“It’s all right, man. You know what I owe you.”
“You don’t owe me your family. I think you need to cut them out. Get some distance.”
I could see him there in my mind’s eye, thinking and chewing the inside of his cheek. “All right. Can you find the cabin?”
“I was thinking the same thing. Yeah, I can find it. I’m pretty sure there’s nothing to lead them to it. And Zee-man…might want to put out a warning order for a few more guys, just in case. This is some through-the-looking-glass stuff, and I don’t know how deep the rabbit hole goes.”
“Just don’t tell me I’m going to wake up in a tank full of goo with a tube down my throat.”
“Well, I got a red pill for you here, if you want it.”
He snorted. “All right, Morpheus. When can you be there?”
I thought for a moment, trying to calculate the distance and time. About ten hours to Cave Run Lake, Kentucky. “Sometime tonight, I think. Same white van.”
“Ok, brother. You take care, and I’ll see you tonight.”
I put down the phone, used the latrine, then went out and paid for my food order. I brought it out to the van and ate a bagel sandwich sitting there in the seat, watching Quantico go about its morning routine. I drank a half a gallon of the milk and started on the coffee. The hunger pangs seemed to come and go, and apparently I had to feed them when they did.
I got on the road, passing the inbound base traffic piled up at the gate. I took it easy, driving in the right lane south down I-95, letting my thoughts flow.
Things were a thousand times better now. Yeah, I felt a little guilty for putting Zeke on the spot, but what were friends for, anyway, and I had saved his life, after all. In some cultures that meant I was responsible for him. Either way, me for him, him for me.
There was nothing quite like the bond between men who had face death together. It sounded corny, even in my mind, but it was the unspoken truth that turned recruits into veterans and boys into men on the battlefield, and had for millennia. And it was more important than just about anything else, on a par with the love between husband and wife. In fact, I knew guys who would choose their brothers in arms before their wives, maybe even their kids. I’m not saying that’s right, I’m just saying it’s that strong.
But that didn’t mean you even liked the guys, always. Sometimes you couldn’t even stand them, outside of an op. And I was always a bit of a loner, so I hadn’t worried about keeping in touch. I could always find them later, I thought.
Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. I hadn’t memorized many Bible verses, but that was one of them. I couldn’t remember who said it, but that guy really knew what he was talking about. I hope he died well, saving his friends. Couldn’t ask for a better way to go. I know I’d welcome it when it came, if I died doing my duty, so others could live.
I shook off my melancholy thoughts. Maybe the XH meant I didn’t have to think about dying anymore, or my buddies dying or anyone. Maybe XH would put me out of business. That was a strange idea. This stuff was going to change the world, if the unknown downside didn’t turn out to be too bad.
In any case, physically I felt great, better and better by the hour. My thoughts were clearer, my body hummed with vitality and health. It was an overnight revolution. And all I had to do was bite someone, I figured, to pass it on. I had a sudden feeling of power, of the ability to bestow a gift on my friends and withhold it from my enemies, whoever they were. Then I felt a sudden stab of conscience, realizing that I wouldn’t, I couldn’t withhold it from anyone that needed it. That Others May Live was my code. Not ‘That Others Who I Happened To Like May Live’. I knew then that everyone had to have this stuff.
That conscience nagged at me as I drove, with nothing to do but think and listen to the radio. I started remembering stupid things I’d done as a kid, growing up in Omaha. I’d hurt people, emotionally and physically. I’d been a jerk, because I could be. I was big and tough and athletic and good-looking and I’d used and discarded girls like paper cups, drinking my fill then tossing them away. I’d done pretty much the same thing with women when I was grown. I’d had a filthy mouth, I’d gotten into fights, and I’d bullied weaker people around me. It was all for their own good, of course, and they deserved it, of course, and I deserved whatever I wanted from life, of course.
Of course.
I kept a purer part of myself compartmentalized, in a box marked “Duty,” and that was sacred. In that box I was a paladin. I did everything right, everything by the book unless completing the mission called for a deviation, and the mission was everything.
