First to Burn (24 page)

“Yes. Tell me, and I promise...” His hand hovered over her arm.

If he touched her, she might not be able to continue, so she hunched her shoulder. “I want to walk a dog in Central Park. Run around the reservoir.” While pushing a jogging stroller, but she wouldn’t twist that knife after what he’d told her in Rome. “Live in a brownstone on the Upper East Side. One with black iron railings.” She closed her eyes to dispel Afghanistan’s jagged mountains and brown dust. “Go to a
nice
office four days a week. No plywood, no pistol holsters. I want to buy lunch from a street cart.” She could almost smell the hot dogs and the city. “I want to be normal.”

“That’s an illusion.”

“It isn’t.” She opened her eyes to see the flat line of his frown. “People really live like that. I met them at Princeton.” With their run long over, her cooling sweat left her chilled, so she wrapped her arms around her chest.

“They have problems like everyone else. My brother lives in one of those brownstones.”

“Look, I don’t need a shrink to tell me what I’m seeking is the opposite of my own childhood. Is that so wrong?” Swallowing to hold in her jumbled emotions, she had to look away to deliver her final statement. “I’m sorry, Wulf, but you’re not—” to say he wasn’t
normal
sounded so awful she choked. “You’re more of what I don’t want.” Her words sounded both cruel and completely false to her own ears, but she couldn’t unsay them.

“That’s not what you told me before.” Anger hardened his voice until each word hammered at her. “I distinctly recall you screaming for more. Several times.”

“This is not, I repeat, not about sex.” She glared back. “You’re the most fascinating man I’ve ever known and yeah, I’ve never had and probably never will have such amazing sex again, but that doesn’t mean I’ll change my goals.”

“No shit. You won’t let anything change you. You have a rule book and everybody has to follow Theresa’s rules.” He intruded so far into her space that she squeezed her eyes shut and pressed her palms against the hangar wall. His breath warmed her cheek. Three days apart wasn’t enough time for her body to forget his.

He didn’t back off. His heat and scent stayed next to her like a dog on a bed. The first person who trotted around the corner would notice them and realize immediately what he wanted. Everything she’d worked for would be ruined if one of them didn’t retreat, but her hopelessly weak legs wouldn’t budge an inch sideways to escape.

“Hope your plan works out, Captain Chiesa.” His voice vibrated on her name. “Hope you and your memories have fun screwing some
normal
man.” Then he was gone.

Of course she was glad he’d left, and doubly glad he didn’t turn and see her trembling and staring after him. Because if her Viking had lingered one instant longer, she might have melted into his arms. So much for her rules.

* * *

Early for the VIP escort mission, Theresa dropped her ruck and rotated her shoulders inside her protective gear. A senator wanted to visit concrete-and-rebar evidence of America’s investment in Afghanistan, so she’d been tasked to guide a tour of the new provincial hospital. She also planned to distribute the medical texts and supplies from her backpack, which might help her to connect with a local doctor and lay groundwork for a program to help girls like Nazdana.

Even doctors knew that a convoy should be led by a reinforced or armored vehicle and, at a minimum, have a roof-mounted fifty-cal providing security. The assembled string of white SUVs seemed more like it should belong to a half-baked relief organization than to the United States Army. She searched the gravel lot for the rest of the vehicles.

“Hey! Glad I’m not alone.” A dark-haired woman wearing mirrored sunglasses and camera bags trotted over while vigorously chomping gum. “Laura Rizzotti. Reuters. You one of our minders on this dog and pony show?”

Theresa automatically introduced herself. Surely the reporter’s name, the same as Wulf’s Italian butler’s, was a coincidence. “I’m a doctor. I’ll be giving the hospital tour.”

The photojournalist’s jaw shifted from left to right and back while she chewed, as if she too searched the parking lot.

“Who or what are you looking for?”

“Got me.” A dimple showed in Laura’s cheek. “I’m hoping for candid photos of our esteemed VIP.”

“The senator?”

“None other. He threatened to replace Black and Swan’s cash spigot with a competitive-bid contract.” She raised her first two fingers and thumb to her mouth and seemed almost startled to find them empty. “Mr. Chairman investigating corruption in person is a money shot.” Her jaw never stopped ferociously chewing.

“Nicotine gum?” Theresa bit her tongue too late to stop her question.

“That obvious?” Laura’s eyebrows raised above her reflective lenses while she fiddled with her camera.

