He still hadn’t responded to Hackett’s question. The general looked directly at him—he had eyes like stainless steel ball bearings—and said, “Do you understand, Mr. Brodie?”
“Yes, sir. I do.” But something was missing from this story, and he added, “You said Mercer escaped his captors eight months ago. How do you know that?”
Hackett and Dombroski exchanged a look, and something told Brodie they had finally reached the heart of the matter.
General Hackett said, “What you are about to see is classified.” Brodie was certain the man practiced saying that in front of a mirror every morning.
Hackett took a thumb drive out of his desk drawer and handed it to Dombroski, who plugged it into a flat-screen TV mounted on the wall across from Hackett’s desk.
Hackett continued, “Eight months ago, a SEAL team conducting a cross-border operation into the Pakistani tribal territories came across a former Taliban encampment. While they were inspecting the site, they were approached by a local goat herder who presented them with a note, written in English—and, as we discovered later, in Mercer’s handwriting—instructing any American military unit to pay the bearer of the note fifty dollars in exchange for valuable information. The SEAL team paid the goat herder and he handed them an SD memory card and then left. The card contained this footage.” He added, “It’s graphic.”
Dombroski pressed play, and they all watched the screen.
A stationary camera showed a burning tent in rugged mountain territory on a moonlit night. A figure was splayed out on the ground in front of the tent. It appeared to be a bearded man in dark clothing. He was sleeping. Or dead.
Another figure was hunched over in the distance, moving in quick repetitive motions. An arm, framed against the sky, raised a long knife and brought it down over and over.
The figure stood. It was a tall, thin man with a beard, his features etched in moonlight. He held the knife in his right hand, and a round object swayed from his clenched left hand.
A human head.
The man walked forward toward the burning tent, and as he got closer to the camera his head disappeared out of frame and his body could be seen approaching a sharp wooden pike staked in the sand. He dropped the knife on the ground and, with both hands, brought the head down onto the pike. A distinctive wet crunch could be heard over the wind and the crackling fire.
“Five men—apparently Taliban—were found like that,” said Hackett. “Decapitated, heads mounted on pikes in a circle around the encampment. Three of them, according to the SEAL team report, were killed by bullets. Two had their throats cut.”
The figure walked forward and crouched into frame. It was Kyle Mercer. His face looked frightening—gaunt, bloody, illuminated by moonlight and by another fire somewhere off camera. His blue eyes were wide open and alert as he stared into the lens. “I hereby resign my commission as an officer in the United States Army.”
He leaned forward and turned off the camera.
The screen went black, and for a moment they all stared at their own dull reflections.
Hackett broke the silence: “For the record, the Army does not accept Captain Mercer’s resignation. He is still subject to military justice.”
Right, thought Brodie.You are still one of us, and we will find you.
Hackett continued, “Captain Mercer was held for over two years by a ruthless and sadistic enemy, undoubtedly subjected to physical andpsychological torture. It is remarkable that he was able to escape, and this speaks to his considerable abilities. It goes without saying that this man is dangerous, and unlikely to be taken into custody willingly.”
That, thought Brodie, may be an understatement.
Brodie understood something about the stress of war. Before joining the CIC, he’d served as a rifleman in the 2nd Infantry Division in Iraq and taken part in the successful drive to retake Fallujah from the insurgents in Operation Phantom Fury. He fought along dusty alleyways and sunbaked roofs and houses blown open by mortar shells. He saw people ripped apart by bullets and bombs and artillery. Most were the enemy. Some were civilians. A couple were his friends. He’d seen action before that, and he would again, but that battle had changed him.
He wondered what the war had done to Kyle Mercer, not to mention the years of captivity and torture. The Army had turned a kid from San Diego into a trained killer. But what was it that had turned him into a deserter who would abandon his own men? And what had he become when he not only killed his captors, but whacked off their heads and mounted them like trophies? Whatever it was, he must have known he’d crossed a threshold from which he could not come back.
Hackett stood, and they all followed suit. He looked between Brodie, Taylor, and Dombroski and said, “If you have any questions, Colonel Dombroski will answer them.” He added, “This meeting never took place.”
Brodie wished that were true.
CHAPTER 5
Maggie Taylor was typing on her laptop. “Looks like we can get a cute Airbnb right in downtown Caracas for twelve bucks a night.”
Brodie still couldn’t tell when his new partner was joking, though he hoped this was a skill he’d pick up over time.
They were sitting in their small shared office on the second floor of an administrative building about a ten-minute walk from Hackett’s office. Quantico was their permanent duty station, though they were hardly ever there. Their office walls were bare except for a bulletin board thick with layers of official notices and takeout menus. Brodie’s gray metal desk was covered in piles of dusty incident reports that were supposed to be filed somewhere, and the whole place smelled stale. Brodie’s last partner, a humorless guy named Spencer from Chicago, was constantly annoyed with the state of Brodie’s side of the office. Dave Spencer was a former infantry NCO, but he had spent all of his time stateside, and Brodie suspected he put more care and attention into folding the perfect military corners on his bedsheets than he did into getting his soldiers battle-ready. Scott Brodie had no patience for the finer points of military discipline and etiquette, and he’d noticed that some of the most useless guys in his old infantry battalion had the crispest uniforms, while many of the bravest soldiers he’d ever known couldn’t even keep their footlockers organized. So the CID suited him well. He could be an officer without worrying about being a gentleman.
When Dave Spencer was promoted to Warrant Officer Four, he’d jumped at the opportunity to get a new office and find his own lower-ranking partner to boss around, leaving Brodie alone with more room to spread his mess. Then Maggie Taylor came along, fresh off a six-month stint with the CID at Fort Bragg, and as far as Brodie could tell she hadn’t even noticed the mess, or the smell. She tended to become manically focused onwhatever she was doing, oblivious to everything else. At the moment, her task was making arrangements with the travel office, and Brodie decided he ought to clarify the objective before she found them a room share in the Caracas slums.
“We need a modern hotel. Preferably one that employs private security.” He added, “Cost is no object.”
