It was a moment before he continued. “Chuck had only been in
country for a month or so,” he said, “but Kenny and I were two weeks away from
shipping out, both of us scared shitless that we’d die before we could escape
from that soggy hell. We were razzing each other that night, bragging, seeing
who could outdo the other with the biggest line of bull. It was a way of
passing the time, a way of laughing in the face of death, a way of trying to
fill the silence, because it was too damn quiet. The jungle’s usually alive
with sound, but that night, the silence was spooky.”
Casey got up from the bed, stood beside him at the window, and lay
a hand on his back. Beneath her fingertips, his muscles were rigid and
unresponsive. “We’d found what I thought was a relatively safe place to spend
the night,” he said. “The guy must have been watching us for a while, waiting
for the precise moment to strike. The first shot picked Chuck right off his
feet. It went in the front and left a hole the size of a watermelon when it
came out the back. Kenny and I hit the ground. We knew it was a sniper, but
we couldn’t figure out where the guy was shooting from. He knew where we were,
though, and he was having one hell of a fine time trying to pick us off. I
pulled rank on Kenny, ordered him to fall in behind me, and the two of us
started crawling through the mud, trying to reach cover. There was no moon
because of the cloud cover, and it was dark as the pit of hell out there. One
minute, Kenny was right behind me. The next minute, he wasn’t. As patrol
leader, it was my duty to go back and find him.” He paused. “Christ, I’d have
gone back anyway. He was my best friend.”
He lit another cigarette. “I found Kenny a few yards back. He’d
been gut-shot, almost split in two. After I finished puking my guts out, I
left him there. I didn’t want to, but I had to if I wanted to save my
worthless ass. The guy had stopped shooting. He must have thought there were
only two of us. I was up to my ass in mud when I reached this clump of
cypress, and I really thought I’d made it. I scrambled to my feet, and there
he was, standing not five feet away, looking as surprised as I was.
“He was just a kid. Eleven, twelve years old. I looked at him
and he looked at me, and for the first time, it dawned on me that this wasn’t
just some gook, this wasn’t just the enemy, this was a real human being like
me. Somebody’s kid. And he must have felt the same way, because we just stood
there, two human beings frozen in hell, and looked at each other.”
He was silent for so long that Casey thought he’d forgotten she
was in the room. He filled his lungs with smoke, then abruptly crushed out his
cigarette. “And then,” he said, “I killed him.”
***
They headed north out of the District of Columbia the next morning
beneath overcast skies. The forecast was dismal: a low pressure system was
working its way in from the Midwest, bringing with it rain and sleet and record
snowfalls. It had already dumped more than a foot of snow on western Pennsylvania,
and it was headed in a meandering northeasterly direction. “A little over 200
miles from DC to New York,” Danny said, pressing harder on the accelerator.
“From there, we can outrun it.”
Casey tightened her seat belt and stared out the windshield at the
driving rain they’d encountered just north of Baltimore. It was coming down in
torrents, bouncing off the surface of the roadway, awash with reflected light,
destroying visibility. “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather spend the night
somewhere?” she said.
“In some run-down motel room,” he said, “with a rock-hard bed?
No, thank you. I’ve spent too many nights in places like that. Tonight, I’m
sleeping in my own house, in my own bed.” He glanced at her tense face, and
his voice softened. “Don’t worry,
carissima.
I’ll get you there in one
piece.”
It had been a long time since he’d called her that, and Casey took
his hand and threaded fingers with his. “I’m not worried,” she said. “I’ll
just be relieved when we get home.”
They ran into the first flakes of snow halfway through Jersey.
Danny slowed his speed, but he kept glancing at the dashboard clock and
frowning. “Christ,” he said in disgust. “Why the hell didn’t we buy a house
in Palm Beach?”