Wulf rounded the corner of the motor-pool office. Theresa hadn’t seen him in the week since their run. The feat should have been hard to accomplish in a camp this size, but they’d become avoidance experts.

“Put your camera away,” she warned Laura as the man who
really
didn’t like photos crossed the gravel.

“Why—” With her camera half raised, Laura twisted to look. “Well, that’s a problem.”

Wulf reached them, eyes narrowed as he stared hard at both women. “Captain Chiesa.”

“Sergeant Wardsen,” she retorted.

Then he glared at Laura with an intensity that confirmed the name Rizzotti
wasn’t
a coincidence.

“I gather you know Ms. Rizzotti—” she didn’t stunt the emphasis, “—already?”

Instead of answering, Wulf interrogated the other woman. “Did Ivar send you?”

“Not even hello? I don’t do your brother’s bidding, Sergeant Rude.” Laura spit her gum in the dust.

“No,
that’s
rude. I should make you pick it up.”

“You and what army?” Laura was already scraping the foil off another piece of gum.

Theresa refrained from pointing out that one piece should last an hour. Ten minutes in Afghanistan was like an hour at home, or maybe a dog year. Even if Wulf thought she was a rule-following ice queen, she wouldn’t gripe about how much gum someone chewed.

“Cut the crap, kid.” Wulf crossed his arms over his chest, his brown T-shirt sleeves threatening to bust a seam. “Tell me why you’re here.”

“I’m an adult.” Smiling without revealing teeth, she raised her camera. “With a job, remember?”

Wulf scanned the vehicle convoy. “You’re not going on this sorry-ass mission.” His statement sounded like a command, not a question.

“I have a photo exclusive,” Laura said.

He pointed at Theresa. “I meant you.”

That finger pushed her pissed-off button. Sleeping with her didn’t give him a right to order her around. “I’m guiding the senator around the new provincial hospital.”

“No.” His voice was as gritty as the sunbaked parking lot. “You’re not.”

“This is my chance to help women and girls like Nazdana.”

“No. It isn’t.”

“So.” Laura cleared her throat. “Seems like you two know each other.”

“Too well,” he said.

“Barely,” she said.

Wulf gestured at the line of SUVs. “I’ll blow a goat if the guards let those out the gate.”

“Buy it dinner first.”

Laura snorted, but Wulf loomed so close she could’ve touched the vein at his temple. “I haven’t busted my balls on security so you can roll out of here whenever you want to feed your adrenaline habit—”

“Security? What are you talking about?” And she was absolutely not a thrill junkie.

“Forget it,” he said.

She could almost hear his teeth grind, and then understanding dawned. A helicopter pilot had started mooning after Jennifer; one of Wulf’s teammates had been hanging with the transportation officer that shared their hut; and this morning the Hawaiian on Wulf’s team had reported to sick call with a gastro complaint. Oh-so-friendly, he’d asked about her day. She’d mentioned this mission. “You’ve been spying on me!” Her nails dug into her palms as she fought to keep her fists at her sides. “You sneaky—”

“This gets better and better,” Laura interrupted. “In fact, it’s so good I almost want to talk to your brother, Wulf, which I generally enjoy less than reformatting my hard drive. Alas, the army waits for no woman.” She tugged Theresa’s elbow. “Our ride’s here. Toodle-oo, Wulf old man.”

Theresa followed, if only to avoid charges for kicking a subordinate.
Do not turn around
, she cautioned herself.
Keep walking.
There’s a hospital to visit.

A civilian with a clipboard and earpiece motioned her to the second car and sent Laura to the convoy’s rear. After wedging the rucksack of medical books by her feet, she struggled to stretch the seat belt around her Kevlar vest. Wulf’s concerns were valid enough that she didn’t remove her protective gear, not even the neck-compressing helmet.

“Sir.” She introduced herself to the white-haired man who slid in the opposite door. In a blue button-down and khakis, the senator resembled every politician who visited the troops. They exchanged polite conversation while the convoy idled at the gate.

“Black and Swan invited me here to show why I shouldn’t appoint a special prosecutor to examine their finances.” The blunt change of topic, not the lurch as they passed the gate of Camp Cadwalader, left Theresa gaping. “Boots on the ground usually know more than geezers like me stuck in Washington. So tell me, Captain, what do you think of Black and Swan’s services? Good value for the taxpayers?”

