Five

Saint Martin wasn’t Saint Martin. Saint Martin was a pipe dream. It was a place that Michael had read about in a magazine. We didn’t have the money or the initiative to make it to a place like that. One day, maybe. One day, when the forces above us deemed us worthy, maybe we’d get paid enough for a trip like that. For now, for us, Saint Martin had just become a call sign. It was a nickname. When Michael told us to meet in Saint Martin, we knew where to go. It was the same place we’d been going since we were teenagers. Our Saint Martin was the New Jersey Shore.

We’d come in the past during breaks from work. Whenever each of us could find the same free moments, we’d do our best to meet on a skinny little island off the Jersey coast called Long Beach Island. Our stand-in for paradise. It wasn’t easy finding the time. It was even harder to get in touch with each other. The opportunities to actually meet were becoming more and more rare. We had to take them when we could even if we all knew that it was dangerous to do a trip like this so close on the heels of the jobs we just pulled only a few hours away in New York. Sometimes you just didn’t feel like running anymore.

Long Beach Island wasn’t an easy place to get to without a car. I had to fly back into the Philadelphia airport, take a train to Atlantic City, and then find a cab willing to take on a one-hour fare. I offered to pay the cabbie double since I knew there was no way he was going to get a fare coming back. It was the middle of the day. There wasn’t a line of people waiting for cabs so he reluctantly agreed. My cabbie was a large black man with a beard and short cropped hair. There was no shortage of black people in Atlantic City. You could count the number of them at Long Beach Island on one hand. They stood out. That’s why I recognized him so easily the next time I saw him.

All I had with me was a backpack with a bathing suit, a beach towel, and a couple of changes of clothes. That and about five hundred dollars in cash. It was late in the season, so the island was starting to empty out. The Jersey Shore works like a faucet. Memorial Day turns it on and the beaches get crowded and stay packed all summer. Labor Day turns it off and all that’s left is a trickle, then a drip, then the whole place empties out. It was mid-September. That was always my favorite time at the shore. The water was warm. The air was still hot and the place was quiet.

The cabbie and I didn’t talk much during the ride. I’m glad we didn’t. It would make the things I would do later much easier. When we got to the bridge that led to the island, he simply said, “Where to?” He had a slight Caribbean accent left over from a youth spent somewhere more exotic than Jersey. I hadn’t been in touch with Jared or Michael since they dropped me off at the Philadelphia airport the first time. Still, I knew where to go.

“Beach Haven,” I replied to the driver. It was always Beach Haven. It was Michael’s preference. More bars in that town than the others. More inebriated women.

“Yes, sir,” the driver said. As he drove I opened up my backpack and pulled out my bathing suit. I slipped off my dirty jeans and slipped on the bathing suit in the backseat of the car. The cabbie looked back at me in the rearview mirror and shook his head. I didn’t know what he thought I was going to do alone in the back of his cab.

“Just putting my bathing suit on,” I said, and he looked away. The sun was shining brightly down on the little island. We drove over the bridge and took a right-hand turn toward Beach Haven. Once we got there, I told him what street to turn down and asked him to drop me off at the beach.

“Thanks, pal,” I said, when I got out of the car.

“I’m not your pal,” he replied, taking my money and counting it. Great way to start a vacation, I thought. I didn’t know the half of it. I stepped out onto the hot pavement but was only two steps from the white sand that led up to the beach. In moments, my toes were digging into the fine, powderlike sand. It was even softer when we were kids, before they started pumping in other sand in the futile attempt to save the island from being washed away forever. I walked up the little path leading to the beach, over the sand dunes. The cabbie stayed and watched me until I crested the little hill. Only then did I hear him pull away.

At the top of the hill, I looked out in front of me. There was the ocean. God, it was beautiful. Every time I saw it, I felt small again. I loved that feeling. The sun beat down on the water and glistened off the waves as they curled in toward the beach. It felt like home. It was only one of two or three places in the world that gave me that feeling.

After watching the water for a few moments, I began to scan the beach for my friends. This is where we met every time—this beach. Either I’d see them or I’d lie down in the sand and wait for them to show up. I didn’t see either of them at first. The beach was still relatively crowded, with a towel or blanket every five feet or so. The image looked like it came right out of a 1950s postcard. I took the towel out of my backpack and walked down toward the water. I dropped my towel in the sand about twenty feet from the waterline and lay down. The air was warm. I think I may have fallen asleep. If I did, I just dreamed of other sandy beaches, because I don’t remember anything else. Not until Michael came up and kicked sand into my face, anyway.

“You bastard,” I said without opening my eyes, blissfully unaware of the children around me. I sprang to my feet and ran. It took me about half the beach before I caught up to Michael and tackled him into the sand. He tried to avoid it by bobbing and weaving but knew that I had more endurance than he did. Finally, I dove down toward his legs and knocked him over. Then I climbed on his back and pushed his face into the sand. “I was having a perfectly good time until you showed up,” I said to him.

“Get off me, fat-ass,” he managed to mumble through a mouthful of sand. Then I let him up and he tried to dust as much of the sand off his body as he could. The process was endless. Each wipe left a white residue. “You really know how to say hello to a guy,” he complained as he tried to get the sand off his back.

“You started it.” I felt like I was twelve years old again.

“All right, fine,” Michael replied. “Give me some love.” Then he pulled me into a big hug. I could smell the coconut odor from his suntan lotion. “Glad you could make it, Joey. We’ve come here every day for like three days now.”

“Yeah, sorry I couldn’t get here sooner,” I said. “I guess we’re not at this beach.”

“Nope. I found us a choice place on the beach down about fifteen blocks.”

“Where’s Jared?”

“He’s back at the house, making drinks, waiting for you to show your lazy ass up.” Michael took one long look at me. I stared back. All I saw was my seventeen-year-old friend, even though nearly a decade had passed since we were that age. It was like looking through a time machine. When I looked at Michael, all I saw was an innocent, happy kid—even though he definitely wasn’t innocent anymore. “So what’d you want to do?” he finally asked.

“I just want to go home,” I replied.

 

 

We walked the fifteen blocks on the beach. We were in no rush. That’s all I wanted out of the week, no rush. We walked close to the water’s edge and each time a wave rushed in, I could feel the coolness engulf my ankles. Michael ogled the women as we walked. He stared at every single woman on that beach. Neither age nor weight held him back. “Don’t you have any standards?” I asked him as he stared at a woman who must have been in her late forties as she took off her shorts and lay down on a blanket.

Michael took a step toward me and put his arm around me as we walked. “I see beauty everywhere,” he said to me with a grin.

“Right,” I replied.

“Come on, man. You have to loosen up a little. What do you think beaches are for, anyway? Ogling and being ogled—that’s the whole show, Joe.”

“That’s it, huh?”

“That’s it.” Michael laughed. “This is nothing, Joe. Wait until we get to Saint Martin. Those beaches, they’re like a three-dimensional porn magazine.” This time I laughed. “Paradise,” he finished, “Like the garden of Eden, except you don’t get booted out because your dick gets hard.” He nodded as he spoke. It sounded pretty nice.

We approached the house after about a forty-five-minute walk. I could already feel my skin sizzling beneath the sun and was ready to find some shade. Michael had gotten us a little house right on the beach. It was the top floor of a duplex. As we began to walk up the hill toward the house, I could make out Jared sitting in a chair on the porch reading, his feet up on the table in front of him. “Look what I found,” Michael shouted as soon as we were close enough for Jared to hear. Jared waved to us, using his whole arm. I waved back and watched as he put his book down and trekked inside the house.

“Place looks great,” I said to Michael.

“I’m glad you think so,” Michael replied, “because you owe me seven hundred bucks for the week.”

When we made it up to the house, Jared was back outside on the deck. He’d gone inside to grab a blender and some cocktails so that he could mix drinks. The deck was nice. From it, you could see over the sand dunes and watch the waves crash against the sand. Those waves were the only sound that made it up from the beach. The crash. Then silence. Then the slow build toward another crash.

Michael ran to the bathroom as soon as we got back, leaving me and Jared alone on the deck. I hadn’t been alone with my oldest friend in a while. “So what’s the plan?” I asked.

“Right now? Drink a little. Sit. Watch the water.” Jared smiled and picked up a shaker. He had an assortment of liquors and juices in front of him.

“And tonight?” I asked.

“Are you kidding? Michael’s been waiting all week for you to show up so that we can hit the bars together. You better not let him down.” It was a toss-away line at the time. There was no way that Jared or I could know how badly I would wind up letting Michael down.

“Well, let’s pick a mellow place tonight,” I replied. “I could use a little rest before things get crazy.”

“I think that can be arranged,” Jared said. The sun was beginning to drop toward the bay on the other side of the island, creating a glare. Even through the glare, I could see Jared smiling.

“What are you making?” I asked, watching Jared measure and poor and shake.

