The Book of Truths

Chapter 8

Moms hated the Pentagon. Literally, although she wasn’t too fond of it figuratively either. In its brochure and press releases, the Department of Defense boasted that a person could get from any one place in the Pentagon to another in seven minutes or less.

Unless they were a person like Moms.

Going to a place only someone like Moms wanted to go.

She’d already passed through three security checkpoints, all on the supposed lowest level. That didn’t bother her as much as simply getting in from the parking lot to the first checkpoint. All the rank irritated her. They had full-bird colonels here doing the work of secretaries. One-star generals fetched coffee. The place was so top-heavy with eagles and stars it was amazing anything got done.

And the ribbons. Every officer’s jacket uniform was so laden with them above the left breast pocket, she was surprised they all weren’t walking tilted over. She’d been out of the “real” army not that long — okay, a while — but she didn’t recognize what some of the awards were for. Most of the ribbons indicated combat duty, and it was rather easy to tell the difference between those in this building who would rather be there than here. This was a world away from where the soldiers on the ground implemented the policies that flowed out of the building.

She turned down a hallway and another desk blocked the way. Two military police, honest-to-God soldiers, not contractors, stood behind the desk, which was manned of course by a full-bird colonel. He looked up at her, noted the civvies, ran his eyes up and down her body, checked her hand for an Academy ring (she never wore her West Point ring), then sighed as he mentally slotted her: another military person turned play-spook.

“Can I help you?”

Moms took out her real ID and flipped it open.

The colonel popped up. There was no rank or name on the ID, just her clearance and a QR code. It was enough to get him to his feet, because he only saw that clearance a couple of times a month, even three security checkpoints in. There were fewer than fifty people in the country who held it, and only a few visited the Pentagon. And when they did, they normally came in the VIP entrance through the underground parking lot, whisked by two-star generals to whatever briefing they were to attend by a four-star general.

Moms still hadn’t said a word. The colonel took her ID and scanned the QR code with a handheld device. It beeped green. Then he picked up another handheld device.

“If you don’t mind, ma’am?”

Moms stood still as he shone it in one eye, then the other, checking her retinas. It flashed green.

The colonel waved her through, the two MPs stepping aside. She walked down the hall and then a set of stairs to a sublevel that wasn’t supposed to exist according to the brochures and press releases. None of the doors were open. There was no bustle of people going about. The work down here was done behind closed doors, in hushed tones, with a minimum of what the army called “dissemination of information.”

She reached a desk set in an anteroom, behind which sat an elderly man peering at a newspaper through glasses perched on his bulbous nose.

He looked up and smiled. “Good day.” He waved the paper. “Got a mudder running the fourth tomorrow, but don’t know if the weather will agree. You play the ponies?”

“I’m afraid I don’t.”

“Smart girl.”

Moms couldn’t remember the last time she’d been called girl.

“Who do you want to chat with?”

“Pay.”

He nodded sagely. “No one gets paid enough that comes through here.”

“I’m getting paid too much.”

A frown crossed his wrinkled face. “That’s not good either.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“You’ll be wanting to talk to Mrs. Sanchez then.” He glanced at his computer screen. “Moms, is it?”

“Yes.” The odd single name, no salutation, seemed not to bother him in the slightest.

He pulled open a drawer and extracted a thick, brown file. He broke the seal on it, reached in, and pulled out a stapled set of purple paper. Moms recognized the paper and the handwriting on it.

He ran his finger down it. “Fourth-grade English teacher?”

“Mr. Carletti.”

“Name of the second street you lived on?”

“Same as the first street,” Moms said. “Taylor Lane.”

He smiled. “That was one of those they told you to mix up, eh?”

He asked six more questions, two of which also had mixed answers. Eight questions and answers out of the five hundred on the purple paper that she’d filled out many years ago when she’d first been submerged into the world of Black Ops. It was the last check and balance. Technology could be fooled, scanners could be overridden, but the human memory checked by another human and then twisted by deceit was the final obstacle. She knew there was probably some sort of weapon in the man’s other hand and was certain there were guards behind some of the doors scattered about, watching this play out on video screens, ready to burst in at the wrong answer. If she got it wrong, they wouldn’t be cuffing her and reading her rights.

“Very good,” he finally said. He placed the purple paper back inside the folder and slid it back into his desk. He hit a button underneath his desktop and a door swung open, revealing a room the size of a telephone booth.

It didn’t have a telephone. Just a chair.

“Enjoy the ride,” he said.

