The pickup skidded to a halt in front of the well. Mossa stepped out of the Toyota and motioned for Pearce to follow. The other two stayed behind on alert. Pearce kept his weapon slung over his shoulder and gripped the aluminum attaché case in one hand.
Mossa marched to a nearby house and stopped. Bullet holes scarred the mud-brick walls. He motioned to the doorway illuminated in early-morning light. It was already warming up.
“Your friend is in here.”
Pearce nodded and marched past Mossa into the little house. This close he could see the lines around the older man’s eyes. The Tuareg fighter was five feet ten and powerfully built, but still four inches shorter than Pearce.
Mike Early sat at a small table drinking hot tea. The kettle still steamed where it sat on the hot coals in the fireplace. His left arm was in a sling, and an olive-drab shemagh was draped around his neck, the U.S. Army’s version of a keffiyeh.
“Troy? What are you doing here?” He stood. A wide, toothy grin spread across his bearded face.
“Came to get you out of here.” Pearce crossed to Early and bear-hugged his old friend. “Heard you were wounded and needed an evac.”
Early held up his slinged arm. “This? I’ve had cases of clap worse than this. It’s just a sprain.”
“That’s not what we were told.”
“Don’t blame him. I made the call.” The woman’s heavy Italian accent gave her away.
Pearce turned around. Cella stood in the doorway. He’d steeled himself for the moment but still nearly lost it. It had been years since he’d seen her. She was clearly exhausted and undernourished, but even in her faded camouflage she was stunning.
“Why?” Pearce asked. His voice was even. “And why me?”
She wore her hair pulled into a ponytail, revealing the proud cheekbones and angular jaw he remembered so vividly. Her blue eyes bored into his. “I knew you would come for your friend.” She stepped closer. At six feet even, she was nearly as tall as he was. A ray of golden sunlight struck her face, softening it. “It’s been a long time, hasn’t it?”
“Yes,” Pearce said. He had a million questions, but now was not the time.
“You two know each other?” Early asked.
One of the corners of Cella’s mouth tugged slightly. Almost a smile. “Yes, we know each other.”
“I’ll be damned. It’s a small world.”
“And getting smaller. There’s a convoy on the way.” Pearce motioned to Early. “We need to haul ass.”
“Me? I’m not going anywhere,” Mike said. “I’ve got a job to do.”
“What job?”
Early nodded at Cella. “Her. I’m her security.”
Cella rolled her eyes. “My father’s watchdog.”
“It’s complicated. Like an arranged marriage,” Early said.
“So what am I doing here?” Pearce asked. He glanced at Cella. “I take it you want a lift?”
“Not for me.”
Pearce nodded at Mossa. “Him?”
“No,” he said. “My place is here, with my people.”
Cella brushed past Pearce, close enough that he could smell the sweat in her hair. A memory flooded him. He pushed it away. She stooped a little as she entered a low doorway toward another room. Pearce followed.
Cella pointed toward a bed. A young girl lay on it. Motionless. Eyes closed.
“I need you to take her.”
“A body?”
“Asleep. I gave her a sedative for the journey.”
“Who is she?” Pearce asked.
“My granddaughter,” Mossa said. His fierce black eyes softened beneath the indigo veil.
“My father in Milan is expecting her,” Cella said.
“I’m not running a taxi service. Call somebody else.”
“We can’t. Everybody else would use her to get to Mossa. The only person I trust to help us is you.”
“And you knew about this?” Pearce asked Early.
“First I’m hearing about it. But it makes sense. We’re in the shit out here.”
“You trust me,” Pearce said to Cella. “But you lied to me.”
“You were my last hope. My only hope,” Cella said.
“I don’t understand. What is the girl to you?” Pearce asked.
Cella searched Pearce’s blue eyes, a question weighing heavily in her own. A moment passed. She found her answer.
“She’s my daughter.”
26
Pearce’s cabin
Near the Snake River, Wyoming
7 May
Myers buried her nose in Pearce’s shirt and breathed it in again. It smelled just like him. A combination of sweat and testosterone, mingled with wood smoke and bacon. It brought back fond memories. She hadn’t seen him in over a year, but the olfactory sense was the most powerful of them all and, when triggered, elicited strong emotions, too. Something stirred inside of her, but she felt guilty as hell, sitting in Pearce’s cabin, wearing his shirt while her clothes were in the wash. She was invading his privacy in the worst way, though technically she’d been invited to do so.
She had never depended upon anyone since she was a young girl putting herself through college. But she was afraid and alone, and without sufficient resources for the job at hand. She ran a software company, not a security firm, and was persona non grata with the Greyhill administration, so she turned to Pearce, the only man she truly trusted for help. First for Mike Early, then herself.
There was something indescribably male about Pearce. She’d thought about him often since her resignation. She called on him to take out the Mexican cartel killers who had murdered those poor teenagers, along with her only son. Pearce did as he was asked, and more. She owed him everything. So did the nation. They had all let him down, it seemed. She hoped he had found Mike Early in time and gotten him out of Mali in one piece. Mike was a good guy. So was Pearce. She trusted him completely. He didn’t let her down when she needed him. And now she needed him again.
It was impossible to be around Pearce and not feel like a man was in the room. Solid, dependable, masculine. The kind of man who would fight and die for his country, a rare breed these days. The kind of man who would defend a woman’s honor and her life, whether in a bar fight or a firefight. There weren’t many of those left, either. Video games and boy bands and androgynous movie actors were feminizing everything. In the current culture, the masculine was pitifully obsolete, testosterone an environmental hazard.
Myers poured herself another cup of coffee and gathered her wits. Enough dawdling. Time to get to work. Ian’s package that had been delivered to her at the Glory Box café by Sadie contained all of the necessary keys for Pearce’s cabin and vehicles, along with the alarm code passwords she needed. Pearce had left instructions with Ian that he was to give Myers any and all support she needed should she ever require it. Myers had offered Pearce and his team much the same, though in her capacity as a hands-off owner of a private software company, there wasn’t much she could bring to the table compared with the resources available to Pearce Systems.
She began the terminal session on Pearce’s Linus desktop by plugging in the flash drive Ian sent her and followed his script exactly. Moments later she was tunneling on Ian’s encrypted virtual private network (VPN). Ian’s VPN operated in the Dark Net where 97 percent of all Web content was located and yet was mostly inaccessible to the billions of online users. The Surface Web where people used Google and Facebook was only a tiny fraction of the online world. While some black market vendors hid in the netherworld of the Dark Net in order to sell illegal or contraband items, legitimate users, like lan, just didn’t want to be found.