by E. M. Smith
The car turned and we hit gravel.
My heart rate ramped up. You don’t take any gravel roads driving from Ouachita Hollow to Little Rock. Once you hit Highway 10, it’s blacktop the whole way.
Maybe they’d found the girls and Della had told them Uncle Jamie didn’t do it. Maybe we were turning around to head back and I could go free.
But the longer we drove on the dirt, the more I started freaking out. Maybe they had found the girls, but in pieces. Maybe this was the part where I confessed or ended up in a shallow grave where the bears could dig me up and eat the evidence. I twisted and jerked at the cuffs, but all that did was mess up my wrists even more.
“This left,” Donovan said.
The car turned again. I tried to scrape the hood off with my shoulder—even just get it to lift up a little so I wouldn’t be blind—but it was buckled under my jaw.
“Over there,” Donovan said.
The car stopped. My breathing sounded like an asthma attack inside the hood. The front doors opened and shut.
Talia had showed me some hand-to-hand stuff. Basics, she’d said, but basics were better than nothing. No fucking way was somebody going to kill me without a fight. Not while my baby nieces were out there with some sick son of a bitch.
The door to my right opened. I leaned back, brought my feet up and kicked as hard as I could. I hit someone. They grunted. I could hear scrabbling in the gravel.
I got ready for another strike, but the door behind me opened and someone dragged me out backwards. I tried digging my heels into the seat. It didn’t work.
“Stop,” Donovan yelled at me.
When I didn’t, an elbow slammed me in the back of the neck. Little white sparks exploded inside my head. I fell on my ass.
The hood pulled tight and jerked my head back. The buckle under my chin came undone, then the blackness ripped away. I blinked, trying to adjust to the sunlight and shake the stunned feeling from the shot to my spine.
Donovan’s cruiser was parked next to a white cargo van. We were pulled off a dirt road at the bottom of a mountain, surrounded by southern pines on all sides. I couldn’t hear any highway sounds.
A tall, blonde chick in a business suit—a real suit, not some Penthouse job—knocked on the back doors. They opened up and two guys in fatigues climbed down, dragging another guy in an orange jumpsuit and spitter’s hood. Apparently that guy had the same idea as me—he was fighting, too.
The fatigue guys tried to shove the jumpsuit guy into the back of Donovan’s cruiser. He was screaming something I couldn’t understand through the hood. One of the fatigue guys grabbed the jumpsuit guy by the back of the hood, cracked his head against the car frame, shoved him inside, and slammed the door.
Beside me, Donovan asked the blonde chick, “Where’s the crash site?”
“The interchange at I-430,” she said. “Make it look like a legitimate escape attempt this time. Clip him at least once before you put him down.”
Donovan frowned.
“It won’t go on your record as a miss,” she said. “But it will go down as disobeying orders if you fuck this up showboating.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Donovan went around to the passenger side of his cruiser and got in while the other trooper climbed back into the driver’s seat. Before they backed out onto the road, I saw Donovan pull out his gun and chamber a round.
The blonde turned to face me.
“Jamie Kendrick.”
“What the fuck is—”
“I don’t do interruptions,” she said. “Don’t talk unless I ask you a question or give you an order. Then I’ll expect a ‘yes, ma’am’ and for you to get your ass doing what I told you to. Understood?”
She waited.
“What the fuck’s going on here?” I yelled. “Are they fixing to kill that guy?”
I didn’t see her gun until she jammed the barrel into the lid of my swollen-shut eye.
“I asked if that was understood, soldier! You fucking answer me when I fucking ask you a question!”
“Shit—yes—yeah—I mean, I understand.”
“Ma’am.”
“Ma’am.”
“Work on it,” she said, holstering her weapon. “We don’t have a whole lot of time, so for now, just answer yes or no: Do you want to save your nieces and kill the man responsible for your brother’s death?”
