by Mike Maden
A minute later, Pearce, Hyssop, Luckett, and Rowley were airborne. Pearce watched the Kurds get thrown into the other Black Hawk, their hands bound behind their backs. Pearce knew the bloody history between the genocidal Turks and the hapless Kurds. He assumed the Turks would toss them out of the chopper like sacks of garbage as soon as they reached altitude.
Maybe the four of them, too.
As they pulled away, Pearce’s eyes fixed on Tariq’s truck down below, still burning in the dark. He swore.
Jesus, what a goat fuck.
As soon as they were airborne, the Turk captain opened up Pearce’s tablet. He pressed buttons until an image pulled up. He stared at it. A feral grin spread across his face in the red cabin light. He turned the tablet around and held it close to Pearce’s face.
Pearce’s heart sank. The ISIS trucks and men were on the women like a pack of wolves. But instead of rounding them up, they were killing them. A half dozen bodies already lay scattered on the ground as the rest fell in a dead run, one by one.
The captain’s grin grew wider.
Pearce grunted with rage and launched at the captain, aiming his skull at the Turk’s jaw. But the captain saw it coming and clocked Pearce across his ear with the butt of his pistol and Pearce crumbled to the steel floor, knocked out cold.
3
Pearce awoke when Luckett dropped him into the plush leather seat. His head throbbed with a splitting headache, and his eyes blinked in the harsh cabin lights of the Bombardier 5000.
“He’s back with us,” Luckett said over his shoulder, a worried look on his unshaven face. The turbines whined as the engine power increased.
Rowley dashed over. He lifted each of Pearce’s eyelids, checking for dilation. “You better get that noggin checked when we land, but I think you’re okay for now.”
Pearce stood up on wobbly legs. The plane was already rocketing down the tarmac.
“Whoa, boss. We’re taking off. Better sit down and buckle up,” Luckett said as he plopped into his own seat and strapped in. Rowley did the same.
Pearce pushed past both of them, steadying himself with the leather headrests as the plane angled steeply into its climb. He made it to the front of the cabin and fell into a chair facing an open console attached to the bulkhead. It was a remote-control station. He pulled on the headphones and dialed up Ian.
“Ian, you still there?” Pearce powered up the computer monitor and pulled out the sliding keyboard and joystick.
“Troy! Thank heavens. It’s good to hear your voice. I was getting worried. Your men filled me in. I’m sorry for what happened. I didn’t know what to do.”
“There wasn’t anything you could’ve done. Please tell me you tracked those dickheads back to their rat hole.”
“Are you at the console yet?”
“Just opened it.” The computer monitor flicked on. Another ghosted image appeared, but this time it was a small village. A crosshair was fixed on a large building. Several trucks were parked outside, still glowing from the engine heat.
“What am I looking at?”
“That’s where they all ran to ground. The whole stinking lot of them.”
“Any civilians inside?”
“None that I’m aware of.”
Pearce flipped a few more switches. Seized the joystick.
“Ian, I need you to log off.”
“Troy, I don’t think that’s a good idea—”
“Not asking your permission. Sign the fuck off now.”
“Troy—”
“I’m trying to protect you. Now do as I say or I’ll fire your ass.”
There was a brief silence as Pearce armed one of the two Hellfire missiles slung under the Heron’s wings.
“Logging off, under protest,” Ian said. His line went dead.
“Duly noted,” Pearce said.
He pressed the trigger. A moment later, the screen flared with a blinding white light. When it faded, it revealed a heap of hot, smoldering ruins where the building and trucks had stood.
Pearce stared at the screen. Armed the other missile. Fired. It struck the flaming wreckage and the screen flared again.
Pearce wished he had another one.
He fought the urge to scream.
He dialed up Ian and turned the control of the Heron back over to him, then powered off his console. He leaned back in his chair, the horrific images of the night flashing in his brain like a strobe light. He covered his face with both heavy hands.
And wept.
—
THE SUN ROSE pink in the early dawn.
The Turkish special forces captain stood in the midst of the ruins of the church, a pile of smashed rubble and smoldering wood. His men were fanned out, turning over splintered pews and shattered brick, searching for human remains.
The captain glanced up at the pink-gray sky. The blast shattered one of the nearby utility poles. Its grim human cargo had been tossed through the air and now lay twisted in the dirt, still attached to the crossbar. But the rising light revealed the gruesome line of bodies high in the air that still remained, leading away from the church and down the long, winding road away from the village.
Butchery, the captain thought. But useful. The Kurds were a problem and ISIS a convenient solution for Ankara. His own country had slaughtered the Armenians in the same way years before. He shrugged. His moderate Islamic government knew what it was doing and he wasn’t in charge of the Kurdish operation. He shouldn’t even be on this side of the border. His duty was to obey orders, but the army didn’t pay enough money.
“Captain!” a short, stocky corporal called out.
The captain picked his way through the ruins and made his way over to the corporal, who pointed in earnest at the corpse beneath the burnt timbers.
The captain nodded at the wood. “Move that.”
