The cold water froze his frontal lobe and unlocked his sanity. Real life never worked out cartoon perfect, but Wyrd offered men choices for a reason. Fate allowed him to shape his destiny. Tonight Kahananui or Deavers could escort Theresa home.
Tonight, like a thousand nights before, and ten thousand upon ten thousand before that, he would be alone.
Chapter Six
Wulf paused before he ducked into the dust cloud created by the UH-60 Black Hawk’s rotors. The orange sun rising between two eastern mountain peaks sparked his memory, and he smelled citrus again, like the scent of Theresa’s hair when he’d sat close to her during the movie. A day and a half, two showers, and Black and Swan’s version of spicy Italian sausage pizza filled the interim, but her scent still came and went at the shittiest times.
Captain Deavers slapped the side of Wulf’s helmet as he passed and gestured toward their ride. This was the team’s second airborne hunt for an overloaded shipping container. Yesterday’s resupply run had proceeded by the book, and Alpha squad had returned disappointed, without intel or leads about what the chief had discovered before his death. Today Alpha squad would make a visible presence around Caddie while Wulf, Deavers and Bravo squad road shotgun with the pilot, Morgan.
Hunching lower to avoid decapitation from the rotor blades—once per thousand years was once too often—Wulf followed his captain. The four blades overpowered other sounds, but he knew what his commander would say if they could hear each other. Time to move out on this be-yoo-ti-ful Sunday morning. Time to find some shit to fry in a pan. Last night Kahananui had taunted the guys on this trip about missing the Sunday omelet bar, so Deavers had found a dozen eggs and stuffed the Hawaiian’s running shoes. Shit was going to fry, but he’d be a hundred miles away and three thousand feet off the ground.
Inside, he tuned to the helicopter crew’s communications.
“Green on fuel. Green light from the flight line.” Captain Morgan finished his preflight checks. “Your team’s a go?”
“Ready.” Deavers’s voice crackled as he handed Wulf one of two metal cases the size of a quart of milk. “Got our toys.”
“No fireworks?” The pilot waited for Deavers to say no, then continued. “Right then, let’s pick up our delivery and boogie.”
Despite swinging a loaded twenty-foot shipping container, the tactical flight over the barely lit land was fast and stomach-dropping. Wulf rehearsed what-if scenarios, but the stretch of Theresa’s T-shirt when she leaned on her elbows intruded. He’d been surrounded too long by Afghan women swathed head to toe, or army women dressed to resemble chunks of concrete, because her gray cotton tee had seemed revealing. Thirty-two hours later, he could conjure her next to him, her legs stretched alongside his, butter-rich cookies and Turkish-style coffee mingling with that damn citrus scent that clung to her. He’d eaten an orange with every meal since Cinderella, proof of his stupidity.
Focus. Bringing his rifle stock to his nose, he sucked in dark oil and metal. His weapon. His mission. His team.
In the twenty minutes before they reached Firebase Rushmore on a ridge commanding a valley bend, he managed not to think of her six more times. The Black Hawk never touched ground while the firebase grunts worked with the crew chief to swap the supply container for its empty twin. Eight and a half minutes, and then Morgan lifted their new load off the packed dirt rectangle next to the sandbagged compound and soared away. The poor bastards at the firebase wouldn’t see another friendly for fifteen days.
With Rushmore three ridges and two valley twists behind, the pilot called Wulf and his commander forward. “See the weight?” Morgan pointed to a dial. “Six bucks heavy, when all it’s supposed to have is outgoing mail and unburnable plastics.”
“Jackpot.” Wulf’s arms and chest tingled with anticipation. They had over six hundred kilos of secrets hanging below. “Pick your spot. We’ll execute.” Distractions fell away as he became one with his squad. They had separate arms and legs and beating hearts, but one mission: the box. Find out what it held and why Chief was dead, then balance the books.
“Studied topos,” the pilot said. “There’s a partially concealed saddle fifty klicks west.”
