Highest Law: A Gripping Psychological Thriller Read online

  “Oorah!” I say.

  “Oorah!” he and Chappy reply in unison, before Granite adds, “A wise man learns from his mistakes. A wiser man learns from someone else’s mistakes. I made the call to storm into the office of the USMC Commandant at the Pentagon after I got word that the Marines at KAF were not being provided with enough intelligence by NATO. Next thing, I was transferred from my cushy teaching job in Quantico to this lovely little piece of paradise with orders to—” Granite makes quotation marks with his fat fingers and adds, “‘Look into the problem.’ That was two years ago. You go making more noise about what you saw up on that mountain and who the hell knows where you’ll end up. That’s the OGA conducting a SAP, Marine. Don’t screw with it, and the word I got from General Richard was that this ponytail friend of yours is supposed to be some big shot from Langley on special assignment and under direct orders from the DCI, who I don’t have to remind you, has a direct line to POTUS. You’ve registered your concerns with the KAF operator at Central Command, including your claim that there might have been Russians and biohazard materials involved, and that has been relayed up to Richard. You’ve also stated your position with your superior officer back at Virginia Beach, and now with me. And I’ll look into it. Promise. But you, son, need to get the fuck over it and rejoin the real war out there.”

  I blink at that, remembering him screaming through that window in Iraq like if it was yesterday.

  “We’re clear, Marine?”

  As I considered that, I spot Lieutenant Kate Parker, a navy doctor I’ve been seeing off and on for the past couple of months, grabbing a tray and joining the personnel queued at the front of the cafeteria line.

  Kate’s wearing blue scrubs, sneakers, and her ever-present beeper clipped to her pants. Our eyes meet for a few seconds before she breaks it off and focuses on the breakfast selections.

  “Lawson?” Granite asks, an edge now in his voice. “I said, are… we… clear?”

  I return my gaze to him and say, “Lima Charlie, Colonel.” Loud and clear.

  He pats me on the shoulder and says, “Good man. Come see me at Oh-Dark-Hundred tomorrow. I may have a job for you guys.” That’s military speak for a ridiculously early time of the morning, which in KAF usually means 5 am.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good. Good.” He stares at me for a moment, then asks, “How’s Danny Boy these days?”

  I look into the distance for a moment while images of Uncle D. fill my mind. The man looked after my mother and especially me during my troubling teenage years, when he dished out a fair amount of tough love to keep me on the straight and narrow. He would often drag me away on weekends aboard his damn sailboat to keep me from meeting up with my troublesome friends, most of who ended up arrested or dead. And in the process, he made me fall in love with the sea. But then, Uncle D. would vanish on another in country rotation, serving in various operations in Iraq and Afghanistan through the 2000s—an unprecedented eight tours—before the violence caught up to him. You could see it in his eyes, which became dark, cold, devoid of all compassion.

  Afghanistan will do that to a man.

  And that’s why I think he left the Corps shortly after mom died: the rush of combat just wasn’t enough to satisfy him. In some weird way, he was like a drug addict in need of something stronger, and he found it in Special Access Programs.

  Pretty scary shit what juices that man.

  Uncle D. was—and still is—neck-deep in the darkest SAPs, dividing his time between places like Guantanamo Bay, the Parwan Detention Facility up at Bagram Airbase, and other Black Ops sites. I had a couple of beers with him just before my deployment, when I was able to catch him stateside. All I have to say is that I’m damned glad he plays for our team.

  I return my gaze to the colonel. “Fine, I guess. Doing what he wants to do, sir. Just like in the Corps, though way too many tours, if you ask me. He was almost agoraphobic about this fucking place.”

  Granite sighs. “Yeah. Most of us stepped up to command after a few years leading platoons. Danny Boy never did. He served all that time in the trenches. That’s insane.”

  “Had a few beers with him before deploying. Seemed content with whatever it is he’s doing at places like Guantanamo and Parwan, which, like what just went down at Compound 35, is probably as much as I really want to know.”

