Ambush

by Barbara Nickless

  Above us, trees rustled in the county park where we’d fled. The moon spilled silver. I stopped my pacing long enough to glare at him. “That the kind of bullshit platitude you peddled during the war?”

  “It’s pure truth.”

  “Yeah? Well, fuck that.”

  But I took a deep steadying breath and hoisted myself up on the retaining wall. If I leaned back, I could see the basketball court at the far end of the park. The lone hoop was lit by a single streetlight.

  Sarge was right. If I couldn’t get a grip, everything would go up in flames.

  Across the two-lane country road from the park was the Coach Motel, a place as gray and devoid of character as a metal bucket. Except for an older couple in the room at the end—ranchers judging by their mud-splattered pickup and worn cowboy boots—we were the only customers.

  Dougie stood in the lighted lobby, paying cash for two rooms. We’d left the body of Mark Fadden behind for someone on Team Alpha to find. We’d searched the place but found nothing of Fadden’s that was personal. Nothing that pointed toward who had hired him or what he intended next. What we had found was the Alpha’s arsenal—we’d helped ourselves to enough weapons and gear to equip an LA street gang. While I retrieved my belongings and Dougie got the backpack he’d had when he was taken, Sarge went through and wiped down every place the three of us might have touched, erasing our presence as much as possible. We stocked up on groceries and beer at a strip mall and finally came here, to this tiny roadside inn and a deserted park on the edge of nowhere.

  I’d gotten one more text from the Alpha. Our original deal was off. At noon the next day, they would begin removing pieces of Michael Cohen.

  By two in the afternoon, if I hadn’t delivered, they would kill him.

  The temperature had dropped to the fifties, but my skin burned as if I’d dunked myself in acid. Under my jacket, blood seeped through Gram’s bandage. Every molecule of adrenaline had dissolved, and now my body sent up flares of pain strong enough to make the world spin.

  But my pain was nothing against what Cohen would endure if I could not find him.

  I leaned down and ran my fingers through Clyde’s fur. “You learn anything at all from that friend of yours?”

  “Hutch?” Sarge sighed. “Nothing. Man drank my whiskey, but he was scared as shit to talk.”

  I curled my hands into fists.

  My mind could not find a place to roost. It lit on the feel of Fadden’s weight on my body and the sight of his crushed skull, then flew to Clyde’s desperate barking. It circled about and landed on the fact of Dougie’s sudden return from the dead, and my struggle to figure out how I felt about that—relief, rage, joy, and shock were all good candidates.

  It bumped up against the photo they’d sent of Cohen.

  And there it lingered before finally wandering into the past—Cohen in his living room, his shoulders up, his voice ripping a hole in my flesh.

  I don’t know if I can trust you to have my back.

  The mantra I kept coming back to was the fact of Dougie’s key. On the drive over, I’d taken it from my duffel and placed it in my pocket. Every hope I had for Cohen hinged on that.

  The key, and the weapons locked in the back of my SUV.

  I nodded toward a paper sack. “I’m ready for another.”

  Sarge popped the top off a bottle of beer and handed it up. I hesitated, then placed it on the wall next to me. Probably good to take a breather.

  With his own drink, Sarge gestured toward the lobby. “That is one messed-up dude.”

  “You don’t know him.”

  Sarge’s chuckle was as dry and mirthless as bones rubbing together. “Knew him then, know him now. War turned that boy inside out.”

  “Didn’t seem like it did you any favors, either.”

  He glanced up at me. In the faint light, he was a silhouette, solid against the night.

  “Ditto for you, sister,” he said after a moment.

  A breeze flicked against my flesh, tangled my hair. I registered the sensations as if they belonged to someone else.

  “Least we got one thing,” Sarge said. “We got the fucker who nailed Kane.”

  We did have that.

  I held my head in my hands to keep it from flying off. “When you guys were driving here, did Dougie tell you how they got him in that strip club?”

  “Just said he was tired and he got careless. Wouldn’t say anything else. Point of pride, I think.” Glass clinked as Sarge got another beer. “What I want to know is what he’s been doing since everything went down in Iraq.”

