Blue Warrior

18

Afghanistan–Pakistan border

^{6 January}

Troy Pearce scanned the village down below him through his binoculars. He was perched five hundred meters higher up on the mountain in the snow-covered trees, looking down, half hidden by a fallen log. The village was a poor excuse for human habitation, even by Afghan standards. A squalid collection of mud-brick buildings with pens attached for goats and chicken coops. A small boy, naked from the waist down, peed against the wall of his house, steam rising from the piss. The Pakistan border was just five klicks away.

“Wyoming is just like here?” Daud whispered. A bright, incredulous smile poked out of the thick, woolly beard of the twenty-five-year-old Afghani. His dark eyes sparkled beneath his dark brown pakol, a flat woolen cap with a thick round bottom made famous by the mujahideen martyr Ahmed Shah Masood. Daud popped another piece of snow into his mouth to keep his breath cold so as not to make a vapor.

“Maybe not as many Pashtuns, but yeah, where I come from is a lot like here. Pine trees, too. Here.” Pearce handed his friend the binoculars. The Afghani’s trusted AK-47 was slung across his back.

“I should like to visit Wyoming someday.”

“My grandfather built a cabin near the Snake River. I’m going to fix it up if I ever make it back there.”

“If? Don’t speak like that, my friend.”

“Inshallah, then. And you’re more than welcome to come.”

“Inshallah? You are Muslim now?” Daud’s smile was infectious. He handed Pearce back the binoculars.

“Not exactly.”

“If I came to the States, I would finish my engineering degree. America has the best engineering schools. Everyone knows this.”

“What kind of engineering?”

“Civil. My country needs more roads and bridges if it is going to develop properly.”

I admire your enthusiasm, Pearce thought to himself. You’re going to need a helluva lot more than roads and bridges to drag this dump into the twenty-first century.

“I have an uncle in Texas. Perhaps a school there.”

Pearce shook his head. “Stanford is the ticket.”

“It is difficult to enter, yes?”

“Maybe I can pull some strings for you there.” Like someone once did for me, he thought. Changed his life. Without Stanford, he wouldn’t be here.

“You like to fish, Daud?”

“I don’t know. I have never fished.”

“What? How is that even possible?” Pearce took a rod and reel with him everywhere he could.

“We eat goats around here, mostly. They cannot swim.”

Pearce scanned the village again, then the thick trees around it. “You think Khalid’s still coming?”

“Where else would he go? His wives are here and it is cold, is it not, and nearly night?”

Pearce nodded. He and Daud had led a small band of fighters to observe the village below on a rumor that the local chieftain, Asadullah Khalid, a Taliban commander, was returning from Pakistan today with a load of RPGs, traded for heroin bricks cultivated in the valley. Their goal was to capture him, but failing that, he was authorized to terminate the bastard. The trick for Pearce would be to keep Daud from killing him first.

The wind gusted. Pearce shivered despite the government-issue polypropylene thermals beneath his eclectic mix of local garb. Daud was clad in little more than woolen pants, a Canadian army surplus sweater, and a knitted scarf, but after six hours out here in the snow it was Pearce’s teeth that were chattering. He never ceased to admire the endurance of these mountain villagers.

Daud’s village was ten kilometers away. He was the son of the village chief and had studied English and engineering in Peshawar. He volunteered as a translator with the U.S. government, which is how Pearce found out about him. Daud’s village hated the Taliban almost as much as they hated Khalid’s village. It was easy enough for Pearce to recruit Daud and his men into the CIA’s war on the Taliban in this part of the country. He’d been embedded with them for the last two weeks.

“Why do your people hate the people in this village so much?” Pearce asked in bad Pashto.

Daud spit. “They are worse than kafirs, with no honor or loyalty except to themselves. In the last war they made alliances with the Russian pigs. Two of my uncles were killed by the Russians, and other men, too, and our women raped because of those dogs.”

“And now the Taliban,” Pearce added.

“And the Devil, too.” Daud spit again.

A branch cracked behind them. Both men whipped around.

“Ahmed!” Daud whispered loudly.

Nothing.

Daud raised his AK-47 in the direction of the sound. “Ahmed!”

“What?” a voice whispered back.

Thump.

A grenade landed in the snow at Pearce’s feet.

Daud shoved Pearce backward over the log. Troy tumbled ass-over-teakettle with a yelp, and on his first rotation caught a glimpse of Daud tossing something back up the hill. Automatic-rifle fire split the air above. Pearce spread his arms wide to slow his roll, then dug his boot toes into the snow on the next tumble. He was facedown in the powder when he heard the whoomph of the grenade explosion. He leaped to his feet, snapping the M4 butt stock against his cheek and aiming at the tree line. Caught a glimpse of Daud racing straight up the hill and dashing into the pines.

Pearce called after him. Stupid, he knew.

“DAUD!”

Savage cries and more gunfire. Pearce’s brain registered AKs, for sure. But also the high snapping crack of HKs. Strange.

One of Daud’s men, Hamid, dashed parallel across the ridgeline, firing his weapon above where Daud had entered the trees. Pearce charged up the mountain, legs burning with every step, like hundred-pound weights were clamped on his boots. A burst of bullets chopped the snow around him. He wheeled to the right and put three rounds in the chest of black-turbaned fighter. The man’s mouth opened in a silent cry as he toppled backward, rifle flying through the air.

Pearce turned back uphill and stormed toward Daud’s position in the trees. It felt like sprinting in molasses. He finally reached the trees. Hamid was there, kneeling down, Daud grimacing and holding his bleeding thigh with both hands, blood pooling in the snow.

Pearce broke open a med kit. Hamid ripped open Daud’s trouser leg and wrapped his weathered hands around the thigh above the wound to stanch the bleed. The wiry Afghan was the same age as Pearce, but with his milky left eye and leathery skin, Hamid appeared to be ten years older, maybe more.

“You looked very funny falling over that log,” Daud said through gritted teeth.

“Idiot,” Pearce said, quickly examining the wound. “You’re lucky it went clean through. Missed the bone.” But Troy wasn’t sure the artery wasn’t nicked. He was bleeding fast.

“You should see the other guy.” Daud grimaced. “Not so lucky.”

Hamid jabbered in Pashto as Pearce dumped QuikClot into both the entry and exit points of the wound, then quickly wrapped the double-padded “Israeli bandage” around Daud’s thigh and secured it tightly on the pressure applicator clip.

“Hamid says the cowards ran away but we lost Ahmed. Ahhh! It burns!”

“That’s the QuikClot. Good news, you’ll stop bleeding. Bad news, you’ll never be a lingerie model.”

“Don’t forget Ahmed. His father…” But Daud passed out.

Rage and despair overwhelmed Pearce. His first solo mission in country and it had gone to shit.

“Let’s get him out of here,” Pearce said to Hamid, not bothering to use his broken Pashto.

Hamid didn’t speak a word of English but understood Pearce perfectly. He clapped Pearce on the shoulder with a leathery hand. “It has already been written.”

Pearce hoped that wasn’t true. He wanted to write Khalid’s last chapter himself, in the bastard’s own blood.

19

Afghanistan–Pakistan border

^{6 January}

Hamid and three other fighters held the corners of the heavy woolen blanket that carried Daud like a stretcher. Pearce was on point, but his night-vision goggles were useless. The moon had fled and the stars had turned to falling snow. The infrared scope on his rifle lit the way.

Pearce first led them farther down the hill, then back around and higher up, suspecting an ambush. He was right. Pearce took out two of Khalid’s men with single shots to the head before they knew what hit them. When the other bad guys opened up in the night, their flashing barrels made them targets, and Daud’s men took out two more with Pearce providing covering fire. The air rang with automatic-rifle fire, muzzle flashes sparking between the trees like strobe lights. Then it stopped. The black night returned, and the sound was swallowed up in the gauze of thick, wet flakes blanketing the mountain.

Pearce kicked the bodies over and flashed a light in their faces, giving Hamid a clear look. Hamid nodded with recognition at each face, spitting heavily in the snow at the last.

“Khalid?” Pearce asked.

Hamid shook his head no. The other fighters rifled through the pockets of the dead men. They pulled out wadded rupee notes, cigarettes, stale rounds of naan. No contraband.

Pearce went back on point. Hamid and the others followed silently behind at a distance, carrying their precious cargo through the frigid air.

Pearce trudged ahead, exhausted. A headache raged. Hours of concentration and physical exertion had taken their toll. No matter. He had to push on. There was still another kilometer to the village, maybe more. He checked his watch. It was just past two a.m. on the illuminated dial. He heard the rush of feet tramping in snow up ahead. Flashlights swept through the trees. Pearce signaled the men behind him to halt and drop, and he raised his weapon to fire. A ghostly gray head walked into the target reticle and Pearce laid a sure finger on the trigger. He hesitated.

It was Daud’s father.

Six other fighters from the village were with him. The new men took up the stretcher and the band raced back to the village, carrying Daud into his father’s house and laying him on the rug-covered dirt floor in front of the fire.

In the dim, flickering firelight, Daud looked bad, pale and beaded with sweat. His lips moved, but he wasn’t conscious. They stripped his snowy garments off and his mother covered him back up with a couple of dry blankets. Pearce checked the green Israeli bandage. There was a bloodstain, but it was small and dry. The wound must be infected. Why else the fever? Pearce had only oral antibiotics, but Daud was in no condition to swallow them now.

“Doctor,” Daud’s father said. He motioned with his hands and added, “Helicopter.”

Pearce told him in his clumsy Pashto that the snowstorm wouldn’t allow it.

“Cella, Cella,” his mother said, pointing at the doorway. Two teenage boys standing in the doorway shouted something Pearce didn’t catch and bolted away into the dark.

“‘Cella’?” Pearce asked.

The old man flashed a toothless smile.

20

Afghanistan–Pakistan border

^{6 January}

Pearce’s teeth chattered. He’d never been so cold in his life. He’d grown up in the snowcapped Rockies bow-hunting mule deer and cutting timber. Knew all about cold weather, but nothing like this.

Pearce shook his head. His mind was wandering again. It was still two hours before dawn and every able-bodied man from Daud’s village was posted on guard, including Pearce, watching the road. After the ambush, they could only expect a counterattack from Khalid and his Taliban fighters. The two villages had exchanged potshots for years, but now the war had come with a vengeance.

Pearce thought about the gunfight earlier that night. At least three kinds of automatic rifles had fired in the dark. Every kind of rifle had its own distinct sound, even if it fired the same caliber of round. He was firing an M4 loaded with 5.56mm, and Daud’s men all had AKs firing 7.62mm. But Pearce had heard the distinct retort of Heckler & Koch G3s. They also shot 7.62mm. He’d heard enough of HKs shooting practice rounds on NATO ranges in Germany to recognize them instantly.

