Stolen Identity

by Michael W. Sherer

  Amir finished off the last bite of chicken shawarma and wiped the plate clean with the last, small piece of pita bread before popping it into his mouth. Though not quite as good as his favorite restaurant near MIT in Cambridge, the food was well prepared and filling. Motioning to the waitress for his check, he dug in his pocket for some cash. When he’d paid, he dabbed the corners of his mouth with the paper napkin and got up from the table.

  A ten-minute drive from the strip mall on the outskirts of Ann Arbor took him back to the Ypsilanti neighborhood he’d left an hour earlier. The subject had returned, finally, putting Amir at ease, so he’d packed up his van. He’d waited until sounds from inside the house assured him the man was in for a while, if not for the night. On his way out of the neighborhood, he’d driven slowly around the block, first finding the car that had broken away from the procession and turned onto a different street. Amir had spotted three men in that vehicle. Cruising slowly past, he’d noticed that the sedan carried U.S. government plates.

  The SUV had appeared to contain four men, though he couldn’t be certain. The vehicle’s tinted windows had blocked the interior from view, and he’d gotten only a glimpse through the glare on the windshield. But he’d had plenty of time to note that the SUV’s Michigan license plate followed the format for police vehicles.

  All through his meal he’d considered what the mix of vehicles meant. Obviously, the number of men and machinery suggested a major operation. And the Michigan plates meant that the feds had involved local law enforcement. But he didn’t yet know which agencies had assigned their people to the job. Homeland Security? FBI?

  Now, he parked on the block behind the man’s house, a wooded lot standing between his van and rear of the man’s property. On foot, he retraced the route he’d driven the van on the way to the restaurant, avoiding streetlights and using whatever cover he could find to hide his movements. He navigated a large square around the perimeter of the area where the watchers were stationed, and turned onto the street behind the SUV. Wanting a closer look, he cut across a lawn, staying behind a hedge. When he reached the bushes, he carefully peered around the end. The only cover between the hedge and the SUV now was a thick oak tree in the parking strip. Tensing, he tried to judge how long he would be exposed before putting the trunk between him and the SUV. He dropped into a crouch and calculated the risk.

  Just as he made up his mind to go, the SUV’s front passenger door opened, and a figure stepped out. Amir’s pulse raced and his legs trembled from the adrenaline pumping through his veins. Dressed all in black, the figure stretched and looked down the block, then turned slowly, gaze surveying the quiet street in Amir’s direction. Amir ducked behind the bushes and breathed slowly through his mouth, trying to quiet the pounding of his heart. He strained to hear movement from down the block, and after what seemed like an eternity, chanced another look. The man faced away, and a moment later climbed back into the SUV and shut the door.

  In a low crouch, Amir turned and scurried back across the grass and around the corner. Breathing a little easier now, he slowed to a walk and moved on to check the sedan a block away. It, too, remained in place. Returning the way he’d come, he detoured just far enough to confirm that the plumbing van hadn’t moved, and that the other, smaller sedan stayed parked in front of the house across and down the street from the old man’s. Satisfied that the watchers were settled in for the night, he circled around to the street where he’d parked and carefully picked his way through the woods to the edge of the old man’s property and peered through the darkness from the shelter of the trees. He’d heard the murmur of a television earlier through his earpiece. Now, all was quiet, and the house was dark.

  Amir walked back to his van, climbed in the back and retrieved a sleeping bag from a storage bin. He unzipped it and wrapped it around his shoulders, settling onto the cold metal floor of the van. He tucked some of the sleeping bag under him to ward off the chill, and set the alarm on his phone two hours ahead.

  It took only one person, like himself, to watch an old man. At least nine watchers, maybe more, had arrived to do the job. The man in the SUV had been dressed for combat, bulk of his bulletproof vest obvious under the black fatigues. To Amir, that meant someone intended to accomplish more than simple surveillance. Amir planned to be awake and present when that happened, but he was betting that the watchers would not make their move until an hour or two before dawn.

  For now, rest would give him needed strength. He closed his eyes and let his mind drift.