  Lying to me. Hiding from me. Breaking my heart across years of silence.

  But the camera in my brain clicked through old images, and I thought I knew at least some of it.

  A man calling himself Strider leading Malik to safety in Iraq. Snap.

  Delivering him to another man in Mexico City. Snap.

  A different man in the airport, his throat slit. Big fucking snap.

  I lifted my head as a lone car whizzed by, speeding toward the horizon. The dark soon swallowed it.

  I picked up the beer, drained half of it.

  Across the street, Dougie came out of the lobby and moved through the parking lot toward our two vehicles. Even his walk had changed in the years since I’d last seen him. In Iraq, he’d been a force—his six-foot-three height, his optimism, his booming laugh. Back then, he’d taken over every room he went into.

  This new Dougie was quieter. And much more dangerous.

  He got a backpack out of the trunk of Sarge’s car and disappeared into one of the rooms.

  “Why did Rick Dalton do it?” I asked. “Go along with destroying Haifa’s and Resenko’s bodies? Why did he pass along the Alpha’s order and start all this?”

  “Only thing I can figure is that he thought it was the right thing. Just like you and me and the rest of us poor dumb schmucks. All of us trying to fit one big fucking genie back into the bottle.”

  “It didn’t bother you, what we did?”

  He shot me a look; I felt the heat coming off it. “Bothered the hell out of me. We were choosing the many over the few, which I get. Sometimes, that’s how the play goes down. But Resenko was one of mine, and Haifa saved our lives more than once. Still . . .” He fell silent for so long I thought he’d had his say. Then he added, “Parnell, you’d better learn to move on. We all got things we wish we hadn’t done. But God sees everything in our souls, and even with that, He believes in forgiveness.”

  I thought about that for a time.

  Dougie came out of the hotel room and walked across the parking lot toward the park. He’d changed into a pair of jeans and a black short-sleeve tee. His wet hair gleamed.

  Clyde got to his feet, tail wagging, straining toward Dougie. I held tight to his lead in case he forgot there was a road between us and his former handler.

  I nudged Sarge’s shoulder with my foot. “Did he tell you what intel he hid?”

  “Said he never had any intel. Didn’t know what the hell I was talking about.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t panic, Corporal. We’ll figure it out.”

  But the key was Dougie’s. He had to know. The key would take us somewhere, give us something with which to buy Cohen’s life.

  I nodded. “You’re right.”

  But I felt like I was climbing Everest with a flashlight and a pack of chewing gum. I didn’t like the odds, and it was Cohen’s life I was gambling with.

  Sarge must have heard something in my voice. He squeezed my foot. “I filled him in on the way over. Told him about Osborne. About the video. The fact they took your man. You watch, Parnell. Between the three of us, we’ll put it all together.”

  Dougie reached us. He scooped a beer out of the paper bag, ruffled Clyde’s ears, and sat next to me on the wall. He touched his hand to my knee for only a second. My skin went hot. He looked and smelled the way I remembered him in Iraq, the way he’d been in my dreams.

  I had a tho
usand questions for him. A million. My mind buzzed with them, a nest of hornets careening off the inside of my skull, drilling me with their need to know. I wanted—craved—a rundown of everything that had happened to him since he’d kissed me good-bye three years ago and walked away to join his team.

  But not now. Now all that mattered was Cohen. And Malik.

  I took the key from my pocket and pressed it into Dougie’s palm.

  He stared. “What’s this?”

  My heart stepped onto an elevator and pressed B for Basement. “It was in your compass.”

  He turned it over in his hand. “I don’t understand.”

  Sarge got to his feet and took his own look.

  I stared at Dougie. “The Alpha says you have what he wants. Isn’t that right, Sarge? You had what he wants and then you gave it to me.” My voice rose. “The key has to lead to Malik’s video.”

  “Rosie, I’m sorry. I’ve never seen this key. And I didn’t hide any intel.”

  “You gave me your compass.” My skin was on fire. “That last day before you—before I thought you’d been killed. Didn’t you mean for me to find it?”

  Dougie made a fist and popped it softly against his thigh. “Rick Dalton.”

