by Mike Maden
The turbines whined as the choppers lifted in unison, arcing into the warm, starlit sky, streaking for home in single file.
A heartbeat later, alarms screamed.
Missile lock.
Salvio grabbed a handhold as the helicopter plunged violently to escape, blowing auto-chaff in a steep banking turn. Through the gunner’s door he saw a fiery streak slam into one of his choppers and erupt in a cloud of flaming metal.
The last thing Salvio heard was the roar of the exploding HE charge that tore his aircraft apart, killing most, including him. The screaming survivors perished when the burning wreck slammed into the ground five hundred meters below.
In the space of thirty seconds, the entire Scorpion platoon ceased to exist.
Proof of concept number one.
2
CRISFIELD, MARYLAND
Jack pulled up to the curbless street in front of the modest one-story white frame house and killed the engine. It brought back memories. He hadn’t been here since his freshman year in college, when Cory’s mom cooked the two Georgetown students a roast. “Stick-to-yer-ribs food, Jack. That’s what you boys need if you’re sailing today,” she’d said. Taking the skiff Cory’s dad built out onto Daugherty Creek was one of Jack’s favorite memories.
Cory’s working-class family was a lot like that little house. Solid, sturdy, dependable—and certainly nothing fancy. But Cory had been a good friend, and the memories Jack had from the summer road trip they took in their sophomore year, hiking fourteeners in Colorado, still made him laugh.
Jack approached the front door with trepidation. He hadn’t seen Cory in years. Always meant to, but they both got busy. When his father died in his junior year, Cory gave up his dream of law school and dropped out of Georgetown to take over his father’s hardware store, and to care for his ailing mother. Jack made it out a few times that year, but Cory was too tied up with customers and inventory to really do anything but shoot the bull over coffee at the store. Jack’s academic plate was also overflowing. No hard feelings. Just a fork in the road. They went their separate ways.
Jack found his dream job with Hendley Associates and The Campus.
Cory stocked lumber and bird food.
Cory’s mother died a few years back, but Jack missed that funeral—he didn’t even know about it until a year after she was buried. He meant to call Cory and offer his condolences, but it just felt too damn awkward after so much time had passed.
Yeah, awkward.
Some friend, asshole.
Jack rang the doorbell. A moment later, a smartly dressed middle-aged nurse in blue scrubs opened the door. Jack noticed her lapel pins. Mary Francis was an RN and a nun. She smiled.
“You must be Jack. Cory’s expecting you.”
“Thank you, Sister.”
Jack followed her through the neat and tidy home, the old wooden floors creaking under his two-hundred-pound muscled frame.
“How’s he doing?” Jack whispered, as if in church.
“As well as can be expected,” she replied at full voice. “It won’t be long now.”
He followed her down a narrow hallway. A dozen family photos in cheap frames hung on the walls. One of them was a picture of Jack and Cory standing next to that skiff so many years ago.
Ouch.
“This way,” the nun said, pushing open a bedroom door. An invitation for him to enter alone.
Jack halted for a second. He would’ve felt more comfortable charging blind into a Tora Bora cave with an empty pistol than dealing with what he imagined was waiting for him inside.
“Jack, you came.”
Cory smiled broadly, sitting up in his adjustable bed. He held out his hand. Despite the pallid skin and skeletal frame, he exuded warmth and grace.
Jack sighed with relief. He crossed the room and took Cory’s soft hand. Jack was six-foot-one and powerfully built. More so now than when they were in school together. But back then, Cory had been six-four and two-twenty. A state champion lacrosse player. A real beast. Hard to believe the frail wraith in the adjustable bed had once carried a 175-pound Jack a mile and a half down a Colorado slope on his back after he twisted his ankle. Now Cory was half his former weight, if that, and could barely hold up his own arm.
“Good to see you, Cor.”
“Sorry for the long drive out. I know you’re a busy guy.”
Ouch. Again.
