by Scott McEwen
“I know,” Jalen said, “and I’ll never forget. Today just reminded me of that.”
“Listen, I’ve been there. I’m there now, just in a different way … I don’t even want to talk about it. Just trust me,” Wyatt said. “Sometimes it’s one step forward, two steps back. But you can help. You will help. Valor is going to get a call and you will help bring in Encyte by…” Wyatt thought of saying her but decided against it. “By the proverbial throat.”
“I don’t want to wait for the call! I want to do something to make this right. I have to make this right.” Jalen was yelling now.
“Okay,” Wyatt said, lowering his voice. “I promise you can help with Encyte. I just can’t tell you what I am thinking.” Wyatt’s plan, which was coming together, was to marshal a team and leverage the resources at Valor to find Dolly’s killer. Perhaps he would not need to sound out after all. “Just know, I need your help on a mission, a personal mission I am running—”
The door creaked behind them, and Wyatt looked over to see his brother standing at the threshold. “Cody, I told you! We need a second.”
“What’s going on?” Cody stood there with the door open.
“Give me one second. We’ll be right out.”
Cody didn’t move.
“Please,” Wyatt said, patience fading. “Get out!”
Cody’s face fell and he turned, gun slung over his shoulder.
“I’m sorry, dude,” Wyatt said. “I’ll find you in a minute, okay? Go take that rifle back before Dad finds out.”
“Whatever,” Cody said and shut the door.
Jalen wiped his face. “So what’s the mission?”
“Can’t say just yet. Let me ask you a question. Your mom is from Brazil, right?”
“Yeah…” Jalen said. “Why are you asking about my mom?”
“You know any Portuguese?”
Jalen scoffed, “You’re kidding, right? I had to study it as a kid. Was the only way I could talk to my grandma. She’s dead now, so I haven’t used it in a while, but yeah, I’m fluent. Why?”
“I’ll tell you when the time is right. For now, I might just pull you into some Group-A training exercises. You cool with that?”
Wyatt held out his hand, and Jalen slapped it. “I’m cool to try.”
CHAPTER 20
It took a few days for everyone to come out of the haze, the bits of plane and human debris seared in everyone’s mind like the charred holes in the ground. Even with the threat of Encyte looming, the newly formed Group-A could do nothing until authorized, so each day they waited for the call. And while they waited, Wyatt kept his group busy by preparing to find Hallsy.
From the outside, Wyatt’s handpicked team didn’t look like the warrior core one would expect to go after a Rambo turned serial killer. Wyatt himself, though physically hard and wiry, still had the brooding, shifty-eyed look of a juvenile delinquent or a professional dirt biker.
Then there was Samy, a huge figure with gangly limbs, who dressed like a cross between a genie and a rapper. He might have been mistaken for a Palestinian card shark, except for his constant joking.
And Rory—thin, diminutive, quiet. With her pale skin and innocent puppy-dog eyes, she was far more punk-rock pixie than predator.
The new members, for their part, didn’t make the group appear any tougher. Pierce Grant, the dark-skinned pretty boy, might’ve been able to trek from Juneau to Nome, Alaska, living off the land, but in his flip-flops and polo, he looked like the kind of kid who summered on golf courses, letting his caddy carry his bag. If anyone in the group had the potential to be physically commanding, it was Mary Alice—tall, blond, gracefully assertive, she’d shine in any organization; however, based on appearances, you’d sooner think Junior League than military. And yet, the five of them were highly experienced operators and stone-cold killers. In one firefight alone, Wyatt and Samy had dozens of kills apiece. Rory had also been a critical player, providing cover and intelligence via unmanned drones. And Pierce, though he’d never felled a human, had killed all manner of big game, from bear to elk to deer, using rifle, crossbow, arrows, and even a knife he’d made from flint.
Mary Alice, too, had taken lives, though in a more indirect manner. Before her fifteenth birthday, she’d poisoned two men: a Russian spy and a Saudi royal who’d been funding terrorism. Her third kill was a female Chechen rebel, responsible for dozens of bomb-related deaths. Mary Alice dispatched her while on a ski trip in the Dolomites when she used a small, carefully placed explosive to create an avalanche that buried the legendary bomb-maker alive.
