Missing (3 page)

 
"Come on, soldier, you need to let us help you," a medic said, then took Wes by the arm.

 
But Wes's voice was shaking as he pushed the man away.

 
"No, don't. I have to take care of them," he said.

 
When they went to lift Margie onto a stretcher, Wes jerked, then leapt forward.

 
"Watch out, goddamn it! You're about to bump her head!" Gently, he slid his hands under the back of her neck and didn't let go until they'd laid her down.

 
"There now," he said softly, then pulled loose a bloody lock of hair that was stuck to her cheek and smoothed it back from her face. "Don't worry, darling. I won't let them hurt you."

 
The medics looked at one another, then looked away. They'd seen stuff like this before, but it didn't make it any easier. Trauma did crazy things to people's minds, and this was a bad one. When they went to remove the child from the debris, Wes lost it. His face was expressionless, but his body was shaking. He kept shifting his weight from one foot to the other; then he started to moan.

 
The medic closest to Wes was sympathetic to his distress, but these weren't the only two victims he'd pulled out of the site, and he feared there were more to come.

 
"Sir, you need to let us do our job."

 
"No...no... I'd better do this," Wes whispered. "He's my son, and he's not very good with strangers."

 
Tears were running down the medic's face as he stopped and swiped at his nose.

 
"Christ almighty. I hate this shit."

 
Wes was oblivious to everything but his son as he bent down and picked him up. Then he walked toward the empty stretcher, stumbling through cans of green beans as he went. But when he got there, instead of laying Mikey down, he pulled him close against his chest, and in the midst of smoke and debris, with his cheek against that soft little face, he began to moan.

 
He couldn't believe this was happening. God was playing some horrible joke. Wes had sworn an oath to put himself in harm's way. He was the one who should have died. God knew he couldn't live in this world without his wife or his son, so if He'd wanted Wes dead, then He should have let him die in Iraq.

 
Wes rubbed his cheek gently against his little boy's face, and as he did, he caught a faint whiff of the menthol-scented shaving cream from that morning. Mikey would never grow whiskers, not even as long as a million Christmases from now. He would never learn to read or hit a home run. Every dream, every hope, every plan that they'd had for him, was gone. Within the space of one heartbeat, everything had ended.

 
The medic touched Wes's arm.

 
"Sir? Please. You have to put him down now."

 
Wes flinched, then looked up, as if surprised by the sound of someone else's voice.

 
The medic pointed to Mikey again.

 
"Sir?"

 
Wes tightened his grip.

 
By now, the medic was begging. "Please." He pointed to the stretcher.

 
Wes stared at the empty space on the stretcher and then looked down at the child in his arms. Something fell off a shelf behind them, while outside, someone was calling for help. He blinked, then, for the last time, kissed his little boy's cheek and put him to bed.

 
When the medics began to cover the body, Wes grabbed the plastic sheet.

 
"I'll do it. He likes to be tucked in."

 
Wes bent down and pulled the sheet up to Mikey's chin, then gently tucked it in around him.

 
"Night-night, buddy," Wes whispered, then traced the shape of the Barney Band-Aid on the little boy's neck, as if making sure it was still firmly in place.

 
A nearby paratrooper took Wes by the arm and led him away. He didn't know what to do with him, but he would find someone who would.

 
Outside, as they were walking past the fire trucks, an officer suddenly came out of the crowd and grabbed Wes by the arm.

 
"Wes! Are you all right?"

 
The paratrooper saluted quickly.

 
"Colonel! Sir!"

 
"At ease, soldier," the colonel said. "What's happened here?"

 
"You know this man, sir?"

 
Charlie Frame nodded. "He's Colonel Wesley Holden, Special Ops." He gripped Wes's forearm. "Wes...talk to me, man. Are you hurt?"

 
But Wes didn't acknowledge Charlie's presence, or, for that matter, anything around him. His smoke-streaked face, as well as his unblinking stare, suddenly gave Charlie the willies.

 
When the paratrooper led Wes to a stack of boxes and sat him down as if he were a child, Charlie followed. Then the soldier turned to Charlie.

 
"Sir, we just pulled the bodies of a woman and a little boy out from under some debris. From the way he reacted, I think he knew them."

 
"Dear God." Charlie looked around. Maybe it was a mistake. It had to be a mistake. "The bodies...where are they? Where did you take them?"

 
The soldier pointed to a rapidly growing row of corpses on the nearby grass. Some were covered with plastic sheeting, others with whatever had been available at the time.

 
Charlie glanced back at Wes, then moved toward the makeshift morgue. Yet even after he got there, he hesitated. It was all he could do to make himself look. Finally he bent over and lifted the covers from the last two bodies on the end. Even while his mind was processing the information, he kept telling himself it had to be a mistake.

 
But it wasn't.

 
It was Margie, just as he'd feared. The last time he'd seen her, she'd been sitting by Wes's bedside in the hospital with a look of horror on her face. Now her face was barely recognizable. He glanced back at Wes, then looked down again, and this time his gaze slid from the woman's bloody face to the small boy lying next to her. It was Michael, and except for a tiny smear of blood on his cheek, he looked as if he'd just fallen asleep.

 
Charlie groaned. Quick tears blurred his vision as he reached out with trembling fingers and pulled the edge of the T-shirt back down over the little child's belly. The absence of mobility on a little boy who'd been a bundle of energy was almost obscene.

 
As he stood up, he silently cursed. They'd gone overseas to fight a war against people with a suicidal mindset so that their loved ones wouldn't suffer like this. But something had gone wrong. How could this have happened—and on a fucking military base?

