Sonman, crouched on the floor, twisted his head toward Jonas and exposed his teeth in a snarl. Maybe it was a smile. It was hard to tell with all the blood covering his mouth.
And there was something—
In Sonman’s mouth. He was biting it, and his crimson lips parted up and around it, exposing his pink teeth.
“Jesus Christ, Sonman...what did you do?”
Jonas took a step forward. A man and woman lay in the northeast corner of the room, their awkward positioning and pools of blood beneath their heads enough clue to convince Jonas they were dead.
Jonas trained his weapon tighter on his target, but then was momentarily distracted by something on the floor just a few feet to his right. He stared at it for a split second and knew the image would haunt him the rest of his life.
A baby, or what was left of it, was on its stomach, its naked skin seeming to melt into the concrete floor. In the single second Jonas had spent looking at it, half of the time was consumed by the thought that it couldn’t be a real child. It was a toy, wasn’t it? A doll of the most horrifying kind, the kind that rose from the depths of sweat-filled and drugladen night terrors. In the last half of that second, Jonas told himself it was real, because it was bleeding, and dolls don’t do that. Bleeding from the stump of a tiny black neck that had once and for too short a time held a head to it. A flick of his eyes was all Jonas needed to find the head, just a few feet away, its eyes still open and mouth pursed in an eternal suckle. Jonas didn’t know if it was a little boy or little girl, and he didn’t want to know.
Sweat poured down his face and he felt bile rise in his throat as he looked back at Sonman. The man was growling.
Time slowed. Jonas’s peripheral vision disappeared, but what he could see directly in front of him he did with almost supernatural ability. He could see the gleam of the sunlight in the individual droplets of sweat peppering Sonman’s face. Jonas could barely get out a whisper.
“Sonman...fuck...what did you do?”
Sonman spit at Jonas, and out from his mouth flew a small black chunk, which slapped against the floor near Jonas’s feet.
Jonas looked down. An ear.
A girl—no older than five, Jonas guessed—was pinned beneath Sonman, and from all visual evidence the soldier had just bitten her ear off. She didn’t move. Jonas didn’t see any other obvious wound on her, though the blood pouring from the hole on the side of her head made that kind of assessment almost impossible.
Her eyes weren’t just open. They screamed, stretched to the point of bursting. Why is this happening to me? her look said.
“It’s what I’m supposed to do,” Sonman sputtered, his words stifling what almost sounded like a laugh. “The sign... outside. It was a message.”
Jonas’s hands felt numb from the surge in adrenaline. He struggled to steady his rifle. “Disengage, soldier. That’s a direct order.”
But Sonman was too far gone, Jonas knew. The soldier had detached, like an old frayed shoelace pulled just a bit too hard. He had heard such stories, of course. It was all part of warfare. Guys go crazy all the time, and their craziness takes all sorts of shapes and sizes. But he had never heard of anything like this. And this...it was just sniper fire. Certainly enough to stoke large flames of fear and adrenaline, but insanity? As Sonman breathed heavily through wet, bloody lips, Jonas tensed his finger on the trigger of his weapon.
“Now, soldier.”
“Not done yet.” Sonman slowly reached for the large knife on the floor, the one that already had blood on it. Baby blood.
“Don’t you grab that knife, soldier.” Jonas realized he wasn’t calling Sonman by his name. He was already disengaging from the relationship, because he knew that, in the next few seconds, he was going to shoot him.
The girl wasn’t dead, but she wasn’t moving. Paralyzed from fear, Jonas thought. He could see her chest moving up and down in short, tight bursts as she breathed like a rabbit caught in the jaws of a coyote.
Sonman’s wet fingers squeezed the handle of the blade. “Disengage, Private!”
Sonman paused, his eyes wide.
There was a moment, a fraction, an opportunity. Jonas could save him. Goddamn it, he could save him.
Jonas could barely hear his own voice. “Don’t do it. Jesus Christ, don’t do it. We can stop this now.” He tried to steady the frenzied rhythm of his heart. “Let me take you back. It doesn’t have to happen like this.”
