“Wolf disappears around this big rock at a bend in the trail and I’ve got one hand on the jerky and the other feeling my way around this monster rock when there’s this hissing scream. The next thing I know I’m sliding down a chunk of the mountain I just climbed up doing a somersault dance with a cougar. He’s big with these piercing eyes, and he’s buried his teeth in my shoulder.”
Sam shook his head. “I wallop him one in the nose and his ears flatten back against his head, then we slam into this tree trunk that about breaks my back and gives him a huge thump on the head. He lets go of me with this swallowed growl, and I’ve got him in a grip that would do a lion trainer proud, and we just stare at each other. About that time I realize he’s shedding on me and I start sneezing. You should have seen the annoyed offense as he tugs to get back: Hitting is okay, but don’t sneeze on me. He stalks off with this swish of his tail that quivers with his outrage.
“About this time my partner comes stumbling down the mountain and about lands on top of me. Wolf decides I lost my footing and am making up the cat. He’s not buying the holes in my jacket, so he takes off to track this mythical cougar. I’m standing there shedding cat hair and he’s having to see the thing to believe it.”
Darcy bit her thumb as she struggled not to interrupt him. She wanted to howl with laughter. Sam was allergic to cats.
“That giggle is going to crack ribs if you hold it in much longer.”
“You’re a born storyteller.” She could just see the scene. It was a wonder he’d been able to walk away from it.
“Only true ones. No one believes the made-up ones.”
“Did Tom ever see your cougar?”
Sam shook his head. “It remains a debatable legend.”
“Before that, was your handle something to do with Texas? Your name just begs for one related to Texas.”
“Sam Houston is a pretty colorful figure in history. He was both governor of Tennessee and of Texas during his lifetime. The guys tried out a few handles over the years, but they said I never lived up to them. Then the cougar incident happened and that name stuck. What about you, Dar? Did you ever acquire a handle?”
She wrinkled her nose. Sam laughed and reached over to tip up her chin. “What?”
“I’m kind of tenacious going after my objectives. They call me Hound Dog.”
Sam considered that name and smiled. “You’ve even got an Elvis Presley theme song. Not bad.” He studied her. “How come you can’t swim?”
“Who said I can’t?”
“Darcy, you can’t even do the guppy stroke.”
She wasn’t sure she could handle being teased by a SEAL about water. They were born and formed in it, in a Basic Underwater Demolition training/SEAL course where a man’s mental and physical strength were both tested to the limit. He loved water; she could tolerate it. “There wasn’t a YMCA anywhere near where I grew up.”
“You need to learn.”
“Maybe someday.”
“I could teach you,” Sam offered.
“Somehow I doubt you’d start with blown-up flotation rings.”
“I’m actually a pretty good teacher. We could start with windsurfing, and by the time you climb back on the board a few dozen times, you would learn the basics of closing your mouth before you go underwater.”
She laughed. “You’re enjoying this.”
“You bet.” Sam glanced at his watch. “The guys should be about ready.” He got to his feet and picked up the blanket. “Let’s go take a walk. I want you to see something.” He offered her a hand up.
Darcy took a deep breath and forced herself to go with the flow, wondering what he had arranged. Sam led her into the trees a short distance to where a fallen tree on a rise overlooked the road. He spread out the blanket and encouraged her to take a seat. She pushed her hands into her pockets and did so while he perched beside her.
“What do you see?” Sam asked.
“A road.” The sun was beginning to go down and the shadows were shifting around.
“The four Brits are out there. Somewhere between that telephone pole and this one. No one more than fifty feet away.”
She paid sharper attention, searching the area. There was nothing moving, no sign of where a person stood or lay on the ground, nothing to indicate someone was there.
“You need to understand the problem with facing a sniper. He’s not like a street thug who wants to get close to you with a gun. Distance and patience are a sniper’s tools. If he sees you stand still for an instant, you’re dead. They don’t miss at two hundred yards, and a really good sniper can hit from a thousand yards away. That’s ten football fields out, farther than you can see.”
“Why show me this?”
“You can’t see a sniper when he’s amid trees and grass, the most unnatural environment for a man to hide in. You’ll be even less aware of him when his perch is an upper-story window a block away or a car parked down the block from your home. Snipers have to be stopped before they are sent, or you are betting your life on him making a mistake. And most snipers don’t make mistakes.”
In other words, if they came against her again, she wouldn’t be alive. “You made your point.”
“Have I?” Sam asked softly and lifted his hand. Darcy jumped, startled, as Brandon moved away from a tree seven feet in front of her. His face was painted in green and black and his clothes were woodland cammies with two draped bands of cloth like a long scarf hung over his shoulders tucked with leaves and twigs. He stood on the slope going down to the road. The other Brits rose from the ground, two beside the road and one near Brandon.
“That was with less than twenty minutes to disperse into cover,” Sam remarked. “With planning, it gets better.”
“Is there any way to counter and stop a sniper committed to a mission?”
