Quest for Honor (17 page)

“That is for you and your father to discuss later,” Mark said. “Is this farm on the main road?”

“Five kilometers south, then one to the west.”

“I know the place, Colonel,” King said. “We were there a month ago, inoculating the family. There’d been some talk that the two older sons had joined the insurgents, but the family clammed up.”

“Mount ‘em up, Doc,” Mark ordered. King was the highest-ranking noncom he had after Elkins on this mission. To the chief, he said, “We will leave you now, sir. We will try to rescue your nephew.”

“May God be with you,” the chief said, his eyes a mixture of anger and sadness.

Elkins and his men had gotten a heads-up from Mark over the radio and were five minutes ahead. Mark saw them a couple klicks down the road, through clouds of dust. Normally they would be going a lot more slowly, on the lookout for IEDs, but not this time. It was a gamble, but Mark knew this road had been cleared of bombs just the day before and he doubted—prayed—the Tals hadn’t had time to set any new ones, especially since they’d snatched the kid only a short time ago.

Elkins and his trailing vehicle came to the side road and took the turn with rocks flying. Mark radioed permission for the sergeant major to engage upon arrival at the target. Bouncing along behind them, Mark’s vehicles were at maximum safe speed, but he figured they’d still be on target about two minutes behind Elkins. By then it could be all over, Mark thought grimly. He knew Elkins had four kids back home. The sergeant major wouldn’t be looking to negotiate anything on this mission.

What the hell was the matter with these people? The thought had crossed Mark’s mind so many times during his deployments that it had become second nature to him. For every act of kindness and decency he saw from the Afghans, and there were many, there seemed to be one of cowardice, brutality, even what some would call evil. Were they really any different than anyone else, though? Adults tortured and murdered children everywhere. But over here, it seemed to be part and parcel of what the enemy was doing. Mark had dealt with more than one suicide bombing clean-up detail back in Iraq, and the sights of dismembered children were ones he’d never forget. Mark quickly learned that one of the best ways to deal with the horror was to find the perps and send them on the way to face God’s judgment, or whatever the hell Muslims had to face from Allah.

The radio crackled as Elkins’ vehicles pulled up to the perimeter of the farmhouse and he deployed his squad. Shots rang out, the distinctive flat crack of the AK-47, answered immediately by the deeper sound of the M-4. As Mark’s two Humvees approached, he saw Elkins crouched behind one of his vehicles, waving them around the perimeter. Like they’d done many times before, Mark’s two vehicles split off, one heading to the left, Mark’s driver to the right, flanking the single-story, mud-brick farmhouse. Goats and chickens scattered.

There was a tall poplar tree behind the farmhouse. “Get us around back!” Mark yelled. Bullets ricocheted off the armored sides of the vehicle. From the top turret, a corporal returned fire with the fifty-cal, raking the side of the house. They were only about thirty meters from the side of the building. The driver swung the Humvee around and the tree came into view. A man was throwing a rope over one of the large branches, with two other men standing nearby, holding AKs. One had a hand clamped on the back of the neck of a small, terrified boy.

“Stop!” Mark yelled, and the driver braked hard, swinging the wheel around so that the Humvee faced the tree. Mark estimated the distance at about fifty meters. “Hold your fire, Wilson!” Mark shouted to the corporal manning the fifty.

“Goddamn motherfuckers gonna lynch that kid!” Wilson screamed.

“Hold fire!” Mark knew that a burst from Wilson’s fifty would take out the boy. His training and experience carried him now, calming his breathing, his actions coming almost without conscious thought, as they had so many times in his career, in so many firefights that he’d lost count long ago. He jumped out of the vehicle and knelt down on his right knee, brought his weapon up, sighted on the insurgent to the left and pulled the trigger.

