Walker (In the Company of Snipers #21) - Irish Winters Page 0,38

out without being seen or caught. Or remembered. Uncanny, was what he was. He was the one who’d taught Walker how to avoid making an impression, how to avoid being seen.

Walker missed his guys. They’d been through some stuff together, everything from taking out pirates on the high seas in Indonesian waters, to the grunt work still going on in the Middle East. How he wished the US of A would get out of Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and all those other tortured places where freedom, and doing the right thing, didn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of surviving, much less thriving. Walker’s one take-away from the wasted years he’d spent in that part of the world, was that he couldn’t change people. Even when he’d just wanted to help. Or save them from themselves. Uh-uh. People had to want to change, and right now, that wasn’t happening. The powers in charge of those Middle East kingdoms seemed intent on turning time in their countries back to the Stone Ages.

Every other civilized country had already deserted those desert climes. But not the noble United States. Which was too bad. Too many young men and women had died for what felt like nothing more than political bullshit, oil, and strategic military positioning. It all came down to greed and power, and Walker was sick of the continual one-upmanship American politicians played at the expense of military lives.

They’d play that game differently if their sons and daughters were the ones dying in the Middle East. Only they weren’t. Elitists’ sons and daughters were forever too good, too rich, and too privileged to ever have to fight for their lives or their freedom. No. That responsibility would always fall to someone else’s children.

The plight of every good soldier was, it seemed, to die for the unthankful, unthinking masses. The power brokers who peddled their influence while others died in their stead. But for what? So they could get richer? More powerful? So they could flaunt their wealth behind ten-foot-high walls that protected them from having to see what their greed had done to America?

There seemed no end to it, no hope in sight. Yet reaching out to his guys was unthinkable. Walker wouldn’t make them accessories after the fact. Yet he wondered how they were doing now, and if they were okay. If NCIS had targeted them or claimed guilt by association.

The last thing he’d heard on American radio was that military members everywhere were looking for him. He was on the FBI’s top ten most-wanted list, which meant Interpol was looking for him, too.

But Walker was willing to bet his life that his guys weren’t hunting him. That they still believed in him. They were SEALs. His friends.

He ran a quick hand over his head, needing a cut, but not willing to risk being recognized by some nosy guy in a barbershop. His beard had grown into a thick cover that bore as much darker browns as it did gray these days. Didn’t that figure? He’d barely turned thirty-five, but he felt as weary as a ninety-year-old. Guess life was not what you made it. Not unless you’d intended it to run over you like a rogue wave, swamp your boat, drown your dreams, and wash your Trident overboard, as if it were merely another foolish trinket that stupid men lived and died for.

Christ, he was tired of life on the run.

Automatically, his fingers went to the scar on his chest, where his hard-earned Budweiser had been pounded into him by another SEAL, Adam Torrey. Now, there was a certifiable adrenaline junkie. Tall. Blond. A freak who’d once lived to dive out of perfectly good airplanes. Not Walker’s forte, but Adam had certainly excelled at high altitude, low opening jumps.

Walker wondered where that diehard warrior had gone and what he was doing now. Was he happy? Had he settled down? Somehow, Walker doubted Adam ever married. Not in the cards for either of them. Torrey had always been one of those bigger than life, hero types. He was like Charlie Brown, aka Gregor Jorgensen, the Army Ranger who’d befriended Walker during his trial, who had, in fact, been on the jury. A jury of Walker’s peers who had actually advocated for more evidence. More transparency. More legitimacy. Instead...

Their wishes were ignored as much as Walker’s sworn testimony.

He swallowed hard at the exile he’d been forced into after the farce of his much-publicized trial. In the end, the judge hadn’t cared about evidence.