Stay by Victor Gischler Page A

convention. If you need to speak to somebody, one of the assistant managers on duty would be happy to—”
    â€œThanks, but Larry and I are old friends and this is important. I’d appreciate it if you could get him for me. I understand he’s busy, and I can wait in the bar until he’s available.”
    â€œMay I give him a name?”
    â€œTell him it’s his old drinking buddy from Basrah.”
    She regarded him a moment before saying. “Okay … I’ll try to get him.”
    â€œThanks,” David said. “We’ll be in the bar.”
    It was made up like an old Irish pub, crowded, impossible to get a table, but a couple of Shriners stumbled away from a stretch of bar and David and Amy took their places. The harried bartender hurried over to take their orders.
    â€œA club soda with lime,” David.
    â€œClub soda, huh?” Amy shook her head. “After our day so far I think I need something with a little more backbone. Double Scotch rocks. Whatever’s in the well is fine.”
    The bartender knew his business, and the drinks arrived fast. Amy took half hers down in one go.
    â€œTake it easy,” David said.
    She laughed. “Take it easy, he says. God, are you kidding? For Christ’s sake.”
    â€œI know you,” David said. “I married a strong, level-headed, smart woman. So you get thirty seconds to feel shock and awe, and then we have to focus.”
    â€œYou know me,” Amy repeated. “I thought I knew you, too.”
    â€œWhat’s that supposed to mean?”
    â€œMoving supplies around. Sitting behind a desk. That’s not what you were doing in the Army, was it?” Amy sipped her drink again. “The guy driving our SUV today and shooting an automatic pistol out the window wasn’t a pencil pusher.”
    David drank club soda to buy himself a few seconds.
    He sat the glass back on the bar and turned to her. She was watching him, not with hostility. Just waiting. Her eyes gleamed with the same alert intelligence that had attracted him in the first place.
    A formidable woman. God help me if I ever cross her .
    â€œThere are things I’m not allowed to talk about,” David said. “Not to anyone.”
    â€œI’m your wife.”
    â€œEspecially not to my wife.”
    She drained the Scotch and set her glass next to his.
    â€œDo you want another one?”
    She shook her head. “No.”
    They stood looking at their empty glasses a moment.
    â€œHoly crap, Major.” A voice behind them. “It is you.”
    In his peripheral vision, David had already caught Larry’s reflection in the bar mirror. He stood, turned and extended his hand. “Sergeant.”
    Larry Meadows ignored the hand and swept David into a bear hug. They patted each other on the back, laughing. When they disengaged, David took a good look at his old friend.
    Larry Meadows was a compact bulldog of a man with a bald head and very dark skin. He wore a sharply tailored double-breasted suit with a tasteful emblem of the hotel on the pocket, but whenever David thought about him it was in desert camo and a field rig.
    The first time David met Larry Meadows, the master sergeant was saving his ass. He was part of a retrieval team meant to escort David back after one of his deep penetration solo missions. Larry and his squad were hunkered down a hundred yards from the Iran border, just inside Iraq. David was on the other side of the line, pressed flat against some boulders, pinned down by an Iranian patrol spraying AK-47 fire all over the place.
    The sergeant’s orders had been clear. He could not cross into Iran. It was Major David Sparrow’s problem to drag his own ass back across the border into Iraq. The U.S. government would claim no knowledge of him if David got himself captured, but if he got himself back across the border under his own steam, Larry and his men would take him the rest of the