Swift Vengeance

35

Four hours and no word from Taucher. Maybe Caliphornia had ducked for cover. Maybe I’d simply been cut from the team. Maybe both.

Too tired to sleep, brain on spin cycle, I sat under the palapa in the cool morning.

Noted the evidence of last night’s party: take-out boxes from Vince’s Pizza in town, beer and soft drink empties, Ping-Pong table left uncovered. Zeno’s water bucket by the barbecue.

Clevenger’s drone hovered above the casitas, streaming me and everything else that moved within its field of view back to one of Clevenger’s computers. I was glad to have it protecting Lindsey. I flipped it off anyway.

Moving slowly, I dropped some pizza boxes and foam salad containers into the trash. Listened to the red-shouldered hawks screaming in a chill, unsettled sky. The storm that almost chased us out of the Sierra Nevada, I thought, making its way down to us. I looked out at the pond for a while, where a snowy egret stalked. If you want to see patience, watch a snowy egret stalk.

Then the slapping of a screen door, and a muscular gray beast emerging from casita three. Followed by a tall black-haired woman in a Navajo-style coat, jeans, and boots. She raised her coffee mug at me, then they started down the railroad-tie steps.

Zeno arrived a few yards in advance, stopped and beheld me. Head up, legs wide, chest full. Brindled flank like a tiger’s stripes in sunlight. Soulful brows, gray eyes focused only on me. On me, but somehow detached from me. Without judgment.

Lindsey approached from behind him. She stepped around him and came toward me, but Zeno bumped past her and sat down between us, facing me.

“Guess I’ll say good morning from here, Roland.”

“Morning, Lindsey. Looks like you and Zeno are getting along.”

“Like peanut butter and jelly,” she said.

“I see you had a pizza party without me.”

“We waited for you as long as we could,” she said. “Grass Valley?”

I nodded.

“We’ve contacted him,” I said. “Caliphornia. He’s close.”

A cloud crossed her handsome face. She lifted the handgun from the pocket of her robe by its grip, then let it drop heavily back in.

“Take a walk?” I asked.

We started up the gravel path around the pond, Zeno between us and keeping our pace. The sun was still low but warm through my coat.

I told her what I’d learned about that day in April of 2015, in Aleppo, where the Headhunters had been cleared to take out Zkrya Gourmat. I told her about the local doctor who ran the improvised hospital — a man beloved by many friends and family — one of the volunteers who died.

“Yes,” she said. “Dr. Ibrahim Azmeh.”

“Caliphornia is his son.”

Lindsey stopped. Zeno did, too.

“Benyamin,” I said.

I was just now beginning to fully understand Lindsey’s take-home from the war. Post-traumatic stress, to be sure. We combat vets all had it, just in differing degrees. We handle it in different ways. In Lindsey’s case, the stress wasn’t something the enemy had done to her or to those around her. It was something she had done to the enemy. An act that could feel eternal and could not be forgotten or changed. A psychiatrist friend of mine had written about this kind of stress. She called it “moral injury.”

“Ben didn’t just snap,” I said. “He’s been preparing himself for this. He might be planning other things, too, but we’re not sure what or when.”

I told her about Caliphornia’s martial-arts and knife training, his time spent at gun ranges, his communications with the FBI’s “recruitment” site, loyal Hector, the ammunition.

“How old is Ben?” she asked.

“Twenty-two.”

She hugged herself against the morning chill, then we continued around the pond, dog between us. She was locked in thought, eyes to the ground, her footsteps measured and slow. We were halfway around the water before she spoke again.

“A Muslim trying to kill a half-Muslim,” she said. “But this isn’t about religion, is it?”

“No. It’s personal. Like he said in that threat to you.”