  “Wise words,” he replies. “There’s the War on Terror and then there’s the War on Terror. Danny and your Ponytail friend are certainly in the latter, but paying a hefty price.”

  I nod. The price Uncle D. paid, and continues to pay, is in the form of that darkness in his eyes, which I believe is a reflection of his soul—not unlike what I saw in Jones’ face this morning. And while I’m no saint, I’d like to think I’ve yet to cross into such an obscure world, which I got a peek into today. But on the bright side, what I saw felt disturbing enough to suggest that perhaps there’s still hope for people like me.

  “Anyway,” I finally say. “I’ll try to catch up with him when I rotate back, though he warned me that he might be out of reach for a while.”

  “Sounds like more SAPs.”

  “Yeah. A lot of that going around. But he seems happy, so…”

  “Well, good for him. Tell him I said hi.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  And he’s gone.

  Murph finishes his breakfast, checks his G-shock Casio, stretches his arms over his shoulders while yawning, and says, “Shuteye time,” and he’s also gone. Cope and Chappy follow him while Dix continues feasting with what I could only describe as profound enthusiasm.

  “Okay, man,” I say, leaning forward. “We’re alone now. Who was that ponytail asshole?”

  Dix frowns ever so slightly and continues chewing.

  “Seriously? You’re really not going to tell me who that bastard was?”

  The former football star keeps digging into his pancakes.

  “What about the contractors? You called one of them M.K., right? The guy with the scar on his cheek standing next to Jones?”

  The man keeps chomping away while staring at his chow.

  Before I can push harder, a young Army private named Harold Finn swings by holding his tray while limping a little.

  “Good morning, Commander Pacheco,” he says.

  The kid has a baby face, and he’s probably still in his teens, but he already saw plenty of action when his platoon came under attack a month ago by a large Tali contingent. My guys and I were in the vicinity on another op and ended up providing covering fire while they made a run for a pair of Chinooks. Finn, who was the radio operator for one of the platoon’s squads, took a 7.62 round in the ass, literally, while taking out two combatants who were about to flank his buddies. I ended up hauling him to the helo shortly before the Talis overran their position.

  Said another way, I saved him from either getting killed, or worse, getting captured. And now he feels he owes me.

  “How’re you feeling, soldier?” I ask.

  “Better, sir,” he replies. The Tali slug, as it turned out, missed anything vital, but the wound—and his courage under fire—earned him a Purple Heart and an Army Commendation Medal. It also got him a temporary reassignment to Central Command working communications.

  “Good,” I tell him. “How long before you can escape the desk job?”

  “They say at least two more months, sir.”

  “And how much longer before you rotate back into the world?”

  “Five months, sir.”

  “Good. Plenty of time to give those Talis a little payback.”

  “Fucking-A, sir.”

  “Well, I’m glad to see you up and about.”

  “Yes, sir. And if there’s anything I can do…”

  “Just doing my job, son. You owe me nothing. Okay?”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir,” he says before limping awa
y and joining a table packed with young grunts, most of whom looked like they were getting laid in the backs of their parents’ cars only yesterday.

  I turn back to Dix, who’s still gobbling up his breakfast seemingly without a care in the world.

  “So?” I ask.

  “So?” he replies, cutting into his pancakes.

  “Who the hell was this Jones guy, man?”

  He momentarily inspects the forkful of pancakes dripping in syrup before shoving them in his mouth.

  “How long were you a part of that team?”

  He just stares me in the eye while chewing slowly.

  “What about those Russians? I saw you nodding at the one that looked like a ghost. Who was he?”

  He just keeps chomping away, before cutting another slice.

  “And why would they be hauling crates labeled as biohazard?”

  But the man proceeds to deliver another forkful into his damn mouth.

  “And what did the big bald guy mean by ‘this shit really works’ when he saw the crazy mothers we had to kill?”

