Reload

by David McCaleb

  Carter removed the top bun of his sandwich and shook blood-red ketchup onto it. He took a bite and chewed slowly. “More than you want to give.”

  “Name it.”

  Carter leaned in. The scent of some designer cologne mixed with tomatoes. “You know the Senate hearings on FBI’s handling of that terrorist cell up in New York?”

  “Think so. That investigation they just announced? Some terrorists were killed after being apprehended upstate. Happened five years ago.”

  Carter took another bite. His eyes focused on the distance. “They’ve given it a name. Marble Hill Madmen. The terrorists were in Marble Hill. We were the madmen. Came right before I left the bureau. After they’d caught those guys in New York City, I was called to the action center. Intel said an imminent threat existed. I was told to use whatever means necessary to extract the info. It was a tactical interrogation—perishable information. If we got it a day too late, it would be another 9/11.” Carter turned to Red again. “That’s what they thought, at least. What’s the greater good? If we had to kill a couple terror suspects to save a thousand Americans, that’s a no-brainer. I was in Marble Hill one day only. I want my name out of that report.”

  “Hasn’t it been subpoenaed?”

  “Not the one I’m in. But once the hearings start, they’ll know more of what to ask for. It’ll be required eventually.”

  Red rubbed his eyes. “I don’t know, Carter. We just use intel. We don’t manipulate it.”

  “Yeah, you don’t do anything outside your jurisdiction. And you’re not here trying to hire me with government funds for personal reasons. I don’t want the report manipulated. I want it gone, lost, stolen, burned, whatever.”

  “If they find out what I did, I’d be...” Red sighed. “What’d you do?”

  Carter chewed slowly, then swallowed hard. “I got the information.”

  “And...”

  “Two died from injuries, but the other two talked. Only problem is they weren’t anywhere near as far along as intel thought. Those guys couldn’t have put together a dirty bomb even if they were standing in the middle of Radford, Virginia.”

  What the hell? If Red did nothing, his family lived in fear. If he started his own investigation with Carter, he’d be breaking a hundred military regulations and misappropriating funds. Now he was considering using his connections to deliberately destroy evidence that related to a US Senate hearing case. Even worse, he knew exactly who would know where the evidence was stored and how to erase it. But if caught, his kids would grow up while he rotted in a jail cell. This was madness. How far was he willing to go? “Shit, Carter. This could be my ass.”

  The detective’s eyebrows lifted and he coughed into a napkin. “Don’t go out of your way or anything. It’s not like you owe me.”

  “Carter, it’s just—”

  “Oh, and my rate’s two fifty an hour.”

  “Two fifty!”

  “An hour. I got a mortgage that I want out from under before I retire...again.”

  Red pushed his plate away. The CIA had advised Higher there was no actionable threat against his family. Higher was the name given to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the same organization that had spoken the Det into existence almost a decade earlier. All Det taskings were cleared through them. He was uncertain exactly who was included in the term “Higher,” but all communication flowed through the vice chair.

  The tall waitress came back through the kitchen doors and lifted his plate, then wiped down the counter again, cloth scented with a disinfectant. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing. He’d have something on Carter, and Carter would have something on him. Both would have motivation to toe the line. That was only fair, wasn’t it? Red breathed deep and held out his hand. “OK. I’ll do it. Deal.”

  They shook. Carter’s grip was a vise. His smile seemed to glisten with menace. The same one Red had seen while witnessing Carter during an interrogation. The detective wiped his mouth and stood, then pulled out a phone and tapped it. “I’m on the clock as of now. You’re coming with me.”

  “Now? I gotta get back to the Det. Why don’t you just call when you need something?”

  “Because we’re going to interrogate our first suspect.”

  “Who?”

  Carter’s words were stone. “Your wife.”

  Chapter 5 – Letting Go

  North Korea

  As the Kozlik topped the hill’s crest, a bitter western breeze clawed through the passenger window. Staff Sergeant Ko Chung Ho peered across the edge of the glass, which was rolled up to his nose. A short valley of calf-deep snow lay below, its smooth surface covering jagged rocks, pine stumps, and green sheets of moss, musty and moist in warmer months. The Yalu River, the homeland’s northern border with China, lay frozen only a half kilometer away. His cheek stung with the welcome cold, but Ko shivered instead at a whiff of spruce and the memory of decaying pine needles falling down his shirt, sticking to his sweaty belly.

