A darkness coalesced and pooled in the passenger seat. In a moment, Reynolds sat there uncomfortably, shifting as if his skin was too tight.
He waited for Book to start the engine. “So, we going back to the office or what?” he grumbled.
But Book was far away, wet fantasies dancing behind his eyes, thinking about what he’d get to do to Bell if she turned out to be on the wrong team after all.
FOURTEEN
We were waiting in the hallway outside the rally when I got The Fear. I thought it was the speed coming up on top of the ether, but my molars weren’t grinding the way they usually do. Something was different. I saw one of Nixon’s flunkies nearby, a young guy in a cheap suit, giving me the eye. I’ll rack any lawyer with a quick shot to the nuts if I think it’s necessary, but this one was different. Just a kid, but with that Hitlerian air of certainty so many of the Nixon youth carry. The way he looked at me made me think he was genuinely dangerous. It could have been the drugs, but I swear the bad mojo rose off this guy like smoke. I turned away to wipe the sweat out of my eyes, and when I looked back, he was gone. Maybe he’d never been there at all.
Jesus. I needed whiskey. I went in search of the bar.
—Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72(redacted in later editions)
Bell looked embarrassed, but she was getting her color back.
“Sorry,” she said, smiling weakly. “I’m really not such a girl most of the time. Would you believe I was top of my class at the Farm?”
They were at a bar located near the closest Metro station. Zach offered to get her a coffee when they left the morgue. She said she needed something a little stronger.
They both sat, Bell with a half-empty glass of Scotch, Zach with a beer.
“It’s normal to be freaked out by this stuff. Believe me,” he said. “The day it stops being weird, then you start to worry.”
“You seem to handle it pretty well.”
“Hey, the first time I met Cade I peed my pants,” Zach said, then immediately wished he hadn’t.
“You know, I was a little surprised to see you with Cade,” she said.
“Me?” Zach was mildly offended, even if he wasn’t sure why. “Why would you be surprised?”
“You’re not as secret as you think. There are all kinds of rumors. Cade is sort of a scary story in the intel world. Like an urban legend. Or a joke. You know, ‘Better watch out or the vampire will get you.’ Then you showed up with him. I knew Cade had a human . . .”
Please don’t say sidekick, Zach thought.
“. . . handler. But I expected some kind of thick-skulled FBI burnout, some guy who’s more afraid of retirement than death.”
“That was the old guy,” Zach said.
“What?”
“Nothing. So I didn’t look like what you expected.”
“Yeah. I thought someone like you would have something to live for.”
He wasn’t sure what to say to that. “What about you? You said you were CIA before you were an Arch—before you joined Archer/Andrews?”
She grimaced at him. “I’ve heard the nickname. Don’t worry. I don’t mind. Don’t repeat that to Hewitt or Reynolds, though.”
“Really? They seemed as cuddly as a room full of kittens.”
She rolled her eyes. “You know what we do for a living, right? Love and kindness aren’t high on the job requirements.”
“Then why did you get into this?” He was genuinely curious.
“Oh, I probably started with the usual ideals,” she said. “Patriotism. Nine-eleven. Saving the world from the forces of evil. That’s why I joined the CIA. My talents pointed in that direction, so I thought it was the best way to serve.”
“But you quit and joined Archer/Andrews.”
“It’s not that complicated, really. Every morning they tell you you’re saving the world. But there are only so many nights you can come home to a cheap apartment on the corner of Crackwhore and Homicide, deciding which bills to pay this month, before you say, screw it. Sometimes saving the world isn’t enough.”
She saw the look on his face. “You disapprove, I take it.”
“Not my place,” he said carefully. “I was shanghaied into this. If I had the chance, I’d probably bolt, too.”
“Would you really?”
“No,” he admitted. “If saving the world’s not enough, then nothing else is, either.”
“Don’t judge me,” she warned. “I’m just doing what I can to survive. A/A is a necessary evil. You worked in politics. You of all people should know there are shades of gray.”
“Not for me,” Zach said. “Not anymore. Trust me. Those are human ideas. But good and evil—they’re not just human. They don’t belong solely to us. They’re real. They’re solid. And sometimes, they’ve got teeth.”
“And you’re going to stand on the ramparts and hold the line,” she said, smiling at him in a strange way. “I never would have pegged you for a crusader, Zach.”
Zach was suddenly uncomfortable. He’d shared national secrets with Bell, but this felt like actually revealing something. “Yeah, well. You take enough blows to the head, anything can happen.”
She gave him a what-the-hell smile. Her glass was empty. There was no trace of nausea or fear now. She was nothing but the competent operative again.
“I can’t afford to get too philosophical,” she said. “I’m one of the only women in a company full of spooks and soldiers. Worse, I’m in a command position. Ninety percent of the guys think I’ve fucked my way into my job, and the other ten percent think I’m a dyke. Who’s fucked her way into her job. I cannot let my guard down for a second. Because I can’t have any of these men seeing me as a target. I have to remain totally untouchable. Or I become a victim, waiting to happen.”
Zach felt like he’d skipped a page somehow. She looked right at him.
“So I don’t get much of a chance to date, if you understand what I’m saying.”
