(2012) Political Suicide

by Michael Palmer

  Dennis Welcome had four great loves in his life: his family, his red Chevy pickup with 200,000 miles on it, his union, and the Wave Rider’s double bacon burger. Though Dennis lived in Virginia, Lou shared a meal with him frequently, including Emily whenever possible. With the senior Welcome between carpentry jobs once again, and his inability to distinguish solitude from solitary confinement, Lou felt glad this was an Emily day. His father’s lunch invitation, ill timed as it might seem, offered a much-needed break from what had been an extremely stress-filled couple of days.

  The Wave Rider, a surfer-themed sports bar that had rarely served an actual surfer, was pleasantly busy. All twelve flat screens were playing some variant of an ESPN sports show. Dennis, distinguishable by his salt-and-pepper crew cut, stood up from his customary booth and waved to Lou and Emily as soon as they set foot inside the place. He wore faded blue jeans, dusty work boots, and one of his collection of flannel shirts, this day red.

  “Grandpa!” Emily squealed, dodging waitresses and patrons as she sprinted into Dennis’s burly arms.

  “How are you, Dad?” Lou asked.

  “Oh, great and great,” Dennis said, tapping his knuckles on the top of Emily’s head. “Okay, then, enough chitchat. I’ve got me a man-sized craving.”

  “You know they do serve a nice variety here,” Lou said. “Rumor has it that the double bacon burger may be slightly less than healthy.”

  “Blasphemy!” Dennis cried, looking to Emily for corroboration.

  “Put Dad on trial for food treason,” Emily said.

  “Instead, I’d suggest you spend a little time researching arteriosclerosis,” Lou said.

  “And I’d suggest you spend a little time mending your shirt.” She pointed to a one-inch tear just above his belt.

  “Diversity,” Lou groaned.

  “What?” Dennis asked.

  “Diversity is my new cat,” Emily said without looking up from the menu. “He and Dad aren’t exactly getting along.”

  “You got a cat? Who named him?”

  Emily pointed a thumb at her chest. “It’s in honor of my mission to bring multiculturalism to the Carlisle School. I was going to move in with Dad, but Mom wouldn’t let me, so we got a cat.”

  “So when you’re in Arlington, that makes your dad the guardian of Diversity. I like it.”

  Lou poked a finger through the hole in his shirt. “The cat and I are getting along just great.”

  “That’s sarcasm,” Emily said. “Diversity hates Dad because Dad blames him for things he could never have done.”

  “‘Hate’ is a very strong word,” Lou said. “I would prefer you didn’t use it.”

  “Would you prefer ‘despise’? Detest? Dislike? Abhor? Resent?”

  “Any of those,” Lou said. “How about ‘is adjusting to’?”

  Emily executed a textbook-perfect eye roll. “Okay. Diversity is adjusting to how much he resents my dad.”

  Dennis’s laugh was always good to hear. The year-long assault on his spirit since his wife’s cancer death had been hard on all of them.

  “Grandpa,” Emily said, “can you order me a veggie burger, side salad, and a sparkling water?”

  “What about the bacon burger? I thought you loved those?”

  “She’s thinking about going vegan,” Lou explained.

  “I’m almost vegan already,” Emily said. “Another year, and I’ll be a hundred percent.”

  “You always set goals and you always achieve them,” Dennis said. “Just one of the many things I love about you.”

  “Oh, look,” Lou chimed in, “they’ve added catburger to the menu.”

  “That’s not funny,” Emily said.

  The folks at the ASPCA shelter, where the two of them had adopted Diversity, could not have been happier to make the match. For Emily, it was love at first purr. On the ride home, Diversity, a two-year-old orange and white tabby with amber eyes, nestled in her lap. Later he chased thread, batted a piece of paper, and clawed the carpet-fragment-on-a-pole Lou bought at the pet superstore for forty-nine dollars.

