Signature Wounds

by Kirk Russell

  On his own he returned to religion, saying, “It is impossible in America for these pilots to be killed in a business owned by a Muslim and not have this become a question. This is another reason I opened my home and offices to you tonight.”

  “Why do you say that?” an agent asked. “The country was founded on freedom of religion.”

  “You’re an FBI agent so maybe you are right that America is for all religions. I was not aware of that.” He stared at the agent and added, “I have only been in seventeen states. Maybe it’s different in the others.”

  This led to more philosophical talk, and I left the room. I toured the house. I doubted it would be open to us the next day.

  In a media room, a large TV screen was tuned to reports on the bombings. The sound was down low. The first agents here told me that a housekeeper had let them in and led them to Smith, who was sitting in front of this TV, weeping. I went upstairs and walked through the bedrooms and lingered in the master to see how he lived and then came back down.

  Across a garden path lined with low landscaping lights and curving around a pool and a fountain was his home office. I found Bill Murtha, an agent I’ve known forever, with three other tech types downloading everything on Smith’s computers. Murtha said, “Smith wants to cooperate fully.” He said that like it was righteous and smart. It was probably the opposite, and the vibe in here was urgency. Like a team of hackers who knew the police were already on their way.

  Two hours later, I talked to a fatigued Omar Smith about Juan Menderes, my reason for having come. Not my only reason. I had needed to see in person the man who had rented to my sister.

  “I like your ads,” I said. “Always have. I’m fine sitting at a red light when I’m listening to one of them.”

  He absorbed that, then said, “My father heard them on his one trip to America when he came to stop me from changing my name to an American name. The ads disgusted him.”

  “I want to talk with you about Juan Menderes.”

  “I already showed the agents the text he sent when he delivered the cake. It is a requirement for the drivers. I cannot say why he ran. If they get a speeding ticket, they cannot drive for me ever again. They are responsible for their vans. They drive the same one every day.”

  He held up two fingers. “Twice a year is a party for the employees. I talked with him at the holiday party at the end of last year, and he convinced me he should be a driver.”

  “Do you videotape your parties?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’d like to see him in a party video.”

  Full disclosure on my part: after the Patriot Act, there were really no rules left with a terrorism investigation. If Omar Smith had said no to anything this night, we would have found a reason to seize his computers and phones. But maybe he knew that and beat us to it, opening his house and records. We watched the party video together and he made me a copy. I said I’d talk to him again soon and left him with something else.

  “My sister was Melissa Kern. Her husband, Captain James Kern, also died, as did their son, my nephew, Nate. My niece is in emergency surgery right now.”

  “You were the FBI agent who was first inside my building?”

  “I was. If you remember more about Juan Menderes or anything else, call me. I don’t care how insignificant it seems. Call me at any time of day or night.”

  “I am very sorry for you, and I will call if I remember anything.”

  He heard what I was saying, and I knew he would call me. In that moment we connected. How or why we did I couldn’t say yet.

  8

  At four thirty that morning I was driving when my cell rang with an unidentified number. Didn’t recognize the phone number and in my grief and worry over Julia’s surgery I almost didn’t answer. But it turned out to be Beatty on a burner phone.

  “On the radio they’re saying a teenage girl survived. I was hoping it was Julia.”

  “It is Julia.”

  “Is she okay?”

  “She’s in the hospital.”

  “Will she be okay?”

  “The doctors don’t know yet. What happened to your phone? Why are you on a burner phone? Are you at the airfield you texted me directions to?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I can’t talk long right now, Jeremy.”

  I started to tell him that Melissa, Jim, and Nate were dead along with pilots he knew, but I couldn’t do it. Plus, I could tell he’d been online. His name was out there and he knew. It could have come from someone in our office. It could have come from the DOD investigators or a whole lot of others.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you were shutting your phone down?” I asked.

  “I don’t know, paranoid, I guess, and I read an article saying the FBI wants to question an ex–drone pilot who was in the vicinity when the blast occurred. The headline says, ‘Vegas Terrorist Attack Has Possible Local Link—Ex–Drone Pilot Sought.’ Is that me?”

  “It is, but don’t take it personally. We’re questioning everyone. You were in the area and were invited. You didn’t show up. You knew pilots, and like you said, you were under surveillance, even if for something completely different. We’re looking at every angle, anything, and everything.”

  “So it came from you?”

  “No.”

  He was quiet long enough for me to wonder if we had lost our connection. Then he said, “I’m really sorry, Grale. You lost a lot tonight. I’ll deal with whatever questions there are about me.”

  I wished that were true. I wanted it to be that way, but didn’t think it would work out like that.

  “Tell me about the airfield,” I said.

  “I’m in a flight trailer that’s two double-wides combined. There’s an asphalt runway for the drones and light aircraft. They graded miles of road wide and smooth enough for trucks, but went cheap on the runway. There are other trailers for living and a commissary. There’s a temporary hangar for the drones that looks like a circus tent and a whole lot of desert and mountains behind here. From the air it’s going to be a black strip of asphalt in a flat desert valley. We’re not that far from the atomic testing area. Is the FBI coming here?”

