Hurt Hawks Page 2

  Silver was already in Kuwait City when war was declared.

  War.

  As wars go, nothing special. The Iraqis didn’t put up much of a fight. Like a school yard bully when the teacher catches them. They rolled over.

  Combat.

  It cannot be fabricated. Simulations come only so close. Until the bullets fly, until the tanks roll, you don’t know if you have what it takes. Silver had it. In spades. Cool and calm under fire. A natural leader, he had a nose for his opponent’s weak spots. He trusted his instincts and before long, his fellow soldiers did too.

  He remembers pitying men who never found their calling in life. He smiles now at his young self. Should have saved all that pity. For himself.

  Silver inspects José’s lifeless corpse. Not too messy. He has the tools he needs. A thick plastic tarp. Bleach and other cleaning supplies. A rolling luggage rack. He knows a discreet way to get the body to a dumpster. José’s head lolls, his face looks at Silver with a twisted leer. Silver suspects there would be no dental records to match, but he’s a thorough man. He’s paid to be. He finds his pliers and begins to yank the man’s teeth out of his head.

  His phone vibrates. A number he doesn’t recognize. A 617 prefix. Massachusetts. This is his personal phone. A number he’s kept for years, unlike the work phones he disposes of after each job. Less than ten people know this number. He hesitates. Presses talk. “Hello?”

  A woman’s voice. “Is this Captain Donovan?”

  It used to be, Silver thinks. Captain Patrick Donovan.

  “Are you there?” A desperation in her voice. “Captain Donovan?”

  “What can I do for you, Ma’am?”

  She doesn’t speak, he realizes after a moment, because she is weeping.

  He lets her. Waits. Puts the pliers, grasping José’s last molar, down on the ground.

  “My husband had your card. He said…” More tears, throat clearing. “He said if anything happened…”

  When she doesn’t say anything, he says, “Something happened.” José’s toothless mouth tries to grin at him.

  He pictures her nod, fight back tears, then, “Yes, something happened.” A hoarse whisper. Just a croak.

  “Who is your husband?” He knows. Just needs to hear her say it. Say the name of the man he owes his life to.

  “Chris Rogers.”

  Silver has to be careful not to crush the phone in his hand. “What happened?”

  He pictures Rogers eating a bullet, the splatter of bone and brain and blood; or hanged, face squeezed blue, eyes bulging in a death stare; maybe a big fall off a building or cliff. Silver knew soldiers claimed by all those fates. Or pills. Or carbon monoxide.

  “They killed him.”

  It is so unexpected, he has to sit. People aren’t killed in the real world. He looks at the corpse at his feet. Not men like Rogers, shop owners. They died in their sleep, fell in the shower, a sudden heart attack.

  “Who killed him?”

  “One of those thugs. One of those gangsters from the neighborhood. Sons of bitches. I told him. Told him to just pay their protection money…”

  “But he wouldn’t.”

  “No sir. Said he couldn’t. Couldn’t do it and look at himself in the mirror. Wouldn’t be able to face his son.”

  That’s right, he had a son. That was the Chris Rogers that Silver knew, however briefly. Stubborn and brave, no matter the cost. He let out a sigh. “Mrs. Rogers, when is the service?”

  “Wake’ll be Wednesday. Calling hours four to eight. At Tierney’s. Funeral on Thursday.”

  “I’ll be there, Ma’am.”

  “Captain, you don’t have to.”

  Yes, I do, he thinks. “I’d like to, Ma’am.”

  Silver pictures the pretty face on the other side of the phone, other side of the country. He checked up on Chris Rogers. A few years back. Remembers the woman at the counter of the store. A brunette with pale, porcelain skin, blue eyes, a sad smile. Remembers Rogers. Sergeant Rogers in his wheel chair. Silver watched from the street for five minutes. He wanted to go in. Talk to him. Shake his hand. Apologize again. Let Rogers take a swing at him. The sergeant did not move the entire time.

  Maybe next time, Donovan told himself. If he’d learned anything in the Arabian Desert, there are no next times.

