The Forgotten Soldier: A Pike Logan Thriller (9 page)

16

M
urphy’s was starting to get rowdy, with happy hour in full swing. Kurt shook my hand and sat down, looking at the drinks on our table. He said, “Soda? What the hell, Pike?”

I glared at Jennifer and said, “She told me it was bad form.”

Kurt flagged a waitress and ordered a round. When she’d left, he said, “Trust me, I could use a beer.”

I said, “Because you’re pimping out Jennifer like every other general with a female to hoist over his head?”

He rubbed his face and said, “No. Actually, I need a drink because I’m
not
a general.”

I looked at Knuckles, but he was just as confused. I said, “What’s up, sir?”

He said, “I’ve been fighting this traditional military architecture forever. Created our organization, then took it to the enemy, but the one thing I forgot is that we work
inside
that traditional architecture. Like it or not.”

The round of beers came, and he took his, drawing a gulp. He said, “Blaine’s getting RIFed.”

RIF stood for Reduction in Force, and was something the military went through after every surge in recruitment due to war. Basically, the military expanded because of need, sometimes loosening
recruiting requirements to fill the ranks. When the need was over, the military contracted, getting rid of those it deemed undesirable.

It had happened after World War II, Vietnam, and the “peace dividend” from the end of the Cold War. Now, after we proclaimed the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq “over,” regardless of the fighting still going on, the military began its purges again, getting rid of those at the bottom rungs to meet the new congressionally mandated size requirements. But that made no sense for anyone in the Taskforce. No bragging, just facts, we were the absolute best of the best.

I said, “What’s the RIF got to do with Blaine?”

“He got his SERB paperwork today. He’s being involuntarily retired. Because I didn’t protect him.”

SERB stood for Selective Early Retirement Board. In today’s military, anyone at the rank of lieutenant colonel or higher who’d shown no upward movement was placed in the crosshairs. The Army had no emotion about the matter. The men were shoved out the door like a guest who’d overstayed his welcome. But that wasn’t us. Shit, we were the shiny edge of the knife blade, conducting complex operations all over the globe, and Blaine Alexander was the one who controlled all of them. The one who made national-level decisions in the span of a second. The guy who’d saved America’s ass on more than one occasion.

Our unit was a little bit different from the ordinary military construct, to put it mildly. Not wanting the traditional military hierarchy, which led to traditional military inertia, Kurt had built a thinking, adapting organization. In the traditional military, when you reached a certain level, you had a certain rank and a certain predetermined job. In our organization, rank meant nothing. All that mattered was skill.

We were huge on the cover organization and support side, but really, really small on the tippy end of the spear. We had five teams total, comprising between five and ten men—all hand-selected—but we had literally thousands supporting us, be it in generating intelligence for
targets, hacking for cyber penetration, or just cover organizations like Grolier Recovery Services.

Because we were so unique, Kurt had eschewed the traditional military mind-set of a pyramid, where the commander was in charge based on time-in-grade and not on the situation at hand. Sometimes, there was no reason to have
any
higher headquarters, and unlike the military, Kurt realized this. The greater military had spent the years in the War on Terror building one headquarters after another, until the warfighter was buried in bureaucracy, building PowerPoints for one useless layer after another.

Kurt had done the opposite. He’d let us run free, without an overarching command, trusting us to do what was right, but he’d picked one officer to be the man in charge when the time came, like plug and play. When we reached an endgame and were about to execute an action with national implications—what we called an Omega operation—the leadership meshed on top of us. And that guy was Blaine Alexander.

I said, “Why the hell is Blaine getting SERB paperwork? He’s the cream of the crop. Well, at least as far as you officer types go.”

Kurt smiled at the slur and said, “Because he’s been shining a seat with his ass at the Joint Staff for the last four years. While his peers have been in combat.”

“Yeah? That’s his cover position. You don’t have a way to protect him?”

