Ambush (Michael Bennett #11)(61)

“Malik gave that video to you,” I said.

“And I passed it straight up the chain of command. Way too hot for me to hold on to.”

“What’s on that video, Sarge? What’s the Alpha so damned determined to hide?”

Sarge opened his eyes. Or rather, his one good eye. The other, I now saw, was swollen shut. The rest of his face didn’t look great, either.

“The Alpha,” he said. “I forgot that’s what you call him.”

“The video, Sarge. Tell me.”

“American weapons.” He let loose a long, melancholy sigh that sounded like it came from somewhere deep. “Sold illegally to Iran by an American company, smuggled into Iraq, and used to kill American troops. All with the blessing of a goddamn prick the devil has kept alive for his own mean purpose.”

A breeze gusted up, licking the sweat from my skin. My tongue clicked against the roof of my suddenly too-dry mouth.

I said, “He killed everyone who knew about it. Malik’s mother. PFC Resenko. Murdered them in cold blood.”

“And he killed your man, Doug Ayers. He killed them all. He’s still killing people.” Sarge’s jaw went tight like he was working through something he couldn’t swallow. “And now, Corporal, it’s us. Your number and mine are about up. Only chance we got is to put our heads together and figure out who this asshole is. Then we send a three-hundred-pound mortar straight up his ass.”

“My number was up six months ago. Remember that, Sarge? You were the one who was going to call in my ticket, until I got the upper hand.”

Sarge nodded. Then he tilted back his head and stared at the sky for a moment. When his eyes once again met mine, the storm of anger had quieted into a pensive calm.

“I was fed a lot of bad information about you, Parnell,” he said. “Some seriously fucked-up shit. Told you were a threat to national security because you were endangering the mission. That you had intel you’d use to bring down the good and protect the evil. I swallowed their lies like I was swallowing good scotch. Thought I was some hot-shit superhero.” The calm sputtered out, and his voice came like a growl. “Took me a long time to realize I was on the wrong team.”

The image of Sarge beating me in my own kitchen broke free from the compartment I’d stowed it in. “Do you even remember how much you hurt me?”

“I remember. As I recall, you got in a few licks of your own.”

“There’s more where that came from.”

“Well, then.” He chuckled. “Damn good thing we’re on the same side now.”





CHAPTER 16

When the dog has a chance to bite, he will.

—Effie “Grams” Parnell. Private conversation.

“Explosively formed penetrators,” Sarge said. “EFPs.”

He sat in a chair in Paul’s office in the back of Joe’s Tavern, his body pitched forward as if ready to run, his eyes on Clyde.

For his part, Clyde looked intently interested in chewing off Sarge’s feet and then moving up to more sensitive areas. Max Udell was a lot more entertaining than a dental bone.

“Dog’s making me nervous,” Sarge said. “Doesn’t he know we’re on the same team?”

“Clyde’s not really a team player.”

“Shit.”

“Plus, I need a little time to decide if we are on the same side.”

“I gave you my gun! Put myself at your mercy.”

“You could be a mole.”

“Ah, fuck me, I’m not a spy.”

“Because you’d tell me if you were.”

But in truth, I believed him. The vibes Sarge gave off felt right. And sometimes you have to trust your gut.

That didn’t mean I was going to kiss his ass.

“Clyde knows we’ve called a truce,” I said. “He won’t take off your face unless you do something stupid.”

“Define stupid.”

“Anything that pisses him off.” I opened my work laptop and hit the power button. “Now go on with what you were saying.”

Sarge leaned back in his chair. Clyde adjusted his haunches. They rolled eyes at each other.

“These EFPs were nasty motherfuckers,” Sarge said. “They could be launched from a distance, rather than buried in roadside trash. Easier to use. More flexible. And way more lethal. The only thing the bad guys had that could blow up an M1 Abrams tank. The penetrators started showing up a week before Haifa and Resenko were killed.”

“We were getting some bad shit in Mortuary Affairs then,” I said. “The bodies—it wasn’t good.”

“Like I said. E-fucking-Ps.”

“How do you know so much about them?”

“Rick Dalton.”

“Your favorite spy.”

“Rick was a good guy. He got involved with the EFPs because he was monitoring reports from Special Operations Command—SOCOM. The SOCOM guys noticed an uptick in American casualties near the border with Iran. It looked like the weapons were coming in across the border. But Rick knew these ordnances were way too sophisticated for the insurgents or even the Iranians. He went to SOCOM and started asking questions.”

“What did he learn?”

“Nothing. After a few weeks, the bad guys stopped using the EFPs. All traces of them disappeared. No unexploded ordnance, no fragments. Nothing. Like they’d never been there.”