  But I get nothing.

  “Go fuck yourself, Dix.”

  “Copy that, Boss,” he replies while chewing.

  I take my coffee, leave the Jersey boy in the company of his damn maple syrup, and make my way toward Kate, who’s settled at an empty table in the rear.

  “Hola, Guapa,” I say, calling her by a Spanish term of endearment meaning ‘good looking.’ Placing my cup on the table and sitting across from her, I stretch my left leg under the table and rub the side of my boot against hers.

  “Hey,” she replies, giving me her best effort at a smile. Kate is almost six inches shorter than me and very thin, with saucer-like brown eyes, short auburn hair, and a glowing in-country tan.

  But her most striking feature, I think, are those amazing Angelina Jolie lips.

  This morning, however, the lips—and the rest of her for that matter—look a bit hard-shell, perhaps from being cooped up inside that ER for longer than any human should.

  I met Kate two months ago during an R&R weekend in Qatar. She basically had me the moment those lips parted into a smile, and we ended up stripping our clothes in the predawn hours at some beachside cabana after a long night of drinking and dancing. What I thought at the time to be a one-night-stand—to help me forget someone else—has turned into a two-month thing. But at KAF, our physical contact has been limited to what I just did because it’s frowned upon for military personnel—even officers—to fraternize while on rotation. And while I’m up for bending—and occasionally even breaking—the rules, Kate is a stickler for them.

  So, it’s really been more of a Platonic thing.

  “That bad, huh?” I finally say.

  Kate slowly nods while picking at her scrambled eggs with a fork. She works the nightshift at the Role 3 MMU, meaning she’s just getting off of a 12-hour stretch dealing with the worst the Afghan war can dish out. The majority of the injuries rushing through her world are caused by IEDs. Their signature wounds are multiple limb amputations plus severe trauma to the lower torso and groin.

  Yeah. The Talis love to cut us in half.

  At the last count, coalition forces have lost 388 soldiers this year, a third of them to IEDs. This month alone the death count is almost 40. And if you add up the total number of U.S. Military casualties since we started this War on Terror, it has already surpassed 10,000, far more than the number of stars that can be seen with the naked eye. And then there’s the wounded, where we mangled up several starry-skies-worth of American warriors.

  “Marines got ambushed,” she finally replies, compressing her lips, before adding, “It’s been… nonstop… and brutal.”

  “Yeah. I heard. Very fucking unfortunate,” I say and instantly think of Ponytail Jones.

  She slowly looks up. “The oldest was twenty-one, Law. Most were missing their legs and some even their genitals.” Then she drops her gaze and returns to playing with her food. “And we got word that there might be another batch of wounded coming from somewhere else.”

  Kate is in her fifth month of a six-month rotation, and she’s seen far worse shit than I have in all my tours combined. As a SEAL—and before that, Marine—I have been mostly at the dispensing end of violence.

  “You’re saving lives in there, Kate,” I offer. “There’s nothing more noble than that.”

  She looks up again, but very slowly, her bloodshot eyes resembling a pair of rising blood moons. “Sure, Lawson. I felt very fucking noble amputating those kids’ mangled legs and cutting off what was left of their balls.”

  Kate only calls me that when she’s really pissed, so I decide to give her some space. At my silence, she adds, “And to make things even worse, NATO decided to conduct one of those stupid fucking drills. So, while we’re trying to do our goddamned jobs, we suddenly had to drop to the ground and pretend there’s an attack on the base. What a joke!”

  “That could save your life one day,” I offer. “I wish more people would react by dropping and rolling away the moment they hear gunfire or mortars. Instead, they freeze and end up at your ER, or worse. So, drop and roll, Kate. Drop and—”

  “Oh, put a sock in it, Lawson. I don’t need that dumbass drill when I’m trying to do my damn job.”

  I pause and stare at her.

