The Ares Decision (5 page)

D
R. RONALD BLANKENSHIP PUSHED
through the metal door, and Jon Smith followed him into an empty stairwell at the Camp Lejeune Naval Hospital.

“So what’s Fort Detrick’s interest in a beat-up SEAL?”

When he didn’t get an answer, Blankenship stopped and leaned against the railing. “I mean, I reviewed the kid’s chart, and beyond looking like he spent a few hours in a washing machine with his bowling ball collection, he couldn’t be healthier. Not so much as a sniffle to get one of you virus hunters excited.”

Smith just smiled amiably.

“Don’t even give me that look, Jon. Am I helping you out here or what?”

They’d known each other for years, having done part of their residency together and serving in MASH units all over the world. Smith had called him from the airport and asked him to make sure his discussion with the injured sailor was kept quiet. Or better yet, dead silent.

Ironically, it wasn’t his association with Covert-One that was the problem this time; it was his day job at USAMRIID, the army’s infectious disease research group. While details of the SEAL’s operation were classified beyond top secret, it was impossible to keep the fact that he’d been in Africa from the medical team treating him. The sudden appearance of an army microbiologist charged with tracking deadly diseases and bioweapons was bound to raise eyebrows.

“Yeah. You’re helping me out,” Smith said. “But there isn’t much to tell. My guess is that all this is nothing but a waste of perfectly good tax dollars.”

Blankenship frowned and started up the stairs again. “You’re back in intelligence, aren’t you?”

“No.”

“Come on, Jon. I went from MASH units to three kids and a pool that leaks no matter how much I spend to fix it. Do you know what the most exciting thing that happened to me in the last month was? My wife told me she wants to quit her job and become a full-time artist. And that’s not exciting in a good way, you know? So throw me a bone, here. Tell me how the other half lives.”

Smith enunciated carefully. “I swear to you that I am not working for Military Intelligence.”

“And this guy isn’t carrying some supersecret bug we should know about.”

“I think you’re moving into tinfoil-hat territory now, Ron.”

Blankenship slammed the bar handle of a door leading to an empty hallway. “You win, Jon. Just like always. Go down there and take a left. It’s the second door on the right.”

“I owe you one, Ron.”

They shook hands and Blankenship clapped him on the shoulder. “Next time you’re in town let’s have a drink. Since you don’t like the subject of current events, we’ll get hammered and relive the glory days.”

“Sounds good. Maybe even take a dip in your pool if it has water in it.”

His old friend grimaced and ducked back into the stairwell as Smith made his way down the hall. He found the door and paused with his hand on the knob, mentally running through the list of questions he’d put together and wondering again about the best way to handle them.

When he finally entered, the young sailor struggled to his feet.

“At ease, Lieutenant.”

Rivera ignored him and, teetering on his casted leg, gave a sharp salute. “Good evening, Colonel.”

Smith returned the salute. “Good evening. Please. Sit.”

He did, and Smith took the only other chair, placing Rivera’s personnel folder on the table between them. Blankenship’s description of a washing machine and bowling balls was right on—in addition to the leg, the young man’s face was bruised and stitched, and his left shoulder was in a harness.

Despite that, though, he was in a dress uniform meticulously altered to work with his injuries and complete with gleaming sidearm. A soldier’s soldier.

“I appreciate you agreeing to see me on such short notice,” Smith said. “I know how difficult this has been for you.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’ve read your report, but I’d like you to tell me what happened in your own words.”

“My entire team was wiped out,” he said, the bitterness clearly audible in his voice. “Except me. I understand they made a movie about it. You should try to catch it sometime.”

Smith kept his expression impassive and didn’t respond. Eventually, the silence went on long enough that Rivera felt compelled to fill it.

“A kid came running up the road with people chasing her. She seemed to know we were there. She wanted us to help her. To save her.”

“The people behind her weren’t normal soldiers, though.”

“Not the way we think of soldiers, sir. It just looked like random people from a village or a market or something.”

“Were any of them armed?”

Rivera shook his head in shame. “A few may have had sticks. I’m not sure. Some of them didn’t even have clothes. They were covered in something that looked like blood…” His voice trailed off and his expression turned blank.

“You fired into them,” Smith prompted.

“Didn’t really want to kill them, sir. Just get them to back off so we could disappear. But they didn’t back off. It was like they didn’t care. Like they didn’t even notice.” He paused for a moment. “They tell me you know who we are. Who we were…”

“The very best of all our special forces combined into one elite team.”

