The likelihood that he would kill the people who shot Andie, or kill Mullah Hamid, was almost nil. But he would make sure those bastards couldn’t engage in chemical warfare, and that would be a measure of revenge.
A Hellfire chopper dropped Nick’s unit at an altitude of 7,800 feet and ten miles from the target village, which was located north of Azrow in the mountains. The squadron began its trek up the hillside and along narrow valleys toward the remote village. Each step was a calculated decision, because there was no guarantee that the trail was clear of IEDs, even though a team had swept the area in advance. Each soldier carried a backpack jammed with sixty to a hundred pounds of supplies, including communication gear, weapons, first aid, clothing, and personal items. They climbed higher and set up camp on a flat, narrow ridgeline. The observational rally point had a bird’s-eye view of the village where the chemicals were being stored. Day and night, two members of the unit observed the activities of the village through high-powered binoculars and infrared lenses. The squadron wouldn’t move in until they were sure that most, if not all, of the Taliban fighters near the compound had left the target village to join the other insurgents caravanning south to join the ongoing battle. That happened three days later.
Nick and a ranger named Arnold Raker went out for a closer look. Before initiating the Operation Dragon Claw DC-10 objective, the squad had to confirm that the chemicals were still in place. The target point, a hut, lay on the sparsely populated outskirts of the village. If Nick and Raker worked quickly, they’d get in and out without the villagers noticing them. Around two o’clock in the afternoon, Nick and Raker entered the village alone. They made their way inside the hut, which, according to army intelligence, provided access to an underground tunnel.
Nick stood guard while Raker checked the entrance to the tunnel. When Raker found the door locked, he pulled out a small lock kit from his rucksack and jimmied the door open. Moments later, Raker went inside the tunnel. When he emerged, he reported to Nick that he’d found barrels that, according to intelligence, contained the toxins.
They left the hut, headed back to their encampment on the ridge, and reported in to command. Operation Dragon Claw DC-10 replied that the operation was a surefire go. The soldiers suited up in masks and protective clothing.
Talented Pakistani scientists sympathetic to the Jihadists had developed the binary nerve agent that the squad had to destroy. The agent was designed to be mixed with an igniter just before use. The precursor was more stable and less hazardous than the finished agent. To counter the effects of exposure during the neutralization process, the soldiers took a pre-dose of galantamine, along with atropine.
The squad headed down to the village and made their way inside the tunnel. Two soldiers set up a portable stove and began boiling water. Three others opened containers of hydrogen peroxide. When the water was hot, a soldier named Schmitz, a weapons disposal specialist with a degree in chemistry from Rice University, added hydrogen peroxide, then poured the mixture into smaller containers. This created the neutralizer that would be dispensed into the barrels containing the toxic powder. The soldiers would pry open one hundred tight-head steel-drum fifty-five gallon containers with bolt-ring closures, add the neutralizer, and seal them again.
The scientific team went inside while Nick and Raker, weapons poised, guarded the hut in case Taliban soldiers or villagers showed up. Nick waited patiently, hoping the process would go smoothly and efficiently.
The entire process took six hours, which seemed like an eternity. Schmitz assured Nick that the barrels had been properly resealed and looked as if they’d never been disturbed.
The team evacuated the site and helicoptered back to their military installation. The mission had come off perfectly, or so everyone believed. And then, that night, Raker awoke from his bed, vomiting blood. Despite the best efforts of the medical team, he suffered a brain seizure and died. Thirty minutes later, Nick fell victim to the vomiting and seizures. He suffered paralysis as he alternated between consciousness and oblivion.
No one else on the team got sick.
What had gone wrong? Neither Raker nor Nick had gone inside or gotten near the open canisters during the neutralization process. They’d only taken a quick look inside the tunnel to make sure they had the correct target and not some residence or feed-storage shed and to confirm that the Taliban hadn’t moved the barrels.
The cause of their illness remained a mystery. It clearly wasn’t the result of poisoning from the toxins in the barrels. Nick suspected that when he and Raker entered the hut or when Raker opened the storage-room door, they’d triggered a booby trap, which blasted them with something, God only knew what. Nick had hung back, watching the perimeter, so he hadn’t gotten as close as Raker to that unknown toxin.
Nick was ready to die, wanted to die. He’d accomplished his mission, prevented further loss of life for his fellow soldiers, and had at last avenged Andie’s death, at least in a fashion. There was nothing more for Nick to live for. He told every doctor and nurse caring for him that he wanted to die.
CHAPTER 36
While Nick went out to forage for more firewood, Margo stayed in the bed. Her legs throbbed, and the truth was, she did need rest. The baby was dropping more each day, causing increasing pressure in her pelvic region while also allowing Margo to breathe more easily. All of this meant that the birth date was getting close.
It had been foolhardy to travel to Spokane, but she’d wanted to try, probably for the last time, to reconcile with her family. What could be more healing than a wedding and the gift of a new grandchild—probably her parents’ last grandchild? Blanche still insisted that she didn’t want kids. Heather would’ve liked to have given their parents another gift or two, but the fertility doctors long ago told her that any chance of having children of her own was nonexistent. Margo had been so estranged from the family that Heather didn’t bother to call her with the news of the Olivia’s wedding. Margo heard about it from her mother.
