Killed in Action

by Michael Sloan

  McCall stepped into the kitchenette and opened the refrigerator. It was stocked for a family of twelve. So was the freezer. He walked out into the main living area to meet up with Candy Annie.

  “You won’t starve for the next week.”

  “Is this guy a cowboy?”

  “It has been said,” McCall agreed wryly. “I’ve never been to his apartment before.”

  “He’s not living here?”

  “He’s out of the country.”

  “When is he coming back?”

  “It could be several weeks. I’ll find you a permanent place, but this will do for now. If you like it.”

  “I love it! But you’re sure it’s okay with your friend—I mean, your colleague—for me to stay here?”

  “I’ve told him about you. Mickey will be fine with it.”

  “Because you’ve saved his life more than once?”

  It felt like an odd thing for her to say, but then again, maybe it wasn’t. She was smart and canny for a girl who’d spent the last ten years underground. She’d helped him plant a bug on Borislav Kirov, a vicious Chechen nightclub boss whom McCall had been forced to kill. Candy Annie was fearless. But she was also overwhelmed. She looked around the living room again, then back at McCall, as if trying to make up her mind about something. Sunlight from the two windows overlooking Second Avenue was streaming through her sheer blouse. McCall almost sighed.

  “When did you take off your bra?” he asked, like a scolding father.

  “I don’t like it. It chafes my breasts.”

  She took a deep breath and walked toward him, unbuttoning her blouse as she did so.

  “Annie, what are you doing?”

  “I have nothing to give you but myself. And, really, I don’t even have any experience in that. I only had sex once down in the tunnels, and that was a very long time ago. I enjoyed it, but I don’t think I did it very well. It was over very fast.”

  “That probably wasn’t your fault. Annie…”

  She stopped right in front of him. Her blouse was unbuttoned all the way now. She put McCall’s hands gently on her exposed breasts.

  “Let me try to thank you,” she said softly.

  McCall would have been tempted if it had been anyone else but Candy Annie. He slipped his hands off her breasts and gently buttoned up her shirt.

  Tears suddenly brimmed in her eyes.

  “You don’t want me?”

  “Friends don’t take advantage of each other.”

  “It would be exciting. And wonderful.”

  “It would be both of those things. But not with me.”

  “Because you’re old enough to be my father?”

  McCall thought of his young Czech “angel” Andel, with whom he’d spent a night in Prague. She had also dismissed their age difference. But this was different. Candy Annie was arousing, in a sweet, almost innocent way, but it wasn’t going to happen.

  “I’m here to be a friend. That’s all I can be to you.”

  She nodded, as if she understood. “Because you’re too damaged right now.”

  “If you want to put it that way.”

  She threw her arms around him. “I’m not angry. Or embarrassed. Or hurt. Because you told me all things are possible, right?” She broke the embrace and smiled at him through her tears. “And here I am, in your colleague’s apartment, starting my new life. How cool is that?”

  “Very cool. The next order of business is to find you a job.”

  That thought hit Candy Annie like a physical force. She stepped away from him, squeezing her hands together.

  “What kind of a job?”

  “I’ll come up with some ideas.” He wrote something down on a sheet of paper. “This is my cell phone number. Call it whenever you need to, day or night. Tomorrow we’ll get you a smartphone of your own.”

  She made a rueful face. “I probably won’t be smart enough to use it.”

  “Sure, you will.”

  Candy Annie noticed a picture on the mantelpiece. There was only one. Mickey Kostmayer was standing with his arm around the shoulders of a young brunette woman in front of the La Casa Sena restaurant in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The brunette looked relaxed and happy, but Kostmayer’s smile was forced. Candy Annie picked up the photograph.

  “Is this your colleague?”

  “That’s him.”

  “Who is the young woman with him?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “I don’t know,” McCall said.

