Backblast

by Candace Irving

  "Or I go on the record regarding just how precarious your current mental state really is—whether or not your hand still twitches."

  Bastard.

  The silence returned. This time it filled the air for a full thirty-one seconds. She knew, because she watched the oversized, twenty-four-hour wall clock behind Gil's head tick them off, one by one.

  A phone rang, shattering the quiet. But it wasn't the extension on Gil's desk. It was the cellphone in her ACU pocket. Grateful for the reprieve, Regan grabbed it.

  "Agent Chase."

  "You fit for duty or not?" Colonel Hansen. Her boss.

  Regan stared at Gil and, God help her, she forced her lips to beg.

  He held firm.

  "Sir, I'm with Lieutenant Colonel Fourche now. He's experiencing…reservations."

  "Hand him the phone."

  Regan passed it to Gil, straining to listen as he greeted her CO. Unfortunately, she couldn't make out Hansen's side of the conversation. She did know Gil was not happy. Not with the initial information he was given and not with the ensuing discussion that he actively pushed on his end, abusing every embarrassing facet of the argument he'd just thrown in her face, plus a few. And, finally, Gil was anything but pleased with his own terse "Yes, sir. Understood" at the call's conclusion.

  Gil severed the connection and passed the phone back.

  Silence bunkered in once more, hardening down to depleted uranium as Gil turned to withdraw a form from the top drawer of his desk. He scratched out a few words, filled in her name and signed his at the bottom before handing the form over.

  Bemusement set in as Regan deciphered his scrawl. Fit for duty. She jerked her chin up. Gil's seemingly blasé shrug was everything but.

  "Seems I've been overruled—needs of the Army and all. Congratulations, Chief. You're back on the roster. You won't be waiting for your next case, however. It's already here—but it's not new. You'll find out the rest when you get to CID. Now go; Colonel Hansen's waiting. And for God's sake, be careful."

  He didn't have to tell her twice.

  She left.

  2

  By the time Regan reached the building housing Fort Campbell's Criminal Investigation Division, her boss was nowhere to be found. Stranger still, the man occupying Colonel Hansen's office outranked her commanding officer by a hefty trio of silver stars.

  Lieutenant General Thad Palisade.

  Regan stared through the sliver of glass that ran down the length of the door. The general's wrought-iron back might be to her, the formal fitted coat and trousers of his Army Greens uncharacteristically crushed and creased from what had undoubtedly been a long and tedious flight, but it was him.

  According to the duty sergeant out front, the current head of the US Army's Special Operations Command had returned to Kentucky…just to see her.

  For a single, blinding moment, panic flooded her entire body.

  John.

  Palisade was the closest man John had to a father. If the general was here, hat literally in hand, and John was not, that meant—

  Damn it. This was not a death notification. Nor was John missing-in-action. If he was, Gil would be here too…to pick up the pieces. But if John was still alive and kicking—wherever he was—that meant Palisade was here about her case.

  The not-so-new one.

  Regan blew out her relief and pushed the door all the way open. She closed it behind her as the general spun around, his weather-beaten ascetic features splitting into a warm, deep smile as he spotted her.

  "What went wrong, sir?"

  The smile evaporated as he tossed his hat on the desk. Like her, Palisade blew out his breath—and cut straight to the point. "Everything."

  Shit.

  Palisade waved his hand toward the pair of black vinyl armchairs and couch wedged into the corner of Hansen's office. "Have a seat. The file's on the table, waiting for you. I'll get the caffeine. Don't know about you, but I could use some."

  Regan blinked back her shock as the man turned and headed for the door. A general running for his own joe? And a warrant officer's to boot?

  This was bad.

  Curiosity overtook her surprise as she reached the coffee table. The file was there, as promised. Regan doffed her beret and camouflaged jacket and dumped them in one of the armchairs, opening the four-inch-thick, brown accordion folder marked Top Secret and hauling it closer as she sank into the vinyl cushions of the other chair.

