guarantee that the information of a crime would make its way to the top—or if it did, the information might reach the wrong people, meaning the people who were complicit.
Paranoia was a fun brain exercise. Until it wasn’t.
Well, there were no more answers in Caracas, and no more questions to be asked here. The questions, the answers, and the truth were waiting for them in the dark green expanses of that map.
If he didn’t get on that plane to Kavak, he would never know the truth—not about Mercer, or Flagstaff, or Worley… or Maggie Taylor. And in the end, the only work product that Warrant Officer Brodie produced was the truth. And truth was the critical component of justice.
He turned from the window and continued packing.
The truth will set you free. John 8:32. The truth can get you killed. Scott 1:1.
CHAPTER 35
Brodie lay on his bed, wearing cargo pants and a black T-shirt, unable to sleep, waiting for his 2 A.M. wakeup call.
Starting your day at zero dark thirty was a time-honored tradition in the U.S. Army, but if you lived off base, as he did, at least you weren’t awakened by the bugle sound of reveille blasting out of pole-mounted speakers. But even off base, or on assignment, you still had to get up with the birds to get a jump on the worms.
But to put things into perspective, what sucked even more was being in a combat unit in hostile territory in the dead of night, unable to sleep because there were people out there who wanted to kill you.
Even worse was when you’d gotten the word that your unit was going to mount a dawn attack—the two worst words in the English language for an infantryman. Dawn attack. Bad enough that you slept on the ground with your boots on in scorpion-infested dirt, and breathed desert dust all night. But to add insult to injury, some officer or NCO was going to come around and wake you up at zero dark so you wouldn’t be late for your dawn attack. Which, by the way, you’d been thinking about all night: You were going to attack an enemy position, assault rifles and machine guns blazing, grenade launchers firing, mortar and artillery exploding while the infantry moved forward, trying to keep up with the armored vehicles that were firing everything they had at some poor bastards who a few seconds before had been jerking off, dreaming about their seventy-two virgins in paradise whom they were about to meet.
We attack at dawn, men. Before breakfast, for God’s sake. You were going to kill someone before you even had coffee. Or it was you who was going to get killed. And the last thing you’d see was the rising sun. Shoulda gone to grad school.
Well, if he could handle that, there was little he couldn’t handle. The shoot-out at the whorehouse would barely make the Battle Update Brief in Iraq.
Brodie canceled his wake-up call and got out of bed. He put on his running shoes, took his overnight bag, and went into the sitting room, hoping to find Maggie Taylor there.
Over the years he’d become adept at navigating any morning-after awkwardness with the women he’d slept with. It was situations like this—a swing and a miss—that were awkward. And annoying. As the boys used to say at NYU, “Getting laid is no big deal, but not getting laid is a very big deal.”
Taylor wasn’t there, so Brodie sat on the couch and looked closely at the map by the light of the table lamp. What the hell was Kyle Mercer doing in the jungle? And why hadn’t the asshole gone someplace nice, like Barcelona, where he could practice his Spanish in a tapas bar? It occurred to Brodie that most of his world travels had taken him to shitholes. It also occurred to him that his mood might be better if he was now in a postcoital sleep in Maggie Taylor’s bed. He deserved a thirty-day leave after this assignment. He pictured himself on a nude beach in the Caribbean, walking hand in hand with someone who looked like Maggie Taylor.
* * *
“Scott. Time to go.”
Dawn attack?
Maggie Taylor had her hand on his shoulder and shook him gently. “You ready?”
He looked at her, hoping she was naked, but she was wearing cargo pants and a T-shirt, same as him, except her shirt said: “Georgetown.”