Gifts like the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee inviting her to talk about Black and Swan didn’t happen often. She inhaled and started. “I—”

The boom was so close the gargantuan pressure crushed her chest. It crushed her answer, her breath, her vision, crushed the world around her until everything disappeared except one instant of understanding. In the flash one thought hung like a scalpel over her heart: she’d walked away from Wulf angry.

Now she’d never be able to tell him she loved him.

Chapter Twenty

The shock wave slammed Wulf’s back, and he knew what he’d see when he turned. He was sprinting for the gate by the time the dirt geyser topped out, and he didn’t stop running even when the guards, crouched behind blast barricades, yelled “Get down!”

Find Theresa.
His heart pounded the imperative.
Get her.
She had to be okay. Snaking through the concertina wire while the debris plume changed from a brown froth of airborne dirt to black smoke, he focused on the wreckage a hundred meters down the road.

Laura.
He’d almost forgotten Lorenzo’s granddaughter was in that mess too.
Let both be alive.
Behind him, rescue sirens blared, but he’d reach the site first.
They’re not-dead-not-dead-not-dead.
The words matched the piston beat of his legs as he closed the distance.

A dark-haired woman pulled at the side door of an SUV.

“Theresa!”

She turned, and the way his heart stuttered when he saw Laura felt traitorous.

“It’s stuck!” She stumbled from the twisted door, her hand wrapped in a jacket to pull broken glass from the shattered window. “I can’t open it!”

He grabbed the window frame and handle and yanked until the vehicle rocked, but the door didn’t budge in its warped frame. Bracing his foot on the SUV’s body above the tire, he pulled even as flames ran up the far front seat. He had seconds until fire filled the compartment. He pulled again, and this time the door popped free.

Theresa slumped sideways from her seat belt. Laura used an extinguisher to block the flames while he ripped a strap cutter off his vest and sliced the nylon restraints. Everyone else was beyond help—that was obvious—so he scooped his woman into his arms.

Her spine arched and she flailed at air as he ran toward the military ambulance. Her scream wasn’t the high-pitched sound of fear. It was a gut-cry of pain.

“You’re going to make it.” Empty assurances sucked, but he didn’t know what else to say as he sprinted with her.

“Wulf.” He looked down as she moaned his name. Her lips curled back to show her teeth. “Hurts.”

Slivers had cut her face, but nothing seemed to be catastrophic. “You’re going to—”

He saw her leg. Her boot was gone. More than the boot. Tendons and flesh hung unconnected to anything, flapping like shredded fabric.

This nightmare couldn’t be real, but gravel peppered his cheek as the ambulance skidded to a halt. Medics jumped out and the Quick Reaction Force secured a perimeter. The stretcher was a familiar flat rectangle, never more foreign than when he laid Theresa on its olive-colored canvas.

Clutching him, she howled when the medics straightened her limbs. They put on a tourniquet and stuck a needle in her, something for her pain. Each thing they poked into her bit into him too. He’d failed. He hadn’t convinced her to stay inside the wire. He hadn’t protected her.

She moaned as relief took hold. He couldn’t be sure, but maybe she said, “Don’t leave.”

“I won’t. I won’t leave.” The medics bumped him aside, but he didn’t let go of her hand. “You’re not alone.”

“She’s out now, Sarge.” Someone peeled his fingers from Theresa’s while someone else thrust a tube down her throat. “We’re rolling.”

Her blood, smeared across his knuckles and wrists, branded an oath onto his soul. As soon as he knew she was safe, he’d tear the village outside Camp Caddie apart until they pointed him to the Taliban who’d planted this bomb. The bomber would repay every drop of Theresa’s blood. Tenfold or a hundredfold, from three generations or from a dozen, the guilty would suffer for hurting his woman.

* * *

Twenty-four hours later, Wulf lurked along the fringes of the intensive care wing of the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany. He wanted to sit beside Theresa and study her eyelids for flutters when he said her name, but security had already cornered him because he wasn’t her next of kin or her chain of command. He couldn’t risk a confrontation where a clerk might check the authority-line numbers on the travel orders Deavers had created for him. He’d bet it was paperwork, not his best friend, that had toppled Caesar too. Maybe a sympathetic nurse on the next shift would let him slip into Theresa’s room. Until then, he’d wait in the hall.

It was after 7:00 p.m.—already twenty-one thirty in Afghanistan—when his smartphone flashed an encrypted message. His neck tingled as he entered codes. The only intel important enough for Deavers to send now concerned the IED. Did the team have a lead?

