Time to get moving.
8
I had never known the soldier’s name, and so the name Caleb Wardell had meant nothing to me when it was splashed across all those front pages all those years before.
Although I’d probably seen the mug shot a couple of dozen times in the media, I’d never taken a closer look. Not just because of the beard and the prison coveralls. But because, from a cursory glance, it looked like all the photographs of that type do: It looked like a man who was crazy and dangerous and pleased with himself. The killer’s name and the picture that went with it were unwanted background noise — like a summer pop song, or a ubiquitous commercial. They didn’t belong to the world in which I lived and worked, and so I’d never had a reason to take a closer look, to scratch below the surface, to see the familiarity.
But the old photograph in the file left no doubt. There was no mistaking the smiling young Marine in front of the flag that stared out at me. No mistaking those eyes.
Mosul. 2008. It was 112 degrees in the shade. Too many foreigners there for too many different reasons. By then, it had been a long time since Saddam had fallen, and whatever goodwill that had generated among the locals had long since evaporated like piss on hot sand. They didn’t want us there. They sure as hell didn’t want the insurgents there — particularly those who’d taken it on themselves to come on vacation from Pakistan to wage their holy war in somebody else’s backyard.
The resentment wasn’t just projected across races or nationalities; it was internecine too. The military didn’t want the CIA there, sneaking around, probably starting shit that would make life harder for the grunts. And neither of them wanted the mercenaries there: those Blackwater assholes making big trouble and small fortunes in equal measure.
And as for us? Nobody wanted us there either. As usual, nobody knew exactly who we were or why we were there. They didn’t need to know in order to form an opinion about us. I guess most people figured we were with one of the other groups. Some of the CIA guys had an inkling, had heard one or two whispered code names for something that had no name. They knew enough to know how much was being kept from them. And that was why they really hated us.
Mosul. Summer of 2008. Muhammad Rassam. A routine assignment, the best-laid plans royally fucked up by one rogue element with two cold blue eyes.
I’d looked into them and realized the owner didn’t give a shit whether I pulled the trigger or not. Those eyes conveyed no fear, no emotion, only the cold single-mindedness of a great white shark.
A dozen dead civilians. One dead million-dollar asset. All because of this cold killer. But I’d followed my orders, and now…
“We’re here.”
I looked up to see Agent Banner staring across the narrow aisle of the Learjet at me. “You ready for this? You don’t look too… alert.” She was looking at me in the manner of a big sister forced to take her kid brother along to a party.
“Just thinking. Let’s go.”
She held my gaze a minute longer, skeptical. Then she shot a wary glance at Castle, who was already heading for the open door of the jet. She looked back at me. “You mind if I drive?”
I shook my head and looked back down at the file in my hand.
Caleb Wardell. I knew his name now. And twenty dead civilians and counting said I should have put him down when I had the chance.
9
Banner kept her eyes on the road for the most part, occasionally flicking them to the right to see what Blake was doing. He was still reading the Wardell file, seemingly deep in concentration. He hadn’t spoken since the plane, hadn’t even glanced out of the window as far as she’d noticed. If not for the whisper of paper as he turned a sheet every few seconds, she could almost forget he was there at all. In the silence, her thoughts shifted to her daughter. Helen — her sister — would be picking Annie up from school as usual, but it was looking likely that she’d have to call and ask her to keep her overnight. Again.
She shelved the familiar concerns for the moment to focus her attention on overtaking a giant semi. The midmorning traffic was moderate. Although they’d yet to hit rain, they seemed to be chasing it, since the road ahead was perpetually glistening.
This had been Castle’s idea, her driving from the airport to the crime scene with Blake. He’d taken her aside as they exited the conference room. Personal animosity had temporarily disappeared from his voice — from his point of view, she was on his side for the moment. As he watched the other three men, he kept his voice low. “Keep an eye on him,” he’d said. “See if you can work him out.”
Work him out. She’d agreed readily enough back in the corridor, but thinking about it now, that vague instruction seemed to Banner to carry a lot of demands: Can he help us? Is he going to get in the way, or worse? And can we trust him?
Who is he?
So far, Banner had carried out only the first part of Castle’s request: keeping an eye on Blake. Not exactly an achievement, given the fact they were side by side in a gray Bureau SUV doing eighty on the highway. As for the second part, she was no wiser about Blake than she had been when they left the building.
Initially, her strategy had been to give him the cold shoulder. Perhaps that would encourage him to open up. Blake would probably want to get Banner to warm to him, if only to make her easier to work with. Her strategy had failed miserably. Either he was playing the same game — and doing it a good deal more effectively — or he really was as engrossed in that file as he seemed. Reluctantly, she decided to attempt conversation. It felt like a small defeat, like she was blinking first in a staring contest. “Doing your homework?” she asked, making sure to keep her tone cool.
Blake raised his head from the file. He looked slightly disoriented for a second, as though he had just awakened from a trance, and she knew then that his silence had not been part of a strategy. “Sorry.” He smiled. “I get tunnel vision sometimes.”
Something in his smile managed to pierce her guard a little, and Banner realized that she had been wrong before: He didn’t look nondescript at all. Sure, the impression his appearance left you with was “everyman,” but now that she’d spent a little more time with him, she couldn’t help notice the determined line of his jaw, the striking green eyes that seemed to gaze through to your innermost thoughts. She turned her own eyes back to the road quickly. “I don’t care if you don’t say anything at all.”
If Blake noticed the slight, he didn’t let on. “Just getting caught up on Wardell. Some piece of work, huh?”
His accent was another thing about him that was difficult to place. Not that it seemed out of place, exactly — more that it was difficult to pin down to any one place. Blake’s voice usually had a generic East-Coast cadence, but occasionally it sounded as though it hailed from farther afield, with an almost British feel. It was the voice of someone who had not grown up in a single, settled community.
Banner nodded curtly at Blake’s assertion. She hadn’t worked the original Wardell case; it had been a long, stiflingly hot summer that year, and she had been working bank robbery. But of course she’d followed the killings with the morbid fascination that everyone else in the Bureau had. Everyone else in the country, for that matter.
“I thought you jacked in the death penalty in Illinois,” Blake said after a minute.