by Bob Mayer
“So what should I know about you?” Gant wearily asked.
“Nothing,” she said bitterly.
“You felt it was important to know about me,” Gant noted. “Shouldn’t it be important for me to know about you?”
“I’m the psychologist,” Golden said. “You don’t need to know how your target thinks, you just need to be able to see it, right? So you can shoot it?”
“I’m your target?”
“No.”
“And I do need to know how my target thinks,” Gant said. He spread his hands, taking in the building. “I worked for SOCOM for years. I was trained like our targets. I did live missions like our targets did. So I think like them.”
“Not quite,” Golden said. “There’s tens of thousands of people in Special Operations. Very few of them turn rogue. So they have something else in their psyche that you don’t understand.” Golden typed something into her keyboard. “I’ve come up with sixteen probables. I cross-checked them based on assignments and that widens the fields of possible to one hundred and six if one of those sixteen is the leader and suborned his team-mates.”
“Check for Lutz, Payne, and Forten.”
“Did Sam give you that?”
“Colonel Cranston said he lost a team in a helicopter crash. They were the team.”
“If they’re dead—“ Golden began as she looked at her screen and then she fell silent for a second. “Forten is one of the sixteen.”
“He’s the leader.”
“I don’t understand. If Sam—“
“It’s Colonel Cranston, Doctor Golden. I don’t know what your relationship in the past was with him, but let’s act professional.”
Gant was surprised to see Golden’s face flush and he knew he had hit her somewhere deep, but he was tired of sparring.
“If Colonel Cranston says those men died, then why do you believe they could be our targets?”
“Because helicopter crash is almost a Special Operations euphemism for getting killed somewhere you weren’t supposed to be. That’s something I know.”
“But if they were killed—“
“Let’s pretend for a moment they weren’t.”
Golden frowned. “How did you get those names?”
“They’re on the plaque right outside this building commemorating Special Operations soldiers who died in the line of duty.”
“Oh.”
“Also, there’s no pilot listed as killed on that date. Kind of strange to have a helicopter crash with no pilot especially when Cranston says there were no survivors.” Gant hammered home his point. “Cranston’s bullshitting us. Something happened to that team. Something so bad he’s willing to put his daughter’s life on the line to cover it up.”
“Sa — Colonel Cranston wouldn’t do that.”
Gant stared at her. “He’s already done it. I believe he thought those guys were dead. I think now he wishes they truly were. But I don’t think they are. I think they survived whatever happened to them and they’re back and they’re pissed.”
Golden’s fingers flew over her keyboard. “Sergeant Joseph Lutz. Staff Sergeant Michael Payne. Sergeant First Class Lewis Forten. All assigned to Seventh Special Forces Group. All listed as killed in a helicopter crash off the coast of Panama. Their bodies were never recovered.”
“Of course not,” Gant said. “Because there were no bodies. You had Forten as one of your sixteen probables. Why?”
Golden looked at the screen. “Forten was given up for adoption when he was born. No record of birth mother. He bounced around from foster home to youth facility for his entire childhood. The longest he stayed in one place was two years.”
“So he had a crappy childhood.”
“Instability in early family is one of the indicators,” Golden said. She looked up at Gant. “Are you going to listen or are you going to critique me?”
“Go on.”
“He was removed from one of his foster homes when he was eight amidst allegations of abuse by the woman who was responsible for him — his surrogate mother. She was arrested two years later on charges of abusing another child. I checked on her — she’s currently in prison for armed robbery.”
Gant opened his mouth to say something, but he could see that Golden was anticipating him. “Yes. Bad mothers make bad sons. Men act out, women act in.”
Gant frowned and Golden explained.
“It’s easy to say that society places more binds on a female’s ability to act out, or is it that she’s simply too weak to become a predator? But what if women do become predators? What if women routinely act out their years of abuse by also becoming sexual sadists?”
Gant wasn’t following, but she kept on going.
“Maybe these women simply become mothers or surrogate mothers. Now they don’t have to worry about society and they are no longer the weak ones. Men go out into the world and wreak havoc, women turn inward toward their family and do the same. Here lies the difference in a fucked up adult and a murdering predator. The former has a terrible childhood indeed, but the latter has a sexual sadist for a mother. The sadist mother literally invents the abuse that the son later reinvents for his own needs. That reinvention is what I look for. It is the source.”
“You’re blaming mothers?” Gant was incredulous. “You’re saying this woman did something that’s caused Forten to act like this?”
“I’m saying that the odds are very high that a sadist who kills had a sadist for a mother. That is something my research has proven. So. Yes. Men focus their impulses outward: they kill strangers. Notice there are no serial killers who follow in their father’s shoes. They would never be satisfied torturing their own children forever. They would have the strength and the means to inflict their insanity on the populace. Women, as I’ve said tend to abuse themselves and their children. But hey, it’s just a theory. But I did come up with one of the names.”
One out of sixteen, Gant thought but did not say. “We know who they are, but that doesn’t help us much. What we have to figure out is what their next step is. We’ve been reacting. To get these guys we’re going to have to act.”