  He smiled. Funny how smells evoke past emotions, associations, even events forgotten. How many years ago had that exercise been—eight? It wasn’t this same valley, but one like it, maybe fifty klicks south, and then a sweltering 33 degrees centigrade. His infantry corps had been running small-unit maneuvers. The drillmaster had them low-crawling up a bluff, shaded by spruce, a thick bed of undisturbed needles prickling his forearms.

  “Stay low!” the drillmaster had yelled, rapping the back of Ko’s helmet with a heel, driving it into the earth, its rim gouging through a woven blanket of dried needles. Black dirt lay beneath, and a centipede wriggled near his nose. “Stick your head up and a faggoted boseul-achi will drill one through your skull.”

  Even while maneuvering in the northernmost part of the homeland, soldiers set their teeth perpetually against the south.

  Ko inhaled frozen winter air and squinted at a bright, waxing gibbous moon, then back to the valley where tops of evergreen perforated the smooth white cover of snow like miniature darkened guard towers across the valley.

  The nose of the Kozlik dipped and the engine spun higher. He tapped the driver’s shoulder. “Slow down. Ruts are underneath.” The washouts were still unrepaired from last spring’s thaw, or maybe the year before that. “Hit one hard enough and you’ll break the axle.”

  The corporal bobbed his head. “Yes, Sangsa.”

  Ko lifted his chin at the mention of his rank. He turned back to the window and concentrated once again on the frozen landscape. “Snow’s only two days old. Look for tracks. They try to cross in valleys like this.”

  When the driver’s side wheel dropped hard, Ko gripped the dash in anticipation. A second later his side sank, and for a blink he lifted in his seat before the wheels slammed the bottom of a hidden rut. The engine strained, throttle open to pull the jeep through. Spinning tires threw white handfuls of snow streaked in deep brown by the windows. They settled behind the truck like the foaming wake churned by his father’s fish boat. The jeep settled and resumed downhill.

  “Better, but less gas. Don’t spin the wheels. If we’d been going uphill, we’d be stuck now.”

  “Yes, Sangsa.”

  The corporal was progressing well, even Ko had to admit, despite the driver oversleeping his first morning and backing a jeep into a pine tree as thick as any the earth could produce. The man had even claimed he’d not seen it. How the hell could you miss a trunk that big?

  Ko suppressed a snicker. He’d been just as naive on his first assignment. In the week since the accident, his disgust had ebbed. The corporal’s eagerness to please had sprouted respect through frozen ground.

  These rotations to border patrol were all too often now, done to reduce corruption—or so Ko was told—and the possibility of refugee brokers forging relationships with his guards. It seemed every time he trained a new one, they were rotated out. This corporal would be gone in a few months.

&nbs
p; The Kozlik leveled. Ko looked up at towering green-and-white guard towers—spruce rampant against a speckled night sky. Maybe one of the stars was his father, watching restfully from the afterlife. He’d be proud of Ko now, wouldn’t he? A sangsa, a staff sergeant in the world’s fiercest army.

  Yes, the fiercest, though his sister had implied differently. Ko bit his lip. He’d put her in her place, though, and she never mentioned again what the drunken news officer babbled in her bed.

  Ko taped the dash.

  “Sangsa?” The brakes grated as the jeep stopped.

  “Got to pee.” When Ko opened the door, the snow was to the jamb. He planted his soles atop the frozen crust, which for a second appeared to support him, but then it splintered with a crrrch and he sunk to his knees. Ice crystals were shoved deep into the back of his boots as he pulled his legs from the frozen holes, lifting his knees high, trudging to create new ones a half meter ahead. Once he’d lost his shoe as a kid in a similar trap, the rubber sole having been held fast by sucking mud as he pushed his father’s boat from soft grass flats. Abeoji’s back had arched, straining against the heavy load, veins bulging from his wiry forearms. Ko had added his own strength and the vessel launched into shallow waters.