  “How soon after I saw you did you head out there?”

  “Right away, and I almost followed you to the party. I chickened out for the same old reasons and went to that Carl’s Jr. you and I used to go to. I had a burger and fries, watching for anyone following me. Everything I told you about Hakim Salter was true.”

  “It’s not about Hakim Salter tonight.”

  “Captain Kern always said the war would come to us. He said we couldn’t fly drones indefinitely without getting pushback.”

  Jim did say that.

  “I see all kinds of bad things coming, G-man. My mind is messing with me tonight. I see arches in a courtyard with cinder-block walls and dirt raked and watered. They don’t fill the cells of the cinder block with concrete and steel in Pakistan like we do here. They just stack them up. Cinder-block chunks tear the shit out of a house after a missile goes off. I see Laura when I close my eyes. I try to take back everything bad I said to her. I hear Melissa offering me a room in their house for as long as it takes me to get back to normal. Why is it the best people get killed?”

  “I don’t know why.”

  “What I told you earlier was true. I asked Ramer what we were waiting on. All the Taliban dudes were there, and I was ready to go when command said make another loop. I did, and Salter came out, and command told Ramer to sparkle the target. Ramer adjusted the infrared marking laser. The speed was right, the range was right, my thumb was there, and then Salter steps back toward the shadows as if he’d forgotten something inside the house, and one of the Taliban dudes looks up. He fucking looks up. Salter also looked up, both he and the Taliban dude. They heard it coming. I’ve done a lot of research on Salter. Did I ever tell you that? I know all about his life.”

  “Jeremy, I can’t do this, but don’t run.”

  “Grale, I’m sorry. I
’m so sorry.”

  A moment later I ended the call and pulled into an empty shopping mall lot, then stood outside breathing deep, trying to calm myself. I must have stood there forty minutes pushing grief back. I wanted the bombers. I wanted the vengeance of justice. I wanted back what was forever gone. The hard truth of that came with the dawn.

  9

  Dr. Latik, the orthopedic surgeon who had operated on Julia, held a small piece of twisted metal between his fingers.

  “Let me show you what we’re dealing with.”

  He put up an X-ray of the thoracic vertebrae near which the metal had lodged.

  “It corkscrewed in.”

  He handed the piece of metal to me.

  “Rub your finger along the tip and feel the little hook. That’s how it dug into the bone.”

  “What happens now?”

  “Now we hope the surgery doesn’t cause new swelling and that the initial swelling has peaked. That can take up to seventy-two hours.” As if anticipating a question I might have had, he added, “We couldn’t delay the surgery, and we’re debating whether to chill her to impede swelling. We’ll decide on that this morning.”

  Worst case was paralysis. Best case was the swelling subsides and Julia retains full movement and sensation. Melissa and Jim’s trust named me as executor. Separately, I became custodian of their children until adulthood.

  In the post-op room, Julia looked at me through half-closed eyes. Other shrapnel fragments were pulled from the backs of her thighs. Her torn left ear was bandaged, and the surgeon who did the work said it wouldn’t look the same as the other ear, but it would be close. She did not yet know about her family, but that changed as I stood alongside her bed.

  She asked in a faint voice, “Where’s Mom?”

  I didn’t know how else to say it, and I’d already resolved never to treat her as less than an adult. Anyone who would be going through what was ahead for her was owed that.

  “Your mother was killed.”

  Her look was disbelief, but when I didn’t correct what I’d said, her face crumpled. It broke my heart when I saw she knew I was telling her the truth. But I also understood the reflexive denial that came next.

  “That’s not true.”

  I knew she didn’t remember anything beyond going into the back of Bar Alagara with another girl, so it was possible she didn’t believe me.

  “A bomb exploded in the bar area when you were in the bathroom. You and another boy are the only survivors.”

  Her voice rose. “My dad and Natty?”

  I could only nod and take her hand.

  “That can’t be.”

  Her eyes brightened with tears then closed tight, and I wiped tears from mine. She brought her hands to her face and sobbed. Less than ten minutes later, she asked again what had happened. I took her through it very slowly, and her body wracked and shook. From deep in her throat came a low keening cry that drew a nurse. It was a very hard way to find out that you were an orphan. There was no other family on our side. On Jim’s, just his mother, who was in a retirement home with no short-term memory left, and beyond her, only very distant relatives.

  I left Julia with the nurses, and in the early light I unlatched the garden gate of the house Jim and Melissa had bought fifteen years ago to raise the kids in. The squeaking hinges started the Kerns’ young black Lab, Coal, barking. I had their house key at home, but they kept one under a porcelain tortoise near the pool. When I opened the kitchen door, Coal jumped on me and then ran out to look for his family. I found the dog food. I cleaned the pee off the kitchen floor and was rinsing my hands when Venuti called.

  “JTTF wants you on a call in twenty minutes. So does headquarters. Why aren’t you here?”

  As in, why in the fuck aren’t you here?

  “My niece just came out of surgery. I checked on her. I’ll be on the Joint Terrorism call.”

  “Where are you?”

  “At my sister’s house feeding the dog.”

