Chapter 24

CHAPTER 24

I stopped just before crossing the wood bridge back to the highway and then into Rocky Start.

Luke had hit on the crux of the matter that had been worrying me since yesterday: Why had my old boss sent me to Rocky Start? It hadn't been for boots. Even I, slow as I was at times, had finally accepted that. I turned right and walked along the river to the bench I'd cleared off earlier. Leaned my ruck against it and sat down. Maggs used the break to find a place where the riverbank wasn't so steep and went down to get a drink, which was kind of funny to watch since she still had the cone on.

I dug the secure satellite phone out of the bottom of my ruck and turned it on. I waited while it sought out and then made its linkup with a government satellite. Then I called on the special line direct to Herc.

"How goes the meander?" Herc asked when he answered.

"Why did you send me to Rocky Start?"

"To get your boots."

Fucking Herc wanted to play games? "Oz Oswald is dead."

"Wait. Oz is dead ?"

"So you knew him. "

"Hell, yeah, I knew him."

"Is that why you sent me here?"

"No."

"Why am I here?"

Several seconds of silence ticked off, then Herc ordered: "Start from the beginning."

Fuck him. "My journey began as a young lad on the dark streets?—"

Herc wasn't in the mood. "Don't be a dick."

I started over, not in the mood either. "My journey began when I left Mount Katahdin in Maine on a misty morning in April?—"

"Max. Start from when you reached Rocky Start," Herc said.

"Fuck you, Herc. Why am I here?"

"Start from when you reached Rocky Start," Herc said, and I knew I wasn't going to get anything from him until I told him what I knew.

I gave him a concise, typical after-action report for a mission, except I didn't know what the mission was, and it obviously wasn't over.

When I was done, his first question wasn't about my wellbeing, but that was the norm for him. "So Oz died of natural causes?"

"I have no idea," I said. "I haven't heard anything to the contrary. You know this guy named Pike? He seems to have been Oz's running buddy."

"Yeah, I know Pike."

"Who else do you know in this town? I ran into Tiny just now."

"How is Tiny?" Herc asked. "It's been a long time since?—"

"He goes by Luke now."

"Of course, he would. How?—"

"Herc. Why am I here?"

He ignored my question but stopped trying to chitchat, which he'd always sucked at. "How long has Oz been dead?"

"Three days. Who exactly was he?" I demanded. "He was a player, right? Like Pike. Like Tiny. Like me."

"Three days? And people are showing up?"

"Who was he?"

"You ever hear of The Wizard? "

"Of course I've heard of . . ." I had my own moment to pause and realize what I'd missed that had been right in front of me. Yeah, getting old sucks. "Oz was The Wizard? That Oz?"

"Oz. Wizard of. That's how he got the nickname."

"I heard he died a long time ago."

"Everyone did."

"But not you."

"No."

"And now he really is dead."

"And now he really is according to you."

"And Pike?"

"Oz's partner from a long time ago. Everyone thinks he's dead, too."

"Except you."

"Yeah," Herc admitted.

" Why am I here? "

"Chill out, Max. Nothing nefarious. I just wanted you to check on someone."

"Why didn't you tell me that?"

"I figured you'd drop me a line when you got the boots. I had Amazon put a note on the card inside for you to call me. It wasn't high-priority."

I hadn't checked because Rose had chatted me up and stolen my wallet, twice, and Pike had been up my ass outside the post office when I'd opened the box. I'd just tossed it all after swapping out the boots. And since when does Herc send messages in Amazon packages? We had secure satellite links for that, like the one we were using now.

"Who did you want me to check on?" I asked. "Oz? Pike?"

"Neither." Herc sighed. "My ex. Sort of my ex. We were never married. But she's the mother of my daughter."

Not Rose , I thought. Please, let it not be Rose . "Who?"

"Her name is Lian. My daughter's name is Mei."

"Asian, forties or so, good looking, wearing a business suit and carrying a taser. "

"Sounds like you met Lian. I imagine she still looks good; she was always one to?—"

I cut him off. "I saw her. We didn't chat."

"Did she tase you?"

"Not funny, Herc. You should have told me up front."

"You might have said no to doing a sensitive personal job," Herc said. "And you needed the boots, right? It seemed like a karmic convergence."

"Screw your karmic convergence." For a big chunk of my adult life, Herc had been my Special Ops boss, the entity controlling my life, giving me my contracts. I thought I'd left that behind. But I need boots, and he gives me his ex and his daughter and Oz and the Weed Brothers and Pike and Junior and Tiny and his son and Norman and Poppy. And Rose. Rose braless, making excellent lasagna and my bed. All to check on his kid. The fact he hadn't thought he could ask me for a favor up front really pissed me off, after all we'd been through. But it fit perfectly with who he was: Never take the direct approach when you can manipulate from the shadows to get what you want. People can't say no when they don't know they've been maneuvered into something. And when they figure it out, it's usually too late.

"Why did you want to check on her?"

"The kid's going to college next year," Herc said. "Planning on Harvard," he added proudly, as if he'd had something to do with that other than a spurt of sperm. "I wanted to know how she's doing."

"Why didn't you just ask your ex?"