“We saw it. Drop our snipers on the overlooking ridges.” His commander nodded as Wulf continued, “Our commo will stay on board to coordinate. The captain and I go in the can.”
“Roger that.” The pilots would hover, prepared to haul the container off with Wulf and Captain D inside at hostile contact.
Before the dust boiled from the ground, Wulf had an instant to gauge the distance to the corrugated roof of the half-size twenty-footer. Reassembled, his welds would be easier to conceal on the rippled metal than on flat steel, where they would look exactly like a trap door.
He fast-roped to the top, the zip a rush that was always over too soon. Next to him, Deavers was nearly invisible through the brownout. Wulf’s blowtorch had to be roaring, but the massive rotor blades overhead left no air for other noises. Dirt scoured his goggles until it was impossible to see past his arms. No way could his commander spot an elephant next to them, let alone a Taliban fighter with a rifle a half klick away. For the other man’s sake, he hoped the team snipers had clearer views.
The steel square of roof fell into the void. Odd to see it disappear, to know it clanged metal on metal as it landed, when he could only hear the overhead thwacks.
He dangled on the edge and dropped, followed by his commander. The dusty light that filtered through their entrance point revealed four shrink-wrapped pallets of white bricks fixed to tie-downs on the floor. An instant after he registered the incongruity of commercial packaging in the wilds of Clusterfuckistan, the pickle-barrel smell walloped him. It wasn’t the lethargic dream-scent of raw poppy resin, so Deavers wouldn’t fail his next piss test just by breathing. This was the stink of hundreds of bricks of processed base.
His flashlight played over the cargo and lit his commander, who tried yelling loud enough to be heard. Even inside the can, the Black Hawk obliterated every noise, but his lips were easy to read. “O-pi-um?”
“Morphine,” Wulf mouthed back. He unstrapped the metal case from his chest. Flat transmitter chips, the size of match heads, nestled inside in packing foam eggcups. While he peeled protective paper from a wood-patterned chip and fixed it to a pallet, he calculated the requirements to prep and pack this much junk. Water. Fuel. Lime. Ammonium chloride. Space. Multiplied by the number of containers Morgan had noted, the processors would need more square feet than a hilltop firebase like Rushmore offered. The lab had to be somewhere else.
At the other end, Deavers slit a tiny hole in the plastic and inserted his last tag between paper-wrapped blocks. In two minutes, they’d marked the whole load for satellite tracking, but the bigger problem sliced through Wulf’s gut like a seax.
How were drugs getting inside containers at different firebases?
Not via American soldiers, please. Let it be someone else. The kids out there couldn’t be responsible for loading this shit. The army and marines had enough to do being policemen and border patrol for places the Afghan government didn’t reach. If soldiers tried to tackle poppy production, they’d also end up being the chamber of commerce, the farm bureau and social workers, so they usually stuck their heads in the sand and left drug policy to the State Department and politicians.
Now that would change. Because someone had killed Chief, someone inside the wire who was neck-deep in the opium trade, that fucking ostrich was about to raise its head and come up locked and loaded. His team would find the truth.
He hoped the truth didn’t suck as badly as he suspected it might.
Chapter Seven
“Will you stop that already?” Jennifer’s annoyance caught Theresa off guard.
She jerked her eyes away from the dining hall door to her roommate’s frown. “What?”
&
nbsp; “Stop jiggling. You’re moving the table. You haven’t sat still since Friday.” Jennifer’s eyebrows merged over her nose. “I can guess, but what the heck’s going on?”
“Nothing.” Theresa stared at her barely touched Greek omelet. When had she eaten the hash browns?
Her friend muttered a profanity at the same time that part of Wulf’s team entered the mess. Theresa’s lips and cheeks automatically stretched into a wide smile as she fixed her gaze on Jennifer. “So, what are you doing today?”
“Working. Like you. You know, at the hospital?” She leaned across the table. “Relax, my partner in crime. He’s not with them.”