“Yes,” I said. It was like her asking focused a rifle scope in my brain. Yes, I wanted the fucker who killed Owen dead. Yes, if he had my nieces, I wanted to be the one who killed him. Yes, I wanted some fucking control back over my life.
“Get in the van,” she said.
*****
“Whiskey,” the blonde said when the van turned off of the gravel and onto highway.
I shifted on my bench.
“I don’t—haven’t drank in three months. Not just for legal reasons. I—”
“No,” she said. “Whiskey. It’s my call sign. As far as you’re concerned, it’s my name.”
“Oh.”
“Your sister-in-law,” Whiskey said. “How much did you know about her?”
“She was from New York City,” I said. “She was a model for a while, then a personal trainer. A really high-priced one because she was really thorough. Like, her workout for me was a lot tougher than what the army fitness test requires. Plus firearms training. And she was tutoring me for the written. She said I needed to be impressive.” I was fixing to deflect if Whiskey asked me why, but then I figured, fuck it. She had to know I wasn’t in a county jumpsuit for being a brilliant, upstanding citizen. “I failed the first time I tried it—all the tests.”
Whiskey didn’t blink.
“Talia knew you wouldn’t make it in the army,” she said. “You’d either spend the rest of your life in and out of military prisons or eat your gun. It’s built into your mental framework. You make stupid decisions, you’re shit with authority figures, and you don’t have the impulse control and emotional regulators required to survive a stint with Uncle Sam.”
“Fuck you, I have emotional regulators.”
“What Talia did know,” Whiskey went on talking as if I hadn’t said anything at all, “Was that you could excel in unofficial operations.”
I just stared at her.
“‘Black ops’?” she said.
“Oh.”
Whiskey rolled her eyes. Maybe she got that a lot.
“Talia was one of our operatives until five years ago when she married your brother and retired her commission. Since then she’d put in several requests to train you as an operative, but was turned down. After your most recent brush with the law, however, she took matters into her own hands.”
“I thought she just wanted to help me,” I said. “You know, keep me from turning out like her dad, dying in prison.”
Whiskey shrugged. I tried not to look at the way her breasts moved inside her suit jacket.
“I’d say it’s more likely that you reminded Talia of herself at your age.”
“My ass,” I said. “She don’t—she didn’t even drink.”
“Neither do you. Anymore.”
I looked down at where my ankle bracelet had been for the last three months. My leg felt naked without it. Looked kind of naked, too, where the damn thing had rubbed my leg hair off. That would probably grow back, though. After a while, it’d be like I’d never had an ankle bracelet.
I could do all that shit I’d been missing out on. Swimming. Hand fishing. Without Owen, though, tromping around in muddy water, sticking my arm in catfish holes just sounded stupid.
But I could call Roy up and get a jug of shine fresh from his pressure cooker. If that didn’t kill me, I could see what Bubba had on hand that would take a spark. It was like that old country song—nobody would know, nobody would care now.
Whiskey was still talking. I made myself listen.
“Talia modified the usual year-long program our new recruits go through to fit into six months and sent us regular reports on your progre
ss. She was hoping that NOC-Unit would reverse decision about accepting you as an operative. If things had gone as planned, you might’ve been allowed to start training with a team in August, then go on your first mission sometime near the beginning of next year. But, obviously, somebody cut her head off before that could happen.”
“I didn’t do it,” I said. That was getting to be a kneejerk reaction. “The cops said my ankle bracelet GPS says I was there when—when it happened—but I wasn’t.”
Whiskey looked at me like I was stupid.
“Talia would’ve taken you out in a second. Anyone with a basic understanding of electronics and a few codes could’ve hacked a cheap county monitoring device and put you anywhere they wanted you.”
I thought of Harris’s grudge to end all grudges.
“What about somebody at the police department? Like, if they had a password?”
“Talia’s murder wasn’t the work of some petty, small town cop,” Whiskey said. “It was revenge. Lucien Delgado. Your sister-in-law took down his human trafficking organization back when he was still going by the name ‘Alex Hardy.’ His thugs broke into the house, dosed Talia with a paralytic during the struggle, then beat your brother’s skull open in front of her. Delgado probably beheaded Talia himself.”
