The Shack: Ladykiller

"They're in Croatia, right?" I could see him mentally checking his list of information.

"Yeah, fishing boats. I need to tell them I am going to miss the season this year. I try to get over there to help."

"Sounds like fun."

"It's a living, sort of."

*****

Opatija, Croatia

Three days later, I walked in the front door of my brother's home without knocking. It was my home, too, at least while I was in Croatia. It was never locked, anyway.

The bus had gotten in early, as usual, since bus service in Croatia is typically very good. It was Saturday morning, off-season, so odds were that Nicco was still in bed, and there was no point in waking him. I headed for the kitchen and began pulling down the coffee. Just as I finished pulling a couple of mugs down, somebody poked me gently in the ribs.

"Nicco, I didn't know you were up or I'd have started the coffee myself."

I turned to look at my admonisher. A deeply tanned woman with light brown hair and matching eyes, who appeared to be wearing only an oversize maroon Texas A&M t-shirt looked at me in shock. "Hi, I'm Antoni, or just Tony. Nicco's brother? Maybe he mentioned me?"

At first I thought she was going to scream, but she relaxed after she stepped back a couple of paces. She blushed. "He's talked about you a lot, but he didn't mention you were coming out. I thought you were Nicco."

"That's pretty obvious. I probably should have called to let him know I was coming so he could have warned you."

"I came down here to call my Mom, she's in California, managing the night shift at the hospital. She worries about me. I saw you and thought I must have woken Nicco up." She blinked. "Oh, yeah, I'm Kayla."

"Nice to meet you, Kayla."

She started to say something then looked down at her own bare legs and blushed again. "I think I'd better get dressed."

As she ran up the stairs, she tried to keep her T-shirt pulled down, but it was pretty obvious her golden-brown tan was all over.

Of course it was. Kayla was obviously the Summer Girl. Every year, for almost the last 20 years, there'd been a Summer Girl. Nicco had realized he and Dad would never do more than scrape by fishing for Bluefin, Amberjack and Mahi-Mahi. So he'd gone a different route, enlisting in Marine Biology research programs and helping out with nautical archeology programs. Along the way, it'd turned from volunteer work, to paid work, to subject matter expert support. Nicco flew back to the States to make presentations and offer advice at the big conferences.

Every year a post graduate student or doctoral candidate came out to do some kind of research project. Always an unattached female grad student or doctoral candidate. Nicco, like me, was all too obviously a bit of a wolf, and as Anne had said, every girl has a bad boy fantasy. A rugged Greek-American fisherman, living in beautiful Croatia seems to qualify. It rarely took a week before the Summer Girl was sunbathing nude on the deck of one of his little boats as he ran her out to the sites to look at whatever she was there to see. That was about three days longer than it usually took them to end up in Nicco's bed. They enjoyed the hell out of the summer, Nicco made damn sure they were successful as hell, and the summer ended with a scattering of tears and fond memories as the Summer Girls headed off to her future.

It was a tradition of sorts, and it had lasted so long that some of the Summer Girls were running programs at major universities and Marine institutes. Those former Summer Girls, fondly remembering Nicco and the success they'd had, both personal and professional, seemed intent on directing the best of their unattached female students in the same direction.

But things had changed, I could see that, and I had some questions for Nicco when he came down.

When he did, I handed him a cup of coffee. After our usual raucous greetings, I explained why I'd come by. "I'm not making it for Bluefin season this year, I have a contract."

"Iraq or Afghanistan?"

"Afghanistan."

"Rather you were there than Iraq."

"Me, too." I sighed. "So... Kayla?"

He nodded. "She was here last summer to finish her doctorate and when I went to that big conference in January... well, we sort of hooked up."

"I can see that. When is she due?"

"September." I could see pride etched on his face.

"What'd Dad say?"

"He wanted to know when we were getting married."

"So when is it?"

"It was going to be in August when you came out. I need you to be my best man, Tony. I'll talk to her, see if we can do it while you are here."

"I've only got a couple of weeks."

"We can do it." The Last Summer Girl stood on the stairs, wearing a light-yellow sundress. "I know how important this is to you, Nicco, and that makes it important to me. I'll call Mom and she can head straight over here. She has her passport ready, anyway, and I'm her only baby."