Time seemed to slow down. His shot caught the gunman square in the chest, knocking him backward as a puff of red sprayed out. The Humvee driver on the other side of the vehicle squeeze off a round, and the insurgent with the rope suddenly lost the top of his head. Mark was bringing his carbine around to sight on the remaining gunman when his eyes registered the flash from the AK’s barrel and something next to his head exploded. His world went white, and then very dark.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Wisconsin

J
im opened up
his personal email when he got back from lunch and the inbox had its usual collection: updates from
Men’s Health
and
Black Belt
magazine, a couple of discussion alerts from one of his favorite sites, Art of Manliness. An old high school classmate was inviting him to be her friend on Facebook. Assorted junk. Nothing yet today from Gina.

Jim sat back in his chair with a little sigh and looked out the window. It was Friday and plenty of people in the office already had the weekend jitters. Some of them were bailing out early, but he’d decided to stick around till the end of the day. He only had so much leave time to use, after all, and taking an hour here and another hour there pretty soon added up to a day or so of vacation he couldn’t take later. Not that he had much use for his vacation time anyway. In the past year, he’d taken two weeks off, one at a time. For one of them, he just stayed home, put in some extra training at the dojo, relaxed a little bit, caught up on his reading. The other was more of the same, except that he allowed himself to go visit Mickey in Milwaukee for a couple days.

But there was something to be said for taking a break. During his last week off he’d been puttering around in the back yard and decided to turn one part of it into a Japanese garden. He knew nothing at all about gardening but he got himself a couple books, talked to a few people and got after it. Now he made a point of getting out there every day or so, weeding and tending the plants, tinkering with the stone path and the water feature he’d installed. It was soothing, and he found it helped him clear his mind. He was a little worried about how the garden would last through the winter, but he would just have to prepare it and hope for the best.

Well, he had about a week built up again, and he thought now about taking a few days and maybe driving up north. He seemed to recall that Bayfield had a festival of some sort, and Gina was only a few miles away in Ashland.

He was surprised and not a little concerned by how much he missed her. The tournament was six days ago, and after all, he’d only spent a few hours with her. After the hot tub, one thing led to another and they hadn’t gotten out of her room until about eight o’clock to get a late dinner at a nice little bistro down the road called Adventures. Jim remembered the name with a laugh. Yes, the weekend had certainly provided a few of those.

He stood up and walked over to the window. His second-story office overlooked a strip mall, and beyond that, the town ended and the countryside began. Like so much of Wisconsin, with rolling farm fields and wooded hills, it beckoned him with a timeless temptation of adventure. Some of his fondest memories from childhood were of the visits he made to his Uncle Chuck’s farm near Palmyra, where he and his brother and cousins would hike through the woods to the swimming hole, fish the trout streams, and explore the caves on the hillsides. He should get out and do some hiking, maybe head over to Kettle Moraine State Park. It wasn’t much fun going alone, and he was pretty sure Annie wouldn’t want to go with him anymore. In fact, he knew now he wouldn’t want her to go. It was time to bring down the curtain on that one. He hadn’t returned her call from the other night, but that would have to be done. Tonight.

Down on the street, a woman rode past on a bicycle, heading into town. He recognized the coppery-red hair. It was Jessie, the rural mail carrier, she of the trim figure and lustrous complexion. He saw her frequently at the gym, lifting weights, running on the treadmill. Mid-thirties, with a couple of kids, and she was married. That was too bad…

Women. Sometimes Jim felt they were his only weakness, although objectively he knew that wasn’t true. He had worked hard the past six years to get his life under control, and he was almost there, although he wasn’t too terribly sure exactly where “there” was. But he was close, he could feel it. There were all the workouts, the training, his bookcase groaning with biographies and novels about men and women who’d made a difference. He had built himself a life of discipline, and always tried to conduct himself as a man of honor and integrity. It was not the easiest path to take in life, that was for sure. It was hard, and sometimes he felt lonely.

At first it was a matter of survival. The only way he could deal with Suzy’s murder was to train, train as hard as he could, so he’d be ready the next time. But the martial arts did more than just get him fit and ready; his training and studies opened up an enormous new vista to him, impacting his life in every way. It was more than just learning how to fight, so very much more. It was a philosophy, a way of life, and it led him to delve even deeper into the concept, the ethos, of the warrior. What did it mean to be one? What made those men, and those women, stand apart from the herd? He didn’t have all the answers, but what he’d found out so far was that it took discipline, integrity, and a determination to live a life of honor. He was on a journey, and he found himself wanting to share that with someone.

