He already had a plan for the last quarter mile, and such was his iron-clad determination that he was already dreading it. Of course, a normal person would have decided that was an exercise too far, and jogged home cheerfully. That, however, was not the Bedford way. Mack swung into the home stretch with a slightly uphill climb before him, and let it rip. He stepped it up into a lung-bursting, uncontrolled sprint, the fastest he had traveled during the whole eight miles. He pounded up the road, driving himself to the point of blackout, swerving into the front yard and collapsing on the ground, gasping for breath. Anne thought he was dead. Well, she would have, had she not seen him do it so many times before.
Tommy, however, had not, and he came bolting out of the house yelling, “Mom! Mom! Dad’s dead! I think the Deadheads got him!”
At which point Mack jumped right back up and grabbed Tommy, lifting him high and shouting, “They never got me! I killed the goddamned Deadheads!”
Tommy thought this was approximately the most important thing that had ever happened. But Mack would not lower him, and Tommy kept laughing and demanding to know where the bodies of the Deadheads were. Mack told him they were all under the bed. And so it went on, just a little boy and his dad, the one acceptable face of a diabolical international scheme.
They played baseball for a while after that, and then while Anne put Tommy away for his late-afternoon rest, Mack went to the garage and took out a four-foot length of metal pipe, like a short piece of scaffold. He took it to an apple tree out in the backyard and jammed it horizontally between two branches about two feet above his head.
This was a killer SEAL exercise, the pull-ups, where a trainee grasps the pipe and hauls himself up, chin high, holds, and slowly releases and lowers. A normal untrained person probably could manage to do it twice, a young sportsman perhaps nine times, and a fit member of the Special Forces possibly fifteen. Mack Bedford could do thirty-two, though today he may have dropped back to twenty-nine. This is a discipline you need to assault every day, preferably twice.
He tackled the exercise slowly, moving through the first ten with long, steady pulls, each time his chin clearing the pipe. The next twelve were hard but not that hard. Number twenty-six was absolute murder, the pain stabbing through his biceps, his lower back throbbing. Grimly, he hauled himself up again, the pain now ripping through his shoulders. But he made it. And then he made it again, almost crying out with the agony, but still keeping his feet off the ground, and going for his target twenty-ninth. But this was a heave too far. The strength in his forearms and fingers was sapped, and he slipped back onto the grass, never having seen over the bar for the final time. “FUCK!” he roared.
“Sorry?” called Anne from the back doorway. “I didn’t quite catch that?”
Mack looked up. “This sucks,” he gasped.
“Yes, I thought that was what you said. I wasn’t sure.”
She came over and brought him a large glass of water, having watched him torturing himself on the pipe. “I can’t quite see why you need to prepare yourself for another combat mission,” she said. “You’re home now, and you’re not going back.”
“Fitness is just a bad habit,” he grinned. “I’ve had it for a long time, and it’s hard to kick.”
“I know. But there’s fitness and fitness. One of them has to do with general well-being and health. The other kind is what people do before trying to throttle a polar bear with their bare hands.”
“That’s my kind,” said Mack. “You haven’t seen any polar bears locally, have you?”
Anne laughed at him, as she always did. Well, nearly always. She gazed at him with admiration. He really was the most incredible specimen of a man. Thirty-three years old, tall, without one ounce of extra weight, broad shoulders, and a manner that could charm the stony heart of a highway state trooper. Anne did, however, suspect there were certain Middle Eastern terrorists who might not wholly go along with that view.
“I’m making a fish pie for dinner, with the other half of the bass and some scallops I picked up at Hank’s.”
“Plenty of cheese in the sauce,” said Mack. “With hot French bread and a baked potato. That’s my girl.”
“Anything else?”
“One nice cold beer, and I’ll go to bed happy. If you’ll have me.”
“Yes, please,” she said sassily, heading back to the house with a spring in her step Mack had not noticed since before his last tour of duty in Iraq.
He chugged his pint glass of water and stared at the bar, which in his mind had defeated him. Temporarily. “You bastard,” he told it. “I’ll get you tomorrow.”
He pulled out his super-cell phone and checked in with Harry, just to make sure the money was in place.
“All done, Mack,” he said. “Money’s gone. One million smackers to the clinic. No bullshit.”
“You’re a goddamned hero, Harry,” he replied. “They’re leaving Tuesday night.”
“Yup. I already checked. Boston to Geneva. American Airlines, 9:30 P.M. I’ll have business-class return tickets here tomorrow morning. Want to come and pick them up? We can have a chat.”
“I’ll be there 1100 hours, six bells. We’ll have coffee on the Forenoon Watch.” He heard Harry Remson chortling away as he put down the phone.
Mack flexed his arms and decided he had recovered. He walked to the side door of the garage and stepped inside, walking across to a small storage area to the left of the Buick. And there he found the packing crate he had shipped to Maine from Coronado. He’d meant to unpack it last week, and there were items in there that he wanted to move to the house—books, memorabilia, and of course his uniforms, which would hang in his bedroom closet until he died. There were also a few items he did not wish Anne to know about—not for the moment, anyway. This was SEAL stuff, things that spelled out a thousand words to him but were meaningless to anyone who had not done what he had done.
He hauled out the books and uniforms, walked back, and placed them on the hood of the Buick. Then he delved into the box and pulled out his SEAL underwater goggles, top-of-the-line scuba diver’s gear that had once been bright red but was now colored the dullest gunmetal gray, with not a glint of light reflecting off them. Every SEAL had a mask like that.
Then he pulled out his state-of-the-art wet suit, a truly superb piece of modern underwater equipment, light but incredibly warm, with layers of a plastic/sponge compound insulating the wearer. It was jet black in color with a fitted hood, tight across the back of the neck, forehead, and chin. At the top of each leg were four black metal “popper” studs, and to them were attached Mack’s special SEAL flippers, too big for ordinary mortals. On the instep of each one was painted his BUDs Class number, 242, precious numbers that signified the sun and the moon and the earth to Mack.
