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Camp Raven, The Green Zone, Baghdad

At the Black Management Baghdad headquarters, Camille looked at Pete over the top rims of her sunglasses, shook her head and walked past her into the trailer, favoring her right foot. She couldn't get Hunter off her mind and she wanted desperately to stop thinking about him, even for a few moments. She knew all too well what Rubicon would be doing to him to motivate him to give up whatever information he possessed and Hunter was not the kind of guy who would let go of anything. His will could scratch diamonds.

Pete followed her inside. Someone had straightened up the trailer. The blanket and fresh sheets were stacked on a chair in the corner. Camille tossed her sunglasses onto the coffee table and they slid across it and fell to the floor where they stayed. She then opened a metal file cabinet and rooted around. When she didn't find what she was looking for, she slammed it shut and went on to the next.

“Whiskey's third drawer down. But you might not want it, though. I managed to rustle up a bottle of Beefeater,” Pete said as she walked over to the cabinet in the kitchenette. She took out a bottle of gin and held it up with both hands as if it were made of expensive crystal. “I couldn't bring myself to go with the vodka, because it was all cheap stuff you wouldn't like.”

“Best news I've heard all day. So you ran down to the local package store to please the boss-lady?” Camille knew it was a little more complicated than that. Café Babylon sold bottles out of the backroom, but their overpriced stock was hit and miss.

“Anything for her.” Pete flashed a smile as she got ice and a bottle of tonic water from the fridge. “I traded a favor with the boys over at the Bechtel party trailer.” Pete mixed a gin and tonic, then poured herself a straight whiskey. “So do you want to hear the latest Julia Lewis installment now?”

“Let me drink in peace for a few minutes. It's going to take a few stiff ones until I can handle any more today.” Camille sat down on the sofa and unlaced her Merrell hikers. The boys in the Black Hawk had brought her one size too big and it had rubbed blisters. She had only really noticed them burning in the past couple of hours after adrenaline levels in her body had started to settle. Pete tossed her a bag of pistachios. She caught it and set it aside.

“I almost had him. I was within ten meters of Hunter, then that stupid, stupid man took off running and the next thing I knew he had his paws in the air, giving himself up to Rubicon.” Camille rubbed her foot while she inspected the blisters. The biggest had already burst. Gritting her teeth, she ripped the dead skin off.

“You were shooting up his helicopter this morning—”

“My helicopter.”

“I stand corrected—your helo. My point is, this morning you were trying to kill him. What does it matter if Rubicon does the deed instead of you? Dead is dead.”

“It matters.” Camille rubbed the dead skin between her fingers, then flicked it away toward a wastebasket. She leaned back and sighed. “It matters. Rubicon is not going to get away with shooting down one of my birds.”

“You want him only because they want him?”

“Works for me.”

“Not for me. It was because you let him get to you last night.”

“Fuck you.” Camille gulped down the gin and tonic too fast and felt the gas building up inside. She put her hand over her mouth and stifled a belch. “You talk to our lawyers?”

“Yeah, Sarah Wang was out of town—Minneapolis again—she must really love it there. But I spoke to Patrick Jones. When I told him you wanted to know if you could sue Rubicon for taking out the Hawk, he couldn't stop laughing. Said you'd be better off visiting Rubicon's HQ in Herndon and staging a slip and fall than trying to nail them for shooting down your helicopter here in Iraq. Ain't gonna happen.”

“We paid Marr Hipp Jones and Wang for that?”

“You always say they're the best. To be fair, he covered all the bases. You want the detailed analysis?”

“Cut to the punch line.” Camille untied the bag of pistachios and pried open a nut. Her mind kept going back to how she had failed Hunter. Rubicon was probably torturing him right now.

“He said your best option is write the whole thing off and watch your back. The bottom line is we're all operating outside of Iraqi law and the Uniform Code of Military Justice doesn't apply to private security companies like us.” Pete poured herself another glass of whiskey. “That's why we can do whatever the fuck we want.”