  17

  Forty-plus years, I’d been a light sleeper. Waking in the middle of the night wasn’t uncommon for me. Usually, I could get settled and back to sleep fairly quickly. Sometimes, once I woke I was up for good. Whether troubled about the fraudulent activity in my accounts or anxious about my grandson’s birthday party, my eyes snapped open long before dawn. I lay there in the dark, staring at the blank ceiling, taking stock, registering night noises—the rumble of the refrigerator, clank and hiss of radiators, soft whir of a passing car—along with the fullness of my bladder. Evaluating whether I could safely sink back into sleep. But whatever had woken me pricked at my subconscious, injecting me with vague unease.

  I flipped the covers back and swung my legs out of bed. The floor felt like ice under my bare feet. I hobbled to the dresser for a clean pair of socks, shrugged on some jeans and pulled a warm, hooded sweatshirt on over my head. At my age, nature usually called about the same time every night. I heeded it, but a fist of exhaustion cold-cocked me on the way into the bathroom. I sat my bare ass down on the toilet before my knees gave out, the seat humiliatingly cold. I’d gotten in the habit years before, so as not to wake Susan. A wise man once told me, “When water falls on water it makes a sound for all to hear, but water sprayed on porcelain falls silent to the ear.”

  The fatigue seeped away slowly, and I mustered the strength to stand up and close the seat cover. Again from habit, I didn’t bother to flush. It seemed a waste of water. The house was so familiar I could have found my way downstairs blindfolded, but plenty of light spilled in from the street to see where I was going. Sometimes, when I couldn’t sleep, I read instead. Often, I’d sit in the living room in the dark, watch the world outside, and let my mind wander. By the time my foot hit the bottom step, though, the uneasy feeling was back. I padded softly to the kitchen and checked the back door—locked. I did a slow tour of the first floor, keeping my profile away from the windows but getting close enough to the frames to peer out into the night. The street remained quiet and showed no signs of unusual activity.

  I poured myself half a glass of water in the kitchen, drained it and carefully set the glass on the drain board. Too worked up now to consider sleep, I slipped back into the living room and lowered myself into an easy chair across from the window. Loneliness walked in and plunked down on a corner of the couch, looking so much like Susan grading papers with her half-frames perched on her nose that I almost cried. Ten years, and I still missed her something fierce.

  The image faded, but the tension in my shoulders and queasiness in my gut did not. Instead of thinking about what might have happened to my credit card and bank accounts and what might be floating around inside of me, I tried to focus on the time I’d spent with Preston. But my thoughts kept buzzing around the questions like flies around a dog turd, worry chafing at me so bad I almost missed the first signs of movement outside.

  A shifting shadow at first, it could have been a breeze moving a branch to one side. The darkness moved again, a black smudge against the charcoal gloom under a still-leafy tree, taking on human shape. I sat up straighter. Four armed men in black combat gear fanned out and started across the street toward me. I wondered which of my neighbors had gotten desperate enough to turn Walter White and open a meth lab. Down the street, a man in a dark ball cap and windbreaker motioned to three other similarly dressed figures, and they, too, spread out and headed in the direction of the house. A woman, judging from the ponytail sticking out behind
the ball cap, stayed with the leader.

  The knots in my gut tightened, and without even being aware of it I found myself out of the chair and backing away from the window into the hall. I hadn’t seen night vision gear, but they could have a sniper out there with an infrared scope. Flattening myself against the wall, I eased around the corner and chanced a look out a side window in the dining room. Two shadowy figures ghosted by, one stopping a few feet from the window, the other continuing on to the rear of the house. They both carried semi-automatics in a two-handed grip.

  It had to be a mistake. They had the wrong house.

  My heart slammed against my ribs in a bid to escape. Normal people, rational people, would have knocked on the door in daylight if they wanted to talk to me. An assault team in the middle of the night, especially one with no identification on their clothing, was bad news. I could sense the four commandos creeping onto the front porch. They’d smash open the door with a ram in a matter of seconds, and my best hope was to stand in the open with my hands up and hope they were willing to talk first and shoot later. But the crashing boom of the ram never came. Instead, I heard a faint scratching. They were picking the lock.

