Red ran crosschecks as he steered toward the Det, eyes never landing on anything more than a second. His mind seemed to grow sharper with time, as if coming down off a drug. Faces were imprinted with high detail. Even license plate numbers. The man with long legs, limping slightly as he crossed at the red light. His tilt indicated the graphite briefcase contained something heavier than papers. Red squeezed his eyelids shut till the car behind him honked. The light was green.
He couldn’t turn it off, so he tried to think of Lori. Was she still alive? He’d gone after female assets before and every one had been tortured, raped, or mutilated. Tom was right. The kidnappers had made this one personal. He’d kill every one of them, slowly if he could. Guess that’s why they have confession.
Chapter 10
The Team
Lori woke to darkness. To her left only a faint glow from the light stick remained. How long had she been out? She lifted her head and looked around her coffin. Nothing had changed. How long had the kids’ light sticks worked last Halloween? She remembered the devices still glowing faintly when she’d tucked them in bed the next night. They’d thrown the sticks into the corner of their room, the novelty eclipsed by an overdose-ecstasy of sugar and chocolate. Lori hated Halloween. The kids were hyped up for weeks. She’d cull their plunder while they were at school, throwing away at least half.
How would they grow up without a mother? Would Red remarry? Would Nick remember her later in life? She clenched her jaw, pulling her thoughts back in. Drugs must still be dulling her mind. She held her breath. The hum of engines was the only sound. Lower now and from a different direction, or maybe they’d moved her coffin around while she was out.
She listened again. No, these couldn’t be the same ones. Definitely a different pitch, a different aircraft.
Judging from last Halloween, the light stick looked to be at least twelve hours old, maybe more. When her captor had held up the syringe, it held twenty CCs of something, but what? He’d want her under for two, maybe four hours while they switched planes. She didn’t remember being kidnapped, so they must have given her something when they’d taken her. All that time under, plus whatever she’d spent in the coffin, awake, added up to at least fourteen hours. That made sense, considering the dying light stick.
Her captor had threatened to throw her into the ocean if she didn’t stay quiet. That was a slip. Assuming it was the Atlantic, then New York to London would be around seven and a half hours. No. New York was too far away to have been the takeoff. Maybe Dulles, Reagan, or Philadelphia.
She threw her head back. Damn it. Who knows where they landed? London, Paris, Madrid, even Johannesburg.
She was on the second leg of a flight with no idea where it was headed. No way to know what she’d been given, if they’d used a contaminated needle, or if Tony would be able to get her out before they sawed off her head with a kitchen knife.
She couldn’t let herself go that way. She strained her ears, trying to hear the horse’s hooves on the metal floor, or maybe another bark from the dog. Nothing. When the plane hit some turbulence, she heard metal banging. Maybe cargo crates? There were no smells except her deodorant and the sweat-soaked polyester padding all around her.
She gave the lid a few quick kicks to see if anyone would answer. She didn’t care if her captors put her back under. There was nothing else she could do right now. That was the worst part. Worse than smelling her own stink. Worse than needing to pee like she had when she’d been pregnant. Worse than having a spit-soaked gag in her mouth for fourteen hours. Being helpless was despicable. She should have seen this coming. She’d failed the kids. She’d failed Tony.
* * *
Red glanced at his watch as he pulled into the Det’s parking lot: 21:56. He turned off the car and ran to the entry, swiped his card, and entered the millimeter wave scanner. After a thirty-second exam, the green light glowed and he blew through the warm foyer where Sergeant Ramirez was on duty again. “Semper Fi.”
He clipped through the offices and down the hallway, past the debrief room where he’d started recall two days earlier. His head was down, thoughts back with the kids. He pushed open the door at the end and stopped, as if called to attention. The hangar ceiling towered over him, high enough it could fit the tail of a C-17. Ahead were two mid-sized Gulfstream VIP transports, a Bell V-22 Osprey, and two MH-60 Pave Hawks. He smiled when he saw an old Sikorsky MH-53J Pave Low. A few years ago he’d read an article saying the Air Force had retired its fleet and replaced the Sikorskys with the controversial Ospreys. Apparently, no one had given Jim the memo he wasn’t allowed to have the older model.
