122 Rules (24 page)

Sam focused on the terrain, looking for threats and inconsistencies among the desolate, crumbling buildings, burned car skeletons, and holed-out businesses. These had, at one time, been restaurants and clothing boutiques, but now they only served the lingering ghost patrons unable to move on from this world.

The farther they travelled past the decimated debris that littered the streets and decorated the landscape in a morose tableau of genocide, the more tense he became, like an electric wire forced to carry a larger and larger current.

Something’s not right,
Chet said. His alter ego hesitated, as though unsure what conclusions to draw based on the facts laid out before him.

What is it?
Sam questioned. He could see no signs of life, and none of his men raised an alarm as they continued down the quiet streets.

I don’t know…something. Wait.

“Halt.” Sam’s voice interrupted the static on the intercom. The small group, traveling no more than a couple miles an hour, did not delay as they followed his order, and with a soft squeak of brakes, the Humvees came to a stop. Already on full alert, his men prepared to move, trusting their CO’s instincts.

“Did you see something?” Armon, his assistant squad leader, asked as he scanned the area around them, searching for threats.

“No.” But the hair on the back of Sam’s neck stood on edge. Chet didn’t say anything for a minute, but something felt wrong. Off somehow. Sam didn’t know what threat they faced, but he followed his instinct.

Back!
Chet yelled in his head.

“Back! Back! Back! Now!” Sam shouted.

In unison, the drivers of the Humvees threw the vehicles into reverse and hit the accelerators. Their training and complete faith in their CO prevented any hesitation. That simple, vital trust saved their lives. The large vehicles hadn’t travelled more than ten feet and were still speeding up when everything went to hell.

An RPG sailed through the air, launched from inside one of the abandoned buildings. The missile soared past the empty space where the lead Humvee had been just seconds before and exploded into a rusted car skeleton on the far side of the street. The big vehicles stopped, and the Marines piled out. Through the cloud of smoke created by the explosion, Sam glimpsed armed men running out of the building. Bullets from automatic weapons pinged off the Hummers and pulverized the ground around them.

The crew took up the 50 caliber machine guns mounted on the Humvees while other soldiers fell to defensive positions. But the thick smoke prevented the men from being able to see, forcing them to fire blind.

Sam radioed for backup and ordered his men to the outside flank positions.

As his soldiers fought, the militants started falling. The smoke began to clear, giving them better visibility. Ten, maybe twelve men advanced on Sam’s position, while others fought crouched in doorways. The men raining bullets down on them from the windows on the third and fourth stories of the building proved to be the worst threat.

Sam could see two. He lined up his rifle on the first, held his breath, and took the shot. The man slumped, half hanging out the building, his gun falling to the dirt below. He sighted in on the second gunman and had been about to pull the trigger when he heard the call through his headset, “Man down! Man down!”

Sam steeled his concentration, centering himself. Nothing could be done without removing the threat from above. Again, he held his breath, aware that every passing second could mean the difference between his man living or bleeding out. He pulled the trigger.

Through the rifle’s site, he saw the enemy’s head explode like a watermelon as the projectile tore through the man’s face.

Sam looked around, evaluating the situation that had begun to turn in their favor. He cursed under his breath when he spotted Armon lying in the dirt, bullets ripping the bloody ground around him. He needed to get his man out of the line of fire.

Next to him, Collins crouched behind the hood of the Humvee. A precise, methodical shooter, the other man pulled the trigger with a calm, practiced ease. With each report of his gun, another bad guy fell.

Sam got Collins’ attention. “I’m going to go get him.” He indicated toward the fallen soldier. “Ready?”

Collins nodded.

Sam threw a smoke grenade, letting it billow for a few seconds. He relayed his intentions through the intercom and charged in.

The enemy gunfire turned towards the new target, and Sam responded with his own. He dodged and weaved, working toward the unprotected soldier lying vulnerable in the dirty city street.

Sam reached the big man and rolled him over. The lower back of Armon’s uniform had soaked through with blood.

“What the hell, boss?” the injured man croaked. “You are the dumbest cracker I ever met in my life.” Drops of dirty blood clung to his dry lips, and his breathing was labored.

“Shut up, I’m here to save your stupid ass. Let’s go.” Sam cupped his elbows under Armon’s armpits and dragged the 250-pound man back towards cover. “Ever think about skipping a meal or two?” Sam grunted.

When Armon didn’t answer, Sam knew that if he didn’t hurry, he might as well not do anything at all. He dragged the big man to the periphery of the fighting when a slug tore through his thigh. Collins, still covering him, found the target and put a bullet in the gunman’s forehead. As Sam went down, two of his men grabbed him and Armon, hauling them to safety.

A MEDEVAC chopper left the base as soon as the first man went down, and while they waited for its arrival, the medic tried to slow Armon’s bleeding. Someone else wrapped a tourniquet around Sam’s shredded leg. As the last of the militants fell, the men loaded the injured soldiers into the helicopter and flew back to base.

The doctors removed the bullet that had slipped past Armon’s armor and lodged itself in his lower back. He would be in recovery for weeks but would otherwise be all right. Sam had more extensive injuries.

The slug split when it hit his femur, leaving fragments of lead behind, and the doctors had to search for them among the splinters of bone. The bullet had created a hole about the size of a nickel when it entered the back of his leg. But when it exited, it left a saucer-sized crater in its wake. Because of the extensive damage, the doctors didn’t know if they would be able to save his leg.

In the end, they patched him up and put him on strong antibiotics. Both he and Armon went home to recover. After three months, Armon headed back to the front lines. Sam underwent another surgery, and weeks after the final operation, he started physical therapy.

