The Book of Truths (18 page)

But he doubted it. She looked too perfect, like the restaurant. It was why Roland never went to those top-tier strip clubs. He
said the women’s bodies were too perfect and that they’d cut you. Doc had never quite grasped that last part.

“You are as your sister said you were,” Gay said. She too was Indian. Despite their years in the States, his sister could not imagine marrying outside of the home country.

One part of Doc’s brain worked on trying to untwist the meaning in that statement while he evaluated the net worth she was covered with. He thought it ironic that people spent so much time and money on things in an attempt to show others who they were. She had perfect hair, expensive clothes, and a watch that cost more than his car. But one could buy all that with a loan, or from an ex-husband’s alimony. Or they could all be fake, which is the first conclusion he knew Nada would jump to, and then it really bothered him to be channeling Nada.

Real things that no one could take a loan on and buy seemed to have little value. Doc knew he was overthinking this, but the last mission, time running out, had brought him a bit too close to the black void. Like most who gazed over into that chasm, one tended to get a little introspective.

Or they were a psychopath and never thought of it again.

“As are you,” Doc finally replied.

“Do you have a first name?” she asked.

Doc lied.

“And what do you do for a living?” she asked. “Your sister was very vague.”

That’s because his sister had no clue. Doc told her a very elaborate lie, the same one he’d been telling ever since joining the Nightstalkers and getting his cover for status. Which was different than cover for action, Nada had patiently explained to him during his in-processing.

The good thing was there were no student loans tied to all the training the Nightstalkers had given him in tradecraft and fieldcraft.

The bad thing was there was a high probability of getting killed being a member of the team even if one were perfect with tradecraft and fieldcraft. Murphy was always waiting to screw things up.

She asked more questions. He was beginning to miss Ms. Jones’s in-briefing and “why we are here” speech because he had no clue why he was here. He batted back the conversational shuttlecock and asked her all the required questions in return.

She was lying too. She had a little twitch on her left eyebrow. Mac had taught him how to look for tells. She’d have been a lousy poker player.

Doc knew he was lying, but he had a good reason; he had to keep secrets larger than himself. In his business, one learned that a secret could only be protected by lies. She was lying because she’d already made a decision to never meet him again. He’d known that from his first look, and he knew it was because he had not been paying attention, anxiously awaiting her entrance and not pulling out her chair for her.

Some women need that chair pulled out. She was one. She knew if he wasn’t focused on her from the start, she could never get that focus.

He did give her points because she’d accurately judged him so quickly and just as quickly made her decision. Decisiveness was good.

“And your credit score?” she asked after their salads arrived and before the meal, as the shuttlecock was drifting lazily toward the floor.

“My what?”

“Credit score?”

“I do not know.”

The tell was twitching and he knew that was the wrong, wrong answer. At that moment Doc would rather have been anywhere and, despite knowing what it meant, he actually was glad when his phone began playing “Lawyers, Guns and Money.”

“Good friends help you move,” Mac said. “Great friends help you move a body.”

“I’m hoping it won’t come to that,” Kirk said, pulling back slightly on the slide of his MK23, making sure there was a round in the chamber. It was a glaring sign of the nervousness held by the other three in the black SUV because they’d all supposedly checked their weapons before entering the vehicle.

But it was also a reminder.

“Eagle?” Mac asked.

Eagle sighed, but didn’t reply. Kirk reached across and drew Eagle’s pistol. He pulled the slide back and confirmed there was no round in the chamber. He pulled it all the way back, chambering one.

“Make sure it’s on safe,” Mac said, “ ’cause we don’t want Eagle shooting his dick off.”

“My finger is my safety,” Roland said, the refrain of all shooters in Special Ops. “And really, really good friends help you make a body.”

“And your dick is going to kill you,” Mac said. “How much did you blow in Vegas this time?”

“Not much,” Roland said, but he was shifting into action mode and even Mac couldn’t needle him out of that.