But outside of duty, I was a son of a bitch.
Then Becky came along. God, she was beautiful, with sandy straight hair in bangs, freckles, a generous figure that I found just right - and she had a young daughter. It was fireworks and flame for a while, and we got married.
It lasted five years, until my drinking and my gambling and my jealousy of her daughter and their relationship – I know, I told you I was a son of a bitch – ruined it all. We didn’t have any kids of our own, either. It was me, my half of it. That poisoned the well too, just one more contributing factor. I couldn’t be much of a man if I was shooting blanks with my own wife, right? I had too much medical training to deny a low sperm count.
A wave of guilt washed over me and I ground my teeth, tears of regret leaking out in the privacy of my van at sixty-five miles per hour. It was cathartic, a few minutes, but I felt infinitely better afterward. I don’t think I’d ever faced my own culpability, and it was cleansing to just accept it.
Dr. Benchman used to tell me I had to take responsibility for things I’d done and I would feel better. I’d preferred Prozac and Ritalin and dexedrine, but I realized I didn’t want those now. I think the XH was fixing me.
Was XH going to put the shrinks out of a job too?
An inkling of the downside started to rattle around in the deep recesses of my thoughts, way down there where those things I don’t want to think about lurk. I couldn’t see it clearly but I figured that given time it would eventually surface.
Feeling better, my thoughts turned to Elise. I’d shot her, she’d made a fool of me by escaping – had I let her go? Maybe I could have tried harder. I’d never killed a woman – not that I knew of, anyway. Never had a woman fire a weapon at me either. Maybe I had a soft spot? It wasn’t something I’d thought about much. Then I hadn’t tried very hard to keep her out of their clutches, but I might have had to kill four men in front of witnesses to do it, and she’d been so adamant…I turned it all over in my mind, trying to analyze my own feelings.
Okay, I admitted it to myself. I was interested. She’d shown her spine, and every man likes a woman with a backbone, a woman he can respect. But there was something more there, a connection I felt. Part of it was the shared experience of combat, of the life and death stress that welds people together is unusual ways. But there was more to it than that. Was I fooling myself? It was the way she had looked at me, like she knew me.
Well, I had all day to think about it.
-7-
Nine hours later I was muscling the van around the twists and turns of State 211 south out of Salt Lick, Kentucky, looking for Clear Creek Road, then Buck Creek Road. After that, it was all by memory, looking for the unmarked gate with a “Trespassers Will Be Violated” sign on it, then off into the wooded hills on the rutted dirt track. Branches scraped along the roof and sides of the van, adding to the innumerable dings already there. I’d got it cheap in a fleet auction, and never regretted it. If anything scraped too deep I just sprayed some white enamel over it.
After ten minutes of rollercoaster I drove up to Zeke’s cabin. It was rustic but well-maintained. There was a big barn next to it, and I pulled up midway between, my headlights shining on the big door. I turned off the engine and the headlamps, leaving the parking lights on and turning on the dome light over my head. I put my hands on the steering wheel and I
waited.
A moment later I felt the pressure of observation from my left. This phenomenon is scientifically unproven but it’s a well-accepted principle in special ops, and even in ordinary hunting. A well-trained, situationally-aware operator will know when someone is looking at him, especially without the distractions of a busy urban environment. So will an animal, sometimes. My dad had told me about it, from when he was evading the NVA and the Cong. Never look at the guys looking for you. They will feel it.
I froze in place. If it was hostiles, I was screwed anyway. I had to believe it was Zeke or one of his guys, checking me out.
A faint sound, like a breath, came from behind my left ear. My eyes flicked to my door mirror and I could see the barrel of an assault weapon with a short, dark figure behind it. About the same time, I saw Zeke come around the corner of the barn, dressed in some old BDUs. He was easy to identify, big and bearded. He’d gotten paunchy since retirement, but he still moved easily. He would be in his early fifties, about ten years older than I was.
He walked confidently up to my open window, waving the gunman back. He reached through to clasp hands with me. “DJ!”
“Zeke. Really good to see you, man. Is that Spooky back there?”
