by Dale Mayer
“You delivered drugs before too,” he said with a sneer. “You get a manifest, and, as far as you’re concerned, all of the cargo has been loaded up, and you fly it. You don’t know what’s being flown. There is no doubt drugs have made it onto your loads many times.”
“Great,” she said in a whisper. “That’s not what I want to hear.”
“No, maybe not,” he said. “But again somebody has to be signing this paperwork.”
“What about in purchasing?”
“Maybe,” he said, “but somebody higher up has to okay the orders.”
“That takes us back to the commander,” she said. “Aren’t you his right-hand man?”
“Yep,” he said, “and I did sign a lot of the paperwork. But a lot of the stuff I didn’t.”
“So you signed on his behalf?”
He nodded. “I knew that wouldn’t last too long either. Just think about it. Not everybody will believe that the commander was bringing in forty pallets of toilet paper.”
“Actually pallets of toilet paper make a lot of sense,” she said.
“If one of those pallets is drugs, nobody checks.”
“Shit,” Troy said from the driver’s side. “I can see that. For a base like this, you need a ton of supplies.”
“And easy enough to hide drugs in the shipments to move as needed,” he said. “It just gets moved into the back of another truck, so we had men at every level.”
“Great,” she said. “That doesn’t sound good.”
“It doesn’t matter. It happens in every big organization. Company theft or moving things through the company is a common problem.”
“Never where I worked,” she said. “Or no one I ever worked with anyway.”
“Which is why you wouldn’t have been included,” Parsons said, “but, trust me, every corporation has a group like that.”
Troy nodded. “Unfortunately he’s right.”
Kate stared. “That’s pretty sad.”
“It’s realistic,” Troy said shortly. Another heavy gust of wind slammed into the jeep, jolting her sideways. “Damn,” she said, “I feel like we won’t make it to the base.”
“We’ll have to sit in the vehicles, if that’s the case,” Troy said.
She looked ahead and could see Colton still driving steadily. “I guess as long as he’s moving forward, we are too.”
“Yep.”
She looked back at Parsons. “How much farther?”
“Shouldn’t be too much longer,” he said. “It’s hard to say though.”
Then Troy pointed and said, “Look.”
Up ahead through the heavy storm were lights. “Is that the base?”
Parsons nodded.
*
Colton hated to admit it, but he was damned relieved to see the base. A part of him had been worried Parsons had sent him into another ambush. But as he entered and opened his window to the man at the gate, he explained who he was and what he was doing. He said, “Call the commander and have him meet us down here too.”
With that, the gate opened, and he drove through, and he could see Troy had been stopped as well, but he was eventually let through too. The gates closed heavily behind them. There shouldn’t be anybody else coming and going, but somebody needed to stand watch just in case.
Colton drove up to the warehouse on the left. He wasn’t sure where the hell to go, but this one had a door partially open, and he figured he could get inside and unload their cargo. Although he might have been better off going into town and taking them right to the hospital and to the morgue. As he drove in, his phone went off. He answered it. “Commander, I’m just pulling into a warehouse. I’ve got eight men dead in the back.”
“Jesus Christ! I’m on my way,” he said. “What the hell is this about Parsons?”
“You better come down here, sir. It’s pretty bad.”
As Colton pocketed his phone, he hopped out and opened up the big warehouse door farther so he could get in under it. Hanging onto the vehicle every step of the way in order to not get thrown sideways, he hopped back into the truck and drove it in. Immediately the heavy sound of the wind stopped, muffled by the structure. He pulled over to one side so Troy could pull up beside him. As soon as he shut off the engine, he opened the truck door, hopped down and opened the door for Kate. He looked at her, seeing the fatigue and the exhaustion in her face. “How you holding up?”
“I’m okay,” she said. “But I guess we missed another meal, didn’t we?”
