First to Burn (26 page)

“Bite me.” She pulled her lips back at her stepbrother, showing teeth.

“Whaaat? I watch the Westminster dogs with Jeanne, so sue me.”

Easy for him to mock, since he wasn’t the recipient of an improvement plan this week, or even this month. The honor was all Theresa’s.

“Don’t you want to look your best for the other doctors?” Nothing diverted her mother.

“It’s PT, not a job interview.”
And not a date.

“Job, schmob.” She rolled her heavily outlined eyes. “That Major Brady—”

Her parent kept talking. If she hadn’t had to use both hands on her crutches, she might have made the same talk-to-the-hand signal that her stepbrother mimed from the doorway. Didn’t her mother understand how uncomfortable her injury left other doctors? They chatted with Jeanne instead of her precisely because she’d morphed from doctor to patient. None of them wanted a reminder that hot metal could dice up professionals as easily as lieutenants and grunts.

“He has such deep eyes, and he told me his mother was a Ricci from Bayonne—”

Even if her mother spiked the cannoli, Major Brady wouldn’t ask her out. If he did, she’d crutch the other direction faster than Ray could pop a clutch, because the truth was she was so pissed at every man she knew—Raymond was a smart aleck, Carl smothered her and Wulf hadn’t bothered to send one measly email, the bastard—that she couldn’t endure her mother’s schemes for another second. “Mom, I have things on my mind other than dating. I’m trying not to spend my life as a fucking cripple.”

Her mother shook the water bottle at Theresa. “I don’t care how old you are, or how miserable living here with the people who love you most in the world makes you, you may not use that word unless you want me to wash your mouth out with soap.”

“Even Jeanne can catch you now,” Ray muttered.

By the time her mother turned to glare, the picture of brotherly innocence was holding the front door, looking exactly how he had whenever he was caught with cigarettes in junior high.

Following them past mounds of burgundy asters to her mother’s silver Cadillac sedan she realized that when she had a prosthetic instead of crutches, people would finally walk next to her. At the end of the driveway she blew her breath out hard enough to disturb loose strands of hair on her forehead. “I’m sorry, Mom.”

Raymond held the car door open with one hand while he read phone messages.

“Thanks.” Theresa slipped sideways on the seat, yanking her crutches in before he slammed the door. Thirty more seconds and she’d have been situated to close it for herself, but nobody ever let her try.
I
still have opposable thumbs.
I
can work a handle.

Her mother’s silence as Ray started the car clearly meant she’d have to go further to make up for her f-bomb. Last week her mental-health therapist had reminded the group that their injuries changed expectations for their families too. Meeting loved ones halfway, that’s what they’d promised to try this week. She’d always been good at homework. “I didn’t mean to be rude, but I want to focus on my therapy. Maybe later I’ll want to date more.”

“What about that young man at the hospital in Germany?”

“What are you talking about?” She strained into her shoulder belt to stare at her mother, who had half turned in the front passenger seat. “Who was in Germany?”

“I don’t remember his name—he wasn’t Italian—but he was blond and looked like he needed a good meal.” The penciled-in eyebrows went higher, daring Theresa to ask for details. “Carl talked to him. More than once.”

Was it true? Was her dream, the one where Wulf knelt at her bed and pressed his face against her arm and whispered that he’d come for her, but she had to fight to get better, real? “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“It didn’t come up.” Her mother gazed past Theresa’s head before she dropped her perfectly timed reply. “After all, you’ve been busy focusing on your therapy.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

The Afghan fighters asleep in this shed had foolishly reached for assault rifles instead of the sky when Wulf’s squad burst in, so he rolled a body away to lift the tunnel’s trapdoor. The team had waited six weeks for a dark moon to coincide with a Black and Swan contractor’s presence at the target. During those long weeks, they’d rescued a kidnapped high-value Afghan, cleared Taliban out of two villages, visited Dostum and his boys, and trained a parade of Afghan National Army units. Through it all, they’d watched this compound.

The men had talked about after the mission, but they knew that tonight Staff Sergeant Wulf Wardsen would die. All day small gifts had appeared on his bunk or in his boots: his favorite beef jerky and energy bars, a wooden box with the unit crest hand-carved into the lid, waterproof topographic maps. Men who were superstitious about goodbye found ways to speak without words.

