The Ascendant: A Thriller Read online

  “Embarrassingly bad.”

  They ate, and talked about movies. The apocalypse seemed further away to Alexis than it had in days. Garrett might live a life that was out of control, and he might indeed turn out to be a sociopath, but around him she felt oddly protected. He was so sure of himself, so fierce in his confidence, that she felt it rub off on her. It surprised her, but she felt stronger in his presence. Together, she thought, we might actually stop whatever it is that’s happening, and possibly save the country.

  She drank her beer, and Garrett stepped outside the bunk room and came back with two more. “An endless supply,” he said, laughing. They drank a little more and Garrett cleared away the plates.

  “Do you think it’s traitorous that we ate Chinese food?” she said.

  “The people who made this food are as American as we are. The delivery boy said he just graduated from San Diego State. Name was Chang. Said he wanted to be a computer programmer. He talked like a surfer.”

  “I was kind of joking,” she said.

  “I know,” Garrett said. “It’s just that I’m not even sure the country is our enemy. Maybe the party leadership is. Or some generals. The Chinese people? No way. But can we talk about something else?” He pulled his chair a little closer to hers.

  “Like what?”

  “Like us.”

  “Us? Is there an us?”

  “I’d like there to be.”

  He leaned close to her. Alexis was suddenly flustered. He stared at her with his intense blue eyes. He kissed her. She let him, not resisting, even liking it. Her head spun. Being kissed hadn’t made her feel this way in years. He shifted his body in his chair, moving closer to her. His arms wrapped around her back. She could feel his warmth, and it made her go weak in the knees. He kissed her harder, more passionately. She got a grip on herself and pushed him away.

  “No,” she said.

  “No? Why?”

  “Because.” She was at a loss for words. She was breathing hard. Her own lust for him was a revelation to her. But she fought it. Now was not the time.

  Garrett moved close to her again. “I don’t believe you.” He kissed her clumsily, hands brushing her chest. He was perched on the edge of his chair.

  She shoved him backward. “Stop!” It was a little harder than she meant to, and his chair rocked backward. Garrett lost his balance and fell hard to the floor, sprawling out onto the wood. Alexis gasped. “Are you okay?”

  Garrett struggled to his feet, flustered, angry. “Why did you do that?”

  “I said no, you didn’t listen.” He got to his feet and brushed himself off. His face was tight, hurt. “Shit. I thought you were into me. We were close. You—”

  “No,” Alexis cut him off, “you were mistaken.” She sat up straight in her chair, pushed her hair back. “Look, it’s just that . . .” She fumbled for the right words, stopping, then trying again. She didn’t want to tell him, but she felt she had to. Morally, it was wrong not to. But if she did, she would be going off script, endangering everything.

  “Garrett, we can’t because . . .”

  “Because what?” Garrett spit out.

  “Because I’m married.”

  • • •

  Garrett stared at her, stunned. “Married?” He blinked. It made no sense. “But you don’t wear a ring. You never mentioned a husband. In all this time.”

  “I,” she started, the words dying on her lips. “I took the ring off.”

  Garrett tried to concentrate. She had seemed so open to him, so interested, so engaged, and now . . . And suddenly he realized.

  “On purpose. You took the ring off on purpose.”

  She said nothing. She looked down.

  “To lure me in. So I would like you. Think I had a chance with you. So I would commit to your stupid project.” He grimaced, pacing. “Give back to your country. Find a purpose. All bullshit.” He spit it out. “A big fucking con.”

  “No,” she said. “All true. Giving back is important. There is nothing more important.”

  “Then why lead me on? Why not tell me you were married? Why not wear the ring?”

  She had no answers for him. She looked away. He leaned close to her, got right in her face. “I should have fucking known. All that military bullshit. Liars. You are all liars. God, I hate you people.” He started toward the door.

  “Garrett . . .”

  “What?”

  She started to say something, hesitated, then shook her head. Garrett laughed and walked out, slamming the door behind him.

