Day Zero (11 page)

 

G
unnery Sergeant Jacques Thibodaux dropped his carry-on roller bag on the chipped concrete porch and fished his house key from the pocket of his Marine Corps utilities. Two gallon jugs of milk and six flimsy plastic grocery bags hung from his massive left hand. The brim of his utility cover pulled low over his forehead, he clutched a stack of bills and credit card offers between his teeth. A black patch covered one eye, the wound courtesy of a gun battle in a Bolivian jungle alongside his friend Jericho Quinn. He was a big man with shoulders as wide as his own front porch and muscles that strained the seams of his MARPAT camo uniform. The black nylon rigger’s belt with a single red stripe signified he was a certified instructor trainer of Marine Corps Martial Arts.

The door swung open before he could get the key.

“Hey, Boo,” Thibodaux said to his wife. Her name was Camille, but he’d called her Cornmeal or Boo from the first time he’d met her when she was tending bar outside Camp Lejeune. She was a short thing, and at six-feet-four he had to lean down some to meet her. Snatching the mail out of his mouth with the hand that held the grocery bags, he winked his good eye and tilted his head so she could give him their customary welcome-home kiss without bumping the brim of his cover.

Camille didn’t move. Standing in the open door, she cocked her hip to one side—a hip that was nicely clad, to the gunny’s way of thinking, in stretchy black yoga pants. Her deeply tanned arms ran up either side of the threshold, completely blocking his entry. Black hair brushed strong shoulders. The Eagle, Globe, and Anchor on the chest of her faded green USMC tank top swelled and dipped in all the right places.

He’d only been gone three nights—some training down in Georgia for his new job in logistics. Sheer torture for a man used to the rigors and adventure of the field, the hours of convoluted PowerPoints and bone-dry lectures felt like some new form of enhanced interrogation. Being able to lay eyes again on the mother of his seven boys took his breath away.

He leaned in again, trying once more for their customary hello.

Instead of kissing him, she folded her arms, obscuring his view of the Eagle, Globe, and Anchor, and threw him one of her patented pissed-off Italian looks. She was nearly a foot shorter than him, but standing inside the doorway made it easier to look him in the eye with him still out on the porch.

Thibodaux took a half step back.

“What?” he said. “Somebody die or somethin’?”

Eyes the color of black coffee narrowed under an even darker brow. “Don’t pretend like you don’t know.” Her accent was a fricassee of the Deep South spiced with just a hint of her father’s Mott Street Italian.

Thibodaux shook his head, rolling through his brain for some anniversary or birthday he’d missed. They’d just talked the night before. She hadn’t given him any indication then that she’d been mad.

“I really don’t—”

“Yes, you do, Jacques,” she whispered. “That’s the problem.”

“What?” He was begging now. “What is the problem?”

“I want to hear it from your own lips, Jacques Thibodaux,” she said. “It’ll be better for everyone that way.”

“Arette toi
,
”
he pleaded.
Stop, you
. “Baby, I got no earthly idea what you’re talkin’ about.”

Her lips tightened into a terrifying line, the way they did when she banished him to sleep on the couch. “Jacques,” she said, scolding. “You have got to tell me the truth.”

“You’re killin’ me, here,” Thibodaux said, his gumbo-thick Cajun drawl thickening even more. “I swear on my
mamere’s
own grave . . .”

Camille’s face melted into a wide smile

“Just checking,” she said and leaned in to give him a peck on the nose. “Gotta keep what’s mine, mine.”

“Holy shit, girl,” he moaned, throwing his head back. “You scared my mule there.”

She raised a black eyebrow at his cursing.

“Come on,” he said, walking in to set the bags on the dining room table. “You owe me that one.”

“Maybe,” she said, peeking out the mini-blinds that faced the street.

Camille Thibodaux, the churchgoing member of the marriage, allotted her gunnery sergeant husband a total of five non-Bible curse words each month in an effort to keep her boys from picking up potty mouths. As long as it was in the Bible, any word was fair game. Which, Thibodaux discovered, actually gave him a pretty large lexicon to choose from.

“That van’s back,” she said.

Thibodaux shrugged. “I know,” he said. “Just try and forget about it.” He took the milk into the kitchen.

He knew what the van was all about—or had his suspicions at least. He even told Camille some of it. An OGA, or other governmental agent along with Quinn when Winfield Palmer had been in office, the change in the administration had forced him to return to his old unit. He returned from Japan as ordered and reported in to Quantico, but his command had been unsure of what to do with him. It seemed that anyone who’d had access to the former president was now damaged goods—even dangerous to be around. Gunny Thibodaux—the consummate warrior with more tours into forward operating areas in the hellholes of the Middle East than he had sons—which was saying a lot—had been relegated to desk duty.

Even there he didn’t really have a job other than organizing paper files that seemed to be pretty damned organized already. It was the clerical equivalent of breaking big rocks into little rocks. Still, Thibodaux tried to make the best of it, biding his time until Palmer, and the few he had working with him, hatched a plan to deal with this current administration. Thibodaux had little contact with Quinn, but Garcia and Palmer reached out to him on occasion, using the old-school method of leaving a chalk mark on the bench at the ball field where his oldest sons played when they wanted a meeting. It was all basic tradecraft from the Cold War era, fascinating stuff in his early training with Quinn and the enigmatic Mrs. Miyagi, but certainly not something he’d thought he would ever put to use.

Camille’s voice pulled him out of his thoughts. “Are you even listening to me, T?”