Tonight would be the last chance to put himself out front for them. He saw Kahananui and Cruz plug their ears a second before he dropped a flash-bang grenade in the tunnel’s hole. Skipping the rungs, Wulf slid down the ladder’s outside supports. “Clear,” he said into his mike. Weapon up and ready, he advanced, scanning with his night vision gear. Evenly spaced grooves showed where machines had carved this route, and overhead beams supported the ceiling rock. Rounding the first corner, he had less than a second to identify the greenish shape of a man rushing at him as hostile—raised weapon and Afghan dress—and not the contractor they wanted alive. He depressed the trigger.

Bang-Bang-Bang.
The guy fell backward.

Shit. He didn’t feel rattled or distracted, but the two rounds he’d wasted wouldn’t pass unnoticed. If the Big Kahuna had already activated the communication relay unit, even the guys stuck aboveground would’ve heard.

Thirty feet away, another human shape flickered across the tunnel’s mouth and threw something.

“Grenade!” Wulf scooped a Russian-style potato masher and lobbed it into an open storage room, then hit the dirt. His heart thumped like mortar fire even though he knew his team had dropped—

Booom.
Only a fraction of the explosive force rushed out the door, but the tunnel amplified sound. Expecting rock slabs to crush his back, he almost felt let down by the small chunks that pelted him, although they were a damn good advertisement for the quality of Black and Swan’s construction services.

The fight in the main cavern was similarly anticlimactic. Kahananui took out an Afghan whose weapon jammed, and Cruz dropped the American contractor with a shot to the leg. Hands up and blubbering, that rat wasn’t going down with his corporate ship.

“Alpha team up,” Wulf reported to Deavers. “Target secure, receiving first aid. Over.” Watching the guy moan as Cruz dressed his leg, he heard Bravo team call in similar results in its part of the compound. Start to finish, under eleven minutes.

“Work up more sweat in a drive-through at lunch, dude,” Kahananui said.

“Don’t order the mega-triple-fat-attack, amigo.” Cruz yanked a knit hat over their captive’s eyes.

He’d miss these guys. Bad.

“Fucking A-plus for speed.” Deavers’s congratulations crackled over the commo link. “Although I hear Howling Wolf owes two bucks to the tip jar. Remember, gentlemen, our taxpayer overlords own each and every bullet. In tough budget times, we operate on the one-shot one-kill principle.”

“Take it out of my paycheck, sir. Okay to send Rizzotti down.” Laura planned to photograph documents and upload them by satellite to multiple news organizations. After the clusterfuck of the disappearing car-bomb evidence, no one was taking chances. She’d have a big story, they’d have rough justice and Black and Swan would have a steaming mess.

“Power’s up,” Bravo team reported.

In the fluorescent yellow, Wulf counted three rows of six pallets loaded with heroin bags, a half dozen stainless-steel cooking vats, a small conveyor belt and one shrink-wrap machine.

“Look at this shit,” Kahananui called from a corner rigged like a comic-strip cubicle hell, with sand-colored partitions, wood-veneer desks, computers, printers and steel file cabinets. “Every piece of crap here has a Property of the United States Government tag. Fuckers have a nicer printer than we do.”

“This is weirder.” Cruz had his hands on the lid of a chest freezer. “Want to bet there’s a stinking body?” Lifting it revealed bundles of hundred-dollar bills stacked next to euro notes, all the way to the top. The air went out of the room.

“A briefcase is roughly three-quarters of a mill. That must be...” Kahananui paused, probably calculating the freezer’s volume like Wulf. “Twenty-five? Thirty?”

“In a freezer?” Cruz couldn’t look away from his find.

“Rat proof,” Wulf offered. “Remember the cash in Saddam’s warehouse?”

“Sent a bag of shreds home to my girls. World’s most expensive gerbil bedding.” Kahananui hooted. “Good fun, but Jewel was pissed because it stank like money.”

Wulf and Cruz joined his laughter, the shared memories consuming what they knew—but wouldn’t acknowledge—was their last hour together.

