“Just stay calm. You’ll be good. I can tell.” Wells hoped he was right.
The overhead lights flicked on, replacing the spectral red glow of the landing lights. Wells blinked against the white glare, remembering his dream.
“Good luck, Lieutenant.” He offered Gower his hand.
“Luck, Mr. Brown. If the 504th can be of service, lemme know.”
Wells looked at the portable chess set in Gower’s pack. “Next time, you have to teach me some openings so I can give you a game.” He felt oddly disappointed as he turned away from Gower. Another good soldier he would never see again.
BUT WHEN HE STEPPED ONTO the tarmac, a pleasant surprise awaited him. Glen Holmes stood outside the C-17, a bit thicker than he’d been when Wells had met him in 2001, but otherwise instantly recognizable.
“Mr. Wells. It’s been a long time. The Special Forces welcomes you to Bagram.”
Wells looked at the eagle on Brown’s shoulder-boards. “
“Yeah, I’m a real trailer queen these days. Hardly leave the base.”
“Trailer queen?” Wells had to smile. “Never heard that before.”
“You’ve done all right yourself since we last met, John.” Holmes grinned. “That might be the biggest understatement of my life. You need a nap, or can I interest you in a cup of coffee?”
“Coffee sounds great.”
A few minutes later they sat in Holmes’s B-hut as a lieutenant carried in two oversized plastic tankards. “Starbucks,” Holmes said. “My wife sends it every month.” The lieutenant lingered by the door. “Thank you, Carlo,” Holmes said. “Dismissed.”
“Yes, sir.” He saluted smartly and was gone.
“Funny,” Holmes said. “He never hangs around when it’s just me.”
“Everybody here know who I am?”
“Not the regular units. But SF is too small to keep secrets. Only a few hundred of us in the whole country. Anyway, you must be used to it by now.” Holmes grinned at Wells.
“Langley seems to wish I would disappear.”
“Well, you’re among friends here.”
“You sure? Vinny Duto never shot me. More than I can say for you.” Wells tugged up his sleeve to show Holmes the scar on his biceps, left over from the night in 2001 when he’d first met Holmes.
“If I recall, you asked me to. The most surreal night of my life,” Holmes said. “I sure didn’t expect to see you again.”
“All these years—”
“And look how far we’ve come.”
Wells smiled. “Yeah, about thirty miles. So how is it these days?”
“Had to spoil the trip down memory lane,” Holmes said. “Still mostly okay. Afghanistan isn’t Iraq. Not yet, anyway. But the Talibs are getting tougher. They’ve got new tactics this year. Their snipers are more accurate. And there are these rumors they’ve got professional help.”
“Why I’m here.” Plus I’m driving the woman I love crazy, Wells didn’t say.
“If we had another division, even a couple brigades, things would be different.”
“But we don’t.”
“No, we don’t. They’re busy you know where.”
“They’d do a lot more good here.”
“We just do what we’re told.” From a file cabinet, Holmes pulled out a silver flask and two smudged glasses stamped with the Army’s “Black Knight” football logo.
“Would you be offended if I offered you a drink?”
“Not at all.”
“Glad to hear it.” Holmes poured them both a healthy shot. “Macallan, eighteen-year-old. Been saving it for the right visitor.”
“To the men you lead,” Wells said, thinking of the soldiers on the C-17.
They raised their glasses. The scotch hit Wells immediately. He wanted nothing more than to lie on the wooden floor of Holmes’s hut and sleep.
“You must be beat, John,” Holmes said. “Carlo will find you a rack. Check it before you bunk down. A scorpion stung one of my guys last week. On the ass.”
“Ouch.”
“Yeah. Got his share of shit for it too. Swing by at 1300. I’ll fill you in on what we’re planning. Your office did great work on these foreign guys. Caught something we should have figured out a while ago. It’s time for us to hit them where they live.”
“Sounds like a plan to me.”
10
“EDDIE! DINNER!”
Even in the basement, through the locked door, her voice grated on his ears.
“In a minute,” he mumbled. He tapped a Marlboro from the box on the cluttered coffee table, touched lighter to cigarette with practiced hand. He closed his eyes in satisfaction as smoke filled his lungs. A nasty habit, but so what? Everybody died sometime. He exhaled through his nose, feeling his nostrils tingle.
He was stocky but solidly built. A touch under six feet, with thinning gray hair and a forgettable face, jowly and middle-aged. The face of a manager who’d never make vice president. The smoking and the Dewar’s didn’t help. His eyes were his only memorable feature: the right brown, the left green, with a striking black stripe that cut through the iris. The flaw was purely cosmetic and didn’t affect his vision.
He was a mole, a double agent. For seven years, he had sold secrets to China. An act of treason. Punishable by life in prison. Or death.
He looked around the windowless room. A dirty white shag rug covered the floor. The walls were paneled with cheap imitation wood and decorated with framed pictures he’d taken in Hong Kong decades before. His only overseas assignment. A softball trophy from the Reston summer league sat on his desk.
He kept the trophy as an ironic joke. But what good was a joke that no one got? Everyone he knew — coworkers, neighbors, even the Mexicans who cleaned his Acura — pegged him as a capital-L loser. On pain of death, he had to hide the only interesting part of his life. Tragic. He was tragic. He puffed on the cigarette, and a kind of pride filled him with the smoke. Tragic, but heroic. He broke society’s rules, lived apart from the common mass of men. He knew the chances he took, and he—
“Eddie!”
Where had his wife learned to howl like that? He ignored her and reached for the envelope inside his green windbreaker, the letter he had picked up that morning. The paper inside was neatly folded, a single sheet printed in the oversized Arial font the Chinese always used.
“Dear Mr. T.”—he always smiled at that, a cultural reference his handlers probably didn’t get—“As always, we most appreciate your work. You are truly our most valued asset. A bonus pay of three months has been received in your account for your service. Also please accept this gift.”
The English wasn’t perfect, but he got the point. They were happy. A gold Krugerrand had been taped to the paper. Nice touch, the mole thought. They’d never given him gold before. He flicked open his Swiss Army knife and cut the coin off the letter. The springbok stamped across its back gleamed even in the smoky basement air. It felt dense enough to stop a bullet. He flipped the coin in the air and caught it neatly. And a three-month bonus? That was an extra seventy-five grand.
“Eddie! The roast will be cold!”
Janice. Always spoiling his rush.
“For the love of God, shut up!” he yelled upstairs.
He slipped the coin into his pocket and returned to the letter. The rest was routine, until the end: “In light of