  She adds, “At the moment, I’d rather have someone just shoot me between the eyes and put me out of my misery than spend another second in that life-sucking place.”

  I decide it’s probably best to give her some space. I’ve seen her like this before, though more so in the past few weeks. The job is really starting to take a toll on her. It probably explains why the rotations at the Role 3 are only six months with weeklong R&R breaks every two months. Soldiers and Marines spend maybe up to 99% of the time waiting for shit to happen and around 1% of the time actually either killing shit or getting the shit kicked out of them, as was the case this morning with those ambushed Marines. Kate, on the other hand, spends 99% of her time dealing with the horror created during that 1% window.

  “Look,” I say. “Maybe we can catch a movie later or—”

  “I can’t do this anymore.”

  “What… what are you talking about?”

  Her index finger shifts back and forth between us. “This. Us. I just… can’t.”

  We stare at each other in silence for a while.

  “Look, Kate,” I finally say. “You know I care about you, and I know the feeling is mutual. You just got off a shift seeing some pretty horrible stuff. Maybe we can talk about this later, after you—”

  “You’re right. I do like you, and probably more than you like me.”

  “Why would you say that? Did I do something to—”

  “A girl can tell.”

  “Tell what?”

  “When there’s someone else in the mix.”

  “Kate, I don’t know what—”

  “I could almost feel her that night in Qatar, Law. Like there were three of us in that cabana. Who is she?”

  I’m at a complete loss for words. How could she possibly know that I—

  “But put that aside,” she adds at my silence. “Maybe you’re using me to get over her or whatever. Either way, I really just need a break, okay? I have four more weeks of this, and then I’m back in Portsmouth. You’re barely halfway through your nine-month tour. Call me when you rotate back home. Maybe… maybe we can pick up where we left off… but only if you’re really over her. Okay?”

  She stares at me with tears in her eyes, pleading with me to agree to the break.

  “Look,” she adds at my silence. “There’s something you should know. I… I was engaged… about a year ago.”

  I lean forward. That’s certainly news to me. “You were?”

  “Captain Pete Rivera, Marines. Stepped on a daisy-chained IED out on
patrol not ten klicks from here. There was nothing left for me to bury except for his charred and twisted helmet. I can’t go through that again, okay?”

  “But, Baby, nothing’s gonna happen to me.”

  “You can’t promise that.”

  “I’m a SEAL. I’m the one who brings hell to the enemy.”

  “Now you sound just like Pete. The stupid man recited that stupid line to me right up until the day he was blown into a thousand stupid pieces.”

  “Kate, I’m so sorry that—”

  “Yeah. So was I, and I really can’t go through that again. I’m sorry,” Kate says. “Qatar was great, at least for me, and I do like—”

  Her beeper goes off.

  She pulls it off her waist band, stares at it, and mumbles, “Goddammit.”

  Standing abruptly and clipping it back on her scrubs, she glares at me as tears well in her eyes. “You’re a great guy, Law. But I just… take care of yourself.”

  And she’s gone, walking away briskly while cupping her mouth with her right hand. She cruises past Dix, who is still eating, and who raises a hand to say hi. But Kate just shakes her head and rushes past his table.

  I’m about to go after her but decide not to make a scene. So, I settle for watching her slim figure maneuver through the sea of packed tables and towering GIs walking about.

  As my mind is processing what just happened, I spot no other than Ponytail Jones stepping into the DFACS.

  The mere sight of him jerks my emotional joystick to the complete opposite end of the spectrum.

  Before I know it, I’m on my feet making a beeline for the bastard, who sees me approaching and greets me with the finest of deadpan faces.

  “Remember me?” I ask.

  “Of course. Morning, Commander,” he says while grabbing a plastic tray and falling in line. “Chow any good?”

  “That didn’t take long,” I say. “Thought you guys were going to be there awhile.”

  “What are you taking about?”

  “Really? That’s how you’re going to play it?”

  “Play what, exactly?”