Brown, Dale - Independent 02 (93 page)

 
          
And
you, Massey, you son of a bitch, can get rid of us, which you’ve wanted to do
ever since Hardcastle came up with the Hammerheads idea, Elliott thought and
almost said aloud. Fortunately the President made it unnecessary.

 
          
“Very
good, Sam, draw up some notes for me, turn them over to the Vice President. For
now, however, I want the Border Security Force to continue their operations as
planned.”

 
          
He
then turned to the Vice President: “Kevin, I’m going to drop this one on your lap.
Get together with General Elliott and Secretary Preston, draw up a plan of
action, and brief me on it as soon as possible. It’s an intriguing ploy, we’ll
give it a try.” To Elliott he said, “Brad”—he paused, an exasperated-amused
smile was on his face— “Brad, you’re like damned cat—somehow you always manage
to land on your feet. I was ready to string you up this morning, and here I am
going along with your crazy idea. Which you better pray works . . .”

 
          
Jabbing
a thumb at Elliott, he turned to the Vice President and said with a straight
face, “Okay, Kevin, fire that sonofabitch.”

 
          
Westchester
,
Florida

 
          
Two Weeks Later

 
          
Hardcastle
surprised himself at how good he used to live. The house that his ex-wife
Jennifer now lived in with Daniel was a lovely two-story Tudor-style home in a
gated community southwest of
Miami
. As he parked his old station wagon out
front, he reminded himself he was not here on a nostalgia trip. He was here to
try to regain a son.

 
          
He
saw a brand-new motorcycle parked beside the garage under the eaves. So this
was Jennifer’s solution to the trouble Daniel had gotten into when he
“borrowed” the motorcycle to see his father. His irritation quickly subsided
when he realized that the incident had happened almost three years ago. And he
had seen Daniel maybe a dozen times since then.

 
          
He
noted another car in the driveway, a foreign job he didn’t recognize. But he
was sure it belonged to Jennifer’s attorney and sometime companion—Hardcastle
still couldn’t imagine them as lovers—Vance Hargrove.

 
          
Hardcastle
had come here right after another fifteen-hour day at Border Security Force
headquarters. Too damn many hassles with the Navy, the DOD, the Coast Guard,
everybody . . . Getting the
Coral Sea
moved to west Florida was bad enough, but now the state of Florida and the
Coast Guard were having major problems moving the Hammerhead Two platform to
the east side—they were afraid of toxic spills, terrorist acts, expenses, of
their own damn shadows.

           
Jennifer had sounded upset enough to
make him come right over from Aladdin City without changing out of his
Hammerheads flight overalls with his SIG Sauer automatic in the belt
holster—the old rule about Border Security Force members not wearing sidearms
off-duty had been relaxed since the attacks on the aerostat units. At first
he’d been annoyed, then realized it could be serious, and maybe it would give
him a chance to get close to Daniel . . .

 
          
Jennifer
answered the door, and skipped the niceties.

 
          
“Come
in.” She said it like an order, not an invitation.

 
          
“What’s
wrong? You sounded upset over the phone.” In the foyer he wasn’t surprised to
see Vance in his six-hundred-dollar suit and silk tie, a crystal glass of
something amber in his hand.

 
          
“He’s
upstairs,” she said coolly.

 
          
“What’s
he doing?”

 
          
“You
tell me.”

 
          
“Come
on, Jen, what’s up?”

 
          
“What’s
up is I think he’s doing drugs. He spends all his time in his room. He stays
out until all hours. I’m
worried
about him.”

 
          
“Have
you tried talking to him?”

 
          
“Of
course. He says there’s nothing to worry about, everything’s fine. But, he just
seems more and more ... distant. I can’t control him, I’m at a loss—”

 
          
“I
can see that.” He nodded toward Hargrove. “Why is
he
here?”

 
          
“He
called this afternoon. I told him what I thought was happening and he came over
. . .”

 
          
“He’s
your lawyer, not Danny’s father. Never mind,” he said; he unbuckled his leather
belt, removed his ammunition belt and holster.

 
          
Hardcastle
could smell it before he reached the top of the stairs, the sweet but pungent
odor of marijuana. Oddly enough, Hardcastle’s first reaction wasn’t anger
towards Daniel—it was anger towards his ex-wife. Cooking heroin? Jennifer was a
bit protected all her life, but he assumed even she could recognize pot when
she smelled it.

 
          
He
went to Daniel's room and knocked on the door. “Daniel?”

 
          
“Dad?”
He noted a bit of surprise in his son’s voice; he fully expected a long delay
as Daniel tried to conceal the evidence, but the door opened right away. “Hey,
Dad, I didn’t expect you.”

 
          
“Can
I come in?”

 
          
Daniel
seemed genuinely surprised at the question. “Hey, it’s your house . . .” Then,
he grinned and added, “Well, it used to be ... I mean . . .”

 
          
“Forget
it. I know what you mean.” He entered the room, and Daniel shoveled an armful
of clothes off an armchair—one of the armchairs that used to be downstairs, one
of
his
den chairs—and motioned his
father to sit down.

 
          
“Fine,
dad, fine.” Daniel was trying hard to carry it off. “Just up here studying for
a test. How are things with you? Sounds like the Hammerheads are in some hot
water.”

