by Jack Carr
As the pastor concluded his short remarks, Special Warfare Operator Master Chief Petty Officer Ben Edwards approached Lucy’s casket and stood at rigid attention in his immaculate dress blue uniform. He removed the golden Trident badge from his left breast and placed it on top of the casket’s lid. He pressed downward, forcing the brass pins on the back of the badge into the highly polished walnut veneer until it sat flush. He then executed a hand salute with tears in his eyes and moved swiftly away. The scene was repeated by every SEAL present at the ceremony, until the entire lids of Lucy’s and Lauren’s caskets were clad in golden Tridents. These hardened warriors, most of them husbands and fathers themselves, had honored Lauren and little Lucy with a tradition reserved for SEALs slain in combat. As far as they were concerned, Lauren and Lucy had died in battle.
CHAPTER 12
REECE DID NOT MOVE for more than an hour. When he did, he knelt at the graves of his wife and daughter, head bowed, tears streaming. It was a knowing hand on his shoulder that revived him from his trance. Reece turned his head and looked up into the eyes of a short, almost scrawny man of Mexican heritage. The man helped Reece to his feet and embraced him.
Reece looked into the face of his friend but didn’t change his expression. With considerable effort, Marco del Toro turned Reece from the graves of his family and slowly walked him to the waiting new Mercedes S-Class Maybach sedan. A driver, looking suspiciously more like a prison guard than a chauffer, opened the door for them and Marco helped Reece inside before moving around the big car to the opposite side door. “La casa,” Marco told the driver, who put the car in drive and headed back to Coronado.
“Tequila?” Marco asked.
Reece slowly shook his head.
Marco reached into the seatback, pulled out a bottle of Cuervo’s best 1800 Colección, and pulled a swig.
“I am sorry I missed the funeral, my friend. I was in Mexico City on business and could not get home in time.”
Marco del Toro was one of Reece’s closest friends. At first glance, one would think them an odd pairing: the naval commando and the Mexican businessman. But with further investigation it was evident that they connected around the ties of family. Marco’s daughter Antonia was the same age as Lucy. They attended the same preschool and loved their playdates at the beach. Marco’s wife, Olivia, and Lauren had bonded over tennis, which they both played with vigor. Try as they might to get their husbands on the courts, Reece and Marco chose to spend their time on the mat and in the ring, training in Brazilian jiujitsu and boxing. Marco was by far the better jiujitsu practitioner, besting Reece at every turn. How such a small man harnessed so much strength and determination was astounding. Reece could never quite figure out how to beat him. His technique was flawless. In the boxing ring Reece came close, but the one time he bested Marco he was fairly certain the smaller man had let him win.
Both men also enjoyed a shared love of custom motorcycles. Two years before, Reece and Lauren had joined Marco and Olivia on a trip to Sturgis for bike week. Marco had flown them all out on his corporate G550 jet and, with beautiful new Harleys waiting on them when they landed, they enjoyed a few days exploring the Black Hills of South Dakota and the spectacle that is the Sturgis motorcycle rally. Reece loved his adventures with his friend, but it was Marco’s love and dedication to family that Reece admired most.
Reece knew that Marco was a wealthy man. His multiple homes in Coronado and what seemed to Reece to be an almost unending supply of new high-end vehicles made that abundantly evident, but it was not until Reece and his family joined Marco at one of his family villas in Mexico that Reece fully understood the extent of Marco’s affluence. Reece had twice accompanied Marco down to estates in Mexico, hunting birds in areas not usually accommodating to foreigners, but those hunting estates were nothing compared to the villa. It was what most would consider a private resort and was located just south of the bustling beaches of Puerto Vallarta. A full staff waited on their every need while Antonia and Lucy played in the waves under the watchful eye of nearby private security contractors. Vast real estate holdings, a telecommunications company, and Mexico’s largest insurance firm fell under Marco’s portfolio, making him extremely prosperous. This also made him and his family prime targets for Mexico’s kidnap-and-ransom industry.
