Fallen Angel

by Chuck Logan

  Go like hell, and don’t look back.

  Morgon drives the Suburban to give Ahmed time to recover from the shock of his first action. “You did good,” he yells. “You lost a man, but you did good. You got the job done . . .”

  “Two men,” Ahmed yells back. “You forgot the truck driver.”

  “Okay. Two men.”

  He’s shouting because his ears are still plugged and burning, and the adrenaline’s flaming out, which screws up his timing. People yell their jabber talk and pound their horns and dive out of the way as the Suburban swerves, brakes, and burns rubber down the narrow side streets, racing through the warren of hovels west of Samarra. Red Arabic script flashes on an orange brick wall. Then, between buildings, he catches a sizzle of blue sky cut by wires. One minute his pulse bangs on fast-forward, then his heart downshifts into slow motion. Following Ahmed’s shouted directions, he turns onto the national highway as the last of the adrenaline rush burns out and real time throbs in a hollow vacuum. Shock picks up Fatigue hitchhiking on the road to Balad.

  Fatigue turns his eyelids to lead.

  Hunched over the steering wheel, he’s trying real hard to focus his sand-pitted eyes, and he can’t hear and barely can tell where his sweat stops and the foul dusty air starts. Deaf, he searches the swirl of sunspots and the road ahead for the shadow of an Apache gunship. Any second he expects a missile up his tail pipe.

  His mouth tastes like dirty melted copper, and blood fouls his trousers from lap to knee and reeks in the heat. More of it’s all over his shirt and down his back, and the only good news is that it’s not his. With difficulty, yelling to Ahmed to steady the wheel, he tears off the tunic and tosses it aside. Then he paws in the caddy Ahmed holds in his lap for his sunglasses. No luck. He finds a bottle of Visine and squirts the fluid into his burning eyes. Not much help there, either. The road is a gritty blur, going in and out. Traffic coming at him, bedsprings tied on top of decrepit cars, goats in the back of rusty trucks like an Oakie migration doomed to wander through an endless Dust Bowl.

  Blinking, he monitors himself for concussion. He checks his eyes in the rearview to see if the pupils are dilated. Confused? You bet. Dizzy, light-sensitive, nauseous, ears ringing? Been here before. But you were younger then . . .

  The Visine helps some. His head swings on a swivel, checking the horizon to either side of the road, the rearview, the sky. If he hadn’t blown the truck and created the diversion, they’d have never gotten out. In a lucid moment he thinks, The choppers should be scouring the road to the highway. Insurgents resemble convenience-store jack boys—they like freeway access.

  Morgon turns to Ahmed. Some of the color is returning to the ashen pallor that had sucked the sweat from his brown face. “You okay?”

  Ahmed nods. “I never saw up close what a gunship could do . . .”

  “You’ll be all right. Drink some water,” Morgon says. “We’re not done yet.”

  Ahmed dry-swallows and looks at him in disbelief. “What?”

  “A pilot made it out alive. They’ll take him to the hospital at Balad. That’s where we’re headed.”

  Methodically, Morgon swabs the dirt from his face, hair, and hands with a bottle of water and moist baby wipes. Up ahead an American convoy is throwing dust: three lowboys hauling Abrams tanks with Humvees front and back, headed south down Iraqi Route One. A green road sign printed in Arabic and English whizzes by: Balad 22 kilometers; Baghdad 90.

  Cleaning up helps; his thinking, while painful, is more ordered. No detours into amnesia. The shock is wearing off.

  “The helicopters,” Ahmed says.

  “If we’re lucky, they were just coming up the canal on their way to somewhere else. One of your guys got carried away and took a shot, and it all went to hell.”

  “So an accident?” Ahmed asks hopefully.

  “I think so, otherwise they’d be after us. Their first priority is the crash.”

  “So why are we going to Balad?”

  “What if the pilot saw me?” Morgon explains, turning back to the road. He’s never been to the hospital in Balad. And hospitals, even military hospitals, are relatively foreign ground. He’ll need to use the forbidden satellite phone and talk to his handler . . . and to his handler’s granddaughter, Amanda, the woman who makes pillow-talk comparisons to Alexander of Macedon. Amanda is part of their little team, is whip smart, and has three years of med school. He might need her expertise on this.

  “We need to find a place to pull off. I have to get out of these dirty clothes and clean up.”