BUDs 242. Seven little marks, the marks that reminded him of a grim black-top square in Coronado where a legendary SEAL admiral had pinned on his chest his golden Trident, which would forever confirm that out of 168 starters, he, Mack Bedford, was one of the 11 chosen to step forward into America’s most elite fighting force. Only then was he able to have the class number painted on his flippers. BUDs. The Basic Underwater Demolition course, where they test the mettle of would-be SEALs. It was ten years ago now, but he remembered it as if it were yesterday. He just stood there in the garage, cradling his wet suit, the one he had worn when he led them through the depths of the Persian Gulf to capture Saddam’s offshore oil rig.
He glanced again at the numbers, and the memories shed a mantle of sadness over the former commander. They were memories of the best of times, when he had tackled every obstacle they threw at him and then punched that BUDs indoctrination right on the nose. He’d run that beach until he’d darn near passed out, he’d swum the laps, on the surface and under it. They’d tied him up, ankles and wrists, and shoved him in the twelve-foot deep end of the pool. They’d made him row the rubber boats until he thought he’d die. He’d dragged those boats, run with the goddamned things on his head. He’d hauled those boats up rocks, he’d hauled tree trunks, and he’d sure as hell hauled ass. They’d yelled at him, insulted him, called him a faggot, driven him to the limit of his endurance. Once they’d kept him in the freezing Pacific for a couple of minutes too long, and then had to ship him to the hospital when he passed out from hypothermia. And had he quit? Nossir. He told the ambulance drivers to take him right back to the beach, where he dived right back into the water.
BUDs 242. Those numbers told him everything he needed to know about himself. And when they made him one of the youngest lieutenant commanders in the history of the SEALs, he felt for the first time in his life that he had achieved a worthwhile ambition. Because that promotion was bigger than BUDs. Ten other guys had made that and stood alongside him when the Tridents were handed out.
Lt. Cdr. Mack Bedford. That was priceless, a singular honor, just for him . . . and then they took it all away. At least they took as much away as they could. But they could never take away the words that were written on his heart:
My country expects me to be stronger than my enemy, both physically and mentally. . . . If I am knocked down, I will get up, every time. I am never out of the fight. I am here to fight for those who cannot fight for themselves. I am a United States Navy SEAL.
Carefully, he reached down in the packing crate and retrieved another of his most cherished possessions, his “attack board,” the kind they issue to SEAL commanders launching underwater assaults on the enemy. The board was light, made of strong polystyrene, around eighteen inches square, weightless in the water. Into its flat surface were set three instruments: a clock, a compass, and a global positioning system. The board is held out in front, with both hands, as the SEAL leader kicks through the water with those massive flippers. It saves him having to stop to check either the time, the direction, or the team’s position. All of it stands right in front of him, softly illuminated but betraying no glare to enemy searchers or sentries on the surface. Mack had located the Iraqi oil rig using this personal attack board.
He leaned down and found his battle-scarred leather bag. Into the bottom he packed the attack board, covered it with his carefully folded wet suit and flippers, and tucked the big underwater mask alongside. The suitcase had a concealed false bottom, and in the space beneath it Mack would pack passports, driver’s licenses, and two hundred thousand dollars worth of cash, euros for Ireland and France, pounds for England, and dollars for a U.S. emergency. Everything below the false bottom would be paper or cardboard, and none of it would show up on the X-ray machines in airports. The leather grip would be his only hand baggage. It would never be more than three feet away from him.
He put the bag down, behind the packing crate, and carried the books and uniforms into the house. They had a family supper, and afterward Mack and Tommy watched the Red Sox. Anne was upstairs packing for the journey to Switzerland.
At around nine Mack drove over to Harry’s house and apologized for the late, unexpected visit. Harry, who had just finished dinner with his wife, Jane, was unfazed. “Come on in,” he said. “We’ll have a night-cap, and you can give me the news.”
Mack followed him into the study and handed him a piece of paper. On it, for the first time, he had written down his date and time of departure, six days from now—a Saturday, arriving Sunday morning in Ireland, when customs and immigration staffs would be less diligent. He hoped.
“Tickets in the name of Jeffery Simpson,” he said. “Open return. Better make it first-class. That way I can pretty well guarantee I’ll get a seat anytime I want it, and I might be in a hurry.”
Harry nodded. “No problem, pal,” he said. “I had a call this morning—the documents will be here by FedEx Monday. Cash, Wednesday morning.”
“Perfect. And I just wanted to let you know I will take the cell phone, but it’s only for dire emergency. I know the number cannot be traced, but after I hit Foche, there’ll be a nationwide manhunt for the killer. And a phone can be traced by the police. Not the number. But the area where it was utilizing the satellite signal. And that might put me in more danger than I need.”
Harry Remson poured two Scotch whiskies with soda. Then he said slowly, “Mack, is the exit the hardest part?”
“Yes. Incoming, nobody’s looking for me. At least I hope not. Outgoing, the whole fucking world’s looking for me. I need to get away in the seconds after I pull the trigger—before Foche hits the ground.”
Harry nodded as if he were an expert on high-profile assassinations. And then he stated something that had been on his mind for a few days. “Mack, I’ve never asked you. But from the very start of this proposal you shied away from any deep involvement. By the time you decided to fire Raul, you wanted to stay at arm’s length. Jesus, at one point I thought you were going to bail out on me altogether. And then that night, something happened. You arrived here at Christ knows what time and announced not only were you in on the project, you were actually going to carry it out. Jesus, that’s a big turnaround. What happened? Because it wasn’t just Tommy, was it?”