Burial Ground

IV

9:08 a.m.

Merritt sat on the pontoon beneath the wing of his plane and dangled his bare feet into the lake. He fought the initial reflex to recoil his legs from the shock of the cold water, and finished the last of his guava juice, wishing it had been coffee. God, how he missed the stuff. Not a single day passed that he didn't question his decision to give it up, but at least he was sleeping better now, rather than lying awake for hours, a victim of his waking nightmares. It was a small sacrifice, however. Life was good again for the most part. Uncomplicated. Just how he liked it.

The military had granted him the opportunity to spread his wings. Unfortunately, it had also sharpened his talons and trained him to use them however and whenever it saw fit.

A bare-chested native rowed his dugout into the middle of the lagoon, a dark silhouette against the reflection of the rising sun on the waves. The diminutive man stood, gathered a fishing net from the heap at the back of the boat, and tossed it out onto the water. After a moment, the man sat back down and rowed farther away, the net's buoys bobbing in his wake. Merritt almost wished he could be like that man, but he did need just a little more excitement after all. For all intents and purposes, the flying provided just that. The speed. The heights. The battles against the volatile tropical elements and the rush of alighting on nothing more substantial than water. There was a part of him, the same part that had driven him to enlist in the Army and then pushed him into special ops, that longed for adventure and danger, but he still wasn't able to forgive that aspect of his persona. It had sent him careening through the gates of hell, and it had taken every last ounce of his strength to claw his way back out.

He closed his eyes and let the sun warm his face. It hadn't always been like that. He remembered all of the hours he had spent dusting crops with his father back home in Iowa, learning to fly in his old man's lap, rocketing so low over the fields that his props clipped the grain. Like his father before him, he was never happier than when he was in the sky, where nothing could touch him and he controlled his own destiny. The problem was that that life was too simple. He could see how it wore down a man in his father's eyes, like those of a dog tethered in a yard by the highway, watching all the cars speed past on the way to destinations it would never know. And it would have killed him just a little bit every day.

He heard footsteps on the pier, but paid them no mind. As far as he was concerned, his job was done. He'd unloaded every last bag and box from his cargo hold. They could sit on the end of the dock until the Second Coming for all he cared. It wasn't his responsibility to play bellboy, or pack mule for that matter. They could drag their weary asses down here and carry that stuff for themselves.

"Mr. Merritt," a voice said from behind him.

Merritt shook his head and enjoyed the gentle roll of the waves a heartbeat longer. He really wasn't in the mood for this.

"Look," he said, lifting his feet out of the lake. He rose, walked down the length of the pontoon, and hauled himself up onto the weathered planks to face the silver-haired man who had been sitting behind him on the flight, the one whose eyes had never left his reflection in the mirror. "I unload the stuff as a courtesy. Beyond that, you're on your own."

The man offered an amused smile and extended his right hand. Merritt simply looked at it for a second before matching the man's stare and shaking his hand.

"My name is Leonard Gearhardt." The handshake lasted a beat too long, and Merritt had to slide his hand out of the older man's strong grip. "I wanted to thank you for what you did for my son."

Merritt should have suspected it. He was going to have to be much more careful. The lackadaisical life had dulled his instincts. Now that he knew, he could see the familial resemblance in the brows and eyes, the set of the broad jaw.

"I didn't do anything for your son, Mr. Gearhardt. There was nothing I could do."

"You made sure that his remains reached the proper authorities, and flew across the country to hand-deliver his belongings to the American Consulate." Gearhardt paused. "You could easily have made what was inside that bag disappear and no one would have been the wiser."

"And what kind of person would that make me?"

"A very wealthy one, Mr. Merritt. I can only assume you looked inside the rucksack. How easy would it have been to just slip out one little thing for yourself?"

Merritt felt his face flush with anger and his fingers automatically curled into fists. If there was one thing he'd learned in life, it was that either a man had honor or he didn't. It was a choice one had to make. There was no such thing as situational integrity. One bad choice invariably led to another, and the next thing one knew, he was sighting an innocent down the barrel of an assault rifle. Damn the consequences. He was never going down that road again.

"Are you suggesting that I stole something from a dead man? I'm not the criminal here. I wasn't the one looting the ruins, the very heritage of these people. I may be a lot of things, but I am not a thief."

Gearhardt flashed a disarming smile that might have had the desired effect under other circumstances, but Merritt already had his quills up. Maybe his character and loyalty were often suspect, but never his integrity. Never.

"That isn't what I meant to imply at all, Mr. Merritt. I was simply pointing out that had any other man on the planet found that bag, he would have taken the headdress, if not all of the contents, for himself. You're an uncommon man. And I just wanted to personally thank you for it."

Merritt softened subtly, but he could sense the other shoe hovering overhead, and he had run out of patience waiting for it to drop.

"Let's get this over with. What do you really want?"

"I want you to show me where you found my son's body. I need to see it." There was a barely noticeable shift in the man's posture, a sagging of his shoulders. "Please."

Merritt saw just a glimpse of the man's true pain before the stoic, businesslike demeanor returned. His anger softened in the face of such anguish. He knew the soul-deep sorrow of losing friends and family, but he could only imagine the sheer torment of having to bury a child.

"My son was my world, Mr. Merritt. I'll pay you whatever you want. Money is of no consequence right now. I just need to find out what happened to my boy."

"Of course," Merritt said. "I'll help in any way that I can."

"Name your price, Mr. Merritt."

Merritt smiled. "I wouldn't mind another cup of guava juice."

Gearhardt looked quizzically at him for a moment, and then laughed. He clapped Merritt on the shoulder and gently turned him toward the shore.

"I suppose you should put on your shoes while I track down some guava juice. From what I understand, we have a bit of a hike ahead of us."