“To get Emily, right?”
Gant glanced over to the window, looking out at the darkness. “Emily is alive. There’s got to be a reason why they’re keeping her alive. And before this is over, they’re going to give us an idea where she is.” Gant moved behind Golden. “Let me see their files.”
Golden brought them up, one by one, and Gant scanned them. When all three were done Gant had a good idea of all three men’s military backgrounds and training. “All right. Here’s what we’re facing. Forten is the sniper and the leader. Senior man rank wise. You know about SOTI training right?”
Golden nodded. “Special Operations Target Interdiction training. A nice way of saying sniper training. I revamped their screening program.”
“A screening Forten obviously got through,” Gant said.
“Yes. Four years before I got here. There was a reason I revamped it.”
Give her a point, Gant thought. “SOTI is sort of a fancy way of saying sniper school, but there is as much emphasis in that school on shooting things as well as people.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You take a fifty caliber sniper rifle and shoot out a critical component in a microwave relay tower or in the engine of a jet fighter, you cripple that entire system. So we need to keep that in mind, although it’s most likely Forten will be shooting people.” Gant scanned down the man’s list of training. “OK. Besides being a trained sniper, Forten has a couple of other special skills. He was trained as a tracker in Borneo.”
“’Borneo’?”
“A big part of Special Forces training is joint training in other countries. Forten went over there and went through their tracking school, taught by ex-headhunters. So he’s an expert at following and finding people. He’s also a Special Forces medic. Which means he can perform minor surgery. Also knows pills and drugs.”
“Lik
e what shot to give a girl to knock her out.”
“Right. Payne was the spotter for Forten. They worked together for two years. Recorded several kills in Afghanistan. Payne is a weapons man. Means he’s an expert on all sorts of guns. He also is a trained scout swimmer so he can operate in the water.
“Lutz was a demo guy. So that’s not good. We haven’t seen anything with his signature yet, but we need to keep that in mind. He can booby-trap things, blow things up, do all sort of nasty stuff.”
“Lucky us,” Golden said.
Gant stood up. “Let’s go talk to Sam. See if we can jog his memory.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Golden followed Gant out of the building. She knew he thought her theories were bullshit and her contributions so far of little value. It was a reaction she had run into many times before, both at the FBI and here at Bragg when she worked for SOCOM. She had little time to reflect on this latest issue because Gant pulled open the door to the car parked in front of a garish statue of a soldier. Gant brusquely gestured for Cranston get out. The three of them stood in the parking lot, their faces almost in shadow from the parking lot lights, with the statue looming over them as if in silent judgment. Golden decided Gant had jumped her one too many times about Sam, so she decided to remain silent and let him take the lead.
Gant snapped out the names. “Sergeant Joseph Lutz. Staff Sergeant Michael Payne. Sergeant First Class Lewis Forten.”
Despite the poor light, Golden could see Sam’s face go white. “They’re dead.”
Gant jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “That’s what it says on the plaque over there and in their service records. Like you said, died in a helicopter crash. Except they didn’t, did they?”
“They’re dead,” Cranston repeated, as if by saying it again he could make it so.
“No, they’re not. They have your daughter.”
Subtle, Golden thought as Cranston stepped back as if punched. He leaned against the side of his car. She resisted the impulse to reach out and comfort him. Gant was right about one thing: Time was of the essence. Even as she thought that, she realized he was right about something else: Sam had been holding something back. She’d sat with too many patients when she was practicing early in her career who with-held information during therapy not to recognize it now. She realized her judgment had indeed been clouded by her sympathy for Sam when they first went to his house.
“Not only do they have your daughter,” Gant pressed on, “they’ve already killed three other girls. They slashed one girl’s throat while she was working at a daycare center, right in front of the kids. The pilot’s fiancée. Her name was Kathy Svoboda. And she was pregnant. So technically they’ve notched four kills.”
Golden was startled by that last piece of information. She had not read through the autopsy.
Gant continued. “They drowned another girl in a foot of water. Jim Roberts of the CIA — his daughter, Caleigh. Eighteen years old. And they chained Michael Caulkins’ daughter Tracy to a tree and let her starve to death. Cached her, just like they’ve cached your daughter. Coroner estimates she lasted almost three weeks there, slowly dehydrating and starving. Tracy got so desperate she tried smashing her own foot with a rock to try to get out of the shackle that held her to the tree. If we’re going to find Emily before she meets the same fate, you need to tell us what happened.”
Golden noticed that Gant had begun using the plural — we. He probably wasn’t even aware of it, but she noted the verbal cue anyway. She focused on Sam. His head was down, his shoulders slumped. Not anything like the commanding figure she’d met here two years ago. Children could do that to you, she knew.
Sam raised his head and looked from Gant to her, searching for some sympathy. Golden steeled her face to remain passive. The way she had learned through graduate school in training and in her early practice when she’d worked with patients.
“All right,” Sam finally said. “It wasn’t a chopper accident. They were on a mission into Colombia just over the border from Panama. It got all fucked up. It wasn’t my fault. I tried to help them. But they did get killed.”