  Confusion set in as she pulled out the folder's contents and flipped through the first two reports. It wasn't that she couldn't place them.

  It was the contents of each.

  More specifically, the summaries attached at the ends.

  The first began with a slew of information that was already painfully familiar to her. Namely, that four short weeks ago, an Afghan Islamist by the name of Dr. Nabil Durrani had murdered seven pregnant Pakistani women in a cave located deep in the Hindu Kush—a cave that was also firmly located on the latter country's side of the Afghan-Pak border. The infants had been carved out from their mothers' wombs and left atop each to die. Except three of the babies had managed to survive their horrific entrance into the world. John, Captain Manuel Mendoza and Mendoza's Special Forces A-Team had breached that Pakistani cave in time to prep the three for an emergency chopper flight to Bagram Airbase. But only two had made it aboard. Another had taken a turn for the worse at Bagram and hadn't survived the night.

  But one had.

  Baby Doe #6. A girl. Not only had the tyke survived that chopper flight, a week and a half later she'd been flown on to Germany. She was currently thriving in Landstuhl's neonatal intensive care unit under the watchful eye of her biological father, Captain Mark McCord. Since McCord had been subsequently cleared of orchestrating the slaughter in that cave, the captain was now awaiting his separation from Special Forces and the Army so he could take his daughter back to the States.

  A mere two weeks ago, the discovery that McCord had fathered a child with one of the Pakistani cave victims had turned their entire investigation on its head. But the information in the summaries of these two reports was even more startling.

  They contained the respective DNA breakdowns for two other infants from that cave: Baby Doe #3 and Baby Doe #5.

  They appeared identical.

  But that was impossible…wasn't it?

  Regan was in the middle of her own, systematic, visual comparison of the DNA breakdown when a Styrofoam cup of steaming black coffee materialized on the table beside the accordion folder.

  "It's not a mistake, Chief."

  She glanced up as the general scooped up her beret and jacket, tossing both to the couch as he claimed the chair beside her. "You're certain?"

  "The lab guys ran the test three times. Of the seven babies Garrison and his men found in that cave, two of the boys were identical twins."

  Regan leaned back in her chair, absorbing the implications.

  Because, ultimately, the brutal murders in that cave had just been the beginning. The very nature of the deaths was part of a sick, two-pronged terror plot to provide one hell of a stressor to allow an unknown biological warfare agent to kick in, decimating Captain Mendoza's Special Forces team by sending the infected soldiers home to their loved ones in the States as violent, hallucinating human IEDs—while simultaneously framing Captain McCord's SF team to take the fall for the cave slaughter.

  Nabil Durrani—the Afghan-born, so-called physician responsible for the depraved plot—had hoped to translate the resulting frame into a renewed burst of hatred for all things American within the Islamic world, and especially within Pakistan. For who would fail to avenge the death of innocent Muslim children?

  But if two of those infants were twins…

  Regan leaned forward, needing the caffeine the general had provided more than ever. She took several scalding sips before returning the Styrofoam cup to the table as she voiced the only possibility that made sense given everything else she'd uncovered while working the cas
e. "One of the women was never pregnant. At least, not during the murders."

  Palisade nodded. "Yes. By the time the medical examiner had a chance to confirm that the mismatched mother from that cave showed signs of a late-term miscarriage and nothing more, you and the others had been kidnapped."

  And then she'd been infected with the psycho-toxin. The moment she and John's men had taken down Durrani and his stooges in Afghanistan, she'd been medevacked back to the States where she'd succumbed to her own nasty bout of hallucinations—and, finally, coma. By the time she'd woken in the ICU across post, she was part of the crime. Durrani's latest victim. The case had been handed to someone else.

  To whom, she still had no idea. Nor did it matter. Because, once again, the case belonged to her. That much she could see in the general's eyes.

  Gil's parting words finally made sense.

  As did her rapidly intensifying suspicion. "Do we know who she is? The woman with the mismatched twin?"

  "No."

  "What about the rest of the women?"

