Dark Dragons (72 page)

Darren stood up and entered the house.  He didn’t want
to hear her response.  It was a cold move to just leave her out there
alone, he knew, but the uncertainty was unbearable.  He finished his beer
and went to the fridge for another.

What are you doing, asshole?  Go back out there and
tell her straight!  After all you’ve been through, you’re going to mope
away from a girl?
  He was practically marching back toward the front
door.  He gave the screen door a slightly harder push than normal, ready
to get his Rick James on——but Vanessa was not there.

He saw her dark silhouette highlighted against the street
light at the end of the driveway.  She was on her cell phone.

In the dead silence of the city around them, he heard her
say, “Where are you . . . ?  Oh, good, can you pick me up at the corner of
Sutton Canyon and Kenmore . . . ?  I’ll tell you when you get here . . .
okay, I’ll see you in a bit.”

Vanessa slowly walked away in the dark stillness toward
Kenmore a block down the street.  Darren went to the curb and watched her
go.  A minute later, he saw her appear under the street light at the
corner and sit down on the curb.

He knew who was coming for her.

Minutes later, a familiar red Chevy truck pulled up, and
Vanessa got in.  The truck did not move for several seconds, until finally
it U-turned and drove back down Sutton Canyon toward Foothill Boulevard.

Darren climbed into his Dragonstar’s cockpit, leaving the
windshield open so that he could listen to the soft prattle of the crickets and
the owl still hooting in the distance.

“What a week,” he murmured.

Restaurant Le Cap, Grand
Hôtel du Cap-Ferrat

Three Weeks Later

Darren sat by himself in the Restaurant Le Cap on its open
air terrace overlooking the Mediterranean Sea.  The setting sun was
beginning to dip below the horizon, casting peach-colored bands with yellow
streaks across the darkening sky.  The twinkling lights of Nice lay just a
few miles west of the Saint-Jean-Cape-Ferrat peninsula where the Grand Hôtel du
Cap-Ferrat sat like a mighty castle on the southern point.

Darren wore a purple Ralph Lauren sport shirt, white
Brunello Cucinelli cotton trousers, 10½” Gucci cream leather drivers and a
$7,800 Rolex Explorer on his left wrist——about $9,100 worth of shameless
overindulgence.  The only items missing were a white scarf, Ray-Bans and a
fashion runway lined with ogling photographers.  His dandy appearance,
however, did not mirror his melancholy mood.

He stared at the sailboats and yachts lingering by,
wondering if those aboard were having a good time.  Of course they were.

A group of Arab men in crisp white robes walked past,
chattering in their native tongue, which Darren found fascinating.  The
restaurant’s patrons were the
crèmé de la crèmé
of the jet-set
lifestyle: European aristocracy, movie stars, rock ’n’ roll gods, corporate
CEO’s, and twentysomething heirs out spending their billionaire parents’ wealth
in the flashy techno clubs and wine cafés along the French Riviera.

Darren watched an Australian actress——
what’s her name
again?
——walking toward his table dressed in a beautiful light green evening
dress.  There was some kind of schmaltzy party going on in one of the
hotel’s VIP lounges.  She caught his roving eye and smiled as she strutted
by.  Darren felt a little better, but it didn’t last long.

He definitely looked out of place sitting alone surrounded
by rich lovers staring into one another’s eyes.  British rocker Ian
Hawthorn and his current supermodel girlfriend sat at the next table eating
pistachio ice cream from a single bowl.  Even the two gay guys text
messaging on their smart phones one table over were still mindful of the
other’s presence with a game of footsie under their table

The waiter returned with a bottle of vintage Bordeaux. 
“Monsieur, plus de vin?”

“Oui,”
Darren replied.

He filled his glass and moved on.

The PDA chirped in his pocket, and he fished it out, keeping
it under the table.  His Dragonstar parked on a forested mountaintop ten
miles to the north just sent an intruder warning, but it turned out to be a
harmless fox taking a piss on one of the landing skids.  No need for
retaliatory violence.  Darren dialed down the anti-intruder defense for
“two-legged” surveillance and put the device back in his pocket.