He read the message twice. FBI agents from Kabul had swarmed to Caddie because a senator had died, and more were en route from stateside. That made sense, but with the exception of Laura and the bodies from the wrecked SUV, the rest of the convoy had vanished. Not even paperwork remained. No record of who’d signed for fuel, no motor pool inventory of VINs—even the manifest the lead driver had given the gate guards was missing. While the guards remembered Laura and Theresa, no one could describe the drivers with more detail than “White guys.” Four men and two vehicles had evaporated into the Big Fucking Empty.

Staccato taps that never came from nurse footwear interrupted his third review. The couple that turned the corner had to be Theresa’s mother and stepfather. The lady, flamboyant from her open-toed heels to her unnaturally dark hair, hurried ahead of a military escort and a track-suited man who dragged a rolling suitcase.

Wulf snapped to attention.

“Where’s my daughter?” The woman pinned him with dark brown eyes identical to the ones seared into his memory. Like her daughter, she wasted no time.

The breathless specialist arrived to block the door. “Ma’am, we have to wait for—”

“No, we don’t.” She lifted a hand and pointed. “Carl.”

“Sorry, kid. Gotta listen to my wife.” Theresa’s stepfather lunged more quickly than Wulf expected of a man wearing crisscrossed carry-ons. With Carl’s bulk crowding the startled soldier into a precarious lean, it only took a gentle shove on the shoulder to send the escort stumbling aside. Wulf whisked the door open for Theresa’s mother.

With a shrug at the spluttering aide, he followed Carl. Theresa’s mother circled the bed to press her cheek against her daughter’s. Theresa’s arms lay flat on top of sheets that were only slightly paler than her skin. Intravenous tubes, finger clamps and other equipment he didn’t understand poked out of or latched on to every part of her, but it was the sight of her right leg that paralyzed him. The sheets were pulled away from what resembled a heavily wrapped log. That swaddled mess with its dangling tubes couldn’t belong to the woman who’d sprinted and jumped and kicked so hard at his side.

From between stubble-darkened jowls and thick eyebrows, Carl’s suspicious eyes fastened on Wulf. “You’re no doctor. Who’re you?”

Crowding into the room behind Wulf, the medical entourage cut off conversation.

“You again!” One of the attending surgeons ordered Wulf out.

“He can stay.” Holding her daughter’s hand, Theresa’s mother spoke with the nasal New Jersey sound Theresa only let slip when angry.

“Mrs. Chiesa,” the colonel in charge of Theresa’s care began.

“Napolitano.”

“Mrs. Napolitano.” He started over. “Your daughter’s prognosis is good. She’s in the best hands for her type of injury.”

“What type is that?” As she posed a question no mother wanted to ask, she looked transparent enough around the edges to float away without the anchor of Theresa’s hand.

“In layman’s terms, she lost her right foot above the top of her boot. We recommend a second operation to reshape the remainder of her tibia to better fit a below-the-knee prosthetic, but initial evaluation shows minimal or no brain injury.” He described, without detectable irony, how the medical texts she’d straddled in the car had shielded her left leg from the blast.

While her parents volleyed questions, Wulf imagined holding Theresa’s other hand. If he indulged himself and slid close enough to confirm that her skin held the warmth of the living, someone would demand he leave, so he focused on her face. The dark wings of her eyebrows were sedated into immobility, but nurses had picked shrapnel and glass from her cheeks and dabbed ointment on her scabs.

The lead physician checked his watch as the medical team filed out. “Visiting ends in fifteen minutes. Your escort’s at the main desk, ready to show you to your room at Fisher House.” He frowned at Wulf. “Sergeant, you go when they do. This is your final warning before we call the MPs.”

In the restored quiet, Theresa’s mother sank to a chair beside the bed.

The only part of Carl that looked gentle was his hand on his wife’s shoulder. “You never answered me. Who are you?”

Wulf recognized the impotent rage in the other man’s voice. He shared it. “Her escort.” He’d used that line around the hospital. “I flew in with her.”

Carl lowered his unibrow and patted his wife’s back before he slipped around the end of the bed—without, Wulf noted, showing his back. His eyes fastened on the identifying patches on Wulf’s uniform. “I spent 1966 with the 173rd Airborne in Cu Chi.” He lowered his voice. “Don’t shit me they put a guy from
your
unit on escort duty. Tell me. What’re you doing here?”

