“I actually don’t know that,” LeAnne said.
“Pah,” said Katie. “Laws can be changed. That is the difference.”
“Uh-huh,” LeAnne said. “Tuck your pant legs into your socks.”
“Why ever would I want to do that?”
“So you don’t get caught in the chain and go ass over teakettle.” LeAnne rolled the bike next to Katie, sized things up, took a wrench, and lowered the seat as far as it would go.
“Ass over teakettle? I don’t understand.”
“Sure you do.”
“But why teakettle?”
“It’s just what we say.”
“The expression is vulgar,” Katie said. She tucked the hems of her slacks—black, of nice-looking fabric and cut—into the tops of her socks. Per LeAnne’s orders, she was wearing sneakers—the first time LeAnne had seen her in anything other than heels or city-type boots. The sneakers, white on white, looked like they’d just come out of the box.
“Hands on the grips,” LeAnne said, keeping the bike steady. “Swing your leg over. Sit.”
“This is not comfortable.”
“Feet on the pedals. Not like that.”
“My feet are on the pedals.”
“Balls of your feet.”
“Balls of my feet. You are very dictatorial, you realize, in fact reminiscent of . . .”
“Of who?”
Katie shook her head.
“Out with it,” said LeAnne. “When I’m insulted I like to hear the payoff.”
“Of . . . of certain family members.”
“You’re talking about members of your family?”
“But who on this earth has a perfect family?” Katie said. “Now will you give me a push?”
LeAnne gave Katie a push. She wobbled forward.
“Faster! Pedal faster.”
Katie peddled faster, got the wobbling under control. She rode across the hard-packed dirt of the compound as far as the razor-wire-topped wall, turned unsteadily, and came back, picking up speed—actually much too much speed.
“I am riding! I am riding!”
The droning died away to a silence of the muffled, cottony type, all vibration gone but the sensation of gliding still there.
“Sorry to wake you.”
LeAnne looked up. Stallings stood in front of her, a garment bag folded over one arm, a cooler in his free hand.
“What do you want?” she said.
“Brought you this.” Stallings held out the garment bag. LeAnne didn’t take it. He laid it beside her, set the cooler on the floor.
“Where are we?”
“Lajes—pit stop. We’ll be airborne again in fifteen minutes. Anything else I can get you? Any questions?”
“Yeah, I’ve got a question. Does Colonel Bright know about this?”
“You’re referring to our mission?”
“What else?”
“I haven’t actually had the pleasure of meeting the colonel, although, of course, I’ve heard all about her. But the short answer is no. We all operate in our own silos.”
“How’s that working out?”
“I hear you.”
Stallings returned to the front of the aircraft. LeAnne noticed one of the doors, just behind the starboard wing, was open. She rose, walked over to it, and stood in the moonlight. Mountain silhouettes rose in the distance. She heard music.
LeAnne had always been good at sleeping during down times, like before a mission, but sleep wouldn’t come for the rest of the flight. Somewhere over the Mediterranean, she took the garment bag into the head and opened it up. Inside hung a new combat uniform with “Hogan” on the right side of the chest. LeAnne stripped down, changed into the uniform, regarded herself in the mirror. Then she took it off, rehung it neatly in the garment bag. When she got off the plane at Kabul International Airport, she was wearing what she’d started with: jeans, T-shirt, a light jacket, and Marci’s red sneaks. She was half a world away from where she should have been. LeAnne stood up straight and followed Stallings toward a waiting Growler, idling on the runway.
The driver jumped down and ran toward them. It was Corporal Crannack, looking completely unchanged. He was grinning, a grin that expanded with every step. He ignored Stallings completely, drew up in front of LeAnne, and saluted.
“Welcome back, Sarge. You’re a sight for fuckin’ sore eyes, that’s for goddamn sure.”
“Hey, Luke,” she said, then paused, and somehow the right thing came to her, for the first time in way too long. “Lookin’ pretty good yourself.” She started in on a fist bump, but he swept past, grabbed her, hugged her, raised her off the ground. He pounded her on the back until it hurt and she wanted him to never stop. She was home.
