She tipped her soda to her lips. “I had no reason not to. So yes, I believed that’s how he died. Until a flash drive with that file on it was delivered to my apartment a month ago.”
Even though he’d lost his appetite, he dug back into his sandwich. His body needed fuel whether he was hungry or not. Then the significance of what she’d just said hit him. “Wait. I thought you said it was given to you by accident when you were researching your story.”
She looked a little sheepish. “I made that up to go with the journalist cover.”
“You’re starting to be very predictable,” he said, in lieu of a resounding “aha.” “So… State Department? DOD?” He’d been speculating about that ever since he’d seen her fake ID.
“CIA.”
He almost fell off his chair. “Oh, this keeps getting better and better. You’re a field agent?” That would explain the Glock and her tactics.
“Attorney. Office of General Counsel,” she clarified, chasing down a bite of her sandwich with another drink of soda.
No wonder she’d known she’d get cut off at the knees if she contacted the CIA or the FBI with her theory.
A woman slogged by, wearily pushing a squalling baby in a stroller. He let the commotion subside before picking up the conversation again. “Back up to how you got the information.” He’d get details on her CIA gig later.
“It just showed up,” she said. “The flash drive was messengered to my apartment. After I got over the shock of what was in the file, I tried to find out who sent it but the messenger service had nothing on record for that customer. No credit card. No address. Claimed they must have lost it. And no one remembered having seen him—or her.”
“How convenient.”
“Too convenient,” she agreed.
“So tell me about the file.” The file that was supposed to have been deleted. The file that branded him the kind of guy whose ego and inability to follow orders got people killed.
“It was a detailed account of the mission that night. The after-action report was signed off on by your base commander. Every word laid the blame squarely on your shoulders.”
Which was why she hated him. Territory they’d already covered. “Who would want you to have that file?”
“You want a name? I have no clue. But it had to be someone who knew I had the means and the motivation to start digging.”
“Then the next question is why they wanted you to investigate.”
“Because they wanted to expose you? Or because they wanted me to find out the truth? Maybe it’s someone who believed your pretrial statements. Someone who wanted me to ask the tough questions.”
“And that’s when doors started slamming.”
She nodded. “And when I started to sense I was being watched.”
An announcement on the PA system called their flight.
Appetite gone, Mike stuffed the rest of his sandwich back in the bag. She did the same. She hadn’t even eaten half of it.
“You have to tell me, you know.” She met his eyes with earnest entreaty. “You have to tell me what happened.”
Yeah. He tossed the bag in a trash can and started walking toward the gate. He had to tell her.
And thinking about that took him right back to the night he had tried for eight years to forget, but knew he never would.
11
“The boys are taking their sweet time.”
Taggart was right. And Mike was worried. The team should have been back by now.
He squinted into the night. He’d flown the mission totally dark. No locator or position lights, no cabin lights, used only his night-vision technology and his instruments to guide him down to the landing zone. They were still dark, though the bird was powered up and ready to lift off at a moment’s notice.
Behind the controls of the Black Hawk that he’d set down on the unforgiving Afghan terrain with only the night and a jagged wall of rock for concealment, Mike glanced over his shoulder past his copilot, Sonny Webber, to his gunner, Bobby “Boom Boom” Taggart. The Special Forces sergeant had drawn bird-protection duty with him, Webber, and Jamie “Hondo” Cooper, while the rest of the team executed their recon mission—and Taggart wasn’t happy about it.
Restless behind the Black Hawk’s multibarrel M134 machine gun, Taggart wove a jack of spades in and out between his fingers, using the worn playing card as a diversion from the uncertainty and the wait.
Mike understood why the tough-as-nails Bronx native was getting twitchy. Mike and Webber were used to waiting; pilots always stayed with the bird. But regardless of how many missions they had under their belts, Taggart and Cooper would rather be crawling around on their bellies, planted on a ridge with night-vision binoculars, checking for Mr. Taliban, and covering their team’s six. Anything beat staying here in the cramped confines of the idling bird, playing sit and wait for the rest of the team to return.
Salinas, Smith, Wojohowitz, Brimmer, Johnson, and Crenshaw had left over twenty minutes ago to hike less than half a kilometer to conduct a quick sneak-and-peek on a small village. They were following up on a report of Taliban fighters taking over the village and forcing the inhabitants to shelter them.
No engagement with the enemy; observation only. In. Out. Twenty minutes on the ground, tops. Report back to Command Central when they returned.
If this had been a Special Forces team, a Night Hawk pilot would have dropped them in. But this wasn’t an ordinary team. This was the One-Eyed Jacks—Uncle Sam’s grand experiment incorporating special operations personnel from the Navy, Army, and Marines.
It was such a standard-fare mission that Com Cent had dubbed it Operation Slam Dunk. Recon only. Easy Peasy.
Mike checked his watch—twenty-five minutes and counting—and stalled a trickle of concern. Even with full packs and dogging it, they should have been back by now. It
“You’re going to wear that thing out, Boom Boom,” Webber, a quiet staff sergeant from Arizona, said as Taggart continued to work the playing card through his fingers.
The card was barely in one piece. Taggart had used clear tape on it several times, repairing a cut from a KA-Bar that had almost sliced it in half.
“I’m going nuts here.” Taggart shifted behind the big gun.
The munitions and explosive expert was an adrenaline junky. And he’d seen too much action. On his last leave home, he’d had a tattoo inked on the inside of his right forearm: a pair of combat boots supporting a rifle on which a combat helmet hung. Beneath the image were the letters RIP, in tribute to his brothers in arms who’d been killed in action.
“You’re already nuts.”
This from Cooper, whose jack of hearts—every One-Eyed Jacks team member had a card—was worn and burned around the edges.
While Taggart was proud of his mixed German and French heritage, Cooper liked to say that his Caucasian,
