The Diaries - 01 (45 page)

Ellis dipped his
chin.
 
“In our government’s mind, he
doesn’t exist, Kenny.
 
They wrote him off
and now they’ll hang him out.
 
He’s a
spook…a ghost…and they can do that to a ghost.
 
They’ll do some nice little favor for the French or the Germans and old
Hartline or
Schoenfeld
will cease to exist, buried in
some unmarked grave somewhere.”

Kenny licked his
lips once but was otherwise unresponsive.

“Come on
Kenny.
 
Help me here.
 
Help your old friend.”

Kenny Mars let out
the breath he had been holding.
 
Panic
seemed to seize him as his eyes darted left and right.
 
Ellis grabbed his hand.

“Is he already in
Metz, Kenny?”

Kenny chewed his
lower lip, air sucking in and out of his nostrils.
 
A vein on his forehead popped out.

“Help Matthew
Schoenfeld
, Kenny.
 
Help Gage
.”

That did it.
 
Kenny’s eyes went wide and his lips parted.

Ellis squeezed his
hand even harder. “You have my word, brother.
 
I’m not trying to nail him with all this. I’m trying to help a soldier,
one of us, who’s in trouble.
 
I done heard
from everyone ‘bout what a good man he is.
 
Now let’s stop him before he goes too far.”

Kenny squeezed his
eyes shut for ten full seconds.
 
Finally,
to himself, he nodded and began to speak.
 
The words crawled at first, faster once he warmed up.
 
After two minutes, Kenny was incredibly
detailed as he recanted what he and Gage had done for the last week.

From across the
restaurant, Sergeant Peter Sorgi sipped his coffee and shook his head in
awe.
 
There was no limit to what Captain
Damien Ellis was capable of.

 
 
***

Sunday, November 15 – Metz, France

It
was Gage’s sixth bar in the
past three hours.
 
He stepped into the
quiet pub, glancing around for a spot that would give him the best vantage
point.
 
The bar was located just outside
of the city’s center, cut into the rock of the hillside, located down a flight
of stairs and in a cave-like environment. Gage immediately recognized the
Rolling Stones’ “Sway” blaring from the stereo as he slid into a darkened booth
at the back of the bar.
 
Fitting music.

There were only
seven patrons, all of them sitting in twos except for a hulking type sitting
alone at a table next to the bar.
 
In a
quick glance, Gage decided that none of them happened to be the big Frenchman
whose life he spared—the one named Bruno.
 
It was after midnight and Gage knew his body would require sleep
soon.
 
Trying to find his guy was like
looking for a needle in a haystack, but he didn’t know any other way to do it
without tipping him off, and Gage needed the element of surprise on his side.

The evening before,
after he had paid cash and checked into the simple hotel on the outskirts of the
city center, Gage had experienced a slow-burn adrenaline rush as he readied his
supplies on the bed of the dingy studio room.
 
He reveled in the nine-millimeter’s calculated sound as the slide floated
back, securing a shining bullet, ramming the round into the clean chamber.
 
Gage smelled the film of gun-oil in the
barrel.
 
He enjoyed the texture of the
grips in his palm.
 
Felt the lethally cold
weight of the hardened steel in his hands.
 
And it was good.

He assembled the
Walther sniper-rifle, over and over, finally doing it with his eyes closed.
 
The satisfying click of the precisely milled
parts sliding together took him back to a time and place when he had once been important,
had been relevant.
 
Back when the
missions were treacherous and critical; when his only worries were keeping his
teammates safe; when guys laughed at stitches and bullet wounds; when a bottle
of Wild Turkey was shared over stories of great peril in places like Karachi
and Tbilisi and Damascus and El Obeid; when Uncle Sam valued him, adored him
for his abilities.
 
Before Crete.
 
Before Metz.
 
Before Monika.
 
Before this mess
he was now planning to create.

He had stopped
what he was doing.

Not
planning
to create…
going
to create.