“It's the only way we can do the job the government wants us to do.” Camille shook her drink and the ice cubes clinked against the glass. She struggled to keep herself focused on the conversation. “The last thing we need is to pay for some creative legal work, set a precedent that somebody's law actually applies here in the Wild West and have it come back and bite us in the butt. Can you imagine the civil liability for property damage alone? Black Management has taken out over five thousand insurgents and we all know the definition of an insurgent is pretty damn loose around here. It's more or less anyone we take out. I don't even want to think about the wrongful death claims Iraqis could come after us with.”

“Patrick did mention something like that.”

“Sometimes I lie awake at night—you know Washington is a mercurial place. Sure, we're saving the president's ass in Iraq, but you ever stop to think about what could happen if the other guys sweep the next election?” Camille got up to pour herself another gin and tonic. “I shouldn't be talking like this. It's been a hell of a day. You want another round? Oh, forget it. I'll bring over the bottles.” Camille braced the three bottles between her forearm and belly and balanced her own glass. She set them on the table, then plopped onto the sofa. “I'm going to hurt Rubicon. I just don't know how yet. Any more reports of them taking aggressive action toward us?”

Pete reached for the Wild Turkey. “Things were hopping today along the Syrian border. It started in Tal Afar, then spilled over into the Syrian side. The first rumor I heard was they thought they had al-Zahrani, then some of our guys came back with conflicting reports they'd nailed a French spy in Syria. We were all out in numbers. A few of our guys and some from Rubicon tripped over each other, but I'm pretty sure that's all it was.”

“Rubicon has what they want, so maybe they're going to leave us alone and hope I leave them alone. What I can't figure out is why they wanted Hunter so badly. I'm starting to think some of what he was telling me is true. He told me Rubicon has a mole on the inside here.”

“No way.” Pete set down her drink, pursed her lips and shook her head. “Our boys are loyal.”

“I don't care what we call them, they're mercenaries. They'll kill for a price, which is about eight hundred bucks a day.”

Pete kept shaking her head. “A lot of the boys are very loyal to you—to the legend of Camille Black.”

Camille cringed at Pete's words. She had proven today that she was no legend. She started thinking about touching Hunter's missing fingernails last night and she wanted to cry. She paused before speaking to compose herself. “The operators come to me because I buy them the top-of-the-line toys and they stay only because I pay top dollar. And they don't really stay. They all move around—some come back, though.”

“We've got a lot of former recon Marines who thought the world of your father.”

“I have no illusions. We're not the Marines. We don't get them while they're young and use borderline cult tactics to mold their loyalty.” Camille waved her hand in the air. “Don't get me wrong. I think the world of the Corps. No organization has ever produced better warriors, better patriots or better human beings, but they have something we don't that goes beyond tradition, beyond patriotism. The Marines have got some kind of core truth that grabs people inside, bonds them with each other and gets them to push themselves to give their all in a way the Army could only dream of. They fight for each other, not money or flags. No military in the world has been able to replicate it and god knows they've tried.”

“You really miss your dad, don't you?”

“Like you wouldn't believe.” A couple of tears rolled down her face. She looked away and tried to wipe them off before Pete noticed.

“Hunter reminds you of him, doesn't he?”

“Don't go there.” Camille picked up her drink. “Now how did I get started on that?”

“I think you were getting hungry and starting to ramble. Which reminds me, I hear Halliburton is starting up a new lunch wagon right outside our front gate.”

“You're getting me off track, though I am starting to think about real food.” Camille grabbed a handful of pistachios. “I remember where I was going with all of that. A Rubicon spy is the only explanation for how they knew to intercept Hunter's helicopter this morning.” Camille's fingernail broke as she pried open a nut. She twisted the splintered nail off and rubbed her finger against the jagged edge. She closed her eyes. “Who else knew about Hunter other than you?”

“The entire base. I issued a general alert right after you told me he was inside the wire. A couple of guys saw him run out of your trailer and streak across the compound. Anyone with a brain could've figured out it was him spinning around in the helicopter you were shooting at. It was quite a spectacle and word travels fast around here, especially when it involves a buck naked man running from the boss-lady's trailer and stealing a helo. I'm sure guys were laughing about it all over Afghanistan today.”