  In lieu of answering, Palisade leaned forward. He dragged the accordion folder past her cup of coffee and flipped through the contents. He culled the crime scene close-ups of the victims' faces and splayed them across the coffee table. In each photo, the women's lashes were thrown wide, each vacant and glassy gaze offering testimony to the collective horror of their final seconds in that remote cave.

  Regan pushed through her compassion as Palisade tapped the first picture. "Her name, you know."

  She nodded. "Jameelah Khan." The local they'd discovered who'd once worked in the laundry on Bagram Airbase. Jameelah was also the mother of the massacre's sole surviving child…as well as the former, married lover of Captain McCord, the leader of the SF team framed for the murders. That Jameelah's child had been fathered by an American soldier had sealed McCord's fate—and his team's—in Durrani's eyes.

  Palisade tapped a callused finger over five more crime scene photos. "We've identified these women as well. You were right—Durrani trolled for his victims while volunteering at the Malalie Maternity Hospital in Kabul. Agent Castile assumed lead on the case following your exposure to the psycho-toxin. Castile was able to uncover evidence that proves these women were also patients of Durrani at Malalie. Their names are now in the file."

  Regan nodded. She leaned forward as well, tapping the final photograph. "And this one? Are we even close to identifying her?"

  But she knew.

  "No. And, yes, she's the woman who never carried a fetus to term. Miscarriage or not, there's no connection to Malalie. Not one Agent Castile has been able to unearth."

  "What about Durrani? I assume he's been interrogated?"

  Palisade nodded.

  And, again, Regan knew. Nothing had come of those interrogations in the thirteen days they'd had the bastard in custody. There was something else in the general's stare. An odd, almost palpable mix of hesitation and anger.

  "What's wrong?"

  For a split second the anger intensified, then it was gone. Masked. "Durrani. He knows you survived the psycho-toxin. An interrogator let it slip."

  For a moment she, too, was pissed.

  How the hell did a trained interrogator just let something slip? Especially something as crucial as the survival of a detainee's intended, final victim?

  That was information best held close to an interrogator's chest, deliberately tossing it out onto the table when, and only when, it was likely to yield maximum effect and gain. But from Palisade's expression, they'd gained absolutely nothing.

  Then again—

  Just like that, her fury fled. She could feel the tug of an honest-to-God grin curving her lips as she sat back in the chair. Her first in nearly a week. She allowed the grin to deepen as the thrust of the confrontation she and Durrani had shared in that darkened bathroom set in.

  "I bet he's livid."

  Palisade returned her grin and raised her a hearty chuckle. "Oh, that he is." A moment later, the man sobered.

  His hesitation returned.

  Regan suppressed a sigh. What was it with officers?

  They just couldn't seem to impart what they perceived as negative news, at least not cleanly. "Sir, just spit it out."

  Respect edged out the pique in the man's faded blue stare. Palisade's own, deeper sigh escaped. "Durrani wants to speak to you. In fact, he's demanding it."

  Okay, not negative news. Not to her.

  Still, there was no way the Army would let her meet with Durrani, alone or otherwise. Much as she craved a second face-to-face with the perverted shitbag, Gil was right. Durrani had murdered her fellow CID agent. And then the good doctor had injected her with that charming chimeral virus he'd gotten off the Russians—personally.

  There was no way her CID chain of command or the lawyers in the Judge Advocate General's Corps would sanction a meeting.

  Or would they?

  Palisade shifted in his seat as Regan let the silence stretch out, waiting.

  Watching.

  And there it was. The evidence she sought had moved down the general's weathered features and into the slight but unmistakable clenching of his jaw. The man hadn't spilled everything he'd come to say.

  Even better, just as surely as she was certain she needed to pursue the remainder of this case to retain the sanity Gil had so recently questioned, she knew what Palisade was withholding. "Durrani's refusing to talk to everyone else. Everyone but me."

  The respect was back.

  "Yes."

  Regan clamped down on her excitement, forced herself to play it cool. Because she also knew full well that the objections and infuriating psychological assessment Gil had voiced on the phone to her commanding officer had been passed on to this man.

