by Jeff Carson
The top message caught his eye and reeled him in close.
Farewell, David Wolf.
The subject line could have been crafted by an evil-doer on a different continent wanting his credit-card number, but his heart jumped when he read the name.
Paul Womack.
He hadn’t thought of that name for years. The email contained a video link so he clicked on it, but the software wouldn’t let him open junk so he dragged the file over to his inbox and waited.
Paul Womack had been sentenced to eighteen years in Leavenworth, and in the federal prison the maximum sentence reduction for good behavior was fifteen percent. That would’ve left him with just over fifteen years to serve, assuming he’d been a model inmate.
Wolf finished the math and put his release at this year.
He clicked the link and the computer motor revved up. The still shot showed Paul sitting at a table. His mouth was open and his eyes were half closed, as if in mid-sentence.
He still had the same haircut—a spiky flattop and shaved around the sides, making his head look like a toothbrush. He was just as Wolf remembered him—blond and blue-eyed with a confident air—but he was skinnier in the neck and shoulders and his receding hairline put his huge forehead even more on display.
His huge forehead, Wolf remembered with a snort. They used to call him “Fivehead” because of that thing.
His smile evaporated as he spotted a Beretta M9 service pistol lying on the table near Paul’s folded hands.
Wolf hesitated, then pressed the play button.
“You—witness. Wolf. It’s … your fault. Wolf. It’s … your fault.”
Pulling his eyebrows together, Wolf stopped the video, pulled back the slider and played it again.
“You—witness. Wolf. It’s … your fault. Wolf. It’s … your fault.”
Paul’s face and posture transformed with inhuman speed. His tone rose and fell in pitch unnaturally.
Wolf had been confused the first time around, but now he realized that the words had been carefully edited—clipped and put back together to relay the message.
This time he let the video play its course.
On the screen, Paul stared at the gun in front of him.
If not for the hissing static coming out of the speakers, Wolf would’ve thought the video had stopped or paused.
Finally, with deliberate slowness, Paul Womack unfolded his hands and grabbed the M9.
With each second that Wolf watched, the room shrank around him. He scrolled the mouse cursor to the stop icon and hovered his finger over the button.
Hesitating, Paul lowered the gun and looked into the camera.
“You—witness. Wolf. It’s … your fault. Wolf. It’s … your fault.”
The screen went black, but the video was unfinished. Because a second later the sound of a gunshot came from the speakers.
CHAPTER 9
Wolf stood up from the chair. Behind him, the metal blinds clanged. He couldn’t recall having pushed away from the desk.
His lungs pumped air as if he’d just finished a sprint.
“What the hell?”
Frozen in place, he took deep breaths and stared at the black video window.
There was a knock on the door.
“Not now!”
Footsteps receded into nothing.
Sweat beaded on his forehead and under his arms. He sat on the edge of the desk and breathed some more. He shut his eyes, thinking about the sound.
Pop.
It had been a pistol shot, no doubt. There’d even been a rustling afterwards, and Wolf tried to blank his mind rather than think about Paul’s dead body sinking to the table.
He stood up and grabbed a half-full bottle of water off the bookshelf and drank it down.
Slowly, he eased himself onto the loveseat against the side wall and stared at the floor. Drifting inwards, he pushed past the video to fainter memories from a distant time and place.
“It’s on now, bitch!”
The C-17 Globemaster’s engines muted all sounds inside the cargo hold, but Wolf lip read PFC Gunderson’s catchphrase to the squad members nearest him.
Turning his head to the Ranger sitting next to him, Wolf met SPC Paul Womack’s steady gaze. Wolf always drew strength from that blue-eyed perma-frost look his friend had before action, and he’d told him so on many occasions after a dozen beers.
Womack smiled.
Due to their last names being so close alphabetically, he and Womack had been lined up in formation next to each in the Ranger Indoctrination Program. Three years later, the two men were still shoulder-to-shoulder along the wall of this latest C-17, taking them to the next mission in over a hundred they’d endured together.
