into long, narrow rooms like dining cars. Booths ran down either side of the central aisle. The booths had high backs that blocked off sounds of conversation. “You having buffet?” the slender waitress said in heavily accented English as Keller slid into the booth.
“I’m waiting for someone,” Keller said. “Give me a few minutes.”
The waitress looked baffled for an instant, then smiled broadly. “Okay,” she chirped. “Something to drink?” It was obvious that she had exhausted her entire stock of English. Keller ordered a beer. The girl nodded and walked off.
Wilcox arrived at the same time as the beer. He was dressed in civilian clothes, a cheap off-the-rack suit that had seen better days. From his haggard, baggy-eyed look, so had Willcox.
“You having buffet?” the girl repeated. Wilcox nodded and ordered water.
“So,” Keller said after they had filled their plates. “The FBI. What’s the deal?”
Wilcox pushed some rice around on his plate. “It’s not just Lundgren,” he said. “There are two others missing.”
“All Deltas?” Keller asked.
Wilcox nodded glumly. “All from the same unit.”
“And all just back from Afghanistan,” Keller said.
Wilcox nodded again. “The two FBI agents—Gerritsen and Rankin—are from a Bureau task force. They’re working the terrorist angle.”
Keller shook his head. “That doesn’t make sense,” he said. “Terrorists would want to make an example. They wouldn’t disappear these guys. They’d blow them up.”
“That’s what I keep trying to tell them,” Wilcox said. “But anything that could even remotely be terrorist related has them all jumping at shadows. Now they’re even doing background checks on all three, seeing if maybe they might have crossed over.”
“What, you mean defected?” Keller snorted in derision. “Right. These guys are motivated. They’d cut their own nuts off before they’d join the other side.”
Wilcox’s jaw tightened. “I know that, and you know that,” he said. “But the Bureau doesn’t know that. And let’s be real. There’s a lot more corners here than you realize. Hell, they may have formed their own side.”
Keller considered that for a moment. Then he looked at Wilcox and spread his hands. “So why are we here?”
Wilcox took a deep breath. “We’re here to pool information,” he said. “Maybe something you know will fit with something I know that makes sense.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
Wilcox gave him a humorless smile. “Then we’ve both wasted our time, and if someone learns about this, my career is over, probably worse. The only consolation I have is that you’d probably end up in the same prison as me.”
“Got it,” Keller said. “I don’t like you; you don’t like me. But we have to work together. Eddie Murphy and Nick Nolte will end up playing us in the movie.”
“I’d rather be played by De Niro,” Wilcox said.
“With my luck, it’ll end up being Adam Sandler and Whoopi Goldberg,” Keller said. “But why are you really here?”
“There’s a child involved. I didn’t know that before. Neither the FBI nor the Special Ops types thought that was important enough to fill me in on. I happen to think that’s pretty damn important.”
“You have kids.”
“Yeah. Two.”
“Okay,” Keller said. “Fair enough.” He filled Wilcox in on what he and Marie had learned so far. Then he leaned back and took a sip of his drink. “Your turn.”
Wilcox hesitated, then took a deep breath. “The two other guys that disappeared at the same time as Lundgren were named Mike Riggio and Robert Powell. They went through training together. Hung out together off duty.”
“They were tight.”
“All those types get pretty tight with one another. Comes with the territory. But yeah, they were buddies. For one thing, they were the only unmarried guys on the team. They didn’t have any close family connections. Riggio’s parents were both dead, and Powell’s were divorced. His psych profile said he wasn’t close to either of them. Didn’t say why.”
“They were the only family each other had,” Keller said.
“Yeah. Some guys, the Army becomes their family, you know?”
“Yeah,” Keller said. “I know.”
He remembered faces, looking at him in the dim glow of a chemlite, huddled close in the confines of a Bradley fighting vehicle. Looking to him to get them home.
“Where we at, Sergeant?” a voice spoke up. It was Michaels, the guy from Louisiana they had nicknamed “Forty Mike” because of his talent with the 40mm grenade launcher. Michaels could drop a grenade within an inch of anywhere you cared to point out.
“Dunno, Forty,” Keller had said. “The GPS is deader’n shit. I’m going outside to take a piss and look around. Maybe get a fix on the stars.” The answer seemed to satisfy them. They slumped back in the web seats. Some of them pulled their helmets down over their eyes to sleep. In truth, Keller could no more navigate by the stars here than he could sprout wings and fly. But he had to say something. They trusted him.
He exited the vehicle through the rear hatch and stretched. He walked a few feet away, unzipped, and took a piss on the desert. When he was done, he heard the sound of rotor blades. It had to be one of the good guys. The bad guys no longer had an air force to speak of. He raised his hands and started waving. It was a stupid gesture in the dark, but he couldn’t think of anything else to do.
“Hey!” he yelled. “Hey—”
A Hellfire missile homes in on a laser beam focused on a target from a ground observer or from the launching aircraft itself. It is primarily intended to pierce the heavy armor of a main battle tank. Against a lightly armored target like a Bradley, the effect is devastating. Keller saw the trail of the missile’s rocket motor like a bolt of white light from the sky. It touched the Bradley and the world seemed to explode. Keller was knocked to the ground by the blast. Then he heard the screaming as the Bradley caught fire.
“You okay, Keller?” Wilcox was saying.
Keller shook his head to clear it. “Yeah,” he said. “I’m okay.”
“You don’t look it,” Wilcox said. “You look like you just saw a ghost.”
“I’m fine,” Keller said.
Wilcox’s cell phone rang. He continued to regard Keller with a doubtful expression as he pulled it out. “Wilcox,” he said. Then the blood seemed to drain from his face. “When?” he snapped. “How long had he…okay. I’ll be there. Don’t do anything…Damn it!” The person on the other end had obviously hung up the phone. He snapped the cell phone shut and looked at Keller.
“The
