Black Site (8 page)

He’d been administered IV drugs, this was clear, because he felt no pain, only the cold in the thin air and the vibration of the helo’s engines. A dozen Rangers sat around him on the floor, their backs pressed against the thin walls of the aircraft. Their uniforms and gear were government-issued, in stark contrast to his own clothing and equipment. The Rangers looked impossibly young and clean-cut in the red light of the cabin.

He looked down and realized that the man treating him was Benji, a baby-faced Delta operator from Raynor’s squadron. He then noticed another operator looking out a portal of the Chinook with his rifle cradled in his arms. Master Sergeant David “Monk” Kraus stared into the night. Behind Monk, on the floor of the helo, Raynor saw three black body bags stacked one on top of the other.

He blinked and looked away.

Benji must have noticed that his patient had awakened. He shouted over the chopper’s engines. “How you holding up, Racer?”

“Can’t feel my legs.” His words felt fat and slow in his mouth, an effect of the drugs coursing through him.

“Yeah, your lumbar is broken. Most likely the snap just bruised your spinal cord. If you’re lucky you’ll get your feeling back in a few days. You also caught three in the leg. Lost two quarts of blood, but we’re filling you back up. You’re outta here. Going to Ramstein as soon as we get up to Bagram and get you on a transport.”

“Where’s T.J.?” Raynor asked. Although T.J.’s Eagle 01 element was not part of the Quick Reaction Force, they had been staged three hours closer to the border than this Ranger/Delta QRF. Raynor had assumed that if anyone had been able to rescue him, it would have been his friend.

Benji looked down at Racer. Said nothing.

Now Monk appeared over Raynor’s immobilized head. Dropped down on his kneepads, leaned closer still. Even in the dim, red-tinged cabin, Raynor could see malevolence in the master sergeant’s eyes. He and Musket were best friends.

But there was something more.

Monk said, “The JOC ordered up the QRF at 0900 after they intercepted AQ radio traffic saying the Taliban engaged American commandos. But T.J. didn’t want to wait. He talked an Mi-17 chopper at his safe house into taking Eagle 01 over the border to your ROD. They couldn’t find you, so they flew to your rendezvous point. On the way the chopper took an RPG to the prop. They tried to make it back over the border, but they lost control. They went down hard in the Tochi River four klicks north of where we found you. The UAV overhead didn’t see anyone surface. We asked the Pak Army to help us search for survivors, but they’re plenty pissed about the incursion, and it’s not like they’ve got control of that area of operations. The river is fast and deep and runs through a hundred miles of bandit country. We’ve been told we’re to make no more cross-border incursions unless we have positive proof of life. We’ve got two UAVs overhead, but it looks like T.J. and the rest of Eagle 01 are dead, along with the two Agency pilots.”

“Oh my God,” Raynor said.

“God didn’t have anything to do with it. Did you vacate your ROD site, Racer?”

“We were ambushed.”

“In your ROD?”

Raynor looked up at the ceiling of the chopper. For the first time since puberty, tears welled in his eyes. “Negative. I moved us forward.”

“Then all this shit is on you.”

Kolt nodded slowly. Closed his eyes. He knew his reasons for moving ahead had been sound, but it did not matter now. “I know,” he said softly.

Monk turned away, returned to his seat by the door.

*   *   *

After a week of intensive care in the hospital at Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany, and a further three months of inpatient treatment at Duke Medical Center in North Carolina, the majority of Raynor’s physical wounds had healed. Surgeons fused two vertebrae, and sensation and mobility returned to his legs. But while in the hospital, it was hard not to notice that visits by his chain of command were nearly nonexistent, and visits by teammates in-country were few and far between. He knew his decisions in Pakistan would be harshly criticized, but he also knew the OPTEMPO of his squadron kept the boys busy. He assumed it was the latter that was keeping his comrades away. But his mates who did drop in to check on him shared very little about their current activities, and this Raynor found strange. Strange that after three and a half months, he knew little more about what had happened to Eagle 01 than he’d learned from Monk on the recovery helo.

