Black Friday (or Black Market) - James Patterson [77]
“Horse Latitudes” was playing somewhere in the hospital….In the Special Forces Center. Deception.
“Breathe that good air, Captain Hudson. Just breathe in easily. Pure, pure oxygen. You passed, Captain. You’re the best so far. You’re the best we’ve tested.”
Stress and tolerance tests.
The Womack Hospital at Fort Bragg.
Deception.
He was learning to be illusion’s master.
You passed, Captain Hudson. Flying colors.
Of course—I’m the best you have!
I’ve always been the best—at everything.
That’s why I’m here, isn’t it?
That’s why I was chosen for this training.
Hallucination.
Deception.
Important to understand.
The key!
The solution, the answer to everything was deception!
“Breathe that pure oxygen, Captain Hudson.”
Chapter 56
CARROLL WAS BARELY AWAKE, barely functioning.
Familiar home surroundings coalesced … Books on the mantel—The Brethren, Fatal Vision, The Pope of Greenwich Village, The Fate of the Earth…. An oil painting of his father, done by Mary Katherine, hung on one wall.
And there were children.
Lots and lots of children.
They were eyeing him suspiciously, waiting for him to speak, to say something characteristically flip and amazing.
Carroll slowly sipped fresh-brewed coffee from a cracked Revenge of the Jedi mug. “Sunrise Semester” flickered on the TV with the sound off. The horizontal line lazily flipped out of synch with the rest of the room.
The Carroll clan was together for a rare family conference. Coffee, cocoa, and Carroll’s world-famous pop-up toaster French toast comprised the menu.
“Mmff… mmff… Lizzie mmff… Lizzie was a son of a bitch, Dad. While you were gone away.”
Mickey Kevin reported this news as he chewed heavily syruped wads of toast His mouth flapped open in a rubbery, half-smiling circle.
“I think I told you about that kind of gutter talk.”
“Mmff, mmff. You use gutter talk.”
“Yeah, maybe my dad didn’t kick my rear end enough. I won’t make that same mistake, okay.”
“Besides, I wasn’t a son of a bitch. He was.” Lizzie suddenly glared up from the soggy remains on her plate.
“Lizard! You’re not too big to get an Ivory soap sandwich, either. Big bar, right fresh out of the wrapper.”
The most angelic smile lit up Lizzie’s face. “An Ivory soap sandwich, Daddy?… Better than Eggo, still-a-little-frozen French toast!” She leveled her father with a deadpan, brutal evaluation of his not entirely home-cooked breakfast offerings.
They all began to laugh, then. Clancy and Mary nearly fell off their chairs giggling. Mickey Kevin did topple off, like a drunken carnival kewpie doll.
Carroll finally gave up. He broke into a sleepy smile. He winked over at Mary K., who was letting him run the familiar, four-ring circus this morning.
He had been trying to tell them about his almost tragic trip to Europe. He’d been trying to be a reasonably good dad for the four of them…. He fuzzily remembered how his own father had done the same sort of thing: telling sanitized stories about the 91st Precinct, right in that very same breakfast nook on Sunday mornings.
Finally, after putting it off at least thirty minutes, Carroll: came to the really difficult part of his story; the punchline so to speak; the core of his tale of adventure and foreign intrigue in England and Ireland…
He was going to try and make this all sound very casual now…. No big deal, right? So begin.
“Over in Europe, I was working with someone…. They had these special teams of police with financial people. Our best people. We worked in London, then in Belfast together. She was nearly killed there, in fact. Over in Ireland. Her name’s Caitlin. Her name is Caitlin Dillon.”
Silence. The big chill comes to the Carroll house.
Keep going. Don’t stop now.
“Sometime, I’d like you guys to meet her. No big deal. She’s originally, uh, she’s from out in Ohio. She’s pretty funny, actually. Very nice. For a girl. Ha ha.”
Absolute, stone-cold silence…
Finally, a very tiny, muffled reply from Lizzie. “No thank you.”
Carroll’s eyes slowly, ever so slowly, passed from face to small face.
Mickey, who