And for a moment, Jonas thought it would happen. Sonman’s eyes widened even further, as if something Jonas said resonated. But the moment didn’t last. The detached mind serves only itself and doesn’t bother with things like reason. It only had one direction and one speed, and logic wouldn’t veer it off its course. Sonman pushed himself a few inches off the floor. Not to get up, but to give him more power to bring the tip of the Army-issue fighting blade into the chest of the little girl.
That’s when Jonas fired.
He felt no shame or fear from doing so. He didn’t want to kill his fellow soldier, and in fact aimed his rifle so he likely wouldn’t, but if Private Rudy Sonman did happen to perish in this room, Jonas was okay with that.
Sonman’s body pitched sharply to the right as the rifle round slammed into his left shoulder. The flesh was unprotected and the bullet would do damage, Jonas knew. But it wouldn’t kill him.
Jonas ran over and kicked the knife out of Sonman’s hand. From his position, Jonas could now see from the window and down into the street. He saw the two dead Pakistani soldiers, the blood from their wounds seeming to cradle them as if they were merely sleeping on top of large rose petals. One block away a company of U.S. soldiers was advancing. The situation would be fully under control in a matter of moments.
Jonas turned his head to Sonman, who was face down on the floor, his right hand squeezing his left shoulder. Low, guttural moans came from beneath him. Jonas then knelt by the girl. Her wide eyes moved to meet his, but that was the only indication she wasn’t catatonic.
“You’ll be okay.” He knew she didn’t understand, but he hoped his tone would comfort her. He turned her head and saw the gaping hole where the ear should have been. He squinted in disgust and then spoke into his radio.
“Two-five this is two-six. Private Sonman is wounded, and a little girl here also needs immediate medical assistance. I’m on the top floor of—”
Jonas fell silent.
A grenade rolled up next to him and rested against the leg of the little girl.
There was no pin in it.
Jonas saw his death, and he even had time to look over at Sonman, who now stared at him with a wide smile—clown smile—red and grotesque, the kind that said the real good jokes were only seconds away. Sonman’s outstretched hand was empty save the grenade pin, which was hooked around his dirty thumb.
There was just enough time to do something, to move, to make a life and death decision.
“Two-six, please report. Two-six, please report.”
With the two seconds he was afforded, Jonas pushed himself off the ground and lunged as hard as his legs could manage toward the open window.
Jonas flew. He soared as would a bird, but only because the explosion in the room sent shockwaves through his body, propelling him as though he had wings.
He stared down at the corrugated tin canopy three stories below, the one he would soon smash through with all hundred and eighty pounds of human weight and fifty pounds of gear.
19
WASHINGTON D.C. APRIL 18
THE FIRST thing he noticed was the heat. Seeing the candle flames, he thought for a second the room was burning.
He jolted in his chair before he saw Anne, who spoke to him in a tone not quite soothing.
“It’s okay, Jonas. You’re here with me. I was hypnotizing you, remember?”
With those words, he did remember. He remembered it all, and he knew he would never be able to push it all away again. He sank back into his chair and tried to control his breathing. “People pay
you for this?”
“It was important for that to happen,” she said.
“Was it?” he shot back. “That’s supposed to cure me of something? I’m supposed to be able to have closure now or something?”
She shook her head. “Don’t mistake my intentions, Jonas. I’m not a psychologist. I’m not here to help you. I’m only here to help my work.”
He stared at her through the diffused light. “You’re cold.”
“I’m professional.”
“And how did it help you?”
She crossed her legs and leaned forward toward him with excitement, as if finally revealing a secret stored for years. “I got an imprint from you. An image. A feeling of intense familiarity in things you have been a part of. When you were under and as I touched you, I saw Sonman—not clearly, but clear enough. I felt him, a sense of his presence in your life. It’s the same imprint I received shaking your hand at the funeral, the connection with Calloway. The same imprint I received when I touched the pamphlet. I think Sonman is who we are looking for. Sonman put that pamphlet on your desk. I think Sonman is who killed Calloway. And the student.”
