by AJ Stewart
The first thin shards of light were coming in through the window when Fontaine awoke. When they had collapsed in a heap of sweaty sheets it took a few minutes for their breathing to slow to normal, and then half that time for them to fall asleep. Fontaine woke feeling refreshed. His sleep had been deep and complete. No dreams. Not this night. He put his hand behind his head and rolled to his side. Hutton was gone. He considered that for a moment. It was her room. Surely if one of them was to leave, it was him. He really wasn’t sure about the etiquette of such things. He didn’t frequent bars or go to whatever places and do whatever things normal men did to meet women. Hutton wasn’t military so she was closer to normal than he was. She probably lived in a house or an apartment, and owned a goldfish and commuted to the office on the train with a morning cup of what he had learned was called joe back in the States. So she probably met guys, she probably knew the etiquette. Perhaps she left to give him the space to do the same. To beat a retreat without uncomfortable words. Perhaps it was his cue. Exit stage left. But there was a problem. He didn’t want to leave.
The door cracked open and a shaft of light glowed around the edges of the jamb, and Hutton stepped in. She worked the door with her hip, pushing it open then letting it slide closed. It thunked home and the room dropped back into gray light from the horizon. Hutton stepped to Fontaine’s side of the bed and leaned down. He turned to face her. She placed a tray on the bedside table.
“Coffee,” she said. “That dark gloop you like. Turkish?”
“More or less,” said Fontaine.
Hutton stepped away and walked around the bed. She was wearing loose gray track pants and a blue t-shirt with the FBI logo over her left breast. She picked up her pillow and threw it to the other end of the bed. Slipped out of her track pants. She was petite but strong and her legs shone in the soft light. Fontaine bet he could beat her on a ten-kilometer run, but a twenty K might go the other way. Hutton slipped under the sheet and tucked the pillow against the baseboard of the bed and faced him.
“You serving?” she asked with a smile.
Fontaine nodded. He pushed himself up against the headboard. He was shirtless. He realized he was in fact naked. He poured two small strong coffees and leaned over to pass one to Hutton. He looked at her t-shirt.
“You have me at a disadvantage,” he said, nodded at her garment.
She nodded back. “Yep,” she said, sipping her coffee with a grimace. “This stuff will wake an army.”
“That’s the idea.”
Hutton wriggled until she was comfortable. “So?”
“So what?”
“So what was last night?”
Fontaine hesitated. Post-match analysis wasn’t his preferred operating procedure, but he wasn’t sure if it was part of the etiquette.
“You want to talk about last night?” he asked.
“Not that part. The other part. The suicide bomber part.”
Fontaine relaxed and took time to sip his coffee. It wasn’t quite his preferred brew, but it was good and strong and his father would have told him it would put hairs on his chest, as it had.
“Luck or design?”
“Let’s say luck,” said Hutton. “We were the only people stupid enough to go walking around in a war zone. Someone saw a chance. Plain old crime of opportunity.”
“Could be.”
“Against?”
“Were they really sitting on a roadside waiting for someone to wander by? In the GZ? The place is full of twitchy US Army and twice as many PSCs. Unlikely.”
“And they weren’t military.”
“No, mademoiselle. They weren’t.”
Hutton sipped her coffee. “So, design.”
“They were after a specific target. Us. They followed us to dinner, then waited until we reached as isolated a place as there is within the zone.”
“That leaves a big question.”
“Why?”
Hutton nodded.
“It’s always the why.”
“They either wanted to scare us or kill us,” she said.
“The guns and lights weren’t meant to kill us.”
“How do you know?”
“I picked up one of the rifles. It was empty.”
“Empty?”
I think they were for show, to get us to comply so they could get us close to the suicide bomber.”
“You’re certain about the bomb?”
“Cent per cent,” he said.
“Huh?”
“Completely certain.”
“You saw it?”
“Better. You see a bomb strapped to a guy, you think bomb, right? But how often are those things fake? Or so poorly constructed as to have almost zero chance of ever working? It happens a lot. So visual confirmation is faulty. I saw something better.”
“What’s better than seeing the device?”
“I saw the bomber. I saw his face. An actor trained at Juilliard couldn’t pull off the look in this guy’s eyes. The guns might not have been loaded but the guy sure believed the bomb was the real deal. He was second-guessing himself, that’s for sure. But ultimately, he was going to do it.”
“You think this was a terrorist attack? Isn’t that a coincidence too far?”
Fontaine nodded. “Yes, it is. But it’s exactly what you’d expect to see in a place like this, isn’t it? Easily explained. Two people out walking where they shouldn’t have been walking, despite being in a secure zone. They’d write it off as our stupidity. The place is crawling with terrorists, after all.”
“Except it isn’t. The GZ isn’t crawling with terrorists. Even Baghdad isn’t. They’re out there, sure, but it’s not like there’s a suicide bomber on every corner.”
“Exactly. There isn’t, but that’s not the perception. So if we did get blown up by a suicide bomber, it would be an acceptable theory. Especially to an army that is busy getting out of Dodge. Why make work?”
“Doesn’t the phrase make work come from the army?”
