Cajun Justice(56)

“The media loves it,” said Aito, a friend of Tanaka’s who’d recently joined the security team. “This will be their best-selling paper of the year. Right, Tanaka-san?”

“Yes,” Tanaka replied. “Bonnie-san is right. It makes the gaijin look like a real barbarian. I am happy to tell my friends I work for an American cowboy.”

“Yes!” Aito agreed, and laughed.

“The good news,” Tanaka said, “is that I don’t think we have to worry about any more attacks on Sato-san. With your picture, everyone will surely be too scared to attack now.”

“Thanks, guys,” Cain said. “But we can’t drop our guard. We have to stay vigilant. There is a high possibility of more attacks. A lot of people lost money, and people will do crazy things for money.”

Cain was getting more comfortable with his team members every day, but he still didn’t know enough about them to completely trust them. There just wasn’t enough time to properly vet the security detail, especially since he had hired additional bodies at the last minute. Secret Service background checks for an agent took a year; investigators would go all the way back and interview an applicant’s kindergarten teacher.

A female receptionist announced over the company-wide PA system, “Cain-san, you have a telephone call on line number two.”

Who would be calling me at work? Cain thought. Bonnie would just call my cell phone.





Chapter 46



He walked to his office and picked up the phone. “This is Cain Lemaire speaking.”

“I’m sorry, but I asked to speak to the gaijin.” The male voice on the line had a distinctive Southern accent.

Cain smiled as he recognized the voice from what seemed like another lifetime. “This couldn’t be the wet-behind-the-ears pup from Saint Augustine, Florida, who used to yelp in my David Clarks all those years ago, could it?”

“Holy shit! Hurricane, it is you!” Hurricane was Cain’s navy call sign, but nobody had used that in years.

“SFB Alvarez. I can’t believe it,” Cain said.

“That’s Chief Alvarez to you, buddy.”

“Jesus Christ! The navy will promote anyone nowadays. They must have short memories,” he teased his former flight engineer.

“Obviously someone has a memory like an elephant.” The chief laughed.

“How could I forget that?” Cain asked incredulously. “You almost got us court-martialed.”

Naval aviators rarely got nicknames for things they did well; they were usually given when a service member screwed up. Alvarez was no different. SFB stood for “shit for brains.” It had come from a time when Alvarez’s dyslexia had caused him to transpose two grid digits on a map, causing him to mistakenly drop ordinance too close to an American submarine during a training exercise. Cain had recognized the error immediately and radioed the sub’s captain to take emergency evasive maneuvers. After the disaster was narrowly avoided, the submarine’s captain screamed furiously over the radio, “I want the name of that shit-for-brains son of a bitch who tried to sink my sub!” And so “shit for brains” was shortened to “SFB,” and Alvarez had his new call sign.

“Chief, huh? Since when?”

“Yes, sir! Navy diagnosed me with sleep apnea. They booted me out of flying on P-3s. Got my promotion working on F-14 engines aboard the USS George Washington.”

“Well, congratulations are certainly in order.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“How in the hell did you find me?”

“It’s a crazy story. You see, the USS Washington is docked in Yokosuka, Japan. I was riding the train to base this morning and saw a bunch of people reading the Japan Times. This ugly, bloodied-up man was on the front page, and he looked real familiar to me. He looked a lot older so I couldn’t be sure, though.”

“Oh, God.” Cain sighed. “I know where this is heading.”

“Oh, yeah,” Chief Alvarez said, chuckling. “I’ve already been telling everybody on board the ship that I used to fly with that gaijin who’s all over the news.”

“Talking with you brings back some great memories.” Cain smiled.

“For me, too, Hurricane. Thousands of hours over the oceans looking for commie subs.”

“Look, how about we get together for a drink this weekend and catch up? I’m at work right now and I gotta get back to it. You can imagine how intense things are at the moment.”

“Why don’t you come down to Yokosuka and I’ll show you the base? If you’re up for it, we can even take one of the sailboats out and cruise Tokyo Bay.”

“As long as you don’t read me poetry and try to hold my hand,” Cain joked.

Chief Alvarez laughed. “I’m still trying to find true love”—he paused before disclosing the punch line—“at the bottom of a bottle.”

Cain chuckled. “Then I’ll bring an ice chest full of true love for you.”

“Don’t bring anything! I will take care of everything. If my shipmates found out that my old pilot—”

“Jeez,” Cain said. “Easy on the old jokes. This old man can still whip your ass!”

“That’s probably still true.” The chief laughed. “I can’t wait to smoke a stogie with you and talk about old times.”