Signature Wounds

by Kirk Russell

  “He’s not a suspect.”

  “You wouldn’t know, mate.”

  “You wouldn’t know it here either.”

  Ramer was quiet, yet had to know what I wanted. He threw it back at me.

  “You called me. I’m calling you back.”

  “I called about the Hakim Salter drone strike.”

  “The American schoolteacher, yeah?”

  “That’s right.”

  “He got taken out with some Taliban.”

  “Was it just bad luck for Salter?”

  “I’m not allowed to talk about it.”

  “You can talk to an FBI agent.”

  “My commanding officer wouldn’t agree.”

  “Give me his number and I’ll call him. I’m not reporting this conversation to anyone.”

  “Recording it though, yeah?”

  “I am, but you’re talking to someone who knows Jeremy personally.”

  Ramer considered that a moment, then said, “Wouldn’t much matter anyway, the truth is gone on that one.”

  “What do you remember?”

  “If I talk to you, where else does it go?”

  “Depends on what you have to say.”

  “If it shows up in Yank media that I don’t agree with the official version, then I’m in a mess here.”

  “That won’t happen. I can promise that.”

  “Can you now?”

  “It stays inside the Bureau.”

  “I’ll tell you more if you keep my name out of it.”

  “I can make you an unnamed source.”

  “All right, mate, I’ll go with that. You’re giving me your word?”

  “Yes.”

  “What happened is, we were ready to launch a missile on the Taliban targets and they had us wait. The Taliban were there and we circled and circled. Jeremy is asking but getting no answers back about the wait, and then out comes the schoolteacher and the order comes to launch. Jeremy is at them, saying he’s looking at the American lad who teaches. The order comes again. So you just do it. You don’t think on it too hard. It’s not yours to identify the target when it’s the CIA sitting on your shoulder looking down with you. You fly the bird. But they knew what they were doing. They waited for the Salter fellow to come back out. Whatever they say, there was no question about it then. Straight up, we took him out.”

  “Did Jeremy say anything that day?”

  “He said a lot. Surprised his mates and the captain. He was stone-cold calm otherwise, but not that day. He said it there and plenty loud, ‘I didn’t sign up to kill Americans.’ Said it and walked out. That was the start of things going wrong for him.”

  “There was an investigation. You were questioned. I’ve read your transcript. It doesn’t have any of this in it.”

  “They told me it all happened a different way, and Jeremy and I misunderstood. They put it to me and gave me a choice.” His voice quieted. “I went the coward’s way. It was to keep my career, you know?”

  “I know the feeling.”

  “I’m not proud of it.”

  “Did they really ship you home the next day?”

  “Nothing like that. Orders were to cooperate with the Yanks and talk to no one except the questioners. What they did was send me home to where I was living in Las Vegas. I was told to have no contact of any kind with Jeremy. We didn’t talk again until after he was discharged. I told him what I did and he understood. We talked a bit. He needed to know what I remembered. He was questioning himself until I said I remembered it the same way.”

  I got an address on him and more contact numbers and sat for a few minutes at my desk before moving on. I called the pilot who flew the FBI Cessna.

  “What’s up, Grale?”

  “I need a ride.”

  “They’re cracking down on us. You’ll need a good reason.”

  “I’ve got one.”

  “Where do you want to go?”

  “Borrego Springs.”

  “When?”

  “Now.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay, well, we did some minor repairs yesterday, and I’m thinking I need to take a test flight. Meet me at the field in an hour.”

  “See you there.”

  39

  July 10th, midafternoon

  Beatty met the guy who had called about his motorcycle and sold it to him for $17,000 cash in a Target parking lot. Then he bought a good little gas stove, a sleeping bag, and a box of ammunition and replaced the camping gear the FBI had impounded. He bought a cooler and ice and some fresh food, four one-gallon jugs of water, and enough MREs to last for a while. He gassed the pickup, checked the tires and oil, and stopped at a pharmacy for another list of things before buying more groceries, ice, and water. He bought three more throwaway phones and packed everything into the king cab of his pickup, and then called Grale to say he’d get another bike someday and he’d be staying a few days with Laura. He also talked to Bahn, Eddie threatening to go to the FBI.

  I told Beatty, “I’ve got the file you sent me. You’re okay.”

  But he couldn’t seem to get that into his head. Later, he left me a message that he’d met up with Laura in Big Pine and gone up to the Bristlecones. They took her jeep and rode up the alluvial plain and into the winding canyon on the eastern slope of the Whites. Once, long ago, they’d made a game of finding the Methuselah tree. It was all there in a long message that rambled near the end about everything coming apart, but that he was fighting it.

  “I’m pretty down,” he said. I picked that message up when we landed in Borrego Springs. When I called him back, he said he was with Laura on the highway running through the Owens. That was good to hear.

  “What is it about these drone pilots, Jeremy? What’s your problem with them?”

  “They don’t care.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know how I like Willie McCool and flying remote-controlled aircraft?”

  “Sure.”

  “That’s about flying. It’s the same with the drones, you have that or you don’t. The three pilots I was training, even in those few days, I could tell it wasn’t in them. They don’t have flying in them. It’s just a job. If it was just one of them, then okay, I’d get that, or even two of them just looking at it as a good opportunity in a new market. But all three? That’s hard to believe. You know what I mean?”

