It took an hour and a half for Winters to arrive. I don’t know what happened in that time, because I was hooded and driven to an abandoned hangar immediately after the Shia left. I guess Campbell—I overheard the name—didn’t like the gist of the phone call, because he was even grumpier than before, pulling my arm and smacking me in the head whenever he had an excuse, and twice as hard when he had no excuse at all.
The only excitement was when they found a Shia militant hiding in the back office where they wanted to stash me. There was yelling, the threatening kind, but only for a few seconds.
“I am not gunned,” the man said in terrible English. “I have no more my command. I want to go home.” He sounded tired and broken.
“Go to hell,” Campbell replied, as a shot echoed through the hangar.
After that, they kept me flex-cuffed to a pipe in an office adorned with pink plastic flowers and the scent of rosewater. I assumed the AO team worked to clear the runway of debris and enemy, because I was alone after that. I was asleep when I heard the whine of the Gulfstream V’s jets as it taxied into the hangar. I imagined the Apollo mercs in their extraordinary vehicles racing alongside as escort. I was jealous of those vehicles. If I’d had them, I could have taken out the Martyr Maker and saved Bear, my Kurdish driver, and a bunch of other good men.
At least Farhan and Marhaz were alive. They’d told me that much, even if they refused to let me talk to Boon. I assumed Boon and Wildman were flex-cuffed in another room.
“Uncuff him,” Winters said the moment he walked into the room.
“Sir?” Campbell started.
“You’ve taken his guns and knives. You’ve given me his satellite phone. What can he do to me?”
“You’d be surprised, sir.”
“You’d be surprised, son, by what I can do.”
I kept still as the flex-cuffs were cut off, resisting the urge to rub my wrist back to life as I rose from a leaning position for the first time in ninety minutes. My back was killing me. I hated getting old.
“Water,” I said.
Campbell threw a canteen in my face. He had a buzz cut and a snake tattoo crawling around his collar. I’d seen his kind before.
“He’s going to question every order you give him from now on,” I said, after he’d left and Winters and I were alone.
“No he’s not,” Winters said confidently. He was wearing a blue Brioni suit, the best money could buy, but slightly rumpled at the sleeves. His white shirt was open at the collar, no tie. This was his business casual. “But he’ll never give up wanting to kill you.”
I shrugged. Campbell didn’t bother me, although he probably should have. Men like him were dangerous, even if you were on their fighting side.
“I was surprised to get your call,” Winters said.
“You thought I’d fight.”
“I thought you’d run. Most people would have.”
“You would have caught me.”
“True. Most people figure that out too late.”
Fine, Brad, let’s talk this through, if that’s what you want. And yes, I used your first name. I don’t kowtow to you anymore. At least not in my own head.
“You betrayed me in Ukraine,” I said.
“We’ve been over this.”
“No, we haven’t.”
Winters sighed, like I was wasting his time. Fine with me. I knew he wanted to be at Camp Speicher even less than I did. I was comfortable in this environment; he wasn’t.
“If you had died in Ukraine, Thomas, you wouldn’t be the man I thought you were.” He looked me in the eye for dramatic effect, but I didn’t squirm under his gaze. Not anymore. “But you weren’t killed, and you are the man I imagined.”
“My friend died there,” I said. “A man I trusted like a brother.”
“Men die, Thomas. You should know this better than most. It’s what you do.”
He didn’t understand. He didn’t have anyone in his life that mattered to him like Jimmy Miles had to me. He probably didn’t even have someone like Boon.
“Why did you track me?”
He laughed. “You know the answer to that, Thomas.” But I didn’t, and Winters realized it. If he was disappointed, he didn’t show it. “Sometimes, we are the last to know ourselves,” he said.
Since when was this snake a philosopher?
He leaned back. “I could have killed you, of course,” he said, “but what’s the point? I could have let you go. Cut you loose to fend for yourself.” He glanced at me for a reaction, but I kept a stone face. “I could have brought you back into the fold,” he said, and I resisted the urge to tell him to fuck himself. “But it never would have worked out. We both know that.”
It’s true. I would have killed him.
“So I waited you out,” Winters continued. “You needed to cool down. I let you bring yourself back, when you were ready. That’s what you did, Thomas. You came back.”
“I didn’t have a choice.”
“Of course you did.”
“I did it for my men. They didn’t need to die for me.”
Winters looked away. “The excuses we make,” he muttered with a smile. It was supposed to be fatherly and wise, I suppose, but he was leaking oil, letting his real personality get in the way. He must have been under a great deal of stress.
“When I was in my thirties,” he said slowly, looking around the faded pink and purple office—the favorite colors of the Iraqi army, no wonder they failed—“I left the military to work on Wall Street. I thought they would show me true power, not just firepower. I thought they were Masters of the Universe. But they were limited people. They only cared about money. The making of it, sure, but also the counting, the hoarding, the comparing of piles. I spent six months there, adrift and unfulfilled. In many ways, it was the best six months of my life, because it showed me who I was and what I wanted.” He turned to me with that oily stare, and again I resisted the urge to curse him. “The most important step to power, Thomas, is to know ourselves. To accept who we are.”