  Sarge looked from me to Dougie. “Say what?”

  “Rick and I worked together. When we were in the field, we usually shared a sleeping space. A tent, or a room in the house of a friendly. A lot of times it was just the two of us deep in enemy territory. You develop a lot of faith in someone when they have your back. I even trusted him to look after Clyde. He could have left the key, no problem.”

  “That’s why the Alpha was asking about Rick Dalton,” I said. “He knew Sarge and Rick Dalton were pals and that Sarge sometimes worked for him.”

  “That’s right,” Sarge said. “The Alpha would have known I’d give Malik’s video to Rick.”

  “And the Alpha,” I went on, “also thought the same thing everyone else did—that Rick was still alive.” I turned to Dougie. “Rick hid that key in your compass so you would have it if something happened to him.”

  “I don’t suppose he left an address, too,” Sarge said.

  Dougie stirred. “He was going retire to Vegas. He bought a condo there.”

  “But he wouldn’t have mailed the video there,” Sarge said. “He would know that’s the first place the Alpha would look.”

  “A postal store, then,” I said. “There have to be a lot of them in Vegas.”

  But Dougie shook his head. “You have to think like a spy. If you want to hide something, you don’t bury it in your backyard.”

  “Where, then?”

  “Somewhere anonymous. Close but not too close. And a place you’d have a reason to visit.”

  “That narrows it down.” Sarge made a disgusted sound. “Sounds like mission impossible.”

  “It’s meant to be.”

  “Why didn’t he just upload the video and email it somewhere?” I asked. “And for that matter, if he trusted you so much, why didn’t he tell you about Osborne and the video? Or just give you the key and say something like ‘in the event of my death’?”

  “Maybe he didn’t trust anyone at that point,” Dougie said. “You realize somebody on the inside is a traitor, how can you believe anyone? As for uploading the video and emailing it somewhere, likely he did. Rick would have wanted multiple copies in multiple places. Assuming he dared. The Alpha would have been monitoring communications—by sending that video, Rick would have risked exposing himself.”

  “Not only that,” Sarge said. “Malik’s phone was an old piece of shit. Maybe Rick couldn’t upload the video.”

  “Okay,” I said. “So he would have needed to send the original somewhere. And not to family, because the Alpha would look at them.”

  Dougie laughed. It was a faint flicker of the big booming laugh I remembered so well. This laugh was dry and sharp and came from a place I didn’t know. But it still counted for something.

  Clyde must have thought so, too. He rose from where he’d sprawled below Dougie’s feet and leaned against his legs.

  Dougie said, “Rick made a big deal one day of telling me he had a half sister. It was the family secret, because Rick’s parents were still married when his dad got involved with a Las Vegas showgirl. Rick only found out about it after his parents died and he read their letters. He waited years, he said, and finally reached out to her after he was in Iraq. She was his only sibling.”

  Sarge laughed softly. “I’ll be damned.”

  “He was planning on visiting her after the war. Then a week later we were ambushed, and he was killed.” Dougie’s hands staccatoed against his thighs. “He had this planned. He knew what was on that video. Knew he had to get it out of the country.”

  I slid off the wall, then regretted it as the world wobbled. I reached out a hand to steady myself. “Where is she, Dougie?”

  “Bullhead City, Arizona. A hundred miles south of Las Vegas. She manages a copy center there.”

  Sarge’s laugh grew louder. He grabbed me and gave me a bro hug. “How much you want to bet she has mailboxes there, too?”

  I pushed Sarge away and told myself that pain makes us stronger. “Let’s call her.”

  “No,” Dougie said. “It’s safer for her if we keep her out of the loop. We go in, find the mailbox, and leave without her knowing we were there. Then we use it to get your detective out of danger.”

  I leaned carefully against the wall. The world stopped wobbling, but my back burned with a thousand agonies. “This is our one shot, isn’t it? If the video isn’t there, we’ve got nothing else.”

  “That’s optimism for you,” Sarge said.

  Dougie roughed Clyde’s fur. “What’s odd is that this key is all Rick left. Rick was Mister Triplicate. He always had a plan B, usually a plan C.”