  He stalked out of the barracks, angry, a little buzzed from the beer, his head spinning, and walked out into the cool desert night. What a fool he had been. They had played him, completely duped him. And he was Garrett Reilly, the guy who read all the patterns, who could feel inconsistencies in his gut. But they had nailed him with his weakness—women. He was a sucker for a pretty face, a sexy body, a little flattery, someone who told him he was great. And Alexis had done exactly that. “Only a couple of people in the world can do what you do,” he muttered angrily to himself. “You dumbass.”

  He dialed a cab service on his cell phone, and jogged down to the main base entrance. By the time he reached the guard house there was a cab waiting for him. He rode it to downtown Oceanside. There were bars up and down Mission Avenue. He got out at the first one—he didn’t even look at the name of the place—and ordered beer and vodka. By his third shot he was feeling much better. His mind was clearer, his anger more focused. His cell phone rang twice—it was Alexis—but he ignored it. Fuck Mao and the Chinese, he thought. And fuck saving the world.

  He bought a pair of joints off a stringy kid hanging out by the pool tables and smoked them one after the other, in quick succession, in the alley behind the bar, then went back in for more booze. He lost all sense of time—and place—but he was still angry. He couldn’t get Alexis’s face out of his head. Her voice. Her lies. Fuck, he had really fallen for her. How could he have been so stupid? And who the fuck was shoving up against him at the bar? Through his drunken, stoned haze he saw a trio of jarheads, slamming down beers, laughing.

  Garrett thumped his chest into the biggest one. The Marine said something to Garrett, but Garrett couldn’t hear him over the jukebox and the chatter in the bar, and anyway, he wasn’t listening and didn’t give a shit what the jarhead said. “You’re a fucking asshole,” is what Garrett spit into his face.

  “Do you have an attitude problem, douche wad?” the Marine growled.

  Garrett brought the beer bottle down on the Marine’s head with one swift motion of his right arm, shattering the glass on his temple. The Marine fell backwards, and time slowed down for Garrett, as it always did when he got into a fight. He stomped the fallen Marine hard with his left foot, then drove his fist into the neck of the second Marine, who was just turning to help his buddy. Marine number two staggered into his friend, the third Marine at the bar, and Garrett threw himself onto both of them, fists flashing in a rapid-fire sequence of punches. It was a scrum, but a scrum that he was on top of, and a bar brawl that he was winning. He kept his fists pistoning—pleased with himself, knowing this was how to win bar fights—when suddenly he began to fly backwards into the air. It was the strangest sensation, as if he were magically levitating, and then reality came rushing in on him in the form of a fourth Marine, twice as large as the others, wrenching Garrett backwards off his comrades, and Garrett cursed himself for being so stupid. It was a jarhead bar. The place was full of them. And they were all coming to their jarhead comrades’ aid. No one left behind, and all that grunt bullshit. He turned in time to see a meaty fist land squarely on his cheek and then everything else became a blur.

  The bar turned sideways and pain exploded in Garrett’s head, and in his chest, and then his arms were wrenched behind his back and he could feel his left shoulder pop. That hurt more than all the other punches, and it was at that moment that Garrett became sure of two things: (1) that he had lost this fight, and (2) that he mig
ht die because of it. Then everything went black.

  34

  CAMP PENDLETON NAVAL HOSPITAL, APRIL 6, 3:36 AM

  Alexis paced the antiseptic fifth-floor hallway of the Naval Hospital as the ghostly white fluorescent lights flickered over her head, making the pale walls seem even more sickly and uninviting. She’d gotten the call from the ER doctors half an hour earlier: white male, bar fight, multiple injuries, Army private, recorded as under her supervision. She’d shaken off her cobwebs, thrown on her fatigues, taken the team Humvee, and raced to the hospital, trying hard not to run off the paved road that traversed the base.

  She hadn’t slept well. All night she had replayed the conversation with Garrett. She thought about the dinner, the kiss, his reaction, her pushing him away. And then telling him she was married, and the look on his face. All that deception. And all that raw emotion in Garrett. She hadn’t realized how hard he had fallen for her. But he had—that much had been obvious. And that, of course, was exactly as they had planned it.

  The acid rose in her throat. She had been a willing participant. Hell, she had even come up with the strategy herself. Garrett liked women. She knew that, had seen him in action. And she had used it to her—and the Army’s—advantage. How, she thought to herself, am I any better than Garrett? I am deceptive. I am as amoral as he is.

