by Jack Mars
Swann shrugged and nodded at the same time. It was an odd gesture. “Thanks. I appreciate that.”
Luke was on the verge of telling him about the president. It was on the tip of his tongue… but no. Luke felt like he was tiptoeing through land mines. Tell Swann, Swann starts to run with it, tries to confirm it, but he needs help from outside the agency. Who does he tell? Who does he bring in? Is any of this even real?
Kent Philby wasn’t always right, and he wasn’t always trustworthy. He was a man who followed his own agenda, and there was no way of knowing what that was.
“Don’t mention it,” Luke said. “In the meantime, I need some way to call out of here, totally encrypted, untraceable on either end. Can you do that?”
Swann nodded. “Sure. It’s already set up. We’ve got our own communications satellite now. I can shoot a phone call from here into space, bounce it off black satellites all over orbit, and put it anywhere you want. Nobody will know where it came from, nobody will know where it went. That said, like always, keep it as brief as you can. The quicker the better. Where do you want to call?”
“Right here,” Luke said. “Ten minutes away.”
He saw the quizzical look on Swann’s face. “Some people came to see me this morning. Luckily, they were friendlies. But it means I’m being followed, and I need to talk to my wife.”
* * *
Luke held the phone pressed to his ear.
It was a digital phone, a landline that came with its own sort of mini-laptop. Swann had brought in and plugged it directly into the wall. He ran through a bunch of screens on the display, input some numbers, and then smiled at his own cleverness.
“It’s ready to go. You are officially a clandestine caller. Try not to hurt this thing, though, okay?”
Now, after a delay while (to hear Swann tell it) the call bounced up to the moon, and across to Mars and the deep space Oort Cloud, then back again, Becca’s cell phone rang and rang. Finally, it picked up. For the third time in a row, he got her voicemail.
Her voice was vibrant and bright. He pictured her: beautiful, smiling, optimistic, and energetic. “Hi, this is Becca. I can’t answer your call right now. Please leave a message after the tone, and I’ll call you back as soon as I can.”
Aarrr. Frustrating. He hadn’t wanted to leave her a message, but he would have to. They could hack into her voicemail account.
“Sweetheart,” he said in a friendly, sing-songy voice. “This is Luke. Your husband. I love you very much. Everything here is fine. I am going to call you back again in a few minutes. Yes, it’s a strange number. But now that you know it’s me, please answer when I call.”
He hung up.
He took a deep breath and held it for a moment. When he let it go, it flowed out, loose and jittery. He was pushing, probably too hard. He was due for a crash, he knew that. He had come through hellfire in Russia, had been burned and shot, flew back here to the United States, and was immediately suspended from his job.
He had driven home, slept for three hours, and was awakened by Russian spies pointing guns at him and telling him the president had been kidnapped. Now he had driven back here in morning traffic, suspended, not suspended, he had no idea. And he hadn’t even talked to Becca yet.
He looked at the pink MEMO page again. Murphy. He dialed the number.
Murphy, unlike Becca, answered on the first ring.
“Yeah?”
“Murph. Stone.”
“Oh, hey, Stone. Listen, about that fight…”
“Yeah, don’t worry about it, Murph. It happens. I know where you’re coming from.”
“It was funny though, wasn’t it?” Murphy said. Murphy’s Bronx accent chopped his words down to almost nothing. Funny doh, wadn it?
“We had the tourists running for cover. I thought one of us was gonna catch on fire there for a minute.”
Luke smiled. He pictured two guys, dressed for a funeral, rolling back and forth across John F. Kennedy’s eternal flame. It must have been quite a scene.
“Yeah,” he said. “They were moving.”
“Did you mean what you told me?” Murphy said. “About coming on board? Okay if you didn’t. I’m just checking. I wouldn’t mind getting out of the rain.”
“I meant every word,” Luke said. “I’ve got a few problems here myself at the moment, but I’m hoping to get them cleared up today. How’s tomorrow afternoon look for you? You could come in, take a look around, maybe make your case to the boss.”
