Kitabı oku: «Primary Target», sayfa 3

CHAPTER THREE

March 19

Night

An airplane over Europe

“Are you men comfortable?”

“Yes, sir,” Luke said.

Murphy didn’t respond. He sat in a recliner across the narrow aisle from Luke, staring out the window at blank darkness. They were in a small jet that was set up almost like someone’s living room. Luke and Murphy sat at the back, facing forward. In the front were three men, including a Delta Force colonel and a three-star general from the Pentagon. There was also a man in civilian clothes.

Behind the men were two green berets, standing at attention.

“Specialist Murphy?” the general said. “Are you comfortable?”

Murphy slid the window shade down. “Yeah. I’m fine.”

“Murphy, do you know how to address a superior officer?” the colonel said.

Murphy turned away from the window. He looked directly at the men for the first time.

“I’m not in your army anymore.”

“Why are you on this plane, in that case?”

Murphy shrugged. “Someone offered me a ride. There aren’t a lot of commercial flights out of Afghanistan these days. So I figured I’d better take this one.”

The man in civilian clothes glanced at the cabin door.

“If you’re not in the military, I suppose we could always ask you to leave. Of course, it’s a long way to the ground.”

Murphy followed the man’s eyes.

“Do it. I promise you’ll come with me.”

Luke shook his head. If this were a playground, he would almost smile. But this wasn’t a playground, and these men were deadly serious.

“Okay, Murph,” he said. “Take it down a notch. I was on that hill with you. Nobody on this plane put us there.”

Murphy shrugged. “All right, Stone.” He looked at the general. “Yes, I’m comfortable, sir. Very comfortable. Thank you.”

The general glanced down at some paperwork in front of him.

“Thank you, gentlemen, for your service. Specialist Murphy, if you are interested in being discharged early from your obligations, I suggest you take that up with your commanding officer when you return to Fort Bragg.”

“Okay,” Murphy said.

The general looked up. “As you know, this was a difficult mission which did not go exactly as planned. I’d like to take the opportunity to familiarize myself with the facts of the situation. I have the records from the mission debrief when you both returned to Bagram. I gather from the testimony, and the photographic evidence, that the overall mission was a success. Would you agree with that, Sergeant Stone?”

“Uh… if by the overall mission, you mean to find and assassinate Abu Mustafa Faraj, then yes sir. I suppose it was a success.”

“That is what I meant, Sergeant. Faraj was a dangerous terrorist, and the world is a better place now that he’s gone. Specialist Murphy?”

Murphy stared at the general. It was clear to Luke that Murphy was no longer all there. He was better than he was the morning after the battle, but not by much.

“Yes?” he said.

The general gritted his teeth. He glanced at the men to his left and his right.

“What is your assessment of the mission, please?”

Murphy nodded. “Oh. The one we just did?”

“Yes, Specialist Murphy.”

Murphy didn’t answer for several seconds. He seemed to be thinking about it.

“Well, we lost nine Delta guys and two chopper pilots. Martinez is alive, but he’s scrambled eggs. Also, we killed a bunch of children, so I’m told, and at least a few women. There were piles of dead guys on the ground. I mean hundreds of dead guys. And I guess there was a famous terrorist there too, but I never saw him. So… about par for the course, I guess you’d say. It’s kind of how these things go. This wasn’t my first rodeo, if you know what I mean.”

He looked across the aisle at Luke.

“Stone looks okay. And speaking just for myself, I didn’t get a scratch on me. So sure, I’d say it went fine.”

The officers stared at Murphy.

“Sir,” Luke said. “I think what Specialist Murphy is trying to say, and you’ll see from my testimony that I agree, is the mission was poorly conceived and probably ill advised. Lieutenant Colonel Heath was a brave man, sir, but maybe not a very good strategist or tactician. After the first chopper crashed, I requested that he abort the mission, and he refused. He was also personally responsible for the deaths of a number of civilians, and likely for the death of Corporal Wayne Hendricks.”

Absurdly, saying the name of his friend nearly brought Luke to tears. He choked them back. This wasn’t the time or the place.

The general glanced down at his paperwork again. “And yet you do agree that the mission was a success? The object of the mission was achieved?”

Luke thought about that for a long moment. In the narrowest military sense, they had achieved the mission goal. That was true. They had killed a wanted terrorist, and perhaps somewhere down the line, that was going to save lives. It might even save many more lives than were lost.

That was how these men wanted to define success.

“Sergeant Stone?”

“Yes, sir. I do agree.”

