Left for Dead

by Sean Parnell

  “She will not die in our home, husband,” his wife replied. She was raven haired, with sweeping Asian eyes and wide cheekbones, and swathed in bear furs and also a long scarlet skirt, with thick boots roped like Roman sandals. “I have just fed her soup and she is holding it down.”

  “She appears lost to this world to me,” Gengi grunted. He pulled a three-legged stool close to the wooden pallet bed upon which Liang was snuggled beneath two layers of camel hide, and sat down. His great mustache was gleaming wet from the condensed steam of his nose, and his long thick hair was roped at the back of his great skull into something he had no idea the Americans called a man bun. He touched Liang’s forehead with calloused red fingers that looked like overcooked sausages.

  “The woman is fevered,” he said.

  “It will break,” said his wife. “I have prayed for it.”

  “You have prayed for it? Why?”

  “We shall not be shamed. And besides, the ground outside is too hard for a grave.”

  Just then, Colonel Liang stirred and fluttered her eyes. Above her, through her blurry vision, she saw a conical starfish of wooden beams laced with billowing canvas, below which hung a small cloud of smoke and steam. She glanced to the left and saw two long wooden pallet beds, like the one she felt under her spine. She glanced to the right and saw a low table made from some sort of crate. Upon it was a steaming iron pot, next to a pile of bloody white strips of cloth. Her drenched uniform hung from a wooden pole above her neatly ordered boots, like a soldier’s burial plot, and she realized she was naked beneath a pile of animal fur. The snippets of her rescue in the snow came flooding back from her frozen memory, and a large male face loomed above her like something from the tales of Fu Manchu.

  “Huan ying lai dao shi jie,” the man’s bass voice said in fluent Mandarin. Welcome to the world.

  Liang blinked and she tried to speak, yet nothing came out but a croak. Then a woman’s face appeared, a ladle touched her lips, and something that tasted like syrupy ramen warmed her throat.

  “Xiè xie,” Liang managed. Thank you.

  “I am Gengi Phon,” said the man. “You are in my village in Mongolia. Who are you? Why did you flee, and why are you wounded?”

  Dr. Liang’s tongue was still thick. She looked at the woman, whose eyes were nearly black, yet kind. The woman smiled, showing gold-tipped teeth, and she ladled more liquid into Liang’s mouth and it soothed her clutched throat.

  “I am a colonel in the Chinese army,” Dr. Liang rasped. “I am the commander of a secret . . . facility. We were attacked by troops . . . I don’t know who. Everyone was killed . . .”

  “But you,” Gengi said.

  “Yes.” Beneath the furs, Liang carefully explored her skin. It was hot, even to her own touch, and the flesh of her waist wound was swathed in a slimy pȃté that felt like some sort of animal blubber, perhaps seal.

  “These troops,” Gengi said, “were Chinese?” His breath smelled like harsh tobacco and onions.

  “They arrived in helicopters, but I do not know.”

  Gengi’s leathery face lifted away and back, as if he’d just realized that his guest was contagious with something.

  “These men. Do they know that you survived?”

  “I . . . I believe that they do.” Liang wasn’t going to lie.

  Gengi looked at his wife. The woman shrugged, and then glanced sideways at Gengi’s three rifles, which were resting across a fixture made from the antlers of elk-like Mongolian red deer. The rifles were bolt-action British Lee-Enfields in heavy .303 caliber, but no match for modern firearms.

  The door to the ger creaked open, a blast of frigid wind swirled into the hut along with lances of snow-bright light, and a large young man covered in snow-crusted fur stepped inside. Twenty minutes before, Gengi had stepped outside and blown a summoning blast on his ram’s horn. The young man was his son. Gengi stood up and went to him. He was the image of his father, though slimmer at nineteen, and his mustache wasn’t yet as full or menacing. Gengi spoke to him in Khalkha.

  “Ganbaatar,” he said. The name meant “steel hero.” “You must ride to Zuunbayan.”

  “It is sixty kilometers, father.” The young man’s eyes narrowed. “The snow is growing.”