“Personal,” she said. Then, a few steps later, “Can I tell you something personal? Flying Predator drones for recon is tedious business. Hours of cruising and hovering. You follow a man. You follow a technical — that’s a truck with a machine gun mounted on the bed. You hover and watch. You’re like a cop on a beat. You get to know the people and their habits. You know their faces. Some by name. It drove me bats, not knowing all their names. You watch them go about their lives, do their jobs, trying to survive. Some are moms or dads, and you see a guy hugging his kids before he heads to work, or to the market to get food, knowing that he might not make it back. Of course, he knows it, too.

“But things can change. Fast. You finally get the guy out in the open — a terrorist you’ve been looking for, month after month. You find him in the right time and place, and as soon as you’re cleared hot, you’re going to light that fucker up. It’s why you’re here. It’s what you do. So that day in Aleppo, when Zkrya Gourmat took off on his motorcycle, we Headhunters went from zero to ninety in a heartbeat. For weeks we’d been the watchers, but suddenly we’ve got our pistols drawn and we’re running straight into a gunfight. I stayed cool, Roland, because that’s what all your training says. Cool, methodical, open-eyed. The sensor operator’s job is to guide the missile to its target. You use a targeting laser, which is one very temperamental piece of technology. It has a grip like a pistol but bigger. Trigger for acquisition, buttons for adjustment, set and reset, and a keypad for altitude, azimuth, distance, and closing speed. If you breathe wrong, you throw the laser off-target. If you flinch or twitch, you can put that Hellfire on the house next door, or into the group of old guys smoking cigarettes in a courtyard, or on a kid on a bike, or into a mosque at prayer. When Zkrya lost control of his motorcycle, I had that laser right on him. Followed him down and into the crash. When the doctors and nurses came running out of the field hospital, I saw I had to get that laser off Gourmat or we were going to kill them all. I could see it was going to happen, sure as sunrise. The timing was perfect. The distance they were covering. The seconds until the Hellfire hit. But it wouldn’t come off! My laser wouldn’t respond. I tried everything to get it off Zkrya, lying there on the ground in the rubble by his smashed-up motorcycle, but it wouldn’t come off target. Like it had its mind made up and I had no say in the matter. I watched my screen. Saw the people trying to help Zkrya. And then my screen pixelated. A second of white fire. When it came back to life a few seconds later, I saw the bodies and parts of bodies burning and smoking, and the few people still alive crawling through the blood and dust. Hell. Fire.”

She stopped and looked at me. A tear ran down her cheek and she ground it away with a balled fist. “Kenny and Marlon knew how hard I tried to get that missile away from the people. They knew what a good sensor I was. I need someone alive on earth to understand that fact. That I was a good sensor. Kenny and Marlon are dead. So now maybe you can carry that truth for me, Roland.”

“I’ll help you carry it, Lindsey. You know that.”

“Resti,” commanded Lindsey. Zeno lay down on the path and watched her come to me. When she got close, he sat up, cropped ears alert.

Lindsey kissed my cheek and took my hand. “You’re a friend, Roland. Someday you will be whole. Until then, know that you’re my brother in arms. And if you need me, I’m yours. I might even pay my rent on time. Someday.”

Zeno growled.

“Silencio!”

Went silent and stared at me.

“Rasha called,” said Lindsey. “He apologized for scaring me with his calligraphy and his college stupidity. Said to call him if I wanted a man to talk to.”

On a hunch I called Liam Flaherty, my contact at Pacific Security, which provides security for First Samaritan Hospital, proud employer of Hector Padilla. It paid off: First Samaritan’s annual New Year Harbor Cruise would begin boarding at six p.m. on New Year’s Eve — on the dining ship Glorietta.

“It’s the big fundraiser for their Children’s Unit,” said Liam. “A pricey ticket. Live music, dancing, a high-dollar auction. First Samaritan employees do the decorating and cater it themselves so all the money can go to the cause. What are you fishing for, Roland?”

“We need to talk.”

“You sound serious, my friend. Name the time and place.”

I got into my truck, checked the gauges, set my phone in the cup holder, and plugged in the charger. Still nothing from Taucher.

Had we lost him?