Charlie rented a car at the Fort Myers airport and followed the state map to Lake City, a charmless low-rent sprawl about sixty miles inland from Tampa. From there he headed another twenty miles east, along a road so flat it looked ironed. The scenery was pure Florida wilderness, scrub pine and brush and cattle and humidity. He pulled into a tiny lakeside community at sunset, rented a motel room, and ate a solitary meal in the town’s only diner. The mattress was ancient and the springs noisy, so Charlie pulled the covers onto the floor and slept soundly.
He awoke in the dark hour before dawn and was the diner’s first client. He then drove to his destination, parked on the street, walked around the house, and settled onto the lakeside dock.
The home of Colonel Donovan Field was unpretentious in the extreme. The colonel had never much cared for what other people considered elements of the good life. He had lived for duty, service, loyalty, patriotism. The more these components became unpopular, the less the colonel had to say about anything.
Donovan Field had run the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, known as FLETC among the intelligence trade. All field agents with DEA, CIA, and State, as well as every Homeland division except the FBI, trained there. Many city antiterrorism divisions also sent their detectives. Defense intel, which constituted more than sixty percent of the nation’s total intel budget, used FLETC for advanced training.
Twenty minutes after Charlie arrived, he heard a screen door slam. The last time he had seen the colonel was at his own wedding, when Donovan had given his secretary away. Charlie recalled that day as the colonel tottered across the lawn to where he sat on the lakeside dock. Donovan had needed to lean heavily upon the bride’s arm. That day, as now, his legs had seemed impossibly frail for carrying such a massive upper body. The colonel had been badly wounded in the first Iraq war. He did not speak about it. Charlie knew a number of other old warriors who treated their injuries in the same careless manner. The world was not perfect, their silence said. Deal with it.
A truly ancient terrier panted at the colonel’s feet. Donovan limped over and offered Charlie his hand. “How are you, son?”
“Fine, sir.” Charlie watched the terrier slump onto the dock and stare at the water. “I don’t remember a dog.”
“My sister-in-law passed away last year. I agreed to give him a home. The old boy has arthritis, a bad heart, cataracts, and no sense of smell. He’s been exactly the same way for twelve years. Probably will outlive us both.” The colonel settled onto the bench beside Charlie, bent over stiffly, and scratched the terrier between his ears. “I heard through the network you lost your wife.”
Charlie gave the colonel the raw truth. “About nine months before she died.”
“I’m sorry, son. Is that why you’re here?”
“No.” He stretched out his legs and watched the morning mist drift over the water. “Nice place.”
“Libby thought so. But she’s gone, and I find it lonely here by myself.” Donovan grunted and settled back on the bench. “Are you ready to tell me why we’re having this conversation at dawn on the end of my dock?”
Donovan had several qualities rare in officers and men. One of them was the ability to set the world aside and listen. He sat and stared out over the water as Charlie described the meeting with Gabriella, the highway attack, the experience at the hospital, the telephone conversation, the trip with Strang, the meeting at Harbor Petroleum, the ultimatum. Charlie finished with, “If you can make sense out of that, sir, you’re better off than I am.”
The dog growled from his position at the colonel’s feet and gave the empty waters a hoarse bark. The colonel slipped his foot out of the shoe and stroked the pup’s side. For the first time, Charlie saw the stubs where the colonel’s toes should have been.
Donovan said, “Sounds to me like you’re facing your very own breakout.”
The words took Charlie straight back. The colonel had often started his toughest conversations that way. A breakout was military speak for an event that shattered all existing parameters, such as when the enemy introduced utterly new tactics, or the Pentagon sliced budgets in half and demanded the same operative capacity. The colonel had been known throughout the country’s intel divisions for being the best there was at preparing agents for breakout events.
Donovan continued, “What you need to decide is whether you’re ready and able to grow beyond your current mind-set.”
“Absolutely.”
“Don’t respond too hastily. Growth means change. Change of this kind can bring gut-wrenching challenges.”
A grey-winged crane swept over Charlie’s head. The morning was so quiet he could hear the air filter through its wings. The crane flapped twice and came in for a landing in the reeds to their left.
Charlie said, “After the accident when my wife died, I spent six weeks lost in a fog of painkillers. Finally the doctors stopped offering refills and I switched to booze. I hated both, but it was easier than facing what I had inside, which was nothing at all.”
The crane moved with impossible grace for such an ungainly beast. It lifted one leg like a ballerina caught in the amber of dawn, settling it down so carefully the water was not disturbed. It took another step, shifting through the reeds, hunting.
Charlie went on, “I started attending AA at a church down the block from my empty apartment. I went back to my job with the insurance company. I got out of bed and I put on my tie and I drove to the office and I came home and I watched whatever sport was on television. I joined a gym. I knew I was coasting, but I told myself this was the best a guy like me could ever ask for. And a lot better than I deserved.”
The colonel might have waved the words aside as not worthy, or he might have been swatting a fly. At his feet the dog kept up his hoarse panting.
“Then General Strang showed up and offered me a job. Afterward it felt like I had returned to the only thing I would ever be good at. There’s never been any real satisfaction to the work, not then and not now. More like, everybody’s got to do something to fill the void. I might as well do this. Then Gabriella showed up, zapped me with those harmonics, zinged me out of my body . . .” Charlie shook his head. “I can’t believe I actually said those words. But ever since waking up that next morning in the passenger seat of a stranger’s car, I’ve carried the feeling that everything has changed. If I want. If I’m ready.”
The crane struck the water and emerged with a fish flapping silver in the daylight. The bird lifted its head and swallowed. The fish shivered hard enough to be visible as it slid down the crane’s gullet. The bird froze once more, quiet as the reeds, quiet as the water.
“The luckiest of us reach a moment when we wake up one day and discover what we want to do with our lives.” Donovan’s foot continued to rub the dog’s scruffy chest. “I wish I could say it’s all downhill from there, but I can’t. What I can say is, if you don’t take hold of that chance when it comes, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life.”
Charlie tasted the truth, retreated, then forced himself to ask, “What if I don’t have what it takes anymore?”
Donovan looked at Charlie for the first time. “The life well lived is a search for identity, priorities, peace, wholeness. I’m not saying you’ll ever find them. But having the courage to even speak the words puts you ahead of the crowd. Then one day, the fortunate few discover something they can give their total allegiance to. They identify a purpose that creates harmony from all the impossible elements and all the past pains. Even speaking that desire aloud is terrifying. What if you’re wrong? What if you get halfway down that road and find you’ve been fooled by life again? What about everything you’re giving up? The risks are huge. Of course you’re scared.”
Donovan grunted as he bent over and covered his stub of a foot with his shoe. “Too many people coast through life, Charlie. They keep waiting for that perfect solution to all their problems. Until their calling arrives risk-free and tied in a lovely blue ribbon, they have their safe little excuse for not moving at all. They never grow beyond the delusion that life should deliver dreams on comfortable terms.”
He grunted again as he hoisted himself to his feet. The dog rose with him and panted off the dock. “Don’t make that mistake, son. You can’t attach a dollar value to truth. If you run from a lifetime chance just because the price is high, you’ll drown in shadows or cynicism or both. You grab hold with both hands. And you get ready for the fight of your life.”