Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 148, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 900 & 901, September/October 2016

Coup De Grâce by Doug Allyn

Say certain authors’ names and people think of EQMM. Doug Allyn is such a writer. He has won our annual Readers Award eleven times in the thirty-one years since its inception, and his stories are highly anticipated by our subscribers. He’s also a two-time Edgar winner in the short-story category, and has nearly a record number of Edgar nominations. There’s been a darkening in Doug Allyn’s stories recently, but they’re as strong — or stronger — than ever.

I’ve walked this old dirt road ten thousand times in dreams. Walked it in Texas during basic training, then later in Afghanistan, standing guard over construction sites, bunkers, bridges, helipads. I whiled away the endless hours imagining the long walk home, down this dead-end road.

Over and over again.

Sometimes I’d vary the season in my mind. I’d be walking in the fall with the leaves going golden. Or in spring, in April, after a morning rain, with the mist rising from the forest floor like the souls of woodland spirits.

But I liked my winter dreams the best. New-fallen snow, cold and clean and glistening, totally unlike the rocky barrens of Helmand or Herat or wherever our construction battalion was blasting a landing zone out of a mountain or beefing up a redoubt.

From a guard post in the ’Stan, you can see a thousand meters in any direction. Not a single tree in view. A few clumps of scrub brush here and there. But nothing green. Nothing that even looks alive.

But in my mind? I’d be walking down this dead-end road, through a midwinter forest at dusk, shadows stretching out and away, pine trunks dark and stark against the snowdrifts, a study in chalk and charcoal.

Wending my way home as the twilight blue faded to purple, wondering what Ma would have simmering on the stove.

Knowing that I would never arrive. Ever again.

My folks are gone now. And our old cottage too. I got a postcard awhile back from a high-school buddy saying vandals had torched the place. Burned it to the damn ground.

It shouldn’t have mattered much. The cabin had been abandoned for years. After the logging accident that killed my father, we moved to town. Ma said she needed to be closer to her job, but in truth, I don’t think she could bear living in the place where we’d all been so happy. My father’s death changed everything. Her life most of all.

And now that I was finally making the long walk home, on a midsummer evening, after so many years away, I realized my favorite dream was... well. Only a dream.

Oh, the woods were lovely, dark and deep as a poem, but the old road wasn’t my imaginary memory lane. It was a woodland path through a northern Michigan forest, stalked by its own predators and prey.

The raw stench of a dead skunk hovered in the mist, a fresh kill. I’d definitely never dreamed up dead skunks in Afghanistan. And in my guard-duty reveries? I’d always walked the old road alone.

But I wasn’t alone now.

Someone was stalking me. Keeping to the shadows.

At first I thought it was battlefield jitters. I’ve been through a few tough scrapes. But it wasn’t paranoia. Someone was definitely dogging my trail, ghosting through the cover off to my right, using the terrain and the mist to mask his movements. And he was good.

If I hadn’t grown up in these woods, I might’ve missed him. As it was, I was only catching an occasional glimpse, a shadow, a flicker of a silhouette gliding silently through the trees. Just enough to know he was real. And that he was armed. Carrying a rifle.

I stopped. On instinct. Didn’t even realize why for a moment. Then, twenty yards ahead, a dark form took shape as a dog stepped into the road. A big dog. Black. Labrador, maybe? With his hackles raised. Showing his teeth in a silent snarl.

In the gathering dusk, I couldn’t see him clearly. But he looked so damned familiar... that I knelt.

“Ringo?” I called.

The dog stopped snarling. Cocking his head, he eyed me curiously, listening.

“Ringo! Here boy! Come on.”

And he bounded toward me, barking a hello, with his tail wagging.

And for one surreal moment I thought I might be dead. That I’d been killed in the Sandbox, and somehow my ghost had traveled through time and space, back to this road.

Because I knew this dog couldn’t be my Ringo—

My Ringo had been savaged by a rogue bear when I was ten. I’d put him down myself, and buried him, long before this dog was born.

So he couldn’t be my dog. And the boy with the rifle who’d stepped into the open behind me wasn’t some ghost from my past either.

He had red hair, jug ears, and freckles. His flannel shirt was patched and faded, and his Carhartt coveralls were two sizes too big. Hand-me-downs. It’s tough being a little brother.

His rifle was no toy, though. It was practically an antique. A ’98 Springfield 30–40 Krag, with a box magazine. Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders carried Krags up San Juan Hill. But this kid wasn’t out here playing cowboys and Indians. He was a wood-smoke kid, hunting meat for the table.

“This is all private land hereabouts, mister. What are you doing here?”

“Passing through,” I said. “I used to live here.”

“No way. I don’t know you.”

“It was years ago,” I said. “You weren’t around yet.”

“I’m older than I look. Who are you?”

“My name’s Jax LaDart. My folks owned a cottage up around the next bend. I was born there. Grew up there.”

“Nobody lives up this road. It’s a dead end.”

“The house burned awhile back. I was away at the time. Just wondered if anything was left.”

“There’s a chimney’s still standing,” he admitted reluctantly. “And part of the porch.”

“Do you mind if I take a look?”

“Ain’t my land, I just kinda keep an eye on things. Nobody comes around here much. C’mon, Ringo.”

The dog loped after him as he turned away.

I swallowed. Hard.

“Hey kid,” I called after him. “How’d your dog get that name?”

“It’s carved in a tree,” he said. “By your old house.”

Of course it was. I’d carved it there myself. When I buried the first Ringo. All those years ago. And it was still there, in the yard of the burned cabin, guarding a few scorched timbers, a chimney leaning like the Tower of Pisa over the porch floor.

I’d planned to check out the ruins, then hike back to my rented Jeep and find a motel in town. But the sun was sinking now and after dreaming of this place all those years? I was reluctant to leave it so soon.

I made a rough camp instead. Spread some cedar boughs on the porch, built a small fire, and settled in for the night.

The floorboards were uneven, but I’ve slept in trucks and tanks and on rocky hillsides. Soldiers can sleep anywhere. Just not for long.

I woke with the rise of the moon, then lay there half awake, watching my fire dwindle down to glowing embers, listening to the wind singing in the pines.

Eventually I drifted off, and slept like the dead. Until just before dawn, when my favorite dream came to me again.

And I found myself walking down that dead-end road. Again. And the first Ringo stepped out of the shadows. And woofed a hello.

And I was almost home.