  There was a long pause before Venuti asked, “How did the surgery go?”

  “Well, but she’s not out of the woods.”

  “We’re all pulling for your niece. I want you to know that.”

  “Thank you.”

  Another long pause, Venuti working around to something else and trying to be sensitive before asking, “Who authorized you to question Omar Smith?”

  “I did.”

  “Say that again.”

  “I’m working Juan Menderes, the missing driver. Omar Smith was his employer. I had questions for him.”

  “Make sure you’re on the call and find me when you get in. I want to hear what you got from Smith.”

  I got the call-in number from Venuti, then hung up and walked the house before leaving. I stood at the door of each kid’s bedroom. I remembered their births and the joy. Seventeen-year-old Nate had looked like his dad. Julia had a string of soccer trophies on her dresser and two dolls from younger days leaning against the second pillow on her bed. I turned off her computer, then walked back down the hallway to the study and faced a wall of photos.

  One was of Jim beneath a B-52 wing in Idaho before the move here, another of the family in Bryce Canyon National Park, and then Jim with drone pilots at Creech, and one of Jim and me along the Green River in Wyoming in a different world in a different time. Could we have ever imagined Jim would someday become something called a drone pilot and die in a bombing on the Fourth of July? I don’t know how we could have.

  Jim once said, “I’m a legitimate enemy target. I’m on the battlefield here. Think about it, bud. It’s the asymmetry of modern warfare.”

  I had thought about it many times and sat in meetings in the field office where the risk was evaluated. For several quiet minutes I stood in front of a picture of Jim and Melissa, then I walked out and sat with Coal, who closed his eyes as I held and talked to him. It calmed him. It helped me a little too.

  “You hang in here, Coal, and we’ll make a plan you’ll like. But you’ve got to be tough right now.”

  The Joint Terrorism Task Force call went down as I drove to the office. I answered questions about my first minutes in Alagara and about Melissa’s party planning and Facebook interaction, neither of which I knew anything about. Melissa didn’t talk with me about the party planning, and though I have a Facebook account, I’m never on it. I answered a stream of questions about Jeremy Beatty. The call ended just as I reached the field office garage.

  Venuti was upstairs at the Domestic Terrorism Squad, and as I came up we walked together to the ASAC’s office.

  Our ASAC, the assistant special agent in charge, was Mark Thorpe, a large man light on his feet and careful with his words. He could be acerbic. He could be hard and offended some, but never me, because he was always forthright. I liked it that Thorpe knew who he was. The prior ASAC lacked self-awareness, and working with Venuti was like riding in a rodeo.

  Thorpe offered condolences. He said, “You’re very strong. I don’t know if I could be working.” But of course he would, so I went on alert. Venuti and Thorpe must have something in mind.

  “How’s your niece?” Thorpe asked, then added, “The whole country is pulling for her.”

  I saw he meant it and told him the details of what the surgeon had said. We talked about that for several minutes. Thorpe asked, “What do you want to do? Given the magnitude of what’s happened to your family, where do you fit in the investigation?”

  At the Bureau you don’t get to decide what you’re going to do next, so I paused on that. It was a critical moment, Thorpe assessing me. Venuti no doubt was arguing for a passive role that would confine me to the office, where he’d assign me work and give me time for my niece and the memorials for Melissa, Jim, and Nate. I needed to be very clear with Thorpe.

  “I belonged at the Alagara, but I understand the decision last night.” I gave it a beat and said, “Put me on finding the bomb maker.”

  Thorpe responded with, “You’re one of the top special agent
bomb techs in the country, not just here. That’s not the issue. You lost family. You were first in. You know a possible suspect. If we put you out there, will you be able to focus?”

  “I’m already focused.”

  He heard something in that and said, “We’re not after revenge. We’re after justice and stopping anything else that’s been planned. What about this ex–drone pilot Beatty?”

  “I don’t think there’s anything there. I know people disagree with that, but we know where to find him, and we can look closely at him. He called me earlier this morning, distraught over headlines saying we’re looking to question him. He expects to get fired today. He’s very disturbed. I don’t think he understands why this is happening.”

  “Why did you stop and see him before going to the party?”

  “Didn’t anyone tell you?”

  “I want to hear it from you.”

  “Late in the night of July 3, he sent me a text message that was similar to suicide texts he would send during the worst days after his discharge. He didn’t respond to the messages I left on the Fourth, so I stopped by on my way to the party.”

  Thorpe mulled that over and said, “That may have saved your life.”

  It had, but I didn’t want to talk about it. I agreed the timing of Beatty reaching out to me raised questions, so did ditching his phone for burner phone—until you factored in a surprise visit from Air Force Office of Special Investigations officers. Then Beatty’s actions made more sense.

  “How did Beatty spot the Department of Defense surveillance?” Thorpe asked.

  “I don’t know exactly. He saw the same people too many times and got suspicious, then got a little drone up for a look and took video.”

  “I hate those goddamned drones,” Thorpe said.

  Thorpe glanced at Venuti then looked back at me and in a harder voice asked, “What does it mean to target US cities with drone instruction software?”