The general nodded. So did the colonel. The man in civilian clothes made no response at all.

The general gathered his papers together and handed them to the colonel.

“Good,” he said. “We’re going to be landing in Germany soon, gentlemen, and then I’ll take my leave of you. Before I do, I want to impress upon you that I believe you’ve done a great thing, and you should be very proud. You’re obviously courageous men, and very skilled at your jobs. Your country owes you a debt of gratitude, one that will never be repaid adequately. It will also never be acknowledged publicly.”

He paused.

“Please recognize that the mission to kill Abu Mustafa Faraj al-Jihadi, while successful, did not take place. It does not exist in any recordkeeping, nor will it ever exist. The men who lost their lives as part of this mission died in a training accident during a sandstorm.”

He looked at them, his eyes hard now.

“Is that understood?”

“Yes sir,” Luke said, without hesitation. The fact that they were disappearing this mission didn’t surprise him in the least. He would disappear it too, if he could.

“Specialist Murphy?”

Murphy raised a hand and shrugged. “It’s your deal, man. I don’t think I’ve ever been on a mission that did exist.”

CHAPTER FOUR

March 23

4:35 p.m.

United States Army Special Operations Command

Fort Bragg

Fayetteville, North Carolina

“Can I bring you a cup of tea?”

Luke nodded. “Thank you.”

Wayne’s wife, Katie, was a pretty blonde, small, quite a bit younger than Wayne. Luke thought she was maybe twenty-four. She was pregnant with their daughter—eight months—and she was huge.

She was living in base housing, half a mile from Luke and Becca. The house was a tiny, three-room bungalow in a neighborhood of exactly identical houses. Wayne was dead. She was there because she had nowhere else to go.

She brought Luke his tea in a small ornate cup, the adult version of the cups little girls use when they have imaginary tea parties. She sat down across from him. The living room was spare. The couch was a futon that could fold out into a double bed for guests.

Luke had met Katie twice before, both times for five minutes or less. He hadn’t seen her since before she was pregnant.

“You were Wayne’s good friend,” she said.

“Yes. I was.”

She stared into her teacup, as if maybe Wayne was floating at the bottom.

“And you were on the mission where he died.” It wasn’t a question.

“Yes.”

“Did you see it? Did you see him die?”

Already, Luke didn’t like where these questions were headed. How to answer a question like that? Luke had missed the shots that killed Wayne, but he had seen him die, all right. He would give almost anything to unsee it.

“Yes.”

“How did he die?” she said.

“He died like a man. Like a soldier.”

She nodded, but said nothing. Maybe that wasn’t the answer she was looking for. But Luke didn’t want to go any further.

“Was he in pain?” she said.

Luke shook his head. “No.”

She looked into his eyes. Her eyes were red and rimmed with tears. There was a terrible sadness there. “How can you know that?”

“I spoke to him. He told me to tell you that he loved you.”

It was a lie, of course. Wayne hadn’t managed to utter a complete sentence. But it was a white lie. Luke believed that Wayne would have said it, if he could have.

“Is that why you came here, Sergeant Stone?” she said. “To tell me that?”

Luke took a breath.

“Before he died, Wayne asked me to be your daughter’s godfather,” Luke said. “I agreed, and I’m here to honor that commitment. Your daughter will be born soon, and I want to help you through this situation in any way I can.”

There was a long, silent pause between them. It stretched longer and longer.

Finally, Katie shook her head, just a tiny amount. She spoke softly.

“I could never have a man like you be my daughter’s godfather. Wayne is dead because of men like you. My girl will never have a father because of men like you. Do you understand? I’m here because I still have the healthcare, and so my baby will be born here. But after that? I’m going to run as far away from the Army, and from people like you, as I can. Wayne was stupid to be involved in this, and I was stupid to go along with it. You don’t have to worry, Sergeant Stone. You have no responsibility to me. You’re not my baby’s godfather.”

Luke couldn’t think of a single thing to say. He looked in his cup and saw that he had already finished his tea. He put the teacup down on the table. She picked it up and moved her bulk to the door of the tiny house. She opened the door and held it open.

“Good day, Sergeant Stone.”

He stared at her.

She began to cry. Her voice was as soft as ever.

“Please. Get out of my house. Get out of my life.”

* * *

Dinner was dreary and sad.

They sat across the table from each other, not speaking. She had made stuffed chicken and asparagus, and it was good. She had opened a beer for him and poured it into a glass. She had done nice things.

They were eating quietly, almost as though things were normal.

But he couldn’t bring himself to look at her.

