Absolution (2 page)

“It’s me,” a male voice replied in English.

His hand clenched tighter around the phone.

Abdu. His eyes and ears until he got back on his feet.

“What have you learned?”

“I have bad news, I’m afraid.”

Tehrazzi’s heart gave a sickening throb. “Tell me.” “The operation failed.”

He closed his weary eyes. “He is still alive?”

“Yes. Ahmed died attempting to kill Doctor Adams. No one followed up on Hutchinson.”

His jaw clenched so hard his teeth ached. Doctor Adams was the least of his concern now. His teacher was all that mattered. “What happened?”

“Security was too tight at the hospital.

Communication broke down amid the confusion with Ahmed’s death.”

“Where is he?”

“The hospital released Hutchinson this morning, but I can’t find out if he’s left Vancouver yet.”

Of course he’d left. His teacher would never stay in the same place, especially when he’d been targeted there. “What about his wife?”

“His wife? I thought they were divorced.”

Tehrazzi suppressed a growl of irritation. That was irrelevant. She would be easier to find, vulnerable. And for all the years they’d spent apart, his teacher still cared deeply about her. That wouldn’t have changed, nor would the fact he would always wear the precious medallion she’d given him.

Tehrazzi knew him too well to believe otherwise.

Losing her would eviscerate him, even now. “Find out where they both are.”

“I’ll look into it and get back to you.”

“Do that.”

Tehrazzi hung up and laid back against his damp pillow. Perhaps he’d been thinking about this 6

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the wrong way. Maybe he should focus on the wife.

He’d targeted other women in his teacher’s circle because it guaranteed his teacher would respond personally. And every time it had worked.

He shifted on the thin straw mattress. Planning an operation like that stateside would be difficult.

The Vancouver debacle proved how unreliable the men he’d hired were. For this to work, Tehrazzi had to be directly involved. And when the end came, he wanted to be the one facing off against his teacher.

Allah willing, he would prevail.

The rough wool blanket scratched and hurt his fevered skin, but at least it was warm. Winter closed in on the mountains. In a few weeks the snows would make travel all but impossible. And his body…he wasn’t ready to take this operation on yet.

Much as it killed him, he had to wait until he was stronger. But what could he do in the meantime besides plan his next move?

His restless gaze fell on the pack he’d placed next to his bed. The book was in it. Stained and worn, its binding falling apart, he still carried it with him. For twenty years he’d kept it as a reminder.

A frown creased his forehead. Christmas was only a few weeks away. Perhaps it was time to let go of his memento.

His hand shook when he reached for the pack and dragged it over, biting down on his lips to keep from crying out as his wound pulled. Reaching inside, he took it out and studied the tattered cover in the dimness. He rubbed his thumb across the faded title. A barrage of conflicting emotions flooded him. Grief. Bitterness. Rage. And above it all, an aching, terrible loneliness.

Releasing a deep, slow breath, he laid it on his lap and called out for his host. The man appeared a moment later.

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“I wondered if I might impose upon you to take a package into Kabul and mail it for me.”

“Of course, I’d be honored to.”

When he left, Tehrazzi stared down at the paperback cradled in his hands. This would be a Christmas gift his teacher would never forget.

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Yesterday is history.

Tomorrow is a mystery.

And today? Today is a gift.

That is why we call it the present.

—Babatunde Olatunji

Baton Rouge, LA

Christmas Day

The waiting made him edgy as hell.

Luke Hutchinson eyed his silent cell phone lying on the coffee table next to his whirring laptop and loaded SIG Sauer, and willed it to ring. He hated the waiting almost as much as the dread he couldn’t shake. In the quiet of the room all his senses were on alert, anticipating…something.

All thanks to the tattered paperback novel in his lap. He’d found it on his front porch when he’d come back from his morning run. One look at the brown paper wrapping and his heart had gone into overdrive. Nobody sent him Christmas gifts anymore. But this was no ordinary gift.

It was a promise.