  “As are you, my son.” Gengi’s massive hand gripped his son’s shoulder. “Take your rifle, water, food, and a second horse, Uli’s horse. Bring the man from Tibet, the monk they call Tenzin, the one who worked with the American spies.” He leaned closer, and spoke lower, even though he was certain the Chinese woman would not understand.

  “Bring him quickly, Ganbaatar, before she dies.”

  Chapter 12

  Arlington County Jail, Virginia

  “Were you born a dumbass? Or did you have to go to school for that?”

  That was about all that Dalton “Blade” Goodhill had said to Steele when his Alpha called him from the processing room at Arlington County Jail.

  Steele had been allowed the single requisite call to an attorney, but having recovered from his momentary lapse in professional judgment at the Marine Corps Memorial, he’d quickly realized that if Ted Lansky discovered what he’d done, his newly refreshed Program career could be terminated at birth. Somehow, his stupidity had to be kept under wraps. So he’d called Goodhill instead, told him briefly what had happened, then cringed as Goodhill cursed him and clicked off.

  For once he was happy with cell phone technology because his keeper had no handset to smash.

  The park rangers, having witnessed Steele’s decimation of the Antifa thugs, knew they didn’t have much of a federal case and had turned him over to Arlington County sheriffs and relayed what they’d seen. He’d politely offered them his wrists for the cuffs, hadn’t made a fuss, and one of the EMTs who’d arrived in an ambulance had looked at the carnage and snorted, “What? You’re gonna book this dude for defending himself from five of these assholes?” No charges were going to stick, but he still had to be processed.

  The jail was nice, for a prison facility. It was a modern, multistory, clean cement structure on Court Street, where the interior cells were raised behind a blue balustrade catwalk, above a central recreation area of blue and beige tiles and neat tables bolted to the floor for bitching and cards. The cells were cinder block, freshly painted and disinfected, with the usual open toilets, small sinks, beds as hard as the warden, and single-slat windows with no view except the next-door police precinct’s walls.

  Steele had been questioned briefly by a bored deputy, fingerprinted, and locked in a holding cell. Unfortunately, his timing sucked, because he had no new cover yet and all of his pocket litter, including his Pennsylvania driver’s license, said Eric Steele. His fingerprints, however, had long ago been ghosted out of the federal record, so these fresh ones weren’t going to return a single match. Very soon now, these folks were going to get very suspicious, so while he bided his time he was hoping that Goodhill would come up with a solution, and fast.

  The solution arrived that night at 10:21 p.m., in the form of a sound, a light tapping along the internal catwalk outside. Steele was sitting on his bunk, still wearing his civilian attire and pondering his life choices, when a figure appeared outside his cell.

  Steele had met Thorn McHugh only once before, in the dark in a park. The man was something of a ghost himself, one of those old-world spooks from days gone by, but he’d heard enough whispers about McHugh’s past and recognized his stature and form. The man standing there had a slight smile playing on his wind-weathered lips, below a pair of gold spectacles and a green fedora. He was wearing a dark blue corduroy jacket with leather elbow patches, twill trousers, brown cordovans, and a tie. His cane was mahogany classic, with a right-angle polished grip instead of a curve, and Steele imagined it could be twisted off to reveal a rapier blade.

  “I had hoped for a less formal reunion,” said McHugh. He was somewhere in his seventies, but his voice was much younger and had a Yalie lilt that was nearly British.

  “Tha
nk you for coming, sir.” Steele rose to his feet. “I apologize for any inconvenience.”

  “Oh, it’s no bother, my boy.” McHugh jutted the tip of his cane through the bars at Steele’s shirt and asked, “Is that blood yours?”

  “No.” Steele felt embarrassed.

  “Fortuitous. Then you shan’t need attention.” McHugh turned his head to someone in the corridor and nodded. A jailhouse deputy stepped into view, unlocked the cell door, and slid it open. “Come,” McHugh said to Steele. “The county sheriff is a friend, but I’d prefer not to dally and try her patience.”

  Outprocessing was short and painless. The sheriff’s officers behind the front desk barely said a word—someone had made a call. They handed Steele a large ziplock plastic bag with his Rolex Submariner, a few quarters, wallet, and cash, had him sign a form for recovery of his possessions, nodded at McHugh, and went back to watching their monitor screens. Ever since child predator Jeffrey Epstein had died mysteriously in his Manhattan cell, with the blame being laid on his “goons,” prison guards all over the country had kept their eyes peeled and their coffee caffeinated.

