The VISOR attenuated the sound and light, which gave John time to stitch fire across the two men on stools, dropping them where they sat. The old man at the fire grabbed at his AK-47 and started firing wildly as the three men at the table stood. He ducked and came up shooting, catching the old man in his chest. The old man dropped, dead before he hit the floor.
He wheeled around and saw the three men at the table turn it over and cower behind, the beardless man in the middle. He turned the HK to the right of the table and cut loose. The bullets punched holes through the wooded top and he heard screams from the other side.
The fighter on the far left of the table came up and fired, catching him high in the chest. He stumbled back but the liquid body armor did its job, spreading the kinetic energy of the 7.62mm rounds across the large meaty part of his chest. He emptied the rest of the magazine and the man fell, his eyes already sightless.
He dropped the empty magazine from his HK and put in a fresh one, cycling the bolt. He heard the beardless man gasping for air and knew that he had once chance to get him to surrender.
“Drop the weapon and stand up,” he commanded.
There was no response.
“I said drop the weapon!”
The man came up with his AK47, smiled, and shouted, “Allahu Akbar.” The man did not fire, but glanced down. John realized he was buying time and turned to run from the room, the beardless man cutting loose with his AK, screaming.
He just cleared the room when there was an explosion and he felt the impact in the back, like a giant pillow, slamming into him. He hit the dirt and rolled up, turning back to the room.
The stillness was absolute. The VISOR struggled to filter the stench of cordite from the air as he entered the room. The beardless man’s legs were blown completely off and pieces of shrapnel had shredded his arms and chest. His face, though, remained untouched, the empty eyes staring at him.
He’s too young. It’s not him.
Eric’s voice came through the VISOR. “What’s the sitrep? Do you have him? Is he secure?”
John sighed and left the room, motioning for Eric and Redman to approach. The bodies of the two guards that Eric and Redman had shot lay no more than five meters from him, their bodies blown completely in half by the 50 caliber rounds.
“He’s dead,” John said. “Blew himself up. And it wasn’t Abdullah. This guy’s my age. Was my age.”
Eric cursed and John knew their mission had failed.
John turned away in disgust at the remains of the man, his trunk in one bag and the rest of him in another. “What do we do now?”
The smell from the corpse was thick in the stifling heat of the tent. “I don’t know,” Eric said. He stood quietly next to John, waiting for the results of the DNA analysis. “You killed the one man who could give us Abdullah’s location.”
“That wasn’t my fault,” John protested. “What was I supposed to do, shoot him and hope he didn’t set off the IED?”
Eric started to speak, then stopped. “You did your best. It’s just bad luck.”
John left the tent and headed for the Gulfstream. Greg was performing his preflight checklist and John watched the soldiers give the plane a final once over. The morning sun baked down, well on the way to another hundred plus degree day, and the sweat stained his shirt he loaded the Battlesuit cases in the Gulfstream.
Eric approached. “They matched the DNA from the corpse to hair samples from Germany. He was the other man with Abdullah.”
John grunted.
“What’s your problem?” Eric asked. “You haven’t been right since Germany.”
“It’s this,” John said, pointing at the runway. “We’re in Afghanistan and what did we accomplish? We killed some Mujahideen. We saved General Azim, who we don’t give a shit about. How did we help anyone?” He kicked the case to the VISOR in frustration, knocking it over.
“Not true,” Eric said calmly. “We stopped whatever this man had planned, but it wasn’t to help Azim. We did it to find Abdullah.”
John shrugged. “We didn’t find anything.” Then, before he could stop himself, he rushed ahead. “I know.”
Eric blinked. “You know what?”
“Who I am and what I did. I remember everything.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about—”
“Stop lying! It’s probably the drugs they gave me. I remember Iraq, the IED. I remember coming home and the Red Cross.” Tears streamed down his face. One way or another, it’s over. “I’m responsible for all those people. And Deion? I remember what he did to me in Guantanamo. They should have shot me. It would have been better for everybody!”
Eric faced him, expressionless. “You’re not thinking clearly.”
John shook his head. “You can’t lie to me anymore. If you’re going to shoot me, just do it. I won’t resist.” He sat down on the hot tarmac and stared at Eric.
Without warning, Eric grabbed him by his shirt and hauled him to his feet. “You know what you’re going to do? You’re going to go back and you’re going to help me catch Abdullah. What you did can’t be forgiven. All you can do is try and make it right. You’re going back and you’re not going to say a word about this to anyone, because if you tell anyone about this, they’ll kill you.”
John nodded. The weight had lifted, and he was flooded with relief. He understood the risk Eric was taking for him. Eric was giving him a second chance.
He wasn’t sure he deserved it.
Eric shook Redman’s hand. “Thanks for the backup.”
Redman pulled a wad of stringy chaw from a pouch and put it in his mouth, chewed a few times, then stuck his hand out. “Anytime, brother. I know I’m not supposed to say anything, but that boy was damned impressive. Whatever you been feeding him, it sure as hell worked.”
Eric smiled, but it faded quickly. “Yeah, he’s something else.”
Redman nodded. “You need any help, you know where to find me.” He turned to spit out a mouth of juice, then strolled away.
For a moment, Eric envied him.
The fight in Afghanistan was easy. He knew the players, he understood the politics. The OTM was different. He headed back to the Gulfstream where John waited.
He was taking a big risk. His first instinct was to put a bullet in John’s head. Smith would understand, and Nancy had wanted to do it from the start.
He couldn’t. Doc Barnwell was right. He was more than just John’s mentor. He was John’s friend. It was hard to separate the feelings he had for John the terrorist versus John the man who desperately begged for his approval.
They needed him. That was the simple truth. They needed the project to succeed and John proved that it did. Sure, back in his Delta days Eric could have taken that stone building with his own team and air support, but John had blown through the building like an avenging fury.
He boarded the plane and took the seat across from John. John was different than the broken man he met in Guantanamo. John was a real human being, who felt pain and sorrow. John felt remorse.
No, John would live. For now.
The Gulfstream was fifty-two thousand feet above Europe when Eric answered the secured video conference. Nancy, Karen, Clark and Deion sat in the briefing room in Area 51, and he could tell by their excited faces that they were finally catching a break.
“We’ve got a lead,” Deion said.
Karen joined in. “I had a trace on cell phones associated with the American Patriot Revolution. We got a hit. His name is Jimmie Jakobs, a long-term member of the APR, and he just turned on his cell phone and called his wife. Nothing important, just that he was set to finish his trip and be home soon. We’ve tracked him to a Motel 6 on the outskirts of Dallas. Jakobs is a dim bulb, he can’t possibly be planning anything on his own. He’s probably passing the caesium off to someone else, someone smart enough to know how to use it.”