Black Angel

by Jack Dayton

  His conversation this afternoon would be one he was permitted to have, the one with Gunnery Sergeant Roscoe Vance. Vance was probably a waste of time but since there were fewer and fewer available avenues, he would have to settle for gathering whatever he could get from him.

  Leveque pulled himself from his cracked leather chair and moved across the room to the table that acted as a break area for the four detectives who had desks in the office. The other three were out so Leveque was left to clean up what was left from the morning. Empty, torn Sweet ‘n Low packets, stray granules from the Coffee-Mate, the ever-present drops from the red stirrers, left for someone to clean up. Leveque wondered if these guys’ wives cleaned up after them like he did. The place was nothing to brag about, especially in an exclusive community like McLean, but for chrissakes, why make it worse?

  He measured the coffee into the paper-lined basket and pushed the button for the fresh pot. No fancy lattes or K-cups . . . just regular police department coffee in a stained carafe that no one ever bothered to wash. When Vance walked into the office, he recognized the coffee table from the dozens of coffee messes he had been drinking from for the last 15 years. LeVeque glanced up from the dripping machine as Vance entered.

  Vance paused in the doorway, recognizing the cramped room with too many desks from most of his office assignments, too. A cushy executive office had been converted into shared space for the four desks. It made for an interesting arrangement with two facing the wall at the back of the office, bracketed by file cabinets and two facing the door. There were chairs on wheels positioned in front of each of the desks near the door.

  “Gunnery Sergeant Vance?”

  “Yes, I’m looking for Detective LeVeque.”

  “You found him . . . can I offer you a fresh cup of coffee?”

  “That would be great, yeah.”

  LeVeque poured two mugs and brought one over to Vance, motioning him into the seat across the desk from him. Vance noted a long amber drip streak down the side of his mug and subtley turned the cup so he could drink from the other side.

  “Thanks for driving up, Gunnery Sergeant,” LeVeque started casually. “I mean, I-95.”

  “No problem. You live here long enough, you know what to expect. Besides, it’s the best excuse anytime you are late for anything.”

  LeVeque chuckled. “Ain’t that the truth.”

  They both paused, remembering why they were there.

  “So, you know we are interviewing everyone who was at the party at the attache’s house. We talked to you the morning after at the scene but there are still a lot of unanswered questions.”

  “Well, I told the detectives everything I remembered when I spoke to them that morning. I’m happy to help if I can.”

  “You gave us a fairly detailed description of what you saw. Let me go over the notes from that . . . You were in the basement with the rest of the attendees. You heard the shots, looked over saw and the attache fall. The perpetrator fought his way through the group to the basement door. You and Major Guidry . . .do I have that right? Guidry?”

  “Yeah, that’s his name.” Vance couldn’t use the past tense yet.

  “Okay, you and Major Guidry gave pursuit, ran after him, split up and in the dark you tried to follow him down the hill outside the house. Okay, so far?” LeVeque checked Vance’s reaction.

  Vance was someplace else, his mind going back over the sequence of events.

  “Yeah, that was it,” he responded. “It was pretty rugged going.“

  “I saw it during the day and the slope on the hill was fairly steep. I can only imagine what it was like in the dark.” LeVeque went on. “You got to the creek area, 80 yards or so below the house. That’s where you almost tripped over the body of the alleged shooter and then found Major Guidry who was, at that point, fatally wounded? Is that right?”

  Vance was staring off past the detective, his mind fixed on that night. He had relived it a thousand times with no change to the final outcome. “Yeah, those are the basics,” he finally answered.

  “I just need to ask a few questions to fill in some of the blanks, if you don’t mind?”

  “No, that’s why I’m here.”

  “So you said you and Guidry made straight for the door after the perpetrator fled, right?”

  “Right.”

  “So why’d you split up?”

  Vance let out a little puff of air and shook his head. “That’s a question I have asked myself over and over. We were reacting in that moment and when we got out of the door it was completely black, no illumination at all.”

