KBL (22 page)

“If only.” Ty ran his hand through close-cropped hair. “I hate not working out. I’m going to flab.”

“Don’t they have a weight pile here?”

“This ain’t San Quentin, dude. No TV, no library, no weight pile.”

“The good news is no Mexican Mafia or Aryan Brotherhood, either.”

“Yeah, but we’ve got AQN and Taliban.”

“In segregation, right?”

“You better believe it.”

The room fell silent for half a minute. Ty took the time to appreciate the RSO’s visit. He looked at Wade. “Thanks for coming, dude.”

“You’d do the same for me.”

Ty gave the RSO a thumbs-up. “You bet.”

The two men fell silent again. Neither was given to small talk.

Finally Wade said, “I pouched most of your professional stuff for you. It should end up at your home base.”

“Thanks.” Ty had stored a cache of CIA gear—false license plates, IDs, and other equipment—in the RSO’s safe.

“No prob,” Wade shrugged. “Anything else you need?”

Ty fingered his very ripe plaid shirt. “A fresh set of clothes would be nice.”

“I’ll bring a package in a couple of days.” Ty’s belongings had been moved out of the apartment he’d shared with Loner, Kent, and Gary within hours of the shootings. The three AWG Soldiers were long gone, but Ty’s two suitcases sat in the RSO’s office. “Anything you specially—”

The RSO stopped speaking at the sound of the door being unlatched.

The guards were back. Mutt was holding the shackles. Jeff had a big ring of keys.

“Yeah—skivvies. Mine’ll walk out of here on their own.” Ty extended his hand. “Thanks, dude.”

Wade took it. “Keep the faith, bro.”

“Nothing else to do.” Ty gave the RSO an upturned thumb before Mutt slipped the handcuffs on his wrists. “Remember—call Patty.”

18

Abbottabad, Pakistan
March 2, 2011, 1620 Hours Local Time

Charlie Becker sat outside the Iqbal Market collecting alms, and his thoughts. Tareq Khan was back. Charlie had eyeballed the Bin Laden courier, quite by chance, four days earlier. He was skirting the perimeter of Ground Zero, the Khan compound, when the gates opened and the red Suzuki drove out.

But it wasn’t Arshad who was driving. It was another Pashtun, slightly younger, whom Charlie had never seen before, with a woman and two kids in the back, and a young male child riding shotgun.

Had to be Tareq. The Suzuki was the Khans’ car. No one else drove it.

Then Charlie had seen him again. Yesterday. At the
zam-zam
stand across from the Kabul Café. No wife, just Tareq and the kids. He bought them all milkshakes: mango, papaya, orange, and melon. They had stood next to the stand and drunk them. And Charlie heard the kids ask Daddy how his trip was and how sad they were when he was gone, but what wonderful presents he’d brought them.

And then Daddy told them he wouldn’t have to go away again, not for a long time. He kissed them all, telling them he’d be at home, except for one or two very short visits to friends near Peshawar, but it would only be for a day or two.

Bingo, thought Charlie. Gotcha.

Exuberantly, he’d bursted it all to Valhalla Base: the short trips, the kids’ presents, the
zam-zams
.

And from there his transmission disappeared into the great void.

And left Charlie hope, hope, hoping, it would do some good.

Because if Charlie had thought about it, which he had—oh, had he ever—he was beginning to wonder whether anything he was doing out here was making a difference.

The reason for this unusual (for him) introspection was that, although he wouldn’t admit it to anyone, including and most important to himself, he’d been somewhat depressed of late.

It wasn’t anything to do with Saif’s death. That sonofabitch deserved everything Charlie had given him. If anything, killing Saif had served to remind Charlie of his
raison d’être:
putting those who threatened the nation in the ground. But even so, for the past week or so, Charlie had been feeling . . . empty. Like he’d been caught up in an existential vortex and couldn’t spin out of it. Part of it, of course, was the culture of which he was a part, had been a part for more than three decades, first as a Ranger, then at CIA. Rangers, like other Tier One units, operate in secret.

