With both Marcinko and I riding inside the Rover and the radio off, there was a silence punctuated only by the sound of passing air as we traveled, the whine of the V8 well insulated under the hood and the hiss of radial tires passing over hot asphalt. Marcinko had said nothing since his single question regarding what had happened to him. His shoulder wound was slight, although he made quite a show of crutching the small area tightly with his right hand. I would have tried to mollify him somewhat by telling him about a sergeant on the San Clemente police force who’d borrowed my magnum and then done the very same thing to the guy at the police range with him, except that guy, an Orange County Sheriff’s Deputy was hit by a tine piece of lead that went right through both sides of his nose. According to reports I got, the wound had bled so badly that the deputy had to spend time at the local hospital emergency room to get it stopped. Nobody ever borrowed my magnum again.

The silence, I knew, wasn’t from Marcinko modifying his overly expressive personality and presentation. Shock did the silencing. Even though his wound wasn’t painful, he’d been shot, constructively and no matter how mildly, and there was a near rape feeling of bodily violation and mental pain. I didn’t think the man would come out of his shock and be violently angry. What he’d heard about me and my background, completely cloaked by my personality, facial look, and easygoing comportment, hadn’t and didn’t usually lead men to think that I was in any way capable of violence, much less the massive potential I held in check at all times. However, Marcinko had been shot, and that penetration would serve as an entry point for the message I’d sent him.

An old expression from my scouting days came to mind as I glanced over at the man and kept a close watch over him while working to make it look like I wasn’t doing that at all. The interesting expression, one that I used mostly to myself now and then, was, “If you are going to dance, then you must be prepared to pay the piper.” Marcinko had danced and he’d paid the piper, no matter that he hadn’t thought to dance nor would likely have chosen to if he’d been allowed to consider it. I wasn’t prepared to fight for my family. There was no point in fighting when my mental state and field training allowed me the opportunity to call on skills and equipment which precluded fighting at all. An end was applied so there was no return engagement and therefore no fight at all.

“Where are we going?” Marcinko asked, looking straight ahead, not turning his head to direct the question directly at me.

In a brief few seconds I had gone from being a target for the man’s sophomoric and moronic aggressive humor, or even threatening behavior, but I was no longer that person in his life and I understood. I did not, however, want to awaken some rage inside the man and have it directed at me.

“My home,” I said with a smile, even if he didn’t see it. “Mary will patch you up after taking out the tiny piece of lead that’s likely still in the muscle of your shoulder. You can get your car and drive, or I can have Kingsley drive you wherever you want to go. Nguyen can follow and take Kingsley back if you need that.”

I kept my voice tone light and airy as if we were talking about picking up groceries or maybe the cleaning instead of treating a small wound that would affect the man for the rest of his life, even if he wasn’t aware of that yet. I did feel guilt. I knew that spalling would likely take place and had positioned the magnum to maximize the potential of the piece striking Marcinko. But there was no way to predict the placement of any bits on target. Blinding could occur, even if in only one eye. A strike in the private parts would not have been pretty or easy to treat either. Had my reaction been too much? With both the damaged ear drums and the open wound, I lamentably felt my reaction was over the top, even though that reaction had been the product of a rising series of provocations. There was no chance in hell that Marcinko had mistreated my wife. I knew that in my bones. Marcinko was like a peeping Tom. He watched, talked, and maybe even flashed, but he was not a violent actor or a doer of violence in any way I could gauge.

I glanced over as I drove the Rover up Montgomery toward the turnoff onto Magnolia. Mary was going to be surprised I knew about what had happened. There was no lie I could conceivably come up with that might cover the situation unless Marcinko went along with it, which was more than highly unlikely, I knew. There was also no way I wanted to owe the man anything as bringing him into my confidence would require leaving Mary out. I couldn’t do that, so I was stuck with the truth as bad as that was more and more coming to appear to be.