  I did. That resonated. I thought about it for a long time after hanging up with Beatty.

  40

  A San Diego County Sheriff’s Department deputy named Pete Nogales was waiting in the Borrego Valley Airport. He was chatting with the staff inside. They all seemed to know him. Two women were laughing at some joke he’d just told.

  “Seven years since I’ve seen you,” Nogales said and took in the changes in me as I did with him.

  Nogales was moving into middle age, hair thinning on top, face fuller, a little more around his middle than he probably wanted. But he seemed much more confident and at ease. I could tell that the women he’d just told the joke to liked him and were waiting for another laugh.

  Years ago he wanted to join the FBI. He’d filled out an application and been interviewed, but it didn’t happen and I’d barely talked with him since. I’d done everything I could for him and called several times after he was rejected. The disappointment hit his pride hard. It stripped away a dream.

  “Are you acting on a specific tip?” Nogales asked.

  “All I have are grainy photos from the terrorism database and some correlating info.”

  “Correlating info?”

  “I’ll go over it with you.”

  “What do you want to do with the photos?”

  “Come up with a cover story, drive around with you, and talk to people.”

  Anza-Borrego was desert country. A wide swath was state park. In winter and sometimes into early spring, people came for the wildflower bloom, but even in the summer heat like today, there were hikers and off-roaders. T
he café we’d just passed was packed. In the sheriff’s office, I shook hands with Nogales’s captain, Tim Albrecht, and as Nogales had predicted, Albrecht wanted something solid before Nogales toured with me.

  “I’m looking for the bomb maker,” I said. “I don’t have evidence, but I have things that say it’s possible he could be in the Anza-Borrego area.”

  “Where are you getting that from?”

  “Some of it from a tip through a CI.”

  “Where did your confidential informant come up with that?”

  “From a cartel manager’s laptop.”

  “Is that right?”

  “It is.” We looked at each other as I opened the manila envelope with the grainy photos, slid them across, and said, “I can tell you more if it stays in this room.”

  Nothing ever stays in the room, but I needed the San Diego Sheriff’s Department to be completely onboard and could feel the clock running. Nineteen years of doing this had taught me that if you want local support, you never talk down. You don’t hold back unless you have to.

  “Some on the Joint Terrorism Task Force think AQAP and ISIS each trained their own teams and sent them separately over time. Some think it’s a combination of a sleeper cell in the Vegas area and more crew smuggled in over the Mexican border. My focus is the bomb maker. I think we’re looking for a tested pro hired for this who has a place to build bombs far enough away from Vegas to be outside the main law enforcement search. That’s part conjecture, part what I’ve seen in my career, and what we’re putting together with the little we’ve gotten so far. This area could fit.”

  “What about the guy you’ve been questioning, the ex–drone pilot?”

  “Not a shred of anything connects him to the bombings. Air Force OSI and a DOD criminal investigative unit were tapped into his communications for six months and came up with zero.”

  “We’re three bombs in,” Captain Albrecht said, “and the estimate I hear is that’s only half of the C-4.”

  “That’s right.”

  Albrecht circled back and asked, “Why Anza-Borrego?”

  I felt impatient circling back to that question, but knew I couldn’t be.

  “For the same reasons the drug traffickers and fugitives like it—the access to the border and it’s close enough to Vegas.”

  “How long do you expect to be here?”

  “Depends.”

  The captain registered that with a noncommittal nod.

  “Well, Deputy Nogales knows everybody. He’s the right guy to take you out. But he’s got another job to do as well, so I can only give him to you for a couple of days, unless you’re onto somebody.”

  “If that happens there’ll be an army here.” I paused. “Captain, I want to ask you about something else before Pete and I get out there. There was a small plane, a Cessna four-seater that may have been brought down by a bomb. It was definitely brought down by an unusual explosion. Score and burn marks show that. There was the Alagara bar bomb, the pickup bomb, and a car bomb, all made with the same C-4. The plane debris is scattered, but pieces have been retrieved and it’s getting looked at. Are you aware of that plane crash?”

  “Sure.”

  “I figured you would be. The plane crossed from Mexico and landed and took off again from an airstrip in the Imperial Valley. Do you know anything about that airstrip?”

  “Sure, I’ve heard stories.”

  “What kind?”

  “Drugs. Smugglers. You know how it is down here.”

  “Does that airstrip have a rep?”

  “Yeah, a little bit of a rep.”

  “Thanks.”

  We toured Borrego Springs first and then outback places, where everyone living there was off the grid. Nogales knew a cadre of eclectics, antigovernment wackos, retirees, survivalists, parole violators, drug dealers, sportsmen, desert rats, rock collectors, painters, sculptors, and others just drawn to the stark beauty. Nogales networked, and he went to his people now. After the first couple of stops, I felt like a ride along. Nogales was also a natural at asking questions without revealing much. Too bad the Bureau passed on him.