Cory saw the flinch. “Sorry, I didn’t mean it that way. I know working for a financial firm like Hendley Associates must be an eighty-hour-a-week job.”
“Sometimes I bring a cot to the office. Better to sleep than commute.”
“Good for you.” Cory lay back on his elevated bed, obviously fatigued by his efforts.
Jack glanced around the room while Cory got comfortable, adjusting the IV needle taped to the back of his bruised and sallow hand. A large crucifix hung on the wall opposite the foot of his bed. Next to it was a framed wedding photo of his parents. Cory was an only child.
Standing next to the bottles of pain meds was a framed novena—“Our Lady of Good Remedy.” A rolling IV stand with a bag stood on the far side of the bed.
“So, I like what you’ve done with the place,” Jack said.
“My designer calls it Medical Modern. Sort of like Mad Men, but with drugs instead of booze.”
“I need to call her.”
“Just wait a few more weeks. I know a place where you will be able to get all of this stuff dirt cheap.” Cory winked.
Jack chuckled. He never knew anybody funnier than Cory. Or scarier, when he threw a punch. Fists like cinder blocks tied to tree trunks. Two bikers in a Jackson Hole bar discovered that side of Cory the hard way.
Jack suddenly felt very self-conscious, his full beard and head of hair in stark contrast to Cory’s naked scalp. Chemo took that thick mane of curly blond hair, no doubt, but not the fire in those dark brown eyes.
Cory reached for a plastic cup full of ice water, but it was too far away. Jack snatched it up and brought it close.
“Thanks.” Cory sipped cool water through the straw.
Jack’s eyes drifted back to the prayer card. “Dear Lady of Good Remedy, source of unfailing help, thy compassionate heart knows a remedy for every affliction . . .”
“You go to church much, Jack?”
“Me? Not enough. You?”
“Kinda hard to wheel this bed down the aisle these days. But I do have my own nun, don’t I?”
Jack glanced back at the large crucifix. He thought about the coeds that used to draw to Cory like flies to honey, and the beer kegs he’d polished off, almost single-handedly. “I guess you got some religion lately.”
“No, I got some cancer lately. My faith renewed is the payoff.”
“That’s great,” Jack said.
Cory heard the cynicism in Jack’s voice. “Yeah, I know. Foxhole prayers and all of that. But I’m serious. There’s something about facing your mortality that brings eternal things into focus.”
“Sure, I suppose it would.” Jack didn’t mention he’d stared death in the face a few times lately. Quite a few times. He had a hard time finding faith in the dark abyss of a pistol barrel shoved in his face.
“Don’t be like me and wait until something like this wakes you up.”
“Now you sound like my sister.”
“I liked your sister. She doing okay?”
“A doctor now, just like Mom. Same hospital, even. Married a great guy.”
“Good for her. Your folks okay? I don’t watch the news much these days.”
“They’re doing well. Thanks for asking.”
Cory coughed violently. Thick gobs of phlegm rattled in his throat. He lurched forward, gasping for breath, his pale face reddening with the effort.
Jack reached for a clean spit tray on the table and held it up to Co
ry’s lips with one hand while supporting his bony back with the other. Cory coughed and spat until a spoonful of yellow gel finally dropped into the pink plastic tray.
The nurse burst into the room.
“Cory?” She rushed over to the bed as Jack gently lowered him. She took the spit tray from Jack’s hand and set it down.
“Thank you, Jack. Perhaps you can wait outside for a minute,” she said as she wiped Cory’s mouth with a tissue.
“Sure, no problem.”
Cory shook his head and waved a frail hand. “No, wait, Jack, I’m fine.”
“You sure? I’ve got plenty of time.”
Cory took another sip of water with the nun’s help. It surprised Jack how much effort it took him. He finished and sighed with exhaustion.
“I’ll be right outside,” the nun said. “But call me before you need me, okay?”
Cory smiled. “Okay.”
She left, closing the door gently behind her.
“So, Jack. Remember those fourteeners we climbed in Colorado?”