  Panic set in, making it hard to draw a breath. They were coming in hot and silent, and weren’t interested in a friendly chat. In my experience, everything I’d seen indicated they intended to shoot first. I wouldn’t have a chance. I was a dead man. Unless I found a way out…

  Slipping silently down the hallway, I did some mental calculations. Two locks. If the guy at the door was good, I had less than a minute, maybe only half that. I reckoned I had one shot at getting out of the house alive. I raced down the stairs into the black maw of the basement in stocking feet. Against a far wall stood a workbench. Cupboards overhead held tools and DIY materials. Stored underneath were a few personal things I’d collected and kept over the years. I quickly turned on a light and dragged a footlocker out from under the bench. Moving a folded, faded American flag aside, I immediately found what I was looking for—a combat knife, an old Smith & Wesson Model 29, and a box of ammunition. I grabbed them all and raced across the basement floor, counting off the seconds as I went.

  Under the stairs was a door to a crawl space that housed the furnace and the old original oil tank before the heating system was converted to natural gas. It sat half-buried under the floor of the kitchen—the lean-to section of the house. Cradling the box of ammo in one arm, I stuffed the sheathed knife in a back pocket, and tucked the gun in my waistband, yanked the door open and slipped inside. Pitch black, the tight space smelled of dirt and oil even though the old tank had been filled with sand for decades. The walls pressed in on me, and sweat trickled down my sides and brow. My breathing grew shallow as I fought the panic that had been immediately exacerbated by a long-forgotten anxiety. The furnace rumbled as the fire deep inside its steel belly burned, fan whirring loudly as it blew air across the heat exchanger. Suddenly it shut down, and in the dark and silence, the memories came rushing back, thick and choking, stinking of blood and fear.

  18

  Cú Chi district, South Vietnam, 1969

  The dumb, fucking grunt had stepped on a side-closing punji trap, and while his mates had opened the jaws, the barbed bamboo spears were still embedded in the kid’s ankle, the shafts sticking out of his boots. He lay on the jungle floor, his sweaty face contorted with pain and white as a sheet. His buddies sat and smoked cigarettes while they waited for an evac chopper. Fortunately, the VC hadn’t hung around to ambush the squad. But the kid’s wounds, if he didn’t get help quickly, would fester in the fecund environment and get infected. He’d be lucky to keep his foot.

  Sonny looked at me and rolled his eyes. We knew all of Charlie’s tricks—spike boards, tiger traps, mace traps, door traps, Venus fly traps, whip traps, grenade traps, cartridge traps—and the eye roll was the limit of Sonny’s sympathy for the newly arrived. The way he figured it, anyone who volunteered for this gig should get educated on guerilla warfare before coming in-country, and anyone dumb enough to get drafted into this shithole deserved what he got coming. We’d seen more gruesome examples of VC ingenuity than everything Madame Tussauds’ Chamber of Horrors had to offer. Despite his tough-ass attitude, the carnage rendered by the VC booby traps incensed Sonny.

  We got called in because traps often served Charlie as an early warning and line of defense in the tunnels. The VC had been digging them since the ‘40s, but it wasn’t until ’67 that the U.S. military got serious about eradicating them. An attempt at carpet-bombing them out of existence failed, and by early ’68, the VC had rebuilt what had been damaged, and used them to launch the Tet Offensive against Saigon and a dozen other cities in the south. Australian and American army engineers originally had been tasked with finding ways to find and collapse and destroy tunnels with whatever means they could. They experimented with all kinds of explosives. But when it came down to it, guys like Sonny and me were the ones who went into the tunnels to clear them and lay charges. Even crazier, we’d volunteered for the duty, which is why those who knew us called us Loony and Zany. Everyone else called us “rats” or “tunnel rats.”

  Our six-man squad had been only a klick away when the call went out. We’d come up dry in the area we’d been combing, so the kid’s misfortune was pay dirt for us. The two combat engineers dropped their packs. The two other grunts in our squad unburdened themselves as well. All our packs were heavy, but those two carried the most weight since they shouldered most of the materiel the engineers used to blow up the tunnels after Sonny and I cleared them.

