Prophet, p.15
Prophet, page 15
“So what’s the plan?” he asks.
“We walk in.”
“That’s a terrible plan.”
“We don’t have time to recruit assets and we’re in no position to SWAT team it.”
“Adam,” Rao says patiently. “They won’t let us in.”
“You can brute force sufficient intel to get us in.”
“Right. Then they shoot us. Or dose us and make us make Furbys.”
Adam’s silence isn’t reassuring. “What would you make?” Rao asks. “If you got, you know.”
“What?”
“Dosed with this stuff.”
“I’ve got no idea.”
Rao narrows his eyes. “A knife.”
Adam rolls his. “I’m not nostalgic about knives, Rao. They’re kit.”
“Bullshit. I’ve seen your knives. They’re a bit flashy for kit.”
“They’re not flashy.”
“They bloody are. Ok, not a knife. One of your airplane models.”
“Stay on target, Rao.”
“Al-most there.”
Adam closes his eyes for a moment. “Give me my laptop. I’ll book a car and a hotel.”
Rao throws himself upon his bed, flings the back of one hand theatrically over his eyes, and lets out a self-pitying groan. For the last forty minutes he’s been generating statements out loud and ascertaining the truth value of each one. He’s found out that Flores is alive but incapacitated by the substance, along with fourteen others in that building, all but three of whom are ex–Special Forces. Volunteers.
After that, Adam handed him a pen and paper and asked him to run through the alphabet to find the name of the guy at the top of the hierarchy on-site, who happens to be someone named Montgomery. Adam intends to tell whoever this Montgomery turns out to be that they’ve come to conduct a spot check on project progress. Drop the words “EOS PROPHET.”
Rao’s not happy with this plan. “With a bit of time and a lot of paper, we can just find out the names and roles of everyone involved in the project,” he’d pointed out quite reasonably, because it’s fucking obvious that’s what they should do. “You know, now you’ve decided I’m allowed to.”
“Names don’t get Flores out,” Adam had said tightly. “We need to go in.”
Rao had struggled with this statement. Adam’s mission prep has always been infinitesimally granular, and it’s disturbing how ready he is to go in on such limited intel. Must be because of Miller, he thought, remembering the rage on Adam’s face. Or did he call Miller’s boss and get explicit orders while Rao was having a smoke outside? Maybe. More likely.
He yawns. He’s ok. Tired but ok. Agitated the way he always is after a run but ok. His hangover has been lessened by time, water, and Tylenol, but its diminishment has exposed all his self-recriminations, and those are far trickier to handle. All day he’s been telling himself that last night’s relapse was a one-off, but Rao’s a past master at lying to himself. He’s going to do better. He had been. He has to.
Adam walks back in from the bathroom. Rao hadn’t noticed he’d gone, and startles slightly. “How’re you doing?” Adam asks.
“Headache’s gone, but my brain’s leaping about like an ant on a hotplate.” He waggles his brows. “Might go back to that bar and start a fight.”
Adam snorts. “That won’t be happening.”
“You punch me in the face, then.”
“Rao. Please.”
“Adam, please.”
“I’d suggest we raid the minibar, but I think you already did that.”
“Leave off. I get it. I went off on one. I’m not going to apologise.”
“Wasn’t asking you to,” Adam says, pulling the chair from the desk to sit. He leans back and folds his arms; there’s the faintest suspicion of a smile. Rao closes his eyes to shut it out.
“I was really awful though, yeah?”
“No. Hunter just doesn’t know you. I had a pretty good night, considering.”
“Considering what?”
“Nothing, never mind.”
Rao’s not going to let that lie. He props himself up on an elbow, fixes Adam with an enquiring eye.
“Fine,” Adam acquiesces. “If you weren’t giving me shit last night, then Hunter was. I’m not used to pincer manoeuvre ass kicking.”
Rao grins. “I’d never be able to kick your arse, and I think it’s alright if we both admit that.”