Finally, there was Jalen. Though not officially part of Group-A, he was pulled out of the Rovers to do one-on-one language immersion with a CIA language instructor they had flown into Valor. Immediately, Jalen’s training with the Rovers was modified to provide more time with Group-A, and Cody’s scowl deepened, as Wyatt stole more and more of Jalen’s time away from the Rovers.
The team, which Wyatt dubbed “the War Dogs,” began training immediately. After nine months away, the skills acquired over the previous summer, or summers, once razor sharp, had now dulled.
“What we do,” Wyatt told his team as they lined up at the shooting range, “is art and skill. But it’s also sport. So we gotta be on point in the field.”
“I am on point,” said Samy.
“Your gut is on point and poking out,” cracked Rory.
“Who cares about my Buddha.” Samy rubbed his belly. He’d put on a good twenty-five pounds since last year. “I can shoot just as good with a paunch. Gun don’t care. We all rarely miss a beat.”
“Rarely isn’t good enough. Not for Hallsy. We’re like the gifted pianist who plays perfectly at a recital. But then he takes a few months off and plays again. Sure, a layman won’t be able to tell he’s off, but another virtuoso could,” Rory said.
“Huh?” Samy said.
“I’m saying, Hallsy is an expert. Hallsy trained most of us.”
“Can we stop talking and start shooting?” Mary Alice was wearing tennis whites and holding an M16.
Wyatt motioned her forward. “After you.”
Along with sharpening skills, there was, of course, the physical training. (Samy discovered quickly that his “Buddha belly” didn’t seem so benign on his first ten-mile jog.) Finally, there was the most challenging task: integrating two new members into a core of three and having all five operate like an organism with one mind.
To meet these challenges, Wyatt and Eldon, with input from the rest of the senior staff, designed a program of training that focused on tactical skills like shooting, driving, hand-to-hand combat, and bomb disposal. There was also a strict PT regime with running, swimming, and obstacle course work, as well as situational group training such as group reconnaissance and close-quarters combat, or CQC.
The tactical training, PT, and group reconnaissance were relatively easy to implement. Valor had the facilities for shooting, the planes for jumping, and some pretty fast cars. The driving was actually a blast. These kids, who were much too young to ever stand in line at an American DMV, were driving modified versions of some of the newest, fastest cars coming out of Germany and Italy. And instead of using a racetrack, the camp halted planes flying in and out of the airstrip and used the runway to practice driving in reverse at 70 miles per hour and forward at 140, all the while developing both evasive and chasing skills. If they were lucky enough to find Hallsy, a car chase of some variety would be likely, and given their experience last summer, Wyatt, Rory, and Samy knew firsthand that driving skills can save your life.
Close-quarters combat created more unique challenges for the team as they progressed as a unit. Under a staff’s supervision, they performed CQC drills in Valor’s custom-built “kill house,” by training in three phases.
Phase One involved using electronic SIM, or simulation, rounds. Here, the team used laser beams and gears in the kill house in what looked like an elaborate game of laser tag. Both groups wore bodysuits that recorded hits
on target (lethal areas) and “flyers” (when a round hit a buddy).
In one particular hostage-recovery scenario, Samy, carrying a SAW (a heavy machine gun with SIM rounds), rounded a corner and opened fire on Mary Alice, pumping her full of thirty rounds of harmless laser beams.
“Samy,” Mary Alice screamed. “If these were real bullets, you woulda cut me in half!”
“I’m sorry,” said Samy, unusually cowed.
“You better be! Sharpen it up! I don’t want to get killed one day—or lit up with plastic pellets moving hundreds of feet per second—because you think you rarely miss a beat.”
“I’ll do better next time.”