“Sure it does. Armies do a lot of waiting. Trust me on that. And waiting men get bored and bored men either get lazy or they start thinking too much about what they are doing. No army wants their grunts lazy or overcomplicating already complex issues. So they make work. They march, they clean, they maintain the equipment. Then they do it again.” He sipped his coffee. “But not now. Now they don’t need to make work. They have more work than they can handle. There’s a deadline for the pullout and they have to meet it. So they’re not looking for work. In fact, the opposite. They’re looking to offload anything and everything they can.”
“So they’d look for the easiest conclusion?”
“Exactly.”
“And someone knows that.”
“Exactly.”
“Someone like Staff Sergeant Dennison.”
“Possibly.”
“Possibly? Who else had a motive to put us out of action?”
“Something doesn’t feel right about this whole thing.”
“Tread carefully, soldier. We’re still in bed.”
Fontaine smiled. “There are conflicts. I was ordered to stay away. I was already being taken care of, in theory. Killing me was unnecessary at this point. And it could only serve to raise suspicions. But me getting orders from a general suggests high-level involvement. Murder feels like low-level action. The two actions are in conflict with each other.”
“Like the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing.”
“Or there are two competing interests. A single objective perhaps, but competing interests. Handling things in their own way.”
They were interrupted by a knock at the door.
“My bath,” said Hutton. She put her cup on the tray and slipped into her track pants and opened the door. A man with a thick mustache waited with a large porcelain bowl. Hutton held the door open and the man stepped into the darkened room and placed the bowl carefully on a table by the window. Fontaine lay motionless, listening to the water sloshing around in the bowl. The man bowed t
o Hutton and then backed out the door and closed it.
“There are showers,” said Fontaine.
“Cold, usually. They heat this water in the kitchen. Promise you won’t look.”
Fontaine didn’t promise. He watched her in silhouette against the waking sky. She slipped her t-shirt over her head. Her back was small. Full of angles at the top—shoulder blades and trapezius and deltoids—and it softened as it fell away to smooth skin at the bottom, punctuated only by her spine. He could see the gentle swell of her breast under her arm as she lifted the shirt. Then she bent over and splashed water on her face, once, twice, three times. Like a process. Like a ritual. She wiped the water back into her short hair. It was the kind of low maintenance haircut that made sense in the desert, but it wasn’t the shorn style of someone who didn’t care how they looked. Hutton dipped a small cloth into the water and ran it across her hair and let the water run down her back. Along the angles, like tributaries, and they joined along her spine, and ran down into her track pants. She lifted her head to the window and wiped the water from her face.
“There’s a problem with your theory,” she said to the window.
“I know.”
“It was after you met with Dennison that your general came to town.”
“Oui.”
“So the low-level and high-level are connected.”
“Eventually. But I think the general was already here.”
Hutton dipped her cloth in the water again and wiped it across her arms. She had toned triceps, as if she did some kind of workout to keep them stronger than the average. She wiped her arms, down around to her side.
Hutton spoke as she bathed. “If they are connected, then maybe the high-level knew that you weren’t going to play ball and sent the low-level to finish the job.”
“I don’t think so,” said Fontaine.
“But it’s possible.”
“Anything is possible.”
“If it’s possible, then the question is, who knew that you were going to disregard your orders?”
Fontaine said nothing.
“You, obviously. Your team, of course.—and I assume you trust them completely.”
“Without reservation.”
“So who else knew?”
Fontaine said nothing.
Hutton wiped the excess water from her skin and placed the cloth back into the bowl.
“I knew,” she said. “You told me.”
Fontaine said nothing.
“You told me, Fontaine. I’m the only other one who knew. Aren’t I?”
“Oui.”
“So maybe I’m the link.”
“You’re not the link.”
She turned to him. The sun was breaking now and it lit her from the side. He looked her up and down. Not the way law enforcement types do. She wasn’t classically beautiful. She wouldn’t grace the cover of those magazines he saw on the newsstands when he was back in France. Her face held too many angles. But she wore it all well. She exuded a confidence—in her body, in her mind. A strength of purpose.
She stepped toward him. The light curved around her back, painting her like a Degas.
“This could all be part of the plan,” she said. She stopped next to him. Her skin was still moist from the cloth. “I could be the link.”
“You’re not the link.”
Hutton slipped up onto the bed and straddled him. A sheet and terrycloth track pants between them.
“How do you know?”
“You don’t want me to trust you?”
“Of course I do. I just don’t know how you can.”
He pulled her down to him and kissed her. Then he held her at arm’s length again so he could look at her.
“I saw the bomber. He was going to detonate.”
The little wrinkle appeared between her eyes. “What does that prove?”
“It proves everything. You were the closest to the bomb.”
He saw the wrinkle deepen and then disappear. The corner of her mouth lifted to a grin. She looked at him for a time. Then she leaned down, pressed herself into him and kissed him deeply.
Chapter Nine
Fontaine woke for the second time that day. He wasn’t alone. Hutton was crushed against him, sleeping soundly. He wanted to stay just as he was, just where he was. But he couldn’t. His heart was racing. He had missed something. Something important. Something that had entered his mind as he looked up into the eyes of the suicide bomber but had then been swept aside in the adrenaline that followed. A mistake. A bad mistake.