 
He walked back to Wes, then sat down beside him.

 
"Wes, I'm so sorry, man."

 
Wes didn't answer.

 
Charlie put his hand on Wes's back.

 
"Wes, it's me, Charlie. I'm here for you, buddy."

 
There wasn't a shred of emotion on Wes's face. He'd gone to a place in his mind where this hell didn't exist, and Charlie didn't know how to get him back. He'd seen plenty of dead people, some he'd even killed himself. He often struggled with that, even knowing that what he'd done had been under orders and in time of war. But this was different. He wanted to lie down and weep.

 
There was a faint but constant spray of water blowing on Wes's face. He could feel the dampness but couldn't seem to focus on where it was coming from. The acrid scent of smoke was still in his nose, and he was only vaguely aware of his surroundings and not sure why he was there.

 
Added to that was a faint hint of anxiety, as if he needed to be someplace else but couldn't quite remember why or where it might be.

 
People were shouting, some even screaming, as they ran past him. Overhead, he could hear the familiar whup-whup sound of a chopper's rotor blades. It was a sound common in war, and he thought nothing of it. He was a soldier, well versed in the art of warfare, and for the past two years it was all he'd heard. But as he sat there, he felt something wasn't right. For some reason, his hands were empty. A soldier should never be without his weapon.

 
The driver of a nearby ambulance suddenly fired up a siren as he took off toward the hospital. At the sound, the muscles in Wes's legs began to jerk. His fingers curled into fists.

 
The sky was black. It shouldn't be black. And where the hell was his gun?

 
Mohammed El Faud was an imposter. For the past seventeen months, he'd been living in Columbus, Georgia, under the name of Frank Turner, while working for a civilian contractor at
Fort
Benning
.

 
Five years ago, when he'd first come to the States, he'd had plastic surgery to disguise his appearance. Now he regularly frequented a beauty shop off base called Lighten Up, where a woman named Estralita applied chemicals to his hair to keep it blond. Then, to keep up the pretense of why he had such dark skin, he paid good money to a tanning salon for a tan that would never fade, and he wore sky-blue contacts to hide the near-black color of his own irises. He was a master at linguistics and had adopted a
California
surfer accent, but it was only after the American military had begun making inroads into the war in his home country that he'd been given a course of action.

 
Implementing it had been far easier than he could have imagined. After months of careful planning, he had pierced the infidels in the heart by striking out at the military in two ways. First by attacking them on their own strongly guarded military base, then by targeting not only the soldiers, but their families, as well.

 
The commissary had been the obvious choice. And it had been so easy. Today he'd driven right up to the loading zone, as he'd done a hundred times before. He'd spoken in jest to a groundskeeper named Jeter, then pretended great concern for a very pregnant woman by loading her groceries for her before calmly walking away. He was two blocks away and safely behind a concrete wall when he detonated the bomb in the truck he'd left behind.

 
While everyone else was running to assist in recovery, he'd run the other way, retrieved the last part of what he needed to complete his mission and set off toward the blast site.

 
He had slipped all the way inside the perimeter set up by the M.P.s and was almost on top of the survivors they'd been bringing out before he shed his poncho and let out a cry. It was a blood-curdling shriek, followed by a litany of curses in his native language. Even as he was shouting and waving the detonator that would set off the explosives strapped to his chest, he seemed to be standing outside himself, enjoying the growing looks of shock and horror on everyone else's faces. Search and Rescue came to a momentary halt as soldiers went into battle mode.

 
Mohammed el Faud was under no misconceptions about his fate. Today he would die. He would detonate the explosives strapped to his body and kill even more. It would be a first for his people. Many had sacrificed their own lives while driving a car bomb into a crowd or building, but none had come back to the scene to kill again, this time taking out the survivors and rescuers alike.

 
It was the man's sudden scream in Arabic that reset Wes's focus. He recognized the language. He understood the words. What didn't make sense was the fact that the man had a
California
tan with a pretty-boy face. Even more at odds with the situation was the man's short blond hair. But Wes could see the explosives and the detonator he was holding, and knew from past experiences that things were never as they seemed. All of a sudden, he knew what had happened to his family and who had done it. He knew, and while he was too late to save them, he wasn't too late to exact retribution.

 
He stood abruptly, shoved his way past soldiers, medical personnel and firefighters, all of them frozen in disbelief, ripped the rifle out of an M.P.'s hands and fired off one round. It went right between Mohammed el Faud's fake blue eyes and out the back of his head before anyone could react.

 
There was a collective gasp as the detonator fell from Mohammed's hands into the street. Mohammed quickly followed suit, landing with a splash, facedown in the water from the fire hoses.

 
There was a split second of complete silence where no one moved—no one spoke. Then everyone started shouting, talking and running at once. The M.P. grabbed

his rifle out of Wes's hands and ordered him facedown on the ground. Hands pushed at him, then pulled at him. Shouts followed to hasten the orders being carried out. The retrieval of victims had dissipated into a hasty retreat for fear that more terrorism was yet to come.

 
Charlie Frame pushed his way through the crowd to the military police who were holding Wes down.

 
"Get him up. Now!" Charlie ordered.

 
"But Colonel, he—"

 
"He executed a terrorist. Nothing more. Nothing less."

 
They pulled Wes to his feet, then undid his restraints.

 
Charlie took Wes by the shoulders, carefully eyeing his demeanor. There was a scrape on Wes's chin from when they'd pushed him to the ground, and a small drop of blood was seeping out of his left nostril. But those were nothing compared to the look in his eyes.