Several of the men chuckled. Brady was quick with an answer. “Carter, that’s a great idea. I might hitch a ride with you, if you don’t mind.”
Riley and Enemario feigned a protest.
“Same for me. I’ll park my Green Machine on the base at Coronado, too, right next to Carter’s.”
“Suit yourself. I understand that.”
Riley addressed John. “No offense, John, but I think you’re riding the buggy down by yourself. I’ll hitch a ride with Enemario, if you don’t mind.”
“Hell, not a bit. I get to listen to all my old tapes. I’ll sing show tunes I sure as hell won’t be able to when you lot are with me. I say we split up and—”
“Nope. You’re overruled. We go as a caravan,” corrected Brady.
The next morning, Brady and Carter hadn’t said much to each other the first hour of the trip. Brady decided to break the ice a bit and asked about it. “Everything okay, Carter?”
“I’m good. I get into a zone when I drive long distances. I’m just thinking about all the business stuff I’m doing, got a couple new deals I’m working on. I mainly like to think when I drive. But if you want to have a little chitchat, you just go right ahead, Brady.” He gave him a wide grin, and Brady felt like an idiot for asking.
He shrugged, settled back in his seat, and wasn’t going to force the issue any longer. It didn’t take Carter long to break his reverie.
“Boss, there is one thing that I probably should go over with you.”
“Okay, shoot.”
“I wanted to explain a little bit about Stanley and sort of what went on, what the history was. I didn’t really get a chance to talk to you after the operation with Maggie got shut down.” Carter glanced over at Brady. “I know this is a sore subject for you, but I got to tell you a couple things.”
“Go ahead. Get it off your chest.” Brady crossed his arms and prepared himself.
“Well, you’d gotten shot, right? Just before that, we were ready to go in, and the whole team heard Stanley’s orders to stand down. Everyone was looking at you, and if you went in, they were going to follow you regardless of what that jerk ordered. You always were the team’s leader, regardless of how he tried to tell everyone he was. The men didn’t respect him like they did you. The jerk was stopping you from getting Maggie. I was right there next to you, remember?”
“How could I forget?”
“I don’t think it had anything to do with Maggie. It had everything to do with Rojas, and I got the impression that Stanley was protecting him. And there’s another part, too.”
“Yeah, I kind of lost it there for a second. I was going to go in. If I hadn’t gotten that round to the hip, I don’t know what I would’ve done. I probably would’ve gotten all of us killed. They were going to shut it down either by giving us orders or standing in the way. There was no way in hell Stanley was going to let us go in there for the rescue. And there were about three dozen bad guys to our twelve, so the odds weren’t in our favor. But goddamn, I sure did want to get her. And I think about putting a bullet in that man’s head just about every night, truth be told. So there isn’t anything surprising you can tell me about Stanley, except that he’s a saint or a really good guy or something like that. You can’t tell me anything about Stanley that I don’t already know.”
The emotions came flooding back from the op that had been so dangerously truncated. The moment Brady got shot, he halfway thought perhaps somebody from his own team delivered the round, but that was crazy. Besides, the angle didn’t work. There wasn’t anybody from their side anywhere close to the compound where Rojas was. Not unless Stanley himself or somebody else was in collusion with the bad guys. While Brady had considered that, he didn’t think an officer in the Navy would stoop to something so low.
Carter let him stew on that for a few minutes and then began again.
“What I’m going to tell you next, Brady, has to stay between just the two of us. And you’re going to see why in a minute. Do I have your word?”
“You do. Goddamn it, Carter, would you please get on with it?”
“Okay.” He gathered his thoughts, took a deep breath. “Stanley is an asshole. His father bought his commission basically. They have friends, wealthy friends, high up in the military. He was coddled and pushed through the Academy and got his commission. About a year before all this shit started between us, same as with you and him, I was at a bar in Palm Springs. I have friends who own a condo there, and I used to go there on weekends, play some golf, and hang out at the spa. This bar is called the Blue Ox. Have you heard of it?”
Brady looked at Carter with a huge question on his mind. “That’s a gay bar, Carter.”
Carter slowly nodded his head.
“I go to those sometimes.” He paused and then continued. “It’s what I do for fun. How I meet people. Meet guys. I keep it to myself, and I don’t date anybody in any branch of the military. But yeah, I’ve been gay my whole life, and I’ve done a pretty good job of covering it up. It was easier for me that way.”
“Sure. I get it. Makes no difference to me,” said Brady. “You’re a hell of an asset for our team, Carter. And I’m delighted you did so well, but what does this have to do with Stanley?”
“I started the rumor that Stanley was jealous of the patent I sold, the money I was making. He knew he didn’t have anything over me, because if he tossed me, it really wouldn’t matter, except that it was just damn unfair. I’ve always believed in what I was doing. I’d wanted to be a Navy SEAL for the past dozen or so plus years. I didn’t think the fact that I was gay would make any difference. We’ve always served in the military.”
“I get you. I know that to be true.”
“But the one thing I haven’t told you is Stanley’s gay as well. I saw him at that bar one night. And he saw me. Damn, he looked at me like he’d wanted to stab me in the heart. I was never going to use that information against him, and he could never use that information against me or it would screw up his military career.”
“But Stanley’s married, Carter. He’s got two kids.”
“Happens all the time, Brady. It’s not uncommon to have two lives running side by side. That’s not me. But some men live that way and want to be good husbands and fathers. But they’re still gay.”
“That’s why he wanted to get you tossed. He needed you out of the way, because you were a liability to him.”
Brady was beginning to understand.
“Exactly. There was no other way he could think of to eliminate that threat to his career, even though I would never interfere with his life. I don’t know why it took me so long to tell you. I just thought you should know. It’s one of the reasons I wanted to come on this trip, to sort of have a do-over. We should have gotten Maggie that day and killed that asshole who took her. I’m real sorry I didn’t help you out more or protect you or get shot in your place, Brady.”
“Oh, fuck you, Carter. That was never going to happen. I wouldn’t have let it happen. But it does explain a lot. And I thank you for that. You never have to worry about this discussion going any further. You can take the top off that jar anytime you want. I’m not going to.”