The first glow of dawn snapped me awake instantly, on full alert. I stayed silent and solid as a rock, taking in my surroundings. Sniffing the air for danger. There was none, of course. No Taliban in these hills, no tribal jihadis hunting me. The clearing around the charred ruins was on high ground with a clear view for miles in all directions. I was safe as a church up here.

I scanned the terrain anyway, out of pure habit. I’d been living at orange alert for so long that hyper caution seemed normal to me.

The forest began seventy yards below the clearing, scrub brush that blended into clumps of tag alders, then willowy poplars, then pines and hardwoods. Beyond that, the treetops rolled away from the hill like a vast green sea, stretching to the edge of the world, where the silvery line of Lake Michigan defined the horizon like a freshwater necklace.

Magnificent. Even better than my dream, actually. But seeing it again nudged my memory. Bringing back old feelings I’d forgotten.

Funny, as a teenager I’d grown to hate this place. The solitude. The eternal dusk of the deep woods.

But mostly the poverty.

I’d grown up wood-smoke poor. Dad was a logger, Ma worked in town. And they were happy here, I guess, though back then I couldn’t imagine why.

Then I hit the smart-ass time of my life. I looked around, and all I saw were rusty pickup trucks, loggers sweating in the deep woods for minimum wage, poaching game off state land to feed their families.

Losers. Like my father. No ambition, no gumption. Or so it seemed to me, with the vast experience of my eighteen summers.

I didn’t understand that there’s more than one American Dream. That the tapestry of life in the back country had nothing to do with numbers in a checkbook or the latest gee-whiz computer game.

Folks could walk free in these forests, harvest wild raspberries in the spring, take salmon and turkeys and white-tails in their seasons. Or whenever they damn well pleased, really.

If the Internet crashed and took civilization down with it, they’d scarcely notice, or care all that much. But at eighteen, I knew so much better.

I knew that the Secret of Life was money. Rack up enough long green, and you can buy anything or anybody. The world’s for sale. Buy as much as you want.

And because I’d grown up in wood-smoke country, I had marketable skills. I could hunt, shoot, track, and run like a spooked buck. I’d been working construction since I was twelve, already had my journeyman’s card.

And the U.S. Army was hiring, and paying a lot more than minimum wage. So my best friend and I signed on with the army, and then the Company after that, rebuilding Afghanistan. And there was plenty to rebuild, since the locals seem dead set on blowing everything up. Including us. Still, I took to the work. And I was good at it. At first...

I shook off the dark memories before they could settle in and take hold. Rummaging through my pockets, I found half an energy bar stashed, then strolled the yard, munching, loosening up.

And noticed something I’d missed at first light.

A paper sign, stapled to a pine tree.

Forty yards further on, there was a second sign. And a long line of them stretching into the distance.

Which was odd. My dad inherited this hilltop from his grand-pop, and though I couldn’t recall the exact details of my mother’s will, I knew the old place had come down to me.

Not that it’s worth much. There are vast oceans of vacant land in Vale County. Eighty thousand acres of state and federal woodlands, probably three times that in private hands. There’s more open land in northern Michigan than in half the countries in the UN.

Most of it’s primeval forest, like the ground surrounding this hilltop, as far as the eye can see. Natural habitat for native species too numerous to count, from earthworms to opossums, on up to the predators that feed on them. Coyotes and wolves, bobcats and bears.

And us, of course.

But in these woods, primates aren’t automatically at the top of the food chain. Every once in a while, a rogue bear or a coyote pack will remind us of that fact.

I stomped out the ashes of my campfire, walked out to the Jeep, and drove into town.

When I was a kid, Valhalla was a quiet little resort town snoozing on Michigan’s north shore. Nowadays it’s booming, flush with Internet money. Fierce young entrepreneurs, buying up everything in sight. Big-box chain stores springing up along the lakeshore roads, housing projects blanketing the hills above the town, so new the windows still have stickers on them.

The last bastion of my teen years is Oldtowne, the historic center of the village, six blocks of nineteenth-century buildings, some original, some updated, all faithful to their Victorian roots. Cobblestone streets and sidewalks, globular street lamps.

And the heart of the heart?

The Jury’s Inn. The old saloon dates back to the First World War. Built across the street from the courthouse, it’s a hangout for cops, lawyers, and media people, and locals who want to keep up with the latest gossip.

I took a seat at a corner table, facing the door with my back to the wall. An old habit, but a smart one. Ask Wild Bill Hickok.

The joint was buzzing like a hive, the jukebox thumping out Motown oldies, cops scarfing up lunch while newspeople sniffed around for headlines and lawyers swapped away their clients’ rights like a game of Texas hold ’em.

Nordic ambiance. Blond furniture, birch paneling, wagon-wheel chandeliers. Table lamps fashioned from deer antlers.

At the rear of the dining room, a massive octagonal table sits apart from the others, ensuring privacy for anyone who chooses it.

Today it was Todd Girard, prosecuting attorney for the five northern counties, sitting with a judge and a couple of cops I vaguely remembered.

I doubted a soul in the place would remember me.

But I was wrong about that.

“Jax?”

I glanced up. A tall woman in a khaki uniform was frowning down at me. She looked vaguely familiar, definitely someone I should know. But I didn’t.

“You are Jackson LaDart, right? Jake and Yvonne’s boy?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said, starting to rise. “I’m sorry, but I don’t—”

“Marge Kazmarek,” she said, waving me back to my seat. She sat down facing me, but didn’t offer her hand.

“Of course,” I said. “You’re Chief Kazmarek’s wife.”

“Actually, I am Chief Kazmarek now,” she said, indicating the badge on her blouse. “Walt had a coronary chasing a dealer off school grounds last year. The city council asked me to fill in for the remainder of his term. I’m surprised to see you. When you didn’t show at your mother’s funeral, I thought you might be—”

“—dead?”

“A man who doesn’t show for his own ma’s funeral better be dead.”

“We were in the field, Chief, turning a mountaintop into an airstrip. I didn’t get word until it was over.”

“The army should do better by you boys.”

“I haven’t been in the military for a while.”

“I heard you quit the army but stayed in the war. Couldn’t imagine why anybody’d do that.”

“The CIA pays five times army wages, for the same kind of construction work.”

“With people still shooting at you?”

“Sometimes, sure. It comes with the territory. Why?”

“Your buddy Brian Baylor came home a few months ago, or half of him did. He’s staying with his sister. I hear he’s in pretty rough shape.”

I looked away, avoiding her eyes.

“You didn’t know?” she asked.

“Brian and I... got separated after it happened. I haven’t seen him since.”

“Because you left him? To die?”

I just stared at her.

