“You’re not going to get an argument from me.”

“This shit festers. It all gets thrown into the pot whether you want it there or not. It’s your own little personal goulash. You might not think one thing is going to affect another, but listen to me when I tell you it does.”

“Yeah… I know.”

“So tell me,” Hurley said with genuine concern, “what’s wrong with you and Maggie?”

“I didn’t come out here to talk about my marriage.”

“I know you didn’t, but right now you’re one of my starting pitchers and I need you to get your head screwed on.”

“My arm feels great.”

“Bullshit. I spoke with Irene before you got here.”

“So?”

“She told me you lost your cool in front of Glen Adams.”

“Big deal.”

“She said Adams already filed an official complaint claiming that you physically assaulted him.”

“All I did was grab him by the arm.”

“You need to act like a professional. Especially around clowns like Adams.”

Nash looked across the lawn and nodded. “Message received. What else?”

“I called Maggie.”

“You called my wife?” Nash said in shocked voice.

“Yes. I’ve been hearing rumblings that you haven’t been yourself lately, so I called her up. She’s worried about you.”

“She’s always worried about me. Who wouldn’t be?”

“Listen to me,” Hurley said with a biting intensity. “We’ve got a lot in the offing right now, and you’ve got a ton of crap you need to attend to, so I’m going to cut through all the bullshit and put my cards on the table. I know you’ve had some difficulty raising the old flagpole lately…”

Nash didn’t hear another word. He felt as if he’d just been tossed into a deep, dark pit. His own personal hell here on earth. This conversation was out of bounds in so many ways, all he could manage to say was “We’re not going to talk about my personal life.” Nash started to stand, but before he got far, Hurley reached out and with surprising strength yanked him back down.

“Yes, we are, and so help me God, if you so much as raise your voice at Maggie, I’ll kick the piss out of you. You need to get your head screwed on and that means you need to make love to your wife and you need to do it quickly, boy. You’re a goddamn ace. You know what an ace gets paid in the majors? The good ones are pulling in twenty million a year. How do you think those guys would perform if they got up on that mound and knew they couldn’t get a hard-on? They’d get shelled. Their confidence would be shot.”

“Stan, I hardly see what…”

“Just keep your piehole shut for a minute, junior. This job fucks with your head bad enough, you throw something like this on top of everything else and you can become a liability real quick.”

“I’m fine. It was a onetime thing.”

“Then explain to me how you let some worthless suit like Glen Adams get under your skin this morning, because that’s not the Mike Nash I know. The Mike Nash I know would never lose control like that.”

As much as Nash hated to hear it, he knew Hurley was a little too close to the truth. With more attitude than was wise he asked, “So your point is?”

“My point is, numbnuts, that while you are diddling around with your dick, Rome is burning. That’s the problem with this whole country. Fucking vast prosperity. No one has any real problems anymore. Ninety percent of the damn politicians in this town either think there’s no war on terror, or if we’d just be nice to these zealots they’ll leave us alone. Well, that ain’t going to fucking happen. The Huns are circling, and we’re sitting around arguing about gay rights and prayer and guns and global warming and all kinds of bullshit. These idiots will eventually wake up to the threat, but by then it might be too late.” Hurley looked over both shoulders to make sure no one was nearby and then said, “You need to get laid, boy, and then you need to find out who in the hell is leaking your operations to this fucking reporter at the Post, and you need to put a bullet in his head.”

“Come on, Stan. You can’t be serious.”

“About which part?”

“I’ll take care of my love life, all right? Let’s just take that one off the table.”

Hurley ran a hand over his wrinkled face and said, “Kid, if someone at Langley is leaking shit to reporters, they’re a traitor, and traitors in our business get taken out back and shot. At least they used to until all these PC pussies got involved and everyone lost their nerve.”

“You want me to kill a fellow employee of the CIA?” Nash asked in near disbelief.

“You’ve killed plenty of men before. Don’t tell me you’re losing your nerve.”

“I’ve never killed a fellow American.”

“Well don’t think of them as an American. Think of them as a traitor who is exposing an intelligence operation that has done more to protect this country than anything else we’ve done around here in a good twenty years. And now we’ve got confirmation that a third cell is out there. What the fuck do you want to wait around for? You want a grade school full of kids to be taken hostage and slaughtered? You want to see a damn mushroom cloud over the Capitol?”

“No.” Nash shook his head. These were the nightmares he’d lived with since 9/11.

“Then get your head screwed on, and get out there and get these fuckers before they get us.”

CHAPTER 28

BAGRAM AIR BASE, AFGHANISTAN

LELAND walked through the mess line sliding his tray along as he went. Since he couldn’t use his right arm he chose the pasta Alfredo over the meat, which was difficult to cut even with two good hands and a sharp knife. He skipped the salad bar, grabbed a piece of blueberry pie, and then came the hardest part of all. He turned and looked out across the huge dining hall. This part was never fun, trying to find an open seat, preferably next to someone he actually liked.

The place was barely a third full. Leland looked around for a familiar face but found none. He was usually on duty at this time, but Garrison had given him the night off. Not feeling like making small talk, he picked an empty table, set his tray down, and headed over to the beverage station. He grabbed a glass and filled it with ice and then Diet Coke. Back at the table he sat and took a sip. He thought about his CO and the advice he had given him – to wait forty-eight hours before writing his official report.

Leland was tempted to go over Garrison’s head on that point alone, but he didn’t know whom he could trust. The whole thing was wrong on so many levels, his head ached just thinking about all the compromises he was being asked to make. And then to make matters worse, Garrison had asked to have a word alone with him. Off the record. Academy grad to academy grad. The words stung him more than the brutality he’d suffered at the hands of the fascist from the CIA. Garrison told him that he had a reputation for being difficult. And it wasn’t just his assessment; the previous CO felt the same way. He’d already been passed over once for promotion to major. Garrison explained to him that it came down to the fact that he was not liked by either his superior officers or those he commanded.

Garrison very firmly told him if he ever wanted to live up to his abilities and become a flag officer, he was going to need to stop being such an inflexible prick. The audacity, Leland thought, to turn this into a popularity contest. It flew in the face of everything they’d been taught. This was not high school. Promotions were not based on popularity. They were at war, and during combat it was about results. Talent and results. Who could get things done, and Leland got things done.

There were a couple of ROTC guys who were his same age who had received the bump. Leland took it personally, and wrote it off to the fact that his CO didn’t like him, and here he was again with another CO who didn’t like him.