The Forgotten Soldier

by Brad Taylor

  He still thinks Billings is driving.

  I knew different. I screamed at him, and he reversed. I saw the Arab frantically searching the floor. He raised something up, and Knuckles took the shot, one, two, three, four. Straight through the windshield.

  The man slumped over.

  Knuckles remained still. I slowly stood, hearing the men starting to react from behind the walls of the old museum. I felt a wicked pain in my left leg, but I could walk. I heard someone shout from inside the vehicle.

  I shuffled forward, reaching Knuckles. Inside, Billings was moaning like he was in labor, and I thought it pretty fitting. He’d given birth to the biggest fuckup I’d ever been involved in. Knuckles said, “You okay?”

  “I don’t know. Too early. Let the adrenaline wear off.”

  Knuckles saw movement and snapped his head to the windshield. He shouted, “No, sir, no, no, no, remain still.” I turned around and saw Billings trying to climb out, over the top of the dead man, his foot kicking the detonator the Arab had held.

  Knuckles screamed, “Don’t fucking move! Stop what you’re doing!”

  I grabbed Knuckles and bodily threw him over the old berm, diving after him. We hit the ground behind an abutment that had been protecting soldiers for more than five hundred years, and the vehicle went off, an enormous, earth-shattering explosion.

  The sky rained metal, the thumps and dings crashing among the trees, the smoke and heat from the explosion flowing over us. I could hear nothing, the overblast still punching through me. After a second or two, Knuckles groaned and rolled over. I did the same, then grabbed his shoulder and said, “You okay?”

  He shook his head, looked at me and said, “That didn’t work like we wanted.”

  I flopped back down and said, “Bullshit. I’m still breathing.”

  90

  Lying on the couch, nursing my wounds, I heard the bell ring and said, “Jenn! Can you get that?”

  She came out and saw me flopped like a beached walrus. She said, “How long are you going to milk this? It’s been three weeks.”

  I said, “I didn’t see you getting blown up.”

  She said, “Guess you’re still just mostly dead. Should I look through your clothes for loose change?”

  I smiled at the Miracle Max reference and said, “As you wish.”

  She rolled her eyes and said, “Car bomb goes off, and I never hear the end of it.”

  “Hey, I haven’t been milking it. I’ve been doing my fair share around here.”

  She reached the door and said, “Really? That’s what you call last night? Your fair share?”

  I squinted at her, because certain things really did still hurt, but she ignored me, answering the door. I saw Kylie Hale, Kurt’s niece, along with someone on crutches behind her. I knew who it was. I finally rose. “Veep. Come on in.”

  Kylie came in before him, speaking in a stern voice. “Seriously? You expect a warm welcome? You recruit him and then get him shot?”

  I said nothing, simply holding out my arms, and she let me wrap her up. When I realized she wasn’t going to kick my nuts, I said, “No, no. Come on. I didn’t get him shot. He walked in front of a bullet.”

  She leaned back and said, “I’m talking to my uncle about this. Don’t think I won’t.”

  I shook Nick’s hand and said, “Talk all you want. From what I hear, he’s been cleared by the Oversight Council for future operations.”

  She said, “Against my wishes.”

  I looked at Nick and said, “Well, I heard his father threw his hat in the ring for president. So you should expect a little bit out of the son.”

  I saw him flush. He said, “Pike, about that garage thing. I don’t think Brett told you after everything was done. He saw the door open. He pulled on the guy and I was still moving. I blocked his shot. I mean—”

  I cut him off. “Jesus, you are one glutton for punishment. Are you seriously saying you deserved to be shot? Nobody, no matter what, ever says that shit. When Brett shows up, I expect for you to say he got you shot because he didn’t trust his aim enough to pull the trigger.”

  Nick looked over my shoulder and said, “Speak of the devil.”

  Brett came in, walking right into Jennifer. He hugged her and said, “Mighty nice digs. Didn’t expect this from Pike.”

  She said, “What on earth does Pike have to do with our place?”