His doctor admonished him to go easy, but he pushed hard, not accepting the verdict and sentencing of his injury. Weight training, walking, yoga; he became a machine with a single purpose: to get back into the field. His physical therapist lectured him if he didn’t go easier he would set himself back. The first time he tried to run, something in his knee snapped, and he lay on the edge of the dirty street writhing in pain.

Sam got to keep his leg, but he couldn’t fight for his country any more. The angry, mocking scar tissue and scattered memories remained the only remnants of his life as a soldier. Walking without a crutch took over a year, and several months after that, he could do so without a limp. He eventually recovered enough to run again, but he’d lost the speed and nimbleness that had once made him a star athlete. The Marines labeled him a hero but also unfit for duty, so he finished the duration of his military career behind a desk shuffling papers.

Sam slipped out of his military life unnoticed, much like he had slipped in. Half a dozen of his buddies greeted him as he packed out his duffel one last time. Tracy had not been with them.

* * *

Two hundred miles outside of Walberg, Sam stood in a little copy store, using their shredding services to dispose of the Peter Morrell identity as he had done with a thousand others. But as he pulled out of the parking lot toward the highway that led to L.A., something kept nagging him. Events of the case felt askew, or perhaps something within The Agency itself had changed.

He tried to put it out of his mind. But as he shifted gears on the big bike, working it up to cruising speed, he wondered if maybe he needed to do a little more research on an otherwise closed case.

Then again
,
maybe I’m just going crazy.
He gunned the throttle heading towards home.

30

Monica glanced out the window every couple of minutes, waiting. Tires crunched on gravel, and Angel pulled into the Stardust Motel then parked her dilapidated Beetle next to Monica’s beat-to-shit piece of crap on wheels.

As Angel raised her hand to knock, Monica cracked open the door. “Get in here.” She slinked her arm out, grabbed her friend, and pulled her through. She had Angel in an embrace before the door had finished slamming shut.

She held her childhood friend, taking comfort in her smell and familiar embrace. “Thank you for coming,” Monica said in her ear.

“Oh honey, anything for you.”

“Everything’s such a mess.”

“Knowing you, this doesn’t surprise me.” Angel stepped back and looked her up and down. “Nice clothes.”

Monica gave her a half smile. “I only shop at the finest boutique thrift stores.”

“Okay, so what happened?”

“I’m not sure where to even start,” Monica said as they sat on the bed.

“Yes, actually, you do. There’s no one else here, no FBI, no police, so start at the beginning. This time, don’t hold anything back.”

“If you know what I know, you’ll be in danger too. You need to be aware of the risks.”

Angel lifted an eyebrow. “Seriously? First, if someone started interrogating me, or whatever they call it, do you think they’d believe me if I said I didn’t know anything?”

Monica shook her head. “Suppose not.”

“Second, I should never have let you leave without me, and I’m not making that mistake again.” She took Monica’s hands in hers. “Like it or not, you’re stuck with me. Got it?”

“I love you,” Monica said.

Angel cocked her head. “Aww. I love you too. Now quit stalling and start at the beginning.”

Monica took a deep breath. “Well, after we left the diner, shit really started going downhill…”

She talked for over an hour before she got to the part about the man on the motorcycle. “So, this guy, Peter, asked me to look over some documents for him. But really, now that I’ve thought about it, I think he just used that as an excuse to finagle a date out of me.”

“You went out with him?” Angel’s surprised expression matched Monica’s own feelings.

“Yes.” She told Angel about the evening and subsequent night they’d spent together.

“You told him your real name?”

Monica stood to pace. “I was so pissed at the FBI. I really wanted to screw with Crew Cut. The bastard had been eavesdropping on everything I’ve said for the last six months. I wanted to give him something to listen to. You know, verbally give him the finger.”

“Well, you did that.”

“Yeah.”

Angel stood and faced her. “I’ve tried to tell you before, Mon. You fight the system like a demon and that’s admirable, but at the same time, it causes all kinds of hell in your life.”

“I was really tired of taking shit from those guys.”

“You don’t take shit from anyone, and it’s one of the things I love about you. But perhaps just this once it would have been better to go with the flow.” Angel sighed.

Monica had been on the receiving end of this argument a thousand times before. Her friend might have a point. It was possible that things worked better when you went with the flow. Maybe.

“So anyway.” Angel got into the bed and lounged against the headboard. “After you kicked him out, he just left town, and that was that?” She waved Monica to continue.

“Maybe.”

“What do you mean?”

She told her about Lisa wanting to stay the night and throwing the keys, then the subsequent explosion.

“Christ! Lisa saved your life by being a self-centered bitch.”

Monica forced a laugh at the dark irony. “Suppose she did. Anyway, I had the keys, so I ‘borrowed’ her car, and, well, here I am.” She held up her hands.

“So you think it was Peter who tried to kill you?”

“I’m positive. The only thing is he went through a lot of effort to make it look like an accident. We spent the night together. He had ample opportunity to quietly take care of things, if that was his goal, and just slip away. But he didn’t.” Monica shook her head. “Yet…”

Angel sat up straight, her face pale.

“What?” Monica sat down next to her. “What’s wrong?”

“I have something to tell you.”

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost. What is it?”

“Maybe I have.” Angel took her hand again. “Mon, honey, you know I love you, right?”

She nodded. “Yes, but right now you’re scaring me.”

“You should be scared. It’s my fault.” Angel dropped her eyes.

“What? What’s your fault?”