The Big Burn

“What? I need that much?”

“It’s my job to prepare you the best I can. Besides, if you’re with me I want to know I’ve made you very comfortable with Heckler and Koch.”

“Who are they?”

“They are the assault weapons you’ll be married to until we’re extracted. A thousand rounds from now you’ll think you were born with them in your hands.”

“I’m so excited,” she said sarcastically. “How long does it usually take to train somebody for your line of work?”

“Couple years. Couple million rounds.”

“I’m going to be proficient with Heckler and Koch in a day? Yeah, right.”

“Familiar is the operative word. Proficient is a marriage of talent and practice we don’t have the time for. Just give it a chance, okay?”

She nodded.

They rode in silence for a time, then Brock glanced over at her. “You may or may not hit the bad guys. I just want to make sure you don’t shoot me should a crisis arise.”

Excuse me, she thought with an inner smile, but you, my friend, are way too necessary to my survival to shoot. “I’ll try not to.”

“What’s between you and the CIA?” Brock asked.

“Years of lies.”

“Then it must feel good to finally know the truth.”

“Is it?”

“You don’t believe that your father is alive?” He glanced over at her, a look of confusion on his face.

“I don’t know yet,” she explained. “I guess I do. It’s just such a shock, it’s hard to bring this whole thing into focus. If he’s really in trouble, I want to get him out of there. Once he’s safe, then I’ll go ahead and have whatever kind of joyful nervous breakdown it requires.”

“We’ll get him out,” Brock said. “Given your record and mine, I’d say as a team we might just be the best there is at extracting somebody from a very bad situation.”

Flattery no less. She wondered what the structure of his thought patterns might be. He never appeared condescending, like Verrill, which she found to be a bit of a shock. He didn’t seem to possess any really annoying macho mannerisms toward her. Anna had run into just about every variety of male as a smoke jumper. The heroes and the assholes. She was sure the military was no different. Brock was a mystery that didn’t look to be easy to unravel. He was charming, no doubt about that, but charm could be the most venomous of snakes. It always put women in a weak position. Anna liked to know who her friends and enemies were up front and the charmer never allowed that. They were the real high-stakes poker players in the game. The ones she had to look out for.

Another group of men appeared out of the jungle and jogged in single file across the road in front of them. These men wore jungle camouflage, carried weapons and had blackened faces. Brock slowed to let them get across the road and into the high grasses of the field.

“Why haven’t any females broken through this elite barrier yet?”

He gave her a sidelong glance with that enigmatic half smile of his.

“They have now.”

Watch this guy closely, Anna thought. He’s saying all the right things.

She was in trouble.

Chapter 6

Bethesda, Maryland

Stanford Ellis watched the silver-haired jogger move at a loping gait along the Potomac River until he turned off the trail and settled into a fast walk.

The jogger, Frank Patterson, was searching for Ellis, finally spotting him in a tree grove. He looked around as if making sure they were alone, then walked over to his former boss.

“Where are we?” Ellis asked.

“Verrill’s assembling a team to go in.”

“They still getting response from Jason Quick?”

“Yeah.”

“Who’s going in?”

“Quick’s daughter, Anna. She’s a smoke jumper and he’s demanding she come in with the team.”

“What!”

“I don’t know what the hell’s going on with him. Verrill says Quick is over the edge. Full-blown paranoia. He won’t cooperate unless we send his daughter in. She’s agreed. We pulled her off a fire in California.”

Patterson shrugged, then shook his head. He was a CIA agent who’d worked for nine years under Ellis before Ellis was pushed out. “John Brock, Special Ops, took her to Guam for some quick OJT to get her ready to jump on that island.”

“Quick wants his daughter in that mess? He must be crazy.”

“It’s bizarre as hell. Verrill thinks he’s farther over the edge than we first thought.”

“I can’t believe she agreed.”

“Well, she’s at the Guam IC right now. Verrill’s not happy about sending anybody in there. It’s a miserable situation. The island is on fire. It’s a real no-man’s-land. Neither Malaysia nor Indonesia have any authority in that area. Thousands of little islands. Most of them either controlled by pirates or criminal enterprises. Or Jemaah Islamiyah terrorists. Verrill thinks maybe the best way to play this—”

“I don’t give a rat’s ass about Verrill’s worries. We need to get rid of this bastard and get that damn laptop. Verrill understands that his name might be on one of those files, doesn’t he?”

“Yeah. But he thinks if we play it so we can’t find Quick, he’ll just die on his own.”

“So he thinks.”

“Or somebody from the Jemaah Islamiyah will get to him if he’s out there long enough.”

“Can’t risk it. The laptop is still out there. Besides, it’s too late for that. We have to make sure this is buried and buried deep.”

“The ship’s on course to arrive in three days in Marseilles.”

“Then you tell Verrill he better get moving.”

Patterson sucked in his breath, and said, “Consider it done.”