The van went weird and swimmy when I thought about that picture of Owen’s brains. I had to shut my eyes and lean my head back against the side of the van to keep from passing out.
“What about the girls?” I swallowed. “My nieces. Did he…kill them, too?”
“No.”
“How do you know?”
“Besides the fact that Delgado’s money comes from selling little girls like that into slavery?” Whiskey asked. “Operatives are paranoid. Talia had tracking chips implanted in her children in case of abduction. Chips that show vital signs as well as coordinates. Similar to your ankle bracelet, but much more secure. NOC-Unit’s tech team locked onto the signal this morning. The girls were alive and en route, but they’ve probably landed by now.”
“Where?”
“Same place we’re going—Belize. Delgado set up shop there after he changed identities.”
I wanted to ask whether Owen had known about Talia, but I didn’t think I wanted to know the answer. Owen was a nerd who had married a model. He’d worshipped Talia—even quit drinking Red Bull because she wanted him to eat healthier. He hadn’t kept any secrets from her.
“Unofficial military operations,” I said. “So you’ve got plenty of badasses on your team, right? They’ve got lots of experience and none of them were arrested this morning for murder. Why bother getting me out of jail?”
“You knew that Talia wouldn’t allow any pictures taken of herself or her children?” Whiskey asked.
“Owen said she went a little crazy back when she modeled,” I said. “Something about vanity and pressure and she didn’t want that for the girls, but to the extreme.” I looked at Whiskey. “Was she ever even really a model?”
“There are no pictures of your nieces in existence,” Whiskey said. “No one on my team knows them by sight, and even though we can track where they’re going, the implants broadcast on a secure frequency. The tech team can track the kids to within three hundred yards. They can’t narrow it down beyond that without the encryption key, which was lost when your sister-in-law was killed.”
“You’re saying you want me to identify them.”
“And if you do well on this mission, who knows,” Whiskey said. “Maybe I can find a place for you on my team.”
*****
When the van finally stopped, Whiskey unlocked my handcuffs and shackles, then climbed out. We were on a tarmac. Behind her, I could see a jet with its stairs down and a flat, swampy grassland past that. Definitely out of the mountains. Probably close to the Louisiana border.
“Let’s go,” Whiskey said, jerking her head at me to get out. She turned and started toward the jet.
I got out, straightened up, and winced. Stiffness from the early morning ass-whooping had really settled in while we were driving.
“There’s a medic on the plane,” Whiskey said. “He’ll check you over, then give you something for the pain if you need it. In the meantime, think of it as a test. See how far you can push your body.”
Talia used to say that. Think of it as a test. Keep your body moving and you pass. And if Owen was trying to keep up with our training that day, he would say, Think of it as a kidney stone, Jamie. Move your bowels and then pass it.
I bit down on the inside of my cheek, not sure if I was trying to stop myself from laughing or crying. We weren’t going to be giving Talia any more shit about her corny personal trainer sayings. Or about baking chicken instead of frying it. Or anything.
I shut my eyes and forced all that down to the back of my brain until I could focus on Della and Eva. Getting the girls back had to be the only thing that mattered. And killing the guy who did this.
*****
Once Whiskey and I made it inside the jet, the stairs folded up and the door vacuum-sealed itself.
Instead of rows of seats like I was expecting, the jet had a couch and a recliner to one side, a table and chairs where a couple of guys in fatigues were playing cards, and a bathroom with a sign overhead that said Occupied. Through a door in the back, I saw part of a bedroom.
A huge black guy leaned an upper body the size of a backhoe shovel out of the cockpit.
“Ready when you are,” he said.
“Get us in the air, Fox,” Whiskey said.
By then the guys at the table had stopped playing cards. One had spiked black hair, an orangey tan, and sunglasses. The other guy was just muscle and shiny scar tissue.
