by Rene Fomby
“Yeah. The video. I know all about that.”
Jenkins winked at him conspiratorially as he accepted the beer from his wife. A Lone Star Light, Harry noted. Classy.
“You want one?” Jenkins offered.
Harry shook his head. “No, thanks. Working, you know? But—back to your statement. You said you saw Mr. Rahum bending down, messing with something on the ground, then walking away rather briskly. Immediately after that was the explosion.”
“Yeah, that’s how it went down,” Jenkins said, hesitantly.
“Okay, let me show you that video again.” Harry set his Android tablet down on the small coffee table between them. The screen was angled slightly up, so Jenkins could see it clearly from his seated position. Harry pressed play.
On the screen, Jenkins and another refinery worker were standing together, talking, when Jenkins appeared to shout something out to another worker who was standing quite a distance away from them. Just as they started walking toward each other, suddenly the blast occurred and everything went to hell. Harry shut it off before the smoke cleared, before the video could show all of the dead and mangled bodies. Jenkins’ included.
Jenkins looked up with shaded eyes. “Say, this is the wrong—are you sure you’re one of those refinery lawyers?”
“Actually, Mr. Jenkins, I’m not,” Harry answered. “Nor did I ever say I was. The thing is, sir, I’m looking into the real truth about what happened that day. And I believe the real truth is, those folks from the refinery bald-faced lied to you, and in the process got you to lie for them. Because you and I have just looked at what really happened that day, and Nabil Rahum wasn’t a part of any of it.”
Jenkins tried to rise up, then realized his legs wouldn’t support him. He glanced furtively into the bedroom behind him, where he knew his gun lay on the stand beside the bed. “Carol Ann?” he asked, jerking his head toward the bedroom.
Harry caught the move, and moved quickly himself to head off any stupid behavior on Jenkins’ part. “Sir, before you throw me out of here, I think you need to listen to what I have to say. Listen to the dangerous spot they’ve put you in, and why they did it. Just give me one more minute, and if you still want me to hightail it out of here, I will, and I’ll never darken your door again. Fair enough?”
Jenkins looked up at his wife, who nodded slightly. “Okay, lawyer man, you got one minute. Start talkin’.”
Harry leaned forward. “First of all, making a false statement in a criminal case like this is itself a serious felony. If even I figured all this out so quickly, then other people are going to make that connection, too, folks a whole lot smarter than you or I. So if you don’t come clean as to what really happened between you and those refinery lawyers, the feds are going to wind up putting you away for a long, long time. And any money you’ve been paid to lie about all this is legally forfeit, so you’re be going to be plopped down in that jail for decades with not a cent to your name.”
Jenkins and his wife shared a worried look as Harry continued.
“Now, I wasn’t there, but I bet they told you that your testimony wasn’t all that important, it was just the icing on the cake to put that raghead A-rab terrorist away for life, like he should be. For killing all those good people, and leaving folks like you behind, ruined for life.”
Jenkins was slowly nodding his head, as was his wife, now standing right behind him, her hands tightly gripping the back of the wheelchair.
“And I bet they also told you that your statement would let them pin everything on him quicker, so they could get the insurance money out to everyone as soon as possible. By God, all those families with dead or crippled husbands, they needed that insurance money right away, didn’t they?”
“And that’s just what they did. They got me my money right away.” He hesitated, slowly thinking it through. Which for him was a tougher job than most. “Or at least they got me half of it.”
“Right. Half up front, half when they’re certain you’ve behaved, done what you were told. But did you ever bother to check on whether they sent any money to the other families? On whether anyone other than you ever got a dime of that money?”
“No.” He looked up at his wife for support. “They made me sign a paper sayin’ I wouldn’t talk to nobody about this, or they’d take back my money. So I guess that means I shouldn’t be talkin’ to you! An’ your minute’s up.”