Jonas wanted to protest, to tell her that her powers of intuition were nothing but imagination left unharnessed by logic. He wanted to tell her PFC Rudy Sonman had died that hazy afternoon in the Mog. He wanted to tell her that Sonman’s body, already wounded by an M16 bullet, was torn apart by the grenade blast.
But he couldn’t tell her that, because Sonman’s body had never been found. The girl was found, or what was left of her, as were the remains of the girl’s mother, father, and baby sister. But there was no evidence Sonman had even been in that room.
“I need to leave,” Jonas said.
“No, Jonas. Not yet. I have more questions.”
Jonas stood. His legs felt weak, as if he’d just finished a long sprint in a shallow tide. “I know you do, which is why I’m going to leave now. Call me in a few days. Maybe we can continue then. For now, I just want to sleep.” He turned and walked toward the door. “Hopefully without dreaming.”
She followed him, and as he opened the door she opened her mouth as if to offer one more protest to get him to stay, but she caught herself and closed her lips.
Then she leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek, allowing her lips to skim a few extra inches on the side of his face. Her breath was warm and inviting, and when she pulled away, she did so only partially, staying close enough for Jonas to see tiny flecks of gold in her otherwise brown eyes.
“Be safe, Jonas.”
• • •
Outside the night was cold and still. Jonas pulled his keys from his jacket pocket and pressed the button on the remote. The rental car winked at him from across the street. The sweat on his face cooled.
He crossed and went to open his car door. It was then he paid closer attention to the car parked twenty feet or so behind his. It was unremarkable—a Honda Accord, he guessed. Shit brown. But it was the only car parked remotely close to his own, and there was someone sitting inside.
Waiting.
Jonas could only see the faintest of silhouettes, which made the figure look like a black paper cutout taped to a chalkboard. A small orange glow blossomed and then faded, and Jonas knew the man—it was a man, wasn’t it?—was smoking.
Smoking and waiting.
The figure turned his head and blew smoke out the cracked window. The smoke billowed in a stringy cloud for just a moment before fading into the night air. Jonas was close enough to smell it.
Jonas didn’t feel threatened, yet he waited a few seconds before getting in his car. There was something just not quite right about the person waiting in the car. Jonas didn’t know why, but he had trusted his instincts enough times to know they usually pointed him in the right direction. So Jonas stood outside his car, waiting, and offered the occasional glare at the Accord to let the driver know Jonas knew he was there.
Instinct usually not being enough, Jonas finally left, pulling away from the curb and looking one more time at the Accord in the rearview mirror. Nothing suspicious. Just some dude smoking a cigarette. That’s all.
Jonas drove a few blocks toward home before deciding to make a quick loop and drive back by Anne’s house. He couldn’t stop thinking about the one possibility that made the least amount of sense: the man in the Accord was Sonman. Jonas knew it wasn’t true and the idea wouldn’t even have had a home in his mind had he not just spewed the whole story to Anne just moments before.
But what if Sonman was alive? Jonas thought. Don’t I have a duty to at least look at the guy in the car?
Duty, Jonas thought. It’s always about fucking duty with me. Maybe I need to see a shrink about that.
He turned onto Anne’s street and discovered his sense of duty would not be appeased that night. The Accord was gone, and the still-smoldering remains of a cigarette on the cold asphalt were the only traces of the stranger in the car.
20
JONAS WASN’T ready to go home. He needed answers, and in D.C. answers were readily available if you had the time, patience, and contacts to be able to ask the right questions. What Jonas lacked in time and patience he more than made up for in contacts. He scrolled though the contacts on his BlackBerry as he drove downtown.
“Yeah,” the gravelly voice said on the other end of the line.
“Chuck, it’s Jonas.”
“Yeah?”
“You sleeping?”
“Yeah, Jonas. I’m sleep-talking.”