  Morgon slows for a checkpoint, and the grinning Iraqi National Police study his vehicle and just wave him through with the convoy. He’s functioning better now, but the crud and sweat and filthy clothes are getting to him. He can’t go into the hospital at Balad looking like a hairball mud pie. “C’mon, Ahmed, find me a turnoff.”

  After a few minutes, Ahmed calls out, “Next turn on the right, there’s a side road along an irrigation canal.”

  Morgon turns off on a dirt road that skirts the canal. Iraqis on foot and kids on bikes avert dark eyes in their carefully neutral faces as he drives past.

  He stops the big SUV where an irrigation culvert branches out from the canal. Ahmed gets out, takes an M4 carbine from the backseat, and leans across the hood, keeping watch.

  Morgon digs in his carry-on bag for soap, strips off his filthy clothes, wades in the canal, and scrubs himself vigorously, swiveling his head to scan 360 degrees of approach. Then he dunks in the greenish water and surfaces and wipes suds from his pale, flat belly that is rippled with interlocking muscle and scars. Only his arms, face, and neck are marked with a faded professional tan. He picks up his towel, wraps it around his waist, collects the weapons, and lays them across the hood of the Suburban.

  In a few minutes he’s shaved and changed into his extra shirt and trousers and clean socks. He bundles up the filthy shirt and pants and tosses them into the canal.

  To compose himself, he forces himself to smoke a cigarette before he makes the call. Puff by puff, the Camel burns down. He’ll cherry-pick the event, edit out his moment of hesitation that resulted in this clusterfuck. If he would have fired the RPG two seconds sooner the chopper might have survived. And he’ll slur over shooting the crew, attribute it to his shaky Iraqi assets. Okay. He tosses out the butt and picks up the Iridium sat phone and punches the preset number. His ears still full of surf, he can’t tell if anyone answers, but he starts anyway.

  “We have a situation. The army happened by in some helicopters, and it got sporty.” He knows he’s speaking too loudly into the sat phone. The man on the other end is in Lakeside, Michigan, where it’s early in the morning. He’s an elderly man named John Rivard who is many things in Morgon’s life: mentor, tactical handler, even a touch of surrogate father. He is also completely unflappable, because when he retired from the Central Intelligence Agency, John was the director of covert operations for the Far East.

  Rivard says something. “Calm down,” maybe.

  Morgon shouts, “You have to talk louder. A chopper got knocked down. There was an explosion. Our local friends freaked and started shooting. What? I’m not hearing so hot. I thought the whole crew was dead,” he shouts. Pause. “But there’s a good chance I was seen by one of the pilots who survived the crash.”

  Morgon still can’t hear properly; he’s talking to himself. “They’d take him to the hospital at Balad.“ Another pause. “I know what I gotta do. Get Amanda and have her stand by; I might need some medical advice.” Then he adds, “This all happened after the fact. The actual job went off without a hitch. No one will ever use that shit now. But maybe you should reach out, skew the reporting.” He ends the call, trusting John to handle the hot-potato handoff and tie up the administrative loose ends. Then he tucks the phone back into his duffel and motions to Ahmed.

  They get back on the road and pass a green freeway sign: Balad 12 kilometers. He watches an oily column of smoke curl over the flat. Something’s
always burning or blowing up, and the air smells like a smoldering gas station.

  “I’m going to have to drop you on the road outside the base,” Morgon says, trying to deliberately lower his voice, shake off the aftereffects of the explosion, and talk normally.

  Ahmed nods and says, “I’ll get on the phone and locate the two cars that escorted us to Samarra.”

  “While you’re at it, can you call the airport and change my reservations from tomorrow morning to later today? I’d like to get out of here as soon as possible. My ticket’s in the zipper on the side of my bag.”

  Now he’s caught up with the American convoy that has stopped by the side of the road. The soldiers are out of the vehicles setting up a perimeter. New kids, looks like, gamely learning to wear their sweat and riding the downside of a war.

  Suddenly, passing the young GIs, Morgon is seeing the wounded woman from the helicopter on her knees in the dirt—the look in her eyes, not fear even. Like she deserved an explanation.

