“Come on in, Dylan, I’ll be with you in a minute. Just lemme finish this call.”
Dylan Corcoran walked into the study and took a seat in the high-backed, black leather chair, in front of a large golden maple desk, covered in papers and open laptops. Behind and to the right of the desk was a matching credenza, upon which sat several whiskey bottles, each missing a significant portion of their contents. He pushed his thick auburn hair off his forehead as Madeleine Peyroux’s voice cooed from all sides, shrouding the room in a fateful pall.
"...drink up with me now and forget all about the pressure of days do what I say..."
As the phone conversation droned on from the other side of the desk, his eyes wandered around the room, lighting here and there on the framed photographs that crowded the walls. He saw himself in many, mostly among heavily armed, uniformed men with filthy faces. In one such, surrounded by mountains and in another, a lush forest with hanging vines. In still another, a much younger, exhausted self cradling a combat shotgun, reclined on the bumper of a Humvee against a desolate moonscape pocked with Saddam's hellish fire geysers. On another wall, he saw himself barefoot, in shorts, three-day beard and sunglasses on the bow of a sailboat. And over there, with his daughter Katie, his former brother-at-arms and boss on the other side of desk and the bosses’ daughter, Cara, on the porch of a palm-shaded cottage.
The phone snapped shut, the boss sighed, sought relief in a deep gulp from the omnipresent whiskey glass, reclined back in his chair and farted loudly.
“That was was awesome,” Dylan said.
“Do you really think so?”
“I’ve always liked that one of the four of us in Tavernier,” Dylan said.
“Yeah, those were good times, brother, we need to get back there soon.”
A wry smile flashed across Dylan’s face, knowing how often the boss talked of reliving the old days and how rarely he did anything about it. “Does that place even exist anymore?” Dylan asked before pointing toward a framed photograph on the desk. “Is that a new one of Cara?”
“Yeah, she posted it last week.”
“I remember how Katie used to miss the shit out of Cara when she left at the end of the summer. It was a two-week ordeal just to work through the separation anxiety,” Dylan laughed.
“Hell, I feel that way now. I’d like to have Cara around all the time, I get to rely on her when she’s here. She just makes everything right. Funny, how your kid can do that.”
A smile of assent flickered across Dylan's face and he sat lost in thought until the boss spoke up.
“So what’s up, buddy? I know you didn’t come over here to talk about old times.”
Dylan stalled a little longer. “What're you working on there?”
“A thriller about a father and daughter,” the boss responded sarcastically.
“A thriller? What are you? Robert Ludlum now? Plots in your books are only the waves on top of the ocean while beneath the surface you are plumbing the depths of men’s souls," Dylan proclaimed grandly. “Or that’s what your mesmerized critics say anyway.”
“Thank you, Walt Whitman.”
“No problem,” Dylan smirked.
“And how about you? What’s your latest tome going to shed new light on?”
“The use of artillery in Napoleon’s Italian Campaign, my friend.”
“Oh god, that sounds awful!”
“Ha! You’ll be reading it on the shitter before long.”
“Alright, let’s get on with it. I quite literally have a dozen things to do today.
Dylan repositioned himself in the chair as if to redirect himself to business. "Colonel Zakharchenko called last night. He wants a Predator flight over the northwestern edge of the Rasht Valley and he’s wondering if you could arrange it with Major Sizemore. According to him, that sack-of-shit Ahmadhov is back at it." He paused, reflecting. "I don’t know what the hell the Dushanbe government wants with that Rasht shit-hole anyway.”
“Uh huh... right... You more than anyone knows exactly what they want with it. It’s the only buffer between them and the Afghan border. What else is going keep the assholes out? Whether the adolescent American public knows it or not, we’ve got to have secular Islamic states in that area of the world, just to keep our sloppy, fat asses in Pepsi and Hohos.”
“You might wanna make that last sentence your ring tone," Dylan laughed. "Do you really believe that anymore? That’s what it looks like from your desk, but it’s a little different on the floor of that valley.”
“Fuck that! I’m not even going to get into this with you. It’ll be a two-hour conversation that’ll lead to you seeing it my way. Our way. The way we’ve understood since The Gulf.”
Dylan sat quietly, almost passively. “You always remember that. My resolve gets lost in all the kids that Zakharchenko’s artie shreds and the women his troops rape.”
“There are shredded kids and raped women on both sides, Dylan.”
“Yeah, they seem to be the lowest common denominator of every war...”
“I know.”
“And they don’t get the benefit of all the money we make off of trying to fix Islamist messes around the globe, either,” Dylan said.
“This isn’t all about money.”
“Isn’t it? I still can’t figure out what loan-sharking, prostitution and strong-arming businesses has to do with our little crusade to save the world?”
“Well it paid for our work for quite a few years, if you recall.”
“But we don’t need it anymore, do we?” said Dylan, adopting a plantive tone. “We each have enough money to finance a year-long Third World conflict anywhere on the globe.”
“Hey now! The airborne paid us shit for all those years, while we risked our asses in every god-forsaken corner of the globe and, I might add, we made nuthin' when we both were trying to get our first pathetic drivel published. Someone’s finally paying us for the things we do best and I’m more than willing to let ‘em.”
Dylan relented. “Yeah, for all my Desmond Tutu talk, I’m a total hypocrite. I’m attached to the money and the excitement and I don't care about selling weapons and military services - as long as they're used to get rid of these idiots, but more and more I’d really like to off-load at least the civilian crime we’ve gotten ourselves into.”
“Soon enough, my friend, that was Barry on the phone and he thinks Mike should take over a lot of this shit. He’s setting up a meeting for us this week.”
“Mike Mariposa, huh? That dude wants to get his fuckin’ paws on our military contacts in the worst way.”
“How’s he gonna do that? Those men follow us and no one else.”
They follow you. You’ve been everyone’s daddy since those operations in the Gulf and the Balkans, there’s not one of them that wouldn’t sacrifice his virgin daughter to you,” Dylan said.
“Whatever! You were there for all of it.”
“When did we start saying ‘Whatever’?”
They both laughed.
Then Dylan began again, “But seriously, we both know that none of our buddies are going to have anything to do with that Colombian mother-fucker. But he doesn’t. He’s thinkin’ he can use your prestige to get at them and nobody’s gonna convince him otherwise.”
“You and I can deal with him. We’ve handled every other bad-ass on the globe.”
Dylan smiled ruefully, “You generally read people pretty well, but I’m tellin’ you right now, you aren’t going to have your way with that guy. He’s a hollow-eyed killer, no question. The worst I’ve ever seen and I’ve seen some bad ones. I can’t think of anything he wouldn’t do for a nickel. Fuck the money, he’d suck a third-grader’s eyes out for the pure joy of it.” He paused for a moment. “I don’t know about you, buddy, but I’m ready for the whole thing to be over. With all the success we’ve both had writing, why do we need it? I’m ready to retire and be a gentleman farmer with my books and my writing. I’ve had enough excitement to last me.”
“I love writing, man, but sometimes I don’t know if I could be as good without livin’ this way. Could you?”
“Sure as shit I could! Writing and sailing with Katie, you and Cara will do me just fine,” Dylan replied.
“Ha! Yeah, I love that shit. It’ll happen again soon enough.”
“Okay, but while we’re all waiting, could you do me a favor?”
“What’s that?”
Dylan stood up to his full six foot three and poked a finger at the boss. “Just be careful with that guy. Just be fuckin’ careful! You know Colombians. They play for all the shit... All of it! Both of us have a lot to lose and he sure as hell knows it.”
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