Khomeini's Boy: The Shadow War with Iran by Bryce Adams Page B

with his chin, too. He whispered, “Jesus Christ, man…”
    The older man didn’t give him enough wallowing time to crumble. He pressed onward, saying, “I’m Colonel Wayne Shenzo, Army. I’m attached to a special joint civilian-military unit that performs high-end analysis of evolving threats. We’re small, but that means we can pinpoint and address these threats very quickly when we have to. Based on what I’ve been told about your interests in Sadr City, combined with this nerve gas cache it sounds like you ran across, you’re firmly in my fucking orbit right now, Mister Hayes.”
    Ambrose ground his teeth together, realizing that they were all intact, despite what he was sure he’d felt when he collapsed in that warehouse. “Carlisle. I knew that fucker wasn’t what he seemed.”
    “Then you were an idiot for trusting him with so much information.”
    “I didn’t tell him enough so he could stop me, did I?”
    “And right now that’s something you’re proud of?”
    Ambrose felt something hit his stomach and he looked down. It was a manila folder with papers sticking partway out of it. He opened the thing up. It was full of his own notes, taken from his villa, where he’d kept translations of Sorcerer’s messages along with his rambling speculations about the man’s goals and methodology. Ambrose grimly noted that he’d never mentioned “chemical warfare” in his notes.
    Ambrose asked, “I know all of this. I wrote it. Why are you showing me this?”
    Wayne Shenzo shook his head and replied, “Those aren’t notes. That’s the portfolio you submitted to me as part of your job application. I hire the person, not the skillset. I’ll give you the skillset if I need it and you don’t have it. I told you we observe emerging threats. It looks like you independently discovered, tracked, and almost eliminated such a threat, Mister Hayes. You’re what I’ve been looking for, so I’m hiring you.”
    “I have a job.”
    “No you don’t. State fired you immediately upon hearing you were admitted to the Green Zone hospital by a marine who was raving about chemical weapons in Sadr City at three in the morning. That means you’re mine. Do you accept?”
    For the first time since Shenzo entered, Ambrose looked in the mirror across the bed from him. The tubes were gone from his nose and mouth, which revealed heavy bandaging around his chin. His eyebrows were animated and twitching wildly. When he opened his mouth, he saw that half his teeth were a uniform, artificial off-white. He raised his left hand to touch his chin, and noticed that the tendons in his forearm leading down into his hand pulled jerkily back and forth like pistons in an engine gone haywire.
    “What happened to me?” Ambrose breathed.
    Shenzo’s voice was flat and cold. He knew how to deliver bad news without wasting a person’s time. “At this point only you know, and the doctors said that your short term memory is probably crap right now. Based on your notes and the other limited evidence at my disposal, I think you found your Sorcerer and he hit your team with some kind of nerve agent. Tesoro saw that you were alive and drove like hell to get you back here. You were technically dead, but the doctors brought you back with a massive dose of atropine, then did reconstructive surgery on your mouth and jaw. Then you were fired, and now you’re speaking with me. Do you accept the job? I might add that you’re looking at one hell of a hospital bill if you don’t.”
    Ambrose looked his mirror-self in the eye. Yeah, his eyes were still fine, despite the eyebrows. They still glittered with blue intelligence that he almost recognized as his own. Those cold blue eyes told him that he was still in the game. Sorcerer had failed, not only by leaving Ambrose alive, but by giving him a reason for revenge. He’d nurse himself back to health with Sorcerer’s gift, then when he was healthy again…
    Ambrose said, “I won’t work with a team