Gage had pulled
the curtain back, aiming the rifle nearly a kilometer down the hill, tracking
people as they walked the path on the bank of the Moselle.
 
Each person moved in a hurry, the wind biting
their skin as they hustled to wherever it was they were going.
 
Not a one of them had a clue that one of the
world’s finest rifles was trained on them and, had a bullet been in the
chamber, their certain death could lie less than one supersonic second away,
smaller than a fingernail, capable of covering thousands of feet in the blink
of an eye, able to penetrate armor, shatter bone, with enough inertia to keep
right on going.

As he sat there in
the semi-crowded bar, recalling the emotions he had felt late the night before,
Gage knew he shouldn’t move forward.
 
He
should do what Hunter had said, and get to the States and let him get him some
help.

He should.

But the simple
fact was Gage felt better than he had in years.
 
There had been times before when the headaches had abated, but having a
new mission had completely killed his depression and constant worry.
 
The upset stomach had been gone for the
entire week.
 
He had even slept well at
night, never waking to a nightmare or the pangs of guilt.

Gage Hartline—Gage
of old—was alive, and doing quite well.

He glanced at his
simple backpack to his left, nothing more than a simplified version of his team
pack.
 
It had everything he needed, and
if it didn’t, what the hell did it matter?
 
Coming out alive was not mission-critical.
 
If he lived, fine.
 
This wasn’t a suicide mission.
 
But if he were to go down with the mission,
the only disappointment would be the mission’s incompletion.
 
That would constitute failure, and that
couldn’t be an option.
 
These men needed
to be made to—

And then, as if by
magic, the medieval-style door at the bottom of the stairs banged open, and in
lumbered Bruno, the amber light of the bar illuminating the pinkish, healing
scar on his forehead.
 
Gage dipped his
head as the big man plodded across the bar, taking a seat opposite the other
hulk who had been sitting by himself.

Studying them, it
was easy to see a resemblance as the two brutes sat directly across from one
another.
 
They had to be brothers.
 
Gage could see the similarity of their
profiles and their mass.
 
Both were big—at
least 6’3” and weighing more than two-hundred-fifty pounds.
 
They both had slumped backs, rounded
shoulders, and the back of each man’s oversized head was long and sloped, with
no undercut between the enormous head and the nearly nonexistent neck.
 
Bruno was mostly bald.
 
His brother had thin, dark hair that should
have been shaved like Bruno’s.
 
Both men
wore a scowl that screamed bad attitude.
 
Two thuggish monsters used to getting their way wherever they went.

The bartender, upon
seeing Bruno, hustled around the bar with a tall bottle of clear liquid and a
shot glass.
 
His brother was drinking red
wine.
 
Bruno tipped the bottle, downing a
shot and pouring another almost immediately.

When the bartender
came to him, Gage ordered a beer in French and removed a newspaper from his
bag, also French.
 
Rather than read, Gage
used the newspaper as a prop, hiding himself and glancing occasionally at the
two men as they proceeded to drink the contents of their respective bottles.

Gage couldn’t
believe it.
 
Tonight was going to be the
night.
 
He took several deep breaths,
wanting to drink the beer but willing himself not to throw away years of sobriety,
even on a night such as this.

Over the course of
watching the two Frenchmen, twice Gage stepped to the restroom behind him, only
after the two thugs had freshened their drinks.
 
He stepped into the tiny toilet, dumped his beer, ordered another.
 
As he waited, pretending to drink, he studied
the two men, gauging them.
 
Usually able
to read people in a short amount of time, Gage decided they were both somewhat
simple, but most likely vicious.
 
Especially if cornered.
 
Two pit
bulls.
 
The contempt with which they
talked to the bartender; the animalistic way they ogled a man’s wife as the
couple walked by; the way they spoke to one another: these men were career
hooligans, and violence and intimidation was the only way they knew how to get
what they wanted.

Gage understood
men like that.
 
