First to Burn (25 page)

“I don’t believe this has to do with your business.”

“She tell you what I do?” Carl’s voice had a sharper edge.

“No.” The moment of truth had arrived. More than once, Ivar had made his opinion about privacy clear, but Wulf no longer gave a bucket of camel shit. “My brother did.”

“Who’s he?”

“Beo Holdings.” Revealing the connection to his brother’s hedge fund was a gamble, but Carl deserved honesty.

“Shiiiit.” Carl’s reverence for money showed in that drawn out vowel. “And you’re a noncomm dirt pounder?”

“I like it that way.”

“So does my girl. Won’t take nothing from us except clothes from her mother. Always has—had—has, dammit—to do it herself.”

Wulf suspected his passenger’s raspy voice owed more to tears than cigarettes. Like anger, grief could be contagious, and his eyes prickled. The headlights revealed the vestiges of a downsized army post, nothing to distract him from his guilt while Carl composed himself.

Finally Wulf felt able to ask another question. “You handle drugs?”

“You got more explaining to do before I answer that.”

In the corner of the closed military-exchange lot, Wulf parked away from the pools of light illuminating empty spaces. Telling Carl what he’d involved Theresa in was the hardest thing he could imagine right now, but he took a deep breath and started.

“Theresa and I were in Italy together. It was...” Words couldn’t capture the dinners and laughter. “Wonderful. Perfect.” He didn’t want to continue. “Then there was trouble.” He wasn’t articulate enough to describe the carnage. “My Special Forces team is investigating heroin smuggling by Black and Swan. Thought it was only an army problem, and I could handle everything. But it was about more than drugs.”

“Yeah? What?”

If Carl swung at him, he’d take the hit. He deserved worse punishment for his arrogance.

“There’s an old feud between my brother and the man who controls Black and Swan, but I didn’t know who ran the company when we were in Italy.” Maybe because he’d barely slept in two days, opening up was too easy. If he wasn’t careful he’d start mentioning names. “They connected Theresa to me and my brother. Not sending her back sooner was a mistake.”

For a long minute Carl breathed loud and hard in his seat, as if struggling to control his reactions, until finally he said, “No one can send her anywhere. If she don’t want to go, you can’t make her. If she wants to go, you can’t stop her. She’s like that.”

Across the parking lot, a stream of happy couples exited a movie theater. At this distance, he couldn’t see their ages or dress or races. They were silhouettes drifting through pools of light and voids of dark, starting cars and driving away to their lives. Normal lives. Regular people. And here he was. And Theresa wasn’t.

“I had to cut her seat belt to get her out.” Where had that come from? He rested his forehead on the wheel and closed his eyes to block the lucky people. “The SUV was burning.”

“You saved her.”

“The convoy wasn’t following security procedures. No armor, no gunners. I told her not to go, but she wanted to give the hospital tour. Show how much more the Afghans need.” He tasted salt on his lips. “I didn’t stop her. I didn’t try hard enough.”

“Hell, I can’t stop Jeanne from nothing even though I pay the credit card bill.” He stuffed another handful of antacids in his mouth. “So’s you know, fringe benefit of seniority and being a true Italian, I don’t have to do everything. I limit myself to real garbage and let the young wannabes handle the other shit.”

“Good. Because I will destroy the man behind this, and Black and Swan, and their drug network.” A molten core of vengeance filled his emptiness, but to be free to take down Unferth, he had to know that Theresa was safe. “I can’t guard her. The army won’t believe she needs security. Can you protect her?”

“She’s family.”

He could predict Carl’s next answer but still offered. “You could all disappear quietly. We’ll find private doctors in Switzerland. A beach, if you prefer. Anything you want, my brother and I will pay.”

Carl blew through his lips like a horse. “First, I pay for my family. Second, Jeanne can’t be quiet. Third, I got a business to run. I won’t hide. Anyway, Theresa wouldn’t do it.”

“I had to ask.”

“Understood. I forgive the insult.”

“Then we’ll send men, across the street from your house, 24/7.” Ivar would be furious at both the promise and its revelation, but he always paid blood debts.

“I’ll take care of inside. My boy Raymond lives at home and I’ll set my nephew above the garage. Jeanne loves feeding him.”