There was a black matte Glock nine-millimeter on the table near his right hand. It was loaded.

“Luke, are you okay?”

He nodded. “Yeah. I’m fine.” He took a sip of his beer.

“Why is your gun on the table?”

Finally, he looked up at her. She was beautiful, of course, and he loved her. She was pregnant with his child, and she wore a flower-print maternity blouse. He could almost cry at her beauty, and at the power of his love for her. He felt it intensely, like a wave crashing against the rocks.

“Uh, it’s just there in case I need it, babe.”

“Why would you need it? We’re just eating dinner. We’re on the base. We’re safe here. No one can…”

“Does it bother you?” he said.

She shrugged. She slid a small forkful of chicken into her mouth. Becca was a slow and careful eater. She ate little bites, and it often took her a long time to finish her dinner. She didn’t strap the ol’ feedbag on like some people did. Luke loved that about her. It was one of their differences. He tended to inhale his food.

He watched her chew her food in slow motion. Her teeth were large. She had bunny teeth. It was cute. It was endearing.

“Yeah, a little,” she said. “You’ve never done that before. Are you afraid that…”

Luke shook his head. “I’m not afraid of anything. We have a child on the way, all right? It’s important that we keep our child safe from harm. It’s our responsibility. It’s a dangerous world, Becca, in case you didn’t know that.”

Luke nodded at the truth of what he was saying. More and more, he was beginning to notice hazards all around them. There were sharp dinner knives in the kitchen drawer. There were carving knives and a big meat cleaver in a wooden block on the counter. There were scissors in the cabinet behind the bathroom mirror.

The car had brakes, and someone could easily cut the brake lines. If Luke knew how to do it, then a lot of people knew. And there were a lot of people out there who might want to settle a score with Luke Stone.

It almost seemed like…

Becca was crying. She pushed her chair away from the table and stood up. Her face had turned crimson in the past ten seconds.

“Babe? What’s wrong?”

“You,” she said, the tears streaming down her face. “There’s something wrong with you. You’ve never come home like this before. You’ve barely said hello to me. You haven’t touched me at all. I feel like I’m invisible. You stay up all night. You don’t seem like you’ve slept at all since you got here. Now you’ve got a gun on the dinner table. I’m a little bit afraid, Luke. I’m afraid there’s something very, very wrong.”

He stood, and she took a step back. Her eyes went wide.

That look. It was the look of a woman who was afraid of a man. And he was that man. It horrified him. It was if he had snapped suddenly awake. He never imagined she would ever look at him that way. He never wanted her to look that way again, not at him, not at anyone, not for any reason.

He glanced at the table. He had placed a loaded gun there during dinner. Now why would he do that? Suddenly, he was ashamed of that gun. It was square and squat and ugly. He wanted to cover it with a napkin, but it was too late. She had already seen it.

He looked at her again.

She stood across from, abject, like a child, her shoulders hunched, her face crinkled up, the tears streaming down her cheeks.

“I love you,” she said. “But I’m so worried right now.”

Luke nodded. The next thing he said surprised him.

“I think I might need to go away for a little while.”

CHAPTER FIVE

April 14

9:45 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time

Fayetteville Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) Health Care Center

Fayetteville, North Carolina

“Why are you here, Stone?”

The voice shook Luke from whatever reverie he had become lost in. He often wandered alone through his thoughts and his memories these days, and afterward he couldn’t remember what he had been thinking about.

He glanced up.

He was sitting in a folding chair among a group of eight men. Most of the men sat in folding chairs. Two were in wheelchairs. The group took up a corner of a large but dreary open room. Windows against the far wall showed that it was a sunny, early spring day. Somehow the light from outside didn’t seem to reach into the room.

The group was positioned in a semicircle, facing a middle-aged bearded man with a large stomach. The man wore corduroy pants and a red flannel shirt. The stomach protruded outward almost like a beach ball was hiding under the shirt, except the face of it was flat, like air was leaking out. Luke suspected that if he punched that stomach, it would be as hard as an iron skillet. The man was tall, and he leaned way back in his chair, his thin legs out in a straight line in front of him.

“Excuse me?” Luke said.

The man smiled, but there was no humor in it.

“Why… are… you… here?” he said again. He said it slowly this time, as if talking to a small child, or an imbecile.

Luke looked around at the men. This was group therapy for war veterans.

It was a fair question. Luke didn’t belong here. These guys were wrecked. Physically disabled. Traumatized.