It was nearly three o’clock when they stopped at a rest area near
Newark. While they waited for their meal, Casey sipped coffee and Danny glumly
watched the sooty snow outside the restaurant window. “Look at that fool,” he
said as a beat-up Toyota pulled in a little too fast, fishtailed, and nearly cleaned
out the left rear fender of a white Caddy. “It’s people like that who make the
roads dangerous for the rest of us.”
The waitress brought them each a bowl of soup and a sandwich. “You
know,” Casey said, crumbling oyster crackers into her bowl, “we could just stay
in New York tonight.”
“And then we won’t get home until tomorrow afternoon.” He picked
up a dinner roll and plucked a packet of butter from the dish in the center of
the table. Peeling off the foil, he said, “I thought you weren’t worried.”
“I wasn’t worried then. I am now.”
“Let’s just see how it goes. If it’s really bad, we’ll stop
somewhere in Connecticut.”
It was as good as she was going to get. They finished the meal in
silence. By the time they went back out into the storm, the wind had started
up, and the snow was blowing in a blinding cloud. They made a run for the BMW,
slamming doors against the onslaught. Danny pulled the car out of its parking
slot and shifted it into gear. “You’re not wearing your seat belt,” she said.
“And please don’t remind me of your ‘live hard and fast’ philosophy. I’m not
in the mood.”
Danny cleared his throat. “What I was about to say, before I was
so rudely interrupted, was that I’d forgotten. I don’t suppose you’d care to
fasten it for me?”
She leaned over, reached around him, tugged the belt, snapped it
into place. Adjusted the harness until it fit him snugly. “I’m sorry,” she
said. “This weather’s turned me into a basket case.”
It took them two hours to get through New York. Bumper-to-bumper
traffic moved like a caravan of snails, stopping and starting, splashing and
sliding, a sea of tail lights that ebbed and flowed into the night. They sat
for a half-hour on the Cross-Bronx Expressway while a wrecker peeled a mangled
Ford Granada off the guardrail and towed it away. By the time they reached New
Haven, she’d counted seventeen cars off the road, one of them a rollover.
“Danny,” she said, “I’ve had enough. I want to stop now.”
He glanced at the dashboard clock. “Let’s put thirty more miles
behind us, and we’ll stop. All right?”
Thirty miles loomed like a hundred, but she reluctantly agreed.
“Fine,” she said. “Thirty more miles, and then we stop at the first motel we
see.”
“If I’d had any idea it would be like this,” he said, “I would have
stayed in DC. I really thought we could beat this mess home.”
The car lost traction and skidded for a moment, and Casey’s heart
jumped into her throat. But he quickly brought it back under control, and the
adrenaline in her bloodstream slowly receded to a normal level. “Damn it,
Danny,” she said, “if you kill us, I swear to God I’ll never speak to you
again.”
Gripping the wheel tightly, he said, “I’m not going to kill us.”
An eighteen-wheeler sped by them in the passing lane, splattering
the windshield with a heavy coating of muddy slush. “Christless idiot,” Danny
said. “Thinks he’s running the Indy 500.”
The snow was coming down almost sideways, and they were driving
directly into it. He switched his headlights to low beam in a futile attempt
to see through the blinding mass. The beam reflected off a road sign
advertising food, fuel and accommodations at the next exit. “I guess we’d
better stop,” he said reluctantly. “How far did it say?”
“Six miles,” Casey said, breathing a sigh of relief.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I had no idea it would be this bad. I
just didn’t want to spend all day tomorrow on the road.”
“I don’t understand,” she said. “What’s your hurry? You’re not
on any deadline. You don’t have any commitments. What difference does it make
if we spend an extra day or two on the road?”
His knuckles were white on the steering wheel. “I guess I haven’t
learned to slow down yet.”
“If you don’t,” she said grimly, “you’ll die of a coronary before
you’re fifty.”
“I don’t think so,” he said. “I’ve changed my mind. I’m not
going to crash and burn. I’m going to be right there beside you in your
dotage.”
