The bad thing was there was a high probability of getting killed being a member of the team even if one were perfect with tradecraft and fieldcraft. Murphy was always waiting to screw things up.
She asked more questions. He was beginning to miss Ms. Jones’s in-briefing and “why we are here” speech because he had no clue why he was here. He batted back the conversational shuttlecock and asked her all the required questions in return.
She was lying too. She had a little twitch on her left eyebrow. Mac had taught him how to look for tells. She’d have been a lousy poker player.
Doc knew he was lying, but he had a good reason; he had to keep secrets larger than himself. In his business, one learned that a secret could only be protected by lies. She was lying because she’d already made a decision to never meet him again. He’d known that from his first look, and he knew it was because he had not been paying attention, anxiously awaiting her entrance and not pulling out her chair for her.
Some women need that chair pulled out. She was one. She knew if he wasn’t focused on her from the start, she could never get that focus.
He did give her points because she’d accurately judged him so quickly and just as quickly made her decision. Decisiveness was good.
“And your credit score?” she asked after their salads arrived and before the meal, as the shuttlecock was drifting lazily toward the floor.
“My what?”
“Credit score?”
“I do not know.”
The tell was twitching and he knew that was the wrong, wrong answer. At that moment Doc would rather have been anywhere and, despite knowing what it meant, he actually was glad when his phone began playing “Lawyers, Guns and Money.”
“Good friends help you move,” Mac said. “Great friends help you move a body.”
“I’m hoping it won’t come to that,” Kirk said, pulling back slightly on the slide of his MK23, making sure there was a round in the chamber. It was a glaring sign of the nervousness held by the other three in the black SUV because they’d all supposedly checked their weapons before entering the vehicle.
But it was also a reminder.
“Eagle?” Mac asked.
Eagle sighed, but didn’t reply. Kirk reached across and drew Eagle’s pistol. He pulled the slide back and confirmed there was no round in the chamber. He pulled it all the way back, chambering one.
“Make sure it’s on safe,” Mac said, “ ’cause we don’t want Eagle shooting his dick off.”
“My finger is my safety,” Roland said, the refrain of all shooters in Special Ops. “And really, really good friends help you make a body.”
“And your dick is going to kill you,” Mac said. “How much did you blow in Vegas this time?”
“Not much,” Roland said, but he was shifting into action mode and even Mac couldn’t needle him out of that.
Eagle was driving, because Eagle always drove. Kirk was in the passenger seat because this was his turf, northwest Arkansas, just above the Ozark National Forest and below the loop of the Buffalo River National Park. Roland and Mac were jammed in the backseat, Roland’s knees shoved into the back of Eagle’s seat, which bothered him, but it wasn’t like Roland could make himself shrink. And Eagle needed as much legroom as possible.
If Nada was there, he would have made Roland and Mac switch places. But Nada was with Zoey, a story none of them believed, because no one believed Zoey was real, so who the hell knew where Nada was?
They’d left the Snake in an isolated field twelve miles back, a place Kirk said it would be safe, but like any good driver, Eagle had shut all the hatches and put on the security system. Anyone touched the Snake, they’d get zapped with enough volts to put ’em out but not kill ’em. They’d still be lying next to the aircraft by the time the team got back from its vacation mission.
If they got back.
“This is a town?” Eagle asked as they approached Parthenon.
“I thought Texas had some real shitholes,” Mac drawled, “but you boys up here got us beat.”
“Reminds me of home,” Roland noted with all sincerity and perhaps a twinge of longing, angling his commando dagger in the sunlight, checking the edge.
“This isn’t Senators Club,” Eagle said, referring to the gated community where they’d run their last Rift mission.
A sign warned that Highway 327 did a hard juke to the left at the stop sign. It was as best they could tell since bullet holes had chewed most of the sign off. The stop sign, which seemed to anchor the town to the intersection, was also riddled. The place was more an intersection than a metropolis.
“Take a right,” Kirk said, taking them off the two-lane hardball onto a one-and-a-half-lane paved road that had seen better days.
“I remember the plan and the terrain,” Eagle said, but gently, knowing Kirk was nervous enlisting them on a personal mission. But who better to help you than the comrades you entrusted your life to?
The paved road gave way to a single dirt-rutted lane.
“Mac?” Kirk asked.
“Roger,” Mac said. Eagle tapped the brakes and Mac was out the door with his pack and rifle case and into the underbrush on the north side of the road. Roland put half of the backseat down and assumed the prone position, trying to get out of sight. Combined with the tinted windows, it was a bit of overkill perhaps, but Roland was going into combat mode and the word overkill never applied.
It wasn’t easy, given he had body armor on and his combat vest. He’d argued he should be the one with the rifle on overwatch, but this was Kirk’s op. Kirk knew Roland would have more value standing behind him as a presence. He’d also be less likely to start shooting people by misjudging threats through a sniper scope. Mac was more levelheaded with bullets. He fired them like he owned them and each one cost a lot.
Eagle continued on and they reached a stream. There was no bridge and Eagle plowed into the water. They roared up out on the other side.
They reached a fork in the road and Eagle turned right. They switchbacked up a slight rise and then Eagle stopped the SUV. Not part of the plan, but there were two men standing in the road with AR-15s aimed at the windshield. They wore Arkansas formal attire, meaning they were draped in one-piece camouflage hunting outfits and wearing beat-up baseball caps.
Kirk got out, hands up. “I need to talk to Ray.”
“I remember you,” one of the men said. “You Pads’s oldest boy.” He walked a couple steps closer to the SUV and peered at the tinted windshield. “Who’s your friend?”
“Buddy from the army.”
“You got bad choices in buddies,” the man said as he spit tobacco into the dirt. “We don’t like his kind ’round here.”
“You mean intelligent?” Kirk asked.
“Don’t get smart with me.”
Kirk laughed. “That’s called irony.”
The other man spoke up. “What you want with Ray?”
“It’s between me and him,” Kirk said. “Family business which ain’t your business.” Kirk was falling back into the lingo of Winthrop Carter, the man he’d been before the Nightstalkers and before the army.
The first man shook his head. “Not if I don’t let you go talk to him.”
“It’s about the kid and your sister,” the other man said. “Ain’t it?”
Kirk nodded. “Yes.”
The second man shook his head. “You can go talk to Ray, but you gonna see he ain’t listening to people much anymore. No matter who it is or what they say. He ain’t the same as you remember. He ain’t the same as anyone remembers.”
“What’s wrong with him?” Kirk asked.
The second man shrugged. “Don’t know, but he’s in charge now and no one is going to ask him. He’s mean as a cottonmouth if you confront him.”