Chapter 4 Dungeons and Dragons

Chapter 4

Dungeons and Dragons

I had practiced the delicate balancing act hundreds of times. Standing on one foot with the remaining half of my right leg dangling eighteen inches above the ground was easy enough…when I wasn’t in a gunfight. When hunks of supersonic lead are zipping through the air in both directions, the demands of the one-foot dance grew exponentially. Using the rack that almost qualified as a bed became essential as I braced to repel whoever was clearly raiding our tiny camper.

My protégé proved he’d been paying attention over the previous year when every member of my team pounded wisdom into his skull. I was surprised he didn’t have the adage tattooed somewhere on his body.

The only purpose of a pistol is to fight your way to your rifle.

When his even number of feet hit the deck, instead of raising his Glock as I had done, he shouldered his M4 and thumbed the switch to flood the intruder’s pupils with the most powerful weapon-mounted light in existence.

The assault worked, and the attempted breaching of our trailer was thwarted without firing a single round. The wall of unimaginable light accomplished more than merely stopping the intruder; it caused her to belt out a string of Cajun obscenities no one could understand. Gator instantly dowsed his light when Cecilia threw her arm over her face to block what must’ve looked like the surface of the sun.

“What are you doing?” she demanded.

Gator lowered his rifle. “Trying to get some sleep. Have you ever heard of knocking?”

Still squinting, she said, “Sorry, I forgot you were in here.”

“You forgot we were in here?”

“Yeah, I live a half hour away, and I had a few beers, so I was going to crash here for the night. I do it all the time.”

My bright young operator didn’t need my help negotiating the sleepover, so I holstered my pistol and slithered back under the sheet.

Gator grabbed his poncho liner and a spare pillow. “Come on. You take the bed. I’ll take the floor.”

She giggled. “What’s the matter? Afraid I’ll take advantage of you?”

I’m not sure which one of them got to be the big spoon, but the distraction was exactly what I needed to get my mind off the floating body parts. I was asleep in minutes with absolutely no interest in knowing what was happening five feet away in Gator’s bunk.

The smell of coffee drew me from the best night’s sleep I’d had in weeks. Cecilia handed a cup toward me while I attached my prosthetic.

When the foot was securely in place, I accepted the steaming cup and took my first taste. “Thank you. It’s good.”

“I’m glad you like it. It’s chicory.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“It’s a plant,” she said. “The binomial nomenclature is Cichorium intybus. They roast the root and then grind it into the same texture as coffee. Chicory is cheap and plentiful around here. Coffee is not.”

She motioned toward my cup. “That’s a fifty-fifty blend.”

I took another sip. “Nice.”

Gator came from the mini shower dripping and trying to wrangle enough space inside the camper to dry himself while still feigning modesty.

Cecilia peeked around the towel. “Good morning, Snuggle Bunny. Want some coffee?”

“Don’t do that,” he said.

“Don’t do what? Are you not a coffee drinker?”

“No, I like coffee just fine, but please don’t give Chase any more pet names to torture me with.”

She leaned close and whispered, “Chase is sleeping alone, and you’re not. Now, who do you really think is being tortured around here?”

Changing the subject suddenly became a necessity, but I was going to keep Snuggle Bunny tucked away in the back of my mind for a rainy day. “Aren’t you logging today?”

She shook her head. “Not today. Uncle Kenneth made enough yesterday to keep him in cheap whiskey and Marlboros for a while.”

“So, he only pulls logs when he runs out of money?”

“That’s right.”

Gator pulled a T-shirt over his head, and Cecilia watched, obviously enjoying the show.

She glanced at me. “Why don’t your abs look like that?”

I poked Gator in the ribs. “Because strength and stamina are more important than aesthetics to me.”

She turned back to her Snuggle Bunny. “Please tell me you don’t have stamina issues.”

He planted himself on the edge of his bunk. “The only issue I have is with this conversation right now. My stamina is just fine.”

She shrugged. “We’ll see.”

I redoubled my effort to change the subject. “Normally, I wouldn’t pry into your business, but as of last night, prying became my job. Why is it that Kenneth gets all the money for the timber, but you seem to do all the work?”

“He pays me,” she said. “Just not in front of anybody.”

