“Thank you,” he had said. “I wish I could have done that.”

“All it takes is time,” Preach had replied, turning away toward the firelight. “Come with me.”

Now, the echoes falling softly around him, his thoughts returned to the Well and the restocking of its personnel. Though he needed only a few, recruiting hadn’t been an easy task when he had first conceived of the Well; in this day and age, when a person could obliterate secrets at an upload speed of 20 Mbps, finding the right people would be doubly difficult. Although, he could see the backs of the heads of two or three of the men who had worked under him in the Well, and he would approach them.

There was one particular thing that made his job even harder now: the one person he wanted most back at the Well was the one person he would never get to return—Gregory Whitman.

Chapter 17

17

Being on the ground in Pakistan, as they had been two weeks before, gave Whitman an eerie feeling, as if he were experiencing this in a nightmare regurgitation of their ill-starred first encounter at Seiran el-Habib’s villa, doomed by betrayal before it even began.

As they began their trek in the middle of the night, Whitman felt like he’d stuck his head into a sea of wasps, as if whatever God existed had turned His back on this blighted sector of Western Pakistan.

Flix had plowed on ahead, working his equipment without respite to seek out and disrupt any enemy communications. He was bound and determined to have this second mission succeed on every level. “Nothing less is gonna make my day,” he’d told Whitman as they had exited the jet.

Whitman, night goggles on, felt Charlie come up beside him. Even through his body armor he could sense she had something on her mind.

“Not now, Charlie,” he said to forestall her.

Which was when she grabbed his elbow, spun him around to face her.

“Yes, now. There are things we need to say to each other.”

“We couldn’t have done this on the flight over?”

“You wouldn’t have paid attention.”

Well, she was right on that score, he thought with no little annoyance—at himself as well as at her.

“Let’s not get too far behind Flix,” he said, and they continued on over the terrain illuminated in luminous green and black.

“It’s this place,” Charlie said.

A little chill, like a spark of electricity, flashed through him. “What about it?”

“It smells … It stinks of evil, of unnatural death.” Something creaked, a bone perhaps, as she turned her neck. “It reminds me of … someplace else.”

Of course, she was right again. He smelled it, too, with his sorcerer’s nose. That sensation of wasps all around him had only come from one other place.

“Whit,” she said all at once, “why did you take me there?”