by Mike Lawson
When they were of age, Kelly and Nelson joined the army for the same reason: the army, economically and socially, was a step up. They discovered each other in boot camp, and a lifelong bond was formed—a bond forged in the heat of combat, shared hardship, and pain.
They sat for a few minutes in silence after Fiona left their Afghani jail cell, until Nelson finally said what they were both thinking. “We could get the ranch.”
Four months before they met Fiona, they had taken some time off from Romar-Slade to go fly-fishing in Montana. While they were there they saw the ranch—a hundred and fifty acres of paradise on the Bitterroot River with a view of Trapper Peak that was literally priceless. It was for sale, and when they asked the old woman selling it how much she wanted and she told them the price, they didn’t say it was too much—it was simply beyond their reach, and always would be.
The ranch became their fantasy. If they ever won the lotto; if they ever came upon that buried pot of gold … They talked, and not idly, about stealing heroin from the Afghani politician they had been hired to protect. It would have been difficult but doable—but they had no idea how to turn heroin into money after they had it, and they knew the drug business was even more dangerous than the Taliban.
If they accepted Fiona’s offer, however, fantasy could become reality. They could retire before the age of forty, rich for the first time in their lives. But they didn’t really care about money, per se. They didn’t want luxury cars or yachts or designer clothes or a spacious, palatial home. They didn’t want to travel the world as pampered tourists; they’d already seen most of the world. What they wanted was a plot of land to call their own, a plot large enough to feel like they were living in a world of their own. They wanted space. They wanted a place where they didn’t have to see other people on a daily basis, a place where they could fish and hunt and walk their dogs, a place where eagles soared and wolves still roamed and where they could sit on their front porch and gaze upon a mountain peak and pretend it was theirs alone. And all they had to do to get what they wanted was become assassins—though the word assassin was, quite frankly, too glamorous for what Fiona wanted them to do.
Kelly and Nelson had killed a lot of people during their army careers, and some of those people had been noncombatants—collateral damage, in military parlance. And on a couple of missions they performed while they were in Delta Force, they’d been sent in to execute terrorists and had been told not to leave witnesses, no matter how innocent those witnesses might appear to be—and they followed their orders. They could rationalize those killings, however; they were soldiers and it was the politicians who chose the targets and set the agenda.
When they left Delta and became mercenaries for a private security company, they did it for money, pure and simple. They knew if they stayed in the army—assuming they weren’t killed—they’d end up training other soldiers before they were pensioned out, and the pensions would be adequate, but no more than adequate. So they signed on with Romar-Slade, who tripled their army salaries, and in return, they protected a corrupt, opium-growing Afghani politician. And when they killed to defend the politician, they knew they were often killing his business and political rivals and not enemies of the state. And they could live with that.
They did regret killing the three children in the roadside house—but they didn’t weep, they didn’t get drunk to dull the pain, they didn’t toss and turn in their sleep. Their emotions had been cauterized by their childhoods, and they had seen and caused so much death during their careers that a dead human being made no more of an impression on them than a decaying log lying on the forest floor. And, from their perspective, it was the Taliban who were to blame for the children’s deaths; it was the Taliban who had been callous enough to start a firefight in a house containing kids.
But they didn’t kill for the sake of killing; they took no pleasure from the act. They weren’t bullies; they didn’t torment the weak. And they didn’t kill innocents unless the innocents just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time—like the three children in the roadside house. They knew, however, that if they went to work for Fiona, they would be crossing a line they’d never crossed before. They would go from being hard and sometimes brutal men to truly bad men. More important, they knew they would be … diminished.
On the other hand, if they didn’t accept Fiona’s offer they knew they might spend years in an Afghani prison. Their employer was ready to sacrifice them as a matter of political expediency and for the sake of the bottom line. They also knew that the only marketable skill they had was killing, and that if they didn’t take Fiona’s deal they would spend the rest of their lives working for paramilitary organizations—assuming they ever got out of jail—and the ranch in Montana would continue to be nothing more than a dream.
Yes, they knew all these things, and they thought all these things, but didn’t speak to any of them. So when Nelson said, “We could get the ranch,” Kelly’s response had been, “It’s the only way we’ll ever get it.”
“Then I guess we do it,” Nelson said.
“Yeah, I guess we do.” Then Kelly held out his fist and Nelson tapped Kelly’s fist with his own and said, “Hooah.”
“Yeah, hooah,” Kelly had said, the word no louder than a whisper.
The morning after they visited the Warwick Care Center outside Pinchollo, Kelly and Nelson slept in late and had a leisurely breakfast as they waited for the nurse to wake up from his tranquilizer-induced sleep and discover the three dead bodies in the Quonset huts. At nine-fifteen, the satellite phone rang and the nurse, following prescribed procedures, told Kelly that three of the residents had passed away during the night. One death wouldn’t have surprised him, but three… . Well, mother of God, what a shock.