Gant was silent and Golden continued to follow his lead, waiting.
“It was a direct action mission,” Sam finally continued. “They were a sniper team seconded out of Seventh Group. Forten was the team leader and sniper. Payne was his spotter and Lutz his security. They were infiltrated into Colombia from Panamanian airspace via HAHO — high altitude, high opening parachute,” he explained with a glance at Golden— “near a village that was a key way-point in moving cocaine over the border. The villagers had contacted both the Colombian government and the DEA that they were willing to accept the substantial aid package offered if they stopped allowing the free trafficking — but part of the deal was taking out the local warlord who ran the drug net. So Forten’s team went in to do that. We knew the warlord was going to strike back at the village once they no longer gave sanctuary to his couriers and we got intelligence when that was going to happen. So the team went in forty-eight hours before that. We figured if we cut off the head, the rest of the organization would fall apart.”
Sam fell silent for a moment and they all could hear the hum of the parking lot lights overhead.
He picked up his story. “They were on site and everything was good. I was on the exfil chopper. We were waiting just over the border. The team reported the warlord and his men coming in to the village as scheduled. I gave them the green light to take out the warlord. Then Forten also reported seeing an American among them. Someone they thought might be a DEA agent from a badge on the man’s belt.
“So per SOP I called it in to the Embassy. Found out that the DEA and the Agency had come up with something new. The DEA had gotten one of their agents to make the warlord think he was playing both sides. And they hoped to use this connection to go further up the food chain and take down a major player, someone much bigger than the warlord.”
“So fuck the villagers,” Gant said and Golden was surprised at the venom in his voice.
Sam wearily nodded. “Yeah. The deal was off. God-damn bureaucratic fuck up. The left hand didn’t know what the right hand was doing. I radioed Forten to abort. Ordered him to abort.” Sam shook his head. “He ignored me. Ignored a direct order. He fired, took out some of the warlord’s men. Their position was compromised and over-run. The word we got back eventually via the CIA was that all three were killed.”
“And you didn’t even try to go in to extract them?”
Sam’s face hardened. “I had my orders. We were not to cross the border. They had their orders. If Forten hadn’t fired, they’d have been able to get out with no trouble. Hell, they could have walked over the damn border.”
“Borders.” Gant nodded. “They killed Caleigh Roberts right on the Alabama-Florida border. I don’t think that was coincidence. They were making a point.”
“They could have walked out if Forten hadn’t fired,” Cranston repeated.
Gant shook his head in obvious disgust. “Who else was involved? They’ve hit you, Caulkins — he was the DEA agent in the camp?”
“I don’t know. Probably.”
“Roberts was the CIA liaison, right?”
Sam nodded.
“Lankin was your pilot?” Gant asked.
“I suppose so,” Sam said.
“Who made the decision to abort? Roberts?”
“I talked to Roberts,” Sam said, “but he was relaying a command from the man who was in charge of all counter-drug operations in theater.”
“And who was that?” Gant pressed.
“A State Department official named Foley. Lewis Foley.”
“Fuck,” Gant said. “Would have been nice to know that earlier.”
“I thought they were all dead,” Sam protested. “It didn’t even occur to me it could be them.”
“Because you took the CIA’s word?”
“Yes, but we lost radio contact with them. And if they’d been captured, it stands to reason
the warlord would have used them as bargaining chips. Or executed them. What the hell did happen to them?”
“Good question,” Gant said. He had his Satphone out. “Anyone else who might be targeted?” he asked as he punched in a speed dial.
Sam held his hands up helplessly. “If it’s them, I don’t know. Foley gave the order to abort because I assume Caulkins was working the warlord. I relayed the order. I guess Lankin was flying the exfil chopper, which I was on. Why would they target him? He was just following orders.”
Gant held up his hand, silencing Sam. “Seems like everyone was just following orders but no one was taking responsibility.” Gant talked into the Satphone when it was answered. “I need to locate Lewis Foley. State Department. A-S-A-P. And the make-up of his immediate family.”
The three stood in silence as they waited on the answer. Golden was surprised to suddenly feel very tired, as the adrenaline rush of the past thirty-some-odd hours wore off. It bothered her to see Sam broken and defeated, but even more so to realize he had been part of this whole mess and that he had lied from the very beginning. And worse, she could sense he still wasn’t telling them the complete truth. And she was uncertain whether she should tell Gant that or if he already knew it as he had known it from the beginning, obviously.
Gant cocked his head listening. Then he spoke: “We need security on Foley and his immediate family ASAP. That is most likely the next target. Who do you have close by, Mister Nero?”
Gant looked surprised at the answer. “Neeley is there?” He listened for a few seconds longer then snapped the phone shut. “Let’s go,” he said to her.
“Wait—“ Sam said
“There’s no more time to stand around talking,” Gant said. He paused. “Unless there’s something else we should know?”
Sam shook his head. “I’ve told you everything. I thought they were dead. I was told they were dead.”
Gant turned to Golden. “We have to get to DC to see Foley. He’s the only one we know that was involved in this whose family hasn’t been hit yet, so there’s a good chance his is next.”