“Brian was in Valhalla Samaritan for a month before they sent him home,” she explained, meeting my eyes dead on. “The nurses said he babbled in his sleep sometimes. Begging you not to leave him. And cursing you. What the hell happened over there, Jax?”

“A whole lot happened, Chief. Every damned day. None of it anybody’s business. Half the world’s at war, from Peshawar to Paris. Maybe you’ve seen it on TV.”

“Brian says you were working for some rag-head warlord.”

“His name was Omar Khalid, he was my friend and an ally. And since he was slaughtered, along with his whole family, you might want to watch your tone.”

“I don’t give a damn about anything over there, Jax. I’m sorry as hell about Brian, but you’re the one I’m worried about. Who are you working for now?”

“I’m between jobs. Why?”

“Lot of new faces in town. Some of them hard-case vets. Thought you might be one of them.”

“I’m not a new face.”

“But you got no people here anymore. So what are you doing here, Jax?”

“Visiting my hometown, Chief. Why would that be a problem?”

“You were always a problem, Jax, even as a kid. And now? There’s no work for mercenaries around here. Go back to your war, son, or find yourself a new one, the farther off the better.”

“I’m just passing through, Chief.”

“Glad to hear that, since they pay me to keep the peace around here,” she said, rising to go. “Make it a quick visit, Jax, and don’t expect to trip over no welcome mat.”

“Chief? I crashed at my folks’ old place last night. The property’s been posted with ‘no trespassing’ signs.”

“Then it sounds like you were trespassing.”

“On my own property?”

“A lot of land’s changed hands in the county recently,” she said. “Your buddy Danny Froggett’s handling most of it. He might know something.”

“I’ll ask. Thank you.”

She didn’t bother to answer. Shot me with a fingertip instead. Then strode briskly over to the Old Boys’ table to chat up the cops. Several of them glanced my way. Not hostile, just mentally taking my picture. For further reference.

I signaled the waitress for my check.

Outside, on that sun-dappled street, it almost felt like a long-lost teenage summer again, back in my hometown. But not for long. Too many cars, too new. Mostly SUVs, overgrown, overpowered road hogs that will never charge up anything steeper than a drive-thru at Burger King.

America. I love this country, but I’ve spent most of my adult life in foreign wars, and when I do make it home, I feel more and more like an immigrant. A stranger in a strange land.

Everybody mumbles now, talking to themselves as they walk down the street. I know they have cell phones plugged into their ears, that they’re actually carrying on a conversation with someone else, but it weirds me out...

And I was stalling.

Delaying the inevitable. Putting off the real reason I’d come back.

I had to see Brian again. To face him. And explain, if I could.

First things first. The chief said he was staying with his sister, and Peg was a reporter with the Valhalla News, just up the street.

I found her name on the information-desk directory and took an elevator to the third floor. Peg was at a desk in an open bay with a half-dozen others. She glanced up as I approached, then froze when she saw me, taken completely by surprise.

I knew the feeling. Peg looked older by a decade. Not in a bad way, just... totally grown up. When last I saw her she was fresh out of college, a newsroom intern in faded flannels and knee-holed jeans.

Now, in a blue business suit and pumps? She looked cool, competent, and in charge. Definitely not my buddy’s kid sister anymore.

She rose to meet me, but before I could even say hello, she slapped me across the face.

Hard!

The blow snapped my head halfway around, bloodied my lip. I could have ducked it. I took it instead.

She was entitled. Everyone was staring, including Peg. She was surprised, I think, at how much rage had gone into that slap.

“The prodigal son of a bitch returns,” she said coldly. “I can’t believe you’d show your face here.”

“Nice to see you too,” I said, grabbing her wrist before she could slap me again. “That first one was free, Peg, but one’s all you get. Can we talk somewhere? In private?”

She nodded without speaking, visibly trying to control her temper. I followed her into a small snack bar, with vending machines along the wall. A coffee maker. There were small tables but neither of us sat. She turned to face me.

“How’s Brian doing?” I asked.

“Why would you care? You promised you’d look out for him, Jax, all that blather about never leaving a brother behind? And he comes home blown to pieces, and here you are, months later, standing tall. Not a mark on you. What happened to my brother, Jax?”

“What does Brian say?”

“He doesn’t say anything! Not to me. But he mutters in his sleep, Jax, pleading with you not to leave him in — wherever it was.”

I looked away, considering that.

She was staring at me. “Dear God,” she murmured. “In spite of everything, a part of me couldn’t quite believe it. But it’s true, isn’t it? You left him.”

“Yes,” I said. “That’s true.”

“To die?”

“I left him,” I said. “I need to talk to him.”

“What’s the rush? He’s been home for months. And not a word from you to him. Or to me.”

“I’ve been... traveling. On business for the Company.”

“And a business trip was more important than checking on your best friend?”

“It wasn’t like that, Peg. And I do need to see him.”

“He doesn’t want to see you.”

“He has a right to be angry. After we talk, if he still wants to punch me out—”

“Punch you out?” she scoffed, shaking her head in disbelief. “You know what, Jax? You’re right. You really should have a talk with him. Right now. Come on, I’ll take you to him.”

I followed her down to the newspaper’s parking garage. The Peg I used to know drove a purple V-dub convertible. The little car suited her then. Cute as a Bug.

The grown-up Peg climbed into a full-sized van, a GMC 350, battleship gray, with a raised roof. I climbed in the shotgun side. There were no backseats; the rear was tricked out with a bulky hydraulic lift for transporting a wheelchair.

And there was something about seeing the brutal mechanics of that machinery...

I’ve been blown off a road by a mortar round, had a bayonet jammed against my carotid, and I once walked into a walled compound filled with corpses, some of them children.

I don’t spook easily anymore, but I was getting a very bad feeling about seeing Brian.

Peg drove with grim competence, her lips a thin, angry line.

We didn’t talk, and I was sorry for that. We’d been good friends once.

Back then, Peg and a roommate had shared a cold-water flat furnished in early Salvation Army.

Now, she lived in a brand-new brownstone, in an upscale suburb. McMansions with three-car garages. As alike as peas in a pod. But Peg’s home had a major difference. A long aluminum wheelchair ramp that stretched from the front door down to the curb.

It looked sturdy enough to support a tank. I found out why the moment I stepped through the double doors.

The house wasn’t a home at all, it was a freaking hospital wing. There was no furniture in the living room other than the movable bed. There was only medical gear, oxygen tanks, a respirator, some kind of a heart beeper. Other bulky, space-age equipment I didn’t recognize.

