by Blake Banner
“Go to hell!”
“What would you say was a reasonable price for the rental of your BMW for a day?”
“Now you listen to me, young man! If you are trying to terrorize me with some newfangled psychological technique, let me tell you I was in Vietnam and I have seen action in the Latin American jungles. There is nothing you can throw at me that will make me break. Do your worst!”
I shook my head. “I don’t want to scare you, Colonel. I just need to remove myself from the neighborhood for a while, and I need to do it in a hurry. For that, I need your car, but I intend to pay you for it. How much?”
“Are you out of your mind?”
“I’m not sure. I don’t remember. How much, Colonel.”
“I don’t need your money!”
I reached in my pocket and pulled out three hundred bucks, which I laid on the table. “It’s the principle of the matter. I am not a thief.”
His scowl became a frown of curiosity. In the distance, more sirens wailed. “Who the hell are you?”
“As before, Colonel, I don’t know. I don’t remember.”
Keeping his eyes fixed on me, he reached forward and picked up the remote control from the table. I sighed. He pointed it at the TV and it winked on. He skipped through a couple of channels to the local news. I didn’t look, but I heard the young female voice.
“We have just arrived… and it is hard to tell exactly what is going on. From what we can make out, there has been a shooting at this popular local restaurant, and from what I have been able to gather so far, there was more than one victim. The shooter has not been identified. We are hoping to talk to Sole Martinez within the next while, as she was apparently the only witness to the shooting, but Deputy Hank Olsen has told me that a car left at the scene, a 1992 Jeep Cherokee, may be impounded, as they believe it may belong to the killer. Olsen is asking the owner of the car, or anyone who knows anything about it, to please come forward…”
I reached over, took the remote control and switched off the TV.
“There are two men dead, and one badly bruised. It was in defense of a woman, and also in self-defense.”
“Who?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know their names. Two punks in Italian suits. They worked for a guy with a shiny silk suit, a big mustache and a black Mercedes-Benz. He was threatening Sole. I was going to do something about it and he tried to pull a piece on me. I put him down and his boys came at me. I killed them. But my timing wasn’t so good. Just at that point, the deputy showed up. Otherwise the body count would have been three, not two.”
He studied me a moment. “You took down two of Mendez’s men. You were armed?”
I shook my head and held up the Sig. “Mendez? Is that his name? This is his gun.”
“You have skills.”
“Apparently.
He grunted. “It’s not your first run-in with drug traffickers, is it?”
I gave my head a small shake. “No.”
He studied me a moment longer with serious eyes. “You’ve been in the news.”
“Apparently. What do you know about Mendez?”
“Not a lot. I was involved in military operations in Colombia, years back, and more recently in Mexico. I still have a few contacts in law enforcement, and Mendez is known to be involved in cross-border narcotics smuggling. Indirectly, he has ties with the Chupacabras gang. But he delegates, and no connection with him can ever be proven.”
“What about Ivan Ivanovich? I thought he was the big kahuna around here where drug trafficking was concerned.”
He raised an eyebrow at me. “I said I had friends in law enforcement, young man. I didn’t say I was an expert. But word has it that Ivanovich represents Russian interests, while Mendez is in charge of the import operation.”
I gave a single nod. “Makes sense.”
“Are you going to kill them?”
“Yes.”
He reached in his pocket and pulled out the keys to his BMW. He tossed them to me and I caught them left-handed.
“You can tie me up if you feel safer, but if you do, I’ll have to report the car stolen and give them a description of you. So far, as far as I can see, we have had a small misunderstanding, which we have managed to clear up, and I have lent you my car. Nobody need ever know. Just promise me you’ll keep Sole safe, she’s a good girl, and you’ll eliminate those bastards.”
My brain told me I was an idiot. I should at the very least tie him up and gag him, but my gut told me this was an ally, and that he would have my back as long as I did what I promised.
“Thank you.”
He stood and extended his hand. “Colonel John Stokes.”
I took his hand. “I don’t know who I am. But I won’t let you down.”
I took his BMW and drove, nice and slow, to my motel on Central Avenue. I left the car out of sight, at the back of the parking lot of the church opposite the motel, and returned to my room on foot. As I slipped the key in the lock, the voice came from behind me. It was deep, it carried authority.
“What have you done with Colonel Stokes?”
I turned. There were two of them. The one who’d spoken was in his late fifties, dressed in a blue, expensive, off-the-peg suit. He had a face that had seen more things than it wanted to and eyes that had grown ruthless in the process.
His companion was dressed in the same suit, but in gray. He was in his thirties and had the lean, hungry look of the career cop. But these weren’t cops. Cops always put procedure first, because they know that bad procedure can cost them a conviction, and these guys hadn’t even identified themselves.
I jerked my head at them. “Who the hell are you?”
The older one smiled with more arrogance than humor. “We’re those guys who can ask you questions, and make you answer, without having to tell you who we are.”
“Yeah? Go for it. Make me answer your questions.”
He reached in his jacket and pulled out a leather wallet. It flopped open and told me he was Major Mitch Hunter of Military Intelligence. “We’d rather do it nice.”
