Ambush

by Barbara Nickless

  “So what changed?”

  “All this time I was hiding in the home of a man who took me in for no reason other than that he believed God expects all of us to care for anyone in need.”

  I remembered Zarif’s words. “The hadith.”

  “That’s right. A source of guidance for Muslims. This man took me out into the countryside, to the home of his wife’s brother. The brother and his wife took care of me, and the man visited as often as he could, at first bringing medicines and bandages. Later other things. Books. DVDs. Fruit from the market. Little gifts to keep up my spirits. Every day, these people risked their lives and the lives of their families to help me. Me, an invader. One of those who brought death and destruction down on their country.”

  He stopped, and I waited out his silence. After a moment, he went on.

  “Then one night, when it was near my time to leave, the man who’d first taken me from Habbaniyah asked me to walk with him in the desert. We walked for a long time. I was much stronger by then, and I kept up with him. Even when we went so far out into the desert that I thought he had changed his mind and meant to kill me.”

  “What happened?”

  “When we were out of sight of all man-made light—campfires, lanterns, lights from the generators—he led me up a hill and pointed to the same sky you and I are looking at now. He said that even though there are many stars, each one is glorious. Each star has a place in the heavens. And no star is greater or lesser than any of the others. And that is why he helped me.” He dropped his head, kept drumming his feet. “It sounds corny now. Stars in the heavens, for fuck’s sake. But when I was with him in the middle of the desert with my life hanging by a thread, it didn’t sound trite at all. It made perfect sense. He also said that eventually every star goes out. And the thing for us to remember is that when our own time comes, there will be others to carry on. Others to pick up the sword or plow that we dropped. And we’ll always have our place in the heavens.”

  My tears were unexpected, rising from a place I’d barricaded shut long ago. I turned my face away so that Dougie wouldn’t see me weep.

  “It sound corny to you?” he asked.

  I forced a laugh. “I wish it did.”

  “I’m asking for just a few hours with you.” He became so still that for a moment it was as if he’d slipped away into the dark. “Just tonight. And I’m not talking about sex. I know you love someone else, and I’m glad for you. I just . . .” He pulled in a deep breath. “I just need to hear you breathe. Need to have my eyes on you for one night. You were always my compass rose.”

  I looked up once again at the glittering canopy of stars. Blinked away the last of my tears.

  Then I reached over and took his hand in mine.

  CHAPTER 22

  There is no place in war for love. But I loved anyway.

  —Sydney Parnell. Personal journal.

  In the hotel room, I closed and locked the door behind us and fastened the chain. I heard one of the beds creak as Clyde jumped on top.

  When I turned around, Dougie hadn’t moved away from the door.

  Our bodies were only inches apart. In the gloom, the heat rising from his skin flared over me like the signal arc from a radar beacon. His scent, both foreign and familiar, filled my nose and mouth. Memories swirled through my head like leaves caught in a storm, urging me to a distant place, another time.

  Beneath this longing was the drumbeat of my fear for Cohen.

  I dug my nails into my palms and pressed my back against the door, grounding myself. In the faint light, I searched Dougie’s face, trying to read his expression. The single overhead bulb merged his shadow with mine. We seemed more dream than flesh.

  “You’ve been covering it well,” he said, “but you’re hurt.”

  “It’s not so bad.” Not for my body, anyway. In my soul, an existential battle waged.

  “Let me see to it.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “You need to be at your best. For whatever’s coming down the pike.”

  Panic surged, and I pushed it down. But it was like trying to drown an elephant.

  “I’m afraid of you,” I whispered. “Afraid to be too close.”

  “Rosie.” His voice cracked. He pulled back, and the light fell between us, dull and fly spotted.

  “Don’t touch me.”

  “I want to help you. Only that.”

  I remembered the bloody rag at the strip club. Neatly folded and spattered with blood. “They hurt you, too.”

  “He hadn’t really started.”