Since when did Taliban fire G3s?

The sound of grinding gears slapped him back to reality.

Down the hill, in the distance, a pair of headlights threw two wide cones of light through the falling snow. A faint engine roar finally made its way up to him, most of the sound absorbed in the blankets of white powder.

Pearce raised his M4 and tracked the vehicle through his infrared scope, but at this distance in the heavy snowfall he couldn’t make out more than the shape of the car, the blazing heat signature from the engine, and the headlights.

The vehicle bounced and fishtailed unsteadily up the hill until he could make out the shape of an old UAZ, the Soviet army’s version of an American jeep. Pearce counted a driver and two heads in the shadow of the cab. It flashed its lights and honked the horn. The engine rattled like a high-speed whisk scraping the inside of a stainless-steel bowl.

“Cella! Cella!” a voice rang out behind him, then another. Pearce turned around. Light spilled out of open doors, bodies outlined in the frames.

Since he could hardly feel his hands, he decided to head back to Daud’s house and get warmed back up and maybe try and figure out who Cella was. In the two weeks he’d been embedded with Daud’s men, he hadn’t once heard the name mentioned.

By the time Pearce reached Daud’s house the UAZ was parked and empty. Pearce stepped through the door and was greeted by a blast of heat from the roaring fire and a hot cup of tea from Daud’s mother.

Daud’s mother smiled, flashing her three good front teeth, and pointed over to a figure kneeling down next to Daud’s bed, low on the floor in the far corner. Cargo pants, military boots, and a heavy parka hood hid the form.

“Cella.” The old woman muttered something else in Pashto that Pearce didn’t quite catch, but he gathered it was good, judging by the laugh lines bunched around her eyes.

“You must be the Amrikaa,” a woman’s voice said. The accent was distinctly Italian. A canvas bag with medical supplies was open by her side.

“That’s what the passport says,” Pearce said, wishing he hadn’t set his M4 down. “You?”

She pulled her hood down and faced him. A lick of light honey-brown hair peeked out from beneath a heavy woolen scarf wrapped around her head, no doubt a nod to Muslim customs but also to the frigid conditions. Her high cheekbones, long jawline, and perfect teeth smiling through full lips belonged to a runway model. The Italian accent only added to the effect. But it was her topaz-blue eyes that captured him. Pearce guessed she must be from the north, maybe from the Italian Alps.

“Dr. Cella Paolini.”

“Pearce.”

“You did this?” She pointed at Daud’s bandages, dried blood on the edges. He was sound asleep. His breathing was shallow and rasping.

“Yeah.”

“Not bad. You probably saved his life.” She eyed him up and down, dressed like a local over his heavy-weather gear. His pakol was still flaked with snow. “CIA?” She turned back to Daud and touched his face with the back of her hand, checking for fever.

He shrugged, ignoring the question. “What brings you to this part of the world, Doc?”

“I’m with Medicia Oltre Frontiere. We’re a medical aid society. My clinic is not far from here.”

“Never heard of it.”

“Like you, we try to keep a low profile.” She pulled a hypodermic needle from her bag, along with an injection vial of clear liquid. Cipro, Pearce guessed by the purple label.

“What’s your prognosis, Doctor?” Pearce asked.

“He’s a little warm, which isn’t surprising. But his father says he hasn’t made any urine since he’s been here. That could be oliguria. And his breathing. Do you hear it? A classic sign of lactic acidosis. Those three symptoms alone tell me he’s suffering a case of sepsis. Of course, I can’t be sure without lab work.”

“I only had oral antibiotics, but he was knocked out with morphine. Couldn’t swallow.”

“Doesn’t matter. Antibiotics aren’t enough anyway. He needs intravenous fluids. But we must hurry. Every hour he’s not treated increases his mortality by almost eight percent.”

“Can’t we treat him here?”

“I didn’t bring enough supplies. He’ll have to come back to the clinic with me. Now, or he’ll die soon.” She stood and pulled the bag strap over her head and onto her far shoulder.

“You can’t go back now. We’re expecting an attack,” Pearce said.

Cella gave instructions to Daud’s father. He rose to his feet and approached his son’s bed.

“If we don’t take him now, he’ll probably die,” Cella said. “I’m not worried. I’m known around here. Only medicine. No politics.”

Daud’s father grabbed the ends of the blanket by his son’s head in his gnarled fists, preparing to lift him.

“Then I’m going with you,” Pearce said. He grabbed the blanket ends at Daud’s feet, then glanced at the old man and the two of them lifted simultaneously. Daud was cocooned in the folds.

“You fight your battles, I fight mine. Alone.”

“Seriously, it’s dangerous out there. I won’t let you go.”

She shook her head and sneered. “If you try to stop me,” she said, nodding at the old man, “he’ll shoot you between the eyes. Or his mother will. Besides, I have other patients at the clinic and they are alone back there. Very dangerous for them.”

Pearce asked the old man permission to escort Daud back to the clinic. He agreed.

“Now I have his permission to go. Do I have yours?”

Cella shrugged. “Like you Americans say, ‘It’s your funerale.’”

Cella’s compound was technically in Pakistan, about five kilometers from Daud’s village on the other side of the border. Pearce marveled that the two teenagers had been able to run so far through the heavy snow in the frozen night to fetch her. Most American kids their age couldn’t have done it. Too much time planted on the couch playing World of Warcraft until their eyes bled.

The UAZ pulled up in front of a cinder-block building, a utilitarian rectangle with a steep roof, square windows, and two steel doors. One door posted the sign MEN’S CLINIC, and the other WOMEN’S CLINIC, in English with international male and female symbols for each.

Cella ran over to the men’s door and unlocked it, then came back to the jeep to help Pearce wrestle Daud through the snow and into the warm clinic.

“Two clinics?” Pearce asked.

“Strict separation of the sexes. The mullahs insisted. Otherwise, no clinic at all.”

Inside the building, Cella led them to an empty bed. The air was warm. He smelled the kerosene heater on the far wall. There were two other occupied gurneys on the clinic floor. A boy’s voice called out from one.

“Cella? Is that you?” The voice was slurred as if slightly drugged, and panicked. Pearce saw a torso propped up on elbows on one of the cots. The voice was in shadows.

“Yes, it’s me, love. Go back to sleep. It’s early.”

“Who is that with you?”

“A friend. Go back to sleep.”

“And that’s why you lock the doors on the outside.” Pearce lowered Daud’s head and shoulders to the bed.

Cella lowered Daud’s feet. “Thieves will steal the medicine and rape any women they find. Boys, too.” She pointed at a storage rack. Told Pearce, “Two blankets, quick.”

Cella opened a locked steel cabinet and pulled out a 1,000mm saline bag and a sealed IV kit, then rolled over an old-fashioned stainless-steel IV stand. She hung the bag on the hook and opened the kit. Pearce watched her snap on a pair of surgical gloves, then quickly and expertly set up the IV and insert the needle into the back of Daud’s hand. “No pump?” Pearce asked.

“No. Gravity-fed is best. Especially with antibiotic. Pushing the antibiotic too quickly can cause problems.”

Pearce was impressed. IVs were deceptively complicated and even fatal, if not handled properly.

He fought back a yawn. Checked his watch. Still another forty minutes until sunrise. He glanced around the room. Beds, cabinets, sink, a small office desk. Simple, but clean, organized, and well supplied.

“Quite a little place you have here, Doctor.”

“I have a very generous donor base.” Cella pulled on a stethoscope.

“The women’s side is occupied, too?”

“Yes. Quiet, please.” She listened to Daud’s heartbeat and breathing, then held his wrist for a pulse count. She sniffed the air.

“You stink,” Cella said to Pearce. “You need to shower.”

“That’s not funny.”

“I’m not being funny. You smell like stale urine and shit. If you’ve been drinking the water around here, you have diarrhea. Correct?”

“That’s life in the field.”

“But not in my sterile clinic. Unless you want to go back outside, you need to get cleaned up. Soap, hot water. You remember how to shower, don’t you?”

“Where?”

“There’s a shower through that door. And throw away your soiled clothes. I have others you can use.”

“We’re in a combat zone. I can’t—”

“Fine, then go back outside and smell. The stink alone will keep the Taliban away.”

Pearce seriously considered going back outside to keep an eye on things. But he was finally getting warm again. And he did smell like an outhouse. What the hell.

Pearce headed to a small bathroom. He peeled off his clothes and undergarments, tossing everything soaked in sweat, shit, or pee into a pile in the corner. He stacked the body armor on a chair and stepped into the small shower and pulled the plastic curtain shut. The water flow wasn’t strong, but it was stinging hot on his filthy, chilled skin and it felt good.

It took him a solid ten minutes to scrape off the crusted grime with a stiff plastic brush, and he spent another ten washing out crevices and cracks that hadn’t seen clean water or soap in almost a month. Even he was grossed out. He pushed chunks of whatever into the drain hole with his big toe, then swept the rest of the hairs and whatnot into the drain with his size-14 foot before turning off the water.

Pearce pulled aside the plastic curtain, thankful that the small bathroom had kept the steam. He was almost hot now, another sensation he hadn’t felt in a lifetime or two. He instantly noticed that his filthy clothes had disappeared and a pile of fresh clothes was neatly stacked on the now open chair, the body armor carefully placed underneath the seat.

Pearce dressed. Thermal underwear, heavy boot socks. Civilian, Italian labels. And beneath them, local woolen pants and a green hospital scrub shirt. There was a name stenciled on the front: “PAOLINI.” A pair of Nike running shoes, clean but used.

Pearce emerged dressed in his new clothes, but in his stocking feet.

“What’s wrong with the shoes?” Cella asked without looking up. She sat at the small desk, making notes. A pair of wire-rimmed reading glasses were perched on her nose.

She finished her notes and smiled at him. Could she be any more beautiful?

“Too small. Especially with the socks.” Pearce wiggled his toes. “I’ll clean my boots instead, if that’s okay.”

“They’re by the heater, getting dry.” She looked him up and down, clearly pleased. “Everything else seems to fit.”

Pearce looked down at the name stenciled on his shirt. “He and I are about the same size, looks like.”

“Looks like,” she repeated, not taking the bait.

“I miss anything?” Pearce asked.

“It stopped snowing. The sun is up. And there’s a pot of tea steeping. Pour us some, will you, while I finish these notes?”

“Sure.” Pearce padded over to the sink area. A pot sat on a hot plate, steam curling up from the spout. Two thick ceramic cups with Italian navy logos were next to the pot. He poured.