  “Maybe there wasn’t time.” I frowned. “Or maybe, like you said, he couldn’t risk it.”

  Sarge spread his feet and clasped his hands behind his back. “You want me to go to Vegas? You trust me enough for that?”

  “You can’t go alone,” I said. “Too dangerous.”

  “Yeah, well, we don’t exactly have an army to help. The two of you need to find Cohen. I’ll move fast and keep my head low. Agreed?”

  Dougie and I exchanged glances. But Sarge was right. There was no one else.

  “Agreed,” we both said.

  Sarge said, “Okay, good.”

  But Dougie and I were still looking at each other.

  In that moment, it was as if no time had passed. As if we were still young and in love, carrying faith that the war would soon end and there would be room enough in the world for our dreams.

  That we would always be together.

  Sarge said, “Why do I suddenly feel like I’m interrupting something?”

  Dougie startled, and his face folded in on itself, overcome by a sadness so profound it was visible even in the dull glow from the streetlight.

  I knew the feeling.

  Dougie shook himself and said, “You feel you can manage Bullhead City on your own, Udell, then we’ll trust you to bring back that video. After all, Malik trusted you with it when all this started. Seems only right for you to bring it back. While you’re gone, Rosie and I will work on figuring out where her friend is. And tracking the man you guys call the Alpha.”

  “James Osborne,” I said.

  Dougie nodded. “Sarge told me your theory. What you guys learned about Valor Industries and Vigilant Resources.”

  “There’s more.” I told them about my call with Alison Handel, my State Department friend. When I finished, Dougie fisted his hands one atop the other and tapped them together, thinking. Then he nodded.

  “Rick worked with Osborne. I don’t know in what capacity. But Osborne gave the order to allow the weapons and the Iranians into Iraq, then set up the mission for us to capture them.”

  “Then he really is our Alpha,” I said.

  “He definitely sounds like
a good place to start.” Dougie flattened his hands on the wall. “For now, I suggest we get a few hours of sleep and start fresh. Not much we can do until Sarge can get on a flight to Vegas.”

  “We can look for Cohen,” I said.

  His look was soft. “You have any ideas where?”

  I had to shake my head.

  Sarge collected the empty bottles and took the room key Dougie offered. “I’ll book a seat on the first flight out. And arrange for a rental car. I’ll let you know what time I’m heading out.” He headed toward the motel, then turned back. “Have you two thought about how this is going to play out? We turn over the intel, what’s going to stop him from whacking us?”

  “Nothing,” Dougie said. “The only hand we have right now is that video. Soon as we turn it over, he’ll kill us.”

  “Nice. And if we don’t turn it over?”

  “He’ll kill us.”

  “I hate suspense,” Sarge said. “Why don’t we lie down on that highway right now and get flattened by a semi?”

  “We’ll figure out something.”

  Sarge eyeballed us in a way that could only be described as skeptical. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but ‘we’ll think of something’ don’t get my heart fluttering. I might take my chances with the semi.”

  “Just get the video.”

  Sarge glared at us another minute, then shook his head and crossed the road to the hotel, stopping long enough to grab a backpack from his car before disappearing into the room.

  The moon sank behind the mountains. A gust of wind set the swings to swaying.

  Dougie looked up, and I followed his gaze. The night was a spangled glory, ablaze with silver light, magnificently indifferent.

  “Perspective,” Dougie said.

  My heart wasn’t fluttering, either. “The kind of perspective that says our lives mean nothing? That none of this matters?”

  “No. The opposite of that.”

  I held out a hand, and he hoisted me back atop the wall. I was starting to get used to the pain. Like having a tracking monitor on your ankle. At least you knew where you stood.

  “I don’t understand,” I said.

  Dougie’s heels drummed against the wall. “After I nearly died in that ambush, I spent a long time in Iraq. Every day for six months I walked a line between death and life, moving back and forth across that line with every hour. Then for another six months, even as my body grew stronger, I wondered if going on was worth it. My men and I had been betrayed by our own countrymen. Most of us had died. Dalton had died.” He folded his arms. “I’d seen the worst this world has to offer.”