“Sure do. I was thinking about that when I pulled up.”
“Good times, man. Can’t tell you how often I thought about those days when I was counting pallets of drywall and roofing nails. Got me through some dark patches.”
Guilt fell all over Jack like a bucket of warm motor oil.
“I’m sorry about that, Cory. I should’ve—”
“Oh, man. No. I wasn’t saying anything. I just mean climbing those mountains meant a lot to me. That high up. Clean air. And the quiet!”
“Yeah, good times for sure.”
“I’ve had a lot of time to think about my life lying here, ya know? Things done, and things undone. And to be honest with you, I wouldn’t change a lot. Don’t get me wrong. Arguing a landmark case in front of the Supreme Court would’ve been awesome, but it wasn’t meant to be.”
“It must have been hard on you.”
“It was, and it wasn’t. I just did what I had to do to take care of my family. You would’ve done the same thing for yours. I know you would have.”
Jack nodded. He sure as hell would have. There wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do for his family, especially his mom and dad.
“So really, no regrets. Well, except one. I never told you this, but I made two promises to my dad when he was on his deathbed. I’m proud to say I kept one of them—finishing my pre-law degree at Georgetown last year.”
“That’s freaking awesome. Congratulations.”
Jack stuck out his hand. Cory took it as best as he could.
“Thanks, man. Summa cum laude, too, by the way.”
“Not surprised.” Truth was, Cory was the sharpest knife in the drawer.
“But I didn’t keep the other promise. And it’s killing me.”
“You do look like shit. But I thought that was the cancer,” Jack said, hoping for a laugh.
He got one.
“Ouch, man,” Cory said, touching his stomach. “Don’t do that. It makes me hurt.”
“Sorry.”
“No, you’re not.”
“No, not really.”
They bumped fists. Friends again. For life.
However long that was.
“So, what’s the promise you didn’t keep?”
Cory told him.
Jack didn’t bat an eye.
“It’s a lot to ask, I know,” Cory said. “But I couldn’t think of anyone else I could ask, let alone pull it off. But I hate to disappoint my dad, you know?”
“Yeah, I know. But I think he’d understand.”
“He probably would. But this is about me. I want to keep my word. And you’re my only shot.”
Jack fought back the tears welling up in his eyes.
“It would be an honor.”
* * *
—
Sister Mary Francis brought in a bottle of twelve-year-old Macallan single-malt whiskey and two glasses Cory had purchased for the occasion. The bedridden man sipped water out of his glass while Jack worked his way through a couple fingers. They laughed and told stories like old college buddies do, but the light began to dim outside and Cory’s eyes began fluttering with fatigue.
Jack left the room with Cory gently snoring and Sister Mary Francis’s heartfelt thanks.
“If he needs anything at all, please call me,” Jack said, slipping her a business card. She handed him one of hers as well.
“I will. Safe travels, Jack. And God bless you for coming.”
Jack was surprised when his phone rang with her number just three and a half hours later as he sat at his desk, poring over a spreadsheet.
Cory Chase was gone.
3
WASHINGTON, D.C.
RUSSELL SENATE OFFICE BUILDING
Arnie van Damm, President Ryan’s chief of staff, sat in the office of Senator Deborah Dixon. There was something bigger than the massive, hand-carved antique desk separating them at the moment.
As the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a former chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Europe and Regional Security Cooperation, Dixon was one of the most powerful people in the Senate and arguably the most important foreign policy legislator. Treaties lived and died on her watch.
Except this time, a bill didn’t “die,” it was killed—shot in the head and bled out by Dixon herself, a fellow Republican. It had been a straight party-line vote—except for Dixon, who crossed the aisle and voted with the Democrats.
Arnie was furious. More important, so was President Ryan, along with Secretary of State Scott Adler, Secretary of Defense Robert Burgess, and the Army chief of staff. President Ryan himself had spent months carefully planning and negotiating a bilateral treaty with Poland to build and maintain a permanent army base on Polish soil. That base would serve as a forward defense against encroaching Russian expansion in the region in the face of a weakening Western European commitment to NATO’s defense.