He shook Hutton gently and she woke with a smile. The smile slipped as Fontaine dropped her back onto the pillow and jumped out of bed.
“Why would the suicide bomber detonate?” he asked as he looked for his shorts.
Hutton wiped her face with her hand. “Why do they ever? Ideology?”
“You think Dennison has cultivated an ideology?” Fontaine splashed water on his face. It was cold now, but refreshing. It cleared his head. He pulled his t-shirt on.
“I doubt it,” said Hutton.
“So why then? Why detonate? And the rifles—they weren’t loaded. Whoever strapped those explosives to their bodies didn’t trust them with a loaded weapon. They weren’t friendly. So why didn’t the bomber just make a run for it?”
He searched and found his sand-colored trousers.
Hutton sat up but said nothing. Her brain was trying to do multiple calculations before it was fully booted up, so it took her a few seconds longer.
“Coercion,” she said.
Fontaine nodded as he collected a boot. “What kind of coercion?”
Hutton thought a moment longer, and then her face dropped.
“Hostages.”
Fontaine nodded again and found his second boot.
“I’ll get the guys. Lobby, ten minutes.”
Yusuf drove. He was waiting outside the hotel when Fontaine called, and Fontaine wondered when the guy slept. Perhaps in the SUV. Fontaine told him where they were going and he needed no further guidance. Hutton sat next to Fontaine in the back of the Highlander. Fontaine’s men followed in the second vehicle, driven by Babar, except for Thorn, who was heading for Camp Victory.
“It occurred to me last night, but I didn’t make the connection,” said Fontaine.
“Don’t go blaming yourself. You might be wrong,” said Hutton.
“You think?”
“We need to think clearly. Blame will just slow us down.”
Fontaine nodded and looked at the broken city as it passed by. Everyone had damaged this once great metropolis. For a thousand years. A crossroads of trade, so a crossroads of war. Yusuf headed into the suburb that had been a rich part of town. Now the rich people were taxi drivers in Europe and the suburb was largely deserted.
Yusuf stopped in the same place as before. Babar swung around the block and stopped on the other side of the building. Fontaine got out of the SUV with his PAMAS sidearm at the ready. He stepped to the open driver’s window.
“This goes bad, you get out of here,” he said to Yusuf.
“I wait for you, sayidi.”
“You’re a very stubborn man. You know that, Yusuf?”
“One who exists in the desert must be stubborn, sayidi.”
Fontaine nodded. “Just don’t wait too long.”
“There is a family inside?”
“Maybe.”
“Then I wait for you.”
Fontaine met Hutton at the front of the SUV.
“Babar?” he said into his radio.
“Oui, mon Adjudant.”
“In position?”
“Oui.”
“On thirty. Mark.”
“Mark,” said Babar.
Fontaine and Hutton stayed low and hugged the mound of rubble beside the building where Fontaine had met with Dennison. The upper apartment was a ruin but provided cover if a sniper was in play. Fontaine didn’t figure Dennison would have a sniper in place, but he would only get that call wrong once, so he wa
s wary.
They moved swiftly to the front door and waited for the count of thirty. Then Fontaine kicked the door hard and the jamb exploded in a hail of splintered wood. Hutton dashed through the doorway, her Glock held high.
Hutton swept into the first room. There was sunlight coming through the bars on the window, and she swept from right to left, her natural momentum pulling her across the space and finishing with an image of the room. She kept her back pressed to the wall and slid into the room and swept back the other way, just as wary but not expecting anything now she had a read on the room. There was no furniture, nowhere to hide.
“Clear,” she called.
Fontaine stepped across the opening to the room, along the hall that ran from front to back of the home. He saw Manu standing in the rear doorway. He was astride the threshold, watching the rear for an ambush but keeping half an eye on the movement inside. Babar would have fallen back from the vehicle to take a long view, just in case there was movement from the upper floor. Gorecki stepped out of the room where Fontaine had met Dennison. It had been the kitchen once. Gorecki locked eyes with Fontaine and shook his head.
“Clear,” he said.
There were two rooms between them, both off the hallway. Both windowless and therefore darkened. Gorecki and Fontaine moved in unison like dancers, across the width of the space, to press their backs against the outside wall of the hall. It gave them a better angle into each room, and put them further from the interior wall, behind which might be a gun in waiting.
Fontaine and Gorecki each took a couple of green light sticks from their webbing, snapped them and threw them into the rooms. They had considered flash bangs, but they didn’t have any in their inventory and didn’t want to wait to source them. So they went with lights. Anyone in the room would be alert and aware rather than disoriented. But Fontaine held a sinking feeling it didn’t matter either way.
They moved together, one into each room. Fontaine was in the doorway before the sticks had stopped moving across the floor. He pressed hard against the jamb and kept low. The light sticks threw a green hue across the room. The color of night vision, but in opposite relief. Fontaine swept around just as Hutton had done. The first pass gave him one shape but no movement. He pushed hard against the wall as Hutton crossed behind him in the doorway to sweep the other side of the room. Her silence told him what he needed to know, so he pressed into the room.