“Sounds good. Two o’clock?”
“Two o’clock,” Luke said. “See you then. If I happen to get fired between now and then, I’ll let you know.”
He hung up. Okay. That was okay. The prospect of Murphy maybe coming on board, maybe getting a second chance… that was a good thing. Luke needed good things right now.
He dialed Becca again.
She answered instantly. “Hello? Luke?”
“Hi, babe.”
“Oh my God, it’s so good to hear your voice. I saw the thing on television, and I didn’t know what to think. I was so—”
Luke interrupted her. “What thing on television?”
It was the wrong question. In a split second, she was off to the races.
“On the news. They had a segment about an American attack in Russia. They said there weren’t a lot of details because it was top secret. But it was a prisoner rescue and a lot of people were killed. I immediately thought of your mission. They called the rescue a bloodbath. And now there are all these… I don’t know what to call them. Provocations? There was a shootout with fighter jets over Alaska last night. A bunch of planes were shot down. They say we could be on the verge of World War Three. Oh, Luke, it’s so—”
He raised his hand, although of course she couldn’t see that. “Sweetheart? Sweetheart, it’s okay. There isn’t a war. Cooler heads are going to—”
“Were you there, Luke? Were you in Russia?” Her voice dropped to just above a whisper. “Did you start all this?”
“Becca, listen…”
“Did you? Did you kill all those people?”
He paused. The silence between them drew out.
Her voice was shaking. “They said it was a bloodbath. It’s going to start a war.”
“No,” he said finally. And now that he had lied to her, he came down firmly on the side of lying. No more fudging. No more messing around. “I wasn’t there. I never left Turkey. But I know about that mission, I was sent to monitor it and be part of the communications team, and I know what happened. If they said it was a bloodbath, they are blowing it out of proportion at best, and lying at worst. There was a shootout, yes, but it’s not even clear if anyone was hurt. No one on our side was.”
He almost couldn’t believe he had just said these things. He glanced down at the bandages on his arm. There was another one on his calf, currently covered by his pants leg. He had been shot twice. He was in a lot of pain.
How was he supposed to cover this up?
The answer came to him as quickly as he asked the question: by avoiding her until he was mostly healed.
At some point, and soon, he was going to have to go out of town again. Oh, man. Maybe Don could send him on a mission to the beaches north of San Francisco.
“Why would they lie?” she said.
He shrugged. That was an easy one. “Television ratings. You know the old saying in TV news… if it bleeds, it leads.”
“Where are you now?” she said.
Luke nearly sighed with relief. They were moving back toward mundane territory. His footing was firmer here. “I’m at the office. I got in late last night. I didn’t call because I didn’t want to wake you. I drove home to the cabin, but you weren’t there. Don gave me the morning off today, so I slept in. I just got here a little while ago.”
“What is this number you’re calling from? It was like twenty digits long.”
Yeah. That.
“Becca, I want you to try to understand this the best you can. I was not in
volved in the cross border raid, but my part in the operation was, and is, still classified. It’s possible that people might try to follow me, or learn more about me.”
“Oh my God, Luke. It’s true, isn’t it? I can hear it in your voice, don’t you know that? I know when you’re lying to me. You were there, and it was a bloodbath. Right? Isn’t that what you’re telling me?”
“Becca…”
“Did you kill people, Luke?”
“No. I didn’t even hold a weapon.”
“Luke, we have a newborn baby! Can’t you understand that? How can you be a father to our son? How can you murder all those people and expect to come home and be my husband?”
“Becca, I didn’t murder anyone.”
He looked at the ceiling and shook his head. He was digging himself deeper and deeper. Yes, he had. He had taken the mission and killed people. He couldn’t even hazard a guess how many. And now he was lying about it. But he had killed people before, a lot of people, and she had never questioned him this closely.
Anyway, was it really murder? He was doing his job, and those men would have killed him if they could.