  “No light at all?”

  “Nothing, except the little Christmas lights on the bridge across the creek down the hill. But up above at the patio, nothing. I have wondered about that.”

  “Yeah, somebody had disabled the outdoor lighting, even the sensor-operated security lights at the roof-line,” LeVeque mentioned.

  “So we were blind. We couldn’t tell which direction he’d gone. Guidry yelled out he was going left and was already headed that way. I yelled back that I was going right. It took me longer to circle back to the center and go down than it did him. No doubt in my mind that it could have been me. I just wish I had moved faster.”

  LeVeque shook his head. “Well, if you had you would probably be dead, too. Without any weapons, it would have been very difficult. The person who committed these acts was waiting for the attache’s murderer to meet him there and he was well-prepared. That was clear from the scene, probably under the pretense of helping him escape. Unfortunately, Major Guidry’s arrival got in the way of him making a quick getaway. Just the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “Still, if I had been there . . . ” Vance trailed off. This wasn’t the first time he had confronted the ‘what-if’s.’ He had never had to consider it under these circumstances when none of the factors made sense.

  “If I can ask,” LeVeque interrupted the Gunny’s self-punishing reverie. “What were you two doing there in the first place? I mean, it’s not typical for officers and enlisted to socialize, right?”

  “It’s a long story. We usually wouldn’t be going to social events together but it was a request of the attache.”

  “A request from the attache?”

  “Yeah, he asked us to come because he wanted us to be there for one of his staff officers, Major Aksel Dahl. We go way back. We had all met at Bridgeport.”

  “Bridgeport?”

  “Marine Mountain Warfare Training Center in Bridgeport, California. Guidry, Dahl and I were all there at the same time, back when we were fresh-faced Marines. We got to know each other. We learned a lot but much of it was old news for Aksel. He was raised on a mountain in Norway so he was way ahead of us. He got us through though, especially that week we tested on knots.” Vance laughed remembering how he would return at night with a snarl of rope and how Dahl had patiently worked with him to master the insane particulars of climbing knots.

  “Tested on knots?”

  “Oh, nothing . . . just a weird memory from that training. We had to tie a secure climbing rope with very particular knots depending on the situation and the week we tested for that was . . . well, let’s just say, the only other time I felt that stressed was in sniper training. Anyway, the attache called me and asked us to attend so we felt like it was kind of a diplomatic work function, even though he was clear he wanted it to be a surprise. Not sure why.”

  “A surprise?”

  “Yeah, something about how Aksel would appreciate seeing us. I assumed it was just a holiday reunion but I don’t have any more than that.”

  “No, that’s fine. One more question. You said in the initial conversation that you didn’t hear much when you were pursuing the shooter. Can you remember anything? Does anything stand out?”

  “Well, I was moving fast . . . not fast enough, as it turns out, but not trying to be stealthy or anything like that. There was a lot of debris on the terrain . . . leaves, dead branches, some rocks so I wasn’t heari
ng things at the scene. I finally got close enough to slow down and try to make out some shadowy movement. The light from the bridge was all there was.”

  “Whomever planned this probably didn’t know that those lights were even there.”

  “They didn’t help that much but I could see some movement and then, as I got closer, I could hear a scuffle, choking sounds, then sounds of someone moving off to the left.”

  “That was when you stumbled on the body?”

  “Yeah, he was down and I didn’t see his legs. I almost tripped but then moved past him to where I found Les.”

  “That was when you found your friend, Major Guidry?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You didn’t hear anything else after that?”

  “Just the sounds from the house, some noise like shuffling of leaves moving away off to the left. Not much.”

  “You didn’t happen to hear an exchange between the shooter and whomever was waiting for him, by any chance?”

  “No chance. . . Whomever was there was gone when I got there.”

  “Yeah, that kind of thing is tricky but you didn’t hear any arguing or anything like that?”

