Into Darkness by Richard Fox Read Free Book Online Page B

it?”
    “What is, sir?” Ritter asked.
    “That I have to play these stupid cover-your-ass games while those men are out there…waiting for us to find them. But this is a zero-defects war.”
    Hibou pressed his lips together and drummed his fingers on the desktop as Ritter spoke.
    “Can we convince the commander to delay for a few days? We could turn up a more credible lead somewhere else...maybe prove that the intelligence driving this mission is bogus.”
    “Do you know someone who could provide this miracle intelligence?”
    Ritter maintained his poker face as his mind raced. There was no option to make discrete inquiries to the right people. The Caliban Program didn’t officially exist, and once his tenure ended, his communication channels back to the group were to be annihilated as a matter of policy. Besides, kidnapped Soldiers weren’t something Caliban would concern itself with.
    “I’m sorry, sir. What do you mean?” Ritter kept his micro expressions in check as Hibou scrutinized him. The slightest twitch of the eyes or lips could signal deception, and Ritter wanted to keep Hibou’s trust. There was no way Hibou could know anything for sure. The backstop in his records was foolproof, and he had never spoken of the Program since he left.
    He must be fishing for information, Ritter thought. If he knew about the Program, he would never breathe a word of it out in the open.
    Hibou slid open a desk drawer packed with manila folders. His fingers danced up the handwritten names until he pulled Ritter’s file from the drawer and placed it on the desktop. He pulled out the one-page bio sheet common to all Army officers. Ritter’s picture in the green class-A uniform took up the lower right corner.
    “When I heard you were reassigned to us, I was rather surprised.”
    Ritter doubted Hibou had been half as surprised as he was. Before arriving in Iraq, Ritter had been assigned to an air-assault brigade at Fort Campbell, a unit not slated for deployment until the end of the year. Without explanation, orders came down, transferring Ritter to the brigade, which was already in Iraq. It was the Army administrative equivalent of a lightning bolt from a clear-blue sky. His chain of command had fought to keep Ritter, but whoever had cut the orders was immune to persuasion.
    “You have combat experience,” Hibou continued, reading from the bio sheet, “native Arabic speaker, graduate of the captain’s course…But you didn’t finish the officer’s basic course at Fort Huachuca.”
    Ritter felt a bit of relief; he’d told this lie many times.
    Hibou lifted the bio closer to his face and squinted. “Says you were assigned to the European command for several years as your first duty assignment. Odd since you joined the Army right after 9/11.”
    Ritter nodded. “I was selected for a study-abroad program through the Sorbonne in Paris. The personnel clerks don’t know how to code it and—”
    Hibou shook his head, halting Ritter’s explanation. “Do you remember Captain Schultz? Second Lieutenant Schultz at the time you were at Huachuca? He’s the intelligence officer for Shelton’s battalion.”
    Ritter didn’t answer. His eyes crept up and to the left, the normally unconscious body language sign for memory recall. Ritter remembered Schultz as a borderline idiot and had done all he could to avoid him once he’d learned the two were in the same brigade.
    “Schultz remembers you. He remembered you were at the lieutenant’s course for a week. Then you vanished from the face of the earth.” Hibou leaned forward, lowering his voice to a whisper. “Naturally, this led to some questions from a curious bunch of cherry lieutenants, questions the course instructors couldn’t, or wouldn’t, answer. It’s like you never existed. Then there’s your masked reports from your time at European command.”
    Hibou paused, baiting Ritter to fill the silence with an explanation, but Ritter kept his poker face.
    “After a