“It was Ahmed.”
“Well, Ahmed got some of the pictures. I don’t understand exactly what they mean, but I do know one thing. If these get out, the whole Army will be disgraced.”
“Like now we’re fighting guys who have weapons we helped them buy?”
“Here, I’ll just show you one of them. The one that’s got me feeling—” He pulls a sour, disgusted face.
Lopez unbuttons his shirt and pulls out a manila envelope. We sit down on the cot. He fusses with the red string that closes the flap for such a long time I take it from him and finish unwinding it.
“Dump it out.” He squeezes his hands together, staring at them as though they are someone else’s. “Please.”
A fancy cell phone rolls onto the cot. Lopez picks it up and cradles it in his hands. And then a piece of blue cellophane slides out along with a brown paper money wrapper with “$10,000” marked on it in green, an old highway map produced by the former regime, and a piece of typing paper covered with hand-printed lists of some sort. At the bottom is a stack of photos held together with a yellow rubber band.
Lopez fumbles through the photos; he can barely keep the pictures from falling. He finds the one he’s looking for and gives it to me. “Look at this one first.”
I do. It shows a florid-faced general I recognize from TV news reports early on in the war. He’s grinning and shaking hands with the famous cleric-turned-militia-commander. The one Lopez says left the country. In the background of the shot, there’s a stack of blurry green. Behind the general, two other soldiers stoop over the table. Something strikes me as familiar about the one next to the general. Lopez jabs the photo with his finger.
“Look,” he says, “right there. Who does that look like?”
The man’s face is difficult to see. But I’m sure I’ve seen him before. It’s like trying to remember a dream later in the day, though. You reach and you reach, but you can’t quite pull it up.
“All right,” I say. “I give up. Who the fuck are these people?”
“That guy,” Lopez jabs at the photo with his finger. “Look closer. See that scar on his cheek? Doesn’t that look like Sergeant Oliphant to you?”
Oh, God, I hope he’s wrong. Many, many unhappy possibilities fill my head.
“Look really closely.”
I bring the photo closer to my face, tilt it back and forth. I’m trying to find anything that might prove him wrong. But he’s right: now that the name is in the air, I see it. It’s him. I decide to play it carefully. This is still Lopez, after all. “Now that you say it, he does look similar. But there’s no way you could prove it.”
“I don’t care about proving it. I just want to know if you see it too.” He shuffles through a couple more. “And this one. Doesn’t this man’s head look like the lieutenant’s?”
In the foreground of the shot, an officer points at an enlarged photo of a rocket-propelled grenade launcher with a pen laser. Lopez taps the head of the person next to him, a young man in dress uniform with only a small section of his face turned toward the camera. His pin shows he’s a first lieutenant, but the hair and the neck, they could be anyone. I tell him this.
“That mole, right there. Lieutenant Blankenship has one just like it.”
“So, what are you saying?” I ask him.
“With the proper equipment, they could enhance these photos. Then there’d be no doubt. And there are others saved on the phone.”
I wonder if I look as freaked out about this as he does. Tiny beads of sweat have formed on his nose. His pupils look enormous. He studies my face, trying to make a decision. Finally, he purses his lips and picks up the road map. Yellow dust spills onto the cot. When he unfolds it, I see someone has circled three spots in the desert just south of Kurkbil, maybe fifty or so klicks from our base. A completely uninhabited zone. Next to each circle there’s a number: 9,000,000, 18,000,000, 8,500,000. Below this, another circle and a date from a couple of months ago. I look closer. It’s the toy factory. Before I can wrap my head around this, he takes the sheet of paper and reads a series of dates and grid coordinates and physical markers. A truck tire painted blue, a waist-high pile of white stones, a circle of green cinderblocks.
“Okay,” I say, “I’ve got it. Grid coordinates.”
“And this.” He holds out the 10-K money wrapper.
“And this.” I point to the cellophane. It suddenly comes to me. I’ve got it now. It’s something Doc Greer told me the day after the IED attack that makes me realize.