  * * *

  Kostmayer lay on the concrete floor in utter darkness. He was alone in the cell, which was unusual—normally six or eight North Korean prisoners were incarcerated with him. He had lost twenty pounds and was suffering from hypothermia. At least he wasn’t hanging in the shackles on the wall, where he’d been forced to spend at least twelve hours a day. He welcomed the respite. He knew the reason. The North Korean prison guards were regrouping. They’d been embarrassed by the raid led by Kostmayer and Granny. Kostmayer’s band of mercenaries had been overpowered and killed, and Kostmayer and Granny had been captured. They’d been taken, along with the remaining Korean men, women, and children, to this new camp, but it was derelict. It would not be long before they were moved to a newer, stronger camp. But he and Granny had got over one hundred souls out, most of them entire families. They’d been picked up in three large AVIC AC391 Chinese helicopters and flown over the border into China. Kostmayer counted that as a victory.

  He winced as he turned over. Every breath he took seared pain through his lungs. He felt alternately hot and cold and wondered if he’d contracted pneumonia. There was no doctor at the prison facility—at least, not for any of the prisoners. Many of them died of starvation and illness and torture. Kostmayer had lost touch with Granny. The North Korean prison guards had separated them right away. He thought they’d taken Granny out and had simply shot him. But he had no real intel.

  Kostmayer’s mind drifted to Robert McCall. He’d seen his ad before he’d left New York. It had made him smile. If anyone could help ordinary people with nowhere else to turn, it was McCall. The Equalizer. Kostmayer liked the name McCall had chosen. But it wouldn’t do Kostmayer any good. His odds couldn’t be equalized.

  Not even McCall could get him out of this place.

  Kostmayer had one way out. It wouldn’t come today. Or tomorrow. But soon, because the North Korean prison guards would have to move the prisoners and shut down the camp before there was an official inspection. Kostmayer had heard them talking about it. That was where he’d heard that Granny was dead. They didn’t know he spoke Korean. He had one chance of escape—and he had to be strong enough to take it when the time came.

  CHAPTER 6

  The RPG burst into the outdoor marketplace with blinding intensity, but for a split second everything he’d been looking at remained etched on his retinas. Tiers of colorful fruits and vegetables in big wooden carts. Multicolored grains in round wooden barrels. Metal and copper pots and pans stacked fifteen feet on either side of a halal meat market. Glittering necklaces were stretched out on wooden tables covered with white sheets. Acres of silks were laid out on the cobblestones. Carpets standing upright on stands eighteen feet high. He’d noted little oddities here and there: a vendor’s stall of ancient Singer sewing machines; chickens hanging from metal hooks next to delicate cages of birds—babblers, nightingales, sandpipers, even one peregrine falcon; twisted bicycles with oversize wheels, all flat, lying discarded. The narrow marketplace in Al Tabqah was crowded with Syrian villagers, men in white Didashah one-piece robes, some of them talking on Apple iPhone 6s, women in abayas with tightly pinned hijab scarves covering their hair and neck, mostly in black, but here and there a splash of blue and red. Kids were tearing around the vendor stalls and tables dressed in jeans, T-shirts or dress shirts, hoodies and Windbreakers, Nikes or bare feet. The air was filled with bargaining and cajoling, scolding, and heated dissension over cost and quality and freshness.
<
br />   All of it lingered for that split second—

  And then it was gone in an instant.

  The blast from the RPG turned all of it into a searing white frame.

  The shock of the blast hit him with physical force. It was followed by assault-rifle fire. Captain Josh Coleman, US Army, heaved over the fruit cart he’d been standing behind. He was in his early twenties, with an almost angelic face, but a seasoned veteran. He heard shouts of “Daesh!” from the villagers. Bullets splintered along the cart. One of them grazed Josh’s forehead, spitting blood down into his eyes. He carried an M4 SOPMOD Block II rifle. He fired it at the enemy before a hand grabbed his shoulder and hauled him down to the ground.

  There were at least twenty insurgents, most of them in black, all of them wearing what looked like close-fitting gray skullcaps on their heads and gray material wrapped around their faces, leaving only their eyes exposed. They had jumped out of two stolen US Army Humvees and a Ural-4320 off-road truck, all flying the black insurgent flag. The Jihadists carried AK-47-M assault rifles. They fired indiscriminately into the panicked villagers, bullets exploding through merchants and women, children gunned down without mercy.

