Extraordinary Retribution (11 page)

He glanced through a small window on the wall parallel to his bed. The first pale daylight fell on the pines outside. He had slept dusk to dawn. He noticed the sheets were soaked with sweat and, in some places, pink with blood.
But it is less. The bleeding is nearly over.
He noticed that the bandages were applied well, even over his back which he could hardly reach. The sound of wood groaning under weight distracted him.

“You are finally awake,” came the voice from the dream. He glanced across the room to a shape against the wall.
The soldier
. Each day, his mind cleared faster, his memory returned more quickly. The rough voice spoke again. “They’re calling you the
wraith.
”

“Yes,” he spoke through a parched mouth, grabbing a full canteen strapped to the bedpost. “How do you know?” He drank greedily.

The old man laughed and shifted in a creaking chair by the door. “You spoke in your delirium. Sometimes, nonsense. Sometimes, cold facts. Sometimes, a mixture.” The soldier gestured beside the bed. “Fresh formula for a growing infant.”

The wraith groaned and pushed himself to a seated position. He reached over to a stained nightstand for a syringe and bottle by the edge. Inside the glass was a cocktail of three antibiotics mixed with anabolic and anti-inflammatory steroids. He inserted the needle into the bottle, drew the liquid, and plunged it into his arm. He could barely feel the shot. Compared to the hurricane in his back, it did not register.

He stood up, and the old man watched him in silence. It felt like a Herculean effort, but he knew the extreme pain and stiffness would gradually wear off. It had done so each morning, afternoon, and evening when he awakened from sleep to impose drugs, feeding, and exercise on his protesting frame. He stepped on a scale acquired from a drugstore and watched the numbers settle to one hundred and sixty-five pounds. At five foot, eleven inches, this was thin for him. Of far greater concern was that he weighed nearly thirty pounds less than before the bloody encounter with Lopez. He picked up a notebook from the floor and logged the number. Focusing intensely to do even simple math, he grunted with satisfaction as he looked at the growing list. The numbers were still low, but they had slowed their decrease dramatically. Tomorrow, he was certain, the trend would reverse.

To make sure that happened, he walked over to the sink. He pulled three different protein powders from the shelf. One canister contained egg albumin mixed with numerous branched chained amino acids and vitamins. Twenty-five grams of protein per scoop; he added two. A second was casein protein from milk—hard to digest, but providing hours of nutrients as it made its way through the digestive tract. One scoop. Finally, hydrolyzed whey protein, the most biologically available protein known. A staple in cancer wards. Used quickly, it went straight to the tissues starving for nitrogen. To the mixture, he added water, three different unsaturated oils, maltodextrin for the insulin spike to shuttle the nutrients to cells, and creatine. He punched the button on the blender and let it scream for a minute. He downed the nasty concoction and rinsed the container.

Now for the real test of will.

He began with mild stretching exercises. Excruciating, yet his continued progress encouraged him. Then, resistance training, limited at present to body weight exercises. Through a pained grimace, he smiled that he could do ten squats without holding onto the chair for support. He lowered himself for pushups, careful not to wrench his back. Sweat poured down over his body and pooled on the floor below his face. He nearly collapsed with exhaustion, holding onto the side of the bed for several minutes, unable to move.

The soldier finally spoke again. “Javed, what will be left of your body when all this is over? Steroids, growth hormone, grenades?”

The wraith did not look up, his breath coming in gasps. “Those thoughts are a weakness.
There is no long term.
There is only the mission, and I must be ready soon
.
”

The soldier nodded his head. “You sound like troops preparing to continue some war.”

“There is a war!”

“Yes, I know.
Your
war.”

Slowly, the wraith collected himself. The workout had gone well. Now he had to clean the wounds.

“Are you having second thoughts, Avram?” he asked the soldier.

“I
began
with second thoughts, you young ass. But your pain was bigger than my wisdom. Your vengeance would not be ignored.”

“Then get in here and help me wash.”