Yes, what a shock, Kelly said. Kelly told the man that a helicopter would arrive sometime that morning, and the nurse wasn’t surprised by this. He had no idea where the helicopter was coming from or how fast it could fly; all he knew was that he worked for a wealthy American company and they could do marvelous things. Kelly told the nurse to place the bodies in the body bags provided for this situation, and then called the helicopter pilot that Hobson had hired.
Kelly gave the pilot the GPS coordinates of their campsite, then went back to reading while Nelson made a halfhearted effort to catch a fish he’d seen in the stream. Two hours later, the chopper arrived and picked up Kelly—there was no need for Nelson to go—and flew to the Warwick facility. While the bodies were being loaded into the helicopter, Kelly spent some time talking to the nurse, a short, brown, moon-faced man named Juan Carlos. His last name was unpronounceable.
“I don’t understand how this could have happened,” Juan Carlos said.
“I know,” Kelly said, shaking his head sadly. “Are any of the other people presenting symptoms?”
“Some have headaches. Some say their stomachs are upset.”
“Hmm,” Kelly said. “You could have a carbon monoxide leak coming from the generators. Let’s go take a look at them.”
They did.
“Everything looks fine,” Kelly said, “but carbon monoxide’s the only thing I can think of. I better have somebody come out and inspect the generators and the ventilation systems. In the meantime, keep the windows in the Quonset huts open.”
“But we’ve never had a problem with the generators in the past,” Juan Carlos said.
“Well,” Kelly said, “it may have nothing to do with the generators. These people have issues or they wouldn’t be here. And they’ve been through a lot; they’ve suffered a lot. The people that died were probably just weaker than the others—weaker immune systems or something. Or maybe they had some sort of preexisting condition we didn’t know about. Things like this happen, so don’t beat yourself up, and, for God’s sake, don’t talk about this to anyone. If some sort of investigation was started … Well, you know, that could be the end of
this operation here.”
Juan Carlos wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer. René Lambert must not have been able to find anyone else in the region with the medical background needed to manage the facility. And it wasn’t good to hire folks that were too bright. But even Juan Carlos was smart enough to understand that he could lose his cushy fuckin’ job if anybody made a fuss about the deaths that had occurred. Fortunately, there wasn’t anyone likely to investigate, and the people who died didn’t have relatives who would ask questions.
“I’ll pray for them,” Juan Carlos said, crossing himself.
“Yeah, me too,” Kelly said.
The chopper dropped Kelly back off at the campsite. He and Nelson would now drive to Arequipa, catch a charter flight back to the states, and then proceed to their place in Montana. The three bodies would be taken to a mortuary in Lima, placed in vacuum-sealed aluminum coffins, then flown to Thailand; it was easier to bring corpses into Thailand than the U.S. After the autopsies were performed, certain tissue samples would be sent on to Dr. Ballard’s lab.
Unless there was a security issue of some sort, or they had to get medical supplies to Lambert or perform the function they had just performed in Peru, there really wasn’t much more for them to do, and Fiona had no problem with their remaining in Montana until she had another task for them. With any luck at all, they wouldn’t have to leave their ranch for a few months.
Kelly just hoped that this DeMarco character, and whatever the hell he was doing with Brian Kincaid, didn’t screw things up.
12
The oncologist was a small, dark-haired woman about Emma’s age, and Emma imagined that during the course of her career she had told a lot of people they were going to die.
She wondered if she was going to be one of them.
Emma had always been extraordinarily healthy. In part, this was due to her lifestyle. She exercised fanatically, and always had. She was naturally slim but ate in such a manner as to stay that way. She also had good genes: the people on both her mother’s and her father’s side of her family tended to live long lives. She had been wounded twice during her career, once critically, but had never had a major illness. The only noncombat-related operation she ever had was when she was six and they removed her tonsils. She had low cholesterol, low blood pressure, and no sign of osteoporosis. Menopause had been a bitch, but then it was for every woman.
And then, out of the blue, came the cancer.
When she heard the prognosis, she told herself that she had lived a marvelous life, a meaningful life. She had been loved and had known the joys of love. She had done things few women ever have the opportunity to do, and she had served her country well and honorably. She had no regrets; there was nothing she felt had been left undone. She had expected to live much longer, at least another twenty years, but if she died this year … well, she could accept that. What she could not accept was being an invalid—being shackled to a bed, filled with narcotics, too weak to think, much less move. She would never allow herself to get to the point where living was nothing more than one labored, pain-filled breath followed by another. If she couldn’t live her life as she had always lived it—vigorously and independently and uncompromisingly—she would end it.
After she was diagnosed, she had the first operation, followed by a second, and then all the drugs. The side effects of the drugs had seemed worse than the disease. And now it was time to hear the verdict.
“I think we got it all,” the oncologist said. “I think you’re going to be all right. It could come back and if it does … Well, you know. I want to see you again in six months, but for now … you’re a lucky woman.”
