Fallen Out

  Published by Down Island Press, 2014

  Travelers Rest, SC

  Copyright © 2014 by Wayne Stinnett

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed, or electronic form without express written permission.Please do not participate in, or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  Library of Congress cataloging-in-publication Data

  Stinnett, Wayne/Wayne Stinnett p. cm. - (A Jesse McDermitt novel)

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Most of the locations herein are also fictional, or are used fictitiously. However, I took great pains to depict the location and description of the many well-known islands, locales, beaches, reefs, bars, and restaurants in the Keys, to the best of my ability. The Rusty Anchor is not a real place, but if I were to open a bar in the Florida Keys, it would probably be a lot like depicted here. I’ve tried my best to convey the island attitude in this work.

  I’d like to thank the many people who encouraged me to write this fourth novel, a prequel to the first three, especially my wife, Greta. Her love, encouragement, motivation, support, dreams for the future, and the many ideas she keeps coming up with have been a blessing. At times, I swear she was a Key West Wrecker in another life. Or maybe a Galley Wench, I’m not always sure. A special thanks to my youngest daughter, Jordy, for her many contributions and sometimes truly outlandish ideas. While only a twelve year old mind can conceive of some of the wacky ideas she has, many of them planted a seed in my mind that found their way into the story. I need to thank our other kids, Nicolette, Laura, and Richard for their support and encouragement.

  I also owe a special thanks to my old friend, Tim Ebaugh, of Tim Ebaugh Photography and Design, for the cover work. You can see more of his work at www.timebaughdesigns.com.

  Lastly, where would any writer be without great proof readers? While I can come up with a decent story line and characters, it’s Karen Armstrong and her mighty red pen and Donna Rich, with her computer wizardry that put the polishing touches on it all. Thanks also to Beta Readers Thomas Crisp, Marcus Lowe, Timothy Artus, Joe Lipshetz, Nicole Godsey, Debbie Kocol, Mike Ramsey, Alan Fader, and Bill Cooksey.

  If you’d like to receive my monthly newsletter for specials, book recommendations, and updates on coming books, please sign up on my website:

  www.waynestinnett.com

  Jesse McDermitt Series

  Fallen Out

  Fallen Palm

  Fallen Hunter

  Fallen Pride

  Fallen Mangrove

  Fallen King

  Fallen Honor

  Charity Styles Series

  Merciless Charity (Due out fall, 2015)

  To my loyal readers.

  Many of you have emailed me, wanting to know more about Jesse, Rusty, Julie, Jimmy, the other islanders, and their backstories. This prequel to the series should shed more light on how Jesse came to live in the Florida Keys and hopefully show a side of these characters you couldn’t see in the series.

  “The world was all tied together in some mysterious tangle of invisible web, single strands that reach impossible distances, glimpsed but rarely when the light caught them just right.”

  Travis McGee

  The Green Ripper, 1979

  Rising from my bed in the Bachelor Enlisted Quarters, I stretched and thought, Today’s the day. My last day in the Marine Corps.

  It was twenty years ago today, that the door on a Greyhound bus opened and some guy with a Smokey the Bear hat stepped on and told a bunch of us that we had three heartbeats to get off his damned bus. I remembered it like it was yesterday. There were twenty-six of us on the bus and we all hustled to get off. The guy in the Smokey hat was joined by three others, all yelling orders at the same time in a common tone and theme.

  “Fall in!”

  “Line up!”

  “Stand on those yellow footprints!”

  It’d been a great ride, but now I was ready to move on with my life. I’d given twenty years of it to the Corps, had the opportunity to lead and be led by some of the greatest people I’ve ever known. The years of service and dozens of deployments had taken their toll. My first marriage lasted six years and we had two beautiful daughters. They left me while I was deployed to Panama. My second marriage lasted only nine months and thankfully there were no kids produced with that shrew. I’d been shot at and blown up, but I’d survived.

  Taking my usual seven minute shower, I dressed in my clean and pressed utility uniform, in three. Habits born of necessity are hard to break. Eleven minutes after rising from my bunk I was out the door. I’d packed everything I owned the night before into a single seabag. I traveled light the last few years.