  However, when Lou returned home after dropping Emily back at the house in Arlington, Diversity had become an altogether different cat. He hissed, hid under the bed, and made a flying tackle to dig his claws into Lou’s legs every time the guardian of Diversity crossed the living room. At some point, he turned the top of the refrigerator into his own personal fortress. But of course, whenever Emily was around—or anybody else, for that matter—the cat was an angel.

  Lou perused the menu long enough for his father to complain and call the waitress over, rushing Lou into a Cobb salad.

  “So … you involved with the doc who killed Colston?” Dennis asked once their server had moved on.

  “Shhhh!” Lou said. “Keep it down. Dad, this isn’t appropriate lunch conversation.”

  Emily broke away from her texting. “I know that Congressman Colston was murdered by his wife’s jealous lover,” she said, holding up her smartphone. “We get all the news on these things. So, are you involved?”

  “The two of you!” Lou said. “Enough.”

  “I spoke with your brother yesterday, and he thinks you are,” Dennis said. “Told me one of his clients is connected with someone important who told him that before he shot Colston, McHugh was under monitoring with the PWO for a drinking problem.”

  “Graham should not be spreading rumors,” Lou said. “A PWO contract is very confidential. It’s not something that he or his over-the-top-rich clients should even be discussing.”

  “I’m just curious is all,” Dennis said. “No need to get all snippy.”

  “I’m not being snippy,” Lou said.

  “You were being a little snippy, Dad,” Emily said.

  “Will you guys just drop it, okay?”

  “Dropped,” Emily said, holding up her empty hands.

  “Dropped,” Dennis followed.

  “Good,” Lou said.

  Dennis broke the ensuing silence less than a minute later. “So, do you think he did it?”

  Lou threw up his hands. “Oh for goodness’ sake, okay. Okay. I admit that I do know Gary McHugh. He’s asked me to help him out—see if I could come up with reasons why somebody other than him might have wanted Elias Colston dead.”

  “And did you?” Emily asked.

  “I’m working on it, but McHugh’s high-powered lawyer, Sarah Cooper, wants me to stop interfering with the case. She thinks the only thing I’m capable of is getting in her way.”

  “Sarah Cooper,” Dennis exclaimed, “the one from the Sandra Winkler trial?”

  “That’s right.”

  Lou explained to Emily what the Winkler case was about. Not surprisingly, she already knew a few of the details.

  “So this Sarah Cooper sounds pretty peeved at you,” Dennis said after Lou had finished.

  “If by peeved you mean uncooperative and hostile, then yes, she’s peeved, all right.”

  “Do you know why she’s so angry?” asked Emily.

  “Not really. I came across something that I thought would help McHugh’s case, and I gave it to the police rather than to her. Now it looks like they may have misplaced it.”

  “No wonder she’s upset,” Dennis said.

  “Actually, she was irritated with me from the moment we met.”

  “First the cat and now this lawyer,” Dennis said. “Maybe you should change your deodorant.”

  Thankfully, their food arrived, sparing Lou from having to respond. Throughout most of their meal, Emily seemed preoccupied. She would eat, do something on her phone, and then eat some more.

  “I’ve got a new investment chance,” Dennis said between bites of his burger.

  “Not the replacement window company?”

  “No. With the economy tanking, people aren’t fixing up their places as much these days.”

  “So, what is it this time?”

  “Online gaming,” Dennis said.

  “Online gaming?”

  “It�
�s a Polish company. They’ve got three games in development. Virtual fish farming and virtual gold mining look like their biggest winners.”

  “Virtual fish farming?”

  Lou was hardly incredulous. For as long as he could remember, Dennis was always looking for the big score, and never finding it. At one point, he went through the funds he had set aside for Graham’s college tuition, and turned to Lou to bail him out. Hopefully, the younger Welcome brother would never know, but the amphetamines Lou ended up taking to help him through several moonlighting jobs, and the alcohol he used to come down from the speed, were what led to the suspension of his medical license. On the other hand, they also led to his subsequent recovery.