“Been making ’em for the past two days. If we can’t get Michael to the islands, I figured the least we could do is bring a little bit of the islands to Michael.”

“What’s in it?”

“A little rum, pineapple juice, orange juice, and some coconut cream. Big drink in the islands. You want one?” Jared started pouring the frothy drink into a cup.

“Sounds a little girlie to me. What’s it called?”

“A painkiller.”

“All right, then,” I answered. “Make mine a double.”

 

 

We drank painkillers and grilled burgers on the deck that night as the sky grew darker above us. Michael gave in and agreed to a relaxed evening after I promised that he would get to pick everything we did the following night. So, on the first night, we picked a small bar on the bay that we knew wouldn’t get crowded. When we got to the bar, it was nearly empty. They were playing Jimmy Buffet music, trying to make people forget that they were at a dumpy little bar in New Jersey. We walked in and went straight for the bar. Michael tried ordering a painkiller. The old man behind the bar looked at him like he was from another planet. He settled on a beer.

I grabbed a barstool and sat down. I didn’t plan on getting up again until we left. Michael and Jared decided to explore the place before sitting down. They didn’t make it back. Instead, they discovered an old bar game tucked away in the back. I knew Jared and Michael well enough to know that, once they found that game, they weren’t leaving it until one of them declared himself the champion of the bar. The game seemed simple enough. There was a small golden ring hanging from the ceiling by a string. The ring hung about chest high. About five feet away there was a hook screwed into a post. The object of the game was to hold the ring, place your feet behind the line taped to the floor, and try to swing the ring so that it would catch itself on the hook. It looked easy until you watched people try it. I sat there, with my drink in my hand, and watched as my two friends took turns standing behind the line and swinging the ring. It was unbelievably frustrating and I wasn’t even playing. If you aimed the ring right for the hook, it would bounce off the hook and swing back to you. Instead, you had to swing the ring to one side, so that it would pass the hook on the way up and encircle it as it began to swing back toward you.

Frustration has never been a quiet emotion for my friends. Jared and Michael’s competition started quietly enough but it didn’t take long before the two of them were louder than the music coming over the bar’s speakers. I divided my time between watching them and watching the bubbles rise up through my beer. I was perfectly happy just sitting there, continuing down my path toward debilitating drunkenness. I just wanted to let my worries melt away from me. I let my guard down. When I was on my third or fourth drink a woman sat down next to me at the bar. She looked like she was alone. She glanced over at Michael and Jared. They were tough to ignore. They’d always been tough to ignore. She looked at them and laughed and then turned toward me. “Friends of yours?” she asked.

It took me a moment to realize that she was talking to me. When I finally caught on, I tried to play it cool. “What makes you think that?” I asked. The woman was wearing a thin white tank top and a long island-print skirt. She was Asian, probably in her late twenties. She was in fantastic shape. She didn’t look like your typical Jersey girl. She didn’t look like your typical anything.

“Don’t worry. I think they’re cute,” she said to me, staring at my friends berating each other. “They’re not going to kill each other, are they?” I looked over at Jared and Michael. It was nothing I hadn’t seen before. I figured my best strategy was to try to ignore them. It was a strategy I’d used plenty of times over the past ten years.

“You here alone?” I asked. It was the alcohol talking, pumping me full of courage that I normally didn’t have.

“Maybe,” she replied. She had a strange accent. “What would you think of a woman who went to a bar alone?”

“If she looked like you?” I answered. “I’d think she was mysterious. A little pathetic, but definitely mysterious.”

“Great. Mysterious and pathetic.” She laughed.

“Hell,” I replied, “you can’t win them all.”

We sat for a few moments in silence, watching Jared and Michael argue. “So”—the woman eventually broke the silence—“do you come here often?”

I placed my drink back on the bar. “Are you trying to pick me up?”

“Not yet,” she said, smiling. She paused, biting down on the corner of her lower lip. “I should probably get to know you first.”

“And then you’ll try to pick me up?”

“Maybe, if I like what I hear.” She placed her hand on my elbow as she slid herself onto the barstool next to mine. Her skin was rougher than I’d expected but it was still warm, and my skin flared up at her touch. “So, what’s your name?”

“Joseph,” I replied, and held out my hand to shake hers. It was the first time that I’d used my real name with a woman in ages, maybe since high school. It felt good.

“Catherine,” the woman volunteered, and shook my hand.

“Where you from, Catherine?” I asked. “You’ve got a peculiar accent.”

“Yeah, yeah, my accent. There is nowhere in the world where I can go and not have people think that I have an accent.” She looked at me, taking in my entire face, looking for something. At the time, I thought that it was good sign. “I grew up in Vietnam but I went to graduate school in London.”

“You don’t see too many people with that type of pedigree at the Jersey Shore,” I offered. She laughed. I liked her laugh.

“What about you? Where are you from?” she asked.

“Right here,” I replied, not yet growing uneasy with the questions.

“Really? You’re from New Jersey?”

“Well, not New Jersey. I live just outside of Philadelphia,” I lied. Lying was easier than the truth.

“So you spend a lot of time around here?” Catherine asked, leaning into me a bit, squeezing her elbows into the sides of her breasts so that they nearly erupted out of the top of her shirt. In an instant, I could feel my pulse in my head. “I’m kind of new to the area,” she added. “I just came down from New York. Do you make it up there much?”

“Now and then,” I replied. “I have to go there on business sometimes.” I knew that I was dangerously close to the truth.

“Really? What do you do?” Catherine asked, still expertly using her cleavage to hypnotize me.

“Shill for the man,” I replied, deciding to try to get the subject off of me. “What about you?”

Catherine laughed. “No, really. What do you do? If I’m going to pick you up, I need to know that you’ve got a stable career.” She smiled at me. I never wanted her to stop smiling.

“You don’t have to worry about that,” I replied. I leaned in toward her. I was drunk and horny and out of sorts.

“I think I’ll be the judge of that,” she rebuked me. I figured that if I wanted to get in her pants, I needed to come up with a job where I made some money.

“Fine. I’m a financial consultant,” I lied. We were taught, during training, to tell people that we worked in professions that wouldn’t elicit much of a response. They suggested jobs like product managers for companies that made hangers or salesmen for plastic doorstops. Basically, we were taught to pick jobs that would effectively act as conversation enders. Of course, we were never taught how to do this and get laid at the same time. It really was a flaw in the curriculum.

Her smile broadened. “Is there lots of financial consulting in Philadelphia?”

“Big fish, small pond,” I responded.

“Wouldn’t you be better off working in New York? That’s where all the finance happens, right?” Catherine replied. I began to feel uneasy that she kept bringing up New York. “I mean, you could work downtown and live in Brooklyn. I love Brooklyn.” She held the word Brooklyn in her mouth for a moment before letting it out. “Have you been to Brooklyn?” That’s when the alarms began to go off in my head. My memory ran to the last moments I’d spent in Brooklyn. It was only a week earlier. I saw the face of the woman I’d strangled. I heard the voices of her children. Everything that I had come to the Jersey Shore to forget came rushing back to me. Catherine just sat there, staring at me, watching as the blood began to run out of my face. “Are you okay?” she asked. Her voice was cold. There was no concern in it. I felt dizzy. I needed to change the subject. I took a long swig of beer from the bottle in front of me. I tried to take a couple breaths to regain my composure. My pulse was racing. If I hadn’t been drunk or if I wasn’t so turned on, or if I hadn’t spent the day at the beach trying to forget everything about my life, maybe I would have been able to keep my cool. Have I been to Brooklyn?

“No,” I answered, trying to buy myself enough time to get my shit together. “Maybe once or twice.” I could feel myself speaking quickly, unnaturally. “I don’t really remember.” I looked over at Catherine, trying to read her response. I was looking for confusion. A normal person would have been confused by my reaction. Instead, she was simply sitting on her stool, that tight little smile still on her lips. I wanted her to stop smiling. Time to pull your shit together, I said to myself. I tried to convince myself to forget everything that I’d been taught about paranoia being your best friend. My best friends were playing ring jockey at the other end of the room. I just wanted to look at this woman and forget everything else. I let my eyes scan Catherine’s well-toned body again. She was leaning back in her chair, her eyes fixed on me, sipping her drink through a straw.

“So, you want to try your hand at this ring game?” I offered, knowing that I had to stand up before I fell off my barstool. Before Catherine had time to answer the question, I got up and began walking toward the back of the bar, toward my loud and obnoxious friends. I held out some obscure hope that she would follow me, that we’d play this silly game and I would take her home and that I would eventually wake up in the morning with her toned, naked body next to mine. Somewhere deep in my gut, I knew that wasn’t going to happen.

When I made it about halfway between the bar and my friends I stopped and looked back. Catherine was gone. She’d simply disappeared. She had been there thirty seconds ago and now there was no sign of her. My stomach dropped. I tried to wave the feeling in my stomach off as regret but I was lying to myself and I knew it. It wasn’t regret. That feeling in my gut was telling me that something was wrong. Too bad I didn’t listen.