When he tipped his head back to finish his wine, he spotted
another stunning woman in the Restaurant Le Cap, this one appearing from around
a corner at the far end of the terrace.  She wore a waist-high, pink
cocktail dress with long fishnet sleeves, a pink and black wide-brim hat, and a
matching set of black, high-heel pumps and shoulder bag.  She stopped at
the bar pavilion to buy a drink——a martini——before strutting across the terrace
in his direction, turning heads both male and female as she approached. 
The skimpy dress accentuated her amazing curves, and the plunging neckline
threatened to cause a ballooning wardrobe malfunction.

“Where have you been?” Darren asked with fake indignation in
his voice, his dour disposition suddenly brightening.

Vanessa stuck her tongue out, imitating his faux
anger.  “The Gucci store in Monaco had a sale on jewelry.  These were
only $600.”  She flicked one of her earrings.  “I got a new stamp in
my passport, too.”  Vanessa sat down and let a sheepish grin cross her
face.  “I’m sorry I’m late.  The cab driver didn’t speak English, and
I don’t know French.  We were halfway to Italy before I knew where he was
going.”

“It’s all right,” Darren said truthfully.  “I was
kidding.”  Her constant sunny disposition made it hard to stay mad at her
for long, one of her many attributes he found rewarding.

Vanessa sipped her martini and glanced across the darkening
Mediterranean.  “I love a country where the drinking age limit is
eighteen.”

“So. . . ?”  He raised his eyebrows as high as he
could.  “Where’s my card?”

Vanessa gave him a confounded look.  “Oh, that’s
right!”

“Ohhhh, yeah!”

Vanessa reached into her tiny bag and gave Darren back his
American Express Centurion card, its monthly balances and $2,500 annual fee
integrated into the Department of Defense’s “black budget.”  Darren, Tony,
Nate and Jorge were awarded the exclusive, invitation-only cards ——made of
anodized titanium!——in a secret ceremony held at Camp David two weeks
ago.  Of course the cards were just the APIS’s clever way of keeping track
of their movements, but they didn’t care.  Towsley was a good guy. 
Paranoid nonetheless.

Jorge received a little extra frosting on his cake from a nice
lady from Homeland Security who granted him and his family immediate U.S.
citizenship.  For saving the world, it was the least Uncle Sugar could do.

The Medal of Freedom was nice, also, but it couldn’t buy a
$2,300 bottle of Château Lafite Rothschild and a $200 jar of Russian Beluga
caviar——which Darren and Vanessa wound up discretely spitting into their
napkins the night before.

Darren stuffed the AMEX into his wallet.  “I feel
guilty spending the American taxpayers’ money . . . almost.”  He had a
fully restored 1970 Mustang Boss 429 waiting for him at a Ford dealership in
Providence, Rhode Island, a sizable down payment sealing the deal.

“You’ve done generous things with your money, too,” she
said.  “You shouldn’t be feeling guilty for anything.  Snap out of
it.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

Darren sent his mom and her two girlfriends to the Bahamas
for a week and helped his Aunt Michelle, his dad’s sister and a single-mother,
get back on her feet after some tough times.  Jorge put a down payment on
a beautiful home in Rancho Palos Verdes for his family.  He also set up a
monthly $2,000 auto-pay donation to a hunger/poverty-fighting organization
called Heifer International that donated precious livestock to poor Third World
families.  Tony and Nate exercised their philanthropy by supporting the
local economy in the tequila-soaked back alleys of Tijuana at the “donkey
shows” and cockfights.  They returned a week later with black-eyes,
tattoos, pubic crabs and a blood-pact to return.

“All of this money is going to make me sick.  Aren’t
you getting sick of it yet?”

Vanessa tilted her head a little, giving him a playful
look.  “Hell no.  I’m having fun with your military-issue credit
card.  I have the Vera Wang shoes to prove it.”

“Ha!  Now I know why you really broke up with
Todd.  Just for a roll in the Benjamins, that’s all.”

“You got me.  I’m only dating you for the money,
honey.”

“Yeah, I know,” he shot back. “Live it up fast, though,
Princess Grace, because the AMEX expires in five years and it doesn’t renew.”

Vanessa kicked him under the table with a look of
choler.  “I was kidding.”

“Honestly?” Darren asked.

