Page 47

“Yeah, he was unsettled,” Rybek resumed, “but he was also more nervous than I remembered. The old Wyatt had a calmness to him, while the new one—well, if I said he was always looking over his shoulder, it wouldn’t be far from the truth. I put it down to his time in the military. I’ve seen the army do that to people, especially if they served hard, like Wyatt.”

I paused in my note-taking.

“Wyatt claimed to have been a desk jockey—that he didn’t see any real combat, or only from a distance.”

“He told strangers that just to head them off. He wasn’t one of those blowhards who likes boasting about their time in uniform or showing off their tats to chicks in bars. But I’d heard stories about Wyatt down the years.”

“What kind of stories?”

“I’m betraying confidences here,” said Rybek.

“If it helps, think of me as a priest.”

“I’m not religious.”

“Then think of me as a selective amnesiac, but one with a short fuse before noon.”

Rybek gave me a sad look. “I bet you have no friends,” he said.

“Not at this hour.”

Rybek gave up.

“Wyatt might have started out in the National Guard,” he said, “but that’s not where he ended up. He worked in Army Special Operations. They call it Civil Affairs, which was how come Wyatt was able to make it sound like he was a desk jockey if someone tried to pin him down. But Civil Affairs was a whole lot more than shuffling paperwork.”

“How do you know this?”

“Because we discussed it, not long before he melted away. I told you, we’ve known each other a long time, Wyatt and me. A few weeks ago we had one of those nights where you hit the town and properly renew old acquaintances. We got real drunk, then real high, and exchanged war stories, except in Wyatt’s case, they literally were war stories.”

He stopped talking.

“You sure you don’t mean him harm?”

“If he’s in a jam, I can help. I’m not in the habit of making people’s lives harder than they already are, not unless they deserve it.”

“And who decides that, you?”

“Let’s say I have faith in my own judgment.”

“Then I suppose I’ll just have to rely on it too,” said Rybek. “From what Wyatt told me, and what I dug up later on the internet, Civil Affairs personnel operate in four-man teams. They go into places where the natives are hostile or where U.S. forces can’t admit to operating, and deal with threats to and from the civilian side. Wyatt was a civil recon sergeant, a technical reconnaissance expert. He was one of the operatives who assess critical infrastructure and civilian networks and figure out the crossovers with a view to disruption or protection. Frankly, my stomach tenses up just thinking about it.”

That would explain the absence of tattoos. A member of the U.S. military operating undercover in hostile territory couldn’t have permanent markings that might give him away.

“How long did he serve?” I asked.

“Four years before he moved to Civil Affairs, and another five or so after, mostly in GWOT—the Global War on Terror.”

“So when did he leave?”

“In 2017, maybe early 2018.”

“Donna Lawrence said he had a record for possession. That didn’t impede his progress in the military?”

“I doubt they gave a rat’s ass. If the army turned down everyone who’d messed up early in life, the system would collapse.”

“And what did Wyatt do after he was discharged?”

“Drifted. Spent some of his lump sum, then more of it, until soon there wasn’t much left. He started taking short-term contracts in the private sector: guarding executives, risk analysis, that kind of thing. A few of the jobs were in Latin America, places like Mexico, Colombia, parts of Peru. He’d spent time down there before, possibly early on with Civil Affairs, though he wouldn’t confirm that part. He spoke good Spanish, as far as I could tell—better than high school, which is all I have. Whatever he earned from a contract would keep him in clover for six months, after which he went looking for another payday. It suited him, living that way, or did for a while. But once forty was looming, and his bones started to hurt more, he decided it might be time to go out on a lucrative high and invest whatever he made in a bar or a store, something that would produce an income without requiring him to wear a gun. So he took a job he wouldn’t otherwise have accepted.”