  “No, not a word. Why?”

  “Nothing, really. Just that this was a well-planned assassination. You and your friend got in the way and he was the unfortunate victim. The sophistication of it doesn’t match what we know about the trigger man, the one who killed the attache. Just trying to figure out the association between the shooter and the assassin who took him out.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I wouldn’t normally reveal this and I have to ask you to keep this to yourself but the shooter was Chechen.” LeVeque’s eyes never left Vance’s face.

  Vance tilted his head slightly, his eyes fixed on the floor next to his chair. “Chechen,” he echoed the detective’s word but said nothing more.

  Chapter 6

  Serge Kovak’s jaw visibly tightened and he turned abruptly away from the K Street side door of VizionNet news studio heading back down the short hall into the lobby alcove from which he had just emerged. His departure would have brought him face to face with Dacey Dunne, a personality who would not let him pass without engagement and whose curiosity he had no desire to pique. He held his phone tight to his head as he listened to the tirade he could barely discern. In another circumstance, he would have cut the call but these were extraordinary circumstances and he couldn’t afford to jettison this caller. He pursed his lips, head down attempting to keep his voice under control.

  “Yes, I understand but you must keep your wits about you now. This won’t last but you can’t act in ways that draw attention.” He tried to use his most oleaginous tones to soothe the person on the other end of the call but knew this was only a temporary measure. “Look, I can’t talk now but we must talk face to face, yes?”

  He waited but got only another burst of invective. “Yes, I repeat: I understand and I want to talk to you, too. So let me call you when we can arrange another more opportune time, okaayy?” He elongated the last word to hint at his growing exasperation. It conveyed what he desired. The caller went quiet. “I will call you as soon as I get to a place I can talk and we will set something up. You heard me, yes?” A begrudging yes and then the call was over as he tried to bring normalcy through the courtesies of a farewell. Kovak shook his head and slipped the phone into his overcoat pocket.

  He turned to leave and almost walked over the diminutive Dunne as he moved quickly to the door.

  “Whoa, Serge . . . Easy. What’s the rush?” She teased him easily, as though she knew him far better than she did. She had always reminded him of the Siamese cats from “The Lady and The Tramp,” dark roots and all. ‘There will be some for you and also some for me . . . ‘ He could only be grateful there was only one of her. “Your presence is clearly demanded somewhere important. Care to let me in on it?”

  Kovak laughed heartily. “Dacey, if that were the case, it would be the other way around. You would be letting me in on where I was going.”

  “Okay, Dr. Kovak . . . I won’t delay you. I just wanted to say hello. I was wondering if you might want to get together and talk about the party . . . Off the record, of course.”

  Kovak half-expected her to bat her eyes. “Dacey, you know I’d love to and if it weren’t for the admonitions of law enforcement concerning not discussing it with anyone, you would be the first person I’d turn to.”

  Dunne nodded, a look of bemused resignation on her camera-ready face. “I get it.” She brushed her shoulder-length blonde hair back behind her right ear and looked at him directly. “We wouldn’t want to do anything to disrupt the investigation. We’ll just have to go a different direction.” She cocked her head and stepped out of his path. Kovak nodded, smiling and moved to the door. She watched him as he hustled out the door, dodging the random flow of walkers, joggers and scooters. He wasn’t about to give her anything. But he knew that she was in the hunt for what he wouldn’t say. And she wasn’t about to quit.

  * * *

  Vance sat in his car, looking at the parking lot, not seeing anything in particular. He couldn’t stay in the McLean PD’s parking lot indefinitely but he had to think through where he wanted to go. Knowing that the attache’s assassin was Chechen had sent him to a new level of bewilderment. Why was a Chechen sent to kill the attache? And who would be waiting for him at the foot of the hill?

