Sue “Pete” Peterson swiveled in her Aeron chair and jumped to attention as soon as she saw it was Camille. Her hair was even more closely cropped than Camille remembered, but she still wore enough Old Spice to make Camille nearly gag. Pete worked as the Black Management deputy project manager for logistics for the Baghdad area of operations, but whenever Camille was in town, she reassumed her old role of personal aide to the boss.
“At ease. I thought you were going to salute for a minute there,” Camille said.
“Sorry, ma’am. Old habits die hard.”
“We crapped out in Ramadi. The trail’s cold,” Camille said as she pulled apart the Velcro shoulder straps of her Kevlar vest. Pete helped her out of it and hung it on a coat rack. Camille was very aware of how the sweat made her T-shirt cling to her breasts. So was Pete. Camille would never admit it, but she liked the attention and Pete was more of a gentleman than most of the guys she worked with. It wasn’t that often that Camille let someone make her feel like a lady.
Camille continued speaking. “We must have talked to two hundred shop owners and vendors. Hundreds of people were there yesterday during the riot and they all say they saw nothing. I even believed one or two of them. Iggy back from Afghanistan yet?”
“Tonight. Don’t worry. Virgil’s holding down the fort, but he hasn’t been too happy about it. It’s his shot at being the alpha dog and there’s no one to play with. It’s been quiet lately-real quiet.”
“Quiet makes me nervous. You don’t know where the tangos are. They’re moving around, regrouping for something big.”
“You want some ice water? A soda?”
“I got it. I miss the old speakeasy days. I could use a cold one right now.” Camille opened an apartment-sized refrigerator and pulled out a can of Coke with white Arabic script. She took a sip, then set it on the coffee table and sunk herself into the black leather sofa, closed her eyes and took a long breath as she savored the air conditioning. The unit for her trailer was twice the recommended BTUs for the space and seemed to be one of the few that could stand up to the desert heat.
“I can send one of the boys for whatever you want and I could rustle up some whiskey a little faster than that.” Pete set a glass of ice on the coffee table in front of Camille and poured the soda into it.
“No need. I’m good.”
“Can I be frank with you?” Pete was the kind of woman who, even if you didn’t ask, would tell. It got her into trouble. It got her out of the Army. It got her a job with Camille.
“You always are.”
“We’re not a mom and pop shop anymore. You don’t need to do this yourself. I heard from Virgil that you went out on a run and led a takedown last night. That’s too dangerous for the president of a billion dollar company.”
“We’re not there yet. Though the accountants are projecting we’ll hit it in November if current trends hold.” Camille sipped her Coke. “Things have gotten hot with Rubicon and I needed to see for myself.”
“Is that all?”
“I like to keep my skills sharp.”
“I hear you on that one. I sneak out every once in a while with the boys just to pop a few fly balls. But that wasn’t what I was talking about.” Pete stood and walked over to a cabinet beside the stainless steel sink. “You’ve been at the Kandahar base so much lately, I’ve gotten out of the habit of stocking up for you. Looks like all I’ve got to offer you to eat right now are some corn nuts, pretzels or a stale Ding Dong.”
“Pass on the Ding Dong.”
“Yeah, I wouldn’t touch it either.” Pete ripped open a vending-machine-sized bag of pretzels and dumped them into a blue ceramic bowl hand painted with a geometric pattern and stylized Arabic writing. She offered some to Camille, then set the bowl on the coffee table.
Camille bit into a pretzel. “Business is too good in Afghanistan-actually most of our work at the moment is unofficially over the border in Waziristan, tracking down Abdullah. The Taliban and al Qaeda run that part of Pakistan, but no one wants to admit it any more than they want to admit the US is active there. Even though Pakistan is our good friend in the fight on terror, as far as I’m concerned Pakistani intelligence is the most functional part of al Qaeda.”
“The tangos have sure been going after each other without OBL to hold them together.” Pete plopped down in the armchair across from her. Camille sensed there was something bothering her. Pete’s expression suddenly became more serious and she continued, “I’ll tell it to you straight. You have no business running after this guy.”
“Abdullah? You’ve got to be kidding. He and al-Zahrani are the world’s two most wanted terrorists now that it finally leaked that bin Laden’s long dead.”
“Come on. You know who I mean-Stone. I’ve never seen you put out an alert to all supervisors like this morning. Asking them to grab Stone, sure, but the part about you reserving deadly force for yourself-that was out there.”
“I want him brought in alive. He has some information I need.”
“Right. Come on, Camille. You and I go back to the days when this trailer was sitting at Shuwaikh, impounded by the Kuwait Ports Authority because we didn’t have some trumped up permits. The amazing part is I hauled it up to Baghdad in one piece, more or less. Sure couldn’t do that now, too damn dangerous.”
“Amazing you wrestled it away from them. I thought Black Management was sunk then and there along with everything I owned. Of course, I thought that several times-like when we couldn’t get any operators to join us because they didn’t want to work for a woman. Thank god Iggy joined me. He really turned things around. Without him, we wouldn’t have hit critical mass.”
“Iggy was sure a magnet for the best operators. But you’re selling yourself short. There are a lot of boys who wanted to work with you. You’ve got star power, too.”
“More like sex appeal. I know these guys. All they think about is pussy and that’s all a woman’s good for.” She ran her fingers though her hair, pushing it back behind her ears. “You recognized him from the picture?”
“Oh, yeah. And I’m sure I’m not the only one.” Pete grabbed another soda and drank a swig from the can before filling half a glass. She opened a file cabinet and pulled out a bottle of Wild Turkey. She added a shot, then set the bottle in front of Camille.
Camille dumped some whiskey into her Coke too, even though she was more of a vodka kind of gal.
“When did you find out he wasn’t KIA?” Pete said.
“Two months ago. What I just now found out was that the Agency helped him fake his death so he could marry someone else-a hell of a way to break off an engagement.”
“Ouch. You gonna take him out?”
“You do know me, don’t you?”
“We’ve been around together and I’ve seen more than I should.” Pete shook her glass and the ice cubes clinked against the side.
“What you don’t know is that I’ve been hired personally for the job. Temp Agency stuff. He was working for them inside Rubicon and apparently the new hussy is high maintenance. He got greedy and stupid. Sold seized weapons caches to the tangos.”
“You believe it?”
“I believe enough.” Camille took a deep breath. “It’s a knife straight into my heart. And the more I find out, the more it gets twisted.”
“What if it’s been twisted? You know the Agency. They’re not exactly in the truth business.”
“Even if only half of it is true, choosing death over me is enough to make me want to help him get his wish.”
Pete chuckled. “I hope I don’t ever cross you, but I gotta say, there’s no one I’d rather have watching my back than you. Don’t get me wrong. The boys working for us are the best, but they all do it for adrenaline or money. You’re old-school like your daddy. It’s all about loyalty-loyalty to country, family, friends.”