CHAPTER THIRTY
The setup was familiar to LeAnne from movies and TV, but she hadn’t thought about—or missed completely—its essential creepiness. She and Stallings sat at a desk in a darkened room before a two-way mirror. On the desk lay a pad of paper and a pen for each of them. Beyond the two-way mirror was another room, more brightly lit, where three people sat at a table. The two on the near side of the table—a big man and a big woman, both in uniform—had their backs to the mirror. The third person, on the far side of the table and facing the mirror—was Katie.
She didn’t look good, seemed to have lost weight, for one thing, and she’d been trim to begin with. There were dark patches under her eyes, almost like bruises; the eyes themselves now the dominating feature by far, almost black and somehow much more liquid than solid. But what caught LeAnne’s attention most were Katie’s eyebrows. She’d always attended to them scrupulously, even obsessively, but now they were neglected, thick, prominent, even coming close to making her look like someone else.
Sound came through a speaker somewhere out of sight.
“How about we circle back a bit?” said the female interrogator.
“Circle back” was the kind of expression that interested Katie, but she showed not the slightest reaction. In fact, for a tiny moment, her eyelids appeared to get heavy, as though about to close.
LeAnne wrote on her pad: “Can we talk?” And turned it so Stallings could see.
He wrote on his pad: “V. quietly.”
Then why hadn’t he answered aloud? Some kind of humor? Was Stallings having fun? She twisted around to see him, but he’d sat down first, on her bad side, and she didn’t get a good look. She spoke in a low voice. “Have they drugged her?”
Stallings replied even more softly. “No mistreatment whatsoever,” he said. “By the book and then some.”
Meanwhile, the male interrogator was speaking. “Don’t see the point myself. All we’ve been doing is going in goddamn circles.”
“Katie?” said the woman. “How do you respond to that?”
Silence. Was Katie thinking? LeAnne couldn’t tell. Katie sat motionless. Nothing moved in the interrogation room except the play of light in Katie’s eyes.
“Other than a touch of sleep deprivation,” Stallings said, again very softly.
That made LeAnne angry. But why? If Katie had done—meaning done to her, namely ruined her life—what Stallings and the army believed she’d done, then her anger, and way, way more than anger, should have been directed at Katie. But it wasn’t. What the hell was wrong with her?
“Katie?” the woman said. “Response? I’m trying to be nice to you here.”
Katie nodded, an almost imperceptible movement. “What do wish to know?”
“What we wish to know, you stupid lying cunt,” said the man, “is exactly what you did on the night of January seventeenth and who told you to do it.”
LeAnne’s head snapped back, as though the male interrogator had just slapped her face. Katie showed no reaction. Katie did not like vulgarity—except when used sparingly in an aristocratic sort of way—and would normally have made that very clear, even in a situation like this, but she showed no reaction. LeAnne knew right then, and all her anger started redirecting itself in the proper way.
“I have told you and told you so many times already,” Katie said. “I knew nothing of the attack.”
“Then how the hell—”
The female interrogator silenced the man with a raised hand, although perhaps he went silent just a hair too soon; still, LeAnne could tell that they were very good.
“What we need to understand,” the woman said, “is why, given that your assignment was to stick to Sergeant Hogan like glue and that she was wounded, there wasn’t a scratch on you?”
“But not badly wounded,” Katie said.
“Excuse me?” said the woman.
“LeAnne—Sergeant Hogan, I mean—it is my understanding her wounds were not serious.”
“Your point?” said the man.
“It’s true, is it not?” Katie said. “About her wounds?”
“So?” said the man.
“We don’t see what difference it makes,” the woman said.
For the first time, Katie seemed animated. “Well, but it’s obvious. If she was barely affected, doesn’t it mean she was some distance from the detonation? And I was standing with her but on the other side, if you see, meaning even still more distant. And so therefore.”
“So therefore what?” said the woman. “I’m not quite following.”
“So therefore unscathed,” Katie said.
“That’s your explanation?” the woman said.
Katie nodded.
“Complete bullshit,” said the man.
No reaction from Katie.
“More of a mixture, I’d say,” said the woman. “Mostly bullshit but some truth. What was your impression of Sergeant Hogan?”