“What about Toyboy here? Is he your secret weapon? He going to bore me into a state of subservience?” Before he could answer, I said, “What do you want?”
“You murdered two men this morning. We’d like you to tell us about that.”
“Go screw yourself.” I turned back toward my door.
“We have powers of arrest. We can take you in if we have to. Right now, all we want is to ask you some questions.”
I spoke over my shoulder as I pushed into my room. I left the door open.
“So ask.”
I watched their shadows move in front of me as they came in and closed the door. The room felt small and claustrophobic with them in it. I pulled the cork on the bottle of Bushmills, poured a measure into a tooth mug and swallowed it.
Major Mitch Hunter said, “A little early for spirits, isn’t it?”
“That your opinion?” I poured another shot and drank that one more slowly. “You here to give me moral guidance or ask me questions? If you’ve got questions, ask them. Then get out.”
“You’re pretty hostile.”
“That’s an observation, not a question.”
“You got any ID?”
“No.”
“You drive a car?”
“Yes.”
“You need a driver’s license to drive a car.”
“That’s not a question.”
“Do you have a driver’s license?”
“Probably.”
“You’re not being very cooperative.”
My face told him that was an observation, not a question.
His young partner spoke suddenly. He had an annoying, nasal voice that seemed to make his face uglier when he spoke. “Do you own a 1992 Jeep, modified with an electric engine and currently sitting in the parking lot of the Casa Castaneda?”
I studied his face a moment, swirling the whiskey around in my glass. Finally, I said, “Who the
hell are you?”
His cheeks colored and he pulled his badge from his inside breast pocket. “Lieutenant Mike Lovejoy, Military Intelligence.”
“Why is Military Intelligence interested in what car I drive?”
“Would you answer the question please, sir?”
“I don’t know if I own it. I woke up in it. I think it’s mine.”
He scowled. “What do you mean, you woke up in it?”
“Tell me how that is any of Military Intelligence’s business.”
Hunter answered. “Where were you this morning between seven and eight?”
“Visiting a friend.”
“What friend?”
“Colonel John Stokes.”
“You took his car.”
“He lent it to me.”
“Why did you take his car when your own car was just five hundred yards away?”
I shrugged. “It has two electric engines and two lithium-ion batteries. It’s very fast and very powerful, but it is also very delicate and sensitive, so it breaks down a lot.”
“What were you doing at Casa Castaneda?”
I thought for a moment and couldn’t see any reason not to tell them. “I had dinner with Sole at La Rosa.”
Lovejoy snapped, “So you stayed the night?”
“It happens. Your mommy will explain all about it when you grow up.”
“So you were there this morning.”
“I don’t know what time it was. It was early. I tried to start the Jeep. It was dead, so I walked over to John’s place to ask him if I could borrow his Beemer.”
He nodded a few times, then seemed to examine the ceiling of my room. “What is your name?”
I didn’t hesitate for a moment. I said, “I don’t know.”
“What the hell do you mean, you don’t know?”
“I mean I don’t know, Major. I mean I woke up in the Jeep in the desert just outside Tularosa with no idea of who I was or how I got there.”
“When did this happen?”
“Couple of weeks ago, maybe less.”
“How come you didn’t go to a hospital, or the cops, and ask them for help?”
It was a good question, but I didn’t know the answer. I shrugged.
He went on. “If that’s your Jeep, we’ll have your identity in fifteen minutes.”
He waited.
I waited.
He said, “Don’t you think it’s time you came clean with me?”
“About what?”
“Who you are and what you are doing here. Since you arrived in town, nine people involved in drug trafficking in the area have been murdered.”
“And what has that got to do with Military Intelligence?”
“We have a pretty wide remit. Now I am going to ask you one time, are you willing to cooperate with us, or do I have to take you in?”
I thought for a while. Finally, I said, “I’ll cooperate with you, but I need you to find out who I am, and tell me.”
Nine
The room was silent. Lovejoy was watching Hunter like he was waiting for a cue. Hunter was staring at me, and you could almost see the cogs turning behind his eyes. Finally, he said, “Sure, we can do that.”
I followed them back out to the parking lot. They had a Range Rover parked near the entrance and I cursed myself for not having seen it when I arrived. Hunter got behind the wheel and Lt. Lovejoy got in the back. I got in the front passenger seat and I knew Lovejoy had his piece trained on the small of my back.
“Play nice,” he said, “and we’ll all arrive in one piece.”
I glanced at his face in the mirror. “Yeah? But how will we leave?”
They didn’t answer. Hunter pressed the starter and we pulled out of the lot and onto the road. He turned onto Highway 70 and headed south, driving at a steady seventy miles per hour. We passed Casa Castaneda, where there was still police activity outside the main door, and kept going past Alamogordo to the intersection with Route 54. There we stayed on 70 and turned west and a little south toward White Sands.
After maybe fifteen miles, we passed the White Sands visitors’ center and turned south again. We’d been driving almost half an hour and I asked Hunter, “Where are you taking me?”
