Salty Sky (21 page)

16

HALLELUJAH! THE FRIENDS
were gone, the house empty. Cale loved seeing his friends, but you know what Ben Franklin said about fish and visitors.

He checked his phone. A missed call from a 703 area code that he didn’t recognize but—surprise—no messages from his daughters. He told himself not to be a grumpy old man. He would go to Facebook to see if they had any updates. There was something about the end of a guys’ weekend that made you want to hug your family. The girls had both uploaded new pictures of the little ones—on swings, being held in the pool, asleep in the car seat in a bathing suit.

Cale scanned his other “friends’” posts. Oh no. A former coworker, Jim Radcliffe, died in a fire in an office building. The funeral was scheduled for Thursday.

Toggling out of Facebook, Cale Googled articles on the fire. Cause unknown. Started in an area with construction material. The deceased’s remains were too damaged to perform an autopsy. Worry crept into Cale’s chest.

His mind wandered. Despite the Facebook connection, he and Jim weren’t truly friends, but they were bonded. Every time they worked together, except one, Jim jumped out of the helicopter, and Cale stayed in it. But there was that time in Colombia. (Wow, two times
in twenty-four hours thinking about Colombia.) They’d survived. A pair of better men hadn’t.

Was it coincidence that this happened to Jim right after the new treaty? After Colombia, whenever the two men crossed paths, they joked that if one died in a strange car wreck, it was time the other stopped driving. Even since both men left the DEA, they’d occasionally sent each other emails with titles like “Still driving?” Such were the type of looking-over-your-shoulder worries the drug runners in Colombia inspired.

Feeling a touch of paranoia, he dialed Sheila, a former boss of both Cale and Jim. Sheila started with the DEA in 1984, fresh out of Vanderbilt Law School. The DEA was pretty fresh at the time too. Cale started half a decade later, right in the middle of the South American campaign of the War on Drugs. Four years before Pablo Escobar met his demise.

It still amazed him that Pablo Escobar had controlled eighty percent of the cocaine trade entering the United States. The loyalty he built through soccer clubs, hospitals, and terror kept him protected for over twenty years in the world’s deadliest profession. An obscene amount of time for so risky a venture.
Forbes
magazine listed him as the seventh-richest man in the world. He spent a year in a country club prison he built for himself so he could sleep soundly while his men assassinated his enemies. He openly assassinated three Colombian presidential candidates who were not to his satisfaction. He was finally killed by police officers acting against their own orders but in the interest of their country. The truth behind it all was that the team hunting down Pablo was directed by the DEA’s human assets and Delta Forces’ soldiers and technology.

Even if Sheila and Cale had started on the same date, they would have been on different career tracks. Her destiny was to be a manager and his a skilled worker. A producer, not a leader. He valued the skill sets of leadership and diplomacy—setting a vision, tact, standing
down. He just didn’t possess them. Sheila did. She held as high a position in the agency as an non-appointed employee could obtain. If she had a husband instead of a partner, she’d likely have an appointed position by now.

The call went to her office voice mail in DC, where Cale left a brief message as instructed after the beep. He returned to reading about the fire. His phone started bouncing on the desk. The same area code 703 number he’d missed earlier.

“This is Cale.”

“Hey, Cale. It’s Sheila.”

“That was quick. You must have checked your voice mail right after I called.”

“I’m in the office. I just couldn’t switch over in time.”

He started to ask whether he’d missed a call from her earlier and why the number wasn’t from a 202 area code, but let it pass. They kibitzed, commiserated about Jim. Cale asked, “What is the agency’s feeling about this peace treaty in Colombia?”

“On the surface, it’s OK. The rebels agree that their lands will pay homage to the capital in exchange for being able to largely self-govern. As you know, that’s no different from the way the warlords, sheiks, chiefs, and patrons divide up most countries. The quality of life in those areas is a crapshoot. When you have the rule of man over the rule of law, it’s the man that matters.”

“So we learn, over and over. What’s below the surface?”

“This was a three-way treaty. The actions of the rebels were codified as part of a war. All participants are covered by the Geneva Convention rules.”

Cale sat quietly, letting the news sink in. It wasn’t getting very deep. “I’m sorry; I need you to draw the line for me. My knowledge of the Geneva Convention doesn’t extend past not torturing POWs. Or, as Bush adjusted it, to uniformed POWs.”

“I don’t know if W got that change ratified. Do you remember
when El Capo wanted Colombia to end the Colombian-American Extradition Treaty of 1979, when part of the deal would have been international pardons for past crimes?”

“Of course.”

“Remember what that would have meant?”

“Very well.”

“Now multiply it maybe five times, and you’ll get a feel for what we’ve entered into. Do you still need me to draw the line?”

“No, I think I drew it. So we not only drop all prior charges and convictions in absentia but also any travel restrictions against the rebels?”

“Yup. Our consulate in Bogotá has been monitoring the issuing of new passports to our former most-wanted-list folks. The list is getting quite long.”

“So these groups can now travel to the US? Folks that we really don’t want traveling here? Folks that are narcotraffickers first and guerillas a distant second?” Cale wondered why he was both belaboring the issue and not using names. The point was moot; she knew to whom he was referring.

“I’m afraid so. It seems we have a very short institutional memory.”

His brain speed picked up, and Cale began making connections. “Sheila, are there federal investigators in Florida looking into that fire?”

She let the question hang for a moment. “Yes. I’ll have someone contact you to let you know what they find. Should be within a week. I’m sure it’s just odd timing, but it makes me feel a little uneasy, so be careful until we can rule out foul play.”

“Thanks.”

