Page 28 of Cross Down
In the darkness of the night and my own thoughts, I think of my rough upbringing, how I’d practically lived by myself as a preteen with my father long gone and my mother gone most of the time, both sucked into the world of drugs and crime. If it weren’t for one determined older woman—Nana Mama—I would have ended up in prison or dead within the decade. I could have been one of those nameless forgotten “others.” But she had saved me, and so had the army and the DC Metro Police.
I have large debts there, debts I’m honor bound to repay.
I pull into the lot of the Pine Grove Motel. Two red lights flickering—OPENandVACANCY—tell me what I need to know.
Behind a low counter in the office sits a yawning young blond woman wearing black leggings and a UNC Tar Heels football T-shirt. She looks to be six or seven months pregnant. In the corner is a small crib where a toddler is sleeping. Low sounds come from a TV playing what looks like an old Hallmark Channel movie.
I pay cash for my room and I’m pleased the clerk doesn’t ask for my identification or license plate number. From the office in the center of the one-story building, I walk to the end room. It has two beds, a moldy bathroom, and not much else.
I drop a black duffel bag on the far bed and suddenly I’m tired from hunting bad guys.
I whisper, “Sure wish I was back home with you, Willow.”
Then I get to work.
Chapter
30
I twist andturn; it’s always a struggle to get my six-foot-nine-inch frame comfortable. Billie used to tease me that she wasn’t sure which half of my body she was going to cuddle up against.
I shift again.
It’s been a long while since I’ve thought of those funny, loving moments.
Don’t think about that. Don’t get distracted with memories of your Billie. Think about what’s ahead. The talk with Mel Carr.
I try to decipher what he said to me yesterday about our mission to Afghanistan, about the current state of affairs at Fort Bragg.
You should be paranoid. All of us who went on that cross-border expedition into Afghanistan should be paranoid. I think what we did and saw there is connected to all these bombings and shootings.
The trip to Afghanistan.
Sheep-dipped so we were no longer with the army but attached to the CIA. The CIA provided transportation and a woman field officer to supervise us.
We didn’t land in Afghanistan but in a cold, windswept airfield in neighboring Tajikistan.
What did we see there?
What did we see in Afghanistan?
What—
There’s a noise.
Chapter
31
The three attackersmove silently across the motel’s parking lot to John Sampson’s room, and the lead armed man places small detonation charges on the door’s knob and three hinges.
The charges flare into life, and the lead man flips down his NVGs and kicks down the door, which falls with a satisfyingbang.
They do a quick sweep of the room’s two beds, and the near one holds a huddled shape, blankets pulled up, boots lined up on the floor; a duffel bag is on the other bed. All three open up with bursts from their silencer-equipped MP5s, tearing up the bedding and sheets and the shape underneath. Spent brass thuds on the floor, and the room smells of gunpowder.
They advance slowly and carefully—they wouldn’t put it past their highly trained target to sleep with a Kevlar blanket—and the lead man reaches down with a gloved hand and tugs the sheet and blankets away.
Revealing a row of shot-up pillows.