Zach didn’t. But he said, “I think so.”
She stood up. Zach looked puzzled. She rolled her eyes at him again.
“Let’s go.”
Zach finally caught on.
“This might not be a good idea,” he said.
She laughed. “No shit. It’s a terrible idea. I know there’s a time and place, but. You’re a pretty decent guy. So. Well. Tomorrow we may die and all that.”
She waited.
“Probably lots of reasons why we shouldn’t do this.”
“Dozens,” she said.
For some reason, Zach couldn’t think of a single one.
He got up and followed her out the door.
IT HAD BEEN A WHILE. Inside his apartment, it took all his control to keep from mauling Bell as he tore off her shirt. His fingers fumbled as he tried to work the buttons on her pants.
She shoved him off, smiling. Barefoot, she pulled down her pants and underwear, shimmying her hips a little.
Zach stared at her.
There was always something unreal, something impossibly compelling, about seeing a woman naked. Zach figured it must be coded into the straight male’s DNA. It didn’t matter who the man was, if a woman bent over, revealing a flash of cleavage, the cup of a bra—he’d look. Greedily searching with his eyes, reduced to a kid in junior high again. Just needing to see that little bit of flesh, that uncharted, unknown expanse of skin.
Bell’s eyes laughed at him. But she didn’t move. She watched him watching her.
Her skin was gorgeous. Flawless. Like something out of the description of a heroine in a Victorian novel. Her breasts moved slightly as her breath came faster. His eyes traveled up and down her body.
She stood there, very still, giving him a better look. He knew he shouldn’t stare; it was juvenile, it was stupid and unimpressive. And yet he kept looking.
Bell stepped over to him and peeled off his shirt, one button at a time. She traced the line of his jaw, his neck, with one finger, drawing it down his chest,
her eyes locked to his the entire time.
Zach was so hard it hurt. He couldn’t take it anymore. He grabbed Bell and fell with her onto the bed.
His pants were down, and he was stumbling over them, trying to get them off over his shoes.
She began laughing openly at him then, pure and happy. He didn’t care.
He slid into her like they’d been designed for each other. He was barely hanging on. He rose up above her—Shit. Condom? Fuck it.—and looked again into her eyes. They were wild, the grin on her face something animal now.
He found control he didn’t think existed inside himself. She pumped her hips, pulling him deeper, locking her ankles at the small of his back.
Before he knew it, they were both slick with sweat. His mouth found hers. He felt her teeth against his own, his tongue and hers, tangled and darting back and forth.
He could not possibly hold back any longer. His body was pushing on its own now, his mind only on her skin, on the feel of her, on her taste.
Their bodies clapped together like applause, faster and faster.
He came first. It felt like his spine snapped clean, his mind emptied and he felt some great tide lifting him.
She wasn’t done. She didn’t unlock her legs, and she slammed into him, as if ordering him to stay hard. He still felt stiff as a board. He went along for the ride.
She tipped her head back, sucked in a deep breath, then opened her mouth, showing those lovely white teeth again, and laughed as she came.
Or maybe she was laughing the whole time.
FIFTEEN
Summer 1981—Boston, Massachusetts, and elsewhere—A wave of sightings of clowns who terrorize children and attempt to kidnap them reported in several cities and states. Sightings continue to the present day.
—BRIEFING BOOK: CODE NAME: NIGHTMARE PET
ABOVE THE GULF OF ADEN, OFF THE COAST OF DJIBOUTI
Corpsman Trevor Noonan was in way over his head, and he knew it. The Marine on the stretcher was dying. They were still a good hundred miles from the aircraft carrier with doctors who could save him. And Noonan didn’t have the first damned clue what was wrong with him.
It was supposed to be a simple gunshot wound. That’s why they didn’t waste a doctor on the trip. He could keep the Marine stable.
He wasn’t really sure why they’d decided to send an armed guard with him, but he gathered it had something to do with the terrorist attack the night before. He was lucky. He’d been off-base on a twenty-four-hour pass. He came back to the blood and the bodies, and nobody would talk to him. Partly out of guilt, partly out of shame, he volunteered to babysit the Marine when the Archer/Andrews guy offered a ride.
The guard was getting even more worried than Noonan. The Marine thrashed in his stretcher, and his skin looked shiny and tight.
“Can’t you do something?” he demanded.
Noonan shook his head. He was scraping the limit of his knowledge.
He went to the cockpit, to ask the pilot to hurry again. Maybe it was just because he was an Archie—he was probably earning more in a month than Noonan saw all year—but the pilot didn’t seem particularly sympathetic. Noonan picked up the passenger headphones so he could talk.
Then he saw the answer to his prayers out the starboard windscreen, practically glowing like a beacon in the morning light.
A hospital ship. There was no missing the bright white hull and the massive red crosses painted on its top. Noonan remembered something from the base bulletin about a humanitarian mission passing through the gulf.
In his joy, he whapped the pilot on the side of the helmet. “There! Dude, right there! Set us down! They can help!”
The pilot looked at him, eyes cold. “Not my orders. Colonel Graves said the carrier.”