“That I don’t get.” Lopez crinkles it in his hand. “A piece of trash? I was going to throw it out, but—”
“The American ambassador, brilliant asshole that he is, shipped some fifteen billion dollars in cash into the country a year or so ago. Flew it in on troop carriers. Most of it is now unaccounted for. Vanished. It came in ten-thousand-dollar blocks. They wrapped it in—”
“Blue cellophane.”
“Right,” I say.
“Holy crud. I thought Greer was just making that stuff up.”
And then the last tumbler falls into place and the lock opens. This is really fucking big. Colossal. No wonder the captain got so exercised. Lopez has the same lightbulb going on above his head. His breath hisses out between his teeth. Then I remember something else. The last time I saw Herman, he had a bit of that cellophane wrapped around his neck.
“Now,” he says slowly, “I get what he said.”
“Who?”
“The captain. He said he’d go in on it with me if I handed the box over. I thought he was talking about blackmail. This is bigger. This is—”
“How did the captain know you had it?” I asked.
Above us, three mortars land in quick succession. The lightbulb in the ceiling jiggles, making our shadows twitch.
“I don’t think he did for certain. He was just sounding me out. Like a fool, I admitted it.”
“But what about the cell phone?”
“That’s what they used to take the photos. I went through it this morning after you got back.” Lopez picks the cell phone up and hefts it in his hand. “I guess it’s like keeping negatives.”
“Why the fuck would they do something stupid like that? Why not just break the thing?”
“I wondered about that too.” He flicks through the stack of photos again. “Now I think I get it. Look at this one.” He hands me another picture. It’s crumpled, probably from the rough handling it got last night, but the image is clearer than some of the rest. In it, the ambassador himself hands one of the sheiks a blue block of bills. Both men grin.
“It’s rotten,” Lopez says. “The whole darn thing. Top to bottom. I bet the general just wanted to cover his butt if all this went wrong. ‘I can take you down, too’ sort of thing, I guess. It makes me want to cry.” And for a moment there, it actually looks as though he might. We’re quiet, but down deep in his chest I swear I hear something creak and smash to bits. I’m familiar with the sound.
“You better watch yourself, Lopez. People die for a lot less money than this. What are you going to do?”
“I don’t, I don’t—” He rubs his good eye with the heel of his hand.
“Listen, you need to take this stuff to someone up the line.”
He looks at me in alarm.
“Not the lieutenant,” I say. “If that’s him, he’s in on it too.”
“I know.”
“Even more reason for you to get the hell out of here, now that they know you know.”
“Go AWOL?” he says.
“Not quite. Just take a little trip. Now you know about this, you’ve got to cover your ass.”
I watch the implications of this sink in. In the dim light of the cell, his cheeks look shiny and dark, almost purple. His lips twitch, and he licks them. Once, twice. He stares at the floor like there’s a Bible verse printed on it.
“But how?” he says helplessly. This goes against all his training. Like a divine command to kill his son. “I can’t just leave.”
“Yes, you can. Get in a Humvee and go. They’ll go apeshit, but when the chain of command sees what you’ve got, I think they’ll forgive you. Take it to Colonel Marquart in Inmar. Just make sure you’ve got plenty of witnesses around when you do it. Who the fuck knows how deep this goes.”
“What do you think they’d do with the photos?” he asks me.
“Bury them. Destroy them, maybe. They ain’t going to let this shit go public. No way.”
He looks stricken, as though he’s just received news of a horrible death. And I suppose he has—the death of his hero, the lieutenant.
“What would you do?” he asks.
I look at him in surprise.
“What I just told you,” I say.
“That’s it?”
Rankin raps on the door. “Somebody’s coming. You got to go, Lopez. I’ll put you in this other cell. Move.”
Lopez scrambles to stuff everything back in the envelope and tuck it into his shirt. Rankin opens the door. He catches my eye. Of course he was listening. So would I. I touch Lopez on the arm before he steps out.