  McHugh opened the main entrance door, swept a polite “after you” hand for Steele, and they strolled out onto the street. Arlington was quiet this late on a weeknight. There weren’t any statues around to tag or burn. They walked north on Courthouse Road. It was chilly, and Steele was tired, hungry, and secretly ashamed. But McHugh took his elbow, squeezed it slightly, as if to say “It’s all right. We’ve all screwed the pooch once in a while,” and he kept his fingers there as they walked.

  “You know what they say about old spies, my boy?” he said.

  “No, sir. What do they say?”

  “Nothing.” McHugh smiled as he tapped his cane on the sidewalk. “No one is supposed to know who they are.”

  Steele smiled as well but kept silent. He sensed he was going to learn something.

  “I was much like you as a younger agent. Fraught with emotion on occasion. They turn you into a certain kind of chap, then expect you to freeze that persona when something unexpected, and unrelated to your mission, all at once rears its ugly head.”

  “I should know better by now,” Steele said. “I can usually control it.”

  McHugh squeezed his elbow again.

  “It’s not an admonition. My father was with the OSS during the war. Parachuted into France, on more than one occasion. I followed in his footsteps, as you did in yours.”

  Steele looked over at McHugh’s expression, which was slightly bemused, but he was keeping his old eagle eyes on the path.

  “Yes, I knew him.” McHugh nodded once as they walked. “I was with the Company, as we called it back then, for many years. One of my mentors at Langley, who shall not be named, invited me on a fishing trip in Chesapeake Bay. There were, of course, no fishing poles, and no fish. He explained to me that a select few of the old guard believed that Langley had become too large, unwieldy, and unsecure. He revealed another, much smaller agency where he thought I’d be more suited to serve. We shan’t say its name, shall we?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Yes, and that’s where I met one of the finest operators I’d ever known.” McHugh winked at Steele. “Aside from my own father, naturally.”

  Steele felt the flush rising up through his throat. Thorn McHugh had worked with Hank Steele. A hundred questions instantly popped into his mind, but he held his peace.

  “By the way,” McHugh said, “I heard you received a postcard from him.”

  “I did.” Steele had no idea how McHugh could possibly know that.

  “Might I ask where it came from?”

  “The picture on the front was of Bali.”

  “Ahh, the tropics.” McHugh smiled. “So he’s probably somewhere in the Alps.” Then he transitioned to fluent French. “Tu crois qu’on a une queue?” Do you think we have a tail?

  “Je n’ai pas vu ça,” Steele replied. Not that I’ve seen.

  “Three long years in Saigon,” McHugh said in English again, as if by way of explanation for his French. “I was in Hue in ’68, when the bullets were pirouetting through the embassy and we were burning all of our files. Hence, the leg.” Then he rapped his cane on his right lower leg and it made a knocking sound—wood on wood. “I ran a network of joes from Tibet. Later on, I also handled an asset, deep inside the CCP. We called him Casino, but that man is unfortunately dead. The fellow who called Camp David is an imposter.”

  “The president told me that this morning,” Steele said.

  “I know.”

  This man runs deep, Steele thought. Very deep.

  “He’s also tasked me with this Chinese threat,” Steele added.

  “I know that as well.”

  It was so matter-of-fact that it didn’t invite discussion. They passed the Bayou Bakery, which was closed but still exuding scents of chocolate croissants that made Steele’s stomach growl, but they pressed on and turned left on Clarendon.

  “Tell me, my boy,” McHugh said. “How often do you find yourself wanting to quit?”

  “Often,” Steele said. McHugh wasn’t the kind of man one lied to.

  “Good, then you’ve got a healthy mind. It’s the ones who can’t envision a normal life who become dangerous to themselves, and to others.”

  They were approaching the Court House Metro station when McHugh slowed, stopped, and turned to Eric. He was tall and their eyes nearly met.

