The Summer House(102)

A happy nod. “Damn, you are a good investigator, Major Cook.”

“What happened?”

“What do you think happened? The Rangers weren’t officially there, nothing officially happened, and to make sure I kept quiet, that woman made some calls, pulled a few strings, and here I am.”

A thump shakes the little bunker, and dust falls from the overhead rocks.

“Ah, shit,” Kurtz says. “Looks like the muj want to let us know they’re around.”

Another, closer thump.

I turn. “Mortars?”

“The same,” he says. “Excuse me. I’ve got to get to work.”

“But—”

“Sorry, pal, you’re our guest for the foreseeable future.”

He snaps out a series of orders in Pashto, the men grab their AK-47s, and Kurtz stands up, pulling aside a nearby blanket. “Come along, Major. We’re going to wait this one out.”

The men rush past me as I look at Kurtz, then grab my rucksack and head outside.



Kurtz yells but doesn’t follow me as I go after his men, who are moving under the netting, taking up binoculars and grid maps, looking out, two of them talking quickly on handheld radios, probably trying to reach their observers out there among the rocky peaks.

The sun is setting.

I check my watch.

I’ve been here nineteen minutes.

Where is Chief Cellucci? Where’s his Little Bird helicopter?

Twenty minutes.

Twenty-one minutes.

The Night Stalkers pride themselves in arriving on time at a mission, give or take thirty seconds. I have the information to free the Rangers back in Georgia—Kurtz’s statement combined with my eventual recovery of travel records and manifests to show Representative Conover and Sheriff Williams were here in Pendahar—and I’m stuck here on a rock in a mountain wilderness, with men out there trying to kill me.

Twenty-two minutes.

Is Cellucci still out there? Was he called to another mission? Is my watch wrong?

A louder, closer mortar explosion tosses up dust and rock fragments, and knocks me down.





Chapter 95



ALMOST A WEEK AGO, Staff Sergeant Caleb Jefferson’s chest hurt, his arms hurt, and his eyes were sore from the pepper spray used during his arrest at the roadhouse. He and his guys had been unwinding there two nights after tuning up that drug-dealing creep who nearly killed his stepdaughter.

Even his wrists bled from where the metal cuffs dug in.

Across from his cell in the Ralston jail, seated before him, was the county sheriff, whom he immediately recognized. The last time she had been in an Army uniform, outside Pendahar in Afghanistan, screaming and slapping a naked congressman in a ratty hovel with two Afghan businessmen in Western suits looking on in amusement.

“Well,” she said, “here’s the situation, Staff Sergeant.”

“Go on,” he said.

“You and your boys saw something you shouldn’t have seen, back in Afghanistan. You saw a good man falling to temptation. A man who will do great things for this nation. And a man who will become senator in under two weeks.”

“Some man,” he said.

She said, “All great men have their faults. FDR, JFK, Martin Luther King Jr.…yet they did great things for their nation. As the congressman will do when he gets back to Washington, as a senator this time.”

Jefferson stayed silent. He knew where this was going.

“But here’s the situation,” Williams said. “How do I keep you and your three boys quiet about what you thought you heard and saw back in Afghanistan?”

“I’m certain about what I saw and heard,” he said. “As are my men.”

A slight toss of the shoulders. “Not going to debate that. Which goes back to my original problem: keeping you quiet. Which is why you’re here. You see, we know what you and the other Rangers did at The Summer House, you beating up Stuart Pike. Maybe that could have been enough to keep you quiet, me holding that over your heads. But I doubted it. So later…well, bad things happen to bad people.”

Jefferson clenched his fists. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Bad things,” she said. “Gunmen later went in there and killed everybody in that home. There’s forensic evidence and witnesses placing you four Rangers at the scene. You’re all under arrest. You’re here until I say otherwise. And you’ll stay here until the Wednesday after the election, and then…oops! You’ll get released. Faulty evidence and all that. Then you’ll keep your mouths shut…forever. Because, Staff Sergeant, there’s no statute of limitations for murder. And it’s amazing what new evidence can pop up at the right time.”

Jefferson gave her one good hard stare, and she returned the favor. He said, “I get a phone call. I get a lawyer. I tell him or her everything you just told me here. How’s that for evidence?”

Then, like a sniper shot coming from nowhere, hitting him right in the center of his ballistic plating, taking his breath away, the sheriff said, “And how’s your lovely stepdaughter doing. Carol, right? Carol Crosby?”

Jefferson couldn’t talk.

“She’s at the Damon Harbor Rehabilitation Facility, isn’t she? Over in Hilton Head. Second floor. Her day nurse is Sonny Law, her night nurse is Kim Christo. Damn close thing it was, her nearly getting killed.”