  He laughed, knowing it was true. I said, “Well, nobody else in here is dealing with the mice invasion. She keeps trying to catch them, and that’s failed.”

  The conversation was loose and fun, but it was a thin veneer for why we were together. A brittle layer that everyone was afraid of cracking, but it had to happen sooner or later. That was the point.

  Knuckles walked in, waving a bottle of Jameson Whiskey. I said, “What the hell is that? We drink Bacardi.”

  He hugged me, then Jennifer, and said, “We drink what Guy drinks.”

  And the brittle layer was cracked.

  I said, “Yeah. Yeah, you’re right. Just waiting on one. But serve them up.”

  The end state of the mission wasn’t exactly textbook, but Guy George had been right all along. If anyone had listened to him to begin with, the rest of the sloppy mess wouldn’t have occurred. The Taskforce had, as I’d thought, declined to do our usual memorial for fallen members. I didn’t blame them, since Guy’s actions had, in fact, jeopardized everything we stood for, but I’d be damned if he wasn’t getting one. I’d planned my own.

  I’d wanted to do it in DC, at our traditional haunt like we always did, right after his burial in Arlington, but Kurt had said it was poking a sore. Make no mistake, he sympathized, but he had more on his plate with the death of the secretary of state than I could ever comprehend. He didn’t tell me no, but I got the message. I planned it for my own house, in Charleston, South Carolina, with only the team.

  Well, the team and one other.

  We’d managed to escape Norway intact, but it was a close-run thing. The chaos of the exploding Range Rover helped, of course, but the rental agreements on the motorcycles had hurt. Knuckles and I had escaped by traversing a footpath on the other side of the berm, never engaging any of the security or the follow-on police forces, leaving the bikes where they lay.

  The fallout, irrespective of Billings’s death, was as messy as I’d ever seen, and we’d been cut off from all operations for the near term while the might of the US government went into damage control. So far, they’d managed to explain away a lot of things with innuendo and bullshit. The attack on the cottage had helped, but that too was hampered by blabbermouths.

  I didn’t pay attention, because I thought the entire mission was a disaster from the get-go. For the first time ever, I let the Oversight Council sort it out. They made the mess. They could clean it up.

  Knuckles poured the shots, and the doorbell rang again. The final invitee.

  I opened the door and saw Carly standing with her arms crossed, looking over the balcony. I said, “You made it. I hoped you would.”

  She turned around and smiled. “I wouldn’t miss it. Thank you for the invite.”

  I said, “Thank Jennifer. For me, it was only returning the favor.”

  She came inside and said, “Trust me, that’ll never happen again.”

  After the garage hit, Jennifer and Brett had transferred Khalid to Taskforce control. Our data from the thumb drive, coupled with his interrogation, had buried the QIA official known as Sharif al-Attiya. He was a bad, bad man. Well, he was a respected member of the Qatar government, but once we introduced his transgressions into our liaison system through the CIA, the government immediately considered him a bad, bad man. Like those fucks weren’t doing the same all the time anyway.

  CIA had taken the ball at that point, tracking Sharif to Istanbul, Turkey. They’d asked for his transfer back to Qatar, and t
he Turkish intelligence guys had balked, asking for Qatar to formally request him. Of course, the Qatar government wasn’t going to officially request his arrest, as the information that he’d been complicit in killing the secretary of state would be explosive. And so we’d been called in. Well, more precisely, a rendition flight had been, along with some coordination with unsavory Turkish characters.

  Carly had asked, and been given permission, to run the repatriation, and because of Taskforce involvement, she’d requested me to be included as an “observer.”

  It was really not a high-speed thing, but it was satisfying. We’d flown to Istanbul with a bunch of CIA black-clad Ninjas, none who would say a word. We exited the aircraft, drove to a hangar, and met some unknown Turkish thugs. In the trunk of a car, they had Sharif, wearing zip ties and a hood. We took him, put him on the plane, and landed in Doha, Qatar.

