“Hell, I can’t stop Jeanne from nothing even though I pay the credit card bill.” He stuffed another handful of antacids in his mouth. “So’s you know, fringe benefit of seniority and being a true Italian, I don’t have to do everything. I limit myself to real garbage and let the young wannabes handle the other shit.”
“Good. Because I will destroy the man behind this, and Black and Swan, and their drug network.” A molten core of vengeance filled his emptiness, but to be free to take down Unferth, he had to know that Theresa was safe. “I can’t guard her. The army won’t believe she needs security. Can you protect her?”
“She’s family.”
He could predict Carl’s next answer but still offered. “You could all disappear quietly. We’ll find private doctors in Switzerland. A beach, if you prefer. Anything you want, my brother and I will pay.”
Carl blew through his lips like a horse. “First, I pay for my family. Second, Jeanne can’t be quiet. Third, I got a business to run. I won’t hide. Anyway, Theresa wouldn’t do it.”
“I had to ask.”
“Understood. I forgive the insult.”
“Then we’ll send men, across the street from your house, 24/7.” Ivar would be furious at both the promise and its revelation, but he always paid blood debts.
“I’ll take care of inside. My boy Raymond lives at home and I’ll set my nephew above the garage. Jeanne loves feeding him.”
“You understand the risks.” Wulf put the car in gear to return to Fisher House. “Black and Swan planted a bomb on a vehicle inside a secure army compound. They killed the head of the Senate Armed Services Committee. They won’t think twice about some people in suburban New Jersey.”
“I got security.”
“So did the army.”
Chapter Twenty-One
The fifth arrondissement of Paris eddied around Draycott. The knowledge of how much Jane would have enjoyed the bistro across the Boulevard Saint-Michel made him hunch his shoulders and stare at the pavement. He knew what he looked like: a solitary vieillard, wearing his only suit of clothes, beat thin by living. For the first time in forty years, what he looked like mirrored the truth.
As he stepped to the curb, a chic university student, the type who might have been friends with his stepdaughter in other circumstances, swerved from his path. Her tilted head and gently curved mouth showed pity before she glanced away, embarrassed by the inadvertent eye contact.
The white business envelope contrasted with his dark glove, then momentarily with the bright-yellow postbox until it disappeared through the slot and became one of millions of letters in the French postal system. After flying over the Atlantic, it would be routed to the U.S. Armed Forces mail-processing center on Long Island, where it would mix with thousands of cards and packages returning across the ocean to Afghanistan. Once there, it would reach the hands of a soldier surely seeking vengeance identical to his own. All the information Draycott could offer Wardsen was in that letter.
The first missile had flown. Now he needed to plan the next salvo against the Director.
“Cave-in?” Wulf offered Deavers another death scenario.
“Recovery ops might fly in an excavator.” His captain handed Wulf a nonalcoholic beer, the only piss allowed on deployments, then tilted on two chair legs.
In the weeks since the senator’s death, the high-level attention dumped on Camp Caddie had alerted pencil necks outside Special Operations Command to Wulf’s unauthorized forays into Pakistan, Italy and Germany. The memo front and center on Deavers’s desk demanded copies of orders, expense vouchers, supply requisitions and flight requests pertaining to Staff Sergeant Wulf Wardsen. The list of recipients filled twelve lines.
Wulf wouldn’t be going home with the team.
The near beer tasted like fizzy metal.
“Walk away. Load and go.” The can in Deavers’s fist crinkled. “Tonight. I don’t want freaky-acronym spooks snagging you—”
“We’ve been over that.” They’d located the mother ship of the opium processing facilities, and he refused to disappear before finishing Black and Swan. With his chest feeling like a squeezed-out meal pouch every time he thought of Theresa, he didn’t really care about the details of his pending death, but he played the game. “What about an explosion?”
“You know IEDs.” Deavers focused on his empty can as if it was a picture of his baby son. In the years he’d known Wulf, he hadn’t broken the team’s unspoken command: Don’t ask about Wulf’s difference. But lately the edges of that rule had started to fray. “They always recover some DNA.”
“Can’t.” Other eras, other battlefields, he’d left remains to be identified, but simplicity was a casualty of modern science. No DNA left behind.
Theresa left hers. He ached to take her pain and give her his healing ability, but he couldn’t. Yesterday he’d broken down and phoned Carl, who’d told him she was up on crutches and might be an outpatient by September—if she avoided infections, if she didn’t develop bone spurs, if, if, if. Although the agony of fitting and learning to use a prosthetic remained and her swelling wasn’t fully controlled, her progress seemed miraculous.
After six years, his friend read his mind. “She’ll pull through. She’s tough.”
They returned to the satellite images of the heroin facility. On the surface it looked like ordinary mud-and-concrete buildings, a blip of nothing two klicks along the road to nowhere. But ground-penetrating radar scans revealed tunnels connecting several underground spaces, including one room large enough to house a basketball court. A thermal scan showed a glowing generator that pumped power to the hidden complex. This was no simple farm spread.
“Two Westerners have visited since surveillance began.” Deavers pushed more photos across the desk. “Face recognition IDs this one as a Black and Swan guy, but this one’s unmatched.”
“CIA?” They hadn’t yet linked anyone in theater to that call from the disposable phone in Italy.
“Cruz is still looking.” The medic had the best computer skills on the team.
“So we hit while the contractor’s there.” In older photos a dry streambed marked the south edge of the compound, but in recent ones it had morphed into a churning brown mess. Wulf tapped the spot. “This can’t be snowmelt.”
“Tail of the Pakistan monsoon’s reaching here too. Probably a lively stream through September.” While Deavers talked, he hunted for his can of chew. “Maybe farmers will grow some fucking wheat next spring instead of poppies. Feed their kids instead of Russian junkies.”
“Skip the explosions and shoot me. I’ll fall in the water and be swept downriver.”
The captain snorted around the wad in his lip. “I won’t call you a wet pussy. Cruz will.”
“You want to go in that river wearing fifty pounds of equipment, be my guest.”
“Last time we practiced self-rescues with full gear, I crushed you by what, nine seconds getting out?” Wulf’s boss smirked at the usual team gripe about extra pool training. The competition between Deavers and the navy officers across the post in SEAL Team 6 wasn’t always friendly.
“Only a loser remembers how much he wins by, sir, and this water’s balls colder than Gardner Pool.” He had one last issue to tackle. “What about bringing an embed photographer? The pics can stand in for a body.” Laura would play nice for a story like this.
“No press.” Deavers spit into his empty can. “Too much can go wrong.”
“With outside documentation, the Pentagon can’t bury this in a secret award citation.” Leaning across the desk, he prepared to convince his commander to go big as Beowulf’s words from fifteen centuries ago filled him: Better to avenge than to mourn. “The chief, the doc, the senator—” his finger stabbed the plywood three times, “—I don’t want to destroy a shipment or a lab. They can make more opium. I want to sink Black and Swan’s whole fucking boat, cancel their cushy deals, sever the world logistics contract and stop every shipment.” Pens rattled when his fist hit the desk, but it didn’t begin to release the anger that had built in him. “The army pays their damn mileage! I want to hack until they bleed.” Like their victims—