“I don’t know who you’re talking about.” So she and Wulf were playing that never-crossing-paths game again. Her spine drooped into a curve.
“You’re full of shit, Ms. Captain Promotable, but I’m the only person who knows.”
“There’s nothing to know.” She picked olives and feta out of her eggs. The situation had escalated too far during the movie. Damn if she’d think about touching that overconfident piece of man again, not after he’d left her sitting on the floor like a sack of trash. If her near-mistake with a sergeant had demonstrated anything, it was that her next job had to be a place where the vast majority of eligible men weren’t off-limits, somewhere like a big university hospital. “Last night I read about another position in New York.”
The change of subject wasn’t blatant enough for Jen. “Look, I made a mistake.”
At her roommate’s unusually serious tone, Theresa lifted her gaze from her dish.
“I shouldn’t have joked about him or pushed you.” She turned her paper coffee cup around and around. “Everything you said about fraternization, your career—I acted like it was no big deal—but you’ll be a field-grade officer in six weeks. And you need perfect references for your job search.” She took a deep breath. “Being downrange is making me crazy and bored. Teasing you seemed...” She hunched her shoulders. “Funny, I guess. But it’s not. You’re going to be a major.”
“I suppose when I get that gold oak leaf cluster, our fun has to stop.” Theresa waved at the gray-painted dining hall. “I’ll send the reality television crew home and cancel the hot tub. Sayonara Spring Break Afghanistan, hello eighty-hour work week.”
“I sooo cannot picture you in a hot tub.” Jen wrapped her arms around her waist and snorted. “You’d check if the chlorine levels met health code, or swab for bacteria on the deck.”
She wasn’t that joyless, was she? “Thank you for making me feel like a total loser.”
Jennifer stopped laughing. “I didn’t mean—”
“I’m not hungry.” Theresa stood and piled her cup and napkin on her tray.
“Sorry I—”
“See you at the office, okay?” Everything inside her twisted as she crossed the plywood floor toward the service window, but the plastic tray in her hands was indestructible. She could squeeze it as hard as she wanted.
“Aloha, Doc.”
It wasn’t Wulf’s voice, but it was familiar. She turned and saw the linebacker-size Hawaiian from Wulf’s team, the one with the daughters who liked princesses. “Sergeant K.”
“On for Tuesday?”
“For what?” They didn’t have an appointment.
“To return Nazdana, Mir and the twins. We’re free and a Black Hawk’s available.”
“Whenever.” She dropped her paper plate of food in the can. “They’re fine to travel.”
“How’s your schedule?”
“Me?” Silverware in the gray bin. Tray to the civilian contractor in the window. “Why?”
“You’ll be the guest of honor.” His teeth were blinding white in his tan face. “Boy twins are like winning the lottery to a dude like Dostum.”
“I’m too busy. My midtour leave starts Wednesday.”
“Dostum’s going to want to thank someone.”
“Colonel Loughrey did the caesarean. Invite him.” No way could she sit next to Wulf. The truth rolled around her stomach and threatened to boil up her throat. Remembering the way he’d caressed her hand still woke her some nights in a sweat. She couldn’t spend more time with him, not if she wanted to stick to the rules. “I assisted a little and cut the cords. That’s it.”
“Whoa.” Kahananui held up plate-size hands. “Our team doesn’t know that, and neither does the proud papa. He thinks Nazdana had a female doctor. She was unconscious and Mir was in the hall with me, so you’ll leave everybody sharing that happy belief, right?” He loomed closer to Theresa.
She retreated until the garbage can bumped her thighs.
“You’ll come? For her safety?” he pressed.
The photo she’d seen of a Pakistani girl with her nose cut off flashed in her mind. Similar honor crap happened in Afghanistan too. She’d have to go along to protect Nazdana from the risk of punishment for having been alone with unrelated men. Special Forces were expert at boxing people into corners, weren’t they? “What time?”
