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SHREVEPORT, LOUISIANA (Sunday, Dec. 9, 2012) — Mac, Troy, and four roustabouts carried Danny’s casket through the cemetery to the burial plot. They set the casket, covered with an American flag, on the platform at the grave, and stepped back, standing at the graveside at parade rest, shoulders square, eyes straight ahead, hands clasped behind them. A color guard from the nearby base stood at attention as well.
There had been a memorial service at the Baptist chapel, but Mac figured the graveside services would be no briefer. The Baptist minister had known Danny all his life. It seemed as if he was going to detail every moment of it. Well, there might be a few moments Danny hadn’t told the preacher, Mac thought irreverently, careful not to let anything show on his face.
After the graveside services, everyone was expected back at the Brown home for potluck. Food had been arriving all morning from neighbors, friends, church members, Kristy’s fellow teachers, parents of her students. Some men from the oil company had shown up with a dozen cases of beer — to chill, they said. Kristy had thanked them all.
Mac glanced over at Kristy. She was dressed in black, even with a hat and a small veil. Southern traditions, he supposed. She looked subdued, quiet. No wailing. She’d shed tears, plenty of them, Mac knew. He’d see her disappear to her room, come back red-eyed, but controlled. He admired that. The last few days had been hard on her. Harder maybe even than the kidnapping. From what Troy had said, her guards had taken awfully good care of her. Mac shifted slightly to avoid smiling at the picture that conjured up. But Danny’s death. Then coming home, making all the arrangements. Telling Mac’s manufactured story of his death again and again. Knowing it for a lie.
The newspaper had been by to do a feature on Danny dying a hero. Mac almost regretted his lie. Something simpler might have been easier on everyone. He’d written the obituary. First one he’d had to write since Newswriting 221 in college. For some reason the first story a journalism student wrote was an obit. Mac never had figured out why. Classified ad clerks usually wrote them up at most newspapers, near as he could tell. Or they were submitted by the family. You’re a reporter, you write it, Kristy had said. So, he wrote his first for-real obit.
He and Troy had volunteered to clean Danny’s room and take most of his clothes and things to Goodwill. It hadn’t been easy. Danny had been a packrat, and the assholes who kidnapped Kristy had tossed every item, emptied every drawer, and slashed open every box. The whole house was a mess — just what had those assholes thought might be hidden in a 10-pound bag of flour for God’s sake? Kristy had spent two days cleaning, sorting, straightening. Mac had suggested she hire a cleaning service for the kitchen and living room areas, but she hadn’t wanted it. Therapeutic cleaning? Mac wondered and went back to sorting through Danny’s things.
The minister led the mourners in a song that everybody, but Mac seemed to know. As a pallbearer, he could stand silent, grateful he didn’t have to try and fake the song.
“Just as I am, without one plea,
But that thy blood was shed for me.
And that Thou biddest me come to thee,
O Lamb of God, I come! I come!”
Shed blood. Song didn’t make much sense to him — no Sunday School in his childhood — but he understood spilt blood. Yeah, Danny had shed his own blood because of him, he thought grimly. He could feel his face tighten, a blood vessel in his jaw pulsed.
He thought the song might mean the end was near, but the preacher seemed to be just warming up. Mac’s mind drifted.
For the first day, Troy and Mac had worked in silence. Only when Kristy was around did the two of them make any effort to talk. Saturday morning, however, when they were reboxing Danny’s medals, Troy had looked at him.
“You hating me ‘cause I got Danny killed?” Troy said. “If so, you can’t hate me more than I do.”
Mac sat back on his haunches, looked at Troy, then he shook his head and looked away. “It took both of us to get Danny killed,” Mac said bitterly. “I should have told you to bring your package to me. Danny’d still be alive.”
“Can’t know that,” Troy observed. He handed Mac another medal. Mac put it carefully in the velvet-lined case used to store Danny’s medals in. Not like the cardboard box his own were tossed in.
“No.” Mac hesitated, stuck out his hand. Troy shook it.
“We’re going to get the fucker,” Troy said.
“Yeah, we are.” You hear that, Danny? We’re not done yet, Mac thought.
Things between the two were better after that. It had been bad to have things strained between the two of them. Not that they hadn’t been crossways of each other before. But this wasn’t something that could be eased by taking Troy down and pounding some sense into him.