  When we’d removed the hood, he saw the man we were turning him over to, and we walked away, hearing him screaming his innocence. Nobody said a word when the screams were cut off by a slap. It wasn’t our business. We were just the delivery people.

  Twenty minutes later, we were back in the air.

  We’d landed in Washington, DC, and I’d said good-bye to the Ninjas. They still hadn’t said a word. Even given that, it had been enjoyable.

  I kissed Carly on the cheek and handed her a glass of whiskey. She took it, and I turned to the room. “Everyone’s now here. For Guy.”

  They all said, “For Guy.”

  I raised the glass and said, “May he rest in peace.”

  Carly started to respond in the same, but was drowned out with “Peace is an illusion. May he continue to fight.”

  She looked at me, then Jennifer, who was drinking her whiskey. I said, “Just tradition.”

  She downed her own glass and said, “I think he’d like that.”

  I said, “Lord knows Guy’s said it enough.”

  Jennifer came over, her eyes wet because she was a softy for this sort of thing.

  Carly said, “Kurt called me today. Out of the blue. Somehow, he knew I was in the United States.”

  With mock surprise, I said, “Who would have told him that?”

  “He wants to talk to me. And I think I know what it’s about.”

  I caught movement out of the corner of my eye, on the counter. A flash of brown. I said, “Not tonight. I don’t want to do business tonight. This is for Guy. Jennifer, go take her and show her girl things. She’d rather talk to you.”

  Jennifer smiled and said, “Actually, I’d love to. I’m sick of being the only woman in the room.”

  Carly asked, “You’re really always the only female?”

  “Well, there’s this crazy lesbian assassin we sometimes work with, but I’m not sure she counts.”

  Carly had no idea what to make of that. I said, “Jennifer’s just aggravated because she likes me more than her.”

  Jennifer rolled her eyes and said, “Wow. How do you get through the door with a head that big?” She shouted, “Kylie! Let’s go to the porch. Leave the testosterone zone.”

  They went through the door and I turned, seeing the bane of my existence, that damn mouse, chewing on a beer cap, of all things. Brett was laughing at a joke, and I waved my hand, quieting the room. I slowly opened the drawer. I pulled out the meat tenderizer and inched forward, solely focused on my prey.

  I didn’t hear Knuckles tap on the sliding glass door, getting Jennifer’s attention. Didn’t see his grin.

  A red Solo cup slapped into the side of my head. I heard “Pike! Don’t you dare.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The Taskforce was created out of whole cloth, completely made up by me for my novels, but I used my experiences to do so, tapping into what I knew of the world in which I’d lived. The organization is nothing more than a fantasy we wished existed whenever we ran into the inertia of US bureaucracy, but inside, we realized why such inertia exists, and it’s precisely to prevent any one individual from misusing a dangerous asset. America has had a love/hate relationship with special operations throughout its history, resulting in many units being disbanded or rendered toothless the minute the threat was gone because the cure was believed to be worse than the disease. It is only in modern times that special operations have flourished, but it has come with a price. The crux of repeated covert action in a democracy is that a nation can go only so far before its actions begin to erode the very ideals the unit was designed to protect, which is precisely why we have such robust oversight in US Code. The Taskforce has no such constraints, and I’ve threaded the potential for its abuse throughout my books. This time, I decided to explore it as a main theme.

  We’ve all seen movies with the one guy out for justice, clearly harmed by some evil cabal of the US government running amok—and enjoyed it when he took apart that evil. But we also like watching the lone hero bucking the system, fighting the timidity and inherent roadblocks in our government to save the day from a deadly terrorist attack because the buffoons in charge didn’t understand the threat. Those two themes are prevalent, from Jason Bourne to John McClane in Die Hard. The truth is much more nuanced but not necessarily far removed. When I was in the military, in combat and elsewhere, I read and heard many opinions about “restrictive rules of engagement,” and that if the military would “just be let loose” we’d get the job done. This sentiment has appeared from histories written about Vietnam to the current fights in Iraq and Afghanistan, but such thoughts—when translated into action—do have repercussions.

