First Citizen

by Thomas T. Thomas

  That was a fuzzy old bit of radio protocol, as out of date as Samuel F. B. Morse himself, but with Carlotta Corbin, I played by the numbers. Never cared much for her. Probably because she did not like soldiers, or Indians, or me, and she showed it. I return the love they give me—my choice, right?

  “Thank you, Colonel. Can you hear me now, over?”

  “Five by. What can I do for you? Over.”

  “They’ve taken Gran.”

  Two, three, four … “Who has? And where have they taken him?”

  “I don’t know. Nobody will say. He just disappeared one night in Baltimore. And then we got a ransom note—with an ear in it.”

  That last part was broken up with what might be either her sobs or dropouts in the downlink. I would bet on the link. Carlotta felt about Gran the same way the owner of a winning horse feels. If she was sorry about the ear, it was because without it he was no good on video.

  “Are you sure it was Gran’s ear?”

  “Well of course it was—! What do you mean?”

  “Just that, a couple of hours after being cut off, you might not be able to tell your own ear from a dead baboon’s. It could be anybody’s ear. So stop having hysterics. … Over.”

  “I wasn’t having hysterics.”

  Three, four … “How much was the ransom for?”

  “Five—five hundred million.”

  “Can you raise it?”

  “I don’t think so. To get that kind of money out, Gran would have to sign a lot of paperwork. I don’t have the power.”

  Good! Smart man, our Granny. Keep her hands off the big chunks. But to her I said: “All right. A demand that high—they are not going to deal anyway. Just stalling. We have to find out why. Over.”

  “What should I do?”

  “Wait for me. I will come north with some tough friends. Where are you, Baltimore?”

  “No, home in Vegas. Come quickly. I don’t want to get another ear, or worse.”

  “On my way. Good-bye and clear.”

  “Good-bye.”

  Three, four … “Say ‘clear,’ Carlotta.”

  “Yes, that’s—clear.”

  Close enough.

  I left a captain in charge at Chichen-Itza and flew back to our base. First thing, I looked up Mike Alcott. He had just returned with a mixed company on a training exercise. His face and uniform were colored with sweat and red dust. I pulled him right out of the debriefing anyway, ducked us into an empty office, and explained Carlotta’s call to him.

  Mike whistled. “You’re actually thinking of taking half a battalion back to the States?”

  “No, two platoons, and without air support.” That was about seventy troops.

  “Do you want to slow down and give that some thought?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Title Twelve, for starters,” he said, referring to a section of the Gentlemen Volunteers enabling legislation. “You can be court-martialed—not some pantomime in the bush by Gran, but the real thing, ordered by Congress—for ‘maintaining an armed presence’ north of the Rio Grande. We can travel to the States—the Old Fifty—as civilians. We can ship weapons, munitions, and supplies there under bond. But you go back with the ordnance in your hands and they’ll swing you. Those are standing orders, Billy. Gran’s, too.”

  “I think we can get in and out unseen. Go the cocaine route through the bayous. Dressed in civvies and with the ordnance in crates. Once on dry land, we can buy a bus and head north. Or something.”

  “What about police involvement, during and after the action?”

  “Then we just have to keep an ‘armed distance’ from everyone until Gran is safe.”

  “Planning to take passports, idents, anything?”

  “I will think about that,” I said. “Not having them kind of burns the bridges for everyone. … We end up as foreign terrorists, that way.”

  “Wouldn’t it be simpler just to pay the ransom?”

  “If that would get him back, yes. Personally, I think the ransom is just a stall. They want Corbin for another reason. Maybe to kill him. Or to brainwash him. No way to know until we get in there.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “First, keep up the same level of activity here. Maybe increase it. So any audit team coming through has no reason to suspect part of the division is out of country.

  “Second, loan me your best intelligence operative. Preferably one with a police detective or investigative background. It would help, also, if he knew the Baltimore area.”