He just grinned and helped her out. Just then half-a-dozen men swarmed into the warehouse. At the orders to halt and raise their hands, he lifted his. Kate lifted hers as much as she could, but her shoulder was killing her.
The commander stepped forward. “Colton?”
“Here, sir,” he said. He lowered his hands and moved Kate forward. “She has been shot twice, compliments of Parsons.”
The commander’s eyebrows shot up. “Jesus. Where is he?”
Troy stepped forward. “He’s in the back of this vehicle, sir.”
The commander strode forward, fury, frustration and maybe a little grief on his face as he opened the door, and there was Parsons, lying flat out now. The commander checked for a pulse.
Parsons whispered, “Sorry, sir.”
“Damn it, man.”
“Got in over my head, sir. Couldn’t see my way out. It’d be nice if you wouldn’t tell my father and brother.” He looked up the commander and said, “Yeah, I messed up big time.” And, with that, he closed his eyes, and, in front of everybody present, he took his last breath and expired. After that, it was chaos.
Colton opened up the back of the big truck and brought the commander around to take a look. When he saw the dead men were from his own base, and Colton told him about the ambush, the commander swore up and down. But he issued orders quickly. As the men started removing the bodies from the back of the truck, Colton pulled the commander aside and told him that Parsons had said this involved US bases all over the world. But here, at Thule, somebody was upwind of Parsons, but he said he didn’t know who.
The commander glared at Colton, shaking his head, his mouth a grim taut line.
“He did clear you, sir,” he said, a tiny grin at the corner of his mouth. He knew he was insulting the commander, but at least he would also know he’d been cleared.
“This is unbelievable. So he was signing my signature to smuggle drugs into my base?”
Troy stepped up beside him. “Yes, sir,” and he related the last little bit that Parsons had shared. “He said he really didn’t know who it was, but he did mention medical supplies.”
At that, the commander’s jaw worked. “Then I guess we better deal with the corpses first. Hell, I don’t even know if we have room for them all.” He headed out after the last one was taken away, and all headed to the sick bay.
Although nobody was technically on duty, two doctors raced toward him. When they saw the line of dead soldiers, their faces showed anger and grief.
“What happened?” one of them snapped.
“Good question,” said the commander, his voice powerful and brooking no argument. “I’d like to see all the medical personnel who are here, including the nurses, please.”
It took about ten minutes before there was a full assembly.
The commander looked them over. “We highly suspect at least one of you has been helping this group of dead men run a drug operation through this base. I don’t have time to deal with finding out which one of you it is, so step forward now, and it’ll go slightly easier on you. Make me do a full investigation, and I’ll make sure all of you, including your families, pay for this,” he roared.
There was dead silence, as everybody processed his words.
Colton stepped forward and said, “We understand a ton of medical supplies have been ordered, but what’s been coming also are drugs. Somebody has been signing those forms.”
Kate was at his side, and she addressed the doctor she had seen earlier. “Ple
ase tell me that it wasn’t you.”
He looked at her in surprise. “Why do you care?”
“Because Parsons shot me, twice,” she said bitterly. “And I came here to get medical treatment. The three of us are the only ones who got shot and survived today,” she said. “Another man in town was murdered, and a second is likely to be taken out, even though he’s in prison. Parsons didn’t make it, and, as you can see from the rest gathered here, nobody else made it either. I don’t understand how anybody in the profession of saving lives could be dealing in drugs that are killing people.”
Several of the doctors said, “I didn’t have anything to do with it.”
However, Colton watched Kate as she studied the doctor she’d seen, her gaze steady, as if she knew something he didn’t. Casually Colton walked over and around, behind the doctors, as if going to the cabinet. And, just as he went past, he took a look at the doctor whose hand was in his pocket. Something was there. Colton pulled out the handgun he’d taken off Parsons and held it against the doctor’s ribs. “Pull your hand out gently,” he ordered. “Now.”