"There's a reason she's my ex," Herc said. "She's got a restraining order on me. Sort of. Not a legal one. One backed up by Pike and Oz."

"I don't blame her," I said. "Why didn't you have Pike or Oz check on your kid?"

"Oz said no, so I figured Pike would, too. There's a reason she's in Rocky Start. It was a compromise when we split. Oz ran cover for the town and Pike backed him up. I knew my daughter would be safe. I provide overhead cover for the town on the big scale."

And Oz had provided cover from Herc, which was interesting. It had probably been a very rare lapse into humanity for Herc to have sent Lian here with his daughter. Or maybe it was just Herc covering his ass again, not wanting a rabid ex on the loose. Lian was lucky she wasn't dead. Or maybe he'd gotten sentimental about having a kid.

No. This was Herc. If it was because of the kid, he had a long-term plan for her.

"So why did you want to check on your daughter now?"

"She's eighteen," Herc said. "She'll be going out into the world soon."

Like Poppy , I thought. That Herc had channeled Rocky Start into a dual purpose—providing a landing pad for his retired contractors and his daughter—was one hundred percent his style. Keeping an eye on everyone, even after they'd dropped out of the game.

"How many ex-players are living here?" I asked.

"That's not an issue right now," Herc said.

That was Herc's way of telling me I didn't have a need to know. Which I actually did. Off the top of my head, besides Oz and Pike, I figured the German woman, Coral, and her knife; the guy who ran the post office, Ferrell; and my most recent visitor, Tiny, now known as Luke. Rose? No. She was off, something strange in her past, but I didn't get any player vibe from her.

"Why are people showing up now that Oz is dead?" I asked.

Herc didn't reply.

I thought about it. Rose's Ozzie, aka The Wizard, aka Oz, had been one of the most infamous players of the last century. He'd been a legend for his missions at the tail end of Vietnam and then into Afghanistan when we'd been supporting the mujahideen, who'd been fighting the Russians. I'd even heard stories of him from the locals when I was there later. And he'd done some stuff in Europe during the Cold War, classic ops. He'd also pulled off one of the biggest heists in history, millions in pay-off money that he'd taken from . . .

Oh, fuck. "Did Oz really rip off the Russians?" I shook my head, disgusted with everybody. "Damn it, Herc, is the story about him true? Because if it is, there are some good people here who are in harm's way."

"There are lots of stories about him," Herc said. "Be more specific. "

"His last op in Afghanistan. When he went off the grid with a lot of cash that he'd taken from retreating Russians. When he supposedly died. Along with Pike."

"Depends which version you've heard," Herc evaded.

"The one where they lived. Why don't you tell me the real version since we know the dying one wasn't true?"

"Now isn't the time," Herc said. "Plus, even I don't know all of it. The only ones who do, who did, were Oz and Pike."

"Did you have Oz killed?"

Herc sounded offended. "Hell, no. I just wanted you to check on my daughter. I had no idea Oz had died. And the cash he took wasn't Russian, it was ours. The US's, I mean. Stinger buy-back cash."

He meant money to buy back the Stinger ground-to-air missiles we'd provided to the mujahideen in Afghanistan to fight the Russians a long time—and several wars—ago.

"So he ripped off the United States."

"No one really cared," Herc said, which meant he hadn't cared. "The cash was written off the moment he and Pike went into Afghanistan to do that op. It was completely written off when the plane he and Pike were returning to the States on went down in the ocean and was never recovered."

"But the plane didn't go down."

"Oh, it did."

"But not with Oz and Pike on board."

"They were as far as everyone was concerned."

"But not you." Maggs came up from the river, her cone dripping water. She lay down in front of me.

"Nope."

"How much did they still have?"

"Millions."

I'd worked for Herc for many years, but I didn't trust him at all. How could I in the world I'd existed in and in which he still lived? But I did buy the part about the cash being written off. I'd seen pallets full of cash off-loaded in foreign countries that would disappear into the wild. I'd done some of that disappearing myself, paying off warlords and arms merchants and foreign allies and all sorts of nefarious and not so nefarious characters. Sometimes we'd even paid for good things like wells being dug for drinking water. Sometimes. Oddly, that sort of stuff seemed to work better than the warlord thing in the long run, but who cared about that? A lot of the contract work had been security, protecting people on sensitive missions in dangerous places. Tedious and boring but necessary to keep the package we were guarding alive.

"So Oz's death was an act of God?" I asked.

"Hell, Max, I didn't know he was dead until you just told me. He was getting on in years."

Millions. In cash. And Oz hadn't been living in a mansion and reveling in a lavish lifestyle as far as I could tell. Norman's visit now made sense if he knew about the money.

"Did Oz have a kid?"

"I don't think so."

Herc was hedging. He was the kind of guy who could lie without blinking. Who could tell you the sky was green and almost get you to believe it. He had confidence, smarts, and duplicitousness to the nth degree. Which was good when he was on your side, backing you up.

"You're full of shit, Herc."

"What are you going to do?" Herc asked.

"You'll find out." I hung up.

I looked at Maggs. "What are we going to do?"

She didn't wait for me but just got up and headed for the bridge into Rocky Start.

Smart dog.