The Severance (20 page)

“Oh, yeah, Sir. I need to check on that award paperwork. I’ll be right over here,” McBride said, backing away slowly.

“My life is fucking over!” Jake groaned.

“No, it’s not,” Jessica said.

“Are you keeping the baby?” Jake asked.

“Yes, I’m keeping it. Major Bradley is going to have me sent home,”

“My life is over, my wife will divorce me, and take my son away,”

“Jake, don’t worry, there is a 50–50 shot that you’re not the father,” Jessica said.

“What do you mean?” Jake asked through clenched teeth.

“Look, I didn’t want to tell you about all this at once, but I guess you have a right to know. Wesley and I have been seeing each other,” Jessica said.

“You were cheating on me with Wesley Parker?” Jake asked, stunned. Looking behind him, Jake could see McBride trying to make small talk with Wes.

“Why are you so mad? You were cheating on your wife, weren’t you?”

“Let me get this straight, you don’t know who the father of that baby is?” Jake asked, pointing at Jessica’s abdomen.

Jessica gave Jake a cool gaze that told him her former ardor had cooled. “Look, Jake, Wes is convinced that it’s his baby, and he’s prepared to take care of it,” Jessica said.

“How could he have any certainty that it’s his kid?” Jake whispered.

“He thinks that we stopped sleeping together two months ago.” Jessica said.

“And what about that pilot?” Jake asked.

“We’re just friends,” Jessica said quickly. “I don’t care what you think; just don’t mess this up for me. Wesley is a great guy and he’s going to be a good dad—better than you would be,” Jessica said. The comment stung Jake’s pride.

“I don’t know if I can let you dupe Wesley like this. I mean, I’m a real bastard but I don’t know if I can let this happen,” Jake said, looking back at Wesley. Stealing millions of dollars from the government was one thing; allowing another man to raise what could be his child was another. Jake began thinking of ways he could deal with this new problem.

“Listen to me, you dumb son of a bitch,” the nurse cried out, grabbing Jake by the front of his uniform. “If you fuck this up for me, I promise you that I will call your wife and tell her about us, and this love child. I will hit you with a paternity suit and take you to court for child support. I will go to your hometown, rent every billboard I can find and put up ads telling everyone who can read English that you cheated on your wife. I will devote my entire life to fucking up yours. I want Wesley, and you want your wife. This is easy; just don’t fuck with me.” When she was done, she shoved Jake away.

“Hey, babe, is everything okay?” Wesley asked, walking up, with McBride half a step behind.

“Everything is great, Wes. Jake and I were just talking; I told him about us,” Jessica said, with a beaming smile. Suddenly, Jake wondered why he had ever found the nurse attractive. Wesley’s shoulders drooped.

“Dude, I didn’t want to keep it from you. I was going to tell you tonight at dinner. I feel terrible about how all this happened,” Wesley said to Jake, who began straightening his uniform top.

“Oh, hey, Wes, you have nothing to feel bad about at all. Jessica and I are done,” Jake said, forcing a grin.

“But I never told you—”

“You intended to! That’s what counts! You know, Sergeant McBride is always telling us that good intentions are what counts!” Jake said.

“Yup, I always say that,” McBride chimed in, despite the fact that he’d never said anything of the sort.

“Congratulations, Sir,” McBride said, giving Wesley a hearty pat on the back.

Jake needed a minute to think, to get his bearings, to—

“Well, hello, Jake.”

Jake could not will himself to move. McBride’s face turned pale.

“Jake?” the voice inquired again. Now there was a finger tapping on his shoulder. There was no way he could feign ignorance any longer. Slowly turning around, he found himself face-to-face with another attractive, blackhaired woman with blue eyes, a captain no less. Behind her stood a taller man with blond hair. He was wearing a flight suit. Jake read the captain’s uniform nametape and instantly remembered how he knew her.

