Finally, I tug open my duffel and rummage around until I find my cellphone at the bottom. Tap my passcode, check the battery. Slip it into my pocket with the mags and go outside.
The street is empty. Wonder if any of the other huts are occupied. I walk the length of the barracks compound without encountering a soul. I wonder how Robyn is making out in her new quarters. How a Western bed feels, after sleeping eighteen months on Afghan mats. Or a shower with hot running water.
Maybe that doesn’t beat skinny-dipping with Allah’s chosen leader of the faithful.
The last hut in the row has a great view of the airstrip. I sit with my back to its outer wall. Watch a pair of F-15 Strike Eagles thunder down the runway and lift into the sky.
I unlock my phone, tap Stein’s speed-dial, and let it ring.
It is 0430, Eastern Standard Time.
The voice that answers is alert, all business. As I knew it would be, despite the early hour. “Stein.”
“It’s Breed. We brought Trainor back. Grissom took a high dive off a five-hundred-foot cliff. The girl thinks one of the men on the team helped him, I can’t be sure. Zarek’s bitching we hit his caravans three times more often than Shahzad’s. The general says he doesn’t keep those stats.”
“Do you believe him?”
“Hard to say. He’s always been a detail-oriented guy. But—he may be disinterested in that level of granularity. To use his words, we bomb them where we find them.”
“What about the deal?”
“You’ve been naughty, Stein. You didn’t tell me everything.”
“I thought you would find it more entertaining to figure it out yourself.”
“How thoughtful. Yes, Robyn Trainor is an entertaining piece of work. The deal is rattling around with all those happy thoughts she keeps in her skull. Reserved for Grissom’s masters at State and the CIA. Know who those might be?”
Stein refuses to rise to the bait.
“I’m on a conference call with General Anthony in an hour,” she says. “You will all be returning to DC on a flight out of Bagram tomorrow morning. Sergeant Trainor is to be debriefed by the highest authority.”
Warm fluid oozes out of my right ear. A viscous drop begins to form at the corner of my jaw. I swipe at it with the heel of my hand before it soils my shirt. The phone and my hand grow slippery.
“Oh. Little Robyn’s playing in the big leagues, is she?”
“We are approaching the endgame. General Anthony indicates Shahzad is prepared to make concessions to restart talks.”
“We kicked his ass all over the Arwal. He’s suffered fifty or sixty KIA in the last forty-eight hours.”
“He and the Taliban have hundreds, thousands more in the Tribal Lands.”
“Zarek has the same in the north, and he’s arming a coalition in the south. Once the US pulls out, Zarek will go to war against the Taliban right across the country.”
“Get Robyn Trainor to DC, and we’ll close the deal with Zarek. The administration is fed up with Shahzad’s bullshit.”
I can’t believe it. Anya Stein is staking everything on a romantic kid.
Who's the romantic? I remember how Robyn touched my face, her fingers wet with my blood. The concern in her eyes. The girl has gotten under my skin. But she is not for me.
“Stein, this girl thinks she is living a fairy tale. The army won’t let her get away with marrying a Mujahedeen warlord. They’ll court-martial her ass, lock her in Leavenworth, and throw away the key.”
“The army will do whatever the fuck the administration tells it to do. The administration will do what I tell them to do. If you get her back alive.”
Stein is on a power trip, and I need to put some emotional distance between myself and Robyn.
“My job was to get her out of Badakhshan,” I say. “Nobody said anything about babysitting the kid all the way to DC.”
I can read about Robyn in the newspapers… from the veranda of a plantation house in the Philippines.
“A romantic child has her uses,” Stein says.
“Where does the CIA find you people?”
Stein ignores the dig. “However—it does exceed the parameters of our agreement.”
“Our agreement? The general thinks I work for him.”
“Great. He won’t have a problem with you coming to DC. You and I can add a side-letter right now. A fifty percent bonus on delivery—to the highest authority.”
One hundred and fifty thousand bucks for a week’s work. And they buy out my last contract. It’s a good excuse to hang around Robyn a little longer.
“I suppose I could babysit a few more hours.”
32
The Assassin
Bagram
Friday, 2300
Airplanes and helicopters take off and land at Bagram 24/7. You want to sleep, you get used to it.
I lie fully clothed in bed. Our Globemaster leaves Bagram at 0400 for the fifteen-hour flight to Joint Base Andrews. The Mark 23 rests by my right hand. Old habits die hard.
There are some habits we’d like to erase.
In combat, we played the Adderall Olympics. There were two lemon drop bowls on the table in the mess. One filled with Adderall, the other with Ambien. We ran the vampire cycle. Got out of bed at 1600 hours, worked out, had breakfast, and absorbed the briefing for the night’s operations. Popped a couple Adderall. By 0300, we were wired to the eyeballs. Hyper-alert, ready to go out and kill the bad guys in their beds.
We ruled the night. When we got back to base after sunup, we were still high. We sat around and popped Ambien to bring us back down. Loser was the guy who had to take the most to get to sleep. If you were lucky, you lost consciousness by 0800 so you could roll out at 1600 and do it all again.
That’s how the elite operate. Stroll by the barracks at noon, you’ll find Delta Force passed out in their racks, or face down in the