“You understand the risks.” Wulf put the car in gear to return to Fisher House. “Black and Swan planted a bomb on a vehicle inside a secure army compound. They killed the head of the Senate Armed Services Committee. They won’t think twice about some people in suburban New Jersey.”

“I got security.”

“So did the army.”

Chapter Twenty-One

The fifth arrondissement of Paris eddied around Draycott. The knowledge of how much Jane would have enjoyed the bistro across the Boulevard Saint-Michel made him hunch his shoulders and stare at the pavement. He knew what he looked like: a solitary
vieillard
, wearing his only suit of clothes, beat thin by living. For the first time in forty years, what he looked like mirrored the truth.

As he stepped to the curb, a chic university student, the type who might have been friends with his stepdaughter in other circumstances, swerved from his path. Her tilted head and gently curved mouth showed pity before she glanced away, embarrassed by the inadvertent eye contact.

The white business envelope contrasted with his dark glove, then momentarily with the bright-yellow postbox until it disappeared through the slot and became one of millions of letters in the French postal system. After flying over the Atlantic, it would be routed to the U.S. Armed Forces mail-processing center on Long Island, where it would mix with thousands of cards and packages returning across the ocean to Afghanistan. Once there, it would reach the hands of a soldier surely seeking vengeance identical to his own. All the information Draycott could offer Wardsen was in that letter.

The first missile had flown. Now he needed to plan the next salvo against the Director.

* * *

“Cave-in?” Wulf offered Deavers another death scenario.

“Recovery ops might fly in an excavator.” His captain handed Wulf a nonalcoholic beer, the only piss allowed on deployments, then tilted on two chair legs.

In the weeks since the senator’s death, the high-level attention dumped on Camp Caddie had alerted pencil necks outside Special Operations Command to Wulf’s unauthorized forays into Pakistan, Italy and Germany. The memo front and center on Deavers’s desk demanded copies of orders, expense vouchers, supply requisitions and flight requests pertaining to Staff Sergeant Wulf Wardsen. The list of recipients filled twelve lines.

Wulf wouldn’t be going home with the team.

The near beer tasted like fizzy metal.

“Walk away. Load and go.” The can in Deavers’s fist crinkled. “Tonight. I don’t want freaky-acronym spooks snagging you—”

“We’ve been over that.” They’d located the mother ship of the opium processing facilities, and he refused to disappear before finishing Black and Swan. With his chest feeling like a squeezed-out meal pouch every time he thought of Theresa, he didn’t really care about the details of his pending death, but he played the game. “What about an explosion?”

“You know IEDs.” Deavers focused on his empty can as if it was a picture of his baby son. In the years he’d known Wulf, he hadn’t broken the team’s unspoken command:
Don’t ask about Wulf’s difference.
But lately the edges of that rule had started to fray. “They always recover some DNA.”

“Can’t.” Other eras, other battlefields, he’d left remains to be identified, but simplicity was a casualty of modern science. No DNA left behind.

Theresa left hers.
He ached to take her pain and give her his healing ability, but he couldn’t. Yesterday he’d broken down and phoned Carl, who’d told him she was up on crutches and might be an outpatient by September—if she avoided infections, if she didn’t develop bone spurs, if, if, if. Although the agony of fitting and learning to use a prosthetic remained and her swelling wasn’t fully controlled, her progress seemed miraculous.

After six years, his friend read his mind. “She’ll pull through. She’s tough.”

They returned to the satellite images of the heroin facility. On the surface it looked like ordinary mud-and-concrete buildings, a blip of nothing two klicks along the road to nowhere. But ground-penetrating radar scans revealed tunnels connecting several underground spaces, including one room large enough to house a basketball court. A thermal scan showed a glowing generator that pumped power to the hidden complex. This was no simple farm spread.

“Two Westerners have visited since surveillance began.” Deavers pushed more photos across the desk. “Face recognition IDs this one as a Black and Swan guy, but this one’s unmatched.”

“CIA?” They hadn’t yet linked anyone in theater to that call from the disposable phone in Italy.

“Cruz is still looking.” The medic had the best computer skills on the team.

“So we hit while the contractor’s there.” In older photos a dry streambed marked the south edge of the compound, but in recent ones it had morphed into a churning brown mess. Wulf tapped the spot. “This can’t be snowmelt.”