“Amazing Grace, How Sweet the Sound,
That Saved a Wretch like Me.”
Even Mac had heard this song before. Suddenly he wondered who handled C.J.’s funeral; he had a new appreciation for how much went into getting someone buried. The service, funeral arrangements, picking out the casket, arranging for a headstone — just notifying everyone. He almost wished he could attend the funeral for C.J. Say good-bye properly. Did C.J. have a family? Mac thought for the first time. A wife and kids? He didn’t know. Probably. Probably had teenagers. It chilled him. Was some kid fatherless because of him?
“When We’ve Been There Ten Thousand Years
Bright Shining As the Sun,
We’ve no less Days To Sing God’s Praise
Than When We’d First Begun.”
This time the preacher did seem to be done, as he gestured to the color guard. Two soldiers in dress uniform stepped forward, folded the flag that draped the casket. With a salute, they handed the flag to Kristy. Another soldier played Taps on his trumpet — Mac had had to insist a real person play it, not just some recording — followed by a 21-gun salute. Three guns, seven shots. Mac felt each shot as if they were blows to his body.
He took a deep breath, let it out slowly. Good-bye friend, he said to the casket. I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry.
The potluck at the house was a form of a wake, Mac decided. People reminisced, cried, hugged each other. Mac finally escaped out to the back porch. Danny’s buddies from the oil platform had claimed the room for their own. The beer was flowing freely.
Mac accepted a beer, popped the tab, set it aside. In the all-male room, he relaxed for the first time in days.
“Hear you’re bringing his sister out to the platform for a memorial service,” one man said. He was 40, average height, brown eyes, brown hair — the hair cut short in front, but longer in back. He had an anchor tattoo on his left forearm. Mac thought his name was Pete.
“Yeah,” Mac said. “She’s never seen the platform. Thought it might give her some closure to see it, pick up Danny’s things, have someone say a few words.” He shrugged.
The men nodded.
“Be good for the company to do that for all our wives and families,” another man observed. Dave? Mac thought. “My wife is just sure there’s some orgy going on every week when I’m gone.”
“Yeah? She sees you with Mary Beth, and you’ll never convince her otherwise,” Rock teased.
“Shit,” Dave said, drawing it out into two syllables. He threw a beer can at his tormentor, a man who looked like he’d been carved out of blocks of rock he was named after. The can clattered against the wall. Everyone froze at the noise. “Sorry,” Dave muttered. “Didn’t mean to make noise.”
“You knew Danny from the Marines?” asked Bill, a short stocky man with bulging biceps.
Mac nodded.
“He a fighter then, too?”
Mac smiled. “He started a few.”
Bill shook his head. “He surely liked to fight. Guess it’s no surprise he’d finally pick a fight too big to handle.”
“But he did rescue the girl, didn’t he?” Bud, the youngest of them, asked anxiously.
Mac nodded. Maybe the story was more true than he’d realized. “Yeah, he rescued the girl.”
“Hope the bastard gets what he deserves,” Pete said viciously.
Mac smiled. “Danny got his escort to Valhalla,” he said.
“Valhalla?” Bud asked. “Where’s that?”
Sonny rolled his eyes. “Vikings believed God — they called him Odin — had a special heaven for warriors, called Valhalla,” he said to the younger man. “Tradition had it that you wanted to take your enemies with you to gain entrance there.”
“Oh,” Bud said. “They didn’t teach us that at Sunday School when I was a kid.”
“It’s a myth,” Sonny said patiently. “And I don’t reckon the preacher would appreciate it being taught at Sunday School.”
The other men laughed. Seven of them had come to the funeral. Pete had brought his wife, a nice woman who was inside helping Kristy serve food. Bill, Dave, Rock, and Bud had been pallbearers. Sonny was Danny’s foreman; all them worked on the same crew. They were dressed in suits, go-to-meetin’ clothes, Pete had called them, but ties were loosening, shirt collars were being unbuttoned. They talked. Told stories about Danny, about spending a week at a time on a platform no bigger than four city blocks. Mac listened.
“Danny act odd last trip out?” he injected at one point.
“Danny? No odder than usual,” Pete said. “We’re all odd, man, no lie.”