Moms got in and sat down. The door hissed shut. There was a slight jolt, then she was moving sideways, which was a bit disorienting. She came to a jarring halt, and then she was moving backwards. She thought of a horror movie she’d watched on Netflix in her bunk at the Ranch one night, The Cabin in the Woods, and how all these creatures from nightmares were kept in little cubicles deep under a government-run facility. Each cube could be moved about as needed. That’s what the subworld of the Pentagon reminded her of.

Except she was the one being moved about to go meet someone in one of those cubicles. If she was Nada, she would know what that made her, but being Moms, she’d long ago accepted that the world needed people like her and places like this. Nada accepted it also, but it just depressed him.

With another jerk, the booth came to a halt and the door swung open. Moms stepped out.

A chest-high counter, like the DMV, awaited her. Except there was no “take a number and take a seat.” That was the job of the old man reading about horses. They couldn’t have the people who came to this part of the Pentagon seeing each other and perhaps recognizing that person on a mission or while walking through the mall with family. It was called Black Ops for a reason.

An older woman was waiting for her. She was dressed in Southwestern casual, white hair flowing loosely around her sharply angled face. A younger woman, dressed similarly, was sitting at another desk, gaze fixed on a computer screen. She didn’t even look up at Moms’s entrance.

“Good afternoon, Moms. I’m Mrs. Sanchez.” She had an identification badge dangling from her denim vest with a purple band across the top.

“Afternoon,” Moms said. She reached in her pocket and pulled out a bank statement and held it out, along with her ID. “I’m getting paid too much.”

Sanchez took the bank statement and ID. “That’s a complaint I rarely get.”

“I’ve called, but naturally no one would talk to me about it over the phone. Even a secure line.”

Sanchez waved. “Come around the counter.” She led Moms to her desk. The walls were decorated with hung rugs and etchings of the desert.

Sanchez scanned in the QR code.

“I like your jewelry,” Moms said.

Sanchez paused, met her eyes, and smiled. “Thank you. My daughter makes it. She’s very talented.”

“She must be.”

“You’ve been complimented, dear,” Mrs. Sanchez called out.

The younger woman tore her gaze from the computer screen and gave a flicker of a smile. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

Mrs. Sanchez reached into her desk and pulled out a thick brown folder. It had yellow paper inside: Moms’s pay records. Once someone went Black, they no longer existed on the computer except for security checks and cover identities. All other paperwork was paper, just one copy as needed. Paper couldn’t be hacked into, could be locked in secure places like this, and could also be shredded, meaning someone really, truly, disappeared.

It happened.

“How long has this stipend been going into your account?” Mrs. Sanchez was flipping pages in the folder.

“Six months,” Moms said. “This is the first chance I’ve had to get here.”

Sanchez nodded as she got to a certain page. “It’s a survivor’s benefit.”

“From who?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“Who can?”

“The comptroller might be able to.” As if on cue, a portion of the wall behind Sanchez’s desk slid open and a colonel entered. He had no ribbons, just a Combat Infantry Badge above his left pocket.

“It’s my old friend from the real army, now an event horizon,” he said with a grin. “In so deep, you suck all light with you.”

“Bill.” Moms got up and shook his hand. “You went in pretty deep, too.” He perched on the edge of Sanchez’s desk, who leaned back in her chair and folded her arms, watching and listening.

“Been a long time,” Bill said. He glanced at Sanchez, then back to Moms. “Afghanistan, just a couple of weeks after 9/11. I gave you a bunch of money.”

Mrs. Sanchez’s daughter spoke without glancing over. “Six million, four hundred thousand, five hundred and thirty dollars. Moms returned one point four-two-six-five of that with her country clearance voucher. Managed to account for every single dollar, which less than twelve percent of those in your situation were able to do.”

Moms glanced at Mrs. Sanchez, who was beaming proudly. “She has a good memory.”

“Seems so,” Moms said. “Made my ruck a little heavy, although we spread it out among the team.”

Bill nodded. “Bought off the Northern Alliance.”

“Bought goats, and horses, and technicals, too,” Moms said, referring to pickup trucks with machine guns mounted in the cargo bay. “One of my guys got hit and he had so many wads of bills in his vest, they stopped the bullet before it even got to his body armor.”

“That’s always nice to hear,” Mrs. Sanchez said. “We rarely hear of the direct results of our actions in the field.”

Moms shifted uncomfortably in the chair. “Where are all your ribbons, Bill?”

He laughed. “We don’t do those down here. It’s like sticking your DD214 on your chest and advertising everywhere you’ve been and everything you’ve done. I like to keep my past a bit more private. Like you.”

“A CIB, though,” Moms said.