The old man laughed and rose with a grunt, his broad legs bowed but his gait sure. The wraith shuffled into the bathroom, fatigue heavy on his frame. Dark splotches of skin appeared randomly across his body like advanced vitiligo.

“You look like a burn victim,” said the soldier, gesturing across the young man’s frame. “These chemicals you had me retrieve—they will fix this?”

“They will. But it needs constant attention. Now is not the time. Appearances will come later.”

The old man nodded. “Yes. It’s the back that worries me. The shrapnel went deep in many places. I’ve seen it before. You would have died from an infection without me.”

The wraith grasped the edges of the sink as the soldier removed the bandages and worked over the wounds. The pain decreased each day as he healed, but it was still very raw.

“It is much better today. You have the health of a young ox.” He laughed sharply. “Plus the horse steroids!”

The wraith winced from the pain. He looked into the mirror, trying to catch the soldier’s eyes. “Why did you come?”

The old man did not stop working on the wounds and didn’t return the gaze. “We had an agreement. You paid me much to train you and even more for a
contingency
—yes, the right term?”

“So? You were halfway around the world. You knew if you got that signal I was probably dead.”

The soldier grunted. “Yes, I thought you were dead. You
should
be dead.”

“Then why?”

The old man sighed loudly and paused his work. “What you do is the most basic of the acts of war. And you do it against the gods themselves. This is bigger than me.”

“That’s all? Poetic nonsense?”

“No!” the soldier pressed firmly with a gauze pad on the wound, the wraith nearly gasping.

“Then what, old man?”

“Where I come from, you don’t leave a soldier to die on the battlefield alone.”

19

S
everal days had passed since they left the South and the horror of what had transpired. Lopez felt disoriented. Following a bizarre trip to the Knoxville trauma center, he was now far from home, absent from his school on a wild hunt for his brother’s killers: a celibate priest rooming with a female CIA agent, watching her sift through data online for hours in the dim confines of a Virginia motel.

He felt like an intern at a law firm. He brought in food, got her coffee, ran other errands as she worked, and asked her questions that she usually had no answers to. But she did work, often late into the night, her hair like a golden veil over her face and the computer, her athletic form splayed at odd angles from hours hunched over the laptop. Two or three times a day, she would stop her work, take to the middle of the floor, and perform a set of unbelievable stretches that looked to be of some martial arts origin. Lopez could only wonder how she never tore any muscles.

Perhaps she did it to release emotional tension as much as physical. Even though Houston felt that the answer lay within the CIA, without hard evidence, she didn’t think they could bring a case to her superiors. Lopez sensed that something lay underneath her reluctance, some past conflict she was not articulating.
Was she pursuing Miguel’s killers without the approval of the CIA?
Maybe they didn’t believe her intuition. But would they now?

He couldn’t imagine how they would present a case. They didn’t even have a clear hypothesis themselves, only a train of strange coincidences, hints in medical records, and a hunch that something much bigger was underlying it all.

It was all growing increasingly frustrating. While she used Agency devices to log in securely and comb through accessible files, he paced. Sometimes, he prayed the rosary. At others, he simply stared into space recalling the nightmare at his family house in the mountains. And he was running out of time. The deadline his bishop had given him was approaching in a week, and they seemed to be little closer to discovering the identity or location of his brother’s killer, or to understanding the mystery behind the events of the last month and a half. The hotel room was fast becoming a prison. He fiddled with the arrowhead underneath his shirt.
My new nervous habit.

Lopez stood up and opened the blinds.

“Hey, can you keep those closed?” Houston sniped. “The glare, remember? Computer screen?”

Familiarity was breeding contempt.
Or maybe it’s the murders and stress
, he told himself. Nothing was remotely normal about what was happening.

“Sara, I’m tired of the dark. I’m tired of this dark room. There has been nothing but darkness of late. Dark deeds, shrouded mysteries we can’t penetrate. Black ops.”

“Poetic.” The CIA agent arched her back in front of the laptop, pushing her chest outward and stretching her arms over her head. Lopez tried not to stare, but he found it difficult not to. She seemed to relax a moment. “But that’s
exactly
what it seems to be.”