The way Nicco looked at her it was clear how he felt about her. She came on down and slid into his lap while he ran his hand over the curve of her stomach. She all but purred, wiggling back to nestle tighter into him. She looked at me. "When I realized I was pregnant, I called Nicco, but I didn't really know what to say. I didn't even manage to tell him, but he was knocking on my door three days later."

Nicco shrugged. "I just knew."

Kayla sighed as he ran fingertips over her neck. "With my doctorate done, it was easy to get on the plane with Nicco and just be here."

We spent much of the morning just talking over things; Dad, it turned out, had gone into Zagreb for a couple of days to visit some friends. I did manage to get Kayla to accept my offer to pay for her mother's airline ticket, claiming it as the duty of the Best Man.

Nicco brought up our mother. "You still getting letters?"

"Every couple of weeks."

"You'd think she'd get the message."

"I don't know, I thought sending the letters back would make it clear that we don't want anything to do with her."

Nicco frowned. "I think, someday, we're going to have to deal with her. A month ago, we saw one of those custom superyachts, a 200-footer. I'm almost certain it was her standing on the deck watching me while we pulled survey lines."

"Could have been anyone, it's been a long time."

Kayla straightened up and looked at me. "The yacht was named the Daphne. It had to cost over 30 million euros. I looked it up, it's registered in Monaco."

"Sounds like she got everything she ever wanted. Maybe she can come and watch me work next time." I was trying to keep the anger out of my voice, but some may have crept through.

Kayla pulled herself tighter to Nicco, but it looked less clingy than like she wanted to shield him. The way she'd looked at Nicco when he mentioned our mother, she obviously knew our history. He relaxed a bit then smirked. "Yeah, I'll suggest that if she corners me."

Kayla broke in, dead serious. "She'll never corner you alone, and I have some suggestions for what she can do if we ever do have to talk to her. I'm sure she won't like them." In that moment I realized that Nicco, Dad, and I hadn't been the only victims of my mother's actions. Kayla had to be terrified that Nicco would never be able trust her completely.

I grinned at Nicco. "You know, if only she had a sister, she'd be perfect."

It took Kayla a second to catch that, but when she did, I was rewarded with an incredibly warm smile. "Sorry, I'm one of a kind."

Nicco nuzzled her neck. "You certainly are."

*****

By the time Dad arrived back in town, he was only twenty hours ahead of Kayla's mother. Of course, the first I knew that he was in town was coming back from looking over the boats and finding him at the kitchen table at Nicco's house with a bottle of ouzo in hand. "Antoni, why didn't you call ahead?"

"Sorry, Dad, you were already out of town. I got the contract and headed over as soon as I could."

He poured me a glass and slid it over. "You meet her? I think Nicco is damn lucky."

I took a sip, letting the anise flavored liquor burn its way down. "Me, too. She tried to pass me five hundred dollars to give him a good send off."

Dad laughed. "That'd buy a lot of rakija."

"I told her I have it covered, Nicco just wants to have the guys on the crews drop over for dinner anyway. He says his life has been one long bachelor party, and it's about time for it to end."

Dad smiled. "Marko said it would be strange not to have a Summer Girl around anymore. I told him he was getting it wrong."

"I know, there will always be a Summer Girl. But it'll be Kayla from now on."

"She's smart you know."

"She has a doctorate, Dad, of course she is."

"Not that way, she's smart about Nicco. He had already told me he wanted to go back to see her after the conference, that he thought, maybe he'd finally found someone."

"Then she came up pregnant."

"She's not like that, she couldn't lie to him, she has no deception in her."

I pondered that for a second. Maybe he was right, maybe she wouldn't lie to him. But I suspected the positive pregnancy test wasn't exactly unwelcome.

*****

The wedding itself was beautiful, though to me it was more of a formality. Nicco and Kayla had already made their choice and it was permanent and irrevocable. Everyone, including the mother of the bride, who hung on Dad's arm for stability, was more than a bit hungover. Except for Kayla, but that made the Summer Bride shine all the brighter by comparison.

*****

Afghanistan

Three weeks later, I was headed in. Flying in to Afghanistan on the CH-53 saw us flying at night again. Rumors of Stingers, or at least Russian SA-7 anti-aircraft missiles in insurgent hands, made it "better safe than sorry" to bring aircraft in at night.