It was her mother. Audrey was putting her up to this. It had to be. She saw her opportunity, and was trying to drive a wedge between them while she had a chance.
“Am I in danger?” Becca said. “Is the baby in danger?”
“You’re not in any danger,” he said. “But I do think it’s best, just for the next few days, until this blows over, that you stay close to the house. No one is looking for you. No one knows you’re there. Your mom and dad are there. The servants are there. The house has a good security system.”
“Oh God, Luke.”
“Becca, if you were in danger, I’d be the first person—”
“I can’t live like this, Luke. I can’t do it. You’re not in the Army anymore. You don’t have to have a job like this. You don’t have to kill people.”
Her voice seemed to break up for a moment. When it came back on, it was deeper, as if she had a lump in her throat.
“You’re putting your own baby in danger. I can’t even speak to you right now.”
“Sweetheart,” he began, and at this point he had no idea what he was going to say next. But she saved him the trouble of thinking about it.
The line went dead.
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
7:35 p.m. Arabian Standard Time (12:35 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time)
Ibn Sina Hospital
The International Zone (aka the Green Zone)
Karkh District
Baghdad, Iraq
“You all right, Bob?” Big Daddy Bill Cronin said.
Ed Newsam looked at him. As white boys went, he was a bear of a man. Tall, with a thick body, big shoulders and arms, a bushy red beard going a little gray. He wore khaki slacks, shiny black shoes and an open-throated dress shirt. The day was over, but he looked like he was just getting started.
Ed had met Big Daddy for the first time two months ago, when the SRT came here with one mission in mind, but then ended up rescuing the president’s daughter. The man was CIA, no nonsense, about as hard as they came.
Ed had watched him do a little light torture on a couple of guys who were his prisoners. One of those guys was an American. Big Daddy had chambered a round in a .38 revolver, gave it a spin, and put it to the man’s head. An old-fashioned game of Russian roulette, and he had pulled the trigger three times.
He had poured gasoline on the other guy and threatened to set his legs on fire.
Bad. Ass.
Ed was pretty sure you weren’t supposed to do that stuff anymore.
“I’m all right,” he said. “A little pain, but they’re keeping it under control.”
He was lying in a bed at the hospital in the Green Zone in Baghdad. The place was stark and unpleasant. Once upon a time, it had been Saddam Hussein’s personal hospital, the place where his family and friends were treated. But by American standards…
Eh. Who knows? Ed tried to steer clear of hospitals.
The bed he was in was uncomfortable and too small for his body. He could feel the steel frame digging into his back through the mattress. They’d done surgery on his right thigh at some point last night or early this morning, to clear out a round that had nearly penetrated his femoral artery. If that thing had hit…
He shook his head. He would have died on the boat ride to Georgia. He didn’t even like to think about it.
His roommate was a big white kid with tubes running in and out of him, including an oxygen mask and a tube down his throat. He was hooked to all kinds of machines, beeping, monitoring his vital signs. The kid had been shredded by machine gun fire. He was a lump of meat.
Ed had seen a lot of war zone injuries. That kid was a goner. Ed had slept most of the day, but he would wake up sometimes and look at the kid. He hadn’t been conscious all day, and Ed would bet he’d never be conscious again.
The kid was four feet away from Ed’s cot. It was like lying down next to the Grim Reaper. Bill Cronin didn’t seem to notice the kid at all.
“How did I come to be here?” Ed said. He honestly didn’t remember.
Big Daddy shrugged. “You’re a private military contractor named Bob Zydeco. You were on your way out to the airport last night and your convoy got shot up. They brought you back in here by helicopter.”
An Army nurse came in. She wore combat fatigues, boots, and blue surgical scrubs. The scrubs had a logo on the left breast, a silver cross with a tree inside of it, and a deep red ribbon across the bottom. The word Evacuare was stenciled on the ribbon. It was the insignia of the 115th Combat Support Hospital, an Army medic unit with roots going all the way back to World War I in France.
