Commander-in-Chief

60

John Clark sat in the saloon of a small sailboat, smiling at the middle-aged German couple who’d collected him from the shore of West Seal Dog Island an hour before. The husband was dressed only in a Speedo; he was as pink as a rose and as round as a beach ball, and although she was much more modestly dressed, his wife was no more svelte.

They smiled back at Clark, which told him they didn’t get the hint that he wanted some privacy.

They’d rescued him from the rocky deserted island after he had sat there six hours in the sun, feeling the muscle spasms and the bruising and the swelling, and brooding over how nice it was going to feel to get the Walkers’ kidnappers at gunpoint.

And then when the German couple brought him on board their thirty-five-foot Catalina, the Frau tended to his wounds with the boat’s med kit and the Herr brought him a cold bottle of pilsner in an actual stein.

For a minute Clark thought his head injury was so bad his brain was playing bizarre and cruel tricks on him.

Almost immediately the couple asked to get a picture with the American, their catch of the day; they were so proud of their rescue Clark thought this would make the papers in whatever tiny hamlet they lived in back in Bavaria. He obliged reluctantly and then asked if he could use their phone to call his wife.

And here they were, Clark with the phone in his hand and Gerry Hendley’s number already keyed into it, and the Germans smiling and grinning and beaming with pride, staring at him like they wanted to take him to a taxidermist and mount him and put him over their mantel.

Clark smiled even broader. “I’m sorry. I wonder if I could have a little privacy. I might get emotional talking to my wife, since I almost died last night. It would be embarrassing to me for you to see me cry.”

“Ach so!” said the husband, and the wife quickly checked the icepack and the bandage on the side of his head, and then the husband shooed her up the tiny companionway and then followed her, even closing the companionway door.

Clark blew out a long sigh while he dialed the phone, then deleted his picture while it rang.

Gerry answered his mobile after a few rings. “Hendley.”

“Hey, Gerry, John here.”

“Jesus, John, I’ve been calling you all morning.”

“Yeah, well my phone is probably getting humped by a lobster right now.”

“I’m sorry… what do you mean by that?”

“It’s at the bottom of the ocean.” John told Gerry everything condensed into a minute of time, because he didn’t know when the German couple was going to peek down on him and he really didn’t feel like pretending to cry.

When he finished Gerry said, “Christ, John. We’ve got to get you out of there.”

“I’m fine. I just need to be reequipped, and I need a new lead on the Spinnaker II.”

“I’ll pull the boys out of Lithuania to come help you.”

“Please don’t! What they are doing is important. This is important down here, but rescuing the Walkers isn’t in the same ballpark as far as significance. I can handle this myself.”

Clark realized he was beginning to sound like Jack Junior. He had something to prove that, one could argue, transcended logic and sense. Jack had to live up to the legend of his father. Clark had to live up to the legend of himself. Both he and Jack, Clark realized, were dealing with self-inflicted forces.

But that didn’t make them any less real.

It simultaneously annoyed him and allowed him to lighten his criticisms of his younger operator.

Gerry said, “Look, when you didn’t check in first thing this morning I got worried. I sent Adara down, she’ll be landing around one-thirty.”

“Gerry, I don’t need—”

“Wait, just listen. It’s done. Adara will support you. No arguments. You know what she’s done in other ops. She is more than capable of providing operational support.”

Gerry asked for no arguments, and Clark gave him none.

Clark’s morning with the German couple ended when Adara Sherman picked him up in a rented helicopter in Spanish Town, Virgin Gorda. Clark had explained the attractive young woman in the red Robinson helicopter was an employee of the company he worked for, but he didn’t explain how she happened to be down here.

As they flew back toward Tortola, Adara explained she had rented a small two-room house near the airport and she was taking Clark there now so she could check out his injuries.

Clark protested out of habit, but his entire body hurt like hell, and he was exhausted nearly to the point of nausea.

When they got into the house, a businesslike Adara Sherman opened her rolling backpack med kit in the kitchen and ordered John Clark to take off his shirt.

Adara looked at his bruises and scrapes. “Good Lord! Did you fall down the stairs?”

“As a matter of fact, I did.” He winced when she rubbed an alcohol compress on his back. “Is this where you and the other kids start talking about putting me in assisted living?”

It was a joke, and Adara had an easy laugh, even in tough situations, but she wasn’t laughing now. She saw the knot behind his ear. “Oh… I get it. It looks like someone encouraged you to fall.”

“That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.”

“Was this a leather sap?”

“It felt like a hammer, but I’m not sure. I guess everything to the skull feels like a hammer.”

Adara put ice behind his ear after tending to his other wounds. When she was finished Clark said, “We need to find that boat. I feel like they are still in the area, but it could take days to find it.”

“John… we have an aircraft. We can fly across this entire chain in minutes.”

“The Gulfstream can’t make low passes over the BVIs looking for a boat. It will draw too much attention.”

“Then I’ll rent that Robinson we were just on. On the way to pick you up, the pilot said he moves people all over the BVIs all day long.”

“What’s he going to say to flying a recon mission?”

Adara just smiled. “Trust me, Mr. Clark. I’ll make up a good story. He told me he only had two short charters tomorrow, so I’ll call him now, and first thing in the morning he and I will go out hunting for that catamaran.”

Clark winced again as she cinched an ACE bandage holding an icepack around his head. “What about me?”

Adara said, “The only way this happens is if you take a couple days to recuperate. I see the pain you are in. You are lucky you aren’t in traction in the hospital, or worse.”

“But—”

“I can do the recon on my own. I know what I’m looking for. I can see better than you. No offense, but it’s true. I’ll find the boat if it’s out there, and I’ll report back to you. You lie around here for forty-eight hours, keep your ice on, and you will thank me when you get back in action.”

“Ms. Sherman, I am really fine.”

“Everybody says that the day after an injury. It’s two days after, when the bruising circulates through the soft tissue, that the pain gets the worst.”

John had learned this very fact from a lifetime of hard living. In retrospect, he wished he’d learned it from a book instead.

Adara added, “Let’s let them think you are dead. If you go back out to the marinas and ports asking more questions, it won’t take them any time to realize you are still alive and still hunting for them.”

Clark realized Sherman was right. Still, he said, “What am I going to do for two days?”

“First, you’re going to call your wife and daughter and tell them you love them.”

Clark looked down at the floor, a little embarrassed. “Of course.”

“Good. And you don’t need me to tell you to do the other thing you have to do.”

“What other thing?”

Adara Sherman gave John Clark a hard look. “You are going to plan your next meeting with the men who did this to you.”

Clark nodded. No, he didn’t need anyone to tell him this.