“Oh, and before you ask, we already looked it up. Pablo’s favorite nephew, who has a quick trigger finger and a long memory, Francisco Escobar, is in the States. It was his brother at the villa.” Now she was the one who didn’t need to belabor the point. These details were etched in stone in his memory. “Francisco took a flight from Bogotá to Miami. He is scheduled to fly back to Bogotá on Sunday.”

“What has he been doing in Miami so far?”

“Were not even sure he’s still in Miami.”

Cale couldn’t believe they weren’t tracking him, but she had no obvious reason to lie about it. Cale grunted, “Well, maybe it will be fun to look over my shoulder for the rest of my life, be that forty years or a week.”

She laughed because his delivery was funny even though he was being a smartass. Well, maybe she laughed to be polite. Depending on what information was out there, she had more reason to look over her shoulder than a simple pilot like himself did.

Could you feel the spin?
Simple pilot
. He was already rehearsing the lines for his future captors.

Having psychopathic billionaires mad at you was just not a great position to be in. Billionaires, by definition, had significant resources to accomplish what they wanted. Cale reminded himself why he took his pension and ran. The problem pawns faced was that the guys who played chess were at peace with sacrificing a few of them. You could say “chess masters” instead of “guys who play chess,” but Cale’s experience dictated that was too high a praise.

When the call ended, Cale stepped outside on the front porch for some fresh air. The temperature had dropped twenty degrees since midnight. The air felt different, purer. Perhaps this was the barometric pressure dropping. Deep, low storm clouds and thick rain made charcoal-gray light.

He stepped inside and shut the storm door but left the six-panel door open. The house was dark except for the gray light through the storm door and the LED bulbs burning in the foyer and living room. The closed storm shutters blackened most of the house. It was a good day to sleep on the couch and dream about Colombians sharpening their knives. Maybe they’d dull their knives instead to make it more painful. He couldn’t count five postcollege days he’d slept an afternoon away. Forget the Colombians. Thank you, Arlene.

Before he stepped away from the doorway, a truck pulled into the tip of the driveway. Someone lost in the rain? Trying to make a call
and needing a safe spot to dial? Speaking of which, Cale pulled out his phone. The battery was in the red. He turned it off and found a charger to rejuice it. It was hard to believe that for the first thirty-five years of his life, he’d had a house phone connected to a wall. Now, for the last ten plus, he’d just kept one of these handy little guys in his pocket and took his phone into anybody’s house.

The house was storm ready but needed to become post-bachelor-party ready. Cale put linens in one washing machine and the first load of dirty towels in the second. He thought everyone should have two washers and dryers. Batch processing was a small luxury Maggie inserted into their lives. He dumped the rest of the towels on the laundry room floor to wait their turn.

He felt pretty good … considering. The bachelor party was over. There were no more debacles on the horizon. He had done nothing Maggie wouldn’t approve of. (In reality, he wouldn’t have told her about Blake’s adventures, so in the fantasy, she didn’t know about that either.) Maybe there were a few thoughts and daydreams she wouldn’t have cared for, but those were only daydreams. Nothing happened. You couldn’t hold a daydream against a guy. It’s actions that mattered. Or was it intent? No, actions. The road to hell was paved with a thousand good intentions. So wait, did that mean it was intent or actions that mattered? His thoughts should make sense by Thursday.

Walking back past the front door, Cale noticed the pickup edging down the driveway. He stopped to watch. It parked. He didn’t recognize the vehicle. The lights turned off, then the engine. Who was this? The rain was too heavy to see a face. A yellow rain hood was slipped over the driver’s head. Apparently, the driver was getting out. The driver must see Cale clearly, backlit in the doorway. This ruled out a storm looter.

Fatigue-induced brain synapses misfired and made Cale a touch jumpy. Too little sleep and too much booze. His aching hand wouldn’t let him forget yesterday’s silly altercation. He should
have just pushed the meathead into the water and moved on. The choice to go brutal unexpectedly draped him with disappointment. Now was the first time he’d even considered just pushing him off the dock. He thought to himself his own mini-Eisenhower warning about “the military industrial complex.” A country—or person in this case—with great power naturally looked for opportunities to display that power. He probed his memory, trying to make sure he hadn’t secretly been excited to feel that big bull step on the dock.

Cale flipped on the floodlights and stepped outside. He hoped this wasn’t a Colombian. If you were going to be hunted, for both hunter and quarry, it should be a little sporting (even dove farms don’t tie strings to the birds’ legs). No need to be such an easy target as to step backlit onto the porch unarmed. If the doorway had markings like convenience store doors did identifying height, it might make it slightly easier for them to shoot from farther away.

The visitor seemed in no rush to pull the figurative or literal trigger. Cale waited under the porch’s metal roof. Curious. A part of him, despite last night’s prudery, hoped it was Ashley, and that’s admittedly why he stepped out to meet his doom so quickly. But he could now tell it was definitely a dude. Cale reckoned he should go grab his sidearm but didn’t feel up to the effort and would feel mighty silly about it if it turned out to be a buddy.

The sound of rain on copper roofing pushed ninety decibels. A cold shiver fast-tracked across his body. His hands in his pockets, arms straight, elbows tucked into his body, he waited and wished he’d worn a sweatshirt instead of a T-shirt, boots instead of Rainbows.

Would his visitor mind waiting outside in the hurricane for a couple minutes while he went inside to change—or, better yet, started his nap?
Oh yeah. Sorry to keep you standing in the forty-mile-an-hour wind and inch-per-minute rain, but I suddenly fell asleep. No, I didn’t notice you drive up. This rain on the metal roof is so darn loud I didn’t hear the doorbell. I hope
you won’t hold it against me. Oh, you’re here to give me a Colombian necktie. Thank you, but I rarely dress up
.