He decided to take the shot.
Suddenly two new people entered his view. One was a soldier and the other must have been the driver. This new soldier wore boots, a pressed uniform, and a camouflaged baseball hat pulled low over his eyes. Where the other soldiers looked more like refugees, he was all spit and polish. He gestured into the hole and said something in a rapid-fire local tongue. The soldiers grudgingly got to their feet, argued a moment about who was going in the hole, then three of them went down and two stayed at the edge. By the wrinkle of their noses, they weren’t pleased about the smell. All the while, they were watched by Spit and Polish.
The driver was another matter. He looked like he’d stepped straight out of an American mall. He wore white-and-red Reeboks and faded jeans and a T-shirt that said MADE IN AMERICA.
Walker put his aiming point between the crosshatch and the top of the letter A in AMERICA. If he pulled the trigger now, he could blow out the young man’s spine.
The guy couldn’t have been more than twenty-five years old. He had the look of a city kid. He held a cell phone in his hand and was either texting or watching something in the universal way of inattentive addiction that every kid in America had mastered by the age of eleven. His nonchalance spoke volumes.
The driver entered the darkened warehouse, walked unerringly to the couch holding the engine, and reached deep between the cushions. He came out with a plastic bag. He opened it and removed what could only be a joint. He had it lit in a moment and was leaning back on the couch, inhaling the sweet leaf.
Meanwhile, the soldiers were working fast. One by one they handed bodies up to the soldiers waiting at ground level, who in turn rolled them into the back of the truck. When it looked as if they were done, Spit and Polish put the soldiers in a line and called out to the driver.
Walker glanced over at the driver, who was halfway through his joint.
He shouted something back, pocketed the bag, and stood. He inhaled deeply, looking around as he did. His gaze stopped on the boxes in the center of the room. He stared right at the spot where Walker was hidden. But did he see him? Or was he noticing that the boxes had been moved?
Walker was ready to fire, but the driver turned away, dropped the joint on the floor, and wiped it away with his feet.
He strode a little unsteadily toward the opening.
Spit and Polish said something nasty and slapped the driver, knocking him to the ground.
Walker took his shot.
Spit and Polish’s head jerked back and he fell.
Walker fired twice more, each shot taking down a soldier.
Yaya joined the fracas, double-tapping the remaining three, which left only the driver, who was crouched at the entrance, screaming. He started to run out the door, but Yaya was there, a 9mm pistol in his hand. The driver spun and ran back inside, straight toward Walker, who slid out of his concealed position.
Walker stood tall, his Stoner notched into his shoulder and pointing directly at the driver’s face. The driver tried to stop, but his feet went out from under him. He fell backwards, sliding to a stop at Walker’s feet. Walker put his rifle into the center of the man’s forehead and said, “Don’t move.”
The driver’s eyes were wild. He looked as if he were about to bolt.
Good. Now to figure out a way of ascertaining where their friends had been taken.
Walker reached down and snatched the cell phone from the young man’s trembling hands. “You won’t be needing this anymore.”
“You … you … you…” the man stuttered.
Yaya approached from behind. “I think this one speaks English.”
“At least one word of it,” Walker said. “Let’s see if he knows any more words. Got a name?”
“Ed … Eddie.”
“Okay, Ed-Eddie,” Yaya said, kneeling next to the man’s head. He pressed the 9mm hard into one ear. “Where’d you take my friends?”
“I can’t tell you,” he whimpered. “He’ll kill me.”
“Who? Chi Long?” Walker asked, hoping that Laws had been right.
As soon as he said the name, Ed-Eddie’s face blanched. “You know?”
“Of course we know. We’re U.S. Navy SEALs. We fucking know everything,” Yaya said.
Walker couldn’t help but grin at his friend’s aplomb. “Almost everything. Where are the others? Where are the other SEALs?”
“I don’t know.”
“Bullshit!” Yaya twisted his face into something monstrous. “Total fucking bullshit!”
Ed-Eddie’s eyes rolled toward Walker, who knew instinctively that he’d have to be the foil for Yaya’s bad cop. They didn’t have Laws’s interrogation experience, but it would have to do. In conversations on the safety of American soil, he’d always proclaimed that he’d never resort to torture. Now he’d have to put that assertion to the test.
“No, Yaya. Maybe our friend here just wants to help. I mean look at him. He’s not like those others.” As he said it, Ed-Eddie shook his head. “He wears American clothes and American shoes. Hell, look at his shirt. For all intents and purposes, he might just be American.”
Yaya stared at Walker for a moment, then smiled slyly. “He’s the farthest thing from American. A shirt and shoes don’t make you who you are. You know what we say, clothes don’t make the man.”
Walker shrugged. “You’re right about that. You can dress the part, but you can’t act the part. An American wouldn’t let another American get hurt. In fact, an American would make sure he’d do anything in his power to help his fellow American.”
“Why not let me take him out in the woods,” Yaya said, digging the pistol into the man’s ear. “He’s not American. He’s just a pretender. He’s just a slave of Chi Long.”
Ed-Eddie began to cry. “I want to be an American,” he sobbed. “I want to help. I do, but he’ll kill me.”
“Who’ll kill you, Ed-Eddie?” Walker asked.
The man sniffed. “It’s just Eddie.”
“Okay, Eddie. So who’s going to kill you?”
He squirmed on the floor, trying to see both Yaya and Walker. “You know,” he whispered. “Him.”
“Him?” Walker pointed at Yaya.
“Or him?” Yaya pointed back at Walker.
“No,” Eddie said, his voice going low. “Chi Long.”
“Ahh,” both Walker and Yaya said at the same time. “Him. Is that where you took our friends? To Chi Long?”
Eddie nodded.
“Are they alive?”
Eddie nodded again.
Walker felt an immense surge of relief. But he couldn’t dwell on it. They needed to know more.
“I wouldn’t worry about ‘him,’” Walker said, using finger quotes. “Yaya has a magical device that makes us invisible. He can’t see us.”
Eddie’s eyes narrowed.
“No, really. That’s how the other soldiers couldn’t find us. Just as ‘he’ has magic,” he said, using finger quotes again, “we have magic, too.”
Eddie craned his neck to look at Yaya, who until that moment had been looking imploringly at Walker. Walker shrugged and grinned at his friend.
“Go ahead and show him the concealment device,” Walker urged.
Yaya looked around, then reached into his side pocket. He pulled out the old cable he said was from World War II and held it up. “You mean this old thing?”
“That’s it.”
Eddie looked at it and narrowed his eyes. “How does it work?”
This time it was Yaya’s turn to smile. “You put it in your mouth. Here, Walker will show you.”
Yaya handed the cable over to Walker, who reminded himself that Yaya needed a good asskicking. Walker took it, grinned at Eddie, then placed an end in his mouth. It tasted like tar, cigar ash, and an old wig, but he kept it in his mouth.