He stared down at the faded title and thought of the day he’d bought it for his young friend. A piss-poor substitute for his physical presence, but a gesture to show he cared, meant to help Farouk improve his English because Luke could no longer be there to teach him.

He swallowed a bitter laugh. Looking back, how had he not seen what was coming?

The title taunted him.
To Kill a Mockingbird
.

The significance of the book worked on so many levels, and made his stomach clench tight as a fist.

He knew exactly what it meant.

The student was finally coming after the 9

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teacher. Only Luke didn’t know when that fateful meeting would happen. Or where.

A shadow moved outside the French doors that led onto the back deck. A quick flash of darkness.

Hackles rising, he shut the laptop to extinguish its lit screen, snatched up the gun and crept along the wall toward the doors, staying low and out of sight. In the kitchen, pale moonlight shone through the rectangular panes of glass, reflecting on the hardwood floor. The refrigerator hummed quietly.

Nothing else stirred.

Pausing, he waited there in the darkness for a few minutes. His mind spun with various tactical scenarios. The chances of someone sneaking up and catching him unawares were almost nil, but he was going to check things out regardless.

When nothing else disturbed the silence or caught his attention, Luke edged to the French doors. He threw one open and burst through it onto the deck, pistol aimed and ready. A cold breeze blew over his face and rustled the branches of the pecan trees edging the yard. The half moon threw its silver rays onto the grass and led his gaze to the dock that stretched out into the lake. Not a ripple disturbed the clear surface, and he didn’t detect the sound of a motor. He relaxed his stance. Was he just being paranoid? Maybe. Very few people had the ability to take him on, and fewer still worried him.

But Farouk Tehrazzi was more than capable of keeping Luke awake at night. The bastard had already come close to killing him several times.

Satisfied he was still alone on his property, Luke slipped back inside and rearmed his custom security system. Yet for some reason he couldn’t shake the anxiety lingering inside him. Was Tehrazzi already stateside?

No. Impossible. No way could he travel here without someone picking up on it. Luke tossed the 10

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paperback on the couch aside and rubbed his hands over his face.

He didn’t sleep much so it wasn’t unusual for him to be awake at this hour, but all night he’d had a gut deep certainty of impending doom. Something was wrong, he could feel it. After serving so many years in the shadowy realm of CIA counterterrorism operations, he knew enough to trust his instincts.

And they screamed that the monster he’d created was on the move again. The “gift” he’d received merely confirmed it.

The call from his boss back at Langley that morning verified they’d lost their only helpful lead on Tehrazzi when he’d crossed over the Afghani border from Pakistan. Once across, he would settle amongst the Pashtun villages dotting the high mountain peaks of the Hindu Kush. Now they had as much chance of finding him as they did bin Laden.

Unless Luke could somehow tempt him with an opportunity juicy enough to bring him out of hiding.

He ran a hand through his shaggy hair, his palm brushing over the healed craniotomy site at the base of his skull. That inconvenient surgery had kept him sidelined while Tehrazzi made his flight into the mountains of Afghanistan. Now, Luke was more than ready to get over there and finish what he’d started all those years ago during the Russian-Afghan war in the name of defending democracy for the CIA.

If only the Agency would let him get back to doing what he did best instead of gumming up the whole operation with enough red tape to gift wrap the Statue of Liberty. First it’d been because they wouldn’t give him medical clearance to go into the field. Once he’d cleared that hurdle, it was because they hadn’t signed off on the team he wanted. A former Green Beret named Davis was still over in A-11

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stan working his magic, infiltrating the tiny villages and getting cozy with the warlords to garner new intelligence. Right now, that was the only part Luke felt good about. If anyone could find out what Tehrazzi was up to, it was Davis. He was the best at counter insurgency that Luke had ever seen during his career in Special Ops.

The grandfather clock in the hallway chimed midnight, officially making it Boxing Day. Luke glanced around his spartan living room with a sigh.

Not that yesterday had resembled anything close to Christmas. On the few occasions he came home during the holidays, he never bothered with a tree or lights. What was the point? It only reminded him he was alone, and by choice.