“You know it. Still doing his thing.”
Spooky was a little Asian guy, what my dad would have called a Montagnard. His name, what ended up on his documents anyway, was Nguyen Pham Tran. I think that was the Vietnamese equivalent of John Smith. He had come over as a teenager in the Boat People wave of the 1980s, and joined the US Army as soon as he could. Ninjas had nothing on Spooky in the bush. I think his family had been anticommunist insurgents, until they got sent to the reeducation camps. He didn’t talk about it much.
“Hey, Spooky,” I called over my shoulder, now that I felt I could move without getting shot. I heard a grunt in reply. When I got out of the van, I didn’t see him anymore. He’d faded back into the woods.
I hugged Zeke, slapping his back. “Good to see you, man.” I stretched, then bent over, touched my toes, loosening up my muscles after the long drive.
“That physical therapy must be working,” he observed. “Let’s go inside. Spooky’s enjoying having woods to play in. We’re lucky he was between jobs.”
The little man kept busy working for defense contractors, personal security. Sometimes that meant just what it sounded like – keeping VIPs safe in rough country. Sometimes it meant off-the-books clandestine and covert work, all plausibly deniable.
“You still teaching at that gun club?” I asked.
“Yep. Certified Master Instructor, senior Range Safety Officer, all that. Once the relic holding the top job finally retires or croaks, I’ll be in charge of all range operations. Nice and cushy.” He paused, chewed his lip. “Too cushy. Run your van into the barn, will you?”
I did that, as he opened and closed the big door behind me. There was a Jeep Cherokee, a Land Rover and a Porsche Cayenne parked inside. I bet the Porsche was Spooky’s. He always had champagne tastes.
As we walked out the side, man-sized door, I said, “Well, if what I got to tell you don’t get your cushy butt off the couch, I don’t know what will.”
We went into the cabin, grabbed a couple of cold ones out of the fridge – him a beer, me a diet peach iced tea. We sat down in the dim glow from the coals of the fireplace, no artificial lights on. I breathed in the familiar, comforting smells of canvas and wool, old fish and deer’s blood, wood and smoke.
I set my tea on a side table next to my elbow and stared across at Zeke. “I only want to tell this once, so can we get Spooky and anyone else you got around in here? He needs to hear it too.”
“It’s just Spooky and me so far.” He pulled a little sport walkie out of his jacket pocket and keyed the mike twice, then twice more. Private code for ‘bring it in,’ I guessed.
A minute or so later I felt the faint stir of air that accompanied a door opening, but try as I might I didn’t hear a thing until the hot pot in the kitchen started boiling. I saw Tran moving around in the next room with a stainless steel tea ball. I heard him pour and he came in with the mug, sat down across from me.
His face was sharp and closed, wary as always. He wasn’t my friend, but he was Zeke’s, and that was good enough for now.
I told them the story, then, from the open door at my house to departure from Quantico, leaving nothing out but some of my private thoughts. Tran’s face showed nothing. Zeke’s more open countenance showed doubt and wonder. He ran his left hand repeatedly over his face, smoothing his beard, his eyes distant, thinking. I was sure his mind was running down some of the same tracks mine had, and he would come to some of the same conclusions pretty soon. Now I would see what these guys were made of.
Zeke got up and began pacing. Spooky nodded at me, then slipped out of the cabin again, probably to make another sweep. I would have bet cash money there was nothing to worry about out there, but he wasn’t taking any chances. I hoped he had swept my van for bugs, too.
“Got anything to eat?” I asked, uneasy in the silence.
“Yeah…” We went into the kitchen and he turned on the little light over the stove. He pulled out a fragrant pot of something from the fridge, set it on a gas burner and lit it. “Cass sends her love. And her stew.”
I laughed. “Ditto, and I’ll enjoy the stew.” Then my face fell. “Maybe you shouldn’t have mentioned me.”
“Yeah. Well, I’m out of the habit of lying to my wife.”
“I hope you didn’t tell her precisely where you were going.”