“That’s right. And the best of us was a guy named Donny Praman. He was a high school football player from Ohio, and even by my standards, the guy wasn’t human. He never got scared, he never got tired, he never got hurt or sick. And I watched a fat woman chase him down like he was nothing. How does that happen, Colonel? Can you tell me that?”

“I’m afraid I can’t. But I’m going to find out. What happened next? After Praman went down?”

“I don’t know,” he said, his bitterness becoming more and more intense. “I was too busy running.”

Smith looked down at his pen, rolling it back and forth across the tabletop with his index finger. “Could you have saved them, son?”

He could feel Rivera’s eyes lock on him but didn’t look up.

“It doesn’t matter if I could save them or not, sir.”

“I disagree. If you couldn’t, then it was your job to survive and report back.”

“Report back? Report what? That I let my team get killed by a bunch of unarmed women and children? That I walked into an ambush?”

“Calm down, Lieutenant.”

“You look like a pretty hard man, Colonel. But with all due respect, you’re just a doctor. You have no idea what we’re talking about right now.”

Smith let out a quiet breath. In fact, he knew
exactly
what they were talking about. He’d watched friends die when he’d managed to walk away. He’d spent endless nights playing and replaying what had happened—what he could have done differently. But the operations that he’d been involved in were so classified that, technically, even
he
wasn’t cleared to know about them.

“I should have killed the woman,” Rivera said, now fixated on an empty wall, talking to himself. “She must have gotten word to Bahame that we were there. The safety of my men was my responsibility, and I copped out.”

“Killing an injured woman that you have no reason to believe is connected with your target is a serious decision, son. In your position, I wouldn’t have done it.”

“It doesn’t matter what you would have done!” Rivera shouted. “I was in command! The bitch was probably going to die anyway. And so she could live a few more hours, I watched my men get butchered. And then I ran—not to come back and report. Not to try to flank the people tearing them apart. I ran because I
saw
those people. I looked into their eyes and I panicked!”

“Enough!” Smith said, slamming his hands down on the table.

Rivera was breathing hard, and one of the wounds on his forehead had started to seep, creating a thin red line along the bridge of his nose.

Smith’s phone rang, and he looked down at it. Klein.

“I don’t have time for all this navel gazing,” he said, standing. “I’m going to take this call, and while I’m gone you’re going to think about what details you left out of your report that could help me figure out what happened to you and your men. Are we clear, Lieutenant?”

T
HE LAND CRUISER’S SPEEDOMETER
was showing 150 kilometers per hour when the sharp left turn appeared in the headlights. Dembe Kaikara slammed on the brakes and twisted the wheel, listening to the scream of the tires struggling to maintain traction.

The bitch had cut him!

He had a hand clamped over the deep slice across his side and could feel the blood oozing around his fingers. It wasn’t a serious wound, but the pain radiated from it, stoking his anger.

The road straightened and he took his hand off the wheel, balling a fist and slamming it repeatedly into the dashboard. His orders were to take her to the meeting place unharmed. And, as always, it was very clear that failure to carry out those orders would be severely punished.

But she owed him for what she had done. Surely Bahame would agree that he had a right to take his payment. She would still be alive for whatever he wanted her for.

A car appeared in front of him, and he slowed as it passed, looking behind him at the helpless woman bound in the backseat. She had regained consciousness and stared defiantly back at him.

It wouldn’t last, though. Soon her anger would turn to terror. She would use that beautiful mouth to beg him to stop, to offer him whatever he wanted. After a time, they all did.

He faced forward again, easing back some more on the accelerator. The road had gone black again, and he scanned the edge for a place he could pull over far enough to be invisible to the occasional passing car. Somewhere they wouldn’t be disturbed.

Sarie gave up pulling against the duct tape binding her hands. Her head had cleared enough to know she was accomplishing nothing but peeling the skin from her wrists.

What did this man want? Violent break-ins certainly weren’t uncommon in Africa, but theft clearly wasn’t his goal. He hadn’t taken anything but the Land Cruiser—and that just seemed to be a convenient mode of hostage transport.

Of course, sexual assault was also rampant in South Africa, but why be so elaborate? Her house was totally isolated, and he’d sure as hell had the upper hand.