“Who owns the boat?”

“Technically, I do, but let’s not bring that up in front of Uncle Kenneth.”

“So, he thinks it’s his?”

She deflated. “It’s a long story, but the brief version goes like this. He likes to gamble. Okay, that’s an understatement. He loves to gamble.”

“What’s his game?” I asked.

“D and D.”

I recoiled. “Dungeons and Dragons?”

She laughed. “Dominos and dice.”

“That makes a lot more sense.”

She continued. “He was shooting dice with Lil’ Tuck and Tito a couple of years ago and having a really bad night. His luck started to turn, but he was out of cash. He put up the boat against a three-thousand-dollar spot and lost.”

“Ouch.”

“Exactly,” she said. “Especially considering that without that boat, he has no way to make a living.”

“Does that mean you reclaimed the boat from the Tik-Tok twins?”

She chuckled. “If I were you, I wouldn’t call Tito and Lil’ Tuck the Tik-Tok twins, but that’s up to you. Yes, I bought the boat from them at a price significantly higher than the three grand they spotted on the dice game, but I never mentioned it to Uncle Kenneth. We just kept pulling logs like nothing ever happened.”

When I was a newly minted operator, Clark Johnson took me under his wing and taught me exponentially more than I learned at The Ranch. In the never-ending world of covert operations, everyone remains a student until the day they either take a bullet in the skull or finally walk away from the game. My world had come full circle, and it was my turn to teach Gator everything Clark taught me. Part of that training included giving the new kid time to ask the right questions, and in that moment, somewhere south of normalcy, class was in session, and my student was about to get a gold star by his name.

He said, “Wait a minute. You work for your uncle as a diver and boat captain, right?”

I shrank into the background and watched him work.

He sat with a look of anticipation on his face until Cecilia said, “That’s right.”

“And he pays you enough to have bought back his boat?”

She looked away, and I waited for Gator to pounce. If he didn’t, I would, but he didn’t disappoint.

“You drive a really nice truck with commercial plates. Your uncle isn’t your only source of income, is he?”

“No. The truck isn’t mine. It belongs to an oil exploration company. I do some contract work for them.”

Keep pouncing, young Gator.

He did.

“Oil exploration? Why does an oil exploration company need an agronomist?”

She wouldn’t make eye contact, and I could almost see the wheels turning inside her head. I was pretty sure Gator saw the same, and he made a brilliant move. “Never mind. I’m sorry. We jumped off in a direction that’s none of our business.”

She looked relieved. “I guess dat mean ol’ Uncle Kenneth done tol’ you bouts dem body parts.”

“Where did that come from?” Gator asked.

She waved a hand. “Sorry. That happens sometimes when I forget the rest of the world doesn’t speak patois.”

Gator smiled, proving Cecilia’s trap worked. “It’s okay. I like it, even though I don’t understand it.”

“You’re sweet, Kansas. So, what did Uncle Kenneth tell you about the body parts?”

I handed the drawings to Gator, and he passed them to Cecilia.

“Well, he showed us these and told us he burned them.”

She flipped through the sketches. “He’s a really good artist, but these aren’t easy to look at.” She handed the stack back to Gator. “Are you going to help him figure out where they’re coming from?”

Gator turned to me, and I took the handoff. “We don’t know yet. This isn’t the kind of thing we usually deal with. I told your uncle that we’d ask some questions and let him know if we thought we could help.”

She said, “He did tell you not to contact the authorities, though, right?”

Gator clamped his hand over his mouth and leapt to his feet. In an instant, he was through the door and outside the camper.

Cecilia watched him go. “What was that all about?”

I shrugged. “I guess something didn’t sit well in his stomach. He’s not used to eating like we have in the past two days. You can look at him and tell he’s pretty careful about what he puts in his body.”

She smiled. “Oh, yeah. That’s obvious. Maybe I should check on him.”

“That’s probably not a great idea. He doesn’t like attention when he’s not feeling well. He’ll be back in when he gets rid of whatever his body’s rejecting.”

She peered around the partially closed door. “If you say so.”

While waiting for Gator to make his return, I said, “You must have a theory on the body parts. I mean, you’re a well-educated woman with roots in this community. Who’s better qualified to explain it than you?”