“How’s Daud?”

“His IV will finish in about thirty minutes, then he gets another one. I want to give him four more after that.”

“That’s a lot of fluid.” Pearce set a cup in front of Cella.

“But the latest protocols for sepsis call for it.” She picked it up and blew on it. Pearce tried to ignore the shape of her mouth when she did it.

“You must be exhausted. I know how to hang an IV bag. Go get some rack time,” Pearce offered.

“I’m fine for now. Maybe later. I must make my rounds in a few minutes. The others will wake up soon.”

“How many patients do you have now?” Pearce asked.

“Two women and two girls, next door. One late-term pregnancy, one anemia, and two bladder infections. On this side, Tariq is the old man over there, Ghaazi is the boy you met earlier, and you know Daud.”

“Where are they all from?” Pearce took a sip of tea.

“Some are from across the border, some from this side. All different villages. Tariq was the chief of his village years ago, wiped out by the Russians. He is the last survivor of his clan.”

“And the boy?”

“Ghaazi’s father is a talib who fled to the Tribal Areas.”

“You know Italy is at war with the Taliban, right?”

“My war is in here. The only enemy I fight is death and disease. What you idiots do out there is your business.”

“But you’re helping the enemy of your country.”

“I’m taking care of his child, who lost a foot to a mine planted by the Afghan army. I suppose you think it is my patriotic duty to let the boy die for the sins of his father?” Cella took another sip of tea.

“No. But the boy will probably grow up and become a killer like his father. Doesn’t that bother you?”

“I can’t know for sure if he will grow up to be a killer. He probably will. There is killing all around him. What else does he know? Right now, I know he needs my help. I also know that the mine that took his foot was probably American. A lot of American mines have killed a lot of innocent people around here. Doesn’t that bother you?”

“I hate it. But that’s war. The sooner it ends, the better.”

“And your job is to help end it, yes?”

“Yes.”

“And you enjoy this work? Killing the enemy?” Her blue eyes bored into his.

“No, but it’s necessary.”

“Necessary. Yes, of course. Then perhaps it is necessary for you to finish the job the mine began. Where is your gun? Or would you prefer to simply strangle the child while he sleeps?” A devilish smile creased her mouth. She took another sip of tea.

“I wish I had your moral clarity. It’s a luxury I can’t afford right now.”

“I think you are a good man, despite what you do.”

“You don’t know what I’ve done.”

“Stay here with me for a month. You will be surprised how clear things become when you start saving lives instead of taking them.”

Her words were fingers pulling on a string deep within him. He felt light-headed. Needed to change the subject. He pointed at the name stenciled on his chest. “This guy. Brother? Or husband?”

“Neither.” Her face soured. “Bodyguard. My father insisted.”

“Who just happened to have your same last name?”

“A legal fiction. It would be too scandalous for an unmarried man and woman to be living under the same roof here in this place. So Vittorio came as my fake husband. Passport, clothes, everything.”

“Where is he now?”

“Dead, a month ago.”

“How?”

“A local army commander named Marwat. Runs drugs and guns. They ambushed Vittorio. Thought he was Interpol.”

“Then you’re in danger, too.”

“No. I have lots of friends around here, remember? They kill me, they have a civil war on their hands.”

“That won’t save you.”

“It has so far.”

“And does your father know that Vittorio is dead?”

“No.”

“Because if you told him, he’d just send another, right?”

“Yes.”

Pearce rummaged around in his memory for a moment. “Paolini. Aerospace manufacturing. Helicopters, right?”

She sighed. “And other things.”

Pearce glanced around the clinic again. Very well stocked. “And he’s your ‘donor base.’”

“He makes money killing people, so it is only right that his money should save them, too.” She pulled off her glasses. “How would you like some food?”

“Very much, thank you. I’m starving.”

“Then make us something. There are some fresh eggs and bread in that refrigerator, and a pan in the bottom drawer. I must go next door and check on the women.”

Pearce’s mouth watered at the thought of fried eggs. “Sounds like a plan.” He headed for the refrigerator and pulled out a bowl of eggs. Started to relax.

Until the explosion.

21

Afghanistan–Pakistan border

^{7 January}

Pearce grabbed his M4 and a parka before diving into the UAZ. The distant explosion he’d heard was in the direction of Daud’s village. Distant jet engines split the air like rolling thunder, and black smoke smudged the crystalline blue sky above the mountain.

Pearce had given Daud’s radio to Hamid and told him to keep it close. “Hamid! Hamid! What is happening?” Pearce yelled in Pashto.

No response.

The snowstorm had passed, but the clear sky had only dropped the temperature. Pearce shivered in the cab, waiting for the motor heat to kick in. He slammed the gearshift through its paces, clutching as fast as he could to get up to speed. The ancient Russian jeep slipped and yawed in the snow as he gunned the throttle, but its four-wheel drive kept him moving generally forward.

Pearce called on the radio again, over and over. Nothing.

He wound his way back up the hill toward the village. Somewhere along the way he’d crossed back over the border from Pakistan. It was hardly a road, more like a clearing between trees. He followed Cella’s tire tracks from last night, hoping they were, in fact, hers. But he remembered a hairpin turn that he now took that brought him to a steep incline. Daud’s village would be about three kilometers up the road. He slammed the brakes and listened. Over the idling motor he could make out the heavy whump-whump-whump of rotor blades beating the air.

The road leveled out for a short stretch. As best he could remember this little patch was about three hundred meters from the village. He pulled off the road and hid the vehicle in the trees, killed the motor, and grabbed his rifle. The helicopter engine thundered overhead and voices shouted at the top of the hill.

Pearce checked his only mag, then squeezed the release latch, pulled back the T handle, and charged a round into the receiver. He wished like hell now he hadn’t left his fighting pack at Daud’s house. The only gear he had with him was his rifle, combat knife, and boots. He didn’t have time to pull on his body armor.

Pearce picked his way up the hill through the trees, keeping cover, careful to stay as far away from the road as possible. His face burned in the cold air that carried the smell of burnt wood and flesh. He crested the hill and dropped into the snow, which was covered in fine dust and ash.

He used his rifle scope to scan the smoldering village, a hundred meters to his right, across the road. His heart sank. Houses were flattened, and craters smoldered. Broken bodies, or pieces of them, were scattered on the ground. He counted twenty Taliban fighters laughing and joking as they picked through the smoldering ruins, nudging the corpses of Daud’s men. A few carried AKs, but most carried HK G3s, just like he’d heard last night. In the distance, a UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter circled on over watch.

Pearce swung the scope around again. There. Khalid himself. The black-bearded muj was sharing a smoke with a U.S. Army captain wearing an Airborne unit patch.

Pearce tried to put the puzzle pieces together. Why would the Air Force level this village with JDAMs? That Army captain must have called it in. But why? Maybe Khalid told that captain that this was an AQ village. Shit. But Daud and his village were registered with the CIA as allies, and Pearce’s command knew he was hunting Khalid for running drugs and guns across the border. Hell, his command had authorized the mission. So who FUBAR’d?

He’d figure that out later. Pearce centered the target reticle on Khalid’s upper lip just below the nose, aiming for the “apricot,” the medulla oblongata. He slowed his breathing, preparing to pull between heartbeats.

He hesitated. Shooting Khalid now would be suicide. It wouldn’t bring Hamid or Daud’s father and mother back to life. Wouldn’t fix anything. If he wasn’t lucky, he might accidentally shoot the captain. It was a really bad idea.

Pearce’s rifle barked. Khalid’s face erupted in a cloud of pink mist and broken teeth.

That’s for you, Daud.

Pearce rolled to his left, then stood and ran in a half-crouch back down the hill through the trees. Angry voices shouted behind him. Rifles cracked. Bullets zooped in the air just above his head, snipping branches and spitting snow in front of him. Pearce’s lungs burned as he gulped down the frozen air, his legs pumping high through the thick cotton candy of loose snow until he reached the UAZ.

He yanked open the door, fired up the engine, and spun the jeep back out onto the road. He shoved the stick into first gear and leaped out, hoping the Black Hawk would take the bait and chase the UAZ while he dove through the trees down the perilous slope back to Cella’s compound. If the helicopter didn’t kill him, the run down the side of the mountain probably would.

22

Medicia Oltre Frontiere Compound

Afghanistan–Pakistan border

^{7 January}

Two hours later, Pearce stumbled out of the steep tree line, back on the Pakistani side of the border. Bathed in sweat, thighs burning, breathless, he scanned the snowy path just beyond the clinic entrance.

Not good.

The blue steel gate was battered and twisted on the lock side, rammed open by something heavy and hostile.

Pearce dropped to the deck in a puff of snow just as a Pakistani soldier stepped into the open gate area. He wore heavy-weather camouflage gear and carried a G3 rifle.

Just like the rifles that Khalid’s men carried.

That was enough confirmation for Pearce. The Pakistanis, or at least some of them, were helping the Taliban. With allies like that, how could we possibly fail to win this war? he thought.

Assholes.

The soldier scanned the road carelessly, then stepped back inside the gate, out of view. Pearce dashed across the road, as far away from the sight line of the gate entrance as he could get. A stand of pine trees marched up to the high stone walls of the compound. Pearce used them as cover. When he reached the wall, he listened. He counted three voices in the little courtyard, but heard more voices shouting from inside the clinic.

Pearce slung his rifle over his back, pulled himself up silently onto a low-hanging branch, then climbed to another just above. He could barely feel his hands. His gloves were still in the clinic. Up in the second branch he had a view just clearing the wall. He saw three men directly below him, sheltering themselves against the chilling breeze behind a heavy-duty truck parked near the wall, shivering and smoking cigarettes.

Pearce considered his tactical disadvantages. He was outnumbered and outgunned here in the courtyard, an unknown number of bogeys were in the clinic, and Cella was nowhere in sight. No grenades, no flash bangs. Could he evade detection and make his way into the clinic without endangering Cella’s life, or Daud’s? He tried to formulate a plan, but his mind was numb with fatigue and clouded by an agonizing headache brought on by the frozen air and lack of food.

A gunshot burst inside the clinic. Cella screamed.

Pearce pulled his knife and leaped over the wall.

So much for planning.

The Pakistani officer held a fistful of Cella’s hair in his powerful grip and pointed a pistol in her face, inches from his.

“CIA! WHERE IS CIA?!” he screamed in broken English.

“I… don’t… know!” Cella cried.

“Here,” Pearce said.

The officer whirled around, still clutching Cella by the hair, the other hand pointing the gun toward Pearce. He fired.

Too late, by a breath. Pearce had fired first, kneeling.

