Biting the Bullet (11 page)

He began fiddling with his bootlace. “It seems stupid when I think about saying it now.” I wasn’t sure how a guy with a genius the size of a small country could still worry about looking foolish in front of his buds, but I was beginning to think his troubles would drastically reduce if he could just find himself a good woman. Somebody to give him a daily dose of feel-good whether he needed it or not. I sure didn’t have the patience for it. “Dude, spit it out. If we laugh, you can punch us both.”

“But not in the arm,” said Cole. “I’m still sore from all those shots they gave us before we flew over here. You can punch me in the stomach, but give me time to get ready. Houdini died because some guy didn’t warn him first, you know.” I regarded Cole with the thinning patience of a kindergarten teacher who has neglected to take her Zoloft. “What the hell is
up
with you?”

“I am experiencing a deep-seated need to blow a bubble,” he informed me.

I took his right hand, which held my syringe sheath, and shoved the leather in his mouth. It was like giving E.J. her pacifier. Instant relaxation of the facial muscles. Full-body quiver, as if a wave of stress had just exited his epidermis. And yet, at the back of his eyes lurked a tight black ball of tension that promised to explode the second he stopped chewing. Nope, Cole wasn’t just stressed about the lack of bubble gum. Something much bigger had him twisted like a pretzel. I could probe, but I’d never get anywhere with another guy in the room. It was part of their Code. I didn’t understand it. But I respected it. Like demanding silence while using the urinal. Some things men just wouldn’t say in front of other men.

I turned to Bergman. “Go on.”

“You guys are Sensitives, right?”

“Right.”

“Well, it seems to me the mole might be an
other
. He could be communicating with the Wizard through telepathic or other nontraditional means. In which case one of you should be able to sense him.”

“But we haven’t,” I said.

Bergman nodded. “All that could mean is that he’s somehow shielded himself. In which case, you might be able to sense the shield.”

Cole and I looked at each other doubtfully. In the short time we’d known each other we’d learned our Sensitivities differed quite a bit. We could both detect vampires. But only I could tell when reavers were around. Cole was better at picking out witches and weres. And the powers our Sensitivities gave us differed greatly as well. The fact that so far neither of us had noticed anything amiss among David’s crew didn’t do much for Bergman’s second theory. “I guess it wouldn’t hurt to give it a spin,” I told Cole.

“So what do we do?” he asked. “Walk right up to them and give them a sniff?”
Sure
, I thought, turning my card deck in my hands,
three highly trained Spec Ops troops aren’t going to suspect a thing when
we start nosing around their business. Especially after they start comparing notes
. I had just opened the flap so I could get the cards out when an idea hit me. The ideal way to study our suspects without them ever wondering why we were giving them the once-over. “Cole,” I said, “why don’t you go see if everybody’s up for some poker?” Chapter Eleven

Iranians dine on the floor, so, since we didn’t have a table handy for poker, we sat on the living room rug in front of the fireplace. It reminded me strangely of Girl Scout camp, when we’d play Snap and Crazy Eights inside our tents after the marshmallow toasting and song singing had run its course. We formed a circle, most of us cross-legged. Only Dave and Cassandra were missing. They’d chosen to spend the afternoon in the kitchen, drinking tea and gabbing like a couple of beauticians. In any other situation I’d have needled Dave so hard he’d have resembled a coke addict. But in front of his crazy loyal crew I bit my tongue and filed it all away for future use. He’d be home for Christmas one of these days and then,
whap!
Watch that boy squirm!

“Okay, what do you say to this?” I asked as I removed my deck from its somewhat limp and discolored holder. “Dealer calls the game and the wild cards. Ante is seven thousand, nine hundred rials.” We’d all been issued plenty of Iranian currency before we left. I’d just told the guys it would cost them about a buck apiece to get into the game. They’d been around this part of the world long enough to know exactly what I meant.

Everybody seemed agreeable, so I split the deck and bent the halves, thumbing the edges toward each other as I’d done tens of thousands of times. The cards flipped out of my hands like they’d grown springs.

“Very funny,” said Cam, the twinkle in his eye making light of the sarcasm in his tone. “Tell us, Jaz, just how
do
you win a game of fifty-two-card pickup?”