Thibodaux turned to see his wife had folded her arms again. After seven sons, her figure was still what his daddy would have called praline-scrumptious—a little curvier than she once was—but that was just fine with Jacques. The skin-and-bones things on TV looked about as appetizing as cuddling with a metal storm grate. Camille was, as Jacques liked to point out, built for comfort over speed.

“You know I’m listening,
mon cher
,” Jacques said, flinging his Cajun charm at her. He ran the flat of his hand over the top of the bristles of his high and tight haircut. “What was it you were sayin’?”

“You big, stupid son of a bitch,” Camille said, welling up with tears. Somehow, she could curse whenever she felt like it. She could have cursed him in her native Italian, but what was the good of cursing your husband if he didn’t understand how mad you were? Some things just couldn’t be picked up by context alone.

She threw her head back and stared at the ceiling, blinking away tears. “Sometimes you just make me want to scream.”

Jacques grimaced. He truly hated it when his sweet bride was angry—on so many levels. “I’m sorry, Boo. I swear I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”

“I’m telling you that van is parked back across the street again. It was here for a week, then left when you did. You get back from training and now it’s out there again. I can’t help it if that scares me.” She snatched a tissue from the table and blew her nose. “Sometimes I think you just don’t give a damn.”

Thibodaux took her gently by both shoulders, cocking his head to one side to try to make sense of what she meant rather than what she said.

“Of course, I give a damn,” he said. “I give lots of damns. In fact, I give more damns than anyone I ever even heard of. You know that.” He tilted her chin up with a crooked finger.

She put her arms around his neck and pulled him close. “I’m just tired,” she whispered. “You being followed everywhere, creepy men watching us like this—it’s a lot for a girl to take in. You know?”

Arms around her waist, he lifted her off her feet. “I hate it too,” he whispered, pulling her body against his and giving her back a little crack the way she liked.

He put her down and gave her a peck on the forehead.

Camille sighed, semi-appeased. “I’m sorry for the hissy fit.”

Thibodaux glanced at his watch. “I got an hour till I have to start making the rounds to go pick up the little
bougs
. We hardly ever get any time alone. What say you and me play a little game of Naked Twister?”

Camille took an elastic band off her wrist and looped it around her hair, pulling it up into a thick ponytail. “I guess I could pencil you in,” she said. “If you help me put away these groceries.”

“Sold.” Thibodaux grinned, opening the refrigerator door to put in all his plastic shopping bags at once.

“I see where our boys get their behavior,” Camille chided.

“I know,” Thibodaux said. “I was just foolin’ with you.”

“Not until you unpack these groceries, you’re not.” Camille turned away, carrying a carton of Minute Rice to the pantry. He gave her a little swat on the butt as she walked away, keeping up the illusion that he was the one in charge.

Five minutes later, Thibodaux followed his wife into the bedroom, hopping on one foot and then the other as he peeled off his socks.

Camille sat on the edge of the bed, swinging her legs and watching him undress. He rarely told her what he did when he was out of town, but she made it a habit of checking him over for new wounds and scars when he came home.

“When is the last time you heard anything from Jericho?” She asked.

Thibodaux shot a glance toward the window. He put a finger to his lips, and then leaned in closer, whispering. “There’s a good chance the guys in that van have listening devices. They might able to pick up some of the things we say, even inside the house.”

She raised an eyebrow, giving him a slow nod as she considered that information. “That being the case . . .” She looked down at the bed. “We should probably be careful then.”

“Hang on, now.” Thibodaux held up both hands, trying to salvage a few minutes with his wife before he had to pick up the boys. “I ain’t saying they can really hear us. I’m just thinking we should be careful when we mention you know who.”

“I see,” she said, not moving.

“Does this mean . . . ?”

“Of course not.” She peeled off her shirt and fell back on the bed, giving the mattress a playful bounce. “Remember that crap hole apartment we rented when we were stationed at Camp Pendleton?”

He nodded, dumbly. After seven boys, the sight of her body still took his breath away.

“Well, do you recall how the neighbor’s TV was always so loud and how we could hear them talking about what to have for dinner?”

Thibodaux shrugged. “I suppose so.”

“If I worried about people listening in on us, I’d never have gotten pregnant with our first two boys. I think the neighbors left their TV turned up all the time so they didn’t have to listen to you jumpin’ my bones every minute of the day.” She patted the bed, talking out loud now. “Get your ass up here, Gunny Thib—”

The smaller of the two cell phones next to their bed began to chime. Jacques gave an exasperated sigh, but picked it up immediately. He rolled his hand in the air, motioning for Camille to make more noise to help camouflage his conversation.

Dressed in nothing but her grin, Camille began to jump up and down on the bed, squeaking the box springs and driving Thibodaux crazy in the process.

“Speak to me,
beb
,” the Gunny said, eyes locked on his bouncing wife.

“It’s happening,” Jericho Quinn said. “They’ve found me.”

“You okay,
l’ami
?” Thibodaux had to turn away so he could concentrate. The two men had known each other just over two years, but they’d bled and spilled blood together and were closer than brothers—even if Quinn happened to be a member of what he’d always considered the “pansy ass” Air Force.

The Cajun listened while Quinn ran down not only an attack on him, but on his wife and daughter.

“What can I do?”

“You know that thing we discussed?”

Thibodaux found himself shaking his head. “I remember,” he said. “But you might want to rethink that, Chair Force.”

“It’s already in motion.”

“You’re serious about this?”

“Dead serious,” Quinn said. “My dad and brother are with them now. Would you mind heading over and giving them a hand? You know, looking outbound. They need all the security they can get.”

“No problem,” Thibodaux said. “I just . . . I mean . . . Are you sure about this plan of yours?”