Page 269 of Affair
“We killed Hemmingway. He was a good dude. He was just trying to be a good soldier. Willy, Trent, and Ty were up with us in the helicopter. They were going to kill him there. He fought, and they broke his neck.”
Jesus.
H.
Christ.
“Are you getting this, Elizabeth?” she asked again.
“Oh, I am,” she said. “The military inquest on this is going to be funsies.”
They were aware. The US military tolerated a lot, as long as it wasn’t betrayal. That was a one-way trip to Guantanamo or Leavenworth.
Because fear was motivating, Clint kept singing like the desperate canary he was.
“Von said that he had to have gotten the key out of Afghanistan after spending the last few years looking for it there. So, the wild goose hunt began. They assumed he shipped it home. We went to his parents’ house, and we killed them.”
No one said a word.
They were all afraid of stopping him. Oh, well, Zayn said plenty, and most of it ended with‘er’.
Mother fucker.
Cock sucker.
There was no doubt he was angry.
“We left the bodies there, and saw that Hemmingway had a twin brother. At that point, I was done. I didn’t want to be part of this. The whole thing wasn’t worth the money, so when we got Stateside, I disappeared. I didn’t want to be a loose end, and I didn’t want to kill here. I didn’t want to kill at all. I wanted to be a hero.”
Newsflash.
He wasn’t.
Not.
Even.
Close.
Maura could hear Elizabeth on the com, and she was asking one important question.
“Who were the parents?” she asked since they didn’t have any info on Hemmingway.
Oh, they knew he was on the list of killed platoon members, but they’d only investigated the living ones.
To track Von Donore.
“The Duke and Dutchess of Gordon,” he said, without missing a beat.
The whole group paused.
What the fuck?
Nobility?
A bunch of American and British soldiers were killing nobility in an attempt to cause mayhem on both sides of the ocean?
Jesus.