The nonlethal pellets Mary Alice referred to were used in Phase Two of SIM training, in which the team ditched the laser beams for something more realistic—guns that shot actual rounds of ammunition, albeit nonlethal rounds. Though the hard plastic pellets didn’t kill, they hurt like hell, even with armor. The addition of the actual fire, the sound of gunfire, and smoke increased the reality of the exercise, introducing pain, heightened confusion, and blurred senses to the kill house.
For the final phase, live rounds were fired at targets in the kill house. In Phase Three, a flyer would not be tracked on your buddy’s bodysuit or helmet but would blow her face off. Safety, precision, and teamwork were life-and-death requirements. Fortunately, three weeks in, the ragtag War Dog team had risen to the occasion, operating flawlessly in their first live-round CQC.
Jalen was also pulled into tactical training as often as Wyatt could work it in. The rest of the Rovers might not have thought much about it, but when Jalen came back covered in dirt, sweat, and something that smelled like cordite, it was obvious to Cody that something was up.
He cornered his brother one day at lunch in the lodge. “Wyatt, what are you doing with Jalen?”
“Language school.”
“My ass. He’s getting kinetic with you guys. Tell me what’s going on,” Cody said, trying to keep his voice down.
“Dude,” Wyatt said. “It’s need-to-know, and you don’t need to know.”
“The hell I don’t. I’m the Blue for the Rovers. I’m the leader, and I’m your brother.”
“I need him,” Wyatt said. “You got that, brother?”
Cody shook his head. “Who are you, Wyatt? That need-to-know as well?”
Wyatt laughed. “Yeah. Now let me eat in peace.”
CHAPTER 21
Looking out the dirty windshield of the car he’d been living in, Daniel Acoda knew there was something karmically just, even poetic, about his addiction to Zovis. Daniel’s father, Maurice R. Acoda, was the chief exec of International Pharma Corporation, the maker of the painkiller and various other synthetic pheromones, and that year alone had made a fifteen-million-dollar bonus, thanks to record-breaking sales of the wildly addictive drug.
As is most often the case, Daniel’s dependency was born of necessity. He broke his leg on the first day of a family ski vacation, and after the five-hour surgery—the screws and rods to ensure that he could walk again—his father came into the hotel room with a cup of soup and a warning.
“Danny, I know the doctor prescribed this shit…” Maurice took the orange bottle from the nightstand and gave it a shake. “But you shouldn’t touch this stuff … Tough it out,” he said and shut the door.
But after the vacation, Maurice was never around to see that his advice was taken. And so one day, without much guilt or forethought, Danny pulled the bottle from his hoodie and popped two pills down his throat. The buzz was nearly instant. A vibration, a hum, a warm light stretching to the darkest, achiest places inside him. Simply put: the pain was gone.
It wasn’t long before the bottle was empty, but with the aid of his doting mother, Danny secured another thirty. The problem was when the drugs wore off, Danny now had two sources of pain: the one in his leg, and one much deeper than nerve and bone. An unreachable pain that started in his skull and radiated to every nerve and fiber of his body, from the top of his head to his fingertips and toes and the core of his person.
The bottle sat on the second shelf of his medicine cabinet, behind the mirror, and each time he approached it, the image reflected a slightly different face. Before that bottle was gone, Daniel had figured out ways to ensure it would be filled again. But by his junior year, his classmate sources were already inadequate or had been kicked out of school altogether. Danny himself, despite extremely generous donations to the school by his family, had been placed on academic leave, and had spent twelve weeks in a rehab in Malibu.
After his seventeenth birthday, Daniel’s parents tried a tough-love tactic and kicked him out. They did let him keep his car—the Mercedes E-Class he’d been given for his sixteenth birthday—and he packed it with clothes, his laptop, and phone and charger and drove away.
One method Daniel used to protect himself against arrests was trading online. He would swap his ever-dwindling array of fancy watches and clothes for small stashes, and it was this bartering system on the darkweb that led Daniel to a supplier, a guy who went by the handle Star_Man.
