Left for Dead

by Sean Parnell

  “Me either.” Rockford rubbed his jaw for a moment. “Listen, I like Harcourt and I trust her. However, we’re still weeding out leakers and political holdovers at Langley, which is why I called on you, and why I tasked Ted with standing the Program up again. I want you to take point on this, Eric. I’ve got more faith in you and a crew of hard-core Alphas than I do in an army of CIA analysts and NSA eavesdroppers. Go after it. Can I count on you?”

  “I think you know you can, sir.”

  “Good.” Then Rockford reached out and gripped Steele’s shoulder, which surprised him and made Katie Garland and the president’s agents flinch. “That’s the first part of why I wanted to see you. The second part is about your father.”

  Steele just stood there, but he felt something turn over in his guts. Rockford had mentioned his father only once before and he had no idea what was coming.

  “This country betrayed that man,” Rockford said, and his blue eyes gleamed with rare emotion. “I’m not going to make excuses for what was done to your father. He was nothing but a patriot, and we abandoned him, turned on him, left him to the wolves. I want you to find Hank Steele. I want you to find him, tell him the president gave his word that we’ll do our best to make up for all of it, and bring him home. And if he wants to tell me to go pound sand, he can do it to my face in the White House. The only consequences will be a medal, twenty years of back pay, and a big fat bonus. Are we clear?”

  Steele had trouble finding his voice, but he smiled and said, “Which do you want me to do first, sir?”

  Rockford grinned. “The Chinese thing.”

  “Roger that.”

  “Keep me posted through Lansky, but if you’ve got something outside of channels, go directly through Kate here.” Rockford turned to Garland. “Are we good, Kate?”

  She smiled her wild dog smile. “I’ll give him my cell, Mr. President.”

  “Outstanding.” Rockford looked at his watch. “Okay, I gotta go pretend I like foie gras.” He turned to leave, but a Secret Service agent leaned over and spoke in his ear.

  “Oh yeah, I forgot,” the president said. “Bring the cooks back in here first, and get me a felt pen.”

  Rockford always kept his word.

  Chapter 10

  Washington, D.C.

  The sun was draining into the pewter waters of the Potomac when Steele and Goodhill finally left Q Street. It was a warm sun, a shimmering umber sun, and its light lanced through the marble columns of the Lincoln Memorial and glittered off the glass at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. It was a beautiful becalming thing to see, nature in all its celestial glory, waving its comforting curtain across the heart of America’s seat of government.

  But neither man noticed, or cared.

  Miles Turner had tasked one of his armed drivers to get them to wherever they were going. Steele’s coveted sidearm, the Colt 1911 bequeathed to him by his father, which he’d retooled for 9 mm ammunition, was still nestled inside a custom steel box with a thumbprint biosensor lock, in turn welded under the seat of his emerald-green 1967 GTO, which in turn was still parked in a long-term underground lot in Rosslyn, Virginia. He no longer had an apartment in D.C., so he was staying temporarily at the Holiday Inn.

  Goodhill’s cut-down Remington 870 in 20 gauge—a nasty, short little thing with a custom shoulder rig that thwanged whenever Blade drew the shotgun from under his jacket—was also locked in a steel box, but ensconced in the closet of one of his female admirers, with whom he was temporarily crashing in Crystal City.

  The men had not discussed getting a place together, nor would they. Keepers and Alphas were way too ornery and similar to share a kitchen and bathroom.

  “We’re not going to get this damn thing spun up for months,” Steele murmured. He was staring out the SUV’s right-side passenger window.

  “We don’t need it all spun up right now,” Goodhill said. He was across the wide seat from Steele, squinting out the opposite window. “We just need a few good tier-one door kickers that can operate on the down low, way down range. The rest of the admin crap’ll catch up.”

  “Down low. Then we’re talking SF, Delta, maybe some ISA if we can steal them from the DIA. Or maybe some special tactics people from Langley, if they haven’t gone soft.”

  “No SEALs, huh?” Goodhill asked.

  “SEALs don’t do subtle. Undercover to them means three hookers at the same time in a Bangkok brothel.”

  Goodhill laughed at that. Then he leaned forward and said to Turner’s assigned driver, “Hey, you’re not a squid, are ya?”