“Wait—an idea—” Wulf had to catch his breath before continuing. Tomorrow was time enough to anticipate reuniting with Theresa. Tonight was about the team, and laughing sure as hell beat going out bawling. “Take off your shirt, Cruz. Show your flaming skull tat and that haul, and you’ll hit the front pages and the internet.”

“Special-Ops studly man with the big cash money.” Kahananui doubled over, clutching his stomach as he howled. “Honeys will throw their panties at you in bars.”

“I’m off panty bars.” Cruz almost managed to look affronted. “Smart women, they’re like,
hot.
”

The shock on Kahananui’s face kept Wulf laughing even after Cruz’s elbow pad connected with his side solidly enough to stagger him.

“How you planning to ace one of those?” The Hawaiian asked. “You’re no Wulfie, all sad kitty eyes and foreign-language-poetry bullshit.”

“Sitting in a fancy espresso shop reading a book and drinking overpriced coffee.” Cruz flexed. “Like fishing with dynamite.”

“This load is amazing.” Laura trotted out from the tunnel and stared between the three of them. “What’d I miss?”

Cruz’s grin widened. “Or maybe I’ll read a newspaper.”

Wulf rapped his buddy’s helmet with a flashlight. “Not that one,” he growled. “Back to work.” He itched to open cabinets and search computers, but first he had questions for their prisoner. Questions about a car bomb.

* * *

By late September, maples had reddened outside Theresa’s bedroom windows, as good a sign of passing time as her new-old life offered. Without VA physical-therapy appointments, she might not have remembered the day of the week.

She ignored the ringing house phones. The callers were always her mother’s friends.

“Theresa!” Her mother shouted from downstairs. “Are you upstairs? It’s for you.”

Who the hell called her? “I’m in my room.” That wasn’t loud enough for her mother to hear, so she yelled, “Up here!”

Trotting into Theresa’s room with a portable handset, Jeanne announced, “It’s one of your friends. From...” She floundered over the word, so Theresa knew it must be Afghanistan as she grabbed for the handset.

“Hello? Hello?” She couldn’t catch her breath. After two months, he’d called.

“Theresa? It’s Jennifer.”

Not Wulf. She slumped into her mound of pillows.

“I called as soon as I thought you’d be awake. You haven’t heard, have you?” Her friend’s voice sounded rushed and worried, not like Jen’s usual blend of peppiness and irony.

“Heard what?” Names and faces from the hospital flashed almost strobelike in her mind, and her throat closed. “Who is it? What happened?”

“I’m fine. Everybody at the hospital’s fine. It’s...”

Theresa’s stomach heaved with relief so intense, she wondered if she’d lose the container of yogurt she’d eaten with her morning pain pill.

“The Special Forces sergeant you knew. Wardsen.”

“What about him?” Had he asked for her number or address? Please let Jennifer say she’d given it to him.

“He—” Listening to her former roommate’s indrawn breath, Theresa pictured her pacing in the gravel outside their old B-hut. “Last night on an op, he was shot. He fell in a river wearing heavy gear and they couldn’t grab him. They think—” her friend’s voice broke, “—he drowned.”

“Oh.” Although she knew he wasn’t dead, Theresa also knew Jen expected her to respond with shock and sorrow. “Oh, no, I can’t—”
Breathe harder and faster
,
through your mouth
, she reminded herself,
as if you’re about to cry
— “Oh, no.”
Oh
,
yes.
Her fist thumped the mattress. He’d promised to come as soon as he could, and now he’d left the army. Now he’d come to her.

The rest of the conversation was an awkward dance of sympathy that Theresa suspected Jennifer escaped with gratitude after she said she needed to think.

Thinking inadequately described the whirling plans that engulfed her as she scooted to the edge of her mattress and snapped her prosthetic on to the pin sticking out of her silicone stump sleeve. Lottery winners might feel like this, too restless to remain in one spot for more than a few seconds, unable to face other people for fear they’d blurt out their unimaginable fortune, yet too pumped for solitude. When she stood, her hard-won stability on her prosthetic felt almost like flying.

