The Ascendant: A Thriller (19 page)

“I’m from the South. There are no vegetarians in the South.”

“And Corona will do, yes?”

“Any alcohol will do.” She pulled two chairs up to the desk and sat in front of the meal. “It’s lovely. And very thoughtful.”

“Nobody ate all afternoon.”

“We were running on fumes.”

“So I took it upon myself . . .”

He poured the beers and gave one to her.

“Cheers,” she said.

“To the end of the world,” he said.

“That’s quite a toast. You think it’s imminent?”

“Unless we stop it.”

They drank, then ate hungrily, and wordlessly, for a few minutes.

“God, I was starving,” he said.

“You’re doing a good job,” she said.

“Wolfing down my food?”

“Stopping the end of the world.”

Garrett looked at her. She nodded. “I mean it. You’re the right person for the job. Maybe the only person. And I’m impressed.”

“Thanks. You’re not so bad yourself.”

“I facilitate. Group leader. Not anyone can do it, but a lot of people can. Only a couple of people can do what you do. A couple of people in the whole damn world. Maybe not even a couple. Maybe only you.”

Garrett stopped eating. He seemed, for the first time that she had noticed, off balance. He smiled crookedly, as if hiding something, covering some uncomfortable emotion. “So,” he said, still smiling. “If the world is ending, what are your plans?”

“Post-apocalypse? I’m going to roam the planet like Mad Max. In my Ford Falcon GT. Lots of leather.”

“One of my favorite movies.”

“Back when Mel Gibson was cute. And sane.”

“
Thunderdome
sucked.”

“Embarrassingly bad.”

They ate, and talked about movies. The apocalypse seemed further away to Alexis than it had in days. Garrett might live a life that was out of control, and he might indeed turn out to be a sociopath, but around him she felt oddly protected. He was so sure of himself, so fierce in his confidence, that she felt it rub off on her. It surprised her, but she felt stronger in his presence. Together, she thought, we might actually stop whatever it is that’s happening, and possibly save the country.

She drank her beer, and Garrett stepped outside the bunk room and came back with two more. “An endless supply,” he said, laughing. They drank a little more and Garrett cleared away the plates.

“Do you think it’s traitorous that we ate Chinese food?” she said.

“The people who made this food are as American as we are. The delivery boy said he just graduated from San Diego State. Name was Chang. Said he wanted to be a computer programmer. He talked like a surfer.”

“I was kind of joking,” she said.

“I know,” Garrett said. “It’s just that I’m not even sure the country is our enemy. Maybe the party leadership is. Or some generals. The Chinese people? No way. But can we talk about something else?” He pulled his chair a little closer to hers.

“Like what?”

“Like us.”

“Us? Is there an us?”

“I’d like there to be.”

He leaned close to her. Alexis was suddenly flustered. He stared at her with his intense blue eyes. He kissed her. She let him, not resisting, even liking it. Her head spun. Being kissed hadn’t made her feel this way in years. He shifted his body in his chair, moving closer to her. His arms wrapped around her back. She could feel his warmth, and it made her go weak in the knees. He kissed her harder, more passionately. She got a grip on herself and pushed him away.

“No,” she said.

“No? Why?”

“Because.” She was at a loss for words. She was breathing hard. Her own lust for him was a revelation to her. But she fought it. Now was not the time.

Garrett moved close to her again. “I don’t believe you.” He kissed her clumsily, hands brushing her chest. He was perched on the edge of his chair.

She shoved him backward. “Stop!” It was a little harder than she meant to, and his chair rocked backward. Garrett lost his balance and fell hard to the floor, sprawling out onto the wood. Alexis gasped. “Are you okay?”

Garrett struggled to his feet, flustered, angry. “Why did you do that?”

“I said no, you didn’t listen.” He got to his feet and brushed himself off. His face was tight, hurt. “Shit. I thought you were into me. We were close. You—”

“No,” Alexis cut him off, “you were mistaken.” She sat up straight in her chair, pushed her hair back. “Look, it’s just that . . .” She fumbled for the right words, stopping, then trying again. She didn’t want to tell him, but she felt she had to. Morally, it was wrong not to. But if she did, she would be going off script, endangering everything.

