Project Reunion (10 page)

“Granted, I haven’t seen my husband yet,” Pam added. She didn’t seem concerned.

“Yes, sorry, John got hung up in our room. Emmett and mine.” I pointed for clarity, but Pam had already seen us come in together, before Emmett was waylaid by the pair of Massachusetts Rescos.

“Pam, please tell me John didn’t make you put this buffet together.” It was a lovely spread of food, well picked over by the time Emmett and I got there. I nabbed a steamed lobster, drawn butter, more chowder, cornbread, home fried potatoes with onions, succotash and squash. “This looks wonderful. I’m starving.”

Putting on my bathing suit, I saw that I’d lost more weight, or inches at least, just since I’d last worn it a month ago. That was a novel experience, checking myself in a bathing suit in a mirror and finding myself too skinny. Emmett insisted I looked great. But I was determined to overeat my way through the rest of this summit.

“The buffet was catered,” Pam assured me. “Please, take more! I’ll enjoy it vicariously. Ever since I turned 40, I’ve gone stout.” She grinned, and loaded up on succotash and raw hothouse vegetables.

We settled into lounge chairs by the poolside to munch and chat. The caterer had provided a small keg of local beer, which Pam and the Rescos were depleting as quickly as possible. Emmett and I weren’t the only ones to bring our own local alcohol to the summit either, though we’d left ours in the suite. We didn’t drink much.

“Such lovely bodies,” Pam mused. “My favorite thing about being a military wife. Your Emmett has a very nice ass.”

“Ah – yes,” I settled on. “John is, um, very trim for his age.” Her husband was a very attractive, athletic, virile man. He was also mostly bald, with the rest of his head shaved. He and Adam had wandered in by then.

“He’ll do,” she dismissed him. “These are all O-4 and older, aren’t they? That’s a shame.”

“O-4?” I repeated.

Pam laughed. “Oh, you are a babe in the woods at this, aren’t you? O-4 means officer grade 4. The middle grades are four through six, the field grade officers. Above that is generals and admirals. Your Emmett’s an O-4. John’s an O-6.”

“What does it take to go from O-4 to O-6?”

“About 12 years,” Pam supplied. “They have to be competent, too, I suppose. But if they’re not on a promotion track, they resign. Emmett might be nearing O-5.”

“You think he looks older than most of these?” He looked right about in the middle of the pack. Pam was making me study the wet athletic male bodies rather closely. On the whole, I was quite pleased with how Emmett stacked up. Though we both clearly needed to eat more. He’d lost weight this week with that stomach bug, too.

“Not especially older. Emmett’s just second of the Connecticut Rescos.” Pam continued her body ratings. “That gay one’s the youngest. Gay, married, married, bitter, not sure, looking, and in love. The gay one’s in love, too. Adam wins the beauty contest tonight, but he always does that.”

“You always dissect people like this, Pam?” I inquired. I was used to thinking such things, but not speaking them. So the analysis usually flitted in and out of my brain, quickly dismissed.

“She does,” Adam supplied with a grin, and pulled up a lounge chair beside mine to eat his own plate of food. “Especially when she’s drunk.”

Pam stuck her tongue out at him. Adam saluted her back with thumb planted on his nose, fingers waving. I laughed. Clearly these two had known each other a long time.

Emmett and Niedermeyer finally made it off the buffet line and came to join us. The earlier arrivals were done with the food, and playing in the pool. Niedermeyer grabbed an upright chair on Pam’s other side. Emmett handed me his plate, pushed me forward, and clambered in behind me on my lounge chair.

Pam’s dimples deepened to maximum upon him. “Possessive much?”

“Uh-huh,” Emmett agreed happily. He traded introductions with Pam, then snatched a lobster claw left on my plate. “Teach me how to do this, darlin’?”

“I couldn’t get that one without a nutcracker,” I said. I turned it in his hand. “That way.” He easily cracked the shell with his fingers. “Have you considered your own chair?”

“I like this one,” he assured me, and planted a drawn-butter-and-lobster kiss on my hair.