“Great.” Camille sighed. “Be very cautious. Keep as much as you can compartmentalized. From here on out, we're working on the assumption that Rubicon's got someone planted among us.” Camille refilled her glass, but didn't dilute the gin with tonic water. “Okay, I'm ready now. So what did you find out about that Julia Lewis bitch?”

“You're not going to like it.”

“I'm numb. Bring it on, baby.” Camille leaned back and ran her hands through her hair. It was like straw, but she could wait to get back under the shower, given fresh, raw memories. She picked up her drink and gulped it down.

 

A few minutes later Camille closed the file and dropped it onto the coffee table. Except for the headers at the top of each page which made it appear to have been faxed from the Black Management Virginia offices, it looked like a duplicate of the CIA file Chronister had shown her a few days earlier. “That was a waste of time. I've already seen this. Get me something new. She's got a Maryland address. Send someone over to interview her—today.”

“It's getting kind of late.”

“It's still afternoon there.” Camille threw a nut into her mouth. “Is there anywhere here you send someone out for pizza?”

“You really want to ask someone to make their way across town during D.C. rush hour?”

“Set it up so they go there first thing in the morning. And pepperoni would be great, though that lamb kebab and goat cheese one was pretty good the other day.” Camille rubbed her eyes. She knew Pete didn't approve of her being with Hunter—or any man for that matter—but it was starting to annoy her. “I want to know everything about her relationship with Hunter. Get me dates, pictures—everything.”

“That's not going to be easy. You really think you can knock on someone's door and get them to spill their whole life history for you?”

“Don't send a soldier. Send one of the spooks. Trust me. Any decent spy will know how to get what I want—including the pizza.”

Camp Tsunami, Abu Ghraib Prison

Hunter had grown accustomed to the high summer temperatures and even though it was probably in the upper seventies in the cell that night, he was chilled. His lips were burning, his stomach growling and his bruised balls throbbing. They had given him neither food, nor water, nor clothes, so he sat on the filthy cold concrete hungry, thirsty and naked. A light bulb inside a small cage burned all night and loudspeakers blasted Chinese opera. The music selection made little sense, except that the voices were screechy and the nasal sounds damned annoying. He listened for hours, picking apart the sounds so he could filter them out, but couldn't hear any other prisoners. That worried him.

“Here's your Red Cross package, you mother fucking
haji,
” a guard yelled through the slots on the solid metal door. The incessant music had masked their approach. The cell door opened and a book came flying toward his head. While he raised his arm to deflect it, they dropped something else by the door, then locked it without showing themselves.

Hunter walked over and picked up a small Muslim prayer rug and a copy of the Koran in Arabic. He was sure the bastards didn't realize he could actually read it, but he knew better than to ever let them see him doing it—not that he even wanted to crack it open. He sat on the tiny rug, drawing his legs up against his chest for warmth and when he couldn't fall asleep, he tried to meditate. All he could think about was Stella mouthing those three words that he'd waited so long to hear again. He only wished he could be sure she meant them and wasn't just caught up in the drama of the moment.

 

He nodded off, then woke himself up shivering. Lying with his face on the prayer rug to protect it from the grimy concrete floor, he tried to go back asleep, but the deafening Chinese music made his head pound. The cell reeked of stale urine and feces. He slept in fits, his body aching more and more each time he awakened.

 

The music blast suddenly stopped and Hunter jolted awake, jerking his head around, trying to figure out where he was. “
Allahu akbar
,” a canned muezzin blared from a tinny loudspeaker, calling to prayer.

He stretched and everything hurt. A hint of morning light came through the grate in the ceiling above him. He peed into the drain in the floor, sat down on the prayer rug and waited, but no breakfast arrived, not even thin gruel.

 

Hunter counted the cinderblocks in the cell: one hundred ninety-three.

 

Hunter counted the slits in the grate above his head: eight hundred and fifty-seven.

 

He flipped open the Koran, but the first words, “
Allahu akbar
” were such a turn-off, he slammed it shut. Allah didn't seem so
akbar
at the moment. Man, he was getting thirsty.