Tinted windows capped the high walls. A crescent moon angled through a pane of glass from the south, faintly glaring off the white wing of one of the Gulfstreams. The polished concrete floor below reflected the distorted silhouettes of three Humvees. Even so, the hangar wasn’t full.
His breath froze in the cold air that hinted of propane. Someone must be running a tug. A group of seven men in gray-black fatigues was gathered fifty feet away in front of one of the Pave Hawks. Jim’s stance was still obvious in the dim light. Red started toward him.
As he approached, Jim jiggled his wrist. “Five seconds short of 22:00. That’s a hundred and twenty-five push-ups, captain.” Several of the men jeered as another dropped and started pumping them out.
The team was in a circle with gear in the middle. Next to Jim was his set. Lots of Kevlar along with helmet, knee, and elbow pads. The body armor was different—not the Interceptor style. The vest held twelve clips and a KA-BAR, nothing more. Red was studying the weapons when the captain popped back up, breathless. Red glanced around the ring. Good to see a few familiar faces.
Jim put a heavy hand on Red’s shoulder. His huge thumb looked more like a big toe. His gaze was distant, toward the closed hangar door. “We’ve recalled Major Tony ‘Red’ Harmon.”
A flat “HOOAH!” rose from the group.
“See anyone familiar?”
Red eyed the circle of men. “A few. Sergeant Crawler, Marksman, Dr. Ali, and . . . Carter.”
Jim raised an eyebrow and pointed to the man standing next to Red. He was young, arms crossed, standing a step back from the rest of the group. A trim black toothbrush mustache framed his upper lip. “This is Staff Sergeant Rich Lanyard. He’s—”
“New.”
Jim cocked his head. “How you know?”
“Don’t. But he doesn’t look haggard yet. My shadow for the op?”
“You and Lanyard are a set. Bring him back alive.”
Red extended a hand and the two shook. The kid had a firm grip. “Hasn’t been a problem before.”
Jim frowned.
Shit. He had forgotten about that one. Maybe he’d wanted to. Red probed his mind, trying to remember the old team member’s name, but couldn’t. A rookie to the Det but not to spec ops. It had been in Afghanistan, in the boonies but on the way home. An RPG took out their transport and his partner had gotten a shard of floorboard in his belly under his ballistic vest. The kid hadn’t even noticed till a few minutes later when blood filled his boot. He’d made it six hours to Bagram Air Base hospital, but died while they were working on him. Red’s eyes focused on the distance, mind weary, to the Pave Hawk near the far wall. “Well, hasn’t been a problem lately.”
Sergeant Lanyard’s eyebrows drew close together, but he said nothing.
Red turned to Sergeant Crawler, the stocky, unshaven man next to Lanyard. His uniform was clean, but that’s all that could be said for it. The trousers were worn, with patched knees. Boots looked like they’d been dragged behind a car with “Just Married” written across the back. Red remembered him as a good driver and mechanic, but headstrong and heavy on the trigger.
“Crawler, you still have a driver’s license?”
He licked the unlit cigar to one side of his mouth and smirked, holding up three fingers. His Bronx accent was as thick as ever. “I saved yer ass t’ree times. Still no respect.” No respo
nse from anyone. Not even a chuckle.
He aimed his finger at the next one. “Marksman, still going by that? We got a name for you yet?”
“Marksman will be fine,” he said with a flare of his nostrils, like a bull about to charge. He was at least fifty when Red last saw him, but his deep black skin looked younger now. He stood several inches taller than Crawler, and even with his age possessed a more tight, athletic build. Red pointed to his head. “Lost the rest of your hair. Still carrying that M14 from our soiree in Brazil?”
Marksman pointed his toe to the weapon placed on a mat in front of him. “Same one.” He didn’t like being called a sniper. “I’ve never earned that title,” he’d always say. His kill rate said different. The Det had stuck him with his nickname because he’d never give his real one. Only Jim knew who he was. His connection was probably through the CIA, but it didn’t really matter. Why was he on this op? Jim had snipers, but only called Marksman when he needed language skills, too. Maybe Marksman knew Farsi.
“Your eyesight going to hold out long enough to tell which one’s Lori, old man?”
“It’s holding,” Marksman said with a patronizing tone.
Red bit his lip, then pointed to the next, the one who had done the push-ups.
