Breacher (Tom Keeler Book 2), Jack Lively [ebook voice reader txt] 📗

west, so next up was Asia. An even bigger continent. From Seattle you strike land on the islands of Japan and you’re there, Asia. You can keep going, five or six thousand miles later, you’re in Istanbul, Turkey, standing on the east bank of the Bosphorus, still in Asia, looking across the water at Europe.

I had spent years on the west side of the world’s largest continent. Mostly Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan, with assorted side trips elsewhere. Now I was in Seattle, looking toward the other side, eastern Asia. The girl wanted me to go with her on that trip, which I thought was a fine idea. Island-hopping Japan and then hit the mainland. Maybe an epic trip from Japan into North China. Then over through Mongolia and into Kazakhstan.

The problem was money, more specifically the fact that I didn’t have much of it. Certainly, I didn’t have enough to go traveling through Asia for a year. So, she was going to leave, and I was going to stay.

Then Joe Guilfoyle stepped in front of me. Guilfoyle was not a big man. Medium size, bearded and red-faced. He had been polite. Asked me how I liked the fish and chips. We started to talk. Turned out Joe had been in the military, 1st Marine Division out of Camp Pendleton. Guilfoyle had participated in Task Force Ripper, the assault into Kuwait City. Before my time. Now Guilfoyle was the captain of a fishing boat. He worked the salmon season in southeast Alaska. He had offered me a job. Said he had four guys for a five man crew, was looking for a fifth. I said, “Why me?”

He said, “Why not? You’re staring at the ocean. I can arrange a whole lot of ocean if you’re interested.”

The truth is, I had already pictured what it might be like working on a fishing boat in Alaska. The picture had been a romantic one. The ocean. The bow of a wooden boat. Spray coming up off it into my face. The mountains, channels, rainforests of Alaska. Whales jumping and turning in the mist. All of that stuff was passing through my mind, and Guilfoyle knew it. He was looking at me with a little smile on his face, like a cherub.

I said, “What will I do on the boat?”

He said, “Web man.”

“What’s a web man?”

“Three guys on the back. Guy on the left is the weight man. He handles the sinkers that pull the net down. Guy on the right is the floater guy. Handles the floaters to keep the other side of the net up. Guy in the middle is the web man. Handles the net. That’s you.”

I said, “Thought there were five guys on the boat.”

Guilfoyle said, “Me, skiff driver, and three guys on the back.”

So I had agreed.

There had been two weeks in Seattle getting the boat ready. Painting and repairs, plus supplies. The crew had gathered. Then we drove the boat up to Alaska. Seventy-two hours, four-hour shifts. That had been in June. There had been no night. Only a twilight at the end of the day, followed by another day. Going up through the inside passage, the water had been calm. We saw porpoises and bald eagles, whales, and orcas. The picture in my head that day at Ivar’s Fish Bar had been correct. That is exactly what I got.

Good times, hard work.

Four months pulling salmon out of the ocean with a five-man crew on a fifty-eight-foot purse seiner. Now I was done with that. It was time to leave. I had a plane ticket back to Seattle in my pocket. Departure was scheduled for that afternoon. I also had money in the bank. The season had been a good one, so they said. I had more than enough to get going on that epic trip through Asia. Only question was how to get to Japan. There was air travel, and there was boat travel.

But that was not up to me. The girl was still down there in Seattle. Not exactly waiting, she had used the time to take a couple of college summer classes. She had planned the Asia trip. On top of all that, she was meeting me at the airport in Seattle that evening.

Now this.

The man was walking out of town, opposite direction from the airport. I thought about turning around. But I didn’t.

Why not? I wasn’t sure. I was thinking about that while I followed him. Fact was, I felt like a hound on the scent. Maybe I’m a natural hunter. In the military it had been simple. I was the guy who went in and did the damage. A combat medic in a special tactics unit of the United States Air Force. Medic, but not the kind of guy that cleans up the mess, more like the guy who makes it. That Others May Live is the motto. But sometimes you need to clear a path to get to them.

I’d been out of the military a couple years by then. Just bumming around, pretty much. In the beginning I had wanted to feel like a free man. So I started traveling. Eventually most guys will settle down and get their feet stuck into some version of a pair of cement shoes. All the stuff that keeps a person in one place, like planting grain and watching it grow all year, versus hunting and foraging.

I guess I’m not a farmer type. No problem with farmers, I’m just not made for it.

Port Morris wasn’t a large town, the curving streets ending half-way up the hill. And when the roads ended, the woods began. Not regular woods, North Pacific rainforest. There was nothing on the other side of the rainforest except channels and islands, filled with more rainforest and then mountains, then glaciers, and after that, more mountains and more glaciers. Eventually, after walking and swimming for months, you might arrive at the boundary of some remote settlement. You might be in Canada. You might