I didn’t want to be what so many others perceived me to be, including some who’d served at the Western White House, the CIA, and even the Marine Corps. I shifted uncomfortably in the Rover’s luxurious leather driver’s seat, feeling the wallet pushed down inside my left rear pocket, reminding me that I still carried an active-duty officer’s identification card, verifiable inside that wallet. That I.D. was a physical manifestation of not only my violent background in war but the potential others saw and were willing to use of such potential for violence in my current life. Sitting next to me, Marcinko, still pressing his left hand onto the upper outer muscle of his right arm, was quantifiable proof of the fact that I was not who I believed I was. The three weapons available all around me inside the Rover were not there as an indication of my defensive response to valid paranoia. I had not been threatened physically by Marcinko, yet I’d gone deep into risky, violent behavior to make an emotional point.

“You can’t tell her the truth,” Marcinko said, speaking his first meaningful words since the incident and doing so in a louder tone than normal because of his evident damage to his hearing.

I sighed behind the wheel. The man was a complete enigma and not at all without significant intellect and life experience.

“We went out to shoot some junk in the desert for fun, and the weapon malfunctioned, which isn’t totally a lie.”

“The magnum operated as it was intended to,” I replied, not thinking what he’d said quite through, my mind trying to wrap itself around the apparent fact that the man I’d just shot was now trying to help me.

“I wasn’t really talking about the magnum, but that’ll certainly do for her,” Marcinko replied.

“Why did you drive down to pick me up and not my wife?” I blurted out, his open support causing me to try to re-evaluate my own conduct as well as try to come to terms with a revealing set of facts I could not ignore in forcing e to change my feelings about him.

“I drove up there to see if you had returned from wherever you went since nobody was talking, and there’s the jungle training in the offing,” Marcinko replied. “Your wife was home but had to run to pick up your daughter for some reason or other, so I was left to pick you up since you’d called in for a ride.”

I stopped at the last light before crossing Tramway on our way back to my home. I didn’t look over at Marcinko but could see him trying hold himself together as best he could. I knew I hadn’t necessarily been wrong about the man but I also knew I had no idea who or what he really was. My actions were uncalled for but I didn’t know what to say.

We arrived at the residence to find Mary waiting outside. She took Marcinko right inside and went to work on him in the master bathroom, all accept for tweezering out the rounded slim bit of spalled led which I had to take out after squirting the wound with some lidocaine from a bottle of eye deadener I kept around, against all doctor’s rules, for emergency use. It seemed to work as well on an open skin wound as it did in my own eyes. I went back to the kitchen to consider my own sins and situation as Mary finished bandaging the totally silent Marcinko up. His story about the accident had flown with her, or at least she was making believe it had. In my heart, I knew better, of course. She was hyper-sensitive and smart as hell which was great sometimes and terrible at others. Late in the night, I might just get some of the terrible I just knew would come out but that was for later.

The phone rang, so I picked it up before the second ring.

“Doctor Harpending here,” the voice on the other end said, as if the man himself had been called and not vice versa.

“Yes, doctor,” I replied, adding nothing more, wondering what the department head was calling my home for.

“Your Ph.D. direct program begins next month, although I was unaware until so informed that the university had such a program in my discipline. Your only credited course currently will be in primate culture, and that course will emphasize an evolutionary perspective, examining primate behaviors and social structures as they’ve been shaped by natural selection and adaptation.”

There was a silence, so I merely waited.

“The book you’ll have to acquire is titled Primate Cultural Advancement by Cook, and you need to order it right away. It’s a hundred and eight-five dollars when ordered through the campus bookstore, but I don’t set the prices. Lois Draper will be your teacher, lab assistant, and guide for the graduate-level course. Her expressed thoughts on women’s rights you may also find interesting.”

Just in listening to the man drone on, I knew it would be a waste of time to ask him any questions at all, like why I was enrolled, what rules of acceptance had been suspended, who enrolled me and who was paying the tab. Those would have to be answered by or researched by Herbert at a later time.