Vanessa’s martini took a bigger pull this time and a
slightly harder return to the table.  Her eyes promised a nasty retort,
but slowly they softened——just a little.  “You know I came back to you
days before you got rich.  After I said goodbye to Todd . . . who frankly
didn’t appear bothered.  Yeah, the money’s a nice bonus . . . but the
credit card didn’t rescue me from alien invaders or outsmart a whacked out guy
from school . . . the card didn’t write that note I found in my locker either.”

The last question in his heart which had been whispering
suspicions for the last three weeks had finally been answered.  A slight
pressure released inside him. 
“Je t’aime, trop,”
he said.

Vanessa tilted her head again.  “Translation, please.”

“I said ‘I love you, too.’”

“I love
you
,” she murmured.  “I think the fact
you can speak French is sexy.  There’s another bonus.”

“Well, I am half-French.  My great-grandpa fished for a
living during the week and plugged Nazis for the Resistance on the weekends.”

After the waiter came and took their dinner order, Vanessa
reached across the table and held his hand.  She whispered, “Let’s go back
to that secluded, little cove we found in Thailand,” her words laced with fond
memories.

“We already spent a week there,” he replied.  His mind
floated back to that abandoned fisherman’s hut hidden among the coconut palms
and tall limestone peaks.  Eating, drinking, swimming, making
love——eating, drinking, swimming, making love.  “I thought we talked about
Rio or Venice next?  Or Goa?”

“Goa is hippy backpacker heaven.  It would take us an
hour to get into a club.”

“How about a safari villa in Kenya?”

Vanessa nodded. “Yeah, that would be cool.  Or how
about scuba diving in Belize?”

“I’ve always wanted to see Tokyo.”

They spent the next ten minutes exciting one another with
possible destinations——“Mongolia?”——two young adults with the world now readily
open to them, when their food and wine arrived.  They ate a candlelight
dinner with a 2004 vintage Château d’Yquem.  Darren had Duck Confit with
foie gras and black truffles, Vanessa . . . roasted John Dory with sauteed
purple artichokes and olives.  It was late when they returned to their
deluxe presidential suite with the gorgeous view of a moonlit Mediterranean and
the yellow lights of yachts and sailboats out to sea.

As they lay in bed with their bodies intertwined, their
skins caressed by a tropical breeze wafting in through the open terrace, Darren
turned his head and whispered in her ear.  “You know . . . there’s one
place we haven’t considered visiting.”

*

“I change my mind,” Vanessa said. “I want to go back.”

“Oh come on, we’re already here,” Darren said.

“This is freaking me out.”

“How can you be freaking out from this?  This is kiddie
stuff.”

He heard her take in a deep breath over the comm. 
“You’re right . . . I can do this.”

“There you go.  You won’t ever forget this.  This
is one of those life experiences people write books about.  Like that guy
who climbed Everest and those guys who dove to the bottom of the Marianas
Trench.  What we’re about to do is far less extreme than what they
did——and far more historical.”

Darren had landed near the edge of the great Valles
Marineris.  Its incredible expanse and mysterious beauty was hard for them
to comprehend.  At the point where they sat, the opposite side of the
canyon, nearly obscured by a pink haze of rusty dust, lay almost seventy miles
away.  He had been to the Grand Canyon before, but that tiny tear in the
earth’s surface would be just a minor branch of the gargantuan rift stretching
across the Martian surface in front of them.  Twenty feet from the
Dragonstar’s nose, the cliff dropped more than five miles to the valley floor.

Darren used his fighter’s ECM communication hack to access
his MP3 player’s flash drive.  They were listening to a mixed playlist of
his favorite classic rock songs.  The amazing view spread out before them
took on more vibrancy and power to the tune of “Tupelo Honey” by Van Morrison.

“I never did ask . . . how’s Jorge’s suit working for you?”
Darren asked.

“It’s a little tight in the chest,” Vanessa replied.

“Well, it was never designed for boobs.”

“No kidding.  Do I really have to wear the armor
suit?  I’d rather just have the helmet and the sub-suit.”

“I wouldn’t risk it.  All it would take is for a sharp
rock or a sudden sandstorm to ruin your day.  I’m talking exploding lungs
and sucked out eyeballs kind of stuff.”

“Okay, I’ll keep the armor on.”

Darren did a quick environmental——just a balmy summer temp
of minus-22-degrees F, ninety-five percent carbon dioxide, and an atmo pressure
of 7.6 millibars, less than one percent of Earth’s.