“Good to see you, man,” Tim greets. He is the only one of us who's married or even in a serious relationship. While he's an equal partner with Parker and Ben in their company, he stays stateside. Just as his wife likes it. I give him a bro hug before turning to Scotty.
“Hey, bud, to what do we owe the privilege of your company?”
Scotty is probably the guy I’m closest to after Blake. We both love surfing, and spending hours riding waves together brings you close. Each year for the last three we've gone on a surfing adventure down to South America a complete contrast to where I met Scotty when we all trained and worked together as part of the joint coalition forces in Afghanistan. This guy, for all his joking, is one seriously shit hot pilot who saved us from heavy gunfire and fucking hellish situations more than once.
Scotty and Johno were the Aussie pilots who basically saved our lives the night the team was ambushed in the mountains of Kandahar province. They were good friends before that night, and after that night, they became our lifelong friends. Even though Scotty wasn’t in our Rangers Regiment, he's considered one of us.
Johno still serves in the Australian Airforce, so we don’t get to see much of him. But Scotty left the Airforce a few years ago and now lives in Florida, so we catch up with him regularly.
“Hey, mate,” Scotty drawls in his usual Australian style. “I’ve got some business in town next week, so I thought I’d arrive a bit early to catch up with you old bastards.”
I pick up my beer from the bar, touching it to the boys’ glasses, and take a sip.
“Who are you calling old?” chimes in Blake. “If memory serves me correctly, you are older than all of us, Scotty.”
Blake then slaps me hard on the back as his way of greeting. Coming dangerously close to making me wear my beer instead of drinking it.
“Careful, asshole, you nearly spilled my beer. You know how much it triggers Scotty’s beer spilling phobia.”
Scotty laughs. “You know it’s a cultural thing. No self-respecting true blue Aussie likes spilling the amber liquid.”
“What did he just say?” asks Tim, hoping I can provide him with a translation, but I shrug also. Sometimes it’s like Scotty is speaking another language.
“Come on, you jokers, grab your beers and let’s get down to business. I’m ready and willing to empty your pockets,” Blake encourages as he tries to move us toward the pool tables.
Scotty follows Blake, saying, “You can have what’s in my pocket, mate. A condom past its expiry date and my ticket stub from the Florida Gators game last weekend,” he says, with his typical dry sense of humor.
Blake turns to him. “You’re only trying to delay the inevitable, Scotty, with all your smartass talk. I know you’ve got the greenbacks. Start laying bets down for the first game so I can start whipping your ass and lining my pockets.”
“Beware, guys, Blake is all business tonight. He seems extremely keen to take our money. What do you need some extra pocket money this week?” Tim says, getting a hundred-dollar bill out of his wallet to place his first bet.
Blake comes from old money, and out of all of us, has been the one who didn’t have to rely on military pay. So, this is an old joke amongst us.
None of us are now short of cash, having all done well in our post-military careers. Blake and I now have our company hitting a billion in turnover this year. Tim and Parker are doing incredibly well in partnership with Ben in the private security industry. Scotty has a well-known surfboard shaper business down in Florida, selling his highly sought-after custom boards around the globe. We’ve all landed on our feet and successfully transitioned to life outside the military.
“Hey, has anyone heard how Will is doing? Is he still in an overseas shithole?” I ask the guys.
Will is the only one of our original team still in the Rangers Regiment, and last month when I saw the boys, he was on active duty in Iraq.
Tim answers, “Yep, he’s still deep in shit. But is counting down the months till he discharges. He says he's getting too old to be rolling around in the dirt while being shot at. Mind you, he’s thinking about joining our company so will probably find himself doing exactly that. What do you say, Parker?”
“I say you enjoy a little too much sending us out to all the hellholes around the globe while you sit in our comfortable office in DC.”
I know Parker is joking as he, out of all of us, always loved getting in amongst the action. As he’s told us more times than I could count, he hates being tied to a desk.
The good news is that Will is soon to join their team, we don’t get to see him enough these days.
Lining up our beers on a table in the pool hall, we take up our cues and start playing pool. First game tonight I'm playing against Blake. Tim will play Parker on the next table. Scotty will sit this game out but not quietly, I expect.
Blake breaks, sinking the first ball as he starts in on the questions. “How did meeting Cassie last night go?”
Shit, I wish I hadn’t mentioned it to him as I don’t want to talk about it tonight.
“Not great. We went over some old ground. Talked about some new stuff. Didn’t resolve anything. I kind of don’t want to talk about it now.”
He looks over the cue as he is bent over the table about to take his shot, and frowns. “That doesn’t sound too good. You okay?”
“Yeah, I guess. Come on, man, take your shot. Let’s leave it tonight though.”