He pulled his hand out, and, sure enough, he had a handgun. “Of course I needed the handgun,” the doctor snapped. “You just brought a mess of dead men into my medical clinic. I have to be prepared for anything.”
“I wonder if that’s what you were protecting or if you were just waiting for an opportunity to get out of this. Even maybe shoot your way out,” Kate said quietly.
He continued to glare at her.
The commander addressed him now. “Brody?”
Brody and the commander glared at each other. And then the commander’s shoulders sagged. “Jesus, Brody. Why?”
Brody shrugged. “I needed the money.”
“But why?” the commander asked, lifting his shoulders. It was obvious from the interplay that they were friends and that this was a betrayal the commander hadn’t seen coming.
“Cheryl left me,” he said. “She took everything. The bank accounts, the house, the kids, the vehicles, literally everything. And since I’m the one with the paycheck, I’ll get stuck paying alimony to boot. The last time you told me to take a leave,” he said, “I didn’t have anywhere to go. I ended up staying in town and was approached by this group. They offered me a path to retirement that she couldn’t touch and enough spending money so I could go someplace on my days off without losing everything.”
“Instead you’ll lose it all anyway,” Kate said.
“Maybe so, but I want to make sure she doesn’t get more.”
“What about your kids?” Kate asked.
As if understanding something more was going on, Colton watched the interplay suspiciously.. “Just to be clear,” Colton said, “is anybody else in this department working with you?”
Brody shook his head. “No, nobody is.”
“Then go sit down,” the commander said. “We’ll do a full search and wait for the MPs to come and take you to the stockade.”
Brody smiled, looked at the commander and said, “You know me. That won’t do me for very long.”
“But you shouldn’t have done this,” the commander said. “I don’t have any damn choice in the matter.”
Brody nodded, then quick as a flash, he lifted his hand and sliced his throat. Blood spurted as he took an instinctive step back. Within seconds he was on his knees, a pool of blood forming around him. “Don’t try to stop it,” he said. “There’s no life for me after this. There was no life for me after Cheryl left anyway.” And he collapsed face-first.
The other doctors rushed forward, but the arterial bleeding was too much, too fast and the cut just too deep.
And they couldn’t save him.
When Colton stood back up, he walked over to Kate, opened his arms and just held her. “It’s all over with now,” he said. “It’s over—at least here.”
“Says you,” she said and turned to the commander. “Can I at least count on you to clean house?”
“Yes,” he said, “that you can count on. And, while this is all being dealt with,” he added, “let’s get your shoulder taken care of and get you back to your room. You too, Colton. Looks like that leg needs some attention.”
“And here I was hoping for at least a hot bowl of soup,” Kate said. “That storm is brutal out there.”
“I can handle that too.” The commander gave her a smile and patted her gently on her good shoulder. “The next time you come this way,” he said, “it will be a whole different story.”
“I can’t imagine it being much worse,” she whispered.
Chapter 15
It seemed like forever, but, in less than two hours, Kate was back at Colton’s room, after declining the doctor’s recommendation for her to stay in the sick bay. The damage to her shoulder had been cleaned up and repaired as much as possible.
“Is it finally bedtime?” she asked with a yawn. Outside she could hear the wind howling and banging against the windows.
“Yes,” Colton said, “and hopefully this time you’ll sleep for a long time.”
“Until the storm is over?”
“It can last for a couple days apparently,” he said, “and it doesn’t look to me like it’ll end anytime soon.”
“I guess, if we get to stay and veg out for a day or two, that’s okay.”
“And the commander did call the hospital, by the way, and George is fine. And so is his family.”
“Good,” she said. “What about the drug dealer guy?”
“He is still alive, and the police have extra security on him.”
“Good enough,” she said. She sagged down on Colton’s bed and looked up at the top bunk, which looked very difficult to access with a bum shoulder. “Tonight do you mind if I sleep down here?”