“All right, Joe,” Jared said as I stepped toward my two old friends. “Let’s see what you can do.” He patted me on the back.

“I think the string’s too short,” Michael shouted. “Hey, barkeep, what’s the deal with this string?” The bartender didn’t answer. He just shook his head and looked away. I stepped forward and placed my feet behind the line of tape on the floor.

“Who was the beauty at the bar?” Michael asked. I took the ring in my right hand and stepped back with my left foot, as if I were about to throw a dart. “And where’d she go?” Michael laughed, suspecting that I’d simply blown it with her. He didn’t know the half of it. I closed one eye and tried to align the small ring in my hand with the hook attached to the post. The room was spinning, half because of the alcohol and half because I still couldn’t get my heart to slow down.

“Just some girl,” I replied. I let go of the ring, pushing it slightly off to the side. It swung in a slow arc to my left, swinging back toward the hook as it neared the post. The golden ring flared in the light from the bar as it began to swing back toward us. Then, with a small clink, the ring looped itself around the hook. Michael let out an incomprehensible howl. The string went slack. The ring hung there on the hook screwed into the post. Bull’s-eye.

 

 

I got up early the next morning. I weathered my headache and decided to watch the sunrise. When I was a kid, I used to get up to watch at least one sunrise each summer. I always liked watching the world wake up. The deck on the beach house was built for it. You could sit there in the morning and watch the sky lighten, hear the seagulls come to life, feel the sun on your skin when it lifted over the horizon, and still be no more than twenty feet from your bed. My plan was to head back to bed once the show was over. I still had some sleeping to do.

By morning, Catherine and the little panic attack that I’d had were nothing but faint memories. I convinced myself that I just needed more time to unwind. Watch the sunrise. Climb back in bed. Sleep until noon. I figured that was all the cure that I needed.

The sky was still a dark purple when I stepped out onto the deck. The wind was blowing off the ocean. It was cold. It may not be darkest right before dawn, but that’s definitely when it’s the coldest. I went back inside and pulled some sheets off my bed so that I could wrap them around me as I sat and stared at the horizon. Then I started my vigil, wrapped in a blanket, sitting on the deck of that old rental, waiting for the sun to come up.

The sky barely got any brighter before I had company on the porch. “Just like old times,” a voice spoke from behind me. I looked back and could see Jared standing behind the screen door. “I thought you might come out here,” Jared said.

I shrugged. “What’s the good of having a beachfront house if you’re not going to get up for the sunrise?”

“Want some company?” Jared asked.

“Just like old times,” I replied, and nodded for him to come out.

“So what is it with you and sunrises, Pony Boy?” Jared asked as he sat down in the chair next to me. I laughed. I couldn’t even remember how many sunrises Jared had watched with me. He always seemed to be doing it begrudgingly, but he always did it.

“Just something about them,” I replied. If I’d had a better answer, I would have used it.

“Someday we’ll get Michael to join us for one of these,” Jared said.

“Yeah, right. I’d never hear the end of that one.” We both laughed. I don’t think Michael had ever gotten up that early, not when he wasn’t on a job, anyway. Jared and I sat in silence for a few minutes, both watching the water like we expected something to surprise us. The thing with sunrises, though, was that there were no surprises, no matter what else was going on in your life. The sky grew lighter, from a dark purple to a deep red. I could hear the seagulls begin calling out over our heads. I never wondered where they went at night. I was used to things simply disappearing and reappearing.

Eventually, Jared broke the silence. “So, how have you been? It’s been a while, you know?”

I knew. “Yeah, it’s hard to find time,” I answered.

“You ain’t kidding.” Jared shook his head. “For real, though, are you okay? You don’t seem yourself.” There was genuine concern in Jared’s voice.

“Just tired,” I lied. I didn’t know why I was lying. I had so few people to confide in to begin with. Lying was just so easy. “I needed a little break, that’s all.”

“You’re getting old before your time,” Jared mocked.

“Maybe.” I looked over at Jared to see if his face had the same weariness as mine. It did, but he wore his differently. He didn’t look beat down like I did. Jared was a machine. “Doesn’t all this killing and running, running and killing, ever get to you? Doesn’t it just make you tired?”‘

“I’ve got moments,” Jared said. He was lying to me too. It didn’t make him tired. He was trying to make me feel better. It worked. He put his foot up on the deck’s railing and leaned back in his chair. “Sometimes it all seems so surreal, you know?” Jared crossed his arms over his chest to fight the chill in the air. “When we were fourteen, did you ever think that we’d be here one day?”

“The Jersey Shore? We were here when we were fourteen,” I joked.

Jared didn’t even pause to acknowledge my joke. He kept on with his speech. “No, I mean, here, at this place in our lives. Doing what we do.”

“No.” I shook my head. I was sure of this answer. “I can honestly say that when we were fourteen, I couldn’t have imagined that we’d grow up to do what we do. Even if I had, I’m not sure if I would have been too excited by it.” I looked out over the beach. The early-morning beachcombers were walking down along the water. A few people had come out with long fishing poles and were casting them into the tide.

“You’re lying to yourself, Joe. I know it and you know it. You would have been fucking thrilled. I know I would have been thrilled. When we were fourteen, playing basketball in your driveway, I was sure we’d end up in meaningless, dead-end jobs just like all the other losers from high school. That was if we made out at all, seeing how people in our families were dying around us and no one was willing to tell us why. Don’t forget why we became friends in the first place, Joe.”

“I remember,” I said. It was superstition that led us to each other—not ours, the other kids’. They were convinced that we were bad luck. They wouldn’t even talk to us because they thought we had some sort of death jinx.

“My mother, my brother, my uncle, your uncle, your grandparents, your father, your sister. I was pretty sure that everyone I cared about would be dead by the time I was twenty.” Jared stood up. “You want a beer? I’m going to get myself a beer.” It didn’t matter that it was around five in the morning. The beer sounded right. I nodded. Jared went into the kitchen and came back out with two bottles in his hands. He unscrewed the cap from one and handed it to me. Then he unscrewed the cap from the other and took a long swig. I wanted to hear the rest of his speech. I wanted to be convinced. “Instead, look at us now. Our lives have meaning, Joe. Do you know what most people in this world would do to have a little meaning in their lives?” He took a long swig from his beer.

“You know those classes I teach,” I said. Jared nodded. I’d told him about them before. Not every soldier taught the classes. They only picked a few of us. Neither Jared nor Michael had ever taught one. “When those kids ask why we fight, we finesse the answer. We tell them what we know works. They don’t ask for more than that.”

“That’s because they don’t need a reason, Joe. They’ve got all the reason they need burning up inside of them. When you’ve got passion, you don’t need reason. It’s only when you get old, like us, that you start asking questions. The older you get, the more your passion drains out of you and the more you look for a reason behind everything.” Jared took a swig of his beer. “You ever ask one of these old guys that you’ve stayed with when you were on a job what the War’s about?” I shook my head. I’d never thought to ask. I’d heard my share of stories, though. Everybody had. Jared laughed. “They’ll go on, man.” He shook his head. “They’ll tell you stories that’ll burn your ear off.”

“Do you believe them? The stories they tell?”

Jared thought about it for a minute. “Yeah,” he answered. “I figure you don’t get to be that old without knowing something.”

“So we’re the saviors of the world?” I said, half asking, half just letting it float out into the air. “We’re the only ones who can stop them?”

“I don’t see anyone else trying. Look, Joe, I don’t claim to know all the details but I know that the killing and the death are necessary. You know it too.” Did I? “Once we win, the world will be better off. We’ve got a responsibility.” Jared believed every word he said. I believed just enough.

“I don’t know,” I replied, “maybe I’m just running out of hate.” I took a swig of beer.

“It’s not hate, Joe. Your head is all fucked up.” He tapped the lip of his beer against my forehead. “It’s just the way it is. Hate is what I felt when I heard that one of those motherfuckers killed my little brother three weeks after his eighteenth birthday. That was hate. Hate was what you felt when you found out that your dad didn’t die in a car accident. I remember. I was there. I ran out of hate a long time ago. Hate’s got no discipline.” If there’s one thing Jared had, it was discipline.

“So what is it now?” I asked. “What keeps you going?” I thought that maybe whatever it was that kept Jared going would work for me too.

Jared gave it a quick thought before answering. “I don’t know. Knowledge. Purpose. Knowing that I have a cause. Someday we’re going to win this War and my grandkids are going to be able to grow up without being afraid and it will be because of you and me.”

“So, we kill them because they’re evil, just like we were taught when we were kids? That’s what you’re getting at?”

“Fuck, man. Do you doubt it?” Jared asked me the question and then he stared at me. If he could have found the doubt inside of me, he would have pulled it out and strangled it to death.

“I don’t know,” I replied. “You really believe that they’re evil?”