The pistol round cracked on the doorframe just above Pearce’s head as the Pakistani’s throat blossomed in petals of blood and meat. His hands went limp as his spinal cord severed from the base of his skull, freeing Cella, dropping the gun, dead before he crashed to the floor.

Cella stood frozen in a half crouch, trembling.

Pearce ran to her and threw an arm around her. She wrapped both arms around his neck, clinging to him like a life raft.

“The others?” he whispered.

She raised her face. It was smeared in tears and snot. Her left eye was blue and swollen shut. She pointed at the women’s clinic. “Five of them.” She noticed that Pearce was bathed in wet blood.

She gasped. “Where are you hit?”

He shook his head: I’m not.

He shoved her against the far wall, trying to get her out of sight of the doorway, just in case. “Wait here,” he whispered.

“Stay with me. They will be waiting for you.”

He shook his head again. “They think their buddy just shot you.”

Pearce ducked back out the door in a low crouch as Cella raced over to Daud’s bed. The Afghani’s brains were spattered against the far wall and he was bled out all over his pillow. Too late, she knew. But something in her had hoped.

She suddenly realized she was sticky with blood, too. The blood that was on Pearce.

Panicked shouts rang out on the other side of the wall.

So did five muffled gunshots. Cella flinched.

Seconds later, Pearce raced back through the doorway.

“The women were all dead. I’m sorry,” Pearce said.

Cella buried her swollen face in her hands and sobbed.

Pearce glanced at Daud’s bed, then the other two. The boy and the old man were shot through the head as well.

“Was that the asshole that killed Vittorio? Marwat?” He nodded at the corpse on the floor lying in the spreading pool of blood.

All Cella could do was nod.

“We need to scoot.”

“Where will we go?”

“The only place we can.”

23

Medicia Oltre Frontiere Compound

Afghanistan–Pakistan border

^{7 January}

They changed out of their bloody clothes and layered up as warmly as possible, careful to avoid any military-supplied gear, Italian or otherwise. Over Cella’s protests, Pearce allowed her just one backpack stuffed with whatever she could fit in it, along with her passport. She tossed him Vittorio’s.

“What’s this for?”

“It might prove useful.”

Pearce opened it, examined the photo. “I hardly look like him, and I don’t speak Italian.”

“With that beard, who can tell? I can always vouch for you.” She forced a grim smile. “Just keep your mouth shut.”

The only real food Cella had on hand was a loaf of bread and two chocolate bars. Pearce thought about doing the Rocky thing and cracking open the eggs into a glass and swallowing them whole, but he thought the consistency would be like snot so he passed. But while Cella was pulling together her papers, Pearce found a cabinet full of plastic bags labeled Razione Viveri Speciale da Combattimento. It wasn’t hard for him to figure out what they were, but he was glad the Italian combat rations were also dual labeled in English—probably a NATO requirement. He pulled out several bags with the most appealing contents, including ones marked Cordiale/Bevanda Alcolica, because Pearce knew that every now and then a good belt might come in handy.

God bless the Italians.

The last thing Pearce asked Cella to do was the worst, but to his surprise, she agreed without protest. They dragged the dead bodies from outside into the clinic and flooded the floors of both clinics with kerosene from the heaters. He then bundled her up into the Pakistani army truck. The vehicle was clearly marked with Pakistani flags on the hood and the sides. The U.S. Army wouldn’t dare fire on it if they came on this side of the border, which, as far as Pearce knew, they wouldn’t. After pulling the vehicle out past the broken gate, he ran back in and set fire to stacks of blankets soaked in kerosene, but not before snagging one of the dead soldier’s field caps. By the time the truck lumbered away from the clinic it was engulfed in flames.

“Now what?” Cella asked.

“We head south.”

Kabul was less than two hundred miles directly north from the clinic, but Pearce knew he couldn’t drive straight there. Khalid’s men, the U.S. Army, and God knows who else were likely still searching for him up the road just over the border. His first concern was Cella’s safety, and the best he could do was get her to the Italian embassy in Islamabad. But how?

“Samira was the wife of a chief in a village about four kilometers from here.” Cella sighed. “She was pregnant with her third. He would help.”

“He might already be dead. Obviously, Marwat and Khalid were connected. Marwat knew about you and your clinic. Khalid must have tipped him off about me being here.”

“How?”

“Maybe they captured one of Daud’s people. Tortured him for information. Told him about you and I evacuating Daud to the clinic.”

“Would they have had the time?”

“Maybe, maybe not. Maybe they had planned to take you out all along and it was a coincidence that Daud’s village was hit at the same time. I don’t know. But either way, if we’re being hunted, the first place they would look for us is any village that has a connection to you. And if they aren’t already there, there’s no point in leading them there. You’ve seen how they handle business in these parts.”

“Then what do we do?”

“Ditch this truck as soon as we can. If we can get to a phone, I can call somebody.”

“A phone? Are you joking? The CIA can’t afford to give you your own cell phone?”

“I have a sat phone. But I left it at Daud’s place. I fucked up.”

An hour later, they made their way into the flatlands where the temperature had warmed up enough to turn the snow to slush. Pearce was dark enough to pass for a local, especially with his beard and army field cap pulled over his head. Cella lay flat on the bench seat whenever traffic passed in the opposite direction, which was seldom and, thankfully, always civilian—and they were too afraid of the army to dare cast a glance into the windshield.

They parked the truck in a stand of trees off the road when they saw the first power lines. Pearce knew they would lead to a place requiring electricity. But it took them another two hours of walking until they came to a collection of walled houses, shops, and even a gas station. Cella covered her entire head and face with her knit scarf. She’d also had enough sense to grab a heavy woolen shawl back at the clinic and wrapped it around her shoulders and torso to hide her figure, hunching over a little as she walked to try to conceal her height. The place was a little larger than a village, but hardly a town, let alone a city. One of the shops advertised telephone services in both Pashto and English, so they made their way there.

They entered the shop without incident, and Cella asked for the telephone service since her Pashto was far better than Pearce’s. But the man behind the counter smiled beneath a pair of thick lenses and a bad comb-over and replied in faultless English that they were more than welcome to use the phone so long as they could pay. Pearce got the sense from the proprietor that he was sympathetic to Westerners, so he offered him a stashed one-ounce gold coin for both the phone service and his silence. The man’s smile only got bigger, and he swore secrecy.

Pearce reached a senior CIA field agent in Peshawar, a base of U.S. undercover operations since the days of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

“Can you sit tight where you are for two hours?” the agent asked.

Pearce asked the proprietor if he could accommodate them with a flash of two more gold coins and the keys to their abandoned truck. The shopkeeper nodded violently.

“Yeah, no problem. But don’t drag your feet, either.”

An hour and forty-five minutes later, Pearce and Cella were in an armored Chevy Suburban heading back to Peshawar. When they reached the CIA station, Cella was met by an Italian diplomat who choppered in from Islamabad as soon as her embassy had learned that a Paolini was in need of assistance. Before she left, Pearce asked for a private moment with Cella.

“I’m sorry about everything that happened. I feel responsible somehow.”

“It’s this stupid war. It’s crazy. It will kill you before it’s all over. You should leave. Come with me. Now.”

“Don’t tempt me. I’m probably due for a firing squad as it is.”

“You already have an Italian passport with your name on it. You’re my husband, remember?” She tried to charm him with a smile.

“If I can ever make it up to you—”

“You can. Stay alive. And come find me when this is all over.”

“It’s a deal.”

“And thank you for saving my life.” She threw her arms around his neck and hugged him tight, then leaned back and kissed him lightly on the mouth.

And with that, she left.

Pearce spent the next two days in Peshawar recovering from dehydration and fatigue before he was debriefed and reprimanded, first by the local station’s senior supervisor and then by his unit commander back in Kabul, who ordered him to report back immediately.

Pearce caught the next available Air Force transport flight from Peshawar to Kabul, where he submitted to another two hours of debriefing and another sharp reprimand before a brand-new bottle of Maker’s Mark was cracked open and the two men drank until midnight. Pearce stumbled out of the door with a thirty-day pass in his hip pocket and two big ideas in his head.

Pearce chased down the first big idea the next night, making his way to FOB Salerno in Khost, Afghanistan. He broke into the compound, searching for the private quarters of Colonel J. Armstrong, the unit commander of the airborne outfit responsible for the massacre of Daud’s village.

Pearce’s heavy boot smashed open the bathroom door, where he found the bull-necked officer on his commode with his BDUs around his ankles, savoring a Marlboro while relieving himself. Before the startled officer could react, Pearce shoved the colonel’s own vintage Colt M1911 .45 pistol against his forehead, widening the older man’s eyes with shock.

“Are you out of your mind, soldier?”

“There was a village on the map called Dogar until just a couple of days ago, when your unit burned it to the ground and killed about a hundred friends of mine. I’m going to kill you for that.”

“Then why are we talking?”

“Because I’m going to give you a choice. Tell me how much Khalid was paying you and then I’ll kill you fast and easy with a bullet to the brain. But if you lie to me, I’ll gut you and let you bleed to death in a puddle of your own excrement. Which will it be?”

“Khalid is one of our agents. I was paying him.”

“Why did you attack the village?”

“Khalid said Dogar was a Taliban stronghold, responsible for the gun trafficking in the area. Named a talib called Daud as the number one bandit.”

“You stupid fuck. Khalid is the talib shitting all over us up there. Dogar was on our side. Daud and I were hunting Khalid. That was all on the books months ago.”

“Who is ‘we,’ son?”

“CIA.”

“How the hell are we supposed to know what you spooks are doing down there? We’re Army.”

“Don’t you high-level pricks talk to each other before pulling this kind of shit?”

“As a matter of fact, we don’t. My people don’t talk to yours, and yours don’t talk to mine. Still too much territorial pissing going on between commands. The whole war effort’s turning into a goddamned goat rodeo.” The colonel gestured at his trousers. “You mind?”

Pearce stepped back but didn’t lower the gun. His instincts said the colonel wasn’t lying. Killing a man wasn’t an issue for him, but killing an innocent man was.

The colonel yanked up his pants. “I’m real sorry about your friends, son. Truly I am. And I would’ve put a gun to your head, too, if the shoe had been on the other foot. The only difference is, I would’ve pulled it without jawboning beforehand.”

“Yeah. I’m kind of liberal that way,” Pearce said. He tossed the colonel’s antique pistol into the unflushed toilet, splashing slop onto the linoleum. “But I’m working on it.”

The colonel’s skull flushed red. “My granddaddy carried that Colt from Bastogne to the Remagen bridge.”

“Like I give a shit. Next time, pick up a fucking phone and call somebody before you decide to slaughter an entire village, especially a friendly one.”