Her mother’s call came in early December. Margo had made no plans for the fast-approaching Christmas holiday. After she and Matt broke up, she’d spent most of her past holiday seasons working at the hospital. A few colleagues had invited her over to their homes, but the one time she went felt awkward and out of sync. After the birth-control pill fiasco with Olivia, Margo’s family members didn’t reach out to make her a part of the holidays, and she didn’t push back. She was just as upset at them as they were with her. The long-dormant wounds from her teenage years had festered. She was glad she hadn’t aborted Olivia—of course she was—but she still resented her father’s dictatorial intrusion on her rights and then her parents’ prudish demand that she cede her baby to her older sister without even a pretense of a discussion. She resented Heather’s selfishness. And she was angry at herself for behaving like a compliant child, even though she was, at the time, still a child. Her decision to get pregnant again, triggered by the premature onset of menopause, would give Margo a child to love. And, she hoped, give the Fletcher family a chance to put the past behind them.
In early December, during her eighth month of pregnancy, her mother called. After asking Margo how she was feeling—she’d never bought into her pregnancy the way most prospective grandmothers did—she announced, “I have some news. Your niece is getting married.”
“That’s cool,” Margo said, struck again by contending emotions. She’d lost track of the family except for phone calls and texts and occasional visits with Blanche, who would come to Chicago. Through Blanche, Margo knew that Olivia, now twenty-two, was dating someone, but Margo didn’t know it was serious. The first thing that crossed Margo’s mind was that Olivia was too young. But how did she know that?
“She’s getting married Christmas Eve at our home,” her mother said.
A year away—par for the course these days. “Plenty of time for Heather to plan a great wedding,” Margo said.
“Christmas Eve of this year, Margo.”
Margo praye
d that Olivia wasn’t pregnant. “Really,” Margo said dispassionately. “Either this has been planned for a long time, or it’s sudden.”
“I know what you’re thinking. Don’t. She’s not pregnant, and this isn’t sudden. The kids want something small and intimate.”
So, the wedding had been in the planning stages for a long time. Even Blanche didn’t have the heart to tell Margo—or had promised not to.
“It must piss Heather off,” Margo said. “She’s not a small-wedding girl.”
“Please, Margo. No unpleasantries. I called with some nice news. Olivia would like you to be there. So would your grandmother.”
“But not you and my Father and my older sister.”
“We’re not the only ones responsible for what’s happened in this family. You haven’t reached out either. And our concern is Olivia. She’s grown up with certain assumptions. No one has a right to change those.”
“As if that’s ever been a risk.”
“We can’t know how you’ll react to an important event like this. You like to speak your mind. What I’m doing is extending an invitation to the wedding. It’s a nice gesture from your niece. You’re in your last month, so I assume that you can’t travel.”
“Who’s the lucky groom?” Margo asked, articulating sounds just to blunt the intense emotional sting of her mother’s thoughtless words.
Her mother went on to describe Olivia’s fiancé, checking off all of the requirements—educated, CPA, nice family, good-looking—in other words, parent and grandparent approved even though he was five years older than Olivia.
“Thank everyone for the invitation, Mother,” Margo said, trying to sound sincere and not sarcastic.
“Take good care of yourself, Margo.”
Margo hung up believing that there was no chance she could travel to Spokane in her condition.
A wise teacher in medical school once told Margo that normal was what your parents tell you was normal. It didn’t matter that your family did things differently from most of the neighbors, that your father took your dinner off the table if you arrived ten minutes late, that you and your sisters couldn’t date until seventeen when most of the other kids had been going out in groups since age thirteen, that you couldn’t give money to door-to-door solicitors even if they were high school football players from the neighborhood selling cookie dough to buy playoff team jerseys, that any profession that didn’t rely on mathematics wasn’t worth a damn, that you had to follow the tenets of the church even if your father had slipped. The Fletchers were normal—until, Margo realized after she left for college, they were not.
Now, she had a more immediate problem. She needed to get the circulation moving to lessen her aches. She went over to study the map table. The map was circular for reasons she understood when she looked out the windows—the tower had a three-hundred-and-sixty degree view. Margo thought of the forest watchers and the many times they must’ve studied this map each day. And after that, what did they do the rest of the day—stare at the mountains, read books, write poetry, let their hair grow long?
She paced around the room until she remembered the broken radio. Nick couldn’t fix it, but what would it hurt for her to try? Looking around, she didn’t find it anywhere upstairs and so headed downstairs to look for it. The light coming from upstairs was dim but enough to see to make her way downstairs to the small foyer.
It was too dark to see much of anything, so she went to the front door and opened it. Cold air rushed in, but the daylight allowed enough light into the small hallway to see. She walked to a door and opened it to find a large room, maybe ten by ten—a combination workshop and storage room.
What she saw made her stomach lurch. She stepped back and surrounded her belly with her arms.
This is nothing. Or is it?