“It’s on now, bitch!” Womack screamed in his ear.
Wolf smiled. Closing his eyes, he leaned against his pack and let the bouncing aircraft lull him into meditation, thinking of nothing but the sensation of breathing. He’d read about the technique for dealing with high-stress situations on a few websites after the nightmares had started to take over his life.
A short time later, their stomachs lifted as the plane descended. Minutes after that they were rolling on sand as they landed at the forward operating base.
When the aircraft jarred to a halt the loadmaster lowered the cargo ramp and they streamed out into the cold early-morning air.
The stars rivaled the clearest nights back in the mountains of Colorado, with the Milky Way painting a swath across the sky. The kumbaya moment was short-lived because they walked directly to a ready Blackhawk helicopter, piled inside, and lifted back into the air.
There was little conversation. No “It’s on now, bitch!” Gunderson knew when to shut up.
During the daytime, the brown terrain of Afghanistan’s Helmand Province looked to Wolf like northern Utah or southern Wyoming. Now, with no moon, the landscape was dark and what few lights twinkled below were like lone ships in a black sea.
Their mission was to secure a cluster of buildings—mud huts—on a hill somewhere out there. Intel reported a high-worth target among the population of the small compound and the objective was to capture him, or them. As far as missions went, this was no more special than any others they’d been tapped for. Of course, there was always the possibility that this would be Wolf’s last.
That would be special.
Inhale. Exhale.
Then they were back on the ground, off the helicopter, and moving under the blanket of stars again.
An hour later, Wolf’s NVGs revealed a cluster of huts perched on a hill and surrounded by a rock-and-mud wall, growing larger with each crunching boot fall.
Wolf’s adrenaline spiked as they reached the wall and slipped inside an opening without hesitation.
The air inside smelled like goat dung and smoldering wood fires. There was no sound but Wolf’s breathing, and then Sergeant Henning’s order in his earpiece.
“Team One, engage.”
Wolf stood against a building and watched the action unfold a dozen yards away on the other side of a packed dirt road. Team One entered with muted speed and ferocity. There was a clipped scream of a woman, followed by another, and then nothing.
Womack was next to Wolf, and just like Wolf he scanned the buildings up ahead with his M4 carbine.
Painted green by Wolf’s night-vision goggles, huts made from rock, mud, and ancient wood leaned against one another, looking like they’d been built countless generations previously.
He felt like they were a team from the future that had transported back to biblical times. Except for a wheelbarrow with a rubber tire leaning against a wall, he mused, this place hadn’t changed in two millennia.
A goat tethered to a pole bleated nearby.
“Clear. Team Two, go.”
Pushing off the wall, Wolf entered the doorway to his right with Womack a half-step behind. He kicked the rudimentary door inside and it fell on the dirt floor.
He was hyper-focused now, scanning the room
for a weapon pointed in his direction. At least a dozen people slept, covered in brown blankets and lying on thin mattresses.
One blanket stirred and a scruffy-headed child poked her head out to look. With eyes shining like a cat’s in Wolf’s NVG display, she opened her mouth and screamed.
The room burst to life.
“Freeze! Freeze!” Gunderson said in Pashto. Then he ordered the occupants to huddle against the back wall.
Gunderson kept talking, telling two men in their thirties to get up.
The two men complied, walked over, and then when Gunderson asked them more questions they competed to have their stories heard as they pointed outside.
Gunderson spoke some more, and again they pointed. Then they put their hands together as if pleading, motioning to the terrified women and children behind them.
Gunderson turned to Wolf. “They say there’re two men, two doors down on the right side. They killed an elder two days ago and they’re taking what they want. Threatening violence. Terrorizing everyone.”
“Two doors down on the right?” Wolf clarified.
Gunderson nodded.
Wolf nodded to PFC Maystone. “Stay here. Keep them under guard.”
