Tequila vikings, p.30
Tequila Vikings, page 30
There was nothing more for me to say. I stood up, hugged both John and Kate, and thanked them for everything. I told them that I would miss them. I then went back to 32nd Street, smuggled a bottle of mezcal aboard the ship, and got sloppy drunk alone in my radar dome.
*****
I was awakened by a slap across my face and opened my eyes to the sight of Master Chief Darrow standing above me. He was in civilian clothes and waving my empty bottle of Monte Alban in front of my face. “What the hell do you think you’re doing? Do you want to get your ass busted?”
“I don’t care anymore,” I said, trying to drift back to sleep. “If you want to have me busted, go ahead and bust me.”
Darrow smacked me again, this time much harder. He then grabbed me by my shirt and wrenched me up to my feet. Throwing me up against the wall of the dome, he yelled, “Goddammit! You don’t get to do this! I got plans for you, you son-of-a-bitch! I’m not letting you sabotage what’s left of your military career!” He tapped me on the head with the empty mezcal bottle, not hard enough to do any damage but enough to certainly hurt. “How drunk are you?”
“I don’t know. What time is it?”
“Five o’clock.”
I was confused. “In the morning?”
“No asshole," my master chief barked. "It’s seventeen hundred.”
“No shit? What day?”
“Sunday.”
I did the math. I knew that I had been drinking late but was still surprised that I had slept through an entire day. “I don’t think I’m drunk anymore, just really hungover. And hungry.”
“And you smell like Macklemore. Jesus Christ, there is no sicker stench than the reek of stale tequila sweated out of a man’s pores…”
“It’s not tequila," I countered. "It’s mezcal.”
“Which is rotgut tequila. Go below and get your ass cleaned up. I’ll get you something to eat on the way.”
“On the way?" I asked. "Where are we going?”
“You’ll find out when we get there. Now hurry your ass up! I’ve been looking for you all fuckin’ day for Christ’s sake!”
Unfortunately for Darrow, I was in no shape to hurry for anybody. Not even him. I took a long Hollywood shower while he got rid of my empty booze bottle. When I finished, I met him in the EMO office. From there, he took me out to eat carne asada at Adalberto’s on Rosecrans. That was across the street from the Recruit Training Command, where I had gone to boot camp. It was also near the marina where Darrow kept his fishing boats in Point Loma. I lived on Adalberto’s when I was going to BE/E School but had not eaten there in ages. It was glorious.
As I ate, my master chief tried to tell me that Hannah would be little more than a distant memory within a couple of months. “I know you don’t want to hear this now, but you’re going to end up with more tail than you can handle once we get overseas. You don’t want to go into your first deployment tied down to anybody, Doyle. Hell, you don’t want to go into any deployment attached to anybody. That’s why I’ve been married so many fuckin’ times.”
Darrow was right; I didn’t want to hear that. I didn’t want to talk about it either. To change the subject, I asked, “You want to tell me where we’re going now?”
“We’re going for a boat ride.”
It was a little late to go fishing. “To Mexico?”
Darrow nodded. “To Mexico.”
“You think that’s a good idea?”
Darrow shook his head and looked me right in the eye. “Not at all. It’d be a far worse idea not to go, though. Baylon asked us to meet him. He says he has something for us. If he's on the level, this could be good. If he thinks we’re a loose end that needs tying up though, well then, things could get very, very bad for us.”
“And you’re willing to take that risk?” I asked.
Darrow finished chewing his food, washed it down with a gulp of soda, then cleared his throat. “We don’t really have a choice. I have my wife’s family here, not to mention the family of another ex-wife. They know how to get to my daughters back in Arkansas. Once we leave for Japan, they won’t be able to get to me. They’ll have to get to me through them. No, if I have a debt to square with the house, I need to make sure I’m the one who pays it. Not them.”
“I don’t have anybody here in San Diego anymore. Hell, I don’t have anybody anywhere, so…”
My master chief scowled at me. “Well, you’re the one who got me into this shit, so you’re going to pay your share.”