For some reason, his words wrought in her an inexplicable
sadness. “What about children? What about grandchildren? It’s too late for
us to start over.”
“We’ll borrow somebody else’s. If Rob would ever settle down, we
could use his.” The wipers swished across the windshield, and ahead of them, a
sign said
Next Exit 2 Miles
. “I hope to Christ there’s a restaurant
around with a well-stocked bar,” he said, “because when I get out of this car,
I’m going to want to drink my dinner.”
“That makes two of us,” she said.
Ahead of them, brake lights flashed, then disappeared. Danny
sighed. “Now what?” he said.
“I don’t know, but I’d suggest slowing down.”
“I’m only doing forty-seven.”
“That’s too fast for these conditions.”
“Look,” he said, “if you’d like to drive—” He squinted, leaning
over the wheel, and then, in an odd voice, he said, “Christ Almighty.”
Casey looked up in alarm. Directly in front of them, blocking the
highway, lay the eighteen-wheeler that had passed them earlier, toppled like a
turtle, its wheels still spinning in mid-air. She grabbed the dash in terror.
“
Danny
,” she said.
“Hang on,” he said, pumping the brakes like crazy. The car went
into a skid and began spinning, slowly at first and then gaining momentum.
“Goddamn it,” he growled, cramming the shifter into low gear.
At the last possible moment, the wheels caught and they missed the
truck. They plowed head-first into the snow bank, sliced through it and came
out the other side.
We’re all right
, she thought.
We made it
.
Then she saw the embankment dropping away in front of them, and she screamed
his name. They pitched forward into empty space, and then they were falling,
tumbling end over end in the blackness, small objects catapulting like missiles
around them as they tumbled and rolled, tumbled and rolled. She reached out
for Danny, but she couldn’t find him. The car slammed up against a solid
object and the windshield burst in her face, and then something struck her in
the temple with enough force to snap her head back against the headrest.
And the world went black.
BOOK FOUR
December, 1987
Midland,
Connecticut
Dawn was just beginning to lighten the eastern sky when Rob
MacKenzie fishtailed his dad’s LTD into the parking lot at Midland Hospital.
It had taken him four hours of white-knuckle driving to get from Boston to this
rinky-dink establishment in this rinky-dink little town. Above the front
entrance,
Season’s Greetings
was spelled out in plastic holly leaves.
Somewhere inside, Casey was waiting for him. Somehow, he had to do this.
Somehow, he had to walk into that building and be strong for her when inside he
was falling apart.
It had been a rough trip, and not just because he was driving
through a blizzard in a rear-wheel-drive gunboat that was as useful in the snow
as a surfboard. He had spent most of the four-hour trip trying to make sense of
this madness. Danny Fiore wasn’t an ordinary man, he was a god. Gods weren’t
supposed to die. And Rob MacKenzie, a mere mortal, wondered how he would make
it through this nightmare without breaking down.
At the main desk, he asked for Father Letourneau. A few minutes
later, a white-haired man in a cable knit sweater and a clerical collar greeted
him with outstretched hand. “Mr. MacKenzie,” he said.
“Father.”
The priest held Rob’s hand in a strong grip and studied his face.
“You and Mr. Fiore were close,” he said.
Rob swallowed. “Yeah,” he said. “We are. Were.”
“I’m sorry.” The priest shook his head. “I deal with death every
day. It’s my job. But sometimes, it really gets to me. This is one of those
times.”
He cleared his throat. “How is she?”
“As well as can be expected. She’s a brave young woman, but the
enormity of this hasn’t hit her yet. Right now she’s quiet and compliant.
Some of that’s due to the sedation she was given. The rest is nature’s
anesthesia. Sometimes, when something unbearable happens, nature takes over for
a while and we go someplace where the pain can’t follow us.”
He raked a hand through his tangled hair. “I don’t know what to
do,” he said. “How to help her.”
“Allow her to set the pace. Be there for her. Does she have a
reliable support system?”