CHAPTER 3
Nantucket County Jail
My conversation with Tristan Dent lasted less than ninety seconds. I hung up the receiver and was ushered back to my cell.
I sat down, crossed my legs, looked at my cellmate, and tried to make nice.
“My name’s Nat Phillips.” I put my hand out for a shake.
The kid straightened up immediately and had a surprisingly firm grip. “Josiah Wilson, sir, good to meet you. Everyone calls me Si.”
He looked me in the eye. “Man, I really fucked myself this time. This is way worse than when I got bounced out of school.” He muttered woefully, “My father wanted to teach me a lesson, so he called the cops. What do you think they’ll do to me?”
“Who, these dudes?” I pointed with my thumb at the local cops outside the cell. “Take a look at that fat bastard, Si. Are you kidding me?”
“They told me my father’s not coming for hours; he’s so pissed at me.” Si looked seriously distressed about being here in jail.
“It’ll be alright,” I told him. “Clearly your dad is not planning on having you face charges. I’d put money on him just wanting to make you sweat over your expensive joy ride for a little while longer.”
I folded my hands around my crossed knee. “Look, it could be worse. Last week Al-Qaeda tried to teach me a lesson. After I killed one of their suicide bombers, they put a bounty on my head. I mean, seriously? The guy was on his way to die anyway, right?”
It was true. But the bounty was a risk the State Department wasn’t going to take, especially after the ambush. That’s what got me and my team sent home from Iraq less than two days ago.
Si and I had a few hours to kill before Tristan could get me out of here, so I told the kid why I’d been in Iraq, and sketched my work with Chesapeake Security and Training Company—CSTC for short.
Si was all ears, hanging on my description of life with an outfit I liked to call “Disney for gunslingers,” where we routinely trained Delta and SEAL teams. I had the kid on the hook. How often does anyone get to spend the night in jail with a special operator?
I ran down CSTC’s three operating groups: “Land, Sea, and Air. Each group consists of three teams, a who’s who of special operators and security specialists.
I lead Team Rhino in the Land Group. We also have Bear and Bull.
Mako, Tiger, and Hammerhead are our Sea Teams, and Eagle, Hawk, and Falcon are Air. ”
I said, “If you’ve got to do a dangerous mission, at least do it with good people, a smile on your face, and try to have fun. That’s what we do.”
I continued the play-by-play, talking about the events in Iraq.
“Anyway, if you ever meet my teammate Meg Fuller, don’t believe a single word she says, ’cause I shot the guy first. Of course, after the lead injection, his thumb released the detonator and he went kerflooey and blew himself to smithereens.
Hey, happy martyrdom to him. All I did was help the guy on his merry way without taking any of us with him, the fucker.
The nerve of them getting all worked up over a dead suicide bomber. You see the irony, Si?”
He couldn’t help smiling at my little routine, but seemed suitably impressed.
Si showed some humility as he detailed his own situation.
He was twenty years old, an only child, “in-between” colleges, hoping to begin a new slate at Dartmouth in the January term as a government major with a minor in computer science.
Until then, he was dividing his time between Nantucket and Palm Beach, living at home with his parents, Alan and Constance Wilson.
Tough life.
Alan Wilson was chairman of the Wilson Group, one of the most successful hedge funds, rivaled only by BlackRock Capital. Old Al was a big hitter and definitely wasn’t going to end up at the soup kitchen over his wife Connie’s Porsche currently being parked in Davy Jones’s locker.
Si and I bullshitted for a while and I had to admit, I really liked the younger Wilson.
He seemed like a good kid. I suspected he just needed a bit more purpose and direction—and probably an ass kicking too, for good measure.
Everybody needs one from time to time. I couldn’t fault the old man for trying to get his only child energized by something other than girls and beer.
Successful dynasties aren’t normally run by delinquents.
I had some money saved from my last trip to Iraq and desperately needed some work done around my place—starting with repairing the doors the feds had just kicked off their hinges—and the kid obviously needed something useful to do with his time, so I suggested I talk to his dad about having Si come help me out.
It seemed like a good fit for both of us.
At 6:00 a.m., I had just finished laying out the plans when the front door of the county jail opened to a man on a mission.
The gray-haired sixty-something, dressed in a dark suit and carrying a briefcase in one hand and an umbrella in the other, walked directly to the duty officer’s desk.
He put his leather briefcase down, adjusted his tortoiseshell glasses, and went to work.
This must be Tristan’s guy.
I couldn’t hear the exchange, but the finger-pointing between the suit and the duty officer was heated. Then the officer picked up the phone and started dialing.
The duty officer practically stood at attention as he listened to whoever was on the other end, then motioned to another cop to unlock the door to our cell.
I told Si to call me later, and walked out to meet my liberator.