Fair enough. I did not care, anyway. Between having lost Hannah and my biblical hangover, I was as miserable as I had ever been. Having Baylon and his boys blow my brains out would have been a relief.
Darrow and I did not talk much more until we reached the boat. After we were on our way to the Coronado Islands, he broke the silence by pulling out a pair of .45 automatics. He slipped one beneath his belt at the small of his back and passed me the other. “These both yours?” I asked.
“In a sense. The one that you have was stolen from the armory by a dipshit that used to work for me back in Olongapo. We busted him but never officially recovered the weapon. The prick sold it to a Filipino gang leader for dope money. Rico Tejada, a friend with the Philippine National Police, eventually confiscated it. By the time he turned it back over to me, though, it had already been stricken from service. So, for all practical purposes, it no longer exists.”
“And yours?”
“It fell from a Master-at-Arms’ holster while he was scuffling with a drunk Marine on the bridge out of Subic. It got kicked to the side and fell into the Shit River. That’s some nasty-ass water. There’s always a gaggle of kids hanging around it that will dive in after coins sailors flip into it. After the weapon was removed from the registry, I offered thirty bucks to whoever could dive in and find it. The damned thing was in my hands inside of an hour.”
“They’re both untraceable?”
Darrow nodded. “Yep. Completely.”
That did not surprise me, but I was curious. “Why do you feel the need to collect untraceable firearms?”
Darrow shrugged. “You know, I caught a lieutenant commander messing around with little boys in Pagsanjan. That place is a real Sodom and Gomorrah. You can get anything there. It’s near the river where they filmed the movie ‘Apocalypse Now,’ but that’s beside the point. I didn’t catch the guy in the act, but I was onto him, and he knew it.
“This shit bird was married too. He had a beautiful wife who was a real sweetheart. She knew he was queer but had no idea he was into such sick shit. She married him because she thought it was wrong for the Navy to discriminate against homosexuals. She got an opportunity to see the world and he got some cover to keep his career safe. Anyway, she’d been seeing this helicopter pilot, a really nice guy out of Cubi Point, so now things were getting complicated.
“So, this lieutenant commander knows I’m onto him and feels like he really needs the cover that having a wife provides. He’s never had a problem letting his wife do her thing, but once I'm onto him, her affair is getting tricky. He knows he’s under scrutiny and he's scared because his wife is getting serious with this flyboy. The commander starts putting real pressure on her to end her fling with the pilot.”
Darrow paused to light a cigarette. “Anyway, long story short. The guy comes home, finds the pilot there with his wife, and she asks him for a divorce. The lieutenant commander senses that even if we can’t prove he’s molesting little boys, we’re going to find out he’s queer. He may escape prison but the divorce is going to end his career in disgrace. The fucker snaps and assaults the pilot. Realizing he’s losing the fight, he pulls his weapon and ends up getting shot with his own gun during the struggle. He didn’t make it. He died right there in his kitchen.”
Darrow scanned the stars to get his bearings. “Now this pilot’s a great guy, but he's fucked. On the outside, it looks like this lieutenant commander came home, caught the flyboy putting it to his wife, and then got murdered by his old lady’s lover. I knew better but didn’t have the proof I needed to exonerate the poor guy. Even if I cleared him of murder, the pilot’s career is still over. He’d likely end up prosecuted for conduct unbecoming an officer.
“Luckily, the lieutenant commander lived out in town because he couldn’t get away with his lifestyle on base. The Philippine cops got there first. We used a lost .45, just like one of these two, to shoot the lieutenant commander again in the same wound. The forty-five is bigger than the 9mm. As long as we got the trajectory right, it now looked like he was killed with a stolen weapon rather than his personal sidearm.”
The master chief took a drag off his cigarette and thought for a moment, wondering if he should be trusting me with this kind of information. He must have figured it was too late now.
