Chapter 6
Chapter 6
U nable to sleep, I tossed and turned, finally climbing out of bed at 2:00 a.m. Summer reached across, asking, “Where you going?”
“Not sure.”
“Want me to go with you?”
“No, I’ll be al—” She was asleep before I finished the sentence.
I turned to Gunner, who was sitting in the darkness staring at us. “You too, huh?”
I walked into the ginormous bathroom of our suite, dialed room service, and made my request to what sounded like a bleary-eyed chef. But given the constant flow of diplomats from around the world operating in multiple time zones, high-end hotels in the DC area are more than accustomed to middle-of-the-night requests. So twenty-four minutes later, room service appeared at our door with a twenty-two-ounce ribeye grilled Pittsburgh, medium rare, along with a twice-baked potato and a bowl of chocolate ice cream. I carried the tray back into the bathroom and sat alongside Gunner. I cut the enormous steak into bite-size pieces and held the first piece next to Gunner’s muzzle. He sniffed it and turned away, laying his head flat on the floor. I offered it a second time. Same response. With him having refused beautifully marbled prime Angus steak, I cut up the potato, salted it, lathered it with a generous dose of butter, and made the same offer. This time he didn’t even lift his head off the floor, so I sank the spoon in the ice cream and offered it, even dabbing his nose—which he didn’t bother to lick off, proving I was not the only one with a broken heart. I pushed the food aside and Gunner slowly placed his paw on my thigh and let out a deep exhale. I rubbed his head and lay down alongside him.
“I know, pal. Me too.”
As I scratched Gunner’s ears, the slideshow returned. At the start of my spring semester at the academy, I had returned to Colorado to find my entire academic schedule changed. Completely. When I tried to contact my advisor, he had been replaced by some guy I’d never heard of in some building I’d never entered in a far corner of the campus to which I’d never ventured. A dungeon of sorts. Off by itself and connected to nothing.
My knock elicited a terse “Enter” from inside. When I did, I found the white-robed eater of potato chips. Feet on the desk. Pieces of Nikon cameras spread about the room. Black-and-white pictures on the wall. This time he was dressed in BDUs, his black boots were polished, and the look on his face a little less passive. More chiseled.
“You’re late,” he said without looking at me.
His BDUs were not standard issue for the academy. The color and pattern were different. The one thing that did stick out were the markings on his collar, which said he was a colonel. A full bird colonel. I wanted to throw up. Given the depth to which I’d disrespected him in our last conversation, I was certain I was either headed to a military prison or about to receive a level of discipline I would not enjoy. Either way, my weeding out was about to start.
I had just run a mile and a half through falling snow, which was now melting, producing a puddle around me. “Sir, I want to apolo—”
He tossed me a key and pointed to a room next to his office. “Three minutes.”
I held up the key and glanced at the room.
“Two fifty.”
I held up my class schedule. “Sir, I think I’m in the wrong... Um, I didn’t—”
“Two forty-five.”
I was not an extraordinary cadet, nor did I really want to be. I didn’t know how to play or navigate the whole political-military-ladder thing. I also had a tendency to pick and choose which orders I obeyed and which I didn’t, which made me rather unpopular with those who gave them. But to my credit, I’d learned when to shut up. I opened the door and found a locker with my name on it. Inside, I found several sets of clothes, fleece sweats, shoes, boots, and BDUs that matched his—all my size and bearing my name. “Bishop.” Having not been told what to wear, I pulled on something similar to what he was wearing and returned to his office. He threw a small backpack at me and said, “Follow me.”
“Sir, I’m going to be late for my next class.”
He pushed open the door and stepped into the snow and cold, the temperature hovering at zero. “I am your next class.”
We ran out of his office, through the campus, and immediately up one of the mountains that served as a rather picturesque backdrop for the academy. He took the lead, picking his way up a narrow track with the agility of a cat and strength of a bear. I followed, amazed at his conditioning and fitness. He hiked like a mountain goat; never once did he stumble or misstep. When we reached the peak some forty-five minutes later, he wasn’t breathing much harder than I was.
He sat, motioned for me to do likewise, and pointed to the trail we’d just run up. “You like my trail?”
“Yes, sir.”
“But you could have run it faster.”
I could have. “Yes, sir.”
“Why?”
“Why what, sir?”
“Why didn’t you?”
I shrugged.
The look on his face suggested he was about to speak with me and not at me or to me. A first. “Lesson number two: No shrugging. Indifference is the twin sister to resignation, and both will kill you and/or your partner.”
Evidently I’d missed lesson number one but decided I wouldn’t mention that.
He emptied the contents of my pack onto the ground beneath a rock shelter and said, “How ’bout a fire.” I acted quickly. Feeding wood as the flames grew. Ten minutes later, as we ate the lunch I’d hauled up the mountain, he said, “Tell me about Marie.”
I swallowed hard. “Sir, can I ask you a question first?”
Before he answered, he pulled out a small bottle of wine and poured himself a few ounces. Then he crossed one leg over the other and sipped. “Sure.”
“I’m pretty confused right now.”
Another sip. “That’s a statement. Not a question.”
I went right at him. “Who are you?”
“My name is Ezekiel Walker. My friends call me Bones.”
As he spoke, I noticed a cross dangling beneath his shirt. Which struck me as strange. “How do you know so much about me?”
He weighed his head side to side. “Might need more wood for that conversation.”
I added more wood, and we watched in silence as a bald eagle floated effortlessly on the updrafts below us. A minute later, it disappeared over our heads. He continued, “I come up here sometimes. To make sense of what I can’t make sense of.”
“What doesn’t make sense?”
He sipped, and when he spoke, he stared through me. “Love in an evil world.”
He poked the fire and added wood. “I was once a lot like you.” He waved his hand across the academy spread below us. “Didn’t fit in.” A chuckle. “At all.” More poking. “But I was good at a few things, so they kept me around. One summer break, I was camping my way across the west. Just me, my truck, and a skinny dog I picked up on a beach in Louisiana. One night about 1:00 a.m. at a truck stop in Montana, I was putting gas in the tank when a greasy fat man backhanded a scared kid, sent him rolling head over butt, and then threw him into the cab of an eighteen-wheeler. Something in me didn’t like it. So I started listening. And with nothing better to do, I followed that truck. To a hotel in Idaho. When the driver disappeared into a back door of the hotel, I climbed into his cab where I found the kid had been tied up and gagged. I carried him to my truck. He had his share of bruises, but it was the fear in his eyes I couldn’t shake. I fed that kid a burger and watched from across the parking lot as the driver returned. Finding his cab empty, he raged and screamed—but he couldn’t go anywhere because of the flashing blue lights surrounding him.
“A few hours later that kid’s mother hugged her son while the father cried so hard his shoulders shook. Eight days they’d been looking for him—from California to New York and Miami. Eight days of torment that had split their souls down the middle.” He paused and sipped again. “That father is now one of the heads of our government. You’ve seen him on TV. And...” This time he turned, and when he looked at me, there was a tear in his eye. “That boy is a cadet in your class. You know him.”
“I do?”
“You disobeyed my order. Turned around. Went back. Helped him cross the line. Something he could not have done without you.”
“Sir, about that . . .”
“When I tell you I know people,” he said with a chuckle, “I know people.”
I swallowed, my confusion growing by the second. “But how’d you get from here to—” I pointed at his clothing. “The robes.”
He poured more wine and stared across Colorado and maybe into Canada. When he spoke, his voice was a whisper. “I also priest.”