CHAPTER THREE

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. Please return to your seats and fasten your seatbelts. We’re in for a bumpy ride.”

Again?

There was no need to return. Eric Reynolds never unbuckled once he’d lowered his butt to first-class seating and strapped in. Didn’t matter the airline. Didn’t matter the destination. Only when all wheels touched planet Earth would he consider unfastening that buckle, even to use the restroom. Screw physics. The science behind jet propulsion couldn’t compete with the cataclysmic force of attraction behind Newton’s law of gravity.

Look around. There were no service stations in the clouds, no place to land or park. A rock was still a rock, even if it flew thirty-five thousand feet above the planet. Didn’t matter what colorful eye-catching logo was splashed across the tail or under the belly of this jumbo bird, jets fell out of the sky more often than they should.

Could be acrophobia, the anxiety of great heights. Could be claustrophobia, that inexplicable sense of suffocating in restricted, tight places. Could even be plain old anxiety. Whatever!

Facts didn’t mean squat when a guy could, at any moment, drop twenty thousand feet—a minute, mind you—out of a clear blue sky with nothing to say about it but hold onto your ass. Splat and goodbye. Add pelting rain, thunder, and lightning to the mix, and Eric was as wired as he’d ever been.

Despite having flown in an odd assortment of military aircraft during his military career, Eric’s blood pressure spiked the moment he set foot in the terminal. Any terminal. Didn’t matter how many times he’d already done this. He hated every minute of it.

Screw physics and bring on the Dramamine. Or a Jack and Coke.

To make what was a godawful morning worse, this flight to Amsterdam from JFK had been one jolting bump after another. Up and down. Side to side, and every so often, he swore the jet shifted in all four directions at the same time until his stomach screamed to stop.

He steeled what was left of his ragged nerves and dug his fingers into the armrests just in time. The aerodynamically designed aircraft bucked like a wild mustang, and anyone not strapped in, hit the ceiling, and they deserved it, too. What were they thinking walking around like this was safe?

Black clouds taunted at every window. Lightning flashed, too close and personal. The atmosphere sounded like a warzone.

Regularly scheduled, my ass. Flying fifteen hours straight wasn’t part of his regular schedule, not by a long shot. He clenched his jaw and gritted his teeth, bound for glory because, once more, his compassion got the best of him.

The jumbo jet liner dipped, jolting Eric. He glanced at his companion agent, Jordan Hannigan, Army Ranger in his past life, directly across the aisle. He’d stretched his long legs under the seat ahead of him and was sound asleep. Had been since the flight left D.C. Snoring. Damn him.

Eric tightened his seat belt. He had just three more hours to the land of windmills and Hell.

Finally. Oomph. The jetliner touched down on one wheel before the others engaged the runway. Didn’t it figure? Bumpy flight. Rough landing.

Before it rolled to the gate, Eric jumped to his feet, ready to get both boots on the ground, and be out of that flying death trap called modern air transportation. He thumped his buddy Jordan’s shoulder. “Wake up. Time to move.”

Stretching with one bleary eye half-open, Jordan groaned. “We there yet?”

Not funny, wise guy.

An athletic ex-Army Ranger, Jordan handled life as it came and rarely got rattled. From the frozen tundra of wild Alaska, he stood a strapping six-feet five in his stocking feet. He’d graduated from the University of Alaska after he’d graduated from enough deployments to last a lifetime. The happy-go-lucky man gave up all that fancy education to serve his country a couple more years with The TEAM. Yeah, Jordan was crazy like that. But then, so was Eric.

All the economy class passengers had already jumped to their feet, anxious to disembark the minute the exit doors opened. Eric snagged his sole carry-on, a battered and well-used backpack, out of the overhead compartment while he tapped his cell off airplane mode. The thing chirped and vibrated in his hand the second he did. Alex. Damn. Already? What now?

Eric stifled his irritation with his OCD employer and answered politely, “Hey, Boss.”

“You guys find anything yet?”

“Not yet. We only just landed. We’re still on the plane.”

“I need a Sit Rep, damn it. The State Department wants answers. The sooner the better.”

“Understood. We all want answers. Give us a minute. I’ll—”

Alex hung up in his usual curt manner. No big surprise there. He tended to charge full throttle into battle, and when he charged, all hands had better be ready to charge with him, or they’d get left in the dust.

Eric stowed his phone and rolled the cramp out of his neck. Talk about a migraine. Alex never knew when to back off. Men with demons tended to act like that. Obsessed. A tad maniacal. Impatient as hell. In other words, Alex Stewart to a T.