Jared looked out over the waves breaking on the beach. “Well, it’s either them or us.”

I was sick of hearing that, Maria. I was sick of hearing that it was either them or us. I was sick of hearing that it was kill or be killed. Even then, even before I met you, that didn’t make sense to me anymore. That’s not what Jared was saying, though. What Jared was saying, I had to believe. “So that’s it? That’s your purpose? Them or us? First to kill is the last to survive? I can’t find any meaning in that.”

“That’s not what I said, Joe,” Jared replied. His eyes were tight. “Don’t twist my words. You asked me if I still believed that they’re evil. Yes. Yes, I do. I have no doubt and I have no doubt because there’s just too much death for everyone to escape judgment. So it’s either them or us, Joe. I’m not saying that it’s kill or be killed. I’m saying that either they’re evil or we are, because there ain’t no way that everyone here is innocent. And I know for damn sure that I’m not evil, Joe. And I know that you’re not evil either.” He pointed his beer toward me. “I know you. I’ve known you since before you knew about this War. I’m certain that they’re evil because I know that you’re not.” I had to believe it, Maria. I didn’t have any choice. He had to be right. If he was wrong, I was lost. “There’s not going to be peace until we win this.”

“Or they do,” I added.

“Or they do,” Jared repeated, nodding. Then we sat in silence again for a long time. We sat and watched the sky go from red to pink. We sat and watched the sunlight begin to reflect off the low-hanging clouds before we could see even a sliver of sun. We sat and watched as the beach started growing crowded with people there just to watch the sun come up, like it did every other day. Then we watched as the sun first peeked over the horizon and slowly rose up into the sky. It always amazed me how fast the sun seemed to move when it just crested the horizon. Jared and I sat together and watched the world change. I looked over at him and knew that he’d only pretended to be doing this for me. He liked watching the new day be born as much as I did. When it was over, when it had officially gone from dawn to morning, Jared stood up. “I’m going back to bed, and I suggest you do the same,” he said. “Otherwise Michael’s going to drive us crazy tonight.”

“Yeah,” I replied. “I’m going to follow you in a minute.” I wanted another minute to put my thoughts together. “This was good, Jared,” I said to him as he pulled the screen door open. “I needed this. Thanks.”

“Anytime, Joe,” Jared said. His voice was strong. “Sometimes you just need to be reminded, you know? We’re doing a good thing, Joe. I know it. You know it too. I know you do. Don’t let yourself doubt it. If you start to feel doubt, you have to bury it. When you do what we do, doubt’ll get you killed.” Jared was serious, as serious as I had ever heard him in my life.

“I know,” I replied. He was right. The problem was that burying the doubt wasn’t as simple as Jared made it sound.

 

 

As we had agreed the day before, Jared and I let Michael plan our evening on the second night. He spent half the day talking about it while all I tried to do was while away the hours on the porch, watching the day go by. I left the house once in the middle the day to go jump into the ocean and cool down. It felt good to be in the ocean. It felt good to be reminded how small I was.

So that night we headed to the southern end of Beach Haven for dinner. We didn’t have reservations, but Michael figured he could get us a table at one of the fancy restaurants on the bay by greasing the hostess. Besides, he liked using his attempted bribe as an opening gambit to try to get the hostess’s number. The plan was for an upscale dinner followed by a trip to an overcrowded Beach Haven bar with live music and drunk girls. “College girls,” Michael kept intoning, like the words were full of magic. Michael dressed in his summer best, donning a bright red, floral print Hawaiian shirt and a pair of linen pants. He wore enough cologne to subdue an elephant. Michael hadn’t grown up with me and Jared. I didn’t meet Michael until two weeks after my sixteenth birthday. That was the day of my initiation. That was the day Michael and I sat next to each other while some stranger told us that people wanted to kill us and that, if we didn’t want to die, we’d have to kill them first. We went in innocent and came out something completely other than innocent—not experienced, just not innocent anymore. When the class disbanded, each of us was specifically told not to contact or seek out anyone else from the class. It’s dangerous, we were told. It could get people killed. Michael didn’t care. He found me. He couldn’t handle his new knowledge alone. He barely had any family left. He didn’t have anyone that could really help him prepare for what was next. Michael needed friends. No rules were going to stop him from finding them. He chose me, whether I wanted to be chosen or not. A couple weeks after Michael found me, I found out that Jared was one of us too.

“You guys ready for a crazy night?” Michael clapped his hands together and began rubbing them like he was trying to stay warm.

“Smells like you are,” I responded, laughing.

Jared walked up to Michael, took a big whiff, and looked at him. “You’re staying at least ten feet away from me all night.”

“This is my lucky cologne,” Michael said. “You guys’ll see, once the booze starts flowing and the music starts pumping, women will be drawn to this scent.”

“Like flies to shit,” Jared said. “Can we eat before I get another whiff of Michael and I lose my appetite?” We could walk to the street where all the good restaurants were. We had to cross over the island, but that didn’t take long. The island was only three blocks wide. We made our way over to the bay and walked another ten blocks south to get to the restaurant Michael wanted to try. We walked past the amusement park and the water slides and at least three miniature golf courses. Beach Haven was teeming with families, little kids, flashing lights, and ringing bells. The music from the carousel could be heard for blocks. We walked past at least ten kids playing Skee-Ball. The restaurant wasn’t right on the strip, so by the time we reached it, the streets had quieted down quite a bit. We could still look behind us and see the lights on the top of the Ferris wheel but the street in front of us was quiet. It was a small street with three or four seafood restaurants facing the bay. Michael made us walk by each restaurant and look inside before picking one. He made his choice based on which hostess he thought was the most attractive. The place he chose was pricy and crowded but Michael was able to get us a table. Sometimes, he just got the job done.

“You get her number too?” I asked after the hostess showed us to our table and started walking away. Michael didn’t say anything. He just smiled a big goofy smile.

“I’m not sitting next to Michael,” Jared said before we sat down. “I want to be able to smell my food.” I don’t even think he was kidding anymore. Our table was in the back corner of the restaurant, only a few feet away from the railing separating the restaurant from the bay. From our table, we could sit and eat and look at the reflection of the stars rippling in the water. When the wind shifted just right, the smell of Michael’s cologne would be mercifully replaced by the salty smell of the bay. It was just starting to get dark when we ordered our drinks. I was sitting with my back to the wall. Michael was on my left-hand side with his back to the water and facing the entrance of the restaurant. Jared was on my right-hand side, his back to the door, facing the water. I had a straight view of most of the restaurant. While I’d have to strain to see the entrance, I could see all of the seating area and could make out about half of the bar. The room was in high spirits. The light outside was fading quickly. The room was full of the sounds of glasses clinking, silverware rapping against plates, and pointless vacation chatter. We ordered our food, fish, clams, crab claws. We ignored the prices and just let loose. I’m glad we did, since it was the last meal that the three of us would ever have together. Besides, we never did pay the bill.

When we got our drinks, Michael lifted his glass and said, “So, boys, what should we drink to?”

“World peace,” I offered, and we all laughed. It was an old joke, older than we were. I’d heard my parents say it. We tried to avoid talking about the War but our conversation kept circling back to it. It always did. Each of us told the others about rumors we’d heard—recent victories, recent defeats, people we knew who’d been promoted up the ranks, people we knew who’d been killed. We didn’t talk about why we fought. We’d had that conversation too many times already. It never went anywhere. We’d all heard the theories, some theories more than others. In one, there were originally five groups fighting each other. We were the only two left. In another, we had once been slaves and our enemy the slave masters. When we revolted, we won our freedom and they let us go. The problem was that as soon as we left, they turned around and began enslaving other people. So we came back to fight them once and for all, to end their reign, to keep the world free. That’s the version we heard the most—probably because it was the one where we were the most heroic. We all believed that someday we’d be told the whole story. The rumor was that if you rose high enough in the ranks, they told you everything. Sometimes that was the only reason I cared about being promoted.

The food came and we just kept talking. The talk slowly turned from the War to us reminiscing about the good times we’d had when we were young and carefree. Even with the War hanging over our heads, when we were seventeen we felt like we’d be seventeen forever. Those were some of the best times of my life. Then, one at a time, we turned eighteen.

When we were about halfway through our meal, she walked in. Michael had been watching the traffic going in and out of the restaurant since the minute we sat down, hoping he could get two girls’ phone numbers before we even got to the bar. He noticed her right away. She was hard to forget. “Hey, your little friend is here,” he said to me.

“What are you talking about?” I asked. It took me a few seconds before it dawned on me. Michael was lifting his hand to wave her over to our table when my reflexes kicked in. I grabbed his hand before he was able to get it above his shoulder and slammed it down into the table. It made a loud banging sound against the wood. A few of the people at the surrounding tables turned and glared at us.

“Jesus Christ, what the fuck was that for?” Michael asked, twisting his wrist, checking to see if I had broken something.

