Page 38 of Cross Down
Brianna is frozen with anger and frustration, and then she spots something on the woman’s left arm, and the woman thinks,Oh no, not that.
But Brianna moves quickly to her side.
The woman knows what’s exposed.
And so does Brianna.
“Well, well,” Brianna says, her voice triumphant. “What do we have here? I’ll tell you. A tattoo. And not just any old tattoo. It’s a red numeral one on a green background. The emblem of the U.S. Army’s famed First Infantry Division, the Big Red One.”
The three medical workers come in and start moving her hospital bed.
The last thing the woman hears is “I’ll see you when you wake up, and we’ll talk again. By then, I’ll know who you are.”
Chapter
44
In a strainedvoice, Mel says, “John, what the hell are you doing?”
I twist his collar again. “Watching my six, pal. Forget our friendship and what we’ve done together. All I know is that I come down here to talk about Afghanistan, we both get picked up by CID, and you—active-duty army!—get cut loose before I do.”
“But my friend—”
“Yeah, your mysterious friend who has the power to get you set free. He must have one set of brass ones to get that done.”
Mel says, “It’s not a he. It’s a she. Captain Andrea Sharkey.”
“Go on.”
“Come on, John…”
“Go on.”
“Or what? You going to splatter my brains and bones over your car’s interior?”
I say, “I can afford to dump this car and get a new one. Can you get a new head?”
Mel mutters something profoundly obscene, then says, “We’re seeing each other. Met eight months ago when she came to my platoon looking into the theft of some ammo. We hit it off and…you know how it is.”
“How come you never told me this?”
“Because I wanted to keep it a secret. Colonel Michael Sharkey wouldn’t be happy to find out what I’m doing with his wife.”
I pull my pistol back a few inches. “You got your girlfriend to spring you?”
“Sort of,” he says. “I burned a pretty sweet bridge back there, John. I told her that unless she got me cleared and off post, I’d tell her hubby about our relationship.”
I pull back the pistol just a little bit more. “Crap, Mel, that was a hell of a thing to do.”
He says, “Well, damn, it wasn’t going to last forever, right? Her husband is in CID but rumor has it he served in Delta Force before going into law. But if he ever found out…shit, John, I didn’t want to spend my last hours on earth having my legs fed to a wood chipper.”
I stare at him and he stares back and I put my weapon down. “Sorry.” I feel ashamed, pulling a weapon on an old friend. One of the rules that’s hammered into you at basic training the first day on the range: Never, ever, point a weapon at someone unless you intend to shoot.
But I’d had to do it in this new world.
Mel says, “Yeah, we’re all jumpy. What now?”
I holster my pistol. “Time to kick it up a notch. We need to reach out to the CIA officer who was our tour guide into the ’Stan, see if she can shed some light on what went on over there and how it’s connected to these terror attacks.”
