Stephen Coonts: Combat

“Colonel Giraud’s eldest daughter. I remember. Do you have a sister a year or two younger?”

“Rachael. She’s a dental tech, married with two kids.”

“I sorta lost track of your father, I guess. How is he?”

“Dead.”

“Well, I’m sorry.”

I couldn’t think of anything else to say. Her dad had been my commanding officer at the antiterrorism school, but that was years ago. I went on to other assignments, and finally retired five years ago with thirty years in. I hadn’t seen or thought of the Girauds in years.

“I remember Dad remarking several times that you were the best Marine in the corps.”

That comment got the attention of the guy behind the register. His name was Candy. He had a few tattoos on his arms and a half dozen rings dangling from various portions of his facial anatomy. He looked at me now with renewed interest.

I tried to concentrate on Julie Giraud. She was actually a good-looking woman, with her father’s square chin and good cheekbones. She wasn’t wearing makeup: She didn’t need any.

“I remember him telling us that you were a sniper in Vietnam, and the best Marine in the corps.”

Candy’s eyebrows went up toward his hairline when he heard that.

“I’m flattered that you remember me, Ms. Giraud, but I’m a small-business owner now. I left the Marines five years ago.” I gestured widely. “This grand establishment belongs to me and the hundreds of thousands of stockholders in BankAmerica. All of us thank you for stopping by today and giving us your business.”

She nodded, turned toward the door, then hesitated. “I wonder if we might have lunch together, Mr. Dean.”

Why not? “Okay. Across the street at the Burger King, in about an hour?” That was agreeable with her. She got in her car and drove away.

Amazing how people from the past pop back into your life when you least expect it.

I tilted the chair back, lifted my paper and sat there wondering what in hell Julie Giraud could possibly want to talk about with me. Candy went back to his copy of Rolling Stone. In a few minutes two people came in and paid cash for their gas. With the paper hiding my face, I could look into a mirror I had mounted on the ceiling and watch Candy handle the money. I put the mirror up there three days ago but if he noticed, he had forgotten it by now.

As the second customer left, Candy pocketed something. I didn’t know if he shortchanged the customer or just helped himself to a bill from the till. The tally and the tape hadn’t been jibing and Candy had a what-are-you-gonna-do-about-it-old-man attitude.

He closed the till and glanced at me with a look that could only be amusement.

I folded the paper, put it down, got out of the chair and went over to the counter.

“So you was in the Marines, huh?”

“Yeah.”

He grinned confidently. “Wouldn’t have figured that.”

I reached, grabbed a ring dangling from his eyebrow and ripped it out.

Candy screamed. Blood flowed from the eyebrow. He recoiled against the register with a look of horror on his face.

“The money, kid. Put it on the counter.”

He glanced at the blood on his hand, then pressed his hand against his eyebrow trying to staunch the flow. “You bastard! I don’t know what you—”

Reaching across the counter, I got a handful of hair with my left hand and the ring in his nose with my right. “You want to lose all these, one by one?”

He dug in his pocket, pulled out a wadded bill and threw it on the counter.

“You’re fired, kid. Get off the property and never come back.”

He came around the counter, trying to stay away from me, one hand on his bleeding eyebrow. He stopped in the door. “I’ll get you for this, you son of a bitch.”

“You think that through, kid. Better men than you have died trying. If you just gotta do it, though, you know where to find me.”

He scurried over to his twenty-five-year-old junker Pontiac. He ground and ground with the starter. Just when I thought he would have to give up, the motor belched a cloud of blue smoke.

I got on the phone to a friend of mine, also a retired Marine. His name was Bill Wiley, and he worked full time as a police dispatcher. He agreed to come over that evening to help me out for a few hours at the station.

It seemed to me that I might as well solve all my problems in one day, so I went into the garage to see the mechanic, a long-haired Mexican named Juan.

“I think you’ve got an expensive habit, Juan. To pay for it you’ve been charging customers for work you didn’t do, new parts you didn’t install, then splitting the money with Candy. He hit the road. You can work honest from now on or leave, your choice.”

“You can’t prove shit.”

He was that kind of guy, stupid as dirt. “I don’t have to prove anything,” I told him. “You’re fired.”

He didn’t argue; he just went. I finished fixing the flat he had been working on, waited on customers until noon, then locked the place up and walked across the street to the Burger King.

Of course I was curious. It seemed doubtful that Julie Giraud wanted to spend an hour of her life reminiscing about the good old days at Quantico with a retired enlisted man who once served under her father, certainly not one twenty-five years older than she was.

So what did she want?

“You are not an easy man to find, Mr. Dean.”

I shrugged. I’m not trying to lose myself in the madding crowd, but I’m not advertising either.

“My parents died twelve years ago,” she said, her eyes on my face.

“Both of them?” I hadn’t heard. “Sorry to hear that,” I said.

“They were on an Air France flight to Paris that blew up over Niger. A bomb.”

“Twelve years ago.”

“Dad had been retired for just a year. He and Mom were traveling, seeing the world, falling in love with each other all over again. They were on their way to Paris from South America when the plane blew up, killing everyone aboard.”

I lost my appetite for hamburger. I put it down and sipped some coffee.

She continued, telling me her life story. She spent a few more years in high school, went to the Air Force Academy, was stationed in Europe flying V-22 Ospreys, was back in the States just now on leave.

When she wound down, I asked, as gently as I could, why she looked me up.

She opened her purse, took out a newspaper clipping, offered it to me. “Last year a French court tried the men who killed my parents. They are Libyans. Moammar Gadhafi refused to extradite them from Libya, so the French tried them in absentia, convicted them, sentenced them to life in prison.”

I remembered reading about the trial. The clipping merely refreshed my memory. One hundred forty people died when that Air France flight exploded; the debris was scattered over fifty square miles of desert.

“Six men, and they are still in Libya.” Julie gestured at the newspaper clipping, which was lying beside my food tray. “One of the men is Gadhafi’s brother-in-law, another is a key figure in Libyan intelligence, two are in the Libyan diplomatic service.” She gripped the little table between us and leaned forward. “They blew up that airliner on Gadhafi’s order to express the dictator’s displeasure with French foreign policy at the time. It was raw political terrorism, Mr. Dean, by a nation without the guts or wit to wage war. They just murder civilians.”

I folded the clipping, then handed it back.

“Ms. Giraud, I’m sorry that your parents are dead. I’m sorry about all those people who died on that airliner. I’m sorry the men who murdered them are beyond the reach of the law. I’m sorry the French government hasn’t got the guts or wit to clean out the vermin in Tripoli. But what has this got to do with me?”