“My impression?”
“What did you think of her?”
Katie’s look turned inward. What seemed to LeAnne like a full minute passed before she spoke. “Sergeant Hogan was my ideal.”
“Then why would you put her at risk?” said the woman.
“But I did not. I have told you and told you.”
“When will you realize we’re not buying it?” the woman said. The interrogators rose. “Think up something new.”
The interrogators headed for a door on the far side of the room. As they went out, the man turned.
“Don’t even dream of putting your head down. I come back and your head’s on that table, I knock it off your skinny fucking neck.”
They left. The door closed. Katie took a deep breath. She leaned forward, put her elbows on the table, resting her head in her hands. Her eyelids closed, and she started to slump forward. The door in the far wall flew open. The male interrogator stormed in, grabbed Katie by the hair, and sat her up straight. She didn’t make a sound. The man left without saying a word. Katie sat, eyes open, hair askew on one side.
“Okeydoke,” said Stallings.
LeAnne followed him out of the darkened room, along a cinder-block corridor, past a small office where the interrogators were busy with their phones—the woman drinking coffee, the man with his free hand in a bag of Doritos—and came to a closed door. Stallings pushed it open, revealing a tiny bathroom.
“Made sure it was cleaned and cleaned again,” he said. “Should be good to go for your preparations.”
“Preparations?”
“With your eye situation, and so forth.”
LeAnne went into the bathroom. Yes, almost certainly the cleanest bathroom she’d seen in this country. The mirror shone. Wasn’t there a shining mirror in some fairy tale? She tried to remember. Christ, help me.
LeAnne washed her hands with a fresh bar of floral-scented soap, dried them on a fluffy white towel with a W logo. She leaned closer to the mirror and removed her prosthetic eye. LeAnne hadn’t taken a good look at what lay behind for some time. She did so now and did her best not to be shocked, or sickened, or repelled, or even affected at all. She wrapped the eye—a beautiful object, in a way—in a tissue from a conveniently placed pop-up box, and went into the corridor. Stallings glanced at her and nodded. They rounded a corner, came to a door. Stallings nodded again. LeAnne opened the door and went in.
She was in the interrogation room. Katie sat at the table, her back to LeAnne, facing what seemed like an ordinary mirror on the opposite wall. Had Katie heard her, and just assumed her interrogators were back? Or was she unaware? Marci’s sneaks moved in a very quiet and squeakless way, ideal for sneaking up on people. LeAnne picked up Katie’s smell—a mixture of fear and needing a shower—and walked around the table, into Katie’s line of sight.
Could you kill someone with nothing more than a vision? Katie’s whole face seemed to fall apart, as though under attack by some hate-filled portrait painter. Blood rushed into her head, drained out, rushed back in. Katie’s eyebrows, now so thick, twisted into strange, spiky shapes, and her hands rose toward her face, clawlike. Her mouth opened wide enough for LeAnne to see for the first time that she was missing teeth in the back, and she screamed, first silently and then in a horrible rising wail. Katie got up, her whole body trembling, moved around to LeAnne and fell at her feet.
LeAnne went stony inside.
Katie looked up, tears flowing down her face. “Forgive me, I beg you.”
“Why should I?”
“Oh, LeAnne, I would rather hurt myself than you. All I told him was your method. Not a solitary fact more. Just that one tiny thing!”
“I don’t understand you.”
“Why, the footwear. The shitkickers. No more, I swear! That one tiny, tiny thing. He promised me no harm would come to you—nothing, complete and total nothing!”
LeAnne gazed down at Katie, giving her a good long look at this nothing.
Katie sobbed. “He would have killed me for certain. He kills so easily.”
“Who?”
“How could I bring forward this relationship in the vetting? You would never hire me. I wanted the job so badly. And the visa at the end, yes, that.”
“Who?”
“My uncle,” Katie said. “Gulab Yar-Muhammad.” She peered up at LeAnne, stifled a sob. “Does it hurt you? I hope not. I will pray for you not to hurt every single day for the rest of my life.”
“What about Jamie?” LeAnne said. “Did he get included in the promise?”