All for a single patient. Brian Baylor was strapped into a massive motorized wheelchair amidst the equipment, with enough wiring plugged into his chest to jump-start a GTO.

Or roughly half of him was. The left side of his body had been crudely sheared away. There was nothing surgical about his injuries. The damage was so savage, so total, I couldn’t imagine how he’d survived at all. If you could call it that.

His left leg and arm were gone, and the left side of his face was distorted into a permanent scowl, pulled further down by a transparent drainage tube dangling from the corner of his jaw. His shaved head and shrunken features reduced his boyish face to a skull, or a death-camp inmate.

He looked like he was poised on the edge of forever, ready to drop into darkness in the next heartbeat.

I’ve seen some terrible things in my life, and I’ve done a few myself. But seeing Brian like this? The shock of it was more than I could bear. Instinctively, I flinched and started to back away, but he stopped me. With his eyes.

In that terrible wreck of a body, Brian’s eyes were intensely alive. His carcass was scarcely recognizable as human, but his spirit was still present.

And in a rage.

Instinctively, I reached for his hand—

“Don’t touch him!” Peg snapped. I froze.

“He can’t feel anything, Jax. His nervous system is barely functional. You could injure him and he wouldn’t know it. He only has partial use of his right hand. Just enough to operate the joystick on his chair.”

“Can he talk?”

“I can talk some,” Brian coughed. “Just don’t ask me to sing.”

“Not likely,” I said, kneeling beside his chair, meeting those intense eyes. “I’ve heard you sing.”

“I remember those days. Back when I thought we were friends. What the hell happened, Jax? If I hadn’t seen it, I wouldn’t believe it. You freakin’ bailed on us, man. Broke your promise.”

“I thought you were gone, Brian.”

“No. You didn’t. You looked me in the eyes, you bastard. I saw you. And you saw me. You knew damn well I was still alive.”

I didn’t say anything to that. Couldn’t. Because it was true.

“You didn’t even check to see if I was done. You ran like a scalded dog instead. And left me. Like this.”

“I, um...” I broke off. I rose, looking down at him. “Coming here was a mistake. I should go.”

“No! Not till we get things straight, Jax. Why did you ditch us? What the hell happened?”

“The ambush happened. Do you remember that?”

“Only the blast. Then... coming to in a ditch. Looking up at you.”

“A mortar round blew our Hummer crossways,” I said. “We all bailed out, all three of us ducking for cover in the ditch. But the next round airburst directly over us and...”

I swallowed, remembering that split second. Looking down at my best friend, half of him blown to a bloody mist. Doc, our medic, crouching over him, his forefingers jammed against Brian’s femoral artery, screaming into his collar mike for a rescue chopper.

I read the shock and horror in Brian’s eyes as he looked down, and realized what had happened to him. And then he looked up at me, and our eyes met, and I knew exactly what he expected me to do, what we’d all promised each other.

Never to leave a brother behind—

But that’s exactly what I did.

Brian was staring at me now. “And then you just... bailed out. You scrambled back into the Hummer, and... left us there.”

“The jihadis were targeting the vehicle, Brian. I took it down the road to draw them off. And it worked. They came after me.”

“But you never came back,” Brian said.

“They dogged me for ten miles, man. Five guys in a pickup, blasting away with AKs. I couldn’t shake ’em, couldn’t even shoot back. Then, maybe a mile from Khalid’s compound, they rammed me on a blind curve, and we all went crashing down the mountain. I was lucky. I got roughed up some, but I lived. The jihadis didn’t. They were scattered down the mountainside like rag dolls. The Hummer blew up, burned down to the frame. So I grabbed a weapon and hoofed it overland to Khalid’s...” I broke off, remembering.

“What happened?” he asked.

“A raid,” I said. “A dozen Taliban had overrun the place, probably the day before. And at the end, Khalid... He pulled the pin, Brian.”

“Sweet Jesus,” Brian said.

Peg was looking at us like we were speaking Swahili.

“Khalid’s stronghold was booby-trapped,” I explained. “Brian and I helped build the place, and we installed it ourselves. Khalid had a wall safe. Open it with the wrong combination, it released VX-11 nerve gas. One breath, you’re gone. Khalid was dead, the raiders were dead, even his guard dogs were dead,” I said. “He gassed the whole place.”

“But... what about his kids?” Brian asked.

“They were in his arms, man. They went together.”

“The man killed his own children?” Peg asked.

“He put them down,” I said grimly. “It was a kindness, something you’d do for a dog. Better than having them end up on a video getting their heads sawed off, or...” I stopped. Too late.

“Or left for dead in a ditch,” Brian finished, his eyes locking on mine. “Blown to hell. Like me.”

“I called in to the base,” I said. “They told me a medevac had already grabbed up you and Doc. I was ordered to hold until relieved. By the time I got back, you’d already been shipped out to Ramstein. I know I made mistakes, man, I should have handled it better. But that’s how it went down.”

“That was months ago,” Peg prompted.

“They asked me to escort Khalid’s body to France. His family’s in exile there. I could have said no, followed Brian to wherever, but... The truth is, I was glad to go.”

“Glad?” Peg echoed.

“After seeing my best friend... wrecked, then walking into that compound, littered with dead? I couldn’t do one more minute of madness, Peg. Not without losing it myself. So.” I took a ragged breath. “I took Khalid and his kids to Europe to his family. And they didn’t even have a funeral for ’em. They put their bodies in storage, like luggage, so they can all be buried in the homeland someday.”

I shook my head at the insanity of it all.

“Afterward, I stayed on. I was a mess, couldn’t sleep more than twenty minutes at a time. Took a couple months to get my head screwed on straight...” I broke off. Brian’s eyes had closed. Sleeping? Or unconscious? Definitely out of it, though.

Peg motioned me away. I followed her into the kitchen. “Why are you here, Jax?”

“To see my friend. To see if there’s anything... I can do.” It sounded incredibly lame, even as I said it.

“You’re too late. Brian may live six minutes, six months, or six years. The doctors aren’t sure and it doesn’t matter much to him. The blast destroyed most of his body, but I think what you did was even worse. When you ran off and left him to die, you broke his heart, or his soul or... whatever. And maybe in time, he’ll forgive you for that, but I won’t.”

“Neither will I,” I agreed. “How can I help, Peg? Money, or—?”

“Money?” she scoffed. “You think money can make up for — never mind. The CIA has a first-class medical plan, Jax. I expect it has to. We don’t want anything from you. Go back to Paris or Kabul or — I don’t care. Just go away, Jax. Leave us alone.”