“Garrett, we can’t because . . .”

“Because what?” Garrett spit out.

“Because I’m married.”

•  •  •

Garrett stared at her, stunned. “Married?” He blinked. It made no sense. “But you don’t wear a ring. You never mentioned a husband. In all this time.”

“I,” she started, the words dying on her lips. “I took the ring off.”

Garrett tried to concentrate. She had seemed so open to him, so interested, so engaged, and now . . . And suddenly he realized.

“On purpose. You took the ring off on purpose.”

She said nothing. She looked down.

“To lure me in. So I would like you. Think I had a chance with you. So I would commit to your stupid project.” He grimaced, pacing. “Give back to your country. Find a purpose. All bullshit.” He spit it out. “A big fucking con.”

“No,” she said. “All true. Giving back is important. There is nothing more important.”

“Then why lead me on? Why not tell me you were married? Why not wear the ring?”

She had no answers for him. She looked away. He leaned close to her, got right in her face. “I should have fucking known. All that military bullshit. Liars. You are all liars. God, I hate you people.” He started toward the door.

“Garrett . . .”

“What?”

She started to say something, hesitated, then shook her head. Garrett laughed and walked out, slamming the door behind him.

He stalked out of the barracks, angry, a little buzzed from the beer, his head spinning, and walked out into the cool desert night. What a fool he had been. They had played him, completely duped him. And he was Garrett Reilly, the guy who read all the patterns, who could feel inconsistencies in his gut. But they had nailed him with his weakness—women. He was a sucker for a pretty face, a sexy body, a little flattery, someone who told him he was great. And Alexis had done exactly that. “Only a couple of people in the world can do what you do,” he muttered angrily to himself. “
You dumbass.
”

He dialed a cab service on his cell phone, and jogged down to the main base entrance. By the time he reached the guard house there was a cab waiting for him. He rode it to downtown Oceanside. There were bars up and down Mission Avenue. He got out at the first one—he didn’t even look at the name of the place—and ordered beer and vodka. By his third shot he was feeling much better. His mind was clearer, his anger more focused. His cell phone rang twice—it was Alexis—but he ignored it. Fuck Mao and the Chinese, he thought. And fuck saving the world.

He bought a pair of joints off a stringy kid hanging out by the pool tables and smoked them one after the other, in quick succession, in the alley behind the bar, then went back in for more booze. He lost all sense of time—and
place—but he was still angry. He couldn’t get Alexis’s face out of his head. Her voice. Her lies. Fuck, he had really fallen for her. How could he have been so stupid? And who the fuck was shoving up against him at the bar? Through his drunken, stoned haze he saw a trio of jarheads, slamming down beers, laughing.

Garrett thumped his chest into the biggest one. The Marine said something to Garrett, but Garrett couldn’t hear him over the jukebox and the chatter in the bar, and anyway, he wasn’t listening and didn’t give a shit what the jarhead said. “You’re a fucking asshole,” is what Garrett spit into his face.

“Do you have an attitude problem, douche wad?” the Marine growled.

Garrett brought the beer bottle down on the Marine’s head with one swift motion of his right arm, shattering the glass on his temple. The Marine fell backwards, and time slowed down for Garrett, as it always did when he got into a fight. He stomped the fallen Marine hard with his left foot, then drove his fist into the neck of the second Marine, who was just turning to help his buddy. Marine number two staggered into his friend, the third Marine at the bar, and Garrett threw himself onto both of them, fists flashing in a rapid-fire sequence of punches. It was a scrum, but a scrum that he was on top of, and a bar brawl that he was winning. He kept his fists pistoning—pleased with himself, knowing this was how to win bar fights—when suddenly he began to fly backwards into the air. It was the strangest sensation, as if he were magically levitating, and then reality came rushing in on him in the form of a fourth Marine, twice as large as the others, wrenching Garrett backwards off his comrades, and Garrett cursed himself for being so stupid.
It was a jarhead bar.
The place was full of them. And they were all coming to their jarhead comrades’ aid. No one left behind, and all that grunt bullshit. He turned in time to see a meaty fist land squarely on his cheek and then everything else became a blur.