  The room was overwarm, the air as thick and languid as the tropics. My blood throbbed under the weight of my confusion. For a few moments I let my mind run along a path into a future that included both of us.

  “Maybe it’s not you I’m afraid of.” I touched a single lock of Dougie’s hair. “Maybe it’s me.”

  I sat on one of the beds, my feet flat on the floor and my back snugged against Clyde, who lay sprawled down the middle. Dougie returned from the bathroom, drying his hands on a towel. He switched on the table lamp so that the light fell across the bed, then knelt in front of me.

  I’d long ago removed the Kevlar. Now I stripped off my filthy T-shirt. Dougie’s eyes swept past my bra and came to rest on my ribs. Gently, he turned me so the light slanted over my skin.

  His fingers left burn marks where they touched.

  Tenderly, he peeled away the blood-soaked bandage. He studied the wound for a moment, then rose and went into the bathroom, returning with more towels and a damp washcloth. He opened his backpack.

  I stared. “You have medical supplies?”

  “I’ve spent the last two years running deep ops in remote places. Had to be ready for anything.”

  “The kind of secret ops that meant you couldn’t pick up the phone and call me?”

  “Exactly those kind.”

  “Three years, Dougie.”

  His eyes met mine. “Having me back in your life would have brought you the wrong kind of attention. I wouldn’t risk it.”

  “You should have given me a choice.”

  “No.” He closed his eyes. Opened them. “Not even that.”

  A storm surge of hurt washed up against me.

  What kind of man chooses to remain dead to those who love him, just so he can get the job done? And how far into the covert world had he stepped by the time I met him in Iraq?

  Maybe the Dougie I thought I knew had never existed.

  “It was a mistake,” I said. “Falling in love with me.”

  “It wasn’t in the plan.” His mouth ticked up. “But it was never a mistake.”

  So perhaps even the strongest among us have an Achilles’ heel. Who would turn away love?

  An image of Cohen rose, along with another surge of pain. Cohen didn’t know about Dougie.

  Another part of my past I hadn’t shared.

  As Dougie worked, I studied the top of his head, the thick, dark-blond curls. In Iraq, he’d worn a bandanna to keep his hair back from his face. Or a keffiyeh when he needed to move in secret. In the desert, riding horseback, he’d been exotic. Mesmerizing. A man both at home in the wilderness and startlingly alien.

  Here, in this dreary hotel room, he was even more so.

  I said, “How long have you known about the Alpha?”

  He shook his head. “I knew we had a traitor in Iraq. But I didn’t know he was still active until I pulled Malik out of that shit-hole spy school. The Alpha knows more about me than I do about him.”

  A needle bit my skin, and I jerked.

  “Anesthetic,” he said. “Stay still.”

  He was much as I remembered him. Still tall, of course. Still strong. Eyes brilliant in the semigloom, the blue-green of tropical seas. There were new wrinkles—crow’s feet around his eyes, two vertical lines like slashes on each side of his mouth. And the expression in his eyes had shifted from optimism to something darker.

  I gasped when he pulled a different needle through
my skin. He murmured an apology but didn’t stop.

  Could a person be of two hearts? Could you walk through life loving one person as much as another? Or, with the sides irreconcilable, would your heart eventually break beneath the load?

  I closed my eyes and focused on the pain.

  “Done,” he said after a time.

  I glanced down. He’d closed the wound with tight, neat stitches. “It looks good.”

  His fingers smoothed a bandage over the wound. He ran one thumb up my rib cage, and the air shifted as we both sucked in our breaths. He removed my ball cap and fisted a tangled lock of my hair.

  “You could have died in Mexico,” he said. “I should have stopped him sooner. I was afraid to show my hand.”

  Gently I disentangled his fingers. “We should sleep now.”

  “Just give me this moment.”

  His thumb stroked the side of my face, his touch as light as if he had no more substance than one of my ghosts.