“Could have gotten that anywhere.”

“Not really,” Moms said.

Bill reached down and tapped his right leg below the knee. There was a hollow sound. “Got both the same place. Why I ended up in the puzzle palace here.”

“Sorry.”

“Lots have suffered worse.”

There was a moment of silence, one all veterans observe when touching on the subject of comrades that would never see another day. It also brought Moms back to the reason she was here.

“Why am I getting a survivor’s benefit? I wasn’t married last I checked.”

“Never married,” Bill said. “Not that you didn’t get offers.”

Even Mrs. Sanchez’s daughter stopped typing for at least two seconds before going to work.

Bill reached out and Mrs. Sanchez handed him the folder, with the appropriate page open. He frowned as he read. “Well. I’m afraid we can’t tell you. Compartmentalization and all that. You don’t have to be married to get a survivor’s benefit,” he added as he flipped the folder shut and handed it back to Mrs. Sanchez. “You know all those forms you fill out before a major deployment? The one for the benefit? You just list the people you want to get a slice of the pie and we get that slice to them.”

That made Moms think about whom she’d listed on her form when she’d in-processed at Area 51.

Mrs. Sanchez slid the folder back into her desk.

“What kind of benefit is it? A gratuity spread out?” Congress, as the first combat casualties were being carted out of planes at Dover after 9/11, had initiated a “death gratuity” one-time payment of $100,000.

How one could put a price on a life was beyond Moms.

“No,” Mrs. Sanchez said.

“When will it run out?” Moms asked.

“It won’t,” she said. “As long as you’re alive, you get it.” She cocked her head. “Your benefactors get the same. Didn’t you read the form?”

Moms shook her head. “I thought it was the same as the army.”

Bill laughed. “Is your unit the same as the army?”

“No.”

“Why would you think your benefits are?” Bill asked.

“It’s the best our government can do for those of you in the field,” Mrs. Sanchez said.

Her daughter spoke up. “Black Ops survivor benefits account for less than point zero-zero-zero-zero-eight of the entire Black Ops budget. Statistically almost insignificant.” She paused, seeing the reaction, then quickly added, “But only in terms of numbers.”

“Is there anything else we can do for you?” Mrs. Sanchez asked, and Moms realized that while Bill wore the uniform and held the title of comptroller, she was the person in charge down here. Then, sliding into a Nada Yada, she wondered if Bill worked here at all and whether he was really the comptroller. Or if, as she went through the various layers of security, they’d found someone who shared a past link with her and brought him in to divert attention from Mrs. Sanchez and what was really going on.

Moms wondered how Nada could stand to get through the day with his paranoia.

Moms stood. “I just wanted to make sure everything was legitimate.”

“You can count on us,” Mrs. Sanchez said.

And at that moment, Moms’s cell phone began to play “Lawyers, Guns and Money.”

She snatched it from her belt and looked at the text message. Then at Mrs. Sanchez. “Can I get to the White House from here?”

Neeley was doing her best to ignore the family. The steady rumble of the C-130 turboprop engines was a sound she was more than familiar with, but the excited Pakistani voices still bitching were getting on her nerves. They’d been in the air for a day, stopping briefly at Rhein-Main in Germany and were now somewhere over the North Atlantic. The pill had run out hours ago and all Neeley wanted to do was sleep.

Some people were never satisfied that you’d saved their lives.

The woman was now at the forefront, waving her arms and shouting at the interpreter.

“Enough!” Neeley finally yelled.

“You speak Pashto?” the wife asked, stunned. Neeley ranked the question up there with asking whether she was breathing oxygen, since she’d just done it.

“It’s been over a decade we’ve been at war there,” Neeley said. “I could’ve learned Latin and Greek in that time.”

“Why did you not speak to us?” the wife asked.

“All you do is argue. I didn’t have time for it on the ground and I don’t want to listen to it now.”

The words were like water breaking on rock. Ignored. “Where are you taking us?” the wife demanded. “What will happen to us?”

Neeley sighed. She hated dealing with amateurs. “What exactly did you think would happen when you gave up bin Laden’s location?”

The man finally spoke up. “They said we were safe. That they had a, how do you call it, a cover story.”

“Yeah,” Neeley agreed. “They even made movies about it. Better than admitting a pissed-off garbageman gave up the world’s most wanted terrorist simply because the asshole was using proper tradecraft technique and burning all his trash and not paying the local to haul it off. He didn’t think that one through. Should have paid you off not to get his trash.”

“I have a noble profession—” the man began, but Neeley didn’t have the patience for it.

“What did you think you were going to do with twenty-five million in Abbottabad?”