The corporal lifted a big chunk of wood with a grunt and tossed it aside, wiping his hands onto his camo pants, staining them with ash.
The captain knelt and examined the corpse. It was only half of a human torso, relatively intact from the gory waist up. The face was partially charred and badly disfigured, but there wasn’t any doubt.
The captain pulled out his cell phone and framed the shot to make the gruesome figure less so. The important feature was the face. He snapped a few shots until he got one he was comfortable with and even took a few minutes to crop and edit it.
“Good work, Corporal. There’s a thermos with black coffee in my kit. Go get yourself some.”
“Thank you, sir!” The corporal threw a hasty salute and scrambled uneasily toward the chopper as the captain speed-dialed a number.
“It’s me, sir. Captain Orga. We’ve found Kamal al-Medina. I have a photo.” The captain attached the photo to an encrypted text message and sent it. He waited for a few moments for the man on the other end to receive the picture and process it.
The man asked a question.
Orga answered. “An American drone strike, certainly.”
Another question.
“Hyssop said he’s ex-CIA. Goes by the name of Troy Pearce.”
4
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Breaking glass.
Pearce awoke, startled out of a fitful sleep. Head pounding. He glanced at his pistol in its holster on the nightstand, but something stopped him from snatching it up.
Bacon.
He smelled bacon.
His stomach was sour, but the bacon smelled like maple and sweet pork fat. His mouth watered. But that meant someone was cooking downstairs.
More glass broke.
He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and pulled on a pair of jeans that lay crumpled on the floor. He sniffed the wrinkled T-shirt. Not good. He tossed it aside.
The white marble tiles felt cool under his bare feet as he made his way unsteadily to
ward the staircase. The air in the stairwell was heavy with the smell of fried potatoes now, too. Maybe he really had died and gone to heaven.
But, judging from the way his head throbbed, it could’ve been the other place.
He carefully picked his way down the floating white oak stair treads until he reached the kitchen. The whole downstairs was a huge open-concept floor plan of glass and marble. Ultramodern and elegant, just like the woman in the kitchen.
“Morning,” Pearce said.
Margaret Myers looked up from the frying pan full of potatoes. Another was larded with scrambled eggs. She wore form-fitting athletic wear that complemented her healthy physique. The former president only pushed herself harder in the gym these days out of spite for her adult-onset type 1 diabetes. Her brand-new wireless iLet Bionic Pancreas receiver was strapped to her waist and hidden beneath her shirt.
“Good morning. I’m sorry if I woke you.”
Pearce glanced over at the stainless-steel garbage can brimming with beer bottles, its electronic lid jammed open.
“Sorry about the mess. I thought you weren’t coming back until tonight.”
“Caught an early flight. Thought we could spend the day together instead of me hanging around in a stuffy old hotel. How are you feeling, by the way?”
“Better than when you left.” He stepped closer to her.
She pushed the pan of eggs off the burner and wrapped her arms around his neck. “I was so worried.”
He pulled her in closer but his mind was somewhere else. “I know.”
She leaned back. Cupped his face in her hands. “You need to shave.” She sniffed, grinning. “Maybe a shower, too. Breakfast will be ready in ten.”
“Tea?”
“Green as grass and steeping in the pot.” She gently touched the nasty bruise on the side of his head. “You sure you’re all right?”
“Shower and some caffeine and I’ll be right as rain.”
“Did you get to the doctor?”
Pearce shrugged his wide shoulders. “I’m fine.”
Myers caught herself admiring his bare, broad chest and powerful arms. He’d spent more than half of his life throwing punches—or worse. A myriad of minor scars bore witness on his skin to his years in combat.
“Call him today, please.”
His face darkened. He let her go. “Will do, Madam President.”
Meyers turned around and picked up an already cooked plate of bacon, his favorite. “The bacon is a strictly volunteer mission, should you decide to accept it.”
He stared at the bacon and then her fake-scowly face. She deserves better, he thought. A slight smile stole across his face. She knew how to make him laugh at himself. He picked up a piece of bacon in his fingers and crammed the whole thing into his mouth, caveman style.
“Verdict?”
“Perfecto,” he said, still chewing.
He snatched another piece and plopped it into mouth. “Back in a flash.” He dashed back upstairs, his mood lightened.
She watched him jog up the stair treads, then pulled the eggs back onto the burner to finish them up, still worried.
—
A QUICK GLANCE in the bathroom mirror told the story. He examined his stubbled face closely. His exhausted blue eyes were shadowed by dark circles. The place above his ear where the pistol had struck him was swollen and still hurt like hell. His head hadn’t stopped pounding since the Turk hit him, but two days of heavy drinking didn’t help, either. Maybe she was right. Maybe it was time to see a doctor.
He didn’t have any of his things at her place, but she had been thoughtful enough to buy a couple of disposables and some shave gel and leave them in the all-glass shower enclosure. She was old-fashioned in a funny way. They were in love, for sure, but he hadn’t asked her to marry him and she wasn’t going to shack up. “Not my style,” she’d said with a smile. Not his, either, actually. They were serious but taking it slowly. They’d been friends for a few years now but only recently had become lovers.
