by Don Hoesel
“Which makes coming here something like a step of faith, doesn’t it?” Maddy asked.
Her question pulled a smile from Brent because it was quite the opposite to what he’d proposed to her boss just a few days ago, when he’d suggested that he was the man of reason to Richards’s man of faith.
“I don’t think so. Tenuous link or not, this is a legitimate avenue for investigation. No faith involved.” Then he finished the last of his shake before catching Maddy’s eye.
She frowned at his comment, which evoked a feeling in him that suggested he was growing very fond of this woman. And he may have been wrong but he got the impression that the captain had feelings for him as well. Granted, his experience with Amy Madigan extended back a scant few days. For all he knew, the way she interacted with him wasn’t much different from her interactions with other consultants brought within the sphere of the team. Except that he guessed that was not the case, as evidenced by what she said next.
“Look, I don’t know why I’m telling you this,” she began. “When I joined this team I was at a certain place—a place that made it difficult for me to accept a lot of what our research hinted at. . . .” She trailed off and glanced at Brent, and whatever she saw in his expression must have encouraged her to continue. “You’ve already noticed the cross I’m wearing. I have no idea what kind of upbringing you had, but mine was pretty religious. Church three times a week; we would have gone more if the doors had been open.”
“My father was an atheist,” Brent said, “but my mother was very devout.” He laughed at the memory. “My mom dragged us to church whenever she could. My father didn’t seem to mind too much.”
Maddy smiled at his recollection, which while not an exact match for her own, showed he could at least relate to what she was trying to say.
“This job can be a challenge at times,” she said. “My background tells me there are only two reasons things happen: God and science.”
“That’s funny. Usually I hear people arguing God or science.”
“What I mean is most Christians are okay with giving scientific answers to the easy questions. It’s the other stuff—the stuff without a ready explanation—where we often throw up our hands and say, ‘I don’t know. I guess God did it.’ ”
“And you don’t buy that?” Brent asked, wondering what peculiar brand of Christianity the captain practiced.
“No, I don’t. I think God is responsible for all of it. I also think that science can explain all of it.” At Brent’s raised eyebrow, she added, “Like I said a few days ago, I’ve seen a lot during my time on this team that runs the gamut from strange to truly frightening. But nine times out of ten we find a good reason that things happen like they do.”
Brent grunted. “And the one out of ten?”
“Just means we haven’t worked hard enough to figure it out.”
Brent leaned back against the hard surface of the bench, trying to put some distance between himself and the conversation. Even so, he had to point out what he saw as a flaw in her argument.
“What about miracles?” he asked. “If you had such a religious upbringing, you must believe in miracles. Aren’t they, by their very definition, unexplainable?”
“Sure,” she agreed. “But I think there’s a big difference between making a few loaves of bread feed five thousand people and finding a six-foot-diameter circle in the middle of the Amazon where anything made out of copper floats. See, eventually we figured that one out. Who knows? Maybe because of our work in a decade or so they’ll be manufacturing airplanes that use half the fuel they do now.”
“Wait! You found what in the Amazon?”
“That’s not important,” she said. “All I’m trying to say—” She stopped, seemingly looking for the right words. Finally she shrugged and offered him a weak smile. “I don’t really know what I’m trying to say. I guess I’m just trying to let you know that things aren’t as chaotic as you might think. The ground we walk on is pretty solid; it’s the only way we can deal with the stuff that isn’t.”
Brent mulled that over and he thought she was right—she didn’t know what she wanted to say. Still, he thought she’d said it pretty well anyway. The professor found himself very much intrigued by this woman. Of course it didn’t hurt that she was more attractive than most, if not all, the women who had crossed his path.
The sun had lowered while they talked, and the streets that had, just minutes before, teemed with people were now nearly deserted. Brent gazed at the mosque, where the devout now prayed to a god who was foreign to Amy Madigan. He wondered how she reconciled the fact that in the end few people deviated from the beliefs of their parents. As the sun finished its descent, he gave some thought as to how he himself fit into that paradigm.
A moment later, he pushed from his mind such weighty thoughts of differing ideologies, stood, and offered a hand to Maddy. Then the pair started off in the direction of the hotel where they’d planned to dine together.
—
The restaurant was attached to the hotel and catered mostly to tourists in its offering dishes without the spice so favored by the locals. The proprietor had led them to a booth, speaking passable English and making it very clear that the Americans were welcome in his restaurant. Brent had selected a pasta with vegetables, while Maddy chose a hamburger with all the fixings. Neither of them had ventured further into the conversation begun on the bench, and Brent now sensed some reticence in her. He knew, though, that as a general rule people seldom broached the topic of religion in polite conversation. At least that was his experience.
He allowed the silence to linger, pleased it was not of the uncomfortable variety. On the contrary, the two of them sat and ate like old friends, content in both the meal and the company.
Finally, Maddy broke the silence, bringing up the business that had brought them to this foreign city.
“So what will you do when we get back?” she asked.