Star_Man was different: instead of trading physical objects, he wanted Daniel to perform tasks—the delivery of a package, that kind of thing. Of course Daniel knew he’d become a mule, but Star_Man had promised him that he’d never be given much, nothing that would amount to more than a slap on the wrist if he got caught. And perhaps it was desperation that caused Danny to believe what was so clearly a lie. So there he was, carting parcels around the greater Los Angeles area under the hot summer sun. At the end of each task, he was given a location where he would find an envelope stuffed with enough Zovis to tide him over until the next task.
I have an insurance scheme, Star_Man’s Wickr message said one afternoon. I want you to start a fire that will burn across a piece of property I own.
He sent Daniel a copy of a deed and an insurance policy with a rider for fire in excess of three million dollars for an old wooden barn. For this bit of pyromania blended with insurance fraud, Star_Man offered Daniel a month’s supply, a nicely sized carrot.
All you gotta do is light a fire in the ring and walk away, Star_Man’s message said. The wind will do the rest.
It was unseasonably warm, the Santa Anas whipping through the Valley at over forty miles per hour, the night Daniel drove his Mercedes to the property with a gas can, a cigarette lighter, and a copy of the LA Times. He’d grown comfortable with felony, as long as it didn’t do direct harm to anyone, not even an animal, so the first thing he did was make sure the barns were empty. Confident this would be a victimless crime, he walked around the field until he found the crude firepit—a brush pile ringed by cinder blocks. He dragged branches from around the ranch, erected a nice, tall pile of brush, lit the wad of paper, and stuffed it into the middle. He blew furiously and stepped back to watch the flames lick up through the dry branches. The heat was so intense he turned his face from it, and he heard horses in a barn in the distance, neighing frantically.
Just as the Santa Anas began scattering ash across the sagebrush, Daniel wondered what he had done. But it was already out of control, fire jumping through the acreage and consuming the barn in a matter of minutes. Daniel looked around the wide field in futile panic. He fled to his car, and sped toward the pickup spot for the envelope, hoping, praying, for rain.
* * *
The devastation was something Daniel could never have fathomed. By 10 a.m. the following morning, forty thousand acres in rural and suburban Los Angeles had been consumed. The parcel of land where the barn had been positioned was much like the wadded-up paper in the pyramid Daniel had built—the center of the tinderbox in the Valley north of Los Angeles, and with the direction of the winds, the fire had all it needed to accelerate.
It raged on for five more days. On Day Seven, when the fires were officially out, reports estimated 3.5 billion dollars in damage, eighty-five lives lost, and 459,000 acres burned. And on that same day, Maurice sat at his desk in his high-r
ise office, the wall of windows behind him framing a city still shrouded in the aftermath of smoke. His phone buzzed with a text from an encrypted number. A link. Normally he would never have clicked on it, but the caption caught his attention: There is no greater wildfire than Avarice. A YouTube video began playing, showing his son Daniel popping a handful of pills before lighting the great bonfire that would turn Southern California into a crematorium.
CHAPTER 22
“I’ve got a new test,” Avi said one afternoon, a rare smile on his usually blank face. “And I don’t think Jalen can join us.”
“What are you thinking?” Wyatt asked.
“A local police force has agreed to let us help with a raid on a synthetic heroin processing facility.”
“Could that possibly be legal?” Samy asked, drenched in sweat after a day’s drills in the kill house.
“They’ll deputize you before going in,” Avi said flatly.
“Like I said,” repeated Samy. “Can that be legal?”
“I’m not a lawyer,” Avi replied, “but if I’m guessing … no—not legal at all. Let’s go.”
“Okay, give me forty-five minutes,” Wyatt said, running back toward the Caldera.
“Where are you going?”
“To pull Jalen out of language class.”
“I said he shouldn’t go on this one. This could get dicey.”
“Exactly why he should come,” Wyatt called back. “If it makes you feel better, he can stay in one of the cruisers.”
And so, the team plus Jalen suited up and flew to a nearby town and the six members were deputized (even though only Mary Alice was over eighteen) and then driven in an armored vehicle to raid an illicit drug lab. While this situation was loaded with the possibility for disaster, they caught the drug cookers with their guard down, literally playing video games and smoking pot. They scooped up the entire operation without firing a weapon.