“No waving,” I ordered. “Answer my question. Who is my little friend?” I didn’t dare look for myself.

“That hot Asian woman from the bar last night,” Michael replied. “What the fuck’s your problem? Did you strike out that bad?”

“Has she seen us?” I asked, keeping my voice quiet. My gut was talking to me again. I was determined to listen to it this time. This was wrong. There were no coincidences, not in our line of work.

“I don’t know,” Michael answered. His voice dropped, following my lead. “I can’t really tell. If she has, she’s not acting like she has.”

“Act like you haven’t seen her,” I said under my breath. “Better yet, act like you don’t even recognize her.” It was another order. I didn’t pretend that it wasn’t.

“Seriously, Joe, what’s going on here?” Jared asked.

I began shaking my head, trying to decipher what this could all mean. “Bad feelings,” I replied. “I just got a bad vibe from her, that’s all. She was asking me a lot of questions.”

“Questions about what?” Jared pressed. It didn’t take him long to become deadly serious. It never did.

“About Brooklyn,” I replied. The word immediately resonated with both my friends.

“What about Brooklyn?” Jared pressed further. He leaned back in his chair, faking a smile in case people were watching us. We all began acting as casual as possible. Only our words were full of panic. We just had to hope that no one was listening.

“Nothing specific. She was smooth about it. That’s what worries me. She kept asking me about how much time I spent in New York and then she just slipped in how much she loved Brooklyn and asked me if I’d ever been there.”

“Well, that doesn’t tell us much,” Michael replied. “Sounds like normal conversation to me.”

“Yeah, it sounded that way to me too. But it didn’t feel normal.” I looked at Michael again. “What’s she doing now?” Michael was the only one who could watch her without it being obvious that we’d spotted her.

“She’s sitting at the bar. She ordered a drink.”

“What’s she drinking?” It was an important question. If she was drinking alcohol, then we would know that I was overreacting. If she were on the job, she’d stay sober.

“Clear drink. Regular glass. Lime,” Michael replied. “Could be gin or vodka. Could be club soda.” Michael knew the score too.

“Why didn’t you say something last night?” Jared asked.

“Because last night, it didn’t feel right. Tonight, two nights in a row—tonight it feels dangerous. What’s she doing, Michael?”

“Not much, just sitting there, nursing her drink. A couple times, though, she’s made eye contact with the big black dude in the corner.”

“You ever see him before?” I asked Michael.

“Nope. First time. Can you make him out?”

I picked up my beer, pretended to take a sip, and leaned back in my chair to see if I could get a good look at the man standing in the corner. Then I saw him. I recognized him immediately. “We’re made,” I said.

“What do you mean?” Michael asked. “You know that guy?”

“Yeah, that’s my cabbie. He drove me here from Atlantic City. We’re made. No doubt about it.” I nearly took a real swig of beer. It was a reflex. Instead, I just pressed the bottle to my lips, not letting a drop slip through. Then I placed the beer back on the table. I didn’t know what would be in store that night, but I knew that I needed to keep all my faculties. “So, what’s our plan?” I asked. Michael and I both looked to Jared. That’s how it was. Michael was the party. Jared had the plans. I still haven’t figured out what my part was.

“Does she know about us?” Jared asked, motioning to him and Michael.

“Well, if she didn’t before, she probably would have guessed by now since we’re sitting at the same fucking table.” I said. “But, yeah, I told her last night that you guys were my friends.”

“We’re going to have to split up,” Jared said without any hesitation.

“There’s another guy at the other end of the bar,” Michael interrupted. “He’s definitely with her too. Late thirties, white, gray before his time but in pretty good shape, small scar under his left eye.” I again took a fake sip from my drink but I couldn’t get a good look at the new guy. From what I could see, I didn’t recognize him. “Splitting up sounds like a bat-shit stupid idea to me,” Michael said. His face betrayed his emotions for the first time since we’d started playing our little game of pretend.

“Easy, Michael,” I said. “Let’s not give anything away just yet. Why do you think we should split up, Jared?”

“It’s the only chance we have here. We can’t fight them. We have to run. If we run together we all get caught.”

“I don’t see why we can’t fight them,” Michael replied. “We split up and the odds of all three of us making it out are pretty slim.” Michael looked at me when he said this. We all figured the same thing. Catherine, or whatever her name was, came looking for me. I was the primary target.

“We can’t fight them, Michael,” Jared responded. “There are three of them that we know about. There may be more. There are definitely only three of us. Plus, they came here looking for us, so we know that they’re going to be armed. Are you armed, Michael?” Jared was just stating the facts.

“I’ve got my scuba knife,” Michael said, resignation creeping into his voice. One knife between us with a two-inch blade, it wasn’t enough.

Jared shook his head. “Well, I guarantee you that they’ve got more than a scuba knife. They’re on a hunting expedition. You go looking for elephants, you bring an elephant gun.”

“Jared’s right,” I finally chimed in. It’s not what I wanted to say. If I was going to go down, I didn’t want to have to do it alone, but Jared was right. The smart move here was to split up and run. Get out of the restaurant, off the island, and as far away as we possibly could. It was becoming clear to me that vacationing so close to our last hits was a mistake. There was no reason to make another one.

“Fine. Let’s pick a meeting point, though,” Michael conceded. “We need to check in with each other once we’ve all escaped.”

“We’ll meet at the Borgata in Atlantic City,” Jared said. “If we can get off the island, we can get to AC. Meet at the hundred-dollar blackjack tables at three A.M. Anybody doesn’t make it by then, we leave without them. There’s only one way off this island. If we’re not off by then, it probably means we’re not getting off.”

“Okay,” I said. “Jared leaves first. You get up go to the bathroom and keep going. They’re unlikely to get suspicious until the second person leaves. That’ll buy you time to figure out how to get us out of Jersey and as far away from here as possible.” Jared nodded. It was almost imperceptible.

“See you guys at three A.M.,” he said. With that, without another word, Jared got up, looked me in the eyes for a second, and walked toward the men’s room. His eyes were steel. There was no doubt in them. After about two minutes a young guy with dark hair got up from the bar to go to the bathroom.

“There it is,” Michael said. “The dark-haired guy there is the fourth. He’s going to check on Jared. I think that’s all of them.” Michael looked at me. “What now?” I knew what he meant. He meant, now that Jared is gone, what’s the plan? Running just wasn’t Michael’s style. He wasn’t going to do it unless I told him to.

“I don’t know,” I said, trying to devise a plan in my head. Jared was the planner. Jared was gone. “We’ve got to move before the dark-haired guy gets back from the john and lets the rest of them know that Jared isn’t in there. We’ve got to go together or the second person to leave is a sitting duck. And we can’t just walk out of this place.”

“It’s like the end of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.” Michael smiled. I don’t know how he did it. Michael had something I never had. “I know what to do. Once we get outside, I’m going left and you go right. But until we get out the front door, follow my lead.” I nodded, relieved that Michael was taking the reins. Michael stood up and started walking toward Catherine. I had no idea what he had planned, but I followed him.

“Hey,” Michael called out to Catherine before he even reached the bar. “Aren’t you the woman who walked out on my friend last night?” He walked right up to her and put his left arm around her waist. “My buddy here’s been busted up about it all day.” They weren’t expecting this. Catherine shot a frightened glance at the gray-haired guy at the other end of the bar. I kept looking toward the bathroom to see when the dark-haired agent would come back.

Catherine tried to keep her cool. She was trying to buy them a second or two to figure out what to do. “Your friend didn’t seem that interested last night. Something seemed to get under his collar. Perhaps you’d be up for some fun instead?” Her accent was even thicker than it had been the night before.

“My friend?” Michael asked. Just then I saw the guy with the dark hair coming back from the bathroom. He was walking quickly. What little cover we had left was just about to be blown. I signaled to Michael by giving him a quick nod. “You must be mistaken, baby,” he said to Catherine. “My friend’s as cool as they come.” With that Michael grabbed a beer bottle off the bar and smashed it as hard as he could into Catherine’s face. Michael’s move was quick and unexpected. I heard a crunch as Catherine’s nose collapsed and saw blood shoot out from beneath the beer bottle. Beer bottles don’t break when they hit people’s heads like they do in the movies. In real life, beer bottles are stronger than most people’s skulls. You might as well be hitting someone in the head with a baseball bat. Catherine dropped instantly to the floor. Michael and I ran. In seconds, the two of us were out on the street, running. I went right. Michael went left. Michael’s little plan worked perfectly. His attack had accomplished two things. First, it created a diversion. There was enough of a ruckus in the restaurant to buy us a couple moments’ head start. Second, it brought their numbers down from four to three. I looked back once after I started running to see if anyone had made it out of the bar yet. The only person that I recognized was Michael, hightailing it in the other direction. He never looked back. One of the waiters from the restaurant ran out in the street and shouted, “Stop them!” but his shout simply added to the chaos. All these people, the regular people, were on vacation. They weren’t prepared to play hero. One down, I thought as I ran. Michael had just improved our odds of making it out of this alive.

