“Don’t order the mega-triple-fat-attack, amigo.” Cruz yanked a knit hat over their captive’s eyes.
He’d miss these guys. Bad.
“Fucking A-plus for speed.” Deavers’s congratulations crackled over the commo link. “Although I hear Howling Wolf owes two bucks to the tip jar. Remember, gentlemen, our taxpayer overlords own each and every bullet. In tough budget times, we operate on the one-shot one-kill principle.”
“Take it out of my paycheck, sir. Okay to send Rizzotti down.” Laura planned to photograph documents and upload them by satellite to multiple news organizations. After the clusterfuck of the disappearing car-bomb evidence, no one was taking chances. She’d have a big story, they’d have rough justice and Black and Swan would have a steaming mess.
“Power’s up,” Bravo team reported.
In the fluorescent yellow, Wulf counted three rows of six pallets loaded with heroin bags, a half dozen stainless-steel cooking vats, a small conveyor belt and one shrink-wrap machine.
“Look at this shit,” Kahananui called from a corner rigged like a comic-strip cubicle hell, with sand-colored partitions, wood-veneer desks, computers, printers and steel file cabinets. “Every piece of crap here has a Property of the United States Government tag. Fuckers have a nicer printer than we do.”
“This is weirder.” Cruz had his hands on the lid of a chest freezer. “Want to bet there’s a stinking body?” Lifting it revealed bundles of hundred-dollar bills stacked next to euro notes, all the way to the top. The air went out of the room.
“A briefcase is roughly three-quarters of a mill. That must be...” Kahananui paused, probably calculating the freezer’s volume like Wulf. “Twenty-five? Thirty?”
“In a freezer?” Cruz couldn’t look away from his find.
“Rat proof,” Wulf offered. “Remember the cash in Saddam’s warehouse?”
“Sent a bag of shreds home to my girls. World’s most expensive gerbil bedding.” Kahananui hooted. “Good fun, but Jewel was pissed because it stank like money.”
Wulf and Cruz joined his laughter, the shared memories consuming what they knew—but wouldn’t acknowledge—was their last hour together.
“Wait—an idea—” Wulf had to catch his breath before continuing. Tomorrow was time enough to anticipate reuniting with Theresa. Tonight was about the team, and laughing sure as hell beat going out bawling. “Take off your shirt, Cruz. Show your flaming skull tat and that haul, and you’ll hit the front pages and the internet.”
“Special-Ops studly man with the big cash money.” Kahananui doubled over, clutching his stomach as he howled. “Honeys will throw their panties at you in bars.”
“I’m off panty bars.” Cruz almost managed to look affronted. “Smart women, they’re like, hot.”
The shock on Kahananui’s face kept Wulf laughing even after Cruz’s elbow pad connected with his side solidly enough to stagger him.
“How you planning to ace one of those?” The Hawaiian asked. “You’re no Wulfie, all sad kitty eyes and foreign-language-poetry bullshit.”
“Sitting in a fancy espresso shop reading a book and drinking overpriced coffee.” Cruz flexed. “Like fishing with dynamite.”
“This load is amazing.” Laura trotted out from the tunnel and stared between the three of them. “What’d I miss?”
Cruz’s grin widened. “Or maybe I’ll read a newspaper.”
Wulf rapped his buddy’s helmet with a flashlight. “Not that one,” he growled. “Back to work.” He itched to open cabinets and search computers, but first he had questions for their prisoner. Questions about a car bomb.
By late September, maples had reddened outside Theresa’s bedroom windows, as good a sign of passing time as her new-old life offered. Without VA physical-therapy appointments, she might not have remembered the day of the week.
She ignored the ringing house phones. The callers were always her mother’s friends.
“Theresa!” Her mother shouted from downstairs. “Are you upstairs? It’s for you.”
Who the hell called her? “I’m in my room.” That wasn’t loud enough for her mother to hear, so she yelled, “Up here!”
Trotting into Theresa’s room with a portable handset, Jeanne announced, “It’s one of your friends. From...” She floundered over the word, so Theresa knew it must be Afghanistan as she grabbed for the handset.
“Hello? Hello?” She couldn’t catch her breath. After two months, he’d called.
“Theresa? It’s Jennifer.”
Not Wulf. She slumped into her mound of pillows.
“I called as soon as I thought you’d be awake. You haven’t heard, have you?” Her friend’s voice sounded rushed and worried, not like Jen’s usual blend of peppiness and irony.
“Heard what?” Names and faces from the hospital flashed almost strobelike in her mind, and her throat closed. “Who is it? What happened?”
“I’m fine. Everybody at the hospital’s fine. It’s...”
Theresa’s stomach heaved with relief so intense, she wondered if she’d lose the container of yogurt she’d eaten with her morning pain pill.
“The Special Forces sergeant you knew. Wardsen.”
“What about him?” Had he asked for her number or address? Please let Jennifer say she’d given it to him.
“He—” Listening to her former roommate’s indrawn breath, Theresa pictured her pacing in the gravel outside their old B-hut. “Last night on an op, he was shot. He fell in a river wearing heavy gear and they couldn’t grab him. They think—” her friend’s voice broke, “—he drowned.”
“Oh.” Although she knew he wasn’t dead, Theresa also knew Jen expected her to respond with shock and sorrow. “Oh, no, I can’t—” Breathe harder and faster, through your mouth, she reminded herself, as if you’re about to cry— “Oh, no.” Oh, yes. Her fist thumped the mattress. He’d promised to come as soon as he could, and now he’d left the army. Now he’d come to her.
The rest of the conversation was an awkward dance of sympathy that Theresa suspected Jennifer escaped with gratitude after she said she needed to think.
Thinking inadequately described the whirling plans that engulfed her as she scooted to the edge of her mattress and snapped her prosthetic on to the pin sticking out of her silicone stump sleeve. Lottery winners might feel like this, too restless to remain in one spot for more than a few seconds, unable to face other people for fear they’d blurt out their unimaginable fortune, yet too pumped for solitude. When she stood, her hard-won stability on her prosthetic felt almost like flying.
The mirror on the closet door reflected a jittery woman, elbows clenched to her sides, skin pale from lack of sun, with red blotches of excitement on her cheeks and uncontrolled frizzles. Maybe a visit to her mother’s hairdresser wasn’t such a bad idea, but right now her reflection was too wild to consider, so she walked across the room to the door.
Each step worked like her therapists had promised, and she no longer had to juggle backward on crutches when she opened the closet. An unexpected bonus of getting her leg back had been the full freedom to use both hands simultaneously, to open her own doors and even to slam them when she wanted.
In the closet, the corners of three bookstore boxes showed the rigors of their journey roundtrip to and from Afghanistan, then to her old quarters in Texas, then the new Walter Reed Medical Center in Maryland before they’d caught up to her in New Jersey. She didn’t remember what she’d ordered, only that it had been an absurdly expensive assortment about Beowulf. Beyond telling Ray to shove them somewhere, she hadn’t cared. Until today.