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Interpol ‘red noticed’ him with a warrant out for anyone who can arrest him. And if anyone wants anything from Interpol’s member countries they’d better honor it if they have the chance,” Vangaler added.

Chapter 5

    Five
    U.S. European Command Hospital, Landstuhl, Germany
    S everal days after his rescue, Maran awoke groggy in the hospital at the U.S. European Command, Landstuhl, Germany. In the meantime, the Army levied charges against him. The fact that he was in a coma made no difference to them.
    The hospital used the same methodical procedures with which the Army so callously charged him. This time, however, it was to his advantage; they provided him with top-shelf care. As his head cleared, his body shuddering with waves of anxiety, he began to realize where he was.
    What happened in Cabinda? They knew we were coming. How? When?
    The pain. He lifted the sheets, checking his legs. Both there. Sticky. Blood soaked through the casts. He shouted for a nurse.
    “You’re up! How can I help, Colonel?” the nurse asked, looking intently into the slits through the head bandages, his cobalt green eyes still bright with incandescence.
    Her words floated through the fog. He was awake, but he was nowhere near being up.
    “The blood. The pain. My legs. My head.” He reached up under the sheets to scratch under the chest dressing.
    “Don’t do that,” she warned. “I’ll get you something.” Just for a moment, the gloom lifted as he thought of all the gentle nurses he had met in his violent career.
    Again.
    My men! All lost.
    Pain shot through his head like a fireball.
    Cabinda!
    He had gone over it a hundred times in his coma, abstractly. Now it crashed to the fore. Different. Electric flashes, psychedelic blasts slammed through his bandaged head, careened off the aching brain cells like a pinball while anxiety wracked his body. He clawed at the irritation that gnawed at his skin like an army of red ants; gummy sweat soaked his bedclothes. His heightened senses picked up his body odor. Unable to prop himself on the pillows, he squirmed, inched from one side of the cot to the other to find just a shard of comfort. Chaos. A rattle of discordance. His head.
    Goosebumps rippled over his skin. He was struck by an onslaught of tremors. Recall battled with denial, unbending remorse shocked him with the truth.
    Cabinda!
    A cog in a vast wheel that churned out oil, diamonds, and weapons to the world’s terror networks. The clarity of Maran’s vision now clapped him like a back-hander from drunken hooligan. His knuckles went white, hands balled. He fought to regain his grip on reality.
    Betrayed!
    Two days later a team of doctors was at his bedside. They had found thirty pieces of shrapnel in his legs and dug them out. There would be scars and long-term pain. The wounds to his head, back, chest and legs were acute. They would have killed him had the “dust off” medivacs not got to him in time and taken him out when every minute counted. He was just lucky they found him. The hospital was set with minimally invasive endoscopic surgical instrumentation. They went in through a nostril, avoiding cutting and intruding on his brain. The equipment allowed them to use a light source and camera connected to a monitor that magnified the affected area a hundred-fold.
    They warned him about the other complications. The force of the blast from the tank had smashed his head against the boulder. The Kevlar ACH, Advanced Combat Helmet, saved his life. The fissure on the right side of his skull would heal; the fracture would forever pose a threat that could flare up unexpectedly at any time.
    Panic attacks. They said panic attacks!
    “What’s the tattoo all about, Colonel?” one of the young interns had asked him.
    “What’s it look like, patriot?”
    “A Magen David superimposed on a shamrock.”
    “Right. Or the other way around, depends on your view.”
    Above the symbol was stenciled: “ Erin go Bragh ”: “Ireland