Into the Storm (13 page)

Jenkins surely knew he was fighting a losing battle, but giving up didn’t come naturally. “Zanella.”

“Is it funny?” Lindsey inquired, “or just crude?”

“Oh, it’s funny.” Izzy clearly loved Jenk’s discomfort. “
And
crude. Considering the subject matter. You know what? Here’s what I’ll do. I’ll tell it without using any names.”

“Oh, right,” Jenk said. “That really works after you already freaking told her it was
me.
” He turned to Lindsey. “Which it wasn’t.” He took a deep breath. “Will you please just tell Zanella that you don’t want to hear his totally fictional story that never happened?”

Lindsey made a face. “Well, I guess I could, but…I’d be lying.”

“Great. Thanks, Iz. You know how you saved my life? Well, now we’re even.” He gestured to Izzy. “Go ahead. Tell the story. Ruin our friendship.”

“Ruin our friendship,” Izzy scoffed. “You’ll get over it. You always do.” He turned to Lindsey. “This story circulates every few years or so. It hasn’t killed Jenkie yet. Okay, here we go. Ready?”

She nodded. This was going to be good.

“So we got this new guy on the team, right? He’s a good guy, but he’s really young. Extremely green. And about to get even greener.” Izzy started to giggle.

Jenk stood up. “You know what? I changed my mind. I’ve heard this story too many times to be able to sit through it again. Lindsey, it really wasn’t me, and I’ll see you later—”

“Okay, wait.” Lindsey stopped him. “First I have to hear about the wedding. I assume something happened that allowed you to go…?”

“Yeah, we got a twelve-hour delay, so we brought our equipment to the church. Just in case.”

“But then we got a twenty-four-hour delay on top of that,” Izzy added. “And finally on Sunday, we got a call telling us to stand down, we’re not needed. Only, a few hours later, what was it, oh-three-hundred, Monday morning?” he asked Jenk.

“Do you hear some kind of noise?” Jenk asked Lindsey, “that sounds like oxygen being wasted?”

“It was definitely early Monday,” Izzy said. “Way predawn. Prolly around three.”

“On Monday we got a second call,” Jenk continued to ignore Izzy. “This time, we’re told it’s real. We’re definitely going. When you and I spoke on the phone on Tuesday…”

He’d called Lindsey’s cell, but he’d only had about thirty seconds to talk, and he’d spent most of it apologizing for having to leave town.

“…I was in Virginia,” Jenk reported, “getting ready to head for parts unknown.”

“Again,” Izzy said. “Hoo-yah, take two.”

“We were in Europe, in Germany, before we got
that
stand down order.”

“One thing’s sure—something’s up in the sandbox,” Izzy said.

“It’s only a matter of time before we do go,” Jenk told her. “Which is why we’re rushing to do this exercise now.”

Lindsey nodded. “TS Inc has gotten an increase in phone calls from the alphabet agencies.” She shot Jenk a look. “And the reason I know this is because I’ve spent the past four days helping Tracy try to learn how to use the phone system.”

The task that Jenk had promised to come into the office to assist with.

“How’s she doing?” he asked.

“What has
she
told
you
?” Lindsey countered. Did he know that Lyle had come into town several days early, that he and Tracy were having dinner together tonight? God, she was not going to be the one to break that news to Jenk. Or the fact that Tracy had been talking, nonstop, about whether or not Lyle would attempt a reconciliation.

Jenk shook his head. “I haven’t spoken to her all week. I haven’t even text messaged her. After the word came down that today was our window of opportunity to do this exercise, well, you’re lucky I had time for a shower.”

Someone had to tell him. God forbid he come into the TS Inc office tomorrow and see Tracy packing up her desk, a big ol’ diamond ring on her finger. There’d been a lot of speculation over the past few days that Lyle would play the “Marry me” card to get Tracy back. Lindsey had kept her own thoughts to herself, but she suspected that that had been Tracy’s game plan all along.

“It’s funny,” Jenk was saying. “I thought most of the work would be done over at Tommy’s office. I got that wrong.”

“See?” Izzy was triumphant. “You
did
set up this training op, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” Jenk said. “Okay? Yes. Just tell your story and—No. You know what?
I’m
going to tell Lindsey the story. Let’s just get this over with, and move on, okay? How does it start?”

Lindsey made up her mind. She’d tell Jenk about Tracy and Lyle immediately after the op.

