Miles To Go Part 5

Rennie unclipped her water bladder from her pack and took just enough to wet her lips. Then, glimpsing a movement out of the corner of her eye, she brought the muzzle of her weapon instantly toward it.

"A deer. Fifty yards to the right," she said and the message was pa.s.sed up the line to Goode who raised a hand in acknowledgment.

Smythe reached out his hand toward the creature, pointing it like a gun, dropping his thumb.

Rennie thought of Smythe's dog, a big old yellow lab that he brought once to a cookout at Brad's place in Alexandria. She had watched him with the dog, playing with it, feeding it little sc.r.a.ps of food. She wondered at the time how she could reconcile that image of Smythe with the one that sometimes reared its ugly head in her direction. Life was full of conundrums. Shoot the deer, love the dog, hara.s.s the woman.

Rennie ducked to avoid a branch.

"Here we go," Goode said, consulting the compa.s.s that hung from his belt loop.

Finally, they had stumbled onto a path and it was headed in the right directioneast and slightly north.

Hot d.a.m.n! The expression was one her wild Aunt Laurel often used and it occasionally came to Rennie unbidden. Her spirits lifted, knowing their way to the water would be a little easierunless the path veered off course. If they were lucky, it would lead them right to the river.

CHAPTER SIX.

Rashed loved his gun. His weapon. Sometimes he would pose with it in front of a mirror. Like Travis Bickle. You talkin'

to me? Here in the woods he stroked it lovingly, cradling it as he lounged at the river's edge. It was an old Russian submachine gun that he revered in a way he knew was impious. But Islam had not spoken to him in a long time. Not since America. Just another reason to crush them, for poisoning his soul against his own religion. Rashed took off his cap and wiped his brow.

Hamid reclined next to him, his feet trailing into the water.

"You know, Hamid, there are fish in that river with razor sharp teeth that could reduce your feet to a pile of bones in an instant."

Hamid pulled his feet out of the water in a flash and crab walked backward up the bank.

Rashed doubled over in laughter. "You're so gullible, Hamid.

Why are you such a fool?"

Hamid drew his knees under his chin. "I don't know."

Rashed shook his head. The boy was a fool, but he wasn't stupid. He would require manipulating if Rashed was to get what he wanted in the village. But he was in charge this trip and he would get what he wanted. He almost always did. From the moment he was informed that he and Hamid would be making the delivery on their own, he knew that he would buy a woman in the village. He continued stroking the sub-gun. Pulling a clip out of his pocket, he slipped it into place, relishing the sound. Rashed hadn't killed yet, but he would. He antic.i.p.ated the moment with the patience of a man waiting in the night for his tardy lover. He glanced over and saw Hamid watching him warily.

"Don't look at me, a.s.shole."

Hamid was unarmedhe was too young and too much a fool to be trusted with a loaded weapon.

"Fill your bottle. We will walk tonight and be nearly halfway by morning."

Rashed loved the woods at night. The woods are lovely, dark and deep. The phrase slipped into his mindsomething from a literature cla.s.s he had taken at the American university. Hamid knelt at the river's edge filling his bottle. Rashed stood, feeling the strength in his legs. They had probably walked twenty miles that day and he wasn't at all tired. He popped the clip out of the machine gun and slipped it back into his pocket. He would have preferred to keep it loaded but the twenty-five-year-old weapon had its quirks and one was firing without the trigger being pulled.

He turned and looked up the slope toward the line of trees. The river, open and shimmering, still held the last light of the day, but darkness hovered over the woods, a black depth he could hardly wait to pick his way through. If only he had a Walkman, so he could be joined by a thumping ba.s.s beat.

Rashed turned to see if Hamid was finished. He flinched visibly as he realized the boy was standing directly behind him, waiting, his face open and sad. Rashed threw a punch, catching him hard on the shoulder with his fist.

"Let's go."

Baldwin paused to sc.r.a.pe the mud off his boot onto a rock.

The team had been following the path since morning with a brief break for lunch. They had made good time even though each and every one of them was thoroughly exhausted. He had begun to fantasizenot about sleepbut just laying his body down.

"Hey Vogel, you wanna take the first guard shift tonight?"