“We have received only a very small portion of it,” the wife argued. “We have been waiting—”

“You bought the nice fridge,” Neeley said. “You didn’t think people would notice? Didn’t you ever see Goodfellas?”

The little girl spoke for the first time. “What is Goodfellas?”

Neeley didn’t have the time or inclination to fill the girl in on the Lufthansa heist and what happened after. She’d have a chance to see the movie in the States.

“But we had no refrigerator,” the wife argued. “It was just a small one. We have been waiting very, very patiently.”

“Your new place will have one, I’m sure,” Neeley said. They didn’t understand the fundamental truth that the only thing that had kept this family alive so far was the cover story and the dribbled-out payment. And the only thing that kept the CIA looking good was projecting that its hard work had located bin Laden’s compound, not this wreck of a man. The combination had forced the case officer handling the informant and his family to keep them in place, trying to gain as much time as possible.

Neeley, having spent many years in Black Ops, also suspected, deep down, that the CIA was hoping the bad guys would find out about the informant and wipe him and his family out. Save money on the reward, and they could still maintain the cover story: Yeah right. A garbageman gave up bin Laden? She could hear the laughter now if the bad guys tried to publicize it. And they’d get laughed at too. All in all, these three were a loose end and an embarrassment to everyone involved. Which also might explain why the mission had obviously been compromised. It would not be the first time the CIA had given up an asset they considered expendable after the fact. If that were the case, and Hannah found out the identity of the person who did it, they would not be long for this earth.

And this family still didn’t get it.

“And the rest of our money?” the man asked.

Neeley glanced at her watch. “The money is gone.”

The man stood, swaying with the plane. “What do you mean it is gone? We did our part! I was the one! It was me!”

“And I’m sure the United States will forever be grateful, even though no one will ever know.” Neeley shook her head. “I wouldn’t be telling anyone else what you did, even in the States.”

“You are cheating me!”

“Not me. I saved you.” Neeley spread her hands, indicating the plane. “You think this was free? I’m sure the balance of the twenty-five million is being sucked out of an offshore account right now by Mrs. Sanchez. It might just pay for the cost of running this op, which means the books will be balanced and by golly, she’s going to balance those damn books. The government might run on a deficit but not Black Ops.”

“That is not fair!” the wife screeched.

Neeley reached in her pocket and pulled out some gum and handed it to the girl, tuning the parents out as they turned on each other, screaming, as if the one who went louder would be righter.

Neeley knelt and looked the girl in the eyes. “They’re learning the only fair in life has a Ferris wheel and cotton candy.”

The girl was confused. “What does that mean? How is cotton candy? Whose wheel?”

Neeley pressed a hand against the side of her head, sensing a headache coming on from the parents arguing. She wondered how people could stand to raise children. She’d never gotten that memo and it hadn’t been in Gant’s set of rules. She’d rather run an op.

“Don’t worry,” Neeley told the girl. “You’ll be fine. Just not rich and not so close to getting your heads chopped off every day. Things are actually turning out as well as they possibly could for you and your parents.”

“I told you this would happen!” The wife was shaking her husband’s shoulders. “Did I not tell you this would happen? That CIA man you trusted kept telling us wait, wait. And we waited. You said trust him. Trust the CIA. Trust the Americans. And now? See? See? Why do you never listen to me? Why do you swallow your mother’s words as if they were gold, but you throw mine out like they are the garbage you collect? You should have said nothing! Nothing!”

The husband sat down, head in hands, as his wife continued to berate him.

“I’m afraid you’re going to have to listen to this for a long time,” Neeley told the frightened girl. “I can just save your life. I can’t save you from your family.” Neeley put a hand on the girl’s shoulder, trying to conjure up something she’d never experienced on the other end as a child. “It will all be fine.”

She looked past the girl as the crew chief came down the cargo bay. He held out a headset as he plugged it in an outlet. “Priority message for you, ma’am.”

Neeley turned away from the girl and her distraught family. She put on the headset. “Neeley.”

She recognized Hannah’s voice. “I’m diverting your 130 to the closest airbase where there will be a chopper waiting to get you back here ASAP. You’ve got a new mission. There seems to be a window of opportunity. Are you aware of Deep Six?”

“Yes.”

“There’s someone in there. General Riggs’s science adviser, named Brennan. He’s being held there. There’s been an accident with a DORKA experiment and he’s infected.”

“That’s Nightstalker territory,” Neeley said.

“They’ve been alerted,” Hannah said. “But I want you to get to Brennan and ask him some questions.”

“Break into Deep Six?”