  He said, “What kept me alive was the thought of being with you again.”

  “Sh.”

  “Every day in Iraq, a movie played in my mind. A movie of what our life would be when we were together again. You’d be a teacher, like you always wanted. I’d stay home and cook. Tend a garden.”

  Despite everything, I laughed. “You? A house husband?”

  “I’m ready for it, Rosie. It’s all I want as soon as I finish with the covert work.” His face lit up. “That and about five kids.”

  My laugh came smaller this time. “Kids.”

  His fingers brushed my jawline, trailed down to my throat where my pulse ached. “Every day and night for months while my body healed, I imagined you next to me. I’d close my eyes, and there you’d be. Telling me that I had to live. Nothing more. Just live.”

  My shoulders shook with my sobs.

  His hand moved to my bare shoulder, the calluses across his palm like brands upon his skin. “I never gave up on us. I always imagined that in another year, two at the most, we’d be together.”

  “All I had were memories. And those hurt so much.” My breath shuddered. “I tried to let you go. Lately . . . it’s been a little easier.”

  “Because of the cop.” His voice was filed down to an edge.

  “Michael Cohen.” Saying his name brought fresh pain. My eyes strayed to the clock on the bedside table, calculating the hours. “I’m not the same woman you loved.”

  “I’m not the same man. Everyone changes.”

  How easy it was to see that. His confidence hardened into hypervigilance. Optimism buried by anger. The man I loved had been washed through a cycle over and over, until what remained was a hard core of qualities that almost mocked the man he’d been.

  And yet. The gentleness remained.

  He said, “Is he a good man?”

  I remembered our bedroom that morning, a million years ago. The silence between us. Would that be the last thing we shared?

  “He’s a very good man.”

  “And you love him.”

  I’d already searched my heart. “Yes.”

  “More than . . . ?” He pulled his hand away and dropped his gaze.

  “Don’t ask,” I whispered.

  Silence hung in the air.

  But when he lifted his eyes to mine, he pulled up a smile that must have cost him almost everything he had left. “Then we’ll bring him home to you.”

  Sarge came by to let us know he’d booked a 6:00 a.m. flight. The three of us sketched out a rough plan for the next day, I gave him Rick Dalton’s key, and Sarge bid us goodnight. After he left, I washed up in the bathroom. When I came back out, toweling my hair, Dougie had removed his shirt and shoes and settled atop the covers next to Clyde. Clyde slept with his head tucked under Dougie’s shoulder.

  The soft light from the bedside lamp illuminated a network of thick scar tissue that webbed Dougie’s stomach.

  I stopped. “When did that happen?”

  “During the ambush.”

  I sat on the other bed. “That’s when you decided to switch places with Dalton.”

  “I didn’t make that decision, Rosie. I was gut shot. I woke up twenty hours later and miles away. I assume it was one of my sources in the village who made the switch in order to protect me, and another man took me out of the city. When I came to, I was in a house in the middle of nowhere. The man and woman who lived there took care of me for almost a year.”

  “So much pain.”

  “Life is pain. There or here. No matter who we are.”

  True that. “How are we going to find Cohen?”

  “Sleep. Something will come to us.”

  “That part of your secret-ops training?”

  “Sometimes the best way to solve a problem is to walk away from it. I’m guessing you know that. You just don’t know how to do it.”

  “Maybe not.” Not when it came to Cohen.

  He reached over the edge of the bed into his backpack and tossed over a few protein bars. “Better to use this time to eat and rest, Rosie. So we can be on our game at first light.”

  As I turned down the sheets, Clyde lifted his head. But when Dougie cooed a few words to him, he resettled. They both closed their eyes, and soon my partner’s quiet, even breathing joined Dougie’s.

  Dougie was right. I should sleep. Come dawn, I needed to be in the zone, ready to find Cohen and spirit him away before he ended up like Angelo.