  Three Sham 2 armored cars and one Sham 1 armored truck had already driven into the other side of the market square. Rebel Syrian troops poured out of them, firing on the insurgents with their own Hungarian assault rifles. The Jihadists were caught by surprise, firing back. Two of them threw hand grenades. Josh recognized them as RGD-5s, which propelled 350 fragments over a five-meter kill radius. Explosions erupted through the crowd, slaughtering more innocents. The Rebels fired two of their own RPGs. The first one just missed the Ural truck, but the second scored a direct hit on one of the commandeered Humvees. It sailed up into the air, turning almost gracefully before crashing down again, twisted and smoking. An NSV machine gun opened up from the Ural truck, scattering more of the villagers and the Rebel troops.

  Colonel Michael G. Ralston still had hold of Josh’s right shoulder. Ralston was in his late forties, black hair shot through with gray, a lean man with compassionate eyes. Both of them were dressed in Army multipatterned camouflage. Both had allowed their beards to grow while in Syria. The colonel was also armed. He made a gesture to Josh with his hand: Slow down your breathing. Josh nodded. There was no question that Gunner had saved his life. If you’re in the Army, and your initials are M.G., you were called Machine Gun. In Ralston’s case, it had been shortened to Gunner. The nickname had started at The Citadel and continued through his active service career, into his work in antiterrorism, and had followed him here with a US Army contingent sent to Syria to advise the Rebel army in their fight against the Insurgents.

  More gunfire ripped through the burned-cordite air. Gunner motioned toward the doorway to one of the wooden fruit shops. He held up the fingers of his right hand and counted them off—

  In four, three, two, one—

  They ran, firing their M4 rifles as they scrambled for the safety of the doorway. They made it inside and dove to the ground as more bullets exploded through the space for the window. There was no glass. The American officers crawled to the windowsill and fired again at the Insurgent patrol, which was itself scrambling to get out of multiple lines of fire. The Syrian Rebels surged through the decimated square, stepping over the bodies of the villagers.

  Five members of the US observation unit—which numbered twelve Army personnel altogether, including Gunner’s XO, who was a chief warrant officer, and nine NCOs—had not been in the market square at the time of the attack. They were assisting a small UN contingent in the neighboring village of Alhora. The rest of the US unit here in Al Tabqah would have fallen back to the Syrian BTR-152 armored personal carrier that had brought them to the village.

  Captain Josh Coleman looked out into the marketplace. Most of the vendors’ stalls had been lacerated with bullets. Fruits, vegetables, spices, jewelery, pieces of wicker baskets were strewn among the corpses. The acres of silk were bloodstained. Birds from splintered cages were flying above the carnage. The villagers still alive stirred and tried to crawl away or get up and run. Some of them were missing limbs. The children who’d survived were kneeling right where they’d stopped, too scared to move.

  Josh aimed his rifle at the retreating Insurgents. Gunner put a strong hand on his arm.

  “Let the Rebels force them back. That’s what we’ve trained them for.”

  A flash of movement near one of the shattered carts caught Josh’s attention.

  A little girl, probably six or seven, had popped up from a mound of bodies and started to run. She was wearing a red shirt and old Levi’s jeans and might as well have had a target on her back.

  Bullets kicked up the ground around her.

  Josh was out the fruit-shop doorway and running through the market before Gunner could stop him. Josh fired his rifle, taking out one of the Jihadists. A Rebel soldier took out two more. When Josh reached the little girl, she flinched. He hugged her to him and looked down. A woman in her thirties, presumably her mother, was dead. Her father stirred, but he was missing an arm and blood was pumping out of the stump of his shoulder. Josh couldn’t get to him. Too risky with the child in his arms. And the father would be dead within seconds.

  Josh gripped the little girl tightly. “You run with me, okay?”

