With more than fourteen thousand combined horsepower, the three General Electric engines produced a confidence-building shriek, and the huge rotary wing thumped the air like a heavyweight boxer’s fists pounding the crap out of a punching bag. SEALs and Marines and associated Navy men left the ghost town and headed out-country in the last two hours of light, at an air speed of 150 knots.
As the deck vibrated under them, the seven dead terrorists were restless in their body bags. Restless as they had been in life. Good men and women sought calm, peace, time for reflection. Evil people were eternally restive, intractable, always eager for more thrills, which were the same few thrills endlessly repeated, because the evil were unimaginative, acting on feelings rather than reason. Forever agitated, they were unaware that the cause of their fury was the confining narrowness of the worldview they crafted for themselves, its emptiness. There would never be an end to them—and always a need for men and women willing to resist them at whatever cost.
Just before sunset, without incident en route, they touched down on the aircraft carrier, much to Paxton’s relief. There would be a debriefing, after which he expected to call Bibi in California, where it was morning. That expectation was deflated three minutes after they debarked from the helo. Washington wanted all team members to maintain silence with the outside world for at least another eight hours, for reasons that they did not feel obliged to share.
When headlights tunneled the fog in the parking lot and the primer-gray Honda glided to the curb like a ghost-driven spirit car, Bibi stepped out the front door of Pet the Cat.
Because the heater took a long time to warm up, Pogo left the engine running and came around the front of the car to Bibi. “You’ve got that surf-goddess look going more than ever.”
“Maybe cancer was good for me.”
She knew that she was pretty enough, but not fall-down gorgeous or anything. On the other hand, Pogo made most of the male models in the big fashion magazines look as if they were trying out for roles as orcs in a possible sequel to the Lord of the Rings movies. He seemed oblivious of his physical perfection, even when girls were throwing themselves at him in such numbers and with such insistence that the air became scintillant with the fragrance of estrogen. It sometimes seemed to Bibi that if Pogo’s appearance meant anything at all to him, it was largely an embarrassment. But they truly had grown up together, as he had said earlier, and going to bed with him was as unthinkable as going to bed with a brother, if she’d had one. Two years older than Pogo, Bibi had taught him how to take the drop (how to slide down the face of a wave immediately after catching it), how to pull a rollover to get through white water, how to perform a roundhouse cutback, and other moves, when he was a preadolescent surf mongrel, before he surpassed her skill level. His good looks might have mattered to her when she was a preteen and early teenager. Then it had been a power trip to have the full attention of the boy that all the other girls most wanted. But now and for some years, what she loved about Pogo was his spirit, his humility, his tender heart.
He kissed her on the cheek and looked her in the eyes and said, “Who’re you hiding out from?”
“That’s not the way it is.”
In a staring contest, neither one of them would ever be the first to look away.
Pogo decided not to make it a contest. He surveyed the lonely mist-soaked morning, as the distant foghorn sounded at the mouth of Newport Harbor. “Just so you know where to get help when you’re finally not too stubborn to ask for it.”
“I know where,” she assured him.
He opened the passenger door and took from the seat a bag of breakfast staples from McDonald’s and a paperback novel.
After Bibi put her laptop and purse on the seat, she closed the door and said, “You don’t hide the books anymore.”
“Doesn’t matter if my folks find out I can read. I already escaped college.”
“You’ve always known what you wanted. Doesn’t it sometimes scare you that years from now, it’ll turn out not to have been enough?”
“The past is past, Beebs. The future is just an illusion. All we have is now.”
Indicating the McDonald’s bag, she said, “I don’t want that to get cold. But I have a couple questions.”
He gestured toward the store. “There’s a microwave inside. This stuff heats okay.”
She could smell the faint exhaust fumes as the Honda tailpipe pumped faux fog into the real stuff. “Has Dad ever mentioned someone named Calida Butterfly?”
After a hesitation, Pogo said, “She comes here. Tall woman, blond, jingles with jewelry when she walks.”
“Comes here to the store? How often?”
“A couple times a month.”
“I look at her,” Bibi said, “I don’t think boardhead.”
“She’s totally an inlander, not even a wish-was surfer. She comes to see Murph.”
“What about?”
“Beats me. They go up to his office.” She met his eyes, he read her instantly, and he said, “That’s not how it is, Beebs. They aren’t humping up there.”
It hurt her to ask, but she asked, “How do you know?”
“I don’t know, but I know. They go back a long way, but the vibe isn’t sex.”
“When did this start?”