 
          
“We’ve
had better days. Your mother’s worried about you,” Hardcastle began. “She
thinks you’re up here cooking heroin.” “Heroin? Is she kidding . . . ?”

 
          
“No,
she’s very serious,” Hardcastle said. He looked around the room, then back at
his son. “She doesn’t know—or chooses not to know—what marijuana smells like.
She’s scared, bud. I wish you’d straighten it out with her.”

 
          
“It
wouldn’t do any good . .

 
          
“You
know that’s not true, Daniel. She adores you. If you explain what you’re doing,
she’ll listen.”

 
          
Daniel
looked at his father with a puzzled expression. “What about you? You’re not mad
at me? For doing grass up here?”

 
          
“You
were expecting me to be angry . . . maybe hoping I’d be. Listen, Daniel, I
don’t like it, you know that. Considering what I do for a living, it’s not
exactly what I’d hoped for. But, damn it, you’re old enough to make up your own
mind about some things. You want to do that stuff, it’s your life, go ahead and
do it. But I do care. I worry about you. I’m worried that you need pot to help
yourself feel good, and I’m worried that you might be out driving that
motorcycle after you’ve had a few hits of that stuff. I’m worried that if you
keep on doing grass that it might lead to your doing hard drugs, and then your
life will really be screwed up. But I know I can’t run your life for you,
Danny. Just think about why you’re doing it before you do it. Think about going
on the freeways with that motorcycle out there before doing that stuff—if you
get into an accident on that thing ... Remember, other people can get hurt.” He
paused. “Well, open up with your mother a bit more ...”

 
          
“I
don’t think she’d understand, Dad. I think she’d go into hysterics. She’d throw
me into a rehab clinic—or into jail.” He paused, smiled, then added, “Or call
my father on me. Is that what she did? Call the old man?”

 
          
Hardcastle
wanted to smile at his son’s intuitiveness, indulge in a little “chip off the
old block” self-gratification, but instead he shook his head. “Never mind that.
The bottom line is this: she was worried about you—terrified is more like
it—and she wanted to talk with someone before she confronted you like an
inquisitor. That’s the kind of treatment you get when you’re dishonest with someone.”

 
          
“With
Mom, it’s better to keep this kind of news away from her,” Daniel insisted. “If
I drank a bottle of wine at dinner every night, she’d think I was being
sociable. If I took one hit on a joint in her presence she’d flip out.”

 
          
“Probably
so. Most people would.”

 
          
“Sure.
I get it. ‘Wine is fine but pot is not,’ right?”

 
          
“Christ,”
Hardcastle said with a sardonic laugh, “that’s the same damned line we used
back in the sixties, and I’m sorry we used it back then because it sounds
pretty lame now. Neither is fine, and you know it.” Daniel shrugged and nodded.

 
          
“Just
think about why you’re doing it before you do it, that’s all I ask. Remember
it’s just like drinking alcohol—it’ll impair your driving, your reaction time,
your motor skills. Think about going on the freeways with that motorcycle out
there before doing that stuff—if you get into an accident on that thing, you're
dead meat. Also, remember that the slightest reference to drugs these days will
bring the wrath of God down on you—the cops are everywhere, the judges are
under a lot of pressure to reduce drug use—and lines like ‘wine is fine but pot
is not’ won’t get you anywhere with the law. If they catch you using, carrying,
or buying that stuff in anything but tiny quantities, they’ll hammer you,
hammer me, hammer your mother. Do you understand what I’m saying? Vice is
not
a victimless crime, Daniel. Other
people get hurt. I just want you to know that. Hey, I’m a great one to talk.
Flying that Sea Lion after your victory dinner wasn’t exactly a smart idea.
Remember that?”

 
          
“How
can I ever forget? I was shocked, scared, I guess I thought I’d die.” Daniel
touched his head where bits of the pilot’s helmet and his seat had cut him,
blasted by the smuggler’s bullets. Hardcastle shook his head ... his son came
so close to death ... “I lectured you that night you got pulled in by the
sheriff, and then I pulled a stunt like flying after drinking.”

 
          
Daniel
couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing, but he was liking it. “Maybe
messing up runs a little in this family,” Daniel said.

 
          
“And
maybe I get a son who’s got more sense than his old man. I think I better get
to know him better ...”

 
          
The
two sat quietly now, savoring something neither had known for years . . . the
sense of being father and son . . .

 
          
“So
what about the Hammerheads?” Daniel asked. “They say on the news you won’t be
around too much longer.”

 
          
Hardcastle
shrugged. “It’s all up in the air, Daniel. Right now we’re just trying to get
back on our feet.”

 
          
“They
went ahead and fired General Elliott?”

 
          
Hardcastle
nodded.

 
          
“Why?”

 
          
Hardcastle
couldn’t talk about the secret mission to
Haiti
, couldn’t talk about the ploy cooked up to
try to lure the smugglers into the open. “I don’t understand it myself, except
sometimes it shakes things up to fire the head honcho. Elliott’s been there for
almost three years, that’s about par for the course.”

 
          
“I
liked the guy,” Daniel said. “He seems pretty cool on TV. Full of piss and
vinegar.”

 
          
“I
think the general would like that characterization,” Hardcastle said.

 
          
A
beat of silence. Several of them. Finally, Daniel said, “So maybe I should go
down and talk to Mom, huh?”