A few of them didn’t seem like they were ever coming back. The guy named Chambers was probably the worst. He had lost an arm and both his legs. His face was disfigured. The left half was covered by bandages, a large metal plate protruding from under there, stabilizing what was left of the facial bones on that side. He had lost his left eye, and they hadn’t replaced it yet. At some point, after they finished rebuilding his orbital socket, they were going to give him a nice new fake eye.

Chambers had been riding in a Humvee that ran over an IED in Iraq. The device was a surprise innovation—a shaped charge that penetrated straight up through the undercarriage of the vehicle, and then straight through Chambers, taking him apart from the bottom up. The military was retrofitting the old Humvees with heavy underside armor, and redesigning the new ones, to guard against these sorts of attacks in the future. But that wasn’t going to help Chambers.

Luke didn’t like to look at Chambers.

“Why are you here?” the leader said yet again.

Luke shrugged. “I don’t know, Riggs. Why are you here?”

“I’m trying to help men get their lives back,” Riggs said. He said it without missing a beat. Either it was a canned answer he kept for when people confronted him, or he actually believed it. “How about you?”

Luke said nothing, but everyone was staring at him now. He rarely said anything in this group. He would just as soon not attend. He didn’t think it was helping him. Truth be told, he thought the whole thing was a waste of time.

“Are you afraid?” Riggs said. “Is that why you’re here?”

“Riggs, if you think that, then you don’t know me very well.”

“Ah,” Riggs said, and raised his meaty hands just a bit. “Now we’re getting somewhere. You’re a hardcase. We know that already. So do it. Step up. Tell us all about Sergeant First Class Luke Stone of the United States Army Special Forces. Delta, am I right? Neck deep in the shit, right? One of the guys who went on that botched mission to kill the Al Qaeda guy, the guy who supposedly did the USS Sarasota bombing?”

“Riggs, I wouldn’t know anything about any mission like that. A mission like that would be classified information, which would mean that if either of us knew anything about it, we wouldn’t be at liberty…”

Riggs smiled and made a spinning wheel motion with his hand. “To discuss such a high-level and crucial targeted assassination that never existed in the first place. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We all know the talk. We’ve heard it before. Believe me, Stone, you’re not that important. Every man in this group has seen combat. Every man in this group is intimately aware of the—”

“What kind of combat have you seen, Riggs?” Luke said. “You were in the Navy. On a destroyer. In the middle of the ocean. You’ve been riding a desk in this hospital for the past fifteen years.”

“This isn’t about me, Stone. It’s about you. You’re in a VA hospital, in the psych ward. Right? I’m not in the psych ward. You are. I work in the psych ward, and you live there. But you’re not committed. You’re voluntary. You can walk out of here any time you want. Right in the middle of this session, if you like. Fort Bragg is five or six miles from here. All your old buddies are over there, waiting for you. Don’t you want to get back together with them? They’re waiting for you, man. Rock and roll. There’s always another classified FUBAR mission to go on.”

Luke said nothing. He just stared at Riggs. The man was out of his mind. He was the crazy one. He wasn’t even slowing down.

“Stone, I see you Delta guys come through here from time to time. You never have a scratch on you. You guys are like, supernatural. The bullets always miss you somehow. But you’re freaked out. You’re burnt out. You’ve seen too much. You’ve killed too many people. You’ve got their blood all over you. It’s invisible, but it’s there.”

Riggs nodded to himself.

“We had a Delta guy come through here back in oh-three, about your age, insisted he was fine. He had just come back from a top secret mission in Afghanistan. It was a slaughterhouse. Of course it was. But he didn’t need all this talk. Sound like anybody we know? When he left here, he went home, killed his wife, his three-year-old daughter, and then put a bullet in his own brain.”

A pause drew out between Luke and Riggs. None of the other men said a word. The guy was a button pusher. For some reason, he saw that as his job. It was important that Luke stay cool and not let Riggs get under his skin. But Luke didn’t like this kind of thing. He felt a surge building inside him. Riggs was moving into dangerous territory.

“Is that what you’re scared of?” Riggs said. “You’re worried you’re gonna go home and blow your wife’s brains all over the—”

Luke was up from his chair and across the space between him and Riggs in less than a second. Before he knew what had happened, he had grabbed Riggs, kicked his chair out from under him, and thrown him to the floor like a rag doll. Riggs’s head banged off the stone tile.

Luke crouched over him and reared back his fist.

Riggs’s eyes were wide, and for a split second fear flashed across his face. Then his calm demeanor returned.

“That’s what I like to see,” he said. “A little enthusiasm.”