“Mm. There’s kicking someone’s ass and then there’s giving a friend an ass kicking.”
“Ah,” Rao says sagely. “It’s all becoming clear now, Adamski. So what was Hunter’s problem? You don’t look at her during?”
“We’re not a thing, Rao.”
“But you have, though. Haven’t you?”
Adam’s mouth twitches. “Wow. No. Extremely no. She’s a friend, and that’s it. I’m not her type, and she’s very much not my type.”
“Out of your league?”
“Hunter’s out of everyone’s league.”
“Alright, alright. So what was the problem, then?”
“I don’t think you want to know.”
“Fuck off, Adam. Stop being a wanker.”
Adam shrugs minutely. “She thinks that you’re taking advantage of my patience.”
Rao laughs at that. “Fuck right the fuck off. Are you serious?”
Adam’s covert smile hovers on the edge of being in the clear. “You asked,” he says.
“Your patience?”
“Not her exact words, but yes.”
“Does she know you?”
“Yeah, she does. Apart from you, better than anyone.”
Rao’s not sure he heard that right. He doesn’t want the moment to pass unmarked. “I’m touched,” he says eventually.
Adam frowns. “Don’t.”
“No, I’m being serious. You know I always sound like this, love. Can’t help the sarcastic lilt to my tone. Social camouflage at school. I was surrounded by silver spoons, you know.”
“Right. I know.”
Liar, thinks Rao, amused. He can hear Crosby, Stills and Nash on the radio. Housekeeping in the corridor. The dopplering drone of transport planes outside. Adam’s quiet, studying the floor.
“Would you believe me if I said that I feel similarly?” Rao offers.
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I don’t have to do fuck all, Adam. Yet here I am, telling you the truth when I don’t have to. Sober, too.”
“Lucky me?”
“Fucking right. I trust you, you berk. Always have,” he says. No, he thinks. That’s false. “Well, not from the start, obviously, but it was a close thing. I had to, really. Trust you. If I didn’t, I’d have gone mad with uncertainty and second-guessing. So that paid off, professionally speaking, pretty quickly. But, you know. Turns out I started trusting you as a friend as well.”
“Rao—”
“I know, I know. Maybe I’m still hungover. All this sharing.”
“You’re not hungover. You’d be complaining more.”
“That’s true.”
Adam looks up, eyes dark and serious. “I trust you, too, Rao.”
“I should hope so.”
“But I think you should be more careful about where you place your trust.”
“Don’t be a twat. I know you think I don’t notice things, but I do.”
“Do you.”
“Yeah. I know it’s always you that keeps us right when we’re working. I’ll wander off the second anyone gives me a chance, and I’ll kick at any bastard who tries to stop me. But you manage it. Don’t know anyone else who can do that. I see that, you know. I’m not an idiot.”
“I know you aren’t.”
“You’ve probably kept me alive way more times than I know about, yeah? Just a hunch.”
“There are some things you don’t know about—”
Rao raises a hand. “Don’t tell me, love. I really don’t want to know about all the people who could have killed me if you hadn’t been there. I just hope you know that if I were of any use at all in that arena, I’d have returned the favour by now.”
“That’s not a concern.”
“So what’s this revelation?”
“It’s not just your protection I’ve been tasked with when we’re partnered, Rao.”
“I know you’re not just a bouncer with a gun because I was there, if you recall. You’re a Defense Intelligence Agency officer. We met with your assets.”
“Yes. But I’ve filled other roles.” Rao waggles his brows. Adam rolls his eyes minutely. “Roles, Rao. Not holes.”
“Was that a joke?”
“You know I’m not capable of jokes.”
“Right. I say that a lot, don’t I?”
“I haven’t noticed.”
“Stop lying, Adam.”
Adam is staring at the floor again. He’s thinking. “What?” Rao asks eventually. “What is it?”
“Are we still sharing?”
“I’m rather hurt you feel you need to ask. You know me better than that.”
