Blood on the Tracks (25 page)

Sarge was still hollering.

“Out!” I shouted to Clyde.
“Aus.”

Clyde refused. He was in full-on devil mode.

“Aus!”

Clyde gave a final, reluctant shake of Sarge’s arm then released him and dropped to all fours. He didn’t back off.

“Get up,” I said to Sarge, who lay sprawled on his back. The sleeve of his shirt was soaked with blood. More blood spattered his chin and cheek. At the sight of his blood, something cold and primal descended, something dark and dank, as if I’d pulled on a filthy coat.

I’d worn it before.

Sarge didn’t move.

“Get the fuck up, Udell. Or I’ll sic the dog on your face.”

He rolled onto his side with a groan then got to his knees. He cradled his injured arm to his chest and gave Clyde a look of murderous fury.

“I hate dogs.”

“Pass auf,”
I told Clyde.
Guard.
To Sarge I said, “Stand up against the wall.”

“Bitch,” he panted, still on his knees.

I grabbed my Sam Browne belt and pulled out three sets of cuffs.

“Get up, asshole.”

“Fucker tore the shit out of my arm.”

I kicked him in the ribs and knocked him flat, then kicked him again for good measure.

“Fucking cunt,” he said.

“Now.”

He grabbed a chair and tried to stand. As soon as he gained his knees and his head came up, I hit him with the gun. His left ear split open, spilling more blood. He bellowed with the pain and dropped back to the floor like the sack of shit he was.

“Try again,” I said.

“Stop,” he said. For the first time I heard a different note in his voice. Compliance.

Compliance wasn’t what I wanted. What I wanted was an excuse to kill him. The monster, demanding to be fed.

I kept the gun on him, telling myself I wouldn’t kill him. Telling myself we were both Marines, no matter how far he’d fallen. No matter that he’d intended my death. I warned myself to hold tight to the leash I kept around my rage and fear, for if I let go, something monstrous would emerge.

He found his knees. “You going to hit me again?”

“Knuffen,”
I snapped at Clyde. Clyde growled.

“Against the wall
now
,” I said, “or I’ll put him on your throat.”

Sarge hawked blood onto the floor, but he dragged himself to his feet. I slammed him against the wall, punched him in the kidneys then pressed the Glock to the back of his neck.

“Hands behind your back.”

His muscles coiled for a response. I hit him with the gun again, smacking the same ear. He screamed. I shoved him against the wall and stepped back.

“Hands.”

He put his hands behind him, and I snapped the handcuffs on. I righted the chair and pushed it so it was a foot from the table.

“Sit,” I told him.

He sank into the seat, his hands pulled tightly behind him. I pulled duct tape out of a drawer and wrapped it around his ankles and knees.

“Feel sick,” he muttered. His face had taken on a chalky tone.

“You gonna throw up?” I asked.

He glared at me through his right eye. The other was swelling shut.

I braced my feet and leveraged the chair back against the table so that he was tilted at a twenty-degree angle. “You puke, you’ll choke on it.”

He rocked in the chair, trying to right it. I placed the muzzle of my gun against his temple.

“You want the dog in your lap?”

The steel was molten in his eyes now.

But he’d started this shit.

“The Alpha sent you here. Who is he?”

He gave me a stony face.

I put an elbow hard into Sarge’s jaw. The chair teetered. “Who sent you?”

Silence.

I lifted my arm to hit him again, but his voice stopped me.

“I don’t know.”

I followed through on the blow. His head whipped back then rolled forward.

“Who?” I asked.

“Goddamn it! I don’t know. I’ve never met him. I work with some man calls himself Kevin. No last name. He sets up a meet and gives me the Alpha’s orders.”

“Kevin No-Last-Name. He works for the Alpha?”

“I don’t think so. They’re more like peers. Kevin is CIA.”

“What the fuck is the CIA doing involved in this?”

“They’re looking for the boy. And something else. I don’t know what, exactly.”

I stroked his cheek with the Glock. “You can do better.”