“Hold back a few of the photos. For your own insurance, if nothing else. This is going to get hairy.”
Lopez stands in the doorway, his back to me. Rankin’s nostrils flare. Lopez spins back around and thrusts out his hand. For a moment I think he intends to punch me in the stomach with it. His whole arm quivers from the elbow down. I stare at his thin, olive-colored fingers for a few seconds, unsure what he means by this gesture.
“Won’t even shake my hand, huh?” he says.
“Sorry,” I say. “You surprised me, is all.”
It feels like squeezing a toad.
“No, I’m sorry,” he says, looking for all the world as if he means it. I wonder if he does. “I had you figured wrong. You’re something—” Lopez eyes me cautiously. “—I don’t know what, but you’re not a traitor.”
87
Mumble, mumble, mumble. A mortar blast. Mumble, mumble, mumble.
“I have orders. I can not do that, Captain, sir.” Rankin shouts this out, Basic Training style. Loud, with emphasis on the “sir.”
Thanks, Rankin, I think. At least this visit won’t come as a complete surprise. I’m a popular man tonight. The bolt on the door clanks open and I turn around. I try and control my breathing. When the door opens, I’m sitting on my cot, legs crossed, smiling.
Rankin whispers “Bohica.” Which, in this man’s Army, means bend over, here it comes again.
The captain shoulders him out of the way and steps into the gloom of the cell. He makes a face like something smells off, which it probably does, but I’ve been in here so long that I don’t notice it any more. The captain steps around the place where the old man’s body made a damp imprint on the packed-clay floor and stops just in front of me. I clasp my hands in my lap. The perfect Sunday-school student. Before the captain shuts the door, he tells Rankin to close the Judas hole. No flies on this guy.
“You’re late, sir,” I say, “visiting hours ended an hour ago.”
“Shut the fuck up, shitbird.”
Wow, I think, he’s getting nervous. I’m not sure if this should make me feel better or worse.
The captain inspects my face like it’s a flat tire he needs to fix. I stare right back.
He kicks me in the shin, hard.
“Pay attention,” he says. “Your girlfriend Lopez has the box.”
“So I heard,” I say with more bravado than I feel. Those dollar amounts keep reverberating in my head. Ten, eight, nineteen million. Money enough to kill a few people over. Leavenworth suddenly feels like a happy outcome to this situation.
“You’re pretty well informed for a prisoner. Who told you?”
“I overheard someone talking about it in the hall.” I point to the door. “Out there. But I couldn’t make out who it was.”
The captain appears dubious.
“Ahmed got away with half the photos,” I say. “I saw him snatch them.”
“I’m not worried about that.”
I’ll bet, I think.
“Maybe you should be,” I say.
“It’s not my ass that will get kicked over this. And frankly, it’d be just one more scandal in a string of them. These days, the media loses its hard-on for a story after a cycle or two.” He swings his foot back and I cringe, expecting another kick. Instead, he taps me very lightly on the leg. “What I need you to do, partner, is help me persuade Lopez to hand the box over.”
“He hates me. You know that, sir.”
“Even better. That makes you more trustworthy.”
His logic escapes me. “Maybe you can make a trail of pages torn out of the seven-dash-eight leading into a big trap. That ought to get him, sir.” I fight to keep my voice steady. Given the choice right now, I’d much rather be out in a big hairy firefight.
“Shut up, Durrant. This is fucking serious.” He thumps the side of my head with the back of his hand. My ears ring. “Listen to me.” The captain crouches so we’re eye to eye. He takes his sunglasses off. “Are you listening? You are going to persuade Lopez to—”
“No way, sir.” I blurt this out as fast as I can before I lose my nerve. Without quite meaning to, I find myself backing away from him. My head bumps against the wall. “I’m out.”
“That’s an order.”
“I’m locked in a cell, sir.”
“We’ll get you out soon enough.” The captain frowns at the walls of the cell as though they’d been constructed just to irritate him.