  It was a short walk to the mess hall, where I joined other Marines from the several units clustered around the First Battalion, Eighth Marines headquarters, waiting in line for breakfast. Looking around, I saw my platoon sergeant and a few other single non-coms sitting at a table in the corner and walked towards them.

  “Mind if I have my last Marine Corps breakfast with you guys?”

  “Sure, Gunny,” my platoon sergeant, Manuel Ortiz said. “We’d be proud to have you join us. Today’s the big day, huh?”

  “Yeah,” I replied taking a seat. “Transferring to the First Civ Div in about an hour.” I talked with the three of them while we ate and drank coffee.

  After breakfast I went to my office at the Force Recon building. It was still very early, not even zero-six-hundred yet. As usual, there were only three people there, the Duty Officer from the night before, his driver and a young Lance Corporal who was the new S-4 Clerk. S-4 is the logistical office of a Marine unit. I said good morning to the Duty Officer, a young Second Lieutenant by the name of Scott Briggs, nodded to the Duty Driver, a young PFC I’d never met and then went into the S-4 Office.

  “Morning, Gunny,” said Lance Corporal Michael Jaworsky. “I figured you’d be stopping in this morning. Want me to make an airline reservation home for you?”

  I’d been thinking this over for a week already. I was leaving home, not going home. The Corps had been my home and my family for a long time now. The house I grew up in as a kid was owned by my grandparents and I sold it last year, after Mam and Pap passed away. Outside of my room at the BEQ, I didn’t really have a home.

  “No,” I said. “No airline. Can you rent me a car? One way to south Florida?”

  He opened a folder on his desk, looked at it and asked, “One way car rental to Fort Myers?”

  “Souther than that,” I said with a grin and a bumpkin accent. “See if you can find one I can turn in somewhere in the Middle Keys. I know there’s an airport in Marathon and another in Key West.”

  “The Keys? Wow, now that’s what I call retiring. I’ll see what I can do. Any preference in what kind of car? Need a lot of luggage space? An SUV maybe?”

  I laughed and said, “That’d be overkill for my seabag and uniform bag. How about something sporty? Maybe a convertible?”

  “I’ll let you know in an hour,” Jaworsky replied.

  I really didn’t have a whole lot of work to do. I’d already checked out at the Battalion Adjutants office in S-1, the medical office, dental, checked in my weapons at the armory, and received my new ID card from the S-2 clerk. There were only a few things in my office that I wanted to keep. Pictures and awards hanging on the walls and a few things in my desk drawers.

  As if he’d read my mind, Jaworsky knocked on the door frame and came in wit
h a small cardboard box. “Thought you might need this, Gunny.”

  “Thanks, Mike,” I said as I placed the box on my empty desk. He stood in front of it, with his hands clasped behind his back. “Is there something else? No way you got me a car that fast.”

  “Working on it, Gunny. I just wanted to say it’s been an honor working with you.”

  I stepped out from behind the desk and extended my hand. “It’s been a pleasure, Mike.”

  He shook my hand, then turned and left the office. As I started collecting my belongings and boxing them up, several others dropped in to say goodbye. In fact, nearly everyone in Recon, from the newest Private, to the Battalion Sergeant Major and Commanding Officer, dropped by over the next hour.

  The Company CO came by, just as the Battalion CO was leaving. Captain Tom Broderick and I’d known each other for ten years, since he was a wet behind the ears Second Lieutenant, fresh out of Officer Candidate School.

  He was due to be promoted to Major next week and would be transferring out after that. At just thirty-two, he was on the fast track to getting a star on his collar. He was six feet tall, a muscular two-hundred pounds, with a shaved head and skin as dark as ebony.

  “Really hate to see you go, Jesse.”

  “I’m having a hard time believing it’s been twenty years already, Tom.” In front of other Officers and the troops, I’d call him by his rank. But, we’d become close friends and when it was just the two of us, we used first names.

