They limped into the camp, and Mac didn’t even care that they were sitting ducks if anyone was waiting for them. No one appeared. No one shot at them. Kevin put him in the SUV which had escaped him blowing up the enemy arsenal. Always check to make sure you don’t need anything before you blow the fucker, he heard an old sergeant lecture him. “I hear ya,” he muttered. He heard another boom go off. The other arsenal? He wondered. Were there still others up here?
Could be, he thought in a moment when he actually remembered who he was and where he was. “Not doing well, kid,” he said.
Kevin snorted. “Anyone else would be unconscious and dying about two miles back,” he said. “Drink this. Yes, it’s coffee, but it’s hot. It’s laced with sugar. And God damn it, drink!”
Mac obeyed. Didn’t taste as bad as he remembered coffee tasting. Still smelled like shit. He’d drank worse things. Afghani tea for one. Kevin handed him a sandwich and when Mac protested he wasn’t hungry and they should leave, Kevin just ordered him to eat it.
“Yes, Lieutenant,” Mac muttered. Damn snot-nosed lieutenants always thought they knew more than they really did.
He was inside the SUV now. The heater was running, and it felt glorious. Danny was eating a sandwich too. Mac wondered where the Lieutenant had gone. He wasn’t tracking very well if he’d lost track of his lieutenant. Never lose one of those guys, the next one they sent you would be even dumber than the one you lost.
He wondered who the guy was, not Danny, like he thought. Danny would be talking, nothing stopped that man from talking. Not even a sand storm and his mouth full. “Danny? We should go?”
The man in the driver’s seat — not Danny, Danny was dead, a voice in the back of his head said — nodded and started slowly down the mountain.
Well if he wasn’t Danny, who was he? Mac demanded of the voice. The voice couldn’t remember either. Mac snorted, silently satisfied to have gotten the better of the argument. But he couldn’t argue that Danny was alive. Even if he didn’t know where he was and who was driving, he remembered mourning his friend’s death. Holding him as he died.
“He didn’t want to die alone,” he explained, to the not-Danny who was driving. “Said no one should die by themselves.”
“I’m not letting you die either,” the young man said. He kept his eyes focused on the road and the snow. They were going very slowly. Mac approved.
“That’s good,” Mac said. “I don’t want to die. I haven’t made love to Angie yet.”
The not-Danny grinned. “You hold onto that thought,” he said. “And let me drive.”
Mac nodded, and he held onto that thought as he lost consciousness.
Chapter 27
Mac had spent the first week after he blew up “half of the North Cascades” in a hospital with an officer standing outside his room. FBI Agent Stan Warren wouldn’t tell him whether the guard was for his protection — or whether he was under arrest.
“Makes no difference until you heal up,” Warren said when he stopped in on day two to check on him. He listened to Mac fume about wanting out of there. “You’ve got a concussion and two broken ribs, Mac, not to mention the bullet wound in your leg. Remember that thing?” he said. “Just lay low for a bit, OK?”
Mac grumbled until Janet showed up and shoved his laptop into his hands. “Write,” she ordered. “I need the stories. You need something to do. And the nurses will thank me for this. So, write.”
He did. He wrote the profile of Pete Norton, Skinhead to Sheriff, and knew that was going to be the headline, even if it made his eyes cross to type it. Norton was in FBI custody. He was telling everything he knew about Sensei, about the whole militia Sensei was building.
Unfortunately, he didn’t know who Sensei was. Rand dropped by that afternoon to tell him about what Norton had to say.
Mac was deep into his second story about the rise of white supremacists among the white middle class when he showed up. He set aside his computer to catch up on the investigation.
“On the record?” Mac said.
“Hell no,” Rand said. He was out and about on administrative leave pending a review. Janet hadn’t done that to him — he didn’t think. The holy trinity might have, he conceded, and Janet just hadn’t told him.
“But we don’t know who the damn head of it all is,” Rand said disgustedly.
Mac grunted.
When Angie showed up, he was more enthusiastic. She had lost 10 pounds, she told him, as if that was a good thing. He disagreed, but he didn’t say so. He’d learned a few things along the way about women and weight. He listened to her chatter on about all the gossip, and how her photos came out. She pulled up a server access on his laptop and showed him, sitting on the edge of his bed.
She smelled good. And her fuchsia hair streak was back. He wanted to kiss her, but then he saw the pictures she was pulling up, and he was temporarily diverted.
“Jesus, Angie,” he said, letting them cycle through on his computer. “You’re amazing.”
She grinned. She sat there next to him, pointing out the photos she thought were best. Photos of the clients, of Craig Anderson and him carrying out the stretcher, of Cleve left behind, of Rand setting up camp and drinking coffee. Of the weapons. Of the two camps. Hundreds of photos, Mac thought. If he just wrote the cutlines, they’d have all the story they needed. She’d win awards for this. Maybe even the Pulitzer. And wouldn’t that shove a stick up Steve Whitaker’s ass?
When visiting hours were ending, she kissed him. “Get better,” she ordered. “I have plans.