“I turned the ‘official’ murder weapon over to the Flips. They ‘recovered’ it shortly afterward during a raid against some local gang members that went awry. They then pinned the murder to one of the thugs killed in the shootout. The official story was the lieutenant commander was shot during a home invasion. The murder weapon was a pistol recorded as destroyed, but sold to some local hooligans.”
I shook my head in disbelief. That was some real gangster shit. “What happened to the pilot?”
Darrow shrugged. “He married the widow and enjoyed a long and prosperous career in the United States Navy. He went on to command the USS Belleau Wood. He owes me a few favors that you’ve had me cashing in fairly regularly lately.”
I had to laugh. I knew Darrow had something on Captain Fleming.
“Look, Doyle, what we’re going into tonight, it could be nothing. It could also be that this Hulagu fuck somehow got the upper hand. Baylon keeps telling me that they’re on top of this guy, that he’s run out of friends, and that they’ll have him any minute. Somehow, though, this asshole keeps not getting caught. That makes me suspicious and sounds like they’re stalling for time. Shit down here in Mexico, it’s always fluid, you know? Alliances are always shifting, the situation is always changing, and you never know who’s on top.
“If Baylon’s being straight with me, this’ll be nothing more than a business meeting. If he's not straight with me, this is going to be some big-league shit. Stuff that’s way over anything that I’ve ever had to deal with before. It’ll be combat, Doyle. There won’t be any time to question my orders, to decide for yourself what’s right and wrong. If I tell you to shoot, you need to fucking fire. You think you can do that?”
“Yeah, no problem.” I was oddly alright with it, actually. I was more concerned about what kind of business deal Master Chief Darrow had with a man like Marco Baylon.
“No problem? You ever point a gun at someone before, Doyle?”
“Nope, but I really wanted to once. In El Salvador. Unfortunately, I didn’t have one at the time. They only sent me down there with a couple pieces of test equipment.”
Darrow chuckled. “Okay, I told you one of my secrets. Why don’t you tell me one of yours? What happened in El Salvador?”
I had little expectation of surviving a gun battle with Mexican police officers, so I did not see much harm in talking. “I was sent there to set up the land-based version of the SPN-35 radar at this remote base in the Salvadoran jungle. Well, as remote as you can get in El Salvador anyway. The country’s so tiny that you can’t twirl a monkey around by its nut-sack without sending it through customs. I’m down there with an Army Special Forces guy, a bona fide Green Beret named Sergeant Finnegan. He’s kind of shadowing me while I’m working, making sure I don’t trip over my own dick while I’m setting this thing up.
“Anyway, me and Finn are getting along pretty good, and we’re partying with the local grunts after hours. It turns out my Spanish is better than his, so I’m doing a pretty good job at the ‘hearts and minds’ part of the Special Forces mission. We’re getting pretty crazy with these soldiers we’re drinking with. Eventually, we’re all shit-faced, and the locals suggest seeking out some action with the ladies. Me and Finn are thinking they’re talking about going to some bar in a nearby village or something. They were actually talking about just going back to their barracks, though."
Taking a deep breath of salt air, I said, “You know these guys we’re drinking with? It turns out they're from a nasty unit down there called the Atlacatl Battalion. Apparently, they massacred a village nearby and brought back a couple of ‘prisoners.' They were young girls they were keeping for entertainment. The soldiers liked us so much they decided to share one of them with us.”
Darrow shook his head in disgust. Knowing how far beyond my moral tolerance that went, he said, “I’m kind of surprised you lived through something like that. I figured you’d get blown away trying to beat some ass.”
I nodded. “It was close. Shit went down. Punches were thrown. A weapon or two were drawn. Finn had some pull, though. He got me out of there and assured me he’d correct the situation while I was confined to quarters. It was a tiny base, so I was not far from the commander’s tent. I heard a lot of shouting and cursing. I could tell the commander was far more upset that his men showed us the girl than he was about what they were doing to her. I heard him tell them to get rid of her.
