Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 05 (18 page)

 
          
“So
you think we should sell?”

 
          
“We’d
have the money to make a fresh start,” Wendy said. “We could go anywhere, do
anything. Jon Masters said he’d hire you in an instant, doing God knows what.
Any defense contractor in
America
would hire you, hire both of us, on the
spot if we wanted to get into that life again. Hal Briggs talked about us
getting involved in his brother’s police canine-training facility in
Georgia
. Or we could just buy a boat and shuttle
back and forth from
Friday
Harbor
to Cabo San Lucas all year. We wouldn’t be
obliged to anyone except ourselves and our own dreams. We could ...”

 
          
But
she stopped, and she knew he wasn’t listening—he had adopted what the
Vietnam
vets called the “thousand-yard stare,” a
flashback. His mind had drifted off once again, replaying some bomb run or
aerial chase or dangerous mission where men and women had died around him.
Mentioning the names of Brad Elliott, Jon Masters, and Hal Briggs had been a
big mistake, she decided. His life, his heart, was still with them, wherever
they
were. If there truly was a
purgatory, Wendy thought, Patrick McLanahan must be in it—and she was with him.

 
          
She
knew that he had forcibly separated himself from them, his longtime friends, to
return her to
California
so she could heal after her aircraft accident—and it had been a truly
extraordinary event. A Russian spy named Kenneth Francis James had shot down an
experimental bomber in which she had been a crew member. Only two of the seven
crew members aboard that bomber had survived; the spy had killed six other
soldiers, injured several others, and destroyed hundreds of millions of
dollars’ worth of equipment in his mad dash to escape. The incident had led to
the dismissal of all of the senior officers of Nevada-based HAWC, including
Patrick McLanahan, and the closure of the facility.

 
          
Patrick
had accepted an early retirement rather than demotion and reassignment so he
could be with his newlywed during her recovery; to pass the time and do
something close to home, he had taken over the operation of the longtime family
business in Old Sacramento. She loved him for making that sacrifice for her,
but she could tell that he longed to be back in the action, even though he was
bitter that the government and the Air Force had destroyed so many lives and
careers in the witch-hunt that followed the James disaster. The restlessness,
his guilt-based desire to stay with his wife and run the family business, and
his anger and frustration were all combining to turn Patrick Shane McLanahan
into a dark, explosive, and angry young man.

 
          
He
said absently, “Til think about it, sweetie,” before rising, robotlike, giving
her a peck on the cheek, and departing. As Wendy watched him leave, she knew
that he hadn’t heard a word she’d said. All he could see was a job not yet
finished, a life not yet fulfilled. He had come out of sixteen horrible, hard
years in the Air Force with barely a scratch, yet he had been wounded far worse
than all the others—his spirit may have even been killed. Just a little bit,
perhaps, but just as surely and as finally as the deaths of J. C. Powell, Alan
Carmichael, and John Ormack, among all the others that had touched Patrick’s
life over the past ten violent, unpredictable years.

 
          
Patrick’s
attention had wandered because he had heard the
eleven o’clock
news come on. As usual the lead story was
on the goings-on in the
Middle East
,
and he wanted to hear the latest. So far, a lot of saber-rattling by
Iran
, and virtual silence from
Washington
.

 
          
“What
do you think of all that shit, boss?” asked the bartender, a young kid by the
name of Hank.

 
          
“I
think the Iranians are sailing their carrier around to scare the shit out of
the rest of the world, and to prove they’re the baddest Muslim country on the
planet,” Patrick replied matter-of-facdy.

 
          
“Why
aren’t we doing anything about them? Is it because we’re afraid of getting our
asses kicked, like twenty-five years ago?”

 
          
“Hank,
that was
Vietnam
, and we didn’t get our asses kicked—we withdrew,” McLanahan corrected
him. “
Iran
and
Iraq
are two different countries in the
Middle East
, not southeast Asia. Both countries border
on the
Persian Gulf
, a major oil-producing region. We went to
war with
Iraq
six years ago, remember?”

 
          
“Six
years ago . . . man, I was just in high school then, boss!” Hank laughed. “Did
we win that war?”

 
          
“Hank,
we won that war in
one hundred days!”

 
          
“One
hundred days! That’s . .. that’s like over three months!” Hank exclaimed.
“Don’t the Navy SEALs and guys like Jean-Claude Van Damme kick ass and clean up
in just a day or two?”

 
          
“The
Vietnam War lasted ten
years,
Hank.”

 
          
“Oh,
yeah, we learned about
that
one in
school,” Hank said, trying to sound as if he had really been paying attention.
“That was the war where Johnson and Nixon kept on drafting war protesters and
sending them over into the jungles to napalm villagers and get killed by bamboo
poisoned with rat shit, until Jane Fonda caught Reagan bugging her offices and
got him thrown out of office ...”

