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Hunter was on his own.

God help him.

 

None of the Iraqis seemed to look twice at Hunter. No one cared about a big, ugly pregnant woman, not with so much action around them. Since he could pass as one of them at a distance, he stuck to the tight back alleys, somewhere usually far too dangerous for an American. The narrow alleyways made the streets seem all that much wider and more vulnerable. He stood ready to cross what seemed to be a main artery.

He first looked left, then right at Stella.

 

The Black Hawk gunners were working their magic, making the tangos disappear and Camille and her unit were jogging toward their extraction point when something made Camille take a second look at an expectant mother.

“Hunter?”

The idiot turned and ran.

 

Hunter's gait was so wide, he popped the buttons on the overcoat as he sprinted. He emerged from between the buildings and ran onto a wide street, directly into a group of soldiers, Rubicon troops.

“Hey! That's the guy! Grab him!”

A dozen Rubicon troops were a few yards in front of him and Stella was right behind him. He had a fraction of a second to decide his fate. The bitch would probably down him as soon as she got a clear shot, but Rubicon would want to talk to him before killing him. Rubicon and Black might be working together to capture him, but as soon as one side caught him, the cooperation would end. He knew which side would give him the better chance of survival.

Hunter ran to the Rubicon soldiers with his hands in the air.

“I surrender.”

Jabal ad Dhibban, Anbar Province

As soon as Camille spotted the Rubicon troops, she stopped and held her fist up in the air, signaling her men to hold their positions. She was stunned as she watched Hunter raise his hands and give himself up to Rubicon.

Hunter, you stupid, stupid man.

She got on the radio. “T
IN
M
AN
, I need your eyes now!”

“L
IGHTNING
S
IX
, stand by. P
ANTHER
T
WO
, can you assist?”

“L
IGHTNING
S
IX
, this is P
ANTHER
T
WO
. We got ya. I see about a dozen of you standing in a street that's at least one house wide.”

“Negative P
ANTHER
T
WO
, not us. You're looking at Rubicon troops.” AK fire came from across the street from Rubicon's position, but she figured that was their problem. She ignored it and described her position and what she needed from him. The Black Hawk pilot directed three teams through the maze of streets and alleyways so they could take position, flanking Rubicon. One stayed behind to close the trap.

 

So far so good, Hunter thought. The Rubicon troops seemed to accept his surrender. They took his knife and gun and he stood with his arms in the air while a young kid, probably a former Ranger, stripped him of his costume and shoved him down onto his knees. The kid glared at him the same way he had glared at hundreds of tangos. AK fire ricocheted on the ground. A Rubicon soldier held his weapon in one hand and popped off a burst.

The kid zip-tied Hunter's hands behind his back, then shoved him in front of an older South African merc who had clashed with Hunter before on previous Rubicon missions. Hunter had seen him kill several noncombatants in cold blood, but reports of that to his Rubicon superiors had only been enough to get the merc kicked off his team, but not enough to get him fired.

“My original orders were to kill you on sight.” The South African grinned, exposing yellow teeth. “But now I understand that we're going to let your girlfriend do it for us.”

 

It was already in the nineties and Camille was breathing hard as she took position between two walled courtyards. Rubicon troops rushed down the street only seconds later. She signaled her chalk of ten men to step out of hiding and surround the two dozen Rubicon soldiers. The Black Hawk hanging above them added to the illusion of superior force, but she knew it was only for show because the numbers were not on their side. They could pick off a guy or two, but once things started mixing up, they'd have to pull out. The Black Management troops emerged from the alleys and circled the Rubicon unit. Camille pointed her M4 at the face of the operator nearest Hunter. Her men selected their own targets.

“Hand him over,” Camille said. “And give me back my gun. The fucker stole it.”

“Is this your gun?” In a split second, the operator drew Stella's USP Tactical and held it against Hunter's head. “I'll hand it back to you after I'm done with it, doll,” he said with a peculiar accent that Camille suspected was South African.