  Now, Ko pushed only himself across a flat of white snow. He stepped behind the nearest spruce, head slapping a low branch weighed by frozen crystals that dropped down the back of his jacket. He unbuttoned his fly, searching frantically in the merciless cold for the purpose of this brief reprieve. He stabbed at his member with gloved fingers, but couldn’t grasp it with their bulk. At last he stuck a finger into his mouth and bit down on leather, yanking off the glove. Open to the air, his fingertips were instantly numbed.

  He heaved a sigh and pitched his head back as the hot piss melted a neat yellow hole in the snow crust. A short plume of steam rose from it, disappearing at eye level. The Yalu River murmured a hushed melody somewhere beyond the trees, its percussion the occasional crack of breaking ice. He stared at a bare rock a few paces away, then turned toward the headlights and started to button his fly. His eyes adjusted to the dark. He could see the buttons now, working them slowly with one gloved hand. One free.

  The last one stubbornly resisted.

  Ko frowned. Why didn’t the one gray rock have snow on it? Keeping his head low, he pretended to fumble again with his fly, lifting only his eyes. In a single motion he unsnapped his holster and raised a TT-30 toward the rock. Two limbs grew from its side. Slowly a man stood, arms raised.

  Ko cocked the weapon. He had just opened his mouth to speak when more limbs grew from a snow mound a few meters away. Another figure stood, arms up in surrender. Maybe a woman, by her height. Ko squinted around. Several other mounds were scattered in the open patch among the trees. He smiled broadly. The last time he had turned in a defector he’d been rewarded with university for his daughter. There were at least six here. He might even be able to—

  A baby cried a birdlike wail, and one of the figures stooped. He swung his pistol at the commotion and his trigger finger, never able to feel cold due to severed nerves from an old wound, sensed only pressure against the metal. But he held his fire. The person rose slowly again, one arm raised, another cradling a bundled blanket emanating a muffled cry. Ko discerned the gaunt face of a woman. Despite the dark and their layered winter rags, their thin frames and sunken faces demonstrated the extent of their malnourishment.

  Ko turned toward the jeep, pistol still aimed at the defectors. A frozen exhaust cloud covered the rear half, thicker than even the morning fog in spring that had always hung low over the water near Ka-Do where his father had taught him to use a trotline.

  “How do you know where to go?” a young Ko had asked.

  “I follow the compass,” Abeoji said, pointing at a plastic-domed instrument bolted to the gunwale. “When the fog lifts, you’ll see we’re close.”

  It was the peak of winter now, and most peasants were already half-starved in the homeland. He couldn’t truly blame them for this disloyalty. They were just trying to feed themselves and their children. Ko had briefly considered defecting himself, back when his daughter’s injured hand started to turn gangrenous and he could obtain no aid for her. And now surely the corporal had not heard the cry of the baby above the jeep’s rumbling engine.

  If he let these ragtag defectors go, they’d have to make it across the homeland’s fence. Only two meters high, of course. A broker had probably already cut a way through. But there’s another, higher fence along China’s side. If they don’t die of exposure, they’ll have to hide for weeks from the Chinese authorities as they creep painfully toward Thailand. The women will be targeted for the sex trade. Even worse in Thailand. But he’d heard rumors the Thai government is known to arrange transport to Seoul for refugees that make it into their borders.

  Ko had never told his daughter the truth about why she could suddenly attend university. Looking at these bony faces now, his belly soured. If he turned them in, they’d die in a labor camp. If he let them go, there was a small chance they’d live. And he wouldn’t have to lie to his daughter again.

  He rubbed the trigger back and forth with his deadened finger. Always numb from the cut that had saved his daughter’s life.

  He uncocked the weapon.

  “I see nothing but rocks,” he said. Then turned and trudged back to the waiting jeep, pulling on a stiff leather glove, eyes lifted to the sky.

  Chapter 6 – Realignment

  September 1952, Fanchang, China

  One of Zhāng Dàwe’s eyes opened to a slit against the glare of morning sun, then closed again. His sleep-heavy mind wondered why it was already light. Must be dreaming. He rolled to the opposite shoulder and sighed. The welcome scent of fresh hay pressed from the mattress eased him back to sleep, despite a full bladder screaming for relief.