“Christine Doyle!” he exclaimed. Years before, during his first combat tour, he had had a brief relationship with the woman, but had been able to end the relationship on a positive note and had almost forgotten her entirely. He suddenly realized that the similarities between Jessica and Christine Doyle couldn’t be denied. They could have easily passed for sisters. Jake had never been ashamed of his particular taste in women, but now it was proving to be his undoing. Yet, he had married a redhead with green eyes.

“What happened to your face?” Christine asked.

“Oh nothing, just an accident,” Jake replied.

“His platoon sergeant punched him,” Jessica chimed in.

“But everyone said you hit your face on a rock,” Wesley said. Jake let out a nervous laugh and McBride groaned .

“In the grand scheme of things, how I hurt my face isn’t really important. We should focus on the present. Christine, how are you?” Jake asked, hoping with all his might to deflect focus away from his injuries and their backstory.

“Oh, I’ve been good. Look, I just wanted to congratulate you on your award and introduce you to my boyfriend, Owen,” Christine said grabbing the aviator’s hand and pulling him forward. Jake quickly searched the pilot’s eyes for malice, but found none. He looked almost as nervous as Jake.

“Jake Roberts,” Jake said slowly extending his right hand.

“Owen Jasser,” the pilot said, grabbing Jake’s hand and shaking it vigorously. “I fly Apaches out of Bagram— I was one of the pilots that supported you two nights back,” It took a full two seconds for the words to register with Jake.

“Oh! You were the guy with the Hellfires,” Jake said finally.

“Yeah, I’m MadDog 71! Chrissy mentioned that she knew you and I told her that I really wanted to meet you. That was some wild shit! We’ve been tear-assing all over the place looking for you. You’re a hard dude to track down!” the pilot exclaimed.

“Ha! Well, you know, I’ll have to work on making myself a little more findable.” Jake stood like a dummy—dazed, feigning sincerity. So Christine had been searching the base to arrange this encounter. When Lopez had told him about the woman he’d seen at the talent show, he hadn’t been describing Jake’s ex, but his ex-ex.

“Well, I can see you’re a little busy with your friends. Like I said, congratulations!” Owen said.

As the couple walked away, Jake and McBride made eye contact, both knowing they had things to discuss—and only in private.

With any hope of a polished exit trashed, Jake chose to make the best one he could.

Backing away, he heard Wes asking, “Do you still want to eat dinner?”

“That would be great, dude. I’ll get with you later,” Jake said. Jessica gave Jake a look of disgust.

“You’d better start talking,” Jake said, as he and McBride power walked through the crowded foot traffic of Disney Road.

“Sir, things have changed—”

“Yeah, you’re a fucking liar,” Jake interrupted. “Where were my Slim-Jims?”

“Slim-Jims?” McBride looked sincerely baffled.

“Last night, after dinner, you said you were going to get some junk food from the PX and then watch movies on your laptop. I asked you to get me Slim-Jims. You didn’t,”

“So?”

“So, I get back to the tent and you don’t have any Slim-Jims; you don’t have any junk food of any kind. You didn’t go to the PX.”

“Where you going with this, boss?”

“Where did you go?”

“Sir—”

“Shut up! Back at Salerno, Olsen told me about Jessica’s new pilot boyfriend. You told me Jessica was here on Bagram. Lopez told me that he saw her with a pilot at the talent show.”

“Come on, Sir. Those girls are practically twins. It was an honest mistake,” McBride pleaded.

“Bullshit, Greg! You used the coincidence to your advantage! What isn’t bullshit is the fact that Olsen takes medication. Medication that he gets at the hospital in Salerno. You know what else he gets from the hospital? Hospital pens.”

“Sir—”

“I’m willing to bet that one of those pens fell out of his pocket while he was putting a fucking sandbag on the accelerator of the truck that almost ran me over.”

“Let me get in a word here, Sir!”

“Oh, you’ll get all the time to talk later. When I asked you about Olsen last night, you put him at the talent show with Lopez and Nelson, but I never followed up on that. I trusted you!”

“You can trust me, Sir. I’ve got your back, but you need to listen.”

