To Carter, it just looked like an old deserted filling station out in the middle of the desert. Colonel Orlando was driving the battered Jeep, which was the latest in a bunch of strange things to happen ever since he’d been “tested” back in the ’Stan.
Since then, Orlando hadn’t said two words, ignoring every question Carter had thrown at him, and using the defense of that silver oak leaf indicating his rank to treat Carter like the staff sergeant he was.
Except after landing at some incredibly long runway in the middle of Nevada, the colonel had gotten in the driver’s seat of this old beat-up Jeep that had been waiting for them. A colonel driving for a staff sergeant wasn’t normal, even for the elite army. They’d been bumping along for over an hour now, leaving the runway and the hangars and the guards and all that far behind.
Two minutes ago, Orlando had turned off the hardtop road onto a dirt road, passing a plywood sign spray-painted none too steadily with the warning
NO TRESPASS: WE WILL SHOOT YOUR ASS
along with a skull and crossbones also crudely sprayed onto the wood next to the words. Now the old gas station was ahead on the right and Carter could see three guys shooting a beat-up basketball at a metal rim set about eight feet off the ground on a leaning light pole. He knew right away they were Special Ops, even though two had long hair. It was the same way at Bragg, where you could always tell the difference between guys in the Eighty-Second Airborne, not exactly slouches, and someone in Special Forces. They looked different because they were different.
The three didn’t even look over as Orlando screeched the protesting brakes of the Jeep, bringing them to a halt a hundred yards short of the station. Carter saw the reason. Two men had materialized from spider holes, weapons at the ready. Carter blinked as a red laser designator wavered over his face, settling in between his eyes. Shifting his glance to the left, he saw Orlando also wore a red dot.
A third man, who must have been in a hole, too, came up from behind. He held some weird device and flashed it in Orlando’s eyes. It beeped, and since the colonel wasn’t shot, Carter assumed that was a positive beep. All three wore ghillie suits with black fatigues underneath and no sign of rank or unit, so Carter figured they were contractors. He’d seen a ton of them in the ’Stan and Iraq. The guard started to go around the rear of the Jeep—not crossing the line of fire of the others—when Orlando spoke up.
“He’s the new one.”
The guard nodded, looking vaguely disappointed for some reason, as if Carter were stealing his role in the school play. “Proceed, Colonel.”
Orlando put the Jeep into gear, the clutch protesting loudly.
One of the three, a tall black man whose left side of the face was terribly scarred, took a long shot and it flew past rim and pole into a pile of old tires, sending them tumbling. A rattler came buzzing out, trying to see who’d interrupted its late-day nap.
“Yo!” one of the others, a big hulking guy with what Carter initially would have called an honest, happy face, yelled. “Eagle got a snake.”
“I hate fucking snakes,” Eagle said.
“Tell Doc about snakes,” the third guy said with a Texas drawl. He was a young Tom Cruise look-alike, handsome in a way that initially irritated almost every man who met him.
“Fuck you, Mac,” Eagle said to him as he drew a Mark-23 from under his T-shirt and fired, hitting the snake in the head, and firing again, hitting the stump.
“No one would think you were any army of one,” Mac said. “Afraid of snakes.” He stepped over the body and retrieved the ball. “We used to eat rattler back home in Texas. Tastes like chicken.”
“Bet you had to eat rattler,” the big guy said, with all seriousness. “My mom used to make us pine bark soup flavored with pine needles.”
“You had one fucked-up childhood, Roland,” Mac said. “We ate it ’cause we liked it.”
Carter got out of the Jeep as Orlando did. Now that he was closer to the big man, he could see that thing deep in Roland’s eyes that belied his genial face. The man was a killer.
The three finally decided to notice the newcomers.
Eagle nodded at Orlando. “Colonel.”
“Eagle. Roland. Mac.” Orlando nodded three times, like he was blessing them or asking permission to pass, it was hard for Carter to tell. “Been a while.”
“It has indeed, sir,” Eagle said. He looked at Carter. “Must be an officer. He isn’t covered in shit.”
Orlando was the only one who got it, and he laughed as he got back in the driver’s seat. “You gentleman have a fine rest of the day. Until next time.”