Soon enough it became clear to him. He was no longer “one of the boys.” As a Delta troop commander, he had always been audacious and aggressive. His superiors and subordinates had admired the ease with which Raynor seemed to fall into the shit and crawl back out smelling like a rose. But this time it was too much. Lieutenant Colonel Josh Timble and the five men who went down with him were missing and presumed dead, and when he finally returned to Fort Bragg, Major Kolt Raynor found his wall locker in his team room cleaned out and a maelstrom of incrimination and charges awaiting him. That he would be cashiered from Delta was never in doubt. No matter the extenuating circumstances, he had disobeyed a direct order and nine men had died as a result of his insubordination. A court-martial was considered, but all agreed that Raynor should be dismissed from the Army, quietly and quickly.

The Army he could live without, but the Unit declared him persona non grata, and this devastated him. Four months to the day after his ill-fated operation in South Waziristan, Major Kolt Raynor became, for the first time in eighteen years, simply Kolt Raynor, a man who had lost much more than a title before his name.

TEN

Three years later Raynor lay on the mattress on the floor of his trailer. Dressed only in his underwear, his body was covered in sweat that stank, though he didn’t notice, so accustomed had he become to his own stench. Morning light poured through the blinds in bright linear shafts and he recoiled from its sting. His long hair hung askew and his T-shirt retained the colors and smells of the microwavable Chinese dinner he’d polished off just before nodding off the night before.

He looked across the room at his clock, squinted to bring the green numbers into focus, and determined it was either ten after six or ten after eight. If it was the former he could go back to sleep; if it was the latter, he was in trouble.

He had to get up and go to work this morning.

Shit. Kolt closed his eyes.

His money had run out and with it all but the last of the booze, so now it was back to his old job, selling sleeping bags and climbing equipment at an upscale sporting-goods store in Southern Pines.

He had to be at work at nine, and he had either slept through his 6 a.m. alarm or forgotten again to set it, and now he was too hungover to even tell the time.

A knock on the door caused him to lift his eyes, but not to get up. He hadn’t heard a car pull up the gravel drive to his trailer, but in his current state his senses were hardly at their sharpest.

It came again. A pounding this time. Kolt rolled onto his side, his head hanging off the edge of the dirty mattress. He wasn’t expecting company, didn’t have any friends or owe anyone money.

“Hang on!” he shouted, fought with his covers to try and sit up.

With a crash the aluminum door flew in, a big black leather boot behind it, the cheap plastic blinds fell off the window, and the entire trailer rocked as if it had been hit by a bus. The upper hinge of the door broke free. The lower hinge held, but the door sagged deeper as the soft aluminum bent.

Raynor bolted upright.

David “Monk” Kraus stood in the doorway. Kolt hadn’t seen the Delta master sergeant since the night over western Pakistan, three years earlier, but he looked exactly the same, save for his clothes. Gone was his military uniform. Instead he wore a rust-colored flannel lumberjack shirt and faded blue jeans. He stepped inside and cleared the doorway, and Benji entered behind him. They both looked down at Kolt, at the bottles on the floor, at the shitty living arrangements.

“What the hell?” was all Raynor could think to say. He remained on the mattress against the wall.

“Get your ass up,” growled Monk.

“What’s going on?”

“We’re taking you to see somebody.”

Kolt did not move, recovered a bit from the shock of the intrusion. “And if I don’t want to go with you?”

“Nobody is asking what you want.” Monk kicked a bottle out of the way as he approached. It was a short walk to the opposite wall of the trailer.

Raynor made it to his feet, wobbled a bit. “I don’t know who the hell you think you are, but—”

“Are you drunk?”

“What? No. I’m a little hungover, but I—”

Monk looked to Benji. “Find the bathroom, start the shower. Ice-cold.” The baby-faced blond-haired operator disappeared up the tiny hall to the little bathroom. The water started in seconds.

“Back off! I can take my own damn shower. Just tell me what’s going—”

But Monk grabbed Kolt by the arm, turned him toward the bathroom, and pushed him forward.

Kolt could have fought—even in his present state he was no shrinking violet—but Monk had him beat in speed, size, and sobriety. In fact, the master sergeant was so overbearing that Raynor found himself intimidated, and did what he was told.