  Sonny was a bantamweight Puerto Rican kid who wouldn’t take shit from anyone, not even Irish gang members in Hell’s Kitchen where he grew up. Gang life taught him loyalty. We got along okay at first, mostly because of the color of our skin, a tone that looked as if we’d been dipped in olive oil and left out in the sun, common to many people around the Mediterranean. I’d heard some call it “swarthy.” After our first experience in the tunnels, though, we shared an unbreakable bond that in some ways went deeper than a lot of marriages. No rule of combat said you had to like the guy you depended on to keep you alive, but Sonny had become a friend.

  Anger at the VC now radiated off him in waves, winding him up tighter than a Swiss watch. He paced like a caged tiger, head swinging to and fro, gaze searching the underbrush for the markers Charlie left to find their own trap doors. Like a diviner after water, Sonny had a gift for sniffing out tunnel entrances and air vents, usually impossible for the rest of us to spot because the VC disguised them so well.

  The kid on the ground moaned. I averted my eyes, and tried not to wonder if Charlie had dipped the bamboo spikes in snake venom. We’d know soon enough. Sonny’s movements became more frenzied, and I worried he’d hit a trip wire before he saw it. The kid’s anguish only stoked Sonny’s rage.

  I turned to the kid. “What’s your name?”

  He looked up, surprised. “Billy. Billy Cranston.”

  Distract and divert. Get his mind off the pain. “You been to Cam Ranh yet?”

  He shook his head.

  “Some of the prettiest beaches I’ve ever seen around Cam Ranh Bay,” I said. “White sand. Turquoise-blue water. When you’re there, seems like the rest of the world doesn’t exist.”

  He winced but remained silent as he listened. Some of his buddies turned their attention my way, too.

  “You’ll probably get to see it now, Billy. That’s where they treat wounded soldiers.”

  “I thought they’d ship me home,” Billy said.

  “Nah,” one of his buddies said. “You ain’t hurt bad enough to go back stateside. You gotta lose a leg or an arm to get out of this hellhole.”

  “Is that true?” Billy asked me.

  I nodded. “I won’t lie to you. But they’ll treat you pretty good in Cam Ranh. While you’re getting better, you’ll probably get to go to the beach, get a tan.”

  Someone laughed. I didn’t. I listened to Sonny moving through the brush around
us.

  “Doesn’t sound too bad,” Billy said.

  “No, not too bad,” I said.

  He was a kid, a gullible kid, no more than nineteen at the most. He’d believe anything I said. But we were all kids; even the engineers still had baby fat. And who was I to dispense advice? Hell, I was at least two years younger than anyone there, and sometimes I felt older than dirt.

  “Motherfuckin’ a!” Sonny yelled. “I got you now, Charlie! I smell fried VC, baby! Hooah!”

  He trotted past us, back down the path a yard or two and cut to one side, disappearing into the dense underbrush.

  “Found it!” he shouted. “Get your ass over here, Zany. We’re going rat hunting.”

  The words I dreaded. “Don’t do anything stupid, Sonny,” I called.

  Jack and Trevor, the two engineers, perked up at the sound of Sonny’s discovery. Pyros, both of them, they didn’t give a damn whether we cleared tunnels or not. They just liked blowing shit up. Jack got to his feet and watched me follow the sound of Sonny’s voice down the path and into the jungle.

  Pushing aside some palm fronds and low-hanging banana tree leaves, I found a small patch of scuffed dirt, and a black square where a trap door used to be hidden. And no sign of Sonny.

  “Sonny! God damn you. Don’t tell me you went down that hole!”

  The fear filled my limbs with lead, making it harder to pick up my feet with each step closer to the hole. I’d survived six months as a tunnel rat, and my tour was up in another two. But with each mission, I figured my odds of surviving another foray underground went down substantially. They’d used dogs at first, but the mortality rate was so high they considered sending dogs down the holes animal cruelty and stopped. Even though we humans could see the trip wires and think through the potential traps, the mortality rate of us rats, those of us crazy enough to volunteer, wasn’t much better, maybe fifty percent. I might as well flip a coin to see if my head or my tail would end up on a bamboo pike.