“I guess I do. I just wanted to say . . .” Adam starts, then hesitates.
“Spit it out, love.”
“I do my best not to lie to you.”
“Nice to know. You have an unfair advantage, after all.”
“Lies would mess things up.”
“Without a doubt.”
“Lies by omission are worse than making things up, though. Aren’t they?”
Rao feels a soft flutter of foreboding. “What are you getting at?”
It takes Adam a while to speak. “I was contacted,” he says, “by some people, a few times, for advice on how to get you to focus on a job.”
“And when was this?”
“You were in Afghanistan.”
The air is cold, suddenly. “Is that so,” Rao says. Precise diction. Each word honed to a point.
“Yes.”
“Go on.”
“I let them know that you’re happier when you indulge and that it was in their best interest to let it happen. That your limits with that kind of thing are higher than average.”
“Indulge. Right. I see. Better drug tolerance than your average bear, is that what you told them?”
“Not word for word.”
The coldness is now so searing Rao half expects his breath to fog the air when he opens his mouth and speaks. “No. You don’t get to joke. I get to joke. You get to shut the fuck up.”
Adam raises his eyes briefly to Rao’s, drops them to his feet.
“Well? Go on. Tell me what you’re not saying.”
“They misused that information.”
The ice inside Rao spreads and ramifies. Reluctantly, he recalls the details. Sees them for exactly what they were. What it was. How much of a setup it had been. And now the coldness inside him isn’t cold anymore. It’s molten metal, it’s magma, incandescent, and Adam’s still talking. “You said something about meeting a guy at a bar—”
“Yes, thank you. I’m capable of following the bread crumbs of shit you’re trailing around. Fucking hell. This tall fucker, too. Did you tell them to use him too? Do you keep a file on my sexual preferences, Adam?”
“No. I don’t.”
“CIA, I suppose. Nice little chat. You’d be happy enough to open up to them. Everything’s a job, right?”
“They already had the reports I wrote on you after our time in Central Asia.”
“Reports. Fucking wizard, Adam! What else? Been calling my mum each time I piss on the toilet seat?”
“I—”
“Don’t fucking answer that,” Rao hisses. It’s astonishing how difficult he’s finding it to breathe. It hurts. Feels like he’s inhaling scalding steam. It’s astounding that he’s not already beating six shades of shit out of Adam. He knows from his face he’d let it happen. And it’d be happening right now if it weren’t so very hard to move.
“It’s not just your advising the cunts it’d be a good idea to get me hooked on heroin, is it,” he says slowly. “Your reports were why they wanted me in the first place.”
Adam doesn’t respond. Rao sits. Rao waits.
“Well?” he says finally.
“Well what? That’s all of it.”
“You’re shitting me.”
“That’s all, I swear.”
“No, you prick. You’re not even thinking about apologising, are you?”
Nothing. Silence.
“You wrecked my life, Adam. And you can’t even fucking apologise.”
Rao watches Adam inhale and exhale slowly before he speaks. “What’s done is done.”
“There. That. The arrogance that oozes from you, deciding what matters from someone else’s past just because you never pay in sanity or blood like the rest of us. And no one can see it, because you’re so boring and god-awful to be around. But now—would you like to know what I have now?”
“You’re going to tell me.”
“Yes. That’s true. I am going to tell you. I have my wits about me now. My eyes are open. I know what you are. You’re broken on the inside and that’s why I can’t tell with you. There’s nothing even remotely human in there. It’s just all the missing parts from every other soldier on the roster jumbled into the cage you call a body. Under your shitty, shitty suits.” He takes a deep breath, trembling with rage. “Say something,” he says. “No. No. On second thought, don’t say anything. Don’t talk to me. Don’t fucking look at me. Fucking trust. That’s it. That’s me taught.”
They sit in silence.
“Rao,” Adam says eventually. “You should go home.”
“Home.”
Adam nods.