Three minutes later, with Benji and Monk standing by the door and watching his every move, a shivering Kolt Raynor kicked around in the clothes on the floor, found a pair of khakis that were not too wrinkled and a sweater that was not too stained. He pulled them on, toweled off his shaggy hair, and grabbed his wallet, cell phone, and keys off the tiny kitchen counter. The icy cold shower had awakened him, but a pang of nausea in his chest and stomach remained. He wanted to lie back down, but instead he followed the two Delta operators out the broken door and down the drive to Monk’s pickup truck.

In the cab no one spoke for several minutes as Monk drove south. Kolt assumed he was being taken into Fort Bragg, though he could not fathom why, unless it had something to do with what had happened off the coast of Somalia. But when the truck headed east on Highway 1, passing the turnoff to go south to the base, Raynor began with the questions.

“Where we going?”

“I told you,” said Monk. “Somebody wants to talk to you.”

“But not somebody from the Unit?”

Benji broke in. “Just sit tight, Racer.”

“I haven’t done anything.”

Monk chuckled angrily. “That’s for damn sure.”

Soon they were heading north on Highway 22. It was a clear and cool September morning. The green hills rose and fell on both sides of them. For a moment Kolt thought they were taking him to the Moore Country Airport, but the truck shot on by the turnoff at seventy miles an hour.

“What’s in Carthage?” Kolt asked. It was the next town to the north, but it was small, and Raynor did not really suspect it to be their destination.

So he was surprised when Monk responded, “Somebody that wants to take a look at you. If he doesn’t like what he sees, and I expect he won’t, we’ll take you back to that shit hole you call home and drop you off. You can fix your own damn door.”

Shortly after 9 a.m. they turned into a cheap motel just off the road. Monk drove around to the back and pulled up next to the only two cars in the lot. Benji got out of the cab, motioned for Kolt to lead the way to the door just in front of the two cars.

Kolt found the door unlocked.

He entered, followed by the two Delta operators, but only after they scanned the parking lot and the grove of trees behind it for several seconds. Once inside the two-bedroom unit, Monk shut the door, enshrouding the three men in low light.

Kolt stood in front of the TV and looked around for some explanation of what was going on. Monk and Benji just stood there with him in the dimness. Raynor said, “If you guys start taking your clothes off, I’m going headfirst out that window.”

Benji burst out in surprised laughter. Monk rolled his eyes, opened his mouth to say something, but a gentle rapping at the access door to the adjoining room interrupted him. Monk pushed by Raynor and opened the door.

Benji flipped on a lamp on the table between the beds.

A man in jeans and a denim work shirt entered the hotel room from the next unit. Kolt’s body stiffened immediately.

Colonel Jeremy Webber, the commander of Delta Force, stood in front of him. Raynor had not seen Webber since court-martial proceedings against him were dropped. He’d never seen him out of uniform, and he’d never seen him off base unless they were deployed in a combat zone. Standing in a fleabag motel and wearing clothes that looked like they had been bought at a discount store only added to the shock and confusion of this morning.

Behind Webber, Pete Grauer, Kolt’s former Ranger commander, and former employer, stepped into the room.

“Take a seat, Racer,” Webber said. He did not offer his hand. His voice was gentle for a man obviously fit and formidable, but the fifty-year-old’s eyes were stern and serious.

Raynor sat on the edge of the bed nearest the door. The other four men in the room remained standing over him.

Webber eyed the former major for a long time in the shadowed light. Looked him up and down, as if Raynor were on sale at a cattle auction. “Worse than I thought.”

Kolt said nothing.

Grauer observed, “He’s definitely out of shape.”

Monk nodded. “He’s a waste case, sir. He’s useless.”

Colonel Webber frowned, gave a half nod. “You could be right. I must admit I wasn’t expecting this level of … decay.”

Kolt looked back and forth at the men. “I’m sitting right here. You want to tell me what’s going on?”

Webber said, “I brought you here to beg you to do something, but now I think I need you to beg me to
let you
do something.”

Kolt shrugged. “Whatever it is, I’ve got to get to work.”

“At the camping store? Expecting a mad midmorning rush on tent pegs?”

He shrugged again, defensively. “It’s a job.”

Grauer asked, “How much are you drinking these days, son?”

Kolt didn’t answer.

“How’s your leg?” This time it was Webber.