The Big Burn

Verrill handed her a photograph. “This was taken two months ago.”

The man in the photo was getting out of a car, wearing Muslim headgear and clothing, deeply tanned, older, but it was her dad. The nose, the shape of the face. Definitely him.

Then Verrill started lecturing her on how critical the mission was, how important it was to get her father out. That the free world was depending on her. He called it Operation Fierce Snake.

She stared at Verrill, but her mind was on her father and that day he’d left and never returned. She remembered him turning as he was getting into a friend’s car. She was getting ready to go to her first year at the University of Colorado. He’d winked, smiled and said, “Be good. Be quick.”

She had laughed. “We have to live up to our name.”

He’d smiled and given her a thumbs-up.

According to Brock, her dad was already remarried by then. He’d never said a thing.

Then Verrill regained her attention. “We’re still getting some weak, random signals from his locator. He’s up on the mountain. He has some contacts on the island and one of them will meet you when you go in. Brock will fill you in on the details.”

Her father had divorced her mother twelve years ago, but he never talked about it, or berated her mother. She’d been one of those very lucky girls to have the greatest of fathers. Anna knew, and apparently so did the CIA, that she’d go anywhere, risk anything, to get him back.

Verrill continued, “Malaysia is off-limits. If you go in, I don’t know anything about it. If you don’t come out, I know nothing about that either.”

Anna glanced at Brock. He was impassive.

Verrill said, “You will go into training immediately and train continuously until you leave. That’s all.”

He stood now and reached out to shake her hand. She shook it, but somehow she knew it was simply a formality. There was nothing friendly about the gesture. “Good luck,” he said, and pulled his hand back.

The way he said it, the dark flicker in his eyes, sent a chill through Anna. She knew he really didn’t believe she could get in there and get her father out.

She’d prove him wrong.

She followed Brock out of the office, through the Quonset hut and back into the heat.

“I would like to call my mother in Colorado.”

“No problem. But you can’t tell her anything about your father or what you’re up to. You should call her soon, because once we start the training you won’t have time to talk to her until after we get back. Plus, you should know that any calls going out of here will be monitored.”

A man coming out of one of the other Quonset huts walked toward them. He had the confident swagger of someone born and bred to run things, as comfortable at the country club as on a secret military base. “Anna Quick, I’m Tom Roca.” He shook hands with her. “Welcome on board. I heard about your saving those college kids. That was very fine work.”

She nodded. “Thanks.”

“Take good care of her, Brock,” Roca said, his eyes shifting for a brief second to Brock.

Brock didn’t answer.

“Great to meet Jason Quick’s daughter,” Roca said. “Enjoy your training.” He gave her a little smile, then walked into Verrill’s hut.

When he was gone, Anna turned to Brock as she climbed into the Humvee. “A friend of yours?”

“Not exactly. CIA. One of Verrill’s boys. Actually, he thinks he’s running this mission,” Brock said sardonically. “Practice before he assumes the job of running the universe.”

Anna smiled. She was starting to like Brock more and more.

They drove on to the village of Quonset huts down the road. She reflected on the tension between Roca and Brock, and Brock’s attitude toward Verrill. Not a happy group. She wondered what had happened to cause such hostility between them, and hoped it wouldn’t affect their chances of a successful operation.

Anna called her mom on a Sat phone Brock gave her—one, no doubt, that scrambled the conversation and made it impossible to be intercepted and decoded. She assured her mom that she was all right and was just going to sleep in for the next few days. Then she finally took a shower. She lingered in the downpour like a starved desert plant under the season’s first rain. She didn’t care if she used up all the water on the base, she was going to get clean. There were times, and this was one of them, when a shower or bath vaulted ahead of food, shopping or sex as life’s great relaxer. She didn’t need yoga, prayer, drugs or alcohol to get centered. She just needed water and soap.

Brock had gone somewhere to get her some clothes. When he came back she heard him on the other side of the door. “Everything you need is here.”

“Thanks.”

Fatigue breaks down the walls of reason and lets in unbidden thoughts, such as she was naked and a foot away was a handsome soldier. She smiled at her erotic nonsense. She wished she had time for a longer daydream but she was sure Brock was pacing outside, waiting for her to finish.

After the shower she found a pile of clothes just outside the stall on a chair. A green T-shirt, light nylon pants with four side pockets and jungle sneakers. High-fashion commando gear.

“Quick, you dressed?” Brock yelled from somewhere outside.

“Yes,” she called out. He walked in sooner than she’d expected, so she turned her back to him while she pulled her shirt down.

“Shower feel good?” Brock asked.

“I’m almost human.”

“You get that scar jumping?”

Shit.

She hated that he saw the scar on her back. She’d been planning on getting some skin grafts to get rid of it, but hadn’t had the time. “Yeah. Hit a snag. I didn’t have body armor on. It’s ugly, I know. I’m going to get it fixed one of these days.”

“It’s your badge of courage,” he protested.

“I like badges I can hide away in the drawer.”

He laughed and pulled up his shirt to display two nasty scars on his stomach. “Like these.”

The scars were there, but she was seeing the body that was holding them in place. The man had no fat on him. Didn’t she see a book in Barnes & Noble once with some title about the diet of the warrior among the thousand or so other diet books? Brock could be the cover.

She asked, trying to be nonchalant, “How did you get those?”

“Some moron tried to blow up a convoy I was hitching a ride on. Long story, bad ending for a lot of good people.” He tucked in his shirt. “Don’t think of a scar you earned in battle as ugly. There’s nothing ugly about it.”

She wasn’t going to argue with him, serious as he was. Especially when his scars represented something very emotional and deep. But she fully intended to get rid of hers…one of these days.

She followed him out to the Humvee and jumped into the passenger seat.

Anna rubbed her eyes. “The training for all of this had better be good.”

He gave her a wry glance, then headed down the road.

When they’d gone a few hundred yards, he said, “We’ll get in about a thousand rounds.”