Everybody laughed. But me.
Okay, don’t panic. Your fingers probably just spasmed. Maybe you’re not getting enough
potassium.
I gathered the deck together and straightened it.

Okay, concentrate. Pretend you’re just learning. Like Granny May is sitting beside you, patiently mapping every detail of
each move
. I watched my fingers begin the familiar motions that had become a balm to me, a rare and precious soothant to my savaged soul. They stopped working right around step three. As if they’d taken some major muscle damage while I wasn’t looking.

At least my poker buddies didn’t laugh this time. Maybe they noticed the look on my face. I tried to school in blankness, but my inner bitch wouldn’t allow me to deny the awful, dawning truth. She sat on her customary bar stool, nursing a whiskey sour, checking her reflection every minute or so, swinging a black-stockinged leg just enough to make the guys around her hope her red leather miniskirt kept riding up.

“You dumb bimbo,” she spat, adjusting a stray hair as she spoke, her silver earrings sparkling like daggers. “I can’t believe
this
is the sacrifice you made to get into hell. And for what? Fair warning on the reavers? Big whoop. That helped you diddly squat.

Insight into Mommy’s whereabouts? As if you hadn’t already guessed. A good look at the Raptor’s face? Like one decent reporter won’t scoop that story when Samos feels the time is right. You been screwed, little girl. And not in the kick your legs up and squeal kinda way, either.”

I looked at the cards, strewn across the vibrant red tulip that anchored the rug on which we sat, and felt like I should draw a chalk line around them. Call their next of kin.
Wait, that’s me. Oh God, this sucks
. I watched my hands gather up the deck, knowing I would never find comfort in the
whoosh
of a perfect bridge ever again. Fighting the urge to weep.

No boo-hooing
, I commanded myself.
No panicking either. Think
.

No way would I relinquish the sweet relief shuffling cards had given me for any of the reasons my inner bitch had listed. There had to be something more, something I’d missed when Raoul and I had traipsed through Satan’s playground. Something key. But now was not the time to replay that visit. Work called.
Time to ferret out the mole
, it said, its whisper even more seductive than the brush of aces against deuces. I’d survived losses much worse than this. I’d get through. As long as I had the job.

I handed the cards to Cole, who sat to my left. “Shuffle for me, would you?” I sat back, letting my hands rest in my lap. Amazon Grace, sensing vulnerability, leaned her back against the fireplace wall and smiled lazily. “Your reflexes are catlike,” she drawled. “I can see why they picked you for this hit.”

Too bad you’re not the traitor. I’d love to rip you in half and feed you to the town rats.
I took my time replying, trying to measure how her comrades would react to anything I said. I decided they’d appreciate me rising above. “Well, my instructors figured out pretty quick they’d better teach me how to kill with my feet as well as my hands. It’s a good thing they were so thorough, don’t you think?”

That got a laugh, which pissed off Grace just enough that I felt better.

Cole handed me the cards. I called a game of five-card draw, one-eyed jacks wild, and everybody anted up.

The great thing about poker is people expect to be given the eagle eye on a regular basis. So for the next hour, Cole, Bergman, and I got away with shameless snooping right under our quarries’ noses. Jet loved to talk, so we found out quickly that his mom and dad had met in Vietnam and now lived in California. His big sister taught violin at the local college and his little brother played drums in a rock band. He hadn’t met the right woman yet, but when he did he planned to leave the service and start a pizza place because “Pizza is the best food in the universe. Am I right?” High fives all around as we were forced to agree. Jet played aggressively, winning and losing big, bluffing when he should fold. But, damn, he was fun company.

Natchez and Bergman, already mutual admirers, found even more reasons to respect each other. Bergman folded about sixty percent of the time, so he was usually all ears when Natch launched into another wahoo tale. Apparently, when he wasn’t working along a tightrope, he lived on the edge. Every story, whether it ended with him being chased into a lake by a grizzly, BASE jumping off the Perrine Bridge, or freeskiing down Crystal Mountain on a virgin slope, made Bergman gape with awe.

“So there we were,” Natch said as he tossed the equivalent of three bucks in the pot and threw an arm onto the cushion of the obese love seat behind him, “snorkeling in water not three feet deep when this ten-foot bull shark comes racing right at us. We found out later people had been feeding sharks in the area, so, who knows, maybe she was jonesing for a handout.”