  We are a pair.

  A young doctor walked quickly through the trauma doors and introduced himself as Colonel Booker Rogers. He was the surgeon on call.

  “How bad is he?”

  Rogers shrugged, noncommittal. “This is a military hospital. We see some pretty bad cases, so he’s not the worst of the worst. That said, he took a pounding. Oceanside Police said it was ten against one. Your man was the one.”

  She sighed. Garrett might be good at detecting patterns, but he also seemed to have an aptitude for fitting into them. “I’m not surprised.”

  “He has two broken ribs, a dislocated shoulder, a few cracked teeth, but he didn’t lose any. He’s got multiple bruises and cuts. He lost about a pint of blood. He probably has a concussion, but it’s hard to tell because he’s still unconscious. Most seriously, however, he has a linear transverse skull fracture.”

  “Is that bad?”

  “They’re the least bad of a bad thing. It will heal by itself. But he can’t ever again get into a bar fight. Or play tackle football.”

  “I’d actually call that a good thing.”

  “I’m serious. He does and he will die.”

  Alexis nodded. “He’s not in a coma, is he?”

  “He’s sedated for pain. That’s part of what is keeping him asleep. But I have to tell you, Captain, he is very lucky not to have a more serious skull fracture. He was hit many times on the head. We’re keeping his cranium iced right now to prevent swelling.”

  Alexis frowned. Well, at least he would survive. Then a thought occurred to her: “Is he going to be mentally intact? I mean, the same as he was before?”

  “You can’t guarantee anything with a head injury. But probably yes.”

  Alexis breathed a sigh of relief, and hated herself for it. She was still worrying about Garrett Reilly’s usefulness to the Army. She tried to change the direction of her thinking: “Did he hurt anybody?”

  “A Marine checked himself in a few hours ago with a broken nose and scalp lacerations. I suspect he was part of the fight. I think your boy hit him with a bottle.”

  “But he’ll recover? The Marine?”

  “He already has—he’s a Marine. He walked out of here an hour ago.”

  “Can I see Reilly now?”

  “Follow me.” Rogers led her through the trauma unit to a room at the end of the hall. Alexis had to keep herself from gasping when she saw Garrett. He was laid up on a hospital bed, head wrapped in gauze, a plastic ice sleeve laid across his forehead. A pair of tubes ran into his nose, and there was an IV drip jabbed into his arm. EKG machines and oxygen sensors beeped and trilled at his side. But it was Garrett’s face that shocked Alexis the most; there were ragged purple and orange bruises on his cheeks, and stitched cuts on his nose and chin. Alexis thought he resembled a distant cousin to Frankenstein’s monster.

  The doctor muttered at her side, “Why anyone would pick a fight with ten Marines is beyond me.”

  Alexis knew the answer to that question, but she decided it really wasn’t any of the colonel’s business. “When will he wake up?”

  “Could be any time. But my guess is a few hours.”

  “I’ll wait here until he does.”

  “There’s one other thing, Captain.” Alexis snapped her head around. She didn’t like the tone of the doctor’s voice. “We ran a blood test. Beyond a very high blood alcohol level, he tested positive for THC. I’ll have to report that. It’s grounds for immediate discharge.”

  “Have you noted it on his chart yet?”

  “No. Not yet. I just got the blood workup.”

  “Destroy it.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Rip it up. Delete the digital test results. It never happened.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “Yes you can.”

  Colonel Rogers started to protest but Alexis cut him off: “I’ll have the secretary of defense call you personally.”

  The doctor looked like he wanted to reply to her, then thought better of it, and stomped angrily from the room. Alexis, exhausted, grabbed a chair, pulled it next to Garrett’s bed, and sat down to wait for him to wake up.

  35

  CAMP PENDLETON, APRIL 7, 11:15 AM

  “I’m sorry,” Alexis Truffant said, for the thousandth time.

  Garrett said nothing. He sniffed at the breeze coming off the Pacific. It smelled clean and fresh and pure. He loved that smell. Alexis pushed his wheelchair down the ramp from the entrance to the Naval Hospital toward the waiting Humvee.