After wiping his mouth with his napkin, Brent said, “Good question. Although I’m not entirely convinced this is a global phenomenon, I think we’ve uncovered enough data to head that way. I think the thing we have to start looking at, beyond who is behind this, is why the escalation?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, the incidents in your data set start a little over two years ago, right? But up until about nine months ago they were spaced pretty evenly. Then boom.” He shook his head. “In my experience, when you see an escalation like the one we’re tracking, there’s an endgame that’s approaching sooner rather than later.”
Maddy absorbed that and then smirked at Brent. “So in addition to figuring out what’s going on, we now have the added concern of doing it on a timetable we don’t know anything about.”
“Pretty much,” Brent said.
Despite the ludicrousness of the situation, Maddy laughed and Brent couldn’t help but follow suit. Engaged as he was, he hardly noticed the dark truck that rolled past the restaurant’s large front window. From where he sat he could see the tail end of the vehicle in his peripheral vision, but almost as soon as he registered seeing it, he let it go. He had no idea what was happening at the table, this easy rapport with a woman he’d known for such a short time, yet he recognized an opportunity when he saw one.
But then he saw a cloud pass over Maddy’s face and he frowned, wondering what he might have said to shut her down. It took a moment for him to recognize that she was looking past him. He glanced over his shoulder to see what had caught her attention, which left him unprepared as Maddy lunged forward and shoved his head down onto the tabletop.
Brent heard a repeating popping sound, then lifted his head enough to see Maddy rising from her seat, gun in hand, firing toward the restaurant’s front door. She shouted at him to keep his head down, but Brent chanced a look behind him. He counted three men, one of them on the floor and not moving, and more shadows near the front door—perhaps reinforcements for those already inside. He noticed then that the restaurant pat
rons were nowhere to be found.
As a professor and researcher, Brent had been in a precarious situation or two, but none resulting in the firing of actual bullets. Consequently he had no idea what to do. His first impulse was to throw himself to the floor beneath the table, hoping that whatever played out in the air above him would wind up in his favor. But in the instant he had to decide, he could see that Maddy alone wouldn’t be able to handle all the assailants pouring through the front door.
It was in that moment that Brent saw the proprietor—the man who had welcomed them with warmth and kindness—emerge from the kitchen wielding a pump-action shotgun. The man took one look around, leveled the weapon, and fired toward the door. He managed to squeeze off a second shot, and Brent saw one of the assailants go crashing down.
He and Maddy had taken cover in the booth, where she returned fire against a better armed enemy. When he looked the other way, he saw the proprietor’s shotgun lying on the floor. He caught Maddy’s eye, and while she couldn’t possibly understand his intent, she seemed to intuit that he was about to do something foolish. But before she could put voice to it, Brent launched himself out of the booth, keeping low as he navigated the gap between the booth and the kitchen’s double doors. Running from the booth, he thought he had his feet under him, but somewhere along the way he stumbled and fell, landing atop the dead proprietor as bullets cut a trail past his ear.
Brent snatched up the gun, turning and aiming it at their attackers. The reinforcements had followed behind the initial trio, taking positions in the hall between the entrance and the dining area. The only experience Brent had with a gun was skeet shooting, so he used the same technique and fired a shot in the direction of the enemy. Despite all the chaos, he saw the man who was moving into the dining area collapse under the shot. Before Brent could chamber another round, another man took his place and aimed his weapon at him. Brent dove to the floor, using the proprietor’s body as a shield. Peeking above the dead man, he saw a number of lifeless bodies in the doorway yet still more coming in.
He glanced over at Maddy, his eyes finding her just in time to see one of the enemy’s bullets find its mark. Then Brent watched as the captain, who had come out from behind the table, reeled back and fell onto the seat.
As he saw her go down, everything shifted into slow motion, as if he’d stepped away from himself to view the scene from a vantage point safe from gunfire and the sights and sounds of carnage. One moment he was staring at Maddy’s fallen form, and the next he was looking at their attackers, four men advancing into the room. He raised the shotgun with arms steadier than he would have thought possible. He quickly lined up his shot and squeezed off a round that, while missing the man’s chest at which he was aiming, succeeded in taking out the legs. A bloodcurdling scream filled the room.
Turning, Brent saw movement from the booth—Maddy pushing herself upright and facing the men closing in on them. Even as he readied the shotgun to fire again, he watched her raise an arm, hesitate for a second, and then fire. The attacker toppled over, dead. Spent by the effort, she brought her arm down and the gun dropped to the floor.
To Brent’s amazement, the two remaining men, their paths obstructed by fallen comrades, backed down the hallway and exited the way they’d come. As Brent struggled for breath he heard the sound of an engine, followed by the screech of tires. In the silence that followed, when he was certain that no enemies lurked anywhere in the restaurant, he lowered the gun and pushed himself to his feet. He rushed to the booth, his ankle protesting with each step he took.
Maddy had collapsed again, lying still on the booth seat. Brent set his weapon down and reached for her. He wedged a hand beneath her shoulder and eased her up, and then realized that the wetness he felt on his hand was her blood.
Far off in the distance he heard the wail of sirens.