After a close call in Mexico City a few years earlier, Marco decided to move his family to San Diego, choosing the resort community of Coronado for its safety and proximity to his businesses across the border. As of the past year, Marco and his family were dual citizens, an honor for which Marco was exceedingly grateful. That America had welcomed him and his family with open arms, offering them a refuge from the violence and uncertainty of Mexico, was something he did not take lightly.
“It’s okay, Marco. Thank you for coming. How long was I standing there?”
“Not sure, my friend,” Marco said with compassion. “I arrived to see you standing alone. I waited for an hour. When I saw you hit your knees I knew it was time to lend a hand.”
They sat in silence as the car made its way along the coastline, inching closer to home. Marco was a devout Catholic, and nothing was more important to him than religion and family. When Marco spoke again it was both with reverence and sealed resolve. “But for the grace of God, that is my daughter, my wife. Those that did this are scum, lowlife gangbangers. They violated an agreement. I will take care of the bosses regardless of whether they knew or not. And I will help you, my friend. I know what you need to do.”
CHAPTER 13
Coronado, California
REECE SAT ALONE IN the darkness of his living room. His senses had been bombarded by too much; he just needed to see and hear nothing. The headaches had gotten even worse. Reece was sure that his tumor was killing him. Seeing his home looking like the aftermath of a firefight on a target overseas only intensified the blinding pain. The interior walls had been shredded by gunfire and the front door had been replaced by a four-by-eight foot sheet of plywood screwed into the frame. The blood-soaked carpet in his bedroom had been torn out by the cleanup crew and much of the furniture had been either shot up or smashed. For reasons unknown to him, the violence that he’d fought to keep overseas had come to his living room and taken his family.
What if he had come straight home from the airfield instead of going to the Team first? What if he hadn’t gone to Boozer’s? What if he had refused to go to Balboa Medical Center and driven directly home to his family? What if . . . ?
Could he have defended his family from a gang of heavily armed home invaders? Would his skill with a handgun have been enough? Could he have fought his way to his rifle or shotgun?
Reece knew the answer to any of those questions was that he would probably be dead alongside his wife and daughter. He had to believe that he was spared for a reason: to find out what happened and punish those responsible.
Reece thought he knew something about survivor’s guilt, having seen some of the strongest special operators in the world fall prey to its ravages after losing Teammates in battle. The events of the past few days made him realize that he really didn’t know the first thing about it.
I should have been here. I should have died with them, Reece thought, his gaze shifting to the space on the sofa next to him, where his young daughter had loved to curl up for a story, where his wife would snuggle beside him with a glass of wine to watch a movie after putting Lucy to bed. That space would never know that joy again. Now it was empty, a void never to be filled. Well, not quite empty. Now that spot was occupied by the cold dark metal and composite frame of his Glock 9mm handgun.
Would death make the pain go away? Should he just end it all and join Lauren and Lucy? More than anything, that was what he wanted. His hand reached for the Glock and slowly wrapped around it. It felt comfortable. It felt natural, an extension of his body. It felt right. Reece set it on his lap, his eyes moving to the family photo he had on the coffee table in front of him.
“I love you, Lauren,” he whispered, moving
the pistol under his chin and sliding his finger onto the trigger.
You’ve never taken the easy route, Reece.
This was too easy. Fuck easy.
Reece’s eyes narrowed and he took a breath.
Let these feelings turn, Reece. Let them turn. . . .
Reece leaned forward, smoothly tucking the pistol into the holster behind his right hip and then turning the photo of his family over so that it was facedown on the table.
It was time to start figuring this out.
As much as he tried to clear his head of all of the noise, he just couldn’t do it. Facts that didn’t fit flashed in his thoughts like a slide show of evidence: the strange and urgent mission that left his men slaughtered, the tumors, the questions from NCIS, Boozer’s “suicide,” and an act of unspeakable violence brought upon his family on this quiet little street. These kinds of things didn’t happen randomly, not in this kind of proximity to one another.