“I mean were you sleeping?”
“Does it fucking matter? I’m awake now and I’m talking to you. What do you want?”
“I need to know about Rudy Sonman.” The pause was too long. “Who?”
“Don’t shit me, Chuck. You know exactly who that is.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
The silence could have settled in nicely on the moon. “How bad?” Chuck asked.
“How bad what?”
“How bad do you need the info? Would this take care of my chit with the Senator?”
Jonas considered. Sidams had done the Major General and his boss a nice little favor two years ago by leaning heavily on a Pennsylvania defense contractor who had demanded a five hundred percent markup on Kevlar body armor.
“Yeah, we’ll call it even. Where?”
“Hay Adams. Give me a half hour.”
Jonas hung up and pressed down on the accelerator, thankful for all the beautiful back channels that came with his job.
• • •
It was late, but not too late for Off the Record, the hotel bar of choice for hushed conversations among the Washington elite, questionable, and unabashedly criminal.
He walked through the lobby of the Hay Adams hotel and into the lounge, immediately spotting an aide to the Senior Senator from Texas. Jonas loathed the Texas Senator and felt only slightly less antipathy for the aide, a churlish man in his mid-forties who would lobby for oil drilling within the asshole of his own grandmother. The aide was sitting next to someone Jonas didn’t know, and the men seemed to barely hold each other’s attention. Jonas nodded as he passed them.
Major General Charles Ogilvy was already there, a feat that seemed impossible. But he was, and if Jonas had awoken the man it wasn’t obvious. He wasn’t in uniform, but the creases on his slacks could have cut diamonds. His bald head was smooth and black, and only the freckles of grey in his eyebrows belied a few decades and wars in his service to his country. Jonas had met the Vice Director of the Joint Staff through Senator Sidams, and the hardened veteran had softened to Jonas when he found out Jonas was a Ranger. The two men shared a friendship that consisted of the occasional drink and jokes at the expense of Navy pukes, and years ago Jonas shared with the Major General what had happened to him in Somalia. His memory of events had been sketchy then—not like the details he could suddenly recall in the past two weeks—but he remembered Private Rudy Sonman. Ogilvy said he’d look into what happened to Sonman, but he’d n
ever called Jonas back about it. Once, when Jonas pressed him on it, the Major General had said only this: Leave it alone.
Ogilvy wasn’t smiling when Jonas sat across from him. “How long’s it been, Chuck?” Ogilvy was two decades older than Jonas and outranked almost every person in the military, but Jonas never called him sir. It went against every instinct Jonas had, but Ogilvy had always insisted on it.
“Least a year. You look like shit.”
“I get that a lot.”
“Heard about your Beltway heroics.” The Major General shook his head. “Dumbass.”
“I get that a lot, too.”
“Bet you do. You all patched together again?”
Jonas no longer wore his wrist cast. “Good as new. You drinking?”
“Let’s see. It’s eleven at night and my wife is wondering what the hell I’m up to. Got to be at work at oh-eight-hundred. Hell yeah, I’m drinking.”
“Nice to hear.” Jonas signaled the waitress. “Grey Goose gimlet, up.”
Ogilvy looked up. “Two fingers of Wild Turkey.”
“Rocks?” she asked.
“Not even if my life depended on it.”
“Sure thing.”
As she walked away, Ogilvy turned to Jonas.
“So, Sonman. Thought you buried him a long time ago.”
“I thought so, too,” Jonas replied. “But recent events caused me to do a little grave robbing.” He told Ogilvy about the memories he had since the car accident. Then he told him about Anne and what happened during the hypnosis session. He ended with Anne’s hypothesis about the serial killer, the religious pamphlet on Jonas’s desk, and the smoking man in the car just an hour earlier. Through it all, Ogilvy soaked in the information with little more than a few slight nods of his head and the occasional widening of his eyes.
“Let me get this straight. You think the man who tried to kill you in Somalia is not only alive, but is the same person responsible for the crucifixion murders?”
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