“Tail of the Pakistan monsoon’s reaching here too. Probably a lively stream through September.” While Deavers talked, he hunted for his can of chew. “Maybe farmers will grow some fucking wheat next spring instead of poppies. Feed their kids instead of Russian junkies.”

“Skip the explosions and shoot me. I’ll fall in the water and be swept downriver.”

The captain snorted around the wad in his lip. “
I
won’t call you a wet pussy. Cruz will.”

“You want to go in that river wearing fifty pounds of equipment, be my guest.”

“Last time we practiced self-rescues with full gear, I crushed you by what, nine seconds getting out?” Wulf’s boss smirked at the usual team gripe about extra pool training. The competition between Deavers and the navy officers across the post in SEAL Team 6 wasn’t always friendly.

“Only a loser remembers how much he wins by,
sir
, and this water’s balls colder than Gardner Pool.” He had one last issue to tackle. “What about bringing an embed photographer? The pics can stand in for a body.” Laura would play nice for a story like this.

“No press.” Deavers spit into his empty can. “Too much can go wrong.”

“With outside documentation, the Pentagon can’t bury this in a secret award citation.” Leaning across the desk, he prepared to convince his commander to go big as Beowulf’s words from fifteen centuries ago filled him:
Better to avenge than to mourn.
“The chief, the doc, the senator—” his finger stabbed the plywood three times, “—I don’t want to destroy a shipment or a lab. They can make more opium. I want to sink Black and Swan’s whole fucking boat, cancel their cushy deals, sever the world logistics contract and stop every shipment.” Pens rattled when his fist hit the desk, but it didn’t begin to release the anger that had built in him. “The army pays their damn mileage! I want to hack until they bleed.”
Like their victims
—

“Nothing like a personal cage fight, huh?” Deavers lifted his palms to surrender to Wulf. “You vouch for this snapper?”

“Absolutely.” Pulling himself back, Wulf sank into his seat. “She’s an old friend.”

Deavers raised his eyebrows, as if questioning Wulf’s sanity. “
Another
woman?”

“I’m her
godfather.
I taught her how to ride a bike.” And drive. And shoot. And mock Ivar.

“Sometimes I forget how old you...” He shook his head. “Wait a sec, another thing I keep forgetting. A Night Stalker brought this over.” From a desk drawer, Deavers pulled a plastic bag containing a tangle of silver and lapis jewelry. “They found it while repairing the bird we crashed. Didn’t Dostum give this to your doc?”

That casual phrase,
your doc
, flashed at Wulf’s heart like a tracer round. Along the way Theresa had become his in his mind, and apparently the team thought so too. Even if that was still fantasy, when this mission was over and he’d erased Wulf Wardsen, maybe he could reinvent himself as a man Theresa would welcome into her life. Maybe she’d become
his doc
.

Heavy in his hand, the jewelry embodied his time with Theresa. Her roommate had boxed and sent all her possessions to the States, so other than this bag, nothing tangible of her remained at Camp Caddie, not even a picture. And yet every day he was reminded of her countless times, whether by the scent of oranges or the sight of someone else’s ponytail across the mess hall.

“And this was addressed to me, but the letter inside is for you.”

Startled, Wulf looked up from the jewelry. He never received mail. Although he couldn’t recall Theresa’s handwriting, his gut said the block printing on the envelope wasn’t hers.

“Sorry I read it, but my name was on the outside. Guess someone didn’t want to be obvious you were getting a letter.”

The French stamps and multiple creases showed it had traveled hard, and the message was short and unsigned.
Tell Wardsen to begin hunting for a lab in Morocco.
The second page was a list of names—some with military ranks, others with country code abbreviations. He’d lay odds they were all affiliated with Black and Swan’s business.

“Not the lab we want, so I don’t copy.” Deavers raised his eyebrows. “Should I?”

He remembered the crushed tranquilizer he’d sent Ivar after the attack at Montebelli. He hadn’t heard from his brother about the analysis. Perhaps this was related, or perhaps it was a trap. Either way, he needed to talk to his brother.

* * *

“Thought you should hear about the operation from me.” Wulf paced the team’s deserted ready room while he waited through the extended silence. Next time he considered calling Ivar, he’d remind himself to sleep in wet concrete instead. Updates about the syringe contents and Theresa’s security had been polite and factual, but the courtesy heads-up about the planned raid on Black and Swan’s underground lab had provoked a beast.

“I forbid you to interfere further with Black and Swan.”