Carter hastily grabbed his duffel out of the back of the Jeep. And then the colonel was gone in a cloud of dust. Carter stood there, uncomfortable in the late-day sun, duffel bag weighing on his shoulder, his camos drenched with sweat. He knew they were reading the cues on his fatigues: Ranger Tab, left shoulder; Ranger Regiment scroll, right shoulder, meaning combat service with the unit; Combat Infantry Badge; Master Parachute Badge; Free-fall Parachute Badge; Scuba Badge.
Most people were impressed.
These were clearly not most people.
“Where do I report?” Carter asked.
“Get a grape soda,” Mac said as the other two turned back to the basketball and their game.
“I don’t want a grape soda.” Carter regretted the words as he spoke them.
Mac laughed. “Buddy, no one wants a grape soda, but one time me and this hot little cheerleader, all we had was some Jack and some grape soda, and it worked then. It’ll work now,” he added, nodding toward the rusting soda machine leaning against the side of the station.
Carter went over. The peeling labels indicated he could get Dr. Pepper, Pepsi, Orange, or Grape. Twenty-five cents. He reached for his pocket, then realized he didn’t have any change. Before he could turn, Eagle called out.
“Just push the button. And make sure it’s grape. You don’t want the orange, trust me.”
Carter hit the grape button.
With a hiss of escaping air, the soda machine slid to the side and a stairway beckoned, cool air blasting out.
Carter hesitated.
“You got eight seconds,” Eagle added as he took a shot. “Or it will shut on you.”
Carter scooted down the stairs and the door slid in place above him. He caught his bearings for a second, then continued down. He reached a landing, noting the unblinking eye of a camera staring at him. There was someone at the other end of that camera and Carter shivered for a second.
There was a steel door facing him, one that just screamed “try and blast me open and let me laugh at you.” The door slid aside and a gray corridor beckoned. A figure filled the corridor. Short, built like a power-lifter, dark skinned with an acne-scarred face, gray hair, and an attitude that said he was the one who ran things. The well-worn handle of a machete poked over his left shoulder from a sheath on his back and he had an MK-23 strapped to his right hip, tied down with a strap around his thigh.
Carter stiffened to attention as the door slid shut behind him.
“We don’t do that shit here,” the man said.
The door behind opened once more and the three who had been playing basketball pressed by, paying Carter no heed.
“I’m Nada.”
Nada?
Carter thought. “I’m—”
“I know who you think you are,” Nada said, “or else you’d be a pile of ashes back there on the landing.”
Eagle laughed as he looked over his shoulder at the end of the corridor. “Best to forget who you were and focus on who you will be.”
“That’s real fucking Zen-like,” Mac said.
“Follow me,” Nada ordered. “And drop that bag. You won’t need any of that shit.”
They went down the hallway and into a large circular room with dull gray walls. There were several tables in it, along with whiteboards, flip charts, corkboards for imagery, and a row of lockers. The three from outside were stripping off their soaking shirts.
“You’re meeting Ms. Jones,” Nada said, stopping in front of a surprisingly flimsy and ill-fitting door, the antithesis of everything Carter had seen since entering the complex. “You listen to her very carefully.”
The door to the left opened and a tall woman in fatigues stepped out. The way Nada shifted his posture, Carter realized with surprise that he answered to her, so he stood a little straighter.
“I’m Moms,” the woman said.
Moms?
Carter was trying to take it all in.
“I was just telling him to listen carefully to Ms. Jones,” Nada informed her.
Moms nodded. “Listen to her offer. Then you get to say yes or you get to say no. There’s no shame, no blemish on your record for saying no.”
“No is the easy way,” Eagle yelled from across the room.
“No is back to the world,” Mac added.
“Hush,” Roland scolded the other two. “Moms is talking.”
Moms put a hand on Carter’s shoulder. “You understand?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Mac laughed. “He ain’t got a fucking clue.”
Moms nodded at Nada. He rapped on the flimsy door, rattling it on the hinges. Then he swung it open and indicated for Carter to go in. “Take the seat in front of the desk. Do not get out of the seat until dismissed, then come straight back out here. Anything else and I’ll kill you.”