“You can provide a blanket of security that makes it hard for a sniper to find a location he likes. You can use countersniper teams during an event to watch for one setting up for a shot. Technology that can pick out heat sources from a distance can change the equation drastically. But in general, no. The best option is to disrupt planning before a sniper is sent or to catch him before he reaches a target site.
“Darcy, don’t make the mistake of getting slowed down tracking the shooters when it’s the man sending them who is the core danger.” Sam squeezed her hand. “I don’t want you getting hurt because the risk wasn’t adequately understood.”
It was rare to know the moment in time when someone decided you mattered, and she’d actually heard it from Sam. She didn’t have words to say just how much it meant. She’d always been lousy with words. She so wished she had them now.
Sam ruffled her hair. “Don’t let this freeze you, just be aware.”
Ignoring the fact they still had interested third parties around, she leaned her head against his shoulder for a moment. “Okay. I appreciate what you arranged.”
She straightened and got to her feet, then stepped forward and thanked the four officers. She knew when she was in over her head, and this was one of those times. And when in this position, the best tactic was retreat, so she headed back to the house. She’d talk to Gabe about joining the investigation; Sam was right. They had to find the guy sending these shooters.
And when Sam went home, she hoped he thought about her and remembered to call. She would be waiting for the phone to ring.
* * *
Sam woke in the middle of the night, not sure why, but very aware something was wrong. He slid from the office sofa and grabbed his shirt. He had slept in jeans, the situation suggesting being ready for trouble would be prudent. Brandon was already in the hall, his handgun at his side. He clicked on the safety and with a quiet hand signal gave the sign for Darcy, and he gestured to the living room. It was an indication of the tension that they had both reacted to someone simply getting up. Sam buttoned the cuffs of his shirt and nodded that he’d handle it.
The TV was on and an end table light on low.
D
arcy was curled up on the sofa, the bowl of leftover popcorn beside her. “Hey, slide over.” Sam settled beside her. “What are you doing up?”
“Reading.”
The book in her lap wasn’t open.
Sam took a handful of the popcorn. A nightmare? A flashback? Something had driven her in here to watch television at 2 a.m. It wasn’t because she wasn’t sleepy. He’d seen hibernating bears more awake than her. She just didn’t want to close her eyes that final slit. “What are we watching?” So far it had been a number of commercials.
“Carol Burnett.”
“A wonderful comedienne.”
“Laughter should be mandatory after every stressful day,” Darcy said.
A car drove by and he came close to choking on his popcorn at the suddenness of the transformation in her as she tensed. She must be having a flasback while awake. Sam set his hand on her arm, afraid she was going to bolt from the sofa. She finally relaxed.
“He’s not going to come through that door at you.” He’d flatten the guy if he did.
“Easy for you to say.”
He tightened his hand.
“Sorry.”
He relaxed his hand. “Don’t be.”
“I also dreamed about being underwater. I’m fond of being able to breathe.”
He was definitely going to teach her to swim. “I can understand that.”
He pulled the comforter down from the back of the sofa and rearranged her multitude of pillows so he could settle his arm around her shoulders. Darcy was scared. He didn’t like this image at all. “You know, this is an awful lot like a late night date. Popcorn, show, pretty lady.”
“And you’ve got a gun tucked away on the shelf of the side table.”
“Okay, a cop-type date then.” His personal handgun, a SIG Sauer, was still back at the Norfolk base, but he’d borrowed the Browning from the Brits.
The show came back on. He felt when she shifted and let her weight rest back against his arm. He ruffled the edges of her hair.
“Quit. That tickles.”
He did it one more time to get another smile, then rested his hand on her shoulder. Darcy wasn’t in the mood to talk, and he didn’t feel a need to break the silence. He was relieved to hear her soft laughter as the half-hour show concluded. Credits rolled by in a type font not used in the last decade. One mercifully brief car commercial gave way to the opening logo for a late night movie. He looked around for the remote but couldn’t see it. He didn’t feel like getting up to change the channels.
“Do you ever think about dying?” Darcy asked.
“I think about heaven.” He rubbed her shoulder, calibrating his answer to her serious mood before continuing. “I think about how hard it would be on my family if it happened. How hard it would be on them to hear the news, have to deal with wrapping up my affairs given the fact I live on the other side of the country. How stressful it would be to plan my funeral if I happened to die while on active duty and the media descended, wanting their reactions and televising everything. It hurts to think about what the first holidays would be like for them.”
She was quiet for a while. “I’ve just got my sister and she’s pretty tough. Amy’s a sheriff in North Dakota, married to the town doctor. Once a year we have a morbid file exchange with current wills and a list of accounts and phone numbers for everything from insurance policies to credit cards down to who handles trash collection in case Amy and Jacob die in a car crash or someone collects that bounty on my head.”
“There’s nothing wrong with being well prepared for death.”
“I know. It’s comforting that the Bible defines heaven as such a beautiful place, because the transition through death kind of spooks me.” She hugged one of the pillows and leaned her head back. “I’m so tired of spending my life fighting for peace and having so little to show for the effort. I retired, Sam. I wanted to stay retired and out of this violence.”
