Worse, she’d stored shampoo and soap in her indestructible caddy longer than she’d been able to buy a drink.
Hot water sluiced over her body and created a cloud of steam that separated her from the day’s events. She attacked her fingers with a nail brush until her hands pinkened. Not an iota of Wulf’s blood remained in the creases or under her nails, but even with the evidence of his injury washed down the drain faster than the wounds had disappeared from his chest, she knew his healing hadn’t been a dream.
With everything she understood about the human body threatening to change, how could the face looking back from the mirror while she combed her hair be the same? The head tilted when she needed to reach to pin her bun, and the fingers in the reflection obligingly buttoned a clean shirt, but she felt removed from that person.
Dressed, she rolled her stained shirt carefully into a zip-closing bag and concealed it with her towel. The blood smears were the only evidence to support what she planned to tell Jennifer.
On her black sport watch, the day flashed: TU. Tuesday. Today was Tuesday and— oh shit , tomorrow —Wednesday she had to report at 0400 to the helipad for an 0500 lift to Bagram Airfield in Kabul. She had a seat on an air force flight to Kuwait City, where she’d switch out of her uniform and catch a commercial flight to Rome. The black civilian carry-on her roommates took turns using on leave waited, packed, at the foot of her bunk. She’d loaded it yesterday, expecting today to be hectic.
Hectic described today like stomach bug described Vibrio cholerae bacterium.
A reverberating knock on the bath unit’s aluminum door spun her around.
* * *
Braced on the wall across from his commander’s desk, Wulf acknowledged his miscalculation. Forty minutes ago when Theresa tore out of the helicopter, he should’ve followed her and untangled this clusterfuck, instead of trailing after Deavers to coordinate the downed aircraft recovery team. His captain and Kahananui had that situation handled. With the last man inbound, the disabled Black Hawk sling-loaded under a heavy-lift CH-47 Chinook and the incident report delegated to Cruz, he could no longer ignore his woman problem.
Letting go of his support made his head wobble, but before he could find chow he had to shower off the blood. If the stars favored him, maybe Theresa hadn’t yet talked to anyone about what she’d seen.
“Hold on.” Deavers spoke around the tobacco in his cheek. “The drugs in the container we found with Morgan are moving.”
“Damn.” He didn’t need this now, not when he felt like the walking dead. “Where?”
“The marked load’s part of a Black and Swan convoy to Peshawar. Presumably to a ship in Karachi.” The squint lines around his commander’s eyes announced that he wasn’t finished.
“And?” Wulf’s lips were too stiff from his effort to stay upright to say more. He needed ten times his normal calories after the amount of collagen his cells had burned regenerating his muscles and skin. Peanut butter and sports drinks kept him conscious, but he needed more carbs and fats, a lot more, to feel human.
“Someone ought to eyeball the load. Collect HUMINT and determine the destination.”
Human intelligence gathering in Karachi, Pakistan, required a fluent speaker of Urdu, Pashto, Punjabi and Sindhi. Wulf knew only one screwed soul who fit the bill.
“ Someone means me?” Didn’t the captain understand what was on the line if Theresa poked deeper into his life? She’d searched for his medical files once, and now she had a reason to dig. “You realize I’ve got to find the doc—”
“Out of it, aren’t you?” Deavers spit in his cup. “Bama Boy’s keeping an eye on her.”
“What if she talks?” He scratched his chest. Until his body pushed out the fabric shreds and other debris trapped between the new cells, his skin would itch worse than a week-old jockstrap.
“He’ll keep her
Hot water sluiced over her body and created a cloud of steam that separated her from the day’s events. She attacked her fingers with a nail brush until her hands pinkened. Not an iota of Wulf’s blood remained in the creases or under her nails, but even with the evidence of his injury washed down the drain faster than the wounds had disappeared from his chest, she knew his healing hadn’t been a dream.
With everything she understood about the human body threatening to change, how could the face looking back from the mirror while she combed her hair be the same? The head tilted when she needed to reach to pin her bun, and the fingers in the reflection obligingly buttoned a clean shirt, but she felt removed from that person.
Dressed, she rolled her stained shirt carefully into a zip-closing bag and concealed it with her towel. The blood smears were the only evidence to support what she planned to tell Jennifer.
On her black sport watch, the day flashed: TU. Tuesday. Today was Tuesday and— oh shit , tomorrow —Wednesday she had to report at 0400 to the helipad for an 0500 lift to Bagram Airfield in Kabul. She had a seat on an air force flight to Kuwait City, where she’d switch out of her uniform and catch a commercial flight to Rome. The black civilian carry-on her roommates took turns using on leave waited, packed, at the foot of her bunk. She’d loaded it yesterday, expecting today to be hectic.
Hectic described today like stomach bug described Vibrio cholerae bacterium.
A reverberating knock on the bath unit’s aluminum door spun her around.
* * *
Braced on the wall across from his commander’s desk, Wulf acknowledged his miscalculation. Forty minutes ago when Theresa tore out of the helicopter, he should’ve followed her and untangled this clusterfuck, instead of trailing after Deavers to coordinate the downed aircraft recovery team. His captain and Kahananui had that situation handled. With the last man inbound, the disabled Black Hawk sling-loaded under a heavy-lift CH-47 Chinook and the incident report delegated to Cruz, he could no longer ignore his woman problem.
Letting go of his support made his head wobble, but before he could find chow he had to shower off the blood. If the stars favored him, maybe Theresa hadn’t yet talked to anyone about what she’d seen.
“Hold on.” Deavers spoke around the tobacco in his cheek. “The drugs in the container we found with Morgan are moving.”
“Damn.” He didn’t need this now, not when he felt like the walking dead. “Where?”
“The marked load’s part of a Black and Swan convoy to Peshawar. Presumably to a ship in Karachi.” The squint lines around his commander’s eyes announced that he wasn’t finished.
“And?” Wulf’s lips were too stiff from his effort to stay upright to say more. He needed ten times his normal calories after the amount of collagen his cells had burned regenerating his muscles and skin. Peanut butter and sports drinks kept him conscious, but he needed more carbs and fats, a lot more, to feel human.
“Someone ought to eyeball the load. Collect HUMINT and determine the destination.”
Human intelligence gathering in Karachi, Pakistan, required a fluent speaker of Urdu, Pashto, Punjabi and Sindhi. Wulf knew only one screwed soul who fit the bill.
“ Someone means me?” Didn’t the captain understand what was on the line if Theresa poked deeper into his life? She’d searched for his medical files once, and now she had a reason to dig. “You realize I’ve got to find the doc—”
“Out of it, aren’t you?” Deavers spit in his cup. “Bama Boy’s keeping an eye on her.”
“What if she talks?” He scratched his chest. Until his body pushed out the fabric shreds and other debris trapped between the new cells, his skin would itch worse than a week-old jockstrap.
“He’ll keep her
Similar Books
The Evil That Men Do: FBI Profiler Roy Hazelwood's Journey Into the Minds of Sexual Predators
Stephen G. Michaud, Roy Hazelwood