Eagle was driving, because Eagle always drove. Kirk was in the passenger seat because this was his turf, northwest Arkansas, just above the Ozark National Forest and below the loop of the Buffalo River National Park. Roland and Mac were jammed in the backseat, Roland’s knees shoved into the back of Eagle’s seat, which bothered him, but it wasn’t like Roland could make himself shrink. And Eagle needed as much legroom as possible.

If Nada was there, he would have made Roland and Mac switch places. But Nada was with Zoey, a story none of them believed, because no one believed Zoey was real, so who the hell knew where Nada was?

They’d left the Snake in an isolated field twelve miles back, a place Kirk said it would be safe, but like any good driver, Eagle had shut all the hatches and put on the security system. Anyone touched the Snake, they’d get zapped with enough volts to put ’em out but not kill ’em. They’d still be lying next to the aircraft by the time the team got back from its vacation mission.

If they got back.

“This is a town?” Eagle asked as they approached Parthenon.

“I thought Texas had some real shitholes,” Mac drawled, “but you boys up here got us beat.”

“Reminds me of home,” Roland noted with all sincerity and perhaps a twinge of longing, angling his commando dagger in the sunlight, checking the edge.

“This isn’t Senators Club,” Eagle said, referring to the gated community where they’d run their last Rift mission.

A sign warned that Highway 327 did a hard juke to the left at the stop sign. It was as best they could tell since bullet holes had chewed most of the sign off. The stop sign, which seemed to
anchor the town to the intersection, was also riddled. The place was more an intersection than a metropolis.

“Take a right,” Kirk said, taking them off the two-lane hardball onto a one-and-a-half-lane paved road that had seen better days.

“I remember the plan and the terrain,” Eagle said, but gently, knowing Kirk was nervous enlisting them on a personal mission. But who better to help you than the comrades you entrusted your life to?

The paved road gave way to a single dirt-rutted lane.

“Mac?” Kirk asked.

“Roger,” Mac said. Eagle tapped the brakes and Mac was out the door with his pack and rifle case and into the underbrush on the north side of the road. Roland put half of the backseat down and assumed the prone position, trying to get out of sight. Combined with the tinted windows, it was a bit of overkill perhaps, but Roland was going into combat mode and the word
overkill
never applied.

It wasn’t easy, given he had body armor on and his combat vest. He’d argued he should be the one with the rifle on overwatch, but this was Kirk’s op. Kirk knew Roland would have more value standing behind him as a presence. He’d also be less likely to start shooting people by misjudging threats through a sniper scope. Mac was more levelheaded with bullets. He fired them like he owned them and each one cost a lot.

Eagle continued on and they reached a stream. There was no bridge and Eagle plowed into the water. They roared up out on the other side.

They reached a fork in the road and Eagle turned right. They switchbacked up a slight rise and then Eagle stopped the SUV. Not part of the plan, but there were two men standing in the road
with AR-15s aimed at the windshield. They wore Arkansas formal attire, meaning they were draped in one-piece camouflage hunting outfits and wearing beat-up baseball caps.

Kirk got out, hands up. “I need to talk to Ray.”

“I remember you,” one of the men said. “You Pads’s oldest boy.” He walked a couple steps closer to the SUV and peered at the tinted windshield. “Who’s your friend?”

“Buddy from the army.”

“You got bad choices in buddies,” the man said as he spit tobacco into the dirt. “We don’t like his kind ’round here.”

“You mean intelligent?” Kirk asked.

“Don’t get smart with me.”

Kirk laughed. “That’s called irony.”

The other man spoke up. “What you want with Ray?”

“It’s between me and him,” Kirk said. “Family business which ain’t your business.” Kirk was falling back into the lingo of Winthrop Carter, the man he’d been before the Nightstalkers and before the army.

The first man shook his head. “Not if I don’t let you go talk to him.”

“It’s about the kid and your sister,” the other man said. “Ain’t it?”