  She could not afford to appear too eager, much less desperate. "What about Tamir Hachemi?"

  The respect in Palisade's gaze deepened.

  Excellent. Her tactic was sound. As was her suspicion regarding Durrani's sadistic man Friday.

  "Hachemi clammed up."

  No shock there. The Afghan translator had turned out to be nearly as cunning and verbally deft as Durrani. How else had she missed a working, state-of-the-art heater in an eighteen-year-old Nissan Urvan so battered and rusted a Sudanese junkyard would refuse it entrance? That pristine, perfectly functioning heater was the vital clue she'd missed. The one that'd led directly to Art Valens' death. The heater that had spewed the Russian-made anesthetic gas that had killed her fellow CID agent.

  Gil was wrong; she should've caught that clue.

  She wasn't about to miss another.

  "What caused Hachemi to renege?" The last she'd heard, there'd been a deal on the table. The deal had been requested by Hachemi himself the moment the translator discovered that, due to the recent granting of his United States citizenship, he'd been officially classified as a traitor and was subsequently eligible for all dubious privileges said label entailed. Including, but by no means limited to, a sentence of hard labor and unusually spartan accommodations at the federal penitentiary at Fort Leavenworth—until his potential, pending execution.

  Palisade shrugged. "We have no idea. One minute, Hachemi's claiming he has solid information regarding another terrorist—one we would be very interested in identifying—and the next, nothing."

  Holy shit. Suddenly, the general's presence made sickening sense. "He's saying there's another traitor in our midst?"

  "Yes. Only the claim is past tense now. Hachemi swears he made it up. Wants to take his chances at Leavenworth."

  From the lock on Palisade's jaw, he didn't believe the translator's turnabout any more than she did.

  Someone had gotten to the man.

  Somewhere. Somehow.

  Regan shot to her feet, executing a lightning about-face, stalking across her boss' drab carpet as she worked to contain the shock and growing rage. She spun around again. "Did Hachemi give up anything else before he clammed up? Is the soldier part of a larger terror cell? Has it been activate
d? Is he—"

  Palisade held up his hand as he came to his feet. "We don't know. Any of it. But as you do know, the cave's existence—not to mention its precise location and contents—has yet to become public knowledge. The brass and the president would like to keep it that way, for a number of reasons. The least of which being that those women were Pakistani. The whole damned region is still a powder keg, especially now. That's the only reason the Pentagon agreed to let you back in the game."

  Durrani. His demand to meet her.

  The deviant doc had his own agenda; that was a given. She had a pretty good idea what that agenda involved, too. Either way, it didn't matter. Not to her.

  And clearly, not to Palisade.

  No wonder the general was here in the flesh. If there was even a chance this case wasn't yet over, the Army would use every asset at its disposal to ferret out the identity of that remaining traitor before the next catastrophe was scheduled to commence—including her.

  "Sir, you think there's a chance they're connected, don't you? The identity of that woman—and the traitor."

  The man's faded blue gaze strengthened. Sharpened. "Do you?"

  "Yes."

  "Agent Castile isn't so sure. He thinks it could just be a case of symmetry; so does the Islamist expert we brought in. Something about the number seven being sacred in the Muslim religion. And since Durrani tracked the pregnancies of six of the women at Malalie—"

  Regan nodded. "They think he knew about the twins beforehand and needed another body for some mystical numeric portent."

  "But you don't?"

  "No." Castile was a solid agent, more than smart enough. But he was wrong on this. So was this Islamist "expert".

  By the general's own briefing, no one had gotten Durrani to talk. Except her. She'd also bested the man physically. Granted, the tussle she and Durrani had shared had taken place thirteen days ago in the bathroom of a terror cell safe house in Charikar, Afghanistan, but she'd managed to draw the doc out long enough to take him down.

  It hadn't been easy. At the time, every muscle in Durrani's body had been meticulously and methodically honed.

  His mind, even more so.