  THREE

  KATE ROGERS STANDS AT THE WAKE and begins to understand what it is to be shell-shocked. The line of mourners stretches out the door, like rubberneckers at a car crash, they look at her husband in the coffin. She accepts their sympathy, their hugs, their kisses. Numb and exhausted, the faces begin to blur. Kate has been taking her husband’s anti-depression medicine and feels like she is wearing a heavy black veil over her face.

  Not long ago, she had stood in the same spot as the same mourners had paid their respects to Chris’s dad. They had just found out about Chris’s injury. Kate knew it was the knowledge of his broken son that had done him in. She remembers it as a daze of aunts, uncles, cousins, family friends, customers; the whole neighborhood. They all knew about Chris and upon seeing Kate, their sympathy would double. “You poor dear,” all the old ladies said.

  Now, they say it again. But Kate picks up on the slightly different tone. The hint of relief in their voices. The common thought that, maybe, this was a mercy killing.

  Part of her knows that the man she married, the man she loved, never made it back from Afghanistan. The man that came back was a mess. Would burst into sudden tears or angry tirades, over nothing. Screamed in his sleep. Their son looked at his father in terror. She was afraid to leave the boy alone with his dad.

  Chris wouldn’t touch her. Or let her touch him. She was lonelier than when he had been away. The heat of his body next to her in bed was a kind of torture.

  A soldier stands in front of her.

  She looks at his uniform, at the green beret in his hand. “Captain Donovan?”

  He walks with a cane, she sees. It shines as brightly as the medals on his chest, as his eyes. “Mrs. Rogers, I’m so sorry.”

  He really is, she sees.

  “Thank you for coming.”

  He looks uncomfortable. Like he’s not sure whether to walk away or salute. Offers his hand.

  “If you need anything…”

  “Thank you.”

  He turns to her son, Andrew.

  The boy looks up at the man in uniform. “Are you a soldier?”

  Donovan smiles. He has perfect white teeth, she notices. “I was, son.”

  “Did you know my dad?”

  Kate knows she is holding up the line but she cannot take her eyes off this man as he leans down on one knee to get face to face with her ten-year-old son.

  “Andrew, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Andrew, your father saved my life.”

  Kate sees something she didn’t think possible. A glimmer of pride in Andrew’s eyes, in his filling lungs.

  “That’s how he hurt his legs. Saving me and my men. He never told you the story?”

  Andrew shakes his head. Kate almost shakes her own. No, he never talked about the war.

  Captain Donovan uses his cane to stand. Looks at Kate, sees her surprise. Andrew’s eyes are wide. “Maybe I can tell it to you some time.”

  “Tomorrow?” Her son’s expression is greedy.

  “Maybe.”

  Kate looks down the line of mourners.

  That son of a bitch.

  Her eyelids lower, revealing only a thin strip of her poisonous green eyes. The hair on the back of her neck, like an angry dog’s, rises. Everyone turns to see the squat man with the comic book super hero jaw. The air in the funeral home crackles.

  The short man is the last to realize Kate’s stare on him.

  “Nathan Riley,” she says. “Get the hell out of this line and the hell out of this building.” She feels the color burning in her face.

  “Just paying my respects, Kate.” A tremor of emotion in his voice.

  “We don’t want a
nything of yours here.” She turns back to Donovan.

  “Thanks again, Captain.”

  Donovan puts a hand on Andrew’s shoulder. “Ma’am.”

  FOUR

  THAT NIGHT, DONOVAN FINDS a hotel and a bottle of Maker’s Mark. And remembers. The spirits in the glass rile the spirits in his head. Welcome and unwelcome ghosts join him for a drink.

  After Iraq the CIA came knocking. They were looking for a liaison between agencies, the spooks and the Rangers, and whatever other Special Forces might be needed, SEALs, Delta Force. James Bond, Jason Bourne stuff. Donovan was in. He traded in his desert uniform for a suit and tie and spent some time at Langley, on the Farm. Counter terrorism, counter insurgency.

  Conspiracies were like static electricity there. The globe, outside the borders of the United States was infected with threats. If you weren’t paranoid, you were uninformed. India and Pakistan were about to go nuclear. The Middle East and Africa were breeding grounds for terrorist groups, Al Qaeda was a virus for which there was no vaccine. North Korea was run by a mad hermit and they had the biggest standing army in the world. Donovan’s old friend, Saddam, was just biding his time, building nuclear weapons underground. What else could he be doing in those bunkers? Trying to beat Iran to the punch. Donovan thought it farfetched, knew most of those bunkers were filled with gold and other loot. Saddam’s pirate booty.