"Uh, no thanks, Brad ley," she said, emphasizing the last syllable of his given name. "I think I'll take my chances on the draw."

Goode told them midday, as they sat gnawing on their hateful plastic-encased meals and nursing their water, that they would stop at midnight for five hours, each taking an hour of guard duty. Four hours sleep for everyone. It seemed unfathomable.

Actually the first shift wasn't a bad deal. It meant you would have to figure out how to stay awake and alert for an hour, but after that you were rewarded with four hours of blissful uninterrupted sleep.

Baldwin's boots began to muck up again. He reached back to adjust his sniper rifle where it had shifted under his pack. Some sharpshooters he knew described their relationship with their weapon as symbiotic. They saw it as an extension of themselves and when they fired, it was like reaching out and laying a finger on the temple of their target. But to Baldwin it was just a tool, albeit one he treated with great respect. He had to see it in the bigger scope of things. Yes, he was traipsing through the woods because at the end he would line up his sights, squeeze the trigger and a man would fall. Most guys saw this kind of act as a battle between two men, a cord drawing them closer and closer together until the fatal moment. But Baldwin saw the cord branching off, from himself as well as the target, into a vast network of connections that was encompa.s.sed by two contradictory ideologiesgood and evil, justice and injusticethough he never used such words.

He wasn't naive, he knew that all that seemed right in the world 0.

sometimes mingled with all that seemed wrong, and he never knew with certainty that he was doing the right thing. Only the stupid and the fanatic are afforded the gift of unambiguity.

Baldwin never imagined he would wind up in the FBI.

Especially on a special forces unit. His great love was the history of politics and he had planned on entering a master's program out of college. But his interest in foreign policy and his high scores on the GRE had drawn the notice of an FBI recruiter and he couldn't refuse their offer to actually affect the outcome of events in the world. And here he was, strapped with weapons instead of a book satchel.

Vogel stumbled in front of him and he stepped forward quickly and grabbed the back of her pack before she went down.

"Hey, girl, you okay?" he said quietly. The rest of the team hadn't noticed her misstep.

"Yeah, yeah. I'm fine," she said, her breath shallow. But he could see that she wasn't. She was pale and he had seen her drain her water a half mile back.

"Here. Take a big swig of this," he said, handing her his water bladder.

"No, really, Brad, I'm fine."

Baldwin grabbed her by the elbow and swung her around to him. "Take it," he said, his eyes communicating to her that no was not an option.

"Hey, would you two quit flirting and come on," Levin called out, craning his neck behind him.

"Okay," she said, taking it from him. "Thanks." She put her hand on his arm and gave it a light squeeze.

Levin always teased that Baldwin and Vogel had something going on. Levin was too self-involved to have noticed what seemed clear to Baldwin soon after he met herthat Rennie would never have any interest in him or any of the other men on the team.

Baldwin found Rennie to be one of the most physically arresting women he had ever known, but he had never allowed himself to feel anything for her other than a deep friendship. She hadn't opened up to him about her personal life much, but he knew she would eventually. It was dangerous for her to reveal the intimate details of her life to anyone. Bureau culture was still such that if your personal relationships were anything other than the norm, you had to be careful. But he had encouraged his friend Marta, who briefly dated his sister in college, to quietly ask Rennie out.

Later, he wondered if this had been a mistake, if he should have just minded his own business.

Marta Waugh was the house physician for the training academy at Quantico. She also performed testing and took care of anything else that might come up for the special forces teams, HRT and now CT3, that were based there. Baldwin had known Marta since their days at UPenn. He was still an undergrad and she was finishing up her course work in med school. And when he had heard about the opening at Quantico when he was still a special agent, he'd let Marta know.

A few days before the team left for Germany, he pulled her aside and asked her how things were going with Rennie, but she stonewalled, wouldn't give him any hint of what had happened.

He figured Rennie, ever cautious, must have declined.

Baldwin raised his water bladder to drink, but paused before it touched his lips. Rennie might need it more than he would before they reached the river. Her step seemed more sure now that she had a little water in her. He reclipped the bladder to his belt without drinking, just in case.

What the f.u.c.k was going on?