—
When the call came in, Richards found himself in one of those situations in which he did not have an immediate response, as if the news conveyed to him from thousands of miles away was meant for someone else. What urged him forward was decades of training, of acting within defined parameters while the particulars sorted themselves out. The first order of business was to contact General Smithson, to have a marine unit dispatched from Kabul, some three hours away by road from the hospital where his charges had been taken. Even considering a rapid response, as well as a probable chopper insertion at Mazar-e Sharif, Richards suspected a good ninety minutes would pass in which Maddy and Dr. Michaels would be subject to a follow-up assault. He thought that unlikely, as terrorist cells seldom moved against their targets without the element of surprise, but he disliked having his people in a position where he couldn’t protect them.
Once he’d secured Smithson’s promise of a company to support the Afghan security now surrounding the hospital, he placed a call to the U.S. embassy in Kabul, hoping a representative would have time to catch a lift with the marines before they headed out. He had to make certain a diplomat was en route, because while Maddy was cleared to fire in-country, Dr. Michaels was not. And terrorist attack or not, the local authorities could make things difficult for a foreigner accused of killing a native.
In spite of the circumstances, his one consolation was that with two phone calls he could organize a defensive operation from half a world away. What angered him, though, was that he couldn’t get anyone to tell him if Maddy was even alive. All Dr. Michaels had told him was that she was unresponsive going into surgery—and that there’d been a great loss of blood.
Richards had never lost a member of his team, not in the decade since he’d created it, and the thought of losing Amy Madigan was something he just couldn’t bear. In the absence of anything else he could do this far away, he chose one of the few courses of action available—an accounting of his team, to tell them what had befallen one of their own. It wasn’t a conversation he was looking forward to. Rawlings, Addison, and Bradford were in the building, working in the lab. Snyder was in transit from McDonough, and Petros had taken a personal day. He would get them all together before he gave them the news.
In less than two minutes he had both of his off-base personnel on their way in, with a minimum of grumbling from Petros. Richards thought he heard the soldier mumble something about the theater, which he found a bit surprising but didn’t press under the circumstances.
When he hung up he breathed a deep sigh, then sat down and did something he did not do well: he waited. And in an office without windows, dug out from the hard, rocky ground that made the construction of a building in this area as much an act of will as of logistics, Colonel Jameson Richards could not know that as a man on a personal day stepped off a Washington curb in possession of theater tickets he would now be unable to use, and as the man slipped behind the wheel of his Porsche and cranked the ignition, that act ended his life.
The car went up as a fireball, rising more than two stories, its sideways motion shattering the glass of the curbside ticket booth, killing both the ticket taker and a woman out walking her dog, and sending pieces of the incinerated Porsche for a block in every direction. Safe in his subterranean office, Colonel Richards could not hear the sounding of a dozen or more car alarms, or understand that war had just been declared on his team.
—
Dabir was not one to grant superiority where such was not warranted, so he refrained from giving the airport protocols in his country more due than they deserved. What he did concede, however, was that American security was not as untouchable as he had been led to believe. In the short time since he’d exited the plane and passed into the portion of the concourse beyond the security line, he had counted four instances in which he could have wreaked havoc on any plane taking flight that day. The information was of little use at the moment, but who knew when such knowledge would prove useful?
As he made his way past the funneled bodies—thick yet nowhere near as concentrated as an Ethiopian bazaar on a normal day—what impressed him the most, beyond the cleanliness
of the place, was how much he stood out against the lighter skins of everyone around him. The result was that he felt far more exposed than he’d ever felt before. That feeling faded, though, when he realized that no one was paying him the least bit of attention.
Unlike his country, averting one’s eyes seemed to be the norm here, even from those who showed more than a passing interest. In these cases, when Dabir met their questioning eyes with his own steady gaze, eye contact was quickly severed, with the Ethiopian convinced that the ones who had noticed him would forget before they reached their departure gates.
Of primary concern was money. Dabir followed the universal currency exchange signs and soon was in possession of sufficient funds in American dollars, enough to secure for himself transportation and temporary lodging. And food. He hadn’t eaten in almost a day and he’d always wanted to try a hamburger made in America. He knew what the knockoffs in his country were like and couldn’t help but wonder how the genuine article compared.
After he’d worked his way through the line, paid what to him was an exorbitant price for a meal, and located a place where he could sit and eat, he found himself disappointed. The American hamburger lacked the spice of those served in his country. But rather than belittle the food, he remembered that familiarity was a powerful thing. He suspected, with a measure of pride, that realizations like this one were what made him an exceptional soldier. He was one of those outside-the-box thinkers highly prized by Standish.
Canfield. He had to keep saying the name to himself, to continue substituting the real name for the assumed. For that was why he was there.
Once he cleaned out the widow account, adding it to what he’d accumulated over the last year, he had enough to spend the remainder of his days somewhere free of worry. Yet he knew, even before he spent a year on a pristine beach and let the thing gnaw at him, that he would never be happy until he saw Standish—Canfield—face-to-face one last time.