Chapter 11

When the radar detector was silent, Steve let her fly. His black F150 Platinum was a rocket sled, and the tweaked 5.0 liter Ti-VCT Coyote engine didn’t let him down. The all-aluminum, 302-inch V-8 cranked out 412 hp at 6,500 rpm out of the box, but Steve had modifications made and now his engine puts out substantially more horses, 565 ponies that just ate up the road. He made the 200 mile run in just over two hours, having to slow down to the speed limit, only going through the Orlando traffic nightmare. He pulled up to the address Maria gave him, a Starbucks, and he saw a familiar face peering at him from a bus stop just a few car lengths ahead of him. It was Maria.

She looked like the same woman he married, the exact same flowing ebony hair, the beautiful face and a figure like a goddess, round hips, narrow waist, and tube top displaying large heavy breasts that bobbled as she walked toward him with suitcases instead of crutches. He started to get out to help her with the suitcases, but she shouted, “STAY IN THE CAR!” Yeah, that was Maria. She was sweet as honey, until she needed you to understand her instructions, then her tone of voice required obedience.

She swung a heavy suitcase over the side of the truck too late to discover that the bed of the truck had a hard top. She walked around to the back to find the tail gate silently lowering for her. Damn! She didn’t know pickup trucks had such a thing. She also noticed that the truck was lowering. WTF. She slung her suitcases onto the back of the truck and the tailgate slowly closed. She hopped into the front passenger seat and glared at Steve, a look he only got from Maria when he questioned a decision of hers. “So, I’m supposed to call you daddy?” she said with a sneer.

“Call me what you want, just don’t call me late for dinner.” Natalia, the spitting image of Maria, rolled her eyes in contempt, but Steve continued, “I prefer Steve, it’s easier on the tongue than my real name.”

“And just what is your real name?”

Steve smiled at the memory that Maria had never asked that question. When she saw it on the marriage license, she just said, “That is so unique!” it was the first time in centuries that someone thought his first name was beautiful. He cleared his throat and said, “Stephaton.”

“What the fuck is that?” demanded Natalia. She may have the face, the hair, and the figure of his darling wife, but she doesn’t have her mother’s social skills.

“Are you sure you’re 21? You act like a sixteen year old punk.” He was weaving in and out of traffic, trying to get back to I 75, which would take him south to Florida 91, Florida’s Turnpike, a conduit from Wildwood to Miami where he could light the afterburners and let his truck roar.

“You don’t know shit,” she muttered. “When did my mother buy you this truck?” her voice had that petulant sneer again.

“She did not buy this for me, she never spent a dime on it. Anthracite was a gift from an Afghani warlord.”

“You named this truck?”

“I didn’t name it, Naveed did. He thought Americans calling coal a black diamond was funny.”

“That’s such bullshit.” She turned her head and glared out the passenger side window. “What was his name?”

Steve answered without a pause, “Naveed Salama Muhammad.”

“Who’s that?”

“Look it up, I’m driving.”

Natalia picked up her phone and began typing, “How do you spell Naveed?”

“N ... A ... V ... E ... E ... D.” Rolling your eyes while driving is a bad idea realized Steve as he swerved around a Kia. Steve was wondering how Maria’s daughter got to be such a cantankerous punk. Her mom was so wonderful.

Natalia was quiet for a long time as she read the article she found, then said, “Bullshit. You didn’t know this guy.” She continued to read the document that the search on her phone brought up. Naveed Salama Muhammad was a warlord that unofficially ruled the Kapisa Province and enforced the real leader’s orders. “So, this guy was the strong arm of the sitting government, and you did what for him?”

“Favors.” Steve was not going to answer further until he got to know this chick. Right now, he doesn’t trust her. When he gets to sit down with her and her mom, they can talk.

“What, like cutting the lawn? Feeding the chickens?”

“Something like that.”

“You’re so full of shit,” Natalia looked up from her phone in exasperation. Her mother married this liar? “This guy didn’t give you shit, ‘cept maybe a case of the clap.”

“They still say that?”

“Fuck you.”

“Look in the glove compartment, red envelope.”