“An hour later, after one last hurrah, I heard her crying as they led her off somewhere. A little while after that, I heard a single gunshot ring out from the same direction. The fuckers killed her. Finn stuffed me into a helicopter the first thing the next morning and sent me back to the states.”
I could have used a drink right about then, but I knew my stomach would not be able to handle it. “You know, I like Marco. I don’t see him as the type of guy that would sell a ten-year-old girl to a brothel or rape college students like Hulagu, but he’s part of the same system that lets people get away with shit like that."
The more I thought about it, the angrier I got. “Martinez is a proper villain, no doubt. The man’s a monster. These guys, though? Our ‘friends’? They don’t want to kill Hulagu for all the heinous shit he’s done. They’re hunting him only because he tried to hurt them. That’s it. They don’t give a shit about what Martinez did. They only cared about it when he wanted to do it to them.”
I lit a cigarette and leaned back in my seat. “I hope it doesn’t come to that, but if those guys draw on us, I’ll shoot Marco. I’ll shoot Noel, too. No problem. I’ll murder all those fuckers. I’ll do it in the name of that poor girl I got killed in El Salvador.”
Besides, I’ve got nothing to lose.
*****
I was expecting a scenario out of the movies. I thought we were going to pull up alongside the harbor patrol boat with a dozen heavily armed cartel enforcers roaming the decks. Instead, we rendezvoused with the Loma Linda, Master Chief Darrow’s other fishing vessel. As we tied up alongside, I saw only three people aboard: Marco Baylon, his nephew, and whoever drove the boat. The Loma Linda was big, though. There could have been another half-dozen people waiting to ambush us from below.
“So?” Darrow asked Baylon once I fastened the boats together.
Marco walked to the side of the Linda and looked down on us. “It’s nice, Bradley. She runs very well. My man says she's in good shape, has been well taken care of. She’s not as lucky as the Pescado Grande, though. We didn’t catch shit out there.”
“That’s not the boat’s fault," Darrow laughed. "Knowing where the fish are is the captain’s job.”
Baylon nodded. “Yes, I’m sure that’s the problem. You sure your men don’t want to stay on and work for us?”
“I’m sure,” Darrow answered. “They don’t want to get mixed up in any trouble down where you guys are operating from. They’re out.”
Marco looked disappointed, but he understood. “I don’t blame them. Is that Doyle with you?”
“Sí, Marco. Es bueno verte de nuevo.”
“It’s good to see you too, amigo. I appreciate the respect you show me by speaking in Spanish, but English is fine! It would be rude for us to speak in front of your boss in a language that he does not understand. Bradley! Can we come aboard?”
Darrow gave me a sideways glance telling me to keep my eyes open. “Of course! Come on over.”
“Okay. Take our luggage first.”
With a nod of his chin, Darrow directed me to the side of the Pescado, where Noel tossed a duffle bag to me. It was far heavier than I expected. At first, I suspected it was full of dope, but I could feel the bundles inside. It was stacks of cash. Lots of them. “Hey, Doyle!” Noel called out. “Drop that. I have another one for you.”
I caught the second bag and tried to check my surprise. “Take those below,” the master chief told me.
When I returned, both Noel and Marco were aboard our boat. I held my hand out to Noel, but he refused it, insisting on hugging me instead. While doing so, one of his hands brushed my piece. “You know those aren’t allowed in Mexico, my friend.”
“That’s a lot of money.” Master Chief told him. “It’s in case we run into pirates.”
“Besides," I added. "Considering what happened to me the last time I was down here, I wasn’t coming unprepared.”
Noel smiled and slapped me on the shoulder. “You saved my life, amigo. This time I’ll let you off with a warning.”
I scoffed. “I hardly saved your life, Noel. My master chief wasn’t going to pull the trigger.”
“Doyle,” Chief Baylon said to me. “I’ve been a policeman for three decades. When angry men pull out firearms, people die. It happens all the time. Your boss may have regretted it later, but it could have happened. It took a lot of balls to put yourself between my nephew and Bradley’s pistol. That is an act of courage that will not go unrewarded, my friend.”