“Doctor Draper will fill you in, as I have little idea what research assisting might entail for a course I’ve never taught and didn’t know we were offering. And oh yes, you’re pre-registered for this and two other courses in the current semester, but you’ll get that data as soon as you attend the first class.”

Harpending hung up without saying goodbye, which, for reasons of repeat behavior, I was getting used to. Herbert had mentioned that Draper was Harpending’s wife, which would explain the doctor’s change of tone when he’d openly wondered about what a full professor might be doing acting like a research assistant for some oddball student no doubt quite a bit younger than the professor himself.

I heard Marcinko’s car start all the way out from the curb, and then with no real sound coming forth from it was gone.

Mary appeared at the kictchen door. I waited in silence for her to lay into me but she didn’t, instead letting me know that one of my few white cotton shirts fitted Marcinko perfectly.

“He sure has quieted down a lot since our last meeting. Maybe the accident shocked him a bit.”

I still said nothing, not wanting to add that it was likely the man probably couldn’t hear much of anything anyone might say to him for quite some time because of the magnum’s nearby sonic blasts. Instead of discussing Marcinko’s ‘accident’ or anything else potentially controversial, I changed the subject.

“The Agency’s enrolled me in the direct Ph.D. program at UNM,” I said, and then waited.

“It’s about time,” Mary replied with no delay or lack of enthusiasm. “Just maybe you’ll find something that suits your intellect and not your misplaced sense of adventure. Speaking of that, that man, as damaged as he is, wants to meet you down at the training center to plan for the Puerto Rico thing.”

“It’s not some weird thing,” I replied, not wanting to Kirtland so soon after what happened but knowing I had no choice. Despite his condition, Marcinko was simply being efficiently mission-oriented.

“Like those boxers doing the ‘rumble in the jungle’ thing,” Mary added unnecessarily, making me realize I’d rather be with Marcinko at the base than trying to explain myself to her. Normally, unless she was leading up to something, she didn’t come up with such graphic examples to throw at me. I knew where she was going, and I didn’t want to go there.

“I left Nguyen and Kingsley at the office,” I said, ignoring her comments as best as I could. “I’ll pick them up, hit the training center for a quick meeting, and be back for dinner.”

My wife made no reply, but I could tell that a million questions were swirling around inside her deceptively beautiful head. I jumped into the Rover and headed down Montgomery. There would be no point in telling the sordid story about what happened to Marcinko. If he wanted to discuss that, he would,d but I doubted the likelihood, at least until his ears were in better shape. His ears brought up another issue. How was he going to fly with the team to Puerto Rico until his sensitivity to sound improved and his losing sensitivity to the pain was diminished?

I went into the living room and sat down on the ‘Taos Bed’ form of a couch, which meant that I had to stuff myself deeply into it as I always considered the bench part of it too wide. Unexpectedly Bozo hopped onto the cushion next to me and laid down. He didn’t look at me, but I knew he wouldn’t have lain there if he didn’t need some attention. Since Bozo was not the kind of cat who enjoyed stroking, I simply scooted a bit closer to him.

“Your life gives every appearance of being so much more simple than mine,” I whispered down to him.

Bozo’s head snapped around and he stared up into my eyes, as if to ask, “what exactly do you know about the simplicity of my life?”

“Alright,” I said, opening both palms toward his upturned muzzle. “I don’t spend nearly as much time here as you…so I get your point.”

I got up slowly and headed for the front door. Home would still be there when I got back from doing the things I had to do. There was no chance that simplicity could be used, I knew, as a word to explain what living with my wife, Julie, and Michael was like.

When I walked into the office complex the first thing I did was head for my office, hit the button for any outside line and dialed the number for Herbert. Nguyen and Kingsley filed in but remained standing…their way of waiting with respect to see if I wanted them to stay or leave. I nodded curtly and both men sat down.

