Trauma

CHAPTER 35

Squatting with his palms on a thin mat in the center of his Spartan living room, Braxton Price pressed his knees into his arms and slipped into a crow pose, getting both feet off the ground. He was nearing the end of what had been an invigorating ninety-minute yoga workout.

Braxton had the build of an elite athlete, though it was difficult to see under his nurse’s uniform. Before he became a nurse, Braxton had worn a different uniform, that of a Green Beret in the United States Army. After twenty-one continuous months of combat in Afghanistan, Braxton joined a small combat team tasked with training and arming Afghan fighters who wished to rebel against the Taliban.

It was good work. Honest work. Bloody work.

He was part of a somewhat loosely organized counterinsurgency effort promoted by General David Petraeus to win the locals’ hearts and minds. As a weapons sergeant, Braxton served a key role in the Green Berets’ twelve-member Alpha Team, the A-team. Before his deployment to the Middle East, Braxton had attended forty-three weeks of Weapons Sergeant School, where he learned how to adapt to any situation and improvise on the field. He could speak Pashto better than Dari, but was conversant in both.

Braxton came to appreciate his interaction with the locals, but it was nothing compared to the high he got as part of a hunter-killer team, smashing down doors and putting bullets into targets. Killing was just a part of the job, and he did it without remorse.

Braxton’s time in Afghanistan might have come to an end, but he was not lacking for work. His new role required a dozen weeks of training, during which he learned all about charting, taking vitals, administering drugs intravenously; rudimentary knowledge, at best. He could hardly be considered a registered nurse, but one day, just like that, he had a badge with the name “Lee Taggart” and was on staff at the VA. No questions asked.

Even though he did no real nursing, he knew it was good work. Honest work. Bloody work.

Braxton got into a plank position on his mat. Thirty seconds into the hold, he could feel every muscle fiber start to twitch. Closing his eyes, Braxton let his mind replay Steve Abington’s final screams.

Fucking Gantry, he thought.

Curtis Gantry was a thug, prone to violence and lacking professionalism, but he was also Braxton’s best friend, former A-team member, and the guy who had saved his life more times than he had fingers. But this part of the operation was Braxton’s to run as he saw fit, and not Gantry’s. In hindsight, he should have made Gantry put a bullet in Abington’s head. The screams did not bother Braxton in the least, but Abington was a brother in arms and he deserved to go quick.

Braxton knew all about the long suffer. Some of his interrogations in Afghanistan had lasted for weeks. The job description was “information extraction,” not torture, but the line was a blurry one at best. Braxton kept his enjoyment of the work a secret, thinking he otherwise might not get it.

A minute and a half holding the plank and Braxton looked like a bronzed statue. His core was on fire, but there was no noticeable shake in his arms or legs. Fitness was always a passion. He could be sent back to war tomorrow and do just fine over there. In a way he was still at war, doing battle of a different sort.

At the two-minute mark one of Braxton’s cell phones rang, the important one. Braxton cursed; he had two more minutes to go in his hold. But only one person had that phone number, and the call needed to be answered.

Braxton sprang to his feet and padded across the two-bedroom condo’s gleaming hardwood floor. Light spilled in through a bank of bay windows that framed a glorious view of the Charles River. It would be impossible to afford this place on a soldier’s salary, but his current employers were more than happy to pay the bill. In return, he was more than happy to answer their phone call.

“Speak,” Braxton said.

“The girl.”

“I figured.”

Braxton recognized the baritone voice with a distinctive rasp. He saw no reason not to speak freely. Besides, these were stealth phones that used a machine-generated international mobile equipment identifier to make calls more secure and virtually untraceable. A warning system would alert Braxton if somebody were trying to intercept the call. In that case, he would turn his phone off and on to reset the IMEI number. Dive back into the shadows.

“She’s proving to be a problem.”

“I’m not surprised,” Braxton said. “She’s tenacious. Is there an order, sir?”

A pause. Braxton made no inference. He waited for his next instruction as he had been trained.

“Can Gantry be trusted?”

“To not hurt her?”

“We’re not there just yet.”

“Yeah, I think Gantry can be trusted.” Braxton’s mind flashed on Gantry’s twisted grin as he stood at the lip of the pit, lighter in hand, Abington moments from immolation. “He can be trusted, for sure.”

“I’ll call back when we know what we want him to do.”

“Very good,” Braxton said. “What about the next one?”

“We still need him.”

Fine with Braxton as well. He got paid regardless.

“You know, I’m scheduled for a shift. But there’s no removals pending.”

“We can take care of that. You’re sick until further notice.”

“I’m sick, all right,” Braxton said with a laugh.

“Just make sure Gantry does what we want.”

“You know you can count on me, sir,” Braxton said.

Braxton called him “sir” because anybody over him in the food chain was a “sir.” It was not meant as a show of respect.

“Very well. I’ll be in touch.”

Braxton ended the call and returned to his mat. He got back into the plank position and began his hold once more.

Thirty seconds into it and Braxton was questioning his endorsement of Gantry. While he considered Gantry a friend, Braxton knew he would do something to Carrie Bryant before he killed her, and he doubted it would have anything to do with fire.