It was hard, because there were so many temptations to relax, loosen up, take it easy. Especially from women. They were everywhere, on the TV, on the internet, and every now and then he slipped, clicking the TV remote to catch a skin flick on one of the premium channels, or letting his fingertips type out the Web address of a porn site. He never watched those movies all the way through, never paid a dime for online porn, but now and then he would weaken and sneak a peek or two. Later he would curse himself for his weakness, vow never to do it again, and that would hold for a month or two, sometimes more. He was getting better on that score, going on six months now since he’d last fallen off that wagon. There was no avoiding the women he encountered in real life, though. They were out there, and more often than not they were sending signals.

It wasn’t their fault, of course; the signals that came in loud and clear nowadays were ones he’d never read when he was married to Suzy. There were no more temptations out there now then there had been before, but the difference was that now he was paying attention. That had gotten him into trouble once or twice, when he got involved with women he shouldn’t have. He’d left his job in Milwaukee for this one in Cedar Lake when one brief relationship with a co-worker turned sour very quickly, but he should’ve seen that one coming. If she’d really been separated from her husband, like she said, why was she still wearing her wedding ring? An unsettling phone call from the husband one day set him straight on that score.

He’d been here nearly five years now. Met Annie shortly after arriving, but hadn’t started dating her till just last year. In the meantime there were a few others, none serious. Jim never considered himself to be any kind of swordsman, or playa, or whatever they called those types of guys these days. For one thing, he now scrupulously avoided entanglements with any of the women he worked with. There were plenty of other fish in the sea.

Now, there was Gina. Of the women in his life the past six years, she had rapidly climbed to the top of the charts. Physically, she was breathtakingly toned and comfortable in her body, her movements fluid and confident. That had to be from her martial arts training, and Jim presumed, with his relatively limited experience, that would be pretty common among martial artists and athletes. Certainly Annie, a college volleyball star who had stayed in great shape, had the same qualities, although her aggressiveness and attitude set her apart, and not necessarily in a good way. Gina was different. The physical side of their evening together had been more than satisfying, but there was an emotional connection too, something he’d not had with any other woman, except Suzy. While that thrilled him, it was also a bit scary. Could he be falling in love with this woman, after so little time together? Was that possible?

That wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing, come to think about it. Gina had a lot going for her. She had the looks, of course, but a lot more beyond that. Jim was able to find out quite a bit about her, and there wasn’t much there not to like. Married at twenty-one to a U.S. Air Force officer stationed near her home in Ravenna, Italy, she emigrated to the States and lived the life of a military wife for the next fifteen years, raising twin boys while her husband flew fighter jets. He survived combat tours in Desert Storm and the Balkans, only to go down in a training accident in 2004, leaving her a widow at thirty-nine. She raised her boys alone through their difficult teenage years and it wasn’t easy, but they both graduated high school with honors and went on to college.

“How did you ever wind up in Ashland, Wisconsin, of all places?” Jim had asked her over dinner.

“That was my husband’s hometown,” she said. “He was going to retire from the Air Force in another year or two, after his tour was over.” Lieutenant Colonel Larry Curtis, serving as a training supervisor for Air National Guard bases in Wisconsin and Minnesota, went down over Lake Superior on a cold winter day when his F-16’s engine flamed out and his ejection seat malfunctioned. Gina had shed a tear as she told the story, and Jim reached across the table, covering her hand with his.

“I know what it’s like to lose someone you love,” he said gently, and then he told her about Suzy.

His cell phone chirped, and he saw Gina’s face on the screen. Things were looking up. “I was just thinking about you,” he said.

Her laugh was like feathers touching his skin. “I’ll bet. I know I’ve been thinking about you.”

“Obviously.” This was the third time they’d talked on the phone since Sunday morning. The call the other night had lasted an hour.

“How’s your day going?” she asked.

“Pretty good. It’s Friday afternoon, for one thing. What’re you doing this weekend?”