Tier One Warriors don’t talk about what they do, or where they do it, except to other Rangers. Same for SEALs and Delta shooters. Charlie understood secret. But this was different. Undercover was a whole nother universe. Like working in a vacuum. And, as Charlie had lately discovered, depression was a palpable reality; a bona fide part of his life. It was
agnawing
.

Even Waseem noticed it. “You seem very quiet these days, even sad, Brother Shahid,” the tearoom owner had said only last week. “Is something wrong, God forbid it?”

And Charlie had thought, as he sat there sipping his tea,
Well, yes, Waseem, I’m quietly debating the state of my world, because I’m hoping that what I’m doing here will help to put one of your greatest heroes in the ground. Bury him with a stake right through his fricking heart. But y’know, I don’t actually know if I’m doing anybody any good out here because I’m working in a vacuum and I feel totally isolated. On the other hand, the tea sure is wonderful.

To be sure, Charlie understood intellectually that the rigors of undercover work require immense, almost ineffable levels of concentration, discipline, and, above all, the ability to be out there with no net, no support, no backup, and, most critical, no one to talk to. Like a hardhat diver a hundred feet down. Alone. In a vacuum.

That last little bit—and he’d learned it on the job because no one had ever discussed it with him before he’d come here—was the toughest part of working a long-term undercover assignment like this one: no one to talk to. No one to bounce ideas off of. To fricking listen to you. To let you vent about your frustrations. About your fears, anxieties, doubts. About your hopes and dreams, and yes, your successes. The aloneness, the vacuum, was debilitating. Draining. Exhausting. Depressing.

Charlie had spent virtually his entire military career in the 75th Ranger Regiment. The Army was collegial. The Army was built to be that way. Squads, platoons, companies, battalions, regiments, divisions. It was all about working as a team. Which was why, when some idiot had come out with the inane recruiting slogan “An Army of One,” Charlie had wanted to smack the stupid sonofabitch silly. An Army of One? One
what
?

Well, now Charlie was an army of one. Working in a vacuum. He’d arrived in Abbottabad four months ago, almost to the day. The intervening weeks had not been easy.

Oh,
that
was putting it mildly.

It was tough. It was tougher than tough. It was compartments within compartments within compartments. It was bottling up all your hopes and dreams inside an impenetrable shell, the shell that will keep you alive in this hostile, deadly environment, but the shell that wants to explode out of frustration, anxiety, aloneness.

That was why catching sight of Tareq was so important to him. It was the first time in weeks, certainly since he’d killed Saif the Iraqi, that he felt he was making forward progress.

But there had been no reply to his message. And it would have been oh so wonderful to hear someone say, “Thanks, we needed that.”

Yeah. It would.

But then it occurred to him, sitting there on the street by the Iqbal Market, not six rupees in his bowl. It occurred to him, like
Boing!
The Proverbial Lightbulb. An epiphany.

Having put Saif in the ground was thank-you enough. Interdicting a threat and neutralizing it? That was what he
did
. He didn’t need a thank-you. He was a Ranger.

Always would be. Even in Abbottabad. Because what was Abbottabad?

It was a target. It was his job to be here.

And what was his job?

Recon. Spotting Tareq was his job.

Because he was on Point.

Of course he was. Because
Rangers Lead the Way!

Charlie refocused. Remembered the Ranger Creed.

I will complete the mission, though I be the lone survivor.

Airborne Ranger. That’s who he always was and would always be.

He pushed off and rolled down the street toward his next checkpoint.

Energized. Recommitted.

Thinking,
Hoo-ah, Ranger Becker, Drive ON!

19

Cumberland Parkway, Virginia Beach, Virginia
March 6, 2011, 1935 Hours Local Time

Brittany Roberts slid the pasta salad onto the big folding table, careful not to crease the tablecloth. Troy and Ken Michaud had moved the table up against the wall in the family room to give everybody a little more space. She gave the table an approving glance. Pasta salad, pot roast, and a big green salad followed by homemade apple pie and vanilla ice cream made for a lovely dinner. Plates, napkins, and flatware were laid out. There were even flowers. There was a fire in the fireplace, sports on Fox Soccer channel, and the mini fridge that Troy kept under his bar on the other side of the room was full of Corona, Coors, and Michelob Light.