  It was 1400. There was no point in going back to Quantico and he had questions that only a couple people might have answers to. Aksel had gone quiet. He hadn’t been able to raise him but that wasn’t surprising, given the chaos they must be managing at the embassy. He had asked how Mrs. Siggordson was doing and the detective had been opaque about her situation, mentioning only that she and her children were staying at the embassy, getting ready to return to Norway. He was halfway to the District. “Fortune favors the bold, right?” With that he drove out of the parking lot, headed north to Embassy Row.

  * * *

  He tossed the dagger lightly into the air and watched it tumble back to his waiting palm. Again. He loved to play with this dagger, to watch it spiral and twist and always return to his hand. He grasped it now, admiring the decoration, the etched pommel with the matching design on the hilt. He saw the crusted dry blood embedded at the hilt. He scratched it with his thumb nail. Clean now. He tested the sharpness with his thumb. Razor.

  What was it the Americans would say . . . he had ‘knife skills.’ Yes, he had knife skills. This was no mere knife. It was a sacred relic. A gift from the Black Angel himself. A recognition of his courage, his pledge to fight with the Black Angel, Hamzat Gelayev, to the death if necessary. It had almost come to that.

  The Black Angel was a master of escape, the elusive phantom, eluding every bungling attempt by the Russians to capture him. They roamed unfettered from one horror to another, always poking the Russian Bear with the audacity and brutality of their acts of rebellion. When you start with Tukhchar, cutting the throats of surrendered Russian soldiers, it only becomes more ruthless. Take a theater in Moscow, daring them to risk the civilian lives to take it back. Occupy a school in Beslan and watch as the children are butchered in an inept assault by Russians. That had been a mistake, he could see that now. It would haunt them. They had underestimated the Russian rage.

  He thought back to the last day. How many years had they been fighting the Russians? Five, six . . . forever. It seemed like forever that day when they left their hidden base in Georgia for a raid in Dagestan. It was a mistake, they could see that immediately. They weren’t prepared for the numbers, the firepower. The chaos that followed separated them from the Black Angel. He remembered the confusion of looking in the wrong places, barely escaping with their lives. He remembered the disorder and panic, stumbling along as the Russians tried to corner them.

  At first their mad scramble felt almost routine, like so many before. They had always escaped, slipping away from the Russians’ clumsy attempts to capture them. They ha
d managed to elude the campaign against them over and over. He wondered if that had only made them careless, overconfident. He wasn’t the one who made plans though. He was the one who carried out the orders. They all were.

  But then he was stunned when he saw the bullets rip through Noukhayev, his bravest comrade, saw him fall, unmoving. He knew then this would be different. What was left of them had to cross the border back to Georgia. His mouth went dry remembering the cold sense of the inevitable that swept through him at that moment.

  The few that were left withdrew, hiding in brush, staying off the roads. It was then they heard the gunfire. He scrambled with his band of survivors over the crest of a hill and watched as the Black Angel crouched behind a rock outcropping, fighting with two border guards. They watched from above as the rounds from his automatic weapon caught the border guards and they fell, even as their fire found him, chewing away flesh from his arm. They were up now running down the hill when they heard the whomp whomp whomp of a Russian helicopter flying above them. He ordered everyone to get down, firing on the aircraft.

  They watched in horror at what happened then. The Black Angel was standing, his right arm a grotesque twisted mass of flesh and bone. They saw the helicopter hover over Gelayev, waiting for the moment. A bullhorn ordered him to surrender. Taking him alive would be a prize they had sought for years. He could not escape. But he wouldn’t come to them without a fight.

  Then. He could almost hear the gasp that went up as they saw the Black Angel reach for his dagger, hold it over his mangled arm and cut through what was left. He staggered away leaving his shattered limb behind on the ground.

  It was as though time had stopped as he watched the final moments. He didn’t hear the whomp of helicopter blades, the shouts from the bullhorn from above, the cries of panic and terror of his comrades as they witnessed the stumbled last steps of the Black Angel. He watched as the Black Angel fell then, blood gushing from the butchered stump of his arm.