“Are you nuts?” Noonan shouted. “We won’t make it to the carrier. He’s circling the drain right now! You’ve got to—”
The pilot turned in his seat and shoved Noonan back. Noonan stumbled and landed on his ass.
“I told you: not my orders,” he said. “Now sit down and shut the hell up.”
Noonan noticed the pilot had the holster of his sidearm unsnapped and ready. Bewildered, he took off his headphones and headed into the back.
Noonan, as a corpsman who went into the field with a red cross on his back, could not carry a weapon on active duty. One of the burdens of being the good guys, playing by the rules.
As soon as he explained what the pilot had said, the guard was ready to back him up.
He stepped into the cockpit again, put on the headphones once more. He heard the pilot growl in frustration.
“Look,” Noonan said. “I’m not threatening you. I can’t. It’s the first thing they teach us. ‘Do no harm.’ I swore an oath to preserve all life.”
The pilot turned, opened his mouth to say something, but didn’t speak.
Behind Noonan, the guard had his pistol aimed right between the pilot’s eyes.
“But here’s the thing,” Noonan said, “he didn’t.”
The pilot closed his mouth.
“What do you say, Archie?” Noonan asked with a grin. “Want to land this bird?”
IT WAS SUPPOSED to be her day off. The USNS Virtue had assisted with emergency relief operations after a massive quake in India. Dr. Nina Prentice had been working around the clock for two weeks on victims pried from dirt and rubble. Now they were supposed to be headed home to Virginia by way of the Suez.
But her pager sounded and Prentice ran for the casualty reception area. Someone outside gave her the bare-bones details. A chopper carrying a Marine from Lemonnier, hit by a stray bullet. He started to go into convulsions and they were still a long way from their destination. Virtue was closer. Just a stroke of luck.
Nobody could tell her what exactly was wrong with the kid. Basic facts: nineteen, in good health and dying from a minor GSW. Great. Nothing like flying blind.
The Marine had already been off-loaded and a nurse and two orderlies were trying to get him prepped. At first glance, just another day at work. But she could already feel it. Things were sliding out of control. This wasn’t the amplified rush of an ordinary trauma. The edge in the room felt uncomfortably close to panic.
Unlike most of her colleagues, Prentice wasn’t on board because she owed the government for her tuition and fees. In fact, her student loans were accruing interest at a truly impressive rate while she worked as a civilian trauma specialist with the Navy. She was here because she’d seen the devastation in New Orleans, Haiti and in the Middle East on TV. She’d decided these were the places that needed a doctor the most, and the Virtue would get her there.
There wasn’t a day that went by that she didn’t wonder what the hell she’d been thinking.
But she didn’t have many moments for reflection. She got called for the worst cases: victims delivered by helicopter with burns over 60 percent of their skin; people nearly bisected by flying blades of shrapnel; others so mangled by war or disaster they resembled bags of meat holding broken bones.
Prentice’s job was to keep them alive and stable until others could do the more delicate work. Everything was critical; everything was an emergency. She had to freeze her emotions, because if she stopped to think about the small child stuck on the length of rebar she was trying to remove, she would never be able to do it.
She assumed she was numb to horror by now. But when she saw the Marine, she discovered she could still be shocked.
“What the fuck—?” she said.
(Prentice had learned that the cliché “swearing like a sailor” wasn’t at all true. The sailors on board had better manners than a Southern deb. But after the twentieth time some jackass had called her “Nurse,” she began using “fuck” as her all-purpose noun, verb and adjective. Somehow, that convinced people she was a doctor. Or at least someone with authority.)
“I thought this was a gunshot wound.”
“That’s what they said.”
This was no gunshot. The kid looked s
hredded as he thrashed on the table. If Prentice had to name what was happening to him, she’d say “skin failure.” His flesh was splitting and peeling in great strips, and he was swelling like a Ball Park frank on the grill.
Despite all that, it took two orderlies to hold him. They couldn’t even get an IV line.
“Haldol—” she snapped.
“Five and two Ativan already,” the nurse shot back.
Seriously? Prentice thought. That was enough to knock most people cold. “Hit him again,” she said. “Ten and two this time.”
The nurse gave her a look but had the syringe ready to go. She spiked it into his arm. The orderlies managed to strap him into four-point restraints, which allowed Prentice and the nurse to finally get the instruments on him.
The nurse slipped the heart monitor on the Marine’s finger. It began screeching as soon as she turned it on.
“That can’t be right. Seriously, what is going on with this equipment?”
“I’m just telling you what it says. Heart rate two-fifty BPM.”
“Temperature—what the fuck, what’s with the readouts? Temperature one-forty? BP three-twenty?”
“Hey, I just work here,” the nurse said. She slapped a couple of X-rays onto a nearby display. “He was near comatose when they brought him in. I don’t know what happened—”
“Fine, whatever, let’s just get it down before he strokes.” Prentice ordered her to run sodium nitroprusside and examined the film. Hard to tell, but it looked like the bones were intact, just . . . bent. Like something was inside the Marine, pressing out.
“We need a CAT scan. I’ve got no idea what’s going on in there.”
One orderly laughed. “Good luck with that.” Despite the restraints, he was still twitching like a third-grader without Ritalin.
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