Luke took a deep breath and let his fist relax. He looked around at the other men. None of them had made a move. They just stared dispassionately as if a patient attacking his therapist was a normal part of their day.

No. That wasn’t it. They stared like they didn’t care what happened, like they were beyond caring.

“I know what you’re trying to do,” Luke said.

“I’m trying to break you out of your shell, Stone. And it looks like it’s finally starting to work.”

* * *

“I don’t want you here,” Martinez said.

Luke sat in a wooden chair next to Martinez’s bed. The chair was surprisingly uncomfortable, as if it had been designed to discourage loitering.

Luke was doing the thing he had avoided for weeks—he was visiting Martinez. The man was in a different building of the hospital, yes. But it was all of a twelve-minute walk from Luke’s own room. Luke hadn’t been able to face that walk until now.

Martinez was on a long road, a road that he seemed to have no interest in traveling. His legs had been shredded, and could not be saved. One was gone at his pelvis, one below the knee. He still had the use of his arms, but he was paralyzed from just below his ribcage down.

Before Luke came in here, a nurse whispered to him that Martinez spent most of his time crying. He also spent a lot of time sleeping—he was on a heavy dose of sedatives.

“I just came to say goodbye,” Luke said.

Martinez had been staring out the window at the bright day. Now he turned to look at Luke. His face was fine. He had always been a handsome guy, and he still was. God, or the Devil, or whoever was in charge of these things, had spared the man his face.

“Hello and goodbye, right? Good for you, Stone. You’re all in one piece, you gonna walk right out of here, probably get a promotion, some kind of citation. Never see another minute of combat because you were in the psych ward. Ride a desk, make more money, send other guys in. Good for you, man.”

Luke sat quietly. He folded one leg over the other. He didn’t say a word.

“Murphy stopped by here a couple of weeks ago, did you know that? I asked if he was going to see you, but he said no. He didn’t want to see you. Stone? Stone’s a suck-up to the brass. Why should he see Stone? Murphy said he’s gonna ride the freight trains across the country, like a hobo. That’s his plan. You know what I think? I think he’s gonna shoot himself in the head.”

“I’m sorry about what happened,” Luke said.

But Martinez wasn’t listening.

“How’s your wife, man? Pregnancy coming along good? Little Luke junior on the way? That’s real nice, Stone. I’m happy for you.”

“Robby, did I do something to you?” Luke said.

Tears began to stream down Martinez’s face. He pounded the bed with his fists. “Look at me, man! I have no legs! I’m gonna be pissing and shitting in a bag the rest of my life, okay? I can’t walk. I’m never gonna walk. I can’t…”

He shook his head. “I can’t…”

Now Martinez began to weep.

“I didn’t do it,” Luke said. His voice sounded small and weak, like a child’s voice.

“Yes! You did it! You did this. It was you. It was your mission. We were your guys. Now we’re dead. All but you.”

Luke shook his head. “No. It was Heath’s mission. I was just—”

“You bastard! You were just following orders. But you could have said no.”

Luke said nothing. Martinez breathed deeply.

“I told you to kill me.” He gritted his teeth. “I told you… to… kill… me. Now look at this… this mess. You were the one.” He shook his head. “You could have done it. Nobody would know.”

Luke stared at him. “I couldn’t kill you. You’re my friend.”

“Don’t say that!” Martinez said. “I’m not your friend.”

He turned his head to face the wall. “Get out of my room.”

“Robby…”

“How many men you killed, Stone? How many, huh? A hundred? Two hundred?”

Luke spoke barely above a whisper. He answered honestly. “I don’t know. I stopped counting.”

“You couldn’t kill one man as a favor? A favor to your so-called friend?”

Luke didn’t speak. Such a thing had never occurred to him before. Kill his own man? But he realized now that it was possible.

For a split second, he was back on that hillside on that cold morning. He saw Martinez sprawled on his back, crying. Luke walked over to him. There was no ammo left. All Luke had was the twisted bayonet in his hand. He crouched down next to Martinez, the bayonet protruding from his fist like a spike. He reached up with it, above Martinez’s heart, and…

“I don’t want you here,” Martinez said now. “I want you out of my room. Get out, okay, Stone? Get out right now.”

Suddenly, Martinez started screaming. He took the nurse call button from his bedside and began ramming it with his thumb.

“I want you out! Get out! Out!”

Luke stood. He raised his hands. “Okay, Robby. Okay.”

“OUT!”

Luke headed for the door.

“I hope you die, Stone. I hope your baby dies.”

