Ambush

by Barbara Nickless

  “I’m in over my head, Grams. I don’t know who these guys are, or how many of them there are.” I flashed to the Mexican police. “They’ve got resources. And they play for keeps.”

  “That knife wound a warning?” she guessed.

  “Yes.”

  “Is this why you told me a year ago not to go home?”

  I nodded. “I don’t think the Alpha knows about you. And definitely not about Ellen Ann. But if he managed to follow me this morning, he knows now. You and Ellen Ann have to go. Get away somewhere until this blows over. I can help pay for it.”

  “Comes a day I can’t pay my own way, we have a different set of problems.” She was quiet a moment. “There’s no reason for us to stay, necessarily. And seems like there’s plenty of reason to be scarce for a while. Ellen Ann has been pestering me about visiting Gentry. Might be a good time for us to finally do it.” She glanced at the clock. “We can head out almost as soon as she’s home. Which should be any minute.”

  “That’s perfect. Thank you.” After the Elise Hensley case, Gentry had moved away from Denver, eventually settling in a small mountain town on the Western Slope. “I’ll get a message to you when this is all over.”

  Grams continued to study me. “You’ve got it back.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “There’s something bright and strong in you again. Haven’t seen it since before the war.”

  I pushed away from the table. “There’s something rotten in me. That’s why I’m in this mess.”

  “Don’t go feeling sorry for yourself, girl. There’s something rotten in all of us.”

  “But bright and strong?” I shook my head. “Not feeling it.”

  “We never do.” She reached out and smacked my arm hard enough to sting. “The important thing is, can you clean up this mess?”

  I looked down into my empty coffee cup. “I don’t know. They want something from me, some intel they think I have from Iraq. It might be a video recording. Might be something else.”

  “And you don’t have it?”

  “Not as far as I know. I’m hoping I’m wrong. Do you remember that luggage I brought over here?”

  A flicker of amusement. “Your old Superman suitcase.”

  “The one Dad gave me.”

  We both laughed, but there was a burn beneath the laughter, like still-raw skin beneath a scab. The suitcase was emblematic of a familiar battle from my childhood. My dad had pushed to let me be as “masculine” as I chose—video games, Superman comics, toy guns. My mom had been determined to feminize me, and not in a girl-power way. More a doll-on-the-shelf way. Isabel had been a poised beauty who believed that the only way for a woman to survive in a man’s world was to charm the pants off those guarding the glass ceiling until they relinquished whatever you wanted at the moment. Anything from a free drink to a corner office.

  In Isabel’s mind, you were just being smart to utilize the only assets a man wouldn’t ignore. But I still struggled to forgive her for seeing the world in such a narrow way, and for trying to get me to jump in with both feet. One reason I’d signed up with the Marines was to prove to myself that I could handle male superiors in my own stubborn, nonsexual fashion. Joining the railway police had been an extension of that.

  The battle between my parents reached a low point on my ninth birthday. Isabel had given me a Barbie suitcase. Inside was a makeup kit and a little mirror and a certificate to get my ears pierced.

  My dad had given me Superman luggage and a fishing rod.

  Apparently my parents had agreed on what I needed. But not the form it should take.

  I’d been especially angry with my mother that day because she was in one of her sloppy moods. Sloppy words, sloppy kisses, sloppy steps. It was around then that I’d begun to understand that her long afternoon naps, her shaking hands, her slurred words, all fell under a new term I’d sounded out after watching a television show.

  Al-co-hol-ic.

  That day, I’d made Superman my hero and refused to have anything to do with Barbie. I don’t think Isabel forgave me for that.

  “The suitcase is still in Gentry’s old room,” Grams said. “Right where you put it.”

  Clyde followed me down the hall. He plopped down on Gentry’s blue braided rug while I set my duffel on the bed, pulled the blinds closed, and flipped on the light. Gentry had moved out of his parents’ home years ago, when he went to Denver University and eventually took up law. But his room was still all boy—blue paint, plaid bedspread. Posters of rock stars and Halo on the walls. I pulled the Superman case down from the high shelf in the closet and set it on the bed. My fingers lingered over the latch.