“He have more news on these guys we’re supposed to hook up with?” Jordan asked.

“No. He’s just antsy. Alex wants Powers and Mikkelson back in the States in record time. You know how he is. He wants everything done yesterday. Let’s move.”

They shouldered their backpacks and beat feet down to the airport entrance, hailed a cab and headed to the University of Amsterdam. They were no sooner on their way, when the weather cleared. The rain stopped. The sun came out. Didn’t it figure?

According to Mother’s instructions, they were to rendezvous with Powers and Mikkelson at a private flat, off campus. She’d given fairly accurate descriptions. Mikkelson, weightlifter. Powers, overweight. The original odd couple. Yeah, there ought to be no problem spotting them in a line up. Eric pulled up the image of Powers from the selfie Finn had sent Mother. Anyone that interesting would be hard to miss.

The Universiteit van Amsterdam boasted one of the most forward-thinking research departments in the world, something Eric appreciated no end. There was a day not too long past when he’d come to the Netherlands on a different mission, a quest for the cure to one of the rarest cancers known to afflict mankind. No matter how old or young they were…

The child of his heart, Cheyenne Rose, a tender angel of seven, seized one sunny afternoon while playing Chopsticks on the piano with Shea. Her fingers failed. The rest of her poor little body swiftly followed suit.

She fell writhing to the floor, and despite all Eric had seen and lived through during his many overseas deployments with the Corps, that day he knew real fear for the first time in his life. Fortunately, he’d been home when everything fell apart, undecided whether he’d stay with the Corps or opt out for Shea and Cheyenne’s sake.

The seizures made the decision for him. He opted out. Never looked back. Never had a chance to. Meningioma. God, the name still struck terror in his soul, but that was what it was called. A brain tumor had developed in the soft tissue surrounding Cheyenne’s brain and spinal column. Her prognosis went from bad to worse quickly, leaving Eric and Shea to watch their only child’s sweet personality change with that first discordant chord at her fingertips.

Nothing but finding the best care and the quickest cure mattered after that. The illness reduced their only child to steady migraines and nausea, neither controllable. Medicine didn’t help. Local options failed. National options, too.

When all seemed lost, an experimental drug in a far-off country declared itself the only light at the end of a very bleak tunnel. Dr. Hendrikx, the Danish researcher who’d developed the miracle drug, offered the slimmest chance. Eric grabbed hold and took the gamble, along with his wife and child, to Amsterdam.

He never saw it coming. Never thought the day would come he couldn’t fix a person or a problem if he gave it his all and worked fast enough and hard enough and long enough. Especially if that person was his only child. Guess he’d been lucky up to that point. No more. Lady Luck failed him in his hour of greatest need.

Cheyenne never met Dr. Hendrikx. Never even made it to his high-tech research lab. Never got the first injection. No radiotherapy. No steroids or surgery, either. After coming so far and sinking everything he owned in a one-in-a-million chance, Eric lost the battle. Hell, he lost the war. His sweet baby girl died in her sleep the first morning in the Netherlands.

A dedicated full-time mother, Shea couldn’t cope with the loss. Shortly after the funeral, she ran off on a singles cruise by herself, thinking to put distance between her and the heartache. She didn’t return. Sent a lawyer instead with divorce papers and a declaration of the bitterest regret for having married for love.

Eric fingered the rolled edge of his gear bag. Shea was right. She should’ve chosen wiser and none of this would’ve happened to her. She should’ve married better. Should’ve never gotten pregnant. Should’ve. Would’ve. Could’ve. Poor Shea.

His heart still ached for her. His body and soul ached, too, if a guy could call the hole at the center of his being an actual physical ache. Felt more like Fate had injected a shot of living-Hell-on-earth straight into the heart of him, and he was meant to carry it until the day he died. So he did. Like a rucksack full of junk that he might figure out how to handle some day. Like that as yet unsigned divorce decree in his in-basket at home, a daily reminder of the greatest unfinished business of his life. His wife.

But that was a different time and a different heartache. A different person named Powers. Slapping the door shut on his pain, Eric chose to see the colorful sights of Amsterdam’s upbeat urban culture passing by the cab’s windows. Canals. Gabled row houses. Museums. The city reverberated with the busyness of Amsterdamers on bicycles, and history at every glance.

They all flew by in a blur. One charming city looked the same as another without someone special to share it with. Jordan didn’t count.