When Wulf didn’t answer, Carl continued. “I may sound like a goombah from Jersey, but I read the papers and listen to NPR like the smart guys.” With an Italian’s regard for personal space, he crowded Wulf’s chest.

Wulf stood his ground.

“I was listening to radio talk about the deceased senator when the phone rang, and then I heard my wife scream.” He grabbed Wulf’s arm with a grip that would have made a butcher proud. “I got that chest pain when you know,
you just know
, and I prayed I wouldn’t have a heart attack right then because Jeanne was gonna need me.”

Wulf let Carl steer him to the room’s farthest corner.

“My girl told her ma it was no big deal that she went back to Afghanistan early.” His whisper dropped so low that Wulf had to lean in to hear. “I was part of a shitty war too, and only guy I ever knew went back to ’Nam early had offed a hooker in Manila. So I’m putting that together with a guy like you standing at her door, and I want to know—” Carl was so close that Wulf could smell coffee on his breath, “—whadda-fuck is going on? You some sort of guard?”

The email he’d read meant maybe he was. But as drained as he felt, he’d be useless if needed. He realized he hadn’t eaten in over a day. Damn. No wonder his vision blurred when he looked at Theresa.

“Waiting for an answer.” Carl jibed him back to reality.

“Too many ears.” Wulf flicked his eyes at Theresa’s mother.

“Fine. Where and when?”

“Two hours.” Now that he’d seen Theresa, he had to recharge. He also had to call Deavers. “I’ll find you at Fisher House.”

“I got one take-away for you.” Not an ounce of the big man looked friendly. “Anybody messes with my girl, their gene pool gets drained, got it? I take care of my business.”

“So do I.” Wulf allowed his control to loosen for a moment, showing the other man how fifteen centuries of fighting could whet a man’s soul to a knife-edge.

“Our ways might be pretty similar, heh.” Carl half squinted. “You look like you got some
coglioni.
Maybe I could like you.”

Maybe he could like Carl too, and maybe he had a new ally for whatever lay ahead. Because sure as generals expected their shit shined, if the rest of that convoy had disappeared, something sucked.

* * *

When Wulf shifted the rental car to first gear in front of the free lodging for families of injured soldiers, a cigarette glow beside the porch marked where to stop for Carl.

“I don’t usually ride with drivers who don’t have references.” Carl lifted the papers and small flashlight off the passenger seat before sitting. “My group life insurance has strict rules.”

“Read that.” He had no idea how Deavers had acquired the FBI’s preliminary findings, but he owed his boss for emailing a copy. Wulf’s anger choked him to the point where he knew if he tried to speak, he’d scream.

Minutes later, Carl stopped reading. “I don’t get it. This says—” he licked his thumb to turn back a page, “—
blast point of origin twenty-two to twenty-four inches above road surface.
”

Wulf kept the car rolling while he fought for enough self-control to answer.

“I don’t understand.” But Carl’s tone said he did. His voice had the slow beat of a man whose world has capsized, like when he finds out his wife had an affair with his brother or his broker stole millions. Or his country fucked with his kid.

“The bomb was fixed to the SUV’s undercarriage, not buried in the road.” Speaking the words made them real, meant he could no longer believe this was a Taliban bomb. “It was professional. Almost surgical. Little collateral damage.” Hearing the words hammered home the message: Theresa’s injury was his fault.

Carl let loose and smashed his fist on the dashboard. German engineering could handle it, so Wulf let him pound and swear until he shuddered to a halt. “Gotta keep it together. For Jeanne.”

Several seconds later, his passenger’s breathing was closer to normal. “She’s got me doing yoga shit with her to help with my blood pressure.”

“You’ll need it.” He squeezed the steering wheel. If he let go, he’d pound the dash too, and they’d end up in the ditch. “There’s more.”

“Wait a sec.” Carl pulled something out of his jacket pocket. “Antacid?”

The pain of remembering Theresa and her Tic Tac box robbed him of speech. Nothing Carl offered could ease the boiling in his stomach when his soul whispered,
This was Unferth.
This was your fault.

His passenger crunched loudly. “Go on.”

“A photographer at the scene recalled a Black and Swan employee directing Theresa to the senator’s vehicle.” He’d stood in that parking lot as well, angry and frustrated as he’d watched, but he hadn’t stopped them. “Maybe that wasn’t a coincidence.”

“Why would an outfit like Black and Swan care about my girl? I don’t do business with them. I got no defense contracts, nothing international.” He floundered into silence.