Then Luke was out in the hall. Two nurses were coming toward him, walking but moving fast.

“Is he okay?” the first one said.

“Did you hear me, Stone? I hope your…”

But Luke had already covered his ears and was running down the hall. He ran through the building, sprinting now, gasping for air. He saw the EXIT sign, turned toward it, and burst through the double doors. Then he was running across the grounds along a concrete pathway. Here and there, people turned to look, but Luke kept running. He ran until his lungs began to burn.

A man was coming the other way. The man was older, but broad and strong. He walked upright with military bearing, but wore blue jeans and a leather jacket. Luke was almost on top of him before he realized he knew him.

“Luke,” the man said. “Where you running to, son?”

Luke stopped. He bent over and put his hands on his knees. His breath came in harsh rasps. He fought for big lungfuls.

“Don,” he said. “Oh man, Don. I’m out of shape.”

He stood up. He reached out to shake Don Morris’s hand, but Don pulled him into a bear hug instead. It felt… Luke didn’t have words for it. Don was like a father to him. Feelings surged. It felt safe. It felt like a relief. It felt like for so long, he had been holding so many things inside of him, things Don knew intuitively, without having to be told. Being hugged by Don Morris felt like being home.

After a long moment, they parted.

“What are you doing here?” Luke said.

He imagined Don was down from Washington to meet with the brass at Fort Bragg, but Don dispelled that notion in just a few words.

“I came to get you,” he said.

* * *

“It’s a good deal,” Don said. “The best you’re going to get.”

They were driving through the tree-lined cobblestone streets of downtown Fayetteville in a nondescript rental sedan. Don was at the wheel, Luke in the passenger seat. People sat in open air coffee shops and restaurants along the sidewalks. It was a military city—a lot of the people who were out and about were upright and fit.

But in addition to being healthy, they also looked happy. At this moment, Luke couldn’t imagine what that felt like.

“Tell me again,” he said.

“You go out at the rank of Master Sergeant. Honorable discharge, effective at the end of this calendar year, though you can go on indefinite leave as early as this afternoon. The new pay goes into effect immediately, and carries on until discharge. Your service record is intact, and your wartime veteran’s pension and all other benefits are in place.”

It sounded like a good deal. But Luke hadn’t considered leaving the Army until this minute. The entire time he was in the hospital, he had been hoping to rejoin his unit. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, Don had been negotiating an exit for him.

“And if I want to stay in?” he said.

Don shrugged. “You’ve been in the hospital for nearly a month. The records I’ve seen suggest you’ve made little or no progress in therapy, and are considered an uncooperative patient.”

He sighed. “They’re not going to take you back, Luke. They think you’re damaged goods. If you refuse the package I just described, they plan to send you out with an involuntary psychiatric discharge at your current rank and pay, with a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you the sort of prospects faced by men with a discharge under those circumstances.”

Luke supposed that none of this was a very big surprise, but it was still painful to hear. He knew the deal. The Army didn’t even formally acknowledge the existence of Delta Force. The mission was classified—it never happened. So it wasn’t as if he hoped to receive a medal during a public ceremony. In Delta, you didn’t do it for the glory.

Even so, while he expected to be ignored, he didn’t expect to be thrown on the scrap heap. He had given a lot of himself to the Army, and they were ready to dump him after one bad mission. True, the mission was more than bad. It was a disaster, a debacle, but that wasn’t his fault.

“They’re kicking me out either way,” he said. “I can go quietly or I can go kicking and screaming.”

“That’s right,” Don said.

Luke sighed heavily. He watched the old town roll past. They passed out of the historic district and into a more modern roadway with strip malls. They came to the end of a long block and Don turned left into a Burger King parking lot.

Civilian life was coming, whether Luke liked it or not. It was a world he had left fourteen years before. He had never expected to see it again. What went on in that world?

He watched an overweight young couple waddle toward the door of the restaurant.

“What am I going to do?” Luke said. “After the end of this year? What kind of civilian job can I possibly get?”

“That’s easy,” Don said. “You’re going to come work for me.”

Luke looked at him.

Don pulled into a spot near the back. There were no other cars here. “The Special Response Team is ready to go. While you’ve been lying in bed and examining your navel, I’ve been wrestling with bureaucrats and drawing up paperwork. I’ve got funding cemented in place, at least through the end of the year. I’ve got a small headquarters in the Virginia suburbs, not far from the CIA. They’re stenciling the letters on the door as we speak. I’ve got the ear of the FBI director. And I spoke on the phone—briefly, I might add—with the President of the United States.”