“What the fuck would you know about home? Yeah, an evasive look, what a surprise. Home’s a meaningless concept to a military shit like you. Also,” he spits out, “home for me isn’t a nice house in the country, if you recall? What’s waiting for me back in Blighty is prison. Sorry. Jail.”
“I’ll talk to some people. Write up a report on—”
“Fuck you and your reports, Adam.”
“Rao, please go home.”
“Care to tell me how? I’ve got no wallet. I’ve been spending your cash. My passport’s locked in your bag. What do you want me to do? Suck off a trucker for a ride to an airport, walk up to check-in, and beg?”
“I can get you to Andrews, then—”
“I’m not some faceless goon like some people. I can’t just plug in at any charging station at any fucking military outpost, you cunt.”
Rao killed Ed. He’s probably killed Miller. All those poor bastards in Kabul. Guilt, sour, stacked high, wet paper in his chest. “I’m coming with you tomorrow,” he continues, voice like it’s held in a vice. “No matter how much you’d rather I didn’t.”
He is. Mainly because he’s gripped by an inchoate desire to find whoever’s responsible for this and beat the shit out of them. That would be satisfying. While it lasts. Considering the scale of this project, what it’s already done, he has no illusions about how an encounter like that would end. Maybe Adam’ll watch him die. Yeah. That works.
“Rao—”
“Conversation’s over.”
CHAPTER 30
His parents are gone for the day. They’ve been leaving him alone in the house since he turned ten. Now that he’s nearing his fourteenth birthday it’s barely worth mentioning he’s home alone to a neighbor or anything. Nobody will poke their head in. It’s fine. Only, that day, his aunt comes to visit.
“Got the house to yourself, kid?” she grins as she walks in. Her voice is scratchy from the cigarette she’s just stubbed out on the porch. He smiles back at her but doesn’t answer. He doesn’t have to. She never minds if he is a little quiet or slow to warm up to a conversation. “Are we having a party or what?”
“They’re back at midnight,” he explains. He isn’t going to have a party, but that wasn’t the question she was asking.
“So you have some time to breathe, huh?” She nods.
Aunt Sasha gets it. He never has to say the words to her. She understands. She knows how sometimes being in his parents’ house feels like being held underwater, and no matter how hard he wants to kick and buck against it, he is always going to go under. He tells her how his dad has needed to get out of the house. How he’s said he’s been having trouble looking at his son lately. How he needs to go out and be normal with his wife. Talk out some things.
Then he tells his aunt about the camp. About how some friends of his dad’s had sent their sons there. Their sons were older than him, already enlisted now. Tells her how, when they came back, their dads kept talking about how disciplined they were.
He isn’t sure why, but that’s when he tells her about Mark.
He knows it’ll be fine to tell his aunt about Mark. She’s safe. He knows she’ll always be safe. Whenever he’s messed up, she’s never cared. And this? This was a big one. Several clicks past messing up. Mark, and being caught with Mark, wasn’t messing up. It was a fuckup.
She listens to him like she always does. Asks him if Mark was his first kiss or just the first boy. First everything, he tells her. She smiles like she’s proud of him. It doesn’t matter how much he messes up. She always smiles at him like that in the end.
“What’s the name of that camp?” she asks.
He doesn’t know. He’s never listened to the details because there’s no point in fighting his dad about it, he tells her. She knows how he is.
She nods and speaks slowly. Carefully. “How about, instead of that camp, you come live with me for the summer?” They look at each other in silence. She shrugs. “Or forever. Get away from your dad. Get away from that camp.”
He thinks about it. It’s not a real option. He’ll never be allowed. Doesn’t get a chance to say that to his aunt before she starts talking again.
“We gotta get you out of here, kid,” she says quietly. They’re the only people in the house, but she speaks quietly like there might be someone listening. “All I need is a few days and I can get us tickets to somewhere else, anywhere else, and your mom and dad won’t find us.”