“This kid was in training?” the Jersey-Shore-lookalike asked. He lifted up his shades and squinted at the county jumpsuit and my busted-up face. “Is he scrappy or is he just a little prison bitch?”
“Come over here and find out,” I said.
Scar Tissue smirked and played a card, but didn’t say anything.
“Get the pissing contest out of the way now,” Whiskey said. “For all practical purposes, Juliet will be acting as an integrated member of this team until the girls are recovered.”
Jersey Shore threw his head back and laughed. It took me a second to figure out why.
“Wait—I’m ‘Juliet’?”
“Them’s the breaks, kid,” Scar Tissue said. “You get your call sign from the first letter of your first name.” He pointed at Whiskey. “Whiskey.” Then he pointed at Jersey Shore. “That’s Bravo.” Then the cockpit. “Foxtrot we just call ‘Fox.’ And I’m Mike.”
“Mike?”
“NATO phonetic coincidence,” he said, shrugging.
The sign over the bathroom flashed to Unoccupied and a short, stocky girl who looked like a professional gymnast—except for the pinkish cat-scratch-looking scars across her nose and down her cheek—came out.
“Why can’t I go by my last name?” I asked. “I could be ‘Kilo.’”
“Kilo is reserved for R&D projects,” Whiskey said. “Your call sign is Juliet. Get used to it.”
“Trust me, I know the system sucks,” the chick from the bathroom said. “And I know you’re about to catch a lot of shit for this, so let me apologize in advance.” She stuck out her hand. “I’m Romeo.”
I shook it automatically. She had a hell of a grip for such a little chick.
“If I was gay,” Romeo said, “I’d sue for orientation harassment. Even if I was bi. Hell, I’m thinking of suing anyway just to be a pain in NOC-U’s ass. Want to be a part of a class-action lawsuit, Juliet?”
“NOC-U?” I’d heard that about ten times so far from Whiskey, but she hadn’t told me what it stood for.
“The Non-Official Cover Unit,” Romeo said. “When you run with the big dogs, you get to anagram everything so that people will ask and you can explain. It’s a big time-saver.”
“So, is this like the CIA? Or NSA? Government stuff or—”
“An
d/or,” Romeo said. She grinned and the cat-scratch scars on her cheek twisted. “We also would’ve accepted ‘sometimes,’ ‘never,’ and ‘plausible deniability.’”
Whiskey handed me a pair of fatigue pants, a black shirt, briefs, socks, and a pair of combat boots. “Get these on. And hurry it up. Wheels-up in five minutes.”
I crammed myself into the little bathroom cubicle. Definitely not as luxurious as the rest of the jet. I tried to hurry, but my right hand was basically useless. I was still fighting the fatigues’ button-fly when Fox’s voice came over the speakers, “Everyone put a butt in a seat and buckle up. Runway’s ours.”
I settled for fastening the middle button, then cinched the web belt tight and stuffed the socks down in the boots. Those I could wrestle with out on the couch. I tried not to limp too much as I came out of the bathroom.
“Looking good, bitch-boy,” Bravo—the Jersey-Shore-lookalike—said. “I bet you’d give all the big house daddies a stiffie wearing that.”
I dropped onto the couch and shot him the finger. I was getting tired of telling people to fuck off.
“Don’t mind Bravo,” Romeo said, digging a seatbelt out of the cushions on the recliner. “He’s just nervous. This is his first mission, too.”
*****
My ears were stuck between pops when the jet leveled out. Fox announced that we could move about the cabin again and Whiskey had Mike check me over.
“Trigger fingers?” Mike asked when he got to the swelling, purplish mess that was my right hand.
I shook my head. “Lefty.”
“Good news, then.” He pulled a roll of athletic tape out of the first aid kit. “I can bind these up. They’re your only obvious breaks. And I can razor your eyebrow to get the swelling down.”
“A’ight,” I said, hoping I didn’t look too freaked out about the face-cutting.