  “You shall need to be thoroughly ghosted again, my boy. This lovely old town of mine is, shall we say, crawling with Beijing operatives. Close all of your bank accounts, dispense with your civilian friends, put things to bed with Ms. Harden. And I’m afraid that lovely GTO must be garaged. Endure something horrible, for now, like a Prius. I realize that it’s not easy, nowadays, what with Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and so forth.” He pronounced it Twitt-ahh. “You must indulge such practices, of course, otherwise you shan’t appear real, but only in a very sophomoric manner. And your keeper must do the same. We must build you both anew.”

  Steele was stunned by McHugh’s use of the personal plural pronoun. He was still in the game. He was somehow still with the Program, but at a level above the clouds. And he also realized that the man hadn’t yet spoken his name out loud, or Goodhill’s. McHugh released his arm and began heading for the Metro station stairwell. Then he turned and came back.

  “Ah, one more thing,” he said with a smile. “You’re too, shall we say . . . pretty. Grow an unruly beard, get yourself a pair of brown contact lenses, and a scar.”

  “A scar?” Steele said.

  “Why, yes. Use a carpet knife. They’re only five bucks at Home Depot.”

  And then he was gone.

  Chapter 13

  Rosslyn, Virginia

  It was raining like a biblical warning to Noah when Steele drove out to the firing range.

  He’d texted Goodhill with an all clear, told him he’d be taking the day for “assigned tasks,” and checked out of the Holiday Inn, where he’d barely slept, despite knocking off three mini-bottles of Jack from the fridge. Outside on the street, the sky was bruised purple and spitting torrents onto parked cars, mailboxes, and the wind-warped umbrellas and soaked galoshes of the fortunately still employed. It matched his mood, and he recalled the infantry complaint of his brothers from the 10th Mountain Division: “If it ain’t rainin,’ we ain’t trainin’.”

  Fair enough. Let’s get some . . .

  He walked two blocks and extracted the GTO from a nearby long-term garage, but seeing the sleek emerald-green machine made his chest ache. In the evening he was going to drive it up north to his house on Neville Island outside Pittsburgh, lock it up tight under a cotton cocoon in his garage, and forget about it—if he could.

  The idea of driving some hybrid turd like a Prius made him cringe, yet he’d taken Thorn McHugh’s suggestion as an order. He decided he’d lease one, rather than buy it, but he’d still feel like a traitor. Pennsylvania was fossil fuel country, and he was
a hard-core Pittsburgh homeboy.

  The GTO had an after-market CD player installed. He cranked up Guster’s “Come Downstairs and Say Hello,” and wound for an hour through the green Virginia hills, sipping a large Starbucks Americano as the wipers punished the windshield. There were shooters who eschewed caffeine because it could make you trembly, but Steele never did. An operator might be sharing an espresso with an informant in Algiers one minute, and the next minute wind up in a gun battle.

  Train the way you fight. . . .

  At the back half of the Program’s operator training course, Alphas honed their firearms and hand-to-hand skills in business suits, ski suits, track suits, boots sunk in mud, waist deep in rushing rivers, handcuffed, blindfolded, and even buck naked. If you were ready for anything, nothing would be a surprise.

  Speaking of which, sin of mortal sins, he was way too short on range time. Once, back in Afghanistan, when he was a master sergeant in Special Forces and considering a tryout for Delta, he’d sat on a shell-pocked hill in Jalalabad with a B-Squadron operator known only as Hulk, who’d imparted some wisdom about success in the Unit. “If you’re not spending four hours a day on the range, somebody’s gonna ask you why, and you better have a damn good answer.”

  So, he was going out to the thousand-acre patch of remote training area that had been gifted to the Program, on the QT, by none other than Thorn McHugh. He told himself again that he needed the tune-up. Then he admitted to himself that was a lie. Meg had reluctantly agreed to see him at her place in Falls Church. He was just stalling.

  Whatever, dude.

  He turned in off the main road between a pair of old oaks and drove up a long muddy lane for a mile. The Program had spent a cool 200K on a full-perimeter sensor system that locked onto any trespasser’s cell, or a vehicle’s license plate, much like E-ZPass monitors. It was probably deactivated, and Ralphy hadn’t yet cranked it up again, but if somebody knew he was there, who cared?