20
After the long flight to Pakistan, their arrival, in Joe’s opinion, was almost anticlimactic.
Stepping from the cool of the plane into the sweltering heat of Islamabad almost stole Joe’s breath, but he’d experienced it before. He followed along behind Drew, keeping a certain amount of distance and not speaking. It was part of the roles they’d come up with on the flight from Dulles to Dubai. Drew was pretending to be an American businessman looking for new markets for his software company, while Joe was his Urdu-speaking assistant. The thirteen hour layover they’d had in Dubai enabled them to purchase clothing and luggage suitable to their cover story, and to even have a small stack of business cards printed up at a shipping center in the airport. Drew had to use his real name, since he didn’t have the fake IDs that Joe had kept from his previous mission, but the cover should be sound enough to stand up to casual scrutiny for a couple of weeks. Herc had even arranged for a voice-mail drop that was listed on the business card, and Pixel had hacked together a “Martin Associates” website, just in case.
It was probably overkill, but Joe knew from previous undercover missions thatnothaving your cover story backstopped was asking for trouble. Drew had been right that having Herc’s help in setting up the logistics made things much easier. Not that Joe would have needed anything like this if he’d been alone. Even if he didn’t really want Drew there, he knew it was better to include him rather than have Drew blundering along in his wake, possibly blowing Joe’s cover and getting them both killed.Or worse.
Part of Herc’s assistance was arranging for a driver and a hotel, for which Joe was actually grateful. He hadn’t slept much in the past seventy-two hours since Finn’s abduction, and he knew that finding their quarry was going to require them both to be at the top of their games. Now that they’d made it to their destination, it was time to slow down, look, and listen, and not make any mistakes that might end up blowing the mission.
They were booked into a two-bedroom suite at the Islamabad Marriott, which despite being a chain was actually a quite luxurious hotel. After claiming their baggage and locating their driver, they went to the hotel, and once Joe had tipped the bellman and the door was shut, he almost sagged in relief.
“We made it,” he sighed and then moved toward the minibar. “And I definitely need a drink.”
“Have a seat.” Drew waved him toward the plush sofa and headed to the bar as well. “I’ll pour one for us both.”
Joe hesitated, his knee-jerk reaction being to say that he could take care of himself, but he stopped the impulse and simply nodded, moving to the sofa and sinking down onto it. “Bourbon, if they have it, please. Neat.”
“You got it.”
Drew poured two drinks with a generous hand and then carried them back to Joe. He handed over one glass before dropping onto the sofa as well, and he let out a soft sigh. “Feels good to be out of an airplane seat.”
“Yeah.” Joe accepted the glass and then drank deeply, feeling the burn of the alcohol as it went down, warming him in a way that the heat outside hadn’t. “It’s a long damned flight.”
He still wasn’t sure how he felt about Drew, or how to treat him. Drew confused him, and he couldn’t get a good feel for the kind of person Drew truly was. Logically, he knew Drew had to be okay, not only because Herc had hired him, but because Finn loved him. It was, however, hard to get past his initial feelings of Drew being an interloper who was taking something precious from him. There was also the matter of him not really knowing Drew, and the reserved, suspicious part of Joe’s own nature that viewed Drew as a threat. It didn’t help at all that Drew had triggered some bad memories, however unintentionally. Maybe things would have been different if Joe had met Drew before Finn had, if he could have had the opportunity to get to know him without the associated bad feelings before Finn had fallen in love with him, but no amount of wishing would change the situation. Joe was just left feeling like he was walking down a slippery slope without any support.
“It damned sure is, and I’m creeping intogetting too old for this shitterritory,” Drew said, leaning his head on the back of the sofa.
It was on the tip of Joe’s tongue to snap back that no one had asked Drew to come along, but it suddenly didn’t seem worth the effort. Maybe it was exhaustion catching up with him, but Joe was suddenly tired of the verbal sparring.
“Happens to everyone eventually,” he replied with a shrug. He thought about Mark Hansen, a merc known as Stack, who had worked for Drew at Lawson & Greer, and whom Finn and Joe had known fairly well. Stack had been the partner of Hunter Callahan, who now worked for Hercules Security. Stack had died in the field while saving Hunter’s life when the removal of an explosives-filled vest from a kid wired as a suicide bomber went wrong. “Or it does if we live that long.”