“That was what we call a nondisclosure agreement,” Harry explained, now rising slowly off the couch. “And it’s invalid. You can’t pay someone to keep silent about committing a felony.” Harry leaned down and retrieved his tablet, trying to draw his one minute out just a little bit longer. “But if you had called any of your friends, I think you’d have found that you were the only person involved in that blast that ever received a single penny from the refinery. Or their insurance.”
“Yer lyin’! They promised!”
“I’m sure they did,” Harry agreed. “But let’s just check it out, shall we?” He pointed toward a cell phone that he had noticed earlier, perched on the edge of the yellowed kitchen counter. “Mrs. Jenkins, I’ll bet you have the phone numbers for some of the other refinery wives sitting right there in that little cell phone. Am I right?”
She looked to her husband for confirmation, and he nodded.
“Go head on, Carol Ann. If what this feller’s sayin’ is true, then it changes everything around here.”
Harry waited patiently as she dialed the first number.
“Lorene, this here’s Carol Ann. You got a minute?”
After a short conversation back and forth, Carol Ann hung up. “Well, Clay, it’s like this man says. The refinery told Tommy—and everyone else— that the insurance people weren’t gonna pay them anything, on account a it were because of God or something like that. So the refinery picked up some of the medical bills, but nothing else. And a few of the guys, they tried to git themselves a lawyer, but they got told there was a fat chance in hell they’d ever see a dime for any of it. And then the refinery fired them for looking into it.”
“An act of God,” Harry explained. “Or war. Something they couldn’t control, so it wasn’t their fault. And that means they can’t be held liable for the blast.”
Jenkins was staring long and hard at his can of beer, and now he slowly crushed it in his right hand. “Mother f—”
“Yeah, you can say that again.” Harry sat back down on the couch, the critical moment in their conversation now well behind them. “So here’s how it all went down, from their perspective. If the blast had been their fault, due to some mistake or a lack of proper maintenance, then the refinery would have been on the hook for a major payout. A few million each to the families of everybody that got killed, more for people like you who will have to live with their injuries the rest of their lives—”
“Doctor says there’s a chance I might walk again someday, but I see it in his eyes—” Jenkins seemed to crumble a little, all of his previous false bravado now gone.
Harry nodded sympathetically. “Yeah. I got you. And you’re just one case out of many dozens. A whole lot of your buddies got mangled for life on that day, and now they’ll probably have no way of ever working again. They can’t even cover their medical bills.”
A short silence hung between them, when suddenly Jenkins spoke up. “Wait—you said the dead folks would get a few million, and that I would get even more?”
“I’m pretty sure that’s how it would all pan out in the end. Maybe a great deal more, now that they’ve been caught up in this great big lie, in this blatant fraud.”
“But those sons-a-bitches only gave me two hunerd thousand, plus some of my bills. And so far I’ve only seen a hunerd of that—”
Harry laughed, but not because he thought that was funny. “So where is the real crime now, Mr. Jenkins? Those slick big-city lawyers played you and your wife for fools …”
“Yer right, we were stupid fools, believin’ a word of what they said.” Jenkins paused t
o rub the top of his head. “So what do we do now, Mr. Lawyer Man? Are we just screwed now, because of my dumb ass? Am I gonna wind up in Huntsville prison for signing that statement?”
“No, Mr. Jenkins, you are most certainly not screwed, not now. As for your statement, as long as you are willing to step forward now with the unabashed truth, not only about what happened at the refinery but also what happened with their lawyers right afterward, I’m almost one hundred percent certain I can make all the criminal charges go away.”
“Whew!” Jenkins looked up at his wife, who gently squeezed his shoulder. “If you can do that for me, for us, Mr.—”
“Crawford,” Harry answered.
“If you can do that for us, Mr. Crawford, I’d be eternally grateful.”
“We both would,” Carol Ann chimed in.
“Okay, then, let me get started on that.” Harry headed toward the door, stopping with one hand on the handle, looking back. “In the meantime, you guys might think about getting hooked up with a lawyer to handle the payouts the refinery has been trying to cheat everyone out of. I can send you a list of names to start with.”