He flicked his eyes at my reflection in the mirror. “We have a base of operations down here. We have a lot of military facilities. Maybe we can help you. You should have gone to a doctor by now.”
I raised an eyebrow at him. “Your concern is very touching, Major.”
After another fifteen minutes, he slowed and turned right, up to the gates of the High Energy Laser Systems Testing Facility. A military guard approached the vehicle and Hunter showed him his ID through the window. The man saluted crisply, the gate rose and we rolled through.
There was a large building with a blue roof just beyond the gate, with a covered parking lot on the right. We drove past that building and proceeded for another two or three hundred yards to a couple of prefabs that stood alone and fenced off from the rest of the facility. We went in through the electronic gate, Hunter killed the engine and said, “Wait here.”
He and Lt. Lovejoy climbed down from the truck and slammed the doors. The lights flashed and I heard the locks clunck. They crossed the lot to the closest of the prefabs and went inside. Five minutes passed and I started to feel a hot knot of anger in my belly. Two minutes after that, I was about to start leaning on the horn, but the door opened and four soldiers in battle dress come out, carrying assault rifles. Hunter and Lovejoy were just behind them. I watched the grunts approach the passenger side. Three of them took up positions training their weapons on the door, the lights flashed and the fourth wrenched open the door and trained his automatic on me.
“Get down from the car and lie on the ground!”
I shook my head. “What?”
This time he shouted it so I’d understand. “Get down from the vehicle! Lie facedown on the ground! Hands behind your head! Now!”
“OK!” I stepped down out of the Range Rover and looked over at Hunter. He was smirking. I was about to tell him this was unnecessary, but two pairs of hands grabbed me and tried to drag me down to the ground. A hand seized me by the back of the neck and another twisted my arm. Hunter approached, pointing his pistol at my head. Now he too was screaming, telling me to lie down.
Then some future hero of the Free World smashed me in the kidneys with a rifle butt. I bit back a shout of pain and someone, probably the same son of a bitch, kicked me in the back of the knee and I went down. Then the whole world was a rain of kicks, boots and rifle butts. All you can do in a moment like that is sacrifice your dignity to the fetal position and hope it stops soon. After a bit, the pain fades to a generalized dull ache and you can seek refuge in a state of semi-consciousness. I picked up a few bruises on my back and my arms and legs, but managed to keep my face intact.
Next thing, two of Uncle Sam’s finest dragged me to my feet and pushed me toward an open-top Jeep. The major was still pointing his weapon at me and screaming as he took swipes at my face. They pushed me in the back with two grunts in battle dress and Hunter climbed in the front passenger seat, turned so he could keep his pistol trained on me.
We pulled out of the lot again and drove at speed, heading west, deeper into the desert. After a couple of minutes, I saw a larger facility approaching up ahead, about a quarter of a mile away. It was hard to identify from the structures exactly what it was for—there were a number of prefabs scattered on the left, and a large, irregular white dome on the right.
I looked into Hunter’s eyes and asked him, “What the hell are you doing? Where are you taking me?”
His answer was to pistol-whip me across the face and scream at me to shut up.
We turned off the road then, just before reaching the facility, and pulled up in front of a large blue building with double glass doors.
They dragged me down from the Jeep and shoved me toward the building. The double doors gave onto a small lobby lit by strip neon lights. A c
ouple of people standing around in white coats looked up as we came in. The major strode ahead and crossed the lobby to a set of fire doors. I was shoved through and followed him down a passage with offices on either side. I thought about demanding to see the base commander, demanding they respect my constitutional rights, but I knew the best I’d get from that would be another pistol-whipping—if I was lucky.
The major knocked on the door at the end of the passage and opened it. He exchanged a few words with somebody inside, then turned and signaled the grunts to bring me in. I had a hot pellet in my belly, because I was pretty sure I knew what was coming next. The grunts pushed me in, then closed the door and stood on either side of it. There was a guy in uniform in a chair behind a desk. His insignia said he was a full colonel. He was about sixty, with graying temples. He watched me a moment with mild disgust.
Finally, he said, “Who are you?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know.”
“You a Muslim?”
“No.”
His eyes searched mine. “Christian? What religion? What do you believe in? What is your faith?”
“None… I don’t know. I have no faith. What the hell is this?”
“Nationality?”
“I’m an American.”
“I say you’re a filthy, murdering Islamic jihadist. You’re all the same. All the fucking same, looking for ways to murder and maim decent Americans.”
“No. I am an American.”
“What you are doing here?”
“You brought me here.”
“In New Mexico!”
I hesitated. “I don’t know. I’m suffering from amnesia…”
The skepticism on his face told me I was headed for another beating. I glanced at Hunter and saw the same expression.
I sighed. “I’m writing a book, about US veterans who come back to the US and can’t find a way to readjust to society...”
“Another fucking bleeding heart liberal who believes he’s entitled to everything just because he did his goddamned duty!”
I looked at the major. “What the hell is this? I’m a damn civilian. You can’t treat me like this.”
He didn’t blink. “Answer the question. What are you doing here?”