He’d guessed from the worn Bible and the personal way she said grace before dinner that her faith had deep currents, but it was reassuring to hear the words. “No one said life would be easy, Dar.”
“I want it to be.”
He brushed her bangs back. “Are you prone to pity parties late at night?” It got him the smile he had hoped for. Her expression cleared.
“Only when I can’t sleep and someone wants me dead.”
He leaned over and kissed her forehead. “I like your optimism.” He wished he could wrap up the events of the last couple days for her and put them behind her. “You can’t retire from the battle between good and evil in this life. No one can.”
“It’s just a battle we never win. Two more agents are dead, and I’ve got to decide if I’m up for another fight and manhunt. I’ve been there; it costs an awful lot from me.”
He hesitated to answer her. He wasn’t sure if she needed words or simply someone to listen. It was likely the stress of the flashbacks were simply triggering this discouragement. But it worried him; it sounded deep with a lot of history behind the emotion.
“What?”
Words were all he had tonight. “Part of your problem is perspective. You assume people are the source of this fight, and you get discouraged because you defeat one, then another takes his place. Good and evil is a more fundamental fight.”
He wanted to ease the weight she felt but didn’t know how to do it in easy platitudes, only in the harder truths on which the real answers rested. “When Satan rules in men’s hearts there is war. There’s really only one adversary, Darcy. And as long as men follow him, we’re going to have violence and war and all manner of evil to deal with. It’s not that God isn’t the more powerful of the two; it’s just that so many men remain blind to the fact they have a choice of which master will rule in their lives.”
“I know. It’s comforting to know that one day Jesus will enforce the full victory He won at the Cross. But the years of God’s patience with mankind so they have time to repent . . . If it had been my choice this would have ended long ago.” She turned her head to look at him. “You’ve thought about this a lot. Did you originally plan to be a preacher, Sam?”
“It’s an honorable profession. But no, I’m a soldier, Darcy. And part of that means knowing who my enemy really is. Pray for peace, work toward it, but understand that it’s not going to come by another treaty or another conference or a few more bad people being arrested.” His hand rubbed her shoulder. “A fallen world can’t redeem itself. It’s painful to watch sometimes, man’s futile attempts to fix things. Only Jesus can do that. Somewhere on earth there will always be war and rumors of war. We’ve just been lucky it hasn’t been in our corner of the globe lately. You’re as much a soldier as I am. You can’t retire from this fight. You can only decide how close to the front lines you want to be.”
“I tended to prefer the front lines before I retired, which is why it’s hard sometimes to keep a perspective on who’s winning. Thanks, Sam. You’re good at putting facts into perspective so eloquently. That’s a gift.” She pushed to her feet. “Since I’m not awake enough to think this hard tonight, it’s best if I call it a night.” She picked up the pillow she had brought with her. “I liked the company.”
He caught her hand to stop her departure. He adored that smile and was not looking forward to leaving tomorrow without definite plans for when he would see her next. But that was a conversation for the morning. “Sleep well, Dar. And this looks like an interesting movie. If you can’t sleep you can come back and finish it with me.”
She hugged the pillow she was carrying and laughed softly. “Deal.”
Six
* * *
SEPTEMBER 11
Tuesday, 8:45 a.m.
McLean, Virginia
Darcy found it hard to concentrate on the report she was reading. The sunlight streaming through the large bay windows warmed her flannel shirt and jeans, making work the last thing on which she wanted to focus. Not much had changed over the last twelve hours besides Sam scaring her with
that sniper demonstration. He’d done a good job of making his point.
The Brits were out running, and Sam was with them. The man should be declared dangerous to traffic, for women drivers would watch him rather than the road. Even half asleep with eyes barely open she’d stopped when she saw him in cutoff shorts and a gray T-shirt, stretching in preparation for his run. The muscles in his legs were sculpted; there was no other word for it. And his shoulders— She didn’t have to ask if he worked out. He looked over and smiled at her, that knowing smile accompanied by a wink. If she’d been able to quit gawking, she would have had something sassy to say. She settled for a strangled “Excuse me” as she slipped past him to go to the kitchen for the coffee.
Sam’s bag was packed and by the front door. A rental car had been delivered a short time ago. When he got back and showered, she’d be saying good-bye. She still hadn’t figured out the right words to say. She would have to plan a trip to Norfolk in her near future and come up with an excuse to be in his neighborhood. She should be good at coming up with that kind of cover, but she hadn’t come up with one yet that he wouldn’t see right through. It had been too long since she tried to mix dating and her job.
Her coffee had grown cold. A glance across the room at the muted television showed the top-of-the-hour news update would soon be on. She’d wait to get a refill. There was comfort in the morning routines she tried to maintain regardless of her location.
She returned to the report. If she went back to work officially, she’d have broad access to imagery, signal intelligence, human intelligence, and open-source data. Despite sophisticated software, watch lists, and powerful computers, the job still came down to the skill of someone putting together small bits of scattered information in order to read the enemy’s mind.
Three days. If they didn’t have a solid lead in three days she was going back to work. She owed it to Wallace and Rice to try.