  “I’ll give you Randell,” Alcott said. “Born there and spent three years on the police force—but uniform, not plainclothes. Does that count?”

  “He any good?”

  “She. Robbi Randell. Yeah, good as I’ve got.”

  “Then brief her while I pick the action teams and find some crates big enough for our 110-millimeter rockets.”

  “Anyone catch you with those, you’re cooked for sure. What do you want ’em for?”

  “We may have to blow a few doors.”

  The team prepared in secret and left Mexico by charter plane two days later. Taking a fishing boat across the Gulf and in through the bayou country would have been too slow. Instead we flew hard-ass in the world’s oldest DC-10, which had been converted to long-distance freight hauling around the Caribbean sometime before the Nicaraguan War. The inside looked like a beer can that had been housing chickens. One engine would not stay in synch but warbled all over the scale like a drunken Paiute. Our pilot-owner, Poco Pete, insisted, “She fly good, no problem.”

  For the sake of Tampa Air Traffic Control, we were shown as miscellaneous cargo and machine parts out of Merida. For the sake of U.S. Customs, we developed “engine trouble” somewhere over South Carolina and made an “emergency landing” at the Calhoun County Airport. Four trailer trucks were waiting there, by prearrangement with Carlotta, to make a transfer—loading on real “general cargo,” including matching parts, in exchange for men and materiel—before a flying squad from Customs could arrive and seal the plane.

  We changed the trucks’ markings and plates before crossing the county line. Carlotta was waiting for us at a farmhouse she and Gran kept outside Loch Raven, Maryland. I bedded down our troops in the barn and then took Randell and my second in command in to see the lady.

  Jumpy as a cat, Carlotta leaped off the sofa and came over to us. She was decked out in some kind of satin afternoon dress, like this was going to be a tea party. It occurs to me now: She must have been watching from the window as the men and weapons unloaded, gone to sit down—elegantly—for our entrance, and then been unable to hold the pose. She really was nervous.

  “Have you found Gran yet?”

  “Slow down, Carlotta. We just got here.”

  “But you brought soldiers.”

  “We need them no matter what we find,” I said reasonably. “This is my second, Lieutenant Larry Stalk, who I think you met in Merida. And our intelligence expert, Corporal Randell.”

  “Charmed,” Carlotta said at ten below.

  Robbi Randell was petite, black, and tough as Tyvek paper. She was dressed for hard travel in high-top motorcycle boots, pink denims with a grease smear across the seat, and a pearl-gray pullover sweater. Even wearing civvies, she walked like a soldier—or a cop. She took the three-fingered handshake Carlotta offered her and acted polite over it.

  “Do you have the ransom note here?” Robbi asked. “And the ear?”

  Carlotta looked startled for a second, then went to her desk. She took a folded and refolded piece of paper out of her handbag. From a bottom drawer she took a sealed plastic bag with a blackened scrap in it. Randell accepted them both. She stared for two seconds at the ear, set it aside, and focused her attention on the letter. She was quiet for several minutes.

  “It would have been better,” Randell said at last, “if you had kept the letter in the baggie and the ear in the open air. The paper’s been so handled we’ll never get fingerprints, an
d I can’t even find a watermark or tell much about the fiber structure. It’s definitely cellulose, not rag. And I’d guess it’s sulfate process, but that’s about all.

  “Using word fragments out of newspapers is a corny old trick—easier to pull off when there were more papers and less screentext. The idea was to hide the sender’s identity. But scraps like these give us a lot more clues to go on than just using a new laser printer would. If we had a dozen tireless clerks—or two months with just me—we could scan and trace the fragments through media from all over to find out when this was put together and where. I’ll short-cut all that by guessing the when was after they took the general, the where is somewhere around Baltimore. Half this stuff looks like the Sun’s print edition and adwork. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re holding him here. Be a lot better if we could lift prints from this.”

  “But where would we go to match them?” I asked. “We are not officially in this country. And we would have no legal standing if we were. … What about the ear?”