“Tell them what she got,” said Cam as he threw down his hand in mock disgust.

“A face full of knuckles,” Natch said, miming a slow-motion roundhouse. “Luckily she wasn’t in a fighting mood, so she took off even faster than she came.”

Bergman, who sat between Natch and me, just shook his head. “Natch went mountain climbing in Turkey on his last leave. Can you believe that?” he asked me. “You want to know where I went?”

“A software convention in Delaware?”

“Exactly!”

“Dude, you can’t be comparing your life to mine,” Natch said, clapping Bergman on the back hard enough to make him cough.

“You’re a damn genius. Do you think if I could make a gun like that little beauty you brought us I’d be dragging my sorry ass up some rock on my free time? Hell no! I’d be locked in my lab with my Bunsen burners on full blast, spreading beakers and whatnot across my tables and rubbing my hands like a maniac at the thought of what kinda wild shit I was going to come up with today!” The image Natch’s little monologue brought to mind fit Bergman so well that, despite the loss of my shuffling privileges, I had to laugh.

Another hour passed. Nobody tried any weird gestures, at least none that couldn’t be explained. Natch scratched his chest a couple of times. But, hey, if mine was covered with hair, I’d expect some itching too.

The most interesting thing that happened was a three-way showdown between Cole, Cam, and Natch. As the dealer, Grace had decided on Texas Hold ’Em. Only the three guys had continued to bet after looking at their first two cards. Cole let me peek at his.

With a suited king, ten, I figured he was right to stay in.

Grace dealt the flop, one of which was a king. Cole bet. After chewing on his toothpick for a few seconds, Cam did too. Then he sat back against the chair behind him and said, “Natch, I think you should fold, buddy.” Natch raised his eyebrows with amusement. “Why’s that?”

Cam pointed a blunt-nailed finger at his own face. “See these scars?”

Natch rolled his eyes. “Here we go.”

“These scars are for you, man. I took a grenade in the face just for you. You owe me.”

“I bought you dinner.”

“You think a steak is going to make us even?” Despite the heavy growth of beard I caught the hint of dimples as Cam didn’t quite succeed in hiding a grin.

“I think that time I carried your lard ass on my back for ten miles after you broke your ankle does.”

“That was
before
the grenade!”

“You ate a whole box of donuts the night before!”

“I want to win this pot!”

“Not if I can help it!”

And it was on.

They razzed each other until they’d each managed to bet every bit of money they’d brought. And then Cole won.

Collective groan, as if one of them had come back from the shooting range without ever having hit the target. Then they all started talking at once.

Grace and Jet: “Somebody should tell those two how much they suck at poker.” “Are you kidding? Think how much we can win from them next time we sit down!”

Jet and Natchez: “You know he’s going to hold that grenade thing over your head forever.” “I know. I should’ve jumped on the damn thing when I had the chance.”

Cam and Cole: “You look like such a nice guy. I should’ve known you were a con artist.” “I’ll give you ten bucks if you keep me supplied with toothpicks for the rest of this mission.” “You’re on!”

Bergman and me in a low, low whisper: “God, but Natch knows how to live. That’s how I want to be, Jaz! He’s not afraid of anything!” “He’s got some admirable traits, yeah. But don’t forget, he’s found a lot to admire in you too.” The deep, booming sound of the door knocker shut us all up. Dave and Cassandra rushed into the room.

“Were you expecting company?” he asked me.

I couldn’t resist. “No, David. All my Iranian pals are busy this week.”

“Smart-ass. Cole.” He jerked his head for our Farsi speaker to take the lead. “Everybody remember, we’re students,” he hissed,

“so quit looking like badasses in costume.” Almost everyone took a seat on the piece of furniture he or she had been leaning against during the card game. Dave motioned for Cassandra to join Bergman on the couch. I followed him and our interpreter to the door.

My hands itched to pull Grief from its holster. But having a gun in your hand, though it’s hidden behind your back, can prevent you from playing a scene cool. I settled for resting my palms against my thighs, where the fingers of my right hand could feel the reassuring outline of my bola. Dave stayed behind with me in the entrance to the living room as Cole went down three wide wooden steps into the foyer.