“Ain’t that the truth,” Drew said softly, his expression turning pensive as he lifted his head and stared into his glass.
This was the first time Drew had displayed any uncertainty that Joe had seen. “Feeling your mortality, I take it? Working for Herc might not involve IEDs and suicide bombers like we had at L&G, but there’s still danger, or at least there is for anyone in the field and not just managing or teaching.”
“Oh, I’ve been feeling my mortality for about eighteen months,” Drew said, one corner of his mouth quirking up in a wry smile.
Apparently Drew was thinking along the same directions Joe had been, which wasn’t surprising. “I get it. It hit all of us who knew Mark. Hunter was a walking disaster until Payne took him in hand.”
“Oh, man. Hunter….” Drew put his glass aside and scrubbed his face with both hands, suddenly looking weary. “Me and Blaze cleared the camp, but I went back. What if that poor kid wasn’t the only surprise those assholes had planned for us, you know? I kept my distance, but I had a clear view. I saw it happen. And Hunter…. It took me a long time to stop hearing those screams.”
Joe couldn’t help the sympathy he felt for Drew, not after hearing the stories from Hunter himself about what had happened. Drew had, after all, been the XO for Bravo Company, which meant he had been, at least in part, responsible for Mark and for what had happened. Not that he was to blame, since he hadn’t strapped bricks of C-4 to a little kid and sent him in to blow up the camp, but officers were always responsible for the men under their command. It was hard enough for Finn, Joe, and D-Day, who had worked with Mark and Hunter before, to deal with. It had to have been worse for Drew, who had known Stack better, having one of the men under his charge blown to bits in the line of duty.
“I can’t imagine.” Joe shook his head. “I always thought that D-Day would be the one to get his ass wasted, not Stack.”
“You’d think.” Drew gave a little snort. “Stack had a family. He was mustering out. He’d been playing it safer than usual, but something about that kid triggered his inner white knight. Maybe dad instincts. I don’t know. It happened so fast, he probably didn’t think about it at all. Just did it. We got Hunter the hell out of there as soon as possible, and I wouldn’t have been surprised to hear he’d eaten a bullet. I’m glad Payne was able to help him.”
“Me too.” Joe took another sip from his glass, feeling the alcohol allowing him to finally relax, just a bit. He knew he wouldn’t be able to completely let his guard down until Abbasi was in custody—or dead—but he wasn’t going to let anything happen to Finn. No matter the cost. “Just goes to show why you shouldn’t take anything for granted, I guess.”
“Definitely not.” Drew retrieved his glass and downed the drink in one swallow. “I wanted to get out of there myself,” he said in a low voice. “But we were down two men, and Blaze needed me to help get shit back to normal. So I worked my ass off to wear myself out, but I had nightmares, anyway. Sometimes I was watching Stack die again. Sometimes it was me on that C-4.” He glanced sidelong at Joe with a small, rueful smile. “I’ve been saying it was age that drove me out of the desert, but it wasn’t just that. Not even mostly that. I was ready to be stateside, and I pulled my time on the therapist’s couch as soon as I got home.”
Joe wasn’t sure why Drew was telling him this, but he couldn’t bring himself to tell him to stop. There was a part of him that really didn’t want to listen to Drew’s pain because it made him harder to ignore, harder to treat as just another merc he didn’t much like. Another part of Joe understood what Drew had gone through in a way that anyone who hadn’t been in the military, and had their ass on the line, couldn’t. He knew what it was like to have friends and teammates die, to have to stand by while it happened because there wasn’t anything you could do to stop it. He knew what it was like to have not only his own life, but the lives of everyone he cared about, in jeopardy.
“I think I need another drink,” he said and then drained his glass. He stood up and held out a hand for Drew’s glass. “What about you?”
“I wouldn’t say no.” Drew handed over his glass without hesitation.
Joe took it, crossing to the minibar and got them refills. Two drinks wouldn’t be enough to get him even tipsy, but maybe they would help him sleep. He returned to the couch and handed Drew his drink before settling back in his former spot. He wasn’t sure what to say, but somehow he felt he had to acknowledge Drew’s admission of what many might consider a weakness. “Did therapy help?” he asked quietly. “I know Hunter said conventional methods didn’t work for him. I’m not exactly sure what he and Pita used thatdidwork, but I have my suspicions.”
