"I'm getting really tired of waking up in this same damned hospital," Mike said as Pierson walked through the door.
"Be glad you woke up at all," Pierson replied. "Exsanguinated doesn't begin to cover it. And it took FAST quite a while to find the frigate that was in support. All they could do was plug the holes with the stuff you had on you. Good tip on the tampons, by the way. FAST's carrying them, now. They ran out, but one of the pilots from the helicopter had some spares with her."
"I hope they kept my damned cigarette boat," Mike said.
"Your cigarette boat?" Pierson said, grinning. "You were practically dead when they got to it. I think that counts as salvage. Surely it's the FAST's boat."
"I wasn't all dead," Mike replied. "Salvage only counts if you're all dead. And you'd better not have lost it. I captured it fair and square."
"We kept the cigarette boat," Pierson said, relenting. "I take it you want to keep it?"
"Yep," Mike said. "Gonna paint it silver and black. Call it the Too Late."
"Well, you stopped the nuke from getting to the U.S. or any other major populated area," Pierson pointed out. "And the fallout fell in open ocean. It was pretty nasty, too. That's what ground-level nukes do with water: very, very nasty fallout. The fishing in the area will be somewhat hazardous for a while."
"I'm not planning on going fishing anytime soon," Mike said, leaning back and closing his eyes. "I hope somebody remembered my girls."
"That we did," Pierson said. "FAST and a Navy team dropped on your boat and picked it up. One of the FASTs nearly got shot, but everything's kosher. I'm sorry to tell you the girls decided that, all things considered, they wanted to go home. So . . . nobody waiting for you on your little Caribbean idyll."
"I think the Caribbean is getting a bit too hot for me, anyway," Mike replied, shrugging with his one good shoulder. "I think I'll go down for a while, just to rest up. But then I'm going traveling."
"Well, you're entitled to a rest," Pierson said. "And the Finding decided that you still were owed for the mission. So you'll have plenty of money to rest with."
"Money, shmoney," Mike said, closing his eyes. "I'm going to miss Pam and Courtney, though. They were good for an old soldier's soul."
Mike slid the Maker's Mark around in a puddle of condensation as he waited for his table.
He'd been in the body and fender shop for over a month, long enough to be fully capable of getting around on his own, and then headed back to Islamorada. When he got there there was a cigarette boat tied up next to the Winter Born. It was black and silver with the legend "Too Late" already painted on the rear.
He'd taken it out a time or two, but mostly he'd stayed on the yacht. The explosion in the Andros was the talk of the town but nobody seemed to connect him to it, which was fine by him.
So he'd been doing his usual, hanging out, fishing, generally getting his head back together, working on his tan and new set of scars. But that meant he was back in the same lackanookie situation he'd been in before the girls showed up in his life. And he was pretty sure it was almost time to travel. It had been a while since he'd seen Europe and he'd never been to Eastern Europe. He was looking forward to traveling—among other things the hookers in Eastern Europe were supposed to be the finest on earth—but something had kept him around. A nagging sense of something left unfinished.
He'd just glanced at his pager, wondering when his table was going to be ready, when a soft voice spoke behind him.
"Excuse me," the familiar voice said, "is this seat taken?"
Mike looked over his shoulder at Pam and Courtney and shrugged, grinning slightly.
"I dunno," he said. "I was waiting for some friends to show up. But it looks like they just did."