“A nice civilized oh-six-thirty Tuesday at the flight line.”
She’d have to find someone to cover her seat at the battle-update brief, which meant she’d probably have to do Monday’s brief in return. Clear her patient charts a day early. Pack for Italy. Check her battle rattle gear. Restock her rucksack with bandages, antibacterial ointment, prenatal vitamins and immunizations.
She’d also have to immunize herself against a certain Special Forces staff sergeant.
* * *
Flying from Camp Caddie to Nazdana and Meena’s home, Theresa had wedged herself between the two Afghan girls and avoided contact with Wulf. Returning, other soldiers had positioned themselves between her and Wulf so deliberately that for a second she wondered if they guarded him, but that was dumb. He wasn’t at risk from her.
Her head bobbed as she reviewed the day. She’d spent the first hour on the ground exchanging formal phrases and presents with the babies’ male relatives, and the next three in the women’s quarters giving physicals to Nazdana’s extended family. Then the serious eating had begun. Mir had guided her through the array of foods using English words and phrases she’d learned during her weeks at Camp Caddie, but Theresa hadn’t needed the girl to translate the women’s fingers-to-mouth gestures as they piled her plate with garlicky lamb kabobs and spinach-filled dough pockets. The party had been like Christmas at Nonna’s, down to the armed guards outside, but with spicy tea substituted for wine.
Each rotor turn bounced her helmet on the Black Hawk’s vibrating side. The silk-wrapped bundle in her lap contained presents from Dostum: a silver cuff bracelet, waterfall necklace and chandelier earrings. According to Wulf, the azure stones were lapis, a perfect souvenir of her deployment. Federal ethics rules required her to report gifts this valuable to Colonel Loughrey, but maybe she could keep the scarf tied around the set.
Thoughts of Meena burbled through her food coma as they blew past kilometers of dirt and rock. At goodbye the girl had reached deep into her English. Doctors help mothers. Her hands, skinny and chapped from labor, had cupped Theresa’s cheeks to say farewell. Doctor! Meena had pointed at her own chest. Mir and Captain Key-sa! She still refused to wear girl clothes or answer to her feminine name. Doctor and doctor!
Against the brutal odds of Paktia Province, Meena aspired to be a doctor. Like her.
Could she establish a fund for a girls’ school? Perhaps her old high school could become a sister school. If she could establish links to enough local women through maternity visits—
K’BOOOOM. Her body jerked against the safety harness, then slammed into the metal side of the helicopter. Black smoke erupted from the rear, choking her, and men started firing out the open side doors as the flight rerouted to hell. We’re hit.
“Brace yourself!” Wulf shouted as the helicopter lurched and dropped.
Men fired and moved in a blur while the crew chief sprayed an extinguisher on flames snapping from the tail section. Black smoke set her coughing, but she swept her legs out of the way of the bodies launching out both doors. Her gut screamed commands—run, hide, shout, jump, shoot, dodge—but first she had to click the fast-release buckle on her harness.
“Out, out, out!” Wulf grabbed her shoulder and flung her past the sixty gunner in the port side door. His hand never let go as he crashed on top of her.
Beneath his weight, she felt as flat as her vest’s armor plates. The ta-ta-ta-ta of automatic rounds merged into one roar as the door gunner swept the terraced fields ascending the hillside. Dirt geysered where his rounds hit, earthbound fireworks.
“On go run for the rocks and get down. I’ll be on your nine!” Wulf yelled.
She couldn’t nod with her cheek jammed into the dirt.
“Go!” He came off her to her left, already firing. “Go! Go!”
She launched to her feet and raced for the goal he’d identified.
He ran alongside, rifle blasting as they bolted for the rocks.
Leaning forward past full tilt, mouth open for air, she pumped her arms to force every drop of speed that she had from her legs.
He paced her, long after the point when her legs and lungs burned for relief.
First to Burn Page 7
