Wulf let Carl steer him to the room’s farthest corner.
“My girl told her ma it was no big deal that she went back to Afghanistan early.” His whisper dropped so low that Wulf had to lean in to hear. “I was part of a shitty war too, and only guy I ever knew went back to ’Nam early had offed a hooker in Manila. So I’m putting that together with a guy like you standing at her door, and I want to know—” Carl was so close that Wulf could smell coffee on his breath, “—whadda-fuck is going on? You some sort of guard?”
The email he’d read meant maybe he was. But as drained as he felt, he’d be useless if needed. He realized he hadn’t eaten in over a day. Damn. No wonder his vision blurred when he looked at Theresa.
“Waiting for an answer.” Carl jibed him back to reality.
“Too many ears.” Wulf flicked his eyes at Theresa’s mother.
“Fine. Where and when?”
“Two hours.” Now that he’d seen Theresa, he had to recharge. He also had to call Deavers. “I’ll find you at Fisher House.”
“I got one take-away for you.” Not an ounce of the big man looked friendly. “Anybody messes with my girl, their gene pool gets drained, got it? I take care of my business.”
“So do I.” Wulf allowed his control to loosen for a moment, showing the other man how fifteen centuries of fighting could whet a man’s soul to a knife-edge.
“Our ways might be pretty similar, heh.” Carl half squinted. “You look like you got some coglioni. Maybe I could like you.”
Maybe he could like Carl too, and maybe he had a new ally for whatever lay ahead. Because sure as generals expected their shit shined, if the rest of that convoy had disappeared, something sucked.
When Wulf shifted the rental car to first gear in front of the free lodging for families of injured soldiers, a cigarette glow beside the porch marked where to stop for Carl.
“I don’t usually ride with drivers who don’t have references.” Carl lifted the papers and small flashlight off the passenger seat before sitting. “My group life insurance has strict rules.”
“Read that.” He had no idea how Deavers had acquired the FBI’s preliminary findings, but he owed his boss for emailing a copy. Wulf’s anger choked him to the point where he knew if he tried to speak, he’d scream.
Minutes later, Carl stopped reading. “I don’t get it. This says—” he licked his thumb to turn back a page, “—blast point of origin twenty-two to twenty-four inches above road surface.”
Wulf kept the car rolling while he fought for enough self-control to answer.
“I don’t understand.” But Carl’s tone said he did. His voice had the slow beat of a man whose world has capsized, like when he finds out his wife had an affair with his brother or his broker stole millions. Or his country fucked with his kid.
“The bomb was fixed to the SUV’s undercarriage, not buried in the road.” Speaking the words made them real, meant he could no longer believe this was a Taliban bomb. “It was professional. Almost surgical. Little collateral damage.” Hearing the words hammered home the message: Theresa’s injury was his fault.
Carl let loose and smashed his fist on the dashboard. German engineering could handle it, so Wulf let him pound and swear until he shuddered to a halt. “Gotta keep it together. For Jeanne.”
Several seconds later, his passenger’s breathing was closer to normal. “She’s got me doing yoga shit with her to help with my blood pressure.”
“You’ll need it.” He squeezed the steering wheel. If he let go, he’d pound the dash too, and they’d end up in the ditch. “There’s more.”
“Wait a sec.” Carl pulled something out of his jacket pocket. “Antacid?”
The pain of remembering Theresa and her Tic Tac box robbed him of speech. Nothing Carl offered could ease the boiling in his stomach when his soul whispered, This was Unferth. This was your fault.
His passenger crunched loudly. “Go on.”
“A photographer at the scene recalled a Black and Swan employee directing Theresa to the senator’s vehicle.” He’d stood in that parking lot as well, angry and frustrated as he’d watched, but he hadn’t stopped them. “Maybe that wasn’t a coincidence.”
“Why would an outfit like Black and Swan care about my girl? I don’t do business with them. I got no defense contracts, nothing international.” He floundered into silence.
“I don’t believe this has to do with your business.”
“She tell you what I do?” Carl’s voice had a sharper edge.
“No.” The moment of truth had arrived. More than once, Ivar had made his opinion about privacy clear, but Wulf no longer gave a bucket of camel shit. “My brother did.”
“Who’s he?”
“Beo Holdings.” Revealing the connection to his brother’s hedge fund was a gamble, but Carl deserved honesty.
“Shiiiit.” Carl’s reverence for money showed in that drawn out vowel. “And you’re a noncomm dirt pounder?”
“I like it that way.”
“So does my girl. Won’t take nothing from us except clothes from her mother. Always has—had—has, dammit—to do it herself.”
Wulf suspected his passenger’s raspy voice owed more to tears than cigarettes. Like anger, grief could be contagious, and his eyes prickled. The headlights revealed the vestiges of a downsized army post, nothing to distract him from his guilt while Carl composed himself.
Finally Wulf felt able to ask another question. “You handle drugs?”
“You got more explaining to do before I answer that.”
In the corner of the closed military-exchange lot, Wulf parked away from the pools of light illuminating empty spaces. Telling Carl what he’d involved Theresa in was the hardest thing he could imagine right now, but he took a deep breath and started.
“Theresa and I were in Italy together. It was...” Words couldn’t capture the dinners and laughter. “Wonderful. Perfect.” He didn’t want to continue. “Then there was trouble.” He wasn’t articulate enough to describe the carnage. “My Special Forces team is investigating heroin smuggling by Black and Swan. Thought it was only an army problem, and I could handle everything. But it was about more than drugs.”
“Yeah? What?”
If Carl swung at him, he’d take the hit. He deserved worse punishment for his arrogance.
“There’s an old feud between my brother and the man who controls Black and Swan, but I didn’t know who ran the company when we were in Italy.” Maybe because he’d barely slept in two days, opening up was too easy. If he wasn’t careful he’d start mentioning names. “They connected Theresa to me and my brother. Not sending her back sooner was a mistake.”
For a long minute Carl breathed loud and hard in his seat, as if struggling to control his reactions, until finally he said, “No one can send her anywhere. If she don’t want to go, you can’t make her. If she wants to go, you can’t stop her. She’s like that.”
Across the parking lot, a stream of happy couples exited a movie theater. At this distance, he couldn’t see their ages or dress or races. They were silhouettes drifting through pools of light and voids of dark, starting cars and driving away to their lives. Normal lives. Regular people. And here he was. And Theresa wasn’t.
“I had to cut her seat belt to get her out.” Where had that come from? He rested his forehead on the wheel and closed his eyes to block the lucky people. “The SUV was burning.”
“You saved her.”
“The convoy wasn’t following security procedures. No armor, no gunners. I told her not to go, but she wanted to give the hospital tour. Show how much more the Afghans need.” He tasted salt on his lips. “I didn’t stop her. I didn’t try hard enough.”