And of course, no Finn O'Leary. We were out there for two whole days. Finally, the word came down to call it.
Oh, was the debrief a bitch.
My boss, Mr. Church, personally flew over and brought along the DMS's top shrink-who is also my personal therapist-Dr. Rudy Sanchez.They interviewed us separately and together, multiple times. They took blood and urine samples. They did MRIs and CT scans. Rudy hooked us up to lie detectors and ran through a minefield of questions. In the privacy of my session with him, I told him about seeing Rattlesnake Team at the site of the Taliban convoy ambush. About how they were eating one of the terrorists. How their eyes were on fire. When I was done, except for the faint whir of the machine and Rudy's shallow breathing, there wasn't a sound in the room.
A lot of the people involved in running those tests, and all of those who'd been out there scouring the ground where we'd been picked up, began avoiding eye contact with me,Top, and Bunny. They didn't find the right kind of evidence to support our stories, and we sure as fuck weren't changing our stories. Not one word.
I cornered Rudy one afternoon after he came out of Mr. Church's temporary office at the Forward Operating Base Delaram, one of the Marine Corps bases there in Afghanistan.
"Talk to me about those polygraphs, Rude," I said.
I expected the usual obfuscation he gave when pressed about anything clinical, but he shrugged. "All three of you believe your stories . . ."
He'd pitched it as a straight answer, but I could hear some reserve in his voice and called him on it.
Rudy smiled. "Come on, Cowboy," he said, giving me his best Gomez Addams smile. "You know how these things work. As I said, the tests verify that you believe your stories, and the lab work is clean. But that's not the same as saying that the stories are believable as described."
After I gave him three or four seconds of a stony face, he sighed.
"Joe, in the absence of physical evidence or some workable theory that would explain the kinds of things you three claim to have seen-"
" 'Claim to have seen'?!" I said, jumping on it.
"Yes. Claim. There is nothing I know of that can provide a useful framework for constructing a hypothesis that explains it. A tiny woman beating all three of you up, and apparently doing it all at the same time? A woman who was invulnerable to physical assault by trained special operators, including a knife attack to the face? C'mon, Joe . . . give me a scenario that covers that, and I'll be glad to put it in my report. Hell, I'll lead with the theory in my summation."
He knew, as I knew, that there was no theory that could cover it.
"What about the autopsies on Rattlesnake?"
"They've been sealed in freezers and shipped back to the States. Mr. Church wanted the top guy at Mount Sinai to do the post."
And that's where we left it.
For the next couple of weeks, I was completely obsessed. I took teams of various sizes out there whenever I could to continue the search, the specter of the pathogen always being the primary excuse.Through our CIA contacts, we put feelers out through the various intelligence and criminal networks that are everywhere in Afghanistan. A lot of black-budget money changed hands. I'd like to think that we kept up this level of intensity because three Americans were dead, one was missing, and something-something-was happening out there on the Big Sand that didn't make any kind of sense.Top and Bunny always went with me, but they'd now become moody and silent. Off the clock, we were all drinking too much. And Top had been seeing the chaplain a lot.
After three weeks, we packed up our toys and prepared to fly home.The CIA took over to try to discover what Plan B was for the Taliban and their bioweapon.
Which is when my boss called me into his office.
Everything was packed except his laptop, which was open on his borrowed desk, the screen turned away. Mr. Church is a big, blocky man, past sixty but looking a fit and brutal forty. I don't know his past, but there are a lot of wild tales and even wilder rumors. I wonder how he would have fared in that cave.
"Sit," he said, and like a good dog, I did. Mr. Church had an open package of Nilla Wafers on his desk. He selected one and nibbled it thoughtfully while he studied me through the nearly opaque lenses of his tinted glasses. "An Israeli intelligence officer working undercover in this region captured a series of photos and video with his phone.They were taken last night around twenty-two thirty. I want you to look at them and give me your opinion."
He spun his laptop and pressed a key.The screen was dark for two seconds and then a grainy image popped up.
It was clearly recorded at a dark and seedy coffee shop in what had to be a dangerous part of some local town.The people at the table-nearly all men-were extravagantly bearded, grim, wary eyed.They sat in a tight cluster, sipping small cups of black coffee and bending their heads close in order to talk quietly to each other.The place was crowded, and when the image shifted, I estimated forty or more men and a couple of women with chadors.
Church kept tapping the key to go from frame to frame. At first, it was clear that the Israeli agent was using his phone camera to take pictures of as many of the men as possible. A cataloging process that I've seen with field agents dozens of times.You do that when you're trolling for someone who is a genuine person of interest.Then there were fifteen shots of three men at a distant table, their heads bent together in earnest conversation.
"Our contact identifies these men as known Taliban drug traffickers," said Mr. Church. "But they're also active in the black market for looted antiquities."
Then the camera settled down solidly enough that it was clear the Israeli agent had laid his phone down on his table. The lens was pointed at another table against the far wall. Mr. Church then started the video component. Three men sat there. One was an Afghan villager wearing a kaffiyeh with tribal markings. He sat and listened, clearly not a major player in the conversation.The second man was also an Arab, but I couldn't tell anything specific about him except that he was old, hawk nosed, and wore a turban that was so thick that the wrappings cast shadows down over his deep-set eyes. This man appeared to be doing all of the talking. Unfortunately there was too much ambient noise to pick out any of the conversation.
However, it was the third man who was the real story here. He was dressed in Afghan clothes, including a kaffiyeh, but he was clearly not an Arab. He wore sunglasses and a faint smile that was very strange-sensuous to the point of being almost overtly sexual. He sat with hands folded on the table as he listened to the older man.
"Jesus Christ," I said.
Mr. Church said nothing.
"That's Finn."
"Without a doubt. Sergeant Michael O'Leary."
"Where was this taken?"