  “Graham is already looking at the brochures,” Dennis said. “Problem is, they’re in Polish.”

  “I’ll wait for his assessment,” Lou said, knowing that Graham was as conservative with money as their father was cavalier.

  “Your loss, sonny boy. Can you pass me a napkin?”

  Suddenly, Emily cried out, “Oh, so that’s her beef.”

  “Whose beef?” Lou asked.

  “Sarah Cooper.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Did you ever Google her?”

  “Never occurred to me.”

  “It’s all here. Her husband died and she sued his doctor. She won, too. One of the articles says six million dollars.”

  “I thought you were texting your friends, not doing research.”

  “Believe it or not, I can do both at the same time. All us kids can. I was just trying to help you out. Look, read it for yourself.”

  Emily handed him her smartphone, which had a Safari browser open to a five-year-old article from the magazine section of The Washington Post. According to the detailed feature, David Cooper, an attorney and tireless crusader for Washington’s homeless, had been complaining of headaches for some months. The world-renowned neurologist he went to diagnosed migraines, even though Sarah argued that her husband never had a headache or illness in his life. David, a rock climber and kayaker, expressed to the doctor that the pain seemed more in his neck than his head. Sarah was quoted as saying that every time she massaged his neck David would complain about pain in his head.

  Despite their concerns, the neurologist, whom Sarah referred to as “unbearably arrogant,” refused to order an MRI of the cervical area, or nerve conduction studies in his arms. He also refused to involve an orthopedist or neurosurgeon in the case, but rather continued to prescribe anti-inflammatories and physical therapy. Then, beset by increasing pain, David awoke one morning, turned his head quickly, and partially severed his spinal cord, paralyzing himself from the upper neck down. After two miserable years on a ventilator, with little quality of life, David Cooper died. The jury in the malpractice case concluded that more careful attention to his complaints would have enabled the neurologist to seek a lifesaving spinal fusion.

  Stunned by the tragic account, Lou handed Emily back her phone.

  “She doesn’t have a thing just against you, Dad,” Emily said. “She’s got a thing against doctors.”

  CHAPTER 19

  Bucky Townsend and Fenton Morales clanked Bud bottles and toasted their good fortunes. Enjoying a night out at the Willows was nothing new for the two marines, but tonight they had special cause for celebration. A yelping, chest-thumping, fists-in-the-air reason to imbibe. Major Charles Coon had given each the word that they were no longer finalists for Operation Talon. They were in.

  Even though the two of them knew little of the objective of the mission, what mattered was its importance to national interests and to the security of America. For some time, OT had been priority number one at Mantis—the specifics of what the operation entailed were secondary.

  “This is why we became marines,” Morales said, taking another swig.

  “Forget that—this is why we chose Mantis,” Townsend countered.

  “Yeah, though I still can’t believe you made it. Heck, you’re just an Okie from Muskogee.”

  “And a badass one, at that.”

  “To OT, and whatever our crazy-ass future holds.”

  “To OT,” Townsend repeated.

  “To Mantis and the chance to make a real difference.”

  They clanked their bottle necks again and raced to chug their beers. Townsend banged his empty bottle on the table just a second or two before Morales.

  “This Okie knows how to handle his suds, compadre. Never forget that.”

  Morales’s laugh was warm and heartfelt. They ordered another round, then another. An hour later, Morales checked his watch. “We should get going,” he said.

  The jukebox spit out a Stones tune, while Townsend watched more men from the base trickle in, followed by a couple of townie girls wearing dresses far too short for the outside cold.

  “Why go, man?” he asked. “Isn’t the night still young?” He exchanged smiles with a leggy young brunette in a blue sequined party dress.

  Morales’s look was admonishing. “You want Coon thinking you’re more into booze and babes than you are into this mission?” he asked. “That guy is like a ninja—everywhere at once. We gotta get real about this, buddy. Set an example. We’re not only Mantis now, we’re Talon.”