As chief of staff, Arnie had the task of greasing the wheels on Capitol Hill for any piece of legislation, including the one Dixon murdered. The senator was an old friend and a reliable colleague. Or so he thought until this morning. He polished his steel-rimmed glasses, trying to calm himself.
“You’re kind of cute when you’re angry, Arnie. Anyone ever tell you that?” Dixon said. She was fifty-six trying to look thirty-six and nearly pulling it off. Pilates five times a week, Botox three times a year, a strict Paleo diet, and the best hair colorist in the District went a long way, but good genetics didn’t hurt. She was a striking woman, but it was her razor-sharp mind and not her head-turning figure that got her where she was today.
Well, mostly.
“If you think I’m cute when I’m angry, then I must be damned beautiful right now, Deborah. A fucking Adonis. I thought we had a deal.” Arnie’s bald scalp pinked with anger.
“Well, you thought wrong. We had a lengthy discussion and I considered your words carefully. The subcommittee examined the matter from all points, including expert testimony both for and against. You know, Arnie, I do have a job to do. I’m a sitting U.S. senator, not a GOP apparatchik. I’m supposed to ‘advise and consent,’ not just roll over and wag my tail whenever the Ryan administration whistles.”
“Cute speech, Deborah. You write it yourself?”
“Let’s cut the shit, Arnie. What do you want?”
“To begin with, I want a public apology. You embarrassed the hell out of the President—he’s already scheduled for a meeting with the Polish president in Warsaw next month to break ground on the base.”
“First of all, I’m not apologizing for living up to my sworn constitutional responsibilities, and second, don’t blame me because you already ordered your golden shovels for Fort Ryan.”
“Damn it, Deborah, that’s not fair and you know it. No one’s asking y
ou to shirk your duties. But if you had concerns, you should have brought them to us, privately, and we could have worked something out. But you know that and you didn’t say a thing. What the hell happened?”
“Nothing ‘happened,’ Arnie, other than I performed due diligence.”
“And what did your ‘due diligence’ uncover that we hadn’t already discussed ad nauseam?”
“C’mon, Arnie. We’re adults here. Let’s get real. This is rah-rah bullshit. A giant photo op. This treaty sends exactly the wrong message at the wrong time to the Russians. It’s time to deescalate, especially with a new Russian president. Give him a chance to settle in. Putting a forward base on his perimeter forces him to respond. Otherwise, the Kremlin hardliners will have his head, literally if not figuratively.”
“Si vis pacem, para bellum,” Arnie said, leaning in. “If you want peace, prepare for war.”
“Si vis pacem, para pacem,” she countered. “We should try diplomacy for a change, instead of provocation.”
“We’re not the aggressors here. We aren’t the ones who put troops over the borders in Ukraine and Lithuania.” Arnie was referring to the recent Russian incursions, pushed back or at least halted by a force of mostly American arms. “But you know that. What’s this really all about?”
“I think I’ve made myself perfectly clear. This bilateral treaty—which is already pissing off our most important NATO allies, Germany and France—isn’t going to do anything but provoke another war with the Russians. We keep encroaching on their periphery, despite our promises to the contrary.”
“The Russians are just making excuses—”
“No, Arnie. Think about it from their perspective. The Russians agreed to allow Germany to reunify, but only after a NATO promise not to expand eastward. What happened? Germany unified—Russia’s worst strategic fear, at least on the Continent—and NATO expanded eastward anyway.”
“That was before President Ryan’s time.”
“But he still stands by it. It’s not like he’s pulling back our NATO commitments in the East. Croatia? Albania? For chrissakes, Arnie, Montenegro? You think we need Montenegro for strategic defense in depth? Don’t bother to answer that. We both know the answer. So do the Russians. You’re one of the President’s whiz kids. Tell me, what would you do if you were the Russians and the shoe were on the other foot?”