Mile Zero by Thomas Sanchez Read Free Book Online

life, same as war games are not games to soldiers. On a small island full of hotshot boys in tight Hawaiian shirts and diamond earrings pierced in their ears, Karl was no different. He bragged about his educational shortcomings, flashed his hundred-dollar rolls of loot, and spent his early mornings in the din of the Wreck Room trying to find some lucky girl to get pretty with him on the mirror.
    “Oh God, St. Cloud.” Angelica righted herself up and dabbed at her tears with a bar napkin. “I knew you had a good heart.”
    St. Cloud took the bar napkin from Angelica and touched up thetrickle of tears still running down her cheeks. “I don’t have such a good heart, it’s only that Karl was a regular guy. Me, I’m a man beyond belief.”
    “Hey! What is this? I’m a professional.” Angelica snatched the tear-soaked napkin from St. Cloud and tossed it into the trashcan behind her. “Enough of the wake. Karl Dean was an asshole. Can I offer you boys a mescal nightcap?”
    “Delighted.” Brogan accepted the offer for the two of them.
    St. Cloud knocked back four shots of Mexico’s meanest, Angelica’s face beaming before him, her cheeks high and dry now, her cheeks ringing red and gorgeous, contrasting against the skin of her slender neck, skin more blond than flesh-colored, almost the same blond as her cropped hair; she was St. Cloud’s arctic queen, radiant among the denizens of the tropics. He wondered how she did it. All night in bars, all day in bed. Angelica had the kind of high cheekbones that up north in New York were called money bones, the fashionable bones of a model. She could have made a fortune as a department store rag ramp-runner, instead she ran the gauntlet behind the Wreck Room bar, and gallantly sported St. Cloud to forehead-numbing mescal. He was awed and humbled. Once again he was falling in love with Angelica.
    “I’m not going to give it up, St. Cloud.” Angelica backhanded new tears. “Why should I? You understand?”
    “Why should you. Never. Thanks for the drinks. On the house?”
    “The credo of the single woman is romance. I won’t give it up.”
    “Never.”
    “Why should I?”
    “Shouldn’t.”
    “Yes. It’s on the house, for you always.”
    “Always.”
    “Isn’t it just awful about those forty-one Haitians?”
    “Always.”
    The television flickered more ghostly images of the previous day’s tragedy. St. Cloud tried to fix his wavering triple vision on the ghosts. Nothing seemed steady. Something still wasn’t right up there on the screen where a medevac helicopter pilot was shouting at a television reporter above the roar of the crowd surrounding the race judges’ platform:
“Then the two lead boats drew hull to hull, had to swerve to miss the drifting Haitian boat! I don’t know how the Haitian boat got on the course so fast, must have been sucked in by a strong
current, appeared from nowhere, the pace boat didn’t even have time to run a red flag! Suddenly it looked like all three boats were going to eat it! When you’re blasting through heavy seas like that you run the risk of hooking the boat if you bank into a tight curve, catching a sponson hull in a wave and flipping! That happens there is a kill cord attached to the Driver which cuts the engine if he is thrown! Today there wasn’t time for that! Nobody stuffed under a wave, instead there was just a big explosion! We could actually see Karl Dean and his Throttleman blow right out of the water! Then Miami Kid pulled away, alone in the lead! Things were moving so fast the Haitian boat went drifting through falling debris from Karl’s destroyed boat! It was an inferno out there! Before I had a chance to jump from the chopper into the water it was too late. Bloody chaos!”
    St. Cloud felt a stiffening in his neck, a numbing from a viselike grip which sent a persistent ache down his spinal cord. Something wasn’t right up there on the ghostly television. Who knows what the Saints are eating these days?