“It is designed primarily to keep people out,” Hannah said.

“Is this a Sanction?” Neeley asked, which meant she had permission to use deadly force at her own discretion.

There was a moment of silence, then the reply. “It is a Sanction. I think Brennan knows about Pinnacle. As much as anyone knows. We can finally end this.”

“Roger that.”

Neeley expected to hear the click, meaning the transmission was over, but static lingered. “Hannah?” she finally asked.

“Yes.”

“What’s going on?”

“The accident at DORKA. It’s some sort of truth serum called Cherry Tree. It hasn’t been contained yet. It’s gotten loose in the White House and is spreading. I’m not sure how or what the long-term effect is, but this could get out of control. And when things get out of control…”

“Murphy’s Law,” Neeley said, a maxim that was more ancient than Gant’s rules. What can fuck up, will.

“Be prepared to move to the White House on an adjunct mission as needed after you get to Brennan and find out as much as you can from him.” Hannah made it sound like breaking into a highly secure, underground facility was a fait accompli.

“Roger that.”

“Be careful.” And then the click.

Doc looked at the menu, trying to find something he would be willing to eat and could afford. The woman hadn’t shown up yet and part of him hoped she wouldn’t. The place was way too expensive for him by his lonesome, never mind with a date. Not that he wanted to call her a date, but it was obvious that’s what she thought when they talked on the phone, so splitting the check probably wasn’t an option. He wondered why he let his sister do this to him. He always agreed when she set him up and it always turned out badly. She always said this next one was perfect, the one, and he had a growing suspicion that there was no one. That his job, his passion for knowledge, was and would forever be his first and only love.

But one has to humor a sister, especially when she is the only family one has left.

Still. Sixty-nine bucks for a steak? This was Vegas. One could get a steak for two dollars with ten dollars’ worth of chips at most of the lower-class casinos and they might even throw in the start of a lap dance. Doc only knew because Roland had dragged him out one night, and Doc had had the honor of watching Roland wolf down fourteen bucks’ worth of steaks at seven different places.

Besides the base pay, combat pay, danger pay, Black Ops pay, jump pay (not worth it), and various other streams of income as a Nightstalker, it was barely making a dent in the student loans required to get the four PhDs he boasted about so much.

Even with those PhDs, including one in physics, Doc had no idea what fusion meant when it came to food. Why would anyone want to fuse sushi and Indian food? Could that even be fused? He mused on that for a moment, as Roland had mused on spear vs. arrow. Wasn’t the point of sushi the opposite of Indian food?

Doc sighed. He’d have to order something and push it around. Doc ate for energy and he understood very much how calories translated into force. He had never understood eating for the flavor, especially when the flavors were so weird. He was so caught up in the energy trail from food to calories to energy to how much energy the brain required that he failed to notice the woman until she sat down across from him.

She was a bit older than he had expected, but other than that, exactly what he anticipated when he’d walked into her favorite restaurant and scoped it out, the way Nada had taught him to “scope it out.” For most men that meant checking out the women, but for a Nightstalker it meant first assessing the potential threats, the security, then the emergency exits, both marked and those other avenues that could be made into an exit with a little bit of ingenuity. Then for things that could be used as field-expedient weapons and cover; Roland had taught him that, constantly pointing what could be used to burn, impale, explode, maim, slash, and otherwise damage the human body. Roland had also explained what a table could be composed of and the depth needed to stop various caliber rounds when you flipped it up for cover. It had all been rather complicated and confusing but also intriguing, even for Doc, with all his PhDs. Roland was only good with certain numbers, but on those, he was worth listening to. He was an encyclopedia of calibers and armor and entry wounds and exit wounds and ricochet angles that would make the best quant on Wall Street run screaming to Hell’s Kitchen.

But it was Nada who’d said you can judge people by the surroundings they chose. Like the woman. The restaurant was too polished, meaning the food wasn’t going to be that great and neither was she. The food was going to be art, not sustenance, like some people.

“Doctor Ghatar,” the woman said, nodding her head in greeting, her expensive earrings glittering in the candlelight.

For a moment he wondered who she was referring to, then he realized she only had his last name from his sister. A name that was fading away from him with every year in the Nightstalkers.

“Yes. And you must be Gay.” He did not phrase it as a question, but the name got his mind going. Having a name that projected a mood meant you rarely lived in one. (Frasier, Ms. Jones’s one-eyed shrink, had told him that.) But still, Doc had to cut her some slack. Applying Nightstalkers’ templates to civilians might not be fair. For all he knew Gay could be a fun and lively person who was straightforward and down to earth and laughed off gentle criticisms and accepted compliments gracefully.