Herbert came on but it tood several minutes and when he answered I knew he was up to his ears in something. His normally calm and casual tone, except when he abruptly hung up or said no, wasn’t there. He was rushed and short in his responses.

“I have no idea why you’re back in college or how you got there. Sounds like only the Agency could pull that off, given you weren’t the greatest student in New York’s university system. I don’t know. I would say I don’t care, but I don’t want your feelings hurt. That crap you pulled with Erhard is paying dividends and allowing you to have more rope than you ought to have, but the whole thing is making me look like I’m not needed here, only you are. Nobody but me seems to give a damn that you haven’t been to charm school or any of the rest of the courses. I’m the only one trying to keep you alive, and I get the distinct feeling that you are not all in on that with me. You don’t have time to get trained, so how in hell are you going to make the time to get through graduate school on top of everything else?”

“I don’t know,” I whispered back, wishing I’d instructed the loyal men in front of me to leave the room. I held the phone while glancing at them, not that there was anything to say since Herbert had hung up right after asking his question for which there was no answer.

“I’ll get right on it and call you back,” I said, more strongly, trying to put a little iron into my subdued tone.

“Are you talking to yourself?” Pat said into my ear. “I thought the call was over.”

“Thanks for telling me,” I said, matter-of-factly as I could and then replaced the receiver in its base.

“Let’s head out,” I said to both men, tossing the keys to Kingsley.

For once I thought it might be better if he drove, no matter how ridiculous his road manners and style were. I had to resolve some of the issues I could not seem to put together to form anything like a rational plan.

Kingsley drove with Nguyen riding shotgun in the front while I tried to relax just behind him. For once, Kingsley’s slow, smooth driving flow gave me some comfort. I thought about when I was in kindergarten, playing with the giant building blocks of wood available in my classroom. I’d built an igloo-like structure and then invited some of the other students to play inside before pulling one block out and collapsing the whole structure. The blocks were made of light dull cornered wood so none of the kids were hurt. I was, however, banned from ever using or playing with the blocks again. Only the teacher was mad at me. The students thought the whole thing was funny and cool. I wasn’t dealing with that kind of accepting student mentality when I was trying to work with the leadership of the Agency, however. The Agency was very much like the teacher but with an even harsher personality and potentially much more damaging bite.

I tried to sit back and relax, my conduct with Marcinko eating away at me. I thought of Bozo, my nearly unlovable but still needing-love predator cat.

The Rio Grande River was slipping by the window as we cruised on the freeway heading west toward the airport and Air Force Base. I looked out and then upward into the clear, barely blue desert air. I wanted to be up in a balloon with Kris. Kris, who was not a predator. Bozo could not fit back into social life after being a wild ‘swamp pussy’ out in the wild. The semi-civilized predator of a cat identified with me, and only me. I was trying to do the same thing Bozo was trying to do and it was forcefully coming to me that Marcinko was trying to do the same thing. He was a predator, not a faker or chickenhawk. His decorations and combat unit service were real. He couldn’t come home. Bozo, he and I were the same and we came together without cause, will or motivation, like opposite ends of magnets. Without combat, we had no place to go, even though the last place we wanted to be was in actual combat. I brought my head around to face forward and looked at the right side of Kingsley’s face and then at the back of Nguyen’s head. Those, the two. We three. With Marcinko and Bozo the five among all the other thousands around us. We were part of what might be considered to be a displaced social set out upon a social web of a cultural table, that set made of barely polished homogeneous armor plate, reformed and slipped onto the table in between real pieces of Sterling silver.

Marcinko had been almost silent at the house, and also upon leaving, not even ‘blasting off’ in his overpowered car when he departed. I knew that for the predator I now considered him to be, that behavior wasn’t necessarily an indication of anything good happening in our forthcoming meeting.