“No! All I know is it has to do with something they started in Iraq, and Doug Ayers had some piece of the puzzle. It was a joint operation between military intelligence and the CIA. And some other group. A private contractor, from what I understand.”

“Joint operation to do what?”

“Save the free world, Parnell. Jesus Christ. I don’t know. Swear to God. It’s a hundred levels higher than my pay grade. All I know is that the op went wrong. Was supposed to stay over there, in Iraq. But it spilled out over here.”

“So where exactly do you enter the picture? A Marine sergeant working for the CIA?”

“Richard Dalton pulled me in. While we were still in Iraq.”

“Dalton is the CIA guy in the photos on your wall?”

“Yeah. He was the one told me to hide what happened with Resenko and the Iraqi chick. When that went down like it was supposed to, he told me they’d need guys like me to track jihadists here in the States.”

“Dalton is the one who gave the order? After he got the word from the Alpha, I’m guessing?”

“That’s how I figure it.”

“Why would the CIA be giving orders about a military matter?”

Sarge gave me a look that had “stupid” written all over it.

“Never mind that,” I said. “Who killed him?”

“What?” Sarge looked genuinely bewildered. “Dalton ain’t dead. He’s still in that desert shit hole the rest of us left behind.”

Interesting. So maybe I hadn’t pulled up the memory of a corpse. Maybe I’d just taken a man I’d seen around the FOB and—in my rattled memory—mixed him up with the dead. Or maybe I really
had
seen him dead, and Hal and the Alpha hadn’t gotten the word. “Why are they trying to find Malik? What could either the CIA or the Alpha care about an Iraqi orphan?”

“Nobody filled me in. But I’m thinking they wanted that kid for the op that went south. Maybe using him as a spy. That’s as much as I know.”

The slow burn deepened to reach bone. “The CIA is using a twelve-year-old as a spy? Do you know what al-Qaeda does to spies?”

“It’s war, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

“What makes you think Malik would be here? Or that I’d have anything to do with him?”

“We know how close you were to the boy. He was brought to the States, I don’t know when. Then, after those seven CIA agents were blown up in Khost—you remember that?”

I nodded. A Jordanian doctor named al-Balawi had pretended to be willing to spy against the jihadis for the Americans. Instead, he’d triggered a suicide vest and blown himself up along with the CIA officers, a Jordanian intelligence officer, and an Afghan working for the CIA.

“After that,” Sarge went on, “using the boy became critical—losing al-Balawi meant we didn’t have anyone on the inside. But then Malik went missing. We figured he’d show up on your doorstep.”

“You sons of bitches.”

“War, Parnell. War.”

“Fuck you.”

When I hit him again, it was really more of a love tap. Inside, my heart was almost singing. Malik was alive. And he’d made it to the States after all.

Sarge regarded me through swollen eyes. “You gonna kill me?”

“Depends. Tell me about Doug Ayers. What is it the CIA thinks he gave me?”

“I told you. Kevin wasn’t too specific on that. I got the sense he was fishing. Like he doesn’t really know.”

“Is it Kevin who wants it? Or the Alpha?”

“Both, far as I know.”

“If I let you live—and that’s a big if—you tell those sons of bitches that Dougie gave me nothing. You understand? Nothing. No papers. No pictures. Not so much as an STD. Nothing.”

To my horror, I was crying. With rage and with hatred and with the fact that what Dougie and I had once shared was reduced to this.

With Dougie gone, all I’d wanted when I came home was quiet. Clyde and me working together, trying to heal. Working the trains was a bonus. A way to flee into wide, empty spaces and feel in touch with my long-gone father.

It was all I’d wanted. And now this.

Nik was right. What happened in Iraq should damn well stay there.

“What does Kevin look like?”

“White guy. Over six foot, maybe two-twenty. Early forties. Soft looking. Dresses in nylon pants and polar fleece. Like he works for one of those fancy-gear outfitters.”

“How does he arrange a meet?”

“Sends an email with the date and time and location.”

I had Sarge give me the email address, and I jotted it down.