“No!”

“I suggest you inform your men to stand down and permit us go about our business.”

“He'll do it. Go!” Hunter said, standing perfectly still. “I thought your orders were to let her kill me?”

“They were. But I neglected to mention I got new orders.” The South African cocked the pistol. “What'll it be, love?”

Camille slowly lowered her weapon and keyed her mike. “All chalks, L
IGHTNING
S
IX
. Fall back.” Camille looked Hunter in the eyes and said, “I was trying to save you, not kill you.”

“Touching, but I don't have the whole bloody day. Lover boy is the only thing holding me up. If he's dead, I can get out of here. So, love, if you don't leave in three seconds…”

Just as a Rubicon soldier shoved a hood over Hunter's head, Camille mouthed, “I love you.”

 

Camille's team made it to the pick-up zone in less than five minutes. As they piled into the Black Hawk, she could feel their heaviness: mission not accomplished. And she felt like a personal and professional failure. She wanted to hit something, but knew better than to let her men see her frustration. She had no idea if she could save Hunter now. They apparently wanted information from him, so that meant he probably had a few days, if not weeks, to live, but that was only a guess. Rubicon had the means to make anyone disappear—hell, they did it under government contract all the time. She would never know if the Julia Lewis thing was real, like Joe had said, or if, as Hunter kept trying to tell her, things weren't what they seemed. She fought back tears as they lifted into the air.

The one surviving Rubicon Mi-8 helicopter was sitting on the ground only a few hundred meters away. They seemed to be having problems trying to jam everyone into the single helo. Rubicon might have Hunter, but they were going to pay the price—starting now. She leaned over to her pilot.

“Order your gunner to target the Rubicon helo's tail. I don't want him getting off the ground.”

“With pleasure, ma'am.”

The Black Management helicopter rotated in the air, her guns pointing at the Rubicon Mi-8. They fired a deafening burst and the Rubicon tail rotor splintered as the blades turned into the path of the bullets.

Camille and her men cheered.

The Green Zone, Baghdad

Jackie Nelson pressed the charcoal pencil to the paper and made a sweeping line that she could already see as the flowing traditional Iraqi male dress. In a few minutes she tried to capture the mysterious eyes of a man moving about in another man's clothes, engulfed in a lie. She still couldn't get the depth of pain and isolation she had seen. She tore the page from her drawing pad and set it beside the other sketches of her liberator, her hero, the guy she knew only as Ray—her secret agent man. Her small kitchen table was covered with charcoal drawings of Ray.

Her husband, Brian Nelson, stuck the large brown envelope he was carrying under his arm and picked up a drawing. Shaking his head, he dropped it back onto the table. “Do you think you should get some counseling or something? For christssake, you can't draw pictures of this guy for the rest of your life. The embassy flies in a shrink from Amman once a week. How about I have Rubicon pull some strings and get you in to see him?”

“I want to know who Ray is.” She ignored him and started another drawing. “You could learn a lot from him.”

“I'm sure hoping to.”

She raised her pencil from the paper and looked him in the eyes for several seconds without speaking. “You know something, don't you?”

“I've got to go for a short walk.” He broke eye contact and kissed the top of her head.

“Maybe you're right. I could use a break right now. I could use a walk, too. I guess it would be safe enough to go out if I'm with you.”

“Are you sure you don't want to stay home? Give it some more time?” He pointed to a drawing of Ray in combat garb, clutching an M16. “Maybe we can set up an exhibit at a gallery when we get home. These really are damn good.”

“You really think so?” Jackie smiled. It was one of the softest things she'd heard from him in ages.

“The swoop of the line says movement to me. I want to see how you develop that.” He motioned to the one she had begun a few moments ago.

“I'm trying to catch the action. I see him running, firing his weapon while he's using his body to shield the little girl.” Jackie roughed out the figure of the child in seconds. “I can really feel this one. Go on without me. Enjoy your walk.”