“It’s not that simple,” I said.

“What?”

“I can’t leave, Peg. Not unless Brian tells me to. I owe him that.”

“You had no trouble ditching him before. Maybe it’ll be easier this time. Either way, I won’t let you use this ‘band of brothers’ bullshit to soothe your conscience. You can’t un-break a promise.”

“I know that, Peg. I came to keep it.”

“What does that mean?”

I considered lying, but we were past that. Only the truth would do.

“There’s an old poem about Afghanistan, by Kipling, I think. Every soldier who’s served there knows it by heart. ‘When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains, and the women come out to cut up what remains—’ ”

“Jax, what the hell are you talking about?”

“Wars never go the way they’re planned, Peg. With all of our training and hightech gear, freakin’ satellites that can track us from space, fights still go sideways. Guys get hurt bad and can’t be moved, and if you try to save them, you’ll all die.”

“I don’t—”

“We don’t promise never to leave a brother behind, Peg. In the heat of battle, you might not have a choice, and we all know that. So that’s not the promise we make to each other.”

“Then what is?”

I took a breath. “Brian doesn’t hate me for ditching him, Peg. He’s angry that I left him... the way he is. He’s angry that I left him alive.”

She stared at me, and I could see the horror take hold, as the words registered. And she finally understood the real reason I’d come home to Valhalla.

To keep my final, fatal promise to my friend.

To grant him a coup de grâce.

And put him down, like a dog.

If that’s what he wanted.

I walked back to Oldtowne, taking my time, clearing my head. But I didn’t go to my rented Jeep. I had personal business to see to first.

The sign over the drugstore read Daniel Froggett & Sons, Attorneys at Law. Frog took over his dad’s practice straight out of college. I was surprised he’d stayed on, but very glad he did.

I took the narrow stairs two at a time. The door at the top was open. A pudgy Pillsbury Doughboy in a white shirt and rep tie glanced up from an old desk in the middle of the office.

“Jesus Jenny on a bike, Jax LaDart.” Froggy grinned, coming around the desk. We embraced, long and hard.

“It’s good to see a friendly face,” I said, stepping back, looking Froggy over. He was forty pounds heavier, and his baby-fine blond hair was combed sideways to conceal a bald spot, but the open, apple-pie smile was the same. “I was beginning to wonder if I had any friends left in this town.”

“At least one,” Froggy said, resting a plump haunch on the edge of his desk. “But there are a lot of new faces too.”

“I thought you might’ve moved on,” I said, crossing to a window, looking down on the street scene below. “You always talked about leaving.”

“We both did, only you and Brian beat me to it. Went off to see the world. How’s that working out for you?”

“I’ve seen a few things.”

Schoolboys rushing at us through a minefield, screaming God is great, wearing red headbands that would carry them to paradise. Brian’s face after the mortar blast erased half of him, his eyes locked on mine—

Frog was staring at me. “Earth to Jax. Are you okay, buddy?”

“Sorry,” I said. “Jet lag.”

“From where?”

“Paris.”

“No kidding? What were you doing in Paris?”

“Dropping off a friend. But I stayed on afterwards, getting my head together.”

“A lost cause, I’m guessing.”

“It was fun to try. How about you?”

“Not having much fun, lately. My marriage broke up, you know.”

“No, man, I hadn’t heard. What happened?”

“Carol took off to find herself. Last I heard she was living in Taos with a yoga instructor.”

“Sorry to hear it,” I said.

“It happens, about half the time, nowadays.” Frog shrugged. “Tell me about Paris.”

“It was... like the songs say. City of Light. Barges on the Seine, chestnut trees in blossom. And for the first time in a long time, nobody was trying to kill me. So I visited the Louvre, hooked up with an art dealer. Wasted some afternoons in sidewalk cafes on the Champs-Élysées listening to people arguing politics or music or art.”

“So the obvious question is... why the hell did you come back, Jax?”

“I couldn’t sleep there, Frog. I kept waking in the night. Listening to the traffic, listening to footsteps in the hallway. I thought it was combat stress, that it would pass.

“Then one night I woke and realized what I was listening for. Wind sighing in the pines, the Vale River chuckling in the dark. I needed to come home, Frog. If I still have one.”

“Valhalla will always be—”

“I mean my home. I stopped by my folks’ old place. It’s posted with notrespassing signs. Sav-Land Management?”

“You mean the hilltop? With the burned-out cabin? I, um, I got a fat offer for it a few months ago, Jax. Got you a helluva price.”

“I didn’t ask you to do that.”

“Hell, you didn’t ask me to do anything, Jax. You gave me power of attorney to settle your mom’s estate four years ago and I haven’t heard from you since. It was a good offer and I haggled it up to triple the going rate. I thought you’d be happy to unload it. Back in the day, you couldn’t wait to get out of there.”

He was right about that part.

But wrong about the rest.

Working in war zones, I’ve dealt with some hard cases, warlords and tribal chieftains who’ve survived invasions, jihads, and political shifts that would baffle Machiavelli. I can’t always be sure if someone’s telling me the truth, but I usually know when they’re not. And somewhere in the middle of Froggy’s explanation, I realized my oldest friend was lying to me.

Lying faster than a dog could trot.

I just couldn’t imagine why.

“Who bought the old place, Frog?”

“A new guy in town, Phil Savarese. He took over the Buffalo Country Game Ranch, wants to expand the operation. He’s been buying a lot of land around the county. It was a strong offer, Jax. I thought you’d be pleased.”

“How strong an offer?”

“I don’t recall offhand, but it was definitely over market value—”

“Good. If he paid too much, he won’t mind flipping it for a quick profit. Offer him a ten-percent bump, Frog. Buy it back.”

“It’s too late for that, Jax,” he said quickly. “We’ve already bundled it into a package that’s been transferred to a holding company.”

“We? You’re working with him? And this Savarese isn’t buying it for himself? To expand his game ranch?”

Frog glanced away, looking for a workable explanation in the corner of the room. He wasn’t a very good liar. Probably hadn’t had much practice.

Damn.

“Where I’ve been, over in the Sandbox? Villagers don’t have much, Frog. A mud hooch, a few goats, and a rifle. I dealt with tribal elders a lot, negotiating for landing strips, or roads, or strongholds. They’re Muslims, so most of ’em considered me an enemy, a Crusader. But they still treated me like a guest, shared what little they had. And for the most part, they were honest. And they didn’t have to be. The Koran forgives a lie to an enemy, Frog. But I thought we were friends.”

“We are, Jax. We go back—”

“I know we were friends then. What about now?”