“You could force Adam to move,” Pam suggested. “Like this: Adam – move.”

“You’re a real ball-breaker, Pam,” Emmett observed appreciatively. “You and Dee must be bonding nicely.”

I attempted to straighten my spine. Emmett clutched me around the middle, forcing my back round again. Adam grinned at me. We were both a great deal more polite than Pam and Emmett.

“She seems a little repressed so far,” Pam replied. “I like your cross, Emmett.” She reached across and fingered it. He wasn’t wearing anything above the waist except dog tags and a cross on a chain. It looked great on him. “Is that allowed?”

“From my Dad’s dog tags. Old-style, but they’re grandfathered.”

“You knew your Dad?” I asked. He’d never mentioned his father.

“You just assumed I was a bastard? I think you’re making progress on her, Pam,” Emmett quipped. “Dad’s been dead since I was 12, Dee. Didn’t see any rush to fill you in on him. KIA, special ops.”

“So you were an Army brat?”

“Part-time, yeah. Fort Campbell, Kentucky. Dad was kind of a nasty drunk. When he hit Momma, we headed back to the Ozarks. When he hit me, she divorced him.”

“So you didn’t really know him.”

“Knew him fine. We got along great. Died four years sober. Fort Campbell was a lot more fun than the Ozarks. But he’ll still be dead when we get home, Dee. This is a party.”

“He’s not the talkative kind, is he, Dee?” Pam observed.

“Apparently not. What other secrets are you keeping?”

“Has he told you about his divorce yet, Dee?” asked Adam.

I craned my neck around to frown at Emmett. Pam threw a lima bean at Adam. She had a pile of ammunition, apparently her least favorite ingredient from the succotash.

“He was just fishing,” Emmett said, with a scowl. “But yes, I’m divorced. What is it with women? Would it be better if a man my age never had a serious relationship?”

“We want to know what you learned from the experience,” claimed Pam judiciously.

“Let’s see,” said Emmett. “If I’m married, and deployed, I don’t want her cheating on me. Could have told her that before I married her. In fact, I did.”

“Where is she?” I asked. That seemed more pertinent to me than what, if anything, he’d learned.

“Abu Dhabi, last I knew. She worked for a big military contractor.”

“Oh!” cried Pam in revulsion. “Emmett, that wasn’t the marrying kind!”

Emmett barked a laugh. “You got that right. Hey, it was fun, until it wasn’t. And Adam is also a ball-breaker. So, John. Do you surround yourself with ball-breakers, so you don’t have to?”

The captain just laughed, and turned back to his conversation with the senior New York Resco. A number of Rescos were standing around talking along the edge of the pool. Scenic wet lower bodies obstructed our view of the water.

Pam got up, stretched languorously, and pushed the closest Resco into the pool. “I find it so entertaining how I can get away with this, Dee,” she explained. She pushed in another one before they caught on, and pushed her in.

“Yes! Play-time,” Emmett announced in my ear.

We dove in, raced to the far end of the pool, and generally splashed around playing, much as we did at home in Mangal’s pool next door, during the long summer evenings. The artificial not-a-girlfriend constraint was gone, I was glad to see. Pam got together a game of chicken for a while. I fought piggy-back from Emmett’s shoulders. We kept losing, since everyone else out-massed me by 50 pounds or more.

The other men frequently eddied out from the water play to network and do business. Pam made it a point to get to know each Resco – probably her real assignment for the evening. Adam worked the room as well, focused on shoreline Rescos from New Jersey and New Hampshire. He shouted over once for Emmett to verify that yes, New Haven still had machine shops eager for business. But Emmett took the time to play with me, even while he got to know the other Rescos better.

We were taking a snack break, standing at the edge of the pool, when Colonel Mora finally joined us, still in combat fatigues. The Connecticut Rescos all laughed and welcomed him.

He lumbered straight up to Emmett beside me, and shoved Emmett – hard – backwards into the pool. Major Papadopoulos promptly pulled me away, and kept his body between me and Mora. Niedermeyer rose from his lounge chair and walked toward us, stopping 10 feet away, arms crossed and mouth pursed.