  I checked in with Lacey, who was looking at rentals in the area, recent property-sale closings, Craigslist, and everything she could find where an individual looking for a short-term rental would go. Then we made a stop at a bar in Ocotillo Wells. It was alongside the highway, just before a road running out to a gypsum mine. The bar’s windows were coated in gray-white road dust from massive trucks carrying loads from the mine. Even the cool air inside the bar was dust-laden and carried a faint tang of diesel fumes.

  The bartender looked at the artist’s sketches Nogales laid down, then a photo of Mondari’s white Mercedes.

  “Who are you looking for?” the bartender asked Nogales.

  “A stone-cold killer.”

  “A stone-cold killer driving a car like that?” The bartender chuckled and asked, “Are you sure you’ve got your story right? Go ask Nora or Crazy Pete or the owners of the general store.”

  “The car was stolen from a victim. Do you recognize any of these faces?”

  “Not offhand.”

  “I’m not interested in offhand,” Nogales said. “Look again. This guy is truly bad.”

  “I’d tell you if I recognized anybody.”

  “Just take another look at the photos, okay?”

  “If he’s a killer, what did he do?”

  Nogales nodded toward me, then said, “There was a dismembering here that looks like one of his. Six states have unsolved murders done in the same way. Nevada, California, Oregon, Wyoming, Louisiana, and Missouri.” Nogales rattled them off. “That’s why the FBI is here. We do not want this guy among us.”

  “Who says he is?”

  I fielded that, saying, “We were tipped. That’s why I’m here.”

  The bartender picked up the photos. This time he sifted more slowly but still handed everything back to Nogales and shook his head. We tried the small handful of store owners along the highway, then drove out the dusty gypsum road and made a number of stops before returning to the general store to cobble together some sort of meal.

  “Let’s try Nora the Dawn Artist,” Nogales said.

  “Nora the what?”

  “Dawn Artist. Her family was killed some years ago, and she moved here from LA. She was crazy for a while, then started painting.”

  He turned and looked at me.

  “It’s different out here, but you know that. Nora lives up here on the left in that building that looks like a little water tower.”

  “How was her family killed?”

  Nogales told me as we drove to her house.

  “A truck ran a red light. The driver was texting his boss. Nora’s husband and two kids died in the car, and she came apart. Now she paints the morning. That’s what her name is about. A week after she got here, I found her fifteen miles out on a desert road, dehydrated and with no water, and brought her back home. She’s never forgotten and we’re pals. Every dawn she paints the sky and the land so that no day is lost. That’s her thing. No day lost.”

  “I like that,” I said. “No day lost.”

  Nora the Dawn Artist was in her late forties, with skin tanned and dried by the desert. Her eyes were a crystal bottomless blue. I showed her a photo of Denny Mondari’s white Mercedes, first thinking she might have seen it pass by on the road to the mine. The whole theory hung on Mondari driving here, so I had hope.

  She said, “Well, maybe,” then shook her head and said, “No, I’m sure I haven’t seen that car.”

  I prodded.

  “Seemed like you might have had something there for a moment.”

  She shook her head no, and I showed her six photos of known bombers. Several were poor shots, grainy rail- and bus-station photos, crappy airport video, and partial views later given a percentage of probability by some analyst in DC. They weren’t much to look at. The car was the best hope, though Shah was trying for better resolution images on four of them.
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  Nora sifted from one photo to the next, then studied my face before looking out across the desert. She was watchful and trying to be helpful but in truth was just waiting for us to leave. I got it and thanked her.

  After the dawn-artist visit, we slow-drifted the gypsum road. Desert dirt roads branched off on either side, and most had some housing before ending in rocky desert hills or flattening out in the scrub. Plenty of it was unconventional housing, and where we were headed was even more so, a place nicknamed Cargoland.

  Once years ago, Nogales and I were in Cargoland together, but that was an investigation I didn’t like to think about. It was how we first met. I was working human trafficking. A lead took me to Sacramento to track down a motorcycle gang leader named Mikel Richter. Richter was able to shake me, but not a series of spotter planes that tracked two motorcycles and a blue van to Ocotillo Wells. I arrived an hour behind, then checked in with the sheriff’s office and teamed up with a young Pete Nogales to check out a bar in Cargoland.

  That was on November 10, almost eight years ago and just after sunset. A cold wind was blowing and a full-on party was underway in a bar built from cut-open used shipping containers. Two girls, one fourteen, one seventeen, were chained naked to bolts welded to a steel wall of the bar. They weren’t for sale that night, instead were being rented, and I pushed through the crowd bidding on them. One bar patron was just pulling up his pants when I pulled my badge and gun.

  “You there?” Nogales asked.

  “Yeah, just thinking about last time.”

  “Do you want to turn in to Cargoland?”

  “Not yet, I’m changing my mind. I don’t think we’re ready with the right questions yet. Let’s go out toward the gyp mine and work our way back.”

  We drove an hour of unpaved desert roads and past cobbled-together housing, and then on out toward the mine before returning to the sheriff’s office in Borrego Springs. There I logged into the terrorism database and printed more photos and sketches, including one of another bomb maker who was believed dead, but as far as I knew had never been confirmed dead. That was reaching for straws. I felt the early hope fading. Probably another dead end.