  But as tired as I was, I could not rest. Not with Cohen beaten and in pain, wondering if the next day would bring his death. I stared through the gloom at my laptop and asked myself if the key to his location lay buried somewhere on the internet. Something I’d missed. Some clue I’d failed to pick up.

  I threw off the covers and opened my computer, curling my feet beneath me as I sat at the table. Using multiple browsers, I hunted down virtual alleyways and surveyed electronic vistas. I pursued James Osborne as if he were a rabbit to my wolf, diving down holes, digging through layers, searching for a scent.

  Since I didn’t think Osborne would take the risk of hiding Cohen on Vigilant property or at his personal address, I looked for ties to other locations.

  But Osborne was too smart for someone with my skills. He’d erased all footsteps save for those on the broad avenue of his website.

  He was a ghost in the machine.

  After an hour, with my eyes closing against my will, I had to admit failure.

  Determination is not a plan, desire no substitute for strategy.

  I rose and went to the window, edging aside the curtain.

  A gossamer veil of clouds covered the stars. Only a soft yellow glow from the streetlamp held back the dark.

  Clyde roused himself, shook, and hopped off the bed. He padded over and stood next to me at the window. He put his paws on a chair, and we stared through the glass for a time, until I released the curtain.

  In the dark, Dougie gave a sharp, sudden cry and swung a fist. He muttered something and turned to his side.

  How had he and I gotten to this place? How was it that even our love had been corrupted by war?

  For three years I’d played out this impossible reunion in my mind. Now here it was, lost before I’d grasped it. Dougie and I didn’t belong together. We’d changed. Our lives had moved onto separate paths. Water had flowed not just under the bridge, but over it until the bridge was no longer even there.

  Dougie yelled again. Beside me, Clyde let out an agitated whimper.

  I rested my hand on his head.

  “I know, boy,” I whispered. “I know.”

  Clyde looked up at me, and I ruffled his ears.

  “We’re not alone. Sarge will find the intel, and we’ll bring Mike home. I can’t think past that.”

  I set aside my fear. I locked it in a box and threw away the key and dug out my combat face, the one I’d discovered in Iraq my first day out of the wire. Then I ate a couple of protein bars and crawled back into bed for a couple of hours.

  Food, then sleep, th
en war.

  CHAPTER 23

  Everyone is the hero of their own story.

  —Sydney Parnell. Personal journal.

  Paraphrased from John Barth.

  It was still dark when I woke to the sound of water running in the next room. A television set murmured on low volume. A drawer slammed, and something thumped against the wall.

  Sarge, getting ready to head out.

  I sat up and checked my phone—4:00 a.m. and nothing more from the Alpha. My eyes were gritty with sand, my body a mass of pain. I swung my feet to the floor, dry swallowed more of Dougie’s over-the-counter pain pills, and reached for my jacket.

  Clyde hopped down from the bed. Half the night with Dougie. Half with me.

  Split down the middle.

  At the door, I paused. Dougie still slept, his arm thrown over his eyes, the sheets tangled around his waist, his muscles bunched even in sleep. I watched him for a moment, then grabbed my laptop, and Clyde and I slipped outside.

  The predawn air was cool and clean smelling, the highway an empty ribbon unfurled across the prairie. Sometime during the night, the motel owner had shut off the single lamp in the parking lot. The only light came from the hint of dawn in the east and a thin golden glow leaking around the curtains over Sarge’s window.

  Clyde went sniffing for rabbits, his tail wagging and ears swiveling. He trotted past the rancher’s truck where it was still parked at the far end of the lot, dew beaded on the windows and glistening on the back bumper with its GOD AND COUNTRY decal.

  Clyde headed toward a clump of cottonwood trees.

  I stretched for a few minutes and jogged in place, testing my body, stirring the sluggish flow of blood in my veins. Then I sat at the nearby picnic table, powered on the laptop, and opened Google Maps. I pulled up the addresses of the people who’d been on the platform when Kane died.