The remains of the baby elk lay splayed in an odd configuration atop a workbench. The meat had been separated and set aside. The skin and fur had also been separated and was pressed flat. The severed head of the animal, its dark eyes open in a lifeless stare, was placed above the bones arranged in a seemingly ritualistic configuration. A sobering and odd sight. Why had Nick kept anything other than the meat on this counter? Why not put the remains in the trash can next to the bench? As she stood perplexed, her skin began to crawl, and it wasn’t from the grotesque sight she was taking in. She recalled Nick’s childhood story about the skinned animals that the kid Donnie had mounted on trees.
Was her mind playing games?
Maybe. Nick did say the remains of the animal would attract predators, which explained why he’d kept them inside. It just didn’t explain what he’d done with them.
In the opposite corner of the room, various small, rusted tools, some tattered rope, and an empty cardboard box filled the shelves. She searched among the items, but the radio wasn’t there.
The front door banged, and a strong breeze sailed inside, a stark reminder of the cold that lay just beyond. How fast one forgets discomfort in the arms of a warm room. Back inside the foyer, she opened the door to the latrine. Of everything in this tower, she was most thankful for this room. She started to sit but looked down first and gasped. What the fuck?
The front door slammed shut. The lavatory door closed. Everything went dark.
“Nick?”
No answer.
So she braced her hands against the walls of the dark room and attended to her more immediate needs. A moment later, the entryway door opened, and a cold breeze rushed underneath the lavatory door.
Footsteps.
“Nick, is that you?”
“You shouldn’t leave the door open, not for any reason, not for a second.”
“I couldn’t see down here. I needed the daylight.”
“It only takes one wild animal to come in and attack you and the baby.”
A moment later, she opened the door. Nick stood in the hallway not two feet away, waiting. Disturbing yes, but not as disturbing as what she’d just discovered.
“I know you don’t like me to ask questions,” she said. “But answer this one. Why is the radio sitting at the bottom of the latrine?”
CHAPTER 37
Back upstairs, Margo sat on the bed and stared at Nick, who stood by the window. Although it was still the early afternoon, the sky had turned dark, the precursor to yet another storm. Would they ever stop?
“Why, Nick?” She didn’t try to suppress her anger, although she knew she was playing a dangerous game. At some point, you have to stand up for yourself—even in the face of insanity.
“I took the radio down to the storage room to fix it,” he said in an even tone. “I planned to take it outside to see if I could get reception and maybe figure out what the current situation is with the train wreck, to see if any rescuers have arrived on-site. I couldn’t fix the radio. I got frustrated and threw it away.”
Given his meltdown yesterday, the answer was plausible. But that didn’t mean it was true. The tower’s waste can would’ve been a more logical place to dispose of the radio, not the latrine. Was he intentionally keeping her away from the news, from civilization? If he got rid of the radio to keep her from the truth, what else had he lied about? Why would he lie? He didn’t act irrationally before this psychotic event. On the contrary, he’d been the model of rationality, albeit aloof and often irritable, even harsh. She’d attributed his abrupt, domineering behavior to his long career as a soldier, not some psychological problem. If he’d meant to do her harm, he wouldn’t have rescued her from the train in the first place. He could’ve hurt her a hundred times in the past days, killed her and hidden her body in the wilderness. He’d done the opposite. He’d saved her more than once, twice, and at great risk to his own well-being. Without her as a burden, he probably could’ve found his way down the mountain.
“The radio might’ve told us whether the rescue team is at the accident scene,” she said. “We could’ve learned more about our situation, could’ve figured what our alternatives are.”
He shoo
k his head. “Doesn’t matter if they’ve arrived. The snow just keeps accumulating. It’s hazardous out there. We can’t make it down the mountain yet.”
“The longer we sit here doing nothing the more trapped we become. You said it yourself. The snow continues to accumulate.”
His frown threatened to turn into a scowl. “This is an exercise in survival. You want to live, you better soldier up and follow my lead.”
“Nick, I’m no soldier. I’m a pregnant woman. Frightened and vulnerable.”
When he turned on his heels and walked away, she clasped her hands together, bowed her head, and prayed.
In the kitchen area, he placed his hands on the counter as if to brace himself, and looked out the window. He wouldn’t apologize. Throughout this entire ordeal, he had never apologized, never said thank you. Not once.
Her lower abdomen cramped hard, as though she was having menstrual pains. She hugged her belly and leaned forward. Too much stress, too much physical exertion. Just Braxton-Hicks contractions. Nothing more. It wasn’t time. She walked to the bed and laid down.
The blizzard had raged on for most of the day, but now the wind blew even harder. There was a low rumble in the distance—not wind, however, but something altogether different. With some difficulty, Margo rolled off the bed, waddled over to the east-facing window, and listened.
“Nick! A helicopter!”
The juddering of the helicopter got louder, which meant it was heading in their direction. Nick sprang to his feet and rushed to the window, while she started toward the door out to the upstairs balcony. The deck was covered with ice and snow, so she’d have to hold onto the railing with one hand to make sure she didn’t slip while waving at the helicopter with the other. Just as she was about to turn the door handle, Nick grabbed her wrist.
“Stop, Margo! You’re not going out there.”
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