He started with the things that he knew for certain; Boozer’s death was no suicide. First of all, Boozer wasn’t the kind of guy to quit on anything, especially life, and he sure as hell wouldn’t have abandoned Reece in the middle of all this, PTSD or not. The most telling fact, however, was something Reece had not shared with the police investigators. It was something you had to know about Boozer to understand; he would never have shot himself with a 9mm. An outsider trying to make it look like a SEAL suicide would find it convenient to use the same type of handgun that SEALs were issued. What they couldn’t know was that Boozer was a real gun guy who’d grown up shooting competitively before he ever even thought about joining the Navy to become a Frogman. Boozer had a love affair with custom 1911s chambered in .45 ACP, which most people just would not understand. Boozer hated the “9 mil,” and even though he had a SIG P226 in his personal collection to commemorate the pistol all SEALs had carried into combat since 9/11, his disdain of the smaller round was part of his identity.
But who in the hell would want to kill Boozer and go to the trouble of making it look like something it was not? The same people who would send an entire troop into an ambush and then kill a family in their home and blame it on gang violence. Whoever did this had some serious resources at their disposal, possibly even someone in the Naval Special Warfare chain of command, though Reece could not bring himself to make that jump yet. He did not buy in to government conspiracies, but he’d seen enough shady and unexplainable things go down overseas that he wasn’t naïve enough to rule anything out, either. But what was the connection? The ambush, Boozer, his family, the tumors, they all had one common denominator: Reece. The tumors were the outlier. This had to be connected to the tumors. His head throbbed and he momentarily lost his train of thought. He needed a fresh set of eyes on this, but who, if he couldn’t trust his own chain of command, could he trust?
Reece burst from the couch and ran down the hallway, flinging open the door to the garage. He grabbed his pack from a hook on the wall and reached in for the sleeve that held his laptop. Pulling out the MacBook Air, he opened the screen and a business card fluttered to the floor. He started to dial the number on his iPhone but stopped himself, hitting the END button before the call connected.
He looked at his watch: 10:36 p.m., probably not too late. He walked out the back door of his house and crossed the lawn to his neighbor’s front door. He knocked quietly, trying to attract his neighbor’s attention without waking his sleeping kids. He knocked progressively louder until his neighbor, who had obviously been sleeping, opened the front door shirtless and in his boxers.
“Hey, James, what’s up? What can I do for you?”
His neighbor was a good guy, some kind of civilian software geek who was always polite and showed evidence of a slight man crush on his commando neighbor. When he saw that Reece customarily backed his truck in the driveway, he started doing the same. Next thing you know, he was wearing the same sunglasses as Reece and driving an old Toyota Land Cruiser. The guy was harmless, and maybe even useful. Reece could never remember his first name.
“Hey, man, my battery is dead and I really need to make a call. Can I use your phone?” Reece asked in his most neighborly tone.
“Of course, James . . . I mean, Reece . . . come on in and use the one in my office.” The neighbor led Reece into a small home office, where a landline sat next to a panel of three computer monitors. He stood by the door and looked at Reece for a moment until he got the message and quickly left the room, shutting the door behind him.
“This is Katie,” she said, picking up on the first ring.
“Katie, I’m sorry to call you so late. This is James Reece. We met in Afghanistan a couple of weeks ago.”
“James, of course, oh my gosh. I read about what happened to your family and wanted to reach out. I’m so sorry.”
“I appreciate that. It’s actually what I’m calling about. This whole thing just doesn’t make sense and I need to run it by a fresh set of eyes. I read the series you did on Benghazi. It was really impressive. Any chance you would be willing to sit down with me?”
“Absolutely, can you meet me in L.A. or do you want me to drive down there?”
“No, no, L.A. is fine. Can you meet tomorrow?”