But he doubted it. She looked too perfect, like the restaurant. It was why Roland never went to those top-tier strip clubs. He said the women’s bodies were too perfect and that they’d cut you. Doc had never quite grasped that last part.

“You are as your sister said you were,” Gay said. She too was Indian. Despite their years in the States, his sister could not imagine marrying outside of the home country.

One part of Doc’s brain worked on trying to untwist the meaning in that statement while he evaluated the net worth she was covered with. He thought it ironic that people spent so much time and money on things in an attempt to show others who they were. She had perfect hair, expensive clothes, and a watch that cost more than his car. But one could buy all that with a loan, or from an ex-husband’s alimony. Or they could all be fake, which is the first conclusion he knew Nada would jump to, and then it really bothered him to be channeling Nada.

Real things that no one could take a loan on and buy seemed to have little value. Doc knew he was overthinking this, but the last mission, time running out, had brought him a bit too close to the black void. Like most who gazed over into that chasm, one tended to get a little introspective.

Or they were a psychopath and never thought of it again.

“As are you,” Doc finally replied.

“Do you have a first name?” she asked.

Doc lied.

“And what do you do for a living?” she asked. “Your sister was very vague.”

That’s because his sister had no clue. Doc told her a very elaborate lie, the same one he’d been telling ever since joining the Nightstalkers and getting his cover for status. Which was different than cover for action, Nada had patiently explained to him during his in-processing.

The good thing was there were no student loans tied to all the training the Nightstalkers had given him in tradecraft and fieldcraft.

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.”

“You packing?” the first man asked.

“I am.”

“Leave it here.”

“I won’t.”

The man aimed right at Kirk’s face. “I said leave it here.”

“I was issued my weapon by the government and I won’t be leaving it here,” Kirk said. “And ask your buddy to take a look between your eyes.”

The second redneck glanced over and saw the flickering red dot resting between his buddy’s eyes. “You got a shooter out there?”

“Got a couple of shooters,” Kirk said. “I don’t mean any trouble for Ray but we have to talk. You know you can’t stand between family.”

The man indicated for his partner to step aside and they waved for him to pass. As they went by, that guy pulled out a cell phone and made a call.

Kirk got back in and Eagle drove through the roadblock, Roland still crunched down in the back.

“I could kill them,” Roland said. “‘Don’t like his kind’? Let me kill him.”

“Don’t worry,” Kirk said over his shoulder. “He’s TDTL. Someone will do that soon enough.”

“TDTL?” Roland asked.

“Too dumb to live,” Kirk explained.

“I do appreciate the offer though, Roland,” Eagle said. Then he began humming the theme from Deliverance.

“Funny,” Kirk muttered, but he was focused on what was ahead. A large ramshackle house, which had obviously been added to bit by bit, sat on top of a small knob. A barn was to the right, except the barn looked to be in a lot better shape than the house, with a new metal roof and all the windows covered with heavy wood shutters. Several smokestacks punched through the roof, with smoke lazily drifting forth. “They’re cooking,” Kirk said. “And it’s a big operation. Bigger than what was here before.”

“I thought your uncle didn’t use?” Eagle said.

“He didn’t, but a lot’s changed here since I been gone.”

Nodding at the house, Eagle said: “I bet you the inside looks better than the outside.” The SUV stopped in front of the house. Kirk got out while Eagle stayed in the driver’s seat, engine running.

“I got two shooters upstairs,” Eagle informed Roland, looking down at the display. Instead of a GPS it showed the input from a thermal camera mounted into the molding on the front bumper. “Windows A3 and A5.” Kirk had laid out the building to them the previous night and they’d designated sides, floors, windows… everything, so that they could quickly designate targets.

Google Earth helped.

The front door swung open and Kirk’s uncle Ray came out, his left arm looped over the shoulder of a woman. Three men fanned out behind him, staying on the porch, their boots creaking down the worn wooden planks, two ARs and one pump-action shotgun being brought into play. The barrels were pointed down.

For now.

Ray had a large .357 Magnum tucked in a holster on his left side. The woman helped Ray down the three stairs to the dirt path. An incongruous white picket fence about three Mark Twain stories short of a new paint job separated him from Kirk, who halted at the gate.

“Ray.”

The older man had his head cocked slightly to the left. He nodded. “Winthrop. Been quite a while since you’ve been home.”

“I’ve been busy, Ray.”

“Fighting other people’s wars,” Ray said. “Told you it was dumb. Fought in Vietnam. For what? Now we buy furniture from the same gooks we used to bomb.”