This year, he didn’t even have a Christmas card sitting on his mantel. For the first time in over two decades, his ex-wife hadn’t sent him one. And she hadn’t returned his calls. He’d phoned her twice to find out if she was okay after her sudden departure from Vancouver when he’d come out of recovery, and left a message the last time. Nada. It bothered him more than he wanted to admit. She was responsible for a good percentage of the current tension in his gut. Luke set the pistol on the coffee table and sank onto the couch to open the laptop screen. Yep, quite a life he’d carved out for himself. He’d spent most of his days tracking down terrorists in every war-torn and backward country on the planet, first as a SEAL

officer, and later in the shadowy realm of CIA paramilitary ops and contract work. He’d faced death more times than he could count, and taken more lives than he cared to remember. At this point, he didn’t care if he bought it on the next mission so long as he got Tehrazzi in the process. With everything he’d gone through in his life, it would be a relief for the pain to stop. Unless he went to hell.

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Then his suffering would go on forever.

If hell existed, he’d more than earned an eternity of torture and misery there. Though he doubted the devil could do much worse to him than he’d inflicted upon himself over his lifetime. If what he’d done in the name of duty didn’t earn him a place in the underworld once he croaked, he always had the trump card of abandoning his wife and young son all those years ago. That knowledge never went away, no matter what he did. It stayed buried in his heart like a razor blade.

Christ, it was a miracle he’d been invited to his son’s wedding a month ago, and wouldn’t have been if he and Rayne hadn’t tried patching the cracks and fissures in their relationship—if someone could call it that—six months ago. On his way to the Baton Rouge airport Luke had almost turned around on the freeway and gone home. Would have been safer for everyone if he had. In the middle of a dance with Emily, the first time he’d touched her in over a decade, his head injury had finally taken its toll and landed him flat on his back in the middle of the dance floor. Out cold, and they’d dragged him off to the hospital. One brain surgery later, and voila, he was good as new.

Absently he toyed with the St. Christopher medallion hanging from a gold chain around his neck. Em had given it to him when he’d first made the SEALs, and he’d never taken it off. Not once in over twenty years, until that surgery when one of the nurses had given it to Emily to hold. Maybe that’s why she’d taken off so suddenly with the cryptic message of “having her own demons to face”

and flown back to Charleston. Finding out he still wore the thing must have been a shock for her.

The laptop suddenly beeped with an incoming email. When he opened the file from Bryn, he frowned. She was the cog in the wheel that joined 13

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him, his family, and most of his hand-picked team together. She’d just married a SEAL named Dec McCabe. Luke had enlisted him to track down Tehrazzi back in September when she’d been kidnapped.

Luke braced for bad news. If Bryn was back from the honeymoon already and e-mailing him at this hour on Christmas night her time, it had to mean Dec had been called out to join Dev Group.

Which meant either something big was brewing in the Middle East that he didn’t know about, or the top brass expected trouble in the immediate future.

Hey, Luke. Just got off the phone with Rayne.

Emily’s not doing very well...

His stomach dropped. Damn it, he’d
known
something wasn’t right with her.

Christa and Rayne are with her, but I’m heading
to Charleston tomorrow, and thought maybe you
should give her a call. Will keep you posted.

Bryn

Staring at the screen with an awful hollow feeling in his gut, all Luke’s focus was on Emily.

He’d known it had to be bad for her to leave the hospital in Vancouver before he’d come out of recovery, but if it was bad enough for Bryn to fly down there...

He remembered the e-mail from his son back in Afghanistan on the last mission in late September.

P.S. You might want to talk to mom ASAP.

Jesus, he’d been too chicken shit to phone her after their last conversation had ended so disastrously, so he’d let it slide. Seeing her at Rayne’s wedding was the first time he’d made contact since. She’d been pale, but he’d assumed it had to do with seeing him face-to-face and the fact their only child was getting married. But Christ, what if it was something way more serious?