 

Joe Chronister kept the large brown envelope with the file tucked under his shirt as he walked to the site of the dead drop. Camille Black was asking questions about Julia Lewis and he wanted to make sure she got the right answers. He wished he could have done better, but with such short notice the best he could do was to recycle the Julia-Lewis-Fucks-Hunter-Stone file which she had already seen. Camille was a sharp cookie, but she had flipped through the file for less than a minute and he was banking on it that she had missed some things that would feel fresh to her.

A couple of guys were tossing garbage bags into a big blue Dumpster. He ignored them and walked past. A few seconds after he heard the lid slam shut, he looked back to make sure they had gone. He doubled back, slid the envelope with the file in it out from his shirt and peeled off an adhesive strip. Bending over, he slapped the envelope onto the bottom of the Dumpster. With a stroke of the wrist, he marked it with a streak of chalk, trying to imitate the swoop of Jackie's line, stylizing the Z. He thought to himself that someday he'd have to use the code name Zorro for himself. It was a hell of a lot more fitting for him than “Brian Nelson.”

Camp Tsunami, Abu Ghraib Prison

The scratchy cloth hood blocked Hunter's sight and he breathed the hot, stale air which he had just exhaled. The heavy material was wet from sweat. His hands and feet were now cuffed with plastic ties. He no longer heard the voices of the operators who had captured him and escorted him along several transfers. A couple of hours had been spent in a SUV, but a lot of the time was spent sitting and waiting. They shoved him through a doorway and he could sense the presence of two, maybe three guards.

“Greg Bolton, Staff Sergeant, 491…” Hunter rattled off the name, rank and social security number for his cover identity with Rubicon, then repeated himself again and again. Regardless of what his colleagues at Force Zulu thought of him, he would not betray them to Rubicon. He had to keep up his cover story so Rubicon didn't learn that Zulu was investigating them. They might suspect it, but he wasn't about to confirm anything.

“Like I give a rat's ass who you are, you fucking traitor,” his Rubicon jailor carefully enunciated each word. Hunter guessed Minnesota or Wisconsin, a refugee from a blue state.

The other man shoved him to the ground. He twisted his body to break the fall, but it didn't do much good against the hard concrete. The guard kicked him and rolled him over, face down. A knife blade scraped against his back, then the man slit his shirt and ripped it from him. He did the same with his pants and underwear. Then Hunter heard the click of a camera.

“I will now be conducting a body cavity search.”

A latex glove slapped against the man's wrist and Hunter knew it was for the sound effect. It worked.

“I hear you're a
muj
lover.” The man grabbed Hunter's testicles and squeezed. “You know, I could do this all day.”

His hands were a vice. Hunter gasped and nausea washed over him like a tsunami, but didn't recede. The jailor twisted and grasped even harder. Hunter thought he was going to pass out; he wished to god he would.

The guard let go and stood there. Hunter drew himself into fetal position and rubbed his thumb against his missing fingernails, a reminder, courtesy of the North Koreans, that he could survive anything. He tried to focus on controlling his breathing, but it smarted too damn much. His eyes teared up and he was sure his balls were badly bruised and swelling up like a bull's.

Hunter had gone through far worse in North Korea and he knew this was only the introduction to the Baghdad Hilton—a tour of the hotel grounds and a welcome cocktail. Thanks to those commie bastards, he knew himself better than any man should. Love for America, pride in the Corps and his belief that he was warrior on the side of democracy and all things right had kept him going in the catacombs of hell somewhere north of the 40th parallel. The North Koreans were pros, but they couldn't get inside him where it really mattered. What the North Koreans couldn't do in six weeks with their bamboo sticks and electrodes, Rubicon had accomplished in minutes. They got inside Hunter and twisted and squeezed and bruised his very soul.

None of his training had prepared him for torture at the hands of another American.

Underneath the hood, a Marine cried.