Jenkins rolled himself into the kitchen and held up his right hand. “Mr. Crawford, you seem to have done right by us, regardless of what I thought about you when you first come in. You get me out of hot water with the DA’s office, and you got our business. Purty sure you got everyone’s business.”
Harry smiled as he returned the handshake, and he couldn’t help but automatically start to add up the numbers in his head. But that could wait for later. “First things first, Mr. Jenkins. And I’m still going to get that list of names out to you. It’s only fair.”
He opened the door, then stopped, and looked back one last time. “My dear old daddy had one major rule he lived by his entire life. Do right by everyone you meet, and God will do right by you. I’m just glad you decided to do right by Nabil Rahum. He’s a good kid, and as much as the refinery lawyers tried to screw around with you and all your friends, they tried to take his very life away for nothing more than a few measly dollars. They were scheming to have him killed just so they could keep all the money they rightfully owed to you. That tain’t right, Mr. Jenkins. That tain’t right. And now I’m fixing to make them pay.”
95
USS Carl Vinson
The operations room of the aircraft carrier was packed with bodies. Jack and three other team commanders were huddled over a table with Bob Sanders, Gavin and the ship’s captain, Everett Dawkins, plotting out the final details of the assault. Spread out in front of them were several large maps, including blowups of the satellite images of the target area Sanders had obtained from his military intelligence team.
Jack laid out two of the satellite images side-by-side and was sketching out the assault parameters with his right index finger.
“Boy, howdy, look at all this. It looks like they’re expecting World War III out there any minute. I’m reading armor at every exit point, flanked by what looks like fifty mil machine guns. Somebody would really have to hate their sorry life in a big way to go knocking on that door.”
“Roger on that,” Alpha Leader agreed. “We’d get cut to pieces in the crossfire before we even got close. So, what’s our second option?”
“Luckily for us, their security arrangements are absolutely airtight. Except where they aren’t.” Jack looked up and smiled. “It sorta reminds me of something my pappy told me after someone stole his shotgun, and just after he’d blistered my backside for letting it happen in the first place.”
“Yeah, chief? What was that?” Charlie Leader asked.
“Why bother locking the front door when you’ve left the back door wide open?” Jack pointed to a barely-visible line on the map, stretching southward from the underground complex to something that just looked like a big shadow. “I’m willing to bet my next paycheck that this is a secret escape tunnel, just in case someone does make it past the valet at the front door. See this?” He pointed out another line on the map, much smaller in diameter. “This is what the original cave dwellers used to use, tiny little tunnels you had to stay bent over the whole time to get through. But if I wanted to make sure I could get the hell out of Dodge at the drop of a hat, I’d build me a tunnel like the popes did back in Rome. Equipped with some form of high-speed transportation.”
Alpha Leader leaned in closer to get a better look at the tunnel. “I don’t know. How can we be sure this is even a tunnel, or that we can get access to it from either end?”
Jack shrugged. “We don’t. It’s just a guess at this point, until we actually get our butts down there to take a look. But do you see any better alternative?”
The three team leaders picked up the satellite maps and passed them around for closer inspection. After several minutes they laid them back down on the table. Bravo Leader voiced what had become obvious to all of them. “Everything’s a risk in these low-intel missions, but I’d agree that the tunnel looks like our best bet. If we’re wrong, and that turns out to be a dead end, we can always pull back to the ship and come up with another plan.”
Jack nodded, picking up the blowup of the tunnel and turning it around so everyone could see it. “The problem is, Sanders and I have been all over these maps, and there simply isn’t a Plan B here. Every other alternative either gets us all killed or gives them too much of a heads up before we go in. And we all know what that would mean to the mission. Our chances of success at that point would drop into the single digits. So the tunnel’s our only shot. If that doesn’t work, we pull out entirely and meet back here to sketch out our next steps. Clear?”
All three team leaders nodded their agreement. There simply wasn’t any way to make a clandestine entry into the underground complex other than through the escape tunnel.