Kirk spread his hands. “What’s going on, Ray? What are you doing up here in Woodrell’s place?”

Ray laughed. “Ain’t no more Woodrell. He’s in the swamp. Got tired of him pushing, so I pushed back.”

Kirk shook his head. “I don’t get it, Ray. Meth took my dad and you helped keep it away. Now you’re running it?”

“Meth didn’t take your dad,” Ray said. “Being stupid killed your dad.”

“You told me you’d take care of—”

Ray cut him off. “Never said such a thing.”

“Ray, listen—”

“You got shooters out there in the woods?” Ray asked.

“Yes.”

“I got shooters too,” Ray said.

“You promised to look after my sisters and brothers.”

“I am,” Ray said.

“You got Parker working up here,” Kirk said. “How is that looking after him? Dee said you slapped her when she came here to get him. You don’t slap women, Ray. You know that. Especially not my sister.”

Kirk could see the woman wasn’t window dressing. She was supporting a good portion of Ray’s weight. She was like many women in the hills, possibly aged beyond her years. She could have been an old twenty-five or a young fifty.

“What’s wrong with you?” Kirk asked.

“Nothing’s wrong with me,” Ray said. “Tell your nigger friend to get out of the car.”

Kirk blinked. His uncle had never used that word even though it was more than common in the area. Deep in a dark drunk, Ray had told Kirk several times how his life had been saved twice in Vietnam by his best friend, an African American (which is the term Ray had always used) from Atlanta.

Eagle got out of the SUV and walked up beside Kirk.

“Couldn’t find the shooters,” a voice called out from behind as the two men who’d been blocking the road broke out of the tree line on the right, twenty yards away. “We looked, Ray.”

“You didn’t look good enough,” Ray said.

“I know he’s kin,” the man continued, “but look who he come down here with. We don’t”—the man didn’t get another word out as Ray pulled the Magnum and fired. The bullet hit the man in the shoulder, the large round pirouetting him 360 degrees.

At the sound of the gun, Roland came out of the back of the SUV, his M249 at the ready. A red dot centered on Ray’s forehead as Roland aimed at the house.

Kirk held his hands up. “Hold on, hold on! Everyone just calm down.”

“I never promised you nothing,” Ray said.

“He thinks he’s telling the truth,” Eagle said in a low voice to Kirk.

“What?” Kirk was confused, but Roland was ignoring both of them, his light machine gun at the ready. And the red dot was steady on Ray’s head.

“Ray,” Kirk said in a louder voice. “Come on. This isn’t you.”

Ray laughed and tapped the side of his head. “I see things now, Parker. I see the way things need to be.”

“I’m not Parker,” Kirk said. “I’m Winthrop.”

Ray blinked, and there was a window into him through his eyes. Kirk looked at the woman, then the other gunmen. “You let him do this? To all of you?”

The woman spit. “Shut your trap, boy. Your uncle is the toughest son of a bitch this here county ever made. You don’t be talking trash about him.”

“He doesn’t know reality,” Eagle said in his low voice. “Prefrontal cortex is fried. Wet brain, given what you say about his drinking. They all don’t know it. He’s fabulating.”

Roland caught that last part. “He’s what?”

“He’s inventing his own reality,” Eagle said. He took a step closer to Kirk, but spoke in a voice they could all hear. “You would never hit Dee, would you, Ray?”

Ray blinked, more twitched. “I never hit Dee.”

Kirk closed his eyes briefly. “Dee would never lie to me.”

“It just gets worse,” Eagle said to Kirk. “There’s no cure.”

“Get away from him!” Ray yelled as a young girl ran to the man he’d wounded, trying to tend to his wound.

“Ray!” Kirk caught his uncle’s attention. “You’re sick. Let me help you.”

“Girl,” Ray said, lifting his pistol toward the young girl who was pressing down on her father’s wound. “You git, or I’ll—”

Kirk lifted his arm and fired before anyone could react. The bullet hit Ray in the left thigh and knocked him down like a hammer.

No one else fired as Roland swept the muzzle of his machine gun back and forth.

Kirk walked forward. He knelt next to his uncle. “You’re sick, Ray. I’ll get you care.”

Ray was shaking his head, eyes blinking in confusion. “I didn’t do nothing wrong. I didn’t.”

Kirk cradled his uncle’s head in his lap. “I know. I’ll get you care. The—”

His next words were cut off as Roland’s cell phone began playing “Lawyers, Guns and Money,” followed by Eagle’s, then in the distance Mac’s, and lastly Kirk’s.