She looked at Ed’s chart. “How are you feeling, Mr.… Zydeco?”
The name seemed to throw her. Ed wondered about that himself. Had they run out of cover names? Was anyone on earth really named Zydeco?
Ed nodded and smiled, glossing the problem over. “I feel okay. You guys have been great. I’m thinking about when my discharge might be. I’m ready when you are.”
She was smiling, but shook her head. “Believe me, we move people in and out of here as fast as we can. We need the beds. But you’ve got at least twenty-four hours before you’re cleared for travel to Germany.”
“Can I take him for a walk?” Big Daddy said.
The nurse shrugged. “If he feels up to it. But I wouldn’t take him too far in case he gets weak. Mr. Zydeco is a big man. I’m not sure you’ll be able to hold him up.”
Big Daddy smiled. “I’ll do my best.” He looked at Ed. “What do you say, big man? You want to try to take a little walk?”
“Maybe you should carry me,” Ed said.
* * *
It felt good to move around a bit.
They walked slowly through the crowded halls of the hospital. Ed wore blue scrubs. He limped along grasping his IV drip pole in one hand. It had wheels on the bottom and rolled easily across the stone floors. He had a small black clicker in that hand as well, through which he could administer small doses of morphine if he needed it. In his other hand, he carried a silver metal cane.
Ed was surprised at the amount of effort he was expending just walking.
“I’m really out of gas,” he said. “That’s great.”
“It’s to be expected,” Big Daddy said.
They shuffled through the lobby of the building, then they were out on the grounds in the heat of early evening. They turned left from the front doors and walked between two tall rows of upright rectangular ten-foot-high concrete slabs—blast walls, in case anyone decided to make a suicide attack.
They passed under the green awning of the checkpoint. There was a concrete guard post here. Big Daddy waved at the guards on duty. No one tried to stop them.
Then they were out on the street and walking along a sidewalk, another large concrete blast wall to their left. A couple of Humvees moved along the roadway. Pedestrians were out for evening strolls
.
The Green Zone was always a strange place to be.
“Okay, here’s the deal,” Big Daddy said. They were away from the hospital grounds now. There was traffic on the street, and no one could hear them.
“Hit me,” Ed said.
“You were shot up the worst of the bunch. I had to get you out of there. Georgia is a nest of spies. It’s crawling with Russians. This whole game was supposedly so we’d have a heads-up if the Russians decide to invade. It’s a joke. The Russians will run right over the whole country in two days, heads-up or not.
“Anyway, I didn’t want you in a hospital in Tbilisi, drugged up and vulnerable after surgery, just to have some Russian spy come in and pinch your tubes. So I had them get you stable and we brought you down here to God’s country. It’s perfectly safe in the Zone here, and we’ve got better much medical personnel.”
Ed nodded. “And Stone?”
“He was roughed up, but not as bad. We put him on a plane and shot him right back to DC. They cleaned up his wounds on the flight.”
“Ouch,” Ed said.
Big Daddy laughed. “I’m sure it was real pretty.”
“The prisoners?”
Big Daddy shrugged. “Classified. But alive and well, so I hear.”
“The newlyweds?” Ed said.
“You know how young kids like that are,” Big Daddy said. “Fickle. They abruptly decided that Turkey wasn’t really a great place for a honeymoon, so they packed up and headed home.”
Ed smiled at the thought of Swann and Trudy pretending to be a married couple.
“My friend Garry?”
“He got clipped in the arm, took a nice chunk, but I hear he was drunk as a lord an hour after the boat hit the beach.”
Ed nodded. “So mission accomplished and things are good.”
“No,” Big Daddy said. “Nothing is good. The whole group of you were suspended last night. The Russians are pissed and there’s been a lot of saber rattling. There was a dogfight in the Bering Strait maybe eight hours ago. We lost one plane, they lost three. Normally, I’d say that coolers heads are going to prevail, but…”