Rock shrugged. “He was touchy, I thought,” he contributed. “Like something was on his mind. He didn’t hide things very well.”
Mac grunted. “Worst liar I ever saw.”
Everyone laughed. “No lie,” Pete agreed with a smile.
Mac wandered out, checked on Kristy, poured his beer down the kitchen sink.
Sonny was in the doorway when he turned around. “Don’t drink?” he asked.
Mac shrugged. “I drank enough in the Marines for four lifetimes, decided that was enough.”
“You don’t have to fake it for us,” Sonny said, not moving. “We won’t care. Hell, half of us are on the wagon some time or another.”
“Habit. Makes people think I’m having fun, too.”
“Yeah. Why were you asking about Danny’s last trip out?”
Mac shrugged. “Not sure. He came up to see me, said it was important. Then he got killed before he could tell me what it was. Said he had something he’d send me.”
Sonny looked at him for a moment. “Lot you’re not telling us,” he observed. When Mac started to protest, Sonny shook his head. “That’s okay. No need to tell us everything. You think he was going to be a whistle blower?”
Mac frowned. “About the platform?” He shook his head. “No way. He loved what he did. This was something else.”
Sonny nodded, thought a moment. “You talk to Mary Beth, when you get out there. She couldn’t come to the funeral, but she was close to Danny. He was sweet on her. Hell, we’re all a bit sweet on her, including me, and I’m old enough to be her father.” He contemplated that, shook his head. “If he was worried about something, she’d know.”
He looked at Mac carefully. “The man who killed Danny,” he began, hesitated, and went on, “He’s dead.”
“Yeah,” Mac said. “He’s dead.”
Sonny just nodded, didn’t ask anything more. He stood aside and let Mac pass into the room before following. Mac took a second beer, and Sonny just shook his head. When the men decided to move to a bar Mac was included. “Finish the evening like Danny would have wanted us to,” Pete said solemnly.
“In a bar fight?” Mac asked laughing. He felt better knowing Danny had been a part of this crew, had heard the stories about him. Told a few of his own.
“Damn straight,” Pete said.
Mac, Troy and Kristy drove to Gulfport in Kristy’s Saturn with Mac at the wheel. Troy was scrunched up in the back seat. “Take a flight home,” Troy muttered, his long legs tucked up behind Mac.
Mac was feeling pretty good for a man who had had no sleep. The eight of them had closed out the bars in town, then out to the strip by the base where the bars stayed open 24/seven. A soldier with too much liquid courage had obliged them by picking a fight. They’d beat it out of there just as the sirens pulled into the parking lot.
They’d dumped Pete back at his hotel room for his wife to patch up — he’d managed to cut his lip. The others who had been drinking steadily for 12 hours, piled in to Rock’s motorhome and headed south. One case of beer had been reserved for the journey home.
“Helicopter leaves at 7 a.m.,” Rock explained. “We don’t have to be sober, but we do have to be there.”
“Hell, man,” Bill added, “never flown out sober.”
No booze on the platform, Sonny said. They’d get out there, sleep it off, and be straight and narrow for a week.
Thank God for the no booze policy. He had a headache from just watching those boys drink. Not only that, they had infected his language; he was starting to sound like a damn southerner. He’d be saying y’all soon.
If Kristy had slept she didn’t look like it. Now, quiet and pale, she mostly looked out the window on the drive. “You okay,” Mac asked quietly.
She nodded. “Tell me again, why are we going out here?” she asked wearily. “I’m not sure I can stand too many more funeral services.”
Mac reached over and squeezed her hand. “We need on the platform,” he explained again. “That packet is out there, I’m sure of it. We need that disk. We need to see what Troy had that got everyone all fired up.”
She attempted a smile. “You’re beginning to sound like you’re from around here,” she observed.
“God forbid,” Mac said, not joking.
Troy snorted. “Then what?” he asked. “You got a plan?”
“Then Kristy goes back to school, finishes out the term. You got to go to D.C. — get some excuse ready for your family, and your coworkers. Everyone’s got to act as if they’re going to go back to normal.”
“No way,” Kristy said, roused by the idea that she was going to be left behind. “I’m going with you.”
“You can’t. It won’t be safe,” Mac said.