“We got to go,” Roland said.

“I’ve got 911 on the way,” Eagle said. “He won’t be hurting anyone, anymore. And it isn’t his fault.”

“It stinks,” Zoey said.

Nada couldn’t argue with his niece’s assessment of the La Brea Tar Pits. He felt uncomfortable in his civvies, never mind not having body armor. He did have his MK23 in a hip holster under his loose jacket because he’d as likely go somewhere unarmed as not breathe. They were seated at a bench facing the pits. It was a sunny, Southern California winter day.

“It’s got history,” Nada ventured, glancing at the brochure he’d taken from the museum lobby. “A lot of animals have died after getting stuck in there. They still do. Birds and things.”

“Gross,” Zoey said while Nada considered a tar pit as a weapon. He looked out at the black goo and imagined camouflaging it with a layer of sand and leaves. Static, but effective as an obstacle. A person could channel an attacking force using such an obstacle. He remembered the quicksand in Malaysia where he’d been sent from Delta Force to go through a tracking school run by former headhunters. They had pointed out how game moved around such obstacles in predictable patterns.

At least they said they were “former,” but Nada had had his doubts. Lots of people said they were former whatever, but in the long run, one tended to go back to one’s roots.

“I’m hungry,” Zoey said in a voice pitched about a year less than her five, which any parent would take as a warning sign. But Nada wasn’t trained in those familial arts. He had picked up that his brother hadn’t wanted to let the two of them go out alone, but it had never crossed his mind it was because of him, not Zoey.

As she got up and began spinning and twirling, another sign of wanting to move on from the bubbling black graveyard, he thought of Scout and he felt a pang of something.

A more normal person could have told him he missed the young girl from North Carolina who’d helped him on their last mission. Nada figured it was the hot dog he’d eaten.

“Can you do a cartwheel?” he asked Zoey.

She paused and looked at him. “I think so.”

“On the grass,” Nada said, having at least that much kid-sense to get her off the paved path.

Zoey gave it a pretty good attempt, ending up in a ball on the grass. “It still stinks,” she noted as she got to her feet.

“I’ll help you,” Nada said. “You have to keep your legs straight.”

Zoey was less than enthused but gave it a try. As she cartwheeled to the right, her hand came down on a dead bird buried under the leaves. She instinctively tried to pull her hand back as her body toppled over and Nada lost his grip on her ankles. She landed in a heap, saw the bird, and gave a little girl shriek, the kind that carries much farther than tiny lungs should be capable of.

“Easy, Zoey, easy,” Nada said. “It’s dead. It can’t hurt you.” He leaned over and tried to pick her up, but she was scrambling away from the body, now crying and hyperventilating.

“You okay, little girl?” A young man stopped jogging and was walking over.

“She’s fine,” Nada said.

“You her father?” the man asked suspiciously, because Nada looked like no one’s father.

Nada hated being asked questions, especially by strangers. “Go back to your run.”

Zoey got to her feet, crying and looking totally forlorn.

A few more people were being drawn in and Nada tried to put his arms around Zoey and comfort her.

“You know this man?” the jogger asked Zoey.

Nada ignored him and leaned his head close to hers. “Scout, it’s just a bird.”

She shoved herself out of his arms. “My name is Zoey,” she shouted. “Not Scout!”

“Somebody call the cops,” the jogger yelled, taking a step to get between Nada and his niece.

Nada’s instinct was to run, to avoid the confrontation, but he couldn’t leave Zoey. He had his federal ID and could clear it up with the cops. And that depressed him, to realize that he was going to have to use his false identification to prove he was what others take for granted. Because he knew he wasn’t an uncle, not in the real sense. He was the outsider, the weird one, and because of that, he was going to have to be the one doing the accommodating in this, the normal world.

“I’m her uncle,” Nada said to the jogger, raising his hands slightly and spreading them in the universal sign (in Nada’s world) of “I won’t kill you right this second.”

The guy didn’t appreciate the gesture.

“He’s got a gun!” the jogger screamed, spotting the MK23 in its holster, and then more people screamed and everyone began running away. No heroes here, especially not with someone who looked like Nada who had a gun, not even for a little girl like Zoey.

Maybe it was an LA thing.

Nada sighed as he heard the distant siren coming closer and pulled out his real fake badge and ID. A clusterfuck.

And then his cell phone began its distinctive ring, “Lawyers, Guns and Money,” and as he sprinted away to the call of duty, no time to talk his way out of this, knowing the cops would reunite Zoey with his brother, he realized the irony of what he’d always told the team:

Zoey leads to getting Zevoned.