“Head for the hangar,” I instructed Kingsley. The Starlifter and Mack would probably be there since the plane had to be refueled and have whatever maintenance had to be done between flights. I wanted the plan to fly everyone out of the jungle to have no hitches whatever and Mack was the ideal person to make that happen. He reminded me of my own time at the Western White House when I’d been absolutely nobody, having phony but real identification, a make-believe title but tremendous power that I didn’t understand while I had it.

Nguyen turned on the Rover’s radio, and music filtered its way from the front seat as the expensive vehicle’s surround sound kicked in. The song by my old acquaintance from the San Clemente Trestles Beach, Linda Ronstadt, was playing called Different Drum. The starting lyrics hit me before my brain went back out to view the inviting but harsh desert to my right as we approached the airport main entrance: “You and I travel to the beat of a different drum. Oh, can’t you tell by the way I run…”. I knew the words didn’t apply to my situation as they were about breaking away from someone you love, and I was an eternity away from doing something like that with my wife. I knew she strangely liked Marcinko and that also confirmed that he was a predator. She’d stayed with me when I came home from the valley, after all. She was somehow attracted to real predators, no matter how dangerous such association could be.

Kingsley cruised the nearly silent Rover up to the open door of the hangar. I looked out to see that the plane was still there, and so was Mack, although he wasn’t alone. Warner Erhard was sitting right next to Mack with his suitcase between them on the lower part of the giant airplane’s angled ramp.

Both men got up as I stepped down from the back of the Rover. Neither Kingsley nor Nguyen got out, and I understood. There was no threat, so they would wait inside the only armor available, even though the Rover was just a civilian off-road truck.

Erhard walked up to me before I got halfway to the plane.

“We need to talk,” he said. “I presume those people who don’t say who they are sent you for that.”

I saw no point in either confirming or denying his statement, instead turning to walk deeper into the cavernous empty space beyond where the Starlifter was parked. Finally, a few hundred feet away from everyone and everything I stopped and turned to him. I knew he had to talk so I waited for him to begin.
“I need your advice, please. I know you know this kind of stuff. Did I make a mistake in bringing up the nuclear plant? Should I have simply shut and gone home? I’m not going home. I’m waiting for a special command staff plane to fly me to D.C. Will I ever get home? Will they ever leave me in any kind of peace?”

Erhard stopped talking, his arms outspread and his facial expression one of shock and a bit of fear. I thought about what I might or could say to the man. He’d never hurt me and tried to hire me, as well as complimenting me several times at each of our meetings, in his rather biting way.

“You began playing with the devil in Hong Kong, and you know that. You told them about the plant because you fear for your own and your family’s safety.
You’ll get that, as long as you stay in the United States and don’t venture out for quite some time. You are dealing with principled men and women, but their principles apply first to the country with you in a very distant second place. You traded control of a good part of your life for the information, not dealing with the Chinese and the money. You are now one of us.

“One of us?” Erhard asked, dropping his hands to his sides. “What is it that you are?”

“We don’t know,” I replied, being as honest as I could. “We’re whatever they need to make of us at the time.”

A small private jet taxied toward the open hangar door at the same time as an Army truck pulled up to the front of the Range Rover. The jet stopped short of the opening, but the turbines continued to let out high pitched whines from both engines left at idle. Out of the back of the truck came half a dozen of the members of the mission team, all attired in combat camouflage and carrying M-16s across their chests. They assembled in a line before Marcinko stepped out of the passenger side of the truck and came toward where Erhard and I stood. His injured arm was unnecessarily resting in a white cloth sling.

“You’re not part of what this is being made into right now, so get out to that waiting jet. You can look back, but you might now want to see what you are going to see.”

Erhard ran to the ramp, grabbed his suitcase, and then moved rapidly toward the business jet. Mack had disappeared, probably back into the Starlifter, as the ramp began to be cabled up.

I turned to face Marcinko, glancing at the Rover, inside of which there was no movement I could see. The inside of the Rover was an armory, so a pang of worry shot through me as Marcinko stopped just short of me and smiled a phony, warm smile.