First Team (67 page)

“My car’s at the airport,” she told Rankin and Guns. “I can drive you over.”

“Sounds good,” said Rankin. Van Buren had already offered him a lift, but he preferred riding with her.

“Hey, what about Ferg?” said Guns.

“What about him?” said Rankin. “He was with one of the cousins. They gave him a lift.”

“He know where we’re going?” asked Guns.

“Call him,” Corrine said.

Rankin made a face, but took out his phone. Ferg’s voice mail answered, and he left the message.

~ * ~

n hour after he left the cemetery, Ferguson strode into the bar that Conners had told him about while they were on their mission in Chechnya. Its wood-lined walls were thick with the accumulation of nearly a century’s worth of tobacco smoke, and the polished surface of the bar had heard a million tales of glory and misery. It was only one o’clock in the afternoon, but the place already had a decent crowd. There was a lively buzz in the air, the sort of sound that made Ferg glad his hearing had come back.

“Two shots whiskey, neat, both of ‘em,” Ferg said, pulling his wallet. “Beer chasers—make it Guinny,” he said, pointing at the Guinness tap.

As the bartender poured the drinks, Ferguson took a tape out of his pocket.

“I wonder if you’d play this for a friend of mine,” Ferg told him.

The bartender took the tape and looked at it quizzically. He was an older man, and he’d heard much stranger requests than this, so he shrugged and went over to the tape deck, putting in.

Liam Clancy’s voice filled the bar, off an old album Ferguson’s sister had tracked down for him. Ferg raised his shot glass and turned to the room, adding his own to Clancy’s as he came to the final verse of “Parting Glass”:

All the comrades that ever I had,

They’re sorry for my going away

And all the sweethearts that ever I had

They wish me one more day to stay.

But since it falls unto my lot

That I should rise and you should not

I’ll gently go and softly call,

‘Goodnight and joy be with you all.’

As the song faded, Ferguson tossed the whiskey down his throat and turned back to the bar. Standing, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a thick wad of hundred-dollar bills, withdrawn from his personal account that morning. He spread them out on the bar near the untouched shot glass.

“No one pays for their own drink today,” he said. “All for the honor of Sergeant Hugh Conners, a braver man you’ll never see.”

And then he took a last sip from his beer, leaving the glass half-full as he walked out into the cold New Jersey afternoon, alone.