Katie looked away and was silent.
“Get up,” LeAnne said.
Katie rose and stood before her, a small, slight woman with tears and snot mixed together on her face. LeAnne knew she could kill Katie with her bare hands, then and there. She had the strength and the skill, and no one was going to stop her, even if it wasn’t in the plans.
Katie reached out, slow and tentative, and touched LeAnne’s arm. She inched in closer, rested her head against LeAnne’s shoulder. LeAnne just stood there. Then, for no particular reason, she thought of Goody. She put her arms around Katie, did not hug her or hold her tight or anything like that. It was more than enough already.
The door opened and Stallings entered.
“Thank you, Sergeant,” he said.
“Feel like I been in a goddamn firefight,” said Corporal Crannack. He and LeAnne were alone in the office where the interrogators had taken their break. “And that’s just from hearing what went down.”
LeAnne didn’t agree. There was a surge of exhilaration after firefights—if none of your people got hurt—before exhaustion and numbness took over, and nothing was surging in her now. After a minute or two of silence, Crannack got restless, grabbed two beer cans from a shelf-top icebox, cracked them open, and handed one to LeAnne.
“No, thanks.” But LeAnne took the beer, sipped, then sipped some more. “Know anything about dogs?”
“Dogs? Had ’em all my life. News to me that you’re a dog person.” He clinked his beer can against hers.
“I’m not,” LeAnne said. “At least, I wasn’t. But now I’ve sort of got this dog.”
“What kind?”
Someone knowledgeable had covered this ground. Dot, maybe? LeAnne couldn’t remember the details. “A mix. She’s pretty big. And her head is huge.”
“Cool. What’s her name?”
“Well, Goody, but someone else gave it to her.”
“Yeah? I had a pit bull name of Baddie one time.”
“You didn’t.”
“Short for Badass. Took no prisoners. Once he even got a bear to back off.”
“What kind of bear?”
“It was written on the cage, but I don’t remember. One ginormous son of a bitch, that’s for sure.”
“The bear was in a cage?”
“A nice one. At the zoo.”
“Baddie made a caged bear back off?”
“Shoulda seen him. Cage or no cage, woulda made no difference.”
LeAnne laughed. They clinked beer cans again. “Maybe—” he began, but then Stallings entered. Crannack rose and saluted.
“At ease, Corporal.”
“Care for something frosty, sir?”
“I’ll take a rain check,” Stallings said. He turned to LeAnne. “We’ve got a deal. She delivers the uncle. We cough up the stateside visa. You good with that?”
“What was her choice?” LeAnne said.
“That or we hand her over to the Afghan authority.”
“A no-brainer,” said Crannack. “Sir. Favorite brainer type of the entire Crannack family, going back generations.”
Stallings blinked in a baffled way, as though Crannack were speaking another language. “LeAnne?” he said.
“Yes. I’m good with it.”
“Then that’s that—job well done. Corporal, you will convey Sergeant Hogan to the airport. We’ve got her on a flight departing in—” He checked his watch. “One hour and thirty-three minutes.”
“Yes, sir.”
Stallings went out. Crannack drained his beer. “Sarge?” he said.
“Uh-huh.”
“That’s a new eye you got, correct?”
“Yeah.”
“Does it work?”
“What the fuck’s wrong with you, Luke?”
“Looks good, is all I’m saying. So it kind of works, right?” He raised his empty beer can in salute.
LeAnne followed Crannack down several flights of cement stairs—the smell of piss growing stronger all the way—and out to an alley. A dusty Growler was idling a few steps away, a driver at the wheel. Fifty feet ahead an ASV was also waiting, almost blocking the alley completely. A door in the same block of crumbling mid-rises opened, and two soldiers hustled out, one in front of Katie—now wearing a white head scarf—and one behind, both like giants next to her. LeAnne paused, one foot on the narrow running board, waiting to see if Katie looked her way. And Katie’s head did start to turn in her direction, but at that moment LeAnne heard a crack from up above, and a thin red jet shot straight out the top of Katie’s head. Katie slumped into the arms of the soldier behind her, the white scarf turning red very fast.
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