In the dim red light, I studied the PFC sitting in the web strap seat across from me. She was just a kid, really. She was downright scrawny, probably weighed less than a hundred pounds, even in full battle rattle. Stringy greasy-looking hair stuck out from under her too-large helmet and she had a rash of pimples that had erupted across her cheeks and nose, stark against her pasty skin. She definitely had the look of one of the unpopular girls who are uncomfortable showering with the other girls in PE class.

She was clumsily trying to hold an ancient battered M16 upright in front of her; it was certainly older than she was and just as certainly shot out. The kind crap you keep on the books to round out the numbers and only issue to someone who you are certain will never fire it.

Jumpy and terrified, she started at every odd sound, every weird shiver of the CH-53 in which we were riding. She managed to turn even paler when she noticed hydraulic fluid dripping down the inside of the chopper, probably not realizing that it's when a CH-53 stops dripping fluid that you are in trouble. A CH-53 only stops dripping fluid when it's completely out.

She glanced up at me and just as quickly looked away, even more frightened. She'd almost certainly heard the crew and other passengers whispering about me, and even if she hadn't, the six days growth of beard, the unmarked, non-standard uniform, the black and brown shemagh draped around my neck, and the Romanian PSL rifle I had wrapped in my arms made it pretty clear I wasn't "normal." That's why she was sitting where she was; even the infantry squad on the bird instinctively followed one of the major laws of combat survival: Stay well away from anyone obviously crazier than you are.

By virtue of her lack of size and rank, she'd been pushed and shuffled down to the tail end of the bird, ending up sitting across from me. I watched her rock back and forth rhythmically, trembling with each odd sound of the helicopter. She clearly knew she didn't belong here, knew that, whatever was back in the world, however miserable, boring or unhappy it had been, was better than this. She was almost certainly right about that.

I'd just about decided to go ahead and nap out when I saw the crew chief pushing back thought the helicopter, stopping to tell each passenger something. He finally reached the back and leaned over to yell in my ear. "We have to put down. There's a fire warning light and we're too far out to risk trying to run the rest of the way. Rally 100 meters off the nose of the craft."

I watched the PFC's eyes go perfectly round. She was absolutely stricken and near panic. Just what we needed.

As soon as we set down, the ramp went down and doors opened, letting us evacuate. I saw her out of the corner of my eye, starting to turn the wrong way in the darkness. I really, really didn't feel like babysitting, but there was nobody else paying attention.

I caught her arm and forced her around. "Follow the chemlight." I pointed her at the dim green glow, and she proceeded to trip over her own feet almost the entire hundred meters, only staying upright because I kept catching her arm. The crew chief was trying to maintain some semblance of control over the disorganized mob when we finally reached them. The infantry squad had already snapped their NVDs, Night Vision Devices, down and headed out to set up perimeter security.

I realized I was still holding the girl's arm. She was bent partially over whispering something over and over. "This isn't happening. I don't belong here. This isn't happening. I don't belong here. This isn't happening. I don't belong here..."

I could hear the panic getting a grip on her. The last thing I needed was to be stuck here, while everybody looked for her if she rabbited.

I closed my eyes and counted to ten before speaking, reminding myself that patience was my specialty. "Stop." It took two tries because I was whispering to avoid a scene, but she eventually looked up, her face pale and eyes wide. "Just stop."

She straightened up, but in the dim light, I could see tears running out of the corners of her eyes. "I don't belong here. I just did this for college money. I'm really just a French fry cook at McDonalds and..."

God, I didn't need this. "Stop it. You are here. None of that matters." I tried to keep the annoyance out of my voice, but I could see some of it had leaked through.

She flinched like I'd slapped her, but kind of kept it together, lower lip trembling. Shit. "Come here." I pulled her gently away from the mass of people, and led her a couple steps in to the darkness. "Look up."

"What?"

"Look up. Look up at the stars. You'll never see them like this anywhere else."

She stared for a minute, blinking, sniffling and wiping her nose on her sleeve, then becoming more still as her vision adjusted and more and more stars appeared. Her breathing slowed. "Oh."

"Forty years from now when your granddaughter asks what Afghanistan was like you can tell her how beautiful the stars were."