Pearce backed out of the door and disappeared into the night without being followed by the colonel, still cursing in his bungalow. That completed his first big idea.

His second big idea was going to be a whole lot more interesting.

24

Lake Como, Italy

^{11 January}

The second big idea Pearce had the night he left Kabul was definitely better than the first.

It took him two days to make the haul from Khost to Islamabad, where he boarded a Qatar Airlines flight to Milan. He slept for the entire thirteen-hour flight, even during the layover in Dohar.

He was awake and refreshed when he deplaned at one o’clock in the afternoon at Aeroporto Milano Malpensa. To his surprise, Pearce was greeted at the gate by name by a short, barrel-chested man in a turtleneck and sport coat too small for his bulging arms and shoulders. His bald scalp, broad nose, and deep-set eyes reminded him of the famous Italian dictator—if Mussolini had been a cage fighter.

“Welcome to Italia, Mr. Pearce. My name is Renzo Sforza.” The man shook Pearce’s hand. “I am the Paolini estate manager. Ms. Paolini has put you in my care.”

Judging by the crushing grip, Pearce thought maybe “custody” was a better word than “care.”

Sforza escorted Pearce to a waiting convoy of three silver Maserati Levante SUVs. Three men stood by each of the vehicles, chiseled and handsome as fashion models in après-ski jackets and cargo pants. Relaxed and smiling, Pearce thought they looked like they were posing for a sports magazine cover photo rather than conducting a security transport operation. Only the Beretta pistols tucked into their shoulder harnesses suggested otherwise.

When Pearce approached the lead vehicle, he was greeted with the affable swagger of fellow operators—friendly, confident, and lethal. He offered his backpack for inspection, but it was declined with a smile. He climbed into the rear passenger compartment and the mini convoy sped north on the Strada Provinciale 52 to begin the journey to Lake Como.

The window separating the driver’s compartment from his lowered and Sforza handed Pearce a cell phone. The window slid back up, and a moment later it rang.

“I wasn’t expecting a reception,” Pearce said.

“I couldn’t take any chances,” Cella said. “How was your flight?”

“How did you know I was coming?”

She laughed.

“I mean, how did you know what flight I would be on?” Pearce asked.

“We have computers in Italy, too.”

“Exactly where are you taking me?”

“We have an old family villa at the lake. Just a little place for you to rest and recuperate. Doctor’s orders.”

“I’m looking forward to seeing you again.”

“Me, too. Unfortunately, I won’t be there when you arrive.”

The convoy whisked along State Road 583 up into the mountains past Como, winding along the steep grade through a dozen postcard villages and towns perched on the mountain or swooping toward the water. Pearce marveled at the deep-blue color of the lake and the giant snowcapped peaks towering over it. Even taller mountains in the Swiss Alps loomed in the distance. The Maseratis made their way along the narrow lane, which seemed barely able to accommodate two cars, particularly in the little towns. An hour and a half later, Pearce’s vehicle came to the town of Bellagio, sitting at the end of a point of land that bisected this end of the lake. Pearce checked his Google maps. It looked like the Bellagio peninsula pointed at the crotch of a running woman, the lake forming two legs running down either side of the peninsula, with the much broader trunk of the northern lake forming her torso.

The SUVs climbed up the hill toward a massive stone-walled villa occupying the top of the wooded hill at the farther point on the peninsula.

That’s when he knew Cella had lied to him.

Just a little place for you to rest and recuperate, she had said, Pearce reminded himself.

The big iron gates at the end of the winding driveway opened electronically and the three-vehicle convoy sped into a courtyard, where they were greeted by uniformed house servants and more bodyguards.

Sforza opened Pearce’s door. Pearce got out, stretched.

“Welcome to Villa Paolini, Mr. Pearce. Let me show you to your room. Any special requests?”

“Hot shower. And I might toss my clothes into a washer. Long trip.”

“Very good. Follow me, please.” Sforza motioned for Pearce to follow as he pulled out a cell phone and barked an order.

Sforza marched up the grand marble staircase and opened the broad wooden double doors at the top of the landing, pointing Pearce the way in. The room was actually a suite with floor-to-ceiling windows and a stunning 270-degree view of the deep-blue lakes and towering mountains. It looked more like an IMAX theater screen than an actual room with a view. The room itself was easy on the eyes, too, featuring polished white marble, granite, and light wood complementing the natural view. Pearce could hardly take it in.

“I trust you find the room acceptable, signore,” Sforza grunted.

“If this is all you have, I suppose it will do.” Pearce scratched his ratty beard. “I didn’t bring my GPS. You wanna point me in the direction of the bathroom?”

“Of course.”

Sforza led him to a marble quarry posing as a bathroom. Larger than many homes he’d stood in, the bathroom was a vast expanse of stone, glass, and silver fixtures, but it was the antique barber’s chair and the sturdy woman in a white barber’s coat that caught his attention. She was mercilessly beating a cup of shaving soap into a frothy lather with a badger hair brush. Pearce unconsciously tugged on his beard.

“Perhaps you require a shave, signore?” the woman asked. Her accent was Italian, but her blue eyes and sharp features were definitely Germanic. Pearce knew far northern Italy had been Austrian territory before the First World War.

“Yeah, maybe so.”

“Call if you need anything else, signore,” Sforza said, turned on his heel, and left.

Pearce enjoyed the best shave of his life as the barber deftly removed his beard, yielding a baby-bottom-smooth finish with a pearl-handled straight razor and generous helpings of eucalyptus-scented lather.

Pearce took a long shower in a huge walk-in enclosure with six showerheads that also featured a view of the lake. When he emerged from the shower, open suitcases of new clothes were already laid out on the king-sized bed, all in his size, of course. He feasted on a platter of antipasto, cheeses and fruit, and washed it all down with a bottle of Pellegrino sparkling water. He pulled on casual clothes, a vest, and hiking boots and made his way outside. The air was crystal clear and fragrant with pine. The sun was out, and the air was relatively warm despite the higher altitude—certainly nothing like Afghanistan, which, he could hardly believe, was just a few days behind him. He’d stepped out of hell and fallen into heaven in such a short period of time that he felt disoriented.

Under Sforza’s watchful eye, Pearce toured the grounds around the villa and took in the stunning views of the mountains and lake all over again. The clean air alone was enough to revive his spirits, and the gentle hiking was working out all of the kinks in his muscles after so many hours of sitting on planes and in cars. But another wave of fatigue washed over him and he headed back to his suite. He called down for beer and soon received a dozen bottles of chilled Tipo Pils in a silver champagne bucket brimming with ice. The tasty local craft beer brewed in Como was citrusy and sweet. Pearce downed two while watching a stunning sunset purple a jagged mountain sky, and he was suddenly homesick for the Rockies, the first time in years. He shrugged off a wave of bad childhood memories about his father that suddenly flooded in, brushed his teeth, and hit the sack. He passed out almost as soon as his head touched the pillow.

He dreamed of Cella. Her hungry mouth teased its way up his hard stomach until it found his neck and then his mouth. His rough hands cupped her breasts as she grasped him with her long fingers and thrust him into her, wet and eager as he was hard, and she gasped again.

And that’s when he realized it wasn’t a dream.

Their sex was feral, greedy, frenzied. A HALO free fall, waiting for the chute that never opened. The Tingle, he called it. The sheer loss of control, the inevitability of death. Until the chute opened, and then, release.

He marveled at the strength in her long, athletic limbs and hard torso, muscled after a year in the high mountains feeding on animal protein. Her energy built as the night drove on, rising, cresting, then rising again until something deep within him broke, and he gave in to the thing inside, primal and unknowing. Beyond. They devoured each other until sheer exhaustion stole them both away. They awoke, tangled in the sheets and wrapped around each other, the morning light heavy in their eyes.

And then they started all over again.

Pearce woke again with the afternoon sun high in the windows. He pulled on a new set of clothes and sped down the wide marble stairs to the kitchen.

Cella smiled at him over a glass of wine. She was frying fish and green beans in olive oil in a pan over the stove. She wore a tight sweater and formfitting jeans. He tried not to stare at the sheer beauty of her, but failed. He approached her. She kissed him. He could taste the wine.

“Hungry?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. We’ll eat, and then I’m taking you somewhere.”

“I think you already did.”

She blushed.

That surprised him.

They walked hand in hand along the waterfront promenade of Bellagio. The buildings were ablaze in afternoon sunlight, each painted in glowing yellow, or ocher, or blue beneath red clay-tiled roofs. The buildings ascended from the water to the side of the forested mountain powdered with snow. Tall cypress stood guard like sentries over the sleepy winter harbor, mostly empty save for the few white sailboats of the intrepid locals.

Troy and Cella strolled past the high-end stores and shops tucked beneath the awnings, then turned up the narrow alleys, climbing the worn stone steps past more shops and an auberge. Cella led them higher up and then to a stone gate overlooking the town. With the mountains in the background and the red-roofed steeple in the middle, Pearce thought he might have been looking at a painting.

“I wish it were spring.” Cella sighed. “You should see the colors with all of the flowers, all along the harbor, and up here, too, in the hotel gardens, and spilling out of every house garden, too.” She touched a twisting vine climbing the stone wall. “This wisteria hangs like a thick cluster of purple grapes.”

Pearce tried to imagine the splashes of color. He’d seen pictures of this place but never imagined he’d ever visit. He glanced past Cella’s shoulder and caught the eye of one of her bodyguards trying to remain inconspicuous in the distance. In the summer it would be easy to hide in the crowd, but now the village was nearly empty. Even some of the shops had closed for the winter.

At sunset she took him to her favorite restaurant. She was greeted by the owner with a kiss on each cheek and offered a private balcony overlooking the lake. They feasted on lake mussels bathed in butter and garlic, peppered beef filets, and risotto. They took dessert, cognac, and coffee, too, and waved away Sforza’s silver Levante for the long walk back to the villa.

The evening ended the way the day had begun, and they fell asleep in each other’s arms again, wordlessly.

Cella took Troy out on her private boat the next day and they visited a few of the other lake villages, as picturesque as Bellagio, though smaller and less well known. The day after, Sforza arranged a ski trip at Madesimo, near the Swiss border. Cella and Troy insisted, however, that the bodyguards join them on the slopes. What was the point of trying to remain hidden on a downhill run? The snow was powdery and wet, and neither gave ground to the other as they carved their way down the long runs. When the sun finally fell, they drank buttered rum in the lodge by a roaring fire. After a long, hard day of skiing, Troy and Cella were both exhausted, but hot showers and mulled wine revived them and they wrestled the night away again.