  Never killed a woman before. A woman with red hair. Thought a lot about it, though.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Morgon now struggles for focus, fighting the ringing in his ears, blotty vision and a nauseous swoon in his gut. He drops Ahmed at a roadside café and, as he pulls away, sees him in the rearview, hunched over his cell phone. At the Balad Camp gate, as Morgon waits in a line of vehicles for his turn with the security guard, he inspects his face in the rearview mirror. His cheeks and forehead are raw to the touch as if scrubbed with sandpaper, and his red eyes water. He finds his sunglasses. Some help. Outwardly he projects sun-dazed fatigue. Inwardly he calculates the odds. Will the gate guard pass him through with a cursory glance at his CAC—the Common Access Card issued to all contractors—that hangs in a plastic case from a lanyard around his neck? Or is the guard being fastidious today, in which case he might scan the electronically keyed ID and run him in the system. That would be a problem, because David Baker’s subcontractor file with the DynCorps Corporation will not stand up to intense scrutiny.

  His luck holds. The guard waves him forward. Morgon gives a weary smile and holds up the ID card. The air force policeman returns an equally sun-baked smile, nods his weary assent, and hands back Morgan’s Canadian picture ID.

  The base is bigger than he remembers it, so he drives around slowly to get his bearings, mindful that the ten mph speed limit is strictly enforced. After locating the hospital, he stakes out a remote stand of CHUs behind a nearby motor pool. After ten minutes, seeing no foot traffic among the pod-like units, he gets out and drifts down a wooden duck walk.

  Without looking around, he opens a door and enters a unit. He’s still lucky; it’s empty. Immediately he goes to a wall locker and sorts through the uniforms. Too small. He goes to the next locker, where he finds an extra-large set of fatigues and a soft cap. But no desert boots. Out of time. Have to fake it with the civilian boots.

  He pulls the uniform on over his clothes, returns to the Suburban, pulls the cap low over his eyes, then starts the truck and approaches the hospital. The rank on the sleeve is Specialist Four.

  After he parks, he takes a moment to exercise his jaw and pop his ears. It’s getting better now. The splashes of sound come closer, blending together. He tucks the sat phone in his pocket and takes a small notepad and a pen from his duffel. Then he freezes an anxious smile on his face, checks his uniform, and walks toward the hospital.

  He leaves the heat and dust and blast walls and enters a clean, air-conditioned zone where the tile floors are shiny and the lights are bright and the nurses behind the admitting station are smiling. He skirts the front desk, checks a floor-plan guide on the wall, and locates the trauma room where medevaced casualties are being rushed into surgery and ambulatory civilians line the walls. Then he falls in behind a wailing Iraqi extended family. A child with a horrific stomach wound is being wheeled on a gurney, two bandaged men lean on medics. Triage staff slip and slide on a floor slick with blood and bandages.

  At the entrance to a surgical theater he grabs a harried orderly who rushes by with an armful of bloody clothing. “Hey, “ he pleads, “a chopper from my unit went down west of Samarra ‘bout two hours ago. I heard only the pilot made it out. He come through here?”

  The orderly blinks, stares, and hands the wad of clothing to Morgon. Then he nods at a computer on a table in a curtained alcove. “C’mere,” he motions. A moment later the orderly has logged in and scans a screen. He bites his lip. “Sorry, only American we got the last couple of hours is a female Captain, Jesse Kraig, went down by Samarra though…”

  “Uh huh,” Morgon ad libs. “Musta heard it wrong. The rest of the crew didn’t make it?”

  “That’s her. Right now she’s stable, in the holding ward awaiting transport to Germany.”

  “How’s she doing?” Morgon asks with a genuine sinking tone in his voice. It’s another woman. He’s mostly hearing, sometimes lip-reading. But he’s crossed the line of departure. He’s working.

  “They got her down for TBI. When they’re that way, chances are they aren’t receiving visitors,” the orderly says.

  “How long before she ships?” Morgon asks.

  “’Bout an hour,” the orderly says.

  Morgon holds up the clothes. “What do I do with these?”

  “Bin, down the hall, that way.” The orderly points then rushes back to the triage room.

  Morgon lingers briefly near the trauma room and spots a surgical cart that has been shunted aside in the controlled confusion. Moving fast, using the clothing for cover, he scoops up a bottle of fentanyl and a syringe.

  Then he ducks into an unused curtained bed station, dumps the clothes, makes sure the sat phone is secure in his back pocket, draws a massive overdose of the drug, and uses a piece of cardboard backing from his notepad to sheath the needle and tucks the syringe carefully in his pocket. Blending in to the foot traffic, he walks rapidly, head downturned and constantly moving to confuse the security cameras fixed in the halls. He locates the holding ward and takes a moment to gather himself because his balance is still shaky. The bright overhead lights sting his watering eyes and blank pockets ascend in his ears, blocking sound like reverse depth charges.

