. It was almost like you were robotic, like your soul wasn’t in your body. I gotta tell ya, it was unnerving.”
“It felt like a walking nightmare to me,” she said. “One second it was six months ago, then suddenly I’m in a hospital room with Bruno, painful bandaged burns on my legs and abdomen, with Bruno telling me we were divorced, and that I had a new boyfriend and that the boyfriend was this hot-running hero-slash-pirate from an operation where Vermont stole an Iranian submarine. Can you imagine? The U.S. Navy just walking up and stealing the submarine of another sovereign nation? And now I have a boyfriend? And then I meet you, and you’re all handsome and swashbuckling, enough to make a poor girl swoon, but I was sure I had to stay away from you.”
“Why?”
“I didn’t know you. For all I knew, the new Rachel might not even like you.”
“Rachel Romanov not liking me?” Pacino laughed. “Impossible. And did you really think I was, quote, swashbuckling, unquote?”
“You’re a real-life pirate, Pacino,” she said, looking out the window at the industrial side of Norfolk giving way to the bayside high-priced real estate, then to the suburbs of Virginia Beach. “Pacino?” she asked. He noticed that since she came back from her amnesia, she no longer called him ‘Anthony’ or ‘Patch.’ Just ‘Pacino.’ He liked it, he thought. No one else addressed him that way. “Where do you think our dead shipmates are right now?”
“Well, if Tiny Tim Fishman were here, he’d say they all went to the afterlife to contemplate what their lives would have been like had they made different decisions. In some of the multiple universes Fishman believes in, many of them are still alive, so I imagine they watch themselves living out those lives in real time. In essence, they would be haunting themselves.”
“Do you believe all that?”
Pacino shrugged. “In my near-death experience, I only made it into the tunnel, not all the way to the afterlife. But before the tunnel vacuumed me into it, I had the thought that I could just stick around earth and watch things. Maybe haunt people. If that’s true, I think the New Jersey dead are probably still with us, maybe even sitting in this car, listening to us talk. I think they’ll attend the funeral Tuesday. Then they’ll feel free to leave and go on to the next world.”
“You know, that’s kind of freaky, the idea of them in this tiny car with us.”
“We have nothing but fond memories of them,” Pacino said. “I’m sure they find that comforting. I just hope they withdraw when you and I are, you know, in a ‘tactical situation.’”
“Oh man, Pacino, now I’m definitely not in the mood.”
Later, much later, the day would just be a blur of intense images in Pacino’s memory.
The mournful sound of a bugle in the crisp, clean, sunny autumn morning.
The clop of hoofbeats of the horses carrying the twenty-four caissons to the twenty-four freshly dug graves.
The caskets covered with bright American flags.
The color guard firing off three shots for each deceased person.
The solemn announcement of each person’s name, rank and job function on the USS New Jersey.
The chaplain, standing in the middle of the two dozen graves, an open Bible in his hands, reading a passage from the Old Testament—
The inconsolable wives, husbands, and children, all of them crying.
The survivors saluting on cue, all of them dressed in service dress blues with full medals and white gloves.
The honor guard taking American flags off coffins, folding them into triangles and presenting them to widows and widowers, children or parents, or just close friends.
The chaplain’s concluding prayer.
The bugle call at the end of the ceremony.
Pacino’s eyes teared up as he and Rachel Romanov walked back to his car. He sniffed and looked at Rachel, who looked back adoringly at him.
32
“Ahoy there! Attention all hands. Listen up,” XO Quinnivan shouted, “all you rowdy, misfit, criminal pirates, we have a lot to go over, so shut the fook up, yeah?” Quinnivan’s brogue was more pronounced than normal, a sure sign he’d been drinking.
The officers and some of the chiefs of the USS New England stood or sat in the great room of the Snake Ranch, the Virginia Beach rental house occupied by Pacino, Romanov, Dankleff and Vevera. With Quinnivan’s upcoming relocation back to the UK, his house was a wreck from packing. He’d donated his gigantic television, the Sony “Wall,” to the Snake Ranch as a parting gift. Dankleff and Vevera had spent the entire day getting the monstrous TV set up.
Pacino looked around, noting half a dozen new faces. The replacements for the dead officers, he thought. He took a sip of the scotch Quinnivan had brought over, the Irishman showing up with two plastic milk crates full of alcohol that he didn’t want to move back to England. After emptying one of the crates, he now stood on top of it to address the crowded room.