“There’s this new guy on the team named Mark Jenkins,” Izzy supplied.

“Bite me,” Jenk said. “I’m telling it with your name in the fill-in-the-blank slot, see how
you
like it, dickweed.” He took a deep breath. “There’s a new guy on the team named Irving Zanella, and he’s going out on a real-world op for the first time, and he’s scared, but he’s ready. It’s a simple sneak and peak—get in, get some basic info on the enemy’s camp, how many guards are posted, what kind of weapons are in view, get back out.”

“He can pretend that it was me,” Izzy interjected, “but it was really him. How else would he know so much about the assignment?”

Jenk grimly ignored him as Lindsey tried not to laugh. “They’re in the middle of the jungle,” he continued with the story, “just collecting information, blending with the scenery. Turns out they need to stay longer than they’d anticipated, so they settle in, tear open some MREs, have a little chow. About an hour later, the new guy,
Izzy,
goes, ‘Damn, I didn’t bring my Magic Markers. I don’t even have any extra cammie paint.’”

It wasn’t me,
Izzy mouthed to Lindsey, from behind Jenk, who elbowed him without missing a beat. “Ow!”

“And the chief looks at him and, you know, tries to reassure him,” Jenk said. “‘Zanella, you’re fine.’ His paint’s a little muddy from sweat, but that’s no big deal. The chief doesn’t know what this kid means by his Magic Markers, though. What, is he going to make a sign or maybe write a letter home? You never know with the new guys. But this is not the time or place for lengthy conversations.

“But Izzy goes, ‘No, chief, really, I gotta take a crap, but I didn’t camouflage my ass. I didn’t think we’d be gone this long, so…’ And the chief is like, ‘What?’”

Lindsey, knowing full well what was coming, started to laugh.

“Yeah,” Jenk said. “You guessed it. Turns out, back at the base when they were gearing up for this op, some cruel bastards tell Izzy that he’s got to use paint on every part of him that’s going to peek out from beneath his uniform—including his…johnson. Especially his johnson, because he definitely doesn’t want
that
to get shot off, right? And they tell him, as far as that piece of his anatomy is concerned, it’s easier just to use permanent markers. That way he doesn’t have to keep drawing on himself every time he’s going out into the world. So there he is, with a jungle cammie print—apparently he did a very good job of it—on his unit, for like, two months.”

“Gillman! Zanella! Lopez!” On the other side of the Quonset hut, the senior chief was handing out gear.

“I thought it was more like four months,” Izzy said. “But, hey, you should know.”

Jenk gritted his teeth. “Rumor has it, if you look really close, you can still see a trace of it. Even after all these years.”

“If that’s the case,” Izzy said, his hands on his belt, “I can prove right here that it wasn’t me.”

“No, thank you,” Lindsey said quickly.

“It’s an urban legend,” Jenk said. “Go to Fort Bragg, and you’ll hear a version where the new guy is an army grunt. Go to Eglin Air Force Base and the story takes place during pilot SERE training. It didn’t happen. It’s fiction.”

“Zanella!”

“Later, babe.” Izzy was gone.

Jenk looked imploringly at Lindsey. “You believe me, right?”

She didn’t get a chance to respond before the senior chief bellowed for him. “Jenkins!”

Jenk didn’t move as quickly as Izzy had, walking backwards so that he could still talk to her. “I probably won’t see you until the rescue.”

“In that case,” Lindsey told him, “you won’t see me until the exercise is over. Team Sixteen’s not going to win this thing, remember?”

He laughed, supremely confident. “Prepare to be disappointed.”

“Back at you,” she said. “You know, I couldn’t help but notice that you didn’t volunteer to prove that that story’s not about you.”

Something may have sparked in his eyes. Or maybe it was just a combination of the setting sun and wishful thinking on her part.

“I don’t feel the need to prove anything,” he said. “Besides, I’m too old-fashioned.”

Now, okay,
that
was flirting. Wasn’t it?

“Lindsey,” Tom Paoletti called. “It’s time.”

The intentionally motley-looking collection of TS Inc operatives had their equipment. They were ready to vanish with their hostage—her—into the desert.

When Lindsey glanced back, Jenk was still watching her walk away, and her heart actually skipped a beat.

L
OCATION
: U
NKNOWN
D
ATE
: U
NCERTAIN

She used to have a name.