“Nope,” he said. “Let’s get that shirt off you. She had her outer shirt slung over her shoulders. “Did I hear someone say my bag had come in?” Then she noted it on the floor beside her. “Oh, good. Maybe a loose T-shirt is in there that I can wear for the night.”
“Or whatever makes you comfortable. But you should decide soon because that painkiller they gave you may hit you at any moment.”
With his help, she was completely stripped down, slipped under the covers and tucked up against the wall. “If you want to join me,” she said, “I won’t argue.”
“You need to rest. Besides, I might bump you and hurt your shoulder in the night.”
“Maybe,” she said, her voice drowsy and sleepy already. “Or I might bump your leg in the night. Or I might not even know you’re there.”
“I don’t know if my ego can handle that,” he said jokingly. “And my leg is fine. Besides, we’re both on painkillers.”
She smiled. “Your ego doesn’t need any stroking. It’s just fine.”
“It’s definitely healthy,” he said, “but I thought that after we were together last time. Then I just couldn’t forget about you. I kept trying, but it didn’t work.”
“Ditto,” she said, yawning. “Maybe we’ll have to try again.”
“I’m up for it.” Pulling the blanket up to her chin, he kissed her gently on the cheek and said, “Go to sleep. We’ll talk in the morning.” She closed her eyes and sank into a deep sleep. The trouble was, she didn’t stay asleep. She surfaced, went under, rolled over, moaned and went under again. Finally she lay here, shaking. “I don’t feel so good,” she whispered.
“I know,” he said, right beside her. She looked up to see Colton lying as far away on the bunk as he could.
“That can’t be comfortable,” she said, when she realized he was trying to give her space. “Your leg has to be aching, and this sleeping arrangement can’t help.”
“No,” he said, “but watching you toss and turn wasn’t good either.”
She rolled over and said, “Switch places with me,” and then, with her good shoulder down, she tucked up close to him. “This is much better.” He chuckled, and the rumble of laughter rolling up his chest made her smile. She stroked his
chest and said, “I had just enough sleep that I’m awake now.”
“But not enough sleep to keep you awake for long,” he said gently, tapping the tip of her nose. “Go back to sleep.”
“Maybe I don’t want to,” she said, sliding her hand across his chest, around his ribs and down onto his belly. His core muscles tightened, and she could feel the ridges of his abs. “You guys are all so damn fit,” she muttered.
“You’re looking pretty fine yourself.”
She smiled. “Not like you guys.”
“You don’t have to be though,” he said, as her hand strayed lower and lower. He grabbed it and said, “Don’t go starting something you can’t finish.”
“I’m just not sure how the logistics would work with our injuries,” she said. “I’m not in the greatest of shape right now, but I’m game if you can figure it out.”
He murmured, “Maybe you should wait until you’re feeling better.”
“And yet …” she said, her voice drifting dreamily. Her hand slid out from under his to glide across his hip to his muscled thighs. “I know just what would make me feel better.”
“How do you figure?” he asked, his voice catching in the back of his throat.
“Because some hurts are physical, and some hurts are emotional, and then there are those that are spiritual. Today was a really rough day. And although the physical part of me can’t heal as easily, you could do a lot to heal the other two.”
He tilted her head and whispered, “Are you sure?”
“Yes,” she said, “my soul needs this—and my heart. My body does too. It’s just a little more cautious since we’re both injured.”
“So we’ll take it slow,” he whispered. And he started by shifting so she lay flat on her back. “I don’t want you to move.”
“Not happening,” she said. “You’ve got too much of this gorgeous body for me not to touch it.”
He lowered his head, his lips leaving a moist trail across her skin as he moved from one breast to lick the nipple before suckling it deeply and then crossing to the next. She twisted beneath him, moaning gently, but he wouldn’t let her move much. He held her tight against him as he kissed and stroked, tasting and testing every inch of her until he came to the curve of her ribs, gently caressing, stroking and exploring, making up for the last four years they’d been apart.