  “Been a lot of water under the keel, hasn’t it?”

  “Yeah, I suppose it has.’ I replied. “Have a seat.”

  We sat down and with a half grin, he said, “I can’t stay long, I have a few last minute details to iron out on some douchebag’s retirement ceremony.”

  We talked for a few minutes over coffee then he had to leave. I was just putting the last things in the box when Jaworsky knocked on the door frame again and stepped inside.

  “How’s a red Mustang convertible sound, Gunny?”

  I grinned. “Sounds a whole lot better than a silver bird. Where do I pick it up?”

  “It’ll be delivered in an hour,” he replied puffing his chest out just a little. “One way to Marathon, with a turn-in date four days from today.”

  “Delivered? Now that’s service. Thanks a lot, Mike.”

  He left then and I glanced at my watch. It’d been a Christmas gift from my wife and oldest daughter many years ago. That brought on a flood of regret.

  At a usual retirement ceremony, the Corps has a junior NCO escort the wife to stand alongside her husband, where she’s given an award for putting up with his, and the Corps’, shit for twenty years. And the retiree’s daughters are given a bouquet of flowers. I wouldn’t have that.

  The Corps was my only family now. I’d spoken with Tom several weeks earlier and asked for a simple ceremony at morning formation.

  It was zero-seven-hundred, time to fall in. I picked up my little box of mementos and stood for a moment looking around the office. I poured one last cup of coffee into my heavy porcelain Force Recon mug and headed out the door. I talked to a couple of the office people while downing my last cup of Marine Corps coffee, then leaving the box and mug at the Clerk’s desk in front, I walked outside.

  The formation was already mustering. My platoon was Scout/Snipers and we usually formed up off to the side of Weapons and Headquarters Platoons. Today, they were formed up in the center, Sergeant Ortiz standing at the front of the loose formation.

  As I approached, Sergeant Ortiz ordered the men to attention. Then he did an about face and said, “Scout/Sniper Platoon present or accounted for, Gunny.”

  I stood in front of Ortiz and looked over the group of men with mixed emotions, making eye contact with every one of them, even though they were supposed to be looking straight ahead. I nodded to them, then looked at my Sergeant.

  “Sergeant Ortiz! For the last time! Post!” He smartly did a right face and marched to his position at the head of First Squad.

  Looking over my troops once more, I gave the command, “At ease!” With my hands clasped behind my back, I said. “Men, it’s been an honor and a privilege to be your leader. I only hope that some of what I tried to teach you shit-birds stuck.”

  A chorus of grunts and “Oorah!” went up from the platoon and many laughed. Some of these guys, I’d served with in other units and many had been here as long as me. There were a few new guys, who nervously laughed, also.

  From behind me came a booming voice that was both strange and familiar at the same time. “Company!”

  I snapped to attention as a few whispers came from my platoon. I did an about face and shouted over my shoulder, “Platoon!” My platoon immediately assumed the parade rest position.

  Ten paces in front of me stood an old and very close friend and a legend in the Marine Corps, Master Gunnery Sergeant Owen ‘Tank’ Tankersley, dressed as usual in the Charlie uniform, green trousers and khaki blouse. Tank had been my Platoon Sergeant when I first arrived in the Fleet and was later my Company Gunny. He rarely wore utilities, because on the top of his ribbon rack sat a pale blue ribbon with five white stars, the Medal of Honor.

  “A-ten-shun!” boomed Tank and about a hundred pairs of heels came together in unison as the whole company snapped to the position of attention.

  “You didn’t think I’d miss this, did you, Jesse?” Tank asked quietly.

  “It’s an honor to have you here, Master Guns.”

  Tank nodded, then performed an about face and waited as the Battalion Commanding Officer, Lieutenant Colonel Arthur Brooks, strode toward him. The CO stopped two paces in front of Tank, everyone waiting. As is customary, the CO saluted Tank first, in deference to that little blue ribbon.

  Tank sharply returned the salute and said, “Alpha Company is formed, sir!”

  “Post!” barked Brooks and Tank did a left face and marched around the CO to take his position behind and to his left.

