Snow on the Bayou: A Tante Lulu Adventure (20 page)

And yes, dammit, she was tingling.

There’s always room for humor, even in the direst circumstances…

Y
ou do realize that you’re walking around with the loopiest grin on your face all the time, don’t you?” Slick said to him. Slick, or Lieutenant Commander Luke Avenil, one of the senior members of SEAL Team Thirteen, had been around since before Cage first entered BUD/S.

“You’re just jealous.”

“Whatever.”

They were sitting at a conference table in a presumably abandoned warehouse halfway between Houma and Lafayette, waiting for the Fibbies and local and state law enforcement agents to show up.

“He’s grinning because he’s in
luuuuuv
,” said JAM, who sat on Cage’s other side.

“I think it’s because he found someone to suck his sorry-ass dick.” This from F.U., who sat across the table.
Otherwise, Cage would have clocked him a good one. What an asshole! Too bad his demolition/explosives expertise was so critical to this mission.

K-4, or Kevin Fortunato, who’d lost his wife to cancer a few years back, smacked F.U. for Cage and said, “If it’s love, go for it, Cage my friend.”

“Well, be careful. Before you know it, you’ll be paying alimony out the eyeballs. You never really know a woman until you meet her divorce lawyer,” Slick remarked as he idly checked text messages on his cell phone. Slick’s ex-wife had been taking him back to court every other year to bleed him for more cash, mainly because he’d inherited some posh home in Malibu that she hadn’t been able to tap into yet. As long as he resided in the domicile and didn’t cash in, she was SOL, which gave Slick immense pleasure. In fact, he’d been known to take pictures of himself reclining on a deck chair in sunglasses with a hot babe and sending them to her. Immature, yeah, but totally understandable from the male POV.

“Uh, I think there has to be a marriage and a divorce before there’s alimony,” Cage made the mistake of pointing out.

“Not necessarily,” Geek said from behind them. He was checking out the array of high-tech computer and camera equipment lined up on tables along both walls. Equipment so complex only Bill Gates or geniuses with Mensa credentials would be able to operate. Geek was rambling on about partner privilege and common law marriage and other legal mumbo jumbo that had nothing to do with Cage or Cage’s grinning.

Cage was happy. Enough said! And really, he didn’t want to discuss this with the guys. The feelings he had for Em were too precious, and fragile, to share. He had
no idea where they were going, or if they were going anywhere, but he sure as hell was enjoying the moment.

John LeDeux came in with a contingent of local and state police. Best known in the bayou as Tee-John, or Small John, for reasons unknown since he was over six feet tall, LeDeux had already met with Cage. He came over and Cage introduced him to his SEAL buddies.

“How’s yer grandmother doin’?” John asked him.

“Good days and bad days. Tante Lulu and the rosary ladies are with her today, putting together a quilt, I think.”

“For yer hope chest?”

“Oh, God! I hope not.”

All of his SEAL buddies’ ears perked up at the mention of “hope chest.” No way was he getting into that discussion, or he would never hear the end of it when he got back to Coronado. SEALs loved to gossip about one another and loved nothing more than to rattle one another’s chains, taking razzing to a new level. There were no secrets when you knew your fellow operatives so well you could recognize their individual body odor at twenty paces. “Can you show me that map of the Mardi Gras parade route again?” he asked John.

Bernie came in then and joined them.

“Bernie, you look like death warmed over,” Cage said.

“I’ve lost ten pounds. My hair is falling out. And I can’t sleep,” Bernie told them. Under his breath, he added to Cage, “And I’m suffering from ED.”

It took a moment for Cage to realize that Bernie referred to erectile dysfunction. He shifted away from the man. Way too much information!

“Ya gotta get yer act t’gether, Bern,” John said in his heavy Cajun accent.

Cage had an accent, too, even after all these years, and
it was getting stronger by the moment. More fodder for the razz mill! F.U. would be making more jokes about Southern men sounding like pussies.

“If yer not careful, yer gonna blow this whole setup,” John told Bernie.

“I got a prescription for sleeping pills. Maybe I’ll try those.” Bernie looked at Cage. “Maybe I could come stay at your house with you and Aunt MaeMae until after Mardi Gras.”

“Are you crazy? You’re not living with me. You married my girlfriend.” When would Bernie get it through his thick skull that they were not friends? Not even close. No matter their blood connection, distant as it was.