  I always have a few Operators read my book before it goes to my editor just to make sure I’ve not crossed any lines I shouldn’t, but in this case, that wasn’t the problem. I knew I’d written what I wanted when an Operator told me, “I don’t like this book. I don’t like Guy. We would never do that.”

  He’s right . . . to a point. We haven’t done that, and nobody I’ve ever served with or known in my time in the military ever would do that. But then again, we don’t have the Taskforce, either. A unit completely unconstrained. The theme was worth exploring.

  I now had a plot without a concrete tie to any enemy. I could go anywhere with that theme, and so my wife suggested where that might be. The only time I had for book research happened to fall on my daughter’s spring break. After all the time I’ve missed during my daughter’s life, there was no way I was researching this book by myself. I asked her where we should go, and she said, “Greece. With our daughter.”

  On the one hand, my daughter—with the exception of a trip to the Cayman Islands (in case you wonder where the Castle idea came from, it’s because we stayed there)—had never been outside the United States, so I thought it was a good idea just to provide her some exposure to the greater world. On the other hand, Greece? What the hell could I do with that?

  I dug in with research, and the more I read, the more I realized the role the Greek peninsula plays in providing a crossroads vis-à-vis terrorism. I brought the shahid into the plot from a refugee ship, seeing that as a potential threat-stream but not realizing how big a mess the refugee crisis would become after I finished the book. The back-and-forth of Greece’s debt problems is a real thing, and Qatar’s investments and machinations with Islamic radicalism are as well, both providing ample grist for the mill. All that remained was to check it out in person.

  I’m indebted to a tour guide who would prefer to remain nameless. She took my family on a tour of the Parthenon and every other tourist trap in Athens, and then, because I asked, she took me into the largest Alpha Bank in the city, getting me access to the areas I needed to see with her use of the Greek language. She was petrified about lying for me, and I probably would have done better on my own with the ham-handed way she got us into the secure areas, but I was committed at that point. In the end, I got what I needed, and I’m pretty sure she turned me in to the authorities afterward, but since I didn’t actually rob a
nything, it worked out. I can’t thank her enough.

  To a friend stationed at the US Embassy in Athens, thanks for getting me in to see it. As promised, I didn’t write anything that would cause a security issue. Thanks for dinner and the ride in your sweet, up-armored BMW. My daughter thinks I’m James Bond now. Which, of course, I didn’t correct.

  The rest of the research I’m taking credit for. I ran my family to death, and I’m sure my daughter, when asked about Greece, will say, “We sure have a lot of pictures of alleys, Internet cafés, and seedy nightclubs. And I thought we were going to sink on a ferry run from Crete to Athens.” Although she did locate every facility I needed to research on my paper map, using Google Translate from Greek websites. Each night I’d build my research for the following day and hand her a list. She’d turn the Greek into English, and off we went, preventing me from wasting time.

  I always like to offer my meager abilities for charity, and in this case it was a little special. My wife was selected to chair a charity event benefiting the homeless in Charleston a year ago, complete with an auction. When she learned she’d been appointed, she said, “Don’t dare give up a character for charity. Next year is mine.” And so it was. Guy George is a real person, and by his name, many homeless people in Charleston now have food and clothes.

  Guy George’s brother is somewhat real as well. The idea for his demise came from my cousin, a Special Forces soldier doing a tour in Afghanistan and tracking the new threat of ISIS. Luckily, in real life the roles were reversed. Nobody on his team was harmed, but the ISIS cell ceased to exist.

  I mention my wife, but now I’d like to recognize her for real. I left the Army in 2010, and her role in keeping our family together while I served is nothing short of remarkable. Since then, she’s quit her profession and has taken over responsibility for my entire career. She runs the website, posts on Facebook, manages Twitter, coordinates and travels with me on book research trips, brainstorms book tour locations with my publicist, coordinates with the marketing team at Dutton, and generally runs my entire life. I write two books a year now, which squeezes out every bit of available time. Make no mistake, if it weren’t for her, there is no way on earth I could even begin to do so. Oh, and she’s hot.