Hayes shook his head. “I’m in it if you are, Hawk.”
“Thanks, Cal. I’m still in as well, but I wish you’d reconsider your decision to go along, Abby.”
Abby arched an eyebrow.
“Do I have to pull rank on you again, Hawkins? I don’t do half-missions.”
Hawkins looked over at Hayes. “Can you talk some sense into her, Cal?”
“The lady’s got rank on me, too, Hawk.”
“Thank you, Calvin,” Abby said with a smug expression.
“But this is a fool’s mission,” Hawkins pressed. “I have my reasons for taking it, reasons that don’t concern you.”
She turned to Hayes. “Calvin, do you think this is a fool’s mission?”
Hayes greeted the question with a guffaw. “Every mission I’ve been on has been dumb-ass,” he said.
“Matt thinks we don’t know that he’s trying to manipulate us with a guilt trip for his own goals. Please tell your friend that we’re onto him. We know that the psycho discharge has eaten away at his brain all these years and that he’s going on a mission with crazy written all over it because he wants to find out why the navy threw him to the wolves.”
“I owe Hawk. I’d go along with anything he asked. I don’t care why he’s doing it.”
“Neither do I. If it makes you feel better, Matt, I have no feelings of guilt whatsoever over our break-up.”
“Happy to hear that, but there is a difference, Abby. You and I were married. Calvin and I were comrades in arms.”
She gave him a stage sigh. “You’ve forgotten that we spent a lot of time in each other’s arms, too.”
Hayes saw where the conversation was heading and scooped up the plates. “I’ll clean up. You can take the lunch shift.”
He disappeared into the galley where he did a fairly good impression of Fats Domino singing Blue Monday, obviously aimed at drowning out the conversation in the main cabin. Hawkins and Abby exchanged glances and they both started laughing.
“Maybe we should put aside the serious stuff,” Hawkins said. “We’re going to have enough to deal with out in the field.”
She flashed him a smile that could have melted an iceberg, leaned forward and kissed him on the lips longer than was necessary.
“You won’t regret this, Matt.”
He felt heat come into his cheeks. Another reason to regret the loss of his beard. He dug a leather portfolio case out of his duffle bag. He riffled through the dossiers until the warm glow faded from his face, and spread out the contents of the folders on a table.
When Hayes rejoined them, Matt said, “We’ve got the insertion and extraction down. I want to go over the dive plan.”
Abby yawned. “Can we put it off until later?”
“Sure,” Hawkins said. “We’ve got a long flight ahead of us.”
“Good.” She grabbed a pillow and blanket from the overhead. “I’m going to take a little nap.”
She stretched out on a row of seats and promptly fell asleep. Hayes yawned and said it must be catching. He camped out on another row and a few minutes later he was snoring.
Hawkins gazed pensively at the sleeping forms. He didn’t like using other people, even if they went along with it. He’d always had the feeling that it was his bad judgment five years ago that had put him in front of the oncoming freight train of a faceless entity. Now the past had caught up with the present, and he didn’t want to make the same mistake again.
He was convinced that the key to his past remained in Afghanistan, where he and his unit had been ambushed. He had done everything right that day five years ago, but somehow he had screwed up. The bomb had smashed his leg and cost the lives of three men.
There had been the hot blinding light and the kaboom and he was flying through the air like a cannonball. When he regained consciousness, he was stone deaf and the whole scene was a silent movie. Some men were staggering to their feet. Others lay lifeless on the bloody ground.
His hearing was almost ninety-nine percent recovered when he appeared before the board of inquiry. He heard every word when the presiding officer went stone-faced and said, “This hearing is at an end.”
“With all due respect sir, I believe there is more to this matter than has been presented.”
“Not as far as this board is concerned. I’d advise you to count your lucky stars, try to forget this incident and get on with your life.”
“Then this is the end of it?
“Correct, Lieutenant Hawkins.”
The board members started to pick up their papers.
“Well it’s not the end of it for me, sir. If the navy doesn’t intend to get to the bottom of this, then I will.”
Hawkins recalled how the guards had moved in closer as if he were a rabid dog. After the board made its escape, he sat alone in the room, alone with his thoughts, full of rage at what had just transpired. It had been a slippery slope from there, leading to the shrink’s office and his discharge.
He could live without having his psych discharge reversed, but he was single-minded in his quest to find out who had shattered his leg and his navy career.
And when he did?
What then, Hawkins? he asked himself. What then?
He had no immediate answer. He knew only that he was going to do everything he could to make this new mission succeed, an outcome that was highly unlikely given the collection of oddballs he had assembled to back him up. The thought reminded him that he had one more thing to do. He reached for his cell phone and punched out Sutherland’s number.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Sutherland lived in a one-story stucco house atop a scrub-covered hill on rolling land that was once part of an abandoned ranch about ten miles north of the Mexican border. The only people she ever saw on her property were illegal immigrants heading north and the border police in white SUVs trying to intercept them. They were the ideal visitors because they didn’t linger.
She had settled in Arizona after wandering around the Southwestern desert vaguely in search of the kind of spirituality that had vanished along with her innocence. Sutherland had seen the listing for the stucco house in a real estate office window during a stopover in the artsy little town of Tubac. She rode out to take a look at the house and immediately fell in love with its isolation and panoramic view. She bought it and about five surrounding acres with her winnings from internet poker. Her navy disability pension kept her in tacos and burritos and paid the utility bills.
The quiet beauty of the desert had lulled the anxieties that seemed to hound her wherever she traveled. Inspired by the fiery vermilion of the sunsets she saw in the western sky from her patio, she had ventured into town and acquired acrylic paints, brushes and an easel in a local art supply shop. After she took a few painting lessons in a local gallery, she had been spending less time at the computer and more of her days in front of a canvas.
She painted landscapes at first. Her paintings were technically well-executed, but they made her uneasy because of what they revealed about her psyche. She didn’t have to be a psychologist to detect the disturbing hints of paranoia in the beastly eyes lurking in the shadows and in the menacing postures of saguaro cacti. She had put her landscapes in storage and switched to another subject, the hummingbirds that darted in to dine at the dozen or so feeders she had hung around the house. It was impossible to instill menace in her paintings of the tiny birds and she captured the luminescent hues of their colors with amazing accuracy.
She had set up her computer in a small bedroom that had a window view of the crumbling walls of an old ranch house and stables in a shallow valley around a quarter of a mile away. She had carried her coffee into her office to check her computer when the call came in from Hawkins.