“Do you have religion?” Cella asked, standing in the Duomo di Milano, Milan’s famous soaring Gothic cathedral. They stood at the left of the altar beneath the feet of San Bartolomeo, towering over them.

“You mean, like this guy?” Pearce pointed at the Renaissance statue, perfect in its rendition of a man flayed alive, his skin hung about his shoulders like a shawl. The forlorn saint looked like an illustration for musculature in Gray’s Anatomy.

“He is the patron saint of tanners. Men with knives. He would be a good saint for you. He is a martyr.”

“No, but thanks. I’ve seen what martyrs can do.” He admired the artistry of the work, but grimaced at the horror of it.

“San Bartolomeo was a man turned inside out by the world that hated him. You could use an intercessor like that.”

He glanced at his feet. The red, white, and black marble was cut and shaped in the form of flowers. The soaring columns were forests of stone that climbed high into the arched vault above. Brilliant stained glass filled the long window frames. Pearce had never been in a church this large or ancient before. It was overwhelming. He felt small in there. He supposed that was the point.

“Let’s go.”

Cella showed Troy the best of Milano, her hometown. She was proud of it, the way Italians are, especially Milanese. She showed him Leonardo’s famous Last Supper fresco at the convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie, and took him shopping at the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, which with its beautiful glass dome and carved marble floors seemed to Pearce to be another kind of cathedral. She made him spin on the testicles of the Torino bull for luck, and bought them both formal evening wear on her account at Biffi, then took him to the magnificent Teatro degli Arcimboldi to see Otello, apologizing profusely that she couldn’t take him to La Scala because it was closed for renovations, as if she and Milano had somehow sinned against him. Pearce loved the opera, his first, and the evening they spent together at the Grand Hotel. She slept in his arms as he stared at the ceiling with images of the flayed Christian martyr standing in the center of Daud’s ruined village, beckoning him with skinless fingers and a lipless smile. Or maybe it was Daud.

Why?” Cella asked. She was confused. They had spent a perfect week together. Heaven.

Pearce folded his favorite shirt and tucked it neatly into his pack. He wouldn’t need the others, or the suitcases.

“Orders. I don’t have a choice.”

She sat on the bed. “That’s a lie you tell yourself. You choose to obey orders. You can also choose to disobey them.”

“If I disobey them, they might shoot me.”

“If you obey them, someone else might shoot you.”

“That’s the life I chose.”

“Then choose another.”

“I would if I could. But I’m a soldier. I have a duty to my country.”

She took his hand. “Let me be your country.”

Pearce smiled. “Don’t tempt me.”

“I will tempt you.” She kissed his hand, then pointed at the magnificent view of the lake. “All of this will be yours. And more. This is nothing, believe me. My father has houses all over the world. Stay with me, and we’ll see them all.”

Pearce sat on the bed next to her and took her hand in his.

“Tell me, why did you leave all of this? My whole house growing up would fit inside just this bedroom, with room to spare.”

“These are just things. People are what matter most, don’t you think?”

“And that’s why you came to the same place I did.”

“We weren’t in the same place, you and I. Not really. I went to heal. You went to kill.”

“And if I stay here with you? How many more operas will you take me to before you’re bored? Before you decide you have to go back to Afghanistan?”

“I will never go back to that place.”

“At least we have that in common.”

“What do you mean?”

Pearce stood. “I just got the call. I’m heading somewhere else.”

“Where?”

“I can’t say. It’s classified.”

“It’s Iraq, isn’t it?”

Pearce tried not to convey his surprise. How did she know?

“What? You think I’m stupid? You think I don’t read the papers?”

“I don’t make the call. I just answer it.”

Cella stood. “What call? To topple Hussein? Why him? Why now? Because he supports al-Qaeda? But most of the 9/11 assholes on the planes were from Saudi Arabia. Bin Laden is from Saudi Arabia. Why aren’t you invading them?”

“Hussein’s a war criminal. He used chemical weapons against his own people.”

“Do you mean the chemical weapons you Americans gave him? The ones you helped him use against the Iranians?”

“I’m a soldier, not a politician.” Pearce zipped up the pack. “I want to stay here with you, I really do. But I have a job to do first. When I’m done, I’ll come back.”

Her eyes raged, wet with tears.

“To hell with your war, and to hell with you. If you leave, don’t call, don’t write, don’t ever come back.”

Cella ran out of the room. Everything in him wanted to chase her.

But he didn’t.

Duty called.

25

The village of Anou

Kidal Region, Northeastern Mali

^{7 May}

The Tuareg driver flashed the lights of his Toyota Hilux pickup three times. The sun had risen ten minutes earlier and the sky was pinking, but the great silver disk was still hidden behind the hills five kilometers to the east.

“Again.” Mossa scanned the sky for a speck coming from the southwest, binoculars held to his turbaned face.

The driver flashed his lights three more times.

“There.” The plane was ten miles out. Mossa recognized the make. He’d seen Aviocars all over the Middle East, one of the workhorses of the skies. At its current speed it would be landing in about two minutes.

“One more time, Moctar.”

Three more flashes.

Mossa brought the glasses back up. The plane’s wings waggled three times. “They see us,” he said.

Judy finished the last waggle and leveled the plane again.

“Two minutes, boss.”

Pearce pulled out the small duffel he’d snatched from AFB Karem and unzipped it. He removed an Air Force M4 carbine with an HK M320 grenade launcher slung underneath. He checked the magazine and safety.

“Where’d you get that?”

“Won it in a card game.”

“I’ve seen you play cards, remember?”

“Let’s just say there’s an Air Force Security Forces sergeant who’s gonna be embarrassed as hell when they do weapons inventory this morning.”

“I thought you weren’t expecting any trouble.”

“You heard Ian.”

“You stole that before Ian gave us the heads-up.”

“Can’t be too careful.”

“That’s great. You’re pissing in everybody’s soup today, aren’t you?”

“Just so long as you and I are okay,” Pearce said.

“Jury’s still out on that one. Keep your belt on. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.”

Mossa watched the pilot flare the wings as the plane approached. Sand and rock kicked up behind the aircraft but the wheels landed softly, without a bounce. Impressive.

He tapped his driver on the shoulder and the Hilux jumped.

Time to get the American.

Judy feathered the rumbling engines and the props slowed enough that she could release the foot brakes. She unbuckled her safety harness in the pilot seat and joined Pearce in the back.

Pearce stood at the open cargo door. He’d already secured the emergency stretcher to the deck in case Mike had to lie prone. Otherwise, he’d put Early in the more comfortable copilot’s seat and he’d take one of the folding jump seats back in the cargo area.

Pearce had his rifle slung over his back. He didn’t want to appear threatening to whoever was driving up, but he wanted the gun handy in case trouble pulled up instead. Both the rifle and the grenade launcher were racked. Safeties off.

The Hilux raced up to the cargo door. Three men. All wore desert camouflage fatigues and indigo blue turbans that hid everything but their eyes. The Blue Men, Pearce reminded himself. He half expected robes and camels. One manned the machine gun mounted in back, one drove, and now one stood in the passenger seat. All Pearce could see of the standing man’s face were his dark eyes, sharp and suspicious. The other two stared daggers at him.

“You are Pearce?” the standing one said.

Pearce nodded. “Where’s Early?”

The man motioned with his hand. “Come. We don’t have much time.”

Pearce didn’t like the way this was setting up. “Who are you?”

“I am Mossa Ag Alla.”

“Chief of all the Imohar!” the gunner shouted, careful not to point the weapon at Pearce.

Mossa waved a hand to silence the younger man.

“You were supposed to bring Early,” Pearce said.

“Yes, Early. Hurry. There isn’t much time.”

“You know about the Army convoy heading your way?”

“Of course.”

If Early was badly wounded, it might make sense that they wouldn’t have brought him out here, just in case Pearce didn’t arrive.

Or it was a trap.

Pearce said to Judy, “Mind the fort. I’ll be back.”

“And miss the chance to meet the missus? No way.”

Pearce’s icy gaze said otherwise. He yanked a comms link out of his vest pocket and put it in his ear.

“Fine,” Judy said. “At least snap a photo for me.”

“I’ll stay in touch.”

“Be careful,” Judy said, and headed back for the cockpit.

Pearce grabbed the small aluminum attaché case, then jumped down into the rocky sand. He scrambled into the back of the Toyota, and Mossa gave the order to drive with a wave of his hand. The driver mashed the gas pedal and the Toyota leaned hard into a steep 180-degree turn, then sprung upright as it rocketed for the village.

The pickup skidded to a halt in front of the well. Mossa stepped out of the Toyota and motioned for Pearce to follow. The other two stayed behind on alert. Pearce kept his weapon slung over his shoulder and gripped the aluminum attaché case in one hand.

Mossa marched to a nearby house and stopped. Bullet holes scarred the mud-brick walls. He motioned to the doorway illuminated in early-morning light. It was already warming up.

“Your friend is in here.”

Pearce nodded and marched past Mossa into the little house. This close he could see the lines around the older man’s eyes. The Tuareg fighter was five feet ten and powerfully built, but still four inches shorter than Pearce.

Mike Early sat at a small table drinking hot tea. The kettle still steamed where it sat on the hot coals in the fireplace. His left arm was in a sling, and an olive-drab shemagh was draped around his neck, the U.S. Army’s version of a keffiyeh.

“Troy? What are you doing here?” He stood. A wide, toothy grin spread across his bearded face.

“Came to get you out of here.” Pearce crossed to Early and bear-hugged his old friend. “Heard you were wounded and needed an evac.”

Early held up his slinged arm. “This? I’ve had cases of clap worse than this. It’s just a sprain.”

“That’s not what we were told.”

“Don’t blame him. I made the call.” The woman’s heavy Italian accent gave her away.

Pearce turned around. Cella stood in the doorway. He’d steeled himself for the moment but still nearly lost it. It had been years since he’d seen her. She was clearly exhausted and undernourished, but even in her faded camouflage she was stunning.

“Why?” Pearce asked. His voice was even. “And why me?”

She wore her hair pulled into a ponytail, revealing the proud cheekbones and angular jaw he remembered so vividly. Her blue eyes bored into his. “I knew you would come for your friend.” She stepped closer. At six feet even, she was nearly as tall as he was. A ray of golden sunlight struck her face, softening it. “It’s been a long time, hasn’t it?”

“Yes,” Pearce said. He had a million questions, but now was not the time.

“You two know each other?” Early asked.

One of the corners of Cella’s mouth tugged slightly. Almost a smile. “Yes, we know each other.”

“I’ll be damned. It’s a small world.”

“And getting smaller. There’s a convoy on the way.” Pearce motioned to Early. “We need to haul ass.”