  “No, sir. I was air force, Green Hornets, Twentieth Special Ops Squadron.”

  “Cool. Wouldn’t want to offend.” Goodhill sat back again, looked at Steele, and said, “Hey, how about checking out some air force PJs or STS guys? Pretty well rounded.”

  “PJs as Alphas? Their motto’s ‘That Others May Live.’”

  “Oh, yeah, no good. We need shooters, not priests.”

  “And we need some female prospects too,” Steele said.

  “I know some girls on a roller derby team who could probably kick my ass.” Goodhill smirked at the thought. “And I’d probably like it.”

  “You’re not going to last in this PC environment, Blade,” Steele said.

  “Kid, you’re just jealous of my clear-eyed worldview.”

  They were quiet for a minute as the driver took them straight down Fourteenth Street toward Franklin Square. In a few more blocks the White House and the Ellipse would appear off of Steele’s starboard flank, and already he could see more Metro PD activity on the streets, because the evening ruckus in Lafayette Square had become a regular thing. Still, Washington had remained fairly civilized, with only a few shops boarded up, as opposed to Manhattan, where Fifth Avenue still looked like a scene out of Escape from New York.

  “Looks like Lansky wants to totally reghost everything,” Steele said.

  “Yep, and everybody too. Shame that Max Sands has to die,” Goodhill said, meaning Steele’s cover as a sales rep with Graceland Import Exports.

  “Ditto John Booth,” Steele said in reference to Goodhill’s previous cover, “but to be honest, that name always gave me the creeps with the whole Lincoln’s assassin thing.”

  “I didn’t choose it. Computer did. And just so you know, the only true love of my life was a beautiful black girl from Atlanta.”

  Steele turned and looked at Goodhill’s shiny shaved bullet head, busted nose, and bulldog jaw. Goodhill cocked his chin down, confirming what Steele thought he’d just heard.

  “You know, Dalton,” Steele said, “I’m seeing you in a whole new light.”

  “It’s the light just before the fucking darkness, so don’t get too excited.”

  “Where do you gentlemen want to be dropped?” the driver asked.

  “Constitution Ave.,” Steele said. “I’ll stroll the rest of the way and you can drop my gorilla off in Crystal.”

  “Roger.”

  Another half minute passed while they thought.

  “I don’t much like the HQ name change either,” Goodhill said.

  “Yeah. From Cutlass Main, to Sawtooth? I think Lansky’s got a comic book writer on the payroll.”

  “Let’s get Ralphy to tell him Sawtooth’s being used by a JSOC unit or something.”

  “Good idea. Then we can choose something more respectable, like Toothpick Forward.”

  Goodhill laughed heartily at that and slapped Steele’s knee as the driver stopped and Steele opened his door.

  “Watch your six,” Steele said as he slid from the SUV. “There’s gonna be some pissed-off Russians on the hunt very shortly.”

  “I got Kevlar skin, kid. You watch yours.”

  Steele shut the door and started walking west on Constitution Avenue as the SUV rolled away, and right away he sunk into a brood. The president’s tasking hadn’t fazed him, because he’d been down that road many times before. The Program had been as close to the fictitious Impossible Mission Forc
e as anything could be, and would be again, and like all the other Alphas selected, he was highly trained and cursed with an obsessive need to succeed. If it couldn’t be done, he’d do it. If it couldn’t be found, he’d find it. Plus, his love of country and calling to a higher duty were emotions that ran just under his skin and could quickly be activated. John Rockford knew that. Rockford knew that if he tasked Steele with a mission, he’d nail it or die trying.

  But that wasn’t it. It was the other part, about his father. It was about the discovery a year before that Hank Steele had once been an Alpha too. He’d walked out of his son’s life when Eric was nine years old, and had never come back, and there wasn’t a damn thing you could do to repair such pain. Sure, the president could declare Hank a national hero. Sure, Eric might be able to find his father out there somewhere, and they might have a reunion and be able to sit down and share a cigar and a beer and, eventually, laugh over similar war stories, or stare off together at the stars while they swallowed their past. But nothing could fix the years of loneliness that Susan Steele had endured, or the fact that Eric had forced himself to assume the role of “man of the house,” a common phenomenon with fatherless boys, and never completely reparable.