Wolf, Womack, Harilek, and Gunderson went outside. Henning had gathered six women wearing blankets and expressions of mild shock.
Team One ushered the women across the road and into the building under Maystone’s guard, and Wolf relayed what they had learned to Sergeant Henning.
Without hesitation, they made their way down the row of houses.
Wolf’s aimed M4 flicked between hut openings. They’d come in without firing so far, but compared to the relative silence of the night they probably sounded like a freight train to anyone awake.
The next building was a pen housing the goat. When it bleated, it was all Wolf could do to not shoot the animal on the spot.
Their target hut’s windows were a mere few yards away, covered with fabric.
Silently Wolf’s fire team made their way to the building and huddled near the openings, Wolf nearest the front door.
“Go,” he said under his breath. He kicked down the wood propped in the doorway and followed it inside, his M4 leading the way.
Wolf was no more than a half-step inside when his NVGs flashed and a gunshot rang out in front and to his right. The blow to his chest felt like a major league batter had swung into him. He stumbled back and a fellow Ranger quickly pulled him out of the doorway.
As the hut erupted in gunfire, he rolled on the cold ground outside. The action was over as quickly as it had begun, and he found himself dazed, staring at the stars again.
Womack appeared over him and patted him down. “You hit? You hit?”
“Yeah.” Wolf struggled to speak; he couldn’t breathe. He convulsed, writhing side to side as he tried to inhale. His vision darkened around the edges, and the Milky Way began to disappear.
Finally, with agonizing slowness, his lungs opened and he sucked in a stream of air. He coughed, choking on the cloud of gunpowder smoke flowing from the hut.
“I’m okay.” The pain in his ribs beneath his collar bone told him otherwise.
“Clear!” Harilek announced.
Womack pressed on the exact spot Wolf had been shot. “Hit your armor.”
“Good.” Wolf struggled to his feet and shrugged away Womack’s supportive arm.
Walking inside the hut, he joined the line of somber soldiers looking down on two men shot to death in their beds. One slumped against a red-splattered wall, a pistol in his hand. The other occupant’s blanket had been ripped aside, revealing an AK-47 lying next to his steadily bleeding corpse.
He turned to Womack. “Thanks.”
Womack ignored him and continued down to the final two huts that made up the tiny township, the team in tow.
Wolf tried to follow but Sergeant Henning slapped a hand on his shoulder. “Get back to the hut and help Maystone watch the non-combatants.”
“Yes, sir.” Wolf hurried back to the hut. The short walk felt like the length of a football field. His legs seemed to move in slow motion, as if they were filled with sand.
He thought of the green muzzle flash again, the pop of the gun. He’d felt bullets graze his flesh before, but had never been hit point-blank in his armor.
He winced through the pain of breathing and thought of Sarah’s smile, then of Jack, their two-year-old son, waving at him on the computer screen, calling him Dah.
The hut’s doorway yawned black, then Maystone’s head appeared. “What happened?”
Wolf tried to talk but felt a sharp pain and stumbled inside.
“Hey.” Maystone looked at him. “You okay? What happened? You hit?”
Wolf shook his head. “Hit my armor.”
Maystone eyed him, then put a finger through the hole in Wolf’s BDU. “Jesus.”
Wolf sank to the ground and sat against the hut wall.
Sometime later, Womack came inside. “All clear. We’re supposed to keep them in here until the dust settles.”
Womack looked at Wolf with renewed concern. “You okay?”
“You want a kick in the face? Ask me if I’m okay again.” Talking felt like getting run over by a truck.
“I guess that’s a yes.” Womack took off his helmet. “Hot as shit in here.”
A collective murmur rose from the women. They huddled around their children and pleaded with Gunderson.
“What’s going on?” Womack asked.
“They’re … they think you’re going to do something to them.” Gunderson narrowed his eyes and shook his head. “I think they think you’re going to rape them. They’re talking about your blond hair.”
Womack looked self-conscious and ran a hand over his head.
