Curtis didn’t move. He stayed there by the bed, holding the girl’s hand. “We’ve got to bring her with us.”
Flanagan turned a baleful eye on him, but he was already thinking it through, and even before Curtis spoke again, he knew that the other man was right, tomcat or not.
“You know what Vitti’s going to do to her!” Curtis was still holding the girl’s hand, as she looked up at him with something like devotion in her eyes. “We can’t leave her for him to find her.”
Flanagan sighed. “Ah, hell.” He looked at the girl. “What’s your name?”
“Monica.”
“Okay, Monica, we’re going to move fast, and I don’t just mean to my truck. Kevin and I have some serious work to do in a couple of days, so we’ve got that long to get you set up in some sort of ‘witness protection’ arrangement. Fortunately, we know a few people who can make that happen.” He moved to the window and peered out past the curtain. “The coast looks clear.” He turned back and fixed Curtis with a glare. “Are you armed?”
“Of course I’m armed, Joseph. I’m irresponsible, not stupid.”
Flanagan rolled his eyes. “I’ll go first. Give me ten seconds to get out in the parking lot and confirm that it’s clear, then follow. I’m parked just outside.” He narrowed his eyes at Curtis again. “You get to call Frank and get things rolling to get her into hiding. This is your mess; you get to do most of the legwork.”
Then he was going out the door, clearing visually to his right and left, his hand near the butt of his .45.
The parking lot was still relatively empty and still. His eyes were drawn to movement over by the corner of the building, but it was just a drunk, passed out on the porch, moving in his sleep. Under some circumstances, that might be a bad guy, but he didn’t think that the mob was quite that tactically sophisticated, especially not when their target was one gambling, bodybuilding tomcat who’d bedded the boss’s daughter.
Satisfied, he climbed into the cab and started the truck. A heartbeat later, Curtis appeared, pulling the girl after him as he rushed to the truck. He helped Monica into the middle, then climbed in and slammed the door. “It’s okay, baby. Everything’s going to be fine.”
Flanagan already had the truck in reverse, and moved out quickly, pulling a Y-turn and roaring out onto the road. He saw headlights in the distance, coming from the city, but he was already turning right, out into the desert.
Half a mile away, he looked in the rearview mirror and saw the headlights turning into the parking lot. It looked like they’d just made it.
“Get on the phone, Kevin. We don’t have a lot of time.”
***
Carlo Santelli walked out the door and down toward his car with a mixture of satisfaction and sadness. He was about halfway to the vehicle when the phone rang.
“Yessir.” He’d been expecting Brannigan to call. After all, today was the day that they finally got Sam Childress installed in a house of his own, with full-time care and state-of-the-art security. After getting shot in the spine in Transnistria, the young mercenary had then been kidnapped out of the hospital by operatives working for the Humanity Front. They’d worked him over pretty good, fractured his skull, and left him with some permanent brain damage. The Blackhearts had found allies who had gotten him to a secret hospital site out in the country, but it had been far from any of the Blackhearts’ homes, and it had taken a good deal of resources.
And the man couldn’t live the rest of his life in a hospital.
Now, while Childress was a backwoods boy who’d never liked cities, he was just down the block from Santelli’s own house in the Boston suburbs. That meant that not only could they get him the care he needed, but Santelli could keep an eye on him. He’d had a fatherly concern for the younger man since their days in the Marine Corps, when Sergeant Major Santelli had needed to discipline the hotheaded Corporal—or Lance Corporal, depending on the month—Childress a few times.
“How’s our boy?” Brannigan must have been busy, since he hadn’t been there to get Childress settled in. Which meant they had a job.
“Getting used to the wheelchair. I don’t think he’ll ever get used to being fussed over. I might have made a mistake—the permanent nurse we found is awfully pretty. And she’s really good at fussing over him, too.” Santelli chuckled a little, even as he tensed up a bit.
He knew there was a job in the offing. And he’d been wrestling with the fact that he wasn’t sure he was up to it anymore since before Azerbaijan.
It wasn’t that he was scared. Not really. At least, he wasn’t scared for himself. He’d lived with death since he’d been a teenager, first in the old neighborhood, then in the Marine Corps, and finally with the Blackhearts.
No, he was afraid for his family. He had a retirement, but he could only imagine how that might get screwed up if the VA found out that he’d bought it on an illegal mercenary mission somewhere in a country Americans weren’t supposed to be.
Carlo Junior hadn’t been born yet when they’d gone to Khadarkh. He hadn’t had this concern when they’d started.
“I think he’s getting better, Colonel.” He tried to continue the conversation as normally as he could. “He’s always going to have some short-term memory problems—don’t we all—but he’s more alert now. More aware of what’s going on around him.”
“Good.” Brannigan sounded a little pensive. “We’ve got a job.”
Santelli stopped in his tracks, angry at just how tense and nervous he felt. But if he’d given anything away by his silence, Brannigan acted as
