“Keira, why don’t you make him a drink while I finish up. Make me one, too. Gin and tonic. Although I hear you’re a bourbon man, Captain Cole.”
Fair enough, he supposed.
“I’ve been cutting back.”
“Don’t mind Barb,” Keira whispered, touching his shoulder in passing. “She’s just nervous. We all are, I guess. Who knows how this will work out?”
Steve, watching from the doorway, wondered what Cole must make of their odd little household, and of Barb in particular. She was one of those rare redheads without freckles, deeply appealing when she bothered to smile, although that wasn’t often. Journalistically she was easily the best digger of the threesome, a Jack Russell terrier for whom no hole in the ground was too narrow or deep for her to tunnel to the end, or at least until she sank her teeth into the flanks of her quarry. Their skills were fairly complementary. Keira’s greatest asset was her personal touch, a gentle schmoozability, not in the unctuous way of a lobbyist or a salesman, but out of a natural ease and curiosity. Plenty of reporters only pretended to be interested in their interview subjects. Keira really wanted to know what made them tick, a quality that had helped pry loose secrets from distraught refugees, suspicious bureaucrats, and soldiers of all nations. Steve ranked himself somewhere in the middle on the scales of both doggedness and empathy, which probably explained why he often ended up the designated peacemaker. If the chemistry ever failed, he’d blame himself.
Yet, being a fairly typical male, he occasionally found himself contemplating the group’s sexual possibilities, speculating on what circumstances might be required to turn their arrangement into a complicated but gratifying — for him, at least — lust triangle. He always came to his senses. Each of them knew firsthand the hazards of sex in the workplace. And when the workplace was also your home, well …
“Back shortly,” he said, twirling the car keys. Then, calling out to Barb, “Save me some chow.”
“No guarantees!” Barb shouted from the kitchen. “Yon pilot hath a lean and hungry look.”
Steve thought so, too, but not necessarily from an appetite for food, and for a fleeting moment Steve felt more concerned for Barb and Keira than for Cole. How well did they really know this man, after all? He hoped they were doing the right thing.
Cole sipped his bourbon and settled onto the couch, avoiding the furry spot the cat had left behind.
“I’ve got some work to do upstairs,” Keira said. “But welcome to our zoo.” She pulled the ever-present notebook from her hip pocket and disappeared up the stairway with an appealing little wave.
The only noise then was the banging of pots and pans from the kitchen, where it sounded like Barb was at war with their dinner. Cole reached into the pile of newspapers for the sports section of The Sun, hoping for news of any off-season transactions by the Orioles, the team he’d rooted for as a boy. Finding only Ravens coverage, he tossed it back on the pile, then stood. After the long bus ride his legs needed stretching. Maybe he’d go look at the Warthogs. Or maybe not, since there were probably cameras mounted along the base perimeter. He wandered back to the cluttered dining room, their de facto office, where the last light of dusk illuminated a pair of framed photographs hanging from the wall. They were easily the most striking items in the house.
The first one showed two boys, roughly the same age as Karen and Danny. They were all smiles, natural charmers. Afghan, probably, judging by their clothes and skin tone. In the second, which seemed to have been snapped only moments later, the same two boys were wide-eyed and wailing, terrified by something that must have just happened. The focus was slightly blurred, as if the photographer, too, had been taken by surprise. The effect was stunning, a yin-yang pairing that seemed to perfectly sum up the chaotic and unpredictable way of life in that part of the world. Leaning closer, he noticed that in the second photo the boys’ clothes were spattered with dark droplets. He reached up to touch them, as if they might still be wet.
“Blood.”
Barb’s voice made him jump.
“Sorry,” she said. “Didn’t mean to sneak up on you.”
“They’re amazing,” he said.
“Fort1’s handiwork.”
“He took them?”
“I took them. He provided the backdrop, so to speak. The motivating drama. Or so I found out later. It’s why I’m on this story. Eight killed. And two of them were standing ten feet away, right next to where I was taking those pictures. I turned around and there they were, an old man and his wife, bleeding out at my feet. I never could get the stains out of that pair of shoes. Blood and viscera. Brain matter, probably. The shoes are upstairs in my closet if you want a look.”
“No thanks.”
“I hung up those photos the day we set up shop. For motivation.”
“I keep mine up here.” He tapped a finger to his forehead.
“So I’ve heard. Sounds like Owen Bickell was worth the journey.”
Presumably Steve had told them all about the meeting in New Hampshire, which was a little unnerving. Cole wasn’t accustomed to a culture where people played so fast and loose with privileged information. The Air Force always kept things within the tightest possible circle. Op-sec, compartmentalization, need-to-know. Tough habits to break.
“Yeah, he was. I probably could’ve gotten more. First-timer. I was kind of fumbling around.”
“Sounds like Steve got after you,” she said.
“Not really. Or nothing he said, anyway.”
“Oh, he’d never say it. It’s that look he gives you. All of us do. All of us like to think we could’ve squeezed more juice from the fruit than the next guy. Most of the time we’re full of it. The point is, this guy Bickell knew you, trusted you. He wouldn’t have said shit to any of us. Besides, you’ll have another chance to prove yourself soon enough. Steve’s got a little mission planned. A recon of that taco joint where Mansur was last seen.”
“Great. Might as well get to it.”
She smiled for the first time since he’d arrived, then turned back toward the kitchen.
“Soup’s on in ten minutes.”
From upstairs he heard the soft burble of Keira’s voice, filtering down the stairwell as she laughed with some source on the phone, or maybe just a friend. Charming his socks off, no doubt. For some reason, Cole was almost certain it was a he.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
In the deskbound world of Captain Trip Riggleman there was a time, not so long ago, when the opportunity to bring down a target like Darwin Cole would have been the best possible motivation for getting up in the morning. Being an Air Force man, Riggleman would have preferred to go after Cole the old-fashioned way — by shooting him out of the sky. A fireball in the clouds, the enemy vanquished in an instant. Now that would have been perfect, not to mention cathartic.
Alas, any chances for that brand of satisfaction had gone by the board years ago, when Riggleman washed out of flight school. Poor vision and vertigo. He remained in the Air Force, but forever after was marked as a penguin among eagles, a mortal among gods.
Yet even within the cumbersome workings of military bureaucracy, the oddest cogs sometimes tumble into exactly the right openings, snug fittings where they not only mesh but function at the highest possible efficiency. And that is what happened to Riggleman, mostly because his mind was as quick and agile as those sleek jets he had once hoped to pilot.
He first showed promise as an Infowar “aggressors” trainer, by thoroughly disrobing the operational secrets of visiting units in war game after war game. From there he worked his way into the good graces of self-interested brass, up-and-coming generals forever hoping to pry loose their rivals’ deeper secrets. Although his current title didn’t sound like much — special assistant for logistics to the commander, 57th Wing — his duties had evolved to the point that he was now a sort of informational sniper on call, an ace handler of assignments both on and off the books. His particular specialty: Sniffing out any sort of trail — paper, telephonic, or virtual — that even a government auditor or trained investigator might not find.