I knew that the commotion back at the restaurant would only buy us a minute or two. The people who were after us were professionals. Their movements were coordinated. They knew what they were doing. I just wanted to create as much distance between the restaurant and me as possible, so I ran as fast as I could. The island thinned out at its ends. I was close enough to the southern tip of the island that the road I was on simply ended, running straight into the bay. I had to make a left turn and head toward the one road in the middle of the island that kept going south. When I did, I took a second glance back at the scene. I was already over a half mile from the restaurant. Night had fallen. The sky was moonless and the part of the island I was on had grown almost completely dark except for the light on the top of the Ferris wheel. Looking back, the light from the restaurant illuminated the street enough that I could make out a crowd of people milling about the outside. It was utter confusion. I didn’t slow my pace as I turned the corner, giving me only a split second to survey the chaos. That split second was enough time for me to see the dark-haired agent, framed by the mass of people behind him, running after me at full speed. He was already only about a quarter of a mile behind me and he was gaining on me.

Once I turned the corner and I knew that I was out of his view, I began looking around for anything that I could use to aid my escape. If the dark-haired agent knew where I was, then there was little question that his friends would know soon too. Up ahead, I spotted a small red bicycle with a basket attached to the front leaning against one of the little houses that lined the road. I reached for it, swung it into the street, threw my legs over the seat, and began to pedal as fast as I could. There was no way that he was going to catch me on foot now. Still, his friends were sure to have a car, so I needed to find a place to hide, and fast.

As I pedaled, the streets grew even darker. The blackness was only intermittently broken up by a random porch light. As the island grew darker it also grew quieter. I was nearing its end where the road just stops. In front of me was the long sandy southern tip of the island. On one side was the ocean; on the other was the bay. There was nothing in between but sand. The farther along you moved the thinner the beach became until there was no sand left and the bay and the ocean became one. I had no time to look back; looking back could get me killed. I just moved forward. I didn’t think. It would have been safer to duck into one the houses, to hide where there were other people. But I wasn’t thinking. I was just trying to move and I was moving straight into a dead end where there would be no place for me to hide. Suddenly, out of the darkness, I began to hear the loud revving of a car engine. It was moving fast. It was the only sound that I could hear other than the sound of the crashing waves. I heard the car skid around a turn and knew that it wouldn’t be long before they could see me. I just kept pedaling. There was a gate at the end of the road and some Do Not Enter signs. I ditched the bike and jumped over the gate and ran again.

In seconds, I was surrounded on all sides by white sand. I could see the bay on my right side and could hear the waves from the ocean on my left. I took a turn and started running toward the ocean. I thought the sound of the waves might cover the sound of my breathing. The ocean was as black as oil, reflecting back the moonless sky. Looking out into the water, the only lights I could see were the tiny lights of fishing boats drifting miles out over the water. As I neared the edge of the water, the rumbling of the waves got louder. It was high tide and the water here was rougher than anywhere else on the island. I was getting tired but I knew that I’d be caught soon if I slowed down or if I didn’t find a place to hide. Only seconds later I heard the roar of the car engine again, skidding to a stop at the end of the road. They were right behind me. I only had a moment to hide or I was as good as dead. My eyes scanned the beach but it was empty. There were a few dunes and some dune grass but nowhere to hide. I looked back again at the pitch black water. The ocean was my only chance. I broke into a run toward the water. I didn’t have time to ditch my shirt or my sandals. I simply dove forward as soon as I felt the water brush against my toes. I dove straight into a wave. It tried to push me back but I pulled myself forward through the water. Then I swam. My sandals were lost within the first four strokes. I knew that I could only afford a few full strokes before Catherine’s friends made it to the beach. I’d have to stop swimming or they’d see me. Then my only hope would be to quietly drift out to sea.

I took about twelve full strokes, putting a good hundred yards between me and the beach. Then I stopped. I floated in choppy seas, bouncing up and down on the waves. I had gotten out past the breakers so that the waves were breaking between me and the shore. I turned to see if they had made it to the beach yet. Who were these people? I sank down deep into the water, floating with just my eyes and my nose exposed, just enough to see and breathe. The water here was deep. I let my feet dangle straight below me and wasn’t able to touch the bottom.

I had stopped swimming just in time. As I turned, I saw the first of them step out of the darkness. It was the dark-haired agent, followed quickly by the cabbie and the guy with the gray hair. They hadn’t left anyone behind with Catherine. Nobody chased Michael. I was glad for him. They all carried flashlights. The light from their flashlights made it easier for me to identify each of them on the dark beach. They immediately spread out, shining the flashlights over every sand dune to see if I was cowering behind one. It only took them seconds to realize that I wasn’t on the beach. I stayed as still in the water as possible. I could make out from their movements that the guy with the gray hair was the leader. Each of the other two would move to a different part of the beach and then report back to him, letting him know that they hadn’t found anything. I watched each flashlight as it danced along the beach. The guy with the gray hair simply stood there, trying to assess the situation.

Then I saw the cabbie walk to the edge of the water and bend down to get a closer look at something. I was too low in the water to see what he had found. After a moment of investigation, he hurried back to the leader. I couldn’t hear a thing over the crashing of the waves. All I could do was watch them and try to figure out what they were saying.

The cabbie was now holding something in each of his hands, carrying his flashlight under his armpit. The leader moved the beam of his flashlight toward the item. The cabbie was carrying my sandals. They had washed back up on shore. The leader wasted no time.

“He’s in the water,” he yelled. I could hear him shouting over the crashing waves. He wanted me to hear him. He wanted me to know that they were onto me. He immediately began moving the beam of his flashlight over the top of the water. As it neared me, I dove down beneath the surface. I must have been in at least fifteen feet of water because even after I dove down, I couldn’t touch the bottom. I kept my eyes open under the water. The salt stung but I needed to see. I didn’t dare close my eyes. I knew that the water would be dark, but I didn’t realize how dark. I felt like I was floating in space, surrounded by nothingness. All I could see around me and below me was darkness. When peering up toward the surface of the water, I thought that I could make out the refraction of the light from the flashlights as they scanned the surface of the water but I wasn’t sure. I had to come up for breath but I had to stay hidden. I waited for a wave to pass. The wave would be my shield. I’d come up for air behind it. I felt a wave move past me like a ghost and then I surfaced quickly, took a another deep breath of air, and resubmerged.

I just floated there, motionless in the darkness. I couldn’t see anything but I could hear strange sounds erupting from the black water. There was a constant ringing in my ears, which I assumed was just my ears adjusting to the water pressure. Over the ringing, however, I could hear the sound of the sand moving along the ocean floor with the currents. It sounded like sandpaper rubbing against wood. I could hear the waves breaking along the beach, like thunder in the distance. Then there were other sounds that I didn’t recognize, sounds of thumping or thrashing in the darkness not too far away from me. I felt like I was trapped in a nightmare. I tried to ignore the sounds. I tried to keep my eyes on the light moving along the surface of the water so that I could time my breaths. I didn’t want to gasp for air when I came up for fear that they might hear me. I waited for another wave that could protect me. Again, I felt it blow by me in the water. I lifted barely more than my mouth out of the water, took another deep breath of air, and sank back down into the abyss.

This went on for another five minutes before the lights abruptly stopped moving. I carefully lifted my head out of the water, wondering what they would do next. I wasn’t hopeful that they would give up their search. I knew that they had come too far for that. I wondered how they had found us. I imagine that my cabbie was the one who had alerted the others after picking me up. If that was true, then someone was looking for me. I slowly lifted my head above the water again. I was getting tired from treading water in the waves. The three men huddled up on the beach, planning their next move. All I could hear was the crashing waves.

After a few minutes, the guy with the dark hair and my cabdriver stripped off their shoes and began walking toward the water. They were coming in after me. The leader stayed on the beach. He kept moving the beam from his flashlight over the surface of the water. As his underlings waded into the water, I could see the leader pull a handgun out from the back of his shorts. Now it was just a waiting game.

Once the cabdriver and the dark-haired agent entered the ocean, I knew that I had the advantage over them. I knew where they were. To them, I was still a phantom. As long as I didn’t lose sight of them in the darkness, all I had to do was move through the water quietly and stay out of their view. As long as I could stay quiet and keep from being seen, I was safe. It was a strategic mistake on their part. They should have just stayed on the beach. They should have sat on the beach until morning and hoped that I didn’t swim off into the night. I’d be a sitting duck in the light.