“The lieutenant said he confiscated those photos from Lieutenant Saunders.”
“Of course he would.” He smiles. His right eyetooth is several shades whiter than the rest, like it’s plastic. “He’d say almost anything to get out of this. Not that it will do him any good if and when the right people see those snaps.”
“Have you seen them?”
“What do you think?”
“Lopez said you’d split the money with him, sir. What’s that mean?”
“Split? Hah.” He sputters and coughs. It takes me a moment to realize that he’s laughing. “So, what else did Lopez say?”
I suddenly realize my mistake. Jesus, I’m a fool. Why do I let this asshole intimidate me? “What do you mean?”
“Did he tell you about what he found in the lockbox?” The captain coughs. Harder and harder. His face turns the same color as those grape jelly packets in MREs. When it finally stops, the captain stands again, pulls a dark yellow handkerchief from his pants pocket and spits into it. He examines this closely, then stuffs it back into his pocket.
I don’t say anything.
“What else?” The captain tries to shout, but his voice is hoarse and the effort seems to wear him out.
“Nothing, sir. It had a bunch of photos of brass tucking money in turbans. A map with some circles. A sheet with strange numbers. Where’s the money in that, sir?” I examine the dirt lodged under my fingernails.
“I said nothing to him about money,” the captain says, moving his head so close to mine that I can feel his breath on my cheek. “Have I said anything to you about money?”
“No, sir,” I say, “but I never looked in the box.”
“Lopez is confused.”
“So am I, sir. What do you want with those pictures? They—”
“The lieutenant is a corrupt man. He needs to be relieved of command.”
“Who else is in those pictures, sir?”
The captain grins. It is an unpleasant thing to watch.
“Somebody big, huh?” I say, hoping I’m not pushing this too far. “How much money are you going to ask him for, sir?”
The captain kicks me in the other shin. Harder this time. I try not to yell and end up choking. He takes a step back and examines me from boots to buzz cut like an induction doctor. I wonder what he sees. When he speaks again, his voice is calm and his speech measured.
“You’ve got a head for this business, Durrant. You’re a quick study. I
t’s a pity about all the trouble you’ve been having. You’d have made a good intelligence officer. If you can get me that box, you may still have a chance to make a go of it. How does intelligence school out in sunny Arizona sound?”
Despite myself, I’m flattered. This quickly gives way to disgust.
“Even if I wanted to, Captain, I really can’t help you.” I gesture to the cell around me. “But maybe if you told me what all this is about, then I’d have a better idea of how to go about it. Lopez had a few ideas.”
“I’ll bet he did.” The captain eyes me, sucking at his cheek and chewing it. “You’ve already got the general picture. That’s enough.”
“No,” I say, “sir.” I’m startled to find myself really angry.
“We’ll see.” The captain sits beside me on the cot and taps his foot. I consider jumping him and making a dash for it; but to where?
“Did Lopez mention where he’s put the contents of the lockbox?” the captain says, prodding me in the side with his elbow.
“Come on, sir.” I edge away. “He may be an uptight asshole, but the boy ain’t stupid.”
“No, of course not. At least we’ve established that you’ve spoken to him about it. That’s a good first step.” He picks something from his tongue and wipes his finger on my pants. “I’ll give you a general outline. I have a feeling Lopez will come back. You’re the only one he can talk to about this. A guy like him, shit, he’ll be worrying over this all night. He’s going to explode if he can’t talk about it. I’ll be keeping an eye out, and when he makes his move, I’ll be waiting. If he won’t tell you, we might have to find some other way of getting the information out of him. If you’re nice, I might even let you help. You could get out some of that famous rage of yours. I’ll bet you’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
For weeks I’d been daydreaming about punching Lopez, and then I did, and it felt shitty. This offer to do something worse makes me squirm. Not because it disgusts me, but because I’ve already considered it. A part of me still wants to. After all, Lopez is the reason I’m locked up down here. God, this man frightens me. He knows just how to release my inner asshole.
The Sandbox Page 29