“She wasn’t your girlfriend anymore. I told you, you need to ask Emelie about that.”

“Forget about it. You’re not becoming my sleep buddy.”

“Cool yer jets, Bern,” John said with a laugh. “We have a female detective who’s gonna move in with you today. A live-in lover.” He motioned with his head toward a woman whose statuesque build couldn’t be hidden by her jeans and blazer.

“Really?” Bernie immediately brightened up.

“It’s just a pretense,” John told him.

“Oh, right.” Bernie licked his two forefingers and tried to flatten down his unruly eyebrows.

Cage and John rolled their eyes at each other.

The Fibbies strolled in then, fortunate timing since F.U. had just gotten a gander at the female detective, and Lord only knew what vulgarity would come out of his mouth. John Elliott introduced himself as leader of Project Boom. “Since the SEALs were first on the scene here, and because there is clearly a terrorist threat, I will turn the meeting over to Lieutenant Commander Luke Avenil.”

Luke, who was in civvies, as were the other team members, not wanting to announce their military backgrounds to the tangos, got up and stood at the head of the table.

“We have a full-fledged terrorist threat here in Louisiana. Our intel shows that the al-Qaeda cell headed by Abdul Hassid is the one directly involved; he’s the same tango who claimed responsibility for the bombings in Paris last month. Open your folders, and check out page three. Study them well while you’re here, but do not take them with you. I repeat, the folders stay here.”

There were plain black folders in front of each of them, except for Bernie. Opening them, Cage saw page after page of intel. Diagrams, news clips, and everything relevant to this mission. He’d have to be a genius to memorize it all in an hour or so. He and the other SEALs would do their best, then rely on Geek to regurgitate it all back to them.

“Project Boom is expected to happen on Fat Tuesday, during the major Mardi Gras parade through New Orleans,” Slick continued. “We know the grade of explosives that will be used, the amount that was shipped into this area, and the types of pyrotechnic rockets they will be hidden in. What we don’t know is where those hot fireworks are at the moment or where they are scheduled to go off. We do not believe they are intended for the official fireworks arena.”

John LeDeux stood up and gave a short brief on Mardi Gras celebrations. “Carnival begins in Loo-zee-anna at the beginning of January and parades are held throughout that season all over the state, leadin’ up to the big ones on Fat Tuesday, the day before Ash Wednesday when Lent begins. We’ll concentrate on the parades and outdoor events in N’awleans on that last day, the King Rex parade
and others through the Quarter. You have to realize there are hundreds of thousands of tourists in the state for Carnival. When it comes to terrorist attacks, the crowd on Fat Tuesday on Bourbon Street alone would rival the numbers that went down in the Twin Towers.”

Silence met John’s ominous words.

“Can’t we just go in and take the perps into custody?” one of the cops asked.

“Not yet. The worst-case scenario is that we arrest the tangos and they refuse to disclose where and when the explosives are to go off. We’d end up having to evacuate the whole city. As you all know, some of these fanatics will consider it a holy jihad to go up in flames before giving up any secrets.”

“Plus, we can’t torture information out of terrorists anymore. Too politically incorrect!” one of the Fibbies complained. When his superior glared at him, he slunk down into his seat, grumbling. They might all agree that it was a ridiculous policy, but they weren’t supposed to express that opinion in public.

Different members around the table stood up then. Outlining the main parade route. Detailing where Landry Pyrotechnics were to be set off in safe public demonstrations. Showing trucks to be used for deliveries. Listing all the employees involved in the various jobs, from the business side down to the assembly line. Explaining the surveillance of the tangos in question. Showing how GPS chips had been slipped into every single pallet or skid, which carried dozens of boxes of pyrotechnics leaving the factory, from high-powered rockets right down to seemingly harmless sparklers. Then outlining a day-by-day schedule of what would happen between today and Fat Tuesday, which was fifteen days away. Each
of the twenty-one people in the room knew by the end of the afternoon exactly what their role would be to bring about a successful mission. In the best of circumstances, no one would be killed on either side, and the bad guys would end up in custody.

After the meeting, Cage and his SEAL team members decided to stop at the Swamp Tavern for a drink. Cage, JAM, and Geek were headed in that direction, and Cage had his own reasons for that particular choice of beer joint; so the other guys decided to follow them.

