CHAPTER
1
From above the
headboard, as if accusingly, the stiff faces stared down at him.
Johann Steinhoff, Manfred Freiherr Von Richthofen,
E.V.Rickenbacker, Adolf Galland.
The best pilots in history… And I’m probably better than
any of them ever were.
General Willard
Farrington lay back in the large, silk-draped bed. He hated the
bed, by the way. He preferred a barracks rack any day of the week.
Farrington was fifty-one years old now—when you got older, you were
supposed to want nice things. But this place?
It was a
palace. It could be likened to the Presidential Suite at the
Mayflower Hotel. Genuine oil paintings hung on
gilt-and-columbine-papered walls. Plush burnt-ocher carpets padded
every footfall. Fine furniture, a twenty-four-hour attendant, even
a hot tub, which he never used.
Recompense for
his duty, his sacrifice.
But in all, the
luxuriant suite proved little more than a well-appointed prison.
His brief “escape” a week ago was something the mission staff
should’ve anticipated…but what were they going to do? Fire
him?
Farrington
chuckled under his breath.
Oh, he
understood the necessity of the quartering rules.
I’m
special, he
thought. I’m a living secret. I can never be
seen.
And he still,
essentially, believed that.
He’d merely
taken his unauthorized stroll because he needed to know that his
daughter would be well-cared for. He needed to see her, this gift
of his own creation that he’d willingly abandoned a decade ago for
his duty.
Farrington
still understood the duty. He just wasn’t quite sure if he measured
up any more.
I don’t know if I can do it,
he thought.
Not this
time.
Maybe he was
burned out…
Duty, it was
all about duty, wasn’t it? The sacrifices of the few for the many.
That’s why he kept those sterile portraits hanging above his
four-poster bed. In the many moments of doubt, all he need do was
look up into these faces of greatness and see himself. But the
reassurance was dwindling of late. I’ve done my duty, haven’t
I? he
thought. Why can’t I just have a life?
There’s no
going back, the portraits seemed to say. Don’t forsake your honor.
Steinhoff sneered at him, Rickenbacker bristled.
I’ve got more
aerial combat kills than any of you fuckers,
Farrington thought,
but since most of
mine are classified, I’ll never be in the history
books. It
wasn’t fair. But Farrington, even in this rare moment of pouting
pride, realized how wrong he was.
Certainly, the
men above his headboard would all have sold their souls to have
Farrington’s privilege.
Stop being such a baby. Do your goddamn
duty…
He lay back,
his hands propped behind his head in the soft, goose-down pillow.
He wondered what the woman thought when she first saw him. A
hardcore military type? A busted old man? At least he kept in
shape. The women were all wonderful actors. They acted like nothing
was wrong when they saw his…
From the
marbled bathroom, he heard the hiss of the shower creak off. At the same time, though,
the intercom on the nightstand beeped.
“Sir, this is
the CQ. Is everything all right?”
“Yes,
Sergeant,” Farrington answered. “Everything’s terrific.”
“Your dinner
will be ready in—”
“Cancel it. I’m
not hungry.”
“Sir, you
haven’t eaten all day. I really think—”
“Cancel it,”
Farrington repeated with more edge in his voice. “And I don’t want
to be bothered for the rest of the night. That’s an
order.”
A long
hesitation. “Yes, sir.”
The intercom
clicked off.
Steam gusted
like smoke when the bathroom door opened. The young woman sauntered
out on beautiful long legs, all curves, flawless white skin, and
green eyes like emerald fire. She was still trying, he had to give
her that. But sometimes even men had “headaches.”
She stood fully
naked, unabashed, drying herself with the terry towel. “Some men
like to watch, they like to look,” she said.
Ain’t working tonight,
baby. “You’re very beautiful,” he admitted. But then so
was his wife, who’d swallowed a bottle of insecticide a year after
his “death” had been relayed to her. If that wasn’t love, what
was?
The woman
propped one foot up on the bed, slowly drew the towel down her
thigh and calf. “Hmm?”
Farrington knew
the score. The Air Force contracted these girls all the time—the
ones who weren’t drug addicts or street scum—and paid them to
“surrogate” special personnel. Sex ops, they were called;
this whore probably had a Secret clearance. They mainly catered to
the sexual whims of double agents in hiding, or demanding
defectors.
And then there’s me,
he thought.
The one man the
Air Force wants to keep happier than anyone
else.
He watched the
sway of her perfect breasts as she continued with the towel. A
quick glimpse at the soft thatch of her pubis nearly had him going.
But he was tired of using people, just as he was often so tired of
being used. That, or: Maybe I’m just getting
old.
“Take
your pants off,” she whispered through the most sultry of grins.
“I’ll get you in the mood.”
“No, really.
Too much on my mind, you know?”
She stood
straight, dumbfounded. “Well…this is the first time I’ve ever taken
a shower in a client’s place before I got dirty.”
“I thought
you’d like the digs,” Farrington jested. “How many bathrooms you
seen with genuine marble tile and gold fixtures?”
“Not many,” she
said. Clearly, though, she was insulted. She began to put her
clothes back on right in front of him, her lips
pursed.
Why should he
care? Nevertheless, Farrington got up, walked to the silver cart
and poured her a glass of Epernon from the obsidian black bottle in
ice. “They always bring me these fancy wines when I have, uh,
guests,” he said and passed her the glass.
She stared at
his hands for a moment, then took it.
“Aren’t you
having any?”
“No,” he said.
“I don’t drink. I quit drinking in 1975 when Giap took Saigon. By
then, I’d drunk enough Ba M’Ba to fill a gas station.”
“God, this is
wonderful,” she commented, sipping. Then she picked up the bottle.