Pearce’s blood pressure suddenly dropped.
When, exactly, was their anniversary? Sometime soon, he knew. Not the kind of thing he should be forgetting, but it had been more than a decade since he had to worry about such things, and if he missed it, well, Margaret wasn’t the kind of woman to lord it over him. But then again, she was a woman, and something told him it might be a good idea to figure that out before she called him on it.
The plan had been to land back in D.C. after the mission and lay over for a day in order to give her a status report and reconnect, then fly on to California to check up on Tariq and his family while Margaret attended to business in Denver.
But Tariq was dead. No reason to head out.
He decided to stay in town at his hotel, but Myers saw his heavy fatigue and insisted he crash at her place for a few days and recover. What she really wanted to do, he knew, was take care of him, at least that first night.
He took her up on the offer. His company suite was sterile and he wasn’t big on room service.
It was the call to Tariq’s wife the next day when Myers was out of town that finally set Pearce off on a bender. He hadn’t boozed like that in years. At least he had the sense to do it here and not get hammered in some crosstown bar like he used to do in the old days.
He flipped on the shower and let it run good and cold. Nothing like a blast of freezing water to sober a guy up and get the blood flowing. A small mirror suction-cupped to the slate tiles helped him slather on the gel and shave pretty close with the triple blade without cutting any parts off, and a quick splash of shampoo and liquid soap rinsed off the mess of the last few days. He wished he could rinse out the image of Tariq’s truck lighting up the night or the ghost-white images of the women getting gunned down on that mountain slope so far away now.
He pushed open the glass door and toweled off briskly, pushing all of the negative thoughts out of his mind and crowding it with images of the breakfast he was about to consume. He learned on the long, hard marches in the mountains of Afghanistan that the only way he could make a steep climb was to focus on just the next step. The cold shower even managed to push away the queasy feeling in his gut. He dragged a brush through his longish hair, then pulled open the one dresser drawer that held a few of the things he’d left here before and pulled them on: boxers, Levis, and a Denver Broncos T-shirt Margaret bought him to remind him where his new football loyalties belonged. The thought made him smile a little.
He was a lucky bastard, for sure.
5
By the time he made it back downstairs she’d already set the breakfast bar in the all-glass nook overlooking the busy street below. As he sat down, she placed a thick Navy mug of steaming hot green tea in front of him and he took a big slurp.
“Bless you,” he said. His plate was heaped with fried home-style potatoes, bacon, and scrambled eggs. His absolute all-time favorite breakfast.
“Dig in,” she said with a hopeful smile. She didn’t cook this kind of fare often.
He glanced at her plate as he splashed spicy Tapatío sauce on his eggs. She had just one piece of bacon, a small mound of egg whites, and a few cut strawberries—low-glycemic fruit. She knew her bionic pancreas would compensate for whatever she ate with automated dosing of glucogen and insulin. But she wanted to maintain as much control as she could over her own body and preferred to eat sensibly rather than allow the machine to correct her bad choices.
They ate in silence for a few moments.
“Is it okay?” she asked.
He grinned, his mouth stuffed with food. He swallowed. “Yeah, that’s why I’m not saying anything. It’s great. Thanks so much.”
“By the way you’re wolfing that down, I’m guessing the liquid diet you were on wasn’t quite doing the trick.”
Ouch. He deserved that. “Yeah, well, a bad habit from the bad old days
. It won’t happen again.”
She laid her hand on top of his. “I’m not judging you. I’m just worried, that’s all. You said you’d been fighting this battle for a while now. I hate to see you give in to it.”
She was right, of course, he reminded himself. He half blamed the booze for a friend’s death in Mozambique, and the bender he went on afterward nearly got another friend killed in the Elephant Bar down by the docks. He went clean and sober after that and hadn’t touched a drop until yesterday. Even after what happened at Fukushima.
“I’m no teetotaler, you know that,” she said. “But the drinking is a symptom.”
Troy felt the heat on the back of his neck. He dropped the fork. “What’s that supposed to mean?” The words came out harsher than he intended.
Myers set her fork down and wiped her mouth neatly with her napkin, gathering her carefully selected words.
“I know things went sideways on this mission and I’m deeply sorry. I know you did everything you could, but—”
“But shit happens. That’s all. Shit happens. Not my first fucking rodeo.” He picked up his cup and took another sip of tea, trying to tamp down his rising anger.
“You told me this had been a pattern in your life and that you were determined to change it. I just want to help you, that’s all.”
“I appreciate it, but I’ve got it under control. It won’t happen again. I just needed to blow off some steam.” He set his empty cup down. She filled it back up.
“I get that, I really do. But you said your dad was an alcoholic, right?”
Pearce nodded, then lifted the cup to his mouth.
“And he was a combat vet, just like you. And he brought the war home with him, and he took it out on you and your mom and your sister.”
“That’s all water under the bridge.”
“I know you’ve put all of that behind you. But he drank to self-medicate.”
“Is that what you think I was doing?”
