Terry Watkins - The Big Burn

A man coming out of one of the other Quonset huts walked toward them. He had the confident swagger of someone born and bred to run things, as comfortable at the country club as on a secret military base. “Anna Quick, I’m Tom Roca.” He shook hands with her. “Welcome on board. I heard about your saving those college kids. That was very fine work.”

She nodded. “Thanks.”

“Take good care of her, Brock,” Roca said, his eyes shifting for a brief second to Brock.

Brock didn’t answer.

“Great to meet Jason Quick’s daughter,” Roca said. “Enjoy your training.” He gave her a little smile, then walked into Verrill’s hut.

When he was gone, Anna turned to Brock as she climbed into the Humvee. “A friend of yours?”

“Not exactly. CIA. One of Verrill’s boys. Actually, he thinks he’s running this mission,” Brock said sardonically. “Practice before he assumes the job of running the universe.”

Anna smiled. She was starting to like Brock more and more.

They drove on to the village of Quonset huts down the road. She reflected on the tension between Roca and Brock, and Brock’s attitude toward Verrill. Not a happy group. She wondered what had happened to cause such hostility between them, and hoped it wouldn’t affect their chances of a successful operation.

Anna called her mom on a Sat phone Brock gave her—one, no doubt, that scrambled the conversation and made it impossible to be intercepted and decoded. She assured her mom that she was all right and was just going to sleep in for the next few days. Then she finally took a shower. She lingered in the downpour like a starved desert plant under the season’s first rain. She didn’t care if she used up all the water on the base, she was going to get clean. There were times, and this was one of them, when a shower or bath vaulted ahead of food, shopping or sex as life’s great relaxer. She didn’t need yoga, prayer, drugs or alcohol to get centered. She just needed water and soap.

Brock had gone somewhere to get her some clothes. When he came back she heard him on the other side of the door. “Everything you need is here.”

“Thanks.”

Fatigue breaks down the walls of reason and lets in unbidden thoughts, such as she was naked and a foot away was a handsome soldier. She smiled at her erotic nonsense. She wished she had time for a longer daydream but she was sure Brock was pacing outside, waiting for her to finish.

After the shower she found a pile of clothes just outside the stall on a chair. A green T-shirt, light nylon pants with four side pockets and jungle sneakers. High-fashion commando gear.

“Quick, you dressed?” Brock yelled from somewhere outside.

“Yes,” she called out. He walked in sooner than she’d expected, so she turned her back to him while she pulled her shirt down.

“Shower feel good?” Brock asked.

“I’m almost human.”

“You get that scar jumping?”

Shit.

She hated that he saw the scar on her back. She’d been planning on getting some skin grafts to get rid of it, but hadn’t had the time. “Yeah. Hit a snag. I didn’t have body armor on. It’s ugly, I know. I’m going to get it fixed one of these days.”

“It’s your badge of courage,” he protested.

“I like badges I can hide away in the drawer.”

He laughed and pulled up his shirt to display two nasty scars on his stomach. “Like these.”

The scars were there, but she was seeing the body that was holding them in place. The man had no fat on him. Didn’t she see a book in Barnes & Noble once with some title about the diet of the warrior among the thousand or so other diet books? Brock could be the cover.

She asked, trying to be nonchalant, “How did you get those?”

“Some moron tried to blow up a convoy I was hitching a ride on. Long story, bad ending for a lot of good people.” He tucked in his shirt. “Don’t think of a scar you earned in battle as ugly. There’s nothing ugly about it.”

She wasn’t going to argue with him, serious as he was. Especially when his scars represented something very emotional and deep. But she fully intended to get rid of hers…one of these days.

She followed him out to the Humvee and jumped into the passenger seat.

Anna rubbed her eyes. “The training for all of this had better be good.”

He gave her a wry glance, then headed down the road.

When they’d gone a few hundred yards, he said, “We’ll get in about a thousand rounds.”

“What? I need that much?”

“It’s my job to prepare you the best I can. Besides, if you’re with me I want to know I’ve made you very comfortable with Heckler and Koch.”

“Who are they?”

“They are the assault weapons you’ll be married to until we’re extracted. A thousand rounds from now you’ll think you were born with them in your hands.”

“I’m so excited,” she said sarcastically. “How long does it usually take to train somebody for your line of work?”

“Couple years. Couple million rounds.”

“I’m going to be proficient with Heckler and Koch in a day? Yeah, right.”

“Familiar is the operative word. Proficient is a marriage of talent and practice we don’t have the time for. Just give it a chance, okay?”

She nodded.

They rode in silence for a time, then Brock glanced over at her. “You may or may not hit the bad guys. I just want to make sure you don’t shoot me should a crisis arise.”

Excuse me, she thought with an inner smile, but you, my friend, are way too necessary to my survival to shoot. “I’ll try not to.”

“What’s between you and the CIA?” Brock asked.

“Years of lies.”

“Then it must feel good to finally know the truth.”

“Is it?”

“You don’t believe that your father is alive?” He glanced over at her, a look of confusion on his face.

“I don’t know yet,” she explained. “I guess I do. It’s just such a shock, it’s hard to bring this whole thing into focus. If he’s really in trouble, I want to get him out of there. Once he’s safe, then I’ll go ahead and have whatever kind of joyful nervous breakdown it requires.”

“We’ll get him out,” Brock said. “Given your record and mine, I’d say as a team we might just be the best there is at extracting somebody from a very bad situation.”

Flattery no less. She wondered what the structure of his thought patterns might be. He never appeared condescending, like Verrill, which she found to be a bit of a shock. He didn’t seem to possess any really annoying macho mannerisms toward her. Anna had run into just about every variety of male as a smoke jumper. The heroes and the assholes. She was sure the military was no different. Brock was a mystery that didn’t look to be easy to unravel. He was charming, no doubt about that, but charm could be the most venomous of snakes. It always put women in a weak position. Anna liked to know who her friends and enemies were up front and the charmer never allowed that. They were the real high-stakes poker players in the game. The ones she had to look out for.

Another group of men appeared out of the jungle and jogged in single file across the road in front of them. These men wore jungle camouflage, carried weapons and had blackened faces. Brock slowed to let them get across the road and into the high grasses of the field.

“Why haven’t any females broken through this elite barrier yet?”

He gave her a sidelong glance with that enigmatic half smile of his.

“They have now.”

Watch this guy closely, Anna thought. He’s saying all the right things.

She was in trouble.

Bethesda, Maryland

Stanford Ellis watched the silver-haired jogger move at a loping gait along the Potomac River until he turned off the trail and settled into a fast walk.