She hadn’t cried when she heard she had cancer, and she wouldn’t cry now that she was being told she was cancer-free. She simply exhaled and said, “Thank you, Doctor.”
But when she stepped outside the hospital, it hit her. She felt light-headed and her knees almost buckled. She sat down on a bench next to a little white-haired, bright-eyed bird of a woman, a woman who was ninety if she was a day.
Everything suddenly seemed so vivid: the sky was an incredible shade of blue; the trees were greener than she remembered green ever being. She could hear a child laughing somewhere behind her, and the sound was like something an angel would make.
Then, for some reason that couldn’t be explained in any rational way, the old lady sitting next to her reached out and took Emma’s hand in her small frail one and said, “Isn’t it a glorious day.”
Then she cried.
DeMarco knew that she’d been sick but he had no idea what was wrong with her and, being Emma, she refused to tell him—and that really pissed him off.
He found out when he went to see her one day, and Christine answered the door. Christine was Emma’s lover, and she and DeMarco had nothing in common and they didn’t particularly like each other. Christine was that odd combination of ditz and genius; she had a master’s degree in mathematics but earned her living as a cellist with the National Symphony. She was cultured—just ask her, she’d tell you—and considered DeMarco to be a Neanderthal: he was boorishly heterosexual, and given a choice between a good book and a baseball game, he’d pick the baseball game. She also considered him dangerous, because he would periodically drag Emma into his cases, and once Emma had been tortured and almost killed when she helped him.
What all this meant was that he and Christine rarely talked and certainly never confided in each other. So when he went to Emma’s house that day and saw Christine’s eyes swollen from crying, he almost didn’t ask what was bothering her. He figured she and Emma had probably had a fight—Emma couldn’t be easy to live with—or that maybe something related to her snooty orchestra job had gone awry. But his intuition told him that whatever she’d been bawling about was more significant than a lovers’ spat. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
And she told him: Emma was in the hospital and it was serious. Really serious.
“Well, what’s wrong with her, for Christ’s sake? What hospital is she in?”
“I can’t tell you, Joe.” She rarely called him Joe. “You know how she is. She wouldn’t want me to.” And he didn’t argue with her, or not for long, because he knew she was right: no one protected her privacy more than Emma.
He’d met Emma when he just happened to be in the right place at the right time and saved her life—which was why she was his friend and often helped him—but although he had known her for more than a decade, he still knew very little about her. He knew that she had worked for the DIA—the Defense Intelligence Agency—and, at the time she retired, she had been very high up in the intelligence community. He knew she was gay but had a daughter, but never knew if she gave birth to her daughter or if she was adopted. She was wealthy—she had to be to afford her home in McLean—but she would never disclose the source of her wealth. She was an enigma in so many ways, and delighted in being so.
So it wasn’t hard for him to understand that Emma wouldn’t want him to know about her illness. After that day, he called periodically and spoke to Christine; he never spoke to Emma but at least he knew she was still alive. But today when he called, Christine sounded different.
“How’s she doing?” he asked, and Christine gushed out the answer: “She’s doing great. She’s going to be okay.” And then Christine started crying and couldn’t stop, so DeMarco hung up and drove to Emma’s place.
She was out in her backyard when he arrived. (Emma was fanatical about her yard.) She had just cut a red rose from a bush and was standing there looking at the flower. DeMarco thought there was something odd about her posture, her attitude, something—it was like she was seeing a rose for the first time in her life.
But she looked fine. She looked like she always had: tall and slim, though maybe a little paler than normal. Her gray-blonde hair was cut short, feathered the way she usually wore it. Her features had always struck him as a
ristocratic: a perfect straight nose, thin lips, a high brow. She looked like who she was: intelligent, competent, and aloof. She had the lightest blue eyes he’d ever seen.
“Well, you look okay,” he said.
“I am okay.”
“Are you going to tell me what’s been wrong with you?”
“No. It’s none of your business.”
“Yes, it is, goddamnit! It is my business. I’m your friend. I care about you. ”
“Well, too bad. I’m fine. Why are you here?”
“To see you and …”
“And what?”
“Do you know anything about an outfit called the Warwick Foundation?”
“Isn’t this rose just perfect,” she said, gazing at the flower in her hand. Before DeMarco could respond, she said, “Of course I’ve heard of Warwick, but …”
She said this like any intelligent, well-informed person would know about the foundation—and thus it was understandable that DeMarco didn’t.
“… but I’m not intimately familiar with the operation.”
“Do you know anybody who is?” DeMarco asked.
“Yes,” she said—and that’s all she said.
God, she was exasperating. “Well, do you think maybe you could call this person and get me an appointment?”
“Has it ever occurred to you that you can probably find whatever you need on the Internet and without having to bother my friends?”
“Aw, gimme a break. I just need a little background, and I don’t feel like spending a hundred hours on a computer.”