  “It’s definitely starting to rot,” Randell said, “which makes identification harder.” She picked up the bag again and stared into it, kneading the scrap gently with her fingers. “No doubt that it’s a real ear and not a piece of leather or some other skin. I can feel the cartilage. It’s probably human—they’re easier to find around here than, say, chimpanzees or baboons. If I had a gas chromatograph with me, I’d run some of this residual liquid through. Bet we’d find traces of embalming fluid.”

  “This is a dead person’s ear?” I asked.

  “Easiest kind to get. It’s hard to find volunteers in your own cadre who’ll give up an ear for authenticity. And if you go around maiming innocent bystanders, it gets into the media and spoils your story.”

  “But this ear is definitely not the General’s?”

  “No. His lobes are longer.”

  Carlotta let out a sigh. “Thank God for that!”

  “So what do we know?” I asked the corporal.

  “That General Corbin is probably not hurt,” Randell said. “Though he may be dead. And they could be holding him anywhere in the country.”

  “Is that what you would do—take him out of the area?” I asked her. “Be difficult to buy a pair of plane tickets and march him down the jetway at gunpoint.”

  “Of course you could. Masquerade as a State’s marshal with a prisoner. Or a doctor with a comatose patient. But look, speculating like this is useless. You want answers, you got to ask questions.”

  “Where do we start?”

  Randell looked over at Carlotta, who seemed to be listening to other music. “When was the last time he was seen?”

  “Thursday night. Leaving the New Rotunda. By car.”

  “Going where?”

  “Our house, the Exchange, near the Inner Harbor.”

  “His aides agree with that?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “He have any favorite routes?”

  Carlotta shook her head. “There aren’t many ways to go, but Gran and his people used them all, in random rotation. They had a convoy system that’s pretty complex because, riding with him, I’ve never spotted all the other vehicles.”

  “We can check out the accident reports for that night. Should give us a lead to the route. And we can see how they took out his escort.”

  “Check the reports where?” I asked. “With the police?”

  “Look, Colonel.” Randell rolled her eyes up and counted ten mentally. “These’re public records. We go in under cover and make like civilians who have insurance claims on a fender bender.”

  “You might be recognized by old friends.”

  “So we send Stalk here. So relax, Colonel. … Now, once we’ve idee’d the route, which is still going to be in the east end, we get down on the street and start talking to people. I know some of the juvie gangs in the area. They talk tough, but they think a bicycle chain is a deadly weapon. When we go in, they’ll be sincerely impressed.”

  “And what will they tell us?”

  “What they saw.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then we take the next logical step. Detective work is a process of building knowledge, Colonel, not wild-ass theories. It takes time.”

  “According to that note, we have three days, until Wednesday morning, to deliver half a gigabuck or they send us another piece of the General.”

  “Or a piece of somebody else. Don’t worry. We’ll go pretty far in that time.”

  Randell was right about almost everything. The accident reports showed a motorcycle and a bread truck in two closely timed incidents on the turnpike. Corbin’s Stateside security man was able to confirm both vehicles. That gave us the route. One witness described to the police a tight huddle of cars banging fenders as they left the turnpike. That gave us the deviation from the route. Somebody else, from an apartment window, had heard the squeal of tires and seen the same five cars go by, down near the water. That gave us the probable location where the kidnappers went to ground. In the Vice Lords’ territory. She was wrong about the gangs, though.

  “I don’t recognize any of this,” Randell whispered to me as we crept down an alley early on Tuesday evening. We had less than twelve hours until the kidnappers’ next deadline.

  It was just the two of us, Randell and me: a recon and negotiating team. But Stalk was flanking us with a squad of riflemen on either side, over the roofs, just in case.

  In the shimmering heat, and with what little of the evening sun could penetrate the screen of storefronts and warehouses, we were reading the spray-painted walls beside us: “Whisper Fish.” Whatever that meant. It was in blue.

  “Honkey Meat, US Govament Grade AA Choyce.”

  “Otha Govament.”