“Captain Matt Richards,” Jim said before he could ask. “He’s been with us two years. Air Force para rescue. Not as mean as me, but he’ll be a fine replacement if I ever kick off.”
Marksman and Crawler exchanged glances.
Red continued around, running his fingers through his hair. “Dr. Ali, thanks for stitching up my head.” He leaned into Lanyard. “Lesson one. Doc holds a grudge.”
Crawler yanked the cigar out of his mouth and pointed it at Ali. “Yeah. My ass still hurts, doc! You kept tellin’ me, ‘Suck it up. I gave you enough morphine to put a cow to sleep.’ ” He pointed it at Lanyard next. “It wasn’t till we got stateside and they pulled a four-inch piece of rusty iron outta my ass that they figured the damn rag-head gave me the wrong thing!”
Ali grunted. “Pakistani, you thickheaded wop! Pakistani.” His grin suggested the shot may not have been an accident.
Red kept going before the banter turned into something more heated. “Carter, I wasn’t expecting to see you here.”
“Me neither.” His eyes flashed to Jim. “The colonel can be persuasive.”
Sergeant Crawler bit down on the cigar. “You calls it persuasion. I calls it extortion.”
“You would, damn guido.” Ali sneered. Marksman laughed when Crawler slapped a bicep in a bras d’honneur.
Jim picked up a notebook lying atop his gear, as if ready to go through the checklists. “Carter’s intel through his office has been invaluable planning the op. Got more connections than Hoffa.” Jim mentioned a few other things about the detective, but glanced at Red when he mentioned interrogator.
“Prebrief?” Red asked.
“Soon,” Jim said. He pointed to the contents of Red’s old locker, vacuum sealed, next to his equipment. The others harassed Red while he stripped and pulled on soft, worn, dark woodland camo fatigues. Everything still fit, even the insults. He bent and ran his finger across a patched hole in the knee. How could he have forgotten for so long? It had happened during a training exercise. Clearing a doorway, he’d dropped to a knee and fired a double tap at a target of a man gripping a pistol. The knee pad had slipped down and a ragged nail tore a neat hole. Was there anything else he couldn’t remember? What else was waiting to surprise him? It all seemed so surreal two days ago, but now fit like his boots. Like the patch. Comfortable. Familiar.
Jim pressed the team through the lists. Each member checked his own gear and then his partner’s. They ran through armor, communication, night vision, and enhanced auditory. That was something new. A techno geek had found a way to combine a comm set with something like a hearing aid on steroids. The gadget fit behind his neck and clipped to both ears like a Bluetooth. Red clipped his on and steps approached from behind. He turned to see who it was, but no one was there. Twenty yards distant a crewmember walked toward one of the Sikorskys.
“Takes a while to get used to,” Lanyard said. “I swear you can hear a fly fart. Direction can be a bitch, but I’d rather hear ’em than not.”
They pressed through the rest. Weapons, ammo, KA-BAR, and all other essentials were in the same place on each member so that everyone knew where the requisites were. Marksman was the only one with a different main weapon. Everyone else carried a Det M4. The “Det” designation meant that Gunny had tweaked them to his liking. Eight of the twelve clips were Det spec ammo. They had rounds loaded in-house, using modified propellants. That must have been what Gunny had tried to explain earlier.
“More constant barrel pressure as the bullet accelerates. Increased muzzle energy,” Jim said. The rounds also necessitated the custom barrels or they’d shoot out too quickly.
The other four clips looked like weak subsonic ammo. The subsonic stuff was nice when you didn’t want to be heard, but you’d better be close to your target because the slugs were slow. Eight hundred and fifty feet per second, less than one-fourth the velocity of a Det round. They had heavier seventy-seven grain slugs, but at that slow speed the weight didn’t help much. If they were supposed to be tactically silent, the MP5 would’ve been a better choice.
Red shrugged on the ballistic vest and felt for his clips. It weighed on his shoulders and dug into his neck when he reached for his M4. Smelled like the inside of a new car. A variant on the Modular Tactical Vest, Lanyard told him. They didn’t carry any food except a couple protein bars and a single canteen with iodine tablets. Wherever they were headed, they weren’t staying long.
Gear checked out, everyone stripped it off and put it next to their rack in berthing.