  Donovan wanted to talk sense to someone but sense and logic were in short supply. And he was needed in Somalia, the hot, dusty city of Mogadishu. He was there when the Black Hawk fell. Furious when American troops were pulled out. No next times.

  Until another Bush made it to the White House. Then September eleventh burned a hole in the history books, in every calendar. The paranoia was back. All the way to the top of the food chain.

  War with Afghanistan. Knee jerk. Foolish. Ask Alexander the great. Ask the British. Ask the Russians. Donovan was getting tired of the human price of war – on both sides. For what? What was the goal in Afghanistan? To beat the desert and mountains into submission? Blow them back to the Stone Age, some said. They were already there. To find some renegade Saudi terrorist who was probably hiding out in the lawless mountains between Afghanistan and Pakistan? Wherethfuckistan, the spooks called it. For that you didn’t need to declare war.

  Then Iraq. Again. Weapons of mass destruction. Bullshit. The stupidest intelligence ever gathered justified that war. Hearsay and compromised sources, none of it would have been allowed in an American court of law. But here was Colin Powell faking it at the United Nations. A sad day. Powell looked like he loathed every word that came out of his mouth. Donovan did too.

  Didn’t make sense. Saddam wasn’t a Bond villain. He was a thug in a white suit. He didn’t want to blow up the world. Just wanted to pick its pockets.

  In the war rooms of Langley and DC, the electronic maps glowed red in the Middle Eastern deserts, as though they were radioactive. Donovan went back. Baghdad. Fallujah. Blood. Sand. No plutonium. Not even trace amounts. Saddam was found. Killed. America forgot why they had come. With Saddam gone, so was the threat. Right?

  Kabul. Kandahar. Jalalabad. Blood. Sand. Beards. No Bin Laden. Not a trace. Afghanistan was social Darwinism put to the test. Survival of the fittest. A land of warlords. Drug dealers in turbans who controlled the poppy fields of the south. There was a simple solution which Donovan voiced in a meeting in Kabul. President Karzai sat at one end of a long, crowded table. General Patreus at the other end.

  “Burn the fields,” Donovan said. “We know where they are. Destroy them.”

  The General, chest crammed with gleaming medals and stars, looked down at the President, resplendent in his cashmere, multi-colored Kaftan, blue and green stripes intricately threaded.

  Vanity, a deadly sin, Donovan thought.

  “It is not so simple.” Karzai’s English as elegant as his clothes.

  “No?” Donovan said.

  A stern glance from the General.

  “No.” A sterner glance from the President. “You do not realize the turmoil that would cause, the vacuum you would create.”

  “And the warlords who control the fields?” Patreus now. “What of them?”

  “Don’t be so quick to condemn them.” Karzai the silver-tongued. “They were living under the Taliban. They did what they had to to survive.” Sounded so sensible coming from this suave Afghan gentleman.

  A smooth criminal. Donovan knew a gangster when he saw one.

  Patreus was persuaded. Some of these warlords were needed to keep the peace. The drug trade should be condemned, but at times, we must look the other way. Reality had to be faced. The poverty caused by cutting off the supply of opium would drive all of southern Afghanistan back to the Taliban.

  “Perhaps this is the Captain’s goal?” Karzai had the lazy eyes of a serpent.

  In these eyes, Donovan saw how cold-blooded the President was. Donovan bit his tongue, swallowed his pride and gave Karzai a humble bow. “I was mistaken, Mr. President.” The words tasted like chalk in his mouth. He spit them out.

  Karzai was magnanimous. “It is a complicated place.”

  Patreus wondered aloud, “What will it take to control these men?”

  Karzai’s smile had no teeth. “That is simple. Cash.”

  American dollars. Stacks and stacks and stacks of it. To buy the warlords, to pay off the politicians, bribe the judges, consider it a capital investment for a burgeoning democracy. Think of it as securing influence, Karzai purred. It was difficult to imagine a better option than President Karzai for the United States. He saw things our way, for the most part. Didn’t he? So intelligent, so enjoyable to deal with.