  After Sarge’s visit last winter, I’d taken the few things Dougie had given me, packed them into this harmless-looking case, and smuggled it over to Ellen Ann’s, where I’d repacked it, hiding the items beneath Gentry’s childhood clothes. I’d considered and rejected both Cohen’s personal safe and a bank deposit box. Somehow those seemed of little use in the face of a man whose powers mystified me. I could not build a barricade against the Alpha. I could only hope to outwit him.

  If the Alpha had learned about this house and sent someone to search it, I’d hoped a boy’s suitcase in a boy’s room wouldn’t cause a second glance. My version of Poe’s purloined letter.

  I pressed the latch and lifted the top. Immediately visible were Gentry’s childhood clothes—shorts and T-shirts and a pair of Toy Story pajamas. I lifted out the topmost clothes and unrolled the rest to reveal what I was really after.

  What greeted me were memories from Iraq. Hours on the FOB or in Mortuary Affairs. The recovery missions when I’d driven the reefer to collect our Marines and bring back their bodies. The companionship of my fellow Marines, and the grief when some of them made the ultimate sacrifice.

  And, of course, my time with Dougie.

  I picked up an olive-drab T-shirt I’d worn on the FOB and pressed it to my face.

  How does anyone make military-issue clothes look hot? Dougie had teased me once when we were on a midnight stroll.

  The need to hide the truth of our relationship meant there were few opportunities for anything physical between us. Except for a few frenzied encounters, our relationship was celibate. In the absence of actual lovemaking, Dougie had pursued me with the grace I imagined had been used in medieval times when knights wooed their lords’ untouchable ladies. Courtly love—love as a noble ideal rather than a consummation—became our routine. Twenty-first century style, which included barbed wire, jersey gates, and remote outhouses.

  Do you get tired of this? I’d asked.

  He’d raised an eyebrow. Tired of looking at you?

  Tired of never touching.

  His hand found mine. My hand rubbed against the hard calluses in his palm, my fingertips feathering the rough skin.

  How do I love thee? I whispered, smitten with sonnets even then. Let me count the ways.

  Dougie slipped his hand from mine and brushed back my hair. All I think about, Rosie, is what waits for us when we get back to the States. We’ll have our whole lives together.

  In Gentry’s dimly lit room, my tears soaked the T-shirt. What fools we mortals are to think that the plans we make are anything more than a soap bubble blown against a hurricane, a frail and fleeting wish destined to burst.

  The light shifted as the Sir sat on the end of Gentry’s bed, luminous in the gloom, his ruined legs invisible on the far side.

  Near the door, Clyde lifted his head.

  I heard the Sir’s voice. “Self-pity? Unbecoming in a Marine.”

  “Momentary weakness, sir,” I muttered. But I set the T-shirt aside. “If you want to be helpful, why don’t you tell me what went down in Iraq. Who gave the order for what we did? Was it really Richard Dalton, like Sarge said? Is he the Alpha?”

  “Figure it out, Marine. Stop wasting your brain.”

  “Very helpful, sir.”

  I leaned over the remaining items in the suitcase an
d closed my eyes, breathing in the scents. Dust and oil and—another burst of momentary weakness—the unique smell that was Dougie’s. Most of what I’d placed in the suitcase had belonged to him. Given to me on what would turn out to be the last time I’d see him alive.

  There wasn’t much.

  The Sir watched while I unrolled a pair of Gentry’s jeans and revealed the first item. An old WWII Wittnauer military field compass. I slid it out of its cloth case. The Wittnauer had belonged to Dougie’s grandfather, and he’d carried it everywhere. Up until my encounter with Sarge, I’d also carried it, safe inside a pouch in my Sam Browne belt—relying on it as Dougie had.

  The compass was simple and small, about the size of a silver dollar. It had a scratched and polished nickel exterior, stamped with US, and a loop through which an optional chain could go. I opened the lid. Inside was a brass face, a blue needle, and a few sparkling grains of Iraqi sand. The needle vibrated as I moved, swinging steadily north.