“Me? I’m not going anywhere,” Mike said. “I’ve got a job to do.”

“What job?”

Early nodded at Cella. “Her. I’m her security.”

Cella rolled her eyes. “My father’s watchdog.”

“It’s complicated. Like an arranged marriage,” Early said.

“So what am I doing here?” Pearce asked. He glanced at Cella. “I take it you want a lift?”

“Not for me.”

Pearce nodded at Mossa. “Him?”

“No,” he said. “My place is here, with my people.”

Cella brushed past Pearce, close enough that he could smell the sweat in her hair. A memory flooded him. He pushed it away. She stooped a little as she entered a low doorway toward another room. Pearce followed.

Cella pointed toward a bed. A young girl lay on it. Motionless. Eyes closed.

“I need you to take her.”

“A body?”

“Asleep. I gave her a sedative for the journey.”

“Who is she?” Pearce asked.

“My granddaughter,” Mossa said. His fierce black eyes softened beneath the indigo veil.

“My father in Milan is expecting her,” Cella said.

“I’m not running a taxi service. Call somebody else.”

“We can’t. Everybody else would use her to get to Mossa. The only person I trust to help us is you.”

“And you knew about this?” Pearce asked Early.

“First I’m hearing about it. But it makes sense. We’re in the shit out here.”

“You trust me,” Pearce said to Cella. “But you lied to me.”

“You were my last hope. My only hope,” Cella said.

“I don’t understand. What is the girl to you?” Pearce asked.

Cella searched Pearce’s blue eyes, a question weighing heavily in her own. A moment passed. She found her answer.

“She’s my daughter.”

26

Pearce’s cabin

Near the Snake River, Wyoming

^{7 May}

Myers buried her nose in Pearce’s shirt and breathed it in again. It smelled just like him. A combination of sweat and testosterone, mingled with wood smoke and bacon. It brought back fond memories. She hadn’t seen him in over a year, but the olfactory sense was the most powerful of them all and, when triggered, elicited strong emotions, too. Something stirred inside of her, but she felt guilty as hell, sitting in Pearce’s cabin, wearing his shirt while her clothes were in the wash. She was invading his privacy in the worst way, though technically she’d been invited to do so.

She had never depended upon anyone since she was a young girl putting herself through college. But she was afraid and alone, and without sufficient resources for the job at hand. She ran a software company, not a security firm, and was persona non grata with the Greyhill administration, so she turned to Pearce, the only man she truly trusted for help. First for Mike Early, then herself.

There was something indescribably male about Pearce. She’d thought about him often since her resignation. She called on him to take out the Mexican cartel killers who had murdered those poor teenagers, along with her only son. Pearce did as he was asked, and more. She owed him everything. So did the nation. They had all let him down, it seemed. She hoped he had found Mike Early in time and gotten him out of Mali in one piece. Mike was a good guy. So was Pearce. She trusted him completely. He didn’t let her down when she needed him. And now she needed him again.

It was impossible to be around Pearce and not feel like a man was in the room. Solid, dependable, masculine. The kind of man who would fight and die for his country, a rare breed these days. The kind of man who would defend a woman’s honor and her life, whether in a bar fight or a firefight. There weren’t many of those left, either. Video games and boy bands and androgynous movie actors were feminizing everything. In the current culture, the masculine was pitifully obsolete, testosterone an environmental hazard.

Myers poured herself another cup of coffee and gathered her wits. Enough dawdling. Time to get to work. Ian’s package that had been delivered to her at the Glory Box café by Sadie contained all of the necessary keys for Pearce’s cabin and vehicles, along with the alarm code passwords she needed. Pearce had left instructions with Ian that he was to give Myers any and all support she needed should she ever require it. Myers had offered Pearce and his team much the same, though in her capacity as a hands-off owner of a private software company, there wasn’t much she could bring to the table compared with the resources available to Pearce Systems.

She began the terminal session on Pearce’s Linus desktop by plugging in the flash drive Ian sent her and followed his script exactly. Moments later she was tunneling on Ian’s encrypted virtual private network (VPN). Ian’s VPN operated in the Dark Net where 97 percent of all Web content was located and yet was mostly inaccessible to the billions of online users. The Surface Web where people used Google and Facebook was only a tiny fraction of the online world. While some black market vendors hid in the netherworld of the Dark Net in order to sell illegal or contraband items, legitimate users, like lan, just didn’t want to be found.

Myers established a secure videoconferencing connection to Ian, who was located in the renovated Mercury auto plant in Dearborn, Michigan, that served as Pearce Systems’ headquarters and primary research facility.

“Hello, Ian. It’s nice to finally meet you in person, sort of.”

“Same here, Madame President. I’m glad you made it safely.”

“Please, call me Margaret. We’re going to be working together.”

“Of course. Are you comfortable?”

Myers saw herself in the smaller conferencing window wearing Pearce’s shirt. It must have seemed presumptuous. Maybe even Freudian.

“I’m quite comfortable, thank you. The cabin is rustic but charming.”

“I believe his grandfather built it.”

“It has a lot of character. And good coffee.”

“I have you under surveillance on my end. You might care to activate the local security monitors as well, just to be safe.”

Myers scanned the bank of monitors over the desk. Security camera images covering the entire compound filled the screens. There were also cameras rotating shots room to room inside the cabin. “Already did.”

“Very good. Have you had a chance to inspect the motor home?”

“Briefly. It looks like something out of Star Wars.” She had already checked out Pearce’s mobile command center. She knew Pearce had run many of his ops remotely from the retrofitted vehicle.

“You may need to access it later, but for now the terminal you’re on will suffice. Perhaps we should begin at the beginning. Please tell me why you needed a secure location.”

Myers gave a brief explanation of her visit to Justice Tanner and his subsequent suicide, along with the strong suspicion that she was being watched by whoever had blackmailed him.

“What evidence do you have of blackmail?”

“I knew the man for twenty years. His suicide was both an apology and, I think, a clue.”

“Clue?”

“He was very nervous and hostile when I met with him. I’ve never known him to be either. Whoever had the power to blackmail him probably had the ability to keep him under surveillance. I think that’s why he was nervous and hostile. Probably trying to protect me, though I didn’t see it at the time. If he had been blackmailed he couldn’t say anything to me if he was under surveillance, so I believe he might have killed himself in order to invite an investigation.”

“If you don’t mind my saying, that’s a bit of a stretch.”

“Maybe. But he seemed to bear the weight of an enormous amount of guilt for violating his own principles. The weight of history, too. His controversial opinion will be read and criticized for as long as there are law books.”

“So his death could be the result of guilt, but the basis of a clue. That makes sense, though it would hardly stand up in a court of law.”

“I initiated a few search queries two days ago. My own security measures indicated that I was being monitored. Without question, I know I’m on the right path. I’m determined to find out who is behind his death.”

“Do you have a course of action in mind?”

“Yes, and I’m going to need your help. We need to start digging, but we need to do it in a very secure way; otherwise, I’m afraid we’ll both be targeted by the same people who came after Vin. I’m willing to take the risk, but I won’t put you or Pearce Systems in jeopardy.”

“No worries there. This is what we do. Where do we start?”

“I always start with a simple question. Who benefits?” Myers knew the K Street game well enough to know that changes in legislation and regulation could be even more profitable than just simple cash transfers. Politicians and lobbyists—many of whom were former politicians—were obvious candidates.

Wall Street banksters and hedge fund managers would have also benefitted from the ruling, and that would be another place to start. But something told Myers that was too obvious. The sophistication of the malware that tried to infect her motherboard’s BIOS suggested more advanced software abilities than the average stockbroker usually possessed.

On the other hand, a few Wall Street firms hired the best mathematicians and software engineers to create and execute blindingly fast investing algorithms—“robo-traders” or “algos”—that made faster, better, and emotionless computer-generated trades in milliseconds throughout global markets. Often utilizing high-speed data (HSD) sold to them by the exchanges themselves, institutional investors made billions in high-frequency trading. HFT was responsible for at least half if not more of all Wall Street transactions these days, turning massive profits on fractional stock movements, or legally “front-running” trades made by slower investors. Profits, like war, depended on beating opponents to the punch. Speed was everything, and no human trader could ever hope to keep up with the automated systems. The same would be true in war, Myers feared. Automated generals and admirals could eliminate future conflicts by displaying their drone squadrons and rebotic fleets more swiftly and decisively than their human counterparts.

Of course, all of that data harvesting and processing relied heavily on hardware and software systems. When the algorithms failed, “flash crashes” and other high-speed-data train wrecks occurred. But billions of dollars in profits were being harvested by these “drone” trading systems. They also had to be protected by sophisticated hardware and software security systems in order to safely conduct billions of financial transactions every day, accurately and securely. So, yes, there were Wall Street suspects, too, along with the politicians and lobbyists. Come to think of it, a number of Wall Street figures were also former politicians and lobbyists. In fact, they were all interchangeable parts of the same vast machine. This would be a difficult knot to try to untangle.

“Let’s talk about this for a moment,” Myers said. She drummed her fingers on the desktop. “Tanner made an outrageous legal decision. Thousands, if not millions, of people stand to profit in some way from it—some more than others. A few of those would have benefitted the most, so they would have had the most to gain. But the outrageousness of the decision tells me that the leverage they had over him must have been unbelievable. Big decision, big threat, big payoff. Make sense?”

“Impeccable logic.”

“But what could the deep, dark secret have been? Tanner would have been vetted for every significant position he ever held, including the Colorado Supreme Court, but even before he was formally nominated to the United States Supreme Court, we had the FBI conduct a standard background check. So either Tanner did something terribly wrong after he was confirmed to his appointment, or something he had done was very ancient and very well hidden. The first scenario speaks to ongoing surveillance, and the latter to extreme research capabilities, don’t you agree?”

“Agreed. In either scenario, government resources most likely would be needed.”

“Or a government contractor.”

“Or it could have been a stroke of bad luck that someone happened to stumble across something.”

“That’s like saying someone stumbled across buried treasure. No, you have to dig for buried treasure, and the bigger the treasure, the deeper you hide it. Besides, I don’t know how to write an algorithm for luck. If I did, I’d use it to play Powerball, wouldn’t you?”

“Another possibility would be faked evidence of some sort.”

“You didn’t know Vin Tanner,” Myers said. “If someone had ginned up fake evidence, he’d fight tooth and nail against it.”

“Unless the false evidence was so well documented that he knew he couldn’t fight against it, or worse, maybe he even believed it.”

“I’m not following you.”

“You know, something like ‘Here is a picture of you with this person when you were drunk. You just don’t remember doing this terrible thing with them because you were so drunk.’ Most people believe visual evidence, even if it contradicts their beliefs. It’s so easy to fake photographs these days. It’s very difficult to trust anything digital.”