  Through the window came muffled thuds. His brothers were stacking bags of rice in the barn. Faintly, his mind recognized this, though harvest had not yet begun. Maybe a land renter was delivering grain for payment. He cracked an eye again. It was bright, the brilliance of morning. Why hadn’t anyone woken him? Papa would whip him sore. Fear tightened his belly. He jumped to calloused bare feet, stepping over cool, clean straw as he ran past his brothers’ empty cots out of the bedroom. He bounded through a deserted kitchen, the small black woodstove still radiating warmth. The thick, weathered, outside door was already propped open.

  “I’m sorry. So sorry!” he pleaded, blinded by a sun risen to a height that meant he’d overslept by at least an hour. Another bag of rice thudded onto a stack, but the sounds seemed to come from the front of the ancient pine storehouse. A cow lowed nearby. Blinking, still blinded, Zhāng held up a flat-bladed hand to shade his eyes. A group of dirty renters were gathered in a circle in front of the barn. His uncle stood among them. What was that snake doing here? Father had said quite plainly what he’d do if he ever showed up again.

  Zhāng shouldered past dirt-caked thighs, pushing toward the middle. He jostled through an opening. In the center of the throng stood two men, younger than Tabor, Zhāng’s eldest brother. Both wore green uniforms the shade of a rice field ripe for harvest. One hefted a long rifle aloft and shouted at the crowd. The other kept his weapon slung over a shoulder.

  “Who else has grievance with this man?” the first demanded. “Who else has been wronged?” He pointed down toward...Papa! Zhāng’s father was on his knees, bowing his face to the dust at the feet of the crowd, as if at the temple.

  Zhāng rushed toward him but was jerked to a halt so hard his feet left the ground. Someone had snatched him back inside the line of people. Strong fingers clamped over his lips and squeezed. “Don’t, little bug.”

  The voice was Tabor’s. His eyes shone with wetness and fear. The same eyes that only last week were red with rage as he’d chased a lone Tibetan wolf away from the chicken coop, waving only a hand sickle. Even as it had l
oped away, the wolf seemed to laugh at him, trotting with a bloodied muzzle, carrying the carcass of their bird. “Go back inside.”

  “No!” Zhāng wriggled down, but his brother’s grip was fast. Only seven years old, Zhāng possessed the will, but not the strength to resist. “Let me go.”

  “Obey, little bug! Or I’ll beat you myself.” The words sounded harsh, but his brother’s expression betrayed his lack of sincerity. “Papa said not to interfere,” he pleaded.

  Zhāng caught the flash of a green pant leg. One of the uniformed men kicked Papa in the ribs. Another sack of rice thudded down.

  “This struggle meeting is for all of you! Have no more fear of this man. He can oppress you no longer. Surely someone else has grievance.”

  Uncle Snake stepped from the circle. The viper who had inherited twice as much land as Papa, Zhāng had been told, and yet the sloth couldn’t manage it. The year Zhāng had been born, Papa had borrowed much from the Chans, a greedy family tearing as briars against their own, in order to buy Uncle’s land and keep it in the family. Seven long years they’d struggled to pay off that loan, with even Zhāng having given the strength of his own young back, to keep the Chans from calling the debt and claiming the land.

  His uncle raised a fist to the sky. “This man stole my land for himself! He forced me to sell against my will. He oppresses renters and molests their daughters. I have seen it with my own eyes. He is no brother of mine!”

  A low oohhh rose from some in the crowd, angry cries from others, as if they were onlookers at a bloody cockfight. Uncle Snake spat on Papa’s neck and slapped his ears.

  “Again!” the young soldier shouted, waving the rifle over his head, turning and glaring at the crowd. “You have struggled against this man. Fulfill your destiny now. Justice! He must pay, and you must learn to overcome. You are no longer weak and powerless.”

  Uncle Snake spit and kicked Papa more, each blow as deep and muffled as a ten-kilo bag of rice dropping to the floor, the gusts of breath being forced out of his father’s chest. Dust rose from the earth with each flashing strike, settling onto his back and neck. How could the snake lie so flagrantly in front of Tabor? Papa was a just and fair owner, even delaying the collection of rent payments from farmers whose crops suffered. Why weren’t Zhāng’s brothers shielding Papa? It must be they feared the soldiers. Yes, they were protecting the serpent. These men were even more wicked than he.