Natalia opened his glove compartment and found something she’s never seen in a glove compartment before, a pair of gloves. Who or what was this guy? She also found a large red envelope and in there was a greeting card with Arabic calligraphy on the front in gold, on the inside was handwriting in Arabic followed by handwriting in English with a different colored pen that said “Naveed says thank you for your service and extends his wishes for Allah to guide you safely to your home where the gift of Anthracite awaits you. We hope you like the color.”

Inside the greeting card was a photograph of Steve in an army uniform holding a huge rifle. He and another army guy were standing with some afghani between them. Steve’s arm was around the shoulders of the man she recognized from his Wikipedia page, Naveed Salama Muhammad. “The other guy is my buddy Bruce. I’ll introduce you when we get to Vero.”

She put the card back but kept the gloves and she looked at Steve, who was pointing to a plaque affixed to the dashboard. It said “Thank you for helping us clean our province” in English and she guessed the same thing in Arabic beneath, followed by an unreadable signature etched at the bottom of the plaque. Natalia looked up at Steve, who was concentrating on the road. “What does that mean, to clean our province?”

Steve fought for the proper words and finally came up with, “When I saw how the people were being treated I was in a position to stop the abuse without worrying about the politics of the region.”

“So, you were enforcement for the local government?”

“I guess you could think of it that way ... I’m proud of what I accomplished, but not how I did it.”

Natalia was quiet for a long time then said, “Mom said you brough a rat killer, can I see it?”

“It’s under the seat.”

Natalia reached under the seat and pulled out a hard shell pistol case that she popped open and found a nice, clean Glock G20 Gen 5 MOS 10mm semi-automatic pistol. The G20 Gen 5 is simple, reliable, and shootable. Simply put, it’s the perfect handgun for killing something; the G20 Gen 5 10mm pistol is even considered adequate protection against bears. Maria called them Rat Killers as a joke, because if you hit a rat with a 10mm round from a G20, there won’t be enough rat left over to determine if it died. Natalia looked over the gun carefully, admiring the satin finish on the metal, and smiled. This was the perfect killing machine.

She ejected the magazine and found it empty. Being safety conscious like this can get you killed. “The ammo is in the arm rest,” said Steve as he anticipated the question.

She popped up the armrest and found a box of flat nosed 220 grain hard cast ten millimeter bullets, the heaviest load she had ever seen boxed up by a manufacturer. She slid them into the magazine one by one, hefting the weight of each bullet before pushing it in. It’s been so long since she went shooting, her mom and her Aunt Fabrizia took her to the range ages ago. The bittersweet memory of that day, the last time she spent a full day with her mother, Aunt Fabbi, and her sister Jeannie ... and this bastard took it all away. Her eyes teared up as the bolt sprang home, jamming round number one of fifteen into the chamber, and she pressed the barrel against the side of Steve’s head.

“Why did you sell out my mom to the Gronchi family?”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” demanded Steve.

“Don’t tell me you didn’t know about the faida?”

“Look, I don’t know what you’re talking about and I’m sorry we didn’t tell you about the wedding. We didn’t tell anyone, ok? It was just me, your mom, Darlene, Father MacCailein, and that deacon of his. And we didn’t request him alright?”

Natalia felt a sharp pain in her side and looked down to see that Steve had a “rat killer” in his hand and he was pressing it into her side. “I love your mother more than anyone or anything I’ve ever known, I was prepared to throw away my job, the only job I’ve ever loved, for her, so what are you saying to me?”

She could see that he was genuinely confused, and she pulled her gun away from his head. “You don’t know? She didn’t tell you?”

“Tell me what?” Steve pulled his arm back and set the safety. “What didn’t Maria tell me?”

“About her job, about dad, about getting run over...” Natalia shook her head in disbelief. “She didn’t say nothing?”

“She didn’t say anything,” Steve corrected his stepdaughter.

“God! You’re just like my dad!” Natalia stared at Steve in disbelief. “I can see why she said yes when you asked...”

Steve interrupted Natalia, “I didn’t do anything, she picked me. She went to Doctor Albertson at the hospital, the head of the entire Physical Therapy Division and requested that he assign me to be her physical therapist. And when we straightened out our feelings for each other, she went back to him and told him that we were in love, and she demanded that he not fire me. I did not ask her to marry me, we agreed on it together.”