He said it so matter-of-factly that Carter only realized he was serious after taking three steps into the room. A hard plastic chair faced a massive wooden desk. The smooth surface of the desk was unmarred by any phone, computer, or knick-knack. Behind the desk was a huge wing-backed chair, the occupant completely in the shadow cast by the large lights pointed directly at the plastic chair.
Carter sat down, hands on his knees, feeling like he’d been called into the principal’s office and he’d done something really bad—like burn down the school.
The voice startled him, not only with the accent, but the suddenness. “You do know, of course, that someone has to man the walls in the middle of the night? The walls between all those innocents out there who lay their heads down on their pillows every evening, troubled by thoughts of such things as mortgages, or their pet is sick, or their child is failing in school? The normal things people should worry about. There are even those who have grave, serious worries, such as just being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and given weeks to live. But the things we, here, worry about, they are far graver than any of those worries.”
Carter didn’t know if she was really asking or if it was a test, so he followed Uncle Ray’s advice and said nothing.
Ms. Jones continued. “Someone has to worry about those things that go bump in the night, and let me assure you, young man, there
are
things that go bump in the night.”
Like Pads going after Dee
, Carter thought. He knew there were bad things in the night.
As if reading his mind she continued. “Of course you sort of do, given your background. You did very well in the test with Colonel Orlando. You did very well in the Ranger Battalion and in your combat tours. You did very well in Ranger School. Surprisingly
well, considering everyone thought you had been flunked after speaking back to that Ranger instructor. You were a washout. A recycle. Yet somehow when they printed out the roster for graduation, there was your name on it. Everyone was quite surprised. Including the graders who had flunked you.”
Carter sat straighter in the chair. He’d known someone would come after him about that sooner or later. “I earned my Ranger Tab,” he said defensively, throwing aside all the advice he’d grown up with, just like he’d done that hot day in the Florida swamp with the asshole RI. “I earned my combat patch in the Ranger Regiment. There’s many who wear the tab who never served with the Regiment.”
“Oh, yes,” Ms. Jones said. “You earned the tab. The computer said so. The interesting question is how the computer could have said so when the data the—I believe they are called RIs?—put into it flunked you.”
Silence fell over the room as Ms. Jones waited. Carter fidgeted, not sure which way to go, just knowing he was at a critical juncture not only in his career but in the rest of his life.
“Truth doesn’t set you free,” Ms. Jones said. “It just keeps you alive in the Nightstalkers.”
Carter blinked in surprise. “Task Force 160? I thought they were at Campbell and—”
“Not
those
Nightstalkers,” Ms. Jones said with a hint of frost. “When Task Force 160 was formed in 1981, we switched
our
name to Nightstalkers also, because it’s always best to have a cover behind some other classified unit. As you just indicated, it works for misdirection. We prefer to be a shadow inside of a shadow.”
“What were you called before that?” Carter asked.
“That is not important,” Ms. Jones said. “And, as a bonus, Nightstalkers was appropriate. As I told you, we’re the ones who
man the walls against the things that go bump in the night. Do not make me repeat myself. How did you pass Ranger School when you should have flunked?”
“I cheated, ma’am.”
“Very good,” Ms. Jones said. “How?”
“I knew they were gonna flunk me for sassing back at that RI. But he made a comment about my sister, and he didn’t even know I had a sister. Got two actually. So I snuck out the night before graduation. Everyone else was wiped out. The last night, after the last patrol, after the entire course, everyone reaches their limits and just collapses.”
“But not you.”
“I knew they were gonna flunk me.” Carter flushed as he realized he’d repeated himself. “I couldn’t flunk. I needed to graduate.”
“For the tab?” This time it was a question.
Carter swallowed, but he was too far down the alley of truth and the walls were closing in. “No, ma’am. I needed the pay bonus.”
She didn’t ask what for, which surprised him. “How did you cheat?”
“I snuck out. Went to the command shed. Stole a smartphone they use for commo. Hacked into the system. Changed my grade.”
Ms. Jones waited.
“Then I got all the score sheets. Took them over to the admin shed. Scanned every one on me. Photoshopped all of them and changed mine to passing. Took them all out into the swamp. Roughed them up and stained them like the originals. That took a while, as I had to dry them off afterward to make them look real. Put them back.”