The mirror on the closet door reflected a jittery woman, elbows clenched to her sides, skin pale from lack of sun, with red blotches of excitement on her cheeks and uncontrolled frizzles. Maybe a visit to her mother’s hairdresser wasn’t such a bad idea, but right now her reflection was too wild to consider, so she walked across the room to the door.

Each step worked like her therapists had promised, and she no longer had to juggle backward on crutches when she opened the closet. An unexpected bonus of getting her leg back had been the full freedom to use both hands simultaneously, to open her own doors and even to slam them when she wanted.

In the closet, the corners of three bookstore boxes showed the rigors of their journey roundtrip to and from Afghanistan, then to her old quarters in Texas, then the new Walter Reed Medical Center in Maryland before they’d caught up to her in New Jersey. She didn’t remember what she’d ordered, only that it had been an absurdly expensive assortment about Beowulf. Beyond telling Ray to shove them somewhere, she hadn’t cared. Until today.

Her ankle adjustment screwdriver slit the packing tape as neatly as Wulf’s knife had once done. Inside, glossy black covers decorated with Iron Age relics competed with manga and academic texts. The books were a connection to Wulf, his history, his people. The smooth paper under her fingers wasn’t a substitute for him, but he was coming, and she could be ready. She’d start with children’s picture books for basic familiarity with the epic and work through young adult en route to the Seamus Heaney translation and the stack of life sciences.

Twenty minutes ago her future could have been summarized as go-to-therapy-rinse-repeat. Now she had a goal. Even if her research wasn’t the same as a real job, she had a plan.

She liked her plan more than going down to lunch. The fight scenes with Grendel and his mother were freaking suspenseful, so she ignored her mother until the door opened.

“What are you doing?” Jeanne assessed the books in a glance. “Beowulf? Isn’t that some English monster or whatever?” She said it with the tones someone might use about a really hairy tarantula. “And starfish? Squid? What are you reading about those for?”

“Self-improvement?” Theresa finished highlighting a passage about Grendel’s bog.

“A haircut is self-improvement. This—” she gestured at the room, “—this is a library!”

“I tend to like those.”

“I know, I know. But did you have to start one here?”

“You could buy me a new bookshelf. I’ve heard Newport Centre mall sells them.”

Her mother’s eyebrows arched with glee before they lowered at her again. “Ha. You thought you could trick me into leaving. Not unless you come down to eat.”

“Later.” She flipped pages to reach a description of Grendel’s mother.

“Now. I made lasagna.”

* * *

“Ivar?” Wulf called his brother’s name from the stairs to the underground garage. His brother hadn’t deleted his biometric data from the Manhattan house’s security system. So either Ivar was becoming lazy or he didn’t want to completely cut off Wulf. “Ivar?”

If he didn’t have to face those judgmental gray eyes to retrieve his spare identity documents, so much the better. Across the river in New Jersey, close enough that if he stretched, he could almost hold her, Theresa waited. As soon as he showered off the grime he’d picked up in the five airports between Tajikistan and New York City, he’d blow out of here. By dinner, he’d be with Theresa. Or at least trying to convince her to talk to him, given that the last words they’d exchanged before the explosion hadn’t been fond adieus.

He shouted a third time before stepping into the kitchen. “Ivar?”

With his brother out doing whatever international money managers did, he had time to grab a snack. As soon as he opened the fridge, a stench worse than Kahananui’s socks rolled out from a gallon of yellowish milk, sludgy as yogurt. Shoving the back of his hand over his nose, he read the purple-inked date: August 4. Seven weeks ago, right after he and Ivar had argued on the phone. While the team had been waiting for the right opportunity to raid the opium facility, Ivar’s milk had been fermenting.

Burying his mouth and nose deeper in the bend of his elbow, he used one finger of his other hand to pull out the meat drawer. Its contents were an unidentifiable slick of putrefied protein, and the nauseating reek engulfed him like a tsunami. Gagging, he slammed the door. He took the stairs two at a time to the second and third floors, yelling his brother’s name, but the pit in his stomach told him he wouldn’t hear an answer. Echoes chased him until finally, heaving for breath in his brother’s study, where dust had settled thickly enough that his palms left sweat prints on the desk, he accepted the truth.