  The Battalion CO looked over the three platoons, comprising just one of the Companies under his command, until his gaze finally came to rest on me.

  “Good morning, Gunnery Sergeant McDermitt.”

  “And a fine Marine Corps morning to you, sir,” I replied. Brooks and I went back a few years and I’d invited him to personally retire me. Normally, Tom would be commanding the formation as the Company CO.

  “Gunnery Sergeant Jesiah Smedley McDermitt,” he shouted. “Front and center!”

  I winced at the use of my full given name. My Mom’s parents were Jewish and insisted on a Jewish name. Both my Dad and Pap were Marines, Pap having served before and during World War Two and once served under the command of one of the Corps’ greatest heroes, Smedley Butler, just before the General retired.

  I marched forward and came to attention two paces in front of the Battalion Commanding Officer, saluted and said, “Gunnery Sergeant McDermitt, reporting as ordered, sir.”

  He returned my salute then looked over his left shoulder and barked, “Adjutant! Report!”

  A young Captain who had just transferred in from Two-Four stepped forward with several thin, red binders. He opened the first one and began reading. It was a citation from the President of the United States, awarding me the Meritorious Service Medal. When he’d finished reading it, he stepped forward and handed the red binder and a small case to Tank, who opened the case and presented it to the CO.

  Brooks took the medal from the case and pinned it onto the pocket flap of my camouflage blouse. Then Tank handed him the red binder and the CO handed it to me. Shaking my right hand as he did so, he said, “Congratulations, Gunny.”

  The Adjutant read again. My certificate of retirement and transfer to the Marine Corps Reserve. Again, Tank handed the CO a red binder and he handed it to me, shaking hands once more.

  The Adjutant then read letters of congratulations from the Commandant and the Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps. I received them with yet another handshake.

  It was at this point t
hat the wife and family are usually recognized. Tank looked at me with a sad smile as the CO said quietly, “It’s been an honor serving with you Gunny. I know your service has come with great cost. Your nation thanks you.”

  I saluted and said, “Thank you, sir.”

  He returned my salute then nodded to the Adjutant, before he and Tank did a right face and marched off to the side of the formation.

  Stepping forward, the Adjutant announced, “The formation will now be turned over to Gunnery Sergeant McDermitt, so that he may give his final Marine Corps order.”

  I took two paces forward, stopped, executed an about face, and looked once more at my platoon. Then I looked left and right, to the men in the other two platoons, many of whom I’d worked closely with over the years. My gaze fell back to the warriors in front of me.

  “Company!” I shouted.

  Sergeant Ortiz and the other two Platoon Sergeants shouted, “Platoon!”

  “Fall Out!” I ordered then turned and walked away toward a large pine tree. There I stopped and was soon joined by Tank, Ortiz, Tom and all the men from my platoon.

  Slaps on the back, handshakes, and congratulations were offered, along with many young men thanking me for leading and teaching them. One by one, the troops drifted away until it was just Tank, Tom and me standing in the early morning shade.

  “You did good, Jesse,” Tank offered. “One day, God forbid, some of these men will owe their lives to you.”

  “Just doing the job, the way you taught me, Tank.” I shook his hand and turned to Tom.

  “Thanks, Jesse,” Tom said shaking my hand. “If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t be half the officer I am today. If there’s anything I can ever do for you, let me know.”

  Just then a red Mustang convertible rounded the corner and parked at the curb in front of the building. A young kid got out and started toward the main entrance before seeing us. He stopped and asked, “You guys know where I can find a Jesse McDermitt?”

  Driving south on US-1 out of Homestead, I turned left onto Card Sound Road. I’d been driving since early morning, having spent the night in a cheap motel south of Jacksonville. Fighting my way through Miami traffic during an afternoon rainstorm had sapped what little patience I had left. Now that I was clear of that hell-hole and about to enter the only tropical destination in the United States, I felt like celebrating. A blackened grouper sandwich at Alabama Jack’s was in order. It had been far too long since I last enjoyed fresh seafood.