“I can. Is eight too early? There’s a Starbucks downstairs from my condo. It’s at Fifth and Fig, downtown.”
“Eight is fine. I don’t sleep anyway. I’ll see you in the morning.”
“I understand,” said Katie sympathetically. “How could you? See you in the morning.”
“See you then, and Katie . . .”
“Yeah, James?”
“Thanks.”
CHAPTER 14
Los Angeles, California
THE DRIVE UP INTERSTATE 5 to L.A. helped clear Reece’s head a bit. Sleep hadn’t come the night before, but strong Black Rifle Coffee, tempered with some honey and cream, and driving with the windows down made him feel halfway human. It was pitch dark when he left the house. If he was going to make it to downtown L.A. in time to meet Katie, he was going to have to do his best to beat some of the planet’s worst traffic. Contrary to what civilians might think, not everyone in the military gets up before dawn, and Reece was definitely not a morning person.
Ordinarily he’d use an app on his phone to help navigate the L.A. traffic, but he’d purposely left his phone on his nightstand when he left the house. The joke in the Teams was that smartphones were “surveillance devices that also made phone calls,” and he wasn’t sure exactly who was watching him at this point. He took I-5 all the way to I-10 and then onto the I-110 simply because that was the way he knew best. Traveling to a monstrous city like Los Angeles wasn’t something that he relished or did very often. Parking in L.A. could be a nightmare, but he knew from a shopping trip with Lauren that there was a garage near the Seventh and Fig shopping area downtown that would have plenty of space this early.
It wouldn’t take much to have followed him, especially if any satellite or drone assets were involved, so Reece didn’t play any countersurveillance tricks to try to lose anyone. The parking lot was deserted and the three-block walk from Eighth to Fifth was uneventful but for the solicitations of a few of L.A.’s massive homeless population. Something about Reece’s demeanor told the panhandlers not to be too aggressive with their requests, though most were too hungover to give it much effort. Reece had to chuckle when he saw a man facedown on the sidewalk with a length of rope tied around his neck and the other end tied around the neck of a bottle of cheap vodka.
He’d planned to hit the Starbucks before Katie arrived so that he could pick their seats without raising any eyebrows by asking her to move, but she’d beaten him to the punch. As soon as he walked through the door he spotted her in the far corner, seated with her back to the wall. She’d stolen his spot. Despite being a well-respected investigative reporter, Katie Buranek was quite young and undeniably attractive in a way that obviously required very little effort on her part. She was dressed in workout clothes: black yoga pants, and a tight-fitt
ing bright orange zippered top. She wore little, if any, makeup and her dirty-blonde hair was pulled back into a ponytail. She wore black rectangular glasses, probably more for effect than to enhance her vision, Reece thought. Though she was a print journalist, she certainly had the looks and brains to put her on one of the cable news networks. Reece was in his late thirties, and he assumed her to be at least ten years younger than he, if not fifteen.
The last time they’d met had been at Bagram. Reece had just been discharged from medical when she tracked him down in a Green Beans Coffee, of all places. Bagram had turned into a mini-USA over the years and the Green Beans was similar to going to a Starbucks, with gourmet coffee, free Wi-Fi, and plenty of places to sit and enjoy your latte. To Reece, the more they tried to make Afghanistan like home, the more alien and out of place it became. Despite his civilian clothes, she knew exactly who Reece was when she sat down across the table from him. She had slid her business card across the table and simply said, “Commander Reece, I’m sorry about your men. I know that now is not the time, but if you want to talk about it, you know how to get a hold of me.”
A reporter who had the good taste not to smear herself in the blood of his men was a rare bird, and her intel was obviously strong. Reece was a bit of a news junkie and he’d remembered her name from a series that she wrote exposing the lies and cover-ups that followed the Benghazi fiasco. He had known both of the SEALs killed that night in Benghazi, Libya, during a thirteen-hour gun battle in September 2012, so he had taken a personal interest in Katie’s coverage and investigation of the attack.