Berthing had been Jim’s idea, to control the team before a deployment so everyone would be on time, rested, and focused. Problem was it had a Navy name, was almost as confining as a ship’s quarters, and meant more waiting. It was right off the hangar, through a thick insulated door to deaden sound. A Navy squid, built like a brick shit-house, stood next to it. Even Crawler looked at him suspiciously as they filed in with their gear.
Crawler pointed his thumb over a shoulder and said, “Someone needs to screen that guy for ’roids.”
No sooner had Red dropped his gear than Jim stepped into the dim room. Holding up his fingers, he said, “Briefing in two!” He winked at Red. “Intel says they know where Lori’s at.”
Chapter 11
Prebrief
The coffin lid hinged open and white light filled Lori’s eyes, blinding her. After they adjusted, she realized she was outside. The sky was overcast, as best she could tell through slit eyelids. A cool breeze chilled her cheek and brought a faint smell of pine. A man with a toothless grin peered in. His face was tanned, weather beaten as a sailor’s, and a sweat-stained Orioles baseball cap was pulled low over his head. The asshole with the German accent gazed in over that one’s shoulder, then wrinkled his nose and turned away. “She stinks of pisse.”
They switched to Farsi. Her comprehension was spotty, but she made it out.
“Get her cleaned up. I can’t deliver her like this.”
“Where?”
“The outhouse. It has a sink.”
With a bent finishing nail they jimmied the cuffs from her hands and feet. Cheap pricks didn’t even have keys. Then they pulled out the gag, peeling away what seemed like an entire layer of skin from her lips that had dried to it. Her jaw ached as she tried to close it, dribbling drool on her neck. As she moved it side to side, her eyes watered at the pain. They shoved her into a cramped corrugated metal outhouse with a rusted enamel steel sink and a hole in the floor. She tried to punch the toothless man when he grabbed a breast, shoving her into the stinking box. As he raised his hand in retaliation the German gripped a spot near his collarbone.
“Basseh!” Toothless gasped.
“Worth twenty of you, scheisskopf. Slit your throat and sell you
r daughter as a whore in Thailand if you touch her again.”
To Lori, he said in English, “Don’t. Or I’ll let him have his way. Now, clean yourself up.”
He handed her a bottle of Dasani and shut the door. Much of it dribbled out her mouth as she drank. She couldn’t make her jaw do what she wanted. Where were they? The trafficker spoke in Farsi, so maybe Iran? As she squatted to pee, she peered through a bullet hole in the wall. The outhouse stood next to a dilapidated mechanic’s shop with the dented front of a Cessna 210 protruding from it, turbo charger hanging on by the waste gate tube.
Her legs threatened to collapse as she braced on the wall, hovering over the hole in the floor. She rinsed her stinking pajamas in rusty water from the sink, then slipped them back on, shivering in the sodden, cold flannel. They tied her hands with jute rope and thrust her, standing, into a tall wood crate that smelled like tar. She could turn around but didn’t have room to sit. Still, a refreshing change from the coffin.
Cold but fresh air swept in through gaps between plank sides. The German and his helper lifted the crate into the bed of a troop transport, something like a deuce and a half, as best as she could see through the cracks. Over it they tossed a musty green canvas tarp that reeked of mold.
After at least an hour of driving, the tires sounded upon loose gravel.
Secondary road. The primary hadn’t been full of potholes. It was afternoon and they were headed east, judging by the shadows she glimpsed through wide cracks in the truck’s bed. They jostled along for another half hour, then the road became furiously rough. She heard only two vehicles pass, going in the opposite direction. A few minutes and they pulled off, then backed up. The rear wheels bounced over something—a speed bump? A ditch? Then the front. All light disappeared with the screech of dry bearings. The truck’s engine stopped.
The German broke the crate open and led her out. Toothless wasn’t around anymore. The truck was inside a warehouse in front of a silver galvanized overhead door like you’d see at a mechanic’s garage. She turned her head, but he put a bag over it. She smelled a creek, like in New Hampshire when Tony took her fly-fishing, but the scent blew past. He led her along a concrete floor, all she could see past her chin where the bag hung loosely. A strong hand gripped her shoulder, but she ran into the sharp corner of something anyway, rasping her hip. Occasionally, she saw what looked like the bottom edge of a wooden crate lining her path. They paused at the top of stairs, then walked down several flights. It took forever, her stumbling and being jerked upright.
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