Blaine, like all the members of the Taskforce—like I had done before I became a civilian—lived a dual life. They killed or captured terrorists in secret but were officially assigned to a real military unit. While they faced the guns and dying, they were given reports for some innocuous position inside the giant Department of Defense architecture. Actually, inside the greater government, as we had members of the CIA doing the same thing.

Kurt said, “I could have, but I fucked him. He was turned down for colonel on two promotion boards because, according to his file,
he’s done nothing. He didn’t care, because he loves his job, but I missed the signals. I mean, he has a good file, but it’s all fake-ass staff work at the Pentagon, while his peers have been commanding guys in combat. I never thought about how this would play out long-term. I figured he could stay forever. Turns out, the Army had a different idea. I screwed him.”

Knuckles said, “Surely you can fix that. I mean, we
are
the Taskforce.”

Staring into his beer, Kurt said, “Yeah, yeah. I can, and I will. He’ll be okay, rankwise, but that doesn’t alter the bigger problem. He makes colonel, and he’s the same rank as me. We don’t have a job for another colonel. There’s no position for him. I can control the structure and positions of those below me, but I can’t have him on my staff with the same rank. He’ll have to go anyway.”

I said, “Then you just go to general officer. Get your brigadier. Shit, we have the entire intelligence and defense establishment on the Oversight Council. How hard could that be?”

“I thought of that, and talked it over with Wolffe. The problem is that GO appointments are approved by Congress. I also haven’t been doing a damn thing for the last six years. As far as my records show, I’m nothing but a burned-out colonel on the staff of the J3 Special Operations division. Yeah, the powers in the Oversight Council could make it happen, but it would never pass without intervention, which will invite scrutiny.”

He pushed a toothpick through the ring his beer had made on the table. He looked old. Older than I’d ever seen him look before.

He said, “Shit, have you seen the political knife fights that go on here? In this town? No way can I let that investigation get started. Some eager beaver opposed to the administration will tear into the nomination for political points, and possibly expose the Taskforce. Bring down the administration.”

17

K
urt made the statement in such a manner that the promotion meant nothing at all. Which was what I would expect from him. All he wanted to do was solve the problem, as he’d been doing for decades.

Jennifer said, “What does the rank matter? I get I’ve never been in the military, but isn’t that sort of the same BS you tried to get away from when you made the Taskforce? I mean, I don’t have any rank, and yet you trusted me in the Caymans.
Pike’s
no longer in the military, and he’s leading a team.”

I said, “Yeah. Why don’t you just make Blaine a civilian? A GS-15 or something? Hell, your own deputy is a civilian.”

Kurt said, “Wolffe is a standing member of the CIA. Hardly a civilian.”

George Wolffe was a legend in the CIA, working inside the Special Activities Division, he’d been involved in just about every covert action the United States had conducted, both good and bad.

I said, “But Blaine is of the same mettle. Just because he’ll become a civilian doesn’t mean he’s going to
become
a civilian. Any more than I did.”

Kurt took another sip of his beer and said, “I’m not worried about Blaine. Or you, for that matter. I’m worried about what I created. About the Taskforce. We’re starting to get entrenched. Starting to be
something other than a flash in the pan, and what we do now will solidify who we are.”

“What’s that mean?”

“It means I can’t control the future. It means if I choose Blaine as a civilian because he’s
Blaine
, someone in the future may choose another civilian who isn’t Blaine. It means I’ve created something that needs to have left and right limits.”

He took a sip of beer and continued. “Honestly, I’m worried about the precedent I’ve set with you. You
and
Jennifer. We had firm criteria to get into the Taskforce, and I broke that because of personalities. I did it for the right reasons, but someone behind me can abuse it. I have to prevent that.”

I realized he was talking about things way, way above my pay grade. I said, “Are you saying you’re leaving?”

“No, no. Not yet. But there’s a presidential election coming up, and a change of administration one way or the other. President Warren
is
leaving, and we have to prepare for that. He created the Taskforce, and he’s all we’ve known. This isn’t like the Department of Defense, where the president changes over but the systems remain intact. When the new administration is read on, it’ll be a new world. They’ll focus on what’s been established, and may—or may not—use it as it was intended. It worries me.”