I am not who you think I am. “You don’t know me.”
“I didn’t expect you to call. But when you did, Thomas, I knew you. Nobody I have worked with in my life would have thought strategically enough to make that call—or had the balls, to be honest—except you.” He was smiling like a shark now. “And me.”
“I called to save the princess and her baby.”
“You called because of the key. Admit it. You felt alive, when you found out what was at stake. You felt a sense of purpose again, knowing you could change the world. You felt power. It sharpens the mind, Thomas. It enhances the senses. You can taste it: the sense of destiny. You are part of the world, but you are standing above it, beyond it. You matter. That’s true power, Thomas. That’s why you called.”
He was wrong. I called because it was the only way out. I called because I didn’t want anyone else to die. I called because every life is precious. Didn’t I?
“Know thyself, Thomas. Accept it.”
I could see it then. I knew why he had been following me, waiting for me to come back, like the prodigal son. Brad Winters, it turned out, did have someone like Jimmy Miles in his life. That someone was me.
But I hated Brad Winters. Didn’t I?
“You have the money?”
He put a briefcase on the table. One million dollars, the price agreed to with the majordomo—Winters’s traitor, of course—in Erbil. I didn’t need to count it, or even look inside. I knew it would all be there.
“You have the key?” Winters asked.
“Of course not.”
“Good. That would be foolish.”
I paused. Did I really want to hand the key to a nuclear arsenal over to Brad Winters? Was my life worth it?
“What’s the matter, Thomas?”
“I don’t think a private military company should go nuclear.”
“Nor do I. But it’s safer than the Middle East going nuclear. The weapons will be secure with us. It’s a CIA contract. You can see for yourself, if you come with me.”
Yes, I thought, let’s do it that way.
“When can I recover the key, Thomas?”
“When my men are free, and Farhan and Marhaz are safe.”
Winters nodded. “There is no need for us to disagree, Thomas. Not when we can work together.”
“I need to see my men.”
“If you must,” he said. He looked at his watch. It was a Patek Phillippe, probably worth a hundred grand. It was new since I had seen him last. “Two minutes,” he said. “Even I have to stay on my flight plan, or at least close enough to avoid suspicion.”
The Gulfstream V jet was in the middle of the hangar, already turned around to face the runway. The surviving mercs were outside, packing their vehicles, all except Campbell’s men, who were standing inside staring at me with open disgust. FIDO, I thought. Fuck It. Drive On.
The three remaining Kurds took our working Humvee. They would ride with the mercs’ convoy back to Erbil. Speicher, Bear, the contract . . . it was all over.
I needed Boon, and I saw him near the back, next to a technical that an hour ago had been ISIS. Now it was serving us, flying a red flag with a crudely drawn dagger in the middle, Wildman’s handiwork, no doubt. Boon was loading a wrapped body into the truck bed with delicate care, and I didn’t have to ask who it was.
“Are you going to bury her in Erbil?”
“I don’t know,” Boon said. He was as down as I’d ever seen him, but the sadness made him hard. “I don’t know who else she has.”
Nobody was the answer, and it could have been said for any of us. It was what I said about Jimmy Miles, when I’d burned his body to ash.
So instead of offering bullshit comfort, I handed Boon the briefcase of money. “Distribute it to the men any way you see fit.”
He looked inside. He couldn’t have cared less that he was holding a fortune. He pulled out a bundle of cash and handed it to me. I heard cursing from Campbell’s men; one of them was literally spitting mad. They were holding him back.
“It was good getting to know you these last few days,” I said. I meant it.
“It was good knowing you these last few years,” he replied. He meant that, too. Boon was a better person, in his soul, than me. But I was trying.
“You don’t have to run,” I said. “It’s over.”
He started to say something, then stopped. “Only for Kylah,” he said finally.
I gave Wildman a mock salute, open palm, British style. He laughed. “Fock yourself,” he said.
I walked back to the plane. Farhan and Marhaz were disappearing up the stairs to the cabin, unsteady but determined. Brad Winters was to the side, standing with Campbell. He was holding an iPad. Both stared at the screen.
I disappeared into the cabin and sat across from the couple. Nobody said anything. Brad Winters came onboard and took the seat across from me. He was laughing and watching something on the iPad. “Amazing,” he whispered, winding me up. “Amazing.”
I couldn’t resist. “What is it?” I said.
He put the iPad on the little table between us and started the video. It showed the madman, from the back, walking through the battle untouched. It showed him pushing Kylah down and standing over Farhan. He said something, but it was inaudible. He raised his sword above his head and brought it down in a violent arc. But the video ended there, in a fireball, a massive explosion that shook the screen, and then snapped to darkness.
“They found it on the battlefield, next to a dead man,” Winters said.
I just stared at the black screen, too worn out to say anything. Why would someone risk their life to film something like that? What was the point?
“The Lord works in mysterious ways,” Winters said. “But he works, Thomas. He works.”