Kirk nodded. “Yes.”

The second man shook his head. “You can go talk to Ray, but you gonna see he ain’t listening to people much anymore. No matter who it is or what they say. He ain’t the same as you remember. He ain’t the same as anyone remembers.”

“What’s wrong with him?” Kirk asked.

The second man shrugged. “Don’t know, but he’s in charge now and no one is going to ask him. He’s mean as a cottonmouth if you confront him.”

“You packing?” the first man asked.

“I am.”

“Leave it here.”

“I won’t.”

The man aimed right at Kirk’s face. “I said leave it here.”

“I was issued my weapon by the government and I won’t be leaving it here,” Kirk said. “And ask your buddy to take a look between your eyes.”

The second redneck glanced over and saw the flickering red dot resting between his buddy’s eyes. “You got a shooter out there?”

“Got a couple of shooters,” Kirk said. “I don’t mean any trouble for Ray but we have to talk. You know you can’t stand between family.”

The man indicated for his partner to step aside and they waved for him to pass. As they went by, that guy pulled out a cell phone and made a call.

Kirk got back in and Eagle drove through the roadblock, Roland still crunched down in the back.

“I could kill them,” Roland said. “‘Don’t like his kind’? Let me kill him.”

“Don’t worry,” Kirk said over his shoulder. “He’s TDTL. Someone will do that soon enough.”

“TDTL?” Roland asked.

“Too dumb to live,” Kirk explained.

“I do appreciate the offer though, Roland,” Eagle said. Then he began humming the theme from
Deliverance
.

“Funny,” Kirk muttered, but he was focused on what was ahead. A large ramshackle house, which had obviously been added to bit by bit, sat on top of a small knob. A barn was to the
right, except the barn looked to be in a lot better shape than the house, with a new metal roof and all the windows covered with heavy wood shutters. Several smokestacks punched through the roof, with smoke lazily drifting forth. “They’re cooking,” Kirk said. “And it’s a big operation. Bigger than what was here before.”

“I thought your uncle didn’t use?” Eagle said.

“He didn’t, but a lot’s changed here since I been gone.”

Nodding at the house, Eagle said: “I bet you the inside looks better than the outside.” The SUV stopped in front of the house. Kirk got out while Eagle stayed in the driver’s seat, engine running.

“I got two shooters upstairs,” Eagle informed Roland, looking down at the display. Instead of a GPS it showed the input from a thermal camera mounted into the molding on the front bumper. “Windows A3 and A5.” Kirk had laid out the building to them the previous night and they’d designated sides, floors, windows… everything, so that they could quickly designate targets.

Google Earth helped.

The front door swung open and Kirk’s uncle Ray came out, his left arm looped over the shoulder of a woman. Three men fanned out behind him, staying on the porch, their boots creaking down the worn wooden planks, two ARs and one pump-action shotgun being brought into play. The barrels were pointed down.

For now.

Ray had a large .357 Magnum tucked in a holster on his left side. The woman helped Ray down the three stairs to the dirt path. An incongruous white picket fence about three Mark Twain stories short of a new paint job separated him from Kirk, who halted at the gate.

“Ray.”

The older man had his head cocked slightly to the left. He nodded. “Winthrop. Been quite a while since you’ve been home.”

“I’ve been busy, Ray.”

“Fighting other people’s wars,” Ray said. “Told you it was dumb. Fought in Vietnam. For what? Now we buy furniture from the same gooks we used to bomb.”

Kirk spread his hands. “What’s going on, Ray? What are you doing up here in Woodrell’s place?”

Ray laughed. “Ain’t no more Woodrell. He’s in the swamp. Got tired of him pushing, so I pushed back.”

Kirk shook his head. “I don’t get it, Ray. Meth took my dad and you helped keep it away. Now you’re running it?”

“Meth didn’t take your dad,” Ray said. “Being stupid killed your dad.”