Cage got there first and introduced himself to Gator, longtime waiter/bouncer/co-owner of the tavern. He explained his special request to the bald-headed waiter, with his trademark gold loop earring in one ear only. Gator led him back to the office, and left him alone. “Hope you find what you’re lookin’ for, buddy. And by the way, I appreciate your service to our country.”

Lots of folks said that to him when they learned he was in the military. You’d never know there was that kind of grassroots support by watching the national news networks. Cage wondered idly how Gator knew he was military, but then the bayou grapevine was a remarkable communicator.

At first, Cage just stood in the office. He was already feeling like a fool. But then he took a deep breath and began to examine the photographs displayed around the small room. It took him only a second the find the black-and-white one with his father in it. Standing with several members of a band, The Country Swingers, he wore a fringed cowboy shirt and a white, wide-brimmed cowboy hat. About twenty-five, Cage figured, and yeah, he was a good-looking dude. The smile on his face was so innocently open and friendly. It broke Cage’s heart to think of
all that happened to him between the night this photo was taken and the night he was stabbed in Angola Prison.

Geek peeked in just then and said, “We’re ordering a pitcher. Did you want… hey, something wrong, bud?”

Cage shook his head. “Nah, I’m just checkin’ out the old photographs here. That’s my dad there.” Cage had every intention of borrowing the picture at some point and having it duplicated. He was fairly certain it was the only copy.

“Whoa, he looks just like you.”

“He does?”

“Yeah. Same grin,” Geek said.

At one time, Cage would have denied any resemblance, but he didn’t now. How odd! Even odder, as they walked out of the office, Cage said, “Did I tell you my father wrote the song ‘Prison Is a State of Mind’?”

“No shit! I saw a special on Johnny Cash one time where he sang that song. I’m pretty sure he said that he’d met the songwriter.”

After that, Cage was much more relaxed as the group sat around a table in the dark bar, which was mostly empty in this late-afternoon lull before the dinner and evening crowds. They all had beers in front of them, and a heaping pile of crawfish, or mudbugs as they were known in the South, sitting on the newspaper-covered table.

Cage flexed his hands and told the guys, “Watch an expert, boys. This is how it’s done.” He then demonstrated the proper procedure for breaking off the head and sucking the juices from it, then cracking open the tail horizontally along its back, pulling out the succulent meat to pop into his mouth.

“I used to have a T-shirt about this very thing,” F.U. said. “
SHUCK ME, SUCK ME, EAT ME RAW.
”

“That refers to oysters, dickhead,” Cage told him.

“Same thing,” F.U. insisted.

“Not even a little.”

It took them a while to get the knack but they eventually agreed with Cage when he declared, “Crawfish is food of the gods, next to hot wings.”

They talked as they ate, and soon Cage was caught up on all the news back at the base, who was doing whom, who got done wrong, the usual.

“It’s amazing that you just fell on this case,” Slick commented to Cage as he wiped his hands and mouth on a paper towel. “This whole thing could have developed into a major SNAFU, without anyone ever knowing about it.”

“Forget SNAFU. It could have been a monumental catastrophe,” said K-4 as he wiped some foam off his mouth with the back of his hand.

New Orleans was a big city, but it turned Cage’s stomach to think that Emelie might have been in danger from what these fanatics were planning. Still might be. Somehow he would make sure before that time that she was nowhere in the vicinity of the parade route on that day.

“Well, there have been rumblings for a long time about another ‘event’ coming down involving Hassid but no details. We probably wouldn’t have got the details in time,” Geek said after taking a long draw on his brew.

“Sometimes that’s the way the best operations go down. Chance can never be minimized.” Cage shrugged his opinion. Often the least likely sources proved most helpful, and missions deemed sure things were total FUBARs.

“Well, good for you for recognizing the possibility of a threat from the beginning,” Slick said, raising his beer in a toast to him. The others joined in, “Hear, hear!”

Cage shrugged. It was what they were trained to do.

In fact, it was hard to believe, as they sat here talking and drinking casually, that they were involved in an urgent mission that might have the potential for disaster. But SEALs were trained professionals, working with other trained professionals. Teamwork. And you took your breaks when you could, always alert to danger and a call to action. Each of them had secure phones attached to their belts.