“Okay, then, here’s the ops plan Sanders and I worked out this morning on the plane ride over. We’ll be using modified military versions of the Vertical Take Off and Landing vehicles Rolls-Royce developed for air taxis, code named Black Gnats. Never been used before in an actual mission, but there’s always a first time for everything, you know? Alpha Team will go in first, rappelling off the Gnats into the conflict zone, where they will neutralize any unfriendlies they encounter. By the way, unlike the last mission, Sanders has authorized gloves and safeties off. Take down anyone you need to, leave no witnesses behind to tell their tall tales. Got that?”
Everyone around the room nodded.
“All right, once the conflict zone is clear, I will lead Bravo and Charlie Teams into the tunnel on our night cycles. Alpha will stay behind to protect our civilians—” he looked pointedly at Gavin and Bob Sanders “—while the rest of us move to forward positions. Alpha, I want to make it crystal clear that Sanders is to be protected at all costs. The pilots will be standing by with their VTOLS running. At any sign of trouble, any sign at all, your orders are to get Sanders out of there on the double. That order comes from the highest possible level, so don’t listen to any crap he might lay down about outranking you. Understood?”
Alpha Leader responded with a thumbs up, while Sanders stood back and scowled. Bravo Leader spoke up. “Why bring them at all? Wouldn’t that make all our jobs a whole lot easier?”
Jack noticed the nodding heads around the room. “It would, except for two things. First, Sanders has operational control over this mission, so we need to make sure we keep in constant contact with him. We’ll be jamming radar and most of the radio frequencies in this part of Turkey throughout the mission, to keep the Turks off balance and out of our hair, but we can’t be certain what that might do to our secure connection back to the carrier. Particularly with this storm raging. So that means we need to keep Sanders close, as long as we can guarantee his safety.”
“All right, but what about the FBI agent?” Alpha Leader suggested. “He’s just dead weight, as far as I can see.” He glanced over at Gavin Larson. “No offense, bro.”
“None taken,” Gavin answered with a flat expression.
/> Jack cleared his throat. “We don’t have time for this, ladies. Sanders says the agent goes in with him to rescue his partner, and that’s it. Besides, it’s just as easy to protect one civilian as it is two, unless someone here thinks they’re not up to the challenge?” He looked around the room, but not a single commando spoke up. “Okay, then, now that that’s out of the way, let’s get back to the plan. Once we’re inside the tunnel, Bravo and Charlie will proceed to here—” He poked at a spot on the map. “That’s our last chance to finalize our plan of attack and make a go-or-no-go decision before we hit the entrance at the other end of the tunnel. Of course, if shit goes down before then, it’s every man for himself. Everyone clear?
“Clear as a cold spring rain,” Charlie Leader answered.
“Good. Now, our mission parameters are going to be very similar to the Osama Bin Laden raid, with one exception. With Bin Laden, our only two mission objectives were to grab the bad guy—dead or alive—and then try to preserve any useful intel as we bugged out, stuff for the lab rats to study later. Same plan here, except that we have a new number one objective—locate the missing federal agent and get her the hell out of there. After that, if we can find William Tulley and his daughter, great, and Peter Boucher would be a bonus round. But listen up, all that being said, this area right here appears to be the computer center for the entire complex.”
He drew a circle around a small square area filled with rows of even smaller squares on a zoomed-in satellite map of the complex.
“We can assume everything important about Tulley’s entire operation is stored on those servers, so as soon as we enter the complex, I want Charlie Team to secure that room, and prevent anyone from destroying those machines. Hopefully, if those are blade servers, you can pull the drives and store them in your packs. If any of you wind up having to set off some minor charges to seal the place up, I can live with that, under two conditions. First, remember that we are way the fuck underground with soil conditions that are highly unstable, so it’s very likely that any decent-sized explosion will bring the whole damn kit and kaboodle crashing down upon our heads. And that would really piss Sanders off, because then we won’t be able to accomplish mission objective number one. And if Sanders gets pissed off, you can forget about a proper military burial when and if they ever recover our remains. And that means your wives and girlfriends won’t get a cent of the widow’s pensions and hazard pay that would otherwise be due them. Got it?”