And he knew what it would
take to get through to them.

After two and a
half hours, the two men stood and staggered to the door, cursing the bartender,
cursing one another.
 
Gage counted to
thirty, dropped ten euro on the table, and followed.

It was 2:30 in the
morning.

It was time.

 
 
***

After stepping
into the frigid night air, Gage felt a stab of panic when he didn’t see the men
on the street or the pedestrian walkway that ran beside the bar.
 
The distant sound of an engine and the red
and white lights of an automobile backing up alerted Gage to a parking lot down
the street, across the Moselle River.
 
Gage sprinted down the sidewalk, eventually seeing the profile of Bruno
in the blue, four-door Opel.
 
The car’s
tires spun as it fishtailed from the parking lot and began moving southward on
the other side of the river.

Gage cinched his
pack upward on his back and sprinted.
 
He
was not as fast as he had once been, but could still move at a brisk pace, and
the adrenaline coursing through his veins helped give him an initial burst that
helped him keep up.

The car was not
racing away as if it was running; it was
jinking
and
weaving as if it was driven by a drunk, which it most certainly was.
 
Mercifully, three blocks down the river, the
car slid to a halt at a traffic light, slightly askew.
 
Gage was a block behind, and still on the
eastern side of the Moselle.
 
He slowed
his pace, glancing about for a taxi or anyone who might help him.
 
It was late and the streets were empty.
 
As he ran on, the light flickered to green,
and the Opel lurched forward, tires scraping, turning left into the murky
night.

Putting on an
extra burst, Gage crossed the footbridge at Rue
Harelle
,
forcing himself into a fast trot in the direction Bruno’s car had gone.
 
He could see the car’s taillights far ahead
and, as he ran, eventually—Gage guessed at least a kilometer down the road—the
car turned right and was lost behind the trees.
 
Now jogging, Gage watched as the lights flickered intermittently as they
disappeared up the road.
 
At one point,
well up the road and mostly obscured by vegetation, he thought he saw the dark
red signature of brake lights.

Gage was
deflated.
 
He could simply call it a
night and try to acquire transportation on the next day, repeating the task
until Bruno and his brother reappeared.
 
Part of him wished he had taken Kenny’s offer of the use of his car for
a few days.
 
Gage had resisted
vehemently, knowing that it would have easily implicated Kenny in what he was
about to do.
 
Kenny had provided enough
help with his equipment.
 

With no lights to
follow, Gage slowed to a walk.
 
There
were two right turns along the road, each leading down into the river valley.
 
Gage passed them and kept going.
 
Finally, more than a kilometer into the
country and farmland, at the beginning of a rise, Gage spotted a darkened road
that moved upward.
 
Bruno’s lights had
gone upward.
 
He turned and began to look
for homes or other streets.

It was nearly a
half kilometer before Gage came to a turnoff to his right: a gravel
driveway.
 
He walked down the road,
eventually seeing a large farmhouse and knowing immediately that it was not
where Bruno lived.
 
He left the way he
came, repeating the process four times at what he judged to be at least four
full kilometers from the city.
 
It was
now four in the morning.

At the top of
another rise was the first drive Gage saw to the left side of the road.
 
All of the others had been to the right, into
the arable farmland that no doubt took irrigation from the adjacent river.
 
This driveway went further upward, into the craggy
woods and the blankets of darkness.
 
Turning back to the hazy lights of the city, a misty corona in the
distance, the former soldier went through the machinations of what would soon
occur.
 
If this was the mobsters’ place,
they were drunk and tired.
 
The military
has a readiness time, about this time each day, known simply as
stand-to
.
 
Stand-to exists because in World War II, the
Japanese knew the human body was at its most-tired, least-ready state between
three and six in the morning.
 
They would
wait patiently, holding their attack until most of the American soldiers were
asleep or wishing they were.
 
After
several blistering early-morning defeats, the military consulted professional behaviorists,
and stand-to was born.