“Jesus, this was bottled in 1914!”
“You like
it?”
“Well, yes,
but—”
Farrington
stuffed the cork back in it, put it in a bag. “Take it. Show off to
your friends.”
“Well…thanks.”
She was dumbfounded—by the entire night. Farrington guessed the
barrack chiefs had already paid her a thousand dollars for this. It
was only money.
“But I’m sorry,
you know,” he said, “about the rest. Thanks for stopping
by.”
The woman
looked confused through tousles of wet chestnut hair. “They paid me
to stay till morning.”
“Well then
tonight’s your lucky night. You’re off early.”
She blinked,
incomprehension in the slits of her eyes. “Is there
something—”
“Nothing wrong
with you at all,” he said. “I guess I’m having my period
tonight.”
She spared a
laugh.
“The CQ will
have a driver take you home,” Farrington said.
She shrugged.
“It’s your dime.”
Not really, it’s the taxpayers’.
“I’m glad you like the wine. But let
me ask you something.” Farrington’s jaw set. He looked at her, then
held up his strangely mittened hands. “Aren’t you going to ask
about…this?”
“They told me
not to ask anything.”
“Of course.”
What was he thinking? “Good night…and take care of
yourself.”
He showed her
out, locked the ornate double doors behind her.
That’s right,
honey. Tonight’s your lucky night…and tomorrow’s my lucky
day.
He was staring
into the mirror over a Hepplewhite dresser. An image flashed, and
he saw himself a decade younger: firing up the grill on the patio
of his Oxen Hill home. His smiling wife bringing out a bowl of
potato salad to the picnic table. His perfect little daughter
playing in the sandbox.
Then the image
dissolved into the chisel-faced secret staring back at
him.
The strange
black mittens touched the dresser’s brass knobs. He slid open the
drawer, releasing a cedary scent of old wood. The framed picture of
his wife remained face-down, as it always would. He couldn’t look
at it, but he couldn’t throw it away either. Beside it, though,
face up, lay a photograph from the ‘70s: Farrington, a major,
standing in his Marine Corp flight suit on the ladder ramp of his
Harrier V8B. He was surprised they’d let him keep it; any
photograph of him was classified now.
His face was classified. All files of his existence had
been officially deleted.
I’m deleted, he thought.
“Esprit
d’corp,” he whispered to himself. “Ain’t duty grand?”
He stared at
the drawer’s remaining contents—trinkets. A Purple Heart, three
Silver Stars, a Distinguished Service Cross, a Congressional Medal
of Honor that Jimmy Carter had draped around his
neck.
Only one more
thing remained in the drawer…
««—»»
The compound
loomed behind her, a quiet fortress in plumes of sodium light. She
kept the bottle of wine tucked under her arm, her high heels
ticking across cement as she approached the lit
gatehouse.
Her name was
Tina, not that names mattered. She’d joined the Army in 1993 at age
eighteen, hoping to escape a drunk mother and abusive father. When
she’d passed the polygraphs—Have you ever taken drugs? Do you
gamble? Have you ever committed an act of
theft?—INSCOM had
plucked her out of Basic and launched her career as a restricted
sexual surrogate. A whore by any other name. She didn’t care. She
liked sex, and the money was good.
“Hello,” she
said. She held up the bottle of wine. “He said I could have
this.”
The young Air
Force driver nodded at the gate. “One moment, please, ma’am,” and
he took the bottle into the gatehouse where an SP in a white helmet
inspected it. A drab-blue government van sat just past the
gatehouse, a door open. The van had no windows in the back, a
protocol Tina was used to. She wasn’t allowed to know where she
was.
“Ma’am?”
Warm air swept
past Tina’s face. Her gaze drifted back to the strange compound.
“This is one off-the-wall place,” she commented. Then she
remembered her “client’s” hands. Once she serviced a Russian
demolition expert who’d defected with blueprints for a SAGGER IV
firing-trigger. His hands had been all but blown away. She wondered
how he jerked off.
Tina knew she’d
receive no answer but she asked the driver anyway, “What’s wrong
with that guy? He get burned or something?”
The driver
stonily returned her bottle of wine. “Ma’am, I’m not authorized to
disclose any information about your client, even if I was apprised
of any such information, which I am not.”
Tina almost
laughed. These guys were all stock-in-trade, military
automatons. I’ll bet he fucks like he’s doing push-ups for a PT
test…
But a final
thought slipped back to the nameless man whose suite she’d just
left, the easiest trick of her life.
“He seems so
sad,” she said. “He seems afraid of something, terrified but trying
to cover it up.”
The driver did
not respond. He showed her into the van and closed the door and
moments later was driving away from this secret place back to the
world of normal people.
««—»»
Yes, one more
object remained in the dresser drawer. Not a medal, not a
commendation or combat pin.
Just a gun.
Just an old Colt .45.
General
Farrington stared into the mirror for the rest of the night,
peering more at his life than his reflection. He saw it all, all
that he’d been and all that he’d become.
Was it worth
it?
Then he raised
his black-mittened hands. He drew open each zipper in grueling
slowness.
Was duty really
worth this?
Every night now
for nearly a month he’d put the pistol to his head, determined to
end it all. And every night, he lost his nerve.
How would he
fare tonight?
Unzipped now,
he let the leather mittens fall to the floor. He raised his hands
to the mirror in front of his face. The hands—
The hands
deformed into things that no longer even appeared human. The hands
laced with hundreds of intricate surgical scars and shiny with
healed scar tissue.
Each of
Farrington’s hands possessed only two fingers and a
thumb.
Monster hands.
He stared at
them, and at his face beyond…
“Semper Fi,” he
whispered to himself. “Ooo-rah.”
Then he picked
up the gun.