“That’s not fair. You can’t come back after all this time, and expect—”

“That we’d still be friends?”

He started to say something, then hesitated, and that moment of silence told me more than I wanted to know.

“Okay, I’ll make it simple for you, Frog. I don’t care what Savarese paid you. I didn’t okay the sale and I want my land back. Tell him you made a mistake, or — hell, I don’t care what you tell him. But get my hilltop back.”

“Damn it, Jax, you don’t understand. Savarese isn’t somebody I can say no to. He’s got some rough customers working for him—”

“How rough?”

“Some of the old-time landowners are reluctant to sell. Savarese has guys who can change their minds. You don’t want that kind of trouble over a lousy forty acres. Let me put you into something better. Lakefront, with a beach or—”

I waved him off.

“Frog, I’ve been places you can’t imagine. I’ve seen things, and done things that I can hardly believe myself. I’ve lived in mud huts and Paris hotels, but I couldn’t sleep there. That hilltop, on that dead-end road? It may be the only place on this planet I actually belong. I want it back.”

“Jax, I can’t. Half my business, more than half, is tied up with Savarese. He’s not somebody I can cross.”

“Are you afraid of him?”

“Hell yes. You don’t know what he’s like—”

“Then maybe I should meet him. Where do I find this guy, Frog?”

He told me, then rose to usher me out the door. “Jax, please let this go. Let me handle it for you.”

“Maybe I will, Frog. God knows, I’ve got troubles enough. I’m not looking for more.”

“Good,” he said, relieved. “This was never personal, you know. It was just business. We’re still friends, right?”

He offered his hand, for auld lang syne.

I pretended not to notice.

I drove out to the Buffalo Country Game Ranch under a full head of steam, but slowed my roll as I blew through the gate.

The place looked like a Frontier World set from Disneyland, teleported to the woodlands of northern Michigan. Three stories tall and half a block long, the main house was a soaring, surreal fortress built of gigantic pine logs with a Gone With the Wind — sized front porch topped by a widow’s walk. All it lacked were brass cannons on the parapets and a Morricone soundtrack.

The wilderness-outpost effect was marred by the dozen luxury SUVs parked beside the building, all top of the line. Navigators, Escalades, even a HumVee stretch limo that looked like a prop from Star Wars. I pulled my rented Jeep up beside the Hummer and trotted up the steps into the massive log manor house, blinking in the dim light as the heavy oaken door closed behind me with a pneumatic shush.

Inside, the clubhouse was the size of a basketball court, with the same gleaming hardwood floors.

Faux antler chandeliers dangled from the ceiling beams, on anchor chains that looked like they’d been salvaged from the Titanic. One wall was a solid bank of sixty-inch TV screens, baseball, football, horse racing, and soccer all competing simultaneously in silence as massive hunting trophies stared sightlessly down from their mounts.

Trophy heads circled the room. Moose, elk, polar, black, and grizzly bears, even an elephant. But mostly they were bison bulls, magnificent even in death.

I understand killing. Nearly every creature on the planet kills something else to survive. I grew up in the back country, so I’ve been hunting since I was old enough to carry a.22, and I’m good at it.

But it was never a sport to me. I hunted to feed my family. I’ve never killed an animal just to prove I could, or because it was bigger than me. Or because I wanted to mount its head on a wall.

I’d rather see its picture on a wall. Alive, and running free.

The air in the main room was hazy with cigar smoke and the low buzz of conversation from a poker game at a table in the corner. A half-dozen men were playing, clad in combinations of hunting garb and underwear. A few of them glanced up idly, checking me out. Then kept right on checking. And it was more than just idle curiosity.

We recognized each other, not by name, but for what we were. Professionals. I’ve been dealing with guys just like them for years. Paid fighters who worked for our side, or the other side, or both at once. They weren’t here to hunt, they were strictly muscle. And I remembered Chief Kazmarek’s concerns about the new faces in town, wondering if I was one of them.

And I suppose I am, in a way. But Brian and I always worked for the right side, I hope, running construction crews to rebuild a war-ravaged country. I doubt anybody at that poker table had ever built anything bigger than a bank account.

“Something you want?” a bearded one asked.

“I’m looking for Phil Savarese.”

“Mr. Savarese’s office is straight ahead, sport. But if you’re looking for work—”

I didn’t bother to answer. Or to knock. I pushed through the door instead.

Phil Savarese’s office was Hollywood rustic, with knotty-pine paneling and an antique roll-top desk. A long rack of expensive weapons lined both walls, everything from Davy Crockett flintlocks to BFG fifty-caliber express rifles that could punch through two bull elephants, end to end. Way too much firepower for legitimate hunting. But I guessed the goons out front would be right at home with them.

Savarese was at his desk, dressed for a Kenya safari, khaki jacket and shorts. Snake-proof boots laced to the knees. Square faced, with jowls and a whiskey flush, he looked to be in his forties but it was tough to be sure. His jet-black hair was tinted and he’d had some work done around his eyes. Which meant he had an ego, worried about keeping his looks. Good to know.

“You’d be LaDart,” Savarese said, scanning a ten-inch tablet, without looking up. “My lawyer called about you. Dan Froggett? A friend of yours, I understand.”

“We go back,” I said.

“You must,” he nodded. “He practically begged me to help you out, swore up and down you wouldn’t be looking for trouble.”

“I’m not. This is strictly business.”

“You don’t look like a businessman to me. You look more like an out-of-work vet.”

“I’m that too. But that’s not why I’m here.”

“Froggy said there was some mix-up over a backwoods property?” Savarese said. “Wants me to cut you a sweetheart deal on it. What seems to be the problem?”

“It’s not complicated. Frog sold you that land by mistake. I want it back.”

“I paid a fair price for it.”

“I’ll repay every penny plus a ten-percent bump.”

“So you can triple the price and resell it later? I don’t think so.”

“It’s not for sale. It never was.”

“I looked it up. It’s empty land in the middle of nowhere. What makes it so special?”

“My dog’s buried there.”

He blinked. “Are you jerking my chain, pal?”

“I’ll show you his marker if you like.”

“If you’re looking for trouble, sport, you’ve come to the right place. One word from me and the guys in the next room will take you apart—”

His voice faded to a drone. I wasn’t paying attention to him anymore. I’d noticed the king-sized computer screen on the wall behind his desk. And realized what it was.

He saw me staring, grabbed up a remote control and switched it off.

But not before I figured it out. And him along with it.

“Wow,” I said, looking around the office, really taking it in for the first time. “The game ranch, you, it’s all part of the scam, isn’t it?”