  The night when Dougie had pressed it into my hand before a mission, I’d protested.

  It’s your good luck charm, I’d said. It’s your grandfather, watching over you.

  I don’t need it. He’d shaken his head. We’ll let him watch over you for a time.

  My tears splashed on the face of the compass. How wrong he’d been.

  I swiped my eyes with the back of my hand and studied the compass face. When I’d looked at it before, I’d noticed there was conceivably a narrow space under the mechanism in which to hide something. I’d shaken the compass, but only the needle rattled. My efforts to pry the compass free of the case had failed, and I hadn’t wanted to destroy it with what might be nothing more than a snipe hunt.

  I tried again to remove the mechanism from the case, but nothing had changed. I slid the compass back into its pouch and then into my canvas bag.

  I unrolled another shirt. Dougie’s lion’s head ring. Dougie had worn it around his neck on braided leather; it was the one thing he hadn’t relinquished to me that day. After his body was brought into the MA bunker, I’d glimpsed the ring around his neck before the Sir hustled me out and made me stay far away, under guard, while he processed Dougie’s body. Later, the Sir had given the ring to me without the braid. I had to assume the leather was too bloodstained for him to pass along.

  “Thank you for this,” I whispered to the Sir, who still watched from the end of the bed.

  He nodded.

  Like me, Dougie had been an orphan. No family had come forward to claim any of his possessions. His fellow warriors had died on the same mission that killed him. I was all he had. Up until six months ago, I’d worn the ring around my own neck, hung on my father’s silver chain.

  I lifted the ring to the light sifting through the blinds and studied the carved head. The lion was noble. Protective. I’d felt safe wearing it.

  Defiantly, I raised the chain, intending to drop it around my neck. But then I lowered my hands and returned the ring to the suitcase. No matter what happened to me, I didn’t want the Alpha having Dougie’s ring.

  “It didn’t save Dougie,” the Sir pointed out.

  “And yet, you were the one who put it aside for me.”

  The Sir nodded in acknowledgment.

  “You want to tell me why?” I asked.

  But on this, the Sir remained silent. My dead never had anything practical to offer. Their comments ran more to warnings and philosophical musings. My therapist likened the Sir to Pinocchio’s Jiminy Cricket—he was my goad, my whip, my conscience. Hayes advised me to tell the Sir that it was all right for him to leave. That my conscience was, if anything, a bit overdeveloped.

  But I found his presence comforting, even if it suggested an alarming degree of instability on my part.

  I touched the ring again. It seemed incapable of hiding so much as secret fairy dust, so I moved on.

  Next was the Kurdish dagger Dougie had purchased from a bedouin tribesman. The handle was camel bone with silver, the sheath fashioned of carved silver and brass, the blade curved steel. I pulled the knife free of the sheath and stared at the pitted blade. You could do a lot of damage with one of these. But my careful examination of the hilt and the sheath proved, as with the ring, there was no place to hide anything.

  The last things in the suitcase were the memorial flyer from Dougie’s funeral, which I put aside without looking at, and copies of the photographs I’d taken from Sarge’s apartment, including the one that had been stolen from Cohen’s home: a picture of Malik with Sarge and the man my CIA friend had identified as Richard “Rick” Dalton.

  The other photo showed Dougie and Rick together. Both of them wore beards and native dress. Dougie had the dagger on thin, braided rope slung across his chest. I wondered what the two men had been up to together, and if Rick had been present on the mission that killed Dougie.

  I laced my fingers across one knee as I leaned back, staring at the meager belongings.

  That was it. No deep, dark secrets. Nothing that would destroy a man’s life or give him cause for murder.

  Maybe the Alpha thought that Malik’s video had ended up in Dougie’s hands, and from there had come to me. I was sad to disappoint.

  I picked up the compass again. Shook it. Over the gentle tick of the needle, I thought I caught the faintest click of metal on metal.

  Nik’s voice came to me from a years-old memory. I want you to see a few things.

  I stood abruptly, startling Clyde. I grabbed Dougie’s compass and went out into the hall and down to the room that Nik had shared with Ellen Ann before his death.