“What does all of this—Malik and Doug Ayers and this special operation—have to do with Habbaniyah?”

“Nothing. Habbaniyah isn’t Kevin’s deal. The Alpha’s just cleaning house.”

“Then tell me, Udell. Does the Alpha think he can kill everyone involved in Habbaniyah? Me? Tucker? Tucker’s squad? Anyone else in the platoon who might have figured it out? Does he plan to kill everyone?”

“You’re the only lucky one. Because you had to get nosy and start asking questions. The others are too smart to talk. They got too much to lose.”

“And I don’t? Where’d he get that idea?”

“I think he just needs me to explain it to him.”

“What I’m wondering is if you could explain things better alive, or as a corpse?”

“You kill me, it’s just gonna piss him off.”

“So then he’s going to, what, order me tortured and killed? How much worse can I make it for myself?”

“You kill me, you’ll spend every minute looking over your shoulder for the next guy. Only you won’t know what he looks like. And there’s the cop, too, don’t forget. The Alpha’s got his eye on him.”

A chill settled at the base of my spine. “I already told you, Cohen doesn’t know anything.”

“Who’s going to convince your Alpha of that if you kill me? You kill me, you got no way to get to the Alpha. No way to communicate.”

“But I do. I have Kevin’s email address.”

“Kevin won’t respond. He won’t care. Habbaniyah’s got nothing to do with him so long as the Alpha keeps the sandbox clean. He sure as shit won’t pass on a message to the Alpha.”

“Oh, I think he would.”

“Plus you gotta figure if you kill me, the next guy who comes knocking on your door won’t be as nice.”

“Because you’re such a fucking prince,” I snarled.

But Sarge was right about a lot of things. I had no way of knowing if the email address he’d given me was valid. And no other way to get to the Alpha, to warn him off. Most importantly, I now had Max Udell in my sights. The enemy you know is less dangerous than the one you don’t.

“I let you go, you’d better sing to your boss like you’ve never sung before. You understand me? Because if something happens to that cop or my Grams or my dog or anyone else I care about, I swear to you I will cut off your balls and stuff them down your throat. And that’s before I get really mad. Am I making myself clear?”

He nodded.

I reached over and brought down the front of his chair, then knelt so we were eye-to-eye.

“Okay,” I said. “Here’s the deal.”

I watched Sarge make his way down the street through the snowfall, his dark figure disappearing and reappearing in the pools of light cast by the streetlamps. He moved with an upright bearing despite the beating Clyde and I had given him.

Maybe he really was a machine.

After I’d laid out exactly what Sarge was going to do for me—convince the Alpha to back off, convince Kevin I had nothing from Dougie—I promised I would drop the whole Habbaniyah affair and do everything in my power to steer the Denver detectives toward the skinheads. I didn’t even have to cross my fingers while I said all this. Lying to a verifiable asshole doesn’t count against you.

He’d asked if he could have his gun back, and I’d laughed.

Sarge turned the corner and disappeared. Maybe he’d circle back around with a different weapon and shoot me. But I didn’t think so. Not while he thought I still had something he wanted. He’d talk to Kevin. Get his orders.

This bought me a little time.

I closed and locked the door and, as my knees buckled, I pressed against the wall to keep from falling. Hunched, every part of me in pain—my knees, my ribs, my back, my head, my elbow, and most especially my chest—I made my glacial way with Clyde to the kitchen where I grabbed Sarge’s Colt, then through the doorway into the dining room. I eased to the floor in front of the liquor cabinet. Grams had poured out or given away the obvious alcohol, but a bottle labeled bitters held Jameson. I dragged myself into a chair and sat at the table with Sarge’s gun and mine next to me. I poured myself a stiff drink, downed it. Poured another.

I had no fucking idea what to do.

With the whiskey warm in my belly, I leaned back and folded my arms as the shakes rattled through me. When I couldn’t sit up any longer, I slid to the floor and pulled Dougie’s ring free of my shirt, holding it tight. Clyde came and pressed next to me, licking my face over and over.