Retire?He wasn’t even thirty yet, and the man wanted him to retire?
“I appreciate it, sir, but I can’t accept. My entire team—” He ground his teeth. Saying it aloud sounded so matter-of-fact. No words could describe it properly. He drew a breath. “My team died because of me. And Larson’s.”
“There was nothing you could do.”
“I could have refused to let it happen.”
“You would have been disobeying orders. You had no choice.”
“Every action a man takes is a choice.”
Miller fell silent. Reeves shifted so the strongest jet hit his left shoulder blade.
He didn’t even mention the mass destruction the Gulf of Alaska would have undergone if all twenty torpedoes had launched. He had never been much of an environmentalist, but he couldn’t believe how close he had come to destroying an entire ecosystem. His kids—if he ever had any—would never have been able to see a whale, and it would have been his fault.
“We can’t fight the merman with depth charges,” said Reeves. “Not when he has a leviathan in his power.”
“We’ve got choppers and satellites tracking the thing until we figure out what to do.”
At least they were taking a more calculated approach. Still, it had taken a lot of wasted deaths for this to happen.
“Did you relay the message he gave me?” said Reeves.
The word ‘me’ was bitter on his tongue. He wished the merman had chosen someone else to deliver the message—one of his crew, who deserved to be alive instead of him.
“Every vessel is on its way to shore,” said Miller.
“What about the international ones?”
“Them, too.”
Reeves closed his eyes and leaned back.Good. Those lives, at least, he could save.
After a long silence, Miller sighed. “Look, why don’t you take a vacation somewhere. Go on one of those college cruises. You’ve been through a lot and need time to recover. Physically and mentally.”
Reeves drew a breath of chlorine-infused steam. After everything he’d been through, every award he’d received, they didn’t trust him.
“We have marine experts advising us over here,” said Miller, as if reading his thoughts. “Scientists. Biologists. As much as I hate to admit it, this is out of our expertise.”
“It’s not. You said yourself this is an act of terrorism.”
Miller hesitated. “The line is fuzzy.”
Officer Miller was right that Reeves was completely exhausted. In fact, he was too exhausted to argue any longer.
“All right. I’ll look into a vacation.”
“Good. I hear Dominican is real nice. My niece went there on spring break. She’s about your age.”
Reeves drove home from the pool in silence, not even allowing the radio to distract him. He would have to research Norse legend. He remembered reading about the Midgard Serpent as a teen, when he and his friends were on a fantasy role-playing campaign. He was a Paladin, back then. God, how things changed. How would sixteen-year-old Ben react, knowing he would live his dream and become a Team Chief in a few years’ time? Would he be proud to know the path he’d followed, the decisions he’d made?
The Midgard Serpent was one myth he would investigate, but other cultures must have had legends of sea monsters and serpents, too. One of them surely had information on how to kill it—or how the merman managed to gain control of it.
When Reeves got home, he defrosted the most generous portion of spaghetti he had and topped it with half a block of cheese. He then crossed to his bookshelf and pulled down the twice-opened King James Bible his grandma had given him. He would start his research here. He seemed to recall something about a leviathan in the Bible.
What’s gotten into you?said a voice in his head.A few near-death experiences and you’ve turned into a praying man who spends Friday night reading the Bible.
He pulled out a barstool, took a mouthful of spaghetti, and cracked the book open.