She gazed upwards and I could hear the awe in her voice. "They really are beautiful, aren't they?"

"You'll never see them like this in any normal place, only in places like this. There are no cities, no light pollution here. It's a whole different world."

I could almost hear her heartbeat slowing down. "I'm sorry. I just don't belong here, and it got to me. I don't belong in the National Guard. I was supposed to get out, but we got deployment orders before they finished processing me. If they'd have had anyone else to bring they would have. I'm not good at any of this. I can't shoot, I can't do anything right. Nobody in my unit wants anything to do with me. Everybody says I'm a jinx."

I could hear a bit of the fear creeping back into her voice and decided to head it off with a harmless little white lie. "Well, Jinxy, welcome to Afghanistan, I'm Tony, but everybody just calls me Hollywood. You're wrong about belonging here, though. You know why you were in the back of the bird with me?"

She shook her head.

"They can tell. They all can. People like you and me? We're different. We belong here, and they don't. People like us do what we have to do, things they can't do. The rest of them can tell and that makes them nervous."

She hesitated, desperately trying to figure out what my line of bullshit even meant. I wasn't even sure, so I was glad she started talking, puzzlement in her voice. "I don't know, I'm no good at anything. Except running maybe, and working my radio nets. They don't really need me."

"You're a commo dog, Jinxy? Everybody needs commo."

She gave me a sour look. "I'm only here to fill out numbers. My unit is air defense artillery, but we were retrained to pull escort duty."

"You'll do fine Jinxy. People like us don't die in places like this. We make other people die. We're not like the Fobbits here."

"Fobbits?"

"Soldiers that never leave the Forward Operating Base, the FOBs. We used to call them REMFs. Rear Echelon Mother Fuckers, but they caught on to that, so now we call them Fobbits. Hiding in their holes, afraid to come out. They're not like me and you."

She looked at me startled, but before she could ask the crew chief signaled us back aboard the craft. I slapped her gently on the arm and grinned. "Let's go, Jinxy, our chariot awaits."

*****

I had to wait another week for William, while living in a contractor compound on base. For all the stories, reality is that real trained snipers rarely work alone. That question had been mostly settled in World War Two; snipers with spotters are just far more effective.

William was an exceptional spotter, and we'd developed a rapport that made us particularly effective as a team. My Ugandan born partner was also better at field craft than nearly anyone I'd ever met, which was odd, given that he'd grown up in cities, even after coming to the States as a child. His calm demeanor and patience also made him an excellent teacher, which was good, since we're going to train the Afghan police snipers how to work with spotters as a more effective team. At least until our special target cleared cover.

Patience. I could do patience; that has always been kind of my thing.

*****

I walked across the DFAC, the mess hall, tray in hand. It was always a pain in the ass at peak rush and, as usual, there were hardly any seats available. The place was a sea of uniforms.

I saw one seat and started for it, then chuckled. There she was, directly across from the empty seat, head down and almost crouched over her food. The squad she was eating with was doing their level best to ignore her. It was clear they'd been ordered to let her eat with them, and I suspected they'd "forget" to include her on anything they thought they could get away with. Nobody was across from her because nobody wanted to talk to her.

"This seat taken, Jinxy? Mind if I sit down?"

She looked up, hair still a mess, and acne still blazing across her face. "No. Go ahead."

The guy to my left, a burly Specialist, glanced at me, then recoiled. I let myself shoulder him aside a bit as I adjusted my rifle. "Sorry about that. They always make these damn seats too close together."

He started to say something but I deliberately turned my back on him and faced her. I could sense the rest of them trying not to stare. "Get any star gazing done lately, Jinxy?"

She caught her squad's reaction to me. The girl they'd tagged as a loser was somehow tied to one of "those guys." She suppressed an appreciative smile. "No, we've been too busy doing drills and we haven't had time."

"You gotta get back outside the wire, that's where you can see them best."

"I know, Hollywood, it's beautiful out there." There was a wisp of reality in that; those couple of minutes staring up at the stars had probably been as good as she'd had it here so far. Maybe as good as she would ever have it here. "Maybe I can once we settle in."

"Remember to stop and smell the roses once in a while. All work and no play will make Jinxy a dull girl."