“It so happens I’m going to Marshfield for a conference tomorrow,” she said. Gina was a nurse practitioner with a clinic in Ashland, part of a network that was headquartered in Marshfield, in the center of the state.

“Is that right?”

“Yes, and it adjourns at four o’clock.”

“I’ve never been to Marshfield. Anything to do there on a Saturday night?”

There was that laugh again, and he felt a shiver. “I know a place or two.”

Jim hesitated. Yes, he wanted to see her again, wanted that badly, but he knew that if he did, he might very well fall head over heels for this woman. His head wasn’t sure about that, but his heart seemed to be pulling him along.

What the hell. “Tell you what. Find a place where a guy can treat a girl to a romantic dinner, and I’ll—“

The phone beeped. He pulled it away and glanced at the screen. INCOMING CALL flashed with another beep, and the next words almost knocked him out of his chair: US ARMY 445IR 3BN.

Wasn’t that Mark’s unit? “Gina, sorry, but I just got a beep, might be an emergency. I’ll call you right back.”

“Okay, Jim.”

He touched the screen. “Hello?”

The voice sounded a bit hollow, but not that far away. “Is this James Hayes?”

“Yes, it is.” Jim held his breath.

“Hold one, please, for the colonel.” Then, another voice, and even though Jim hadn’t heard it in nearly a year, he knew it well, and he started breathing again. “Jim? Are you there?”

“Mark! Are you all right?”

“Well, I took a round today, but I’m okay.”

Jim straightened up even more in his chair. Lori passed by his open door and glanced in with a frown, but Jim barely noticed her. “What do you mean? Are you hurt?”

“Just a pretty bad headache. I wanted to call you before you read about it in the paper. We have a reporter from
USA Today
embedded with the battalion.”

Three minutes later, Jim sank back in his chair. “So the bullet hit your helmet?”

“Yeah, well, glanced off the side, you might say. Still packed a punch. Good old Army-issue Kevlar comes through again.”

“Well, I’m glad to hear you’re okay.”

There was silence for a few seconds. Jim could hear the hiss on the line. “You there, Jim?”

“Yeah. I’m here, Mark.”

He heard something that sounded like a cough, then, “Listen, I can’t stay on the line very long, but, ah….God, this headache’s a bitch.”

“You should probably get some rest. What time is it there, nine, ten o’clock?”

“It’s, uh…just after eleven. Jim, I’ve been thinking about Dad. Thinking about a lot of things, really. I’ll shoot you an email, okay?”

“Yeah, sure, Mark. But you get some rest.” Then, he added, “When you get home, we can get together, catch up.”

“Sure, okay. Say hello to Mickey from her long-lost uncle.”

“Sure will.” The line went dead.

Jim put his phone on his desk, then got up and walked over to his window. He looked westward, following the town’s main street as it changed into County Road T and meandered off to the west through the farmlands. It was so placid, far removed from the mountains of Afghanistan. Jim wondered for the umpteenth time how he would’ve held up over there. He suspected he might’ve had a hard time, certainly harder than Mark, who always seemed to take physical challenges in stride, from high school football to mountain combat.

Yeah, it was always easy for Mark. It always seemed that way, anyway; Mark had never told him anything different. But really now, had Jim ever bothered to really reach out to his little brother? Maybe it was time to change that, set things right.

He called Gina back, told her about Mark, then said, “About tomorrow night…”

“Yes?”

He paused. “Listen, I want to see you, very much. But, well…maybe we shouldn’t take things too quickly.” Damn, why did he say that? Now she’d think he was backing off.

She was quiet for a second. There was a bit of a sigh, then, “Jim, you should know something. About last weekend, well, I don’t normally do that with a guy I just met. In fact, I’d never done it before. First date, I mean.” Was there a hopeful tone in her voice?

“I’m flattered,” he said. “And, well, it’s like that for me, too.” He had to laugh. “Man, I feel like I’m in high school again.”

She laughed with him. “Well, we’re all grown-up now, so we can do grown-up things. Can you come to Marshfield? It can just be dinner, if you want.”