 
          
“Jesus,
Hank ...” Patrick spluttered. Man, this kid made him feel
old,
Patrick thought. He didn’t even remember the Persian Gulf War,
let alone the Vietnam War or Watergate! All he knew was what he saw on “Beavis
and Butthead” or “Hard Copy.” “Try picking up a copy of something other than
Mad
magazine once in a while, okay?”

 
          
“So
why don’t we just go in and kick some butt, boss, like we did against
Iran
... ?”

 
          
“
Iraq
, Hank.”

 
          
“Yeah,
right... whatever. Why don’t we just go in and bomb ’em or something?”

 
          
Patrick
looked angrily at the bartender, then turned, picked up a towel to do the
tables, and said as he walked away, “We don’t bomb anybody anymore, Hank. We’re
peacekeepers now.”

 
          
Hank
nodded, hopelessly confused, and said, “ Yeahhh ... right. We’re peacekeepers.
...” Talking international affairs with Hank was like talking to the dishrag in
his hands, Patrick decided.

 
          
Yep,
only peacekeepers now . . . and targets . . .

 
          
The
waitress hadn’t shown up yet, so Patrick decided to make the rounds. The guys
who looked like feds only wanted coffee refills. Patrick tried to strike up
conversations with them, hoping to find out if his instincts were right, but
none of them were in a chatty mood, which suited Patrick just fine. Patrick
found a pretty blond woman sitting with the black gent in the corner booth now;
she placed her coffee cup where he could reach it with the pot, and Patrick
filled it. He tried to catch a good glimpse of her face, but failed. Was she a
hooker, trying to scare up some business? Patrick caught a glimpse of sleek
legs, but little else.

 
          
It
appeared that the black gent hadn’t touched his beer in half an hour. Even the sweat
on the side of the glass was gone. Patrick reached for the glass: “I’ll get you
a fresh Samuel A,” he said.

 
          
“Thanks,
young man,” the gent said. “Guess I’m paying more attention to the news than to
the beer.”

 
          
“Me
too,” Patrick offered. “Can I get you anything else? We have some great hot
appetizers. Would you like to see a menu?” The woman sitting at the guy’s table
tittered a bit, covering her mouth. The black guy scowled at her; Patrick
ignored it, but inside he was fuming, asking himself, Why the hell am I here?
What the hell am I doing? This bitch is laughing at me because I’m taking food
orders . . . but I’m not happy doing this. Wendy’s right, I’m not happy doing
this.

 
          
“I
heard what you told the bartender about Iran,” the black guy said, in a bit of
a booming, authoritative voice that made Patrick think perhaps he was a little
drunk or distraught. “It’s pretty unbelievable when you think about the
historical memories of
America
’s young people.”

 
          
“Not
everyone,” Patrick said. “Hank’s main concern right now is paying the rent, not
world affairs. He’s a pretty smart guy.”

 
          
“What
makes you think the Iranians are just scaring everybody?”

 
          
“
Iran
’s got enough domestic problems without
worrying about picking fights with any of its neighbors, or with the
United States
,” Patrick said, not really wanting to get
into another inane discussion about the
Middle East
but unconsciously blowing off a little
steam from interacting with ol’ Hank. “But the GCC attack on
Abu
Musa
Island
stirred up the military. Soon they’ll
mobilize the Pasdaran—”

 
          
“The
what?” the guy asked. “The who?”

 
          
“The
Pasdaran, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Iranian elite troops. The
Pasdaran are the Iranian storm troopers, the SS of the
Middle East
. They’re the best of the best, the pointy
end of the spear. They have about the same size, speed, and equipment as the
U.S. Marine Corps—maybe even better.” Patrick pointed to the TV set over the
right side of the bar just as a map of
Iran
was being shown for the hundredth time that
hour on CNN.

 
          
“What
will they do?”

 
          
“If
the military gets the ear of the clerics in charge of the country, the first
thing they might do is close off the
Strait of Hormuz
and the
Persian
Gulf
. They’ll use
the
Khomeini
carrier group, backed up
by their new fleet of land-based bombers.”

 
          
“You’ve
lost me, son,” the gent said. “
Iran
’s going to do all this? Why?”

 
          
“They’ll
do it if anyone, especially the
U.S.
or
Israel
, gets in their way,” Patrick said. “If
Iran
closes off the Gulf and maybe then the
Red Sea
, all the oil-rich countries lose billions a
day. The
Gulf
states
won’t risk that—they’ll deal with
Iran
rather than risk losing oil revenues.”

 
          
“So
why don’t we just get a Steve Canyon aviator hero-type and bomb the crap out of
Iran, like we did in Iraq?” the woman chimed in, her voice slightly sarcastic,
as if a mere bartender had any answers she would find useful or informative.
Aha, Patrick thought, not a hooker—or at least a very highly educated one.
These two were together, and probably with the other three guys surrounding the
bar. What in hell was going on?