“I agree. Faked evidence is a possibility. But I still believe we’re talking about a government agency or government contractor. But you know government people. They all talk. So if the word never got out about this, then it must have been a very small operation.”

“Rogue perhaps?”

“Not authorized, for sure. At least, not legally.”

“Where does that leave us?” Ian asked.

“A few people who stood to most benefit from a single, outrageous decision utilized one or a few highly capable research and/or surveillance people to find or create blackmail data on Justice Tanner. So at least the numbers of actual participants seems to be shrinking. But the number of candidates is still huge, counting just high-ranking politicians and Wall Street CEOs. Let’s try two tacks. First, can you put together some sort of search query about outrageous decisions?”

“That’s a rather indefinable and unquantifiable search parameter, don’t you think?”

“We can attack it in two ways. First, we can tackle this from a political angle. We can look at all committee and subcommittee hearings, selecting out those focused on big-budget items like defense or regulations that affect big financial institutions.”

“I am a stranger in a strange land, but I believe there are many such committees and subcommittees in your Congress.”

“Okay, I’ll make it easy on you. The Ways and Means Committees in both the House and Senate are responsible for the tax laws. They also happen to be the most powerful and coveted of all committee appointments. Those are the two biggest fish to catch as far as lobbyists are concerned. Finance, Banking, Commerce, Energy, and Defense would be the other big ones—all of their subcommittees, too. Those committee votes are all legal documents that are in the public domain and easily pulled down. In the case of legal decisions, limit the pool to federal appellate and Supreme Court decisions. And let’s limit our search to just the last three years.”

“Just?” Ian laughed.

“The second way to attack this is to define ‘outrageous decisions’ as those that have resonated strongly with the attentive public. So we’ll conduct high-frequency word searches limited to a distinct vocabulary—words like ‘inexplicable,’ ‘indefensible,’ et cetera—and look for those on the top twenty political, financial, and military blogs, Twitter feeds, and what have you, to see what decisions have most outraged the attentive public that uses those sites.”

“We are still dealing with tens of thousands of decisions.”

“Not really. Remember, we’re only looking for the most outrageous. The real outliers. I think we’re talking hundreds, or maybe just dozens, of such extremely controversial votes. Of course, if we don’t come up with anything, we can widen the search. Unfortunately, federal bureaucracies write thousands of administrative laws every year that are every bit as binding as any piece of congressional legislation. But let’s not go there yet.”

“Thank heavens.”

“So the idea is this. If we can find the most outrageous political decisions and then find out which person or persons most benefitted from most of those decisions, I think we’ll have a pretty good pool of suspects to look into.”

“Most benefitted?”

“Let’s quantify that, and let’s just focus on money for now. Let’s set a figure of ten million dollars. If someone didn’t profit at least ten million, don’t keep them in our pool. The kind of hostile surveillance and research operations we’re theorizing about would cost a lot of money. Anything less than ten million is chump change in Washington.”

“I should think that any politician that suddenly increased their net worth by ten million dollars in a few years would make headlines.”

“You’d be surprised. There are more millionaires in Congress than nonmillionaires these days. And some of them are worth far, far more. But I take your point. We’re probably talking about corporations, private trusts, hedge funds. But just in case a political person is behind this, we should target those financial institutions with C-level managers married to the members of committees or courts we talked about.”

“Good thing I don’t have a private life,” Ian said.

“I’m terribly sorry. I know I’m asking a lot, but whoever drove Tanner to kill himself is now out for me. And if they can take out a Supreme Court justice and possibly a former U.S. president, I have to believe they are a threat to other members of the government, and maybe not just this government.”

“Quite right. It is an honor and a privilege to work with you on this. I really wasn’t whinging, I promise.”

“Thank you.”

They worked out the specifics in the arcane and mysterious language of computer programmers, then divided up the responsibilities. Myers would work from the safety of Pearce’s cabin and Ian would do his part from Pearce Systems headquarters, so long as Troy didn’t require his services. Myers agreed, secretly hoping that Pearce wouldn’t need Ian’s assistance, because if he did, that meant Troy was in trouble and she was in no position to do anything about it, and that infuriated her.

27

The village of Anou

Kidal Region, Northeastern Mali

^{7 May}

I don’t understand. Why didn’t you just haul out of here?”

“We’re out of fuel. We wouldn’t get twenty kilometers,” Mossa said.

“You should’ve thought about that before you—”

“You arrogant bastard. What do you know about our situation?” Cella’s eyes were blue coals.

“We planned on refueling here, but the Ganda Koy drained the tanks into the sand,” Mike said. “So we’re stuck.”

“With the army on the way?” Pearce said. “You guys aren’t stuck. You’re fucked.”

“Save my daughter. Please,” Cella said.

Pearce ran his fingers through his long hair, thinking. He hated being lied to. Hated being in the middle of another war on a piece of ground that wasn’t worth pissing on. Hated the whole situation. But it is what it is, he finally concluded.

“All right, fine. We’ll take the girl,” Pearce said.

Mossa nodded his thanks.

“We can crowd a dozen of your men on the plane,” he added.

“No. Our fight is here. And even if we came with you, the minute we landed in Niger we would be arrested. Better to die as free men than live as slaves in a Nigerien salt mine.”

“Then let’s quit jawboning and roll,” Pearce said.

“Thank you,” Cella said, her eyes brimming with tears. “I’ll get her now.”

Pearce tapped his comms. “Judy, we’re on the way. ETA in ten. Fire up the engines.”

Pearce drove and Mike stood in the pickup bed, manning the Russian PK machine gun. Early wore his shemagh around his face, Tuareg style, and a pair of Ray-Bans against the choking sand billowing up around him. His personal weapon was an FN SCAR-H CQC, the short-barreled version of the 7.62mm Special Forces Automatic Rifle. Early loved it because it was short, light, deadly accurate, easy to strip and clean, and fired the same big-caliber ammo handy as the ubiquitous AK-47, so common in Africa.

Cella wedged into the passenger seat with her daughter on her lap, still groggy. The child was long but thin, with a mop of thick black hair. Cella folded her up in her arms as best as she could.

“You can keep the ransom,” Pearce said. Thirty-thousand euros was a lot of money, but it wasn’t his.

“It’s not ransom. It’s my trust fund money. My father sends it to me when there is a need among the people.”

“How is your father these days?”

She ignored the question. “Did you bring the medical supplies as well?”

“It’s all there.”

The girl moaned.

“She okay?”

Cella brushed the girl’s hair away from her face. Pearce glanced at her. She was a pretty young girl on the verge of a ferocious beauty. In a few years she’d be her mother’s twin.

“She’s waking up a little, which is good. But I don’t want her to be completely awake, at least not until you’re in the air.”

“Why not?”

“She is… ostinato. Like a mule.” Cella grinned. “Like you.”

“Me? More like you.”

The Toyota bounced along. Pearce checked the fuel gauge. Nearly empty. The Aviocar filled the windshield.

“What’s her name?”

“Dorotea, after my mother.”

“How old is she?”

Pearce thought she looked six years old, maybe seven. He wasn’t sure.

He tapped the brakes and brought the Hilux to an easy stop next to the open cargo door. The motors were loud even though the props were barely spinning. Early jumped off the back and opened Cella’s door as Pearce climbed up into the Aviocar.

Early took the girl in his big arms and easily lifted her up, even with the sling on. She was still mostly passed out, but her eyebrows knitted into a frown. He carried her to Pearce and raised her up. “Careful with this sack of potatoes.”

Pearce took her up, careful not to bang her head on the door. Cella climbed in after her. Early followed.

“Put her next to me so I can keep an eye on her,” Judy said.

Pearce carried the girl to the cockpit and set her in the copilot’s seat, then kneeled down and strapped her in. She yawned. Her eyes fluttered open for a moment. Something about them. Beautiful.

The little girl was clearly confused by her surroundings. Maybe even thought she was in a dream. She looked around. Saw Pearce’s face. She gazed at him, smiled a little, then passed back out.

“Here is how you can reach my father,” Cella said, handing Judy an envelope.

“Is he expecting her?” Judy asked.

“All her life,” Cella said. “Now he gets his wish.”

Pearce stood. “Call ahead to Bert Holliday and give him a heads-up on the new situation. She’s going to need papers at the very least. He’ll help you with the girl’s grandfather, too, I’m sure.”

“Will do, boss. Soon as I’m in the air.”

“No. Maintain radio silence until you land, then radio us a thumbs-up so we know you’re okay,” Pearce said. “Don’t forget, you’re a target with that IFF disabled.”

“What are you talking about? Aren’t you coming with me?” Judy asked, but she heard the resolve in his voice.

“Brother, we’re a lost cause out here,” Early said.

“Is there any other kind?” Pearce clapped Early on his good shoulder. “Besides, weren’t you the one who always used to ask me, ‘Who wants to live forever?’?”

“I was young and stupid back then.”

“Well, you’re not young anymore.”

“Troy, this is serious. There’s no reason for you to risk your life for Mossa,” Cella said. She laid her fine-boned hand on his forearm.

“I’m not risking anything for Mossa,” Pearce said. “I don’t even know who the hell he is. But I’m not leaving my friends high and dry.”

Early’s shoulder mic crackled. “We have company coming, Mr. Early.” It was Mossa, calling from the village.

Early responded. “Heading back your way now.”

“Good luck, you guys,” Judy said. She started to turn for the cockpit door, but stopped and threw her arms around Pearce’s neck. “You and Mike keep your heads down, okay?”

“You know it.”

Judy nodded and headed for the cockpit.

Mike jumped out of the cargo door and Cella scrambled out right behind him, but Pearce headed to the back of the cargo area. He fished a key out of his pocket and unlocked a hidden door in the floor plate, then snatched up two large black Pelican storage cases by the handles. It was the South African load he couldn’t drop off earlier. Nothing like real-world testing, he thought to himself. Might have to charge them extra for the service.

Pearce tossed the cases out the door and dropped to the ground. He shut the cargo door behind him as sand kicked up in their faces from the revving engines, louder by the second. Early was already back in the pickup bed and wrapping the olive-drab veil back around his face for the ride back.

“Don’t worry. Judy’s the best pilot I know,” Pearce said to Cella, shouting above the rising noise as he tossed the cases into the back of the truck.

Cella wiped her eyes with the flat of her hand and fell into the passenger seat.

Pearce yanked open the driver’s door, and then it hit him. He glanced back at the plane, gaining speed.

The girl’s eyes were blue, like clear topaz. Just like Cella’s.

Blue. Just like his.