Eric couldn’t seem to move on, and that near fatal stabbing in South America last year had reduced him to light-duty for months. Yes, he’d survived, but he wasn’t living. Not like when he’d been part of a family. My family.

It never stopped hurting, the missing them. But there was no going back. Only forward. Into one relentless day after another.

He slipped his fingers into a pair of black latex gloves as the cabbie drew near the University. Jordan did the same. Leaving trace evidence behind wasn’t allowed.

The cabbie dropped them at the front of an ornate brick building with bars on the basement windows. Several grandiose, carved stone porticos opened onto the street. If all went well, this ugly operation would end soon, and Eric would be back on that jumbo jet and bound for home. Gordie and Finn would be safe. Better yet, he’d finally meet the odd duck who claimed he knew him. It could happen. The only problem with that thought process was that once a guy expected an op to go down smoothly—it didn’t.

Jordan led the way, taking the second-floor staircase two steps at a time. With enthusiasm. The showoff. All that reckless abandon came to a screeching halt at the fourth door along the left hall, when blood on the hardwood floor declared their usual meet-and-greet wasn’t happening.

The weapons they’d concealed beneath their heavy TEAM jackets jumped automatically to their hands. Eric maneuvered to one side of the already jimmied door. Jordan took the other.

With pistols cocked and ready, they assumed defensive positions: one man on point, the other close behind. Eric signaled his intent to enter with a quick nod, his eyes forward. Jordan tapped his shoulder once to acknowledge a go, what to them was SOP.

As one, they rushed inside, Eric first, weapon straight ahead, Jordan on his six. Blood was everywhere. The cloying scent of it hung heavy in the enclosed space. Seconds mattered.

Jordan went left while Eric advanced swiftly to the hall straight ahead. Cautiously, he entered an equally trashed bedroom. Coffee-brown walls. White ceiling. Picture frames shattered. Dresser drawers dumped and the dresser overturned. Duffel bags sliced and their contents scattered.

He proceeded carefully, looking for the source of the smell. Two full-sized beds, both upended. Mattresses sliced as well. Chrome dumbbells gleamed from beneath the mess. A weight bench lay on its side. The busted photo on the floor of Berglund and Mikkelson chest-to-chest smiling at the camera, declared whose room this was as it outed them as a couple.

But no sign of Powers or Mikkelson. Still wary about what might be lurking around the next corner, he advised Jordan with a hushed but firm, “Clear.”

A firm “Clear here” came swiftly back to him.

Stepping over the destroyed personal belongings, Eric proceeded out the way he’d entered, still amped for trouble. Only one more door at his right. Turning the crystal knob, he entered a second bedroom in similar ruin. Same paint scheme. Single bed. Still ransacked. The mattress had been gutted and a dark brown ceramic lamp was crushed. Had to be Powers’ room. Want to bet the guy bailed on Mikkelson like he had Berglund back at the lab.

The closet validated Eric’s suspicion. No suitcase. No duffle bag. Just a mound of extra-large button-up shirts on the floor. Socks. The yellow silk nightgown hanging on a hook inside the closet was interesting. He filed that detail to share during his Sit Rep with Alex.

“You need to see the kitchen,” Jordan reported. “The icebox is on its side, and the stove’s pulled away. Someone sliced the wallboard behind them down to the studs. Big, square hole back there. Nothing in it.”

But something had been in it. Something one of these three men didn’t want the others to know about? Or were they all into some illicit activity together?

Eric’s cellphone vibrated on his hip, instantly tweaking the pain in his butt, Alex by any other name. “Reynolds,” he barked. Yes, barked. Alex could take it. He certainly dished it out.

“So?”

“So we’ve arrived on scene.” Eric strove for patience. “Looks like a B&E with intent within the last half hour or so. The place is torn to hell. It stinks. Still searching for the—”

“Eric!” Jordon’s voice boomed. “Found the b-b-body. Damn it to hell.”

Eric ran to join his buddy at the kitchen sink. Puking his guts up, Jordan pointed behind him. “He’s… it’s... in there.”

The head. Aptly named.

Eric’s cellphone vibrated in his hand at the same time. Give it a rest, Boss.

Without preamble, Alex bit out, “Al-Jazeera aired a video three minutes ago. Gordie Mikkelson is dead.”

“Decapitated,” Eric said quietly, his stomach roiling at the gore in the tub and the odor of blood, excrement, and all those nasty things that crime movies on television failed to pass along to their avid viewers. “Yeah. Found him.” In the—head. “What’s left of him.”