“Forbid?” Startled by his brother’s directness, Wulf halted. Somehow he’d imagined his brother would support him after what had happened to Theresa. “This is a military op. Last I checked you weren’t in my chain of command.”

Ivar didn’t respond to the sarcasm. “Isn’t the blood debt we owe your woman high enough? You want to add to it by involving others in this feud?”

“I want to end it. For good.” If he could ever acquire a permanent tattoo on his body, he’d ink a big red slash over a phone symbol.

“Attacking Unferth won’t achieve that. Perhaps you recall he’s immortal.” Ivar lectured without raising his voice, but each coldly dripped word sent Wulf’s blood pounding in his ears. “If I can’t stabilize the conflict you’ve incited, more people may be hurt. Or worse.”

His big brother, the man who had to control everything. Every damn thing. “We’re not moving tonight. You can chill. We’ll hit when the situation presents, so don’t get twisted.”

“Our disputes cannot harm mortals. That’s been our touchstone since Lord Beowulf.” Ivar continued as if Wulf hadn’t spoken. “He may demand to meet you for
hólmgang.
”

Wulf would relish the chance to enter the ring alone with the skald, but he doubted the bastard would choose the honorable method to settle a feud. It was becoming harder to keep his voice even, but he had to try to change his brother’s mind one more time. “My team is—”

“I said no.”

“I heard you.” Kicking a throw pillow into the wall didn’t relieve his frustration. “But the senator, Theresa, the drugs Unferth’s men tried on me, it’s—”

“My position means I must consider greater issues. Since the dragon killed Beowulf, we’ve prospered. We’ve stayed undiscovered. I won’t change our law, so you force me to contact Unferth to restore balance. Do not undermine my negotiations by damaging his corporation.”

“It’s not a corporation, it’s a criminal gang, and he’s a murderer, so your concern’s a little fucking misplaced.”

“In your army, you follow your commander’s orders, don’t you? In this, I am your leader.” Finally, Ivar’s voice rose louder and faster. “I
order
you to stop.”

Paradoxically, the rarity of hearing his brother vent partially defused Wulf’s anger, and he regretted the rift he knew was coming. “You’re my brother, Ivar son of Wonred, but if you interfere, you’re not my leader.”

“If you act against Unferth, I have no choice. I must banish you from our brethren—” maybe his voice cracked, but Wulf couldn’t be sure over a satellite-phone connection, “—as I would any other.”

“So be it. Goodbye, brother.” He disconnected without waiting for a response. The thirteen immortals were a shattered group, only Jurik and Bjorn worth their weight in beer. He couldn’t waste time regretting banishment from the company of Beowulf’s Vikings when he had a mission with his teammates, his true clan, the men who mattered to him.

* * *

“Yo, Theresa, car’s out front!” Downstairs, her stepbrother bellowed loudly enough to be heard in the cul-de-sac. Three days a week, he drove her to physical therapy at the Veterans Affairs hospital in East Orange. Her mother rode shotgun. The trip felt like a middle-school car pool, except Raymond hid a Glock in the glove box.

Zipping her army-logoed windbreaker, she settled onto her crutches. Her doctors had promised to fit her prosthetic today, presenting a new skill to master. She was supposed to be excited about having an advanced obstacle course to conquer and a fresh opportunity to exhibit leadership, but the goal felt as small and lonely as the childhood bed at the end of the hall.

Below her, Jeanne held Theresa’s Army Proud water bottle and dipped her head each time Theresa thumped down a stair. “Would it kill you to wear a new outfit instead of all that black and gray? Once, just once, what would it hurt?”

“Ma, I told you, this is my fitness uniform. Until they kick me out, I wear it.”

“At least let me make an appointment with Gina.”

Gina ran the salon her mother had patronized for twenty years. “I don’t need a haircut.”

“What about a little waxing?” Her eyes flitted from Theresa’s forehead to the hem of her nylon PT shorts. “That you could use.”

A
little waxing
,
my ass.
Her skin care was an often-mentioned affront to her mother, who wanted her daughter slathered, ripped and stripped from eyebrows to remaining ankle, as if smooth skin would balance what was missing. “Do you think I care if I look like a rottweiler?”

“Nah, your fur’s like a Portuguese water dog.” Behind Jeanne, Ray drew a thick middle finger across his eyebrows and grinned.