Ironically, it wasn’t his association with Covert-One that was the problem this time; it was his day job at USAMRIID, the army’s infectious disease research group. While details of the SEAL’s operation were classified beyond top secret, it was impossible to keep the fact that he’d been in Africa from the medical team treating him. The sudden appearance of an army microbiologist charged with tracking deadly diseases and bioweapons was bound to raise eyebrows.
“Yeah. You’re helping me out,” Smith said. “But there isn’t much to tell. My guess is that all this is nothing but a waste of perfectly good tax dollars.”
Blankenship frowned and started up the stairs again. “You’re back in intelligence, aren’t you?”
“No.”
“Come on, Jon. I went from MASH units to three kids and a pool that leaks no matter how much I spend to fix it. Do you know what the most exciting thing that happened to me in the last month was? My wife told me she wants to quit her job and become a full-time artist. And that’s not exciting in a good way, you know? So throw me a bone, here. Tell me how the other half lives.”
Smith enunciated carefully. “I swear to you that I am not working for Military Intelligence.”
“And this guy isn’t carrying some supersecret bug we should know about.”
“I think you’re moving into tinfoil-hat territory now, Ron.”
Blankenship slammed the bar handle of a door leading to an empty hallway. “You win, Jon. Just like always. Go down there and take a left. It’s the second door on the right.”
“I owe you one, Ron.”
They shook hands and Blankenship clapped him on the shoulder. “Next time you’re in town let’s have a drink. Since you don’t like the subject of current events, we’ll get hammered and relive the glory days.”
“Sounds good. Maybe even take a dip in your pool if it has water in it.”
His old friend grimaced and ducked back into the stairwell as Smith made his way down the hall. He found the door and paused with his hand on the knob, mentally running through the list of questions he’d put together and wondering again about the best way to handle them.
When he finally entered, the young sailor struggled to his feet.
“At ease, Lieutenant.”
Rivera ignored him and, teetering on his casted leg, gave a sharp salute. “Good evening, Colonel.”
Smith returned the salute. “Good evening. Please. Sit.”
He did, and Smith took the only other chair, placing Rivera’s personnel folder on the table between them. Blankenship’s description of a washing machine and bowling balls was right on — in addition to the leg, the young man’s face was bruised and stitched, and his left shoulder was in a harness.
Despite that, though, he was in a dress uniform meticulously altered to work with his injuries and complete with gleaming sidearm. A soldier’s soldier.
“I appreciate you agreeing to see me on such short notice,” Smith said. “I know how difficult this has been for you.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’ve read your report, but I’d like you to tell me what happened in your own words.”
“My entire team was wiped out,” he said, the bitterness clearly audible in his voice. “Except me. I understand they made a movie about it. You should try to catch it sometime.”
Smith kept his expression impassive and didn’t respond. Eventually, the silence went on long enough that Rivera felt compelled to fill it.
“A kid came running up the road with people chasing her. She seemed to know we were there. She wanted us to help her. To save her.”
“The people behind her weren’t normal soldiers, though.”
“Not the way we think of soldiers, sir. It just looked like random people from a village or a market or something.”
“Were any of them armed?”
Rivera shook his head in shame. “A few may have had sticks. I’m not sure. Some of them didn’t even have clothes. They were covered in something that looked like blood…” His voice trailed off and his expression turned blank.
“You fired into them,” Smith prompted.
“Didn’t really want to kill them, sir. Just get them to back off so we could disappear. But they didn’t back off. It was like they didn’t care. Like they didn’t even notice.” He paused for a moment. “They tell me you know who we are. Who we were…”
“The very best of all our special forces combined into one elite team.”
“That’s right. And the best of us was a guy named Donny Praman. He was a high school football player from Ohio, and even by my standards, the guy wasn’t human. He never got scared, he never got tired, he never got hurt or sick. And I watched a fat woman chase him down like he was nothing. How does that happen, Colonel? Can you tell me that?”
“I’m afraid I can’t. But I’m going to find out. What happened next? After Praman went down?”
“I don’t know,” he said, his bitterness becoming more and more intense. “I was too busy running.”
Smith looked down at his pen, rolling it back and forth across the tabletop with his index finger. “Could you have saved them, son?”
He could feel Rivera’s eyes lock on him but didn’t look up.
“It doesn’t matter if I could save them or not, sir.”
“I disagree. If you couldn’t, then it was your job to survive and report back.”
“Report back? Report what? That I let my team get killed by a bunch of unarmed women and children? That I walked into an ambush?”
“Calm down, Lieutenant.”
“You look like a pretty hard man, Colonel. But with all due respect, you’re just a doctor. You have no idea what we’re talking about right now.”
Smith let out a quiet breath. In fact, he knew exactly what they were talking about. He’d watched friends die when he’d managed to walk away. He’d spent endless nights playing and replaying what had happened — what he could have done differently. But the operations that he’d been involved in were so classified that, technically, even he wasn’t cleared to know about them.
“I should have killed the woman,” Rivera said, now fixated on an empty wall, talking to himself. “She must have gotten word to Bahame that we were there. The safety of my men was my responsibility, and I copped out.”
“Killing an injured woman that you have no reason to believe is connected with your target is a serious decision, son. In your position, I wouldn’t have done it.”
“It doesn’t matter what you would have done!” Rivera shouted. “I was in command! The bitch was probably going to die anyway. And so she could live a few more hours, I watched my men get butchered. And then I ran — not to come back and report. Not to try to flank the people tearing them apart. I ran because I saw those people. I looked into their eyes and I panicked!”
“Enough!” Smith said, slamming his hands down on the table.
Rivera was breathing hard, and one of the wounds on his forehead had started to seep, creating a thin red line along the bridge of his nose.
Smith’s phone rang, and he looked down at it. Klein.
“I don’t have time for all this navel gazing,” he said, standing. “I’m going to take this call, and while I’m gone you’re going to think about what details you left out of your report that could help me figure out what happened to you and your men. Are we clear, Lieutenant?”
13
The Land Cruiser’s speedometer was showing 150 kilometers per hour when the sharp left turn appeared in the headlights. Dembe Kaikara slammed on the brakes and twisted the wheel, listening to the scream of the tires struggling to maintain traction.