He looked at each of us in turn, then said, “I hand-selected each of you. I picked you, recruited you, then put you through selection.” Jennifer leaned back, and he amended his statement, saying, “Okay, I didn’t hand-select
you
, Jennifer, but I did let you go through selection because I’d seen what you held. Hear me out.”

He toyed with his pint glass, thinking, then said, “I had that control, but I won’t always have it. The next man may choose a different route, and all it will take is one man to go bad to bring this whole thing down.”

He bored into me and said, “Like you almost did.”

I felt like I’d been slapped. Yeah, I’d made an ass of myself, sinking into a morass of alcohol and self-hatred, but I’d never done anything to compromise the Taskforce. I said, “Hey, sir, all due respect, that’s bullshit. I would—”

He cut me off with a hand and said, “There’s a reason I asked both of you up here. Jennifer gets the award, but I need your skill. Your special skill.”

The table grew quiet. Still fuming, I waited on his next words. He said, “You know Guy George?”

I said, “Yeah. You know I do. We were in the same troop when you were the squadron commander.”

“I think he’s going off the reservation. Understand, I have no proof. Just a vibe. The same one I had with you, way back when. I ignored it then, not knowing any better, but I don’t intend to repeat that. I think he’s got a vendetta because of his brother. I want you to talk him off the ledge.”

I said, “How? Why me?”

He said, “The how is your damn information from the Caymans. I had him here in the headquarters, collating information, getting some downtime. He took your data from the castle operation, and sure as shit, the guy there was potentially one of the pictures on his brother’s target package. Originally, he was convinced that a Qatari was behind his brother’s death, some bigwig in the government, and we stood him down on that because of a lack of evidence. It was conspiracy theory stuff. Then, when your data appeared, showing another Qatari who was associated with the first, his face
also
on the target package, he went ballistic. He’s convinced they killed his brother.”

I leaned back and said, “Well, maybe they did.”

Kurt took a deep breath, choosing his next words carefully. “Yeah, maybe they did. I want to bring the new evidence to the Council tomorrow. At Jennifer’s award ceremony. I want to get sanction to chase them, and I will. The guys from Qatar won’t kill anyone else, but
they’ll be removed from the chessboard by an official Taskforce mission. Not because of a vendetta. I need you to make that happen.”

Confused, I said, “How? You want me to go hunt the guys from Qatar? I’m all ears, but I don’t have a Taskforce target package.”

“No. I want you to go to Montana. Go talk to Guy. He’s about to walk off the cliff, and you’ve been there. You know what he’s going through. Talk to him. You guys were in the same troop, and he respects you. Just don’t let him do anything stupid.”

The waitress came over and I asked for a rum and Coke. The beer wasn’t cutting it. I knew that, in order to do what he said, I’d have to dip a toe into my own blackness. Hell, to succeed in bringing Guy back from the abyss, I’d probably have to roll in the blackness like a stripper in oil. It was something I’d worked hard to leave behind, and definitely didn’t want to revisit.

Kurt saw my face and said, “Pike, I wouldn’t ask. I really wouldn’t, but I think this is important. Just go talk to him. Let him know where you were, and what happened. Let him know there’s better ways of handling it.”

I took a breath and looked at Knuckles. At my teammate. He nodded. Solemn.

I said, “Okay. I’ll do it. If that’s what you want, I’ll do it.”

I felt the tendrils of the beast, laughing at how easy it was to return.

When I’d lost my family, I became what some would call a sociopath. Before, I had been a trained killer at the apex of the predator chain, but with a moral compass. I did what was necessary to protect the United States. I was the White Knight keeping people from harm. After my loss, I was still an apex predator. That hadn’t disappeared.

But my compass had.

If Guy was the same way, Kurt had a lot more worries than getting Blaine promoted.