“Being alone will be?” Kristy demanded. “What’s to prevent them from taking me again? Don’t tell me you wouldn’t give up the packet if you had it, if they threatened me.”
“You can come with me,” Troy suggested.
Kristy glanced back at him. “No offense, Troy, but you were sitting in the same room I was. I want to be with the person who got me out of there. Not the one who got me kidnapped in the first place.”
Troy grimaced but didn’t argue. “Where will you be going, Mac, that isn’t safe for Kristy, anyway?”
“I’m going to have the packet and the disk by evening,” Mac said. “Where I go won’t matter, after that.”
“And me,” Kristy said firmly. “I’d feel safer next to you than anywhere else. Besides, I’m in this just as deep as you two.”
Mac glanced in his rearview mirror. He didn’t see anyone who looked to be following them. But then, it wasn’t a secret where they were headed. “Someone tailed me all evening last night,” Mac said. “A couple faces at the funeral didn’t belong — didn’t quite fit in, you know. And I’m pretty sure the house has been watched since we got here.”
Both of them were silent while they digested that. “Why?” Kristy burst out. “Why are they watching us?”
“To see what we’re doing,” Troy murmured.
“Don’t joke with me, explain.”
“Actually, he’s right,” Mac soothed. “They — Parker’s men — are watching to see if we are really going to take the money and back off. So, we have to look like that’s what we’re doing.”
“And what are they going to make of this trip?” Troy asked.
Mac signaled, moved into the passing lane, goosed the speed a bit. He wasn’t fond of how visible the red Saturn was, but he liked how it handled on the freeway. Too bad General Motors had discontinued the cars. “One of two things,” he answered. “Either they think it’s a memorial service, or they figure we’re out to get your packet back.”
Kristy looked at him. “And if they think it’s the second?”
“Then they’ll be waiting for us when we get back.”
Troy drawled from the back seat, “They’ll be waiting anyway. Can’t afford to guess the other way and be wrong. They’ll have to check it out and see if we bring back the package.”
Mac nodded. He glanced at his watch. The helicopter was going to come back after its usual morning run, pick them up at 10 a.m. They’d be right on time.
“Well, what do you plan to do about that?” Troy demanded.
“I’ll figure out something,” Mac said.
They pulled into the parking lot at 10 ‘til the hour. The pilot was waiting for them at the small terminal drinking a cup of coffee. He looked young to Mac. When had that happened, he wondered sourly.
“You all ready to go?” the pilot asked. He shook Kristy’s hand. “Ma’am, I’m real sorry about Danny’s death. We all are.”
“Thank you,” she said quietly. “What’s your name?”
“Hec,” he said. “Well, Hector, really, but everyone calls me Hec.”
He escorted them through the terminal. As they started out onto the tarmac, two men in suits approached them. One held up an FBI badge.
“FBI,” he said. “We want you to include us on this trip.”
Before Mac could protest, Hec demanded, “You have a warrant?”
“No,” the agent said soothing him. “We just want to join Ms. Brown’s trip. This isn’t about the platform. It’s other business.”
“Right,” Hec drawled. He looked at Kristy. “You expecting him?” She shook her head.
The pilot looked back at the two agents. “You come back with official paper if you want on my copter. Until then, you’re on private property. You’ve got two minutes to be off it.”
“Really,” the agent protested, “We couldn’t care less about the platform. We’re FBI, not EPA, anyway.”
Hec shook his head. “Doesn’t matter who you are. You are not on my list, so you don’t go out.”
The agents hesitated, looked at each other. Hec looked at his watch pointedly.
“We’re leaving,” one agent said finally. Both turned and walked away.
Hec watched to make sure they truly left. “Damned government,” he muttered. “If it isn’t them, it’s environmentalists.”
“You handled that as if you were expecting them,” Troy said as they again headed across the field.
“It’s been tried before. Reporters sometimes. I’ve got strict orders. No one goes on the platform unless it’s been approved by higher ups. No matter what.”
“What would you have done if they had a warrant?” Troy asked.
Hec shrugged. “Call my boss. He calls someone else. And finally, Arco’s men in suits show up to handle it.”
Mac looked over his shoulder. The two men were sitting in a Ford Taurus outside the field gates. They’d be waiting when they got back. But they weren’t going to be on the platform. Maybe Hec didn’t look too young after all.