“How should I know? It’s creepy, but there’s all sorts of creepy stuff that happens out here. It’s not like we’re in the French Quarter. There’s a lot that can’t be explained in the bayou.”

I said, “I noticed you had a St. Christopher’s medal on the boat. Is that yours or Kenneth’s?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Just curious,” I said. “Your uncle mentioned something about spirits of the dead, so naturally, I wondered about his faith. If he’s Roman Catholic, what he said wouldn’t make much sense.”

The camper rocked as Gator climbed back aboard, wiping his mouth. “Sorry about that. I’m not used to all this spicy food. I need to get back on my diet.”

She hooked a finger beneath the hem of his T-shirt and pulled it up far enough to expose the abs he worked so hard to maintain. “Yeah, don’t let us mess up what you’ve got going on there.”

Gator pulled the shirt away from her and brushed off the compliment. He squeezed his way into the head and brushed his teeth again.

When he returned, I said, “We were just talking about Kenneth being Roman Catholic.”

Cecilia took the bait. “He was baptized Catholic, but he’s not been to mass in years. In fact, I don’t ever remember him going except for weddings, funerals, or baptisms. The medal is mine, by the way.”

“So, do you attend mass regularly?” I asked.

“Not really, but I’m sure you know about St. Christopher saving people from drowning. That’s why I keep the medal on the boat.”

“I get it. Tell me about the spirits your uncle was talking about.”

She scoffed. “Oh, it’s silly. It’s a bunch of that voodoo garbage from New Orleans.”

She suddenly had Gator’s attention. “Voodoo? Are you serious?”

She shrugged. “To a lot of people, it’s very real. In New Orleans voodoo traditions, most of the practitioners believe in the same God you and I do, but they think He doesn’t get involved in our daily lives very much. They believe He leaves that up to the spirits, and practitioners of that type of voodoo believe they can commune with the spirits through all kinds of crazy rituals like dancing, music, incantations, and even snakes.”

“And that’s what your uncle believes?” Gator asked.

“Who knows? I love him, but he’s not exactly the kind of man you’d say has all of his mental faculties. He’s a little bit out there sometimes.”

Gator turned to me as if I were supposed to rescue him. Instead of pulling him out of the fire, I waved both hands in front of his face, rolled my eyeballs back in my head, and said, “Boogedy boogedy boo.”

He slapped my hands from the air. “Cut it out. That’s not funny. You don’t play with that kind of stuff.”

Cecilia and I laughed, but Gator did not. “I’m serious, man. That stuff is weird. Chicken bones and blood and stuff…I’m out.”

She stood, kissed him on the forehead, and dropped a set of well-worn rosary beads in his hand. “I’ve got to be going, but don’t worry, Boogaloo, this will keep those bloody chicken bones and evil spirits away until I get back.”

When Cecilia closed the door behind her, I said, “Nice show, Boogaloo. You almost had me convinced.”

“Convinced of what?”

“That you’re afraid of voodoo.”

“That was no performance, Chase. There’s some stuff you just don’t play with. Ask Singer. He’ll tell you.”

Singer was the deadliest sniper I ever met, but he was so much more than that. He earned the moniker Southern Baptist sniper because of his devotion to his faith and his tendency to hum old Southern Baptist hymns while sniping. I loved the dichotomy that was my friend and teammate.

“You don’t think Singer’s afraid of the chicken bones, do you?”

He said, “It’s not the bones. It’s the evil. You know it’s real, and Singer would kill me if he caught me carrying rosary beads.”

“You hang on to those,” I said. “Singer would never disapprove of anything that made you think of God. He’d want to make sure you didn’t believe the beads were somehow protecting you. Just like the chicken bones, those beads only have the power that you allow them to have.”

He tossed the beads on top of his backpack propped against the wall, and I asked, “Is your stomach all right?”

He rubbed his abs and tossed his phone to me. “Oh, yeah. I’m fine.”

I checked his phone and found a pair of photographs. The first was a close-up shot of the lettering on the door of Cecilia’s truck, and the second was a picture of her license plate.

“Nicely done,” I said. “We’ll have Skipper run both, and we’ll find out just exactly why Flambeau Exploration needs an agronomist from LSU.”