The dark-haired agent swam off to the right, swimming freestyle with his head out of the water. He stopped every few strokes to look around. I could see the knife he was carrying in his right hand. The cabbie started swimming straight for me. I had gotten lucky. The cabbie didn’t appear to be nearly as strong a swimmer as the guy with the dark hair. The cabbie was fresh, though, and I had already been treading water for some time. As the cabbie made his way farther off the beach he became more difficult to see. His dark skin worked as a camouflage against the black water. I did my best to follow his movement through the waves, to catch glimpses when I could of the whites of his eyes. If I lost sight of him, it would be difficult to regain a visual unless he made some sort of commotion. I couldn’t see if he was holding a weapon, but I knew that he must be. He wouldn’t have come in the water without one.

Avoiding the swimmers would have been easy if the leader hadn’t kept moving the beams from his flashlight over the water. He was using all three flashlights. He held two of the flashlights in his left hand, and the other flashlight in his right. So I had to stay quiet, avoid the beams of light, and also keep my eye on the cabdriver all at once. Every so often, as a beam of light approached me, I would slip quietly under the water and into the darkness. I tried staying submerged for as short an interval as possible because I didn’t want to lose sight of the cabbie’s eyes. The cabbie would take three strokes and then he would stop and look around him. I didn’t want to move too quickly for fear that he might hear me. I just floated, shifting my movement ever so slightly so that I would stay clear of his line of sight.

The cabbie quickly closed to within about twenty feet of me. As he swam, I moved farther off to one side of him. I soon realized that I was actually moving back in toward the beach. A beam of light began to move toward me, so I quietly ducked back underwater. When I pulled my head out of the darkness, only seconds later, I was only about ten feet from the cabbie, floating directly behind him. I wanted to create more distance and began to slowly and quietly swim backward away from his bulking figure. Moving closer into shore was a mistake. I was moving back into the breaking waves. In all my effort to watch the cabbie and the moving lights, I neglected the most powerful thing of all, the ocean. Suddenly, a wave came from out of the blackness. It knocked me over and sucked me down into the depths of the darkness. I completely lost my bearings once I was under the water. The wave flipped me over at least once. For a few seconds at least, I didn’t know which direction to go in to get back to the surface. I just struggled against the currents. Finally, I was able to figure out which way was up and pulled my head back up into the night air. I gasped for breath as I surfaced. The cabbie heard me. He quickly turned toward me. I don’t think that he was sure of what he heard. He just knew that he heard something. I caught a quick glimpse of the whites of his eyes. I saw confusion in them. I ducked my head back under the water and swam off to one side, trying to lose him again. I took two or three strong pulls with my arms and lifted my head for a breath. That’s when another wave came out of the darkness.

I managed to keep my head above it this time, but there was no way to do that and stay hidden. I was giving myself away. My heart started beating fast. I couldn’t see the waves until they were nearly on top of me. I tried ducking my head back under the water to hide but I had no breath left. I had to get to the surface of the water. I had to breathe. I pulled my head above the water again and gasped loudly for air.

The cabbie heard my gasp again and this time, he was sure of what it was. He turned toward me in the water. There was about fifteen feet between us. “Got him!” he shouted as loudly as he could manage, his voice full of a hunter’s excitement. Within seconds one of the flashlight beams was shining directly on the cabbie while another moved along the surface of the surrounding water, searching for me. The cabbie’s eyes became large as he lifted his arms to start swimming toward me. The blade of a knife he was holding in his hand glimmered in the light of the flashlight. I was too out of breath to go back under the water, breathing deeply and trying to get air back in my system before another wave pulled me down. The cabbie just kept coming toward me, swimming in the middle of the beam of light. Just then there was another rumble. It came from directly behind the cabbie. He had swum right into the breakers too. This time, with the light shining on him, I could see the wave. It was moving toward us quickly. The cabbie heard it and turned toward the oncoming wave. It struck him and pulled him under. I was able to duck the wave, having seen it coming. That’s when I saw my opening. I had one chance and I wasn’t going to miss it. I waited for the cabbie to pull his head back out of the water. I knew he’d be disoriented and out of breath. I took three strong strokes toward him, entering the beam of light from the flashlight for a moment. Then I grabbed him around his neck from behind with my right arm, and dragged him under the water.

It was eerie, being weightless, wrestling in the darkness. All the sounds that I heard earlier were gone, replaced only with the sounds of our own thrashing. I squeezed around the cabbie’s neck with my arm, trying to choke him before we both drowned. I pushed everything else from my mind. I forgot where I was. I forgot that I was floating in darkness. I forgot about the waves rolling above us. I concentrated every bit of energy I had into squeezing the life out of the man who had come hunting for me. “It’s either us or them,” I remembered Jared saying; only, this time it wasn’t about right and wrong. I didn’t have time for considerations of good and evil. This time it was about survival. It was instinct. At that moment, I knew for sure that I wanted to live even though, for the life of me, I couldn’t think of a single reason why. The cabbie was trying to pull my arm away from his neck, so I grabbed my arm with my free hand and pulled it even tighter across his throat. I was sure I had more air in my lungs than the cabbie. I was sure that, if I could keep him underwater, I could outlast him. I could feel him getting weaker with each passing moment. He took his knife and began to stab at my right forearm. I could feel the tip of the knife piercing the skin on my arm. The cabbie couldn’t move the knife fast enough through the water to do too much damage. He soon realized that stabbing wasn’t working, so he began to saw into the back of my hand with the knife. The pain was intense, the newly opened wound immediately becoming flush with salt water. After only a few strokes over the skin on my hand, I could feel the knife scraping against bone. Unfortunately for the cabbie, the pain helped to keep me focused. As the pain increased, I simply pulled my arm in tighter, knowing that the sooner the cabbie died, the sooner the pain would stop. I closed my eyes as tight as I could and bit down on the inside of my cheek. The sawing became less intense. Then it stopped altogether. The body in my arms went limp under the water. The cabbie was dead.

I let the body go and it began to float away from me in the darkness. In a heartbeat or two, the body vanished in the blackness as if it had never existed. Then everything came back to me and I remembered where I was. I was underwater. I had been underwater for a few minutes now and I needed to breathe. There were still two people above the surface trying to kill me. I was bleeding and tired.

During our struggle, the waves had pushed me and the cabbie even closer to the shoreline. When I kicked my feet to try to swim to the surface, they began knocking against the ocean’s sandy bottom. I pushed myself up off the sand and headed toward the water’s surface. When my head cracked through the surface, I took a deep gasp of the cool night air. I was spent. I breathed in and then I simply leaned back and floated for a moment in the water. I had floated to within twenty feet of the beach, to within twenty feet of the man on the beach with the gun who wanted to kill me. I couldn’t move. After only a second’s respite, I felt a hand grab my hair. The hand began pulling me toward the shore. I was glad to get away from the dark water, glad to get away from the waves. Dying on the beach seemed pleasant by comparison.

The dark-haired agent stopped swimming after a few minutes and began walking in the shallow water. I was still too tired to budge. I simply floated on my back as he dragged me along the surface of the water by my hair. It didn’t hurt until my body hit the beach. When we got to the beach, he just continued to drag me along the sand by the clump of my hair that he held in his fists. Now there was pain. The pain helped me to regain consciousness. Still, I didn’t fight. It was pointless now. I was trying to conserve energy. I was hoping there would be one last chance for survival. I just needed an opening.

Eventually, the dark-haired agent let go of my hair and dropped me back down onto the sand. A moment later, the gray-haired leader was shining a flashlight in my face with one hand and pointing his gun at me with the other. The light from the flashlight was blinding. My eyes had gotten used to the darkness. “Where’s Trevor?” I heard a voice behind the light say to me. I assumed Trevor was the cabdriver.

“Shark food,” I mumbled.

“Yeah?” the leader spoke, barely acknowledging that his colleague was dead. “Well, you’re next.” Then I saw a shadow move quickly into the light. It was the heel of a shoe. Before I even had time to process the information, it smashed hard into my nose. I was dazed for a second. They flipped me over. Someone pushed my face into the sand, pulled my hands behind my back, and tethered my wrists together with a plastic ring. This was all done in one motion, in about five seconds. They had done this before.

Once my hands were secured behind my back, the gray-haired man flipped me over again. I spit the sand out of my mouth and tried to get a good look at him. I’d never seen him before, not in person. Maybe I’d seen a picture. I couldn’t remember. He glared into my face as if he were trying to read something.

“You killed my wife, you son of bitch.” I had seen a picture. It was in the profile of my last hit. I remembered what Jared had told me. I had killed that woman in Brooklyn to send a message to her husband. He was one of their top soldiers. He’d killed eight of our men last year alone—eight that we knew of. My name was about to be added to a very distinguished list.

I began to regain my breath, and with it some of my composure. “How many people have you killed?” I asked him.