The bar turned sideways and pain exploded in Garrett’s head, and in his chest, and then his arms were wrenched behind his back and he could feel his left shoulder pop. That hurt more than all the other punches, and it was at that moment that Garrett became sure of two things: (1) that he had lost this fight, and (2) that he might die because of it. Then everything went black.

A
lexis paced the antiseptic fifth-floor hallway of the Naval Hospital as the ghostly white fluorescent lights flickered over her head, making the pale walls seem even more sickly and uninviting. She’d gotten the call from the ER doctors half an hour earlier: white male, bar fight, multiple injuries, Army private, recorded as under her supervision. She’d shaken off her cobwebs, thrown on her fatigues, taken the team Humvee, and raced to the hospital, trying hard not to run off the paved road that traversed the base.

She hadn’t slept well. All night she had replayed the conversation with Garrett. She thought about the dinner, the kiss, his reaction, her pushing him away. And then telling him she was married, and the look on his face. All that deception. And all that raw emotion in Garrett. She hadn’t realized how hard he had fallen for her. But he had—that much had been obvious. And that, of course, was exactly as they had planned it.

The acid rose in her throat. She had been a willing participant. Hell, she had even come up with the strategy herself. Garrett liked women. She knew that, had seen him in action. And she had used it to her—and the Army’s—advantage. How, she thought to herself, am I any better than Garrett? I am deceptive. I am as amoral as he is.

We are a pair.

A young doctor walked quickly through the trauma doors and introduced himself as Colonel Booker Rogers. He was the surgeon on call.

“How bad is he?”

Rogers shrugged, noncommittal. “This is a military hospital. We see some pretty bad cases, so he’s not the worst of the worst. That said, he took a pounding. Oceanside Police said it was ten against one. Your man was the one.”

She sighed. Garrett might be good at detecting patterns, but he also seemed to have an aptitude for fitting into them. “I’m not surprised.”

“He has two broken ribs, a dislocated shoulder, a few cracked teeth, but he didn’t lose any. He’s got multiple bruises and cuts. He lost about a pint of blood. He probably has a concussion, but it’s hard to tell because he’s still unconscious. Most seriously, however, he has a linear transverse skull fracture.”

“Is that bad?”

“They’re the least bad of a bad thing. It will heal by itself. But he can’t ever again get into a bar fight. Or play tackle football.”

“I’d actually call that a good thing.”

“I’m serious. He does and he
will
die.”

Alexis nodded. “He’s not in a coma, is he?”

“He’s sedated for pain. That’s part of what is keeping him asleep. But I have to tell you, Captain, he is very lucky not to have a more serious skull fracture. He was hit many times on the head. We’re keeping his cranium iced right now to prevent swelling.”

Alexis frowned. Well, at least he would survive. Then a thought occurred to her: “Is he going to be mentally intact? I mean, the same as he was before?”

“You can’t guarantee anything with a head injury. But probably yes.”

Alexis breathed a sigh of relief, and hated herself for it. She was still worrying about Garrett Reilly’s usefulness to the Army. She tried to change the direction of her thinking: “Did he hurt anybody?”

“A Marine checked himself in a few hours ago with a broken nose and scalp lacerations. I suspect he was part of the fight. I think your boy hit him with a bottle.”

“But he’ll recover? The Marine?”

“He already has—he’s a Marine. He walked out of here an hour ago.”

“Can I see Reilly now?”

“Follow me.” Rogers led her through the trauma unit to a room at the end of the hall. Alexis had to keep herself from gasping when she saw Garrett. He was laid up on a hospital bed, head wrapped in gauze, a plastic ice sleeve laid across his forehead. A pair of tubes ran into his nose, and there was an IV drip
jabbed into his arm. EKG machines and oxygen sensors beeped and trilled at his side. But it was Garrett’s face that shocked Alexis the most; there were ragged purple and orange bruises on his cheeks, and stitched cuts on his nose and chin. Alexis thought he resembled a distant cousin to Frankenstein’s monster.

The doctor muttered at her side, “Why anyone would pick a fight with ten Marines is beyond me.”

Alexis knew the answer to that question, but she decided it really wasn’t any of the colonel’s business. “When will he wake up?”

“Could be any time. But my guess is a few hours.”

“I’ll wait here until he does.”