Mora let out a blue streak, swearing down at Emmett in the pool. Emmett swished his hands around idly, just standing there taking the abuse.

When Mora wound down, Emmett said cautiously, “So, Carlos. How did your dinner go with the brass?”

“MacLaren, that is the
last
favor you get from me!” Mora’s renewed flood of invective carried more information this time. Apparently Emmett had set him on the brass, to find out what he could. General Cullen, the commander of the New York borders, had sent a decoy car back to New York, so he could hide out here for the night, and then attend the rest of the summit. The other brass would leave first thing in the morning.

“The strategic reserves are in Pennsylvania,” Mora concluded. “All of them. That what you wanted to know, Emmett?”

“
All
of them?” echoed Colonel Hoffman. He was the one from New Jersey, who presented the plan to supply New York instead of evacuate it. He was the only Army officer present who out-ranked Mora – an O-6 like Niedermeyer, as Pam had clued me in.

“All of them. All the Army reserves for the entire Northeast,” fumed Mora. “Food, munitions, fuel, vehicles, everything. Effing Tolliver stole them all and stockpiled them in Pennsylvania. It’s his operation. He bragged about it.”

The last sentence was barely above a whisper. I thought Mora had gotten it out of his system. He started to turn to leave, but then turned back toward Emmett and hopped into the pool, fully clothed. He held out a hand to Emmett to shake. “Sorry, Emmett. I was out of line.”

Emmett shook his hand guardedly. “Thank you, sir. We needed to know. That couldn’t have been much fun.”

“Yeah.”

“Might want to take off your combat boots, if you want a swim. Colonel.” Emmett suggested. He continued to eye Mora warily.

“Maybe we could give you a hand, getting back to your quarters, sir,” Major Papadopoulos – they called him Pops – said reluctantly. He offered a large hand down to Mora. I was tugged from behind Pops, to behind Cameron, who in turn hid behind the Resco for New London County. I would have thought it funny, these tough guys wary of Mora. Except, they surely knew him better than I did. Maybe they weren’t allowed to fight back if he swung on them.

Mora ignored Pops’ hand and trained a belligerent glare on Emmett.

Emmett sighed. “You might have had a bit too much to drink tonight, Carlos.”

“I agree, Carlos,” said Niedermeyer forcefully.

“Amen,” chimed Colonel Hoffman.

“That wasn’t the worst of it,” Mora said, in a dead voice. “Emmett, they seeded New York. The Ebola outbreak. Tolliver admitted it. Boasted of it.”

“We were pretty sure of that,” I offered. “From the pattern of how it broke out, all over the city and suburbs at once. But it came on so fast. How did they do it?” The Rescos flanking me looked torn between curiosity and wishing I’d just hide and keep quiet.

“Weaponized Ebola,” Mora said woodenly, still staring at Emmett. “They used nukes to set off the faults in California, too. Amatrudo recorded the confession on his phone.”

I thought Mora was done. Then suddenly he hauled off and took a swing at Emmett. Emmett lunged backwards quickly, to splash-land into the water. He only took a fist to the thigh, the blow softened by landing through water.

“Colonel Mora!” Niedermeyer called out. “You’re done here! Stand down!”

“He murdered them.” Mora stood there sobbing. “My wife, my daughters. Millions of them.”

I’d forgotten that. Mora’s wife and two daughters had been caught in the city when the epidemic broke out. They were confirmed dead. I could only imagine what it took for Mora to sit through that dinner in silence, while Tolliver boasted of murdering New York City and California.

Two of the largest Rescos broke the stalemate. They jumped in and took Mora’s arms, to lead him up the pool steps and away to his room. They weren’t ours, from Connecticut. Clearly Mora would swing on his own guys.

Pops and Cameron pulled Emmett out of the pool. He didn’t need the help, but accepted it anyway.

“You seem to have a problem on your chain of command, Emmett,” Niedermeyer ventured, in a voice pitched to carry over angry murmurs of discussion.

“Tolliver’s a rat bastard,” Emmett agreed. “Mora’s alright. A bit drunk.”