  “Outa Mexico, Outa Baltimo, Outa my Head.”

  “Slim ‘n’ Lady Dee make it Right Here.”

  A sting of jagged stars, exclamation points, and lightning bolts—like cartoon swearing. This was either a code or spray-paint doodling.

  “PanTango Rules.” That one was heavily crossed out in several colors.

  “Put yo guns down!” This was sprayed in yellow with a silver border.

  “The sign mean it, Fish,” said a voice from a recessed doorway. This was followed by the muzzle of an old M-150, whose pronged flash suppressor looked like a spearpoint in the gloom. Other gun barrels poked out of windows and doors and around the corners ahead of us. I looked up at the roofline and saw three more pointing down at us from either side. There was not a bicycle chain in sight.

  Randell and I laid our carbines on the cobblestones and I added my sidearm. Then we stood with hands loose at our sides.

  The alley filled with young black men and women, all silent and staring. Their clothes were a patchwork of jeans and rainbow tee-shirts, but each had at least one piece of military apparel— fatigue blouse, web belt, beret, or jump boots. Like they were saving up for a complete set of uniforms and sharing the wealth until then.

  Quickly, they bound our hands and blindfolded us. Then they led us on a tour of the neighborhood, spinning us around corners, ducking us under real or imaginary doorways, slapping our shins to make us step over unfelt door sills. Twice they jammed us up against the wall, as if waiting for a patrol car to pass, then jerked us along. There were no police patrols in that area—Randell had checked.

  Finally they led us into a large, echoing space and sat us down on crates. The air was hot as an oven and I could feel my sweat sprouting immediately. The blindfolds came off with a snap and we were looking into a bank of klieg lights. On the floor in front of us, bound hand and foot and gagged, lay Stalk and his riflemen. For a “juvie gang,” these kids had made a clean sweep of my jungle veterans.

  “What are you honku-racist-fascist-’cudas doing in my territory?” The voice was deep and mature. It came from behind the lights.

  I gathered my spirit, my chi as Corbin had taught me, and set my voice deep to match this man’s. “We are looking for a friend o
f ours, Congressman Corbin, who disappeared in this area.”

  “And you blame us?” Quick and sharp and proud.

  “No. We blame no one. We only want to find him and take him home.”

  Ten seconds of silence, then: “The black woman beside you, is she your prisoner? Bait for us?”

  “Corporal Randell is a soldier.” I was about to add that she had fought for Corbin in Mexico, then I remembered the spray-painted slogans.

  “A soldier! Another bottom fish of the white cesspool, hey lady?”

  Randell curled up her face to say something, but I cut across her.

  “We are hired mercenaries. We did not come for a fight, just to do our jobs and find the congressman.”

  “Do you think we’ll help you?”

  Ahh! “We have some operational funds. …”

  “So you can buy off the Revolution?”

  “I hope we can buy information. If you are not holding the man for some political reason, perhaps you saw, or know of, others who are. It would be fair for us to pay for such knowledge.”

  Ten more seconds of silence. “What good is money to us? We can get all we need.”

  “I can also negotiate for a certain amount of Congressman Corbin’s good will and—um—support.”

  “Now what can a white blowfish politician do for me?”

  “Well then …” I could feel the sweat coming down beside my ears and along my upper lip. “We could leave you our weapons.”

  “Already got ’em, Red.”

  “These are just carbines. We have heavier stuff, grenade launchers and rockets, such things you cannot buy in a sporting goods store. We could forget them in a convenient place—when we have retaken the congressman.”

  Two seconds. “We could trade your living-and-breathing selves for those things.”

  “Trade with who? And what says they want us back?”

  “Too true. All right, your weapons—them and a free pardon, signed in the guy’s name, for any of the Vice Lords who might be caught in, like, an unjust ’cuda-police raid. Or something.”

  “I have Corbin’s power of attorney,” I agreed. “I can sign a blanket release right now.” For what that might be worth, I added mentally.