  Nik had been dead for six months, but his box still sat on their dresser. I opened it and searched through his war-related treasures for his compass. Not the one that had been issued to him before he left for Vietnam. Rather, the older one his father had carried.

  I found the compass, an almost identical match to Dougie’s with its nicked casing and the letters US stamped on the outside. When I popped open the lid, the inside was also a near-duplicate of Dougie’s. But when I eased my fingernails beneath the mechanism, it readily separated from the casing and dropped into my hand.

  A smooth hollow lay beneath.

  I set aside Nik’s compass and opened Dougie’s again.

  Maybe I’d been too tentative before, afraid to destroy what little I had left of him. Now I went to the garage for the smallest flat-head screwdriver I could find, and when I returned, I pushed the end into the narrow gap and pressed.

  With a pop and a sprinkle of fine desert sand, the mechanism fell free.

  I stared.

  In the hollow space was a cloud of cotton, and inside that, a small key. The top of the key had been sawed off so that it would fit. I knew a few things about keys, a gift from my railroad career. This key had XL7 stamped on the face, which meant it was originally a blank made by Ilco. Heart pounding, I returned to Gentry’s room and grabbed my personal laptop from my duffel. I did a quick search. The XL7 blanks were primarily used for mailboxes manufactured by four companies. I could exclude US Postal Service keys, which would be designated as such. But that still meant that this key went to one of roughly a million mailboxes in the United States.

  Assuming the mailbox was even in the United States.

  Assuming it went to a mailbox.

  I looked at my watch, calculating.

  I had thirty-nine hours remaining. More or less.

  CHAPTER 11

  We were the Marines the other Marines avoided. The pariahs, the bad-luck charms. The ones no one wanted to risk being near. As if we didn’t just process death. As if we brought it.

  —Sydney Parnell. Personal journal.

  Back in the truck, Clyde watched squirrels through the open window while I checked my phone for messages—none—and tried once more to call Hal. Straight to voice mail.

  I adjusted my rearview, checking the street behind. Two houses down, a little girl rode a tricycle along the sidewalk, feet pumping, braids flying. Her mother watched from the driveway, cof
fee cup in hand, her powder-blue waitress uniform wrinkled and baggy, as if she’d just gotten off work.

  I returned my attention to the view out the windshield. Next door to Gram’s, a teenage boy stood on the concrete stoop, texting madly. Beyond that, the street baked quietly in the rising heat, lawns brown and half-choked with weeds, paint peeling like a bad sunburn. Royer was a dual- or even triple-income kind of place, and by now most people would be at their first job. Around five, they’d knock off and go on to toil at the next minimum-wage sweatshop.

  I stared down at the small key cupped in my palm. The same questions kept running through my head. If this was the “intel” the Alpha sought, how had it come to be in Dougie’s possession? And why had he hidden it instead of turning it over to someone who would know what to do with it—whoever that might be?

  Instead, he’d left the compass with me. And later that night he’d died.

  The key taunted me with its mute simplicity. Perhaps this was the key to a storage bunker holding Saddam’s gold. Or an entrée into the location of those weapons of mass destruction we never found. If I stood in front of Cohen’s home with a sign that said FOUND IT, would the Alpha relieve me of the key and tell me Malik and I were safe now?

  Olly olly oxen free.

  Right. If I kept this up, pretty soon I’d find myself hunting alligators in the sewers or watching for the mother ship.

  A block over, someone fired up a lawn mower. Clyde and I both jumped. I looked in surprise at my partner. Clyde could sit through a barrage of artillery fire and not twitch a muscle. That was part of his training.

  But a lawn mower set him off?

  “Buddy, we gotta go see your trainer. I think you’re coming down with a case of nerves.”

  Clyde kept staring out the window as if ready to take on the lawn mower if it got close and made an aggressive move.

  “Exactly.”

  The little girl and her tricycle zipped by on the sidewalk.

  “Kaylee! Kaylee, you turn around right now,” her mother called.

  The girl kept going, her head thrust forward like she was hoping to break Danica Patrick’s record at the next Indy 500.