“What are you—?”

“That map on that screen was Vale County,” I said, “from the lakeshore to the Otsego line. And it was marked off in blocks. The whole county, not just the land around your game farm.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about—”

“Actually, I do. In my line of work, I see all kinds of maps, every day. And we read ’em very carefully. Because getting a coordinate wrong can get people killed. And what I just saw on your wall? Might get you killed in this county. I might do it myself.”

I had his attention now.

“The land on your map is divided into six-hundred-acre parcels and a half-dozen sections were on state land, which can’t be bought or sold—”

He started to argue, but I waved him to silence.

“—except for the mineral rights,” I finished. “Mineral rights have to be sold in sections, and that’s what you’ve really been buying, isn’t it? The right to drill for oil, mine gold or uranium or God only knows what?”

He hesitated for a half-second too long, then shrugged. And dropped back into his seat.

“Froggett said you were smart,” he sighed. “I should have listened. Okay, you’ve made your point, LaDart. So? What do you want? A job? I can make that happen. A payoff? How much?”

I didn’t say anything. Just eyed him in silence.

“C’mon, you blew into town from a war zone, same as the poker players out there. But if you think you can shake me down hard, think again. Unless we work this out, you go from this room to the emergency room. So let’s get down to it. Guys like you always need money, and I actually need somebody like you.”

“A construction worker?” I asked, amazed at how level my tone was. I was a split second from punching him through the wall.

“Cards on the table, sport. We’ve got a sweet deal going here. The people I work for sent me here to buy up mineral rights for the county on the quiet. The lakefront may be booming, but things are thin in the back country. Wave a check under their noses and most landowners are happy to sell their rights, their land, or both together. The problem is, I have to deliver all the rights, as a package deal, and a few local rednecks are holding out. I need to sew this thing up before word gets around and the prices skyrocket, so we’ve got to change some minds in a hurry. I imagine you got pretty good at that, over there.”

I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. He was so full of himself, he took it for a yes.

“Froggett tells me you grew up in the back country, so you know the locals. We need to make an example of somebody, to send a message,” he said, sliding a sheet of paper across the desk. “Here’s a list of the landowners who turned me down. Which one would you knock around to cow the rest?”

“How hard do you want to knock them?” I asked, picking up the sheet, scanning down the list of names I’ve known since I was a kid.

“Whatever it takes,” he said flatly. “Up to now, we’ve kept the rough stuff on the down low. A barn fire, jimmied brakes on a car, a couple of barroom scuffles. But the clock’s running on this. I have to deliver soon and some of these hicks are such knot-heads it’ll take an obituary to get their attention. I don’t expect you to get your hands dirty, just tell me which name. The boys will take care of it.”

“Seriously? You’d bury somebody? Over lines on a map? For what? What are you really after?”

“I got no idea. Who knows what’s underground up here? All I know is, the people I work for sent me to get the rights to it. When I deliver this deal, we’ll divvy up real money. More than you ever dreamed of...” He broke off, eyeing me oddly.

And I realized I was smiling.

“Did I say something funny?”

“Sort of. The thing is, I don’t dream about money, sport. Mostly, I have nightmares. But in my favorite dream? I’m walking down that dead-end road. To the hilltop Froggy sold you.”

“I don’t—?” I waved him to silence.

“This land you’re buying the rights to, for fracking, or a damn gold mine? It’s in the heart of the Great Lakes. Any mistake up here, like Chernobyl or Love Canal? You could poison half the country. For what? Money? Mister, where I’ve been, whole families live in a hooch half the size of this office. How many cars can you drive, pal? How many steaks can you gag down?”

“I guess Froggett was wrong about you,” he said, shaking his head. “He said you were smart.”

He was smiling as he said it, but his eyes had hardened, and I realized I’d said too much, too soon. He’d pressed an alarm, or given a sign that signaled the goons in the other room.

But he didn’t wait for them. He made his own move instead.

Jerking open the desk drawer, he scrabbled for a weapon, his eyes lighting in triumph as his fingers closed around the butt — I lunged across the desktop and yanked the drawer shut, jamming his hand in it.

He started to scream, but I clamped my free hand across his mouth, choking it off as I pulled the drawer harder, crushing his carpals with an audible crunch.

He went dead white, nearly fainting.

“Not a word, or I’ll break it off,” I murmured, with my eyes locked on his. He nodded, swallowing. I released the drawer and he pulled his hand free, clutching his maimed paw to his paunch, like the wounded animal he was.

I grabbed his weapon from the drawer. A German Luger, for freak’s sake, World War II vintage. Rare and richly engraved, it was probably worth more than the Hummer limo out front, but it was a whole lot older. And it was temperamental.

As I jacked a round into the chamber, the damned thing jammed. I was still struggling to clear the action when one of the goons from the card game burst through the office door, a bearded thug packing an M-16.

“Kill him!” Savarese gasped. But the gunman hesitated.

His assault rifle was set on full automatic and Savarese was in his line of fire. If he cut loose he’d splatter us both. And in the split second it took him to switch over to single fire and shoulder his weapon, I cleared the jam on the Luger.

We fired simultaneously. I felt a hammer blow to my shoulder that blew me across the desktop, onto the floor. I scrambled to my knees, knowing I was already too late — but I wasn’t.

The gunman’s eyes widened in disbelief as he stared down at his life’s blood pulsing from the wound in his chest. The old Luger had punched his ticket three inches low, missing his heart completely. Definitely hit something vital, though. Dropping his weapon, Blackbeard stumbled to his knees, then crashed to the floor like a tree in the forest.

I dropped behind the desk as two more gunmen charged through the doorway, firing frantically as they came. In the army, we call it “spray and pray.” But Savarese was the one without a prayer. Caught in the open with both men blasting away at the desk on full auto, a half-dozen stray rounds stitched a fatal line across his chest.

Stumbling backward into the wall, Savarese clutched at the monitor, trying to hold himself up, but his weight tore the screen out of its mount, bringing it crashing down on top of him in an explosion of sparks and shattered glass.

Crouched behind the desk, I could only see the gunmen’s ankles but cut loose anyway, firing at floor level. I managed to bring them both down, and kept on firing as they fell. With the antique pistol, it took me three rounds to finish the first shooter, but only one for the second. Then a head shot apiece, point blank.

To make damn sure.