  Townsend shared one last, longing look with the hot brunette. Then, sighing loudly, he pushed back his stool and stood. Morales did the same. “Whatever it takes,” Townsend said mournfully.

  Morales put an arm around his friend and led him to the door. “Whatever it takes,” Morales repeated, chuckling softly.

  Outside, the winter air slapped Townsend across the face. The gunshot wound to his side was healing rapidly, just as Coon had promised it would, but it still acted up in the cold. Even so, Townsend never once considered mentioning the unusual training practices of Colonel Brody and Major Coon to his family, not even to his younger brother Terry, his best friend. The Palace Guard would not take kindly to anybody challenging the integrity of Mantis. Whatever it takes were not just words; they were a way of life. The way of Mantis.

  “Glad you shut me off,” Townsend said, exhaling a swirling tendril of mist into the dark night. “I was starting to feel it. I can’t even remember where we parked.”

  “We’re right down here,” Morales said, pointing to a side street not more than a block from the bar. As they turned the corner, powerful high-beams flashed on, momentarily blinding them. An engine revved up, followed by the angry whine of tires searching for traction against the nearly frozen pavement. Alcohol slowed their reaction time. The side door of an all-white cargo van slid open as the vehicle screeched to a stop beside them.

  Four men dressed in black leapt out from the van, their faces obscured beneath head coverings that Townsend associated mostly with al-Qaeda. The men, each heavily armed, tossed Townsend and Morales into the van like sacks of laundry. Two other men waiting inside the van shoved the muzzles of assault rifles up under the marines’ chins. The van peeled away from the curb and turned the corner, momentum slamming the side door closed.

  Townsend’s world went black as duct tape was tightened across his mouth and a coarse, moldy hood was pulled over his head. He tried unsuccessfully to shake it off, but it was tied quickly around his neck. All he could think of was a video his platoon had been shown where hoods like this one were pulled over captives’ heads just before they were decapitated. Next came plastic cuffs, which dug painfully into his wrists. He sensed Morales was lying close by, but their captors would not allow them to touch.

  For an indeterminable amount of time, perhaps half an hour, the van sped down a fairly smooth highway. Then it slowed and bounced along an uneven road, violently jostling Townsend about. He heard the men shouting at one another in Arabic.

  Do they want to kill me?… Torture me?… Film me making some sort of confession, broadcasting me on a Web site espousing some jihadist cause?

  Townsend breathed in and out slowly through his nose. He had no idea what was in store for him and Morales.
What he did know, unquestionably, was that regardless of whatever awaited them, he was not afraid.

  * * *

  WITH THE bag still covering his head, Townsend allowed himself to be guided into a room cold enough to store meat. There would be time, he told himself, probably soon, to struggle and to make it difficult for them. But before he could react, they snipped his manacles off, cut his shirt away, and shoved him down onto a sturdy wooden chair. In seconds, they had lashed his ankles to the legs and his wrists to the armrests. Finally, the hood was removed.

  Townsend needed a minute for his vision to clear. He and Morales were tied on identical chairs in a barren, ten-foot-square windowless room, beneath a bare bulb. They were stripped to their undershirts but still had on their camo pants and black boots.

  Three men crowded into the room with the two guards. Their heads were covered except for the opening in their bandannas displaying reptilian eyes. Their complexions, what Townsend could see of them, were dark bronze, further confirming his suspicion that his captors were Arab terrorists. The fifth man, wearing a turban but no bandanna, had a hatchet face buried behind a thicket of dark beard. He appraised Townsend and Morales as if they were lambs destined for slaughter.

  “What is Operation Talon?” he said in near perfect English.

  Are they part of a sleeper cell? Townsend wondered. How long have they been hiding in plain sight? How much do they already know?

  “My name is Sergeant Bucky Townsend. I am a citizen of the United States of America.”

  Townsend had scored near perfect marks at SERE school—Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape training. He knew how to respond during an interrogation. As long as it seemed there was a possibility they would talk, nothing would happen to them—nothing, that was, except some torture.