Page 67 of The Fourth Option
A second mortar landed twenty yards short of the vehicle.
“Hurry, Chris!” Staub yelled.
Once outside the SUV, Walker threw the small girl over his shoulder and sprinted for a mound of rocks down in the wadi.
The girl had stopped screaming. She was breathing but her face was pale. He set her down on the far side of the rocks and turned back to the SUV. He was halfway there when he heard the whistling of a third mortar.
Please, dear God, no.
The prayer failed.
The earth rose up as if a volcano had erupted beneath the Montero. When it cleared, the SUV lay on its back. It was burning. Fatima’s body had been ripped in half. It had been blown through a side window. The vehicle had rolled over onto Staub’s upper torso, and one of his legs was missing.
They’re gone. All gone.
He had started to run to his dead friend when a fourth mortar hit the SUV, covering Walker with debris, smoke, and dirt.
You owe me. If you make it out of here, look in on Leigh Ann and Connor.
He gazed at the burning heap, then back at the rocks where he had left Zahra.
“I’m so sorry,” he whispered.
Go, Chris!
He turned and sprinted to Zahra, lifted her into his arms, and set off into the wadi.
An’ go to your Gawd like a soldier.
PART TWO
“The greatest conflicts are not between two people but between one person and himself.”
—Gaius Musonius Rufus, Roman Stoic philosopher
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
New Orleans
Present Day
WHY HAD HEsurvived?
Is that me wondering or the philosophers?
He drove through the night from the Ninth Ward toward the Garden District, crossing bridges and waiting at stoplights with Paladin in the passenger seat.
Leigh Ann had never heard the whole story. Neither had Connor. And now he never would.
She deserved to know how her husband had died as a hero, a protector, a guardian.
That the incident happened across the wrong border and threatened a fragile truce meant it had been classified. Leigh Ann and Connor were told that John had died in service to his nation in Afghanistan, in an engagement with insurgent forces. There was truth to the lie. It was lying by omission. Those lies continued even when John’s star was chiseled into the CIA Memorial Wall at Langley.
The Agency lawyers had threatened Walker with prison for executing an illegal mission and stealing contingency funds. They hung John Staub’s death around his neck, where it weighed like an albatross. About that, they were right. They were right about all of it.
Because of the border issue and classifications involved, there would be no formal trial. The brokered deal allowed Walker to medically retire with a combination of his years in the military and at the CIA, a victim of traumatic brain injury. If he ever spoke or wrote of the rogue incident that resulted in the death of John Staub, they would come after him, take his retirement, and prosecute him for his crimes.
Perhaps Walker had agreed to the deal so he would not have to faceJohn’s wife and son with the truth; the truth that he was the man responsible for the death of Leigh Ann’s husband, Connor’s father.