“I’m not that out of practice. I just told her I had to help you out for a few days, and I couldn’t tell her where. She’s a Special Forces wife. She understands.”
He got out a loaf of bread and sliced it up, next to a bowl of butter. We waited for the stew to warm up, and for my story to sink in.
He opened his mouth a couple of times to speak, then closed it, false starts. Finally he said, “All right. So you say you got this XH in you, whatever it is. So you can heal like magic, almost, if you’re the same as Elise now. If it doesn’t take longer to get to its full strength. If it doesn’t have some unknown freaky side effect. And you can pass it in a bite. But maybe you’ll turn into a werewolf when the moon is full, or maybe you’ll burn up your years of life, or maybe you’ll get a taste for blood and go Dracula on our asses, or who knows. But I have to see it for myself. I mean, I wanna believe you, man, but…”
“Trust but verify, right? Yeah, I figured. Well, as far as I know it doesn’t protect from pain, so pardon me if I don’t chop off a pinky. This ought to do.” I picked up a paring knife, put my hand down on the butcher-block counter, palm up. I stabbed the tip into the meaty part of my left hand. I had some callus on it from working the bags, but I made a pretty deep little cut and a welling of purplish blood. I held it over the sink and dripped for a minute, just for proof.
I could feel something happening, a nervous surge, like a jolt of adrenaline. My mouth started watering, and I had a definite attack of the munchies. I buttered a piece of bread one-handed and ate it, which calmed them down for a bit.
After a couple minutes of waiting, I ran my hand under the cold tap, rubbing the spot with my other hand until it was completely clean. I held it out for his inspection.
He grabbed it and looked closely, pulling my hand over under the stove light. The wound was gone.
The stew was starting to smell really good.
“And all that happens besides the healing is you get hungry?”
“Yeah, so far, just like I told you Elise did. She was tore up and she wolfed down four or five pounds of food like it was nothing, and a quart of orange juice, and I bet she needed more. It must take energy and building blocks – sugars, protein, amino acids, vitamins and minerals, stuff like that. Just like recovering from a hard workout but ten thousand times more and faster.”
“Not much of a downside, if you get your bum knee and your bad back and your concussions and whatall fixe
d.” He licked his lips. “I wonder about Ricky.”
I raised my eyebrows, shrugged sympathetically. Ricky was his son. He must be about eleven, and he had muscular dystrophy. Duchenne’s. He would already be in a powered wheelchair. I’d volunteered at a Jerry’ Kids’ camp a few times, so I knew. I also knew that pretty soon he wouldn’t even be able to use his hands to control the chair. By twenty or twenty-five he would be almost helpless, probably bedridden. Most people with DMD didn’t make it to thirty. It made me feel a little guilty, because it smacked of manipulation, holding out a cure for his son.
Zeke wondered, “But what happens if it heals him, then whatever ticking time bomb of a side effect is even worse? Until we know that, we can’t even try. What if it didn’t cure him, but did…whatever? Turned him into a monster? His mother would never forgive me.”
“You’re starting to get it, what I’ve been agonizing over. We have to know what the downside is. And there’s only one person I know of that knows anything.”
“This Elise Wallis woman.”
“Yeah.”
“Then we have to find her and spring her.” He made it sound like running to the store to pick up a quart of milk.
I frowned. “Spring her, I can see. But how do we find her? I’m just an operator, and a pretty fine stitch. You’re an A-team leader, hell you were what do they call it, a detachment commander? There are a couple more guys I could call that I can count on, but nobody with the skills and contacts to find someone like that, just from a name.”
Zeke smiled, wicked. “Spooky does. His company also does corporate intel.”
“Cool.” And it was. It was a ray of hope.
-8-
We got up at dawn the next morning. At least, Zeke and I did. Spooky was already up and around somewhere. That guy didn’t seem to sleep. Zeke talked to him for a minute before we started our morning run, out of my earshot. I wasn’t really one of the team. Not yet. All I’d done was fast-rope down to a bad situation and save Zeke’s life on a Kandahar mountainside, and knock off a bunch of Taliban. I hadn’t done any ops with him.
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