  The president had ordered him to go find his father and bring him home. He wasn’t sure that he wanted to anymore.

  Lost in his musings, Steele realized that he’d already cut southwest past the Lincoln Memorial and was approaching the Arlington bridge. Letting his mind lapse like that, instead of remaining split-brained and alert to all threats, was not a good trait for an Alpha.

  You’re slipping, mister, losing your mojo. . . . Might have to ask Goodhill and Turner to burn your ass and tune you up again, like some green FNG.

  He entered the bridge span, between the two bookend statues called Valor and Sacrifice, each of an enormous steed being ridden by Mars, the god of war. Beyond that he could see the rolling green hills of Arlington National Cemetery and its thousands of white marble teeth, the graves of men and women like him, too many of whom he’d known personally, and still quietly mourned. And even though he wasn’t going to visit them today, it felt somehow disrespectful to be dressed as he was, like a sloppy handyman, but he pressed on and braved the next train of thought he’d been resisting all day.

  Meg Harden. They’d worked together at the Program, she as a brilliant intel analyst with a talent for martial arts, while he was the sharp end of the spear. They’d kept their love affair secret, until no one was pretending not to know anymore, and then he’d rolled her into his list of suspects when it was clear that the outfit had a mole. In fact he’d nearly killed her, which had definitely put a wrinkle in their relationship.

  For a long time after that, Meg had refused to see him. It took a lot of coaxing for her to relent and forgive him, and they’d taken up where they’d left off. But it hadn’t stuck. Meg had stopped thirsting for action and wanted a normal life. Steele only wanted to find his next target. He hadn’t seen her for months.

  I should just take up with Allie Whirly. All she wants is regular head-banging sex. We could run helicopter hunting trips for wannabee Rambos in Alaska. . . .

  For a moment, that seemed appealing.

  Problem was, he still loved Meg, and always would.

  He’d crossed the bridge, turned right and was heading north, and he could see the Marine Corps Memorial up ahead. It was a magnificent sculpted reproduction of Joe Rosenthal’s famous photo of the Marines raising the flag on Mount Suribachi at Iwo Jima in 1945. The image always stirred his soul and reminded him of his beloved grandfather, a World War II leatherneck who’d fought at Guadalcanal. Grandpa never spoke of that battle. The real heroes rarely did.

  There were hardly any tourists about the wide circle embracing the statue. But hanging back in the tree line, Steele saw five questionable-looking dudes. They were all dressed in black, with matching facemasks, which wasn’t that unusual. Except a couple were wearing backpacks with the grips of short baseball bats sticking out. And they all had spray paint cans in their hands. They were staring at the memorial and grunting in low tones, and he assessed they were up to no good.

  He knew he should just walk on by. He didn’t. An old photo of his grandpa appeared behind his eyes—skinny, filthy jungle fatigues, dangling M1 carbine, steel pot helmet, thousand-yard stare, and very proud. He strolled up behind the five men and quietly joined the pack, looking over their heads, as if they might be a crew of innocent bird-watchers and he just wanted to see a falcon too.

  “Pretty magnificent, isn’t it?” Steele said.

  The five men started and turned. They hadn’t heard him approach. Few folks ever did.

  “What the fuck’s so magnificent, asshole?” one of them said.

  Steele kept his gaze on the statue, with an admiring smile on his lips as he slipped off his Oakleys and tucked them into his shirt pocket, as if just wanting to see the statue more clearly.

  “My granddad fought with those guys,” he said as his peripheral senses assessed.

  Big one on the right, muscle guy, slow, left one’s faster, two outliers on the flanks are hangers-on, last one’s the danger, knife-wielder . . .

  The men faced him fully now, in a semicircle, their eyes above their black masks squinting and pleased to find prey.

  “Then your granddaddy was a fucking fascist, wasn’t he, white boy?” the muscle guy said, which was amusing, because all of them were Caucasians.

  “Actually, he was a genuine antifascist, not like you Antifa scum,” Steele said. “I assume you’re gonna tag that with yellow, since it’s the color of cowards.”