  “I’m sorry for lying to you. But it wasn’t a complete lie. I’m married, but separated. I haven’t seen my husband in three months. We’re trying to work out our differences. Not that it makes it any better.”

  She craned her head to catch his reaction. There was none. “You were right. I didn’t tell you because I wanted you to think you had a chance with me. That was wrong.”

  Celeste and Bingo were waiting by the Humvee. Celeste held the rear passenger door open. Bingo stood beside her. Jimmy Lefebvre was leaning on the hood.

  “Hi, Garrett. How you feeling?” Bingo asked. He tried to look at Garrett’s face, but winced and quickly turned away. “You look good. Really.”

  “Thanks. Never felt better.”

  Celeste leaned close and stared at his bruises. “I dig the swollen, lumpy thing,” she said. “Very fuckable.”

  Garrett snorted a laugh. Even that hurt. Hurt his lungs, his broken ribs, sent an electric pulse of pain through his head. It had been twenty-four hours since he’d woken up. But still the pain was intense. He would have to ask for more meds. Soon.

  “Easy, big fella,” Lefebvre said as he helped Garrett out of the wheelchair. “Later, you and I should talk about what happens when you break a bottle over a Marine’s head. Statistically, it rarely turns out in your favor.”

  “Ha. Ha,” Garrett said. “Fucking hilarious.”

  “Enough, guys,” Alexis said, strapping him into the backseat. “Leave him be.”

  Lefebvre chuckled, then got behind the wheel and drove the stretch of road back toward their barracks headquarters. Every bump in the road sent more pain through Garrett’s head. All he wanted to do was sleep. They rolled him into the barracks, where Bingo and Jimmy laid him out on the cot in his room. He closed his eyes and was instantly asleep—a deep, dreamless sleep. When he woke again, it was dark out, and he was hungry.

  He hauled himself off the cot and shuffled into the kitchen, a fleece blanket wrapped around his shoulders. Alexis was standing over the stove, heating a pot of soup.

  “You’re up. Good. We were beginning to worry.” She smiled broadly at him. He opened the refrig
erator silently. “Still mad at me?” she asked.

  “Not mad,” Garrett muttered as he struggled to open a plastic-wrapped block of orange cheese. Even moving his fingers seemed to shoot pain up his arms. “Hate you. Completely different animal.”

  Alexis slumped into a chair. “Fine. Hate me. I don’t blame you. But you’re still going to work with us, right?”

  Garrett grabbed a handful of Triscuits from an open box. It was an easier meal. “Can’t decide. Head hurts too much.” He turned and shuffled back into his room. He lay down on the cot, but Alexis appeared over him, her face tight with emotion.

  “This is serious, Garrett. Lives are at stake. That is bigger than how we feel.”

  “Not sure I agree,” Garrett said as he closed his eyes. “Nothing bigger than how I feel.” In seconds, he was asleep. When he woke again, it was the sound of a voice he recognized that brought him to his senses. Older, authoritative, menacing; Garrett couldn’t place it exactly, but he knew he didn’t like it. He blinked his eyes just as the door to his room swung open. The voice preceded the body.

  “A waste of time and money. It’s over, you’re shut down, and he’s discharged.” Secretary of Defense Frye marched into the room. He wore a dark gray suit and a burgundy power tie. Alexis trailed him, followed by Lefebvre. Bingo and Celeste hovered by the door, looking spooked. “Dishonorably, by the way,” the secretary said.

  “In all fairness, we haven’t even started, sir,” Alexis said, trying to step in front of the secretary and get Garrett to his feet. But Frye brushed her aside and walked up to Garrett’s cot. Garrett was wrapped in a blanket and wearing a pair of gym shorts.

  “There is no such thing as fairness, Captain. Not in this world. And certainly not in this Army.” Frye turned his glare to Garrett, who rubbed his eyes and sat up in bed. “What do you have to say for yourself, son? Drinking. Getting stoned. Fighting with Marines. Didn’t even have the good sense to win the fight.”

  Garrett’s head hurt less. He could take deep breaths without too much pain in his ribs. He could see, from the rays of sun streaming through the drawn curtains, that it was morning, and that he had slept through the night. “I had the first three, no problem. Their friend got me from behind. Which is sneaky-ass bullshit.”