  Captain Jessica Kraig resembles a battered nun lying motionless on her back: eyes closed, her bruised, swollen face crisscrossed with yellow painted Frankenstein stitches and her head swathed in clean white gauze. An IV drip runs into her arm, and electrodes connect to a beeping monitor. But there’s a problem. All these soldiers stand around her bed, talking in low hushed tones.

  Morgon makes a show of looking in on one of the other patients and steps back and waits for the visitors, presumably from the pilot’s unit, to leave. He overhears a tall major with bandaged hands quietly explain that surgery has been ruled out. They didn’t find brain swelling. Then the major says that “Laura” never knew what hit her. The blast came right up through her side of the cockpit. Miracle it missed Jesse.

  So the other pilot was also a woman. Like the saying goes, shit arrives in threes. Morgon retreats from the ward when a nurse shows up and shoos the crowd away from Kraig’s bed. After checking the IV and the monitor, she curtains off the bed and leaves.

  Okay. Dump an overdose of fentanyl into the IV and get out.

  Morgon slips the syringe from his pocket, edges back into the now-empty ward, and walks to the bed, keeping the syringe just out of sight, tucked up his sleeve, balanced in his palm. Then he stops because Captain Kraig has a watchdog. This old, tired master sergeant stands behind the curtain, his boots hidden by the monitor cart. His red-rimmed eyes flick on Morgon, momentarily distracted.

  Morgon avoids the glance and keeps moving, checks the chart on the bed to confirm it’s Kraig. Then he raises his eyes and notes the collection of camo badges on the sergeant’s chest over the nametape: Dillon. The guy stands with a tight-wrapped posture that exudes veteran cadre. An expert at assessing men, Morgon decides it’s probably not a good idea to trifle with this on
e.

  Looking down the other beds, Morgon says, “I must have the wrong ward,” as he palms the shot back into his back pocket. Then there’s a bad moment when Captain Kraig opens her blue eyes and stares directly at him. Dillon shakes his head. “Random eye movement, maybe triggered by light or something. They say there’s a chance she’ll never wake up.”

  “Damn, man,” Morgon says in sympathy.

  Dillon doesn’t hear him, speaking into the middle distance. “And if she does wake up, chances are she won’t be who she was. Damn shame ’cause she was a good kid.”

  “Bummer.”

  This time the sergeant’s steady gray eyes click on Morgon’s sand-ravaged face, drop to his dusty nonregulation boots, then return to his face. Morgon responds by raising a hand to scratch his nose and then tugs his collar up higher around his neck, as if trying to retreat, turtle fashion, into the borrowed uniform. It’s time to go. Clearly he isn’t the only one present with a background of quick-studying people. And it looks like this Sergeant Dillon intends to stand vigil with his captain until they load her for Germany. So Morgon leaves the ward and tosses the syringe in a needle-disposal unit in the first empty room he passes. Then he retraces his steps to the hall outside the trauma room. Time to regroup.

  After Morgon leaves the holding ward, Sam Dillon retreats to his default zone, where he long ago learned to function absent fatigue and emotion. He doesn’t allow himself to entertain the thought that his captain swapped him out of Tumbleweed Six at the last minute and that’s why he’s standing here looking at her ravaged face—and not laying dead out in the desert.

  Like Marge Bailey.

  But even in this defensive zone he’s still heir to a lifetime of hardwired habits, one of which is watchful suspicion. So who’s this trooper who appeared in the ward at the foot of Captain Kraig’s bed? Something about the guy bounced weird, like the disparity between the low enlisted rank on his uniform and his poised athletic persona. Like his sandblasted face being at odds with the clean uniform and the way the guy’s bloodshot, hazel eyes moved over Sam’s face like an X-ray machine. And there was something about the relative paleness of his face and hands, with just the barest blush of sun. The undershirt peeking above the first button of the digital camo tunic was a shade of dark-green olive more available in an upscale sports outfitter than a military supply depot. And what’s with the civilan boots? He also noted a small star-shaped scar at the base of the right side of the guy’s neck, peeking from his uniform, just above the collarbone. Smudges of red dirt were swirled in the concha of his external ear but not a speck of it under the crystal that covered the gold Rolex on his wrist. And that was the second one of those watches he’s seen today . . .