Free Brothers In Arms by Marcus Wynne

get his run in. He liked Dale Miller. He’d never worked with him before, though they had been in Special Forces at the same time, but they knew some of the same people in Delta and in Seventh Group where they’d both done their A-Team time.
    Ford’s runs were his favorite time of day. He liked being alone with the rhythm of his body and he relished the challenge of the hills and the occasional encounter with a runner in his class. He saw a woman on the path ahead of him, running, not jogging, with the easy, relaxed upper body and smooth pace of a coached runner. He kept his pace strong and hard and drew up even with the woman with the long blond ponytail.
    “Hi,” he said, between breaths.
    She looked over at him and smiled. “Hi, yourself. Great day for a run, isn’t it?”
    She had a faint accent.
    “Sure is,” Ford said. “How far you going?”
    “Not far . . . I’m coming back from an injury. You?”
    “Just five out and back.”
    “Don’t let me hold you up,” the tall blonde said.
    “See you!” Ford said, picking up his pace. He felt the woman’s gaze on his back and that warmed him.
    Isabelle Andouille stretched out her pace, enjoying the easy run ahead of her and the feeling of being uncramped after her long transatlantic flight. Men were so easy, she thought, not for the first time in her career. They never consider women a serious threat.

DOMINANCE RAIN HEADQUARTERS, FAIRFAX, VIRGINIA
    “So what kind of take are you getting?” Ray Dalton asked Mike Callan.
    “Just interesting tidbits,” Callan said. “The detail is going well. I hooked Dale up with a good crew. He talked Charley Payne into being second in command.”
    “How is Payne doing?”
    “Good. It’s an easy detail. They haven’t spotted any surveillance, they keep Uday buttoned up tight on the grounds, they’ve got assistance from the campus police . . . they’re in good shape. Payne seems to thrive on it.”
    “How is Dale?”
    “He wouldn’t be happy to know that you’re signing his check. He’s still carrying baggage over the whole Jonny Maxwell job, but then so is most anybody who was involved in that operation. He’s doing a good job.”
    “What else?”
    “Dale’s been sitting in on Uday’s psychiatrist sessions. Uday keeps making reference to someone called “the One” and something about having a sad holiday. Dale thinks this is important and linked to why he was tortured. It seems that Saddam may actually havewitnessed or even taken part in the torture of Uday, which means he was pretty damn high up in the pecking order.”
    “Should we take him over?”
    “I don’t know if the Agency shrinks could do a better job. The people at the center are the best in the world at what they do, and I don’t think that scooping up Uday at this point is going to help his recovery. I don’t think you’ll get anything more than what they’re getting. I’d wait, and see what develops. What have you got on Uday in the computer?”
    “Not much. Uday is an Iraqi, high in Saddam’s social circles, and doing some kind of secret work. A close associate of Saddam’s son-in-law Hussein Kamel, who defects in 1995 long enough for us to debrief, and then goes back to Iraq, where he’s tortured and executed. Uday, because of his association with Hussein Kamel, is scooped up by Iraqi intelligence and internal security, and tortured till his mind breaks, and for no other reason we can discern except that he was close with Hussein Kamel. We know that Uday has to be a big muckety muck because he’s got a double, at least one, in his personal secretary. After the war, Uday’s family money buys him out of prison and gets him, his wife, and personal secretary out of the country and into the United States, where he comes up on our radar. Seeking asylum, with immigration paperwork pending, they come to Minneapolis where Uday is accepted into the Torture Center’s rehab program. Uday’s secretary takes Uday’s name and makes