He thought for a moment. “More than you.” He glared at me, his face full of venom. “I’m sure of that.” He gazed down at the gun in his hand. “I don’t remember exactly how many.” I could see his chest moving up and down as he breathed. His body was full of adrenaline. “Eventually, they all just start to run into one another. I do remember some of them, though.” He stared at me with a sick glint in his eye. “And I’m definitely going to remember you.” Then he turned to the dark-haired agent, who was standing next to him, dripping wet. “Steve, give me your knife.” Steve held the knife out in front of him. The leader took it and handed Steve the gun. Then he turned back to me. “I’d tell you to say your prayers, kid, but five minutes into this, and you won’t need me to remind you. Stand up,” he ordered. I struggled to my feet. He took a step toward me. I closed my eyes to prepare myself for the pain. I didn’t know what he had planned. I only knew that this was going to hurt and that it wasn’t going to be quick. I took one last deep breath of air, knowing that it might be the last pain-free breath I ever took. I didn’t think about death, just pain. I could feel the ocean breeze brush by my face. I could smell the scent of the salt water blowing in from the sea. Then, from somewhere, wafting through the salty air, I could make out another scent. It was the smell of cheap cologne.

My eyes still closed, I heard a shout come from off in the distance, a maniacal, madman’s yell. It got closer with each passing second. I opened my eyes and looked just in time to see Michael flying through the air, his arms stretched out in front of him like Superman in flight. He’d come back for me. I told you he didn’t like to run. He tackled the dark-haired agent and wrestled him to the ground. Michael had his scuba knife in his hand. The gray-haired man looked toward them for a second, and as he did, I dug my toes into the sand. When he turned to look back at me, I could see in his eyes that he still meant to kill me, even if it was the last thing he ever did. I was supposed to have sent him a message by killing his wife. Apparently, he had gotten the message. He lunged toward me with the knife. Right at that moment, I kicked up my leg and flung a footful of sand in his face. He flinched back as the sand hit him in both of his eyes. Then, before he could open his eyes again I kicked him as hard as I could in the groin, sending him crouching down on his hands and knees in pain. With my hands tied behind my back, I wasn’t able to keep my balance. I fell back into the sand.

Suddenly, the gun went off, a loud bang echoing through the quiet island night. I looked over to see Michael standing over the dark-haired agent’s lifeless body. My friend had won. Just then, our last remaining enemy, the leader, leapt on top of me, full of rage. With my hands tied behind my back, I had only my feet to defend myself. I was somehow able to flip him over me once with my legs. In seconds, he was back on top of me, swinging wildly at me with his knife. Michael had the gun now but he couldn’t pull the trigger without risking shooting me. Instead, Michael rushed over, grabbed the man with the gray hair by the shoulder, and, using all the strength he could muster, pulled him away from me, gun drawn the whole time. The leader’s body twisted as Michael pulled him off me and he swung his right hand around and plunged his knife deep into Michael abdomen. While the leader’s body was turned away from me, I planted a foot in his ribs, sending him sprawling down into the sand. Now that the leader and I were separated, Michael lifted the gun. He aimed. Then he fired, sending the sound of another gunshot crackling through the air, shooting the gray-haired man in the head.

 

 

So there we were, a bloody mess, with two dead bodies on the beach and one floating not far off in the water. Our more immediate problem, however, was jammed deep into Michael’s stomach. I rolled over toward the dark-haired agent’s body, found Michael’s scuba knife, and managed to use it to cut through the plastic that had bound my wrists.

Once free, I looked up at Michael to assess the damage. He was still standing there, arm outstretched, gun in his hand. He was breathing heavily and with each breath the handle of the knife bobbed up and down. The knife had pierced through his Hawaiian shirt, pinning it to his side, and the blood was creating a dark circle among the palm trees and red flowers. I looked up at Michael’s face. He smiled at me. “And Jared didn’t think we could take them.”

“We’ve got to get you to a hospital.”

“I think that’s a good idea.”

“Was their car still parked along the road?”

“Yeah.”

“Was it a cab?”

“No.” I got up quickly and went over to the body of the gray-haired man. I knew that Steve wouldn’t have the keys, since he had been chasing me down the street on foot. I had to hope that the gray-haired man had the car keys, because if the cabbie was carrying them, we were in trouble. I checked the pockets of his shorts and felt a jingle in his right-hand pocket. Bingo. We had our ride.

I had to help Michael to the car. He was losing blood fast. I threw him in the backseat and began to drive. “You know where the hospital is?” I asked Michael, looking at him slumped in the backseat through the rearview mirror. The whole left-hand side of his shirt was now a dark red color.

“I told you we could fight them,” Michael slurred. He sounded drunk.

“I’ll take that as a no.” As I looked back toward the road, I caught a glimpse of myself in the rearview mirror. I was already developing a black eye and there were streams of dried blood coming out of my nose. I looked at my right arm. I could see red marks on my forearm from where the cabbie had stabbed me. Then I looked at the back of my hand. The skin was virtually falling off it. All I could see was a mixture of bone and blood. We were an ugly pair, Michael and I, but at least I knew my wounds would heal.

I pressed down on the gas pedal, moving as fast as I could along the narrow road. I drove toward the only bridge leading off the island. I had to find a hospital.

“Jared’s a fucking punk,” Michael mumbled from the backseat. “He didn’t think we could fight ’em. But we beat the four of them without him.”

“Relax, Michael. Don’t waste your energy. You’re losing blood.” I pushed further down on the gas. It wasn’t long before we started to hit traffic. I flew past the other cars, passing them on the left and the right. I hit a red light and pulled up to the car next to me. I rolled down the window and yelled over to them. “Hospital!” I shouted. They took one look at my blood-splattered face and yelled back the name of a town just off the island. Manahawkin. I heard the word and ran through the red light. It was about a twenty-minute drive. I didn’t know if I had that sort of time. When I got to Manahawkin, I saw signs for the hospital and followed them until I was able to pull up to the emergency room entrance.

“Let’s get you inside,” I turned and said to Michael.

“No,” he said. He had regained some of the life in his eyes. “You can’t come in.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You go in there with me and neither of us is getting away. Drop me at the door and go.”

“I can’t leave you. You’ll be arrested, at best. I’ve got to stay with you. You can’t protect yourself now. You came back for me. I can’t desert you.”

“I didn’t come back for you.” Michael actually strained a smile. I could see a hint of blood on his lips. “I wasn’t trying to help you.” His voice was weak. Each word was strained. “I get my kicks out of this shit. Go. Go away and try to get in touch with people who can get me out of here. It’s what Jared would tell us to do.” He was right. It is what Jared would tell us to do. If Michael had listened to Jared, however, I’d be dead.

What he said made sense, though. I told myself that I could help Michael more if I left than I could if I stayed. So that’s what I did. I dumped my friend, who had just risked his life to save mine, in the lobby of the hospital with a knife sticking out of his abdomen and I ran. I drove to the highway and headed south toward Atlantic City. I thought about pulling over and calling the Intelligence guys to let them know about Michael’s situation, but I knew that it was useless. We weren’t even supposed to be there. I didn’t have enough clout to get anything done. I got to the casino twenty minutes late. I had pulled over at a rest stop on the highway to try to clean myself up at least enough that they would let me into the casino. I wiped the blood off of my face and did my best to bandage my hand. I had to hope Jared hadn’t left yet. When I got the blackjack tables, I saw Jared sitting there, a stack of about a thousand dollars in chips in front of him. He looked almost dapper. As soon as he saw me, he cashed in, tipping the dealer with a hundred-dollar chip.

“You’re a fucking mess,” he said to me. It was going to take more than one pit stop to make me presentable again. “We’ve got to get you out of here. You’ll attract attention.” He quickly began to lead me toward the exit. “You seen Michael?” he asked me. So I started to mumble the whole ordeal to Jared. “Short version,” he said to me. So I skipped the story and simply told him that Michael was stuck in the hospital with a knife in his gut and that, if we didn’t get him out of there, he’d be found by both the police and our enemies. “Michael will be fine. I’ll take care of it,” Jared assured me. He placed a hand on my shoulder and pushed me toward the exit.

“What does that mean? What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to make a couple of phone calls. While you two were out playing cops and robbers, I was working on getting us out of here. Sometimes you have to count on our guys being better than theirs. That’s the benefit to being the good guys. Here you go, Mr. Robertson.” Jared handed me papers from inside his pocket. It was a plane ticket from the Atlantic City Airport to Atlanta. I was traveling as Dennis Robertson. God and Jared only know what had happened to the real Dennis Robertson. “Now lay low until tomorrow. Get to the airport on time. Clean yourself up. I’ll work on getting our friend out of trouble.”

“He saved my life, Jared.” I looked at Jared, trying to impress upon him how important it was that we help Michael.

“I know. But whatever you do, don’t go back to that hospital.” He shook his head. “Fucking heroes. You’re going to get us all killed one day. I’ll handle it. Trust me.”

 

 

I was hoping that I’d see Jared or Michael at the airport—that Jared might have arranged for all of us to leave for different places at the same time. Jared was too smart for that. When I boarded the plane to Atlanta, I boarded alone. When I boarded, I still didn’t know what had happened to my friends.