  He wasn’t sure she understood English, but she stared at him with big wide eyes and nodded. Bent low, shielding her with his body, Josh ran back toward the fruit shop. Gunner was in the doorway, firing his assault rifle. Behind Josh more units of Syrian Rebels were pouring into the square. Josh made it to the doorway. Gunner pushed him and the little girl inside, fired one more burst, then followed them. Josh sat the little girl down on a bunch of empty fruit sacks, piled up four feet, and took her hands.

  “You stay here with us. Don’t go outside. Okay?”

  She nodded. Josh ran back to the window opening with Gunner.

  “We should have had intel on that Jihadist patrol. The area was supposed to be clear.”

  “Shit happens,” Gunner said with no inflection in his voice, but Josh knew him well enough to hear the suppressed anger in it. “We’d better get your head seen to. I’ve got an emergency trauma dressing and surgical tape in my kit.”

  Something on the edge of the market square caught Josh’s eye.

  One of the Jihadists was being hauled up into the second commandeered US Humvee. Something about him was familiar. Josh stared through the drifting smoke. The Insurgent’s head had been grazed by a bullet and he’d torn off his gray balaclava and face-covering cloth.

  He turned in profile.

  The breath seemed to go out of Josh’s body, like someone had stepped hard on his chest. The Humvee turned in a choking cloud of dust and drove away with the Ural truck. They left behind the hulk of the first burning Humvee and fifteen of the Jihadists lying dead on the western edge of the marketplace.

  Josh’s reaction hadn’t been lost on Gunner. “You recognized one of them?”

  Josh nodded. “Can’t be sure. One of the guys on our terrorist list. Means he didn’t die in that air strike last Sunday. I’ll show you the photograph when we get back to base.”

  All firing had ceased. Silence settled for a moment over the decimated marketplace like a damp shroud. Then shouting and wailing could be heard as more Al Tabqah villagers were on their feet, running to relatives and friends, digging out those still alive. The Syrian Rebel troops were helping. None of the Sham vehicles had gone chasing after the Insurgents. They knew better than to do that. They’d be outnumbered by the time they had overtaken them.

  A woman came through the doorway of the fruit shop. Her black abaya was covered in blood, but obviously it was not hers. The little girl flew into her arms. Josh had looked at the wrong woman lying dead on the cobblestones. This was the little girl’s mother.

  “Take the moment,” Gunner said quietly. “There aren’t enough of them.”

  Josh looked at the mother and daughter, hold
ing on to each other fiercely in the bright doorway, the deadly slaughter laid out beyond them.

  He realized, somewhat ironically, that he might be a little late calling his mother.

  CHAPTER 7

  McCall picked up a cruising cab on Second Avenue and dialed Kostmayer’s cell phone. It rang three times, then Kostmayer’s voice came on: “Hey. This is Mickey. Either I’m not here or I don’t want to talk to you. Leave a message.” Typical Kostmayer. There was a beep, but McCall didn’t leave a message. He hadn’t expected a call back, but he’d hoped for a text, a coded email, a whisper within the intelligence community about the North Korean mission. There’d been nothing.

  He didn’t like it.

  The cab pulled up in front of the Liberty Belle Hotel on Sixty-Sixth Street. It had once been a grand old lady with marble skirts that flared out for half the block. Now the paint had faded, the gilt was tarnished, and more stone had been chipped away as if some super-rodents were nibbling at it. Sam Kinney had added the slim neon saying LIBERTY BELLE HOTEL complete with the crack down its side. McCall thought it cheapened the place. All the hotel needed now was Tom Bodett waiting in one of the rooms to leave the light on for you.

  McCall got out of the cab and paid the driver as his cell phone rang. Not his usual iPhone, but the second one he carried with the Equalizer number.

  “Yes?”

  “Is this the Equalizer?” The woman’s voice was strong and didn’t have the melodious delirium of some of the women who had dialed his number. He could pretty well tell the crank calls in the first few syllables.

  “Yes. Tell me your problem.”

  Her words came out in a rush. “My name is Linda Hathaway. I live in an apartment building in the East Village. My daughter is three years old and she’s suffering and no one will help me. I don’t want to go into details on the phone. Would you come over here?”

  In what McCall thought of ironically as his spy days, this would have been an obvious trap. But he was out of that life now.