Rennie felt like every ounce of strength had just drained out of her. She looked at her watch. It was already past midnight and they would have to stop soon. She wondered how much she was slowing down their progress and how much the rest of the team had noticed. This shouldn't be happening. She had trained for this. Water had always been a weakness, but never like this. Her pack felt like a boulder strapped to her shoulders and she could feel the outline of her sub-gun through its pouch, wearing a hole in her back. She hated to think it might be hormonal. She would not allow the fact of her being a woman to do anything to bring the team down . She shook her head. It was still unbearably hot.

The humidity was like D.C. in Augustso thick she felt like she was crawling through it.

She had fantasized that they would reach the river tonight before they settled down to camp. And she would drink. But it wasn't going to happen.

The guys in front of her suddenly stopped. Goode had his hand raised. Holding her breath, she reached back and slipped her sub-gun from its pouch.

"Okay, this looks like a good place to stop," Goode said.

Thank G.o.d. Rennie stuffed her weapon back into its home, eased the pack off her shoulders and set it on the ground.

Everything hurt. She squatted where she was and wiped her forehead with the back of her handcold sweat. She was going to be sick. Don't pull a Levin. She leaned forward, feeling the gorge rise in her throat, when a bottle seemed to appear out of a fog.

Brad.

"Here, drink. I have plenty."

She looked up at him. He wavered in her vision, her eyes unfocused. She nodded and laughed weakly, suddenly delirious with the thought of it.

"Thanks. Thanks. I owe you one."

"Sure you do."

She drank deeply and her stomach almost rejected it.

"Gather 'round, people. Let's draw straws for guard duty,"

Goode said motioning the team to him.

Goode stood in a small clearing. The foliage was mashed down and it looked like deer might have used it for their own camp.

Surrounded by evenly s.p.a.ced tall, thick poplars, it looked like a place for some kind of ritual. She thought of that old Hawthorne story where a coven of witches meet in the woods outside a tiny New England village, and a shiver ran up her spine.

Goode clutched five twigs in his fist. "Everybody grab one."

"Aw, Christ," Levin said, holding up the shortest twig.

Baldwin put his arm around Levin's shoulders in consolation.

"You just need to accept who you are, Jonah, and maybe you'll have better luck," he said, laughing.

"f.u.c.k off, Baldwin."

"Okay, here's the lineupLevin, Vogel, me, Baldwin and Smythe. We'll start timing as soon as everyone settles in."

"Looks like you won the lottery, Smythe," Levin said.

"Whatever, I could take it or leave it."

"Oh, yeah? Want to switch?"

"Nah, you look like you could use the discipline," Smythe said, giving him a two-fingered salute.

Levin held out his arms. "Why is everybody giving me a hard time today?"

"You bring it on yourself, Jonah," Baldwin said, kneeling to unhook his bedroll.

Rennie spread her sleeping bag on the ground at the base of a tree. Her stomach was still churning from the water, but she began to feel the beginnings of hunger. Maybe she could shake this thing off. It was very dark, with only a sliver of moon not obscured by angry-looking clouds. Sleep would be a boon and she hoped her body would experience a resurrection by morning.

Rennie tossed her MRE on her sleeping bag and stood up to stretch. Goode ambled over to her.

"You doing okay? You were looking a little worse for wear there for a while."

"I'm fine. The lack of water was getting to me but Baldwin gave me some of his and I'm a lot better now." She nodded.

"Really."

"Are you out of water?"

"Yeah." Rennie knew what was coming.

"You know you're supposed to report that to me. We're a team out here, you know, so don't pull any heroicswe all have to get through this."

Goode turned and walked back to where he made camp. He pulled a half-full bladder of water from his pack and tossed it to Rennie. "I'm like a camel, remember that. I always have extra water."

Rennie took a big drink from the bag and noticed Smythe looking at her and shaking his head.

b.a.s.t.a.r.d, she thought.

"What is your meal du jour, Vogel?" Levin asked.

"Tonight I'm having the ever-popular beef enchilada with refried beans."

"Mmm. Does that come with the cookie or the brownie?"

"The cookie, unfortunately." Everyone loved the brownie.