“All over the fucking planet. We popped this guy in Hong Kong. He was selling high-tech shit to the Chinks. I don’t know what it was. In Germany, we torched this office and five-fingered a bunch of files. Most of it was in the Middle East, man. All those A-rabs, man. Took out some crazies. Then the shit went down. Where I bought all this. Became One-Eyed Jack, Jack.”

He finished the rum in the cup. Dunne poured more. Lopez was sitting quietly on the bed.

“Tell me about it,” Dunne said.

“Fucking Tangiers. The deal was, take out the boys running this one group. You know, the fucking Holy Warriors. But, you know, don’t be so clean about it. Make it look like a pissing match between the towel-heads. Right? So it’s fucking obvious, man: a car bomb. But it all got all fucked. The night before, they packed it in and moved. So our intel was no good. Then the damn thing went off before we even got it there. Don’t know fucking why. Wasn’t my thing. I didn’t do demo. But it did. Took out a whole damn block. Killed something like twenty-seven people. Bunch of those beggar-kids they got everywhere. Couple of Americans. Like what the fuck were they doing there? And we lost half of our fucking team. I was a trailer. Got caught in the blast. A fucking mess. Three of us left, including T. L.”

“T. L.?” Dunne asked.

“Team leader,” Lopez answered.

“He was a-o-fucking-kay. Mattie got his face beat up.”

“Mattie?”

The man went on: “Broke his nose and a cheekbone or something. Fucking changed his face. Me—mostly just the fucking eye, and screwed up my leg. Shattered some shit. T. L. dragged both of us out. I don’t remember that too good. Got us a doctor somewhere. Don’t remember all of that either. Then we had to get out of the fucking country. Left behind all this shit. Sat-phones. C-4. We fucking drove across it. Hell yes, I remember that. Every fucking bump. Thought I was going to die.”

“And they brought you back to the States?” Dunne asked.