“Remember who was here last,” Wolf said.
“What do you mean? Wait. They think I’m a Russian? They think we’re Russians?” Womack pulled off his pack and put it on the ground. “Jesus, what did those commie bastards do to these people?” He unzipped a side pocket and produced a huge bag of candy.
Mounds bars, Snickers, and Tangy Taffy in hand, Womack smiled and inched forward.
The children looked unsure and the women even more so as they held them back.
But an older girl escaped her mother’s clutches and snatched the Snickers. It took a few seconds for her to figure out how to open it, but she managed, and then took a bite. The smile on her face was infectious and melted the tension in the room. Then the floodgates opened as every child stood up and grabbed the treasure from Womack’s bag.
Wolf’s eyelids were like lead, fluttering open and shut. The last thing he saw before he succumbed to sleep that night was a hut full of smiles.
Three knocks on the door ripped Wolf from his memories.
“Yeah?”
Wolf’s office door opened and Lorber poked his head inside. “Hey … Jesus, you okay? You look green.”
Wolf stood. “Yeah. What’s happening?” He walked around his desk to his computer. Lines danced across the screen so he left the computer in sleep mode.
“You’re bathed in sweat.”
“What can I help you with, Doc?”
The light in the room had dimmed with the skies outside the window. A storm was flowing over the ski resort, descending into town.
How long had he been daydreaming? His wall clock said eleven forty-five.
Lorber stood staring at Wolf.
“What?” Agitation sharpened Wolf’s tone.
“We have a serious problem.”
CHAPTER 10
Wolf’s SUV crested a rise and Pat Xander’s crime scene came into view in the distance. Two SBCSD vehicles were still parked on the side of the road.
“It’s gonna be the crime scene.” Lorber pointed at the GPS coordinates on the mobile computer and checked them against the paper in his hand. As they neared the vehicles he nodded. “This is it.”
Wolf pulled over and shut off the engine. He stepped outside into the familia
r pine-scented air, which felt electrically charged from the approaching storm.
Deputy Nelson climbed out of his car and walked toward them. “Hey, what’s going—”
“Shhh,” Lorber said, putting a thin finger to his lips.
“Yeah, all right.”
Wolf called Rachette’s phone and cocked an ear to the forest.
His detective would not be picking up. The seven unanswered calls he’d tried today told him as much. They were listening for Rachette’s ditched phone, which, according to Summit Wireless Services, was somewhere within fifty yards of their current position.
They stood back here at the crime scene because of a set of fresh prints found on the interior door handle of Pat Xander’s vehicle—prints matching Rachette’s.
Lorber’s next move had been to call Rachette to see why. When there’d been no answer, the situation had darkened a shade.
When calls to Charlotte revealed that her husband hadn’t returned home the night before, things looked … Wolf left the thought unfinished. And after triangulating his cellphone, they were here, and Wolf tried to figure out plausible reasons for why his detective’s phone would be ditched near a crime scene where they’d found a man shot in the head and stuffed in a trunk. Given those circumstances, none of the reasons could be good.
Thunder rumbled from the southwest and the clouds blocked the sun, cooling the air.
“Better find this thing fast,” Lorber said. “Gonna pour.”
A wall of rain hung like a curtain off the front of the clouds. Behind it, lightning flickered.
“You looking for Rachette’s phone?” Nelson asked.
“Yeah, now be quiet and listen for it,” Lorber said.
Wolf walked away from the sounds of the SUV’s cooling engine and called again. Lorber went in the opposite direction and Nelson took the other side of the road.
“He always has his phone on silent-vibrate mode,” Wolf said. “So we’re going to have to find it.”
“Perfect,” Lorber said.
After four more calls and continuous walking, Wolf had climbed a slight rise in the road to a spot that he estimated to be fifty paces from where Pat Xander’s car had gone over the slope. Which meant he was at the edge of the circle surrounding Lorber’s phone-trace coordinates.