With my shoulder on fire, I stayed crouched behind the desk, waiting for the next rush. Thought I heard the front door slam, but my ears were ringing from the gunfire. Couldn’t be sure what it meant. Were the others running? Or had reinforcements arrived? It wouldn’t matter much either way. I was leaking serious red all over the office floor. Couldn’t seem to catch my breath, felt as heavy as a sack of cement.

I tried to stay in focus, to get a handle on what had just happened.

I’d been shot.223 at close range. Through and through, maybe. Not done yet but I was fading fast. My limbs were chilling, my blood pressure was dropping like a rock. I’d go into shock in a minute or two. If I lived that long.

Through the din in my ears, I could hear someone moving in the outer room. Getting closer.

I dropped to the floor, waiting, watching his feet from beneath the desk when he inched through the doorway, edging closer, unsure of where I was. I desperately tried to remember how many rounds the Luger held, how many I’d fired. Couldn’t think. The slide hadn’t locked open, so I had at least one round left. Probably my last. I couldn’t waste it on his ankles. I had to wait...

But it was already too late. I was fading out. I barely had the strength to raise my weapon as he leaned across the desk and looked down...

“Jax?”

“Frog,” I said. I was still deciding whether to fire or not when the room faded away, to be replaced by my favorite, familiar vision.

The old dirt road. In autumn, this time. With the leaves all ablaze. And I wasn’t alone. Up ahead, my Ringo was dancing with excitement, woofing a hello, so glad to see me...

I woke in a snowstorm. Or so it seemed. So much white. White ceiling tiles, white walls, white sheets on my bed.

A silver bracelet on my right wrist. I was handcuffed to the bed-frame.

It should have bothered me, but it didn’t. I was cruising on heavy meds. Only semiconscious. And before long, I was back in my favorite dream, walking that dead-end road, heading home at twilight...

“Nobody in their right mind would buy your cock-and-bull story,” Chief Kazmarek said flatly. She was in a plastic chair beside my bed. Leaning in. And furious. “Savarese and his thugs attacked you over forty acres of hunting land? The corporation he represents has purchased the rights to tens of thousands of acres. What made your little forty so special?”

“Calls for conjecture, Chief,” Dan Froggett said. “Don’t answer that, Jax.”

I didn’t. I was surprised Frog was alive. In that final instant, I’d decided to kill him. Maybe I still would.

Maybe not...

“The corporation Savarese worked for is a well-known mob front, Chief, already under federal indictment in three states, and my client is a war hero,” Frog said. “So unless you have more pertinent questions, Mr. LaDart needs his rest.”

“If it were up to me, you’d both go straight from this room to a holding cell, over at county,” Chief Kazmarek sighed, rising to her feet, glaring down at me. “Luckily for you, it’s not up to me. You’re free to go whenever the doctors clear you, LaDart.” She turned to leave, but paused in the doorway. “But just for the record? It wasn’t your shyster pal here who saved your ass, Jax. It was those guns.”

I raised an eyebrow. Which took most of my energy.

“We found a dozen M-16s at the game farm, full auto capability,” she said. “They were hijacked from a National Guard armory a year ago. The Luger was hot too. A collectible stolen in a museum burglary that left a security guard dead. And you, of course, have an ironclad alibi for all of that, since you were in freaking Afghanistan at the time. I have a sworn statement from your boss over there, attesting to that fact. He says you were one of his best, and he’d welcome you back. I strongly recommend that you take him up on his offer.”

“I still have unfinished business here,” I managed.

“I’d wrap it up quick, if I were you.”

“It won’t take long,” I said.

I was walking down the dead-end road again, probably for the last time.

I wasn’t alone. Brian was humming along beside me in his motorized wheelchair, operating the joystick with two fingers of the hand he had left.

I’d driven him out here in Peg’s van, over her bitter objections. She knew the truth of our promise now. And she feared it. And rightly so. I’d run from my promise once. I could not do it again.

But in the end, it was Brian who convinced her. It was his decision, his call to make. No one else’s.

I’d hoped we could talk on the drive out, but we didn’t. I lowered the van’s ramp, he eased his chair down it, and we covered the last hundred yards to the burned-out cabin without speaking at all.

At the top, he rolled into the yard, pulled up beside the porch... then stopped. Gazing out over the vista below.

Stunned by a view that can literally take your breath away, Brian shook his head slowly. Below us, the treetops rolled into the distance like a vast green sea, stretching to the edge of the world, all the way to the silvery line of Lake Michigan, glistening on the horizon.

“Wow,” Brian breathed at last, “this was worth seeing, man. It’s a fine place to say goodbye.”

“It is,” I agreed. “But that’s not why I brought you here.” I pointed out the name carved in the tree.

“Ringo?” he read.

“He was my dog, when I was a boy. He got ripped up by a bear. I had to put him down. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. Until now.”

Brian didn’t say anything to that. Waiting.

“I’ve been dreaming about this place for years, bro. Walking up the old road? Changing the seasons in my mind. It kept me going through the worst times. And now that we’ve finally made it back? I don’t want to settle for a dream, Brian. I want to make it real. But I need some help. Your help.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I want to build here, a new home, better than before. But I need money to do it right. So I’ll have to go back to the Sandbox for a while. And I’ll need you here, to oversee the work.”

“Me? What the hell, Jax, I can’t—”

“All I need is your eyes on the site, Brian. Somebody I can trust to see the job gets done right. You’re an expert in back-country construction, I know you can do this—”

“You sonofabitch! That wasn’t our deal!”

“Our promise was for Afghanistan, man. We’re back in the world now.”

“Maybe you are! I’m not, and I never will be. And you’re welshing on me! Again!”

“No, I’m not, truly,” I said, kneeling beside his chair so he could read my face up close. “Listen up, bud. Dreaming of this old place kept me alive. Gave me something to hope for. Maybe it can work the same magic for you. Maybe coming out here every day, to build something new on this land that we fought for, will change your mind—”

“It won’t, damn you!”

“But—” I continued over his objection, “if it doesn’t? If you really can’t hack this world, and you want out? You call me. And I will come back from wherever I am. From the goddamn grave if I have to. And I will keep my Sandbox promise to you. I will help you cross over, Brian. I swear it.”

Our eyes were locked for what seemed like an age. But finally he nodded slowly, knowing it was true.

“Damn you,” he said slowly. “I thought today was my day, Jax. My mind was right. I was ready.”

“You should be ready every damn day. We all should.”

“Maybe,” he nodded. “But just so we’re crystal clear about this? I’ll help build your freakin’ dream house out here, for as long as I can stand it. But if I call, you’ll come on the run?”

I nodded.

“And you’ll put me down? Like your dog?”

“What are friends for?” I said.