“Three A.M. your time.” Alex’s voice softened. “You okay?”

Dumbest question ever asked, but Eric understood where it came from, and why most people asked it. No person in their right mind would be okay at the sight of something like this, but he answered with “Yeah, I’m good,” nonetheless. Alex needed to know if he could handle this op or not. He could. In a minute or two.

“I’m…” Jordan again. “I’ll be out in the hall.”

“Shut the door on your way out,” Eric advised.

Striving for balance and the courage to finish his job, he breathed through his open mouth. He stepped closer to the scene, carefully avoiding the evidence pooled beside the tub or the boot print in the middle of the puddled blood beside the commode.

Definite arterial spray. Shit. Arterial spray up the walls and off the ceiling. Not dripping though. Tacky, by the looks of it. The boot print’s solid evidence. The local constable needs be contacted, but first...

Eric hung up on his boss. He pushed his humanity and his natural aversion to tortured bodies aside to focus on the clinical perspective of the victim, and the stumps where both index fingers and one pinkie finger had been clipped off.

Now Eric knew what had caused those black lines on poor Phoenix Berglund. Bloodied welts left by a whip crisscrossed the headless body. Even its neck. The back of its shaved head. Jesus Christ, what kind of animal does this?

Abdul-Mutaal.

Eric crouched at the tub and strove to see the gore from a purely forensic view. Everything matched the Berglund murder scene, except the location. Abdul-Mutaal must have tortured his victims elsewhere, then forced Mikkelson back to the apartment to locate whatever that elusive something was that he’d killed for.

It didn’t make sense. Abdul-Mutaal clearly wanted more than just Finn, or he wouldn’t have destroyed the place. What was Mutaal looking for and why kill Finn’s friends to get it? That alone seemed counter-productive.

All questions. No answers.

Eric lifted the commode lid with the barrel of his pistol. Mikkelson’s head wasn’t in there, but someone had hurled and forgot to flush.

More questions. Like Berglund, Abdul-Mutaal took Mikkelson’s head with him. Why? And who the hell else was in here? And when? Was it Powers or someone helping Mutaal? Disturbing. Damned disturbing.

Pushing to his feet, Eric needed more room and a helluva lot more air than the already occupied head afforded. He snapped several shots of the scene with his cellphone camera and called his work done. Duty demanded he be thorough, so he made a final sweep through the pillaged apartment, swallowing down the bile creeping up his throat.

His head buzzed with revulsion. The sympathetic taste of copper clung to the back of his tongue. He needed to spit, but got another shock instead. There, at the juncture of the hallway and kitchen, a familiar face smiled up at him. His.

Holy shit. How’d that get here? In Amsterdam of all places. He dropped one knee to the floor, surprised to see his USMC picture staring back at him. Needing to be sure it was his dumb face in the middle of a gruesome murder scene, he picked it up and turned it over. That was his signature on the back of it all right. Definitely me. What the hell? Why here?

There was no way he’d leave that behind, so Eric tucked the photo into his jeans pocket and vacated the premises. He shouldered both of their packs since Jordan stood pale and breathless beside the apartment entry, his back and palms flat to the wall behind him. “You good?”

“Yeah. I guess.” Jordan was nowhere near good, not blowing through his open mouth like he was, and not with his butt still pressed against the wall for support. The guy was downright gray. Sweaty.

Retrieving a small plastic pill jar from his bag, Eric rolled two tablets to his palm and offered them to Jordan before the guy upchucked and made everything worse. “Here. Swallow. These will settle your gut so you can move.”

Jordan tossed his head back, gulped the anti-nausea meds dry, still panting hard. “You finished in there?”

“There’s nothing more we can do. Let’s move. Let the local authorities deal with it.”

Jordan blew out a big breath through pursed lips, jerking his head at the mess beyond the apartment door. “I don’t know how you do it. One look at shit like that and I turn into the vomit comet.”

Eric stuck a firm palm to his buddy’s shoulder. “It all depends on what you see. You saw the horror. Once I settled down, I saw the man. Breathe in. Breathe out. Think of something else. Let it go.”

Jordan wilted to his knees, his head between both palms. “That’s no man in there. That was nothing but a meat sack in a slaughterhouse. I don’t ever want to see anything like that again.”

“Come on. We’ve got to get moving. Someone has to have called this in.” Eric tugged him back on his feet. Only fresh air and distance cured this kind of shock.

It could’ve been worse. They could’ve found two bodies.