No. There was more to it than that. How did he get through the gate and beat her alarm system? Tears began to well up at the thought of her dogs, but she fought them back. There was no time for that now. She had no idea what this man wanted, but whatever it was, she doubted she would survive it. If she’d ever focused in her life, this was the time.

The African leaned out the open window and jabbed at the brake, jerking the vehicle enough to give her an excuse to roll to the floor behind his seat.

He reacted immediately, twisting around and grabbing her hair with a bloody hand. The anger dissipated a bit from his voice as he shouted at her, and while she couldn’t understand his words, the reason for his improving mood was clear. He had won. And he was ready to take his reward.

The sound of gravel beneath the tires forced him to return his attention to the road, and he kept talking as they drove, occasionally slowing and leaning out the open window as though he was looking for something.

His attention occupied, Sarie pressed her back against his seat and worked her hands beneath it. The lessons of her father’s death didn’t end at the walls of her house.

She could just barely touch the gun she’d hidden there, but the holster was positioned with the assumption that she’d be driving when she reached for it. And that her hands wouldn’t be taped behind her back.

Using her knees for leverage, she gritted her teeth and crammed her arms a few centimeters farther. Her shoulders felt like they were being pulled from their sockets, but it still wasn’t quite far enough.

The African whooped joyously and jammed on the brakes again, throwing her weight toward the front of the vehicle. One of her elbows felt like it was going to snap beneath the edge of the seat, but the sudden deceleration allowed her to get a hand around the gun and turn the holster. He threw the Land Cruiser into reverse as she yanked the pistol free, but the front sight got caught on the springs.

She tried to push it forward again but realized that she’d reached the limit of what she could do without breaking an arm. A wave of despair washed over her and she beat it back, bracing her knees in front of her. One hard push. That’s all it would take. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d broken an arm, and it would almost definitely be preferable to what the man in the driver’s seat had in mind.

On three, she told herself. One…two…

The wheels fell into a deep rut as the African backed the car off the pavement, the sudden jerk followed closely by the crack of the pistol and the acrid scent of gunpowder.

From her contorted position, there was no way to know where the gun had been aimed when it had gone off, and she assumed that the bullet had passed harmlessly through the seat until a wail loud enough to overcome the ringing in her ears filled the cramped vehicle.

He’d been hit, which was good. But he wasn’t dead, which was bad. Maybe very bad. In any event, there was no reason to wait around and find out.

Using a toe to get the door open was easier than she anticipated, but getting out from under the seat wasn’t. She squirmed wildly, feeling the cool breeze running over her as she inched toward what she prayed was freedom.

In the driver’s seat, pain had turned to fury and the Land Cruiser rocked with the force of the driver’s door being thrown open. Just as her foot touched dirt, Sarie heard the handle of the door behind her head being pulled and a frustrated howl when the man discovered it was locked.

It didn’t seem to occur to him to reach through the open front door, and instead he shattered the glass with his elbow while she desperately tried to pull herself out with heels hooked over the running board.

But it was too late. His hand was in her hair again, and a moment later the jagged glass clinging to the window frame was cutting across her back. There was no way to stop it, so she decided to do the opposite, kicking off one of the seats and sending him staggering backward into the road.

She hit the ground hard, but not so hard that she couldn’t roll to her feet. In the moonlight, the right leg of his jeans had turned a glossy black, already completely saturated with blood.

Whether the bullet had hit him in the leg or the ass was impossible to know, but either way he was going to be a hell of a lot slower than he’d been at the house.

He’d obviously come to the same conclusion and reached behind him for something that Sarie wasn’t interested in waiting around to see. She ran past a flowering rose bush at the head of a row of vines, struggling to stay upright with her hands still bound and her shoes still back at the house.

The first shot tore through the plants to her right, and she ducked, veering left. The second shot came close enough for her to hear the hiss of it as it passed, but as she penetrated deeper into the vines, his aim became more erratic.

She finally fell to the ground in a narrow trough, breathing hard and listening to him empty the gun in her general direction.

She stayed completely still, waiting for the sound of him wading in after her, but instead she heard distant voices shouting in Afrikaans. A moment later, the Land Cruiser roared away, skidding wildly across the asphalt as a group of farmers approached from the east, loudly listing the types of rifles they were carrying for anyone who might doubt their resolve.

What was left of Sarie’s strength faded and her forehead came to rest in the damp earth. She’d done it again. She’d survived.