  There was a twisted logic to his plan. Support certain sympathetic warlords. Chip away at those loyal to the Taliban.

  That was where Donovan came in.

  He worked with the US Army, Afghan troops and the CIA to set up sting operations. The United States military was too tempting a partner for the warlords. A new avenue to a new market. Donovan posed as a dirty soldier. A buyer. A player with access to cash. An entrepreneurial spirit without a lot of scruples. His partner in crime, an old friend from JFK school. Brian King. King was fearless. A red-headed devil with wild eyes. BK wore a straw cowboy hat, sunglasses and a two-gun holster rig around his waist like some kind of old west gunslinger. He grew a beard and his nickname soon became Yosemite Sam. He took to quoting the old cartoon character: “Any of you lily-livered varmints care to slap leather with me?”

  King was a magnet for a certain kind of attention.

  They caught a few small fish.

  Donovan remembers a dark, quiet alley in a dark, quiet corner of Kandahar. Or were he and King lured there? A small, rat infested apartment. The man they were targeting began to shout at them. Donovan understood just enough to know he was being called a dog. The rest was all vitriol spewing from the man’s face. He remembers the barrel of the man’s Kalashnikov pulling his eyes to it. A shot made Donovan jump out of his skin, but it was King’s pistol, firing a bullet into the Afghan’s skull.

  “My spider sense was tingling,” King said.

  Donovan fell to his knees, shaken.

  A firefight erupted. The Afghans waiting outside with the drugs panicked. Where was their leader? What was that gunshot? King, asshole, pushed their leader’s limp body out the door. He thought it might break their spirits. A swarm of bullets crashed through the boarded up windows.

  “If you hadn’t just saved my life, King, I’d chuck you out after him.”

  King flashed his crooked teeth. They were both still young back then, still invincible. Bullet proof.

  Donovan called in for reinforcements. “Wait, King,” he called as the young cowboy bolted out the door, dodging bullets and returning fire.

  The cavalry arrived. The drugs were confiscated, the Afghans arrested.

  It was a slow, dangerous way to go about it. At this rate, the allied troops would be long gone before any real progress was made. This was prob
ably Karzai’s secret hope.

  Donovan decided to aim higher. Catch a bigger fish. He went through channels. Patreus and the CIA signed off on it. A big buy would have to go successfully. Reel them in, document it. Then a bigger buy. That was the plan. The last approval was Karzai.

  The President listened. He wasn’t wearing his usual Karakul hat and his bald head gleamed. Inside, wheels turned, calculations were made. He squinted at Donovan. “Good luck, Captain.” The light was green.

  Donovan handpicked his team. King, of course.

  Also Chris Burns, their wheelman. He could drive, fly or sail any vehicle known to man. Nickname: Crash. Five feet, eight inches of solid muscle.

  Billy, don’t call me Willie, Nelson. Billy and Donovan had gone through basic training together, had both been selected for the Rangers. By now they could almost communicate telepathically. Invaluable in combat.

  And Doc. An ROTC kid. Four years of service, then medical school. After 9/11, he re-upped. He was as good at killing bad guys as he was at saving good guys.

  Their superiors referred to them as the Fab Five.

  They found their big fish.

  A man in Kandahar who knew about such things, who connected buyers and sellers, set it up.

  Donovan and Billy met the seller in a cafe. The old man who set it up acted as translator.

  The warlord looked the part. Tan robes and a turban wrapped around a rugged, scarred face. Deep voice.

  “He asks,” the translator said, “where does the money come from?”

  “For building schools.” Donovan leered. “For women and girls.”

  The old man translated.

  The warlord slapped each of them on the back.

  Tomorrow, it was decided, at night, at the edge of town. Bring the money. Everything seemed good. Donovan sent it up the flag pole and it flew by his superiors.

  It was cold that night. Their breath mixed with the engine exhaust beneath a crescent moon. Kandahar’s million residents slept. They loaded the opium into a van while the warlord counted the money.

  “Is there more where this came from?” He spoke English.