  The muscle guy said “Fuck you” and thrust out a meaty paw to shove him. It never landed. Steele jinked to the left, trapped the guy’s right wrist in a vise grip, yanked him off balance, reached over that arm with his left and elbowed his assailant’s jaw so hard that it cracked out loud and he went down like a prizefighter clanged by George Foreman. After that, the rest of it was a blur, and Steele was a tornado.

  The second bat wielder drew a Louisville slugger from his backpack. Steele chested him like a locomotive, Krav Maga style, trapping the bat arm with his left elbow. Then he smashed the guy’s nose with a wicked palm strike, grabbed the hair on top of his head, yanked him over his motorcycle boots, and kneed him full force in the groin. That guy went down wailing, and with blood gushing over his teeth, and now the bat was Steele’s.

  He backhand smacked it into one outlier’s forehead, which made a sound like a meat mallet on a rib eye steak, then he gripped the bat two-handed as the fourth dude lunged at him, and he hit one out of the park into his solar plexus. The blow lifted him clear off his feet and he went down on his back, his legs and arms twitching in the air like a cockroach.

  The fifth Antifa, as Steele had assessed, came up with a long knife and dropped into an amateur gangbanger stance.

  Steele hopped backward, dropped the bat, crooked his finger, and said, “I’m your Huckleberry,” hoping Val Kilmer wouldn’t mind being plagiarized. The knife boy took the bait, yelled an unintelligible curse, and lunged. Steele shattered his right knee with a whipping roundhouse kick, eagle-clawed his hand, took the knife away as he screamed, and whipped it like a boomerang into the trees.

  He was painting all their weeping faces red with one of their spray paint cans when he heard a panting voice behind him order, “Drop it!”

  He turned to find two trembling park rangers, a young man and a woman, both pointing Tasers at his chest.

  “You’re under arrest,” the female ranger spat.

  Steele released the can, raised his hands, smiled, and said, “Well, it’s been that kind of a day.”

  Chapter 11

  Ulaanbadrakh, Mongolia

  Colonel Doctor Ai Liang lay half dead in a Mongolian village yurt, but she wasn’t gone just yet. She had lost a lot of blood, had a raging fever, and was dangerously dehydrated, yet she was hanging on in the care of her determined nomadic hosts, who would view it as a grea
t dishonor if their guest did not survive.

  Her rescuer, Gengi Phon, was the elder of this nameless collection of conical huts squatting on a snow-swept plain in the wilds southwest of Ulaanbadrakh. A strapping horseman of forty-two, Gengi was also an expert smuggler who regarded the southern border with China as a mere suggestion, and ranged freely back and forth for collections of Chinese spices, purloined firearms, ammunition, and jewels he snatched from errant hikers. He was a hard man descended from four centuries of cavalry warriors, but he had his own set of private honorable rules.

  The horseback trek from the border had ranged across nearly forty kilometers of relentless blizzard. The Chinese woman, in her torn, soaked, and bloody leopard spot uniform, had at some point fainted and slumped against the fur pelts warming Gengi’s massive back. He’d slung her arms around his neck and roped her wrists together so she wouldn’t fall off. Her breaths were weak, and once when he stopped to check, so was her heart. He’d forced cold water into her gullet from a camel skin bladder, and rode on.

  The village was composed of six yurts the Mongolians called gers. They were circular, shaped like giant Hershey’s Kisses, with wooden beam skeletons cocooned in roped canvas and furs, and openings in their sloping peaked roofs for a single-pipe chimney. They were warm inside from mixed peat and woodstove fires, while frozen outside and coated in gleaming ice. Each had a single, ornate, bright green, amber, or chartreuse wooden door, but there were no televisions or telephones. At night the gers were lit by oil lanterns. The Mongols’ emergency flashlights were squeeze-powered Russian models and the precious few batteries they owned were used for their old-style Chinese transistor radios. Gengi’s heavily blanketed horse stood outside in the snow, next to a Russian Ural motorcycle that wasn’t a recreational toy.

  “She must not expire,” Gengi said to his wife as they stood side by side in the ger, watching the Chinese woman breathe. They were speaking Khalkha, a Mongolian dialect unlike any other on earth, which could be written in Cyrillic but also in a Mongolian script that looked very much like cave drawings.