“All I’ve been doing is listening, yeah, listening to
you
. You got a big block of time unaccounted for last night. But don’t worry, we’re going to fix that when we get back to the tent. You and I are going to talk to everyone. We’re going to lay out everyone’s timeline and we’re going to figure out who the fucking rat is, but Greg, I got to tell you, it’s not looking good for you and Gramps.”

McBride grabbed his superior’s arm.

“Olsen is C.I.D.!” McBride said.

The letters resonated in Jake’s eardrums. Criminal. Investigation. Division. Brought in to investigate only the most important and highest profile criminal matters, C.I.D. agents were dedicated in their pursuit of soldier felons. Guys like Jake and McBride. C.I.D. agents going undercover, posing as regular soldiers in units to expose drug dealers and other conspiracies were legendary. Beads of sweat began to form on Jake’s forehead.

“How do you know?” he gasped.

“I found his ID, his real ID. His name isn’t Olsen; its Walters. Darren Walters. He’s a Chief Warrant Officer Four. We searched his stuff this morning while he was in the shower. He kept his real ID under the insole of one of his running shoes.”

Jake almost laughed at his own ignorance. He’d never seen the rotund Olsen do any exercise other than walk to and from the chow hall.

He leaned against a nearby fence and McBride joined him. The foot traffic on Disney Road continued to flow past the two men, completely unaffected by their plight.

“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” Jake asked.

“Couldn’t get to you this morning without Olsen seeing, Sir.”

Jake bit his bottom lip and shut his eyes, hoping that he was just having another nightmare. He wasn’t; this was all too real.

“You remember right after Harris got killed. Everyone was heartbroken. Heck, you wouldn’t come out of your room for two days. Olsen, or Walters, comes to me, crying that on top of Harris dying, he gets word from his wife that they are behind on the mortgage, their credit cards were maxed out, and his kid just got diagnosed with autism. Real sob story,” McBride said.

“Yeah, I’m in tears,” Jake said, trying to maintain his composure.

“Look, he comes in there, laying on the waterworks and, like I said, I was pretty messed up about Harris—”

“So you cut him in on The Severance.”

“Yes, Sir. I cut him into Harris’s share. Harris didn’t have a wife or kids, so I didn’t think it would be a big deal.”

“We agreed to keep Olsen in the dark on The Severance.”

“Yes, Sir.”

“I also recall that we agreed that each man was going to be given an additional thirteen hundred bucks that would take care of Harris’s share,” Jake said, closing his eyes, concentrating just on breathing.

“Yes, that’s what we said. I know I went against your word—”

“Our word. You went against our word.”

“Yes, Sir.”

“So you cut him in. Then what?”

“Well, I thought everything was fine, until I saw Olsen snooping around your stuff yesterday, after the mission, while you racked out,” McBride said.

Jake nodded his head slowly. “My notebook?” he asked.

“Yeah, he ripped those pages out. I checked it after he left. He has the container serial number. I went by the computer lab. Olsen had signed in.”

“Why didn’t you bring me into the loop?”

“At that point, I thought he was just trying to find The Severance. I put Lopez and Nelson on him, but he gave them the slip.”

“Then, he tried to kill me with a truck?” Jake asked.

“Sir, I thought I could deal with Olsen without bringing you in. I-I didn’t want you to know that I was the one that put everything in jeopardy. I thought all I had to do was keep you separated from Olsen and both of you away from The Severance and I’d be able to put everything right, again. Please—”

“That motherfucker almost killed me.”

“I didn’t know he was going to do that. By the time I put all the pieces together, I was already so deep. I didn’t mean to put you in danger. I thought I could protect you—”

“So you left me out there flapping.” Jake had never felt this betrayed, and by a guy he’d trusted so completely. “You let me run around like an idiot so you could deal with this problem at your leisure.”

“Sir, Big Joe and Bena were watching your back at the customs office. We were watching out for you the whole time, after the Hilux episode,” McBride said.

“And the flashbang? What about that?” Jake asked.

“Well, Sir, that wasn’t Olsen. That was Nelson, actually—”

“Nelson flashbanged us? He’s with Olsen? Why would he flashbang us?”