The priest raised an eyebrow. Whatever his frustrations, he had come to know Sara Houston much better, and he quickly picked up on her tone. “You think you have something?”

“I wanted to be sure, but, yes, there’s a clear pattern here. Buried, but here. I’m sorry it took me so long to find it.”

Lopez walked over to the desk. Their hotel room was claustrophobic, two twin beds and a small working desk crammed beside them. He sat down at the foot of one bed and looked at the screen. “So?”

She sighed, her fingers resting gently underneath her chin. “I looked through what files I had on all the agents who have died this last year. Gerald Stone, John Fuller, Jack Conover. And Miguel.” Again he saw the flash of pain on her face. “There is something connecting them, but the records at CIA border on incomprehensible.”

“They’re covering it up?” asked Lopez, the growing cynicism with this business directing his thoughts.

“It seems so. Look here.” She ran her finger across a list of dates and locations. “I pulled these from all their records. These days here, often several in a row, they did not report into the office. That wouldn’t be so weird except for the fact that they all shared
the same
windows of absence. Like a buddy trip or something.”

“Wouldn’t you have noticed?”

“Not really, Francisco.” She breathed out heavily, resting her head momentarily on her hands. “Although maybe I should have. Our staff was very active, often traveling. Some months there would be more days I
didn’t
see agents than those I did. I never worked directly with Miguel or any of the others. Besides, it could always have been a conference or retreat or something specific for some of their projects. They were the elite.
Special
. Everything top secret.”

Lopez gave her a sidelong glance. “So, you’re not one of the elite?”

“I’m a woman, Francisco,” she said testily. “We may have come a long way, baby, but in many circles, especially government and military, there are certain kinds of missions and activities that are still thought to be the providence of men. Men especially think that, and they still tend to run things.”

“I see,” he replied. “So, these extended absences, you don’t think these are unrelated.”

She shook her head. “No, not now. The coincidences are piling up too high.”

Lopez was getting more curious. “So, what did these
elite
agents work on that didn’t involve you?”

Houston shrugged. “Many things, most of which were classified even from the bulk of the staff. Almost always related to the war on terror.”

Lopez grunted and stood up, pacing the small room. “How do you wage war on an emotion?”

“OK, bad name from the politicians. But the
terrorists
are very real. So are their organizations, and their desire to penetrate and infiltrate America.”

Lopez could hear the echo of his brother in her words. It annoyed him. “You sound paranoid.”

Her eyes flashed. “And you sound like a naive priest!” She glared at him. “I know too many good people who have risked their lives,
lost
their lives, because they know this threat is very real!”

Lopez stopped still in his pacing. “I’m sorry, Sara. I have a distrust of the government. Too many misguided wars and actions. Too many lies. Sometimes, hearing ‘war on terror’ sounds like another excuse to fund Halliburton and other businesses that make money on conflict.”

Houston lowered her fiery gaze. “Yeah, well, I’m not saying all that doesn’t happen. But I’m tired of seeing bleeding hearts pretend there isn’t an enemy to fight.”

Her words stung. He knew it was his ego that was hurt, but it still stirred him up. “Maybe the real enemy isn’t what we think, Sara. Maybe the true war isn’t being fought with guns or bombs, or against human armies.”

“Is it sermon time?”

Lopez planted his feet. “You can scoff, but maybe our best weapons in that war are love and forgiveness. Jesus was the ultimate bleeding heart, Sara. He was wrongly accused, unfairly tried, horrifically tortured, and did not strike back. Turn the other cheek.”

Houston laughed harshly. “I hate to say it, Francisco, but you’re gonna need retraining soon. You don’t understand what’s around you.”

“That’s my ethos. That’s where Miguel and I parted ways.”

She looked away quickly, but not before Lopez could catch tears beginning to fill her eyes. For several seconds she would not look at or speak to him, and her hurt struck him like an undefended blow to the stomach. He was usually more sensitive, more empathetic. It had been his gift as a priest. How had he missed her pain?