Beth Foster.

She sometimes said it aloud in the darkness, just to hear something besides the sound of her own breathing, the endless drip of the water, the occasional squeaking of his feet on the kitchen floor overhead.

Sometimes she said all of their names. Connie Smith was the latest. It was the scent of Connie Smith’s blood, metallic and sharp, pooled on the concrete floor, that hung in the dark basement air, making her stomach churn and her head ache.

Alive. Alive. Her heart still beat. Her own blood was safe in her veins. Most of it, anyway. Alive. Alive. Alive.

And Connie Smith, Lord Jesus save her soul, had gone to a far better place.

“Connie Smith,” she whispered.

He always made a point of telling her their names, but never while they were still alive. Only after their suffering was over. After she’d finished them.

“Connie Smith, Jennifer Denfield, Yvette Wallace, Paula Kettering, Wendy Marino, Julia Telman, Debra Perez, Liana Bergeron, Cathy Quinn, Maris Olietto, Nancy Stein, Michelle Kulhagen, Brianna Martin, Jennifer Denfield…No wait. Jennifer Denfield was Jennifer Two. Jennifer McBride was Jennifer One. Jennifer McBride and…Number Four.”

Number Four had been Beth’s first.

She didn’t know her name.

Possibly, according to some twisted set of rules that he followed, she hadn’t earned the right to know it.

But more likely, he hadn’t yet discovered that telling her their names was another way to torment her.

It turned them from nameless lumps of frightened flesh into people. People who had had lives and families who loved them, who would mourn them—the same as she did.

Once upon a time, she’d had a mother. Strict and overbearing. Full of rules and disapproval.
How will you get a real job without an education? Why don’t you reenlist? How will you ever stop drinking if you keep on working in a bar? If you dress like a slut, you’ll be treated like a slut. He was married? And you’re actually surprised? What goes around, comes around…

Once upon a time, Beth had thought she’d had problems, troubles, pain.

She’d had no idea.

E
AST OF
S
AN
D
IEGO
, C
ALIFORNIA
T
HURSDAY NIGHT
, D
ECEMBER
8, 2005

The training op’s SNAFU started when Dave called for a break about an hour after they’d entered phase two of Tom Paoletti’s plan.

Phase two—for Dave’s little team and their hostage—was all about keeping moving, always moving. They allowed themselves only the briefest of respites in the clear desert night.

Lindsey, however, was purposely dragging, slowing them down as a real hostage would. Someone had given her a blanket because the night air had a crisp chill, but she tripped over it more often than not.

Still, it was Sophia who had really needed the chance to stop and catch her breath.

So Dave concocted some reason to go and consult with Decker, leaving Lindsey sitting on a rock, guarded by Tom and Sophia.

Sophia had, indeed, dressed like a commando-wannabe in cammie-print pants and T-shirt, no doubt purchased off the rack from some fashionable department store. The pants fit very nicely, and both they and the shirt had shiny designer labels that glittered, kind of defeating their purpose.

It also didn’t help that the print was intended for camouflage in the jungle rather than the desert.

But it was Sophia’s bandana, worn biker-style on her head, that truly completed her look. And it was quite a look, especially since she’d arranged her long hair into dozens of skinny braids that hung down her back.

She looked Hollywood ferocious—particularly since the way she wielded her weapon broadcast her lack of skill in using it.

The really funny part of Sophia’s appearance was that, while out in the field, Dave had seen enemy combatants dressed just as carefully and holding their weapons just as awkwardly. It was as if they believed that looking like a soldier was more important than, oh, say, training…?

And Sophia had more than the appearance down pat. She’d made them all laugh back in the Quonset hut, before the op got into gear. Clutching that weapon that was almost as big as she was, her eyes had actually sparkled as she’d haughtily informed Tom that she would only answer to her new nickname, Señorita Diablo, which according to her meant, with poetic license, “Devil Woman.”

She was totally in character. She’d completely cracked Dave up, but his heart had gone into his throat, too. If he’d had any last doubts, they were now gone. Sophia Ghaffari had definitely decided to return to the world of the living.

Apparently with or without Decker’s help.

As for Deck, he’d been intent on keeping his distance, but of course Tom, who was calling all the shots, had divided the Troubleshooter operatives into three cells. He had assigned both Deck and Sophia to the hostage-handling patrol. His final insult had been to name Dave as their team leader.